Robin Morgan
I want a women’s revolution like a lover.
I lust for it, I want so much this freedom,
this end to struggle and fear and lies we all exhale,
that I could die just with the passionate uttering of that desire…
Oh mother, I am tired and sick
“How do you stop from going crazy?”
No way, sister, no way.
May we go mad together, my sisters.
May our labor agony in bringing forth this revolution be the death of all pain.
May we comprehend that we cannot be stopped.
May I learn how to survive until my part is finished.
May I realize that I am a monster.
I am a monster.
I am a monster.
And I am proud.
– from the poem, Monster, by Robin Morgan, 1971
The poem excerpted above, “Monster,” written in response to something Robin Morgan’s then small son said about her genitals, was, in the words of NYC-Big City Lit, iconic, “virtually defin(ing) the scope of early feminism.” Birthed in women’s struggles for freedom and full humanity, the poem captured the imaginations of millions of feminist women, inspiring them to challenge and resist the many brutalities, small and large, which women suffer everyday because they are women.
If the central imagery of the poem is going to be enlisted in a different type of political struggle, then circulated and otherwise blogged, it seems right to me that this classic of the women’s liberation movement, be acknowledged and named, with full credit given, if not immediately by the the person using the imagery (because she or he wasn’t aware of the poem, perhaps), then by those of us interested in honoring the great leaders and mothers of our own movement. That’s what you do– you know?
[Edited to change the date of the writing of the poem to 1971, instead of 1961.]
Heart
To all those responding to the bloggers (unintended?) plagiarism; yes amazing, and so was the women whose thoughts these were, and the movement she and her sisters galvanized, those heady days in the ’70s, steered by Robin Morgan and a few other amazing women. Her words the first feminist writing I read.
Amazing.
No better lesson for what men do to us, for how our history is buried and appropriated. Colonization, it’s called.
To this day I can’t stand to look at bonsai.
Wow. Yeah, Heart.
Talk about cultural appropriation.
And I note that neither of these two blogs have you on their “feminist” blogrolls …
While they’re at it, why don’t they just write, “Not a man, but *better* than a woman. Hear me roar!”
That’s the whole point, isn’t it?
“I can do anything, anything, I can do anything better than you …” … including being female??!!
Mary S.
“And I note that neither of these two blogs have you on their “feminist” blogrolls …”
There are then some things to be grateful for.
Well, my trackbacks don’t work so I can’t send links out. Next best thing is to post them and click on them to get folks’ attention.
http://renegadeevolution.blogspot.com/2007/01/perfect.html
http://nexyjo.blogspot.com/2007/01/best-post-ever.html
http://sanacrow.livejournal.com/42737.html
http://jjcohen.blogspot.com/2007/01/it-is-time-for-feminism-of-monstrous.html
http://www.megite.com/science/1168950769/21#item_3
http://rosefox.livejournal.com/1128879.html
http://lilairen.livejournal.com/425269.html
http://lettersfromgehenna.blogspot.com/2007/01/off-edge-of-map.html
http://faultline.org/index.php/site/sheer_poetry/
http://musingsonlifelawandgender.typepad.com/
It’s not going to do not to acknowledge Robin Morgan’s imagery, poem, and herstoric writings which invoke this same imagery, as though they didn’t exist.
Heart
The ignorance would be laughable if it wasn’t so pathetic and sad.
My nickel’s worth to little light that I posted:
“Monster,” is an amazing poem written by Robin Morgan. The least you could do, little light, is give Robin Morgan credit when you plagerize her work and try to pass it off as your own.
The most you could do if you have no originality, is when you co-opt someone else’s work, to try to not let it go so completely over your head that you’re not even in the same ball park with what the author is getting at, let alone on the same page.
May I suggest “Invisible Woman?” It’s a really short poem by Robin Morgan. Maybe you’ll get that?
– Luckynkl
Heart:
I linked to the post because I thought it was wonderful. The theme of “woman as monster” is nothing new, there have been countless takes on it, good and bad, for thousands of years…from the depictions and tales of the Medusa to the prayers and dances used in honor of Kali as both a woman and a destroyer. Universities study the phenomena (http://faculty.pittstate.edu/~knichols/monster.html). From Frankenstein to modern pop horror/sci fi lit, the exploration, depicition and musings about the monsterous feminine is nothing new. Many women, even in blogs, have used such imagery. I doubt LittleLight was writing anything other than what she felt using imagery that appealed to her, as so many do. I won’t be removing my link, because i think her piece is amazing, and very much her.
Heart, it’s really not clear to me why you didn’t structure your post this way: “Dear LittleLight, you may not be aware that in the 60s Robin Morgan was making a similar point as you…it’s fantastic to see how certain liberatory revisions of ‘body image,’ including monstrosity, keep coming up when we try to think our bodies through in a fashion beyond oppression.”
It’s a great thing to share your knowledge, and to create connections between old feminisms and new. It’s not such a great thing to immediately accuse LittleLight of plagiarism, in a manner that is likely to start another blog war and which creates divides when there could have been bridges.
I’m a teacher, and I have to be alert to plagiarism. This is convergence, not plagiarism; to be honest, “monster” remains a fairly empty category in Morgan’s poem, whereas LittleLight fills it brimful with a wealth of mythological references. No philosopher is the first to use the word “truth,” no poet the first to write about “beauty,” and nobody alive can have read everything that pertains to their writing. A query is a better starting place than an accusation. That’s not because it’s better to be weak. It’s because it’s better to be completely right than half-right.
Renegade Evolution, yes, I agree that woman-as-monster is a classic theme in poetry and literature. I also think that given the ongoing tensions between radical feminists and transgendered persons and their advocates, it’s not going to work to fail to acknowledge Robin Morgan’s poem, especially in another poem which declares that it is time for a “feminism of the monstrous.” The theme of Robin Morgan’s poem is in fact, solidarity among the monstrous, i.e., women. Yes, failing to acknowlege Morgan’s poem can be justified. I can also say I think the thing to do is acknowledge Morgan’s poem, at least at some point.
Joseph Kugelmass, have you read Robin Morgan’s entire poem, “Monster”? That’s an excerpt up there. Her poem fills a book. Before I comment on what you say about Morgan’s monster as an empty category, it would make sense to find out whether you have actually read her poem in its entirety.
I nowhere accused little light of plagiarism. This is what I said, being very careful not to accuse her:
If the central imagery of the poem is going to be enlisted in a different type of political struggle, then circulated and otherwise blogged, it seems right to me that this classic of the women’s liberation movement, be acknowledged and named, with full credit given, if not immediately by the the person using the imagery (because she or he wasn’t aware of the poem, perhaps),
I think I was very clear about that. Others have commented and accused little light of plagiarism– that is their view. I did not accuse her of plagiarism. That is my view.
You say you are a teacher, Joseph Kugelmass. I am a writer. Acknowledging writings which are similar to one’s own, particularly when you are offering your writings to those in a movement to which both you and the other writer belong, is important. I have given little light the benefit of the doubt that she has never read Morgan’s poem. I will still give her the benefit of that doubt. From now on, though, many more people know about Robin Morgan’s poem, “Monster,” if they didn’t before, a poem very central to the women’s liberation movement in the United States, especially. I find the erasure of older feminists and their writings to be pretty horrifying, and so I have made it a priority in my own feminist activism to make sure these important writings are preserved and not erased, and that is also one reason I have blogged as I have.
One reason I posted this, too, is Queer Dewd/BitchLab, to her credit, reminded Belledame and her commenters of Morgan’s poem early on in Belledame’s thread about little light’s poem. From what I could see — and I haven’t gone back to read over the last few hours, so it may have changed by now — Belledame played right past what Queer Dewd said, as did other commenters. Nobody said a word about Morgan’s poem, even when QueerDewd/BitchLab said, “Hey, don’t forget Robin Morgan.” BitchLab was right to do that. And there should have been some response. When there was no response, I blogged about it.
Finally, there are important political reasons for my blogging about this. This poem that Robin Morgan wrote, “Monster,” was about the reaction of her small son to Morgan’s own genitals, the same reaction men and boys throughout the ages have had to women’s genitals (when they weren’t using women’s genitals for their own reasons). Women have been made, always, by men, to be monsters. Feminism has been, in part, about gutting this misogynist usage of the word “monster” and of similar words of their power to shame and denigrate us because we are women. Yes, we’ve been made to be monsters by men. So what. We’re proud of what and who we are, no matter what men say about us. We don’t care what they say; fuck them. I think it’s important for me to foreground this particular theme in radical feminism right now, particularly in that I’ve observed that we have been falsely and wrongly accused of calling transpersons “monsters.” We haven’t done that. That’s not true. The lies about radical feminists are going to come to a severe end, if I have anything to say about it, and I do have something to say about it, and plenty to say. All of us, as radical feminists, do have a lot to say about that. To accuse us of calling transpersons “monsters,” is to lie about us. I’ve known precisely one person who identified herself as a radical feminist to call anybody a “frankenstein” or a “monster,” in the way radical feminists are being accused of using those terms, and that person is, herself, a transwoman, someone who has done radical feminism and radical feminists, our entire movement, women, just in general, great, great harm. I’m not going to let that go down without calling it out, when I have opportunity.
As to blog wars, I don’t participate in them. Usually, I miss them entirely and don’t know about them until they are over with. If anybody makes a blog war about this, I will not be attending. I am speaking my own truth here. That’s all.
Heart
OMG, he’s like an actual teacher. Holy shit, wow. Everybody Panic!
Hey Kugelmass, when you write stuff like this on your blog,
“Very recently, Truly Outrageous linked to a post on the “feminism of the monstrous” which I (and many other people) found wonderful. Then a blogger named Heart took it into her head to accuse LittleLight (who wrote the post) of plagiarism. I’m a teacher”
Took it into her head? Unless English is your third or fourth language, which it doesn’t seem to be as you claim to have the privilege of talking about TV as an academic pursuit, you probably realize that ordering your words in that manner isn’t putting you in the “objective” camp that you clearly want to position yourself in, awaft on a load of sanctimonious crap.
“Bloggers need to be nice! And stop trashing each other! We’re all writers here, especially ME ME ME, and hey, you there, knock it off, YOU are stupid and don’t really get it, now do you, so hey, stop hating! Listen to me already!”
Good grief.
I should also say that I do think little light’s poem is very beautiful, powerfully moving, which in my mind is all the more reason for us to have this discussion.
Heart
Whether or not LittleLight was plagiarizing, there is plenty of crap flying on that blog post about this one. One bit was so absurd, I felt compelled to rebut it, so I posted:
Speaking of amazing, I found this piece of absurdity particularly astounding.
Dw3t-Hthr said…
It’s been clear for some time that Heart and her ilk are extremely threatened by the idea that a transwoman could have any sense of personal power or strength; that Little Light is willing to actually be publically herself is terrifying.
Dw3t-Hthr, you clearly have no idea what you are talking about. Nobody I know feels threatened by a transwoman merely having some sense of personal power or strength. But then, people who profess to know what others must be thinking rarely have a clue.
Aletha
I wonder what would happen if I said something like, “little light and her ilk.”
I don’t really wonder, I know. And, I don’t write that way, never have, never will. But that some feel so very confident in writing this kind of thing, “Heart and her ilk,” speaks volumes. What might my ilk be? The ilk of that subjugated and oppressed class known as women? The ilk raped, incested, beaten, brutalized, sold, made to be chattel, tortured in every conceivable way?
Clearly, the time has come for us as radical feminist women, lesbian separatist wimmin, Amazon wimmin, to rise. It’s enough.
Heart
The point of interest in all of this is not ‘plagiarism’ but the erasure and often, misrepresentation of Morgan/things from that generation in some current feminist discourse.
To the general reader, at least – one without any history with Little Light in particular, or transwomen in general – the parallels between Morgan’s poem and Little Light’s post *do* look like a case of convergence. And I am less picky about references and citations in blog posts than in journal articles – a lot less picky.
It is truly ironic that in identifying someone’s work as borrowing the ideas of another and using them as her own, you cannot even bring yourself to mention the name of the entry, the blogger, or the site that links to her work.
And you ascribe the theme of the monstrous feminine to one poet, as if other artistic works have never treated the subject, and as if other artistic works will never treat it again.
As if all poets, when discussing how the planets revolve around the sun, feel it necessary to footnote their treatments with the works of Galileo.
As if all feminist poets, after referring to the lives of women, send their prose with a works cited page out of fear that their words are not truly spoken or they have no knowledge of their own experiences enough to string words together to articulate them.
Also, ironically, I think you’ve revealed your true political reasons for invoking this appeal to literary authority.
Yes it’s beautiful, but the genesis of that beauty comes from Robin Morgan’s mind.
It’s plagiarism. I said it, not you Heart. Did anyone read what you said, or did they read what someone else told them you said.
The word plagiarism comes from a Latin verb meaning “kidnap”. I think that says it perfectly. But if that’s not good enough for someone:
MLA, APA, Chicago & Turabian styles say taking someone’s idea and presenting it as your own is plagiarism.
So do I.
OK wait, so I looked back to the post itself, and tell me if I misunderstand, the point is:
1. LL did not reference Morgan
2. Perhaps this is because LL does not know Morgan
3. Therefore let us reference Morgan, who is important and worth remembering
AND
The imagery of this poem is being enlisted in a different type of political struggle, and that difference should perhaps be discussed / made clear (for various reasons).
————————————————————————————-
But I am still not sure, from reading LL’s poem, to what degree it actually enlists Morgan’s imagery directly, since there is so very much written on the monstruous.
Thanks, profacero. The issue is erasure. It is also mischaracterization and misrepresentation.
Sylvia’s Revenge, I’m not following you. I linked to little light’s post in my own post, first link, second paragraph down, not counting the excerpt of Morgan’s poem, “Monster.”
Heart
But … but … they do such a *better* job of being women than we do.
Can’t we just get over it, and pay obeisance to them for that?
We never really knew how do do feminism until *they* came along and brought us into the light, while keeping the spotlight on themselves.
Being *born* female is such a nasty, creepy slimey thing that we need to have the way shown to us by those who were not so cursed.
Copycats are better cats, seems to be the point in all of this.
Mary S.
Profacero, exactly. Let’s talk about the apparent erasure. Let’s talk about Robin Morgan and her poem, “Monster,” which is beautiful and brilliant and worth talking about. Let’s talk about the difference between the struggles/issues of women and the struggles/issues of transwomen. Let’s talk about who has made whom to be monstrous and why and when and where.
Mary Sunshine, I love you.
xxxooo
Heart
I don’t ascribe the monstrous feminine to one poet. I do think that if feminists are going to talk about the monstrous feminine, they need to acknowledge feminist work which preceded their own– particularly when that work is specifically brought to their attention.
Heart
profacero we speak from our educations. Mine wasn’t yours. Now that the word has been used, I will call what is being done to women here, and elsewhere, erasure.
And I’ll call it plagiarism too, because the word means “kidnap”.
The nonsense that has been spouted about Heart’s post is quite incredible, and, I believe, deliberately disingenuous. There is no way anyone could read that post and come away thinking ‘Heart accused LL of plagiarism’, that’s simply not what it says! This seems to be yet another form of the attacks we’ve seen lately, which involve accusing radical feminists of saying things that they never said, and then abusing them for it. The nastiness of it all is shocking to me.
Robin Morgan rocks. I discovered her relatively recently, when I came acros an anthology of her writings in a secondhand booksale, and fell in love immediately. I love the discovery of new radfem writers, it’s such a enlightening experience.
Edited
The very language in the description of this work is suspect. Maybe this isn’t what she (I decided to choose a pronoun for little light, since “she or he” is so ambiguous) wanted to use, and she referred to scholarly works on monstrous feminism. Why only this particular book?
Edited
Profacero, I see that; but honestly when people draw on ideas to write reflections of personal experience relating to those ideas, the use of the idea to create a sense of identity is a homage in itself. When I speak about experiences as a bisexual woman and my understanding of my own sexuality gradient, should I be faulted somewhere else because in all my personal reflection, I didn’t pay homage to the works of innovators in bisexual politics and the Kinsey scale? Should an assembly of people who agree with me be collected to expose that my personal reflections did not come with its works cited appendage? If I’m not well versed in that area besides my reflections and general knowledge of a theory backing my reflection, should I not speak for fear I step on the toes of someone poised to motivate personal reflection and action I’ve created? And if it is discovered, why not approach me personally? I’m sorry; it just does not appear very genuine that this is a crediting gesture, about erasure of feminist contributions. If anything, the opposite is true: people identified with the movement and recognized its power. But in this case, it wasn’t allegedly the proper person bringing that sentiment to the fore.
I get the strong feeling there’s some history here I don’t know about.
This is a fair point:
“I do think that if feminists are going to talk about the monstrous feminine, they need to acknowledge feminist work which preceded their own– particularly when that work is specifically brought to their attention.”
But all these comments started flying about the airwaves, on several websites, before LL could have had the chance to get/read/digest the Morgan poem.
“And I note that neither of these two blogs have you on their “feminist” blogrolls …”
for what it’s worth, i’ve had heart’s blog on my blog roll for over a year.
and for the record, i never claimed to be a feminist. i like to think of myself as a student of feminism though, and i consider myself lucky to have access to the writings of people like heart from which to learn. i’ll add that i never knew that robin morgan wrote about pride and monsters so long ago. i thought the first reference was done by mary daly. and that is but one reason why i come here, to this blog, to read and learn.
I’ve just realised that what I wrote above makes it sounds like I was deliberately stirring. That wasn’t my intention, I just meant to point out that this is part of a general trend at the moment. Please delete that comment if it sounds like stirring, or like it may draw negative attention this way.
I should think before I type. Duh.
There is no way anyone could read that post and come away thinking ‘Heart accused LL of plagiarism’, that’s simply not what it says!
I read that very last sentence in her post as saying that someone isn’t being credited, let’s remember the creator of these ideas. Isn’t one version of plagiarism not giving credit where credit is due?
This seems to be yet another form of the attacks we’ve seen lately, which involve accusing radical feminists of saying things that they never said, and then abusing them for it.
Yes, it’s not so much that people disagree about stuff it’s the LIES. The downright fabrications and the third, fourth, fifth hand distortions. Makes it impossible to really discuss the issues at all. (and there are potentially some useful discussions to be had).
I read the anti-radfem hate fests, and my reaction was constantly – but that’s not what happened, that’s not what was said, but whaaa ???!!!!!
By the time it had gone on and on and got worse and worse I just lost all ability to put any coherent reply together about it.
Copycats are better cats, seems to be the point in all of this.
Nah, the bottom line is men. That’s the way its been since the patriarchy first crawled out from under its rock.
No matter how low on the totem pole a man may be in the male hierarchy, he takes comfort in knowing that he will always be considered to be above even the most kingly of women. That’s why we call it patriarchy. Shit rolls downhill, baby. And at the bottom of that ladder, we can always find women.
Less we have any doubts, do we see transppl challenging men’s spaces? Of course not. It remains intact and unchallenged. Because shit never rolls sideways or uphill, baby.
Robin Morgan does a piece on men’s colonization of women. And compares women’s bodies to the land that men seek to colonize. It’s a brilliant piece and one which merits mention and attention. It should wake more than a few people up.
Sylvia’s Revenge, the poem “Monster” has been around for a long time, has been cited to thousands of times in other feminist books, and is a poem which, for the first time so far as I know, speaks of what little light refers to as a “feminism of the monstrous.” That was and is, in fact, the central and specific theme of Morgan’s poem. Morgan’s poem is specifically political, in a way other works about women as monstrous are not. In the same way, little light’s poem is specifically political in a way other works about women as monstrous are not. It makes sense, then, to talk about that. If little light (or anybody, in any similar situation) had never heard of the poem, the thing to say might be, “Oh, wow, I never heard of that poem, interesting, I’ll have to take a look.” I didn’t approach little light personally because my central concern was not accusing little light of anything, but was erasure of the work and writings of radical feminists like Morgan, as I’ve already described, and again, not by little light because little light wrote the poem she wrote, but by the way Morgan’s work was not mentioned at all, by anybody besides QueerDewd.
If I should write a poem and entitle it, “The Masters Tools and the Master’s House,” dealing with that particular feminist theme, one would expect at some point to read some reference to Audre Lorde and her work, either here or in other blogs which might be discussing my poem. If nobody mentioned Audre Lorde at all, or if, when one person did, in passing, (as Queer Dewd mentioned Robin Morgan), there were no response to the mention, I’d expect those concerned with Audre Lorde’s work and writings to write about them, to write about Lorde, particularly if in their mind, Lorde’s work was being erased, as I believe the work of older radical feminists has been and continues to be erased.
Whatever is being or has been said about this thread, it is here, it speaks for itself, for anybody who actually reads what is here for themselves. The lies and distortions you’ve described, therealUK, laurelin, and others are, again, along the lines of the same erasure I’ve described. That *is* how the work and activism of radical feminist women has, in large part, been erased– by distorting it, mischaracterizing it, telling lies about it.
Heart
When someone points out that the work you’ve done is using someone else’s work, whether you knew that or not you then have an obligation to acknowledge, particularly when it’s so bleeding obvious. Regarding not knowing this was Morgan’s poem, for anyone, being a feminist requires more than simply saying you are.
This has happened time immemorial to women’s work. Men take it and call it their own.
knitting goddess your compass needs recalibrating. we’re talking here about the appropriation of women’s work.
Laurelin,
Thanks for your first post. It made a lot of sense to me.
Any excuse to set off an anti-radfem hatefest is a good one for our enemies.
Female reality has to have *some* expression, regardless of the consequences (unless physical or socioeconomic injury could be one of those consequences).
Mary S.
I don’t have time to read all the comments right now. I will only say that I don’t think (of course, I don’t know) that LL plagerized (as I understand the term). If she (I am pretty certain she opts for that pronoun so I’ll honor that instead of using “he or she”) knew of Morgan’s poem it would have been cool for her to give a nod in her direction. If she didn’t, well, you’ve called her attention to it. In all events, I am moved by both poems; I honor LL’s poem (indeed, I called her a poet in comments on her blog).
I can say that *I* had never read Morgan’ poem before and I am deeply grateful to you for providing me the opportunity! It is a lacking in my own education that I am proud to have now completed. Thank you.
Oh, btw, thanks for the link (though I’m not clear *why* you linked to my humble site!).
Denise. *That* isn’t Morgan’s poem. It’s a tiny tiny excerpt.
Thanks, Pony. That much I *did* understand.
So many others don’t. Judgements are being made, based once again, on what someone else tells them, instead of reading for themselves.
Following is Robin Morgan’s poem, Monster, in its entirety. Remember, it was written in 1971. By way of context, Morgan’s husband, whom she is referring to in the poem, was one of the founders of the Gay Liberation Front, one of the first gay liberation organizations in the U.S. Although he was married to Robin Morgan, he (and other pro-feminist men at the time) identified as a “fag,” as “effeminate,” and as variations of those words. The words were intended to be outrageous and confrontational (the earliest version of “we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it”) and were intended to be a move in the direction of deconstructing masculinity and heteronormativity. Morgan’s poem was written as some of these “conscious men” talked in the kitchen.
The poem imo is as right on time today as it was when it was written.
Denise, exactly; those who didn’t know about the poem before, do now, and that’s all good, that is a good result, in my opinion.
Monster
by Robin Morgan
Listen. I’m really slowly dying
inside myself tonight.
And I’m not about to run down the list
of rapes and burnings and beatings and smiles
and sulks and rages and all the other crap
you’ve laid on women throughout your history
(we had no part in it — although god knows we tried)
together with your thick, demanding bodies laid on ours,
while your proud sweat, like liquid arrogance,
suffocated our very pores.
Not tonight.
I’m tired of listing your triumph, our oppression,
especially tonight, while two men whom I like –
one of whom I live with, father of my child, and
claim to be in life-giving, death-serious struggle with –
while you two sit at the kitchen table dancing
an ornate ritual of what you think passes for struggle
which fools nobody. Your shared oppression, grief,
and love as effeminists in a burning patriarchal world
still cannot cut through power plays of maleness.
The baby is asleep a room away. White. Male. American.
Potentially the most powerful, deadly creature
of the species.
His hair, oh pain, curls into fragrant tendrils damp
with the sweat of his summery sleep. Not yet, and on my life
if I can help it never will be “quite a man.”
But just two days ago on seeing me naked for what must be
the three-thousandth time in his not-yet two years,
he suddenly thought of
the furry creature who yawns through his favorite television program;
connected that image with my genitals; laughed,
and said, “Monster.”
I want a woman’s revolution like a lover.
I lust for it, I want so much this freedom,
this end to struggle and fear and lies
we all exhale, that I could die just
with the passionate uttering of that desire.
Just once in this my only lifetime to dance
all alone and bare on a high cliff under cypress trees
with no fear of where I place my feet.
To even glimpse what I might have been and never never
will become, had I not had to “waste my life” fighting
for what my lack of freedom keeps me from glimpsing.
Those who abhor violence refuse to admit they are already
experiencing it, committing it.
Those who lie in the arms of the “individual solution,”
the “private odyssey,” the “personal growth,”
are the most conformist of all,
because to admit suffering is to begin
the creation of freedom.
Those who fear dying refuse to admit that they are already dead.
Well, I am dying, suffocating from this hopelessness tonight,
from this dead weight of struggling with
even those few men I love and care about
each day they kill me.
Do you understand? Dying. Going crazy.
Really. No poetic metaphor.
Hallucinating thin rainbow-colored nets
like cobwebs all over my skin
and dreaming more and more when I can sleep
of being killed or killing.
Sweet revolution, how I wish the female tears
rolling silently down my face this second were each a bullet,
each word I write, each character on my typewriter bullets
to kill whatever it is in men that builds this empire,
colonized my very body,
then named the colony Monster.
I am one of the “man-haters,” some have said.
I don’t have the time or patience here to say again why or how
I hate not men but what it is men do in this culture, or
how the system of sexism, power dominance, and competition
is the enemy, not people — but how men, still, created that system
and preserve it and reap concrete benefits from it.
Words and rhetoric that merely
gush from my arteries when grazed
by the razoredge of humanistic love. Enough.
I will say, however, that you, men, will have to be freed,
as well, though we women may have to kick and kill you
into freedom
since most of you will embrace death quite gladly
rather than give up your power to hold power.
