The Lure of Online Feminism

I wanted to try an experiment this week, the week that I started a new job.

I wanted to try and disengage from the online world of feminism and refocus that energy into the human interactive relationships I would soon be facing in my new work. After being an active blogger for about three years, it was difficult to do at first. I resisted the urge to obsessively check my blog's email, comment moderation, and my favorite feminist bloggers as I normally do throughout the day. The rules were strick: 2-3 internet slots a day, no more than 20 minutes each. When you consider correspondance, reading, news, Facebook, listserves, and random recipe searches on Google, 1 hr/day is not a whole lot if you're an active blogger.

Slowly, though, things got easier as the pace of my job increased.

I work with the MRDD (Mentally Retarded and Developmentally Disabled) population and supervise a staff that works with homes to teach, encourage, and support folks who are trying to live more independent lives. Needless to say, it's hard work. It's draining work.

Today, as I watched a table of four clients eat their lunches, I thought about how little I have been online and how removed I felt from "Feminism," capital F. The news might be breaking something huge and I'm not reading it, or whatever the latest and greatest (or worst, depending on how you see it) IT thing is being talked/written about, I'm not around to read or react to it.

I believe in feminism. I believe in the flaws and all the rights of it. I believe its purpose is multifaceted, but one of the primary faucets of its existence is to be used as a lens for liberation work, a method to view oppressive relationship and overpowering structures that abuse and ignore womyn's voices.

If I believe that, then how is it that I started to measure how current I felt with "Feminism" because I haven't blogged in a week? While I am standing in a house filled with women of every size, mobility, and age who are trying to lead independent lives, make their own decisions, and improve their own quality of life -- WHY AM I THINKING ABOUT ONLINE FEMINISM?

The truth is that we're all prone to comforting ourselves and patterning our behaviors to what feels good, complementary, and familiar. The feminist blogosphere, for all of its energies and wondrous capacities, has not yet fused or connected to the "real" world.

The "real" world is a relative phrase, but for me, this week, it was observing and training womyn on how to measure laundry detergent, how to tuck the sheets into their beds, and counting pills for medication.

The "real" feminist in me saw the staff I work with, all women, who are juggling two sometimes three jobs and internships to put themselves through school and make ends meet for their families.

I am drowning in "real" feminist work and have open opportunities to forge relationships with new womyn in my life who only know me as their supervisor.

And yet, I stood in the kitchen wondering what I might have missed in the online world.

ONLINE FEMINISM IS BASED ON ACTUAL LIVED EXPERIENCES

Why look for the second version when the original is staring you in the face?

So, how had I learned that writers and opinionated activists who have their own corners of the internet to speak were more relevant than what this other womyn with oatmeal all over her smiling face had to tell me about her mother?

A lesson for today for all bloggers and readers of feminism:

the moment you begin preferring screens and books to human contact/relationship building and stories, however slight that preference, remind yourself that it's time for a break.

make/shift magazine issue 6 is prettier than a bouquet of roses

Have you ever unexpectedly received or seen a bouquet of scarlet red roses?

I mean, outside the usual places like sidewalk vendors or flower shops, have you ever been taken away by the simple grandeur of a bouquet of red roses? The rich vibrancy, the throbbing red intensity of its beauty?

The most recent issue of make/shift is even better than that.

A part from the gorgeous red cover, the insides of make/shift are the must MUST reads for today's independent thinking womyn, men, activists, and feminists. Yours truly is also a contributor for this issue - both in print and photographic expression.

In all seriousness, even if I was not a part of make/shift, I would tell you the same thing: it is the smartest, most deliberate, earth shaking, and most perspective changing magazine out there. Period.

Marry Me Because I'm "Asian"

Thanks to Racialicious and to Angry Asian Man for a heads up on this article about how children of immigrants are "looking closer for love," according to the Washington Post who says that there is a surprising trend occurring for the second generations (children who are born in the United States and their parents are immigrants) and 1.5 generation (immigrants who enter the country at a very young age) who are choosing to marry someone from their own racial background.

