Questions

So I just felt like I got a good solid kick in the chest but that is expected.

BFP explains it better and and wants to open the dialogue better but I guess I need to explain myself

To put it plainly I read Renee's comment and felt like I got slapped mind you I read most of Latoya's comments and felt like i got punched so wohoo keeping in theme.

Not because I need them to agree iwth me , not because I wanted validation

but because rightly or wrongly I hoped that however badly we disagreed on some things that as women of color even more so as Women of the diaspora .

That at least with them I wasn't just Sapphire. That the why don't we fight partriarchy instead argument wouldn'tc ome from them.

That it wasn't a point that needed to be conceded that I love my work enough to want to defend it, that that work that led to this great piece of " truth to power" actually you knwo being held to a standard was at least seen.

And to find out that was wrong literally the air out of my chest GONE.

Because what if it's not my truth? What if the fighting is not because I wish it could have been me ( as BFP points out more times than I'd like to put forth and often haven't for the sake of not tokenizing a sister it WOULD HAVE been me first)

but because for me THIS IS NOT TRUTH TO POWER.

WHat if that kind of framing is part of your kyriarchy ? What if that kind of solipsism and playing games isn your experiences contributed to your assault?

What if the first sexual experience you ever had was someon calling you a whore in front of your screaming father? What if you are 13 years old and this is the doctor supposed to save your life and hearing the shame and fear you feel and still feel could have been fixed by saying Yes harder makes you just think " one more way I didn't measure up"

Reading mercy by Toni Morrisson

SHe writes about JOb. That Job didn't want recognitiion or glory but thati n his suffering he wnate dthe one he followed the ones he saw god as.

SAW HIM

NAMED HIM

not taht he loved him, not that he needed his love or favor

but saw him that he bore this torment because of who he was

I see god in you and you

and in fif nothing else i Believed you saw me.

That no it wasn't that i wanted it to be me

not that I need lessons in networking ( which at this point is so comically insulting i can't help but giggle, I am less than three degrees in these rarefied circles from EVERYONE)

but that I actually had a problem.

That it's not pack up and leave becuase as much as I don't make taht choice I believe as long as you are tortured unsupported and unrespected for making your choice I am not free.

That asking peopel to be accountable isn't a fucking tactic but a necessity to the movement

as for what questions I'd ask

I mean how do you ask how many people have to be erased for it to be sufficient.

How do you ask how do you decide who to be accountable to

How do you intervene when your afraid a woman will get sexually assaulted but if you do so will you?

how does one voice come to replace another

How do you market on an idea that you told us COULDN'T work.

How do you expect us to swallw that bile and praise this

and stil believe you think we are human.

Why do I have to come up with questions to save your soul?

when I am not even sure you see mine

On Tokenism

Sharkfu basically says  everything I want to say about the presumption of teh motives of OWC to post on big blog s and how i felt it was treated.

but in the spirit of total honesty

I'm battling

that while Lauren can't get a real answer to any of her questions

there is an immediate answer to the charges of tokenism on how it reflects on the BLOGS itself 

but the women they had to stand for themselves

I  have no idea what it means or am i inferring it one way or the other merely noting.

I am also noting that many of the people who are hopping flipping mad a bout tokenism charges 

are a ok with the non naming of and erasure of women who AREN'T attached to bigger blogs ( and have been okay with it for what is now years) and No I don't mean me.

I am also  amused that people will say well hey this big blog was changed by WOC  voices  but forget to note the shit ton of crap those voices got for making those concerns 

but somehow think the "progress" that is made from them

or that people are OFFENDED by the way their WOC contributors were treated in this POST but have little to NO open demonstration of improving the way WOC are treated in their own common threads.

and if anyone tells  me they can't they're full of shit.

I believe that NONE of these women are dupes or tokens but I also am not at ALL surprised that the supposition was made 

I am angry it was but not shocked 

And really I don't know what that says

So..........

I am 24 years old , and already a member of a conglomerate that doesn't have names or lived experiences that deserve actual specificity or credit


USELESS ANCIENT DEITY BY 27 FOR THE WIN!

A response

Thank you for alerting me to your post.

I have read and reread your piece with great heaviness in my heart, it is on my blog because after the first 1,000 words I thought posting it as a comment would be rude.

I start this letter with the first and foremost desire to clarify,

That I am not a feminist blogger. At this point I am barely a blogger and it shall deplete even more in the future.

It is important to note that because this very colonial theory you have mentioned is one of the huge reasons I am not. One of the most important steps of any form of colonialism is that one most create an Other and strip it of it's humanity to justify one's exisistance.

I do not fele in community in any way with any of these women, and this is a decision reached not out of spite or malice but out of a constant reminder that none of them had nay desire to be in community with me.

In answer to your question there is no What If?

