In light of Appropriation and Race

Reposting the link to Sylvia’s post about the recent appropriation of Women of Color words. Mainly, the discussion.

This link to the Blog and the Bullet on appropriation and racism.

And this letter to white feminists, from Ico. Read it, read the discussion.

I have more links to add:

Sudy asks if feminism is a movement, and who that movement (or ideology) is really for. The entire post is a must-read, but this paragraph hit me pretty hard:

The question of liberation for privileged feminists will always remain unanswered because they are not equipped, they never learned to self-analyze beyond their own profit and gains. Privileged feminists will remain, I believe, fumbling in the dark with nothing but their oversized dry hands, their desire to be a good ally but inability to acutely challenge their darkest shadows of moral responsibility and fragile egos.   In the meantime, the backs of womyn of color have been broken.

For a concrete example, Amanda Marcotte - when her appropriation was pointed out, she responded by attacking everyone - framing their criticism as “accusations of plagiarism,” or jealous attempts to harm her career. I’m not picking solely on Amanda here, but simply using her as an example. This is simply one more case of a white woman using women of colors’  work as her own and thus erasing their work while taking full credit. She’s not the first, and she won’t be the last, and every time this happens, how many white women  - white feminists - will stand up and do something to ensure the right thing is done? How many will simply fall back to discussing the problem and then forgetting about it until it happens again?

Jill at Feministe wrote an article linking back to Sudy’s post, also linked above.

Cripchick wrote a poem about this. Go read it. I can’t quote just one part.

The Angry Black Woman has a message for Seal Press, Amanda Marcotte, and Salon Broadsheet.

Sylvia wrote this to clarify what the real point is - the history of appropriation, of rendering people of color invisible while white people claim credit for their work.

A few weeks ago, The Angry Black Woman wrote a letter to thank white people. A lot of white people showed up in her comments to completely misunderstand what she was saying and why she was saying it; showed up and tried to make it about them. Stormfront linked to her blog, and white supremacists came to her blog to attack her for daring to have a voice. This isn’t specifically about appropration, but in a more general sense is about white reactions to people of color daring to speak their truths.

Ilyka posted about the message being sent in these discussions.

Twisty posted about how white feminists often wield white privilege against women of color in ways similar to how men wield male privilege against women.

Ico posted about the racist pictures in the book promoted on Feministe. Short version: They feature a blonde woman fighting “savage” black men in a jungle.

blueAlto posted about how questions of appropriation/theft/plagiarism deflect can and do deflect the discussion away from the problem. 

And then there’s the fallout:

Brownfemipower has stopped blogging. She’s taken down her blog, and all of the work she’s done over the past few years. It’s still backed up, but I hope we can see it again. I also understand if we never do.

Some context.

I wrote what I wrote in response to all those feminists who, during the Full Frontal Feminism blow up, kept insisting over and over again that if “WOC” want book deals, they should “go get it them themselves.” That publishers weren’t skimming through the blogosphere looking for just anybody who’s a good writer. That you had to work for a book deal—you had to fight for it, show a little initiative, stop complaining, just do it. JUST. DO. IT.

As if there were no such thing as racism—as if there was no such thing as racism that is alive and well and present in the most cellular of spaces. As if simply opening a proposal and viewing the odd name at the top of the proposal doesn’t influence how the person reading that name will understand the rest of the proposal.

I wrote what I wrote to all those people, to all those feminists, who insist that short of refusing publication (and what good is that?) there is little to nothing feminists can do to stand in solidarity with other feminists who are not as privileged as they are.

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.

That if dabbling into and getting to know an actual community working in a certain way is too much work for feminism, then there is no fucking feminist movement.

That is what I said.

If you haven’t read the whole thing yet, go read it. If you have read it, go read it again.

And BlackAmazon. After the whole Seal Press mess along with this, she’s taking a break from blogging.

Do you know what it’s like to read the website that helped start your progressive /radical life describe you being disrespected and hurt as a maelstrom?TO mention your name once and magically turn you into women of color while expressing sympathy for people who flat out made you cry. To turn one SINGULAR you into this monolithic beast as if the people who agreed with you couldn’t possibly be diverse interested in their own realities but some side that is being ‘counterproductive” and not ACTUALLY wounded?

