In the past, I have sometimes taken issue with things Amanda Marcotte has written or done. If you do a search on this blog, you will come up with some things. I took issue with the proposed cover of her book, the one everyone is up in arms about, months ago, in this comments thread on Pandagon. All we could see then was the cover, but it sure did not portend well for what might be inside the book. My entry into the thread about the cover of the book, featuring a King Kong type figure ravishing a blonde, on August 21, 2007, was, “Amanda, the cover of that book is racist. The hell.”
But I am not down with what’s going on right now around Amanda’s book or Amanda, not at all. This will be the only post I will write about it and the only comment I will have about it anywhere.
On the day that Ampersand, of Alas a Blog, gets taken to task for — every single blessed day – benefitting from the sale of blatantly racist, misogynist pornography on his website, advertised not just by way of text but with pornographic imagery, photographs, maybe on that day I’ll take all of this outrage against Amanda, by people who suck up to Ampersand (and others who share Amp’s views) every single day, posting or commenting to his blog like they have some shred of sense, decency, or concern for female persons, seriously. Consider this fine specimen of feminist thought available to you every day, courtesy of Alas, a blog (warning, may trigger):
Ball Honeys is the premier BangBros ethnic site. BALL. Black, Asian, Latina, Ladies. I don’t think I can be any clearer than this. Some of the finest ethnic babes around. All featured in hot scenes, new every week. This is actually one of my favorite sites. The girls they find have the hottest asses around. Nothing beats a big, round booty. Nothing beats the Ball Honeys. Each week, the boys at BangBros deliver a new ethnic mama and get down to business.
Check it out for yourself, it is on Amp’s website (not safe for work, pornographic imagery). Caution, may trigger. (To go to the link, delete the spaces and paste it into your browser).
http://reviews.amptoons.com/ review/ball-honeys
On the day that Maia recognizes the seriousness of the presence of misogynist, racist pornographic images and text on Alas – where she regularly blogs – I’ll take her concerns about Seal Press and Amanda’s book seriously. When any of the crowd currently excoriating Amanda Marcotte begins to take racist, misogynist male pornographers and their apologists to task, I’ll view them as possibly having some shred of credibility, a leg to stand on, in criticizing Amanda Marcotte. When the Apostate’s perspectives — an immigrant, a woman of color, once homeless, a former muslim — are not shouted down, her motivations maligned, because she does not tow a predominantly white, liberal-guilt -fueled, or sexist-pretending-to-be-anti-racist party line usually favored more by white feminists — males especially – than persons of color, then I’ll pay attention to the women and men who are shouting the Apostate down with regularity and impugning her motivations, erasing her reality in every way they can, in the name of “calling out” some other woman’s (never a man’s) racism. It’s just so easy to hate a woman– isn’t it? It’s so easy to gather a crowd to go after a woman, and it’s not so easy at all to gather a similar crowd and to go after men. In fact, it’s dangerous.
I will have no part of the despicable behaviors I am witnessing right now on the blogosphere around Amanda’s book or Amanda herself. There is definitely no love lost between Marcotte and I. I don’t like her feminist politics and she doesn’t like mine, never has. But when I’ve taken issue with something she’s written, I’ve said my piece directly to Amanda, which is what I think you do if you care, remotely, about feminist women, if you have any concern whatsoever for sisterhood. I realize that’s an archaic concept to some — sisterhood — and anathema to men, for sure, but it will never be archaic to me and I don’t care what men think and haven’t for a very long time. Sisterhood, my sisters — this and they are what keep me getting up in the morning, putting one foot ahead of the other, when honest to the Mother I don’t really want to any more at times. The sisterhood, the hope of it, the reality of it, is what sustains me. I would suffocate without it.
I do not think the thing to do, because you take issue with something a feminist woman has done, is participate in or orchestrate a villagers-in-the-town-square scenario, everyone hollering the rough equivalent of ”burn the witch”, especially when day in, day out, you are giving men who profit, benefit, make and use racist, misogynist pornography a pass, when you are giving a pass to the women who support those men and spout the same rhetoric the men spout, or when you yourself participate in this. The particular bad energy, bad mojo, bad juju, blind hatred and spiraling violence, of this particular blogosphere ugliness, is what is responsible for what this world in all of its horror, hatred, mayhem is right now, that’s why this world looks the way it does right now. It’s what any authentic feminism, any authentic woman-centeredness, hell, any authentic concern for human beings, the earth, creatures, must recognize, reject, bring to an end.
Heart
Comments will be severely moderated.
Found this little gem too on his site.
Fleshlight
Score: 92 | Added: Jul 13, 2006
Fleshlight. It’s like having a girlfriend, but without all the nagging and headaches. Now more dates with Ms. Michigan. Find out if the Fleshlight is the real deal.
Nagging and headaches…Yeah, why can’t women just be holes for men’s pleasure? I think I’m gonna be sick. I can’t believe he’s as popular as he is with this kind of blatant women hating advertisement on his site.
Well I have taken issue with Amanda Marcotte’s book and I don’t visit or blog at Amp. So let’s get down to brass tacks shall we? Their issues do not mean that the racist imagery in *her* book gets a free pass. I called her out in public and will continue to do so and it has nothing to do with burning a witch and everything to do with not pretending that feminism is free of racism.
Exactly.
It is always so easy to make a woman the enemy. If the woman does not fit nicely in the script, you rewrite the script labeling her or assigning aspects to her that will make her fit. It is so tiring. When I read long drawn out entries from the same person over and over who blames everything on women, eventually I get to just scanning it (or ignoring it all together), looking for the point when it is revealed that a woman is at fault. It all goes back to the woman being at fault. And it is never the sticky entangling situations like the wife of that Marine who killed the woman he raped and how she did or should have acted. It is usually clear cases where men, men, men are entirely to blame, but in some bizarre twist that lone woman, that lone woman who was under duress should have and could have scooped in and saved everyone. Because she didn’t it is her fault, not only is it her fault it is anyone who looks like her fault as well, anyone who is labled as being the same as her. The woman is the expected saviour. “You are not my mother, but I expect you to be my mother, stop acting like my mother, I don’t need you to be my mother. You are not my saviour but I demand that you are my saviour. I don’t need you but hang you if you do not fulfill my needs. I do not want you, but dammit to hell with you for not making me want you.”
But I already read the dismissive meme, “we know, we should be looking at white men in power, yawn, what a typical diversion.” Well yes you imbecile you should be looking at white men in power.
I decided to take a break from another popular place for similar reasons. Let a man get some feminist points right and he is GOD. But pile on a woman for something you think she may have sort of kinda of but not sure did because it is just so darn much fun to pile on a woman while cuddling a man. He is so cute when he is thinking of us little wimmen.
karnythia, damn straight the racism in the book doesn’t get a free pass, you are so right. That’s why I called it out back in August, on Pandagon, directing my comments to Amanda herself, when all anybody knew of the book was what the (racist) cover looked like. The illustrations in the book are an ATROCITY and I can’t begin to wrap my mind around the nonlogic used in selecting that artwork. If I didn’t know better, I’d wonder if the artwork wasn’t selected to deliberately sabotage the book, but that doesn’t make sense, the publisher needs to make money, they aren’t going to throw their investment in the book down the toilet that way.
So true, Kitty, and especially so true about the “You’re not my savior, dammit, get back over here and do and be what I need you to do and be” routine. (Aside: Speaking for myself, for those reading and unfamiliar with the blogosphere or new to the blogosphere, I am talking about what is expected of women just in general here). Reminds me of a book I have about people with borderline personality disorder so-called (another subject for another day); the title of the book is, I Hate You, Don’t Leave Me. What might happen if we could harness the energy of the current freezing frenzy and focus it on white male supremacists instead of this one woman. But the men go right on in their racist, misogynist ways, take a short break to call out a woman, everybody joins in, and the men go right back to their racism and sexism. The mind boggles.
Amanda Marcotte and Seal Press issue an apology.
The offensive imagery will not appear in future editions of the book.
So, Amp (beginning with you), when is the racist porn on your blog coming down? These three women, Amanda and the two Seal Press editors, put their money where their mouths were. You, on the other hand, are just continuing to put the money in your wallet.
This idea that discussion and challenge of white women’s racism should be tabled until the sins of the patriarchy are addressed is one of many reasons I find myself completely removed from the label of feminist. My mind boggles that you want to critique the backlash against this book (which you already know is utilizing racist imagery) on the basis that the patriarchy still exists. Personally I’m capable of multitasking and I can challenge sexism and racism at the same time regardless of where it’s coming from or how it’s being presented.
Link to Seal Press’s apology
karnythia, yeah, I hear you, and I can also multitask: I can critique the racism in the book and, at the same time, critique the sexism and misogyny in the way Amanda Marcotte has been treated compared with the way Amp of Alas, a Blog (and any number of other blog personalities who similarly advocate for and promote racist, misogynist imagery and writings) have been treated. I don’t suggest tabling any discussion; I think a discussion of sexism *has* effectively been tabled, though, by a number of people who have gleefully participated in the book discussion. Many, many of the people attacking Amanda Marcotte are misogynists, if not in word, by their actions and what they advocate for. There’s a backstory, for sure, and I think it’s important to understanding what is playing out here.
anashi: Nagging and headaches…Yeah, why can’t women just be holes for men’s pleasure? I think I’m gonna be sick. I can’t believe he’s as popular as he is with this kind of blatant women hating advertisement on his site.
anashi, I hear you. Somehow this stuff doesn’t register as sexist. This crowd — those who know what’s on Amp’s site and don’t care — tend to bracket issues around sex off as somehow immune to feminist analysis and critique. It’s a liberal/libertarian/conservative too! perspective, that what goes on in the sack should be “private” and nobody else’s business. Of course, one reason for feminist revolution, historically, has been that what was going on in the sack was *abuse* of women and girls by men, and that abuse continued because men had decreed ahead of time that their sexual misogynies and racism should continue to be private — despite how many girls and women were raped, molested, incested, and otherwise abused. The same thing goes on so far as pornography; we’re supposed to pretend that because the racism and misogyny happen in the context of pornography, it doesn’t count somehow as racism and misogyny.
It’s good to have you back Heart.
karnythia, I think your comment shows why it’s so difficult to talk about this. If I understand what Heart is saying, she is pointing out that the degree and the means of attack levelled at Amanda Marcotte has a lot to do with her being a woman. This is not about denying, ignoring of minimising what Amanda has said or done that is racist, but turning the eye on what people are doing to her, and why and how.
Surely the racism she has displayed does not preclude anyone’s noticing the criticism coming from persons that themselves are racist and more than likely wank off to that hate against women of colour pornography described above. Can we only see one oppression at a time? Because women don’t experience them one at a time. The women at the receiving end of men using them in and wanking off to ‘Ball Honeys’ don’t experience racism and sexism as separate and unrelated. This is the thing that is difficult to put into words but I reckon that when men point out the racism of a white woman it is not for the sake of ethnic minority women but more for the sake of men.