Compassion for the suicidal impulse in our killers? Well,
on a plane ride once, the man across the aisle –
who was a World War Two paraplegic,
dead totally from the waist down,
wheeled in and out of the cabin — spent the whole trip avidly
devouring first newspaper sports pages
and then sports magazines,
loudly pointing out to anyone who would listen
(mostly the stewardesses) which athlete was a “real man.”
Two men in the seats directly behind me talked the whole time
about which Caribbean islands were the best for whoring, and
which color of ass was hotter and more pliant.
The stewardess smiled and served them coffee.
I gripped the arms of my seat more than once
to stop my getting up and screaming to the entire planeload
of human beings what was torturing us all — stopped because I knew
they’d take me for a crazy, an incipient
hijacker perhaps, and wrestle me down until Bellevue Hospital
could receive me at our landing in New York.
(No hijacker, I understood then, ever really wants to take
the plane. She/he wants to take passengers’ minds, to turn
them inside out, to create the revolution
35,000 feet above sea level
and land with a magical flying cadre
and, oh, yes, to win.)
Stopping myself is becoming a tactical luxury,
going fast.
My hives rise more frequently, stigmata of my passion.
Someday you’ll take away my baby, one way or the other.
And the man I’ve loved, one way or the other.
Why should that nauseate me with terror?
You’ve already taken me away from myself
with my only road back to go forward
into more madness, monsters, cobwebs, nausea,
in order to free you — men — from killing us, killing us.
No colonized people so isolated one from the other
for so long as women.
None cramped with compassion for the oppressor
who breathes on the next pillow each night.
No people so old who, having, we now discover, invented
agriculture, weaving, pottery, language, cooking
with fire, and healing medicine, must now invent a revolution
so total as to destroy maleness, femaleness, death.
Oh mother, I am tired and sick.
One sister, new to this pain called feminist consciousness
for want of a scream to name it, asked me last week
“But how do you stop from going crazy?”
No way, my sister.
No way.
This is a pore war, I thought once, on acid.
And you, men. Lovers, brothers, fathers, sons.
I have loved you and love you still, if for no other reason
than that you came wailing from the monster
while the monster hunched in pain to give you the power
to break her spell.
Well, we must break it ourselves, at last.
And I will speak less and less and less to you
and more and more in crazy gibberish you cannot understand:
witches’ incantations, poetry, old women’s mutterings,
schizophrenic code, accents, keening, firebombs,
poison, knives, bullets, and whatever else will invent
this freedom.
May my hives bloom bravely until my flesh is aflame
and burns through the cobwebs.
May we go mad together, my sisters.
May our labor agony in bringing forth this revolution
be the death of all pain.
May we comprehend that we cannot be stopped.
May I learn how to survive until my part is finished.
May I realize that I
am a
monster. I am
a
monster.
I am a monster.
And I am proud.
Thank you for posting the entire poem, Heart. I am very moved; especially by the following:
“My hives rise more frequently, stigmata of my passion.
Someday you’ll take away my baby, one way or the other.
And the man I’ve loved, one way or the other.
Why should that nauseate me with terror?
You’ve already taken me away from myself
with my only road back to go forward
into more madness, monsters, cobwebs, nausea,
in order to free you — men — from killing us, killing us.”
But then, it only got better and better. I will definitely have to pull out that Robin Morgan book I’ve been sitting on, under a stack of other feminist books – top of the stack it goes.
Always surprised by her. Don’t know why; I must just keep underestimating.
Thanks, Heart. My spouse (with a degree in philosophy and a penchant for keeping everything) actually had this in her collection. Still, it’s cool to have it online!
Oddly, I wonder what happened to her son. Did he ever become “quite a man”?
Oh god she is brilliant.
These are the parts that move me:
while you two sit at the kitchen table dancing
an ornate ritual of what you think passes for struggle
which fools nobody. Your shared oppression, grief,
and love as effeminists in a burning patriarchal world
still cannot cut through power plays of maleness.
***
Sweet revolution, how I wish the female tears
rolling silently down my face this second were each a bullet,
each word I write, each character on my typewriter bullets
to kill whatever it is in men that builds this empire,
colonized my very body,
then named the colony Monster.
***
I have loved you and love you still, if for no other reason
than that you came wailing from the monster
while the monster hunched in pain to give you the power
to break her spell.
***
Heart
Heart I am reminded of a writing teacher who threw a textbook across the desk at me, with an expression of contempt. Then picked up a book of poetry, waving it around “Here at least you have something. It’s all here”.
Maybe we should read the poetry, the words of our foremothers, discuss what we understand from the words. Once in a while. There, at least, we’d have something.
*I didn’t stay in English. I had to work.
To me radical feminism isn’t about competition and hierarchies of knowledge. I have often written down and thought up ideas that I thought were original, only to find that my sister predecessors thought and wrote the same things, almost verbatim, 30 years prior. It is at those times that I know I am connected to something larger and stronger than myself. Having a shared mental connection ties me to those women like nothing else can.
Language is symbol; language is myth. Powerful images that recurr across differing populations need to be shared; not shunned.
Yes, Q Grrl, I’ve had that same experience of writing something I thought I’d thought of first, then learning another woman (or man) had had those same ideas. I think we’ve probably all had that experience. As a matter of fact, what good writing really does is, or one thing it does is, it puts into words what others have felt but haven’t articulated to themselves yet, and so the reader “recognizes” herself in the words and feels connected to those who similarly recognize themselves.
This isn’t about that, though. It’s also not about competition or hierarchies of knowledge. I think it’s about feminist women acknowledging the work of other feminist women in a world in which feminist women’s work is erased, ignored, disparaged in an ongoing way.
Powerful images definitely do need to be shared– which is one reason to share Morgan’s poem with women who apparently have never heard of it (with a few exceptions.) What is circulated and passed around, taught in unversities, published, and what is erased, suppressed, censored, disparaged– that is all about power and the way power is negotiated in particular contexts and times in history. There are evidently many, many self-identified feminist bloggers who aren’t aware of a poem that was once described as “The Anthem of Feminism,” and not long ago, either, just 30, 40 years ago. There’s a reason for that, and it is called erasure. To say so isn’t to be competitive. To say so is to refuse to participate in the erasure of the work of feminist women.
Language is myth and symbol and so on, yes, but its writers, and its readers, read and write in specific contexts. Language is either published or suppressed for political reasons. Those reasons are always interesting and worth discussing.
Heart
So why do you wish to suppress Little Light’s words? Because they touch on the same vein as Robin Morgan’s? Using the same symbols and methaphors is not plaigarism and does not diminish what Ms. Morgan wrote. Instead of creating a gap, I would think it would create a bridge of common experience.
I suppose I feel there’s a certain timeliness of little light’s words; I still remember the visceral reaction I had on reading Robin Morgan the first time; and I can compare that to the visceral reaction I got from little light’s words. You can’t ignore that kind of passion, you can’t ignore that atriculate and eloquent attempt to communicate that which is fairly incommunicable these days.
Q Grrl, how could I — even if I wanted to, which I don’t — “suppress” Little Light’s words? If anything, my and others responding to little light’s words, even critically, is more likely to gain her words an even wider reading than they might otherwise have had.
I am concerned about the very thing you say you are concerned about — making sure that feminist women’s words are not suppressed. Not Little Light’s. Not Robin Morgan’s, either.
Whether little light’s, or any writer’s, words create a gap or a bridge will have to do with all sorts of factors, including negotiations around power, including politics, including history, including herstory. People on opposite sides of the political spectrum, any political spectrum, you name it, can use the same symbols and metaphors, sure enough, but as weapons against one another, in order to create gaps, in order to cause obfuscations and mystifications of various kinds, in order to conceal instead of reveal, to burn bridges rather than to build them. What we see in what others write will always be informed by our own politics, our own goals, values, hopes, experiences, and so on, as well. So, it’s not going to work, I don’t think, to assert that little light’s (or anybody’s) use of symbols and metaphors like those Robin Morgan used won’t diminish what Robin Morgan wrote, won’t create a gap. Depends on who is reading. Depends on history/herstory. Depends on what’s gone down between the writer and the women reading. Depends on all sorts of things.
Heart
And really, it’s in discussions like this that we find out, or decide, or establish, or gain insight into whether, in fact, bridges will be built or burned, gaps will be closed or created.
Heart
Q grrl, responsive to your last post up there (we cross posted), yes, this is why I wrote this morning as follows:
womensspace Says:
January 18th, 2007 at 6:01 am
I should also say that I do think little light’s poem is very beautiful, powerfully moving, which in my mind is all the more reason for us to have this discussion.
Heart
****
Heart
oops, missed that post. Sorry.
A couple of things.
First, about plagiarism in the U.S. It’s a very odd thing. Plagiarism is when you appropriate someone’s exact words or images. Using an idea is not plagiarism.
This reached a level of absurdity when lesbian activist Sarah Schulman realized that the musical “Rent” was a direct appropriation of the plot and characters of her novel, “People in Trouble”. To make the story even weirder, Schulman was a theater critic and wrote a review of the play without even realizing the similarities. It took a friend of hers to point out the entire plot and nearly all of the characters were based on her novel. Schulman used this personal experience to write a book called “Stagestruck” which I have yet to read. In the book she does not focus solely on her own experience, but expands the idea to how queer ideas have been consistently ripped off and distorted by mainstream culture.
My other point is that seeing similarity between Little Light’s poems and Robin Morgan’s does a disservice to both writers, in my opinion. Back when I was an English major, I’d have written a 30 page paper on how dissimilar the two works are. But I hope I’ve gotten over that tendency. It really is the worst kind of pedantry.
I guess if I’m forced to take a “side” in this debate, I’d support Little Light. This isn’t plagiarism, this isn’t even colonization or appropriation. It’s an age-old concept that both writers appropriated in different ways for different purposes. Writers constantly go back to the same themes because they work. If Morgan isn’t required to state her influences and predecessors, then why require it of Little Light? Why not enjoy both works and both writers?
I actually hate that Robin Morgan’s work is being appropriated in this discussion. I’d rather celebrate her along with hundreds of thousands of other fabulous feminist writers.
Ravenm, I don’t see similarities, particularly, between the poems themselves. I see that Robin Morgan’s poem, “Monster,” centered around the theme of feminism as monstrous, received zero mention in the discussions of little light’s poem around the same ideas, in all the venues the poem was discussed.
I have a lot to say about the way little light’s poem might be appropriation and colonization, and I’ll write about that in time. Morgan may well have been required to state her influences and predecessors. If she used the same imagery and ideas they used and didn’t mention it, then it would have been right for someone else to, and right for her to agree that it was right. She’s a class act and always has been; I believe, based on all I know of her work (and I know it well) that’s what she would have done.
As to Robin Morgan’s work being “appropriated” in this discussion, there I will have to strenuously disagree with you. Robin Morgan is a radical feminist, just as I am, and others here are. We aren’t “appropriating” our own leaders and our own theories and politics–they belong to us. By contrast, transgender people have frequently mischaracterized and denigrated Morgan’s work. I have personally engaged with transwomen who persisted in calling Morgan a “bigot,” a “Nazi,” “Mussolini,” “David Duke,” and why? Because she is woman centered. Because she is a radical feminist and radical feminist politics are often not appreciated by transpeople. My thinking is, that is possibly a reason there was little discussion of, or even (apparently) knowledge of her poem on the blogs discussing little light’s poem.
I can’t appropriate a politics, feminist work, that I believe in with all of my heart. But others can, have and do appropriate the work of radical feminists all of the time, often without realizing it, and often while trashing the radical feminists whose work they are in the process of appropriating. It’s important to me not to participate in that and to call it out if I get an idea it might be happening again.
Heart
Lots of people here have seen me engage the transwoman who was engaged in all of that trashing and denunciation of Robin Morgan, publicly, on the internet. As profacero says, there is a history here that goes way, way back. Robin Morgan wrote about the intrusions of transwomen into woman-only space in the 70s. That forms a context for discussions of this type. Not many feminists are aware of that herstory, that context, but I am, and when it makes sense, again, I am going to make sure it does not get erased.
Heart
Yes, using someone else’s ideas and not acknowledging source, when the ideas have been expressed is plagairism, whether expressed on the internet, a cocktail napkin or written in a book published 40 or more years ago. And yes, style guides used in humanities departments in universities all over the the United States refer to it that way. It’s not mutable.
Heart wrote: “I can’t appropriate a politics, feminist work, that I believe in with all of my heart. But others can…”
Heart, when you say this, it sounds as if you have granted yourself immunity from a specific standard that you then apply to others. If you do one thing and I do the exact same thing how can you be right and I be wrong? How does anyone measure how much you or I believe in something with all our hearts? I am trying to be open to your idea but it honestly sounds like you are claiming you don’t have to live up to the same standards that others do. Maybe you can explain it in a way that makes sense to me. But maybe we’ll have to disagree.
As for Morgan, her poem is an obvious appropriation of other writings that go all the way back to Mary Shelley, a feminist who used the image of a monster for purely political reasons. Shelley also invented the modern novel. Not bad!
And more power to Morgan for knowing that history. Morgan is an incredibly well-read woman. Her use of references to ideas from our ancestors brings nuance and deeper meaning to her poem for those of us lucky enough to have read the work that is referenced.
So just as Morgan wasn’t referenced, neither were all those other amazing writers who have spoken of the monstrous in reference to human beings who are “othered”. Refencing other writers with similar work doesn’t seem to happen much at all on the internet outside blogs that are specifically devoted to literature.
Pony, plagiarism is not “using someone’s ideas and not acknowledging the source”. Otherwise, “humanities departments in universities all over the US” would refuse to include Shakespeare’s work in their curricula. That dude never came up with a new idea in his life.
“I’d rather celebrate her along with hundreds of thousands of other fabulous feminist writers.”
Why can’t Morgan be a better writer than anyone else, everyone else, or at least *someone* else, dare she; or maybe be, even, as good as someone else!
Because clearly she isn’t!
I heard RIGHT HERE that her monster was an “empty category.”
Now, “empty category” is really just a way to sound smart when calling someone, well, less derivative and cliched, but as long as it’s male cliches being tossed about, well, it’s mythic and brimful and protected by smart teachers who skulk around the internet policing what is or isn’t covered under copyright statute 0.42.2e! And that’s smart! Smart! My shirt collar just pressed itself.
But female poets are boring. The ones born female at least. They don’t have friends, readers, zealous Captain America’s to the rescue–I mean, what could those chicks possibly have to say that’s of any interest to men? Unless they talk about fucking. Unless they’re young enough to physically personify sex. Editors love that stuff. Get your name on the cover of Fence literary journal along with a picture of a Suicide Girl. Careers are built on less.
Who the hell has even heard of Morgan and her monster? It’s kinda dry. Boring. She doesn’t have teachers, swell guys, each and every one a spot of joy, thumping statutes in her honor.
And if that ain’t the meaning of life.
Or so they say.
Heart:
Do not publish this if you wish, I don’t want to start trouble or what have you, I don’t want to be accused of, just as many of the radical bent are sick of, “starting trouble”…but I do have a question or two…and I really ask them because I am interested. Hell, I have read your blog off and on (more off, really) because you are linked over at Witchy’s Place, and I love and respect that gal, despite our different views, but this whole thing? Well, yes, an attention grabber.
One: LL said she had not read Morgan’s work…which means she was not trying to erase Morgan in the least, and considering LL’s situation, she really was coming at it from a whole different view. This is not an attempt to make light of what Morgan was saying, but in truth, all things considered, Morgan and LL, due to their situations, could not possibly be creating from the same place, could they?
Two: I am just going to flat out ask what a lot of people are hedging around…is the problem that LL (not a born woman, but a woman none the less) used similar metaphor to Morgan (a born woman)? I will say now I think that being trans is probably a lot more strife than those who are born women understand, but I will also say I can see why feminists, especially of the radical bent, see that being a trans woman and being a born women are different (in that trans women, while undoubtedly knowing they are different early on, do have a period in which they CAN take advantage of being male, and born women do not have that time). Is that really part of the issue?
And lastly, I want to say…well, I had not read Morgan. And YOU brought her to my attention, and I have been reading…so, all this aside, really, what you wanted, the attention of those who had not known about Morgan now focused on her work…well, that has happened. And it is a good thing, but I don’t like to see LL being hurt for it. She’s probably dealt with pain most of us cannot imagine.
Keep Speaking Your Truth, and I won’t say much…cause, yah, well…
-RE
It’s *so* odd, but I’d *swear* I heard violins just now!!!!
Hey, I’m proud of that comment that didn’t make it past moderation!
Amy:
I will take that as scarcastic….and file under typical….
Hey, that was a great post, Rich– sorry, I just got home now to moderate.
Ravenm, I think appropriation happens when people enlist what doesn’t belong to them — what they haven’t paid for, what they don’t believe in or even know about — to their own projects in a way which disrespects those who have paid for whatever it is or who do believe in what has been appropriated. It’s not about living up to standards– it’s about respect and integrity. When New Agers, for example, adopt, write about, use, sell what belongs to indigenous or aboriginal people, that’s appropriation. It disrespects the history and culture of those to whom whatever they have borrowed and used belongs. I believe that white people wearing dreadlocks is appropriation, unless they are Rasta and can wear dreadlocks with a deep and full appreciation of the meaning dreadlocks have to Rastafarians. Appropriation is using something that doesn’t belong to you disrespectfully, harnessing it to projects the people it belongs to would not endorse or agree with.
Another example that comes to mind would be as follows. A while back I was poking around on the internet and came across a BDSM site with cyber-dungeons and so on and the slogan of the site was an Audre Lorde quote. That was an example of appropriation of Audre Lorde’s work because Audre Lorde was anti-SM and her anti-SM views were published and widely circulated. The dungeon website people were using Lorde’s words iow to support a site Lorde would not have endorsed. That’s disrespectful, obfuscating, and exploitive, in the way it uses Lorde’s words in a self-serving way without respect for what Lorde actually believed, or without bothering to even find out what Lorde really believed.
Renegade Evolution: is the problem that LL (not a born woman, but a woman none the less) used similar metaphor to Morgan (a born woman)? I will say now I think that being trans is probably a lot more strife than those who are born women understand, but I will also say I can see why feminists, especially of the radical bent, see that being a trans woman and being a born women are different (in that trans women, while undoubtedly knowing they are different early on, do have a period in which they CAN take advantage of being male, and born women do not have that time). Is that really part of the issue?
Yes.
And Renegade, yeah, I am glad Morgan’s poem will now be more broadly circulated than it has been, and that more feminists have read it and been encouraged by it. I really appreciate your peaceable posts very much. And I also like witchy-woo, so we have some common ground anyway!
Amy:
Heart
heart:
Can I ask why it is an issue?
Pony–
Why should my compass of academic honesty be recalibrated simply because the material is written by a woman and feminist in nature? Are we really so special and unique that we need a whole separate ethical system from the patriarchy? Is there something inherent in our biology, our brains that means we have our thumb on collective consciousness?
Surely not. Yes, a community should protest the appropriation of creative work, but when the appropriation has actually happened. As many people have pointed out, well-informed art is that is usually pulls from many of the same cultural influences as other works, resulting in eerie similarities. Knee-jerk reactions only undermine the sincerity and believability of legitimate accusations.
Yes, you can ask, but I think your question is disingenuous.
Mary:
You can think whatever you like, I am of no mind to stop you, but I am honestly curious as to why it is an issue.
RenegadeEvolution, an answer is, to be born into the world female is to experience a certain kind of brutality at the hands of men from the moment of one’s birth and in an ongoing way, until we die. All of us born female know this brutality, recognize it, and have made our way against it and in the face of it. It is reflected in women’s art, writings, medicine, spirituality, specific traditions and practices, herstory, stories. It is evident in the way we encounter one another and in the way we encounter men and society just in general. Whatever women have created, whatever ways women have been in the world, have made for ourselves in the world, all of it has been touched by the brutality of our subordination as females, and that is the experience out of which we all, as females, must necessarily speak and do our own work. To be less than conscious here is to deny the facts of women’s subordination and is to actively disrespect women and our struggle for full humanity and so is to participate in our ongoing subordination. To appropriate our lives and experiences, or our writings, our work, is deeply disrespectful (and some other things worth talking about for a long time) in the same way other kinds of appropriation along the lines I’ve already mentioned are deeply disrespectful. Appropriation wherever it happens makes resistance to having been colonized and brutalized that much more difficult and real revolution and the upending of patriarchy that much more distant and out of reach to us.
I’m going to blog about this from a little bit different angle soon, maybe today, depending how busy I am.
Heart
Heart:
I look forward to reading it. And while *I* may not agree, in many ways, i agree…if that makes ANY sense at all. (insomnia…makes me less than rational)
Are we really so special and unique that we need a whole separate ethical system from the patriarchy?
No. The basis of our challenge to appropriation is not some claim of specialness or uniqueness or biology. The basis of our resistance to appropriation of our lives, bodies and work is our standing as people brutalized from the time of our births and from time immemorial because we are female. Appropriation is never justifiable for conscious people, including appropriation for the reason that patriarchy hurts men too.
Heart
“This seems to be yet another form of the attacks we’ve seen lately, which involve accusing radical feminists of saying things that they never said, and then abusing them for it. The nastiness of it all is shocking to me.”
Oh, yes.
“I’ve just realised that what I wrote above makes it sounds like I was deliberately stirring.”
No, it reads like the truth. No need to shy away from it.
And thank you.
Heart: where in Little Light’s poem does she reference transsexuality/transgender?
She does write:
But anyone who has grown up lesbian, come of age as a lesbian before it became all the rage, knows exactly and instinctively that this is the deeper message patriarchy feeds lesbians: you must really be a man.
This poem could (and is) about anything, any grieving that women outside of gender normative behavior experience. Not all poems are meant as autobiographical. It is, very importantly, the symbol and metaphor that are expressed.
Your criticism seems hinged on your sense of outrage that a trannie had the audacity to use a metaphor that a woman used 26 years ago. I have to ask, on what planet do you live? There is no appropriation; although there is a brief, very brief similarity.
But then, your outrage at appropriation is, I suppose, not really that different from my outrage at your appropriation (after 3 marriages and many children) of lesbianism. Is that a low blow? Yeah, but not as low as yours.
Why is “Male Terrorism” one of the tags to this entry?
You know often when I say I am culturally black I am told by POC that is bullshyt. When I ask why it is bullshyt if race is a social construct, then why cannot I construct my race? I am often told, “Well at the end of the day you are white and people will see you as white, and you will always have white privilege, so that is that.” This type of reasoning keeps me out of women of color spaces; it gives WOC, particularly some younger women reason to disrespect me, not once giving me an ounce of respect for being OLDER or having my experiences, all because at the end of the day I am white.
Yet it is exactly that reasoning that is justifying allowing a biological born male to be accepted as a woman. I do not think biological males should be discriminated against during transition, or if they never officially transitioned, but how is it that they are embraced openly, but I do not. If blackness is so special and only open to “real” members, then why can’t womanhood have that right to exclusive membership? Why are women seen as discriminating against a biological male, but people who deny my blackness is not?
To me, it is ONCE AGAIN, biological males dictating the lives of the oppressed with their agenda through a garnering of sympathy from the collectively oppressed.
“Well at the end of the day you are [male] and people will see you as [male], and you will always have [male] privilege, so that is that.”
What sympathy do I get, “You don’t understand what its like to really be black, you can never really be black, at the end of the day you are not black, if you medically altered the color of your skin that would be self-hatred [I would never consider that anyway], because black is a group collectively oppressed, etc etc etc etc.” Maybe I should do black drag. Females are collectively oppressed as well, but by making the comparison I will be accused of trying to trump gender over race, when both are trumped by what males want/desire/dictate/act on/command/mandate. It is no matter how one puts it, divide and conquer for “da man.”
Just like black culture is so appropriated into white society to the extend that whites can no longer recognize when whites are appropriating what was originally black, I think the same could be true for men appropriating the works of women. There is room for innocence, but there is also a whole lot of room for “unintentional” (usually that word is criticized when it is whites pleading their intent or lack of) erasure. There is nothing wrong with pointing it out. Actually I think if POC pointed it out it would be seem as an act of empowerment, yet when women of all colors point female acts, hence empowerment out, it is the same old same, STFU Bytch you are causing problems for men and male sympathizers (even if it is at the expense of women). Take one in the ass for the team.
I am sure my comments will be negated because of my white supremacy, my female stupidity, my lower class crassness, my overall asshattery, my unwillingness to blindly side with one side, yet when people throw out phrases like false analogies or straw arguments, they do not define the straw nor do they examine the very hypocrisy in their stance that makes the opposition a straw.
ChasingMoksha, nail-hammer-bang, says: You know often when I say I am culturally black I am told by POC that is bullshyt. When I ask why it is bullshyt if race is a social construct, then why cannot I construct my race? I am often told, “Well at the end of the day you are white and people will see you as white, and you will always have white privilege, so that is that.” This type of reasoning keeps me out of women of color spaces; it gives WOC, particularly some younger women reason to disrespect me, not once giving me an ounce of respect for being OLDER or having my experiences, all because at the end of the day I am white.
Yet it is exactly that reasoning that is justifying allowing a biological born male to be accepted as a woman. I do not think biological males should be discriminated against during transition, or if they never officially transitioned, but how is it that they are embraced openly, but I do not.
YES.
Going back to reading your comment, chasingmoksha.
Angry and Queer, one of the categories for this post is “Male Terrorism” because Robin Morgan’s poem “Monster” is about male terrorism (and Robin Morgan’s life’s work has been about male terorrism).
Heart
Dang, chasingmoksha. That comment is AWESOME and should be a blog post on your own blog. It is a privilege that it is a comment on mine!
My favorite parts:
EXACTLY.
Your black drag comment is insightful as well. That kind of drag would be hate speech, truly, like blackface, minstrelsy. But female impersonators? (Not talking about transwomen, talking about female impersonators, big difference.) That is completely accepted as oh-so- camp and kitsch and funny and goddamn, they look more like women than women do, never mind the way a girl or a woman feels looking at the performance for cash and accolades of what amounts to her brutalization by men, who don’t know what that’s about and never will.
Heart
ChasingMoksha, nail-hammer-bang
Just had to say that again!
