Turns Out, My Shrill, Humorless Feminist Voice IS Needed

Just saw this on the teevee:

Flirty Girl Fitness

And look, now you, too, can learn to pole and chair dance while keeping the booty beat, from the comfort of your own home! What? You don't have the pole installed in your garage like I???

My sorta raison d'etre (feminist critique of popular culture) has just been affirmed.

The Susan B. Anthony Bench

Sunday, I spoke at a Unitarian Universalist service in honor of the King Holiday. After the service, some members of the church took me and the fam to lunch. One of the women in the group--I'll call her Pam--identified as a second-wave feminist and she sat next to me because she wanted to talk more about my ideas on race and class.

Because I had mentioned where I'm from, she told me how she used to love going to Louisiana--particularly New Orleans--until Louisianans rejected the ERA. "I haven't been back since!" she said. "I suppose that's wrong." The other women and I shook our heads. "You have every right to protest," one of them assured her.

And then she wanted to talk about something else I'd said. I had mentioned during the Q & A after my paper that when I was younger, I quite often knew something was "wrong," but didn't have the words to describe institutionalized racism and sexism. Over lunch, Pam told me she knew exactly what I meant.

She didn't have the words to describe how she felt after a childhood of seeing her widowed mother work so hard only to be passed over for raises and promotions because she wasn't a traditional "head-of-household."

She didn't have the words to describe how she felt when, while working in the office of a Texas senator, she saw him laugh at a female constituent who had come to talk to him.

"Do you know what she wanted?" he asked incredulously, laughing the whole while.

"What?" Pam said.

"Support for an Equal Rights Amendment."

She was mystified, she told me. "I asked him why was that so funny. And he waved me off and said 'You women have it better now!'."

And she didn't have the words to explain how she'd felt after one particular shopping trip. Her husband had been overseas on some military endeavor and she'd gone to a furniture store. There, she'd seen a little wooden bench that she'd loved--but it cost $250. She was going to have to buy it on credit. She approached the store manager and asked for the credit application.

And he told her that she could not make a contract without her husband's approval.

"Here I was, running the house, taking care of everything--I had charge accounts at the drugstore and other places, but he was telling me it was against the law for me to get a bench on my own?"

"Give me the papers," she told him. "I'll take them home for my husband to sign."

She forged his signature of course. And just to make sure I understood the significance, she spelled it out like this: "I had to break the law to buy a bench."*

She calls it her Susan B. Anthony bench, because shortly thereafter, she became involved in the feminist movement. That is what gave her the words to name the oppression and discrimination she'd seen.

She hasn't told her children what happened. Before she dies (and we talked a bit about death and social change, too), she's going to write out the story, so that after her death, the bench and the story can be passed to her daughter who can then pass it to her daughter.

"So they don't forget," she said. "I don't want them to forget, even though they don't remember."
_____________________________________
*I have to admit that I thought by the 1960s, laws like that were a thing of the past.

Why Your Community Ain't Like Mine

Subtitle: And How You Make Sure I Know That I'm Not Welcome. A recent look around the blogosphere and mental cataloguing of episodes of epic fail prompted me to think about community, and lack of community, and "exclusion" right now. These are some of my (incomplete, choppy, certainly not perfectly worded) reflections.

Part One: Realize that parents are people. Realize that parents are the same people you knew before… Realize that parents can be activists, but they are also parents. -Noemi

when you have a child
no one finds it tragic.
no map records it as an instance of blight. -Alexis Pauline Gumbs

They would chop me up into little fragments and tag each piece with a label... Who, me confused? Ambivalent? Not so. Only your labels split me. -Gloria Anzaldúa

I’m teaching a class this summer in black women’s history. The other night, I previewed a film about Mrs. Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Commonly described as “unflinching” and “uncompromising, she was active in anti-lynching and civil rights agitation. She was also a suffragist. One of her friends was Susan B. Anthony. The relationship between the two women hit a rocky patch in the 1890s, when Wells married and began to have children.


Wells-Barnett noticed that Anthony’s attitude toward her changed. In the film, Paula Giddings, one of Wells-Barnett’s biographers, noted that Anthony began to “bite out” Wells-Barnett’s married name.

Eventually, Wells-Barnett felt it necessary to call Anthony out about it:

Finally, I said to her, “Miss Anthony, don’t you believe in women getting married?” She said, “Oh, yes, but not women like you who had a special call for special work. I too might have married but it would have meant dropping the work to which I had set my hand. She said, “I know of no one better fitted to do the work you had in hand than yourself. Since you have gotten married, agitation seems practically to have ceased. Besides, you have a divided duty. You are here trying to help in the formation of [the Afro-American] League and your eleven month old baby needs your attention at home. You are distracted over the thought that maybe he is not being looked after as he would if you were there, and that makes for divided duty.”*

Anthony was questioning Wells-Barnett’s dedication, her supposed prioritization. She had her own perception of what Wells-Barnett’s activism should’ve looked like and resented the change. What she didn’t understand, according to Wells-Barnett, was that “I had been unable… to get the support which was necessary to carry on my work [and] had become discouraged in the effort to carry on alone.”

I thought about this question Noemi asked wrt community-building:

[E]ver think why parents stop being involved in community events and meetings?

What does it mean when what you believed to be community abandons you?

I also thought about Kevin. He has, to put it lightly, been disturbed by the attacks on First Lady Michelle Obama by feminists who question her “feminist creds” and deride her dedication to family. “This shit goes way back, Kev,” I wanted to say after watching that documentary.

What I had said to him when he noted all the “Stepford Wife” comparisons, was “WoC are never supposed to prioritize our children and families.” Defined as laborers, our work is always presumed to better serve someone else's needs or goals. That other women think they can tell us how to be feminists is no surprise.

But my answer had it shortcomings. It’s not so much a matter of priorities. One thing I’ve learned by studying early black feminists is that some of those divisions are false—their activism was shaped to improve the lives of women, their families, and their communities. There was not necessarily a sense of "divided duty." Activism is not always easily divisible into neat categories. That's why those black clubwomen believed "a race can rise no higher than its women." That's why Anna Julia Cooper wrote

Only the BLACK WOMAN can say "when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole Negro race enters with me."

Susan Anthony's distress and the more spiteful critiques of Michelle Obama fail to take into account this interconnectedness. But these critiques prompt me to think also of Little Light's words, about how threatening our love and our attempts to define our lives and our activism for ourselves can be perceived:

It is time for us to acknowledge that our love is an act of war.

It seems distasteful to say. It feels wrong. Our love, our lives, our nurtured gardens and families, we say, these are not weapons. These are not acts of violence. To us, they are not.

Nonetheless, there are those who insist breathlessly, endlessly, that they are...

The very act of not getting to define everything for the rest of us is the end, for them.

Part Two: To build a community, parents and children should be welcome and not feel they can’t attend a meeting/event because of their baby(ies). ... [D]on’t you want the next generation to care about the same things you care about? When will this happen? -Noemi

[F]eminists have a choice in deciding what community they belong to. And they are implicitly choosing to stay away from and otherwise distance themselves from communities that make them uncomfortable or worried for any reason. This has consequences for the communities that they refuse to work with. Most importantly, it has consequences because WOMEN belong to those communities that they refuse to work with. -BfP

If feminism is supposed to work to improve the lives of all women, if it about forging connections and building communities for women, period, then I don’t understand this either. Oh, not so much the OP, though I think it does make some false divisions.

But the comments. At the very least, feminists should respect other women’s choices to have or not have children. But outside and within some feminist communities, childfree women are under excessive pressure to conform to what is considered normative. Those who choose not to have children are regarded as suspect, strange, threatening. Their choices are dismissed as temporary or mean. Those who don’t have children, but for reasons other than choosing not to, are pitied, regarded as incomplete and barren--which has to be one of the coldest words I’ve ever heard used to describe a human being.