And then to say I won’t pick a winner? As if this was some kind of GAME?!

DO you know what it’s like to read time and time AGAIN someone you love dearly be frigging ROASTED in ” polite terms” and have it be okay. To watch people make pledges and commitments that magically disappear the REALITY and specifics of what has harmed you and hurt you in the name of ” objectivity”. Where in objectivity means we’re going to protect HER in expense of HER and EMPHASIZE the power we have by promising that THIS TIME we will give it to you?

As if that doesn’t make us the ULTIMATE OTHER? As if This benevolent desire to lead or to do BASIC frigging research is such a life changing act, and not ANOTHER way of affirming a death grip on privilege power and NON equitable action?

And those are the ” GOOD” responses!

And just in case your wondering in the grand cluster screw of this how many people actively involved with basically screwing me over, making me uncomfortable, or cry have actively in any way tried to CONTACT AND TALK TO ME

Zero.

Read her entire post. Don’t go for the bloodsport.

Oops, you can’t read her post because she took down her blog.

And thank you to littlem on Feministe for putting the first of these three links together and prompting this post. The post on Feministe is about promoting Amanda’s book, but the problem is that we still have this appropriation elephant in the living room, and white people are either avoiding the question or not effectively engaging it. Or they loudly insist it doesn’t exist, and viciously attack all.

Anyway, if anyone has links I should include here, please let me know. I’ll be adding more as I find them.

Three Blog Carnivals: Allies, Disability, Sexual Freedom and Autonomy

Cripchick’s hosting the 37th edition of the Disability Blog Carnival:

Disability Identity: What Do You Think??

The Disability Activist Collective, a group of disability activists working to create change within the disability community by shifting focus towards culture and identity, is currently collecting pieces (poetry, art, essays, videos, blog posts) on disability culture, community and identity in hopes of creating a website or hub on disability culture. This carnival is your chance to participate in the building of it!

This edition will focus on disability identity and culture in all its forms (i.e. radical disability pride, understanding disability through various frameworks, disability intersecting [coming together] with other identities, dealing with pain, etc.).

The deadline to submit something is officially May 4th though I will keep adding people in through a rolling basis. The blog carnival will go on air May 8th. You can submit things by leaving a link in a comment to this post, emailing me it at consciouslycrip [at] gmail [dot] com, or using the blogcarnival.com tech.

The Angry Black Woman is hosting a blog carnival for allies:

I’ve been thinking about many things since the whole “Thank You, White People” post debacle and subsequent influx of white supremacists who seemed to come here with the intent of saying, “You thought you dealt with racists on a daily basis? HA! We’ll show you what REAL racism is!” And they did. One of my reactions was to say that for every white ally who acknowledged racism and worked to fight against it, there were 20 others wishing to drag us back to Jim Crow and worse. Then smart commenter Jackie said:

Thing is, I don’t believe there’re 20 of them for every one of us (black or white or other) who wants to make things right; I think there’s actually somewhat fewer of them. But for each white supremacist (and for each person of any color who wants to make things right) there are 20 nice, well-meaning, but privileged and entitled white people who thing “racism is bad” but have no idea whatsoever that real racism exists, or what it’s like to be a target of it. Or how much they have benefited from their European coloring, and from not having centuries of slavery and legally enforced poverty limiting every aspects of the parents’ and grandparents’ and great-great-great-grandparents’ lives.

This got me thinking about those white folks who exist in that liminal space where they are against racism but don’t understand how it works and get defensive, hurt, and freaked out when folks point out how they benefit from it without trying. We saw a lot of that on the Thank You thread before the others showed up. I am wondering how you turn that kind of person into an ally. I’m wondering if maybe I cannot simply because, when they read my words, they are so filled with defensiveness and perhaps guilt, nothing I say can get through. If they can’t listen to me, can they maybe listen to other White people?

And that got me wondering if this was true for any kind of ally. Is it easier to understand oppression, to move past guilt and on to useful dialogue, etc., if the person explaining these things to you in-depth is a person like yourself? White or male or straight or Christian or whatever? I don’t know. But as this is the Internet, it should be easy to figure out.

The deadline is May 5th, and I apologize for my own atrocious lateness in posting about it.

