About those '70s feminists

An article on Alternet by Heidi Schnakenberg got a whole lot of comments. 268 of them when last I checked. Schnakenberg followed up with three more comments at her own blog before taking a break from blogging.

I happened upon the story by reading WOC PhD post entitled I care about WOC, I really do... that kind of blew me away as I said in the comments.

Other interesting responses to the issue:

Dear Feminisphere, PUT ON SOME DAMN PANTS

My anger is valid, your running away isn't

An imported rant: My sexuality, gender identity and ethnicity are NOT accessories that come with the Ami doll! >:|

Intersectionality, racism, and divisiveness in feminism

Yeah No by BlackAmazon

What I would like to do, when I get some time, is come up with an argument that cuts through the assumptions that white people make when we ask other people to concentrate on only one aspect of themselves: the fact they are female, and to put aside other aspects of themselves: all the other characteristics that differentiate ourselves from those in power.

But before I get to that, I want to tell Ms. Schnakenberg a little something about movement building. I'm a long time activist. I've seen a lot of political issues that have started out as one or two voices speaking out. Over time, with effort, those political ideas have grown and spread and sparked real change in the world. One way that is happened is by asking each other to unify around a single issue.

And I have never seen unification come about when my starting point has been to tell everyone else how they are doing it wrong. It's not a very effective way of working with other people.

And you know, Heidi does not seem to be a complete idiot. I find it really hard to believe that she doesn't understand that basic point.

Blessings be to the volunteer librarians among us

Malcolm at Malcolmgin has a metapost collecting blog posts that talk about What Rachel Moss Did after attending Wiscon, a popular feminist science fiction conference. I love it when a blogger takes time to put together all relevant links to an issue. It's a common practice and I've done it once or twice. Always volunteer. Always appreciated.

As to the issue of Rachel Moss' inability to appreciate women who look different from herself, I feel something between pity and disgust. Pity that she is so shackled by mainstream ideas about who is worth listening to and disgust that she lacks any creativity at all in her choice of victims.

OTOH, I am amazed by some of the awesome writing I've discovered because of this issue. Via, The F-Word I find the link to Charlotte Cooper's posts on headless fatties. Admit it, you've seen dozens if not more images of fat people in the news with their heads cropped out of the picture. I have and I never noticed how common it is before Charlotte pointed it out to me.

Dismissing somebody for their looks? Too damn easy and too popular in this world.

Choose to be a better person. Choose to have a decent reason for disagreeing with somebody. Stand above the common crowd that follows the lead of the mainstream media by pissing on anyone who doesn't follow their dictates on size, dress, make-up, etc. Distinguish yourself as someone who thinks for herself and decides for herself the worth of others based on something more than superficiality.

Getting ready for the carnival

Alice Walker reading "Ain't I A Woman"?

Providing fodder for Godwin's law

zenhabits is a productivity website that provides advice on how to simplify and organize your life. I check in every once in a while. I figure if I pick up one or two things a week, I'm making progress. I'm a packrat with wide interests, so a "simple life" is out of the question. Being able to organize my stuff in a way that helps me find it again is my goal.

Leo Babauta is the main author at zenhabits and he's just won an award for his very popular website. He certainly does deliver what his audience wants in a consistent and user-friendly format. And he's very good at giving guest spots to other bloggers as well. Yesterday, he turned the day's content over to Daniel Scocco of Daily Blog Tips. The minute I saw the title, I knew it would take off:

"One Simple Principle to Live by: Purity"

Here's the first couple of sentences:

Today I was having an argument with my girlfriend about her watching Big Brother. Basically I was trying to discourage her from watching it.

OK, to give Scocco, his due, he was proposing a method by which an individual can decide for herself which of two activities to do next. If one seems more "pure", you've got your answer.

But, of course, it wasn't long before he got called out on any number of areas and, yup, Hitler got mentioned within a few hours, thus proving Godwin's law:

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

It was interesting watching a blog debate on a subject that doesn't interest me at all at the same time I've been reading about a recent kerfluffle in the feminist blogosphere on a different subject.

This started when the lovely Kactus from Super Babymama was guest-posting at Feministe and mentioned her joy at receiving medication for depression. Discussion ensued. Kactus posted again. Elaine Vigneault posted an angry response at her blog claiming she was misunderstood and that everybody else didn't like being criticized.