As the mother of one child I get only a tiny bit of that, and it is wearying. I am routinely asked, “You really don’t want any more? What if you get married? What if a, b, or c happens?” Often, the implication is that I am selfish, both for not wanting to invest the enormous amount of time and effort required to parent a baby and because my son will be “alone” or “lonely.”

You know what my response to that is not? Attacking other women. I don’t think I have had some magical experience that childfree women are sorely lacking and will forever be deprived because of. I can honestly say that many days, I only survive motherhood. I don’t master it, I don’t excel at it.

But how do you nurture and create community when things like this stand? When women are called “moos,” “breeders,” and “placenta-brains” and their children “widdle pweshuses” and “broods?”^^ When you cast your community as one in which women who have children and women who are childfree are diametrically (perhaps, diabolically) opposed and that mothers (gasp) are taking over the movement and leaving slack that others have to catch up? When it becomes clear that some of us are not welcome into your community? When your remarks indicate that you are, in fact, chillingly “independent of community?” I borrowed that phrase from BfP and the moment she said it, my mind began clicking.

All kinds of feminists can nod when I write about the lie that is the capitalistic ideal of “rugged individualism.” They can see the cruelty and efforts at social control when I talk about the attacks on poor mothers that begin and end with “Why are you having kids and who do you expect to take care of them?” They can see the patriarchy at work in the divide and conquer strategy that is the “mommy wars.”

But they can’t see the damaging individualism inherent in their feminism. Of course, I don’t mean in choosing not to have children—familial and community obligations are commonly fulfilled by all of us, not just mothers. I mean the sentiment revealed in expressing aversion and revulsion towards women who do have children. As Noemi asks,

why is motherhood and heavens forbid, single parenthood a step back in the eyes of activists and feminists? If the choice to terminate a pregnancy is radical, why isn’t the choice in being a mother radical?

I mean feeling that it's okay to demean and dehumanize whole groups of people because they made a choice you would not or because of their age, and repudiating any suggestion that said groups can be an important part of your community.

They can’t see the analogy between conservatives saying, “Who do you expect to take care of them?” and some feminists “roll[ing] their eyes when someone brings up childcare.” They can’t see the divide and conquer so apparent in “women with children v. childfree women.”

If feminism is about meeting “our” needs and some of “us” are mothers, why is it seen as a hostile takeover if I ask about childcare? If I express concern about keeping a roof over our heads or clothes on my child’s back? If I write about how my feminist consciousness is often raised by my experiences as a mother? If that is what your feminist community is about, then to quote Noemi again, “This is not community. This is not a welcomed community.”

Part Three: What new skills and influences will single parents give their children if the community doesn’t think it’s important for them to be involved? -Noemi

you have chosen to be...
in a community
that knows that you are priceless
that would never sacrifice your spirit
that knows it needs your brilliance to be whole -Alexis Pauline Gumbs

I struggled for a few days trying to find the words to say what I wanted to say about my community of WoC, why I feel it as community, why I think other women feel it as community. Should I use the words mutuality, reciprocity? Should I use the word vulnerable--because in the loving and trusting, in refusing to hold ourselves "independent of community," we do make ourselves vulnerable, but we also make ourselves strong. "Interdependency between women is the way to a freedom which allows the I to be," wrote Audre Lorde, "not in order to be used, but in order to be creative."

I don't know the exact words for an accurate description. I do know that I don't feel that I have to compartmentalize. I don't have to spend a lot of time developing a defense of why this or that is a "feminist issue" with clearly, neatly defined parameters. I don't feel that there are parts of who I am that I cannot discuss or bring into the community.

I do not feel the false divisions. Why?

Because if I had to choose one word to describe Alexis Pauline Gumbs, it'd be love and I am humbled by how it infuses her words and actions.

Because cripchick expresses pride in our kids as they journey to become revolutionaries. Also, I'm convinced the sun shines out of her.

Because Fabi, Noemi, Lex, Mai’a, and Maegan and others write about revolutionary motherhood.

Because I find myself wanting to take that machete out of BA’s hands and go off on people who make her feel “gunshy" and I know Donna does, too.

Because women cheer when Baby BFP speaks.

Because Sylvia virtually cheered me through that PhD and I smile each time I think about writing her name-comma-Esq.

Because Lisa writes letters to her Veronica.

Because BfP invites us to take our own journeys and come together to share the discoveries.

Because Adele always hears me. Always.

Because Kameelah writes of creating community with her students, centering their art and the way they see the world, and she invites us in.

Because Anjali answers my questions about caring for our communities on macro and micro levels.

Because BA agonizes when she wonders what La Mapu learned about the importance of WoC voices when she witnessed an event in which those voices were, once again ignored.

These are just a few reasons, a few examples of the sense of accountability, to each other, to our children, to our work on- and off-line (and thank you, Aaminah, for helping me to understand that). Maybe this isn't unique to my community. But as WoC, a community that finds us and our work and our involvement "priceless" is not common. What WoC do commonly discover in feminist communities are

real experiences of having hard work devalued – many members of a supposed community literally saying, your work is worthless, you’re haters, critique sliding off like teflon.

But back to that accountability, that rejection of "independent of community." I finally found words that reflect some of what I feel. And me being me, of course I found them in a book. In Black Feminist Thought, Patricia Hill Collins writes,

[T]he conceptualization of self that has been part of Black women's self-definition is distinctive. Self is not defined as the increased autonomy gained by separating oneself from others. [S]elf is found in the context of family and community--as Paule Marshall describes it, "the ability to recognize one's continuity with the larger community." By being accountable to others, African American women develop more fully human, less objectified selves. Rather than defining self in opposition to others, the connectedness among individuals provides Black women deeper, more meaningful self-definitions.

Part Four: We are sistas with brown skin we knew that from jump. … [N]o one could understand what it was like… to wonder if this silence this ignoring this "forgetfulness" is planned or just the final realization that while talking about you is sufficient, privilege and entitlement means you can be ignored pretty fully and suffer no consequences, because someone is always eager to take your place -BlackAmazon

[I]f feminists can’t even be called on to point to the work that other feminists are doing... well, then there’s no fucking feminist movement. -BfP

I mentioned the example of BA and La Mapu last so that I could roughly segue into this. I’ll begin by saying that inclusion is rarely worth a damn--it is used as a substitute for "bona fide substantive change."** It’s arrogant to think it’s up to you to “include” us in feminism. We’ve been there, part of the foundation, existing as "the bodies on which feminist theories are created."

And you know what? People who think they have the power to include also often exclude.

Yes, in a specific sense, I’m talking about the Brooklyn listening party. I hurt for Mala, especially when I read this:

Pero it’s not real enough for people who said they would come to a listening party to support something that means alot to me and other hermanas that I love. It’s not real enough for them to visualize my carrying a stroller with a 30 poundish toddler up and down subway stairs, walking miles not for exercise pero so that I don’t have to buy subway fare and can afford milk, walking to change a bag of pennies, thinking of pawning some earrings. It’s real enough for me to go talk to young people about identity, media, gender and race, pero it’s not real enough for people to think it’s important to support what we do beyond a cursory pat on the head for a job well done little spic girl who we can’t even be bothered to name. I have been invited to two national conferences this summer, pero there is no money to get me there and of course the orgs who want my face, my race and my gender can’t be bothered to actually spend money. They will find another woman of color, mami of color, Latino blogger to take my place, one who they deem more worthy because they can pay their own way or because they play the game well, etc etc.

I hurt for BA and La Mapu and Ms. Poroto and all of us.