Yeah, Q Grrl I don’t disagree with you that little light’s poem likely resonates with all sorts of people, including females, and in particular, gender nonconforming females, no matter the sex of who they love, whether they are lesbians or het or however they identify.
little light is an outspoken transwoman, though, a person born male. This matters. I think it is entirely possible to appreciate the poem itself — as I did, and reminded you of it when you missed it — while at the same time, while appreciating the work on its own merits, rejecting what amounts to appropriation of imagery and metaphors belonging to females– like Lilith. Like the Gorgons. Like Cybele and Baba Yaga, Hel and Ashtoreth, Lamia and Scylla, Kali and Kapo ‘ula-kina’u. To do this is to invoke and appropriate what is sacred to females.
I could write some beautiful poetry around certain kinds of issues I have great familiarity with, but which I remain largely an outsider to. It would touch people. It would move people. They might say so. If I began to invoke imagery or deities or practices of marginalized people groups which do not include me as a member — however well I might feel I relate, understand, whatever my experiences might be — then I am still appropriating, and however beautiful my words, however moving and powerful, no matter who might find their own reality in what I write and might, on that basis, connect with me and feel me, still, they have valid reason to challenge me where I have appropriated.
Say I wrote something very beautiful and powerful, which many people could relate to, invoking imagery or language from, say, Rubyfruit Jungle, or Stone Butch Blues or something like that. Then what if I didn’t acknowledge the authors of Rubyfruit Jungle or Stone Butch Blues? And what if, say, you
came along and said, “Hey, Heart, do you realize your imagery was used years ago, back in the early days of gay/lesbian rights by _________?” Would you be out of pocket to ask me something like that? To remind me? To ask that I acknowledge those who have paid and paid and paid in a way I never have and never will? To acknowledge those who have laid down their lives in a way I never will? I don’t think you’d be out of pocket at all. I think you would be right to say something like that to me.
I’m not outraged that the metaphor was used 37(not 26
) years ago, but that it was invoked in the context of feminism, by a person identifying as a feminist, who did not acknowledge Morgan’s work in the way I’ve just described, and by the fact that Morgan’s work was not acknowledged by many others, even when they were reminded of it (i.e. in Belledame’s thread by Queer Dewd).
Eh. I see your low blow and I’ll let it alone. It is what it is.
I know how you feel, Q grrl– you’ve told me many times
. I don’t think anything I’ve written is a low blow to anyone, so there, I’m not with you. And I think outrage over appropriation and colonization are, well, appropriate for brutalized people. But as to my marriages, appropriation of lesbianism and so on– yes, I hear you and actually, I think you’re right. Whether I thought you were right or wrong, though, whether I agreed with you, disagreed, thought you were really mean, thought you had ulterior motives, thought you just wanted to get a lick in, whatever, no matter what, this would not be something I would attempt to argue you out of, let alone to shout you down over, and particularly not in public on a feminist blog. I wouldn’t let anyone jump to my defense about it either, as against you, particularly men, anti-feminists, particularly people with zero dogs in the fight (let alone zero dogs that can hunt.) Particularly people with old axes to grind or new axes to sharpen at women’s expense. To do so would be to deeply disrespect you and, yes, to appropriate your life and reality, a life and reality I have not shared, will never share, and have been largely an outsider to.
Of course, I have my own thoughts about all this, my own ideas that I think are intelligent and valid and so on. But face to face with you, and with your outrage over what seems to you to be my appropriation of your life and reality, no question. I’m going to step aside, STFU and work very hard to listen respectfully. It’s the right thing to do.
Having said that, I would like to not continue this particular discussion, in this thread, right now. I am pretty sure this is not the last time it’s going to come up, so we’ll have a chance again someday I am pretty sure.
Heart
One more comment and I will not monopolize (talk too much) any more, I promise.
I just do not understand why people do not see the dynamics of it all, especially when intersectionality is/is not superimposed. How can it be played with a covering or exposing blanket for one dynamic but not another?
For the record, I do not think race trumps gender, nor do I think gender trumps race. I think they are two dynamics used by patriarchy, used by hegemony. The similarities cannot be ignored. Take race, put opposing colors at extreme ends (I am afraid of assigning right/left in fear of adding more connotations). White at one end, black at the other end. The whiter a race is seen the more that race is accepted by whiteness, but of course at arms length because they are in fact not white. The closer a race is to the black end, the less favorable to white society that race is. White Americans embrace Chinese-Americans before they embrace Indian-Americans, even though both are Asian. Why? Because Chinese Americans are “typically” lighter in color than Indians are. And if it is not actual skin color, it is ideologies, what ideologies are closer to white than black. I fear it is what causes Americans to blindingly side with Israel over the Palestinians. Israelis seem more “white” than Palestinians do, therefore the Palestinians are demonized regardless of what point they make. Moral high ground be damned.
Using the same sliding scale for gender. Biological males at one end, biological females at the other end. Regardless of what gender the biological being identifies with, transitioning in or out of, dressed as, portrayed as, society will promote the one that is biologically closer to the male. For example, two lesbians, one embraces maleness, one embraces extreme femininity. Which one will be victimized first, even though we must know that both are victimized by society? I can tell you, I was in the military. Male behaving lesbians were treated better by heterosexual male than me, a heterosexual female looking like a female. Why? Because the male behaving lesbian appeared as trying to be like one of the boys, it was complementary, even though she would never really be accepted by them. Where as I was doing the same job and was able to still reek of femaleness. It was not to be had. We were both excluded, but with different degrees.
There just does not seem to be any rhyme or reason (dare I say logic, it sounds so dead white maleish) when recognizing the overall privilege that does exist in hierarchies in intersectionality. Unfortunately, those hierarchies still mirror the larger patriarchal hegemonic society and expose the same hypocrisies.
Add a bunch of other intersections in there, class, education, etc, and it will still play out the same, the closer someone is to being male and white the more they are placed above everyone else and are forgiven for transgressions against a more oppressed group.
“(Not talking about transwomen, talking about female impersonators, big difference.)”
Well, it’s not like no transwoman in transition hasn’t ever participated in a drag show as a female impersonator; I know it’s friendly to pretend there’s some sort of huge line there, but there isn’t one. Of course, there’s backlash either way: no matter what side you come down on, whether you pretend “mere” transvestites are evil aliens from another planet or oppressed human beings just like transwomen, someone will be there to punish you for saying it. Because it really comes down to S&M when you get down to it and punishment is the name of the game.
Personally, I don’t give a damn about little light’s poem.
Haven’t read it, probably not worth the time. I’m not saying that to be mean, I wish her the best, but statistically speaking, the odds are against her work being as good or interesting as Robin Morgan’s, where I’m choosing to put my energy at the moment — nevermind what our resident teacher-dude says about empty categories and mythic whoozits. (As Mayakovsky said, hey perfessor, get that bicycle off of your nose!)
That’s not to silence little light — as opposed to someone named BIG HAIRY DONG OF DARKNESS or something, whom, I suppose, wouldn’t get everyone in feminist land tiptoeing around her feelings like she was fragile or something, rushing around to defend her. I’m certainly not taking anyone’s blog away. I just want to talk about something else:
Robin Morgan is kind of a big deal. She’s a whole fucking lot of big deal. She must be to have made so many people hate her so! But it’s interesting how she *isn’t* a big deal, how she can’t be a big deal, every feminist voice has to be equal now — and anyone calling him or herself a feminist gets to achieve “equality” with her. (”I’d rather celebrate her along with hundreds of thousands of other fabulous feminist writers.”)
That only happens to women.
Picture this:
Some dude with a blog writes a post about racism, entitling it “I Have a Dream.” Somehow, he approached the subject (and the genre he was writing in) without having any knowledge of Martin Luther King.
The blogger is thoroughly genuine in his concern about racism, his work in the realm of activism is authentic; he must have just missed the memo, the speech wasn’t in his textbooks in school, or he was absent that day, or his parents didn’t have cable tv, what have you.
When people point out the existence of the speech to him he is cordial about it: he thinks it’s just great. Other people are dubious. And yet other people attack them in his defense, saying, really, maybe racism is just plain old bad and lots of people can be on the same wavelength and come to the same conclusions. It’s part of the Jungian collective unconscious.
Plus, MLK’s speech is old, it’s kind of impersonal, it doesn’t account for all the cool NEW NEW NEW stuff we have nowadays, miracles of modern technology, like how Eminem has changed *everything* — so really, the blogger just stumbled onto something that’s not just equally authentic, but it’s better written. It doesn’t have those empty categories floating around, bumping into each other, for one thing!
No one reasonable says, you know, let’s take MLK day away from him and celebrate his voice along with hundreds of thousands of other fabulous others — especially people born white, because they have it pretty tough when they buck the party line, too.
Please don’t stop monopolizing, chasingmoksha. This is GREAT.
Still reading…
Heart
Regardless of what gender the biological being identifies with, transitioning in or out of, dressed as, portrayed as, society will promote the one that is biologically closer to the male.
YES.
Heart
Wow, Rich. That was awesome.
Heart
chasingmoksha, please keep on.
Rich I’m going to send you a very dirty, sloppy, smoochy note.
eh, anything I said was merely channeling a feminist poet (not Morgan) that some of us had the fortune of reading a while back.
For the record, I was just really offended to see little light’s page where (s)he (?) has thrown up all kinds of ancient female Goddess imagery and obviously done a makeover of Robin Morgan’s poem to try to present him/her/its self as a born-female.
These female power images have *everything* to do with female biological creative power: gestation, birth, and lactation.
That power is an essential and unremoveable part of those images.
The fearsomeness of female being is very much connected to these particular powers, amongst others.
Trannies really, really do need to realize that there are some lines they should not be crossing.
OK, fine, call yourself “she”, get your body hacked up (or not), get “recognized” as something or other. But you know what? Your imagined “rights” don’t exceed mine: my right to say “hell, no!” when you’re presenting yourself as what I *am* and you *are not*.
You *have not* almost died in childbirth. (I have).
You *have not* almost lost your newborn daughter in that process. (I have).
You *have not* lactated and nourished your own child from your own body. (I have).
These experiences of female power and danger have not been, and never will, be yours.
So back off with the imagery that suggests that they are.
Mary S.
Rich quotes me:
”I’d rather celebrate her along with hundreds of thousands of other fabulous feminist writers.”
We probably disagree on a lot, but I just want to clarify one thing. I am a long-time volunteer worker at an independent, non-profit, leftist bookstore. Over the years, I have sold hundreds of titles by Robin Morgan as well as titles by other radical women. I wasn’t trying to lump Morgan into a group with Oprah, or someone equally inane. Morgan is, in fact, a “big deal” in our store and with our customers.
Does anyone remember which book it is in which Morgan provides a reading list for potential writers? It was huge and included writers from each century starting over a thousand years ago. I’ve been trying to find it through google with no luck, and my own copy is buried in the stacks somewhere. Morgan, in her personal and professional life, acknowledged the debt she owed to the writers who came before. For me, that list makes it hard for me to see her as being a writer created by radical feminism only and therefore separate from a longer line of feminist writers.
Heart, I want to thank you for explaining your point of view and thank RE for asking the questions that made it clearer. I did not realize that you consider Little Light a person from a completely different culture than your own. I did not realize that you consider Robin Morgan represents Radical Feminist culture rather than the broader culture of feminism. That’s what I’m hearing now, and please correct me if I am wrong.
Oh, and one more thing.
I’m obviously the Monster here. The man-hating Lesbian Separtatist Monster. Hated and feared by all on this planet for uncompromising female integrity and strength. Hated and feared for denying the claims of the male to *any* of the forms of female energy or imagery on this planet.
Want Monster?
Check out “They Will Know Me By My Teeth”, a 70’s book written by Elana Dykewoman, a lesbian separatist. Front cover a hideous gorgon face symbolizing that.
Check out “Dykes and Gorgons” from 1972, by the Gutter Dyke Collective. First lesbian separatist publication in North America. Lots of monster imagery there.
Want Monster?
Just who the f–k is getting demonized and monsterized throughout the “feminist” and “LGBTXYZ” movements these days, if not Lesbian Separatists?
Get out of my skin, Jack. It’s not yours.
Mary Sunshine
Or Gossips, Gorgons, and Crones: The Fates of the Earth, by Jane Caputi, also a radical feminist/lesbian separatist, and great writer and theorist.
Yeah, Mary Sunshine. It’s like whoa, don’t mention what distinguishes our bodies, our lives, our realities from the lives of those born male. Don’t say anything about it, you essentialist you, and hell yeah, you monster you.
I’ve born 11 children, one at a time. Miscarried four times, one time in a way which required me to be hospitalized. One abortion. I breastfed my children without interruption for over two decades, and longer than that if you include interruptions. There is a lot more I could say about that.
For now– my reality, my experience, is the reality of by far most of the women on this planet, the reality of bearing many children in my body, giving them birth, breastfeeding them, losing them. It may not be the reality of most comparatively affluent women in the U.S./Canada/Europe, but it is still the reality of most of the world’s women now living. It is the reality of nobody born male.
So yes. Don’t take what pertains to me. Don’t appropriate what belongs to me. It isn’t yours to take.
Heart
Just who the f–k is getting demonized and monsterized throughout the “feminist” and “LGBTXYZ” movements these days, if not Lesbian Separatists?
Yes. And why is that? Who benefits?
Heart
A piece from a college paper that I wrote:
With Athena’s abilities, she could empower Penelope; however she simply perpetuates the existing power structure. In the article, Fabrications of Self, Gijs Van Oenen says Athena knows Odysseus so well that she can be considered [Odysseus’] alter-ego (224). Subsequently, it is Athena’s sole purpose to put Odysseus back in a position of power. Her pursuit is so determined that Athena and Odysseus’ characteristics become interchangeable.
Nevertheless, as the goddesses of war and craft, Athena possesses traits that patriarchy prefers to be exclusively male. A positive female existence may subvert the overall inferior opinion of females, therefore must be defused. The rationalized and reconstructed origin of Athena’s existence applies a male as her dominant contributor. Gaia warns Zeus that a child born by Métis would replace him as the supreme god. Instinctually, Zeus, “[s]ensing the ever-present threat of envy to himself and to his society, [...] fears the consequences of his own envy, and he fears the consequences of the envy of others” (Foster, 165). Because men cannot give birth, doctrine is fabricated declaring that women are byproducts of men. An obvious example of this is the Christian myth that Eve is born from Adam’s rib.
Presenting the male as the birthing parent conveys a rightful claim. Patriarchy welcomes ownership, particularly advantageous ownership. If the offspring by chance becomes more powerful than Zeus, having possession of the birth, by default, gives Zeus more controlling power over it than if he were only the physically secondary parent.
The equality of sex begins with the irrefutable fact that an egg and sperm are necessary to create a life form. From this point the host unit, the female, develops and delivers the union. The existing patriarchal power structure dictates sex as the determining factor for gender role assignments. Patriarchy must harness and perceive this equality as an inequality for men. Because giving birth exposes an act that males cannot duplicate, it divulges a physical ability of one sex over the other. To the oppressor, this creates a perceived advantage, a threat. According to Greek mythology, “Athena spring[s] into being fully grown and armed from the head of her father Zeus, after he swallow[s] the pregnant Metis” (Cotterell, 27). Swallowing the pregnant mother accomplishes several patriarchal benefits. Transforming the act of delivering a life to both sexes weakens the unique female function and gives that ability to a male. If a male figure can do it too, then it is no longer a distinctive female function. It negates a female’s individuality, thus rendering her powerless. She has no tools that he does not have.
For me, that list makes it hard for me to see her as being a writer created by radical feminism only and therefore separate from a longer line of feminist writers.
Morgan wasn’t a writer “created by radical feminism only”; she was a woman, who with others, created and lived radical feminism in their own lives, and wrote about it in their books and articles.
I think all of us are affected by writings, of all kinds. I don’t think that is really the issue though.
Heart, I want to thank you for explaining your point of view and thank RE for asking the questions that made it clearer. I did not realize that you consider Little Light a person from a completely different culture than your own. I did not realize that you consider Robin Morgan represents Radical Feminist culture rather than the broader culture of feminism. That’s what I’m hearing now, and please correct me if I am wrong.
Robin Morgan is a mother of feminism, of the Second Wave in the U.S., and, in particular, is a mother of radical feminism. Little light’s writings evidence that she (little light) is not a radical feminist and in fact stands opposed to the distinctives of radical feminism. That made it more important, in my view, for her to acknowledge Morgan’s work (if she knew of it), in that those who share little light’s views and politics have by and large been responsible for the erasure of radical feminist/lesbian separatist work.
I don’t think appropriation happens only in cultural contexts, although that’s where it is most easily seen, most visible. I think appropriation happens where people use others’ work for their own purposes or projects, without acknowledging the work they are using, or in the course of writing or other projects which, in fact, are disrespectful of those whose work they have appropriated.
Heart
Okay, Heart, thank you for explaining. Can you see how a transwoman might get a little defensive about that categorization here, given the current tension on this topic? I mean, technically one could say that all feminism deals with male terrorism to one extent or another.
Anyway, that’s it from me, after Rich’s comment above it’s clear that no one participating in this discussion would believe me if i said there are transwomen out here, like me, who are uncomfortable with misogyny in drag culture. I don’t feel safe dialoguing here. Goodbye.
Mary Sunshine, chasingmoksha — what’s disturbing is, when radical feminists/lesbian separatists began exploring goddess imagery, ancient matriarchal cultures, women’s culture, women’s spirituality, and so on, they were shunned as “essentialists,” and the dreaded “cultural feminists.” That’s when the erasure really began. When transwomen use this imagery today, somehow the response is not the same. The same folks (including men)who ran women/radical feminists/lesbian separatists out on a rail for loving and making use of this imagery welcome the same for those who are male born, who are transpersons.
Heart
EXACTLY! Thank you! That’s why I use that category all of the time, really, for most of my writings. Feminism is about male terrorism, pretty much.
And yes, I can understand defensive feelings all over the place right now, including mine, including yours, including everybody’s here.
I believe you when you say there are transwomen who are uncomfortable with misogyny in drag culture. I know several such transwomen/transmen, and have valued and will continue to value what they have to say quite a lot. Not to speak for Rich, but he knows that, too. I think his point was, the experience of some transwomen includes participating in drag culture and that I wasn’t putting a fine enough point on what I was saying there.
I certainly can appreciate not feeling safe dialoguing various places, though.
and 
and ugh.
Heart
“Not to speak for Rich, but he knows that, too. ”
Yeah, no kidding. Which is why the “safe” bit is just a cop-out. I mean, no one here is saying “ilk” or “got in in her head” or some of the REALLY horrible things that some of the dudes (most of whom have pro-prostitution blogs) who are friends, really buddy buddy, with a few of the women who have posted in defense of Little Light in this thread, have said. Things they’ve said about some of us here and the people we care about. Horrible things. Outlandish things. And they brag about that horribleness by saying “did you see that stupid puritan feminist get absolutely SAVAGED! Hah-hah!” And of course those types are more than willing to use the “trans debate,” which they could care less about, as a tool to hurt women. And women aren’t above that either: in fact, they have to do most of the work, since their male peers are far less literate and diligent!
That’s what unsafe feels like. And believe it or not, this discussion brought some of that danger HERE, even though the folks with daggers, who could really care less what we think except for their sworn duty to skulk and report and stab, have really sublimated all of that into this argument. An argument that, from their perspective, is really easy to compartmentalize: plagiarism, yes or no; Heart, bigot or ignorant shithead. And because they’ve compartmentalized all of that, they really think that they’re on the up and up. And I’m sure some of them will take what I’m saying here as a vicious attack upon their persons. I’m not being vicious though. Stern and serious, yes, but not vicious. There won’t be a post game report about how I savaged anyone, after all.
So yeah, I don’t doubt what you believe about drag culture!
I don’t know what repercussions those beliefs have had for you personally.
I do know, however, that certain people who profess themselves the arbiters of all that is Gender[tm/pac], will find a way to grill those that they don’t like, no matter what their conclusion is. Drag is bad? You lose. Drag is good? You lose. Because, in this world, it’s power that matters, not conclusions.
And the “gender experts” have more power than feminists do.
“The same folks (including men)who ran women/radical feminists/lesbian separatists out on a rail for loving and making use of this imagery welcome the same for those who are male born, who are transpersons.”
That’s very interesting, as is chasingmoshka’s analogy, we do not POC being POC, and do not try to say we are POC if we are not.
(Slowly I am starting to figure this out.)
What is always interesting to me are the lies about things anybody can check out for themselves. Like that I accused anybody of plagiarism. (I didn’t.) Like that I didn’t link to little light’s post (I did, first or second link in the thread). I mean– anybody can read what’s here and see that those are straight up lies. Yet folks come here, all defensive of… that?
Well, whatever. You’re right, Rich. The danger did come here. But I can and will keep that from happening in the future. “Savaged”? Wow. That’s serious. I’m glad I never saw it. I never will, either.
This is something of a learning curve for me, too. The easiest thing would be for me to do what others like me have done– close the comments down. I don’t think I’ll do that. But I may make the blog registration only or something like that, because danger we don’t need, lies we don’t need, savaged we don’t need, and so on.
Heart
I’m also a lesbian separatist, who resists childbirth and childrearing as two of the major ways women are oppressed in this culture (not mentioning that they often require sexual congress with men). The problem I have with using biological reproductive capacity as a celebratory basis for feminist culture is that it excludes those of us who choose to resist sex with men, pregnancy and parenthood for the majority (if not all) of our lives–as well as women who aren’t able to reproduce. Uncritically celebrating these experiences can feed into the patriarchal demand that women sacrifice ourselves and our lives for others and turn our attention and energy away from creating vibrant loving supportive relationships with other adult females, by our own choice. Are we less women, less feminists, less lesbian separatists because we purposefully, on political principle as well as personal preference, HAVEN’T had those experiences? I’m so leery of discussions of “female energy” etc. that so many separatists engage in because I don’t see how that is different from what the transgender movement advocates–if there is a gendered or sexed “essence” of a person, rather than just PEOPLE who are born with certain traits and preferences and then molded by the social forces that act on all of us, then the argument that gender can be inborn and not connected to biological sex starts to make sense.
I believe the meaning of the experiences of pregnancy, childbirth, parenthood–like all our experiences–is created by patriarchy. In a different political and social system, reproduction could be arranged completely differently. Then, these ideas that somehow “gender” and personality traits and preferences–kindness, nurturing, aggression, intelligence, logic, toughness, intuition, liking pretty clothes, etc. etc.–are inborn in us based on our genitalia, our hormones and our reproductive capacity would go down the crapper, where, IMHO, they belong.
Not saying that anyone here is making these arguments. Just saying.
Yeah, profacero. I like what chasingmoksha said here:
The equality of sex begins with the irrefutable fact that an egg and sperm are necessary to create a life form. From this point the host unit, the female, develops and delivers the union. The existing patriarchal power structure dictates sex as the determining factor for gender role assignments. Patriarchy must harness and perceive this equality as an inequality for men. Because giving birth exposes an act that males cannot duplicate, it divulges a physical ability of one sex over the other. To the oppressor, this creates a perceived advantage, a threat. According to Greek mythology, “Athena spring[s] into being fully grown and armed from the head of her father Zeus, after he swallow[s] the pregnant Metis” (Cotterell, 27). Swallowing the pregnant mother accomplishes several patriarchal benefits. Transforming the act of delivering a life to both sexes weakens the unique female function and gives that ability to a male. If a male figure can do it too, then it is no longer a distinctive female function. It negates a female’s individuality, thus rendering her powerless. She has no tools that he does not have.
For years and still today, the worst insults which can be hurled at feminists are, “essentialist!” And “cultural feminist!” And so any effort to discuss women’s lived reality under male heterosupremacy is dismissed, or concluded under one of those insults and silenced on that basis. One transwoman who is notorious for her copious and voluminous posts in defense of something she calls radical feminism which isn’t in any way, but whatever, has pretty much made a project of denouncing anyone who speaks of the realities of women’s lives as a cultural feminist/essentialist and therefore a tool of the patriarchy. She has no problem, however, being all about the goddess from time to time, or being all about the sacred narrative, i.e., she is a woman born woman and female, despite having transitioned, because she experienced all of these many stereotypically girl things. It’s only wrong to talk about what we’ve experienced in our lives as girls and women if we are female, is what it comes down to. It’s only wrong to talk about women’s art/culture/spirituality/herstory if we are female, is what it comes down to.
Heart
I especially like this:
The existing patriarchal power structure dictates sex as the determining factor for gender role assignments.
Yes. People are sorted on the basis of sex. On the basis of sex. On the basis of sex. Then gender is imposed on them externally. That is what is not supposed to be said. Now it’s all about gender as “narrative,” or gender as something in the head, or something spiritual, or some set of experiences, or something mystical that can’t be named, or having a certain epistemology, but above all, gender is something no one is allowed to discuss without agreeing that it has nothing to do with sex. Can’t say that. Then you are an essentialist. Which means, of course, that you can’t talk about the lived experiences afforded and apportioned to all of us as women because we are female as what gender actually IS. It’s *that* that is gender– what is done to us because we are female.
Well, I’m going to blog about this this weekend.
Heart
Yeah, I’m suspicious of “female energy” too, and similar terms, and don’t like the terms for the same reasons you say, Amy. I think it’s okay and good to celebrate birth and all of that so long as it’s okay to celebrate equally not giving birth and not having any interest in doing so. I don’t like the way women’s experiences of giving birth, etc., are dismissed by some as though they are somehow not salient just because not all women have those experiences. At the same time, I don’t like those experiences to be defining either. In the end, what has been done to those of us who can birth, and who give birth, or whose bodies are presumed to be capable of conceiving and giving birth, is something for which patriarchy is to blame. In any event, these are experiences common to female persons and should not be appropriated by those who will never have to concern themselves with any of it because they are factually male.
Having said all of that, well– it is very different to be in a group of women only and to be in a group which includes men. I wouldn’t describe the difference in terms of women’s “energy,” but I think it’s that difference that is being described as women’s energy, if that makes sense.
Well, I’m just responding, thinking out loud.
Heart
I also wanted to say that I think space and place has to be made for women who practice female only/female spirituality. It isn’t right for anyone to appropriate anyone else’s religious/spiritual traditions and practices. But again, it’s as though the one time that’s regarded as perfectly okay is when we are talking about the religionand spiritual traditions and practices of females.
Heart
Hi Amy,
This is just a brief note.
Celebrating or *acknowledging* the power of the female to give birth is not, in the culture of the original female (not the patriarchy) in any way a denial of the desirability for females *not* to give birth, on any sort of individual or collective basis, at any particular time.
