Birthing a New Feminism

On December 20, 2009, I gave birth to two things: a 9lb. 7oz son and a new feminism. It was the third time my reproductive organs had encountered surgical metal; twice to remove ovarian tumors and cysts and once to remove a breathing boy.

By nightfall, I was vomiting from the drugs administered to my body for my c-section. After an excruciating vomiting episode, my head hit my pillow in utter exhaustion and my newborn began to cry out of hunger.

I looked at my body. Like a meticulous and tedious film director wanting to capture every detail of a flowerbed with a camera, I surveyed every inch of my body. I started at my feet.

My legs were buzzing numb, still, from surgery. To keep from forming blood clots, my legs had been strapped to a pumping machine. Two pieces of plastic swathed my legs. They hissed when they squeezed my calves and lazily loosened after three seconds of tight holds. The noise prevented me from deep sleep and made my legs sweat.

A catheter was inserted. I saw the bag full of my urine with taints of blood. It was a horrendous sight.

The dressing over my surgical incision covered the most tender and vulnerable part of my birthing body, the exit wound of my baby.

An ugly red rash had exploded onto the top of my chest. Its bumps were just as unsightly as they were itchy. A reaction, maybe from the hospital gown? Or hormones?

My left hand was a splotchy mess from a messy IV insertion. Mounds of clear tape awkwardly held in a needle and dried blood itched under the surface. It was hooked to a machine, beeping and regulating my body. Bags of I don’t know what dripped into my arm.

My right arm held Isaiah as I tried to breastfeed him. His desperate attempts to latch on were beyond painful, but with the help of countless nurses and my husband, he drank.

Gulped, really.

My normally brown face was gray with remnants of drugs and fatigue. No food. No water. Only ice chips. My water was taken away when I drank too much too soon and vomited into the pan again.

Later, to help stir bowel movements, an enema was inserted.

And I surveyed my body, every orifice of my body was either plugged, bandaged, bleeding, dry, or fatigued. And as Isaiah drank, my breasts ached with new agony, unfamiliar with this new demand of nourishment and, suddenly, as if my leg pumps, catheter, IV, and surgery scars weren’t enough, I began having more contractions. My uterus throbbed with an intensity that made my eyes close.

The hormones stimulated by breastfeeding will cause contractions. This will help your uterus descend and go back to its normal size.

And Isaiah’s latch intensified.

Never, in all the days of my life, had I ever undergone anything so life-giving. Never had I myself been so life-giving. Every part of my body was simultaneously healing and giving.

But I was in much pain. The lactation consultants were so beautiful and caring, I wanted to weep into their laps.

They gently touched, massaged, and handled my breasts. The nipples, swollen and red, screamed with pain at the slightest touch of a hospital gown. Maya, a middle aged woman from Russia, was sharp, informative, and decisive. Her teaching was fast, her hands careful, but her eyes were business. She recognized the pain, she knew how hard this was. Myra understood that I was thisclose to losing my sanity.

She understood that while the vagina or, in my case, the abdomen, was the door to life in the womb, it was the nipples that were the entry point of survival for my son.

The body, my body became a poem, a poem of survival.
______

I stayed in the hospital room, save two hours to walk down the hall for a parenting class, for four days straight. My dreams were in neon and my breasts were engorged. What I remember about that period in my life was how unbelievably gentle and kind people can be when you are in pain.

Briefly, like a loose leaf lightly touching a windshield before moving on, I thought about Feminism. Now a mother. Never again like before. Never just I. My life just took the most radical turn. That morning I had made myself chocolate chip pancakes. Six hours later, I was a mother. Everything had changed in the blink of an eye. And in that change, I came to a realization that there were two kinds of feminism. The Feminism of issues and the feminism of our lives.

I realized the Feminism that is perpetuated in mainstream and mainstream-like media is not the feminism of our lives. It is the feminism of commerce. It is the feminism that picks and chooses the winners and losers, the visible and invisible, and accessible and ignored. It chooses what will sell and what sells focuses on status climbing, material wealth, and westernized independence. Things that bring pleasure, not transformation.

The Feminism that has stepped on the backs of women of color and ignored the backs of trans and disabled women is the Feminism that camouflages itself with diverse panels and collectives but neglects to modernize its definition of social liberation in the era of digital media. It is the feminist theories stuck in the academy with no implored action. It is the round table discussions reserved for annual conferences that result in no true connection or building blocks.

This is the Feminism that has the time and luxury to ask leisure questions such as, “Why don’t you identify as feminist?” and “Where are all the women of color bloggers?" The same Feminism that circulates the energy over the same privileged circle of the educated, the employed, or as I call it, "the Sames;" the ones who stand an inch into the outskirts, banging on the "equality" door but who also ignore the women whose heads are in toilets cleaning their bathrooms or nannying their children.

This is the Feminism of fruitless banter and recycled conversations. The space to bring these issues up could be a hopeful sign of progress, however, the repetition of those conversations and the predictable accusations and defenses serve no other purpose than keeping the pendulum swinging in balance. Aka, the status quo.

This is the same Feminism that haunts the academy and academic support offices such as Women’s Centers and elite conference gatherings. The conversation of the privileged becomes priority over decision-making. Consciousness-raising is imperative for transformation, but it cannot begin and end with questions. There must be forward motion, however slight.

Simply putting 50% of women into anything male dominated may alter the demographic, but that’s not necessarily transformative. Putting a woman’s face where a man’s once was, without any sort of critical change, is not equality but appeasement. And before Linda Hirshman takes that quote of mine again out of context, let me explain further.

The purpose of feminism is to end itself. Andrea Dworkin called it one day without rape. Others have other land posts measuring feminism’s victory. The purpose of feminism is to one day find ourselves where we don’t need to fight for human rights through the lens of women’s oppression. Note: I didn’t write that the purpose is to bring down the man. The purpose is not to have a female president. The purpose is to transform the infrastructure that holds kyriarchy in its place. Replacing men with women – of any race, ethnicity, creed, or ability – who refuse to acknowledge the insidious and mutating face of gender oppression is not forward stepping. It’s a perpetuation of history.

And so the question comes: how invested are you in the liberation of women?

Because if you agree that the liberation of all women carries more weight than the identification as a liberal feminist, the feuds over whether feminism is dead becomes irrelevant. The uproar should be about dying women, not a dying Feminism.
_____

There was something so entirely miraculous about those four days in the hospital. I witnessed myself birth life. Bones from my bones. Blood from my blood. Life from my womb, I brought a person into the world. From two, I grew my family to three.

This awesome mystery/reality settled itself in bits and fragments.

My father told me that the birthing woman is different afterward. Her power is different. She herself is different.

My power is different.

For months, nearly everyone I encountered – friends and strangers alike – offered their opinion on what parenting should and would be for me. It was in that hospital room, where Nick slept uncomfortably on the couch without shaving and I, hooked to monitors and machines, understood a profound difference.

Parenting is the responsibility that we both shared. Together. It would be the late nights of feeding, rocking, and soothing that we’d walk together, he and I. But mothering, becoming a mother, was an entirely different bond. To me, motherhood is a yearning helplessness. Yearning to love more, yearning to teach better, yearning to make the world right – however impossible that might be. And recognizing that impossibility often made me cry.

I suddenly had this crazy urge to clean up the world for my son. I needed to organize.
___________

The feminism of my life unfolded in a love story that resulted in the birth of my son. Gathered at my bed was my mother, the woman I’ve thought of and written so much about. The woman who I have processed more than any other human I’ve met. My father kept stroking my hair and muttering concerns over my state.

The feminism I had begun to build was a house of love that no longer shunned my parents out of frustration, but embraced our difficulties and disagreements. Filipino culture was not something I needed to understand to live, it was something I needed to live out.

Nick held the can for me while I vomited. He wore scrubs and, in the delivery room, wore a surgical mask. The shade of the scrubs made his hazel eyes deep green. I saw him between hurls. I saw my son. Our son.
____________

Anything that I would dedicate my life to had to include, even demand, men. It may prioritize the lens of women’s experience for the liberation of all, but men had to be there. Where was I going without my son? What was I creating if not for him? I didn’t want to go where my family would not belong. It no longer made sense to separate myself and be alone. There was no division between the world I wanted to build and my son’s participation in it. I wanted freedom. Mine and his.