I finally blundered into the subject from this fabulous post by Daisy and added my own thoughts.

It is really dangerous for me to post this for a couple of reasons. I haven't read even half of the threads I linked. I could be posting to all kinds of stuff I find personally abhorrent.

But via a quick scan, I found something that really impressed me from the zenhabits thread. Rebecca commented:

I work really hard and am a pretty pure and productive person 95% of my life - can I please watch my one hour a week of Project Runway?

I resemble that comment! Love the show. Happily "waste" my time watching it and commenting about it with co-workers and web friends.

So here's my zen suggestions:

Stop attacking people for making lifestyle decisions different from your own.

Stop assuming everyone else is a tool of big pharma or mainstream media or some other magical force that only you have the brilliance and wisdom to identify.

But most of all, stop assuming that people on anti-depressants aren't out smashing capitalism side by side with people who choose to not medicate!

Let's talk privacy

So have you ever had a gun pointed in your face by a crazy person?

Have you ever had a close relative try to run you over in his car?

Have you ever had a psychotic lunatic hold you at gunpoint until you did whatever crazy thing he decided you should do?

When these sorts of things happen, it's a good idea to get the fuck away. Sometimes it's hard. Sometimes it means uprooting your whole life and running away to someplace safe. People do it all the time. I did it many years ago. I'm proud of myself for doing so.

Some abusers, especially psychotic ones, are really good at appearing normal to other people. Especially if they are white middle class professionals. Because, you know, those type of people, "our" people, just don't do that sort of thing.

So a few times while the bastard was still alive, I ran into "well-meaning" people who thought it would be a wonderful thing to patch up that unfortunate misunderstanding I had about the man who tried to kill me. So they gave him my number or my address. And he was back with the harassment. So I uprooted my life again. I cut off more "friends" and relatives.

It sounds like I had it rough, but I didn't really. I would much rather go somewhere new and feel safe than to have to deal with the wacko again. I was young with transferrable skills and no kids at the time. Sure, it wasn't fair, but whose life is, you know? Lots of people had it much worse than I did. I had skills and savings and close friends who respected me.

But one thing I noticed, again and again, is how some people could never understand my need for privacy. Sure, privacy seemed like a good thing, but there didn't seem to be any reason to get all whacked up about it. For some people, privacy is something that never even occurred to them.

These people would think, why the hell not give out my phone number to someone who was interested? Why not point out where I lived or worked to a nice looking gentlemen? A professor, even!

So I'm just posting this here to say, privacy can mean nothing to you if you aren't facing the prospect of an angry lunatic with a gun and a grudge. Hello, privilege! Please, just get the fuck away from me.

And stop, please just stop, trying to make privacy a trivial and unimportant thing. It's the reason I'm alive today.

A book proposal and its consequences

VISITORS FROM FEMINISTING, PLEASE REQUEST THAT THESE LINKS BE POSTED DIRECTLY ON THE FEMNINISTING SITE. I REFUSE TO BE THE "NICE WHITE LADY" (SEE VIDEO ABOVE) THROUGH WHICH THESE AWESOME WOMEN GET FILTERED. THANK YOU.

Over at Feministing.com, there is a Call for submissions for a new book to be published by Seal Press.

Imagine a world where women enjoy sex on their own terms and aren't shamed for it. Imagine a world where men treat their sexual partners as collaborators, not conquests. Imagine a world where rape is rare and swiftly punished.

Welcome to the world of Yes Means Yes.

Yes Means Yes! will fly in the face of the conventional feminist wisdom that rape has nothing to do with sex. We are looking to collect sharp and insightful essays, from voices both established and new, that demonstrate how empowering female sexual pleasure is the key to dismantling rape culture.....

What follows is a series of bullet points suggesting topics to write about.

Make of it what you will. This could turn it to be a decent book. But what a narrow concept of rape!