And finally, the Second Feminist Carnival for Sexual Freedom and Autonomy is up at Labyrinth Walk.

 

Sudy Lays It Out

Sudy asks feminists to stop stealing. Since it’s not unusual for some white feminists to ignore and dismiss woc bloggers, only to use their ideas without crediting them, this is a fair demand.

Belledame also covers this in a bit more detail.

When women talk and talk and yell for months, even years, about injustices suffered by women of color and are outright ignored, dismissed, belittled, talked down to, only to see their words, their writing, echoed in another - more privileged - woman’s work, without any credit given or acknowledged, something’s seriously wrong. If you write about what women of color have to suffer, understand that one of the things women of color have had to suffer is having their words and ideas stolen, and at the very least, point to the road they’ve already traveled if you intend to walk down it yourself.

It’s not hard.

Edit: I meant to include this article much earlier, and apologies for not. Compare the article to Brownfemipower’s posts that Sudy linked.

Apologies for being less explicit than I should have been.

 Brownfemipower also has a response up.

Sylvia at problemchylde makes it even clearer.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with what X wrote, it’s just, you know, women like bfp have been talking about this for the past year, and there’s not a hint of credit given for the work they’ve done and are doing.

Edit: Sudy rightfully points out that people are linking her with reference to this incident with X, and not the historical context that this has happened over and over again, and is not an isolated incident. This isn’t about whether X needs to credit BFP or Nina Perales, but rather about whether white feminists are crediting women of color when they refer to and use WoC’s work to inform their own.

And of course, the answer is “Yes, give credit where it’s due. Don’t steal. Don’t appropriate. Don’t try to make it about you.”

Apologies to Sudy for narrowing the subject down.

CFP: Feminism for Freaks Anthology

Forwarded: 

Call For Papers

“Feminism For Freaks”

At its best, feminism offers an emancipatory potential from gendered
oppression, inequality, and violence.  At its worst, however, feminism
can work to simply affirm the rights of middle-class, heterosexual,
white women, and exclude the voices of already-marginalised groups
such as women of colour, trans* women, sex workers and so on.  Like
Derrida’s democracy, a truly liberatory feminism is mostly a feminism
to come.

Not un-coincidentally, those marginalised groups of women are often
demonised by the dominant culture, rendered as monstrous,
simultaneously invisible and hyper-visible, compelling and
threatening, desirable and disgusting–and forever denied a voice of
our own.  The question of if and how monstrosity can be reclaimed or
re-worked is a vexed one for feminists.

We therefore invite proposals that affirm the voices of socially
excluded people, that seek to create new and exciting knowledge and
address themselves to feminist theory and activism or the wider
culture, on such topics including, but not limited to:

*       Monstrous bodies and identities
*       Social marginalisation and exclusions (for instance, borders, walls,
and immigration laws, and the silencing of voices such as those of
women of colour and transgendered people)
*       Liberation/transformation/organisation
*       sex work
*       queer sexualities and genders
*       BDSM
*       Visible signs of difference (Muslim women wearing the veil, disabled
bodies etc)
*       religion and spirituality
*       freaks in popular culture, body modification etc
*       fat positivity

Academic, non-fiction and creative work will be considered–the call is
broad, and we’re willing to accommodate new and interesting work by
freaks of all kinds.

Please submit abstracts of up to 250 words by May 31st to
estrangedcognition@hotmail.com and suzanmanuel@gmail.com

http://sexualambiguities.blogspot.com

http://butterflycauldron.blogspot.com

*Note - Given that some contributors may not feel safe or comfortable
telling their stories in the public sphere, submissions under
pseudonyms will be accepted.

Fem Watch II: Diamonds in the Rough

Some of you may remember Say it ain’t so Feminism from Sudy a few months ago. Well, she’s produced a second vlog - Diamonds in the Rough.

Apologies for not posting this sooner.

Femwatch, Episode 1: Say It Ain’t So Feminism

Sudy of A Womyn’s Ecdysis has posted a vlog providing a sampling of the really questionable comments from the feminist blogosphere:

This barely scratches the surface, but some of what she quotes is surprisingly outrageous. I’m looking forward to further installments - not just the outrageous stuff, but positive stuff as well.

