Before I begin please let me apologize I think I am now backlogged on email's from NOVEMBER as well as thank you notes, please do not take this as me absconding of my manners but me truly just falling the hell behind.
I have a new job, in retail , and I now work 13-14 hour days ( including travel) so anyone who has not heard from me please know I am trying.
So The Short of this Post is I don't know what to do but i am inspired.
I am now at a point where I feel I must be superpragmatic and conscious of how I say things. I am also at the point where I get no sleep and have had my first coldsore in nearly three years I am that exhausted. I am watching the way I say everything.
Not what I say because I refuse to change that but HOW I say things.
I am skating dangerously close to censoring my self. SO I am going to try and write the next post to get some things off my mind while also setting the stage for what is to come with this blog.
First and foremost. I am done with " Feminism".
I Don't care anymore . ProfBW was right. I can't converse with the hegemon anymore. I need a perspective change.
The most depressing point for me last week was I truly combed through my archives and SEARCHED because after feminist rising and the bullshit with the book , and the reactions
I swore I had to have dedicated a HUGE chunk of my blogging life to Jessica Valenti and Amanda Marcotte and main stream feminism and maligning books .
Total BLACKAMAZON ( Sydette Harry) initiated posts that even MENTION these women out of the 405 posts I have written :
15.
Thats a grand total of if you're being imaginative 4%.
Out of those posts where in I do not directly respond to their WORK,the words the write , the organizing they do, the things they or others around them claim I am just leveraging personal attacks on cause it's so good it's unassailable and I AM JUST NOT SMART ENOUGH OR JUST JEALOUS :
That would be 0%
I have cussed , I have screamed , but not once have I maligned their personhood or their humanity. OR allowed it to happen in my name, when i have known.
And I won't now.
Cause this is the last time it will be spoken of in these conditions.
No matter what both of these women are people, and
THEY ARE NOT AND NEVER WILL BE THE MOVEMENT. Also personality dislike is not a commentary on work. I have NEVER done that and I RESENT implications and connections to my critiques as if me saying I found a book trite is the same as saying I found a human being trite. I also resent the fact that being critiqued by "WOC" has been distilled to my six posts , ONE of which mention s the author specifically. There is NO need to focus critical response to work and historical dynamics on setting up false dichotomies and jealousies between women. That is NOT the work
I am a deep believer in work. The responsibility of work , the necessity of it , and also the WORK of it.One of my favorite professors called social justice " the work" not the movement, not the "----ism"but the WORK. The thing that involves sweat and effort and discomfort that goes beyond being a fan and beyond a dynamic of trying to be on the "right side"
About being actively involved IN THE WAYS WE CAN making life the BEST WE CAN for the LIVES OF OTHERS AS ALL ARE PEOPLE.
FULL FUCKING STOP.
When Dr Reagon speaks of it being a harsh and constant thing of us having no safe spaces anymore its true. This shit is hard and it's ONLY getting harder and I only have so much energy to direct .
and I am tired.
Personally I will admit it I AM JEALOUS. I wish I could organize for young women as a career . I wish I could train my voice and write my own work . I wish I could post all the things I get about worthwhile ventures( please keep sending those). I wish that trying to stay alive have health care pay back student loans didn't prevent me from volunteering and teaching. I wish that I didn't have to constantly deal with major magazines telling me my hair , weight and skin color are a death sentence. I wish that because of that and a Feminism who believes these concerns are secondary I didn't have to try and scratch out theory and knowledge late night on an old ass computer , while folks paint a target on my back for breathing. I wish people didn't dangle opportunities in front of me as if telling me how easy my life could be if I knew my place like a good little darkie.I Wish that my lack of privilege wasn't continually snidely referenced as a character failure.
But this is my life. And as part of the WORK I can do , with this lil piece of space, I have to be judicious.
I am done with this "movement:. When someone it idolizes has the gall to call me stupid in plain speak in a national newspaper, followed by a white woman blatantly telling me to sit down my views and life so she can feel better in her board meetings
while I am worried about taking care of my momma after 60.
When I can be present in places where people are talking about me and things I have written, AND USING THEM ( and yes I know I have stat counter), while IGNORING me.
Well how many times you got to be told your unwanted for you take a hint?
SO after this post , I don't care Feministing, books, " internet celebs" I AM DONE. My email is in my profile and until last week ( where in my wife started HOLLERING _
SO WAS MY SCREENAME.
I have never been hard to find engaging me is EASY. Talking to me is easy cussing me out is easy, but no one has the time , so guess what NEITHER DO I
IF it does not pertain to larger womanhood and by larger I mean the global international multiphase multilevel WORK of making women's lives better, I won't be commenting. Should you want to pay me or donate to a charity in my name, MAYBE
but in this same week I read articles about Kenyan politics, my love of music, Carlos won something, Nubian has an amazing documentary that needs funding (t hats getting it's own post), Warren has a website, Brent is releasing an album, I heard one of the greatest things I have heard in my life,and I've had amazing conversations about life. I posted about vomiting cause i was crying too hard.
If you say Women we coming for ya but besides that.
There is too much beauty in the world.