And, yes, I was angry, too, about the listening party, about the general reception of the SPEAK! CD, about how it is reflective of how the voices and efforts of WoC are regarded.

From the moment BA wrote this

ONCE AGAIN

with people this time being extended the olive branch and courtesy of the voices of my sisters and the hospitality of my BEST FRIEND

have not tried to help contact or even SPEAK one iota

and did not have the COMMON FUCKING DECENCY to return contact on PERSONAL INVITATIONS.

I wondered, how is it made, this decision about which feminists are important enough to support? Why do I read about this book, and that appearance, and this podcast, and yay, yay, yay when it comes to white feminists…

But everything is eerily silent when it comes to the work of WoC?

The vows of support,

the “oh, yes, ‘your issues’ are important!”, ***

the “I totally recognize how very necessary your voice and your experiences are to feminism,” it all melts away, words belied by (in)action.

Not just this time.

I am left thinking of the name of Donna’s blog and the quote from which it is derived:

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

I am left wondering, like Noemi, why are we a luxury?

Expendable and interchangeable--important enough to be invited, too insignificant for anyone to develop a real idea or plan for how we are to get there.

Flighty and abstract, with all that focus on love. Or, as Nadia says,

our solutions are disregarded as being…
-too imaginative, not practical
-amatuer, short sighted
-not real organizing / change-making / “movement building”

In/Ex-cluded.

Part 5: For within living structures defined by profit, by linear power, by institutional dehumanization, our feelings were not meant to survive. -Audre Lorde

[T]hose tools [of patriarchy] are used by women... against each other. -Audre Lorde

Things I fully expect to happen in the aftermath of this post and this one and so many others: WoC themselves will continue to be ignored, while their words and theories are appropriated, depoliticized, made more "palatable."

There will still be attempts to define how our work, our activism, our "priorities" should look--and justifications for why our failure to adhere means we can't be part of certain of communities.

People will continue to scream "get off your ass and do it yourself, stop bitching, stop complaining, stop crying racism, stop stop stop, pull yourselves up by your boot straps and just DO IT!" while simultaneously ignoring that we have been "just doing it" forever with no need for outside motivation and admonishment.

I will from time to time, get angry, feel isolated, say, "Fuck this! What is wrong with you?!"

Then I will sigh, and take comfort in the fact that "there’s us.

it’s the best thing about being us."

I will take comfort in the fact that we know

our words are not a luxury

our love is not a luxury

we are not a luxury. We know that... and quite often, that is enough.

__________________________________
*Toni Morrison read this part of her memoirs in the film, but you can find it and the quote I mention a few lines later, here.

^^ETA: Clicking links led me to this critique by mzbitzca

**PHC, Black Feminist Thought, 6.

*** Wherein "our issues" are always about our victimization, never about our activism and agency--that's objectification, too.

Failing as a Black Feminist Mama

The other day, my son held the door open for some women who were coming into a restaurant behind us. While they noted how nice and well-mannered he was, he did this little silly bow thing and said "Ladies first."

No, that's not why I think I've failed as a Feminist Mama.

See, when he said, "Ladies first," I began to hum this...



...then sing/rap it outright. He, being a music connoisseur in his own mind, askjavascript:void(0)
Publish Posted me, "Mama, what is that?"

"It's 'Ladies First' by Queen Latifah. From when she used to rap," I explained.

And he said,

"Mama, Queen Latifah used to rap?!"

He was shocked!

So was I.

Sexism vs Racism

The other thing I tried to get DR. ELLE to elaborate on in regards to this historic presidential campaign are these so-called feminist Clinton supporters who are charging that sexism is the reason their candidate lost and that many of them will "defect" and vote for John McCain to "show" the Democratic party or teach us all a lesson. Huh?

How is it advancing the feminist cause to put a man in office who will, undoubtedly, place another ultra conservative on the Supreme Court during his time in office. The Supreme Court which is thisclose to repealing Roe v Wade. Isn't reproductive rights CENTRAL to the feminist cause. He is anti- almost everything the feminist cause speaks to, but because the Democrats somehow denied Hillary Clinton the nomination.....they are going to show us their considerable power and vote for John McCain? Because Barack Obama is soooooo different than Hillary? Besides a very slight difference on health care and a bigger difference in ideology on whether or not the POTUS should speak to our enemies, Clinton and Obama agree on about 98% of the issues. So what is the real reason not to vote for Obama in the fall if you are a Democrat or Independent Liberal who believes in Liberal/Democratic causes? Because he was an upstart who "took" her nomination from her? Who is really to blame for that?

Clinton was the de facto/presumed nominee up until January of this year. I was sure she'd win. I was sure no one would vote for Obama. But 18 million people did. The fact is, she had all the advantages when this thing started - 100% name recognition, her husband was a beloved Democratic president, she had the big money donors in her court - she had it all. So to say that she somehow lost because she is female is disingenuous. Were there people out there who would never vote for her simply because she's a woman? OF-COURSE there were. But so too were there those who would never vote for a black man. Was there blatant sexism in the way she was covered by the media. Absolutely. Having CNN commentators actually discuss whether it's okay to call her a bitch is astoundingly sexist and uncalled for. And yes the dumbasses of the world showed up to shout "Iron my shirt" and sell Hillary nutcrackers. But the dumbasses of the world are always going to be there. Did any of that cost her the nomination??? With all the advantages she had the notion doesn't add up.

So now there's this idea that "Bitch is the new Black" (per Tina Fey), in other words, sexism is the new "racism" and sexism is more acceptable than racism in this country today and in this campaign. Elle's already talked about how maddening it is to see it become a competition for who's more maligned and who has it worse. The two are not competing "isms". They both exist and they both are something that is deeply ingrained in this country.

As for this campaign and which has been "worse", for me it comes down to the source of the racism or sexism. In my opinion Clinton, her husband, her surrogates (like Ferraro) and her campaign were openly courting and touting the votes of people ("hard working white Americans)who clearly showed racial resentment (at best) towards Obama and made no efforts to dissuade the ignorance of her constituents who believed Obama wasn't one of them (i.e. "He's not a Muslim.....as far as I know). Where is the honor in that? Of-course she wanted their votes. So did Edwards - but at least publicly he said he wanted not part of people who were voting for him only because he is white and male. Obama, his wife, surrogates and campaign never openly courted the good ole boys by diminishing Clinton as a female. He did question her touted experience as First Lady and what she really did that qualified as experience, and I know that upset many, but I think that's legitimate when your opponent is saying they have experience and you don't. I don't see that as an attack on her for being female. So for me, openly courting and touting the racist vote and playing on fears of "outsiders" is what made racism trump sexism in this race.

Regardless of your opinion on who had it worse in this campaign, the underlying question is, why are these women willing to punish themselves by voting for John McCain to stick it to the media and other idiots who have been blatantly sexist when the candidate left standing in the Democratic party is completely on their side when it comes to the feminist cause? Clearly not all, or even a majority, of Clinton's supporters are saying this, but it's enough that the chatter is being heard, and pretty scary to me.

OK, I Have to Start Thinking about It

One of the other things that former Arkansas State Representative Joyce Elliott said that resonated with me was that we need to stop putting down politics and our political system. Paraphrasing Dale Bumpers, she noted that while the system was flawed, it's all we have right now. She encouraged us to work towards change from the inside.

I am guilty of simultaneously expressing scorn for the infighting within the Democratic party and symbolically washing my hands of it, as if I'm far above the mudslinging that has gone on.

In truth, it has worn me out. But I need to start thinking about it.

Like my parents, I am a die-hard Democratic voter. In fact, whenever I've voted for multiple elected positions and the only candidate for some position or other has been a Republican, I did not vote. There is a part of me that has never allowed me to vote for a Republican, for what that party stands for in its current manifestation.

