Poetic Propaganda

Crip Chick blogs:

I had the honor of joining radical women of color (many of who are your favorite bloggers, BrownFemiPower, Black Amazon, Little Light, Mamita Mala, Sudy, Nadia, and sooo many more) in putting together an amazing album that chronicles experiences around struggle, love, motherhood, redemption, healing and community. You can cop the CD in January, along with a zine and listening party curriculum, so be prepared! More details to come soon but stay on this— there are only 200 copies currently available.

[Hat Tip: brownfemipower]

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BFP on feminisms

Brownfemipower:

one of the big tricks that i discovered had been pulled on me was the trick of getting me to believe that there was such a thing as a “Feminist Movement.” there’s not. but i thought there was. and being a believer and student of ‘movements’–what are they, how are they made, where they come from–i sit back now, and am sort of amused by my naivete. i actually believed that just because people *called* themselves feminists, that must mean there *is* a Feminist Movement of some sort.

…

never belonged to a Feminist Movement, i belonged to a movement led and created and owned by *radicalized* women of color. Those women of color are, were and will always *remain* accountable to other women of color, whether those women are radicalized or not. I belong to a movement started by Gloria Anzaldua, Cherrie Moraga, Audre Lorde, and sustained by Incite! Women of Color Against Violence, Sista II Sista, the Zapatistas, UBUNTU, SPEAK, the AMC and so so so so many others. There is a melding of action with theory–a connection between the streets and academia.

Carnival of Feminists #65

Maria Brumm hosts the latest Carnival of Feminists:

Welcome to the 65th biweekly showcase of the feminist blogosphere! Here’s just a taste of what’s inside:

1. Owning privilege is not about feeling ashamed, it is about acknowledging the benefits that one receives without having to work for them.
2. And now today an excited colleague announced that he had just discovered this totally new concept on the internet: white privilege! Even though I’ve been teaching the idea for over a decade, and it’s even discussed in our textbook, it was news to him.
3. Not a lesbian, not homosexual, but ‘gay’ with such venom I swear her eyes turned red, smoke came charging out of her ears and she was probably trying to get god to strike me down to hell where I stood.

Given that, one would have to wonder, what would a chimp do with human breasts?

64th Carnival of Feminists

The 64th Carnival of Feminists is up:

Come one, come all, to the 64th Carnival of Feminists!  I’m your host, Earlgreyrooibos, and I’m thrilled to be presenting this cross-section of the feminist blogosphere to you!  Happy reading!

The Porn Industry and Exploitation

Renee blogs:

Normally I am in agreement with most things that Noam Chomsky has theorized but in this case I must respectfully disagree.  The idea that the decision to work in the porn industry is simply a result of womens exploitation ignores the degree to which womens agency can make this an active choice.  While all paid labour in a capitalist economy is defiantly exploitation, working in the porn industry is not more exploitative because what is being produced is sex, or rather the imitation of  reciprocal sex.

Why is sex work necessarily more degrading than working at McDonalds, or a  Dunkin Donuts for that matter? Both involve the sale of ones body, and labour power to a certain degree. Both involve not being adequately compensated vis a vis profits versus wage, yet pornography is deemed horribly degrading. I submit that this because women’s sexuality is only culturally acceptable when it is virginal in nature.

BrownFemiPower: Fighting through the Confusion of Anger

BrownFemiPower blogs:

I’ve seen with my own two eyes right on this blog exactly how productive conversations with white women can be. I’ve seen incredible love and support and questions and challenges and answers and gotten insane amounts of help from white women.

I’ve also seen right on this blog (and in blog land in general) exactly how unproductive conversations with white women can be. I mean, how many times will radical women of color organizers be called “intersectionalists” before somebody finally figures it out?

Carnival of Feminists No. 59

The latest Carnival of Feminists is up at Philobiblon:

Welcome to the Carnival of Feminists, which begins with an apology, for the hiatus since the last, which was due to my disappearing under a deluge of work, from which I’m slowly extracting myself.

So there’s more than a month of nominations here, and I decided the best thing to do was to collect them, to allow a new host a managable run.