It’s not a zero-sum game.
To buy into that is to give power to males and the patriarchy.
I (personally) support any and all females who choose not to give birth, whether or not they have the ability to do so.
Exercising the power to *refuse* childbirth is, to me, as powerful an act, and an experience, as *giving* birth.
Neither negates the other.
Is the power to open your fist greater than the power to close it? Or vice versa?
As a separatist, I don’t consider myself a “people”. I consider myself a female being. All flows from that. I do not consider myself as somebody who is engaged in “political struggle” within the patriarchy. To me, that stuff is a squirrel cage.
I’m completely and totally an essentialist. Sure, there’s a social construct. Built by and for males, and maintained for them by women. But analysing that to death isn’t going to get me anywhere. I *do* it all the time, but it doesn’t get me anywhere.
I want to live in a female world, not just a “patriarchy-free” people-world (whatever that is).
Are you serious, that you feel there are no essential differences between males and females?
Mary S.
I read this blog with considerable interest, but avoid commenting because I realize that I am not popular with some of the participants including the host herself. However, something that Mary Sunshine just said overcomes my inhibitions here: “I want to live in a female world.” What exactly does that mean, practically speaking? Does MS’s essentialism require that males and females be separated in some way forever, rather than merely the time required to abate patriarchal systems?
The first law of Female Survival: don’t get sucked in.
The second law of Female Survival: chow down.
I think/hope I didn’t say anything particularly offensive, so chow away.
The reason why I focused on that part—just to make sure that I play my hand completely honestly, so to speak—is that, as many people have pointed out, men’s fear of feminism is partly based on the perhaps irrational fear that women would reverse the oppression if given the chance. Not violently—I don’t really think very many men honestly fear that, at least not subconsciously. But in the sense of effecting a kind of social erasure and peripheralization of males. That is to say, the domination of women is seen as necessary to ensure that males have a place at the centre of culture and society.
Now, I am inclined to believe that this is hopefully not the case, and that the domination of women is by and large not necessary to prevent men from becoming merely the leaves on the tree of humanity, so to speak. But if it is possible to have a “female world” as I am loosely interpreting the term and perhaps necessary for women’s emancipation to do so, then the fear seems to be a bit more valid and the cling to patriarchy more rational than mere economics.
I encourage all females to realize that male fears and inadequacies are no reason to suppress their heart’s desires to live in a female world.
I encourage all females to realize that every little scrap of their own feminist thinking is not something that needs to be negotiated and/or reconciled with males individually or collectively.
I encourage all females to realize that what happens to males when we seek to realize our desires to live in a female world is *their* responsibility, not yours.
Mary Sunshine
That’s all fine and dandy. But in saying,
you suggest that you believe that something “happens” to males. I am not saying necessarily that women should *care* about this as in make it part of their primary fears or worries (but given that men are usually part of most women’s families in one way or another some necessarily will). But I *am* saying that the nature of the resistance to a “female world”—the impediments, the actual physical restraints that have to be overcome—is dependent on what you mean by a “female world.” I must be carrying coals to Newcastle, so to speak, but I’d like to make it explicitly clear.
It may be “their [men's] responsibility”, but the way in which that responsibilty is exercised, so to speak, impinges on the very possibility of the “female world,” depending on what that means.
I take care to say that I am not speaking for anyone but myself.
I do not see it as a zero sum game. I am quite sure that I am not an essentialist. I like men and children. I just do not want them to be socially conditioned to collectively power over me, nor me to them.
Heart said, “I think it’s okay and good to celebrate birth and all of that so long as it’s okay to celebrate equally not giving birth and not having any interest in doing so. I don’t like the way women’s experiences of giving birth, etc., are dismissed by some as though they are somehow not salient just because not all women have those experiences.”
Yes. Exactly. I know you know this is not what I meant.
Heart: “At the same time, I don’t like those experiences to be defining either. In the end, what has been done to those of us who can birth, and who give birth, or whose bodies are presumed to be capable of conceiving and giving birth, is something for which patriarchy is to blame. In any event, these are experiences common to female persons and should not be appropriated by those who will never have to concern themselves with any of it because they are factually male.”
Yeah. And I think, as feminists, we haven’t really worked this out–I think we’ve fallen prey to the patriarchy pitting us against each other as the “good” girls (i.e., the docile sweet nurturing mommies) and the “bad” girls (those of us who don’t go there). As any woman knows, those categories are totally false and meaningless–mommies can be wicked badass, and non-mommies can be mainstream and conforming as can be—but I think we let ourselves get polarized by what’s said about us instead of being able to dialog about how to create a feminist culture that doesn’t negate the value women have gotten from mothering OR the value we’ve gotten from NOT. And because birthing/mothering are valued by patriarchy (at least w/ lip service), I think there’s a balance problem, which is something that ought to be discussed at another place and time, to give it the attention a discussion of that complexity deserves.
Mary said: “Are you serious, that you feel there are no essential differences between males and females?”
Yes–that is, I believe there’s much more diversity WITHIN sexes than BETWEEN sexes. I have been around enough lesbians to realize this, and this is why I call bullshit on things like Marion Zimmer Bradley’s anti-lesbian comments along the lines of “I could never be a lesbian because difference is the spice of life.” Well, we know what difference she was talking about there, don’t we? How offensive to assume that women are all the same, that a lesbian relationship is like looking in the mirror. Snort. If only.
I think people are born with various traits, preferences, orientations, what have you, and some of that gets beaten out of us (or into us) when it doesn’t fit with the sex role patriarchy tries to make us conform to. If I didn’t believe that men can be just as nurturing, sweet and passive as patriarchy tries to force women to be–if I thought all that violence, aggression, and bullshit was natural and innate–why would I be a feminist? Why wouldn’t I be researching that virus?
Therefore, to me, separatism is a strategy that’s useful because I live in patriarchy. I prefer being around women because of what patriarchy makes men, and women, into. I actively value being female BECAUSE being female ISN’T valued in patriarchy. I give my love and energy to women because patriarchy wants me to give it to men. In the absence of patriarchy, in a just, sex-role-free world, I might still do that, but it wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t be a political strategy, it’d just be a lifestyle choice–like the gay rights people try to make it out to be now. I think the context is vital.
Hey everybody, I’m going to wade in here though I’m kind of new and the waters are a bit rough…
Chasingmoksha said, “For the record, I do not think race trumps gender, nor do I think gender trumps race. I think they are two dynamics used by patriarchy, used by hegemony. The similarities cannot be ignored.”
But what about the differences? I’m as anti-racist as anyone, but is it possible to point out that male supremacy is universal while white supremacy is contextual? Men controlled women long before white European males established hegemony though imperialism, and males of color have dominated and controlled women of all colors. Turkish sultans’ harems were a rainbow of enslaved womanhood, for just one example.
If “whiteness” is simply a category of dominance, so that the Irish would be “colored” vis a vis the “white” English while the Han Chinese would be “white” vis a vis other Chinese groups and the Palestinians “darker” than the Israelis, then why do we cling to the contextual and socially-constructed terminology of skin pigmentation? It’s clearly about social hierarchies, white supremacy being a currently prevalent but not universal form. Can’t we Americans see beyond our own noses to a long, complex world history?
Also chasingmoksha, “Presenting the male as the birthing parent conveys a rightful claim. Patriarchy welcomes ownership, particularly advantageous ownership.”
In fact, patriarchy REQUIRES ownership and control of female procreativity in order to establish fatherhood/patriarchy. I think people underestimate how hard it has been historically for men know who their children are!! Not to veer right off the topic, but I think that fact has to be considered when discussing male domination. Men (as a caste) have had to construct and maintain elaborate rules, religions and taboos in order to control women’s sexuality (cutting out clitorises being extreme but not incongruous). If it’s essentialist to point that out, then so be it.
So many comments above have provoked lots of thought…I can’t do justice to them all now. I’m indebted to all of you, especially Heart, for opening all kinds of new doors.
Including Robin Morgan! I didn’t know much about her and am glad to have learned about an amazing radical feminist foremother. Then yesterday I came across her name in a new context where she’s advocating female representation in the media along with Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem. FYI:
http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/46820/
If so, then in a world where women where liberated, men would ideally not know who their children are, no? This makes sense…
…however, it turns out that even in North America which is somewhat more sexually liberated than other societies, I’m given to understand that *usually* women too want their children to know their male biological parents. So perhaps the ownership is not required in itself to establish biological parenthood for men under normal circumstances, only in situation where large quantities of power and property are involved and the determination must be maximally certain.
“But what about the differences? I’m as anti-racist as anyone, but is it possible to point out that male supremacy is universal while white supremacy is contextual?”
Who says white supremacy is only contextual? Incidentally, it is only white supremacy that I discuss on my limited nose because I am living in the here and now western culture and know that most of whom I am talking to is also in that here and now western culture. However, there is a history of imperialism using “race” signifiers just like there is for sex.
“Men controlled women long before white European males established hegemony though imperialism and males of color have dominated and controlled women of all colors. Turkish sultans’ harems were a rainbow of enslaved womanhood, for just one example.”
What is with the incessant need for gender to trump race or for race to trump gender? I am amazed at this fighting for scraps mentality that so many people have. They both have similarities they both have differences, however they are both tools that keep the males in power, currently white male capitalists. I think there is some racism and sexism at play when one wants to trump the one over the other. I really do.
You will have to be more specific about “Turkish sultans.” Turkish as in what? The Ottoman Empire? If so, that only dates back to the 13th century. The history of the Greeks date back to 800 to 600 BC E and they most certainly practiced forms of imperialism using some type of signifier that may not have been skin color but something similar to classify people into groups, —i.e. races.
“If “whiteness” is simply a category of dominance, so that the Irish would be “colored” vis a vis the “white” English while the Han Chinese would be “white” vis a vis other Chinese groups and the Palestinians “darker” than the Israelis, then why do we cling to the contextual and socially-constructed terminology of skin pigmentation?”
Only people who promote and perpetuate the current hierarchy of power cling to socially constructed terminology of skin pigmentation. If you read my earlier comments, you will see that I specifically stated that I have more than once attempted to construct my own race, no, really negate my race, that has to do with my culture and not my skin color. However, skin color is what is currently guiding hegemony therefore cannot be ignored as non-existent. It is so conditioned, that it is not even consciously thought about, it just happens.
I love the way you think, Mary Sunshine. I always feel so inspired and invigorated and affirmed by what you write.
I’m tired tonight and will have more to say tomorrow in response to all of the combined brilliance in here
. One thing I was thinking about reading your comment, roamaround, is what I read in a great book that I have bought many copies of and given away to all sorts of people, Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America. There’s a section of that book in which Lerone Bennett, the amazing and highly-regarded author, describes the way European and African kings, as a matter of custom and tradition, routinely exchanged women between themselves, as payment, as gifts, as property, like cattle, sheep, diamonds. I read the pages describing the way black men and white men gave one another gifts of females, human beings, over and over when I first read that book.
Well, tired now. I’ll be back.
Heart
The reason why I focused on that part—just to make sure that I play my hand completely honestly, so to speak—is that, as many people have pointed out, men’s fear of feminism is partly based on the perhaps irrational fear that women would reverse the oppression if given the chance.
Mandos, perhaps it’s time you took your search inward. I’ve given you several examples of egalitarian societies, and in none of them did men disappear or become marginalized sub-citizens. (By the way, here’s a page I came across that someone compiled of various non-patriarchal societies around the world..
Yet you keep asking this question as if you’ve never heard the answer.
Yeah, Violet Socks. Even Mary Daly, in Quintessence, makes note of men who would receive safe passage into womyn’s land, one of them being Andrea Dworkin’s husband, John Stoltenberg.
Heart
Can’t we Americans see beyond our own noses to a long, complex world history?
No. Americans believe that the world was created 400 years ago in North America and there’s never been anything else. They’re not even too well informed about that, either, given the percentage of them who can’t date the Civil War to within the correct half-century.
That’s why serious discussions about race and gender as types of human oppression are virtually impossible with most Americans. If you’re trying to study the nature of human dominance systems in terms of our global history, then it is of course obvious that modern racism is very recent, while the oppression of women is almost (not quite) universal in civilized societies. This kind of understanding is critical if you want to formulate productive theories about how these things came to be, how they work globally, and how they interact.
Unfortunately most people seem to mistake any attempt to analyze types of oppression as an attempt to play at “trumping” one over the other.
By the way, Mandos, I didn’t mean to sound short-tempered with you, I was just writing fast. It’s an interesting topic and I don’t mean to shut you down. But I do wonder, truly, if perhaps you can’t quite believe that these societies exist, which makes me wonder why you can’t believe it, which makes me wonder if perhaps you’re asking the wrong people about men’s irrational fears…. sorry, you can get off the couch now, see my secretary to schedule your appointment for next week..
Re race and sex, so, so much to say about that. So much to say.
Bottom line, though, I always recall what Stokely Carmichael said to white Civil Rights activists in the 60s who wanted to know what to do. He said, “Go fight your own oppressors.” Likewise Beverly Jones said in one of her amazing feminist essays, ”You don’t get radicalized fighting other people’s battles.” We have to fight for our own lives. We have to fight our own battles. And we have to get the hell out the way while others fight their battles, understanding it is all connected, it is all connected. A lot of really destructive shit goes down when we don’t distinguish between which battles are our own and which belong to other people.
Now I truly have to head to the bed!
Heart
This is where I can honestly say that I am getting off this boat, the wedge has been successfully introduced and shoved in.
“That’s why serious discussions about race and gender as types of human oppression are virtually impossible with most Americans.”
Exactly why is it virtually impossible, because one will not submit to the fact that gender does not trump race or race does not trump gender? I do believe there are women who are also part of the race equation, –they are WOC.
“If you’re trying to study the nature of human dominance systems in terms of our global history, then it is of course obvious that modern racism is very recent, while the oppression of women is almost (not quite) universal in civilized societies.”
Who cares about global histories when racism is smacking them in the face on the daily? Who has that luxury? Racism in the modern sense is just that, the modern sense, however a form of racism as in the target of subjugation identified by signifiers due to imperialism has a history as long as the history of female subjugation. Skin is only the current signifier! There has always been a history of subjugation that includes more signifiers than just being female. That fact does not negate the fact that females have been subjugated, nor should those female ignore other who have been subjugated by other signifiers.
“This kind of understanding is critical if you want to formulate productive theories about how these things came to be, how they work globally, and how they interact. “
Says who? I have read and participated in many productive theories that discuss how they interact globally.
“Unfortunately most people seem to mistake any attempt to analyze types of oppression as an attempt to play at “trumping” one over the other.”
Perhaps they make that mistake because it is what is being advocated. What if this very moment someone of supreme authority (however that may be defined) would declare, okay “Sexism trumps Racism!” Then what? What happens then? I tell you what happens. Every WOC loses a fraction of her existence, because the anti-thesis to racism being trumped would be a supremacy that does not include her.
Four hundred years of racial subjugation in America is enough history to declare it equal to American female subjugation.
Try being a black woman for a day in America and see how the Ottoman Empire matters.
Port, Starboard, —my boat is docked.
So what? There’s lots of wedges here. Some hard up against my ankle but I’m still reading, especially you CM.
“This is where I can honestly say that I am getting off this boat, the wedge has been successfully introduced and shoved in.”
“Go fight your own oppressors.”
The problem with this is that everyone ends up being someone’s oppressor and then everyone is fighting everyone else. Not a very good way forward.
Add in to this that people are not generally very good at identifying their actual oppressors or systems of oppression, and tend to slip into scapegoating and identity politics – the shallow and easy option – my people is better than your people, all your people are the same, I speak for all my people, therefore I hate and deny you – oppressor !
It becomes meaningless
I am not pale enough – I am too pale
I am not old enough – I am too old
I am not queer enough – I am too queer
I am not able-bodied enough – I am too able bodied
I am not poor enough – I am too poor
I am not educated enough – I am too educated
I am too mixed – I am not mixed enough
I am not – I am
I oppress everyone – everyone oppresses me. Stupid, stupid unproductive game that is.
TheRealUKsaid:
“I oppress everyone – everyone oppresses me. Stupid, stupid unproductive game that is.”
Bingo!
About time we figured out something else, eh?
Mary S.
Try being a black woman for a day in America and see how the Ottoman Empire matters.
But that’s exactly the point, a black woman or a WOC in America today has her experience and history and a WOC not in America has her own, different experience and history. Just because the American one is intimately connected to white racism does not mean that the hammer of “white racism” will crack every nut for every other WOC in the world.
Some of my ancestry is Indian, as in from India, the home of one of the biggest, most formalised, long standing (pre Empire) systems of social apartheid – the caste system.
http://www.shivamvij.com/2006/10/i-am-a-dalit-how-are-you.html
Watch the video and don’t tell the rest of the world’s women that they all experience the same way as American.
TheRealUK,
That video has moved me to tears. The little girl portrayed at the end of the video has the most expressive face that I have ever seen. Brilliant intelligence and greatness of spirit radiate from her.
I wonder, how much more can we bear to know?
Much love to your for bringing me into that world for those few minutes.
Mary Sunshine
oops … to you
The little girl portrayed at the end of the video has the most expressive face that I have ever seen. Brilliant intelligence and greatness of spirit radiate from her.
Yes, this moves me to tears too (and I’m not a easily teared person). Mostly though I avoid these things because it is too much pain. “My dreams have been broken”. Too hard, too much.
I think we do have to fight our own oppressors, despite the problems we have that you list there, v, with the white, male, heterosupremacist, academentist attack on identity politics, to wit, and for example, this interest in deconstructing the category “woman” (and even “female”). If there is no category “women” or “female”, then that will solve the problem of feminism and women’s liberation really handily, you know? Those subordinated on the basis of their sex will become invisible as a social category, and that will be great, because we can keep on subordinating them but it will become more and more difficult for them to raise any organized resistance to what we are doing. Which is all good for for those determined that male power should continue, that patriarchy should continue.
Also, it is in fighting our own oppressors that our consciousnesses are raised as to the mechanics and dynamics of abuse, whether abusive relationships, abusive institutions, abusive structures, abusive systems. In addressing the abuse in their own intimate relationships, for example, battered women, raped women, are engaging in political resistance, in political struggle. Resisting abuse, including in intimate relationships, is politics, is resisting our own oppressors. In that resistance, women learn the shape and form and mechanics of resistance to oppression and subordination in general.
A white man fights his own oppressor by, for one example, being a conscientious objector. When the draft card comes, he burns it. When he is told to go to war and participate in killing, he refuses. In that resistance to his oppression, he learns the shape and form and weapons of dominance and his consciousness is raised as to subordinating power in general and how it works. I’m thinking now of Rich’s observations about screen names– very useful and insightful. To present as vulnerable and “feminine,” even if you are male, choose a screen name that is very meek, mild-mannered and with no capital letters, even though you are running around the internet glorying, for example, in the “savaging” of a feminist woman. Really very interesting! (And I don’t know if the “savaging” comment was made by someone with a traditionally “feminine” screen name and no capitals but I do know those who are factually male with traditionally feminine screen names and all lower case letters have made a practice of savaging certain kinds of feminists over many years.) I wouldn’t have noticed that unless Rich pointed it out to me, but it’s clearly something he observed in fighting his own oppressors as a male opposed to traditional masculinity.
Who cares about global histories when racism is smacking them in the face on the daily?
chasingmoksha, of course we do both. Talking about global histories doesn’t equal ignoring the racism smacking people in the face daily.
Racism in the modern sense is just that, the modern sense, however a form of racism as in the target of subjugation identified by signifiers due to imperialism has a history as long as the history of female subjugation.
Why do you think so, chasingmoksha? I am asking about the “history as long as” part of your sentence there now. I think there is a history of female subjugation which precedes the era of the nation state, which precedes the era of the tribe, which precedes the rule of dominance hierarchies in the earth, and conflicts between dominance hierarchies of all and any kind, which precedes the “sorting” of human beings based on these other signifiers you are describing, in other words.
Skin is only the current signifier! There has always been a history of subjugation that includes more signifiers than just being female.
Why do you think so? I am asking about the “always” part of your sentences now. Does it make sense to you that pre-nation state, pre-tribe, pre dominance-hierarchies and conflicts between dominance hierarchies, men might have dominated and subjugated women near them because they found they could? Because they wanted sex and the women didn’t, so they took it by force? Because they wanted someone to serve them, and they found that they could force their wives and children to?
That fact does not negate the fact that females have been subjugated, nor should those female ignore other who have been subjugated by other signifiers
Well, yes– but nobody is “just” female as you have rightly pointed out. In modern times all of us who are female are subordinated on the basis of being female and on the basis of all of these other signifiers you are talking about– age, the sex of the persons we love, class, disability, being fat, race, ethnicity, and so on, so of course we can’t ignore these other battles– they are our battles to fight. At the same time, there is a gendering in these subordinations we experience on the basis of all of these other signifiers. A female oppressed on the basis of race, class, disability, being fat, being a lesbian, being a woman of color or Jewish, or any other signifier experiences specifically gendered subordination; to battle any of these oppressions is always to battle them, to resist them, as a female, which is why being female is common ground. The “trumping” language is in my opinion a mechanism by way of which the category “female” is being deconstructed, something which it is very much in the interests of white male heterosupremacy to be about.
Heart
as in the target of subjugation identified by signifiers due to imperialism has a history as long as the history of female subjugation.
See, this– I don’t think that “female subjugation” exists over here and “imperialism” or “signifiers due to imperialism” exist somewhere over there. I think female subjugation IS imperialism– it is male imperialism. The “signifiers due to this imperialism” are the signifiers of female-ness. I think the first man who raped a woman was engaging in male imperialism, and I think this likely happened pre tribe, as we understand the term, definitely pre-nation state, wherever there was a male and a female.
Sorry to post as both “Heart” and Womensspace! That happens when I post before I log in. Then my own post goes into moderation and I have to log in in order to approve myself!
Heart
I think female subjugation IS imperialism– it is male imperialism. The “signifiers due to this imperialism” are the signifiers of female-ness. I think the first man who raped a woman was engaging in male imperialism, and I think this likely happened pre tribe, as we understand the term, definitely pre-nation state, wherever there was a male and a female.
And of course, this is also colonialism– men, colonizing women.
Heart
TherealUK here’s something I read recently, and pulled off the web:
“For the past number of years, the spokesperson for the black people in Canada has been West Indian and/or African and the Canadian black has been, to a large extent, silent. (…) we speak for ourselves, we don’t need others to speak for us.” the spokesperson for a Canadian black history/cultural organization.
*Heart check your e-mail
And what did you decide?
“Then my own post goes into moderation and I have to log in in order to approve myself! “
Heart, you are right the subjugation of femaleness is imperialism. Femaleness has been a continuous signifier. However, by claiming that as an absolute it leaves no room to recognize the subjugation of anyone else but females by imperialism. Parallel to that subjugation of females there has been a consistence subjugation of others as well using different signifiers. Those signifiers that were and are currently used to subjugate others have changed. Currently it is skin color. There are women with skin colors that cause them to be subjugated because of her vagina and her skin color.
Okay I slept on it and I think I see a way to explain. Forgive me if I over oversimplify.
First, it is insulting (and we need to admit this and take care or we will never be able to reach out to other WOMEN who are affected by our language) to dismiss the concerns of skin color because we have not examined every global indication or history etc etc. When I read this it stabbed me straight into the heart. And just for the record, declaring that someone is just as much an anti-racist as the next person has the same sounds as “I’m not a racist.”
Here is what I am talking about.
A woman has a vagina and feels discriminated against at work (one example) because she is a lesbian. Do all the other women who are not lesbians say, “Well first we need to examine every global dynamic and history before we can conclude that your lesbianism is actually a form of subjugation that we need to concern ourselves with.”
No, women (default white by majority here) take on her fight because she has a vagina.
A woman has a vagina and feels discriminated against at work (one example) because she wants to have children with a man with her vagina. Do all the other women who do not want to have children with a man with her vagina say, “well first we need to examine every global dynamic and history before we can conclude that your desire to have children is actually a form of subjugation that we need to concern ourselves with.”
No, women (default white by majority here) take on her fight because she has a vagina.
A woman has a vagina and feels discriminated against at work (one example) because she does not want to have children but wants to live with a man with her vagina. Do all the other women who do not want to have children with a man with her vagina say, “well first we need to examine every global dynamic and history before we can conclude that your desire not to have children is actually a form of subjugation that we need to concern ourselves with.”
No, women (default white by majority) take on her fight.
A woman has a vagina and feels discriminated against at work (one example) because her skin is a different color than the majority of people in power. Do all the other women who do not have the same skin color say, “Well first we need to examine every global dynamic and history before we can conclude that your skin color is actually a form of subjugation that we need to concern ourselves with.”
Squealing brakes here……………………. “but but but but but but but but but it has nothing to do with the vagina”
Women are more than our vaginas!
Here is what I am seeing. Because having a vagina has been the SIMPLIEST recognizable signifier for white women to identify subjugation they often fail to recognize how other signifiers on top of that makes subjugation just as worse, doubly worse, compounded, whatever language one can use to convey.
What I also see is, fighting racism seems to be in a way helping men, because after all there are men who are discriminated against because of their skin color. So, taking on the racism fight may to some place women issues second to some men. I see that fear. However, again, it seems to be a fear only because it is obvious that men will benefit. However, men benefit when women fight for lesbians. If lesbians are accepted then homosexuals can be accepted. Men benefit when it becomes accepted that a woman should not be a mother if she does not want to, because that will mean he does not have to be a father either if he does not want to.
Each case that a woman fights for another woman benefits men as well. However, not in the benefiting men to be in charge kind of way, but in a way that makes our society closer to true equality. This can only be a bad thing for the women who want a female only society. If so it was never about defusing power, it was about annihilation.
Pony I got a wedge for you {wink}
TherealUK, thanks for the link to the video about the Dalit. It was incredibly moving. I had heard a bit about this when the “untouchables” were not allowed in the same shelters as higher castes after the tsunami. It is painful to witness so much injustice and feel helpless. I feel that way about the daily carnage in Iraq; I can hardly stand it.
Chasingmoksha, if you’re still around, I was trying to start any trumping wars. I just think that the roots of oppression need to be understood in order to try to change anything, and the roots of female oppression are unique to females. I guess that’s a controversial idea, but I don’t care. I’m saying it anyway. Difference doesn’t have to be hierarchical.