And I'm not the type of person who can vote to prove a point in the sense of voting for a third party candidate to express my disgust with the "big" parties. To me, that feels like throwing my vote away. I know it's wrong. I know we need more than two viable parties, but given our system, that's just how I feel. Besides, when I vote for a Democrat, I'm not just choosing the lesser of two evils. I truly do wish for change, for politicians that care about average people and not just corporations and/or the super-wealthy.

That said, I do not think the Democratic Party is a worry free haven for me. For one thing, I realize that I'm much further left than many Democrats. One reason I have not been all engrossed by the presidential brouhaha is I am not just head-over-heels about either of the Democratic candidates. Both Senators Obama and Clinton are a little too centrist for me.

I have been horrified by how divisive this thing has gotten. And one thing that has been enlightening, but kind of heartbreaking for me is seeing the growing rift in feminism. (How could I have forgotten to link Crenshaw and Ensler's "Feminist Ultimatums?" The rest of this post is definitely about how I'm viewing either/or feminists). As Shark-Fu noted:

Senator Clinton’s run for the Democratic nomination has not produced a split in feminism. It just flushed away a lot of that tolerance bullshit and exposed a rift that’s been there since way back in the day.
[snip]
It is layered with issues of class, race, orientation and identity that all play a role in our goals and tactics. The reason it may seem new is because we haven’t had a happening that demanded an unavoidable examination of our values and our goals in some time.

A few weeks ago, I e-mailed some friends about a WaPo article in which a white feminist opined that black women who supported Barack Obama had "forgotten sexism." My response, of course, was my usual "Is she for real?" I wanted to explain that for some of us, sexism and racism can't be neatly separated, that I, for one, don't have a schedule that reads, "M-W-F, focus on 'the race'; T-Th, do your 'feminist' stuff; S-Su, other stuff--every third weekend off." Unnecessarily snarky I know, but, damn, see if you don't get tired of people trying to compartmentalize and dissect who you are.

But even worse than the demands to compartmentalize or prioritize, is the absolute disappearing of black women by some white feminists as they argue against an Obama candidacy. A little while ago, on Taylor Marsh's blog, I read a comment in which a woman wondered what the Democratic Party would do when Democratic women left the party if Obama was the nominee. Now, if I'm understanding correctly, 90% of black Democrats who've been voting support Obama. I'd hazard a guess that a significant portion of that 90% are women. And yet, we don't count as Democratic women?

And on the Reclusive Leftist, after a post in which Dr. Violet Socks explains why she will not vote for Obama, comments include:

36. What’s happening here is that the women of America— the regular voters — are putting their foot down.

Black women are not part of the women of America?

68.. It’s about whether or not we are OK with the Democratic party basically saying they don’t have to do look out for us. Women aren’t important the way blacks are.

You can be a woman or black, but not both?

If Obama is the nominee, Cynthia McKinney would be the ideal alternative choice. How can anyone label us racist if we vote for her?

A black woman becomes the vehicle by which you get to express your disapproval and earn your I'm-not-a-racist card?

Then there's the wider dismissal of black voters in general or, in a similar vein, as Pam Spaulding says, the casting of the black vote as "a "problem" because it skews to Obama." The beginning of it was not Sen. Clinton's observations of support for her among white people,"the people you have to win if you're a Democrat in sufficient numbers to actually win the election. Everybody knows that," though that bothers me a whole lot. The feeling that I get from that is, so what that Obama has overwhelming black support? Our votes don't matter. So many comments on blogs reiterate this meme--the only support Obama gets is from black people and academics so it doesn't count. I'm too tired to get deeply into that, but I'm black and an academic, so my general feeling is, glad to know I pretty much don't matter to the party I always support.

And then there is that which remains largely unexamined by Sen. Clinton's supporters. I see lots of dissection of the "not good" reasons people vote for Obama: "Academics vote for Obama cuz he's elitist. Young people vote for him cuz he has rock star appeal. Black people vote for him cuz he's black." But for Sen. Clinton to stand flat-footed (as my grandmother would say) and claim, "Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening," as if that statement is unproblematic... I respect Melissa's analysis:

What I am keenly interested in is Clinton's having either intentionally or unintentionally equated "hard-working Americans" with "white Americans." Because, you know, on one hand, it's a cynical and ugly dog whistle to racists who equate brown-skinned people with laziness—and, on the other hand, it sounds exactly like a cynical and ugly dog whistle to racists who equate brown-skinned people with laziness. Even giving her the benefit of the doubt that she didn't intend to imply that non-white Americans aren't hard-working, the effect is the same

I want some Hillary supporters to dissect some of the "not good" reasons people vote for her. You know, just begin a sentence with, "Some white people vote for Clinton cuz..." or "I'll vote for McCain if Obama is the nominee because..." and use your imagination.

There is something troubling about some white* feminists who support Hillary Clinton claiming the Democratic Party is acting as if the black vote is "too" important, a sort of not-so-soft whisper of, "Don't forget who really matters," both in terms of votes and the existence of the party, an invocation of power and privilege.

Because they envision this contest as one in which someone is going to be "thrown under the bus," I think they're making it pretty clear who that had better be.
_________________________________
Got some links from here and here.
*This is a little simplistic, since I don't think the rift occurs wholly along racial lines.

Some Context...

...from BFP:

I wrote a whole post in which I clearly stated:

1. there are clear racialized reasons why women of color are never and will never be the sought after by big companies, named as the leader of feminist movements, asked for interviews etc

2. that white feminists bear a responsibility (that they are NOT accepting and in fact are actively rejecting) to negotiate power and create spaces (while working alongside or a step behind marginalized communities) in which power is de-centralized

3. As a result I do NOT consider myself to be a part of any fucking “feminist movement” because to me, feminism requires diversity...

And even though I wrote this whole post about those three points–the only thing people heard was “She thinks she’s Freud and she wants money/power/recognition.”

No, actually, I know I’m brownfemipower and I want to end violence against women. And I wanted to do that with all the women who keep insisting to me that we are all in this together and we have common problems that we have to work against and we’re all sisters, and there is such thing as a commonality of experience between us all—as I said in my original post—I thought feminism was important because it brought women together...

But how can it have “brought us together” when my implicit goal in feminist centered media justice is to write erased communities into existence—and the result of the work of the ’sister’ down the street is the erasure of the same communities I’m working to write into existence?

There's so much more.

Because I Missed Blog for Domestic Workers Day...

...and I promised my girl I would do it. And since she was nudged by my other blogmiga, I just have to take a break to talk about it.

I was going to write a semi-bitter post fueled by my experiences as the granddaughter and grandniece of women who worked as domestics and nannies--and I'll get to that in a minute. (though, BlackAmazon wrote something like I wanted to and hers is amazing).

But first, I looked around to see what other people were saying about domestic work. And though it is not connected to Blog for Domestic Workers Day, I saw this statement by Twisty at I Blame the Patriarchy:

Some women suggest that a marriage may be made tolerable with the introduction of a third party to muck out the filth. This bit of feudal reasoning, with its profoundly antifeminist essence, is problematic.

The implications of hiring a menial — always a woman — to perform low-status women’s drudgery suggest an unsophisticated grasp of feminist theory...

And so we see that marriage may be made palatable to women who view housework, rather than male privilege, as the primary agitator against equality in their relationships. To maintain the illusion that she can be married without simultaneously capitulating to the megatheocorporatocratic machine, the feminist wife cannot engage in stereotypical wifey-work behavior. Instead, she hires a surrogate drudge. Unfortunately, this merely demands that she oppress, in turn, women of a lower caste than herself, while doing nothing to address the power differential in her own relationship.

Good point, I think.