The Feminism of issues serves its purpose well. It informs us of the problems. But we’re more than issues, are we not? Isn’t our life worth more than the issues?

The feminism of our lives is the story of love, survival, testament, death, and epitaph. It is what we dedicate ourselves to and what we will pass on as truth to our children. Whether or not we identify as “feminist” is a sandbar to the oceanic movements of feminisms.

In my community, there is so much work to do, so much silence to break, that for the brief minute of a life where I get to use my voice, I am not going to expend my breath on explaining whether or not I identify as feminist. And the back-breaking work of so many women and men who never use the word feminism is not qualified or standardized on the arbitrary use of the word either.

The awareness matters. The intentional work toward eradicating inequality matters. The feminisms of my life matters. The use of the label does not.

Listen. Listen closely. Can you hear it?

The revolution will not be a movement. It will be Birthed.

The Artist's Way

Some weeks ago (my memory is really bad since pregnancy), my dear friend and much respected writer, BFP, wrote something along the lines of saying that she was less interested in "activism" and more interested in the lives and journeys of artists.

That struck me. For numerous reasons.

The first thing that struck me is thinking about my blogging life. When I first began blogging four years ago (yikes! has it been that long?), I remember wanting my "writing" to FIT into the feminist blogosphere. I read many blogs then, wanting to understand what was important to the "Feminist Community," and, truthfully, always struggled in that genre.

I struggled because writing is, essentially, an extension of one's self. What interests me is what I will write most intimately about, what I love is what will illuminate the page (or screen) with my words. Making my writing fit is like trimming my own self, trying to make ME fit.

What I was always interested in were topics like God. Addressing sexual and gender violence in our everyday relationships through deconstruction and critical questions of gender norming. Family. Humor. And love. Always love. These were my interests.

I didn't know it then, but my writing came and continues to flow from a very deep, supremely sensitive place where I process my memory, my life experiences. Of course, current events and news are always interesting, but the writing I connect with is the writing that comes from LIFE, my life. And I'm always interested in how others live or lived their lives.

How did Gloria Anzaldua live with diabetes? How did my mother live through immigrating to this country on her own? How did my cousins live through the passing of both their parents? How did my 8th grade science teacher feel when she decided to get teeth braces at the age of 48? What is it like for young women of color writers in the US?

These were my questions, they weren't "feminist," I suppose, but they came from a very real place that questioned the systematic punishment and guardrails around women.

Feminism exists for all of us to live richer, deeper, more fulfilling lives. Feminism exists for us to question what we want to question and to live as we want to live. The lives of artists, the lives of those who create are lives that are often imbued with resistance; they live counter-culturally. Artists, the souls who create something out of nothing, those who build from ill-fitting pieces possess a strength that reveals itself in their life choices.

I no longer worry about whether I or my writing fits. Rather, I focus on whether or not I am truthful, committed to creation and relationship, and love. Always love.

4am Lessons

Before I had a son, I wrote about feminism as a subject. It was a noun, sometimes even a verb. Feminism existed as a THING to be written out, explained, debated.

As the past seven weeks of my life have unfolded, I've either woken up to a new form or writing, or I've undergone some sort of lobotomy where I have no recollection about that kind of writing. You know, the kind of writing where I blatantly write FEMINISM IS THIS, IS NOT THAT, IS MORE LIKE THIS, IS DEFINITELY NOT THAT...

I breastfeed Isaiah and this painful learning process about the wonder of the body and the miracle of nurturing has captivated my writing in new subtleties. His eyes are dark and I stare into them. I don't see anything but openness. His open pupils stare back into the dark storms of my eyelets and I wonder what he sees in me. And I think about the world and what it will tell him about being a boy, a growing man. The window alone reveals a half-snowed road and the neighbor's holiday lights still hanging red and white, yet I see a colder world than the winter temperatures. And I worry.

I don't believe teaching "Feminism" is going to do anything for my son. I don't know if attending gender and women's studies courses are going to save him from a hypermasculine society and sexually-distorted media driven world. Maternity leave has let me soak up the world without paid work and I am listening to the sounds of the news. The conversations around me. The behaviors of strangers in stores. The fragments of life are there for me to observe and I'm not convinced Isaiah will learn how to survive that world with "Feminism."

There's no bargaining in raising a child. The world, as I see it from Cleveland, does not bargain with mothers. It doesn't exchange or make deals. Isaiah, with his soft cooing and heart-melting pouts, will be taught messages about his soul, his worth, his identity...and I'm praying I know how to raise him how to reject most of it.

Counter-cultural child-rearing is going to be a monstrous feat in my future. It already is...And the "Feminism" I knew - the kind that had me chasing conferences, journalists, and blog wars - has quieted itself, perhaps even buried itself. A new ecdysis is shedding, rapidly. In its place are questions of health care and education, public breastfeeding, family consumerism, and equal parenting.

To be of use, for Feminism to be of use to mothers, it must come complete with relevance to women's lives. Ordinary lives and extraordinary responsibility. There is no room, in my son's life, for classes or blogs, podcasts, or lectures.

All he has is me. All he knows is me his mother. His father, my partner. WE are all he will know for a window's crack of time before the rest of the community begins to warm his world with ideas. The doubt and insecurity of my own ability to teach him weighs heavily in my heart.

And so I write. I write him letters. I whisper things into his ear at 4am when it feels like no one else in the world is awake. Just us, mother and son. I whisper things, things far too complicated for his tiny brain to comprehend, but I believe the introduction of my voice as a whisper will allow me into his psyche as a voice of reason. A guiding force of love.

I continue to write him letters and whisper into the night. And pray, that for now, it is enough.

How Intimate and Functional is Your Feminism?

I'm presenting at a conference in a little over a week. I was given 20 minutes to talk about feminism, new media, and identity. Twenty minutes.

I remember when I was in college and thinking that writing long papers was one of the biggest challenges. "What am I supposed to write about?" I always looked for fillers to make my number pages increase, as if writing MORE signified more meaning.

Eight years after college, I learned that it's short papers, abbreviated periods of time that holds true challenge. How do I only have 20 minutes to create this presentation when I have so much to say?

In preparing for this conference, I've been writing primers on feminism, my feminism. My perspective. My truth. I have been reviewing the definition of feminism and its futility in the common, everyday world in which we live in. How feminism affects the relationships we claim mean so much to us. How feminism affects our communication patterns in workplaces built on hierarchy and authority. How feminism challenges and/or enhances our expectations of the men in my life (and especially the women in my life!).

How does feminism, YOUR feminism affect you? How personal, how intimate do you allow your feminism to become?

If personal transformation is key, or a precursor to societal transformation, intimacy with feminism cannot be sidestepped. It takes a monstrous force to allow oneself to be vulnerable enough to change, vulnerable enough to change our relationships and beliefs that influence our daily behaviors. That is the function of my feminism -- using it as a ladder to climb for a better view, reaching higher [deeper] levels of clarity. It is not navel gazing if we actually USE feminism for self-transformation, instead of using it as a lens to think or muse on our own experiences. Once we're done musing, it's time to enact change. Put our lessons into practice.

For me, action and change are found in small-sounding shifts. For example...

I stopped lying.

I stopped lying to people when they ask how I am feeling. I stopped saying that I feel great and have enough energy to be pregnant, go out, cook, take care of myself, work a full time job.

I stopped lying and began saying what is really happening: I'm tired. I'm tired by 2pm everyday and need to sleep. Saying this means I've asked for help. Admitting this means allowing others to see that I'm changing and I'm affected by that change. It means acknowledging that I am not as energetic as I once was. It means allowing myself to be seen in my own skin. It means not pretending and letting whatever expectations of me that others held to fall to the ground and stay there.

I stopped lying because the energy in creating a lie - however slight the alteration of the truth it is - distracts and subtracts from the energy bank I DO have.

The result is I am able to see myself as I am: a very pregnant woman, very much in love with this experience, and needing time to Be exactly as I am.

