Talk to someon different

I have been on vacation for the better part of a week and a half.

Hence why it goes form a blog post a week to two or three every day . Well more like these past couple days.

The most important part of my vacation however happened on the first day, yesterday,and today.

First day: I taught kids as a visiting person.

Yesterday: I saw Star Trek.( which will get a longer whole separate post later)

Today: I got Google Reader.

Teaching the kids was interesting , because my personal background is teaching. It is instinctive, and probably reflective of my ginormous ego , and my stupefyingly large mothering instinct. I hadn't been in a class with kids however in any meaningful way for a year . So I came in prepared . READY OUTLINED !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And I was late so totally and completely late . I swear to everything , I was cussing Queens, Brooklyn, the MTA , The DOE, the NYPD and traffic lights.

I entered the building in a Storm( is diva brings drama ) and had no time to do my notes. Not that I would have anywho , so I pulled up a chair and essentially said

Talk.

and it ( for the most part) worked.

They talked, I made jokes, and I got to listen. To the hopes fears, coping mechanisms, and effects of being young in the digital era.

It was funny. " My mom hears the word myspace on the news and wakes me up to tell me about"

and heartbreaking " I can't I'll say it wrong"

but it was the first time I had to in any small way describe myself to children as a blogger as a writer and it was good for me.

Because I had become afraid, and disillusioned and tired and gunshy.

I am afraid to speak on this blog. I am cautious and trepidations and obtuse.

I never was that.

I am afraid that the mere act of opening my mouth will get me labeled, drama queen or trouble maker or jealous. I am afraid that having any memory longer than two months will get me tagged as stalker ish and nitpicky and jealous. I am afraid to write because I have become disgustingly familiar with seeing things I have said watered down, and processed for palatability with no credit .

And no one can say that's not true , because everyone has seen it happen.

I have sat on it till it permeated my soul with the kind of anger and meanness and jealousy ( and coupled with my 9-5) exhaustion, that was literally dampening who i was. I was ALWAYS COMPLAINING , or philosophizing trying to martyr myself on some cross .

and then I listened to the kids.

and they promised me and I promised them that I would talk to and with new people, or newly to the people I know

so I'm a try one

There is a conversation going on some of the larger feminist blogs ( here,here, and here) about the opening of a new women's blog. called Double X( google reader is my downfall)

I am deeply perturbed by essentially everyone talking for various reasons. But mostly I have to share something.

One of the number one hits to my blog is a marketing agency. I will be the first to tell you I am not that big a fish in the blogosphere, even more so now that many people have pretended I do not exist.

That being said this development of women's magazines, and sites that re explicitly not only biting back at women's magazines, BUT ALSO "feminism".

As a RADICAL WOC my critiques have been specific to my experience but time and time again not just WOC, but trans women, young women,older women, mothers have online talked about feeling isolated not just from the stereotypical idea, but a feminism that claiming to speak FOR them not only would not engage with them in ANY way but expert to plebeian.

While many of them insist that the model is why you needs feminism , a LARGE HUGE GAPING HOLE is

" why does feminism need us"

If you are smarter, sexier, more human , better and do it ( whatever it) is that some of us

while needing to be lead taught handheld babies, and begged to treat us as human by others of us

while still others should be a okay with you stealing co opting ignoring tokenism

why should we sign up for this treatment?

ESPECIALLY if when challenged by the mere plebeian set there is nothing but challenged by anyone with hint of PATRIARCHAL power suddenly discussion is vital

( even though you're tired if you're tired I'm telling there are people who are EXHAUSTED)

and if these discussions result in a proliferation of people walking a way and saying

" I will wait for something that represents me , I will wait for someone that speaks to me on my level, I will wait for someone who shows me basic courtesy and respect or I will make my own"

If an entire swath of women can sound like 80's Janet Jackson " What Have You Done For Me Lately"

and your answers read more like what you've done for YOURSELF, there is a disconnect.

There is a desire to say well it's not in good faith , but the question is what has anyone done to earn it?

And if your rebuttal is well writing for women doesn't get enough real clout so why bother, it carries the underlying message that it is more important to get that clout than to solidify ( or even have a real discussion ) on solidifying the power women can have.

REGARDLESS.

The absence, silence and "forgetting" or being too busy being FABULOUS FEMINISTS to deal with " those women"

Someone will , if women and I've been in it for three years are responding to many of these conversations ( which essentially aren't happening ) with removal retraction and the firm sentiment that you're just not talking to me.

EVEN THOUGH I AM INTERESTED.

there now is a market for someone to say

" why worry about them at all?"

and this is not online , hell this isn't even NEW.

Time and time again , commercial market interests have proven that hey are often more wiling to listen to populations to sell them something , than activists are to organize with them.

That's historical. And rather than do any sort of gathering of the people you claim to representing to find out what's going you yell outwards toward the people who claim and will say in public that they have no interest in you


All in all it will be more of the same, because as always these conversations while claiming to be about "women" show and continue to show no interest in listening to women , at least not the ones who aren't in the right place saying the right things that can get " national change ( and for hells bells can we stop pretending that change don't matter unless it's big and flashy ) or the great Macguffin of getting something men had will essentially trun into a cooler than hipper than tou psuedo mix of opinions furthering some while essentially becoming simply one more scan through on google reader.

But prove me wrong , talk to someone different. Make me believe that what I told those kids is true.