One good thing, is the quality of the responses to this badly written cfp. Read and enjoy:


Tekanji

Magniloquence

Sylvia

Sudy

Fire fly

Black Amazon

Veronica

Therimorph

I'm falling up

Elaine Vigneault

Responses from at least one of the editors, Jacklyn Friedman, have been exceptional in the lack of defensive I normally see when valid criticism arises:

Jacklyn's response to Tekanji

Jacklyn's respose to Firefly

To assume or not to assume

I've recently been insulted by a blogger I will refer to as Ms. X. that I have considered a friend for quite a while. Here's her capper:

"That kind of stuff is worthy of Bill Clinton, no[t] you."

I'm not going to link to the post because it contains private e-mails from another blogger, Ms. Y, I also consider a friend that have been posted without her permission.

That crosses a line for me. If you have to make your point about a private conversation, find a creative way to do it. Posting someone's private e-mail and address is not only wrong, it's fucking lazy.

The issue is a private e-mail list. Ms. X's original post mentioned some private e-mail lists she'd heard of among feminists. Finding out there were private lists pissed Ms. X off. Ms. X infers that private e-mail lists are all about "posses". A posse is a group of supporters a blogger can count on to come to her defense whenever anyone dares to question her behavior. So for Ms. X, it seemed, participation in a private e-mail list was equivalent to fomenting posses. She asked her readers to offer reasons why they would participate in such a list.

There are all kinds of private mailing lists and I have been on several over the years. I offered reasons why I believe private conversations in a mailing list and out of the public eye are useful and healthy.

In Ms. X's next comment, she mentions a specific list and a specific list owner, Ms. Y, without naming the list itself. I happen to be on a mailing list owned by Ms. Y. The list I'm a member of is private.

Is Ms. X talking about the private mailing list I'm on or is she talking about another private mailing list owned by Ms. X? I don't know. I'd have to learn a lot more about the list before I can make that decision. Also, of course, I have pledged privacy to Ms. Y and I intend to uphold that pledge. But I don't feel as if I'm in danger of violating that privacy simply by interacting with Ms. X in a conversation about the usefulness of private mailing lists in general.

Next Ms. X claims that she was banned from a specific private mailing list owned by Ms. Y and that she is receiving traffic directly from that private mailing list. Understandably, this makes Ms. X feel bad. People are linking to her blog posts directly from this private list and Ms. X can see that in her blog statistics. Ms. X asks that members of the list from which she was banned either speak with Ms. X directly or copy and paste her posts to the mailing list, rather than linking.

This is also the post in which Ms. X starts revealing private discussions between herself and Ms. Y. She claims Ms. Y told her her presence on the mailing list would be unwelcome. This leads Ms. X to believe that Ms. Y is using this mailing list to say bad things about her behind her back. Combine that with the direct linking and you've got a recipe for paranoia.

Or not.

Here's a couple of reasons why paranoia might not be the first stop for that particular conclusion train.

First and foremost, there are lot of reasons why people on private mailing lists post links to other people's blogs. List members may be linking to posts they admire. List members may be linking to posts they don't understand, so that they ask for clarification from fellow list members. If you are a blogger that has posted about feminism consistently and for a long time, it is likely you will be linked by other feminists. Pretty cool.

Second, there is a fundamental misunderstanding of privacy that is going to be a trend in this story. Ms. Y happens to have a healthy respect for privacy and private conversation. I hadn't read Ms. Y revealing any private conversations. No mention of banning, no mention of unwelcome bloggers.

A commenter asks a question about why Ms. X was banned, and this prompts Ms. X to post a series of private e-mails between herself and Ms. Y.

Now a new story emerges. Rather than being banned, it is revealed the Ms. X wanted to JOIN the mailing list. Ms. Y replies that the list is in a rough period and the membership is currently frozen. Ms. Y assures Ms. X that there will be future opportunities to participate in private mailing lists together.

Do you see how things are shifting now? At first the argument is that mailing lists are bad. Now it is revealed that Ms. X wanted to join a list and was told she could not.

I responded in shock that Ms. X would post private e-mails. But I want to keep the discussion going. I point out that lots of people aren't comfortable with direct interaction. People say bad things behind our backs. The thing to remember is that I'm not going to change my opinion of Ms. X based on gossip (and remember, nobody has gossiped about Ms. X at this point). I pledged that I'd judge Ms. X by my own standards and that I'd expect she would do the same for me.

