It’s been a bit since I’ve done this, since I’ve been unholy busy, but here it is.

1. La Lubu has a comment on Octo’s Feministe post that says a lot of what I was trying to say below far better than I did. Octo also linked to this post at La Lubu’s blog that, well, yeah. Because without the basics, we can’t do any of it.

2. And Octo yet again has a thought-provoking post, this time on individualism. She’s seriously on a roll over there, and instead of freaking out because she’s violating lefty dogma, take a minute to think about it. Then think about what La Lubu said. Then…synthesize?

3. Hilzoy on why John McCain gets scarier every day.

4. A post at Racialicious about the true purpose of satire.

5. Emily about the latest round of trans wars (do we really still have to have this discussion, people?) but more importantly, again: A woman is dead, and her killer got off.

6. Debi has a round-up of things you can DO. She has lots of other goodness, too, including a big kiss-my-ass to everyone who’s treating her like a wayward child. Rock on, Debi. And thanks for the Arcade Fire.

7. The Jaded Hippy actually went to see Tropic Thunder to tell us all about it. Frankly, no matter how much Robert Downey, Jr.  was involved, I wouldn’t have been interested in that movie before I heard anything about protests about its racism and ableism. And she’s aware that she’s white and able-bodied. Something to think about, especially in terms of the successful-satire post above.

8. Finally, I’m stealing this quote from Pop Feminist.

“We have lost the relative strength and security that the old moral codes guaranteed our loves either by forbidding them or determining their limits. Under the crossfire of gynecological surgery rooms and television screens, we have buried love within shame for the benefit of pleasure, desire, if not revolution, evolution, planning, management–hence for the benefit of Politics. Until we discover under the rubble of those ideological structures — which are nevertheless ambitious, often exorbitant, sometimes altruistic–that they were extravagant or shy attempts intended to quench a thirst for love. To recognize this does not amount to a modest withdrawal, it is perhaps to confess to a grandiose pretension. Love is the time and space in which ‘I’ assumes the right to be extraordinary. Sovereign yet not individual. Divisible, lost, annihilated; but also, and through imaginary fusion with the loved one, equal to the infinite space of superhuman psychism. Paranoid? I am, in love, at the zenith of subjectivity.”

- Julia Kristeva (1987)

Posted: August 16th, 2008 under Feminism, Love, Movies, Politics.
Comments: 3

So the stuff I was writing about here has mainly been excused by the fans of that vile cartoon by the idea that it wasn’t intentionally racist! Just like that New Yorker cartoon was excused because it was SATIRE, man! Satire!

This is the thing: most of us are not intentionally racist. Most of us are not intentionally sexist. Yet these things still exist. (Yes, some people are gleefully, openly racist and sexist, but we’re not talking about them here. Don’t derail me.)

M. LeBlanc at Bitch, Ph.D. wrote an excellent post about racism and sexism a while back that I think you should read. Really.

Racism isn’t only about burning a cross on your lawn or about saying that you wouldn’t vote for Obama because he wants to enslave white people. It can be as simple as locking your car door when you drive through a black neighborhood, or assuming in your head that the black woman you see walking down the street with her kid must be unmarried. Or saying that the men in that cartoon don’t have the right hair texture to be black.

Sexism isn’t only about telling your wife to quit her job and get back in the kitchen, or jerking off to really offensive porn (whatever your idea of that is). It’s assuming that a woman who looks a certain way is stupid. It’s perpetuating a false dichotomy between “male” and “female” characteristics and according only the male ones value. (Why do you really think you value not wearing makeup and not shaving? Is it because doing those things makes you less a tool of the patriarchy, or because not doing them makes you less feminine?)

We all do a million little racist and sexist things every day. I do. You do. Barack Obama does and Hillary Clinton does and Noam Chomsky does and Beth Ditto does.

I love to harp on the fact that people are not either good or evil. There is not a line between the good guys and the bad guys that we can see. This isn’t a Batman movie (and hell, even that recent Batman movie played with those lines in a way that made me quite happy).