I am 23 years old and have no answers All I have is a willingness to do work and I am tired of feeling exploited and appropriated cause I do.
I am NOT supposed to be anybody's ANSWER or ANSWER TO. Those you find for yourself and since it was asked of me.
Yes Abby I felt attacked, and i felt violated because your analysis of my writing of the less than one percent of two years of writing I did was to make me some unuseful attacker of my "peer"( although while you make a case that wave feminism idealogical differences is important my utter distaste for the third wave and its subsequent permissiveness s to unchecked privilege is me being mean to peers all of whom are ALWAYS 6- 10 years older than me). I was made secondary to AN OBJECT and you then tried to tell me how I could do better and after what w as essentially bad research , a lack of historical respect or intellectual rigor.
You got a 101 thread.
I help and my help I mean i end up doing it with no crediting no engagement ( unless a white person points it out to the said offender) helping folks rewrite books and change websiteS larger than mine
and I become a TARGET.
Three or four posts go down in infamy and it is obvious that folks don't READ them while calling me STUPID or lazy.
My friends are tired or leave blogging cause its draining, can't hold on to the things they love cause it's proven false, can't even express a distaste for a movement based in coopting their lives without being treated as stupid little infants and after all that.
I have to wait cause every month or so some person hopes they can take down the "dragon" of Blackamazon.
A 23 year old girl, doing the little she can to make the world better, to show her the error of her ways so she can shape up and join up
And for what so old rich white women can tell me how they know what I should be thinking. SO i can be a happy zoo animal, or more likely they can get brownie points for taming the wild black woman.
That's not the work, you wnat home find it somewhere else but this This here is
WORK
Monday, January 14, 2008
The Greatest Trick The Devil Ever Played
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13 comments:
Blackamazon, I feel like a fresh breeze just blew through the room and took all the stale air right out the window. The hostility and pain which brought you to this point simply and utterly suck; but this is a wonderful inspiring post because you're coming from a wonderful inspiring place. You are so right: it's all about the Work. Not the isms or the posturing or cleverness or power plays or taking of sides or self-important pretensions or any of that. Just getting up every day and renewing the Work, with integrity, humility, and of course love. Without these things, the Work doesn't work. And while you may not have The Answers, my young amiga, you do have all those qualities piled up high inside your radiant sky-stretched heart, shining for all who care to see. Thank you for showing us these vistas, which somehow always seem to bring me back into my own self, my own heart, my own work.
I'm going to be real with you here because I love you, and I am SO HAPPY that you're taking this step right now. Especially since so many people enjoy making excuses and twisting their minds around so they can try to stomp on you. Your intellect is like a phoenix, and with every single attack your voice grows stronger. And you have so much respect from me.
I can say that about this part:
The most depressing point for me last week was I truly combed through my archives and SEARCHED because after feminist rising and the bullshit with the book , and the reactions
I swore I had to have dedicated a HUGE chunk of my blogging life to Jessica Valenti and Amanda Marcotte and main stream feminism and maligning books .
The problem was never you maligning books or maligning mainstream-celebrated online white feminists. The problem was always you daring to call yourself a feminist in the first place, of any variation, with any qualifiers. It's like Reagon said in her article; there's only so long that white middle- to upper-class heterosexual often educated able-bodied women can continue to create spaces and theories and frameworks and opportunities for themselves and label them For Women. Because women who fall out of that very narrow line will try to walk in. And when we find that we can't walk in, we'll try to run over if we think it shouldn't be.
But we don't have to walk in or run over if our work keeps breaking ground. Hell, if all of us women stood outside that little shanty house with its bared skin and its style/sex/socially appreciated femininity-for-opportunity shams and collectively stomped our feet, the whole foundation for that bullshit would crumble because there's so much WE do, women who identify as feminists or who don't bother -- there's so much WE DO each day and that WE DID throughout time that didn't require any of these damned glass ceilings and barb-wired electrocuted floors that this movement keeps pressing us into. It's a wonder to see so many movements rushing to take credit for phenomena they did NOT master because they claim that by ceding in their presences, it made our lives more tolerable. Even in the face of women living backbreaking lives under mindblowing odds to stay sane and moving.
And those women don't have to call themselves feminists, you don't have to call yourself a feminist, no one has to BE a feminist to love them and sweat with them and work with them. Live with them because we do it all the time. I don't think I'd know Gloria Steinem if I passed her on the street, and the more I see and hear of her, I don't think I'd like to know her, either. But I see women like us and so different from us all the fucking time.
So I'm so glad you passed through.
And as usual, watching you move always makes me sit down and think. So thank you for moving on your stage and letting me see it.
You're incredible Blackamazon. I don't know what else to say but that I am constantly blown away by your thoughts and your words.
big and brassy be the ovaries of my brown sisters.
How did you get blogger to do a fucking cut anyway?
BA, take it from an almost-48-year-old girl...the next 25 years will make you or break you. That is the difference in age between you and I, and I still feel you like I was 23 again or you were 48.
think of the journey. (Prince called it The Work too). Think of the road. Go down it, don't look back, and after a while notice how many people are keeping step with you, how many have fallen behind, and how many are urging you to keep on when you just want to stop. That's the only perspective I can give you (not that you asked), but if it helps you're not doing it alone.