Alas, not true. Time for another side trip on the wayward conclusion train.

Ms. X now claims that horrible things are being said about her behind her back by someone who pretends to be a friend to her face. Next, she asserts that the mailing list she wanted to join is, in actuality, a list designed specifically to reject her and another blogger. She now returns to the argument that private mailing lists are always bad.

If you've read this far, and seen the twists and turns, I suppose you have figured out what a losing cause my further participation is. But I try to take Ms. X at her word. She claims that our friend, Ms. Y, has created a list whose purpose is to exclude her and talk about her behind her back. This obviously isn't the list I'm on, since Ms. X isn't a topic of discussion there.

But, maybe Ms. Y need to vent somewhere and has created the "I hate Ms. X" mailing list. Maybe she has recruited members from all over the internets. Perhaps they have badges, and cute little names and a theme song.

OK, maybe not.

Many comments ensue and eventually, the mailing list is named.

Yup. It's the one I'm on. Of course it's in completely unrecognizable form. I've got to wonder where Ms. X is getting these crazy ideas about the content of a list she isn't allowed to read. And now that she's revealed the name of the list, she feels free to reveal that I am a member of that list.

Remember what I said about privacy? I intended to keep my pledge to Ms. Y. But Ms. X didn't want to let that happen. So not only does Ms. Y's privacy get tossed to wind, but Ms. X chooses to throw mine along for the ride.

I suppose I should be angry.

Yes, the thread is patently absurd.

MailingList/Bad, MailingList/Good, MailingList/Bad.

But, dammit, I respected this woman right up until that thread. I've learned from her. I've laughed with her. I want her to be healthy and ready to rock and roll. I want to read more of her wonderful thoughts and opinions and be able to follow along as her mind zips from one interesting subject to another.

She's not there now. She's in a bad place. I'm not what she needs right now.

I hope one day she'll be back blogging and making me laugh and cry and think and smile.

Don't miss it!

This awesome video is from the fabulous Sudy! Enjoy!

There are some fairly awesome discussions going on in the blogosphere about the Yearly Kos convention and the very whiteness of it. One that sums it up bettter than many is taking place at Kai's place. Unfortunately, my old-style Mac at home cannot access his site, so I'll have to check that link from work tomorrow.

The discussion focuses on the difference between those who choose to participate with the big-name bloggers that are currently awash in presidential election politics and those who continue to support grassroots politics regardless of the elections.

Suprising no one, people like Black Amazon, Nanette and Joan Kelly are attempting to explain to a Kos poster named dopper0189 that choosing not to participate in DailyKos is not the equivalent of either a) doing nothing or b) some kind of separatist people of color-only group blog hug.

While it comes as no suprise that sucking up to the Democratic Party is not necessarily in the interests of people of color, it seems to escape notice that a whole lot of progressive white activists are also sick and tired of the same old party games.

The fact that individual people of color are able to voice their opinions in the blogosphere benefits all of us, including the melanin-deprived. No one has to post on the big blogs to have credibility or to affect the world in profound ways.

Rather than utilitizing the internetz to repeat the same old tired electorial political gamesmanship, I prefer to focus on the benefits we can achieve activist to activist.

My son reads porn. I should have aborted him

I don't have the whole story, but I first read about this internet post at Trinity's place via a comment at Renegade Evolution's blog. The presence of the post on Heart's blog has led to all kinds of crazy actions and reactions, one of which was an organized attack that shut down Heart's blog for a while. Meanwhile, discussions occurred in several places about the original post and various reactions to that post.

Heart's blog is back, although I can't find the source thread, so maybe she removed it. I don't know. But the post has been reposted all over the place. I googled a couple of phrases and found comments on all kinds of places, including a web site for Chicago Cubs fans. Huh?

So, I missed all the discussions. Those that I did find missed something I recoznied in the original post. So here's the post, copied from Trin's, followed by my own thoughts.

I have three sons, ages 16, 15, and 12. I was also in an abusive marriage for ten years in which my 15 year old was a frequent target of my x husband. These boys had a rough time of it, as did we all.

After I left my husband my children acted out for a short time, we all spoke of feeling relief and feeling safe yet there were still some rough spots as I got the hang of trying to do it alone.