The research findings are confounding social scientists who predicted that the most open-minded, Obama-witnessing generation would be increasing the number of interracial marriages. What they're finding (gasp) is the opposite - that as the number of Asians increase in the classrooms, workplace, campus, and bar lounges, the more second gens are looking for someone who understands the split identity crisis, "As children, they felt divided loyalties, growing up with one foot in their parents' home country, the other in the United States. Now, as adults, they wonder: Would I be happy with someone as American as I am, or a recent immigrant?"

At first glance, the numbers make sense and the case for same-race marriage solidifies with research: as the immigrant pool increases, so should the pride and yearning for one's cultural background be reinforced as they decide to match their race with their future spouse.

Was this research done in 1995 when nearly all Asians were swept under the same rug? Has everyone forgotten the wonderful lessons of reality television? Does no one remember the 2006 Survivor "social experiment" where teams were grouped according to race? Grouping Latinos together was fine, grouping African Americans together seemed logical, throwing the Caucasians together never rocked any boats, but throwing all the Asians together was like throwing cats in a bag.

The point wasn't that Asians don't get along. The point was showing how ignorant ABC producers were in thinking that people with Asian backgrounds were relatively the same. I guess it's a hard concept to grasp. Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Japanese, Indian, and Filipinos (just to name a handful of Asian races) are all tremendously diverse cultures whose heritages spells out extremely different experiences, even if they are "American."

When any one project, research article, or person groups Asian cultures together, it erases the rich lines of difference between them. Growing up, the erasure came from merging all Asians under one roof ("Whenver I see an Asian, I just assume they're Chinese," to "Should I take off my shoes when I come to your house?" to "I bet you'll be a doctor, right?"). But the erasure also came by class. As long as I was a well-educated middle class Asian womyn, I was similar enough to my White friends that they, "...never see race, just the person underneath." My mother's accent was "cute," and my Brown skin was "a tan."

One mentality erased me by piling on stereotypes all over my actual life so it was kept hidden. The other valued sameness and ignored the rest. Both practices made me invisible. Both practices infuriated me.

I know nothing of holistic medicine or herbal teas. Geishas are as foreign to me as speaking German. "Asian sounding" last names became identifiable only as I built relationships with people from Japan and Korea and China, not because I was born with black hair. I ate rice with a spoon and fork, not chopsticks, and wondered why "gook" and "chink" were thrown at my wide-set brown eyes, Filipino features written across the ocean of my face. I slowly understood growing up that racist comments weren't hoping for accuracy, they were meant to categorize and control.

Returning to my parents' homeland reinforced the unique existence of second gens. There is a component of belonging in the Philippines. Physically, I blended in easily and the roots of my culture are born there, but the moment I opened my mouth or talked politics, the differences shine brightly. The westernized tongue was thick in the Philippines and I stood out in my opinions of social action, negotiating personal space, and measuring "progress." Here in the United States, I physically stand out in most areas of the country (excluding NYC or CA), but my values are a mixture of eastern and western.

To be a second generation citizen in this country is not to straddle two worlds, it means to have a multi-divided intellect that can perceive and think on several different levels of intuition, cognition, and emotive signals. Surviving in schools and in social settings always depended on my ability to quickly perceive and act; to measure and weigh each step before deciding how to proceed accordingly. It was exhausting living that way, but that was the way.

The article does not break down how the research is analyzed, but just say for the sake of argument that the researchers take on the 2006 Survivor mentality that groups all Asian cultures together. Likely, then, it would consider, say, a Chinese-Japanese marriage as same "asian" race, and Filipino-Caucasian as interracial. For that, I only have three words: how utterly lazy.

The author also throws this classic line near the end as well: "Their forebears often met spouses through family introductions or arranged marriages."

Pardon me, who are "their forebears?"

Because I've never heard of any arranged marriages in my family line. The majority of the second gens in my family (20-30 of us) are pretty much in interracial long term relationships (including my gay and lesbian cousins who are not married), and our parents' marriages were hardly arranged. That might be true in another Asian culture, but not as much in Filipino culture. Here is my poetic dedication to stereotypes:

Asians
We don't speak English at all
We all eat dogs, cats, and rats
and can't drive to save our lives
We all run laundry mats.

Our women are fetishes
Our men are sexless and short
We're always number one
in any academic cohort.

We're super smart in science and math
and I'm quiet, shy, demure
and if I've got a colonized mind
a White man will be my cure!