"But I'm willing 2 do The Work
Willing 2 do what I gotta do
I'm willing 2 do The Work
Tell me now- what about u?"
The work is so important, and such a wonderful way to think of it and experience it.
Bernice Johnson, at your link (what a wonderful speech) talks about how coalition happens on the streets, where it isn't safe. Unfortunately, it seems like those who stand tallest in their differences get unfairly targetted and (ironically) simultaniously ignored in favor of the stereotypes alive in the minds of the targetters.
I think it's important to have safe spaces to rest, where love is generous and you are seen as your whole and not the pieces people make you into for their own ends. Johnson talks about this - talks about the supportive place where people are alike in the ways they need to be, and I think too often this gets unfairly discounted as somehow divisive or undermining. I think work happens there, too, but work of a different sort - more internal and rejuvenating.
I'm reminded of what Little Light posted about a while ago, about the politics of a heartbreak. Love and passion are needed for connection; to live in coalitions that actually ARE coalitions, we need to bring our strengths and our frailities and make room for both - make it so that people don't have to dress up in their Sunday Best and cover their truths in order to be treated like a person (some of the time; the message always seems to be - 'You may present yourself perfectly, but we can still tear you down and make you go away'). But all to often, people take the showing of a frailty as a "hit here first" sign, and the lack of safety becomes very real and very personal.
And intentions mean nothing to heartbreak.
you know what you do after you make a clean break? You cry your guts out one last time, then drink some cleansing tea, go out for a walk, take a refreshing nap, clean your pores out with a nice hot shower, then go out to dinner with some great friends.
When we are together next, you better have accomplished all of the previous tasks, because this little samwise will be going out to dinner with you, ms. frodo.
xo
"the Great Work continues"
fair enough.
just to say that I loves you, think you're fucking ace, and you do whatever you need to do to keep on.
I also think Sylvia's right, fwiw.
and...I was gonna email you with some stuff, but I hear you wrt being two months behind and overloaded. Just, briefly: you are in many peoples' thoughts, your presence is fiercely felt when it's there and deeply missed when it's not.
that, and: some of us have been talking about going to WAM (as attendees). Want to hear what you have to say by any other same; also want to see and/or meet you, respectively.
and one of these days, dammit, we're gonna get that cake, you and me.
((hugs))
I agree with pretty much everything Sylvia said. Feminism isn't exactly welcoming to those who don't fit the white, middle class, cis woman mold, and those who identify as feminist and who speak out on feminism who do not fit into that mold are attacked for it.
One of the reasons I did end up reading your blog was due to digging up the whole FFF blogstorm while trying to figure out what was going on in the blogosphere, and I saw someone under attack for, literally, nothing she ever really said or did, but rather for being who she was while saying and doing completely reasonable things.
It's something familiar to me, although what you've been getting has been more vicious.
Gloria Steinem's article is such a good example of this white middle-class feminism: She talks about being black and being female as if they are separable, as if there's not really such a person as a "black woman." And of course, the old canard that gender trumps race.
ah yeah. that feeling of getting back on track, eh? nothing like it. nothing like it. you brought me right back. i'm there...oh, about every month or two. jeje. i dont know i kid. but i mean to say for me, i catch myself again and again. that's whats great about living and learning. and still being alive to apply it.
"the work" is perfect.
keep the faith, mujer. big love to ya.
"I am skating dangerously close to censoring my self."
Yeah, that was the goal, I suspect. And if that happens, your friends lose, your fellow workers lose, the people who share your ideals lose and the causes you believe in lose.
I have a favorite quote that was posted above the desk of a woman I knew from 1980s activism on Central America. She was a Presbyterian minister working in the council of churches and steering its very valuable resources and contacts toward the cause. The sign said:
"Wait! There go my people! I must run and catch up with them, for I am their leader and they need me!"
I feel that way about real world activism versus the internetz. All the so-called "leaders" are back there in the slow lanes missing out on the awesome strength of women's activism around the world.
Their loss.
BA, I think you're doing the right thing to focus on the real work you're doing and not the bloglandia drama.
And I think it sucks that you can't follow your passion wholeheartedly right now because of the demands of real life.
I would love, though, to hear more about your new gig.
I don't think you should worry or feel bad if the path from A (current work) to Z (organizing for young women and young WOC) seems enormous. Not to sound like an old crone, but you're young. You will get there. You'll find a way to make it work. You're doing what you have to do right now.
As for not getting a 101-- maybe there is a way to make something like that happen, with all us folks here who want to engage with you and not just marvel at you (not that we never want to do that).
So what would that be for you? Obviously, not the same kind of 101 as the one you noted. But what would be a meaningful way to set up a conversation to engage on the non-mainstream-feminism issues?
"Wait! There go my people! I must run and catch up with them, for I am their leader and they need me!
I think thats the thing . Ghandi said you must follow to lead.You have to be indebted and willing to truly listen to your people. To lead them and thats nota finite
OOHH I AM LISTENING TO MY PEOPLE thing
its literally anongoing processing journey.
i have more on thsi but ihave to go
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