Several years ago my accountability program found that the computer had been accessing pornography. Turns out it was my middle son. To date he has been 'caught' accessing pornography many times since then. He was 13 I think when this started.

I banned him from the computer, but after a few months I would allow him to be on it for short periods of time. Each and every single time my son would access pornography within days (and sometimes hours) of being allowed back online. He was aware that he would be caught because the computers are monitored but he chose to do it anyway.

Most recently my youngest son allowed my middle son to play with his PSP. Brandon (the middle child) used it to immediately access pornography online. The child is now banned from computers, video games and so forth. I've talked until I'm blue in the face, I've grown angry and yelled, I've cried when I was alone and when I was in front of him. I've had him read Dworkin, my site, and other places (namely OAG's site) and I still can't unseat this problem. He can recite feminist literature all day long, he can understand the tenets, the ideas behind it, how it links together but he will not allow this knowledge to stand in the way of his porn use.

I don't think I'm looking for advice (I've tried everything I could think of so far) but more a place to simply be sad. I can clearly see why he's looking at pornography, I've figured all that out readily enough, but I can't seem to make it stop.

I know, that as soon as my child leaves my home and moves into his own place that he will be looking at porn immediately. I know that I am raising a problem for women. I know that this child will one day grow and will fully absorb the messages that porn sends to men. I know that my child masturbates to degradation of my people (when I use that phrase I mean womyn) and that with every orgasm he will further solidify his own hatred of and superiority over, women.

I know that there will likely come a day where my son coerces a young woman into sex (rape) and there isn't a damned thing I can do about it. I look into the eyes of my son and they still sparkle like they did when he was a baby, but he's not a baby anymore, he's growing into a man and that man will have trained himself to degrade women before he leaves my home.

As a radical feminist who puts women first I cannot begin to determine what I should do with regards to this issue. My heart breaks because there is nothing I can do to protect the womyn he will come into contact with.

I have three boys. One of them is lost to me and as a mother and a radical womyn this breaks my heart in a way I can scarcely express. I don't know if it says something terrible about me, but you know what haunts me late at night? More than anything else? I know, in my heart of hearts that, knowing what I know now, if I had it to do over again I would have had that abortion.

I also find myself blaming myself over and over again, even though that radical womyn inside of me stands up and yells that I'm placing blame in the wrong place. I'm not sure what I intended to say with this message. I began writing it this morning and put it away again and finally decided to finish it this evening. I think that maybe I just wanted to share, I keep trying with Brandon and I keep failing. He simply doesn't care. When he wants to jerk off, everything goes right out the window.

Here's the deal: I have no idea what kind of reaction this poster received at Heart's space. Maybe the thread disappeared in the blog attack.

I can tell you that one year of abuse, much less 10 years of abuse, does a lot to fuck up one's head and can lead one to believe all kinds of strange ideas. I know that I did. So I have a lot of sympathy for this woman and for that fact that she's trying to find answers and failing rather spectacularly.

Which is, ffs, totally to be expected. You've been abused, your family dynamics have been fucked over. Of course your life is gonna be screwed up in ways beyond understanding

Somebody needs to tell this woman and her son that they're lives are fucked up for a reason and that they aren't likely to find solutions on their own.

Now I realize there are a lot of fucked up service agencies and head doctors in the world. I met quite a few of them myself. The thing is, the sole responsibility survivors have at this stage in recovery is to keep going until they find help that is useful and leads to a better life. Everything else is beside the point.

I remember myself at that stage. I spent a whole lot of time concentrating on how I was going to handle myself the next time I saw my father. After the abuse, after the stalking, after the attempts to subborn purgery, after the gun shots, it was all I could think about.

Until one day I met a decent shrink who said the following: "The only time you ever need to be alone in a room with your father again is if he is in a coffin and you want to be there to confirm the diagnosis."

That made a world of difference to me.

And I think that this woman, if the post is for real and not some kind of horrible parody, needs to be told that she cannot be the solution to her son's problem. That's going to have to be somebody else's job and the best she can do is help him find a useful mentor or therapist.

But our society doesn't allow for that kind of solution. There is so much pressure on parents to provide all the answers for their children. Even though it's perfectly clear that sometimes parents just aren't equipped to do that.