It wasn't the hugest lie to tell. Perhaps the liberation I feel has more to do with the fact that I am being more FULLY myself, allowing more of the truth in, instead of filtering it out.

It's meant closing my door to sleep. It's meant reaching for more water. It's meant coming to grips with the darker parts of pregnancy that are creeping closer and closer in my insecurity. It's meant more doctor's appointments and less bravado.

It means being real.

Feminism, the kind I am presenting, has to do with that kind of liberation. It begins with small lies we tell ourselves to get through the day, it begins with taking down ridiculous facades we don't even need to begin with, and frees up our identity to pay attention to who we really are, what we are really about, and refocus that energy in what truly matters.

It is my hope, or plan, that beginning in those seeds of truth will allow us to grow into truth-filled bodies where we can recognize the people and places that truly need more energy and hope.

I serve no other person well if I begin from an unstable foundation.

The Last Ungendered Day

I started using the self-descriptive term "feminist" about five years ago and although my life's work to create a better world extends much longer than those five years, the lens of feminism - my feminisms, to be precise - has positively enhanced the way I experience and percieve the mystery of socialization and gender.

Tomorrow, I have my 20 week ultrasound. Before pregnancy, I didn't know that 20 weeks is a milestone. Usually with prenatal care, an "anatomical" ultrasound is done, which means Adonis and I get to see the baby growing in my uterus. We see the face, ears, feet, hands...everything...including its genitalia.

Many things have surprised me about pregnancy, but none moreso than the impact of hormones in my body. My memory has been underwater, my moods sometimes swingy, but my emotions have been fairly calm. I've felt peaceful. One of the few pieces of anxiety I've been experiencing relates to gender and finding out the sex of the baby.

I've been pretty open about my feelings concerning my pregnancy through my letters to Veronica, my unborn daughter, which I started a long time ago...well before I was pregnant. And one of my fears is not just having a child, it's about having a son. I think that my fear dwells in my uncertainty if I can teach a child and have a larger impact than the rest of the world. All the lessons this child will learn will have to be undone at some level. It begins tomorrow. It begins the moment the ultrasound technician will say "boy" or "girl."

And the barrage of texts, emails, FB messages, and comments wanting to know will begin. Along with the pink and blue bull that I don't believe in.

Facing the reality that I am carrying life within me has meant coming to the reality that I am deeply responsible for the wonder and destruction this child shall bear on the world once it enters this life and takes its first breath.

I am faced with the reality that the men who rape women once had mothers too and I wonder what they learned (or didn't) about loving and treating women, both in personal relationships and strangers. I think about the way teenage boys careen by the waterfountain at school and mock the budding bodies of womanhood and adolescence out of their own insecurity. I am, essentially, afraid of what boys because, after working with violated women and children, I know what they are capable of.

I don't want to raise a son contributing to another woman's disempowerment.

But feminism has also taught me that not only are men capable, and actually prefer, to be loving, active, energetic leaders for goodness and wholeness, it's also taught me that women are not grouped together in their fight for equality. The bullying, the cut throat competition, the hidden jealousy, the betrayal...raising a daughter now terrifies me just as much as raising a son. After I've work with violated women and children, I'm afraid I'll raise a daughter who doesn't care about her worth and values her sexuality only at the price set by society and media.

Whether son or daughter, I'm afraid she'll give up on herself.
I'm afraid, quite simply, they won't care about the world they way I do and I won't be able to stand their selfishness.
I'm afraid that when they ask me questions about what I've done to make the world better, I'll look in the mirror and only see a half-worn human and full blown coward.

Somehow, in the years I've contemplated and studied gender and advocated that all persons are equal, I'm petrified I'll find that I've only kidding myself because I know the world can and will knock me on my butt with its cruel, streamlined, flick of the wrist power to teach domination, selfishness, individualism, and greed.

Knowing this child's gender makes it all real, too real, because once I know "boy" or "girl," I'll inherit an entire set of specific strategies the world has planned to brainwash my kid. I don't have anything except what I *think* I know, a lot of guessing, intuition, and a loving partner.

I hope those seeds are enough.

Will they know how to love, truly love themselves and another human being?
Do they know the world is not fragmented and we, all of us, are inexplicably connected?
Does having this much fear dictate what kind of mother I will be?
Who will be there to save me when I'm the one in trouble?

In some funny way, I want this child to forever remain as it is right now - perfect, growing, dependant on nothing but amniotic fluid, oxygen, and my voice. Not only do I fear about this child hurting, but I'm afraid of the harm the child will be capable of doing as well.

Tomorrow I will know if I am having a son or daughter.

Transformative Blogging: A Free Write on Pregnancy, Feminism, and the Internet

Three years ago, I started blogging.

I was newly married, working at a university, confronting my disdain for the midwestern common, and beginning to fall in love with photography.

Today I am 4 months pregnant, working at a spiritual center, combing through my complex relationship with geography and identity, and am a freelance writer and photographer. My dreams are more realized, I can humbly admit to myself.

This summer has been a fragmented blogging experience. I've loosened my ties with the online world after experiencing an avalance of its toxicity. But I know of the power of the internet, the power of online communication and exchange, and I know that I will never completely sever my ties with blogging.

The frequency of my blogging came alongside the confidence to speak my mind about mainstream feminism, kyriarchy, and the destructive practices of dominating US-identifed feminists in the field of gender, sexuality, and "feminism." Somewhere, in the Bermuda triangle of my mind, online expression became necessary strength-training for my feminisms. Online exposure - seeking external information from strangers and "experts" - became one of the most frequently visited gyms to exercise feminist discourse. Until now.

Pregnancy has taken me inward. Deep into the reflective tissue of memory, trauma, joy, and motherhood. It has taken me into these far off places of security and fear, health and death, responsibility and loss of control. I've retreated into my body, less focused on the rest of the world and simply in the world growing below my belly button.

This event, for lack of a better word, has transformed me again beyond any trip, research, or moving poet could ever shift me before. At no other time in my life have I walked more slowly, spoke less with more to say, and allowed to open my life to truly not caring about the world whilst still loving it deeply, wildly from my corner in Cleveland, Ohio.

Early pregnancy was very much like discovering the internet - information overload. There was story upon story of miracle (once infertile now fertile) to the heartwrenching (still born stories that made me weep for days) and more "advice" than I could handle. It left me staring at my ceiling in bed, convinced I was sick, was headed into an unhealthy pregnancy, and needed more medical attention than any other person who had ever given birth in the history of baby-making.

I harbored no trust, particularly for my own mind.

My early experience of feminism and the internet was similar. Three years ago, my blog was somewhat directionless. It was filled with thoughtful entries, some humor, and candid glimpses into my life, but it lacked any true identity. It lacked the substantial stamp of SELF. PERSPECTIVE. AUTHENTICITY. TRUTH.

The exploration of how to effectively use media, the internet, blogging, and feminism to transform ourselves and our pockets of the universe remains an unchartered course, a hike for which an infinite weight of rations is needed. This might take a lifetime. But I have learned that while blogging has been very much a gift - delivering relationships, realizations, connections, and insight - it is also a place that can sometimes take you away. Away from your body, away from listening to your own authentic creations. I realize one of the biggest differences in my writing over the past three years is that I write less reactionary pieces and responses than when I first began blogging. I was exploding like a firecracker to a zillion commentors and posts that led me nowhere except away from truly reflecting and moving within my own consciousness.

This gift of pregnancy has not only given me necessary reflection and work to emotionally prepare for a new role as mother, but it has deterred and sharpened my eyesight to be selective in who I choose to read and listen to. It has taught me that more is not always better and reading an endless parade of memoir writing about motherhood will never grasp what the experience means to ME. What is happening to my body, my brain, my bones right now.

It has been through pregnancy that I see "Feminism" with new eyes and I see much more red than I ever saw before. Red bias, red intentions, red discrimination, red narrowness...I see red. Reproductive health rights are arrows pointing to the majority of heterosexual, young white women. Sexuality and spirituality are rarely explored as an interlaced relationship. The conferences change names, but still move in their same agenda. "Liberal" and "progressive" are thrown around without much depth and review. Blog wars still flare from time to time, roaming from appropriation to racism, but after a few months of quiet, you'll still find the same bloggers rowing in the currents of mainstream thought and contributing to US-centric, heteronormative rhetoric that alientates and ostracizes "unpopular" issues like the fact WE ARE STILL AT WAR IN IRAQ, WE ARE NOT A POST-RACE SOCIETY BECAUSE WE HAVE A BI-RACIAL PRESIDENT, and the violence of poverty and rape still choke the life out of womyn everywhere in the world.