I’m not saying that there aren’t people who cross lines that make me unwilling to forgive them. Dick Cheney? No matter how much he renounced, I don’t think I’d ever be cool with Dick. Jesse Helms? Jerry Falwell? I did not cry or pronounce one word of regret when they died.

But having it pointed out that you unwittingly participated in something racist or sexist should not be a call for a huge defensive freakout designed to point out that you’re one of the good ones and therefore what you did couldn’t possibly be wrong or bad, because you didn’t intend for it to be!

In literary criticism, we don’t worry too much about the intent of the author. We look at the signs and signifiers, and interpret the message based on those.

This is a long-winded way of saying if someone calls you out on racism or sexism, the best thing to do maybe is give it a couple of seconds of thought, at least, and decide if they’re right. Then, the proper response is, if the questioner appears to be even remotely in good faith, “I’m sorry I offended you. I didn’t mean to be racist/sexist/ableist/whatever.”

Then you learn from it and get over it. It doesn’t make you the devil, or discount the good things you’ve done in the past, or even make most people hate you. It makes you human.

Posted: July 30th, 2008 under Bullshit, Feminism, Media.
Comments: 11

(yes, I used the word ‘periodic.’ deal.)

The neverending discussions go on. I had drinks last night with a friend who wondered what feminism was doing for her, a black woman.

As it always upsets me to see people who are otherwise feminist turned away from feminism, I had to think about this yet again.

My feminism was there long before I used the term. I wrote zines, protested at frat parties and refused to give blowjobs to high school boyfriends just because they wanted them.

My feminism was always somewhat caught up with sexual behavior. Up until I was in college I never felt like I was denied anything because I was female. The smartest people in my classes were always girls. I never felt bad speaking up and telling guys they were wrong. But the double standard in sexual relationships pissed me off.

So even now, it may be a somewhat bourgeois thing to fixate on, but I think about feminism and sexuality a lot. It’s a prime interest for me. I’ve never liked the rules of relationships, so I’ve always been trying to renegotiate them for myself.

My feminism wants equal rights, not special protections. I wrote an angry Op-Ed in college in response to a girl who wrote a column about being a “lady.” I ain’t no lady, I said, but that doesn’t mean I don’t deserve human respect. I believe of course that there are certain things that affect women more strongly than men–the threat of rape, even though men are definitely raped too (and don’t get me started on the normalization of prison rape), is something that women live with, the aforementioned sexual double standards, pregnancy. But I am not your victim and I don’t need to be protected.

Nor do I believe that women are somehow better fundamentally than men, that putting women into the positions of power that are fucked to begin with is going to make them all better because those women are kinder and gentler.

My feminism is critical of power relations based on a linear hierarchy. (This translates into me feeling guilty being ‘the boss’ at work). Some of this comes from a general punk-rock tendency to say fuck authority, but it’s since gotten much more theoretical. This means that while I am a (white) woman and therefore most sensitive to issues that affect me as a woman, I consider it my job to critique all power structures. This is because I am a feminist.

(more below. this is a long one.) Read more »

Posted: June 22nd, 2008 under Feminism.
Comments: 4

Had a lovely night last night with a friend simultaneously old and new. thanks, you.

And now, back to the blog! Because it’s what I do instead of researching the articles I’m supposed to be writing, reading for my thesis, or taking the dog out to play. Linkage below!

1. BFP on R. Kelly and the Baby Mama incident. Short, but important.

2. Sylvia quotes Gloria Anzaldua and we all need to read it.

3. Blackamazon on othering women of color in feminism.

4. Linking to Racialicious’s links. but they’re good. So read ‘em.

5. And also at Racialicious: more on being a feminist of color and how racism hurts us all.

6. Ren on double standards (which should be a feminism 101 post, shouldn’t it? that we have to keep explaining this at all makes my brain hurt.)

7. Prof BW on the letter writing campaign for Democrats for McCain! (It’s funny. I promise.)

Posted: June 14th, 2008 under Bullshit, Feminism, Politics, Sex.
Comments: none

..up at Racialicious. Thanks to Latoya for running it. If you aren’t reading that blog regularly, you really should be.