I wonder who the artist was, and what gender they were.
Anyway, whether it’s applicable in this case or not , it’s not unusual for a friendly feminist package, to get loaded up with a concealed patriarchal incendiary device.
People make mistakes, even exceptional ones ; it’s called human, women are human beings.
Amanda apologised with great dignity. I hope those who’s feelings have been hurt, will find some comfort in that, and the fact that the prints will be withdrawn from future editions.
I think that it is legitimate to note that Amanda Marcotte is not the President and Sole Member of Racist White Women Bloggers, and I think it is possible to discuss what is not okay about how some other white bloggers seem to care more about having a chance to inflate themselves by piling on her.
I am unhappy with your remarks though, Heart, both the timing and the substance. I did address Amanda directly also during the book cover thread. Was ignored. As was everyone else who addressed her directly. She was completely dismissive and disrespectful in that thread. I also addressed her when she went to BFP’s to argue on the thread where BFP had not named her and had specifically asked that it not turn in to a BFP vs. AM circus. (Again, I will note that it was mostly white bloggers, other white women bloggers, who got circus-y about it. I don’t think it’s fair to characterize what Black Amazon, or Sudy, for instance, had to say about it as misogynist or mob-y.)
It is hurtful to read words to the effect of “until everybody addresses the porn on Alas, I am not going to weigh in on the racism of white feminist bloggers.” Again, I think it is possible to not-pile on in the hateful ways some bloggers have with AM while still taking seriously and talking about what is hateful about the racism that goes on among white feminists bloggers. And off line.
What you posted does not sound like a calling-out ONLY to the white women bloggers and men who have been using this opportunity to call Amanda the c-word and whatnot. It comes across as a sort of accusation towards anyone and everyone who has expressed hurt and anger about the flood of racist words and actions in the blogosphere lately, including bloggers who have every right to be hurt and angry and have expressed it in their usual thoughtful, penetrating ways.
I am not glad to see anyone bring a shit storm upon themselves. And again, I am not glad to see people use the cover of a shit storm to get their hate-on in a way that has nothing to do with truly supporting anti-racism. Be that as it may, there are and continue to be people who are saying important, necessary things about racism in feminism. The fact that A.M.’s choices have helped ignite those discussions more than once does not make the people having those discussions responsible for A.M.’s undeniably unpleasant situation.
It is hard for me not to feel your post here as being a derail, Heart. I don’t understand why it is important to point out the lameness of someone or something else in a way that links it and calls for prioritizing with something else that is terrible.
A: I don’t read amptoons
B: I think the degree of attack has less to do with her being a woman and more to do with her being a feminist. I expect better from feminists on race issues than I do from the mainstream. Just as we should expect better on sexism from people working some other anti-oppression angle. But the fact that other people screw up too doesn’t mean I’m gonna stop expecting more from feminists.
Thanks, Heart, for the support and for decrying the “blogwar” tactic. I’m not sure that people who are participating always intend it to turn out that way, but it keeps on happening, sometimes to the same people, and some of the participants — the same people, interestingly, who defend torture (BDSM) — do seem to take a sort of glee in it.
I was remarking to a friend this morning that we see nothing like this sort of uproar against the racist, sexist, misogynistic imagery in porn.
Which is not to say that racism shouldn’t be called out, but hello! Why does everyone conspire to defend misogynistic porn as free speech?
Jk: It is hard for me not to feel your post here as being a derail, Heart.
Hi, JK. I’ve read you, off and on, around the blogosphere. I have appreciated your insights, honesty and willingness to be vulnerable, to put yourself out there. You and I are miles and miles apart as to certain things which are central to my own commitment to women, though. So, I’ve kept my distance, pretty much. After all, women are wherever they are in their own journey. We’re all on our own paths, learning whatever it is we need to be learning.
You have not kept your distance from me. You’ve come to my blog with some feedback, criticisms, having never engaged me before, that I know of. In response, I am going to be very forthright and frank with you. My experience is, you can judge what a woman wants from other women by what she gives to other women– not always, but in general.
I have observed that you do something I find troublesome whenever I see it. Although you are (from my reading) a white, fairly privileged woman, you consistently align yourself with marginalized women and women of color as against — almost never white men, that I’ve seen, certainly, correct me if I’m wrong — but against white women. What’s that about? It’s one thing to connect with, and create relationships/community with, all sorts of women, wherever it makes sense. That’s a beautiful, beautiful thing. And of course, as feminists, in general it is our goal to support all women, and especially marginalized women. But that shouldn’t involve distancing oneself from women who are situated precisely as we are. Aligning on the internet, in words, as against women just like you (rhetorical you) doesn’t change the fact of how you, yourself are situated, doesn’t change the fact of your own privilege, whatever it might be. When I see a white woman who is forever criticizing white women as though she isn’t white herself, I stay away, most of the time. I think we ought to be all about the struggles of all women, again, to the degree we can understand women’s varying and individual struggles, but never by distancing ourselves from women whose realities are closest to our own in the various hierarchies of race, who we love, class, ability/disability.
As to derailing. This is my blog. I cannot derail anything on my own blog. Here, I decide what I want to talk about, and others decide if they want to talk about it with me, and if they do, they come here and (attempt to) comment. A derail would be me inserting my post up there, or comments, elsewhere on the internet, in someone else’s discussion, on someone else’s blog. Being very honest, again, your statement tends to cause me to want to stay far, far away from you.
I don’t understand why it is important to point out the lameness of someone or something else in a way that links it and calls for prioritizing with something else that is terrible.
“Lameness” is ableist terminology, and isn’t a word I want to be used here.
I think it’s important to point out, in this current situation, that white men who identify as liberal, progressive or feminist, or profeminist, have received an ongoing pass, no matter how racist/misogynist the material on their websites or blogs, from many of the villagers in the town square with torches in their hands, determined to lay down the smake on Amanda Marcotte, that bith. (Inside joke, mostly for flea. Ha. Bitter ha.)
Amanda is a woman.
Men being given a pass Amanda has not been given are men.
Feminism is all about, all about, all about the women. For me. Perhaps it isn’t for you, and if it isn’t, it’s all good, but this is my blog, and my blog is all about the women. It is also about, always, investigating and understanding the sexism of men, the internalized misogyny of women, and the way women align themselves with men as against women, something I think you are doing here, in failing to recognize the unconscionable double standard which “Amandagate” has illuminated.
Something that is not talked about anywhere near often enough on the internet: white men use racism not only against persons of color, but against white women as well. They forbid racial intermarriage. They lynch and otherwise brutalize black men with the justification that black men have raped or harrassed white women — a total lie. They then blame white women for their brutalities, by, for example, saying the women said they were raped, also a lie. White men blame white women for a racist history white women — chattel until very recently — had little to no power to change (but changed, in amazing, revolutionary ways, anyway, and when they did, white men attempted and still attempt to erase what white women did). They form their misogynist lips to suggest that white women have had the power white men have had in the U.S. and other racist white countries. We never did. We never have. We still don’t. We were victims of white men, owned by them, disenfranchised by them, used and exploited by them, taken from our families and moved to other countries, without civil or human rights. And in general, as white women, we are STILL the victims of white men. They prostitute us, objectify us, rape us, batter us, incest us, molest us, murder us, harrass us, mistreat us, in huge numbers, objectify us, pay us less money for the same work, enslave us in various ways. Do they step up to the plate and acknowledge that? A few do, but often the ones who do are not progressive, or “profeminist” or “queer” or leftist. Far too often leftists, and queer, and profeminist, so-called and progressive men, do their level best to erase our lives, our realities, and to blame us for what only white men have ever had the power to do under white male heterosupremacy. They lie. They deny their own battering and torture and rape and assault and incest of white women as well as women of color, and all of the consequences of all of the above, because otherwise they’d have to REALLY step up. They’d have to admit what they, themselves, and their fathers, and brothers, and best friends and white male supremacy, generally, have done to us. And that’s the last thing most white men ever want to do. The codes of white male heterosupremacy, the codes of white masculinity, require that white men have one another’s backs as against any women, especially, who threaten their power as white men.
Anxious Black Woman, in a really good post, wrote recently:
I think we HAVE to come together and fight racism and sexism simultaneously: because white women’s liberation is tied to women of color’s liberation. We can’t dismiss each other because 1) racism will continue to derail white women’s struggles with sexism and 2) white privilege, when unchallenged, will continue to marginalize women of color.
She is exactly right, and she hits powerfully on the half of the truth that rarely gets spoken when we discuss racism and sexism, that racism will continue to derail white women’s struggles with sexism in the same way that white privilege marginalizes women of color. She goes on to say, if you read her post (and you really should, link is below, title of the post is, Why I Am Still a Feminist,) that our struggles, as white women and women of color, are bound up together. This is so, so true, on so many levels, in so many different ways, including on this level I am talking about now, and which my post here was about. When white men (or white women) align themselves as against white feminists, attack white feminists for their “racism”, too often they are actually participating in a strange, upside down form of the sexist derailing Anxious Black Woman alludes to here. If they were actually committed to ending racism and ending sexism, they would live an anti-racist, anti-sexist life. They would consciously reject whiteness as it is constructed under white supremacy and the privilege that attends it. This has little to do with spouting off on the internet where anybody can say anything at all, any time, writing reams of words and great speeches, reading bell hooks or Audre Lorde and talking about master’s tools and silence not protecting you, or going to conferences. People can do all this and yet be living a white, privileged, sexist, racist life of Riley 24/7. This has little to do with being the good white “ally” always showing up to run off at the mouth on the blogs of people of color. It has to do with, again, rejecting whiteness *in real life ways*, rejecting white male supremacy *in real life ways*, with living a life in which those closest to you, those you love the most in all the world, those you would lay down your life for every single minute of every day, and do, are not white, it has to do with vesting yourself completely in communities of color. Do you do that? Do most of the white men or women spouting off 24/7 live that way? Is that the way the villagers in the town square with torches live? Those are rhetorical questions for you and those reading to ask yourselves. Please, I don’t want anybody’s answers. I am saying that those who are vested in racist pornography or who defend it punishing a white woman for her racism is often more a sexist shoring up of the racism the woman is theoretically being punished for than it is a challenge to racism or sexism, because of the way racism and sexism are intertwined.
Although I’ve already answered this, just to be sure:
It is hurtful to read words to the effect of “until everybody addresses the porn on Alas, I am not going to weigh in on the racism of white feminist bloggers.”