But hold up! Some of the readership disagree, using the tired tried and true observations:

"Cleaning as an activity does not make the 'underclass of women'; our attitude to women and women’s work makes the underclass."

"[W]hy are women the only ones guilt-tripped about being feudal exploiters?"

And more generally, "Since I am paying 73 bajillion cents an hour, how can I be exploiting anyone?!"

And I thought, something is being skirted, flirted, danced around here. Even the observation about women's work being undervalued = the reason domestic work is undervalued is missing a big point.

Which women's work is valued least of all? Who's being hired for this newly-fabulously remunerated, unexploited work? Twisty gets at it here. You see, this work is not being undervalued just because it is cast as women's work, but because it is cast as the work of women of color. And yes, white women have and do benefit from our assignment to low-status, low-paid work. From Dr. Evelyn Nakano Glenn, who expresses it much more eloquently:

White women may actually have a material interest in the continuing subordination of women of color in the workplace. To understand the contemporary divergence between the priorities and interests of White women and women of color, we must first understand the historic differences in their experiences as workers. A careful reading of the history of Black, Hispanic, and Asian-American women workers reveals a persistent racial division of "women's work." This division of labor has subjected women of color to special forms of exploitation, subordinating them to White women and ensuring that their labor benefits White women and their families.*

In other words, work may be divided by gender, but it's divided by race, as well, a significant factor to "overlook." From another article by Dr. Nakano Glenn:

In the first half of the [20th] century racial-ethnic women were employed as servants to perform reproductive labor in white households, relieving white middle-class women of onerous aspects of that work; in the second half of the century, with the expansion of commodified services (services turned into commercial products or activities), racial/ethnic women are disproportionately employed as service workers in institutional settings to carry out lower-level "public" reproductive labor, while cleaner white collar supervisory and lower professional positions are filled by white women.**

It's almost as if Dr. Nakano Glenn anticipated some of Twisty's readers' responses:

We may have to accept the idea that any policy to improve the lot of racial ethnic women may necessitate a corresponding loss of privilege or status for White women and may engender resistance on their part.

My point is, white women aren't just haplessly caught up in this unfair! capitalist! patriarchal! system that's got all us women down equally. They sustain it. They derive benefit from it. And not just the benefit of not troubling themselves with such menial work; in my experience, they derive a mental wage, a sense of "too good to do that work," or "generous me, I'm helping poor her!" or the ability to talk about domestic help and never once bring up issues of race and ethnicity.

And that is where my personal experience is, watching the outward expression of that mental wage. I hated, hated, hated that my grandmother and her sister were domestics.

Not because I was ashamed, but because of the way white people treated them and us.

Like never once saying, "I'm way younger than you; you don't have to call me ma'am!"

Or, giving my grandmother and aunt money, long after they'd retired, not because they didn't pay taxes for domestic help or because they objected to the fact that our government excluded domestic work from social insurance or because they appreciated the sacrifices my grandmother and her sister made. No, that money was proof that, just as their slaveholding ancestors argued, they took care of their negroes even after retirement!

Or, coming to their funerals and sitting on the front row with the immediate family because they had notions of their own importance. "Nanny raised us!" one of my aunt's "white children" exclaimed, then stood there regally as the family cooed and comforted her.

Whether or not hiring domestic help is exploitative is not solely a matter of how much you are willing to pay. Silly rabbits! The most common reasons for hiring--because you don't like housework and can afford to pay someone else to do the damnable stuff or your time can be better spent doing "more important" work... well, that reeks of privilege.

And before we label it as just the result of a patriarchal society's mandate that all women adhere to some standard of cleanliness that does all women an equal disservice (hah!)...

...why do certain women, who so radically dismiss so many other patriarchal demands, choose to abide by this one?
___________________________________
*"Cleaning Up/Kept Down: A Historical Perspective on Racial Inequality in
'Women's Work'," Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (1991): 1333-1356.

**"From Servitude to Service Work: Historical Continuities in the Racial Division of
Paid Reproductive Labor," Signs 18, no. 1 (1992): 1-43.

Mothers of Color

I really did have my head buried in the sand over the last couple of weeks. I was horrified to come back and read news on some of my favorite blogs of the New Bedford, MA, raid, conducted by Immigration and Customs, that separated children and families. BfP has video here and asks again why feminists' definition of reproductive justice is based so narrowly on access to contraception and abortion. One question she asks:

I mean, does it not count as reproductive issues that a woman’s breasts become engorged and possibly infected with mastis because she stops breast feeding so quickly?

BfP also brings up the silence of mainstream (white) feminists blogs on the raid, a thread Sylvia and BlackAmazon pick up quite fiercely here and here.

The name of BfP's post is "Do Immigrant Women Count as Women?" My answer was an immediate no--not to the employers who insist on defining them solely as employees and an exploitable workforce; not to the government officials who think it is okay to rip them away from their children, not to the general U.S. public that think of them as lawbreakers out to rob the country--of what, I don't know. But it would seem that immigrant women may not even count as women to those whose politics and/or life work is supposedly centered around women!

That federal officials could do this, then defend their actions, I think, lies in the fact that women of color don't count as mothers, either. A discourse has developed in this country to support stealing our children away from us that attacks us as immoral, "illegal," or uneducated. I see this raid on a historical continuum with black children sold away from their mothers and Native children forced into "Indian schools" so they could be "properly" Christianized and Americanized. In fact, Americanizers of the late 19th/early 20th century spent inordinate amounts of time threatening to take immigrant children from their parents, telling immigrant mothers how their methods of child-rearing were substandard to those of more WASP-y Americans, probably as much time as 20th century welfare critics spent convincing themselves that poor black women did not really love or want their children--they only had them to get more out of the system--and as much time as 21st century anti-immigration proponents spend convincing themselves that Latinas don't really love or want their children--they just want anchor babies.

At the same time all these theories hurt our children, they hurt us, too. They justify the exploitation of our labor--it's okay if we work long hours in dangerous jobs; our children don't really need us. They justify the exploitation of our bodies--after all we're manipulative women not above using them for material gain. They justify the continual denial of the most basic rights to us. BfP is right--we should be angry.

The Mira Coalition on how to help.

On Becoming a Feminist, pt 3--The Black History Month Post

**my own thoughts on a much-written about topic**

I just re-read Tera Hunter's To Joy My Freedom for my labor history class. I agree with one reviewer who said that while it is a story about women and work, it is all so a story about women and freedom. At the heart of this book is the story of how working class black women defined for themselves, through work and leisure, what it meant to be freed and later, free. Whites and black bourgeoisie disapproved of the these definitions, but poor black women persisted. They persisted, especially, in the face of white women's frustrations and desires to define black women wholly in terms of their service and relationships to white women.

Much has been said about that last issue, in many contexts. It is in works like Hunter's that re-tell the story of how white women despaired of ever finding "good help" and in Evelyn Nakano Glenn's articles about racial inequality and division in public and private "women's work." It is in books like Korstad's Civil Rights Unionism and Brattain's The Politics of Whiteness that detail how adamant white women were that they not share workspace with black women, and in other books that point to how effective white women workers, often treated as "unorganizable," were in organizing hate strikes.

This desire to define black women in narrow terms that marginalized most of their existence was evident among more progressive white women, too, of course. It is in the stories of overtly racist "first wave" feminists (yes, I'm going to point you to the coverage Deborah Gray White gives to this in Too Heavy a Load) and the somewhat more covertly racist second wave. A few weeks ago, a woman in my class asserted that the response of the second wave to women of color's concerns can be summarized, in part, as, "That's nice, dear. Now let me handle the real issues and you run to get me a cup of tea." That is harsh, yes, but has much truth.