Posted: June 5th, 2008 under Religion, Shameless self-promotion.
Comments: 1

So after getting my first official troll (and I’m assuming that this isn’t another incarnation of that girl from SC who still hates me for reasons I just don’t get), I have to think about my own reaction to this primary process.

All of us Obama people have been accused of being “sheep” and just in love with the way the man speaks. Being a white feminist, I’ve also been told that I’m disloyal to women and that I cannot be a feminist if I don’t vote for Hillary Clinton on top of that.

Even one of my friends was arguing with me last weekend that many people voting for Obama are voting for him for stupid reasons (as if millions of people in every election don’t vote for “stupid” reasons like which candidate they’d rather have a beer with). This of course insulted the hell out of me, since I like to think that I’m smarter than that and that my friends know me better than that.

At the beginning of the primary season, I made this chart for one of my other gigs. Did the research on almost every single candidate from each party running for president, and lined them all up next to each other and looked at it. While doing that research, I read the issue positions on each candidate’s website and looked at their voting records.

I was tempted by Bill Richardson, really, I was. But in the end he was an ineffective campaigner and money-raiser, and I’d like a Democrat to win in November, thanks. So I stuck with Barack, whose Dreams From My Father I read and loved and identified with. Whose policy proposals, particularly on foreign policy, were closest to what I myself felt. I don’t want any more saber-rattling. I want negotiation. I want understanding that other countries are not just “with us or against us.” (I want single-payer health care too, but only Kucinich was talking about that, and again, I’d like to win in November.)

But ANY of those Democratic candidates would get my whole support–which doesn’t mean just blogging, it means putting my money and my free time where my big mouth is and donating and volunteering and harassing those nice people who aren’t nearly as partisan as me–in November, because the shit we’re up against is scary. (See last post for reference.)

Hell, I love the idea of a woman president. But the nastiness of this campaign wore on me like it did everyone, and even though I am a white feminist who recoils at sexism like it’s a personal slap in my face, I just didn’t see the sexism as coming from the Obama campaign. Most of the people on the ground for Obama were women, young women of all ethnic backgrounds (and men, too, but I’d have to say that in my personal experience with several different offices, all but one has had a woman in charge).

By contrast, I did see race-baiting coming from the Clinton campaign, so much so that yes, at several points I joined the crowds of people saying they’d vote third party rather than for Clinton.

I think that by November I’d be over it, though.

I was pissed in 2004 when Howard Dean lost in the primaries. Pissed at John Kerry because of stories of push-polls that implied that Dean beat his wife or reminded people that Dean’s wife was Jewish.

But come November, I was on the ground a 12-hour drive from my home, helping Kerry win Pennsylvania (only for him to lose Ohio, and the race, but whatevs).

Because what we were up against was scary. I don’t like voting against things, really, I don’t. I’d much rather vote FOR someone that I believe in. But when it comes down to it, I’d like to keep my reproductive rights and maybe get some help with health care because as a freelance writer, my ass is screwed as soon as I leave my cushy (ha!) grad school.  I’d like to get out of Iraq and have my friends home. I’d like to not see any more tax cuts for the rich that screw over broke people like me, and I’d like to go to the wedding of my gay friends.

So I know that some of y’all think us Obama people are sexist and sheep and stupid and mean and taking away the election from Hillary Clinton. I admit to some of the same feelings at times myself.

But I’d vote for her if she won. And I’d campaign for her and work my ass off to get her in office. Because it’s much more important now than it seemed back in 2000 when I voted for Nader, when I could barely see a difference between what George Bush was pretending to be and what Al Gore was pretending to be.

I want a woman president. I’m really hoping that Obama chooses a woman as his VP candidate. I think that could be truly revolutionary for this country. I think it’s amazing that the Democratic primary came down to a woman and a black man, and it surpassed all my hopes (frankly, I thought we’d end up with Edwards as soon as Iowa voted, and they proved me wrong and made me happy).