This whole discussion reminds me of talking to my ex-boyfriend's son in law blathering on about how the Jews should have fought back more during WW II and that he knows for damn sure he would have done that.*

I tried to tell him that, until you've got a gun to your head being weilded by a fucking nut job, you can't know what your response will be. In my book, no matter what you do, you get a pass. I'm not going to stand in judgment of anyone else in that situation. You're an idiot if you think you'd do any different.

*And yes, I do know that many Jews did fight back, which this dude was clueless about -- along with everything else.

Not hiding, just busy

Lots of stuff to do lately that don't involve blogging.

I got called to fill in at one of the local used bookstores I used to work at more often. Had to go in first last Wednesday to get trained in on the cash register as well as how to close up, including counting the till, etc. The owner is referring to me as "Super Nanny" -- she only calls me when one of her regular workers needs time off. I used to accept $6 an hour, but now I'm taking my pay in books: which equals $11 an hour. With every book half price, that adds up wonderfully.

On Thursday night, my youngest daughter went to her college gradution ceremony. It was huge with hundreds of students. I spent much of the night outside trying to catch up on my reading, but miraculously I went back in just in time to see her pick up her diploma. She looked great and she certainly deserves her reward after all her work.

On Friday night, I attended a going away party for one of my Iraqi friends who is heading back home for a few months. It was a lot of fun and some great Middle Eastern food.

On Saturday, I met with my book group: 5 wonderful friends who've been meeting together for nearly 15 years. From 5 to 10 p.m. I worked my shift at the bookstore and managed to sell a number of good books.

On Sunday, I went in to work to continue creating maps and graphics for a book I'm creating that my Mom wrote. It's been keeping me busy since August. I'm nearly done, so every little bit is a step closer to the end.

Then in the afternoon we heard from my brother in law. He was in the hospital! Turns out he went with a bunch of friends to walk the beautiful paths along the Mississippi River and he went over a cliff. He had to be rescued by firemen repelling down the cliff face and then being lowered onto a rescue boat. He scraped everything and was unconscious for a short time. He broke no bones, thank the goddess. We spent the rest of Sunday getting him out of the hospital and recovering his car, his keys, his cell phone and making sure he wasn't showing signs of a concussion. He's doing amazingly well while aching over every bit of his body.

Meanwhile, I'm busy this week. On Wednesday, I'm driving an out-of-town writer around. I'm halfway through his book and I must say I'm hugely disappointed. The question is will I be honest with him when I meet him, or just be a mute little service worker meeting his needs in an unknonwn city. We'll see.

Amidst all this, I've also picked up Jessica Valenti's "Full Frontal Feminism". I'm about halfway through and will comment when I'm done. I am following the blog debates about the book and I'm fascinated that people who I respect have strikingly different responses.

So much for the catching up. Hopefully I'll be back to useful blogging sometime soon.

Sacrifices

First, a little background:

BelleDame has a pretty good round-up of a recent dust-up in the blogosphere centered on the comments of two white women who had married black men and have referred to themselves as Race Traitors.

Their version should not be mixed up with Race Traitor, the anti-racist journal and book by Noel Ignatiev and John Garvey. These women are talking about the term as used by racists.

One of the women has repeatedly said that her marriage to a black man was a political decision. That confused me. How I vote is a political decision, how I act in my community is a political decision. How I act in regard to my loved ones and family is different. In a rather controversial post at ChasingMoksha's blog, Heart explains her viewpoint:

The lies and distortions are also cruel, like suggesting I married my husbands for political reasons only or whatever stupid bullshit. I married my husbands for love. I left the world of white privilege because of my politics. Part of leaving that world was not marrying white. Part of leaving that world was being rejected by my extended family. Part of leaving that world was becoming poor. Part of leaving that world was bearing and raising biracial children, nine of them, over 36 years now, with all that has meant over the years. I could have set my sights on moving upward, upward, upward through the echelons of privilege available to white middle class women, until I hit the layer-of-men ceiling. I could have stayed in the sorority my parents forced me to pledge to when I went away to school (because I went to school at 16, in the 60s, and they feared for me in the dorms). I left the sorority after my freshman year, couldn't stand the place. I could have gotten serious about, and married, one of the many white frat boys I had to drag along to sorority functions that freshman year (which was a year I had sworn off of men completely so I could attend to my studies and plus, I was sick of men. Some things never change. :P) If I'd done my folks' plan, that is, stay in the sorority, making those all-important connections, marry a frat boy and enlarge that circle of connections, become a professional, married to a professional, then I'd have been solidly ensconced in white privilege, American style. I didn't want that. I said fuck that. I was a pacifist. I was an anti-racist, involved in the Civil Rights movement. This was the 60s and all of us who were activists hated the "Establishment". I wanted to participate in the political revolution that was going on on my campus and in my city, and that's what I did, and I never turned back, even during my fundie years, during which I was still a pacifist, still anti-war, still not patriotic, still interracially married, involved in all sorts of various alternative movements. So anyway, what I did was, I chose my male partners from amongst the political radicals with whom I was engaged in political work, and when, as it so happened, I fell in love with my first ex, I said, hell yeah. I did not skip a beat for fear of losing all my race or class privilege or for what might happen to me, or whatever. Of course, as it turned out, the worst things that happened to me happened to me at the hands of my ex! Which is another story for another time. And which doesn't change how much I loved him, or my second ex. Why are people such idiots, those talking about this? I have to believe they are deliberately being idiots out of cruelty. That men have abused us (generic "us" meaning women) and even tried to kill us doesn't change the love we have had for them or the way our lives intertwine from that point forward. That's the horror and betrayal of abuse, that the men we have loved and trusted more than any other men have battered us, tried to kill us. Even when we leave them behind, usually, we still love them. Maybe we always love them. That's the way that goes down. Anyway, so yes, I consciously, deliberately, married my exes, once I'd fallen madly in love with them, and then had to consider my future. I didn't do what lots of women, and men, would do, say, "No, I can't marry this person, my parents will freak out and disinherit me and disown me." "No, I can't marry this person, it just isn't done." "No, I can't marry this person, it will be too hard on the children." "No, I won't marry this person, he is too poor, he's had too hard of a life, we are too different, our cultures, backgrounds are too different, we will have too many problems." "No, I won't marry this person, his family won't like it." "No, I won't marry this person, he'll get kicked out of the Panthers and he won't be able to go to BSU meetings." "No, I won't marry this person because racists will treat us like shit." I said, "Yes, I'll marry this man whom I love because I love him, and I don't give a shit what anybody says or thinks about that, because the reasons people give for their opposition are RACIST, and my marrying him might make things easier for the next couple like us." Which is POLITICAL. I have to wonder if people understand what "political" even means, you know? That a decision is "political" doesn't change the fact that it is still made because of LOVE. Which kind of gets at something I've wanted to write about for a long time, actually, the heady excitement of revolution-making, the way that falling in love with your "comrades" happens easily, because making revolution in a way that is real is, in fact, to make real, vital, exciting connections, is centered in hopes for a future that is good and hopeful and loving, and that energy spills over into every interaction you have with your co-revolutionaries. So yes, it's political, and yes, it's love, and where one stops and the other begins is not so clearcut for those of us who have experienced this.

When I first read this explanation, I made the following comment at Veronica's thread titled White Lady Pity Party:

Over on CM’s blog (link above), Heart has further explained her “political reasons” for marrying black men.

It’s breathtaking. I honestly don’t believe I’ve met anyone more clueless about her privilege.

It’s breathtaking. I’m speechless.

I literally couldn't comment then because what Heart talked about: her experiences and her decisions, refer to the kind of life that could only have been lived by a tiny, tiny portion of extremely privileged white people in 1960s America. It immediately brought to mind the film Born Rich, a documentary film by Jamie Johnson. If you haven't seen it, you really should. Here's a brief intro:

First-time filmmaker Jamie Johnson, a 23-year-old heir to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical fortune, captures the rituals, worries and social customs of the young Trumps, Vanderbilts, Newhouses and Bloombergs in the documentary special, BORN RICH, a 2003 Sundance Film Festival selection. Offering candid insights into the privileges and burdens of inheriting more money than most people will earn in a lifetime.