A more generous view of second wave strife can be found in Winifred Breines's The Trouble Between Us: An Uneasy History of White and Black Women in the Feminist Movement. By generous, I mean that Breines imbues white women with a sort of naivete--a desire for a perfect, interracial world that prevented them from understanding the realities of a multi-racial one. I think Breines is perhaps too beneficent in excusing the actions of these women--she implies that many white feminists didn't understand racism, how deeply embedded it was in American life. Neither does she rigorously question why, if the inclusionary "nostalgia" she credits had such a hold on white feminists, were they so exclusionary-of other women of color, of lesbians, of poor women. It is a well-written book, but I still hear the, "Sometimes we do racist things, but we're not racist!"

Cynthia Griggs Fleming's Soon We Will Not Cry: The Liberation of Ruby Doris Smith Robinson (one of the best gifts I've ever received, btw) has a much different take--she does discuss white women's racism, arguing that, "many of these women struggled to confront the racist stereotypes that their society had accepted so long... some of them lost the struggle," (128). The results were attitudes and condescending behavior that furthered the divide between black and white women activists.

Fleming has an excellent one sentence summation of the "trouble between us": "Being an oppressed black woman has always been quite different from being an oppressed woman in American society." I'd go so far as to change "black woman" to "woman of color." And isn't that what radical women of color have been pointing out for over a century now? When Sojourner Truth asked, "Ain't I a woman?" And the club women who understood that race work was women's work said it. The Combahee River Collective stated it quite eloquently. The works in This Bridge Called My Back, the voices in Listen Up!, the many works by bell hooks (I can't believe I just started reading her in the last year!)--all of these strengthen and reiterate Fleming's assertion, explaining how and why the experiences have been different and how and why those facts were ignored.

Honestly, I believe I leaned towards Breines's understanding when I first came to blogging. I hid that post a long time, embarrassed* at my naivete. Imagine my surprise (yes, I'm finally getting to the point), when I discovered bloggers like BfP, nubian, Black Amazon were still having to make the same arguments. Nostalgia, idealism, and ignorance only go so far. I sensed blatant resistance as noted in the comments here:

I have had too many to count now unfortunate discussions with white sisters in which it was demonstrated conclusively that (a) they are incapable of taking themselves and their experience as white women -- with their oppression stemming from their placement on a ped[e]stal, not from anything remotely like the backbreaking life experiences of most women of color -- out of the center of the discourse; and (b) they have real, emotional, defense mechanisms against accepting the idea of intersectionality -- the indivisible nature of race and gender in women of color -- and that this may mean that their narratives of oppression simply don't line up the same way as narratives of women of color.

And I've seen the evidence, carefully disguised as "but we're all women" and "all oppression begins with the subjugation of women to men" and "how can I be a problem? I'm oppressed, too!" It reminds me of colorblind racism, in a sense. They rely on the sorts of narratives of which Breines's is simply the latest incarnation. Yolanda excerpted one, Susan Brownmiller's In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution which says:

It is fashionable today to criticize the women's movement for being white and middle class from its inception, yet no movement agonized more, or flailed itself harder, over its failure to attract vast numbers of women of color. [elle's eyebrows shoot skyward]...

Belief in human perfectibility was the chief driving force among the Women's Liberation founders. [the aforementioned nostalgia]...

"We didn't feel we had to apologize all the time when the leftists talked about Vietnamese women or black women or poor women. Of course we cared about all those women, but we wanted to care in the context of feminism."...

Criticism is easy [a grain of truth in my classmate's comment?]; working for specific goals in an imperfect, complicated world is hard. The failure to attract poor black women, or poor Hispanic women, or "ghetto women," or "welfare women," would be used as a club against Women's Liberation by its critics with numbing consistency for the next thirty years.

Who are these critics that clubbed Women's Lib? And does Brownmiller not see that she is, in fact, embodying their criticisms by only arguing how it affected the white women and not why it was made? I find Catharine McKinnon's "From Practice to Theory, or What is a White Woman Anyway?" similarly problematic, especially given its dicussion of intersectionality.

My questions, I suppose, are ones that have been asked approximately a trillion times: How are bridges built? How does this affect my identification as a feminist? Do I give up, despite the fact that I love and respect many white women and know some who do understand, at the very least (these links are not exhaustive), that there is a problem created not by nostalgia and utopianism, but by very real racism and classism?

From the point of view of many women of color, white women are incongruously oppressed and privileged--and that privileging is often predicated upon our subjugation. Though they may not have initially fashioned or designed that privilege, they do derive benefit from it--and we feel the results.
________________________
*In re-reading, I realize "embarrassed" may be the wrong word--I believe in the sentiment of that post, but think I underestimated much.

Brain Break

I've been thinking about my next introspective post about my feminism, about how it is problematic because of the backs I've used as bridges--the women in my family who have sacrificed and deferred their own dreams, desires, liberation so that I can pursue mine.

But, that will come later as I am tired and see the light at the end of this chapter. In the meantime, a frivolous attempt to delve into my philosophy:

You scored as Utilitarianism. Your life is guided by the principles of Utilitarianism: You seek the greatest good for the greatest number. "The said truth is that it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.” --Jeremy Bentham "Whenever the general disposition of the people is such, that each individual regards those only of his interests which are selfish, and does not dwell on, or concern himself for, his share of the general interest, in such a state of things, good government is impossible.” --John Stuart Mill More info at Arocoun's Wikipedia User Page... Utilitarianism 95% Existentialism 90% Divine Command 70% Justice (Fairness) 70% Hedonism 65% Kantianism 15% Nihilism 15% Apathy 10% Strong Egoism 0% What philosophy do you follow? (v1.03) created with QuizFarm.com

On Becoming a Feminist, pt. 2

**Yes, it's long and I apologize, but if you love me :-) bear with me and read it. I really want your opinions on the last part.**

"Your mama on welfare!"

When you're a black child, growing up where I grew up (and in many other places), that is one of the worst insults other children can hurl at you. Before we can even put into word our biases, before we can fully engage in our own stigmatization of poverty, we know, in the simplest terms, that welfare is racialized, feminized. Shameful.

My mom's mom was a retired domestic and farm worker, relegated to the "welfare" provisions of our social security system. I've mentioned before that she was a cook with unmatched skill. What I haven't mentioned is that she also bought much of her food with food stamps and that during the summers, we were the one who'd have to walk the short distance to the local grocery store to buy the makings of lunch and dinner.

Those were the most humiliating experiences of my young life. Typically, my sister, my cousin Tesha (Trinity's sister) and I would have to go. We never went in together--each day, one of us had a turn and the other two lagged outside, as if people in our small town wouldn't realize we were a group. We went early in the morning, so no one our age would be there and shopped quickly as possible, the shopper of the day dreading the moment she had to tear the appropriate amount out of the booklet and receive her change in paper stamps. It seemed as if the cashier took forever and that the quick scurry out of the store, head down, eyes glued to the tile, was never fast enough.

Eventually, we pretended to overcome the shame in a "radical" way: "Yes, I am in this store with food stamps and I am not ashamed!" as we slapped the stamps on the counter and eyed the cashier. It seemed bold at the time, but it was not. It was more of a "See, I'm not ashamed to do this shameful thing."

As I got older, my behavior morphed from scorn and ridicule to a condescending sort of pity. You know, the kind that expresses itself verbally as "Those poor people. I just don't know what I'd do if I were them" and silently as, "But thank God I'm not!" By the time I was in my MA program, I had the distinct feeling that something was not right about the discourse surrounding welfare and mothers and children who received it. Still, I had not formulated my own theory and while I thought I identified with poor women, part of me wanted it clear that I was not like them.