Feminist blogging not only is a digital colonialism , but has for myself and far to many women of color become a site of happy erasure, and staunch upholding rather than moving of the status quo.

I write this letter even with a sense of dread becuase the act of attaching my voice to critiques to any of these big bloggers even to rectify the reinvention of history is immediately tagged with jealousy distrust and bile that I have no desire to welcome into my spce or my life but can not be ignored.

At best some of these exchanges have benn privilege blindness at worst it has been deceitful dishonest purposely malicious racism that has gone unanswered for the sake of maintaining this network.

When teh FFF debacle happened I was contacted , but the minute I did not assure the person who contacted me that this couldn't happen in a shadow network where in that person had loads of support and I had none, where in I demanded they be accountable not becuase i Was some raging hose beast but having already begun to see my work cropiing up in places and in stages that I has a person NEEDING to work full time could not control.

They were gone. In the mean time , women who claimed they were aginst racism against injustice against inhumanity were silent SOLELY to support this network.

against a MENACE

that menace was me.

This was not community.

The Seal Press debacle which was not just about a hierarchy but spun out of control because later racist, solipsitic imagery was used and the worlds least sensitive apologies were issued, is even as we speak being dismissed as a kerfufle or a "goings on" that is two sided because of osmeone careers.

and not because someone I love and know dearly cried in my arms.

Or that being called a DATE RAPIST by a FEMINIST magazine, or being called a whiny race baiter. BY ONE OF THE LARGEST LIBERAL BLOGS ON THE WEB. Because what no one notes in these milleus is that the same unearned privileges that allow these oppressive acts ( race,age,class,ability) automatically casts those who protest not only as outsiders but dehumanized defeminized attackers on a metaphoric presumed white sisterhood not worthy of basic human decency. That casting means we can get rape threats death threats or more succinctly.

Hvae you ever cried till you threw up cause people put pictures of your people being killed by a white lady was "funny and kitchy"?

Have you ever had that kind of psychic violence justified by we went to this bar/conference/party /training session together?

And yes it is still happening . Yes Means Yes was recently published and before it was published a large and PROMINENT critiquing of that was issued. One of the most prominent and important being made very eloquently by a person whose voice as a young queer transperson is often marginalized.

The subsequent debates involved THE ENTIRE SUBMISSION HAVING TO BE REWRITTEN. WHile I myself personally asked not to ever never be connected with the book again by name

NO MENTION AT ALL WAS MADE OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES THAT PRECIPITATED THAT REWRITE

by anyone who reviewed it ( including feminist Review) anyone who supported it , and anyone who did mention reduced it to a "small drama" . Because really calling transpeople crazy, non citing work, and dismissing WOC as bitter and jealous is a small thing.

it is because these people have no desire to be accountable to me.

And the argument that you don't get paid enough for it to be monetary , in mine ears means that we are getting dumped on disrespected, and ERASED continually for a pittance.

But outside of the emotional violence , the unaccountability, the self indulgent navel gazing the assinine behavior that is not even directed at full misogynists( they will at very least name teh misogynists when responding. Many neigh most of these blogs while calling me essentiallya hating demon for two years DO NOT LINK ME)

is also the knowledge that with the coming of the " zeitgeist" everything mentioned by WOC bloggers

The need for increased diversity

The need to even superficially create community

A broadening or dialogue

that were unreasonable and out of the question when we asked for it because we are human and should be considered not just part of but integral TO this movement

became very attractive and do able when that small revenue went down and traffic started fleeing to POC blogs.

and that movement we're supposed to be a part of of where we are powerful and can make change stops RIGHT where it might make someone feel bad.

This exchange between Lauren of Faux Real Tho and Courtney of Feministing broke my heart.

When Lauren expresses a deep issue within THE ENTIRE MOVEMENT about how it has evolved and continued to evolve she is marked as jellus and mean and told by OTHER WOMEN that why is she perpetuating this idea that women should apologize for living well?

Lauren a FOUNDER AND DESIGNER OF THE EMBLEM OF ONE OF THE OLDEST FEMINIST BLOGS ON THE NET.

And for all her " excitement at being challenged" and throws around enough meta data to seem like she's unpacking knapsacks Courtney's main response and final paragraphs are straight up insulting and yes disgusting to me ( and yes i divulge that I am poor as a church mice but ivy league educated, private school educated and Facebook obsessed but hey grassroots organizing involves cheap materials where you can get em)

You see the issue is men. Not Lauren's hurt not referencing the larger comment she made, not what it says to other women( but more about why her privilege is to be shared not dismantled) because she wants all teh things "men have had for centuries"

Now I leave the obtuseness and ridiculousness of that statement ( which men, what class , what race) to be FLABBERFUCKING GASTED at the fact that in a response to Lauren about a large issue her focus is not addressing Laurens points but her self , an invitation to that kind of thinking to other women of privilege ( Yes i have it I am not at all excited in reveling in it) and to say

" Men have done it for so long why not me?"