“…in a world where women where liberated, men would ideally not know who their children are, no? This makes sense…”
Mandos, I wasn’t trying to make up a prescription for an ideal society, I was trying to point out the reason why patriarchy necessitates controlling women’s sexuality. This is what makes women’s oppression different. There are examples of alternative systems (very cool link, Violet Socks!), and with today’s DNA testing some of the subject is moot. But to understand why it all started, I think we have to acknowledge that women aren’t naturally monogamous, that female monogamy has been required to establish paternity. It explains a lot.
Promiscuous women (sluts, whores, bitches) wouldn’t know who the father is. That is the gravest of sins under patriarchy. Even in relatively “liberated” societies, this double standard continues to oppress women. In order to overturn it, we have to understand where it came from.
In a truly liberated society? Hmmm, men would get pregnant too? Well, if we’re going to dream…! Actually, in situations where women don’t have to depend on men financially they often do have children by different men who may or may not stay in the picture. And that can work out just fine. Me, I dream of a world where we care for all children as if they were our own.
Heart, I agree that “fighting one’s own oppressor” is a really important message for women who are socialized (and rewarded) to put others’ needs before our own. Taken to its extreme it may not be practical (everyone oppressing everyone), but it’s the only place to start. Otherwise you’re just pouring the coffee for somebody else’s revolution.
From one who’s poured an ocean of coffee for the left, white, coloured, native male centric organizations and stood for men of the left, thinking we were shoulder to shoulder, union fights whatever, I can tell you it’s like a small death when you finally get it that it’s not just one man, or a couple but the whole of all those lefty issues and movements, who don’t think of you as anything but tits and ass, and kitchen help.
Here’s an example. The picture, not the blog.
http://www.radicalruss.net/blog/2005/07/alicia_keys_too_black_for_the.html
Ooops, should have read “I was *not* trying to start any trumping wars!” Though it looks like this war started long before and has little to do with anything I actually wrote.
Chasingmoksha, we cross-posted here. I’m not really sure what I said that sparked such a strong reaction with you. I’m sorry to have gotten off on the wrong foot since I’ve agreed (and sympathized) with you in the past and agree with much of what you wrote here.
“And just for the record, declaring that someone is just as much an anti-racist as the next person has the same sounds as “I’m not a racist.”
I think I’m being accused of something here. Do I have to provide a résumé of my anti-racism? Since we don’t know each other, I was being brief. I think your accusation (if it is that) is unfair.
It’s not about examining every historical and global dynamic before listening to or helping anyone, it’s about advancing our knowledge and understanding of oppression and how it works. How is that bad?
ChasingMoksha,
You are not a WOC and I’m confused with the constant babbling that persistently do, time and time again. When your skin is black, then you shall be able to compare yourself to WOC or put yourself in a WOC’s shoes. I don’t see that happening even if you were to paint yourself with black shoe polish. YOU ARE WHITE. You seem to have a problem with vagina’s now. Don’t you have one, yourself? Oh no, you have a dick. I forgot.
Heart, you are right the subjugation of femaleness is imperialism. Femaleness has been a continuous signifier. However, by claiming that as an absolute it leaves no room to recognize the subjugation of anyone else but females by imperialism.
I am not sure what you mean when you speak of claiming sexual imperialism as an “absolute”? I think that those of us born female have been subjugated to men on that basis– all of us who are female. All of the other imperialisms we experience, we experience *as females*, so that those oppressions are experienced by us in ways that are unavoidably gendered. To say so isn’t to absolutize anyone’s experience, isn’t to “trump,” it is to state what is factual. A female experiences all of the oppressions she experiences as a female, subordinated on the basis of her sex.
First, it is insulting (and we need to admit this and take care or we will never be able to reach out to other WOMEN who are affected by our language) to dismiss the concerns of skin color because we have not examined every global indication or history etc etc. When I read this it stabbed me straight into the heart.
Okay– are you talking about roamingaround? Dr. Violet Socks? Which comments are you referring to? I think it’s important to be clear what we’re talking about here. Where did you see someone dismissing the concerns of skin color? I think it can be assumed always already in discussions here on this blog that the concerns of skin color *cannot* be dismissed– that’s a foregone conclusion? Talking about history, global oppressions, doesn’t cancel out the concern for racism, I don’t think.
As to being careful what we say or we won’t be able to reach out to women– I think that women are not a monolith? Lesbians, women of color, poor women, disabled women, old women, mothers– within those groups, women will be very different, will respond out of their own history, experiences, baggage, politics. The best we can do is communicate as clearly as possible. Then we’ll hear back and will be able to incorporate what we hear back into the knowledge of women which we already possess. It’s kind of a small quibble, I know, but it is a quibble– I don’t think it makes sense to try to anticipate how we might offend “women” because women are too vast and diverse a group. I think what is important is to speak our own truth, as best we can, and then do our best to make sense of the responses we receive, so that we get better and better at communicating.
And just for the record, declaring that someone is just as much an anti-racist as the next person has the same sounds as “I’m not a racist.”
I read the statement, “I am as much an anti-racist as the next person” to be a rather humble statement, more along the lines “talk is cheap, it’s easy for anybody to say they are anti-racists.” See what I mean? I saw this as calling for a deeper analysis, not being content with saying, “I’m an anti-racist.”
A woman has a vagina and feels discriminated against at work (one example) because she is a lesbian. Do all the other women who are not lesbians say, “Well first we need to examine every global dynamic and history before we can conclude that your lesbianism is actually a form of subjugation that we need to concern ourselves with.”
I didn’t see anyone suggesting this, though? I didn’t see anyone saying we had to do all of this examining before we can conclude racism (or any other oppression) exists? I thought the call was for a deeper, better, more comprehensive analysis than we’ve had so far. But what are you specifically referring to? What comments? I think it’s important to be very clear here.
Here is what I am seeing. Because having a vagina has been the SIMPLIEST recognizable signifier for white women to identify subjugation they often fail to recognize how other signifiers on top of that makes subjugation just as worse, doubly worse, compounded, whatever language one can use to convey.
I think being raped/incested/molested/trafficked/objectified/prostituted/sexually assaulted/enslaved/battered/paid less money for the same work/degraded/dehumanized is, in fact, subjugation– isn’t it? For white women, for all women. I don’t think this is about what it is simple for us to recognize or not? I think it’s about the real hardships of the lives we are living. I think we have to fight for ourselves, in whatever state, as women, we find ourselves. Here is what we can be sure of: by and large, men will not fight for us beyond the level at which they directly, directly benefit. They will fight for us if they get something out of the deal too, and first. But where they don’t, they won’t, i.e., rape/prostitution/pornography/incest/molestation/battering/paid-less-money/glass ceiling/abandoning children/not paying child support/letting women do all the housework/caregiving– these go on and on, for thousands and probably millions of years, and why? Because men are not interested in changing these. They benefit too much from making sure our subjugation continues. If these are ever going to end, for any woman, women, some of us, are going to have to put the fight against male terrorism first and foremost.
Heart
Pony, yes, a small and painful death it is. Tits, ass, kitchen help and don’t forget “secretary” and “admiring audience.” When you realize how many “people’s” revolutions just end up with posters of new patriarchs on the wall, it is the death of a certain kind of idealism.
However, men benefit when women fight for lesbians. If lesbians are accepted then homosexuals can be accepted. Men benefit when it becomes accepted that a woman should not be a mother if she does not want to, because that will mean he does not have to be a father either if he does not want to.
Each case that a woman fights for another woman benefits men as well. However, not in the benefiting men to be in charge kind of way, but in a way that makes our society closer to true equality. This can only be a bad thing for the women who want a female only society. If so it was never about defusing power, it was about annihilation.
Chasingmoksha, I keep kind of puzzling over these paragraphs. It’s true that men, and ultimately all people, and the earth, will benefit when women fight for women. That’s the point, really. That’s, in the end, what we all want. If we upend patriarchy and the rule of men, if we end dominance hierarchies of all and every kind, the whole world and everyone/everything/every creature in it, benefits. I think in order for this to happen, though, men and their concerns and priorities and especially, their place at the top of the dominance hierarchy known as patriarchy, have to be severely *moved* out of the center of the universe and off the top. There has to not be any more “top” and no more “bottom” either. There has to be a *sharing* of power. Woman-centeredness doesn’t mean man-hating or power-over or dominance over men or annihilation of anybody. Separatists don’t want any of these things. There is nothing annihilating or power-hungry or manhating in wanting female-only community. Some of these comments are feeling painfully close to lesbophobic to me. I know if there is any of that going on it’s not intentional and I don’t want to read in what isn’t there, either, though, I’m just saying what I’m feeling.
It seems you’re thinking someone here is saying we shouldn’t care about race or racism or anti-racism work because it benefits men as well as women. Nobody has said that or is saying that?
Heart, I agree that “fighting one’s own oppressor” is a really important message for women who are socialized (and rewarded) to put others’ needs before our own. Taken to its extreme it may not be practical (everyone oppressing everyone), but it’s the only place to start. Otherwise you’re just pouring the coffee for somebody else’s revolution.
Exactly. If we can’t challenge the oppressors in our homes and bedrooms, if we can’t even see the oppression in our bedrooms, or our homes, and face it down, resist it, what insights/tools/understandings do we bring to our other resistance work and activism? In the days of the old anti-war/Civil Rights movements, you had women pouring themselves out in movement work while being treated like shit by men both in the work and at home. It was facing up to this — that men will only do what directly benefits them — that gave birth to feminism as we know it.
Heart
Heart, see how Caroline just talked to me. I’m laughing right now. Yeah the fight against oppression is really serious here.. HA HA HA HA AHA HAAHHHAAAA……
Caroline you are a racist.
I don’t know what you’re saying, chasingmoksha. I don’t know Caroline and don’t recall her posting here before. Do you know who she is? Could she be a woman of color? I don’t understand the dick comment either, but hope she will come in and explain herself. In any event, she speaks for herself only, as we all do.
Heart
I am not black so I should not fight against racism? Using that same reasoning Caroline, I am not a lesbian so I should not fight against discrimination against lesbians. After all, lesbians mostly benefit men. Ask how many men love them some lesbian porn.
The fundamental point is a vagina was made to have a baby by inserting a penis in it that delivers the sperms. If we are going to fight signifiers that are any degree away from that fundamental point, then I do not see how lesbians plight trump skin color plight. Both “deviate” (forgive the word, I mean no other connotation) from the fundamental signifier.
Caroline seems to think white lesbians are superior to heterosexual women of color.
No worry Heart I will not return to this thread. Because I am making a case how race is just as important I am attack. And you allowed it. Caroline is a racist. It does not matter what color she is, look at what she said.
chasingmoksha, I don’t see Caroline saying you should not fight against racism. She is objecting to what she sees as your comparing yourself to WOC or putting yourself in the shoes of WOC, i.e., speaking on behalf of or for WOC, given that (she believes) you are white. I think that’s a different thing from opposing fighting racism.
I don’t think we are fighting signifiers? I think we are fighting our own oppression, our own subjugation, the way we are mistreated in the world because we are female. The oppression isn’t in the penis/the vagina/the sperm– the oppression is in the way those with the penises treat those with the vaginas.
And again, I think “trumping” language takes us places that are destructive for us to go. Nobody has suggested that any oppression trumps any oppression– I don’t think that framing is useful for us; I think it’s useful for anti-feminists and misogynists who want women to stay severely where women have always been forced to stay– solidly behind men. All I am saying is that all of the oppressions females face, they face *as females*. No trumping of anything required, necessary, or useful!
Why do you say Caroline thinks white lesbians are superior to heterosexual women of color? Do you know Caroline? I am completely lost here.
Heart
“In the days of the old anti-war/Civil Rights movements, you had women pouring themselves out in these various movements while being treated like shit by the men in them both in the work and at home. It was facing up to this that gave birth to feminism as we know it.”
Right, and I think now a lot of women are experiencing that in the global justice, anti-imperialist and anti-war movements. It’s less blatant now, but it’s still apparent in all kinds of double standards and dismissal of so-called women’s issues as “divisive” (which drives me crazy since it’s only divisive if men insist on being assholes).
So maybe today’s movements will give birth to a renewal of feminism? One can only hope. And talk. And work. Maybe discussions like this one can lead (eventually?!) to better understanding and solidarity among women. Could these be birth pangs?
Argh.
chasingmoksha, I am not following you. I read Caroline’s comments as possibly being the comments of a woman of color bothered by your attempting to speak for women of color given that she believes you to be white. Because I value your contributions here and “know” you in the blogosphere kind of way, and because I don’t know Caroline, I am going to remove her comment for now.
If she comments again and clarifies, then I will reconsider.
Heart
Now we all have wedgies!
I did not read Caroline as a WOC angry because I am speaking “for” WOC. I am not speaking for WOC; I am speaking to abolish oppression including oppression that uses skin color as a means to oppress. I do not have to be a particular color in order to fight that fight, just like I do not have to be a lesbian to fight the lesbian fight, or I do not have to be a birthing mother to fight that fight nor do I have to be a motherless woman to fight that fight.
I have never interacted with a “Caroline” unless he or she posted under another name.
The “dick” insult is to imply that I am moving too far away from the vagina. It can be understood if one reads it compared to her question if I have a vagina or not.
Right, and I think now a lot of women are experiencing that in the global justice, anti-imperialist and anti-war movements. It’s less blatant now, but it’s still apparent in all kinds of double standards and dismissal of so-called women’s issues as “divisive” (which drives me crazy since it’s only divisive if men insist on being assholes).
Yeah. I was thinking about the issue which gave rise to this thread. I (and others, but I will speak for myself) objected to what looks to me like appropriation. The reaction is a gigantic meltdown, dismissals, rage, all sorts of intensity. What we are supposed to do, as females, is — still, in 2007 — be quiet about what pertains specifically to us as females, about what we believe violates us. I can frame my resistance to appropriation as carefully as possible– doesn’t matter.
So maybe today’s movements will give birth to a renewal of feminism? One can only hope. And talk. And work. Maybe discussions like this one can lead (eventually?!) to better understanding and solidarity among women. Could these be birth pangs?
I believe this, I do. And, of course, I hope it is true. What I fear though, and see, actually, is once again, some more, still, forever and amen, the wheel being reinvented, females giving themselves to male-dominated movements, being satisfied with crumbs in the form of male approval and props, all the while issues specific to their lives are given short shrift. I guess we have to go through the whole thing again of waiting until they’ve had their fill, they can’t take the bullshit anymore, until they say enough. I keep hoping we can skip that step, though.
I mean, come freaking on. I wish I could say everything I know about this, but because of a bunch of reasons, I can’t. But what I can say is the Aradia Women’s Clinic, an amazing clinic which has been providing reproductive services to women since the late 60s/early 70s, including abortions, is closing down after something like 40 years or so. It’s out of money. Over all of these years doctors have been donating their services, including providing abortions, especially to poor women. Not any more. :”"”"( It’s the death of a dream, and it hurts me because I was there and remember when it opened and all the hopes for a new day for women. In order to even go to meetings at this clinic now in this new incarnation of male terrorism, you have to punch in security codes. There is all of this secrecy required and why? Because it is unsafe to provide reproductive services to women, including abortion. It is fucking UNSAFE. Pardon my intensity. That’s the shape female issues are in right now. I can only hope to the goddess on high that the new energy I think I see, I really am seeing.
Heart
I am not speaking for WOC;
Yes, I didn’t think that you were, but I am just one person and was considering that maybe this is what Caroline thought. I read her as possibly a WOC.
I am speaking to abolish oppression including oppression that uses skin color as a means to oppress. I do not have to be a particular color in order to fight that fight, just like I do not have to be a lesbian to fight the lesbian fight, or I do not have to be a birthing mother to fight that fight nor do I have to be a motherless woman to fight that fight.
I totally agree with you here, chasingmoksha, totally and completely. All of these issues pertain to us as females and all are sites of resistance for us.
Heart
Back to Aradia, I mean, damn. I remember the days women, doctors, nurses, people who cared about women walked in and out and about freely. Not any more. And pretty soon, not at all, it will be gone.
Heart
Aradia Woman’s Health Center to close
By Tara Hayes
12/21/2006
It’s a cramped space set below street level. Faded purple carpets and narrow hallways branch off into small examination rooms, office space and labs. Classical music plays in the halls. For now.
But they’ll soon be empty.
Aradia Women’s Health Center, a First Hill nonprofit organization with a feminist point of view, has faced protesters, debt, several moves and a lot of change over the years. Recently it confronted an even more potent threat: a lack of funding coupled with rising costs. This financial crisis will soon take its toll. In January, after 34 years of service, one of Seattle’s first abortion clinics and women’s health centers will close its doors permanently.
“We’re calling it the perfect storm,” says Karen Besserman, vice president of the board of directors. Over the last two years Aradia’s insurance provider tripled the cost of malpractice coverage. Most of the clinic’s clients are low-income women -70 percent up from 50 percent five years ago – and Medicaid subsidies simply did not cover costs. Donations from local individuals have stayed consistent and account for 10 percent of the clinic’s funding. The rest comes directly from clinic services.
Aradia was created in 1972 by a group of women at the University of Washington’s YWCA. The Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade legalized abortion a year later, and in 1977 Aradia incorporated the procedure into its general gynecological care program. It has served 54,000 clients and stayed true to its original mission of care for women by women, together with reproductive advocacy and education. The clinic has been at its current site, 1300 Spring St., for 10 years.
Here the organization’s eight health care advocates, a nurse, a physician’s assistant and nine doctors, provide abortions, birth control counseling, annual exams and testing for sexually transmitted diseases.
Breaking the news
On Dec. 12, the staff gathered in the clinic’s waiting room for their afternoon meeting. The board of directors was also present as Liz Vivian, interim executive director, made the announcement about the upcoming Jan. 31 closure.
“I think that everyone was kind of surprised,” says Kale Rose, a health care advocate. “It was always in the back of our minds that it was a possibility. No one wanted it to be.” The decision to close was part of a multi-year examination of the clinic’s sustainability, says communications director Amie Newman.
But last year’s $84,000 budget deficit was a red flag. Other recent signs hinted at closure. There was a freeze on employee raises and outgoing development workers were not replaced. Notably, no permanent executive director had been hired after Marcy Bloom, the former director, left in May.
“It’s a loss to the community,” says Bloom, but “organizations have life spans.” Bloom served as Aradia’s executive director for more than 18 years. During her tenure she increased the budget from $250,000 to more than $1 million, doubled the staff and added bilingual members.
She joined Aradia in 1987 at a time when the clinic was struggling with debt and the rising cost of malpractice insurance, “ironically enough” she says. When she left Aradia it wasn’t decided that it would be closing. “I will say that the decision to close came independently of her leaving,” says Besserman.
“That kind of compassionate model of health care simply wasn’t sustainable in the long term,” says Bloom.
At Aradia, health care advocates receive intensive training that takes three months. They screen and talk to clients, take their health care histories and also do some lab work. “It’s quite intimate,” says Rose. They stay with clients during abortions and afterward take them to the recovery room with its recliners, heating pads and scent of peppermint. “We’re there so that they are not alone,” says Rose. That kind of one-on-one care was one of the things no one at Aradia wanted to give up.
The only real choice
The board considered other options aside from closing, such as merging with a larger organization, becoming just an abortion clinic or purely an advocacy group. But, says Newman, none of the options would “retain the essence of Aradia.” Roughly 20 employees are being laid off. Bloom feels certain they will go on to continue Aradia’s mission, “with the brand of feminist health care on their souls.”
“It’s a sign of the times,” says Bloom. The federal government does not fund abortion. Washington state subsidizes it through Medicaid but those reimbursements are too low, says Aradia staff. As fewer Americans have insurance, independent non-profit clinics like Aradia are unable to cover the rising costs of service. Abortion is on the decline nationwide, except among low-income women, something Bloom feels is due to their lack of insurance and access to birth control.
Yet Bloom, as well as the current staff and management at Aradia, are hopeful that their clientele will receive the necessary care elsewhere. Aradia is one of 13 feminist health care clinics left in the country, says Newman, but here in Seattle the community is well served and has access to other reproductive care. Aradia will send its client list to another provider, though a decision where hasn’t been made yet. Aurora Medical Services is around the corner and a branch of Planned Parenthood is nearby.
“I’m not sorry for any choices that we made,” says Bloom. “There was never enough thick and too much thin.” “When you’re not willing to cut programs or cut staff or do things that compromise the vision…” She drifts off. “Why stay open if you can’t stay true to your mission?”
Capitol Hill-based freelance writer Tara Hayes can be reached at editor@capitolhilltimes.com.
But I wasn’t talking about people’s revolutions. I was talking about WOMEN’S revolution and you turned it into a left thing within one sentence. I’m not angry just pointing out how we are buried.
When we work alongside them for left issues we are fooled, when we then want to turn the conversation, the light, onto WOMEN’S issues, we are met with oblique comments to outright ridicule, and if we persist we will be shown the door in the various way men do that to us, everywhere, non profit, business, education, blogs.
The left, the men of the left (we always knew the men of the right were a waste of time) have 20/20 vision for the rights of sawhet owls and baby seals, but they just don’t see women’s rights.
It is NOT alright to say we will have a women’s space, where the focus is on women’s rights. It is not alright to say that. Anywhere.
‘
Let me clear something up. Yes, I am a WOC. I am sick and tired of ChasingMoksha parading herself around as a WOC when she clearly is not. She’s stated this before. She hasn’t got a clue as to what opression is for WOC therefore, she needs refrain from assuming everything she spews from her mouth is THE WORD.
I’m sorry for the long gap between my response and what I was responding to. Life.
But now what we see is women who are doing the work for the men of the left telling us we can’t talk only about women’s issues. We are seeing people whar were born male, telling us we must treat them as female, or women. We are seeing a person born male, with all that privilege and not ashamed to use it wearing women’s skin, the head of a women’s studies morphed to gender studies school. The men of the left are so much more comfortable with all that.
Imagine if Alecia has worn a t-shirt that had a feminist slogan, not a left slogan. She’d not be welcome at the revolution again.
Violet:
I don’t want to respond to this here in quite the detail that I’d ordinarily like to provide it because I’ve already said more than I intended to in this particular space, and I am sensitive to charges of subverting the discussion.
First of all, I was responding to Mary Sunshine’s concept of “a female world” which I suggest evokes concepts with a considerably different weight than the notions of egalitarianism which you espouse. If Mary Sunshine were merely proposing a post-patriarchy in the manner that Amy’s Brain Today proposes it, your reference to existing non- or subpatriarchal societies would be more relevant. But given that MS is a self-declared essentialist, the concept of a “female world” becomes very loaded, unless Mary Sunshine chooses to explain why it isn’t.
Secondly, I was referring to the fears of others, not of myself. I thought I took pains to suggest that I didn’t really think that was the case.
Third and lastly, some of the examples in the links you provide suggest some form of role-marginalization, contrary to your claims. Now, most of these societies have are surrounded by patriarchal societies, and hence we can likely often say that those men who lived in these societies have chosen it in some way, seeing as they have either the opportunity to leave or the ability to import patriarchy into their own societies. It’s not the same as a world that is fully gynocentric as some people *appear* to hold to be a preferable state.
Do you really think you can implement the social relations of the Mosuo the world over? Particularly the complete absence of the expectation of paternal identification, as roamaround suggests may be necessary for the end of patriarchy?
I’d analyze more of them in more detail, but as I’ve already written more than I intended, I’ll save it for some other time. Gotta go anyway.
“I do not have to be a particular color in order to fight that fight, just like I do not have to be a lesbian to fight the lesbian fight, or I do not have to be a birthing mother to fight that fight nor do I have to be a motherless woman to fight that fight.”
Absolutely, but we must put our fight first, at least some of the time. I don’t always, I have irons in so many fires. Too many (I keep it off blogs). But I won’t forget that the majority of those people for whom I am willing to fight, will not stand for me, when I say, this is a woman’s issue fight, space, revolution.
Pony,
Yes.
To be a female amongst females, declaring Female Primacy, is to be a monster.
Males make very effective use of females to slay that monster, every day.
Mary S.
Okay, I think I see what you were saying now, Caroline, with the “dick” comment, something like that presenting as a WOC or speaking for WOC when you’re actually white is akin to presenting as female or speaking for women when in fact you are male.
I feel as though anything I might say right now would be the wrong thing, so until I can be sure I won’t make things worse by saying the wrong thing, I’m going to let this be for now.
Heart
Heart wrote: “What we are supposed to do, as females, is — still, in 2007 — be quiet about what pertains specifically to us as females, about what we believe violates us. I can frame my resistance to appropriation as carefully as possible– doesn’t matter. ”
For the record, I disagree with your original post because:
1. I disagree that Robin Morgan was the first to make the comparison between monsters and feminism. Shelley, Perkins Gilman and Angela Carter are all part of the same tradition. I believe Morgan recognizes and acknowledges that in her other writing.
2. I disagree that Little Light’s poem uses the monster metaphor in the same way Morgan did..
3. I disagree that Robin Morgan’s words are the property of a certain kind of feminism. While Morgan is a radical feminist, she and her writings are accepted and celebrated by all kinds of feminists. I think that’s a wonderful.
4. I disagree that feminist writers benefit from owning certain words, metaphors, etc.
5. I disagree that Little Light’s goal on her blog or in her poem was to colonize women.
I have not asked you to shutup. In fact, I’ve asked you to speak more and to clarify so I can understand your point of view. Disagreement with you on this issue does not spell hatred of women. I have read comments from many people in many places that disagree with you without “going over” to the side of your enemies. And I think it’s sad that you do not see us and do not support us.
Roamaround wrote: “Right, and I think now a lot of women are experiencing that in the global justice, anti-imperialist and anti-war movements. ”
As a long-time activist, I’ve going to defend my movement a bit. In my area, the leaders of the antiwar movement are almost entirely women. Strong, amazing, women. Many are young, a few of us are old. Almost all of the men are very supportive and actively anti-sexist.
I believe this happened because some of us worked our butts off to make it that way. In the 80s we split from male dominated groups and formed our own. We worked on process and empowerment. We threw out fucking Robert’s Rules of Order and replaced it with respect and listening. We developed ways to make it very, very uncomfortable for power-hungry people, mostly men, but some women, from pulling their shit. I am a much happier activist today, mostly because of these women leaders. Because I’m tired and I needed stronger, younger, more creative people to carry the load.