Maybe the point is not for the blogosphere to be transformed, but for me to transform according to my offline life, my quiet purpose. And just hope and pray that others are doing the same. Maybe if we all did that, our blogosphere, our world would change. Maybe we could all go through something similiar to a pregnancy where we witness new life growing in some way and we are drawn inward to listen to the new beat of existence, a changed way of being.

Maybe if we listened more, talked less, we could actually hear something other than the deafening needs of our egos and more of the muted chants of our yearning hearts.

No Country for Men and Fathers?

I've been thinking about fatherhood. For as much as I think about motherhood, I think about the absence of fatherhood.

That wasn't MY story, per se.

My father, still the same funny, hard-working, and insanely generous person, has been with me for 30 years.

Still, I am thinking about fatherhood.

In pop and mainstream culture, US feminism is branded and re-branded with the same ingredients, westernized notions, and colonial/racial/able-isms that have plagued it in the past. Let's get real, here. While I emphatically believe that multiple forms of feminism exist, most folks still think of mainstream feminism as the only Feminism alive.

How wrong, and how unfortunate, that is...especially for men.

It was just Father's Day on Sunday, two days ago, and nowhere, other than fleeting greetings did I find any substantial feminist-centered articles or op-eds about fathers, their place, significance, impact on their lives. In general, there rarely are any feminist bloggers who write about their fathers. There are countless reflections, dedications, and ruminations about motherhood, but it seems the feminist=women only/women-centered ideology has become so fascist, that men and fathers are not even recognized. Not even on Father's Day.

The way feminism came to me was through activism and identity politics. Feminist language and thought has equipped me to centralize my own experiences to organize my thoughts of the world and more clearly under the systematic kyriarchy that hold womyn under siege. Through the lens of gender, I am more apt to dissecting the critical role of women AND men in the vision of radical justice and equality.

Including, inviting, teaching, loving, needing, welcoming men and fathers into feminisms is not the same as centralizing them. Men do not threaten feminism, false ideologies of gender, power, and "natural" order do. Most people confuse the oppression tactics with the men who exercise it. I'm not advocating these men - or any persons who abuse positions of power - are innocent or anything, but I think it's good to remember, using the adage of 80s and 90s feminists, men aren't the enemy. Far from it.

I think one of the saddest corners of many feminisms is ignoring men and fathers. It's as if the concept of centralizing womyn, valuing womyn, and studying the global trends affecting womyn has isolated men from the concerns of feminists. And while, yes, women constitute the majority of the world, the close second half of the population needs to be equally considered as we fight for justice, advocate for freedom. What freedom looks like for women will not be the same for men, but that difference doesn't automatically cause friction, or even conflict.

The world feminists need is not simply a reordering of numbers so women hold the same positions as men, so CEOs and business partners, and professionals all have equal footing. That might be nice and have good value in changing the landscape a bit, but I don't think it'll solve our problems which run much deeper than just a numbers game of equality. I'm not minimizing representation or the necessity to provide equal access for girls and women to hold the same opportunities as boys and men, but why is that representation so often becomes the measuring stick of progress for mainstream feminism? Why is that - "men can and therefore, I can too" mentality resonating in the same sphere as freedom?

What if the "men can" way is a path that leads to dissonance, destruction, violence, and brokenness? Restructuring the path, I believe, is just, if not more, important than filling that path with the feet of women.

For example, our military could one day be half and half, but if the philosophies of our military stayed the same, would that 50/50 really represent radical change? Wouldn't it be more radical to hear that our military had taken a more serious stance toward sexism, the rapes occurring within, sexual violence used as a tool of torture and genocide?

* * *

So what does feminism look like with men and fathers with us? What does a Father's Day sound like in the feminist blogosphere?

Silence.

What kind of lessons have we learned from our fathers, surrogate fathers, the men, transmen, male-identified individuals who changed our perspectives with love, bravery, vulnerability, and support?

Silence.

And what are our strategies for mobilizing men and fathers?

Silence.

And how do we get past the ridiculous notion that men and fathers are more than just "allies" in the movements for radical love and justice?

Silence.

* * *

My father raised me the only way he knew how - with love. That love might have been patriarchal, ageist, and sexist, but feminism taught me how to receive and give love, not shun, my father. Every father/daughter relationship is different. I'm not blanketing my experience of the only father I've known with yours or others. But, more often than not, feminists overlook the need for justice seeking men who know and practice radical love beyond boundaries.

The answer to unpacking my childhood was not lashing, ignoring, or not sharing my life with my father. The answer was looking into his past, understanding the context of his life and upbringing and then loving him more so I could show him the colors of my life.

There were cultural differences. There were disagreements. Miscommunication galore. And it was hard. Damn hard.

But for my father to know me and how important these issues are to me, to have my father send me articles and magazines he hopes I like that center women and justice solidifies my belief that the community of feminism will and must include our fathers, the men we claim to love, and the young boys we hope will help transform the world.

The Great Wall of Mainstream Feminism

There are few things in the world I hate more than when the words "prominent," "feminist," "icon," and "won" are jumbled together in a feminist context.

I don't know why I do this to myself. I have long sworn off mainstream feminism and yet, like a moth to a flame where I know I shall burn myself to death, still, I am drawn to read articles that ponder whether Angelina Jolie is "the next feminist icon."

According to "prominent feminist," Naomi Wolf, Jolie "is hot" and "has it all."

Let's skip the whole song and Hollywood dance of her celebrity and take a closer look at what Naomi Wolf says of her,

"Against every Western convention, she has managed to draw together all of these kinds of female liberation and empowerment. And her gestures determinedly transgress social boundaries — boundaries of convention, race, class, and gender — giving many of us a vicarious thrill."

Um, pardon me, but am I the only one that nearly puked up colonialism when I saw her adopt children all over the world, bringing more wind to the Oprah theory that we, those with money and in industrialized countries, should feel free to "save" these other children from the violence and poverty they would be otherwise subject to?

It's not as if I expect Bazaar or Forbes to take that kind of approach to celebrity analysis. Far from it, I expect mainstream media to further confuse the notions of liberation with colonialist domination. But from writers, thinkers, and philosophers teaching from the walls of feminisms (yes, read it, again my friends - it's plural) -- in what orbit are you circling where you think Ange-freaking-lina Jolie is the "next feminist icon?" What kind of sound minded, socially-just conscience gets a "vicarious thrill" through ethnocentric, heteronormative practices and then sings ignorant praises and files it under Liberation, Best Practices?

From the same brand that said Sex and the City was a cultural phenomenon that further liberated US women, that also denounced Obama during the primaries because Hillary Clinton was the first women to potentially clinch the White House, which also says NOTHING in celebration of or in defense of Sotomayer -- comes the newest installation of mainstream feminism: the (slightly) nuanced message that tells women that, YES, we CAN have it all. By golly, if a big boobed and heavy lipped white actress who makes millions off of her sex appeal can fly a plane, snag a handsome and doting beau, and have her pick of the world's poorest children, well, shit! I CAN HAVE IT ALL TOO!

Ah, mainstream feminism...how many times must I say this? The demise of our efforts will not be neoconservative right-wing bats who look an awful like Dick Cheney. It won't even be the machismo. I'll even go as far to say the collapse won't come from a thousand reincarnations of Ann Coulter.

The damning crack in the great wall of feminisms is caused by the mainstream feminists, the "prominent" writers and thinkers who jump and down on the wall, throwing praise to other White women who have money, small waists, and heterosexual sex. They continuously and knowingly break the backs of the women and daughters who need more advocacy than they need to hear about a wealthy, country-jetting actress. This wall will certainly cave from the Utah-sized egos that ignore race and colonial theories and teachings, who offer their souls to Hillary Clinton and nothing to Sonia Sotomayer. And when this wall crumbles, the dust will settle and reveal two things that mainstream feminism has caused: the majority of women are trapped under the wall and are dead while the women who walked the the top and caused the crack are still alive.