But we need to turn this country back in the right direction, and I hope that if Obama lost, I’d be able to look past my distaste for the race-baiting I saw and realize that we needed a candidate who believed in my reproductive rights, the rights of the GLBT community, who wants to get us out of Iraq and hopefully prevent future wars, who wants to give immigrants more rights (and maybe some fair pay too?) rather than throwing them out and bolstering xenophobia, who knows the difference between Sunni and Shiite, who wants to fix our broken health care system and invest in our schools.  And that I would vote for and work for that candidate. Whomever he or she may be.

Posted: May 27th, 2008 under Feminism, Hope, Politics.
Comments: 3

How “different” are Latinos and African-Americans?

Posted: May 24th, 2008 under Politics.
Comments: none

Feminist theory holds, in part, that women are reduced to their bodies in myriad ways by patriarchal society. Women are defined by their appearance, their sexuality, their ability to give birth, in ways that men simply aren’t. The male body is the normal body, while the female body is alien, Other, and thus an integral part of the woman. Man can transcend his body, but woman cannot.

Earlier this year, I presented a paper at a departmental gathering. The best talk I heard there was on “Embodied Cyberfeminism,” by a Mass Media & Communications doctoral student. She wrote about Donna Haraway’s “cyborg” theory, and discussed gender play online as a way to separate women from their bodies and allow them to be defined as they wish.

In the blogosphere, as plenty of us have noted, we sit behind a screen. I don’t have to identify as Jewish or even as female here. The fact that many of us do speaks to that tendency of our bodies to define us. And once we identify as such out in the blogosphere, certain people seem to get the attention, even though the body is hidden and the writing is the only thing we can see.

I took a course on writing and feminist theory that studied the works of Nancy Mairs, a feminist writer with MS. Mairs wrote about her body in eloquent, beautiful terms, and noted that there is no way for her to separate herself from that body even when it fails her, but that her writing can help her to feel comfortable in that body.

In any case, women of color are doubly defined by their bodies. Nonwhite people are defined by the difference of their body from white people’s. With this definition comes a litany of stereotypes, but the starting place is the appearance of the body. The skin color, the shape of one’s eyes or nose (as I note when I am called out in public as a Jew despite no outward symbols of Judaism on me), as a woman, one’s breasts or ass. The shape and shade of our bodies creates an image of how our minds, our whole persons, must be.

Transgendered people define their own bodies–and despite some “feminists” thinking this is somehow wrong, it is beautiful. But as the title of this film (found through Problem Chylde) says, a black person who is transgendered is still black. (And as Holly points out so well here, just because you’re trans doesn’t mean you are trying to uphold some rigid gender roles.)

A white man may escape being defined by his body because his is the normative body in society. A woman may not, whatever the color of her skin. And people of color may not. And this makes it an issue for all of us. It is an issue when Sean Bell is killed and his killers go free (despite them being police officers), because he is being defined by his body as dangerous and as not valuable enough to care when he is killed.

It is an issue when Rev. Wright is seen as somehow more dangerous, scary, and transgressive than John Hagee, because of the color of his skin.

It is an issue when women are treated poorly because they are larger than what is considered desirable (by who, anyway). Fat phobia is often discussed on feminist blogs.

It is just as much of an issue when these things happen as it is when Hillary Clinton is characterized as a “witch” or when anti-Clinton groups name themselves Citizens United Not Timid, because she is female.

We feminists should not wait, as I said below, until an honest-to-god (and maybe cisgendered, if certain feminsts have their way) woman is hurt by something to speak out, because all of these issues are issues of bias against someone because of their body.

Because of the color of their skin.

The shape of their hips.

The curve of their breasts.

Their bodies.

Posted: May 5th, 2008 under Feminism.
Comments: 1

A comment someone made over at this thread has me thinking about when it’s time to shut up and when it’s time to speak out.

I was standing in line on Friday to get my lunch. It was the Day of Silence and there was a group of students sitting at the Bell Tower on Temple campus handing out information on the protest. Two girls got in line behind me. One of them said, “Are you glad they’re all going to be deaf from sitting under that bell when it rings?”

And the other said something about the “Fag-straight alliance.”