So, the movement may suck in some places, but in others it is awesome..
Sorry, for the diversion, Heart. Just needed to get that out.
Here’s what I think. I think the scenario is that it’s somewhat fraught to hang out with radical feminists/lesbian separatists right now, because the academented, bullshit, misogynist, anti-feminist shtick has been that we are “racist” and “classist” and transphobic and all sorts of other b.s., which isn’t true and has never been true. (Yes, all white people, including white feminists, have blind spots around racial issues. No, white radical feminists/Second Wave feminists were not “racists” or elitist or all of the other stuff that has been said about them, mostly by MEN, mostly by WHITE MEN, because it is in WHITE MEN’S BEST INTERESTS to lie about us.) There can be a kind of nervous feeling, like wanting to be very very sure you (generic “you”) demonstrate that even though you are hanging out with radical feminists/lesbian separatists and talking to them, you’re not a racist, like they probably are.
That sucks. And I blame men for it, and especially white men, but the patriarchy in general for spreading lies about us into the world. This has harmed women. It has divided women against women, which is what they wanted in the first place. That was their whole entire plan.
Heart
Ravenm: I disagree that feminist writers benefit from owning certain words, metaphors, etc.
Ravenm, I don’t think that feminist writers benefit from owning certain words, metaphors, etc., either. I think feminist writers, as I’ve said more than once, whenever possible, ought to acknowledge one another’s work which is similarly themed, not only out of writerly courtesy but for the sake of promoting the work of other feminist writers, so that it never is erased. We’re stronger together than we are alone. In other words, out of solidarity.
While I don’t think that certain words and metaphors belong to feminists, I do think that some belong to females (goddess imagery) and ought not be appropriated by those who are factually male.
I disagree that Little Light’s goal on her blog or in her poem was to colonize women.
I don’t know that this was little light’s goal? I doubt it was her intention. I think the effect of those who are factually male invoking female/goddess imagery is to colonize females.
Disagreement with you on this issue does not spell hatred of women.
Of course, it does not. I wouldn’t suggest that it does, and haven’t.
I have read comments from many people in many places that disagree with you without “going over” to the side of your enemies. And I think it’s sad that you do not see us and do not support us.
Can you say more about this? Who do you think I don’t see and don’t support? My question is honest, not a trick question.
Let me ask you this, ravenm– little light straight up lied about my post on her blog. She said I didn’t link to her, when I did. She said I accused her of plagiarism, when I didn’t. Have you, has anyone, taken that up with her? If you have, I’m glad. If you haven’t, then maybe you’ll understand my apparent lack of support. Again, though, I’m not sure what you mean about not seeing you and not supporting you. I need you to clarify there.
Heart
“But I wasn’t talking about people’s revolutions. I was talking about WOMEN’S revolution and you turned it into a left thing within one sentence. I’m not angry just pointing out how we are buried.”
Whoa, Pony! You talked about pouring oceans of coffee for, “all those lefty issues and movements, who don’t think of you as anything but tits and ass, and kitchen help” which I thought was so exactly true and great. I think of those as “people’s” movements that actually define “people” as “men” and agreeing about how disillusioned I was (too) when I realized that. Women’s revolution is another kettle of fish. How do we disagree? Where am I buried?
The link and photo were great too, and you’re right–a feminist slogan would have been oh so uncool.
(I still love the union movement, in spite of it all. I grew up on it, and the songs are so great. “Can’t scare me I’m sticking to the union….” Plus there is no alternative right now.)
Heart, the Aradia closing is just tragic. I’m sure there will be a huge demo against the closing, right? Ha! Sorry to be sarcastic, but I am fucking furious that we can’t get the left organized and out about any “women’s” cause. I was one of THREE people in Chicago one day last summer countering a big pro-life demo. Three!! In lefty Chicago!!
I agree that the Robin Morgan issue that sparked this thread is absolutely critical: do we recognize and learn from our feminist foremothers, or do we participate in erasing older women’s voices (too old, too screechy, not cool) and start from scratch again every generation? That’s a kind of cannibalism! And it’s misogynist.
I need to say this while I’m thinking about it. This idea that inveighles its way into discussions here that separatist women want power over men, or over anyone– earth, other women, creatures — or that separatists are manhating, or oh-so-70s, or are politically misguided? There is lesbophobia, at the very least, severe heteronormativity in those sentiments, those statements. Women don’t need men in their lives. They don’t need men to be happy. Absent patriarchy/male heterosupremacy, in a different world, there would, I have no doubt, be colonies of females, living together by choice, without men. This would not be manhating or wrong or bad or hierarchical or violent or annihilating or anything else. Some women just want to be with women. While I *do* think that separatism is one good strategy of resistance to male supremacy, that’s not the only reason females are separatists. They have other reasons. Like really liking to be around only females! And there is nothing deranged, wrong, hateful, violent, mean or manhating about that! It’s not about men. It’s about females.
Heart
whoops, sorry for the repetition..word processing malfunction
I fixed it, roamaround.
Heart said: “There is lesbophobia, at the very least, severe heteronormativity in those sentiments, those statements. Women don’t need men in their lives. They don’t need men to be happy.”
Yeah. And I would add to that that we don’t need penises. While I really like reading what chasingmoksha writes, “The fundamental point is a vagina was made to have a baby by inserting a penis in it that delivers the sperms.”–that, right there, is a heterosexist idea that lesbians have spent years trying to debunk. The vagina is an autonomous organ that exists for its own purposes, not a sheath for the penis or a baby chute. To say it is either of those leads down the garden path to “women were made to make babies.” Does it make sense to say the penis is “made” to stimulate women’s vaginas and provide sperm to fertilize ova? No one ever says that, do they? Seems to me we had a conversation on your boards about that once, didn’t we Heart?
To me, now people’s movements do not include the women’s movement. With some rare individuals, it might. I learned that the hard way. And I do think women of color, for ex, have to focus on that color aspect. But when you finally come down to it, we can work for any people’s movement, us, but men will not work for ours, not unless we’re fuckable, and then, they’re concern is only a sham because we’re fuckable. If you didn’t know that before, and I did, beautiful and fuckable, and turned my back on men and their movements because they spurned my sisters who weren’t. Too bad I’m still heterosexual, so I suffer I suffer. But if you didn’t know it before you find out when you are old.
Union: I like the music too. I grew up where there were machine guns on the roof of a grocery store, aimed down on my father and the other “men” who forced in the union. And I grew UP in that same place when my mother worked there, not part of the union for men, a single mother by then, with six children to feed, and told “the men have families to support. You can get married again.”
***Some women just want to be with women***
Yes, exactly! Is that so hard to understand? Is it a crime?
***my mother worked there, not part of the union for men, a single mother by then, with six children to feed, and told “the men have families to support. You can get married again.”***
And then they get pissed if women marry for money.
If you have such a problem with it Caroline then why don’t you come and fight the fight in an area that obviously need your voice. It is so easy to criticize someone who is attempthing it though, but not so easy to hang in there and make your case. Make your case then. No, it is easier to whine, whine, whine, whine. All that whining will help your oppression won’t it? Anyone can shoot the messenger. Show us what you got. That’s what I thought.
“right there, is a heterosexist idea that lesbians have spent years trying to debunk. The vagina is an autonomous organ that exists for its own purposes, not a sheath for the penis or a baby chute. To say it is either of those leads down the garden path to “women were made to make babies.””
Yes Amy I understand it is heterosexist sentiment and I was aware of the risk I took when I made that statement. For the record I did not make that statement to assert it, or to mandate it, I made it to make a point about how any function other than what the animal like fundamental function of a vagina is for is worth fighting over because there are many signifiers other than simply having a fetus producing vagina that ignites oppression for the women who have a vagina.
One is a vagina belonging to a woman with a different skin color than the color that is in power. That was my point. I was not advocating or asserting what a vagina should or should not be for, I simply pointed out the fundamental function of the vagina in hopes that people will see that if we are going to fight against any, ANY signifiers that deviate (not implying any connotations apart from the root meaning of this word) from the fundamental function then we should fight against them all, including skin color discrimination.
Admitting what the fundamental function of a vagina is for is not opening the gates to that vagina forcibly becoming a sheath for the penis or a baby chute, it is simply saying what the function is for.
The fundamental function of my finger is to negotiate things like a tool, but that does not mean I have to be forced to pick my nose with it.
Perhaps maybe females with vaginas who never want to have a baby and never want to have a penis inserted and who do not want to worry about different skin colors should have there own space. If that is the case, and if that is what is the space here,– that I apparently have not grasped, then maybe someone should tell me and I will leave. I never claimed to be quick on the uptake. Really, I am beginning to think I am not seeing what is going on or something. Because it is beginning to sound like heterosexual women are not welcomed in the vagina cause unless they denounce their heterosexuality and any desire to fight skin color oppression.
Roamaround
“It’s not about examining every historical and global dynamic before listening to or helping anyone, it’s about advancing our knowledge and understanding of oppression and how it works. How is that bad?”
It is not bad when it is fairly done as in some of the examples I gave, however it is bad when it seems to be only required when the topic of oppression because of skin color is at hand.
But please from now on direct all your questions about race to Caroline, she is the subject matter expert here, because god know I claimed that everything I say is THE WORD!. And using her same logic, please do not talk about lesbianism unless you are a lesbian, do not talk about having babies unless you have had a baby, do not talk about anything else unless you have personally experienced it are you will be declaring in her eyes as speaking THE WORD!
CM I can’t even find Caroline, except in your posts and Heart’s. And there are many women here, each one speaking from her experience. Or in other words; expertise. That’s what it is. We are each, experts.
Pony I’m referring to this:
“Caroline Says:
January 20th, 2007 at 11:00 pm
Let me clear something up. Yes, I am a WOC. I am sick and tired of ChasingMoksha parading herself around as a WOC when she clearly is not. She’s stated this before. She hasn’t got a clue as to what opression is for WOC therefore, she needs refrain from assuming everything she spews from her mouth is THE WORD.”
It would be different if I was in WOC space. However, supposedly “white people” are to teach other “white people” about race. Yet when someone tries to talks another tries to shut them up by claiming that I am owning THE WORD. Please point to me where I said I own the word.
Caroline is doing what so many do, whine whine whine about someone else trying but offers NOTHING! Since my words are so bad, let Caroline school us all. Then she will be saying how it is not her job to teach anyone anything. Yeah whatever.
I’ve been avoiding getting into this discussion since it started, on either end, though I’ve been following from the beginning. But I have to ask:
because the academented, bullshit, misogynist, anti-feminist shtick has been that we are “racist” and “classist” and transphobic and all sorts of other b.s., which isn’t true and has never been true.
Could you please define “transphobic” for me? Because while I can’t make any claims about radical feminists or lesbian separatists en masse (and would find it pretty presumptuous to do so for any group), I have seen many, many transphobic comments throughout this thread, the most notable coming from you and Mary Sunshine. MS went so far as to refer to Little Light as “it” — and whether or not you care to honor how Little Light self-identifies, how can *any* feminist support de-humanizing another person simply because you don’t agree with them? You have continually referred to Little Light as “factually male” and applauded others who’ve made comments about transwomen being “hacked up”, wearing “women’s skins”, references to Buffalo Bill, etc.
Putting personal politics and feelings aside, this comes down to affording others the most basic level of human dignity and respect. I don’t see how not doing so could be construed as anything besides hateful, and when directed at a particular group, in this case transgendered and transsexual individuals, transphobic.
So while I would hardly call all radical feminists or lesbians separatists transphobic (or anything else for that matter, speaking in absolutes is just asking for trouble), I’m not sure how you can claim that you, Mary Sunshine or Luckynkl have made are anything but.
Oh.
I hereby stamp you certifiably able to say something about women of colour, being that I am (according to some) one of, I can do that.
Go ahead.
Mandos, since you’re not here I’ll just respond for the record.
Third and lastly, some of the examples in the links you provide suggest some form of role-marginalization, contrary to your claims.
I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the descriptions on that webpage; I would suggest it be used as a list of cultures one might want to do more research on.
A recurring problem with descriptions of non-patriarchal societies is that the people doing the describing tend to distort things through the lens of of their own patriarchal culture. Herodotus did it and it seems we’re still at it. I’ve seen utterly absurd descriptions of cultures like the Mosu, with statements like “men have no rights” and so forth. What people are doing is imagining that matriarchy must be the inversion of patriarchy, a system where women oppress men in the same way that men oppress women under patriarchy.
In fact such a society is completely unknown. Anthropologists now shy away from using the term “matriarchy” because they want to avoid those erroneous inverse-patriarchy connotations. In all known societies that might be loosely termed matriarchal, what actually obtains is gender equality. Descent is matrilineal, residence is matrifocal, and women generally own the land/means of growing food. But men are not subservient or peripheral. They always, always have a key role that balances things out: trade, animal herding, and religious functions are the typical ones. Men are considered equally important and valued. There is nowhere on earth that any anthropologist or historian can find where men are or have been oppressed by women in the way that women under patriarchy are oppressed by men.
But we’ve discussed this at length, Mandos; you know all that. That’s why when you wonder aloud about whether it’s necessary for women to be dominated in order to keep men from being erased, but you certainly hope not, etc., etc., it’s strange to me, as if you’ve never heard of any of what you and I have spent months discussing.
Do you really think you can implement the social relations of the Mosuo the world over? Particularly the complete absence of the expectation of paternal identification, as roamaround suggests may be necessary for the end of patriarchy?
Many Mosuo children nowadays do know who their fathers are (though possibly this was not the case in the past in that society); in fact paternal identification is actually the norm in most matrilineal cultures. Matrilineal societies very rarely involve “the complete absence of the expectation of paternal identification,” as you misread roamaround (she didn’t say that); what they involve is the absence of male control over female sexuality in order to ensure correct paternal identification.
This is why, in a matriarchy (if I may use the term), men are not oppressed: women have no motivation to do so. If women are in charge of reproduction and possess the economic means for sustenance, there is absolutely no reason for them to try to control men’s sexuality. After all, the woman is passing on her property to her own offspring, and while it may hurt her heart if the man she loves is sleeping with other women, it has zero economic effect, and hence no impact on how society as a whole is structured.
In a patriarchy, on the other hand, where women are simply vessels for men’s progeny and all wealth is passed from father to child, men are motivated to ensure their paternity by controlling the brood mares (women), severely curtailing their sexual freedom. If it’s absolutely critical for economic reasons that a man know who his offspring are, then he’s motivated to keep his wife locked up and “pure.” Patriarchal societies are based on domination and oppression at the very core; it’s an unnatural system.
The irony is that it is possible that paternity may be more accurately known in matrilineal societies than in some patrilineal societies! Women in matrilineal societies simply don’t have much motive, socially or economically, to lie about who the father of their baby is. And as I noted above, in fact fathers are clearly identified and know and love their children in most matrilineal societies that I know of.
***I hereby stamp you certifiably able to say something about women of colour, being that I am (according to some) one of, I can do that.***
I went to Florida when I was 4 years old and got such a tan I was talked to in Spanish for the next 5 years and I say you can talk about WOC too!
Omigosh, I know this isn’t funny, but it’s really OK, CM. Caroline is only one voice on this thread and what she says is not binding on you like the Word of God any more than what you say is binding on *her* as such.
Violet: maybe tomorrow I’ll hijack a dead or irrelevant thread on Reclusive Leftist to respond briefly to your response to my response to your response.
Yeah I know, thanks a lot Banjor and Pony. It is funny in a way. It just amazes me that because I am willing to talk others will try to just me up instead of someone who supposedly knows more challenging my points or showing me the error of my ways, they just attack me personally. It happens everywhere on the net. Perhaps I should make up a name and say I am a WOC, —-who will be the wiser. I shall make up a name and say I am whatever I need to be to make the point, instead of staying with my same name and dancing. Some just want to sit like a lump on a stool and talk about my dance, never getting on the dance floor themselves. There is room for many. But it is so much easier to talk about me instead. That is funny indeed.
It’s not happening here.
Why there Mandos, finish it here. It’s the polite thing to do now that you’ve made your comments. We are waiting…
Yes, sorry about the anthropology drift. I’m compelled to talk anthropology whenever Mandos is around.
ChasingMoksha, you seem to have interpreted my response to roamaround upthread as meaning that I believe that gender trumps race (or sexism trumps racism). I’m not sure how you got to that from my comment, but for the record, I do not in fact believe that. In fact I think talk of one “trumping” the other is hopelessly simplistic; it’s not even the right question.
Racism and sexism interact in a complex and deadly ways. There are many similarities between them, but there are also crucial differences. Understanding both, as well as the interactions, is I think extremely valuable as we go forward as activists for a better world.
[...] is just an irrelevant empty thread for Mandos to post whatever he wants to say in response to this discussion. Or anybody else, for that [...]
What Violet said.
CM, I too find your words valuable and sorry I haven’t come forward earlier to say that. Frankly, I’m surprised Heart approved Caroline’s comment(s), since it didn’t do much to further the discussion in my opinion.
Yeh we should just get her catheterized and then she’d never have to leave her computer.
; )
Thanks Amy and I did not ignore your one notice about my heterosexual sentiment, it is awaiting comment moderation for some reason. Hopefully, it will help explain what I was saying further so I can “evade” an anti-lesbian conveyance.
I could go back and look Violet Socks, but I don’t think it is really important at this point because I do agree with exactly what you are saying here:
“Racism and sexism interact in a complex and deadly ways. There are many similarities between them, but there are also crucial differences. Understanding both, as well as the interactions, is I think extremely valuable as we go forward as activists for a better world.”
Yes “talk of one “trumping” the other is hopelessly simplistic.” Perhaps I was bracing myself for it because it happens a lot in the blogosphere it seems. I did make a diagram, which is probably in itself too ‘simplistic’ but I like to keep in mind that not everyone is coming with the same background and sometimes it helps, even a little bit to make something simple in order to move on to the complex. For example, I make diagrams for stories all the time. I had a creative writing professor that got used to my diagrams so much that she would expect to see them when I had a new story, never quite understanding how I morphed a stiff rigid diagram into a creative story. But if you want to see what I see when I think of sex and gender meeting look at this link I give. Granted it is simple and I think D and E should have been brought in closer but there it is.
scroll to the end of the entry if interested.
http://chasingmoksha.blogspot.com/2007/01/oprah-winfrey-leadership-academy-for.html#links
You have the most interesting mind. I’m so glad you’re here.
Generally, in threads, if there is discussion of issues pertaining to a marginalized group, I approve comments made by people of that marginalized group unless they are over-the-top hostile. It doesn’t seem ethical to me to do otherwise; i.e., if the discussion is of transgender issues, then I approve the comments of transgender persons who comment, even if they are hostile (as some have been). If the discussion is around racism, in general, I approve the comments of persons of color. It wouldn’t seem right, especially when it’s mostly white people in here, to talk about racism but spam comments of women of color? That wouldn’t seem right to me.
If this doesn’t set well, remember, I also approve comments which are extremely hostile to me, like Q-grrl’s comment in this thread, like other very hostile comments in the past. I don’t treat myself any differently than I treat anybody else. I try hard to moderate ethically and intelligently. Mistakes are unavoidable, but I will always do my best.
Heart
I just approved a couple of comments which will have to be viewed by going up the thread a bit. I don’t really get WordPress. It’s supposed to approve comments for people after they’ve had two approved comments. It doesn’t though. It is bizarre. It doesn’t approve my comments made as “Heart” even though I’ve approved myself a million times. I’ve been out tonight; it approved a couple of chasingmoksha’s comments, but one it didn’t approve.
Argh. Soon, I will move everything over to a server where I will be able to fix some of this stuff.
Heart
chasingmoksha: One is a vagina belonging to a woman with a different skin color than the color that is in power. That was my point. I was not advocating or asserting what a vagina should or should not be for, I simply pointed out the fundamental function of the vagina in hopes that people will see that if we are going to fight against any, ANY signifiers that deviate (not implying any connotations apart from the root meaning of this word) from the fundamental function then we should fight against them all, including skin color discrimination.
chasingmoksha, you’re losing me though. Who said, where, that we should not fight skin color discrimination? Please show me where this was said?
I am getting aggravated here, it’s okay, I will get over it, but I spend !#$^@$#&@#$^#@$^%!#$^ of my life dealing with skin color discrimination. At this very moment I am working on a complaint to the Office of Civil Rights against my daughter’s high school, chronicling the racism my daughters and I have experienced at their high school over the last five years, hoping to force action for change.
If you think I have ever said racism isn’t a feminist issue, well, I’ve never said that. I have said that females experience racism *as females* which is to say that racism IS a feminist issue!
But maybe I’m misunderstanding you, completely possible. Maybe you are talking to someone else.
Although Caroline was hostile, I don’t think it’s right to dismiss what she said? If a women of color feels a white woman is speaking for her and she is pissed about it, I think we have to take that seriously, even if it just means entertaining the possibility that that IS what we are doing. I’ve been dealing with racism for a long long time, up close and personal, in my real life, in ways that affect me every waking minute. Still, I try very hard not to speak *for* women of color. At the same time, I also am very concerned about racism and I try to talk about that as often as I can. It’s a difficult thing to navigate for those of us with one foot in the world of white people and one (or two or three, we are monsters after all) in the world of people of color, but I still think we have to navigate it.
Heart
pigeon, transwomen *are* factually male. Leaving aside intersex persons, transwomen were born XY, with penises and testes, which means they were, and are, despite transitioning, if they did, “factually” male. I didn’t say transwomen were men — “men” are one thing, “males” are another. It’s just that I don’t think transitioning, SRS, hormones, change the fact of being born male into the world. I don’t think that this makes me “phobic” or fearful of transwomen. I can appreciate that transwomen don’t want to be understood to be factually male. But being born into the world XY with a penis and testes is to be born into the world male. Surgeries and hormones don’t change this. And none of this means I don’t appreciate transwomen for the human beings that they are when they are good and decent human beings, as many are.
My approving comments to my blog doesn’t mean I endorse or agree with all of the sentiments or words in the comments. I often approve comments with which I disagree. I disagree with *your* comment, most heartily, and yet I have approved it. Just as I disagree with other comments, including the comments of my sister radical feminists/lesbian separatists, sometimes, and still I approve them. In order to effectively and productively discuss issues, all of the perspectives need to be out there for our consideration, including extremist perspectives, including antagonistic perspectives. There is no other way to work through difficult issues fairly. My approving your comment doesn’t mean I endorse it or agree with it, any more than my approving *any* comment means I endorse it or agree with it. The only comments I endorse and agree with 100 percent are my own, and even my own I sometimes end up disagreeing with!
The alternatives to approving all sorts of comments, including offensive comments, are:
* Not allowing comments at all;
* Approving only comments I agree with 100 percent, in which case, again, why approve comments? If I’m only going to approve comments which agree with my own, then I may as well just blog and approve no comments.
I think there is value in approving comments which disagree with my own, and which offer differing views and perspectives. That again doesn’t mean I agree with or endorse what others have posted. I don’t endorse or agree with what you have posted, yet I approved it. See?
Heart
Heart, I explained a bit more of my disagreements at my own blog so as not to talk to much here. So I’ll just respond to a couple of your comments made directly to me.
Heart: ” I think feminist writers, as I’ve said more than once, whenever possible, ought to acknowledge one another’s work which is similarly themed, not only out of writerly courtesy but for the sake of promoting the work of other feminist writers, so that it never is erased. ”
You seem to be failing in your own stated goal “promoting the work of other feminist writers” if you speak of only one poem by one feminist writer. Morgan also fails to meet your standards because she, too, did not refer to her predecessors in using the monster metaphor. At least not in the versions of the poem I own or have seen here.
Heart wrote: “Can you say more about this? Who do you think I don’t see and don’t support? My question is honest, not a trick question.”
I had quoted you here: “I can frame my resistance to appropriation as carefully as possible– doesn’t matter.”
On the contrary, your further explanations did matter and did change my understanding of your meaning. Many commenters here and elsewhere have appreciated that you chose to re-frame your resistance carefully.
Heart wrote: “Let me ask you this, ravenm– little light straight up lied about my post on her blog. She said I didn’t link to her, when I did.”
You’re mistaken. Sylvia is the commenter who missed the link. Little Light said you didn’t leave a comment or trackback on her blog.
She said I accused her of plagiarism, when I didn’t. Have you, has anyone, taken that up with her?
Absolutely. It is there in many comments. Your first post can be read as an accusation of plagiarism without using the exact word.Your later explanation solved that concern and this has been quoted in many places. I just took a moment to look through the “public announcement” post at Little Light’s and, in fact, I posted this on 19/1/07 at 12:09:
“So it’s not plagiarism she’s accusing you of (although Pony and MS sure did), but appopriation. Little Light was supposed to use images of people exactly like her in her poetry.”
Thanks, ravenm, for all of that. I’ll do some reading tomorrow, of what I’ve been avoiding reading, out of self-protection, not always a good thing, but I’m no masochist, and I don’t mind saying I don’t like to be hurt.
Again, thanks.
Heart
Heart:
I can agree to disagree with you on your choice of using terms like “factually male”, and I certainly understand that allowing comments to appear does not mean that you necessarily agree or endorse what’s written. However, there is a part of my comment that you did not address:
[you have] applauded others who’ve made comments about transwomen being “hacked up”, wearing “women’s skins”, references to Buffalo Bill, etc.
Whether or not you made all those comments yourself, your direct response to some of Mary Sunshine’s more offensive, dehumanizing, transphobic comments was “Mary Sunshine, I love the way you think” and other remarks to that effect.
So, if Mary Sunshine makes comments in which she calls Little Light “it” and refers to transwomen as “hacked up”, etc. and you respond by saying “Mary Sunshine, I love the way you think”, one can logically conclude that you do, in fact, endorse this view point.
So the question then becomes, do you consider Mary Sunshine’s comments to be transphobic, and if you don’t, what exactly would constitute transphobic remarks?
“Little Light was supposed to use images of people exactly like her in her poetry.”
This is your phrase.
I’m tired of the lies and distortions, and I won’t respond to you again, with your pretense. I don’t thank you. I think you’re completely disengenuous.
Does it ever occur to you people that you spend your time gossiping, distorting and outright lying about what other people have said or done? What a shit life.
Don’t force yourself. Certainly not on my account. It sounds like you’d find the process painful and no one is encouraging you to feel more pain.