Cuz I'm an Asian Asian Asian

There are no magic potions that trick your skin into feeling like you belong and I never looked to my primary relationship to fix that. I certainly wanted someone to understand, first hand, how it felt to walk into a room and be stared at or mocked, criticized, or discriminated. But that wasn't my litmus test. It wasn't one particular "thing" that I looked for, it was a combination of insight, gentleness, strength, and integrity that attracted me into intimacy.

There are times when I wish Adonis understood my lived experience beyond that of a cerebral reasoning. The smell of Different is incense that never leaves your clothes. Throughout my entire childhood, I felt others mentally burn a word on my forehead and while sometimes I forgot about it, something would and (still does) always happen that reminds me there's nowhere to hide from the world so long they can see the Brown of your skin or the shape of your eyes. I wish he could deeply absorb what that meant to me, to always be seen as a scary paradoxical mystery.

Our cultural differences have sparked some of the most intense fights and loving conversations and I'd be lying if I said it never bothered me that I feel quite alone in my racial identity. But that's the story of immigration and children of immigration in this country. Isolation is the birthmark of our parents, disguised isolation is the trademark of second gens.

I was open to loving anyone, but I never considered the notion that someone from a similar ethnic background would take that particular loneliness away. It's profundity is a part of my fabric and it's evolved with me as I learned how to be in significant relationships. Undeniably, yes, I wanted someone who could understand the longing that came with being racially different, but that wasn't the only kind of longing I was limited to. As a person who knows longing so well, I looked for someone who understood it on multiple levels - a longing for intellectual stimulation, a longing for God, a longing for sports and board games.

Each person - regardless of Asian race - will define "home" very differently. For many Filipinos, religion is of utmost priority. Walking into Adonis' home and hearing them make plans for mass, or tease each other about being late for church, or gripe about the length of Easter Sunday - THAT felt like home to me. The way their four siblings interacted reminded me of being in my four sibling family. The way family was centralized (oh, so very Filipino) and the loud talking, laughing, and efforts to connect as much as possible while everyone was home, that felt very familiar. And while the Sunday brunches' menu did not include pork adobo, rice, or longaniza, I felt a sense of home in his family. That "sense" of home never translated into Home, but I don't look for Home anywhere else than in my own reflections and memories.

The intensity and intricacy of our lived experiences is unpatterned. For me, it was not enough to look for someone who had a connection with culture, I was looking for someone who had a connection to their family, to their spiritual side. Among countless filters, temperament tests, and personality traits, I looked for someone who connected this world with the next, who loved to tackle mystery and faith, and trusted that the road would not be easy, but most certainly worth it. And corny jokes. Must love and tell corny jokes.

I guess that's the Filipino in me.

No Person is "Born to Rape"

Turning to global news...

Some of you may remember that horrendous story of the Austrian father who imprisoned his daughter in a windowless cell in his basement and repeatedly raped her for 24 years and fathered seven children with her.

There are some details of this story that are just too inhuman to comprehend. I find myself going back and reading over the words, seeing if the magnitude of this woman's brokenness can every truly be recognized.

I came to an answer of No.

A psychiatrist who reviewed the psychological state of this man said, "Fritzl is guilty for what he did," and adds that Fritzl himself said he was "born to rape."

Fritzl was diagnosed with a severe personality disorder and has a "deep need to control people," and while my background is in mental health and wholeheartedly agree that those who struggle with clinical personality disorders are the most difficult and often despairing clients to work with, the statement "born to rape," raises a million white flags for me. It should raise a million white flags for anyone who works in psychology or mental health because these kinds of statements throw blankets and generalizations around mental illness and rape culture.

There are so many levels of sexual assault and I'm not exploring all the different kinds and angles of rape that exist. They're all rape. This woman's situation has a rare, animalistic cruelty to it and it's clear on so many levels that mental instability played a part of this man's behavior. It is my belief that rape is the utter denial of another person's humanity. It fails to recognize the full capacity of another human being. How else can you explain violating a person's body, their sexuality, their choice, sacred expression? How else can someone rape if it does not include blinding themselves to the fullness, wholeness of the person they are raping? Rape is the utter denial of a woman's livelihood, as a complete and total living person. To do that, to commit rape, one must have some level of mental distortion.