I didn’t even think about it, I just reacted. “Wow,” I asked her, turning to look her in the face. “Did you really just say that out loud?”

She didn’t really answer me, and when I turned back around she and her friend started quickly talking about how they were in the gay-straight alliance back in high school, so somehow that alleviated them being assholes about these students’ protesting. (Reminded me of this.)

I didn’t even know about the protest until that day. I’m a grad student, which means I live under a rock when it comes to campus events. Regardless of whether or not I was involved in it, or whether or not I was the person being put down by that girl’s words, I had to say SOMETHING to let her know that what she said wasn’t cool.

See, over at that Feministe thread (the first one I linked to), someone pointed out that the thread was full of white women who were angry about the racist imagery in It’s a Jungle Out There. And that person suggested that white women who were speaking out were just as bad as others in appropriating the words, feelings, and thoughts of women of color.

I know sometimes I err on the side of not speaking up because I feel like it isn’t my place. Hi, privileged white girl. But lately I just can’t keep quiet and wait for someone else to say it. Even in the feminist blogosphere, I find myself annoyed with the persistence of attention paid to white middle-class women’s issues while other issues that affect women of all ethnic backgrounds and economic status are ignored. I’ve started to see why women I admire, like Patti Smith and Susan Sarandon, (yes, white women) don’t claim the label feminist, and why bloggers I admire are leaving.

So I have to speak up when I see things that are just effing wrong. I have to not feel uncomfortable calling people out on their racism and homophobia the same way I regularly call them out on their sexism.

And at the same time we all need to know that there are times when I do need to shut up and listen. There will always be people whose lived experience gives them a right to speak out about racism and homophobia and transphobia and poverty and many other things that I have simply never experienced. And the last thing any of us should ever do is tell anyone else that their concerns are trivial, that they should get over it, or that they’re jealous.

On these blogs, as I mentioned here, we don’t have to claim our race or gender or age or privilege level (other than the obvious, which is computer access and enough time to blog). But yet we do, and it gets brought into all the discussions, either as a positive or a negative. It is painful for me to see, even in a world which is supposedly free of judgment based on appearance, how even here voices are privileged because of the bodies they come from.

Giving white women a pass because they’re feminists, because they’ve experienced sexism, misses the point. Giving them a pass because they’re our friends doesn’t work either. Because someone is on the right side of one issue, it doesn’t make them right about all of them. (See Dick Cheney and his disagreement with Bush about gay marriage, for example.) When they’re our friends, it’s even more important to call them out on the things they do wrong, because we care and want them to do better.

When they aren’t our friends, but are people in a position of more power than we are, whether that be a big-name feminist blogger or a presidential candidate, it is hard for a few voices only from the group being slighted to speak up and be heard. They need more voices to join in the chorus.

Those voices are not more important because they are white. They are important because they are making that chorus louder. If there are enough of us, we WILL be heard.

Posted: April 27th, 2008 under Bullshit, Feminism, Hope, Politics.
Comments: 7

This issue and this issue are deeply connected. And are even more deeply connected to the national conversation about race that the national media is pretending to have right now.

See, we like to pretend that certain people just CAN’T be racist. Feminists, for instance, get a pass because they’re feminists and are working for justice for all (but all too often starting with middle-class white women). Or my goodness, the police in the Sean Bell case, well two of them were black! So race had nothing to do with it.

We all screw up sometimes (hopefully not to the extent of killing an unarmed person). But to write the screwups off as ‘human’ and pretend that there isn’t more examination to be done here, well…yeah. How about examining how we’ve internalized images of black male bodies as threatening, bad, evil, for so long that many readers of Marcotte’s book didn’t even notice the symbolism? That other black police officers shot and killed a man who presented no threat to them?

I don’t have a long post about this in me right now, but all those people linked above did, so read their words instead.

Thanks to Holly at Feministe for continuing to make that blog worth reading, btw. Literally each time I think I should just take it off my list, she posts something brilliant and I stick with it.

Also related, you should read this.

Posted: April 25th, 2008 under Bullshit.
Comments: none