Just read your own thread and see there are different levels of support and lack of support for your point of view. Or you can have someone you trust look at threads on other blogs and pull out the quotes that might interest you. There are lots of options that don’t involve you violating your own boundaries.
Huh. I didn’t even see that sentence, pony.
I’m always working so hard to give women the benefit of the doubt, to read them generously. It inevitably comes around to kick me in the butt.
Heart
Rav is a shit disturber, coming here representing what was it “people reading you”, going there, just a real little gadfly.
I do not know why any of us are under any obligation to put up with or respond to people like that. Trotskyites in behaviour if not name.
Slam the door in her face. Both of her faces.
((( Pony ! ))) ((( Heart! )))
Good morning, sweeties.
Mary Sunshine
Okay, I am going to have to pull a belledame, I guess, and post serially since it seems like there’s a lot to respond to and it’s kind of all over the place.
chasingmoksha: Perhaps maybe females with vaginas who never want to have a baby and never want to have a penis inserted and who do not want to worry about different skin colors should have there own space.
I don’t mean to sound like a broken record, chasingmoksha, honestly, but again, nowhere in this thread — nowhere — has anybody said, suggested, or thought, so far as I can see, about not wanting to worry about different skin colors. I don’t know where you are seeing this. I spend a godawful amount of time worrying about different skin colors. It is very central to my everyday, real life. It is unavoidable. There is no way I can NOT worry about different skin colors, my life is all *about* worrying about different skin colors. Life is actually what has taught me about how females and males experience racism in ways which are gendered. I’ve raised four biracial sons to adulthood and three biracial daughters to adulthood, with another turning 18 in April and the youngest 16 in April. The racism the boys have experienced as males is not the same thing as the racism the girls have experienced as females. The racism I experience as a female race traitor is different from the racism white men who are race traitors experience. The racism my exes, who were black, experienced was different from the racism their sisters and my other female in-laws have experienced. All of it all of it all of it, all the racism, we experience, we experience *as* females or *as* males. That has been the point, or a point, I have wanted to make. I don’t see where I or anyone else here has suggested that racism is not an issue for feminists.
When you say things like what you said above, that maybe there should be a separate space for lesbians who do not want to have babies or worry about skin color, it comes across as lesbophobic, with lesbian feminists cast as both white and racist, when in fact, there are plenty of lesbian feminists of color, and some post here occasionally, and when, in fact, white lesbians are not more or less racist than any other white people, and above all, when, in fact, nobody here has said or suggested that racism isn’t an issue for lesbian feminists or for any feminists.
One point that hasn’t been made, because in my opinion we just haven’t gotten there yet, but I’ll begin the discussion now is, if, as feminists we challenge all of the ways all females are targeted for discrimination as females, if we focus on the way we are brutalized by men because we are females, to the degree that we are successful there, *all women benefit*. ALL. All females, regardless of race, benefit from elimination of rape, molestation, sexual harassment, sexual exploitation, incest, the glass ceiling, objectification, from advocacy for the rights of birthing women, caregivers and so on. All females benefit from this. There’s a lot more to say about this, but I’ll leave it there for now, see if anybody wants to talk about it.
If that is the case, and if that is what is the space here,– that I apparently have not grasped, then maybe someone should tell me and I will leave. I never claimed to be quick on the uptake. Really, I am beginning to think I am not seeing what is going on or something. Because it is beginning to sound like heterosexual women are not welcomed in the vagina cause unless they denounce their heterosexuality and any desire to fight skin color oppression.
How come you feel this way, chasingmoksha? Again, with this idea someone has said feminists should not fight skin color oppression– where does this come from? And why tie anti-racism work to heterosexuality? That again, with all respect, because I do respect you and like reading you, comes across as lesbophobic, as though you’re saying somehow being lesbian makes a insensitive to racism or uninterested in it.
Heart
Ravenm: Don’t force yourself. Certainly not on my account. It sounds like you’d find the process painful and no one is encouraging you to feel more pain.
Just read your own thread and see there are different levels of support and lack of support for your point of view. Or you can have someone you trust look at threads on other blogs and pull out the quotes that might interest you. There are lots of options that don’t involve you violating your own boundaries.
Okay, you’ve lost me now. I was confused about this statement in your earlier comment:
I have read comments from many people in many places that disagree with you without “going over” to the side of your enemies. And I think it’s sad that you do not see us and do not support us.
So I wanted to know who I’m not seeing and not supporting. Of course I read every comment to my own blog? I definitely see and support everybody’s right to take any position they want to take?
I’m just not getting the point you are trying to make.
Heart
Okay. Before I respond to pigeon’s latest comment, I want to set forth a few things I want kept in mind when reading what I have to say here.
1. I personally, unfailingly, respect everybody’s chosen “identification,” when I know what it is. If someone identifies as a woman and tells me they do, I refer to them as a woman and use the appropriate pronouns in my interactions with that person. I think I do this to my own and females’ hurt in some ways; nevertheless, I do it. If I ever call someone out of their chosen identification, use the wrong pronoun, it is *inadvertant* and if it is called to my attention, I will fix it right away. I don’t use words like “trannies,” etc.
2. I believe all human beings deserve the same human and civil rights. ALL. Including transgender persons. Discrimination against transpersons is wrong and ought to be as illegal as all other forms of discrimination.
3. I believe that to the degree that transgender persons live as and/or are read as women, to that degree they are going to be targeted for sexism and so will experience many of the same brutalities I and other women face and have faced.
4. I have transgender friends I appreciate very much. I am not writing out of some ivory tower or isolated circumstances in which I haven’t known, worked alongside, or otherwise kicked it with transgender individuals.
This is what I think about the kind of commentary you are calling transphobic.
Calling these comments “transphobic” is premised on notions of “trans privilege,” the idea that females enjoy certain kinds of privilege compared with transpersons.
Using a comparison with race, if a person of color calls a white person names or insults white people in racialized ways, we might call that insulting or mean or rude or whatever, but we wouldn’t, as progressive people, call that “racism” or “reverse racism,” and that’s because to do so ignores the power differentials which exist between white people and people of color. A white person using racial slurs in the U.S. brings to mind centuries of humiliation, degradation, torture, kidnapping, lynchings, rapes, by way of which white people in the U.S. subjugated persons of color, and so, a person of color targeted for racial slurs might feel afraid, in danger, and rightfully so, there’s history to show that those who use those slurs have hurt people of color. There’s no reason to assume someone who uses those words won’t hurt persons of color similarly.
There IS no similar history in the U.S. of persons of color enslaving, brutalizing, raping, terrorizing white people because white people are white. That’s why it’s not really possible for people of color to be “racist” against white people. They might dislike white people in ways that might seem unreasonable or unwarranted, they might even hurt white people sometimes, but that’s still not “racism” or “reverse racism.”
That being so, if a person came into a thread here and started calling people “crackers,” while that would be rude and asshole-ish, it wouldn’t be “whitephobic.” It wouldn’t be hate speech. Because of history, context, power relations in the U.S.
In the same way, if the view is that transwomen are male, it isn’t really possible for females to speak in ways which are “phobic” towards them, i.e., discriminatory, bigoted, because not only do females not enjoy privilege vis a vis males, in fact, the option of transitioning is viewed as yet another manifestation or evidence of male privilege. In other words, it is male privilege which makes provision for nonconforming males to “become” women in a way it never makes similar provision for nonconforming females to “become” men who will actually be afforded male privilege. Patriarchy, in other words, polices gender so as to make it permeable *down* the hierarchy, but not *up* the hierarchy. Males, being on the top, are free to move down and “become women,” but gender nonconforming females, even if they transition, never really enjoy privilege the way those born male do. This is why radical feminists view the issue of transwomen as an issue that belongs to males, that is something males need to address, confront and deal with. It’s a gender-policing issue which females don’t have anything to do with. Females didn’t create the psychological/scientific/medical mechanisms which exist to enforce gender and we don’t benefit from them. Males created them and males benefit from them. Including males who choose to “transition.” Females also never authored gender as subordination. This was a male invention, which benefits males.
When a radical feminist female uses insulting words in the direction of transwomen, she understand this to be no different from using insulting words in the direction of males. It might be rude, crude, and socially unacceptable, it might be insulting, but it isn’t hate speech. It’s not discriminatory. Because given power differentials as they exist between males and females, females aren’t situated socially so as to be able to discriminate against males, or to be bigoted towards males or to be phobic against males. To the contrary, our experience as females is that males *are* to be feared because they hurt females and to say so, and behave accordingly, is not “phobic,” it is based on female reality.
Also, radical feminists use this kind of language as *resistance* to the way males do police gender, with all that that that implies, which is a whole ‘nother post in itself.
As to transmen, while radical feminists might believe that a transman is factually female, now she identifies as a man. If she is a man, although she will never enjoy male privilege the way males do because of the way males police gender, she *will* enjoy male privilege compared with females, even though she is factually female. So again, the same holds true. While radical feminist females may be rude, crude and totally unacceptable in a transwoman’s direction, what they say cannot rise to the level of “hate speech” or “phobia” or “discrimination” or “bigotry” because, again, of power, because of the way females and transmen are situated power-wise. When females use incendiary language in the direction of transmen, it is in the same way they might use incendiary language in the direction of men. It might make them less than likable, might make them assholes, but it doesn’t make them bigots or haters.
I might not use the kind of language Mary Sunshine and Lucky use, but I don’t think it’s hate speech or phobic or bigoted or discriminatory for the reasons I’ve set forth. Do I believe in “nontrans privilege”? Yes, I do. But only males enjoy it. Females do not. We remain at the bottom of the heap, with respect to males, with respect to transwomen, with respect to transmen.
Heart
Heart,
Thank you for your thoughtful, detailed and female-loving response.
Mary Sunshine
“[women (born women)] remain at the bottom of the heap, with respect to males, with respect to transwomen, with respect to transmen.”
perhaps i’m simply not understanding what criteria you use when you make statements such as this one. if i understand you as you intend, are you saying that, generally speaking, trans women enjoy a greater amount of privilege as compared to women? and would that include access to the basic civil rights that all minorities fight for, such as housing, health care, employment, and so on?
I just went through this entire thread and Heart did not make *one* positive response to *any* comment about transpeople being “hacked up”, “wearing women’s skins” or Buffalo Bill. Heart’s positive “I love how you think” responses were to this post by Mary Sunshine:
***I encourage all females to realize that male fears and inadequacies are no reason to suppress their heart’s desires to live in a female world.
I encourage all females to realize that every little scrap of their own feminist thinking is not something that needs to be negotiated and/or reconciled with males individually or collectively.
I encourage all females to realize that what happens to males when we seek to realize our desires to live in a female world is *their* responsibility, not yours.
Mary Sunshine***
and this one:
***But … but … they do such a *better* job of being women than we do.
Can’t we just get over it, and pay obeisance to them for that?
We never really knew how do do feminism until *they* came along and brought us into the light, while keeping the spotlight on themselves.
Being *born* female is such a nasty, creepy slimey thing that we need to have the way shown to us by those who were not so cursed.
Copycats are better cats, seems to be the point in all of this.
Mary S.***
Thanks, Mary Sunshine!
Branjor, then there’s THAT! I didn’t check, but I didn’t *think* I’d responded positively in the way pigeon described.
GEEZ. What’s up with lies that anybody can check out and find out they are just straight up lies?
Heart
Then again, anybody could have checked out the lies about Andrea Dworkin, Catharine A. MacKinnon, Robin Morgan, Mary Daly, and others anytime and also discovered they were straight up lies. I guess if you’re vested in the lies, you don’t give a shit about the truth.
Heart
I should also say, to be very clear, that if males use insulting words in the direction of transpersons, that IS hate speech, that IS discrimination, and that IS bigotry– and why? Because it invokes the spectre of male violence against transpersons, and because males do enjoy societal privilege vis a vis transpersons.
Neither of which can be said of females.
Heart
Heart I was speculating this, not feeling or truly thinking this. I am sorry if I did not make that clear. I know that this is your blog and your space, but 95% of what I was speculating about did not have you are your work in mind, but that of the commenters that I felt were alluding to my comments. I am sorry if I give you pain. I did not want to nor do I want to. Sometimes my “cut to the chase” entangles with my inability to “fill in all of the dots.” I am sorry. I am sure I was being defensive.
I can safety say that I do recognize that there are people who want a very separate, and when I mean separate, I mean with strict criteria space. I respect that. However, I also am willing to put it out there that I think that is an impossible want. We would all be split smaller than atoms if that desire came to pass.
CM. so glad to see you this morning. I will stand to make it possible for those who do want separate. But that is not for me, to separate. I think it will make us bigger, if we can entertain that. I may never go to Mitchfest, or want to, for example, but I will not see it or the dream of more spaces like it, even spaces for communities for those that want that, go down.
perhaps i’m simply not understanding what criteria you use when you make statements such as this one. if i understand you as you intend, are you saying that, generally speaking, trans women enjoy a greater amount of privilege as compared to women?
I think transwomen enjoy greater privilege than females in the following ways:
* Provision was made for them, in patriarchy, to accommodate their gender difficulties whereas no similar way “out” of gender difficulties is provided for females, we are just stuck;
* Transwomen have enjoyed privilege vis a vis females for all of the years they lived and presented as males, in the same way all males enjoy societal privilege compared with females. The benefits of this privilege continue beyond transition, just as the benefits, for example, of having been wealthy at one time continue after someone becomes poor, compared with those born into poverty, just as the benefits of having been non-disabled at one time continue after someone becomes disabled, compared with people born disabled, just as the benefits of having lived as a heterosexual continue on past the point at which a person acknowledges/decides to/comes out as gay or lesbian, compared with those who have always lived as gay or lesbian persons.
* Transmen, while they do not enjoy male privilege as males do, still enjoy male privilege compared with females.
and would that include access to the basic civil rights that all minorities fight for, such as housing, health care, employment, and so on?
I don’t believe transpersons’ rights to housing, health care, employment are any more compromised than the rights of females. All we have to do is consider the situation of gender-nonconforming lesbians, who are consistently discriminated against in housing, health care and employment, to realize that this is so. All females are discriminated against horrifically when it comes to health care. ALL.
Don’t get me wrong– I believe that transpersons do experience discrimination and that it is wrong and must be challenged and actively resisted, but I think the discrimination they face is a form of sexism, something females also face but males never do.
Heart
Whew.
Heart: I didn’t mean to say I thought you were wrong to approve Caroline’s comments. I don’t–it just surprised me, because other comments that have been confrontational in a nonproductive way have been not approved and/or edited. I do think you were right to approve, for the reasons you state. And thank you for your advocacy of lesbian/lesbian-feminist/lesbian separatist viewpoints, and for making this a reasonable space for them to be discussed.
CM: I understand why Caroline’s comments upset you. I would have been upset by them too. However, I don’t see anyone else here agreeing with Caroline that you should not speak/write about your experience and your theories. From my perspective, you have done that here as you; I have not perceived you as trying to speak for anyone else.
But can you understand that saying “Because it is beginning to sound like heterosexual women are not welcomed in the vagina cause unless they denounce their heterosexuality and any desire to fight skin color oppression.” is a very unproductive response towards those of us who DO want to be your allies? I am not sure who you are believing, besides Caroline, is making those arguments here, that you should not fight oppression in the way you see fit. It seems to me your own guilt, defensiveness, and/or history of these kinds of conflicts, of being jumped on and accused, seems to be taking over here so that you are responding to things that WERE NOT SAID.
You wrote, “I was not advocating or asserting what a vagina should or should not be for, I simply pointed out the fundamental function of the vagina..” Can you see the contradiction in this statement? How is “pointing out the fundamental function of the vagina” NOT “advocating or asserting what a vagina should or should not be for”? Isn’t something’s “fundamental function” what that thing “should or should not be for”? Can you understand that I’ve participated with my vagina (and the rest of my body) since I was 20 in a very active and mostly happy sex life without once becoming pregnant, nor wanting to? Can you understand that I’ve been having a wonderful sex life for the last ten years without any penile involvement whatsoever–and that there are women (the smart, lucky ones, IMHO) who live their whole lives without ever having heterosexual intercourse? The “fundamental function” of my vagina has nothing to do with babies, and nothing to do (any more) with penises.
When you say things like what I’ve quoted you above as saying, you indicate that your thinking still proceeds in heterosexual patterns, at least as far as the “fundamental function” of the vagina is concerned. That doesn’t make me think you hate me, or want to shut you up–it does make me want to point out that, to be my ally, it would help if you realized that penises and babies DON’T have any kind of logical connection to vaginas, certainly for most lesbians, and hence need not have that connection for many straight women. It’s PATRIARCHY that makes that conceptual link, and not in a way that serves women. From my perspective, it would be much more logical to make conceptual links between vaginas and hands, or noses, or tongues, or tampons. This is not to say that you should “give up your heterosexuality” or any such nonsense. It’s just to say, look how women are different as well as the same, look at our different experiences, and how those sometimes highlight the lies patriarchy tells about us, and how they might point a way to freedom.
FWIW, I think your perspective on race and your commitment to ending racism are incredibly important and valuable and I have welcomed reading about them here. Heart has recently been the subject of criticisms similar to the ones Caroline made about you, but to me, that does not make her words any less valuable–and it does not make the criticisms completely wrong and untrue. There’s usually truth on all sides, and if I’ve learned anything–and I have, the hard way–it’s that the best way to move forward is to try to really HEAR each other and acknowledge whatever bit of truth the other person has, as well as making our own points as clearly, nondefensively and succinctly as we can.
In any case, CM, I wish you the best.
Totally hear you, chasing moksha, and thanks for that explanation. I see what you were doing, working your thoughts out in writing, “out loud,” sort of. I do that too and am sometimes misunderstood, just as I misunderstood you! So, no harm no foul.
I’m glad to see you here too!
Heart
Yeah, chasingmoksha, Amy’s right, I get the same thing you get re racial issues all of the time. It feels horrible enough when it comes from women of color, but at least coming from them, it’s appropriate, and even when I wig out and become defensive and pissed, I do pay attention to what they say. It takes me a while, usually, to be able to think clearly when a woman of color criticizes me, but I get there eventually, although I’m a lot slower than I wish I were.
What drives me right up the wall is the white people’s criticisms, particularly white men. Fuck-the-hell-out-of-them is my nonapologetic response — they will do ANYTHING to take an uppity white woman out, including messing around where they have absolutely NO business, being pricks. I am not quite so driven up the wall, but almost, by people like the Attention Sisters who also seem to fucking lay in wait around women like you and I.
Anyway, as to Michfest, pony and chasingmoksha, you should GO! You would LOVE! It’s lesbian-organized and a lesbian event, but it’s open to all women and girls (and there’s Brother Sun for boys up to age 10 as well). I’d say it’s about, mmm, 80-90 percent lesbian and the rest het women, all ages. pony, you’d love that about it, plenty of older women, women of color, lots of crones to sit around and chat it up with, and really good facilities for disabled women, deaf women, and so on. Everybody’s needs are respected and Fest works hard to accommodate all wimmin. Great vegetarian food too.
Heart
Thanks, Amy, I didn’t mean to get bristle-y re approving Caroline’s comment so I’m sorry if I sounded that way. It’s hard to decide whether to approve certain commens at times and I am always second-guessing myself, and then I feel defensive when I’m criticized. Argh.
Heart
My stronger criticism concerning race I think was evident when people (anyone) assert a precursor that race cannot be discussed (or understood) unless we explore the ENTIRE global history and dynamics of race. That is where I became defensive. Because that precursor is not routinely commanded before anyone is sanctioned to talk about sexism.
Actually, it plays into the fundamental function of the vagina. How would women, any woman like to have to deconstruct and explore the ENTIRE global history and dynamics of the vagina before they could talk about sexism? I think this is where my thoughts were trying to come together.
I am not accusing, I am just saying. I would like people, women, white women actually to be more conscious of it, because I honesty think, perhaps because white women are white that they do not consciously think of other skin colors when they are thinking of women. I am sure WOC do not think of white women as their default, however, because of white oppression against WOC they do have to always have white people in their thoughts whether they want to or not.
But to be honest, I am no longer in the mood to talk about race. I am angry about the whole topic because of people like Caroline. This is a predominately-white space. According to unpacking the knacksack of white privilege, I am to talk about race to other white people, but then someone like Caroline comes in and gets to criticize without any merit. I could see if she took my points and showed me where I was wrong, but instead she attacked me. And it creates a white guilt dynamic and I think people like Caroline who are not interested in schooling anyone about race, because if she were she would have, but instead she just attacked. It creates a white guilt dynamic evident by how Heart allowed it. Heart felt like Caroline should be able to attack because she CLAIMS to be a WOC. How is being a WOC give her the right to attack me when I did not ONCE attack POC and if I did I was not given the opportunity to correct it, to see where I did, because she did not point that out, instead she ATTACKED!
CM: “I also am willing to put it out there that I think that is an impossible want. We would all be split smaller than atoms if that desire came to pass.”
See, again, to me, that says a lot more about what you think of your relationships with other women, than anything about separatism. I mean, how is it possible to characterize a life that is filled with vibrant, passionate–in the good and bad senses of those words–connections with other women, as “split smaller than atoms”? My focus on and connections with other women enlarge my life, engage and promote my creativity, support and nourish me.
Which reminds me, it’s probably time for me to get back to my own projects. If anyone would like to educate herself about separatism, there’s plenty to read at my website, http://www.feminist-reprise.org/archive.html, and some things on my blog as well, http://www.feminist-reprise.org/blog.
Yeah, that’s true, chasingmoksha, it was just an attack, nothing constructive in it at all.
Okay, here’s my new policy. Even if the commenter is a member of a group relevant to the topic we’re discussing, i.e., a transperson in a discussion of transgender issues, a person of color in a discussion of racism, if their comment is little more than an attack without anything the targeted person can actually respond to, I will not approve it. That only seems fair; otherwise, there’s quite the chilling effect on discussion in here because any time someone can take pot shots at one of us to no good purpose.
Heart
“Because it invokes the spectre of male violence against transpersons, and because males do enjoy societal privilege vis a vis transpersons.”
I could walk outside right now and do something that would piss off society, the patriarchy, what have you, enough to kill me dead on the spot, right in the middle of Main Street. And it needn’t be some grand political gesture. It could be trivial, it could be outrageous; it could be silly, grand or profound, too.
So could you.
And if either of us did, we’d have liberals, great progressives all, from men and women, transpeople, post-gendered types, and transhuman cyborg wannabes, even, cracking jokes about our stupidity — the dumb decisions made out of our own free will — laughing it up about our deservingness of a “Darwin Award.”
Why? Because we’re not “crazy.” We have a choice.
For all of the hollering about how it’s unfair to call transpeople crazy (”the DSM is just something we haven’t torn down because of insurance purposes! We know it’s evil!”), they’re the ones saying they don’t have a choice: I’d kill myself if transitioning wasn’t available to me! After all, what kind of idiot would I be to “choose” this life? I have the gnostic spark, the trans-gene, a gift from the Great Goddess Artemis who made me this way.
Not having a choice is the definition of crazy.
So is “like a fox.”
No, I don’t think all trans people are crazy, and I’m not talking of documented mental illness, it’s not about that, but how being “crazy” in that particular self-obsessed way is inherently patriarchal at the core and is thus actually protected by the patriarchy. And hell, we should all be jealous at times of that, that ability to self-justify anything is probably incredibly handy. It’s also the definition of “male” and patriarchy.
But what does that say about us, us stolid cisgendered oppressor-folk, and the choices that we make, the one’s that bring down fire and brimstone on our asses? We were asking for it, after all. No one made us like that. No Great Goddess informed our decisions, it’s not like we’d completely die if we went along with the status quo — well, except for the times when we do die, The Great Lie is even the undoing of straight, white Christian men, after all, so no one comes out completely unscathed — so what do our choices mean?
And what does it mean when our choices are weighed with or against the choices of the supposedly choiceless?
When some pornographer takes issue with me telling the truth about him and threatens to sue me for all I’m worth, which isn’t anything, though still undoubtedly terrifying, terrifying in ways that a lot of people reading this can’t understand (because they think he’s the one who stands against censorship and that I’m for it!), I brought that on myself.
I had a choice.
On the other hand, when a transwoman complains about sexism that she transitioned into — somehow a better place to occupy than being like, well, ME — I’m somehow her oppressor?
I’m privileged over her? Especially the mythical “her,” the transwoman who is the perfect passer, has no friends or family who know about her male, or formerly male, or what-the-fuck-ever-makes-you-satisfied-with-my-speech, status, who is the “perfect” recipient of traditional old-fashioned sexism against women and none of that junk that applies to how males treat the males they view as inferior.
Because that stuff is simultaneously worse to experience, hence the complaints of cisgendered privilege, and yet once transition has occurred, with all the proper certification, somehow the ugly males who have to deal with that same stuff are now the oppressors of the thusly certified? How’s that work again?
I’ve seen tons of hate-speech by transpeople. I’ve seen it allowed on this blog. Mostly, it’s self hatred, if not recognized as such. But it spills over and about.
I’m actually not a fan of John Stoltenberg. But the one thing his writing impressed upon me is that anyone more attached to their gender than their humanity is dangerous. They will hurt themselves. They will hurt you. They will stab you in your back — or your throat. Especially if you come between them and their ownership of gender.
Heart, with your indulgence, a tangent:
I asked a friend about god, apropos a conversation I was having with another friend about god. Here’s the answer I got. I hope you at least get a smile out of this. The answer was that he, the second he, believes in a god of sorts. The universe as god, he might go with…
“But the personal one who made the squid beings of Omicron Persei 8 to look like itself, and answers the personal prayers of the squid beings of Omicron Persei 8, and really gets pissed off at them if perverts among them put the D tenticle in the F recepticle (instead of in the D recepticle where Nature clearly intended it to go)— then that god-idea makes me laugh.
Carry on Rich.
I just ran four miles. And for the entire duration, the only thing I could think of was that I meant to say “The Old Lie” and not “The Great Lie” in my post up there.
That’s not because I’m a freak.
It’s not because I’m a perfectionist.
It’s not because I want to prove myself smarter than anyone else.
It’s because I know that someone, somewhere, will use that to discredit the rest of my message, to mock me, discredit me.
In fact, I wrote the above post twice. You wouldn’t have recognized the first version from what I originally entertained.
It was more petty. It was less precise and at the same time, less wide in scope. It wasn’t inferior: it was just more dangerous to post, less useful, less a lot of things, but no less honest. Not a single bit less honest.