Mental illness clearly plays role in this specific case, but our rape culture's role is never a headliner. The reflective questions that blast canons at ourselves - those actively who create and participate in this culture - are rarely focal points. Rape culture loves to scare us with extra dark nightmares and put fancy clinical sounding labels to explain violent behaviors. It's the same falsity that convinces us that we're safe enough when crazies like Fritzl are in jail and not bother to consistently teach our sons and daughters about the real and usual face of rape.

It is our culture, our rape culture, deems Fritzl a nutcase but college age and educated men who repeatedly rape women on weekends are an entirely different thing. It is our western rape culture that flaps the trafficking young girls and women as a phenomenon happening "elsewhere," and the stench of violence smells most rancid in cases like Fritzl. It is our rape culture that likes to draw deep lines in the sand that says men who rape their daughters for decades are sick. Men who rape strangers are deranged. Men who rape their friends and girlfriends are disturbed. But the actual dissection of these things of what makes rape acceptable - our rape culture - is never on trial.

When you study mental health, one quickly learns that mental wellness is a continuum. Everyone, to some extent, can be plotted on the graph with anxiety, paranoia, phobias, chronic thoughts, memories, bad habits, reoccurring dreams, depression, psychosomatic pains, bereavement, flat affect...etc. Clearly some suffering is much more severe (e.g. depression versus clinical depression) than others, but don't be fooled. Or scared. We're all mentally well and unwell in some capacity at some times in our lives. The danger of discussing rape and mental illness is that mental illness quickly becomes the focus (and the crutch) for those wanting to understand "how something like this is possible."

But only extreme cases like Fritzl, with a clear personality disorder diagnosis, are "born to rape." These other men who perform acts of brutality are .... what? Not born to rape? Even with the most severe of mental disorders, no person knows how to rape another human. People may be born with a predisposition toward any number of things, but not all people decide and choose to rape. So, how does rape culture affect men differently? Is it really because of mental illness? Is it that men learn to rape and are more prone to these acts if they're mentally sick? Is it all dependent upon external environmental factors? It paints a picture that the grain of crazy was inside this man and, due to family dynamics and brain anatomy, carried out the worst evils inside him.

The methods of how rape is carried out may not be identical, but the need is similar: desire for control and power. How that control is taken - by cell, alcohol, drugs, threat, or abuse - varies, but rape culture sends a clear message to those mentally well and unwell that control can be taken. Power can be taken. With the right resources, idea, and environment, women can be raped. This is the message. This is what is accepted. We, as a society, raise all kinds of dirty hell and voices when we're confronted with the aftermath of these messages, but when it's time to take the stand, we throw mental illness up there for interrogation, blame, and relief, instead of rape culture which plays the largest role in all the violence against women in Austria, the Philippines, Liberia, or anywhere else in the world. Our culture, our global message of our we view and treat women never is deconstructed in the same way we do mental illness.

Why do we do that? Why don't we put ourselves on the stand? Is it because we aren't strong enough to admit that we allow and possibly even participate in that destructive rape culture?
We don't really want to trace how we learn internalize these messages and as we grow into business partners, community leaders, college students, priests, or educators - we grow with the messages inside us.

If we begin accepting this kind of language, "born to rape," as a skirting method to use mental illness and explain the grotesque crimes of our world, we will fail to analyze the true causes of a rape culture - the ways we are raised to understand gender, power, sexuality, relationships, and communication. Rape culture is the culture that features a specific case like this but never bothers to tackle rape as a daily weapon and how imprisonment, trafficking, and enslaving of women around the world is actually not that uncommon.

This woman's story is unacceptable. The brutality and enormity of her nightmare reaches unfathomable depths. But how we frame and explain her perpetrator, a man "born to rape," tells much more of how we frame rape in our own minds.

To truly combat a rape culture, we must go further than to explain the "proclivity" to rape. I believe the decision to rape is pieced together by various traumas, lessons, allowances, and testing pressure points to see what is acceptable and what can go unpunished (e.g that terrible statistic that indicated 25-30% of US and Canadian college men would rape if they knew they could get away with it.)