I'm not claiming that Heart was obnoxiously wealthy, as the people in this film are. I am claiming that she existed in an extremely narrow world in which acts like not pledging a sorority or marrying outside your own race are seen as courageous acts of rebellion. Heart wrote: "I left the world of white privilege because of my politics." She lost her chance at a corporate career, she lost her space in a sorority, she lost her chance at a professional husband.

What the rest of us realize, is that 97 percent of the U.S. population never had a chance at that. And those of us in that 97 percent who were white and never had to make those tough decisions about which wonderful future to give up, were still making out like bandits compared to people of color. We got the nice houses, the nice services, the presumption of innocence, the helping hand of neighbors and strangers.

We could barely get arrested: I know that for a fact. My father was a major conman, a grifter, a charmer. He broke the law and lay waste to family and friends for decades and nobody said boo. None of which would have happened if his skin had been a different color.

I can see that, in Heart's world, she had to pass up a lot of goodies. Having to live a life lilke mine must have seemed hugely difficult. So, perhaps she can convince herself that the privilege is gone. Perhaps the subtleties of racism are too hard for her to see.

Especially if she chooses not to look at them. And you, know, that's one of the bestest things about being white. You can choose to ignore it altogether if you want. Heart become quite the expert in not noticing.

I am not exempt

I hereby acknowledge I am capable of being a racist, sexist, homophobic , transphobic, classist, ablist, agist shitstain.* I've probably done all kinds of racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, classist, ablist, agist shitstainy things in my life and gotten away with it.

*Please feel free to fill in the prejudices I haven't listed.

I do not exmpt myself from these sins. I admit them, and in my better moments I try to learn from them.

Even so, because I am white, a U.S. citizen and capable of picking up some of the nasty shit that surrounds me, I will probably do something racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, classist, ablist, agist and shitstainy in the future. Although I make a concerted effort to avoid it, I'm not going to say it can't happen.

When I do act like a bigot, I hope somebody calls me on it. I hope I can hear that message and learn from it.

I've attended a lot of anti-racist and anti-homophobic training. The issue of power is always discussed. "Racism" is definied as a system that has real power to make life difficult for people of color. By employing and supporting racism through bigotry and hate speech, I could and would make life more difficult for people of color.

People of color do not have access to the power that is white racism. Therefore, the bigotry and hate speech of people of color is not racism. The word racism defines the system.

Bigotry is an illogical hatred for a different group of people. Anyone, including people without power, can participate in bigotry and hate speech. Hate speech has different effects, depending on where one exists on the power spectrum, but it still is logically defined as hate speech and bigotry.

Yesterday, I read a different argument over at Heart's space. This argument equates racism, bigotry and hate speech and says only the powerful can exhibit this behavior.

In this specific instance, the discussion was about hate speech toward transgendered people. Please click on over and read the whole piece, because I don't want to speak for Heart. She explains herself quite logically and doesn't go all academic on the reader, as some of us do.

You can read it here.starting at thread #208 by Heart. Here's a short quote from a follow up:

When a radical feminist female uses insulting words in the direction of transwomen, she understand this to be no different from using insulting words in the direction of males. It might be rude, crude, and socially unacceptable, it might be insulting, but it isn’t hate speech. It’s not discriminatory. Because given power differentials as they exist between males and females, females aren’t situated socially so as to be able to discriminate against males, or to be bigoted towards males or to be phobic against males. To the contrary, our experience as females is that males *are* to be feared because they hurt females and to say so, and behave accordingly, is not “phobic,” it is based on female reality.

I completely disagree with this theory. I believe it to be fundamentally flawed.

First, I believe, as I said above, that all of us are capable of hate speech and bigotry. These are the actions of individuals, not systems, and although they do not reach the level of racism, they still suck and ought to be avoided. By all of us.

Second, and more problematical, is that Heart claims that women have been harmed by men, therefore hate speech and bigotry toward men is merely an accurate description of the way men behave.

Obviously, I agree that men have and continue to harm women in all sorts of ways. I'd be a fool to disagree.

However, bigotry and hate speech is always illogical. It's illogical because we can never accurately define a group of human beings that is exactly one thing or another with no exceptions.

So, again, I am not exempt. And I hope my readers will call me on it when I do fuck up in the future.