To Whom You Are Accountable

Filipinos have a cultural trademark of slapping nicknames on folks which have absolutely nothing to do with their real names. For example, my full first name is Ana Lisa, but growing up, my parents had a slew of nicknames for me that slid in and out of my life. I never questioned it, just knew they were terms of endearment and I embraced my cultural names.

My father called me Shouloo [SHAO-loo], which typically meant, "little one." The youngest of four, it seemed appropriate and a sign of affection. "Shouloo! Get me my tsinelas [sandals]!" My nickname always softened the request to get my father whatever he was requesting.

My mother had a few names for me. "Anak," [ah-NAHK] means "dear" or "child" as she also frequently called me "Ming," which I never completely understood. But they were always said lovingly so I had a feeling they were similar in nature.

As a child, they told me stories of the Philippines and I imagined a faraway place of paradox. A tropical paradise. Unthinkable poverty. Dirt. Spirit. Malls. A home.

* * * *

Last year, I went to the Philippines for multiple reasons. One reason was to academically immerse myself in history, economics, language, and the arts. I was also researching the history of the women's movement in the Philippines and was to study under a professor who had endured political trauma - kidnapping and torture - during the martial law under then president Ferdinand Marcos. Dr. T* was an excellent teacher and I often felt confounded by her life experiece that she used in her teaching college students.

I studied at the University of the Philippines (UP) and quickly absorbed the political tension on campus. I was to attend a rally in one of my first afternoons at the campus. The rally was to raise awareness about the missing Sociology professor and student who disappeared during a research project they had been conducting in the mountains. These young women - Karen* and Carolyn* - were intent on researching the trials and life of rural agricultural workers in the mountains.

They disappeared.

Like so many other philosophers, teachers, activists, and thinkers in the Philippines. Disappeared.

Gone.

* * * *

No one was as interested in my research as they were about my personal story, however. Most of the feedback I received when folks learned of my trip mostly centralized on either one of two assumptions. I actually 1) "abandoned my husband" to learn and conduct independent research OR 2) defiantly traveled alone to the other side of the world without him

* * * *

My parents never taught me or my siblings Tagalog, or any other dialect of the Philippines. Language, its sole function so often understood as the train of understanding, is the carrier of so much more in the Philippines. Being able to speak Tagalog is a marker of cultural acceptance, of union. Stuttering in half English (though nearly all urban areas speak English) is a billboard of westernized upbringing.

The latter. That was me.

* * * *

I meet with all kinds of human rights groups that talk about the many struggles of the bleeding nation. Without filters or softeners, the reality of the corrupt violence makes me afraid. I tell a native that I am afraid. She laughs in my face. "You are an American citizen, yes?"

I nod.

"Just show your passport. No one will ever touch you." She dismisses me.

Feeling slighted and awkwardly untouchable, I turn to a friend for a brief processing. She is from New York. "Yeah, Leese, I mean, come on. We lead different lives. It doesn't matter if we're Filipino, we don't live the same danger these other women do. Janice* just survived her first round of chemo therapy while she spent the night in her office, advocating for justice. She's committed. Why? Because her friends, her actual friends, have been kidnapped, murdered and raped. She's allowed to laugh at us because we don't live that. We can take her bitter laughter if we understand what she goes through."

* * * *

"Tell them we're beyond poverty. We're not even allowed to eat the garbage. We're even charged for the remains no one wants," a Filipina tells me as my research project ends. I say nothing, remembering the communities I met who are charged $60 USD for a truckload of garbage to sift through.

* * * *

"Please, don't forget us. Please, tell others our stories so others will understand what we're living through." I hold the hand of a widow whose husband, a union rights organizer, was assassinated two years ago with no one brought to justice.

* * * *

My parents call me Ming and Shouloo, names of love. Lately, though, I notice they don't call me those names anymore. I realize it's because they were all names for a little girl.

I am no longer.

* * * *

It has been almost a year since I left for my first trip to my parents homeland and I have written nothing but scratches about its impact on my life. My notes, my research sits out waiting for me, waiting for my commitment to travel back in my memory and relive some of the most gorgeous moments of my life, and also some of the most horrific.

I realize, with sadness, as I nurse this plum of a life inside me, s/he will likely not receive the cultural division that I experienced growing up. The intense confusion, and resulting drive, that came with growing up Ming and Shouloo in the United States will not be present for my child.

But the stories I have, the memories still burning in my mind will shape this child into understanding a certain part of the world to where s/he will always have a connection. With connection, comes accountability. Loving accountability.

* * * *

With a picture of the growing Plum on my desk, I reach for overstuffed notebooks with handouts and maps as bookmarks, reeking with the smell of dust and dried sweat.

I remember. I begin writing.



__________________________________________________________________
Salamat to Tanglad for your inspiration, companionship, support, and incivise writing.

This Pregnant Feminist Will Eat You Alive

Everything's changing.

The moment was actually split. Plural.

There were two realizations that changed my life. One was the moment I knew I wanted to be a mother. The second when I realized I was pregnant.

Those two moments were distinct and both charged with a transformative power difficult to express.

The moment I knew I wanted to become a mother of some kind was a shock of worry -- what if I couldn't become pregnant? What if my health was not up to par? What kind of mother would I be? How will my life change?

Then the moment arrived when I realized I was pregnant. Everything turned into a statement, not a question. That left me in shock. I am now pregnant. My health is not up to par. I will be a mother. My life will change. All declaratives. All terrifying. No more questions.

I've come to understand my life in terms of my feminism and vice versa. My feminism is subdued or enthralled by the ongoing events and lessons of my everyday life. The more I engage in my life, the clearer my thoughts become, the more complex my issues grow. I wondered how my blogging would be affected -- would I suddenly be thrust into the prego blogosphere? No...I thought to myself, I'm still the same person. I'm not a genre. I'm a womyn of color, pregnant. I am growing fire inside my uterus. You better believe I'm going to be writing about this.

Being a pregnant womyn has pushed me into a new role in this world. It has shifted my thoughts to a future-oriented way of thinking. When I watch the news, it's not longer about me, but how it might affect the future my child will live in. When I see a car accident, I wonder if a child was lost, or if a child just lost a parent. Then I cry.

My eyes are wet with weepiness. As I ran on a treadmill, I stopped to weep into a corner. Then I got up and ran again.

The assault of medical worries and superficial expectations on what makes a "Good Mother" has astounded me. Everything from pre-natal yoga to avoiding bologna...all of the information and "education" has paralyzed me.

The greatest advice came from a friend who simply said, "Listen to your body. It knows what it needs."

There's a new fragility in my life that has gifted me with a strength I do not want to refuse. I want to be a strong mother, a strong womyn. I see the demons of this world who have painted the canvas of motherhood with images of white perfection, middle class luxuries, and the oldest tool of oppression used toward new and old mothers: guilt. I see the expectations heaped upon my life in the short 9 weeks I've been pregnant and am tickled with excitement. The world has no idea who they are messing with. Me. You are messing with pregnant me and my writing is going to fire back at all the mainstream feminisms that have contributed to the locking down, locking up, and criminilization of womyn of color who choose motherhood despite the odds, who choose to have children with or without a partner, who choose to raise their children with less than adequate healthcare coverage, who work and fight and love all in the same day. My blog will be focusing on the issues of pregnancy and feminism, on giving love and attention to all the truthful ways real womyn birth life into the world.

There is no epidural for the kind of birth I want.

Quick Point for the Day

Anytime a White identified woman asks how to be an ally to a womyn of color, or how to be a "real feminist" that includes full self-actualization, I am always in amazement that the first things said are about how "hard" things are, how "oppressive" the world is, how racism has depleted the hope, stamina, and good-nature of womyn of color.

Speaking at least for myself, yes, there is another side of life that womyn of color must deal with that often has to do with poverty, injustice, violence, and discrimination in waves that most US-White women do not understand.

However, what I think most people don't understand is that with rough terrain often comes full souls, hearts that are readily open and laugh often, party much, and celebrate the matters of most importance.