It's not a formula. There are no easy answers. Dismantling a rape culture will not be one model. How we confront group homes, addiction, neglect, gangs, community outreach, family structures, and silence will look different in every part of the world, but I can start in my own home, with my own small piece of what I see as wrong. I am weary of language that paints men - mentally ill men - as unstoppable beasts. Some most certainly have mental problems that pose danger to others, but those seeds, the things that made men more apt to rape had to be nurtured and grown somewhere. My hunch is it's not all mental illness. Our worst criminals reflect not just the darkness of the human's mind, but act as a mirror of our social culture .

Letter #7

Dear Veronica,

I wish there was a way to explain the world to you in a somewhat simple manner. Most days, I feel after thirty years of observing it myself, I am no closer to a resolution than when I first asked as a little girl.

I remember when I was seven and I slept on the bottom half of a bunk bed, on a blue mattress with white and yellow rockets on them. I woke up one Saturday afternoon from a nap and wondered for the first time, "What if my whole life is a dream?" I waited for the day when I was going to wake up from the real bunk bed of life and discover that I am really a sophisticated genius, dreaming I was seven years old.

In some ways, I think I am still waiting for that wake-up call.

I've been thinking about the pain I am physically in from all the different medications I am taking to ready my body for a pregnancy, hopefully. I've closed down any pathways for alcohol, steer clear of anyone who breathes out cigarette smoke, and try to get some form of physical activity once a day to rejuvenate my spirit. Vitamins, pills, appointments. This morning, I woke to a stomach full of cramps, gripping and squeezing my lower abdomen. Another cycle.

I've finished reading a book called, "The Shack," and your Dad and I discuss all the ways we agree and disagree with it. The book is about faith. It's about God and tragedy, but most of all, the book is about redemption.

I thought of how I might explain redemption to you someday and it almost made me laugh. You, an innocent oval of joy rolling around in my head with nothing resembling a stain or mark of evil or oppression on your skin, would know nothing of redemption because you know nothing of death or pain yet.

Redemption is about making something new, the bursting through of darkness with transformation and purpose. It is a lovely concept, but not many people believe in it. I think it's an odd word, something foreign. I think I put space in my vocabulary from that word because I know it can only come through the despair of tragedy. Redemption is inherently tied to some sort of wrong. I hate wrong.

"The Shack" will be a thing of the past, a dusting on the walls of your books when you learn to read and I am confident there will be a hundred other New York Times frenzies for you to consume. But this book, this particular book came to me in a time where I have been thinking about the possibility of tragedy. My tragedy would not be loss, it would be tragedy of nothingness. Not having you, not seeing you and admitting all the darkest fears in my heart.

A strong confession left my heart and onto a kitchen table with friends as I let out some of my deepest fears of pregnancy and fertility. One of women, one of the wisest I've ever known, turned to look quietly into my face, the face of fear, "You need to come to grips with all that you are hoping and wishing. You need to face all the possibilities of having children and not having children and what that means to you. We'll be here. We're not going anywhere."

Veronica, I couldn't place whether I am more scared to have you in this world with me or to be without you and never experience giving birth to a soul within my soul, light from my cervix, a throbbing bubble of life in the space between my ribs. I am terrified to face the fear that my body may not be capable of the longest desire I've ever known. I am out of my mind frightened at the possibility to bring life into a world that doesn't know anything about redemption except in the contours of novels and films.

Most of all, I'm scared what I will hear within my own mind for the rest of my life if I am infertile, if I am not able to hold life in my body. I am most scared of this small phrase that nearly every single human being thinks and feels, but loathes to admit: I am scared to fail.

My body might fail me. Your father might fail us. I might fail you. You might fail the world. God might fail me. I know I've failed God.

Fail.

Fail.

I'm afraid of failing.

So powerful is this fear that I don't know how else to elaborate its meaning. It's all there in one damning, one syllable word. Fail.

The shame of failure and the perceptions that dance around a dead dream haunt me everyday. The measure of womanhood is often by her body, her health, her decisions, career, family, relationships, mind, spirit. And children. I'm afraid of being seen as a failure, being seen as dry in the soil where life is supposed to thrive. I'm afraid that I have no garden inside me.