Maybe about five words survived from the first version to the second. I have to be careful, I have to be precise. So does Heart, Amy, and a lot of the women here.
How much do you think I’d enjoy being able to write something without capital letters, punctuation, to be able to happily misspell and go about my merry way: To make up some fairy-tale name for myself to safely write under. To just go on and on about what pisses me off. Or take issue with random “facts” and make someone else write an entire book report to satisfy my self-righteousness — just to laugh in their face after they bother, because they’re still stupid and wrong. God, how much easier would things be!
And you know, it’s like that all over the place: the so-called feminist bloggers who have Katha Pollitt (and I just double checked how to spell her name!) kissing their asses, who are getting offered book deals, who have Ivy League educations, they get to be as sloppy as they want to be, too. They can gush and rant and carry on about the most trivial things.
The feminist writers who stand up to men, especially the pornographic and prostitution industry? Well, they have to be precise. They have to have their ducks in a row. They can’t ever have a day off.
i think that kinda sucks. dont you
Speaking of pot shots and attacking, I feel like chasingmoksha has been mischaracterizing my comments and I’d like to try again to respond. I was somewhat conciliatory last time, but I’m getting a bit impatient that she continues to twist what I said. CM, you’ve complained about being set up as the straw woman yourself, you should recognize when you do it too:
“My stronger criticism concerning race I think was evident when people (anyone) assert a precursor that race cannot be discussed (or understood) unless we explore the ENTIRE global history and dynamics of race.”"
I think you are referring to my post here where I submitted that white supremacy, as with any racial dynamic, is contextual and socially constructed while women’s oppression under global patriarchy is universal. To support my point, I named a few global and historical examples. You have still not explained what is wrong with any of this, except to hint at racism. Are we only allowed to talk about America here?
I was responding to this comment you made: “For the record, I do not think race trumps gender, nor do I think gender trumps race. I think they are two dynamics used by patriarchy, used by hegemony. The similarities cannot be ignored.” I still think the differences are important too. I was making a point, here on womensspace, about women’s oppression, how it is unique in important ways and how that has played out in other times and places. Some of us are interested in this. If you aren’t, fine, but you don’t have to derail the whole conversation.
“I honesty think, perhaps because white women are white that they do not consciously think of other skin colors when they are thinking of women.”
You seem to see yourself as someone here to teach other white women about race (“supposedly “white people” are to teach other “white people” about race” —yeah I took that class too), but can you see how arrogant that can sound? I know I don’t need to be lectured by you about race, especially if your lectures degenerate into rants against anyone who questions you.
Your comments belittling the idea of discussing the global dynamics of race actually exclude a hell of a lot of women of color. The beauty of the internet is that it IS GLOBAL and we can all learn from each other.
“Your comments belittling the idea of discussing the global dynamics of race actually exclude a hell of a lot of women of color. The beauty of the internet is that it IS GLOBAL and we can all learn from each other.”
There is nothing belittling about it unless it is inferred. If anyone and their brother want to discuss the global dynamics of racism before discussing racism then he or she is more than welcome. As I said numerous times, it SEEMS to be required often that it MUST be discussed before any type of race discussion can be considered seriously. How in the hell does that mean that people who do desire to discuss it in a global context is belittled? To me this criteria that racism HAS to be globally considered is the very thing that diverts racism topics. Racism can happen here and now without any help from consulting the history of Turkish Sultans.
Good God. I never claimed to be THE, as in the only one, or the main, or anything big, GOD DAMN teacher of racism, I am MY own FUCKING VOICE. I am not willing to own that title that I did not claim. But look what has been accomplished.
Race is so tangled up that in polite society we must avoid it all together. THANKS! Mission Accomplished. I will not discuss race until I come with my encyclopedia of globalism, sanctioned by POC, with numerous POC speaking for me. Be sure to apply that with discussions of vaginas as well. Don’t discuss it unless you have the encyclopedia of globalism covered first.
For the record, I do find it racist, or perhaps elitist, when precursors are set up as a mandatory. What makes it any different from men saying, “Before we take sexism discussions seriously people must.___________” Who made the person who said that globalism has to be considered first the ruler of racism discussion? Talk about belittling. I find it belittling when someone applies those conditions. It is as if unless one is a subject matter expert and consider EVERYTHING they are not entitled to say a word. If that were the case, there would be NO talking here about anything. NONE!
Unless I’m mistaken the person who made the comment you are referring to, CM, is not here today. I didn’t take it quite the way you did, although, yes, it stopped me, and I re-read it, twice. The way I took it was, she was distressed with the general lack of knowledge of history and especially the history of others, in America.
I’m open to correction.
ChasingMoksha, I took your first statement as though you were speaking for WOC when you are not a WOC (because that is what you meant and Heart even read that into your post). I am sick and tired of white privileged women trying to speak for WOC because they can’t possibly know my plight.
Caroline, what do you want from me? Do you want me to SUBMIT to you, do you want me to concede, do you want to POWER OVER me. How many times do I have to say this, I AM NOT SPEAKING FOR WOC. I am speaking for ME! You are giving me POWER!
Here are the comments which seem to be at issue:
In response to chasingmoksha’s comments, roaming around clarified as follows:
And again:
Violet Socks said:
Violet Socks then clarified as follows:
Again, I don’t see anyone saying anti-racism work has to *wait* until any of the above. I see both roaming around and violet socks calling for a better, more broad analysis of racism– that’s all. I don’t see them saying, “Don’t confront racism until you study it.” I see them saying, “We’ve got to get better at confronting racism and these are some of my thoughts about that.”
Heart
Yeah Pony, that opens another can of worms too. “IN AMERICA.” We dumb ole Amerikkkans aint got that rich European history that traces their ancestry to the 10th century and who can smugly walk away from the evils of the British Empires or play the victim that we were helpless to the Germans, etc etc. We’s is just dumb wild shootin’ all up for a buck fallin in line for the fascist Bush.
That accusation in itself is an American stereotype that would put an American who knows their stupidity and trying to correct that on defense.
CM, your issues around this seem to have sent you off the deep end. All your caps and fucks and goddamns don’t improve your arguments.
“discuss the global dynamics of racism before discussing racism”
What? How does that even make sense? And when did I suggest any precursors to anything?
“Race is so tangled up that in polite society we must avoid it all together.”
I choose to talk about race every day with people of many colors from many places, both face to face and virtually. I don’t want to avoid it. It’s a huge part of my world.
“Racism can happen here and now without any help from consulting the history of Turkish Sultans.”
Your sarcasm implies that anything to do with Turkey and its history is just too hopelessly obscure to matter. I think the whole world is interconnected and history affects everything. I also happen to have lived in Turkey (among other places) and it’s part of who I am. Just as your experiences inform your comments, I draw from mine.
But you only seem to want to talk about you.
No CM, what that means (in my mind) is that Americans think the rich long long history of this continent started when they got here on the Mayflower. And most Canadians are NO different, except the ship was called the Prince of Wales.
Heart, the reason precursors, or even hints at precursors are a big deal is because people who are oppressed always have some precursor to contend with. You must see that.
“First you must do this.”
“Oh you did that already, well let me see, now you must do this, now this, now this, now this, now this, now this……..”
It is the proverbial carrot on a stick
Perhaps it is not meant to be, perhaps it is NOT so. Yet how can anyone who can empathize who has had to put up with stuff and still not achieve anything not see what I am saying and see why I would be suspicious of a possible precursor such as considering all aspects and history of racism before one can discuss it. The deep discussions never materialize because someone is always there to throw in a but you are not this, or we must do this first….It is as if people do not want the discussion to take place. And it works, because I no longer want to discuss it. So I have been successfully shut up about it.
I have not talked about me Roamaround, you could not give any details about me or my life other than what I stated at the beginning. So you have won. Pat yourself on the back. That pesky topic of racism has been diverted.
“So you have won. Pat yourself on the back. That pesky topic of racism has been diverted.”
Now I’m the one who’s trying to divert you from championing the topic of racism? Are you serious?
chasingmoksha, I don’t think anyone was telling anybody else what they should do though or how racism should be confronted? The talk was about how we can better engage in the anti-racism work we are already engaging in?
What I’m getting is that possibly what was said was triggering to you, that it brought up a lot of stuff, something like, “ohmygod, there they go again, people who have the luxury of discussing all of this stuff without having to deal with it all of the time wanting to discuss it even more…” I do get that– I feel that way sometimes, but not so much with comments like roamaround’s or Violet Socks, who, it seems to me, have thought a lot about the issues, more with people who get all guilty and start doing the white-person-navel-gazing exercise white people do or with those who start hierarchicalizing themselves so far as who is the most or least guilty white person or something like that.
Heart
“championing”?????? How delighful. “But you only seem to want to talk about you.”"?
We can play this game all day roamaround. You point the finger at my language but take no responsiblity for your own.
Whatever.
Heart, sometimes mediation does not work. I love what you do here, but no one can explain another to another unless both parties are listening with their hearts.
Heart by identifying that it has “triggered me” you are now doing the same thing. You are dismissing the possibility that the one collective often is shut up by another collective by making it about my triggers and me. It is not about me personally or my triggers, or at least it is not about me being the center of that (I am only a tiny part of the whole). It is about how “elitist” type statements do tend to create an atmosphere of invalidation causing people to stop a topic.
There is no problem in seeing how what I said could lead to believing that I am trying to shut down the topic of considering a history first. Yet the same potential power to the other side of the argument is not being applied.
Chasing moksha I don’t want anything from you. I do not want to power over anyone. I was pointing out how I read your statement and was upset that you seemed to be speaking as a WOC when you are no such thing.
For maud’s sake, CM, roamaround, Pony, and Violet Socks were only saying a few brief things about the global histories of racism and sexism, not giving doctoral dissertations on them.
Now I’m elitist? Hey, I think this may be my first “flame war!” I have no idea how it happened really. I just don’t want to be unfairly characterized, and I don’t want global and historical analogies and references to be considered irrelevant.
CM, can’t you see my point at all?
Rich: Where’s MY book deal? I have an Ivy League education, after all.
Amy
Believe me, sisters, this is an internet phenomen. If we were all together in the same (pleasant) physical surroundings it would be going very differently.
Have a good evening. I’ll be dreaming in female.
Mary
chasingmoksha, I’m sorry, I do see what you’re saying. Rhondda, your point is definitely well taken. Yours too, Mary.
I do think you’re onto something, chasingmoksha. I recognize this dynamic from other discussions of this type. There is something going on here that you’re picking up on that others are not and that would likely be good for us to talk about. We don’t know each other so well yet, all of us, and that’s a problem. Mary’s right, in real life, it would be much easier.
Heart
Heart, could you explain the dynamic you’re talking about? I’m confused. I feel like I’ve been set up here. I know lots of you have longer histories, but aren’t new people welcome?
roamaround, you are so welcome! Argh. I hate it that you feel set up. I have really enjoyed your posts and hope you stay and keep posting.
When someone becomes angry like chasingmoksha is, something is usually going on that hasn’t been talked about yet. That’s all I really mean when I talk about the dynamic that I see. I’m not really talking about women being right, wrong, anything like that. More something like, something’s going on that is worth figuring out.
Again, no set up, no worries. I welcome you with my whole heart and am very sure all of us here do, long histories, short histories, no histories.
Heart
Make that herstories.
Heart
I sure do welcome you roamaround, but was waiting for Heart to speak since you addressed her.
I appreciate the welcome, Heart and Pony, and herstories indeed! I’m learning a lot on this blog and really appreciate all the diverse perspectives.
One of the things I really do like about this blog is that people really do try to figure out what each other are saying. For that, it does help to be reticent sometimes (not react too fast), but to also keep explaining, and to be clear. People are pretty good at those things around here, and it helps everyone think (or so it seems to me).
(It is interesting: I left one of those ‘enjoyed your post, I can relate’ [short, but sweet] comments on another blog and when I got back there, realized the author was angry because I had not engaged emotionally right off. I thought, wow, this is different: after observing all of these blog wars, and realizing how important it is to be genuine but tread lightly, I now meet someone who is put off by *that*. I feel badly since I seem to have hurt her feelings, but have not yet figured out what I could say on her thread that would improve matters. And anyway, I just really do think the tone struck here works better.)
“Do I believe in “nontrans privilege”? Yes, I do. But only males enjoy it. Females do not. We remain at the bottom of the heap, with respect to males, with respect to transwomen, with respect to transmen.”
Heart, my jaw dropped when I read this. If you truly believe this, then I don’t see any possibility of a meeting of minds with most of the trans people (both women and men) that I know.
Mary Sunshine’s words to Little Light are a perfect counterexample to what you are saying, yet you defend them (and her)?? My mind boggles. Do you not recognise the language?
“It” when applied to trans people by non-trans people is the epithet of dehumanisation. It says, you are an object of curiosity, an exotic, perhaps incongruous being, an object of desire maybe, but not quite fully human. It has been used by non-trans people through the decades (both male and female alike).
When Mary Sunshine called Little Light an “it”, she called me, and nexy, and UnimportantHero, and every trans woman I know an “it” as well. She dehumanised us all. That any of us was once male, enjoyed male privilege (however little or much) shouldn’t, in my opinion, even enter into the equation. In using that epithet I didn’t read her as speaking as subjugatee to subjugator, but as a member of the (relatively) privileged majority to an oppressed minority with a long history of being considered, and treated legally, socially, by providers of health care, etc., as subhuman.
To me that is hate speech. I’m sorry you disagree.
Also – on the ‘are you white or not’ thing: I originally created my blog voice as race and gender neutral, I was trying to be really anonymous, all I wanted to let out was which U.S. state I was in. The reason I came out as Euro- was that, based on the opinions I was expressing, people thought I was a POC (the most common opinion was Latin male, but I also got taken for Black female). I had in fact wanted to be just a voice, but realized it was impossible, I was going to be identified as something, and I didn’t want to be seen as ‘impersonating’ anyone or anything, and so that was why I gave up on that form of anonymity.
In using that epithet I didn’t read her as speaking as subjugatee to subjugator, but as a member of the (relatively) privileged majority to an oppressed minority with a long history of being considered, and treated legally, socially, by providers of health care, etc., as subhuman.
Yes, I understand, but Mary Sunshine and others do not see it this way, for all the reasons I set forth in my earlier post. I don’t agree that Mary Sunshine or any woman here is a member of a (relatively) privileged majority vis a vis transpersons. I think casting the relationship between females and transpersons as one of females enjoying comparative privilege is, in fact, another way in which females are being subordinated by men, transwomen, and now transmen.
I am not defending the use of any insulting or derogatory language, neither am I defending anybody’s use of it. I am saying it is different when someone with comparative privilege uses insulting or derogatory language against someone she is subjugating. It is not women who are subjugating transwomen or transmen and it never has been. It is men.
Heart
It’s interesting though– hypatia’s child, you’re saying there can be no meeting of the minds, once again, unless I (and others) agree with your definitions, your framings. That’s about power. Just your saying that evidences that in fact, compared with me or any woman here, it is you who has the power.
Heart
profacero, I know what you mean– sometimes there is no way to say the right thing, you are going to be wrong no matter what you say! Which completely sucks when all we have is words on a computer screen. Very frustrating when what you most want is to be supportive!
Heart
***“It” when applied to trans people by non-trans people is the epithet of dehumanisation. It says, you are an object of curiosity, an exotic, perhaps incongruous being, an object of desire maybe, but not quite fully human.***
Nah – I can understand the temptation to use “it”. It (the temptation) comes when you know you will incur disapproval and maybe even attack if you don’t use the person’s preferred pronoun, yet it feels like a compromise of your personal integrity and it hurts you if you do. I think there are better ways to deal with that conflict than using “it”, even if it does make speech a bit cumbersome, but I do understand the temptation.
Greetings all,
I use derogatory and insulting language towards transactivists because they have been using insulting and derogatory language towards me and my “ilk” for *decades* now, and psycho-socially terrorizing female-born feminists into conforming to their line, or be driven out as outcasts.
When that behaviour stops, then I’ll stop being rude, insulting and derogatory. It’s actually stressful for me and many of my allies here for me to have to speak that way.
I’ve been assaulted enough on the street, for being poor and looking like a Dyke, to know what kind of fight-back is required when dealing with bullies and cowards.
I’d like to be able to respect and honour transpeople as folks who honour and respect women’s boundaries. There are a very very few of these transpeople around ,they seem to be about .003 of the vocal transpopulation, and my heart goes out to them. Just as my heart goes out to Rich, who represents about .001 of the vocal male population.
Mary Sunshine
On this trans thing, and I don’t really know enough about the women/trans political dynamic to opine strongly, but I wonder: is it worthwhile to try to figure out in an absolute sense who is the most oppressed? In specific situations, sure. But I am one of those ‘women born women’, and I’m not disabled, or otherwise ‘different’, and although I do suffer from gender oppression as one does, I also think I benefit from privilege by being recognizably average/standard seeming – nobody ever says to me, for instance, ‘you are WHAT?’, or anything like that… ???
“It’s interesting though- hypatia’s child, you’re saying there can be no meeting of the minds, once again, unless I (and others) agree with your definitions, your framings. That’s about power. Just your saying that evidences that in fact, compared with me or any woman here, it is you who has the power.”
I’m sorry you got that from what I said, because that wasn’t my intention at all. All I was saying it that however many issues I, and some I know, may see through a conceptual lens that owes a lot to radical feminism, on this one issue, which is crucial to us but not you, the gulf between us is as wide as the Pacific Ocean. So any discussions we have will be tainted by that. It will always be the elephant in the middle of the room. No power, no coercion, just an exasperated sigh from a member of an oppressed class.
Actually, the rest of your reply just goes to show how far apart we are – you choose to frame our disagreement as “casting the relationship between females and transpersons as one of females enjoying comparative privilege” when I was really talking about the relationship between trans people and non-trans people — a group to which Mary Sunshine (apparently) belongs, even if she happens to be female. To you her femaleness exempts her from examining her non-trans privilege because she (you say) doesn’t have any. My emphatic disagreement, you call “another way in which females are being subordinated by men, transwomen, and now transmen” — on what planet are you living? As far as I know the only real power trans people as a group have is through our alliance with gay and lesbian political groups who far outstrip us in number and influence though they themselves are a vastly disadvantaged minority.
“Nah – I can understand the temptation to use “it”. It (the temptation) comes when you know you will incur disapproval and maybe even attack if you don’t use the person’s preferred pronoun, yet it feels like a compromise of your personal integrity and it hurts you if you do. I think there are better ways to deal with that conflict than using “it”, even if it does make speech a bit cumbersome, but I do understand the temptation.”
How does the exercise of courtesy compromise anyone’s personal integrity? And yeah, I can understand temptation too. As a white person, raised in a working class white community steeped in racism, I can understand the temptation to use the N word as a random passerby being pelted with stones from a porch in one’s own neighbourhood, thrown by youths who happen to be black. It’s still a racist impulse, and the word itself on the tongue of a white person racist and injurious, given the history behind its use.
“It” has a similar history for us. Maybe you didn’t know that? Now you do. You can choose to disbelieve it of course. You have that *privilege*.
I also think I benefit from privilege by being recognizably average/standard seeming – nobody ever says to me, for instance, ‘you are WHAT?’, or anything like that… ???
Well– but there are plenty of transpersons who also don’t get that response, you know? Lots of transpersons pass and nobody even knows they are transpersons ever. They just go on about their lives as most other people do who aren’t transpersons.
There are, of course, plenty of women to whom it is said, “you are WHAT?” (And males, for that matter.)
Heart
***How does the exercise of courtesy compromise anyone’s personal integrity?***
It does when the only “courteous” way to refer to a transwoman is “she” and “he” is considered as discourteous as “it”. It is like being obliged to call a chair a table. And, like Mary Sunshine, I’ll be courteous to you when you’re courteous to *me* and my “ilk”.
Hypatia’s Daughter: As far as I know the only real power trans people as a group have is through our alliance with gay and lesbian political groups who far outstrip us in number and influence though they themselves are a vastly disadvantaged minority.
To the degree that transpersons have in the past, or continue, to access male power, transpersons have power over females.
Let me ask you something. When you say there won’t be any “meeting of the minds” until I acknowledge that females have “non-trans privilege” over transpersons, who do you think is more likely to be supported, between the two of us, and by whom? Do you think male progressives are more likely to support you, as a transwoman, or radical feminists/lesbian separatists? Do you think feminists will support you as a transwoman or radical feminists/lesbian separatists? Do you think liberals will support you as a transwoman or radical feminists/lesbian separatists? Do you think the public in general is more likely to support you, as a transwoman, or radical feminists/lesbian separatists?
Which of us receives more support in our position, especially male support, tells us what is true about which of us enjoys power, vis a vis the other.
Heart
Heart – I know many transpersons pass, but part of what I’m thinking of is, what it must be loike to go through the decision making process for that, and then the transition, and probably getting c*** for it from the family, questions at work, all of this, you know … or being unusually gendered somehow (I don’t know if that’s the right way to put it) and not being able to afford to do what one would really want to about it … it just doesn’t sound easy, that’s all.
By which I don’t mean to say that someone who was raised as male, with male privilege, hasn’t had that as an advantage. I do get that. And that there are many women and men to whom it is said “you are WHAT?” (”What, you are NOT a mother, never married, is that not evidence of a Deep Psychological Problem, should you not at least register sadness over that, grieve for that?” is a question I get all the time.)
Yeah, profacero. I don’t argue that transpersons struggle uniquely– I think that they do. I don’t at all argue that it’s easy. I think Andrea Dworkin was right when she wrote that to feel as though you inhabit the wrong body is an emergency which, since patriarchy created it, patriarchy is obligated to address, including through surgeries.
She then goes on to say, though, that the real battle is with those who have the power to create these emergencies, so that we can put an end to the creation of the emergencies.
I am completely supportive of transpersons’ struggle for human, legal and civil rights. I can be completely supportive here without agreeing that I have “non-trans privilege.” To agree that I do, among other things, would be to say that gender coercion is something women ever authored together with men, or have ever enforced as men have or most importantly, have ever *benefitted from* as men have. It is to make space for appropriations and co-options and deconstructions and redefinings which are at odds with my own struggle for liberation. It is to participate in erasures which make my own fight for women more difficult. And a bunch of other stuff.
None of this changes my support for the rights of transpersons to full humanity, civil and human rights, I do. I support that for all people.
Heart
***Which of us receives support in our position, especially male support, tells us what is true about which of us enjoys power, vis a vis the other.***
Yes. And isn’t it true that even in gay and lesbian political groups, transwomen are receiving more support than radical feminists/lesbian separatists?
Hello all,
This discussion has not, so far, taken into account biologically intersexed individuals. If there were a neuter (non-gendered) pronoun that was applied to those people, I would use that pronoun (which refers to the human species) rather than the word it in my previous post.
I’ll get alongside the intersexed a lot more than I’ll get alongside the MTF’s or the FTM’s in terms of the political aggressions of the above-mentioned 3 groups.
The intersexed are not at all numerous, and (I think) deserve the recognition of their own dinstinctve and unique status and social interests.
I am very fortunate (I think) not to have had to grapple with that situation in my own individual life.
While I would not *particularly* at this point welcome them into women-only space, my thinking on that could be subject to change.
I also think that they would very likely have a unique perspective on feminism, which I would be interested to hear.
Mary Sunshine
Nods to Branjor: Hey, call me “it” all you like, folks! It’s clearly a less offensive word than being called a “he” or “him” if you listen to some of these people! If they’re right, than by all means, hit me with the “it!”
This whole discussion is pointless until self-avowed trans people themselves arrive on a definition of transness and come to grips honestly, and I mean honestly, with who it is they want to include and exclude from that demographic. Until then, everyone in this thread, me, Heart, what have you, is equally as trans as anyone else is.
“I’d like to be able to respect and honour transpeople as folks who honour and respect women’s boundaries. There are a very very few of these transpeople around ,they seem to be about .003 of the vocal transpopulation”
Mary: Speaking of percentage points, what does it say about privilege when trans-people are completely overrepresented in feminist spaces? They are more abundant by magnitudes of orders than statistics should indicate. And, contrary to public opinion, they’re not locked out of the power structure by any means. They’re co-bloggers on tons of the top “feminist blogs” out there, for starters, even guys like Barry Deutsch go out of their way to recruit them for a variety of reasons. Protesting Michfest gets you great jobs in feminist organizations too: heading up camp trans is a CV booster for going on to work for orgs like Choice USA (Sadie Crabtree). The message that males get out of all of this: Rape women enough, violate their space, push and manipulate them enough, and they’ll give you a job with dental.
“To agree that I do, among other things, would be to say that gender coercion is something women ever authored together with men, or have ever enforced as men have or most importantly, have ever *benefitted from* as men have. It is to make space for appropriations and co-options and deconstructions and redefinings which are at odds with my own struggle for liberation. It is to participate in erasures which make my own fight for women more difficult. And a bunch of other stuff.”
OK, and food for thought!!! I am going to go and think about privilege and what not.
Mary S, I think the non-gendered pronoun is “ze”.
R!ch – excellent last paragraph! Thanks for that. I know, that is so obvious to me and to anyone else who is thinking and not just saluting the flag. (Ask Heart why i used a ! instead of an i in your name …
)
Profacero, thanks for that. I’ll use it in the future.
Mary S.
“Rape women enough, violate their space, push and manipulate them enough, and they’ll give you a job with dental.”
…it really does seem to be the patriarchal m.o.
I prefer “na” as a nongendered pronoun, since it’s not a homophone for any current pronoun, and it was invented by a feminist–June Arnold, in her excellent novel “The Cook and the Carpenter,” which does not identify the characters by sex through 3/4 of the book. I’ve toyed with the idea of using “na” in my writings to refer to any and all persons, and I might just start.
Alternatively, there is Marge Piercy’s “per” (short for “person”) from “Woman on the Edge of Time” which I like less well because it can sound like “her.”
Ze/zhe/hir/boi etc were invented by the trans movement and I’m not wanting to use their language, especially because when speaking it’s not always evident that you are SAYING something different–which I think is not entirely accidental.
Great post, Rich!
Hello Heart,
I posted my disagreement with your well-thought out position on bigotry and hate speech here. Please correct me if I’ve misinterpreted you as that was not my intention.
Have a great night!
Ravenmn
Interesting thoughts about pronouns, Amy. ̶