I have not said, believed, or thought this. There is nothing to this effect in this thread or on my blog, anywhere. I am saying, if you (rhetorical, generic you) haven’t addressed the racist misogynist pornography on Alas (or in other venues), don’t come talking to me about Amanda Marcotte, because you have no credibility with me, your behaviors are sexist and racist as well. Of course everyone should weigh in on racism. Everyone should also weigh in on sexism. But anybody can do that, you know? It doesn’t cost anyone anything to “weigh in.” What is more important is to consider that the two — racism and sexism — exist in symbiotic relationship with one another, with each propping up the other. Where you find one, you will find the other. A sexist, theoretically anti-racist person will prove, over time, always, to also be a racist. A racist, theoretically anti-sexist person will always prove ultimately to be a sexist as well.
Again, I am not glad to see people use the cover of a shit storm to get their hate-on in a way that has nothing to do with truly supporting anti-racism. Be that as it may, there are and continue to be people who are saying important, necessary things about racism in feminism.
I agree.
The fact that A.M.’s choices have helped ignite those discussions more than once does not make the people having those discussions responsible for A.M.’s undeniably unpleasant situation.
Amanda Marcotte is not responsible for shark feeds, villagers in the town square with torches, bullying, haters, pile-ons or the behaviors of those who are exploiting a fine opportunity to hate a woman. I’ll let everyone reading decide whether they fit into any of these categories.
So, that’s what I have for now.
Flea, you got it re flashback. Ha. Bitter ha.
Helzeph, the graphics were retro cartoons, from the 20s or 30s, a time when cartoons were quite often racist. I still don’t exactly get what the publishers were intending in using this art, even though I’ve read their explanations.
Arantxa: The women at the receiving end of men using them in and wanking off to ‘Ball Honeys’ don’t experience racism and sexism as separate and unrelated. This is the thing that is difficult to put into words but I reckon that when men point out the racism of a white woman it is not for the sake of ethnic minority women but more for the sake of men.
Exactly, and so good, Arantxa.
There’s more, but this is all I can manage for now.
Diary of an Anxious Black Woman’s blog is here.
Heart
Um, why the assumption that those who opposed AM’s racist imagery in her book are the same people who support or do not oppose porn/Alas A Blog? Why? There are tons in the blogosphere who were both hurt and angry with AMs book images and repeatedly speak out against porn and other forms of misogyny. I HATE Ampersand/Alas. I try to actively oppose ALL of those things. I do not believe in the “race trumps gender” or “gender trumps race” BS. I believe that racism and sexism are inherently connected oppressions. It is therefore necessary to critically analyze things going on both within and outside of the feminist movement, whether they have to do with racism “or” sexism (I put quotes around OR because sexism and racism are not separate or opposing oppressions, they are inherently connected).
I agree that this whole mess about the imagery on and within AM’s (unrevised, already published) book could be used as fodder for anti-feminists (”see? I told you feminists were a bunch of snooty racist white women!”) but that doesn’t mean we should stifle discussion about this within the feminist community.
White feminists need to ask themselves WHY so many women of color are feeling so alienated by this whole thing (the book publishing and AM’s refusal to acknowledge the hard work and research done by WOC). They need to take our feelings, views, and reactions seriously.
Lara, yeah, I’m talking to the (many) who opposed the imagery in AM’s book but have no problem with the racist pornography on Alas.
I believe that racism and sexism are inherently connected oppressions. It is therefore necessary to critically analyze things going on both within and outside of the feminist movement, whether they have to do with racism “or” sexism (I put quotes around OR because sexism and racism are not separate or opposing oppressions, they are inherently connected).
Exactly. They go together. You do not have one without the other.
White feminists need to ask themselves WHY so many women of color are feeling so alienated by this whole thing
I think there are problems with this statement. Some women of color are not alienated. And I don’t know who “white feminists” are. Some of these “white feminists” are presenting as more alienated than women of color. Which is what my comment above was about, in part.
Um, why the assumption that those who opposed AM’s racist imagery in her book are the same people who support or do not oppose porn/Alas A Blog? Why?
Why do you choose to make the shoe fit if it supposedly does not fit?
Okay, so, thanks for responding to me, Heart. A preface – I am not not-responding to much of the latter part of your reply out of dismissiveness or avoidance, I just am not understanding yet what it has to do with what I said, or what I think about it, once I have a better understanding. Forgive me if that is convoluted – I do feel convoluted right now.
I’m sorry for using “lameness,” I am still often in thuoghtless reflex-mode with my language on ableism.
“Although you are (from my reading) a white, fairly privileged woman, you consistently align yourself with marginalized women and women of color as against — almost never white men, that I’ve seen, certainly, correct me if I’m wrong — but against white women. What’s that about?”
I don’t know. Honestly, am not being flippant. It’s true that I don’t confront or even talk-behind-the-backs of white men the same way I do white women online. If that was the point of this post, to ask about and address that phenomenon in white women bloggers who are going apeshit for the glee of it lately, then I misunderstood, sorry about that.
I do agree that it’s your blog and you can write what you want, and also derail was probably not the right word. I just feel like, I wish there was or had been a way to say “hey white women, what’s with the [insert things that I, jk, am correctly identified as doing]?” that didn’t sound like you were saying “it is more important to identify and confront sexism than racism, enough already!”
I’m not saying that is what you said, or intended. It is very much how it hit my gut though when I read it. It’s also why Karnythia’s comments resonated with me.
But back to the confrontation of white women vs. white men.
“And of course, as feminists, in general it is our goal to support all women, and especially marginalized women. But that shouldn’t involve distancing oneself from women who are situated precisely as we are.”
I think I get why it looks like I distance myself from women who are situated precisely as I am. I mean I think it’s true that I do that, largely. There are women I can think of who are white, bloggers, who I am head over heels for. I feel weird saying why I think I do distance myself with many others, because of my awareness right now that you feel suspicious/uncomfortable with my habitual addressing of racism in white women. So I’m sorry if this exacerbates it – but honestly, Heart, why I distance myself is not because of some attempt to distance myself from the repsonsibility of being white/privileged/middle class. It’s that I do find a lot of white people to be white-centered. Most, even?
Like, as an example – what you said above about how feminists should support all women, especially marginalized women. Analyzing the who-is-who in that sentence looks to me like feminists are defined as white women or non-marginalized women at any rate, and puts marginalized women in a dependent position in relation to feminists (white women), what with being in a state of being owed-support-to.
That’s one instance, reading that right now, where I felt like – I just do not have the same feeling about life and the same situational outlook, even if we are both white and privileged. I don’t think that makes me a “good, rare white person” – I am plenty flawed, and I do talk about some of the ways, on my blog. I just, I grew up my whole life in a place that was super racist and homophobic and sexist among other things, and to stay up-close-with white-identified, white-centering populations of people, online or off, feels threatening to me. Either I keep quiet, so as not to tear the fabric of our closeness, or I say something and am disliked for it.
That said, I think it’s valid to question why I so rarely address men. I think one reason is that I am more and more withdrawing from male spaces anyway, and was never that much involved with men to begin with. But I do get what you’re saying – it’s a glaring silence, to be perfectly fine confronting racism in white women but to let white men go on their merry way with their bullshit.
It is a conundrum for me. To really address that point of your post, and your follow up reply to me, I don’t know what a solution is. I don’t feel comfortable being quiet about racism among white feminists, precisely *because* I am a white feminist and I don’t know who else’s responsibility it is to address it if not mine. At the same time, I don’t feel comfortable going out of my way to address men much anymore, white or of color. I do love some male bloggers of all kinds, but it’s true that I mostly avoid dudes online. I don’t like that it is leaving the impression that I hold women to a higher standard than men. Right now I don’t know what to do about it.
JK: Okay, so, thanks for responding to me, Heart. A preface – I am not not-responding to much of the latter part of your reply out of dismissiveness or avoidance, I just am not understanding yet what it has to do with what I said, or what I think about it, once I have a better understanding. Forgive me if that is convoluted – I do feel convoluted right now.
A lot of the last part of my post was a more general response to things said here by several people and wasn’t meant to be directed only to what you’ve written. I was talking about the way that aligning oneself with persons of color as against white women is not necessarily or usually, in and of itself, anti-racist and might, in fact, be both racist and sexist, given the way the two are entwined. White progressive men, a few of them, are experts at aligning themselves with persons of color as against white feminists in ways which are designed more to shore up their own male supremacy than to challenge racism.
I’m sorry for using “lameness,” I am still often in thuoghtless reflex-mode with my language on ableism.
I didn’t like correcting you, for what it’s worth, even though I do think “lame” shouldn’t be used as a pejorative, mostly because that kind of correcting is another thing that is done all over the internet, not because the person doing it really cares but in a scoring points kind of way which makes a mockery of the real issues involved. Again, anybody can say anything on the internet. Someone can correct someone for using the word “lame” and be the most ableist person around yet score points for denouncing the word “lame.”
It’s true that I don’t confront or even talk-behind-the-backs of white men the same way I do white women online. If that was the point of this post, to ask about and address that phenomenon in white women bloggers who are going apeshit for the glee of it lately, then I misunderstood, sorry about that.
That was one point of this post. I don’t think it’s about talking behind the backs so much– the sexism I am talking about is right out front and in the open.
I do agree that it’s your blog and you can write what you want, and also derail was probably not the right word. I just feel like, I wish there was or had been a way to say “hey white women, what’s with the [insert things that I, JK, am correctly identified as doing]?” that didn’t sound like you were saying “it is more important to identify and confront sexism than racism, enough already!”
I’m not saying that is what you said, or intended. It is very much how it hit my gut though when I read it. It’s also why Karnythia’s comments resonated with me.
Yes, I understand. The point I was making is that sexists can be (apparently) anti-racist and racists can be (apparently) anti-sexist and that in order to challenge and confront either ism, you have to see where and how each includes the other. A white man with racist, misogynist pornography on his blog who launches regular attacks on “white feminists” might be doing so (and usually is, in my experience) as much for reasons of sexism, or dominance, just in general, over women as he is doing so because he is concerned about racism. A woman who ignores racist, misogynist pornography on men’s blogs but regularly attacks “white feminists” might be doing so as much out of sexism, internalized misogyny, as she is doing so because challenging racism is important to her.
honestly, Heart, why I distance myself is not because of some attempt to distance myself from the repsonsibility of being white/privileged/middle class. It’s that I do find a lot of white people to be white-centered. Most, even?
JK, do you think you, as a white woman, are not white-centered? Why do you think that? What makes you not white-centered? The desire not to be? The fact that you recognize, you think, white-centeredness in others? Do you think distancing yourself from white feminists on the internet makes you less white-centered than others on the internet are? Why do you think that? I’m not really asking for answers and don’t expect them. I am saying that distancing oneself from “white feminists” on the internet doesn’t mean anything so far as the white centeredness of the white feminist doing it! It can amount to what a theorist I deeply appreciate describes as an attempt to “vault oneself out of power methodologically”. You (generic you) figure if you distance yourself from white feminists, that makes you less white, less loyal to whiteness. It doesn’t. It might mean you are not only not less loyal to whiteness, you are more loyal to the white male supremacy which is dedicated to policing white feminism so called because it poses a real challenge to white male power.