I have all the intuition in the world and I still cannot feel where I am headed. I hope, I suppose, toward my own redemption.

And so, even with all those dimming lights, the sadness and trembling, I continue to plow my land, I dig in the areas where the ground is soft, working to create this garden. I loosen the dirt, readying it for rain, seeds, and love. Readying it for you.

Love,
Mama

Speak! Album is Released

There's a cut and paste version of explaining what the Speak! CD is all about,

Speak! is a women of color-led media collective. In the summer months of 2008, they created a CD compilation of spoken word, poetry, and song. After months of hard work, they are excited to finally share their first self-named album with the world!

With artists and poets from all over the country, the Speak! CD is a testament of struggle, hope, and love. Many of the contributors are in the Radical Women of Color blogosphere and will be familiar names to you. Instead of just reading their work, you’ll be able to hear their voices.

Proceeds of this album will go toward funding mothers and/or financially restricted activists wanting to attend the Allied Media Conference in Detroit, MI this July. This is our own grassroots organizing at its finest with financial assistance from the AMC. Here it is, ready for your purchasing!

but I thought I'd give you another version in case you already read that...

In all the juke and jive I've encountered about how people want to raise their social consciousness, in all the complaints that online interaction and threads don't really do anything, amongst all the bemoaning the road that mainstream music has traveled, and all the talk among folks who want to "help" but don't know how...Here is a musical, artistic collection of work between scholars, activists, poets, mothers, warriors, students, sisters, and partners which does one thing: it speaks truth.

Each track, as I listened to it again last night, is piece of truth of someone's life. You may not understand it. You may not get it. But, there it is, twenty tracks of spoken truth reserved to fill the spaces and ears of those willing to listen and engage.

Be a part of it.

The Top Five Ways that White Feminists Continue to Discredit Women of Color

More food for you. More voices. More insight.

There is a guest post by Aaminah Hernandez over at Problem Chylde entitled The Top Five Ways that White Feminists Continue to Discredit Women of Color.

Here are bullets to whet your appetite...

1) Say we are too “involved” or biased in regards to the subject, and claim
that you are more “objective”.

2) Say we are ignorant of the subject,
even though the subject is our own life, history, culture or religion, because
we have dared to speak to our own story and question the way outsiders have
portrayed it. This includes questioning our academic background (or lack of),
our writing style/ability, and whether or not we cite “accepted” texts to prove
our points.

3) Speak condescendingly towards us. Tell us we are too young or too old,
naïve or bitter, and that we are angry or emotional, etc.

4) Pull out
your “credentials” to show that you have more support and legitimacy than we
do.

5) Say we are hurting the cause of feminism, or that we aren’t really
feminist at all.

Don't comment here. GO THERE AND READ HER WORK!

Who You Calling Radical? Conversations Between WOC and RWOC, Part II of Infinity

Dear Firefly,

I've been thinking about your words, your anger, and the message lying underneath it; about how people cannot come together at the table and discuss if not everyone can attend.

At first, I thought we were just looking past each other. And I thought it was about not being explicit about this "space" on my blog and in the Allied Media Conference. I thought, "Maybe I just didn't clarify the fact that no one can make it to both spaces and so opening it up in various locations makes it more inclusive." The table, so to speak, is moved from one place to the next and if folks can't be there at some moments, well, you have another opportunity to join in later.

I see what you're saying about moving something online to offline. My first thought process was to spread it out, make it as open, transparent, and accessible as possible. When you expressed your disagreement, I thought it was a conflict of models, a difference of HOW a "series" of conversations should be done.

In retrospect, that's just kind of half-assing it. Throwing up my hands and shrugging my shoulders when it is not enough for those like you who DO want to be there and CANNOT make it to the table is not, as I wanted, radical. At all. My reply shouldn't have been, "Well, you can be at SOME of the the talks, just like others who can't be here online and will be at the AMC." It should have been more thoughtful, considering where your anger was coming from. I should have bravery to face the legitimate place of where your reaction sprouted and how I threw more dead hay, more of the same, than what was needed - water.