Because truly that is what we are looking for? A repeat of that colonial man in room of their own mentality?

That Gollum like addiction that is repeated OVER AND OVER AGAIN ad infinitum that ' THIS WHAT YOU DID IS WRONG AND HURTFUL AND SHOULD BE RECONSIDERED AND CORRECTED" is the same as YOU ARE TERRIBLE NO GOOD PERSON WHO DESERVES NOTHING

so you spend half of you r working time trying to say " NO THATS NOT WHAT I SAID"

and the thread about brainstorming tells more about training people to be in " positions of power" with no clear idea of what they do with it.

as if that in any way addresses a damn thing that has been brought up but you knwo what Lauren is at least granted the courtesy of being in the conversation.

or to put in a blunt situation. You know WAM that conference that ended with me , my best friend, my sisters in TEARS.

The one that has a theme of inside outside but personally addressed none of teh issues or critiques in any public accountable way.

The one that a boycott is STILL in progress from teh behavior of " Women " putting " women back in teh picture " ON IT's PREMISES

that is so concerned with the voices of women.

I cleared my schedule my 14 hour a damn day schedule , my best friend did another amazing WOC blogger did to talk to meet to try and be part of this movement.

It was so valued I was stood up,

because they can,

because they suffer no repercussions even of conscience.

That's how much i matter .

Sex With The Amazon : Island Girl

I'm an island girl .

Knife girl, cutlass queens, crazy

I say this in the way that island girls are born and raised. I am raised not born but I am an island girl.

There are many types of island girl, at least constructed in the fantasies of others, but that whiff of the exotic that whiff of the other it hangs around. Not exotic to be worshipped or interesting, but enough to be new, that hot sweat

And we pay for it

So believe you me I know what is going on when they say Rihanna is an " islandgirl", when talking about her assault

It's that special je ne sais quoi you know?

It's that thing where we're hotter spicier feistier than girls "you" are used to , or if you are on of us it's that you don't understand what it takes to handle an island woman

*wink * wink* SMILE

We're sweeter and sensual , prettier, exotic looking, bigger , dramatic, wilder and jealous and it's so WILD

until

that's not what you want, or you're done with it.

I watch the reporting on this with a sense of dread because as usual everybody get's it wrong, wants to tell us about how everybody else got it wrong , there are multiple inside sources, and the person at the center of it isn't talking and people like her who might be talking aren't getting heard.

And of course this is about sex so let's all fill in the details the locker room tales, the mean backbiting behind hands, the girlish gossip , of what those island girls are like .

You see while the average "blame the victim" bullshit has cropped up fine and free, she may have set him off WAIT we don't know.

This time it has that special flavor, that only comes from the isles.

You see that spicy flavor that is really great when you're fanatasizing about fucking us with the smell of coconuts and claw marks and perhaps hibiscus flowers tucked sweetly behind our ears.

also works when you're just fucking us.

One of my original sex in the Amazon pieces pointed to the college party phenomn of adopting "ethnic"identies to fuel their libidos and get "loose" because you cna take on and off this "liscense to have sex"

We don't get to.

An island girl who "starts a fight" deserves it. They got that temper that wild side. An island girl that has that body that size them strong legs, shouldn't get beat by no twig. An island girl with that look that walk, has no right to be angry if her man isn't true, she isn't either or if she is she can jsut pick up a new one..

She's an island girl right?

Island girls are born/and raised. We know everyday the consequences of acting like a lady or not , because even the lightest most demure perfect of us is always an island girl.

We're form that place where one last name means we're all connected to the same traveling rapist, where living or dying feeding your kids or not depends on whether or not a man is interested. We got that slave stock , those big legs , strong frames because we are the ones who made it through the heat.

And we know it we joke about it.

One of teh first conversations I Had about this was witha dear friend who said

" Ain't no way that's Rihanna . She's an island girl. If it's her she got her licks in"

And I laughed half happy half sad . Because it's true.

Because we don't take it lying down, because we don't learn to have the feminine wiles of scheming that you grant women, we island girls. Because you have to answer, because while this is the gospel truth.

We islnand girls get that special flavor.

That it's hot and exciting and spicy and fun.

Because when part of your very fiber is invested in how you keep a man , of what little woman hood you are granted is invested in making this man your own, that you respect is the difference between the yard and the bighouse .

That we had to be hypnotizing, or using the island hoodo to even have a man and thus it's inevitable that if anything happens to us, it's part of the flavor

That it's completely acceptable to us that we would have to fight through life and even love

and no one cares about the island girl but about what it means for everybody else.

But island girls don't actually get to talk bout this.

We just pay for it