Communities of differences beset by injustice are often the first to identify the good spots of life, the waters that most take for granted.

That side of womyn of color is often not understood.

I am not a meeting the world with a bitter head, I see it head on, face up, and have joy.

I have joy.

So, if you want to better understand the lives of womyn of color, it is imperative to not only understand the pain, but to watch the joy.

Bumper Feminism Stickers

BA lights it up while I can make a bumper sticker about it.

Patch These All Over Your Car

Sometimes feminist thoughts put me in an all too serious mood. I'm needing to go back to my roots...my side that is creative, humorous, and loves variety. My writing didn't always used to be so long-winded.

I'm going to start making bumper stickers for my blog about whatever is on my mind.

Have a saying you want to see into a bumper sticker? Send it my way.

Written in My Plain Gendered Language

Since my induction to the feminist blogosphere, I've put much time into narrowing my focus. Widespread blogging seems too general, unfocused, and leaves me with little direction. Mostly, I don't feel I learn as much as I want when I blog across the spectrum.

About a year ago, I decided to move forward in specific issues relating to feminism - defining "radical," exploring sexual violence, faith, media, and womyn of color.

Every once in a while though, I wonder if focusing on "feminism" somehow limits my exploration of "gender."

How does that focus change me, my writing, when and if I write: I want to explore feminism vs. I want to explore gender.

Is it the same thing?

Before I would have emphatically stated yes.

Now, I would emphatically distinguish that mainstream feminism and academic courses absolutely ignore the entirety of gender as an issue. Often times, feminism is conflated with the upward political, class, and elitist advancement of White women. Somehow, in some contorted, quiet way, I've often thought that gender has gotten lost in feminism. Sure, it's pointed out when women, particularly women of privilege are abused, oppressed, or violated, but, for the most part, feminism and gender, ironically, are often not paired together in headliners.

I'm thinking, specifically, of the transgendered lives and experiences that I, admittedly, know very little about.

I am not and do not identify transgender and have often felt like my understanding is extremely limited by my slow understanding and deconstruction of socialization when it comes to gender roles. For as much as I analyze the experience of womyn of color, I often fail at pushing myself to explore the experience of transgendered womyn of color. Semantically, it's easy to ask, "What about the transgender folks?" But to truly be an individual open to learning the struggles and causes of the transgendered population, the questions must conquer the fear and confusion.

And so, as someone suggested to write about feminism as it relate[s] to transgender, here's my honest reply:

I don't know. You tell me.

And I write that with as much respect and honesty as a womyn of color who once asked how feminism relates to US-born Filipinas with immigrant parents. I write that as someone who asks how feminism relates to a late-birthed sexual awakening and an even delayed political consciousness. How does feminism relate to transgender lives?

If I do not live a transgendered life, do not know the full extent of the pain and violence and discrimination suffered by transgendered womyn, I will not know how feminism relates to them, or even IF it relates to them.

Despite what is being written in the history of mainstream feminists in the westernized, classist world of iconic femmies with self-serving agendas, the truth is that feminism has the power to transform consciousness and spirit. It has the ability to challenge our very definitions of humanity and rights. I believe, however, that it must arrive in the grain of relationship and a shitload of humility.

Feminism, the study of women's lives, excludes no one...in theory. Yet, we don't live theoretically, do we?

We live individually, often to own detriment. We live so individualistically that we fail to even understand gender within feminsm and we fail ourselves. We fail as writers, activists, listeners...we fail as people, I think, when we forego others. Feminism has long bypassed transgendered womyn. I write that as someone who only sees transgender issues written about when someone has been slain. I write that as someone whose blog only mentions transgender issues a handful of times.

Truthfully, my goal as a writer is to point out the holes. Most people mistake that for seeing the negative, or constantly bitching about what's wrong. But there are enough fans of mainstream feminism and not enough compassionate critics who long to see it do better than what it is currently doing. And the "doing" isn't by feminism itself, but by the students and practitioners who claim to be activists within a "Movement." And if the students and practitioners are happy with feminism, we are in big trouble.

It isn't just about transgendered folks being ignored or how the issues are only mentioned in the blogosphere by way of violence and brutality, it's the complete disregard for any gritty issue of gender when it involves unfamiliar territory. This is true for feminism as it relates to the disability movement, transnational or international womyn, immigration, faith, Katrina...the list goes on.

Feminism does not make itself relevant to folks like you and me. We must make it so.

In other words, your voice, my voice is needed to explain why.

Feminism in Motion

If you don't know by now, let me remind you: make/shift magazine is a fresh, grassrooted, and truth-telling effort that is looking for events of any and all variety in all parts of the world that are capturing "feminism in motion."

We (especially me) are looking for the awesome work that is being done that have few outlets of publicity.

Show us the colors, sizes, and fierce faces of feminisms.

Catch the plural?
We're looking for the folks behind community justice, creativity, education, activism, and art.


Still unconvinced?
Visit the website or email me.

Please forward to all universes, planets, countries, nooks, corners, and tree houses you can! Just get it to me by May 25, 2009. Submit to me at: lisa@makeshiftmag.com

Muchas gracias,
Lisa

The Lure of Online Feminism: Relationship Building and the Internet

I've received numerous emails and messages about my last post in which I shared the process of starting a new job and deciding to intentionally decrease my involvement in the feminist blogosphere. In my personal reflection, I offered a few insights about the process in which I realized that I was not fully engaging in human relationships because I was thinking about the online forms of feminism.

Three years ago, I was fully offline and not finding what I needed: community. I started blogging because of that void. The ache to be in deep, challenging, analytic conversation throbbed deeply in my bones. As a writer with no community of women of color or like-minded radical feminists, I found a wonderful resource in the online world. The mobility and accessibility, to me, was exactly what I had been needing. Through the feminist blogosphere, I found a connecting thread with others and in this space, my voice became stronger.

The function of the internet is complex and multipurpose. For those unable to be or engage in offline communities, for any reason, the internet can be a life-saving ticket of relationship, learning, and creativity. The function of the internet will be varied and in different degrees of significance. I would never say that what I did three years ago, or have e-built since then, doesn't count or is less meaningful. Quite the contrary. The online work and relationships I made were some of the most meaningful and enriching experiences of my life.

What needs to be clarified is my point: I am not saying that all online interactions is less significant or valuable as offline. My finding the RWOC and feminist blogosphere is a testament to that. Those connections got me through transition, job hardship, moving, confronting inner demons, and gave me back my sanity on countless occasions.

That counts. That counts beyond numbers, words, or reason.

I recognized a conflict last week when I realized I was paying more attention to blog topics and subheadings than the womyn a foot away from me asking me to get her walker so she can exercise her leg muscles for ten minutes. Wondering what any blogger is writing about is nowhere near as important in the moment I am trying to assist a womyn take medication after a seizure. In that moment, the work I am doing is not more important than any person blogging about their insights. I'm saying that the work I am doing is more urgent, more necessary than letting my thoughts float into the blogosphere when I am nowhere near a computer.

The crossroads lie like this: be present to the client or think about what Nadia is going to post about the AMC. Talk to a staff member about her internship and getting her associate's degree that she's worked on for several years or give my mental energy to wondering how BFP and Jess' walks are going. That's not a judgment call on the significance of that work, but it's a judgment call on the function of the internet for me in that moment. It is not a message to the disabled community nor is it an attempt to throw a blanket on all bloggers and readers of feminism to get offline and do "real work." That's a judgment call on where my own head is and what where my priorities lie in that moment when I have a decision to make.

To be human is to need relationship. To be in relationship, we must be present. However relationships come to us - offline or online - we need to be fully engaged to their the offerings and misgivings. One of the misgivings of the internet, for me, is that it lures me with its instant gratification and constant change. I began to grow comfortable in the mode and preferred that work over the offline womyn in my very hands. Examining an unexplained bruise on a womyn's breast is more important than reading my blog roll. Because of that fork in the road, because of that choice that is at my feet, I must make a judgment call on what is more important, what deserves my undivided attention.

That offline work that I am currently doing is not more important than the relationship building I did/do with the online RWOC. It all counts. It's all valuable. But when you start to sacrifice relationship for online activity - activity that is not consciousness raising, relationship building, or serving a greater purpose of need - then, yes, I believe it's time to get off the computer.