Young Women’s Empowerment Project

From brownfemipower:

Young Women’s Empowerment Project is Proud to Invite you to the First Art Show (In Chicago!!!)
Featuring the Original Works of our Youth Membership and Youth Staff

Join us Friday, December 14th for Wine and Hors d’ouvers at the Mekhanskhen Gallery 5459 S. Drexel from 8pm to 11pm

We will exhibit pottery, wood prints, oil paintings, collage, sculpture, textiles, drawing, graffiti art & embroidery.

Made by 12 different YWEP artists. Art and Prints will be available for Sale.

Our Artist Statement:
We titled this art show “Survival of the Artist…” to show how we are resilient to oppression and how we stand up and fight against it every day. Art is one method of resilience we use to show that we are multi-faceted and that what we do isn’t who we are. We are de-humanized by those that say we are “prostitutes” and “criminals.” YWEP doesn’t believe in these terms. We rebel against them.
We believe all girls are priceless.
We support all girls who do what they have to do to survive.

Dics-We mean law enforcement. Because we are young women of color, because we hang out in certain neighborhoods, because we do what we have to do to survive, cops hassle us, stop us for no reason, and generally reduce our quality of life.
Dicts- The prefix “dict” means to label. We are labeled as certain things just because we are women (like “weak”, “over-sensitive”, etc.). The labeling and pigeonholing increases because we are women with life history in the sex trade. We battle someone else’s value system attempting to define us and tell us how to be. Every day, we battle this oppression from many forms of government or state systems and institutions.
Dicks- We mean surviving in a patriarchal society.We are constantly surviving against misogyny, a strong hatred or prejudice against women.

We Refuse to be Disempowered! Come Celebrate our Resilience!
above poster made by Girls in Charge Member Naima

Tickets $25.00
To purchase tickets go to our website and follow the instructions
or Get them at Women and Children First 5233 N. Clark St.
Want to come to the show for free?
Sell 10 tickets and you can!
Contact Cindy for more info:
cindy@youarepriceless.org

On another note, I’ll get posting my own posts again soon. I just had a busy weekend and didn’t have much time for blogging.

I am in love with Renegade Evolution

Ren wrote this post in response to the discussion on Bastante Already about radical feminism.

[W]e all get told how much our activism of any sort does not matter. If you happen to not be against, or are even ambivalent towards, or maybe involved in sex work (and not the perfect poster girl victim), what you do doesn’t mean shit. It’s nothing, not good enough; after all, you haven’t seen what they’ve seen, and you are enabling it, even personally making it happen! It doesn’t matter if you bust your ass every day trying to find a woman on the run from an abusive ex a place she can afford to live. It doesn’t matter if you spend hours working with lesbians who have been kicked repeatedly by society trying to help them feel comfortable in their own skins. It doesn’t matter if you’ve scrubbed the blood and grey matter of a woman shot by her boyfriend off your floors or stood over the casket of a co-worker killed by her boyfriend in a jealous rage. It does not matter if you’re a transwoman who has been beaten or raped. It doesn’t matter if you’ve fucking lived aspects of any of these lives on your own in order to put food on the table and come through it realizing that every persons situation is different and that there is no universal experience when it comes to all women. It does not matter. You’re not good enough. Right enough. Pure enough. What you do means nothing, no matter how much of that nothing you do or how much of that nothing you’ve lived or how much of that nothing has helped other people.

Yeah, that.

The radical feminists I talk about in this blog, who write the most transphobic things are the same radical feminists who say the above - who dismiss the work Ren does because Ren does sex work - because she’s a stripper. Their bigotry is not limited to just one or two things, but a spectrum of experiences and lives that they vehemently disapprove of - BDSM, pornography, women of color who actually speak for themselves, women with disabilities. Anyone who raises uncomfortable questions about the definition of oppression in radical feminist terms - that the root of all oppressions is gender, that women are invariably oppressed, and that all these things represent oppression. BDSM reifies heteronormative patriarchal sex roles. Transsexualism reifies the patriarchal gender binary. Pornography makes women nothing more than sex objects. All women have a common experience of oppression as women, and so the pain that a black woman suffers when the violation she suffers is defined as “not really rape” and “a theft of services” is the same pain that a black woman from Mali suffers when she is refused political asylum to protect her daughters from FGM. It’s the same pain that a Russian woman who’s been trafficked into sex slavery suffers. It is the same pain that a latina woman suffers when she is separated from her daughter before deportation. These are all the same pain that a white middle-class woman feels when she reads about these stories. Or so some radical feminists might say.