Like, as an example – what you said above about how feminists should support all women, especially marginalized women. Analyzing the who-is-who in that sentence looks to me like feminists are defined as white women or non-marginalized women at any rate
My saying feminists should support all women means exactly what it says– that feminists should support all women. Why do you think I am defining feminists as white women? Where do you see that? I think feminists of all races, ethnicities, class standing, regardless of who the woman loves, disabled or not disabled, young or old, should support all of the above and that feminism really is for everybody. I further think that there is no such woman as a “nonmarginalized” woman. All females are marginalized because they are female, even if they are not marginalized for any other reason.
puts marginalized women in a dependent position in relation to feminists (white women), what with being in a state of being owed-support-to
Again, why do feminists equal white women to you? Where do you see, in anything that I’ve written, that I equate or conflate the two. I think a whole lot of white women are not feminists and a whole lot of feminists are not white. I think that a whole lot of white women, including white feminists, are marginalized. I don’t think being marginalized equals being “dependent” on anyone. I *do* think feminism is about supporting the marginalized, and to the degree that we, ourselves are marginalized, we are deserving of women’s support. But that’s not about hierarchy, or “owing” or dependence, it’s about the fight for freedom, the fight for liberation that is what feminism is all about.
I just, I grew up my whole life in a place that was super racist and homophobic and sexist among other things, and to stay up-close-with white-identified, white-centering populations of people, online or off, feels threatening to me.
White-identified, white-centering, racist, sexist, homophobic populations feel threatening to me as well, and I avoid them like the plague!
I do not avoid white feminist women, though, who are consciously, by intention anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-homophobic, because they *are* women, and as women, they are marginalized compared with men, just like I am, and because my own liberation is tied up with theirs. I know that our shared opposition to all of these oppressions gives us common ground and solidarity to fight alongside one another, no matter the level of our consciousness or where we might be on our own journeys or what our specific experiences may be.
Either I keep quiet, so as not to tear the fabric of our closeness, or I say something and am disliked for it.
Yes, but the above is going to be an issue no matter where we hang out. There is racism, classism, lesbophobia and sexism in communities of color, amongst the poor, in the lesbian community, etc. Do you fear tearing the fabric of closeness, or saying something and being disliked for it, in these other, not-specifically-white-heterosexual-feminist communities? Again, I’m not really looking for an answer; I am asking the question, though, and I think the answer is important. Why might it be that in aligning with, for example, nonwhite communities, you, as a white person, might not worry about the fabric of closeness being torn, might not worry about saying something and being disliked for it? If you do worry, why might that particular worry or fear be more palatable to you, or acceptable, in communities of color, say, than it is in the white feminist community?
Apostate: I’m not sure that people who are participating always intend it to turn out that way, but it keeps on happening, sometimes to the same people, and some of the participants — the same people, interestingly, who defend torture (BDSM) — do seem to take a sort of glee in it.
Yeah. I’ve observed the same thing many, many times.
I’ve rewritten some parts of my comment 16 and sincerely apologize for how muddy and murky it was. I am trying to get at things that are hard to get at and to say things that are really hard to say. In reworking some of those paragraphs, I arrived at this:
“I am saying that those who are vested in racist pornography or who defend it punishing a white woman for her racism is often more a sexist shoring up of the racism the woman is theoretically being punished for than it is a challenge to racism or sexism, because of the way racism and sexism are intertwined.”
This is a better statement of what I was trying to communicate in that comment. Again, I apologize for the murk.
I am saying, too, that those who actively defend racist, misogynist pornography, or tolerate it, are, themselves, by definition, behaving as sexists and racists no matter who they are; given that I believe this to be so, the pile on of Amanda Marcotte for racism seems incongruous. The racism and sexism in the pornography you defend and tolerate are different or acceptable precisely how? And why? Where are the apologies for that racism, that sexism, the fetishization, depictions of women as less than human?
If instead of publishing the book with those cartoons, Amanda had published racist and sexist pornography, would that have resulted in the same outrage? Or any outrage at all?
Damn, that post #16 is awesome. Make it into its own post! Or article! Or something, eventually…in your, you know, “spare time.”
Right on.
I don’t know what my favorite part of that one paragraph is, but it might be this:
Far too often leftists, and queer, and profeminist, so-called and progressive men, do their level best to erase our lives, our realities, and to blame us for what only white men have ever had the power to do under white male heterosupremacy. They lie. They deny their own battering and torture and rape and assault and incest of white women as well as women of color, and all of the consequences of all of the above, because otherwise they’d have to REALLY step up. They’d have to admit what they, themselves, and their fathers, and brothers, and best friends and white male supremacy, generally, have done to us. And that’s the last thing most white men ever want to do. The codes of white male heterosupremacy, the codes of white masculinity, require that white men have one another’s backs as against any women, especially, who threaten their power as white men.
[...] http://womensspace.wordpress.com/2008/04/25/villagers-in-the-town-square-torches-blazing/ [...]
The racism and sexism in the pornography you defend and tolerate are different or acceptable precisely how? And why? Where are the apologies for that racism, that sexism, the fetishization, depictions of women as less than human?
Indeed, how and why is this different?
I think the bottom line is we spend too much time attacking women, and not enough time attacking the male pornography/sexism/racism machine out there.
There are real womanhating male radio hosts every day saying dreadful things about women. Other women call into these radio shows to agree with the white male sexist host. It boggles the mind.
We are in a war against male supremacy. It exists everywhere in the world. And we as women are easily sidetracked by the fake male “feminists” out there. Liberal men, libertarian men… sexist to the core when it comes to their own homes, their own backyards, their own marriages…
It is pretty easy to see this, and to wonder, why do women continue to marry men to begin with. When women overcome their addiction to men, then something will shift.
This addiction is sanctioned by everyone.
Either we believe women are capable of supporting one another or we don’t. It’s the bottom line for me. Everything else is simply an add on oppression, but the major oppression is what happens to women in their own homes with their own children, held hostage by the men. They are kept in economic servitude, they are denied their very identity, they do unpaid work, and they pay the price in poverty when the men beat the heck out of them, or when men walk out on women.
The issue is men: their evil, their complicity, their war on women. That’s all it ever is about.
The absolute glee being shown in the trashing of Amanda Marcotte is disgusting. Oh, happy day, everyone’s found something to call her on, that at the same time, lets them buff up their own rightousness credentials.
After all, it’s so easy to trash a female, especially one with the audacity to have strong opinions, state them, and even worse, use those opinions to drive her to success. Maybe Satsuma’s right and there is resentment against successful women even in the feminist arena.
Hearrt, it gets better. They’re pimping Amp’s book on Pandagon. Wow, let’s give him brownie points because he’s written about a girl!
Oh god, re Amp’s book. Amp writing a book about a 12-year-old or 11-year-old girl, or from her standpoint theoretically — like he has clue one what it is to be a 12-year-old girl, but he co-opts that experience anyway like he’s out of his gourd — creeps me out, for a lot of reasons. There’s a lot of squicky stuff like that on Alas, like that other male guest blogger over there who writes about “My Daughter’s Vagina.” Hello, you have nothing to do with your daughter’s genitalia, why are you writing something like that? Step severely AWAY. You sound like the patriarchs with the chastity pledges and the father-daughter proms. ICK.
Thanks, funnie!
Okay, I am wading into this not as someone who has only followed the whole AM/Seal Press controversy a little. What I am reacting to is not that controversy per se, but the idea that I am sensing here that we should criticize women less and focus on men. I think that attitude is unhealthy and allows negative things like racism to flourish within the feminist community.
Let me explain: Black women are often told that giving voice to misogyny within our community counts as an attack on black men, who are already oppressed by white society. We are told that we should be focused on racism and its impact on black people as a whole (but really mostly black men). Many of us learn to swallow our own marginalization and avoid complaining loudly about wrongs done against us for fear of piling on and being a tool of the oppressor. In a forum on hip hop that was broadcast last year, Nelly, the artist responsible for that heinous video featuring a woman getting a credit card swiped down her rear, blasted the black women of Spelman College who spoke out against his planned appearance at their school. Why were these activist young women in the wrong? Well, in Nelly’s mind, they should not have “attacked” him publicly. They should have found some quiet way to address their anger at his misogyny. By mounting a protest, they were aligning with white society against him. I say HOGWASH! But this attitude is rife in the black community and it is one reason why a lot of sexism has gone unchallenged for far too long.
My concern is that there is a similar sentiment here: To vociferously call a feminist out on her racism is to join society in the oppression of women. As women conerned about equality, we should focus on sexism and its impact on women as a whole (but really white women). Feminists of color should learn to swallow our own marginalization within the movement and avoid complaining loudly about wrongs done against us for fear of piling on and being a tool of the oppressor. And that idea, I fear, will have the same affect that is does re: sexism and the black community. The notion will allow privilege and racism to flourish within the movement.
I think we should be vocal about calling out sexism, racism and other “isms” where we find them.
Maybe I am misreading or projecting.
Hey, Tami, my short response is, I don’t disagree with you.
I think we do have to call out racism in feminism whenever we see it. It’s been important to me to do that for all of the time I’ve had any internet presence. And, I’ve done that consistently and gotten the left boot of sistership for it consistently, too. But I have also observed that men — both white and men of color — get an ongoing pass on their sexism, including in feminism and on their sexualized racism, their fetishization of race. They link to/sell misogynist pornography, they support the prostituting of women, openly, they post sexist garbage, they support sexist, racist jerks. And they identify as “feminists” and “pro-feminists” while they are doing all of the above.
I called out Amanda on the racism on her book cover before the book was published, last August, when she asked for comments on the cover. I’m restating that because I do think we have to call out racism in feminism and I don’t want there to be any mistake about that. Here we are now, the book’s been published and Marcotte and Seal are being excoriated to the highest level of heaven — *including by sexist, racist men, and their supporters, many of them women, many of them white women* — of the flavor I mention in my paragraph above. To me, that is sexism among anti-racists. It is every bit as wrong as racism among anti-sexists. At the moment racism is being called out across the blogosphere, but the sexism of a large number of people calling out the racism is, once again, ad infinitum, ad nauseum getting a pass. Again. Some more still.
I think unapologetic sexism should draw the same kind of reaction that unapologetic racism does. It pisses me off to no end that some of the most sexist men and women on the internet — sexist by their advocacies, sexist by their politics, sexist by their practices — people who have engaged in stuff at least as bad and sometimes far worse than Seal Press/Amanda Marcotte, are gleefully joining in to bash the aforementioned like their own hands are clean. They are not.
