Stop the Navel Gazing

In catching up with the feminist blogosphere, I found some powerful discussions around cisgender privilege, trans issues and lives, and voice.

If you'd like to read as to why Voz created this image to boycott Feministing and Feministe, I encourage you to follow this discussion and learn as I have.

As a self-identified feminist of color, I try to engage in all issues related to gender, power, and identity, but I think I allowed my fear of not understanding the lived experience of trans womyn and men, along with my fear of saying the wrong thing permeate my blog with barely audible support. It took me a while to even get my vocabulary straight as to what certain words meant and in what context to use them. Is that the best I can do?

I think not.

This recent outcry really rattled me. In both good and bad ways. Their powerful voices, their deep passionate debates about rights and awareness remind me of some voices in the womyn of color blogosphere who have long abandoned these mainstream blogs which, among many radical womyn of color, are notorious for unsafe dialogue and space.

This conversation is "intersectionality" (how much do I hate that word?) at it's finest. As Voz says, "Because exploitation of women with a trans history for blog hits and cis navel gazing has to stop somewhere."

Because exploitation of women with a trans history for blog hits
and cis navel gazing has to stop somewhere.
Why not with u?

Indeed. Why not with me?