This denies that all women have our own diverse experiences, that we experience life differently, that we’re oppressed in many ways because of race, disability, class, and sexual orientation. That my experience as a white woman is not the same as a black woman’s, or that black woman’s experiences are not the same as mine because she is cissexual and I am transsexual. That we have intersections that stack and multiply the social complications we face, and that it is impossible to separate “race” from “gender” for women of color, or “disability” from “gender” for women with disabilities.

Instead of looking for a common thread that binds all women together, we’re better served trying to address the real experiences that real women live. A form of feminism that runs women who don’t share that common thread out on a rail isn’t really a feminism I can get behind. Especially not one whose proponents try to silence voices like these.

Sour Grapes?

Drakyn posted recently about Heart’s/womensspace’s snipe at the Transgender Day of Remembrance:

“My gut, experience, knowledge tell me that the group of persons which will receive the absolute least sympathy and concern is female persons. We are trafficked, prostituted, enslaved, raped, all of the time by all sorts of men, ho hum, no big deal. But if it’s a boy or a transgender person, suddenly that’s a whole nother level.”

As I said in Drakyn’s discussion:

There are some lines cis women shouldn’t cross. You can participate in the Day of Remembrance, or you can ignore it, but don’t you dare begrudge it.

We have the Transgender Day of Remembrance is because it is a whole ‘nother level when a trans person is killed. A level down. As in trans panic defense actually working, as in massive victim blaming, as in society seeing trans lives as disposable. As in the murders being a matter of brutal overkill. I am not sure what world Heart lives on, but it’s not one where trans lives are valued over cis women’s lives.

Unfortunately, Heart sees everything trans women gain as something stolen from her - from all cis women. She accuses us of appropriating and colonizing womanhood, but she uses both words inappropriately. Talking about colonization the way she does is appropriation: If trans women aren’t marching on Women’s Country, with guns, sabers, diseased blankets and a mandatory religion, using “colonization” in this context is naked appropriation. You don’t colonize by becoming, you colonize by dominating, disenfranchising, othering, enslaving, and murdering.

While I wouldn’t accuse Heart of trying to colonize trans women experiences (she wants to deny that our experiences are valid, not claim them for her own - she only appropriates cis women experiences), she does try to dominate, disenfranchize, and other trans women whenever possible. She aggressively shouts us down when we claim to have experiences in common with cis women. She tells us that we’re not allowed to use goddess symbolism, she insists (sometimes) that we are men, or acting as men, or acting on male privilege. Further, she cheers on regular posters who make even more outrageous and transphobic statements, while claiming all along that she doesn’t believe or think those things because she never said them.

But she whines that trans people dare to remember our dead.

Some Links

Queen Emily describes what being transgender means to her. I need to post my own, soon.

Drakyn posts his description here.

Nexy responds to Emily’s post here.

Shiva describes the natural alliance of disability and transgender activism. I intend to cover this myself, but I didn’t get this done by today as I’d planned.

Monica Roberts continues her Transgender Day of Remembrance posts with Remembering Our Dead.

Gorgon Queen expresses some common frustration about the transphobia coming from certain prominent gay men.

Cara on Feministe posts about the transgender politician sued for fraud. I covered this somewhat, but didn’t comment much. Cara has a lot to say that I happen to agree with.

Brownfemipower, BlackAmazon, Donna, and Sylvia respond to Hugo Schwyzer resurrecting the Full Frontal Feminism controversy. The discussion about how women of color are marginalized in feminism is very to the point.

Miss Crip Chick wrote a poem everyone should read.

Kim at Bastante Already explains why she turned away from online radical feminism.

Dw3t-Hthr of Letters from Gehenna posts regarding mental health, sexual assault, and the personal being political.

Renegade Evolution discusses pornspeak, how some women react to it, and some women try to use it as a weapon.

Lesbianism. It’s serious business.