And then I found some of those works I mentioned here, Linda Gordon's Pitied but Not Entitled, Jill Quadagno's The Color of Welfare, Gwendolyn Mink's Welfare's End, Whose Welfare, and The Wages of Motherhood, Winifred Bell's Aid to Dependent Children, Lisa Levenstein's “From Innocent Children to Unwanted Migrants and Unwed Moms," JoAnne Good's Gender and the Politics of Welfare Reform and so many more.

I learned how white women reformers championed only one mother as deserving of assistance--the widowed, white woman--how they ignored other mothers for fear that they--these never married or abandoned or brown or non-western European mothers--would turn public sentiment against the call for mothers' pensions. I learned how white men crafted the Social Security Act so that people most "deserving" of assistance would be white males attached at some point to the work force, so that there are two tiers--the unemployment insurance and retirement pensions that people "deserve" after having worked--and the "other tier"--the despised welfare programs for people who had not worked or who had been employed in excluded categories. I learned that excluded categories included jobs like teaching, social work, and nursing, thus excluding many women from the top tier, and also domestic and agricultural work, thereby excluding most blacks from the honorable tier. I learned that the later distinctions, that created a top tier category for women who had been married to men who worked in one of the included occupations, meant that many white women got to leave the bottom tier programs.

And I finally knew what was wrong. From its earliest days, the system was designed to leave people of color and women in bottom tier, "handout" categories. It never valued the work of women outside the work place, never acknowledged the right of women to be mothers outside any but the most narrow of confines. It was never meant to be a true system of social provision, characterized as it is with paltry payments and intrusive interrogations. In its most recent forms, it spurs people to question recipients' abilities and rights as parents, an idea I think Fab addresses here:

What can we do in the name of integrity and justice to stop the state’s attempts to destroy low income and people of color by taking children away, by CPS investigations on low income families, the resorting to second class citizenship via one’s lack of access to efficient, free to low cost, friendly and of high quality health care including dentists and psychiatrists–ending the immigration bullshit operation, constant police intimidation of our communities and families, how it is expected that our act of change be done with “grace” and non “angry”, or divisive, dreaming for the better tomorrow and living as our life depended on it, because our integrity is shattered daily by poverty and those out to protect us and the bullshit services for low income people. Where supposed criminal behavior, bad parenting, neglect and abuse is judged upon [by] a middle unaffected class.

If there is ever an experience during which it feels like scales fall away from your eyes, this was it for me. My politics, my self-identification, my thinking--all have changed since.

Which brings me to another point (related, I promise). Considering John Edwards's anti-poverty platform, Nonpartisan asked me did I think Edwards was an urban populist or an agrarian radical. I had to do some quick research (and I'm so grateful NP brought this to my attention) and I found this speech, excerpted at Ezra Klein's

Work gives pride, dignity, and hope to our lives and our communities... To be true to our values, our country must build a Working Society – an America where everyone who works hard finally has the rewards to show for it...
In the Working Society, nobody who works full-time should have to raise children in poverty, or in fear that one health emergency or pink slip will drive them over the cliff.
In the Working Society, everyone who works full-time will at last have something to show for it...
In the Working Society, everyone willing to work will have the chance to get ahead. Anyone who wants to go to college and work will be able to go the first year for free.
In the Working Society, people who work have the right to live in communities where the streets are safe, the schools are good, and jobs can be reached.
In the Working Society, everyone will also be asked to hold up their end of the bargain—to work, to hold off having kids until they’re ready, and to do their part for their kids when the time comes.

And, though his proposals are different and sound wonderful, here is where I have a problem: what is the difference between his rhetoric and that of the Social Security Act framers? Why are the only ones deserving are the ones engaged in paid work? For that matter, why do we still work under definitions of who is or isn't "deserving?"

If we prioritize paid work over all else, ignoring that paid work is not always liberating, honorable, possible, or desirable, what happens to the people included in the 5%+ who are always unemployed in a "full employment" capitalist society? What happens to those that can't or don't work? Why are we steadily trying to fix and fix?

When do we change?
___________________________
For more of my struggle with the stigmatization of welfare, see here.

On Becoming a Feminist

**The story of how I came to identify as a feminist can’t be summed up as easily as my turn to labor history. This is post one of some ;-)**

Despite my genuine love of hot water cornbread, I don’t cook it. I can’t. It’s never shaped correctly. The outside is not crispy enough. The inside never seems done (though my aunt tells me all the time “The hot water cooks the cornmeal!”) It is a mental block, I know related to a disastrous episode of cooking when I was twelve years old.

My mother put some hot water cornbread on to fry, five pieces in a little black, cast iron skillet, then started to comb my sister's hair. That has always been some task, as her hair is thick and long and required some time to pull into ponytails. Hot water cornbread cooks quickly and my mom called me to check on it and turn it over in the grease.

I was a touch peeved--I'd been caught up in some book I probably had no business reading. But I couldn't display my anger overtly--my mom would've popped the hell out of me with the brush or whatever was close by. Instead, I marched into the kitchen in a nylon slip and jabbed the fork into the cornbread. All five pieces had fried together, so they lifted from the skillet together, then fell back down into the grease. Virtually every drop of boiling oil that was in the skillet splashed out and onto my nylon-clad stomach and thigh. I screamed.

From here, the story gets twisted in my family's collective memory. My mother claims that she jumped up, threw on clothes and rushed me to the ER.

My sister and I clearly remember that she looked at me, told me to take my time, and "Stop hollerin'. You a woman. You gon' get burned plenty of times cooking." Only after I went into the bathroom and tried to pry the nylon away from my bubbling and blistering skin, did she get up to check on me and realize that this was serious.

How, you're wondering, is that related to feminism? See, in the ER that day, suffering from 2nd and 3rd degree burns, and angry about that damned bread, I decided I was not going to be a woman. Not if this is what it entailed.

Later, I thought that was the most ridiculous thing in the world. I laughed at my twelve year old self. Silly girl, how could you not be a woman?

Now, I'm back to knowing exactly what I meant.

Just a Hat Tip (Thing Three)

To brown rab girl fish who found this quote at Brownfemipower's from Audre Lord (which I have liberally truncated)

Every black woman in america has survived several lifetimes of hatred... Now we deny such hatred ever existed because we have learned to neutralize it through ourselves, and the catabolic process throws off waste products of fury even when we love... It is not that Black women shed each other’s psychic blood so easily, but that we have ourselves bled so often, the pain of bloodshed becomes almost commonplace.

Some days, the way I treat (and think of) myself and, yes, other sisters, I feel that all through me.

I'll see y'all later.
____________________
From Audre Lorde, "Eye to Eye," Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde. The Crossing Press, 1984: 156-7.

Things...

...that made me say hmm (and okay, a few curse words):
1) During a discussion at home in which I teased bf Louisiana about her little pudge and the fact that she used to say, "After my first child turns four or five, I'm not having anymore,"--her child will be almost seven when the baby comes. She laughed then told me, "We weren't planning this. If they had let me get my tubal ligation two years ago-" Of course, I was like, "Let?" And she proceeded to tell me how she couldn't have the procedure unless her husband agreed, too. He had to sign some papers, too. She never approached him with it because, she says, she simply refused to ask anyone else's "permission" to have the procedure. "I kept saying, but it's my body," she said.

2) Late Sunday morning phone call from frantic cousin, "elle, I thought you said the morning after pill was available over the counter now!" Sleepy me, "It is!" Cousin: "I called Wal-Mart (in a neighboring city of Ruston, LA) and they said they have it, but I need a prescription." Slightly irate me, "I'll call them."