And the next host will be Unmana’s words, on July 9. She kindly came asking if I needed hosts. You can use the nomination form to send links to her, or email her at unmana AT gmail DOT com.

A Woman’s Work (is never done)

Krish blogs:

Is this what feminism looks like, or what capitalism can only accommodate for the educated woman in new millenium? Sandra Tsing Loh writes a compelling rebuttal to Linda Hirshman’s “marvelously cranky ‘Get to Work … And Get a Life, Before It’s Too Late’ ” book that asserts the workplace as a highly-fulfilling, nonstop thrill ride to becoming a complete human being; an almost revist to bell hook’s critique of the Feminine Mystique: what job do you have and why the hell isn’t mine as fulfilling and pleasurable as yours?!

Feminism and Whites

Ashley blogs on Linda Hirshman’s article in the Washington Post:

Part of what we do, when we struggle to take an intersectional approach, is try to challenge the automatic “normalcy” that our culture has given those in dominant groups. By locating middle-class white women at the center of her vision of what constitutes “women,” Hirshman is utterly missing the point of intersectionality. Including (or making central) people who are not white, middle-class women in our vision of what constitutes an end to patriarchy is not the same as excluding white, middle-class women from our vision. It is simply moving them from the place of automatic privilege and centrality our culture has given them in relation to other groups of women, which allows us to understand oppression in a more realistic way. Even if we’re willing to grant Hirshman the point that feminism should only worry about those women who constitute a “majority” of women, white, middle-class women are NOT THE MAJORITY OF WOMEN.

58th Carnival of Feminists

The 58th Carnival of Feminists is up at Be a Good Human:

Welcome to the 58th edition of the Carnival of Feminists! I’m seriously, seriously thrilled to have you here. If you missed the 57th edition, go check it out at Pandemian.

(And while I have your attention, please take a quick sec and vote for my new blog name over to the right. Thanks!)

So I’m going to break down these excellent submissions based on things my 13 year old sister has said to me. (Translations in parentheses.)

Seal Press, Feminism, and Racism

Karnythia states:

I also see people talking about the need to give Amanda Marcotte a safe space from which to respond. Maybe it’s just me, but why exactly is it that WOC aren’t entitled to the same calls for safe space? If we’re supposed to be sisters then shouldn’t safety for us be a priority? AFAIK there is exactly one community devoted to safe space for WOC on the internet and I created it. My co-mod and I work very hard to keep the voyeurs, trolls, and bigots out and the community members guard the space jealously from anyone that might slip past us. And I wish we didn’t have to do that, but I look at this book and the responses to it and the original Seal Press fiasco and I think that we are operating in very hostile territory and the only choice WOC have is to pull back and operate our own spaces in our own ways because we can’t expect anyone to fight for us. And yes, I know many of the people reading this are truly allies and I’m not saying this to hurt you. But we’re going to need you to commence cleaning up your house before you can help us clean up the world.

BrownFemiPower’s Final (?) Words

BrownFemiPower says:

I wrote what I wrote to say that there either is a feminist movement or there isn’t—and if feminists can’t even be called on to point to the work that other feminists are doing—if simply pointing to a whole sphere of pro-immigration bloggers (because, to be clear, I stated pro-immigration bloggers and men and women bloggers of color NOT brownfemipower) who have been blogging incessantly about this is too much work for feminism—well, then there’s no fucking feminist movement.

…

I never said that it’s important to recognize that I had the idea first. I don’t give a shit who came up with the idea first—even if it WAS me. I don’t give a shit who thought of what first. I don’t fucking want credit for anything outside of existing. (For those who care, what I really said: There’s a lot of women of color (and men of color!) who have talked about immigration. There’s a lot of women of color and men of color who have examined how sexualized violence has been the foremost result of the “strengthening” of borders. There’s been a lot of us who have insisted for a long time now that immigration is a feminist issue, goddamn it, get your head out of your ass.

I even wrote a whole speech about it (link not available–BUT for those who DID see the speech, do you happen to recall that long list of LINKED work at the beginning of the speech?).