Saying that I need to be fully present to an individual human is not a message to the disabled community that their methods of communication are less valuable or "don't count," nor do I tell the person I was three years ago that her online outreach work weighs less than what I do now. It's when I begin choosing nameless and safe avenues of communication that serve more as a distraction AND deny the opportunity to be in full relationship with a human person breathing in front to me...THAT's when a problem occurs.

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.

My Nicaraguan Father: Reflections on Feminism, Letters, and Digital Media

My Nicaraguan Father: Reflections on Feminism, Letters, and Digital Media

Dedicated to Don Manual Montiello

My Nicaraguan father, who I had not seen in eight years, died this week. A man with a heart condition, he fell onto a street, his face purple, and died. He was walking the barrio, our home, Catorce de Junio, in Nicaragua where I used to live.

I don’t know where this piece is going. Like a storm, I sense something brewing. The signs are there: quiet moments (dark clouds), tears (rain), and fear (wind). A perfect writing storm. This time, though, I have no predictable end. Something is needing to come out and so I write. I write. There’s a lot that’s been thrown in the eye of my hurricane. I’m going to try and let it out…

* * *

In feminism, particularly the feminist blogosphere, the word “intersectionality,” is strewn around like a popular masthead. For those unfamiliar with this term, in a nutshell, it’s a nugget word of the third wave of feminism, a term to explain one’s ability/responsibility to see/understand the complex layers of oppression and severity. It is a theory by I don’t even know who that suggested we look at the varying intersecting locks of lived experience. To put it bluntly, it says that the middle of the wheel is braced together by several spokes. Look at the spokes, it suggests. Consider the spokes.

I’m not the best person to talk about intersectionality. I’m not the best person to talk about intersectionality because I was introduced to it in the feminist blogosphere and the way I have observed its lack of application – its sore failure – makes me a non-believer in the term. I just don’t see any difference “intersectionality” has made in the lives of womyn offline.

My momma raised me to see the soul, not spokes.

* * *

February 11, 2009
I am in a coffee shop. I see a sign: Imported from Nicaragua.

A small thump hits my gut.

* * *

March 2000
“Buenas dias, Dona Adelia! Como estas usted?” I called out to a neighbor while I was walking in the barrio. It is a hot morning in Managua.

My friend Julia who was walking beside me smiled as Dona Adelia opened her mouth and fired off a response so quick and urgent, I blinked in surprise.

Julia translated for me, “She said, ‘well, that depends. Do you want to know how I am doing economically, physically, emotionally, mentally, politically? It depends.’”

I’ve thought about Dona Adelia’s reply to my simple greeting for nine years. She is a woman, elderly in her seventies, who loves people with so much strength that I pray I am like her when I mature into my later years.

One moment. One response. To my face. And just like that. I understood “intersectionality,” or the multiple intricacies of being. Language, culture, soul. There are so many layers to people; so many things that affect how we perceive one another.

I didn’t need a theory. I needed a teacher.

* * *

The failure of intersectionality is not surprising. Most correlate the term as a method to measure oppression and study its affect on diverse individuals, as if there is a way to truly trace the insidious and camouflaged roots of societal and social demons.

What troubles me about this method is its obsession with oppression and lack of focus on liberation. From what I have observed, most feminists want to understand the surreptitious spreading and practice of oppression - they want to understand that justice is unevenly distributed because of skin color, race, ethnicity, physical and mental mobility, religion, citizenship, class, education, property, age, sexual orientation, gender, and sex – but they don’t want to listen when it comes to transforming the world for liberation.

If liberation means a radical, and by radical I am referring to the Latin origin of radical meaning ROOT, transformation of the world, we need feminists to become more visionary. And fast.

Intersectionality is useless if it merely raises your consciousness but does little else. Ok, so YOU’RE enlightened. Great!

Now what?

The life of intersectionality is brief. It’s a theory. Nothing more.

* * *

April 2000

Don Manual has a heart condition. Somewhere, in the maze of awkward translation, I learn his quiet demeanor cloaks a very gentle man. After a long trip to Bluefields, the eastern coast of Nicaragua, I return to my home in the barrio. Once in my room, exhausted, I begin unpacking.

Don Manual walks into my room.

Puzzled and a bit anxious because he has never entered my room before, I turn to face him.

Just a few pebbles of his words were caught in my translation. There are two things I remember, “Allegra. Muy allegra.”

He was happy to have you back home. He was relieved. Others translated the conversation for me later.

And then I remember that he covered his heart, his weakened and diseased heart, as he spoke. He softly tapped it as he told me he was glad I was home. Then he and his eyes smiled into me and turned away.

* * *

Thursday, February 12, 2009

I am nearing the end of my three month writing stint at Bitch magazine. The experience has taught me so much about writing and confidence, I find it difficult to translate it to those who do not engage in writing practice.

Recently, I wrote a piece about Nadya Suleman, the woman who recently birthed octuplets and is now a mother of fourteen. In my article, where I raised questions about the issue of choice outside the realm of abortion, I asked that we engage in critical and rich discussion but to do so without berating any one woman or a segment of population of women.

That didn’t go over well.

The feedback and comments ranged from, “I think this has nothing to do with race, I never even thought of the idea until people like you to inject race into the subject to cause controversy,” to suggesting that I “become a conservative,” to “What a goddamned shithead.”

Simultaneously, I received an email from Alex Blaze, the managing editor at The Bilerico Project, who let me know that there had been good news concerning a post I had written two months ago about Agnes Scott College, a private all woman’s college, allowing a degrading and anti-feminist movie film on its grounds. The update alerted me to heightened policies the college had adopted in response to the online noise generated by senior, Louisa Hill.

I learned about Agnes Scott debacle from Jess Hoffman, a visionary friend and co-founder of make/shift magazine, where I am a section editor. It was through her that I heard about it, connected with The Bilerico Project, and helped create some online shaking.

The result: not perfect, but improved policies.

While the situation at Agnes Scott College is not the most ground breaking news or the most inspiring story, it gave credence to the power of blogging and communities working together. As Blaze wrote in his email, “Blogging can improve the world!”

Indeed.

It can also destroy.

These are the opportunities before some of us. And there are many sides to align yourself with. What do you choose?

Do you align yourself with the offense, berating women like Nadya Suleman, defining what is right and good for a woman of controversy and poor decision, but nonetheless a women in the name of feminism and “liberalism”? Or the side that tries to outreach and make one corner of the universe slightly better than it was yesterday?

It’s not that simple, I know, and the situation calls for reflection.

But is calling her a “shithead” how we move forward?

* * *

Thursday, February 12
A friend is driving me through Cedar Lee, an area of independent theaters and coffee shops. A wide sidewalk is cleared for winter, but in the summer, Christina says, the restaurants have great outdoor seating.

Out of nowhere, a thought slips through my window

I haven’t talked to my Nicaraguan family in years.

And here is where they have five dollar theater tickets with all you can eat popcorn.

I haven’t even thought about them in months. What happened to when I used to think of them everyday?

You’ll love it here, Lisa.

Raquel would be…my G*d, twenty-one years old now. They wouldn’t want to hear from me. What would I say anyway? My Spanish has depleted so much. Let it go.


* * *

Both on and offline, it’s not our race, class, ethnicity, sexual orientation or any other spoke on the wheel of “intersectionality” that divides us. It’s our objectives. It’s how we measure liberation and what we are willing to do with our privileged lives in the name of transformation. The differences in our objectives are as transparent as our URLs. Some are here for fun and professional advancement. Those of us who are here for more than business are here to question the systems that contort liberation.

Is there any wonder that there is a divide?

For me, there is only one question: what are you willing to do for liberation?

If it begins and ends with blogging, then don’t bother reading the rest of this piece.

If you say you want a world without rape, what are you doing to transform binary definitions of sexuality, relationships, and love?
If you say you want a country of peace, what cost is paid by other countries?
If you say you don’t know the answers, what are you doing to rectify that?

These are the questions before us. What are you doing?