Professional sounding me, "Yes, I had a friend call earlier about Plan B and she was told she needed a prescription." Snotty pharm tech, "Yes, she does." Snotty me, "Even though the FDA has approved it for OTC sales?" Pretending-to-be-knowledgeable pharm tech, "There are two kinds. There's different packaging and we sell the one with the packaging that requires a prescription." WTF me, "Is that a nation-wide Wal-Mart policy or just your location?" Proud pharm tech, "I'm not sure, but I know it's what we do." Professional me again, "Then I need a number for your pharmacy or corporate headquarters." Not-so-confident tech, "Uh, I don't know it." Then:
"You don't know how I could talk to someone about the pharmacy's policies?"
"No, ma'am."
"So, there's no number posted anywhere for customers who want to make a complaint?"
"I don't know it."
"I'll wait for you to find it. Or I can keep calling back to see if you've found it."
"Hold on, ma'am." He comes back with 1-800-WALMART. I call and find they don't open til noon on Sundays. I call back and ask for the pharmacist, who was unavailable for some time until they gave up. I get the same convoluted explanation.
Does anyone know about this?

... that make me happy.
1) Apparently, there was a conspiracy in 1933 in the LA parish I'm studying in which two white men (from elsewhere) enlisted black residents to arm themselves, march on the parish seat, demand more food and assistance "from whites" (that's what the first article says), and demand that some laws change--particularly (according to the article and this shows just how RADICAL the plot was) the law forbidding interracial marriage. Forget the desire to ameliorate the horrible conditions of the Depression for poor blacks in rural LA--we know what they **really** wanted.
From a selfish standpoint, this is going to be important to my chapters one and two. From a more human standpoint, I'm scared of what I'm going to find. The march didn't occur, but I know that some black people did receive shotguns. I know that at least one black man was killed. I also know that I lived in that parish and never heard one word about this. What was done? What happened to the list of black recruits who paid the white "plotters"?

2) I finally joined AHA in November (yes, it took that long). I never thought about it much before and when I did, I was like who has an extra $40. But I bit the bullet and joined. So yesterday, I got my first issue of the American Historical Review. I expressed to my sister that I feel so historian-y now that I'm getting my very own journal (okay, while I love my Labor journals from LAWCHA, it ain't the same!) She said, "You know what will make you feel even more historian-y?" "What?" I asked, thinking about elle in a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, a nice armchair, and an unused pipe. "Graduating," she said.

Have I mentioned that Sis has been in a little bit of a mood since she had to return to the hallowed halls of elementary academia?

Another Thought...

...on the Miss Celie's Blues post. Another two thoughts, really.

1) Women are WONDERFUL. Thanks for all the love and encouragement.

2) More of a rhetorical question than a thought really: In remembering how low my self-esteem and self-confidence has been at times, I thought, What happens to us? We aren't born feeling so low. My aunt has preserved a letter that I wrote her when I was five that contains the line, "Do you still think I'm a genius because I am." And my sister's mother-in-law laughs all the time and tells me how bubbly and conceited I was when I was young. Why is it so necessary that things like that be crushed and abused out of women?

But of course, I think I know the answer(s) already.

Co-opting the Language

A few days ago, Maya at blackademics.org, wrote about how the makers of Equal artificial sweetener apparently thought it cute and kitschy to reword a number of slogans and print them on packets. Most upsetting to Maya was the newly-minted phrase "Power to the Packet":

POWER TO THE PEOPLE was not just a slogan, but a rallying anthem which was appreciated and honored during the Civil Rights Movement. This statement demanded that we stand up, take power and become accountable for our community. The marketing team for Equal’ 0 calorie sweetener morphed this historic proclamation into a diluted tongue-and-cheek advertisement for their ‘Campaign of Flavor’, which ironically (or not so much) further enforced corporate financial gains by exploiting Black culture.

I understood her point because I've been thinking the same thing about the commercial for this nifty little device:

Yep, the apparently all (em)powerful NuvaRing. Have you seen this commercial in which the spokeswoman begins, "Birth control, back in the day about pregnancy protection--no objection!" I want to write the manufacturers and tell them, "No one objected to birth control? Talk about your revisionist history!" But I digress.

As NuvaRing only has to be used once a month, it frees women from the tyranny of daily birth control, prompting the makers to cast it in the same liberating tradition as the Civil Rights Movement. Yep, this commercial ends* with the spokeswoman co-opting the phrase "Let freedom ring!" while thrusting her fist defiantly into the air, NuvaRing gripped proudly. I mean, even though I've seen it a few times now, I still scan the image, expecting that proud fist to be covered in a black glove.

Yeah.

Which is not to say that birth control in and of itself is not liberating for some women (me included), but rather, I don't think the road to freedom for women is paved with NuvaRings.

*At least the TV version ends that way; I can't see this one for some reason.

Updates on the World Beyond My Narrow Confines

One thing that has bedeviled my growth as a feminist and my research as a historian is an irrational belief that I have to read every single thing, know every single detail about a subject before I can write about it. I am frightened of my own lack of expertise and it immobilizes me.

Which is one of the reasons I post haphazardly about people of color in an international context. I need to learn more, read more, know more, I think.

Such teh bullshit. Nothing but excuses delivered in my typical, wide-eyed, shoulder shrugging fashion.

There are people who are helping me learn, though. Please read Quaker Dave's two recent posts on Darfur here and here. One of his commenters noted, "Believe me, when you post things about Darfur, people listen." She wanted to know what private citizens could do and Dave pointed her to this post. Quaker Dave also blogs extensively about the war we're waging on Iraq. The poignant combination of his words and chosen images have made the abstract so very real to me.

For the situation in Oaxaca, Mexico, visit BfP's site and click on her Oaxaca link. Her work on this, and so many other topics, is amazing. She probably has her eyebrow raised at my passing the buck to her with little of my own analysis, but I rely heavily on her posts for updates.

These examples of PoC struggles and oppresson are hardly all-inclusive, but I decided a while ago that I had to stop waiting until I knew it all and start somewhere.

Cruces

Y'all know all I ever have with me is the terrible camera phone, but here are a couple of pictures from the Cruces program on yesterday, All Soul's Day:

The altar for the women killed and disappeared in Ciudad Juarez.

Not one more dead or disappeared woman.

It was a beautiful memorial. 450 names read, broken only by the recitation of poems (including one I believe is called Justice that I want to get and post). As they were reading the names of the women, I kept thinking "Who was she? Who loved her?"

And the unidentified women... hearing those numbers in place of names was sad, but it was also chilling. Nameless in death, those women meant something to someone at some time. What must those left behind be thinking?

There was a professor there who kept emphasizing, kept pressing home the point that these women were killed for being women. That they were hated, mistreated, tortured for being women. "No one cares about the women of Juarez," she said, "But we care." She also reminded us, that it is our responsibility as women (as the audience largely was) to care, to tell, to make sure they didn't die in vain.

You can find more information here.

Placing Myself...

...in a global context. How do I do that? Especially when, as a U.S. citizen, I am afforded this sense of isolationism and autonomy. I am painfully aware that I am largely un-conscious when it comes to a world outside the US. My concern with globalism has been in a historical context, topics like triangular trade, transnationalism and transatlantic, immigration patterns, corporation outsourcing or, as is the case with poultry processing, bringing people "here" rather than taking industries "there." "We live in an era of globalization," I can say smugly, and back it up with these examples.

But I never thought consciously about the fact that the "We" includes women.

So, I've been thinking.

I've been thinking about BfP's post on "Why feminists must stand against government oppression in Mexico."

And I've been thinking about Darfur, which I admit in complete shame, that I knew little about before this past summer.

And I'm thinking about the women I approached on campus today, from an organization called Cruces, who had set up a display and an altar in memoriam of 450 women killed in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. (More on that later. I'm going down at noon when they read off the names of the dead and missing).

And I'm thinking, if I, wholly preoccupied with my own life and school and what I want, know of these three, how many more must there be?

And then I'm thinking, why the hell did BfP have to explain why feminists need to make their fight global?