If radical organizing and breaking through old concepts of inclusion and communication is our agenda, than what I proposed is not good enough. And saying, "Well, it's going to suck, no matter what, let's just try and build from what we have," is strikingly similar to tunes I've heard from, as you called it, elite white feminists. Once I stopped and listened, I could hear myself humming that same tune. That tune of, "Well, it's just an idea, stop getting so hot and bothered about it," mixed in with, "This is the best I can think of right now, " with a little bit of, "That's not what I meant," with a whole lot of confusion, reciprocating anger, and frustration.

As long as it was coming from the insides of a good ol' radical women of color identified feminist, like myself, then it wasn't wrong. The idea wasn't excluding as soon as I explained MY side of it. Your anger was YOUR reaction, not anything I did or am accountable.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Blackamazon (who I need to thank in truckloads) fed me a pool of good questions and thoughts to swim through and I am understanding that "radical" to me is about finding the root. I'm seeing that if what I say, propose, cuts blood on the arm of who I *claim* to want to work with, I shouldn't hand you a band aid, I need to look at how what I put out there managed to cut you and not me and look down the path so we can steer clear of either of us bleeding. I shouldn't be there to lament with you, cut my own arm to be in solidarity with you, but, get rid of whatever cut you in the first place.

If I proposed something that didn't work for you, the response after your feedback should be, "how do WE make it better so this works?" Not, "Well, what do I do about it so I can fix it?"
There's a difference between collaborating to make something work and solely fixing it so there's a solution.

It's not about making everyone happy, I realize. It's about working to create an environment where everyone feels invested in each other, in each idea that moves toward action. If it illicits anger, particularly from a WOC whom I trust, then the fit isn't right.

It isn't right. Period.

In my mind, the big picture conversation is a "series" and "for those who can," and I see now and how that is not radical. Not in the least. If I was to turn this space into a profound and shifting conversation about how women of color and radical women of color communicate with one another each other, I would have clarified, specified a few questions. I may have delved into the deep-cutting factors that influence HOW we talk to each other and how that will impact our conversation. Like

How does our anger function in our activism?

How does our own internalized racism, classism, ethnocentrism, superiority and inferiority affect our perceptions of one another?
What are we willing to do when we run into it,
when we run into ourselves?

What constitutes "liberation" and/or "revolution" and how might that be different in a midwestern town in the United States from a spot somewhere, say, in Sydney, Australia?

And instead of casual-izing the agenda, a more radical writer might be willing to look Deeper than what she thought was possible and look past the defensiveness and scope of her own peripheral vision.

I see not only your anger, but the Why of it.

I see how patterns of privileged organizing are re-birthed into the places where we say they are not allowed. The intention to do or build "something else" does not necessarily mean we will succeed right away in our efforts. Just because I say I want to "de-centralize" or dilute the US-centrism in our conversation doesn't change the reality I am standing on US soil and that will reflect that in all that I propose unless I dismantle my own US/ego-centrism.

Your Australian view of what US-centrism looks like will probably be clearer than my standing in the middle of the road in Cleveland, Ohio. Your view may not be perfect, nor is mine, but how we see each other, and how we discuss that difference may be one critical step is forging a space that works for both of us. Maybe if we both look upward, away from our respective countries and try to shoot the sky with the fireworks of our ideas, maybe we find a space that belongs neither here nor there, but is accessible to us both, to all who wish to be part of it. Maybe that's the blogosphere. Maybe not. I don't know.

The necessity to be specific, to state what we can and cannot do, cannot be overstated.

I CAN try. I CANNOT do this alone.

I CAN open up a idea, but I CANNOT expect for it to stay the same after it is offered to others.

I CAN take feedback, but I CANNOT be defensive.

I CAN write about what being a woc means to me, how my US citizenship affects it, how my definitions desire to be widened but, despite that good intention, still CANNOT grasp the entire conflicts and hardships of radical international/transnational effort.

I can try to understand, but I must be willing to take time to process when things get hairy.

This thread was created to discuss how we, women of color, talk to each other. It is a space where we must be able to find an exchange of difference and respect, but must be willing to look at ourselves, run into ourselves, and not run away from this process when we look like assholes.

This is how I am trying to move forward and if it's not enough, I'll dig deeper again.

I will continue to do so and return to my digging spot as many times as necessary until we all sense we're heading in a good direction, until we're all heard, and want to invest our words and time.

-Lisa