I think we have to address the racism in feminism and the sexism in anti-racism and the classism in both feminism and anti-racism all at the same time. I think that’s really, really hard to do without it seeming as though we are focusing too intently on one head of the Hydra while giving the other heads short shrift. But it’s whatever is wrong at the moment that needs to be challenged, I think, not what’s right. It’s right to challenge racism, it’s right to denounce Seal Press and Amanda Marcottes’ decisions to use racist imagery in their book, that is completely right. And it’s being done. But if you’re as guilty of racism as the person you’re challenging and nobody’s saying that, and you’re clobbering a woman for what you, yourself are also guilty of, that’s sexism and that’s wrong. That is what has not been addressed adequately, that head of the Hydra just bobs and weaves and does its damage.
Thanks for commenting, I felt sort of worried not hearing anything from you.
Another thing is, quite a few of us internet feminists/progressives/anti-racists/bloggers, go quite a ways back, to 1999, 2000, before there was a blogosphere like there is now, back to the old Ms boards which were closed down in 2001 or thereabouts. We’ve been reading each other, or engaging each other, for seven, eight, nine years now, we have a history, also, in some cases, baggage, which factor in to blogosphere politics and dynamics and brouhahas but which those comparatively new to internet politics usually aren’t aware of. There are layers to these things, everybody doesn’t have the same history, everyone isn’t on the same page so undoubtedly there is some confusion for those fairly new to the blogosphere. Over time, things become more clear.
No worries. I was following the discussion, but was kind of hesitant to weigh in because I am still just getting a handle on the whole debacle.
I am concerned about the imagery in Amanda Marcotte’s book, as well as what looks like unaddressed appropriation of content from a feminist of color.
After reading your post I read discussions of the issue on Pandagon and other sites. What is bothering me about some of the defense of Amanda Marcotte is the tone of “bad feminists of color for attacking the nice, white feminist lady.” We’re being deemed too sensitive and, as always, too angry. While many feminists are rising to Marcotte’s defense, I am hearing some of them use much of the same language that men use to defend misogyny to shut down FOCs and defend racism. That’s a problem.
But I totally understand where you are coming from and I agree: There are a lot of folks throwing stones at Marcotte from inside their palatial glass houses.
So, here are some thoughts I have about this post and the questions you’ve asked me in comments, Heart, and on the goings-on that seemed to spark this post in the first place.
1. I think that what you are saying is that this post was about the hypocrisy of other white women bloggers who are being vicious and/or specifically misogynist towards AM in their “confrontation” of the racist images in her book (and prior to that, in connection with the specifically-unasked-for-by-BFP-herself AM vs. BFP re-direct that went on regarding appropriation, and toxic responses to BFP that arose when she talked about it). I think that what you are saying is that, when done with obviously misogynist delight, these are not confrontations of racism in other white women by white women, but are excuses to attack someone they didn’t like anyway, and are particularly ugly because of how some/many(?) of those same white women on the attack have zero to say about racist pornography on sites of their friends?
If I’m understanding you correctly, I agree with that.
2. Is it clear that how I took this post when I read it was that it was a critique of any feminists addressing racism in white feminists at all, because it was a using of their time that could have been used addressing racist sexism in men? I think it’s clear from stuff you’ve said that you understand that’s how I took it, but am not wanting to make assumptions.
3. You have also since stated in this thread that it’s not what you meant – that you do think it’s necessary for feminists to address racism in other feminists. One thing I am confused about is if you are saying that you think I have been a part of the use-a-pretend-concern-about-racism-to-make-myself-look-good-by-attacking-other-white-women-while-letting-racism-and-sexism-in-men-go-unchalleneged?
I know that I have largely stayed out of what gets dismissively referred to as the “sex wars,” and I am lately thinking and working on posts about why that is. I know that there’s stuff that goes on between some white women bloggers who seem to perpetually be attacking other white women bloggers. I don’t feel like I have done that, but I would like to understand why you do, if you do.
4. I don’t think that your questions about who you think I align myself with, and in opposition to whom, are off topic per se, but I do feel uncomfortable with having that conversation in this particular thread. It has to do with feeling like – and I think you have been trying to explain that it isn’t what you meant to convey – what we’ve talked about in terms of how I initially read this post. I feel weird about saying “this bummed me out because it sounded like you were saying white women (and I did not know that you may not have been including also women of color) should not address racism in other white women until the racism of sexist men has been thoroughly addressed,” and then next thing you know I am focusing on me, and why I’m not this or why I am that. Does that make sense? I feel like if you are not saying that, if what you wrote was pinpointing the, agreeably as far as I’m concerned, toxicity of white women bloggers using this situation as an excuse to attack someone instead of addressing what she did without hatefulness, then I misunderstood you. To me, that’s the conversation I feel comfortable having on this specific thread.
Your questions about why I seem aligned against white women are of interest to me. Is it okay for us to have that discussion outside of this topic, as I, again, am not comfortable making this thread about me?
5. As for the correcting-me thing, I would say that I didn’t take it as you trying to score points by chastising me. And lately I wonder if that is also part of the dynamics of what is going on – a feeling like there is not a clear way to distinguish between saying “gotcha!” versus respecting another person and people in general enough to say “hey, from what you just said it seems like you don’t know why that could be hurtful to say, so here’s some info on why it was.” I didn’t feel like you were trying to win an Ableist Ally of the Year award. I felt like you were just saying “hello, that word and stuff,” and I wasn’t thinking about it before you mentioned it. I see it as a good thing that I stop not-thinking about it. If you had created a whole post about what a horribly insincere, power-hungry monster I am for using “lameness” without thinking, then that would be something I understood as a gotcha type of thing.
I don’t have the kind of history and current experience with most of the people I see doing those kinds of things. I would venture to say that I know I have relationships with some bloggers who also have been on friendly terms with some bloggers who do those things, particularly when it comes to the supposed “sex wars.”
(I say supposed because it’s not a fight about sex in my view, plus I think it, like many things that matter to women, gets trivialized towards both sides as being basically a school yard cat fight, and also as being distill-able down to a two-sided loves sex/hates sex disagreement. I resent that trivialization, not the people who are being trivialized.)
At any rate, I am wondering if my two-degrees-of-separation thing with some people who you and other white feminists have ongoing conflict with is any part of why you might see me as being aligned against other white feminists. If the fact that I haven’t written posts or commented on other posts about what goes on between some white women bloggers and some others, in re: to prostitution, porn, etc., has been taken to mean I am on the side of pro-prostitution and porn, basically? I’m not trying to put words in your mouth or stir up shit that god knows is constantly on-the-stir anyway, I’m just asking it because it’s what some of our conversation here has made me think about.
6. Okay with that statement of yours that I said sounded to me like feminists = white women and put feminists (white women) in a different group than marginalized women – the statement I responded to was:
“And of course, as feminists, in general it is our goal to support all women, and especially marginalized women.”
I agree that all women are marginalized as women, in a male surpremacist world. My understanding of who is being talked about whenever a white woman self-identifying as feminist uses the term “marginalized women,” therefore, is that it’s women who are marginalized from a “center” in some women’s feminism that has been defined as white, hetero, able bodied, middle class… So to me the statement that it is a goal for feminists to support all women, especially marginalized women, read like there was a distinction between regular old feminists, and marginalized women they should be including in their support for all women. I think you are saying that is not how you meant it to read? But that’s what I meant, in what I had so say about that sentence. Maybe it is indeed saying something about my gaze that I did not read it as meaning “marginalized women should of course support marginalized women,” without there being a distinction between women who are marginalized *within* what the most visible, palatable form of feminism has been in the United States, which is to say, a white supremacist, middle class, form of feminism.
For better or worse, when I do hear white women use the word “feminists” and then separately use the word “marginalized women,” I am used to reading it as them making a distinction between the group they see themselves in – feminists (without qualifier) – and a group they may care about but do identify (and often correctly) as separate from them – marginalized women within mainstream feminism. Does that make any more sense about how I read that and what I meant in my response to it?
7. I actually am making a post at my blog now to answer your direct questions about my alignments and lacks thereof when it comes to other white women. I assure you that it is not a gotcha post, and will not be allowed to become a tell-Heart-to-go-fuck-herself thread.
Tami, it is true that many white feminist women treat sexism and racism as if they were separate (because, to them, they are separate) and to the extent that we do that we are campaigning around things that concern white women only. This is true. My experience is that it is widespread.
I can speak up against this when I see it happening and see it for what it is. And I can also speak up against white women and men ganging up on a woman in order to appear anti-racist themselves while fully endorsing racism in forms they find acceptable, i.e. hate against women of colour pornography that they can wank off to.
This isn’t a question of picking one or the other, is it? Is there a contradiction in doing both at the same time? If I understand what Heart is saying, she has done and is doing both.
You know, there are so many layers to this stuff, honestly.
I will slag off some more on Amp because he so deserves it, first of all, and he’s the example that comes immediately to mind. Amp, a white, heterosexual man, has a history of banning/deleting the posts of white radical feminists on his blog (when we used to post there years ago, before he sold his blog to an outfit that promotes misogynist, racist pornography) because he is such a hothouse flower he can’t deal with (white) women’s rage directed at him for behaving like a sexist (and racist) jerk (he has explained many times that it’s his blog and if feminist women are too rude or raging, he can’t deal with it). Yet he consistently presents as the chivalrous white male liberal, just so all understanding of, and supportive of, the rage of women of color so long as it is directed against the racism of white feminists, whom he loves to join in describing as nice white ladies when it suits him, though we were the same nice white ladies he consistently banned from his blog because we were NOT nice enough to him and were too mean and raging, also too rude and not polite enough. All the while he makes big bank with racist, sexist pornography on his blog. And all the while, for the most part, he *supports* white feminist women so long as they do not criticize, for example, the racist, sexist pornography on his blog (like, for example, Amanda Marcotte) and who join him in criticizing the white feminists who are too raging. The levels and layers of manipulation, dishonesty, patriarchal-style-you-pat-my-back-I’ll-pat-yours and hypocrisy compound in mind-boggling fashion.
So finally Amanda Marcotte, whom Amp has consistently defended any time anybody criticizes her for anything at all, because she’s always nice to him no matter what a sexist, racist jerk he’s being, goes too far, and now he HAS to join in the denunciations, but it’s disgusting because honest to god, the ONLY reason he’s joined in is because finally Amanda’s gone too far and he has no other choice or he’s right there in the doghouse too. But if he’d been a tad bit less of a fracking arrogant hypocrite years ago, if he’d had any integrity at all, if instead of banning white feminists because we were so mean and raging, if he’d paid attention to why we were feeling mean and angry, PERHAPS Amanda would not have gotten to this point. She got to this point, in part, because she has consistently ignored and dismissed anybody who criticized her for being sexist or racist, and she could ignore them because she knew she could count on people like Amp to defend her no matter what she did.