…

This was NEVER ABOUT FUCKING BROWNFEMIPOWER except in the sense that I BELONG to immigrant communities and I BELONG to pro-immigration blogger community and I BELONG to the women of color community and I THOUGHT I belonged to a feminist community.

This was about women of color constantly being written out of feminism, being written out of our own communities BY feminism—then being beaten up by feminists with JUST DO IT, JUST DO IT, JUST FUCKING DO IT YOU LAZY SPICS.

…

I know I’m brownfemipower and I want to end violence against women. And I wanted to do that with all the women who keep insisting to me that we are all in this together and we have common problems that we have to work against and we’re all sisters, and there is such thing as a commonality of experience between us all—as I said in my original post—I thought feminism was important because it brought women together (I had thought at one time that feminism was about justice for women. I had thought it was about centering the needs of women, and creating action in the name of, by and for women. I had thought that feminism has its problems but it’s worth fighting for, worth sacrificing and sweating and crying and breaking down for.)

…

I realize now that “feminism” and I stand in direct opposition to each other—that the feminists who aren’t actively working against me and my community are, like Seymour Hersch, few and far between.

This has caused a radical shifting in my thinking. A shifting that I have no desire to work through online—but that I need to think through before I can act. I am not giving up. I am just thinking. And resting. And reading my beloved books and soaking my tired dogs.

Cuz giiirls, my dogs are TIRED.

As I said in my last post—I will find you, and you will find me.

Women of Color Blogging, Feminism, and Brownfemipower

Holly, at Feministe, blogs about the recent news surrounding the shutdown of Brownfemipower’s blog and white feminists appropriating ideas from women of color:

What I care about is that when white feminists undertake to write about the issues of women of color — such as immigration, which is clearly a massively race-infused issue — they should do so in solidarity with women of color. In ways that give political voice to women of color, to immigrants, to those whose voice is generally not heard as loudly.

When any of us have a soapbox, an opportunity to get up and talk, we must continue to stand by those who aren’t called on. If you want to consider yourself an anti-racist or a white ally to people of color — if you want anyone else to consider you those things — then it behooves you to swim against the current. If everyone did, perhaps the tides would turn, even if it was just in our corner of the blogosphere. And sometimes all you have to do is simply call out the hard work of another woman who went before you, who has paved the path that you’re walking down with research and ideas and words and strong feelings. All you have to do is cover your bases, pay your respects, and make sure you can’t be read as trying to take sole credit.

[Hat Tip: Alas, a blog]

57th Carnival of Feminists

The latest edition of the Carnival of Feminists is up at pandemian:

Welcome to the 57th Carnival of the Feminists, Littlejohn Baiting Edition.

55th Carnival of Feminists

Penny Red hosts this edition of the Carnival of Feminists:

As luck would have it, this edition of the Carnival straddles both International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month in the USA. As feminists, we are as diverse in our personal politics as the kitchen at a socialist’s birthday party at one in the morning, when the conscience-lesbians are clustered in the corner with the hidden vodka, the marxists have occupied the table with all the crisps, and someone’s anarchist girlfriend has nabbed the damn bottle opener again. There is no single politics of feminism; accordingly, responses to IWD and WHM have varied dramatically across the blogsphere, and our political diversity and ingenuity is something to celebrate in itself.

Sex workers excluded at IWD march London

Sokari blogs about the International Women’s Day march in London and the exclusion of organized sex workers from the march:

I and my friends and colleagues left, what had started out as a march of solidarity – or so we thought at the beginning- with not just a sense of frustration and disgust but the realisation that the words RESPECT and SOLIDARITY were not in the vocabulary of some of the women attending the march and rally. Whilst they were prepared to listen to Middle Eastern and African women about violence, rape and prostitution, they were not prepared to listen to sex workers in their own cities and country not to speak of the vulgar racism spouting out of their mouths. Clearly for some attending the march, sex workers were not entitled to respect, solidarity or a voice and Black women were bitches!

How safe to stand up in London and shout support for the “other” not on your doorstep yet when you are face to face with the presence of sex workers and women of colour you try to silence them and scream “not in my backyard”!