* * *

The face of G*d for me is the liberation of those in pain, myself included. My definition of feminism is not a worded explanation, limited by my westernized and elitist tongue. It is a drive, dare I write spiritual drive, to do what I can, when I can, and make one thing, or as many things, better for another human being born in my lifetime, on our planet, this place we all call home. With all the mystery and fear in my body, soaked in ethnocentric alcohol, I sober my life by sitting on the edge of my bathroom sink and pulling the bathroom mirror into my face.

I look up.

* * *
February 16, 2009

I open an email letting me know about a post raising questions about feminism and digital colonialism.

* * *

For the most part, generation X has been the largest population which the digital age has watered. We’re the first generation of this “new media” and its shifted the way we think, communicate, and organize. It’s even changed our dreams.

As little girls, I would bet those who journaled and dreamed about writing imagined hard cover books or putting pen to physical paper; their name in print.

Blogging has ushered in a new alternative to traditional publishing and while it has created this avenue for information exchange and sharing, it has also created a monster. We, privileged activists and writers with the most immediate form of communi/gratifi/cation at our disposal, gladly reap the surface benefits of new media and, I fear, are satiated by that. We’ve yet to fully incorporate a feminist energy and discourse to digital media. Bloggers, writers, web-users have yet to fully embrace the power and responsibility to transform knowledge, journalism, and expression and bring it to a feminist standard of acceptability and practice.

We’re working on that. We’re still debating and defending privilege.

There has been no sustainable on-going and consistent effort to confront the communication patterns of womyn/gender-centered/feminist blogs or dialogue ethos. Who has time to create that analysis, to write about it? To try and put a lasso on a thousand bucks gone wild?

We’re either too busy feeding our children, finding sustainable employment, caring for our ourselves and loved ones, and making ends meet to commit to dismantling the ways blogging and new media perpetuate the existing kyriarchal systems. It is, after all, a flick of a hand to turn off our screens or we can simply walk away.

Or we’re too busy maximizing our latest idea to utilize blogging as a means to further our professional careers.

There’s a pull in two legitimate different directions that leaves the middle empty. What’s left? The space of blogging. THIS space that we say is the resting pulse of the “women’s movement.” All of it goes unchecked, with no accountability, no rules. We can call each other out, but in the end, if you think it, you can write it. We obviously don’t want a hierarchy or limitations on our speech, right? It’s as if we have lost the capacity to freely explore options and conversation, we don’t know how to dictate basic premises of decency on how to relate to one another over lines of difference.

And so the cyclic, vicious feminist problems continue. The conferences are divided, the blog wars are revisited, the colonialism/racism/classism/capitalism/ everything-ism continues in its original score. Actually, I think this screenplay was written decades ago by our ancestors. We’re all just assuming their roles.

(Who wants to play Sojournor Truth?)

* * *

February 16, 2009
I receive an email telling me of Don Manual’s death just hours after he had passed. I read the words and am confused.

My emails are usually about the latest happenings in the activist world, listserves I love, writers I follow, blogs I cherish, and updates from friends. This message was nestled in the midst of RSVPs to my 30th birthday party. Requests from writers to blog about a spreading story. The message startled me, but not more than my own reaction.

My heart continues to audibly break with each letter I type to admit this: momentarily, I didn’t even recognize Don Manual’s name.

That is how removed I have been.

For a moment, I did not recognize the name of someone with whom I lived, had spoken, formed some of my brightest moments of life, embraced, and breathed.

* * *

That night I muster every strength I could to get over my own guilt and self-consciousness.

I call my family in Nicaragua.

With no fallback of translators, my mind rewinds itself to its rusted Spanish files, long put away.

I speak first with my sister, Lynette, who now has three children. When I lived with her, she only had one son. She is mopping and I can hear her smile into the phone.

Her father just died and she smiles at me.

“Necessitas, Lisa, regressar a Nicaragua pronto.”

You need to return to Nicaragua, soon.

Yo se.

I know.

I sputter out my condolences, whatever is left in my vocabulary and try to twist it, try to offer whatever G*d-awful limiting words that remain and tell her how much I miss her and will always miss her father. How grateful I am for all that they gave me.

All I can make out from her response is “triste.”

Sad.

She asks if I want to talk to her mother.

Dona Marta.

I remember why I was so afraid to speak to my host mother. She was soft spoken and that made translation even more difficult. I am shaking inside.

Unearthing itself after nine years, my intense desire to articulate the depth of my emotions runs again into the language barrier and I feel ashamed at my lack of Spanish practice.

It’s not just about language. Language, as once famously stated, is the house of being. It is a bridge of culture, a valor of heartfelt effort and humility. It’s not just about communication; it’s about respect and offering.

Her voice is barely audible and I want to weep in her arms. Or have her weep in mine.
Neither would happen.

I tell her that she and her entire family is always in my heart.

We have deep pauses of silence. I let them rest between us knowing the loss of her lifelong spouse cannot be explained in language.

We communicate what we can. We communicate love.

* * *

There comes a time to revisit our promises and commitments. We are forever in need of smoothing them over, enhancing the details for better fits.

I remember promising to write my Nicaraguan family. I said those words. In English. They understood.

I promise.

But I broke that promise, repeatedly.

I broke that promise to write when I decided to put it off and write about what I knew - feminism - instead of a what I needed to write, letter to my family. For every post on this blog, now past seven hundred, I allowed myself to slip away into what I knew was so dangerously easy about life in the United States: living individualistically.

Oh, I’ve learned how to be a married activist, a warrior poet salivating after Audre Lorde. I’ve written letters to lovers, biological family, posts, articles, and even begun book projects. I’ve collaborated with strangers who became confidants and healed broken relationship.

“Individualism” is no longer about singularity, it’s about living in a disconnected state, where we are accountable only to those who are like us, agree with, nod with us. Nuanced individualism is serving not just ourselves but only those we choose to be in our communities, those whom we deem supportive and relative, staunchly defining who we want and gives us what we need.

Gifts of baking pans, trinkets, and money mean nothing without connection and in some realms of life, attempted communication trumps clarity. I wanted to communicate safely, with a translator so they knew precisely what I meant and they understood me. I forgot that tapping one’s heart in gesture can convey more about concern and relief than words.

I waited for perfect communication. That day never comes.

In my subconscious fear of not wanting to be uncomfortable or reminded that I lazily let my Spanish subside, I never wrote a letter. Not one. I didn’t want to be reminded of my helplessness, the nightmarish panic I had of not being able to connect transnational experiences with my own damn life. I didn’t want to look at the clock and see that I had allowed so much time to pass.

And in the customary selfish rape of wandering foreign lands merely for one’s own enlightenment, I took my “enlightenment” and applied it to my own life.

I never wrote one letter.

I’ll set up a feeble social network online and write flip responses on the digital walls of high school acquaintances who have taught me nothing, but I won’t confront my own fear of inadequacy and contact a community, a family who gave me shelter and food.

Gringa.

And for those who do not understand the significance letters hold, paper that’s traveled the winds of ocean, just know that it delivers more than anything that can be conveyed in language. It conveys that they, the recipients of the letter, are remembered in a walled country that makes you forget.

* * *

Feminism is not about self-flagellation or “saving” the world, or even piping ourselves up by saying we have the capacity to do so. But I do believe it is about living an authentic existence that challenges our comforts, our talents, and agenda. I believe that we, those with unspeakable luxuries that we cannot put in context because few other nations can even compare to our excessiveness, must be held accountable to our neighbors. Not out of obligation, but out of love.

We are accountable. In our lives. In our letters. In our writings. In our blogs.

As I repeatedly learn in painfully elementary ways, “Not everything is about you.”
Your guilt. Your discomfort. Your understanding. Your. Your. Your.
“I don’t feel like engaging.”
“I don’t want to be attacked or misunderstood.”
“I don’t want to risk.”
“I don’t want to put myself out there.”
“I’ve earned this.”
“I already explained myself.”
“I need to defend myself.”
“I don’t know what you expect me to do.”

I. I. I.

If you can, unstick yourself.

Move beyond your self-consciousness.

We are accountable. To someone.

Without accountability, without liberating practices for all, there is no “Movement.”

Only noise.

Find someone to whom you are accountable.