I just have no respect for any of this. It reeks, again, of cronyism and I’ll defend your indiscretions if you’ll defend mine, there’s so little integrity in it or real commitment or dedication to the elimination of injustice and oppression. So there are people of color and people of conscience who are correctly enraged by this outrageous debacle, and understandably so. Then there are all of the people piling on, most of them white, even though they have a history of ignoring racist and sexist acts and advocacies for a long time, or behaving in racist, sexist ways, but suddenly they are all self-righteous about Amanda Marcotte and Seal Press. And then there are people who are just sexist haters who are exploiting an opportunity to hate a feminist woman, riding in on the coattails of the legitimate outrage of people of color.
These latter two groups are the ones I’m addressing. But there are, honestly, so many backstories here, and they all figure in to how I have responded to this particular outrage. It’s completely understandable that none of this might be particularly understandable to folks who are comparatively new to the blogosphere.
Anyway, yeah. I agree with you.
Arantxa: And I can also speak up against white women and men ganging up on a woman in order to appear anti-racist themselves while fully endorsing racism in forms they find acceptable, i.e. hate against women of colour pornography that they can wank off to.
What it takes me a thousand words to write, Arantxa writes in one sentence. :/
Tami, I can only speak for myself but I’ll say that there is nothing to say in Amanda Marcotte’s defence. I don’t get the feeling, at all, that Heart is defending Amanda or making excuses for her racist book. The book is racist. Amanda is racist.
Then consider Heart’s question: ‘If instead of publishing the book with those cartoons, Amanda had published racist and sexist pornography, would that have resulted in the same outrage? Or any outrage at all?’
Hate against black women pornography is not a threat to men. No matter how much violence men visit upon women who are abused through, or as a result of, the making of such pornography, there will never be any outrage from men of any ethnicity.
Feminism does threaten men. White men, when they feel threatened by the idea of sex equality, suddenly become acutely aware of racism and are quick to point it out. Well, at least if the racist in question is a feminist woman. But they’ll only ‘care’ as long as it’ll work against feminist women and as long as their anti-racism performance can be accomplished while leaving their racist privilege intact.
Hi, JK,
1. I think that what you are saying is that this post was about the hypocrisy of other white women bloggers who are being vicious and/or specifically misogynist towards AM in their “confrontation” of the racist images in her book (and prior to that, in connection with the specifically-unasked-for-by-BFP-herself AM vs. BFP re-direct that went on regarding appropriation, and toxic responses to BFP that arose when she talked about it). I think that what you are saying is that, when done with obviously misogynist delight, these are not confrontations of racism in other white women by white women, but are excuses to attack someone they didn’t like anyway, and are particularly ugly because of how some/many(?) of those same white women on the attack have zero to say about racist pornography on sites of their friends?
If I’m understanding you correctly, I agree with that.
You are understanding me correctly, so we are agreed.
2. Is it clear that how I took this post when I read it was that it was a critique of any feminists addressing racism in white feminists at all, because it was a using of their time that could have been used addressing racist sexism in men? I think it’s clear from stuff you’ve said that you understand that’s how I took it, but am not wanting to make assumptions.
Yes, I understood that was how you took it.
3. You have also since stated in this thread that it’s not what you meant – that you do think it’s necessary for feminists to address racism in other feminists. One thing I am confused about is if you are saying that you think I have been a part of the use-a-pretend-concern-about-racism-to-make-myself-look-good-by-attacking-other-white-women-while-letting-racism-and-sexism-in-men-go-unchalleneged?
My sense of your position — and I can’t give specifics, this is just my sense from having read you wherever and whenever I have read you — is that you aren’t really that concerned about what men do or say that is sexist, it sort of flies under the radar with you. My sense is that you want to align yourself with people of color, both men and women. I don’t think I recall ever having seen you comment to the blogs of white feminists (until now, to mine). I wouldn’t accuse you of pretending concern to make yourself look good because I don’t think anybody who wasn’t at all concerned would be posting so consistently and thoughtfully to the blogs of people of color. At the same time, the fact that sexism seems to fly under the radar with you (my interpretation having seen that you don’t say much about sexism), and the way you seem to distance yourself from white feminists troubles me.
4. Your questions about why I seem aligned against white women are of interest to me. Is it okay for us to have that discussion outside of this topic, as I, again, am not comfortable making this thread about me?
I don’t know whether I will want to have that discussion, actually, though I might if the context seemed right. I know I asked the questions, but as I said when I asked them, I wasn’t really seeking yours or anyone’s answers so much as I was asking questions I think it is more important to ask than to hear answers to.
Re the word “lame”, gotchas, etc. Thanks for your intelligent response. I appreciate it too when someone brings something like that to my attention. Recently Satsuma said I shouldn’t use the term “pornhound” to refer to men who make/use pornography and I was glad she did because I do think it is disrespectful towards dogs and I’d never thought of that before. I know I responded to Satsuma that way, though, because I don’t see her as the kind of person who would do a “gotcha” with me– I know she has respect for me and likes me in the internet sense of “like” and if she brings something like that up, she isn’t doing any wierd one-up kind of deal.
But you and I haven’t engaged until now, and we’ve engaged somewhat adversarially here, so I couldn’t be sure whether you might think I was doing a “gotcha” there or not– I just wanted to tell you I wasn’t doing it for that reason and honestly, I didn’t want to say anything about it because I feared that’s how it would come across, but I do care about words that are ableist so I felt like I had to say something.
At any rate, I am wondering if my two-degrees-of-separation thing with some people who you and other white feminists have ongoing conflict with is any part of why you might see me as being aligned against other white feminists.
I think it’s more that I see you posting widely everywhere, pretty much, except to the blogs of white feminists, whom you seem to avoid? You are here, but you posted here to take issue with points you believed I was making about challenging racism.
If the fact that I haven’t written posts or commented on other posts about what goes on between some white women bloggers and some others, in re: to prostitution, porn, etc., has been taken to mean I am on the side of pro-prostitution and porn, basically? I’m not trying to put words in your mouth or stir up shit that god knows is constantly on-the-stir anyway, I’m just asking it because it’s what some of our conversation here has made me think about.
My sense — again, this is just my sense and I can’t really provide specifics — has been that you didn’t really want to talk about porn or prostitution or about the conflicts between bloggers over porn and prostitution. I don’t blame you! I do not fault you for that. Several bloggers I dearly respect and count as friends and allies in the blogosphere/internet kind of way also rarely or never address these issues and it isn’t a problem for me. But they do something that you don’t do– they regularly post to the blogs of feminists on all sides of these issues. You have seemed until now to mostly post to the blogs of persons of color who are not specifically anti-pornography/prostitution or who are continually in attack mode against those of us who are anti-porn/prostitution. I guess this causes me to feel that you are more to the pro-porn/prostitution/anti-radical feminist side than not. I have other online friends who don’t say anything about porn/prostitution or sex wars kinds of issues but who I feel comfortable with because they regularly comment to my and other radical feminist blogs and seem to avoid the blogs of people whose main purpose on the internet often seems to be to harass and harangue radical feminists.
6. Okay with that statement of yours that I said sounded to me like feminists = white women and put feminists (white women) in a different group than marginalized women – the statement I responded to was:
“And of course, as feminists, in general it is our goal to support all women, and especially marginalized women.”
I agree that all women are marginalized as women, in a male surpremacist world. My understanding of who is being talked about whenever a white woman self-identifying as feminist uses the term “marginalized women,” therefore, is that it’s women who are marginalized from a “center” in some women’s feminism that has been defined as white, hetero, able bodied, middle class… So to me the statement that it is a goal for feminists to support all women, especially marginalized women, read like there was a distinction between regular old feminists, and marginalized women they should be including in their support for all women. I think you are saying that is not how you meant it to read? But that’s what I meant, in what I had so say about that sentence. Maybe it is indeed saying something about my gaze that I did not read it as meaning “marginalized women should of course support marginalized women,” without there being a distinction between women who are marginalized *within* what the most visible, palatable form of feminism has been in the United States, which is to say, a white supremacist, middle class, form of feminism.
I like the sounds of “marginalized women should support marginalized women” better than “feminist women should support marginalized women” actually, but the first statement suggests there are some women who are not marginalized, so it doesn’t work for me for that reason. When I say “feminist” I don’t think of white, hetero, able-bodied or middle class; that isn’t what the word “feminism” conjures up in my mind. For me, “feminist” equals marginalized in any number of ways. I don’t know, personally, any feminist who is marginalized on account of her sex only, who, in other words, is white, heterosexual, middle class, able-bodied and feminist. The women I know/am related to or close to who would fit those categories are not feminists. The feminists I know and am closest to, who form both my real life and online communities, are primarily lesbians, women of color or both. Within that group of feminists I know and am closest to, my own community, in other words, many are additionally disabled, poor, old, fat or single mothers. Almost all are survivors of rape, incest, or battering and many are exited from extremes of patriarchal religion, all of which are part of being marginalized on account of sex but which deserve a mention because of their seriousness. When I say feminists should help marginalized women, I am saying feminists should help one another, particularly women who are specifically marginalized in various ways, with the idea ahead of time that most women are marginalized in more than one way.
For better or worse, when I do hear white women use the word “feminists” and then separately use the word “marginalized women,” I am used to reading it as them making a distinction between the group they see themselves in – feminists (without qualifier) – and a group they may care about but do identify (and often correctly) as separate from them – marginalized women within mainstream feminism. Does that make any more sense about how I read that and what I meant in my response to it?
I understood why you read it that way, but viewed it, I guess, as part of a broader “feminism is for white privileged women” meme that exists in the blogosphere and in the real world, too, something I don’t believe, that has never been my lived experience, and which I view as a consequence or result of the backlash against feminism and radical feminism in particular, as something like propaganda, in other words.
7. I actually am making a post at my blog now to answer your direct questions about my alignments and lacks thereof when it comes to other white women. I assure you that it is not a gotcha post, and will not be allowed to become a tell-Heart-to-go-fuck-herself thread.
Oh good, I will enjoy reading it. I appreciate the time you’ve taken to think about and write about issues that are really tricky to think about, write about, and engage over.
When I say feminists should help marginalized women, I am saying feminists should help one another, particularly women who are specifically marginalized in various ways, with the idea ahead of time that most women are marginalized in more than one way.
Another meaning, when I say, “feminists should help marginalized women,” is that feminists should help marginalized women whether those women are feminists or not.
Something interesting: I was trying to think of women online that I count as friends who fit the “heterosexual, white, able-bodied, middle class” description. I did think of a couple of women who I think fit this description, but interestingly, a couple of them are as I described, they avoid discussions of prostitution and pornography and regularly post to blogs of women who are on both sides of the issue, while avoiding blogs which regularly target radical feminists.