54th Carnival of Feminists

The 54th Carnival of Feminists is up at In A Strange Land:

Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa. Greetings, greetings, greetings to you all. And welcome to the 54th Carnival of Feminists.

Feminist Carnival #53

The 53rd edition of the Feminist Carnival is up at Uncool:

There’s some great posts this time around: some submitted, some found through extensive blog-hopping. Like the last time I hosted the carnival, I’ve marked any blogs that maybe unsafe for you to view at work with a “(NSFW)”. Enjoy…..

Racism, Feminism, and the Issue of FGE

Plain(s)feminist blogs about Female Genital Excision (FGE), also known as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), and the issue of white Western feminists focusing more on the brutalities against women in Third World countries than in the Western world:

There seems to be no way to get a certain segment of the feminist population to understand that it is possible both to oppose practices like FGE and still seek to use respectful terminology. This is perceived as attempting to “whitewash” (an interesting phrase, since we’re talking about mostly White women slinging racist slurs as mostly Black women) the issue. In fact, on several occasions when this issue has come up, it has progressed in the following way:

Carnival of Feminists No. 51

The most recent Carnival of Feminists is up at Philobiblon:

Welcome to the Carnival of Feminists No 51, which has come back to its original starting point for the second time for a very late second anniversary. And it is also running later than the scheduled date – for which apologies. But enough of that, moving on quickly to some great feminist posts….

One of the many great things I find about the feminist blogosphere is that so many of its writers are capable of dealing with nuance, and complexity, and exploring difficult issues in depth.

On (White) Feminism

BrownFemiPower blogs about the book Full Frontal Feminism, on teaching it at university women’s studies classes, her own experience as a woman of color in such classes, and the overall arch of teaching feminism in general:

It’s time for all of us, but in particular, women’s studies departments, to stop pretending that these interactions between women of color and white women never happened or don’t count. It’s time to stop pretending that the voices of white women speaking about women of color is sufficient enough of a history for women of color. It’s time to stop pretending that universal agreement between women of color is necessary before white people can interact with an engage with a particular critique of women of color. It’s time to stop pretending that any critique by women of color exists within a timeless vacuum that demonstrates some ancient racism of a feminism from time past.

Miss Landmine

BrownFemiPower blogs about the Miss Landmine Beauty Pagent:

Now, I’m not sure what I think about this pageant beyond the fact that I think that the name is repulsive (as I’ve said in several places, would we make a pageant called “Miss Rape Victim”? Or “Miss Car Crash”?–and what are the implications of “beautifying” the violence done to female bodies?)–but I do want to say that I think it’s *vitally* important for feminists to be just as critical of this pageant as they would any other pageant (no matter what their final conclusions are).

Feminist Carnival No. 45

The newest edition of the Feminist Carnival is up at Feminist Philosophers:

First off I just want to say what a huge amount of great feminist writing there is out there, and how tough it’s been to put this together.   There’s just too much important stuff out there,  and I feel really overwhelmed. I’ve organized the Carnival a little artificially into categories, just to make it easier to take it all in (hopefully).  In particular, the fact that there is an “Analysis” header shouldn’t be taken to suggest that other items lack analysis.  It’s just that these didn’t fit the other categories, really! So, enough faffing, here we go…

Carnival of Feminists #43

Femtique hosts the first of this months Carnival of Feminists:

Welcome to the August 15, 2007 edition of carnival of feminists. These entries are extraordinary and diverse. Sit back, relax, and enjoy reading these submissions with a good cup of java or tea.

Serious Women Bloggers

Lynn Allen, who blogs at Evergreen Politics, writes about feminism and YearlKos:

So, I’d been wondering what the heck was going on in the world when women’s issues – equal pay, choice, the lack of public support for parenting – don’t get discussed in the public arena; when pharmacists could get away with refusing to dispense pills for women, when women candidates lose in a blue wave year.

I talked to several national women bloggers at YearlyKos about why they don’t write about women’s issues.  Across the board they said, “We won’t be taken seriously.”

What is it with this?