The other thing I was realizing: a number of the white feminists with whom I have found fault for piling on in the situation with Amanda Marcotte fit your category, JK– they are white, able-bodied, middle class and heterosexual or are male, white, able-bodied, middle class and heterosexual, and are the same women and men who often post to blogs of persons of color or to blogs which defend pornography and prostitution and regularly attack radical feminists. Which lends weight to my theory that their alignments or attempts to align with persons of color have as much to do with imagined absolution from liberal guilt or attempts to score points in the progressive blogosphere so-called than with authentic concerns about racism. In their real lives they don’t have to deal with racism, ableism, lesbophobia, poverty, classism, homophobia, ageism. In their real lives they are users of pornography and hence, supporters of prostitution. It costs them nothing at all to spout off on the internet but it does make them feel like they are activists and it alleviates, again, whatever liberal guilt they might feel.
“heterosexual, white, able-bodied, middle class” description”
You at least have an acquaintance in the category
BTW, the above was not a request for any sort of warm fuzzy. I agree that most of the more radical sorts of feminists don’t fit the above.
I think a lot of the time, something has to whack you with a clue-by-4 to make you aware of the sexism in the world, and if you’re comfortably off and not being the target of overt sexism or male violence, then you get desensitized to the more subtle, pervasive stuff.
I’m much more radical than I was when I was on the Ms boards, when I was more libertarian than anything else. Getting older has done some of it, but I’ll credit ginmar for a lot of my awakening. Her posts have really opened my eyes over the years.
Heart says:
“In their real lives they are users of pornography and hence, supporters of prostitution…”
I’d say it is pretty hard to tell what people do outside the bloglands. A lot of the arguments are quite odd to me, and points of view on pornography and prostitution are equally strange.
What we see is MORE of both of these evils, more of it on the Internet, more of it on mainstream T.V.
It’s an interesting point about how women can help each other. You really have to evaluate your resources and where you want to put them to use. We should be honest about what will do in the movement and what we won’t do, and then there would be clarity.
I’ve realized that my issues are quite specialized, and that my time is more limited. So I want to make my work count.
The people who are pro porn or pro prostitution are out there in force in the “liberal” world, in all male worlds, and even in urban young lesbian groups. But there are those of us who stand firm against all of this nonsense, and staying away from degrading images that men produce is sanity.
It’s just too bad that “liberals’ are so clueless, that men are so obsessed with their “right” to free speech at the expense of women everywhere, that they can’t see the danger.
I wouldn’t say I only help feminists; I help all the women I am able to help, and support all the women I am able to support. It’s not always perfect, but I do focus on where my help is the most valuable. That’s a lesson learned the hard way, but it’s useful!
My ten dollars worth for today ( don’t like to devalue myself as a woman by using the term “two cents worth” 
“It costs them nothing at all to spout off on the internet but it does make them feel like they are activists and it alleviates, again, whatever liberal guilt they might feel.”
Okay I agree that that goes on, Heart, and for sure I have seen plenty of it lately.
But I truly don’t understand why you think that I participate on blogs that are radfem bashing, or are pro-porn and prostitution. I can’t think of anyone who does that where I comment and engage regularly, where I am in any kind of community with people who hate radfems and love porn. I identify as radical feminist! There are and always have been some radical feminist blogs that I participate in. And before I realized that it would make my head explode, I used to actually protest mischaracterizations of radical feminism (lies about what Andrea Dworkin actually wrote being a particular sore spot for me) on sites of people who talked an I’m-not-misogynist game and who I thought I could have reasonable conversations with. That’s about the only pro-porn site I can think of that I ever commented at more than once, and it was to challenge the anti-radfem-ness going on there.
I have talked about racism that I have seen online and off among white people, feminist or otherwise, women or otherwise, but I have also said that while I would not presume to correct the word usage of people who are understandably and justifiably angry and hurt, I personally think it is more accurate to call what has been going on lately “white supremacy,” not “feminism,” and CERTAINLY not “radical feminism.”
Which is not saying “all radical feminists are anti-racist,” online or off. It’s saying what I think LM talks about a lot too, which is that humans really do seem to have this ability to grasp some kinds of radical politics really clearly while simultaneously being super dense about others. Of course there will be genuinely dedicated feminist people who are also racist. Or homophobic. Or ableist. Of course there will be men who are amazingly dedicated to anti-racism while still expecting women to do all the work that is classed as women’s work. And on and on.
I just don’t understand – are you saying that because I am no doubt a person who has to reckon with internalized prejudices and privileges, that I should not speak at all about those prejudices and privileges in a way that condemns and pinpoints them?
Lastly – it’s true that I am white and middle class and able bodied, but I am not heterosexual. The only reason it is important to me to clarify that (I don’t think you meant it as an insult) is, well… look, ladies, I’m on the market!
[Sorry sometimes I have to joke to break the tension.]
[But it's true that I'm single and into women.]
Miranda: whack you with a clue-by-4
to make you aware of the sexism in the world, and if you’re comfortably off and not being the target of overt sexism or male violence, then you get desensitized to the more subtle, pervasive stuff.
Yeah, I think this is exactly right.
Heart says:
“In their real lives they are users of pornography and hence, supporters of prostitution…”
Satsuma: I’d say it is pretty hard to tell what people do outside the bloglands. A lot of the arguments are quite odd to me, and points of view on pornography and prostitution are equally strange.
I know what you’re saying, Satsuma, and generally I agree, but in this instance I was thinking of specific people I know from having read what they write are users of pornography, make it themselves, or do not have a problem with it or with prostitution.
Edited to add, please see post 48. I am retracting the paragraph below in italics, but am l leaving it in to avoid confusing anyone just reading the thread now. — Heart
JK, maybe my impression of where you post and what you post is off; I’ll pay attention when I come across something you’ve written from now on. I’m sorry if I’ve misjudged or misunderstood your feminism or what you’ve written or where you stand on various issues. I haven’t followed you around or made an effort to read you specifically, I’ve really just noticed what you’ve posted as I’ve come across it, and on a couple of occasions I’ve read your blog usually because someone linked to you and I followed the links. It could be that I have pole-vaulted to conclusions unfairly on the basis of unrepresentative or not-careful-enough readings or for some other reason. I haven’t noticed you have posted to the radical feminist blogs I normally read, but you may well be posting to some that I don’t usually read, in which case my perceptions might be skewed.
Opposing racism is always right. It’s always good to support committed feminists and progressives of color, too; there’s nothing wrong with being the supportive white person in the corner, no matter who you are or what is going on in your life. I am just angry towards those who have hatefully and viciously attacked a woman for racist actions while tolerating or advocating for or selling or promoting, for years in some cases, both racism and sexism in forms they approve, as Arantxa put it so well. I guess a more basic issue might be, no matter what the motivation or the history or the character of the person, isn’t it always right to oppose racism, regardless? When, if ever, does the destructiveness of targeting/attacking a single feminist woman for doing something that is racist become more important than denouncing the racist acts? I wonder if the answer to this last question might have to do, in part, with what the lasting consequences might be, both to individuals and to various movements for liberation we are all committed to. I know looking back through our history as feminists, anti-racists and progressives that certain events and incidents have been pivotal, have had long-term consequences, for good or ill, for entire movements, in ways the individual participants in those incidents could not have predicted at the time. Audre Lorde and Mary Daly had interactions that have haunted radical feminism since the interactions took place, for one example that comes immediately to mind. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony said things about black male suffrage in moments of rage and frustration that were recorded, that became part of the historical record, and that have haunted the movement for women’s liberation to this day. Ti Grace Atkinson threw down over other radical feminists’ refusal to support white leftists imprisoned at Attica prison, creating a breach that was never mended. Betty Friedan uttered the words “Lavender Menace.” Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) made a joke about the place of women in the Civil Rights movement being “prone.” At the time, the people involved couldn’t have known the significance what they were saying would ultimately have or how the consequences of what they said would play out in the context of their own movements. So when things like this happen, it seems important to look closely at what is really going on while it is going on, to pay attention, because down the road the story will be told and retold, especially if, as it turns out, the incident we are witnessing does become an important fork in the road of some kind.
So, that’s what I’ve got. Peace.
Heart
As my Jurassic-era home laptop with dial-up makes reading blogs during the weekend about as practical as trying to hot-air balloon to another planet, I’ve just now (on my lunch break at work) read this entire thread. I am so impressed by the level of discourse, carefulness, and civility displayed here. Thank you to all of you women who have commented, clarified, and truly communicated so well here.
I think Heart’s two posts about this current situation constitute a good reminder to us to resist doing what most of us have been socially conditioned to do–reflexively pile onto a woman with blame while the men get a pass and saunter around whistling happily as we do so. That said, Pandagon isn’t my cup o’ tea. On that and some other feminist blogs there are entirely too many tiresomely pontificating dewds clogging the bandwidth.
Thanks, Heart, for making this blog space about and for the women.
JK: But I truly don’t understand why you think that I participate on blogs that are radfem bashing, or are pro-porn and prostitution. I can’t think of anyone who does that where I comment and engage regularly, where I am in any kind of community with people who hate radfems and love porn. I identify as radical feminist! There are and always have been some radical feminist blogs that I participate in.
So, I got to second guessing myself, see post 47, wondering whether maybe I had been imagining things and why it was that I had the ideas I had about you that I had, JK. Maybe I was hallucinating when I thought I saw your name in anti-radical feminist venues saying anti-radical feminist things, though I haven’t hallucinated since the time I drank too much mescaline-spiked punch back in 1974 or so and scared myself so badly I haven’t touched any sort of recreational drug again until this day. Maybe I had you mixed up with someone else. So I googled your name plus “radical feminist” and “radfem” and “blog”. And I found that I have not imagined anything. It’s all right there, just like I said and thought it was. So I felt and feel really jerked around and pissed off. I mean, why would you write something like what I pasted there, JK? You know where you post. You know what people stand for and say there, as well.
You do participate on blogs that have consistently targeted radical feminists in ways that are way over the top. You do participate on blogs that are outright, front and center, pro-porn and pro-prostitution and you have for quite a while now. The positions you take on certain core issues, although you articulate them thoughtfully and intelligently and without the viciousness and lies that characterize the blogs I’m referring to, are not consistent with historic radical feminism. I saw that in a couple spots you argued with someone’s opinion of Andrea Dworkin, but I also saw you agreeing with or not bothering to question erroneous information about other radical feminist leaders or joining in in slamming them.
So, I don’t know what’s up with a lot of what you’ve said here. I did note, in my googling, that a man over on Feministe blogged about you today, probably because he’s been reading this thread. A time honored way to gain the attention of certain corners of the blogosphere is to stir something up with me, for sure, where a whole lot of people are going to read what you say.
Anyway, JK, if you want to see the links I’m referring to, I’ll e-mail you what I saved off. I’m not posting them here because I’ll be damned if I’m going to drive any traffic to any of those places. Or, you, or anyone else, can do your own google search and find the links as easily and well as I did. I found exactly one radical feminist blog (in the sense of the blogger identifying as a radical feminist in the historic meaning of the word) to which you have posted and that was Twisty’s.
This kind of bullshit at times makes me wonder why on earth I still believe in women, keep trusting women, keep having faith in women and whether the day is going to come when I just say fuck it, I am so done.
Jeezus christ on a cracker.
And here you come, Level Best, with all of those props. Thank you– I can use them.
Heart, trust your first instinct!
Heart is very wise in pointing out all the historical instances when radical feminism and feminism in general made some strange turns. We don’t know what is important historically sometimes. Only much later do we find out the truth, when historians really start digging.
I think as radical feminists, we do have to give each other some benefit of the doubt. I assume that we are all doing our best in the areas of trying to do something about racism, sexism and the rest of the list.
Where we seem to get into such trouble these days is over pornography. Since pornography was really out of sight of most women for a very long time herstorically, being flooded with it now can throw women off.
Jokingly, I have always called myself a political lesbian and not a sex lesbian. It seems that there are two distinct types out there. I really don’t know why women get involved with pornography or even why they defend it. It humiliates women.
In the past, I never had to worry about the kinds of abusive tactics and humiliation that seems to be heaped on women in bloglands now. We all knew each other as radical feminists, and we were not disconnected via electronic things.
I don’t know why so many women support pornography, and why there is so little (almost no) writing about fine art or great literature from a radical feminist perspective. Andrea Dworkin being a notable exception to this rule. I have the feeling that radical feminists of today really don’t know what great art is, so they don’t have the tools to report on the lack of artistic merit that is the hallmark of pornography.
If we focused on art itself, or what makes art vs. the inherent degrading of women through pornography, perhaps we’d get farther along.
The bottom line is, do women often feel coerced by men wanting them to watch porn? I know for a fact that if I had lesbian friends who were into porn, and I found out about it, I would not associate with them. That’s how strongly I feel about this issue.
Was feminism itself contaminated by the sexual revolution? Did sleaze gay male culture contaminate lesbian worlds?
What statement to we want to make herstorically here?
I see racism and sexism as interconnected. We can’t get rid of one and leave the other. However, as I have said many times before here, the passion is behind the primary wound, the primary insults we experience everyday as both black women or white women.
Why are women attacked more than men? I have always thought radical feminists should throw the most double axes at men, and give women a break. Go against the real enemy out there!
We are sophisticated enough to know that race and feminism are the tricky intersections. We all know that the male dominated civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s did not know how to deal with this. The male leaders were clueless, and the reason for this is simple: men want to change the outside world, but they don’t want to change the castles they return to at night. They want to have children, and then they want to abandon them on the civil rights trail. All the major male civil rights leaders of that era would be considered horrendous sexists now. Only a few black male academics address this, but at least a few do.
Radical feminism would get a lot father if we focused on the facts, and on the things that were the most effective in freeing women everywhere. A few key things can really do the trick!
I think sometimes we have too many flippant remarks, too much shock writing, and not enough real feminism.
There is a lot you can do if you don’t waste all your time on being sex feminists as opposed to radical feminists. I know I saw the left as male led, the sexual revolution as male contrived, and the early civil rights movement as just fine with women’s home bound servitude to men. I’m sick of all that.
I want a true woman first agenda, and I’d like to see women get the idea that porn and prostitution do a great deal of harm to both the viewers of this and the people who participate in it. Just as the drug culture helped create the addictive mess we have to deal with today.
Somtimes I feel that a lot of radical feminists think “shocking” people is radical, and this is a misuse of the term “radical.”
Ah, ((( Satsuma ))), you’ve nailed it again.
***Reminds me of a book I have about people with borderline personality disorder so-called (another subject for another day); the title of the book is, I Hate You, Don’t Leave Me.***
Branjor here.
I don’t know if you know this, but the majority of people “diagnosed” with borderline personality disorder are women. They often diagnose women they really don’t like with that one. It is used like “hysteria” was used against women in the 19th century.
Heart, this is an excellent point about the gendered pile-on phenomenon, a dynamic I’ve noticed plenty in the past, yet somehow I missed it in this instance.
It’s good to see you blogging more often again, and I hope all is well with you.
I’m conflicted, because I know your eagle eye caught this one in part because you identify with Amanda here, though the empty space in the feminist blogosphere where certain women of color used to be is distressing me.
I hate the politics of it all. If you don’t want to approve this, I understand.
Heart, I’ve so missed your blogging. HUGS.
I absolutely agree with you. I hate hypocrites. And it seems the ‘feminist’ internet blogosphere is full of them.
My goodness. When my first ‘A Rapist’s View of the World’ was spread all over the internet I was actually surprised by the fact that some of the attacks were coming from ‘feminist’ sites, like the SF Feminist blog. Ok, well I wasn’t all that surprised. But yeah, all of the ‘feminists’ calling me crazy and racist and misogynist had never directed those words in any ‘feminist’ man’s direction. In all the discussions about me that I read, those words were not used to describe Whedon, but they were used to describe me. I just love that ‘feminist’ sisterhood.
And yeah, what Amanda did wasn’t pretty, but the misogyny directed in her direction isn’t either. And men like Amp disgust me. The fact that so many ‘feminists’ validate him is so beyond wrong.
Allecto, it’s good to be missed. Hugs back! Kitty, so right. I do really struggle with second guessing myself, and a lot of that has to do with having lived so many years in battering relationships. I always get to thinking I’m probably wrong, I must be mistaken, it’s far more likely that the other person is correct than that I am.
K.A., yeah, I hear you. I have to speak up for women when they are being scapegoated, and you’re right, in large part it’s because I so well know what it is to be scapegoated, to be the witch, hunted.
Thursday’s Child/Branjor, what you say makes total sense to me. I think these psychiatric diagnoses, most of the time, are completely bogus. I think we’re in the Dark Ages, still, so far as having any sort of understanding of mental and emotional health and disease, and I think psychology/psychiatry is one of the most misogynist, sexist disciplines of all of the disciplines. I used the title of that book only because it accurately describes the impossible expectation placed on women.
Satsuma, I think I’m hearing a sadness in your comments that I so share. I remember such a vibrant, energizing, bold, powerful feminism from my college days. Women were protesting beauty pageants, protesting pornography, ditching restrictive undergarments, makeup, high heels. It was such an exhilarating time for women, even though I wasn’t really a feminist then. In those days, pornography was squicky and disgusting, something you had to go to the scary part of town to watch, if you wanted to watch it, and nobody did but creepy men. There wasn’t an internet, DVDs, porn broadcast into homes from satellite dishes 24/7, and porn rightfully was viewed by feminists as disgusting and abhorrent. When I returned to feminism 13 or so years ago now, I was so confused — I didn’t understand what could have happened. Where were the fierce, fearless women of my teens and 20s getting up in the faces of misogynist men, Hugh Hefner, beauty pageant promoters? How could it happen that feminist defended, even made, pornography, defended prostitution as a choice? What went wrong? I kept thinking that in the years I was away from feminism, maybe feminists had discovered things I hadn’t, maybe there was some reason to accept porn/prostitution? When I finally encountered radical feminists as fierce and impassioned about women’s lives as the feminists I recalled from decades earlier, I was so thrilled and relieved, thank the Goddess. But it is extremely demoralizing to look around and see what feminists are willing to accept, endorse, defend right now. But still, I think it was worse 10 years ago. I think we’re making a comeback and that the world is ready for it– I really do.
Heart
(From elsewhere in the blogsophere directed towards this post, but on a blog that doesn’t allow comments):
…even if [white women] are less likely to commit violent crimes or less politically able to oppress people of color [than white men are], I don’t see that white women (as a whole) have done any more than white men (as a whole) to confront their own racism
The issue of male violence — against all women, white and women of color — is huge, with ramifications which are immense in the lives of all women, including white women. It is at the heart of feminism and is a central reason feminism is necessary. If you, the writer, cannot see, “get”, or understand what it means — the significance of the fact, historically and now, including so far as race relations goes — that it was and has always been white men who have have made war, bought and sold slaves, made genocide, raped, battered, incested, molested, women and girls, of all races, prostituted women, trafficked in women, trafficked in slaves, in a way white women do not and never have engaged in any of the above as against any women (other than as slaves themselves, brutalized into submission), then you *are*, indeed doing what you say you never do, you are giving white men a pass, and a big one at that.
This is an irresponsible statement, and it reeks of misogyny. It also displays a woeful ignorance of women’s history.
Responding to my comment above, the person I am responding to commented:
I agree with everythng you’ve said here through the last two paragraphs, which I find hard to understand. You say your post was about racism within feminist communities and why nonwhite women become disillusioned with feminism and white feminism, but then you say none of what you have said here applies to white feminists in particular beause you don’t hold white feminists responsible for the actions of random white women.
My post was about the way it’s so easy to pile on to one feminist woman for a racist act — Marcotte in this case for the racist imagery in her book — while in an ongoing way ignoring those in feminism who promote/endorse/are accepting of racist, misogynist pornography and other forms of racism and misogyny. I used Amp as an example, but there are many white feminists and feminists of color as well who support/endorse/accept/tolerate the endorsement of racist, misogynist porn, some of whom participated in the pile-on. More broadly in my posts and comments, I was talking about the way anti-racists can be sexist, just as anti-sexists can be racist, and why it’s all connected and all important, and all must be challenged, and why it’s wrong to pile on to Marcotte as though she is public enemy number one while so many of the pilers on-ers ignore, in an ongoing way, all of this other sexist and/or racist behavior every day, including in one another.
I am responding to you this way, as opposed to approving your comment, because you linked to me in your post but you didn’t allow for comments. I had a response so I posted it here, since this was the post you linked to and I knew you must be reading, but I don’t really want to import, via a link to your site or a direct reference, a discussion that rightly belongs on your blog. It’s hard to moderate comments threads and anybody who tries to is going to take a lot of hits for it and is often going to be resented for her decisions, even by people who are her friends. She’s going to lose friends sometimes, for some period of time, over her moderating decisions. She’s also providing plenty of ammunition for hostile lurkers to use against her because she allows others to comment on her blog, even though she may disagree with them. So it seems to me if you link to someone, especially if it’s a tricky, sensitive subject with potential to cause trainwrecks and blogwars, you should allow for comments, but if you don’t allow for comments, you should not expect that other bloggers will take the risks inherent in moderating a potentially volatile comments thread that really belonged on your own blog or would have resulted from your own post. Moderating my blog takes a lot of time and can be a huge headache — I sure don’t want to moderate comments threads that really belong on other blogs!
Maybe what you’re saying is that since, in the larger community, in society, white women are racist as well as white men, when a white feminist woman *does* do something racist *as* a feminist, it provokes extreme outrage. I agree with this and understand it. All I’m saying is, there is a whole lot of racism and sexism in the feminist/progressive community that goes unaddressed 24/7, whereas Marcotte’s racist act resulted in an enormous response that seemed out of proportion, given what is tolerated or accepted on an ongoing basis. Of course, maybe this wasn’t your point at all. I am really not quite clear what you wanted to say to me, so I won’t say more than this for now.