Having Read The Fine Print......

I don't think we ever explained it to them.

2009-11-21T11:34:00.003-05:00

This post works better if you have the SPEAK! CD( and if you don't why don't you?).

I have shitty days

and I'm a drama empress and I'm a leo sun/virgomoon/scorpio mars/libra rising.

Which means I'm dramatic, critical, dark and evil to the center of my shiny seeming soul/and people always believe I am okay and I can often fool myself into thinking that.

Except when I can.

And besides hugs and pudding , very few things can pull me out of it. But there is one that without fail works all the time.

It's the last track on the CD .

It is my Little Light.

and i listened today and it felt really good.

When your tied to the train tracks you don't ask for permission to save your own ass.

2009-11-16T18:08:00.003-05:00

So people have liked my idea of not " boycotting" Feministing and counterpart sites/systems idealogy per say but I feel like I should clarify/ empty my own head.

Boycotts are a commercial response.

Plainly in my own mind when I boycott something I am trying to cut off it's financial viability. Which is why so often to these ( as previously has happened ) the response has been.

WE DON'T MAKE ANY MONEY/ WE AREN'T RICH!!

which is patently false because if you put it in your byline as work and a paying your bills off that byline you are making money.

They are tooting their ability to MAKE money on an inclusiveness and equality generated by having " hits" and " mentioning" everything.

in this post at Lisa Harney's Ali someone kinder than me assumes ' they don't know better"

except that's not true .

They do know better if they are as ear to the ground as on the field , they know better. In fact they have admitted to knowing they need to do better

and absconded of it by pointing out that to maintain their model to maintain their cachet they

WON'T

or that when they do do better people don't respond

as if they're aren't a multitude of ways that are organized by many other stats that find ways to emphasize

IMPORTANT ISSUES in many ways ( i have many ideas and I won't go into them cause frankly don't want em stolen)

Boycotting implies that we are protesting our right to purchase or interact in an exchange way with PRODUCT.

We are not product. We are NOT consumable , and even if they did act right or less like idiots

the desire isn't to participate in the increase of their commerce. It's not to get their eye

as relevant issues

It is to NOT need it.

I don't want to have to meet someone else's metric as a human and as cool and worthy to get

BASIC HUMAN DIGNITY.

the issue isn't that their product is wrong or that their business practices is wrong. It's because presented with a chance to interact in their space in a way that is essentially good and even reasonably fair.

We are and always will be de-prioritized for keeping their hit count up and getting their press kits larger .

Which will always work because the "brand of feminism" they comport them selves with ( and substitute brand of feminism with social justice etc etc etc)

is beneficial to middle class white or forgiving of white centered discourse " liberal " college educated self indulgent/ed cosmopolitans.

Let's be clear

It DOES NOT take a lot of effort or any real change to do what they do . There is a reason this long line of feminism ( that starts with stanton and steinem and continues here) is lauded while Wells Davis etc are not

They will ALWAYS before we will receive the support of hegemony and ablism and cis genderism etc etc etc

Intersectionality will always rule towards those of us that aren't actually at INTERSECTIONS.

UNLESS

they say outloud they will NOT allow that to happen.

and they will.

PResented with the possibility of experiencing even momentary discomfort at making your lives better and our lives better

THEY not only won't do it they will increase our discomfort for

EVEN ASKING.

That's ot boycottable really .

Because after a few times having it presented to you at the level and consistency it has been to them.

It's not a doesn't know moment

it's a doesn't care

they know better they won't do better

and I don't have a moral judgement of it ( well not one 'm willing to say in this blog.)

but the important thing the NECESSARY thing isn't making them pay attention to us but making whatever attention they pay wherever matter less.

and no it's not mean or cruel

It's our damn lies on the traintracks of race and gender. It's your spoons, your right to not be presented as a rapist for wanting love.

and no we don't got that kind of time to teach.

Fruit and Cake

2009-11-13T09:23:00.000-05:00

I was linked by Quixotess in a post requesting the boycott of Feministing due to the massive failure that is the disability discussion.

And I want to have something deep and insightful to say about it but I’m not sure I have much.

I am not in touch with my hopeful right now ,in terms of the “ feminist movement” but I kind of don’t want you to boycott Feministing.

Please believe I’d like you to stop reading them because frankly a decently constructed google feed provides essentially the same service.

But I want you mostly to support your/ourselves

I keep reading about the Stupak amendment and the hay made over it.

And the constant conclusion that most of the LOUD voices ( all white , or on predominantly white sites) is that some middle class white woman is very angry that this happened cause it threatens “ women”.

Even though most of her response will be directed not at identifying , shielding and supporting the “ women” it hurts but pointing and laughing at the men who are causing the pain.

Because honestly at the end of the day this women usually coastal, “liberal” keeps forgetting to mention

She is NOT one of the women this actually targets.The women it actually targets are the ones she spends most of her time telling a) shut up we have a career to make or b) stealing from and then.

These are the women who were the actual fights, are the actual fight . Do they deserve health care , love security safety.

And just like her “ adversaries” she believes they don’t and worse so she will feed herself on the illusion she believes they do.

While these women will often bemoan and gnash teeth ( in large publications with jobs and full bellies) the sadness of people’s rejection of feminism.

They will in the same arguments ignore all of the twists and valleys of the landscape.

History is rewritten no harm no foul.

Because those you harmed and those you fouled are expendable anyway.

And your “ enemies” agree with you. It isn’t a mystery or an unlinked phenomena that the groups pushed to the fringes in feminism and liberalism are the groups that others who are against these ideals come from.

It is a signal sent along the boundaries of whiteness , ability, gender age and citizenship, that when push comes to shove we don’t and will not protect these people.

This week is the National Women’s Studies Conference and like most people who paid attention in 2008 there is an obvious desire to capitalizd on creating a stronger feminism through “ embracing diversity” by having a theme called difficult dialogues.

Which I find funny because in their downloaded packet are full page ads honoring Seal Press that stil has the offensive pictures in Marcotte’s awful book.

I want to avoid being petty and pointing out that these voices of young feminism and open dialogue are now all walking into their thirties and being confronted by a chorus of voices younger, older , hiper and from such a wide variety of backgrounds.

I want to point out that Stupak was a pointed commentary on how well Washington believes that women political leaders can mobilize their base.

Or I want to point out that yet and still there ahs been no concerted effort to actually confront the deep schism exposed in the 2008 election besides a series of appeals to the most middle class, comforting ( for them) pieces of WOC they can find.

But mostly I want to point out that these machinations, these lines being reached are exactly the kind of top down “ stay in your place” moves that are the direct problems with much of our discourse and evidently more of our public policy.

The truth is that the Democatic party, much of the left, etc etc. have worked consistently to NON accountability.

We’re too big!

We have One of you, we can’t be ----ist!

We tell people we are good therefore we are good.

Not a single one of these excuses addresses the fundamental concern of getting BETTER for ANYONE BUT THEM. There are voices mind you we steal and shout down ( or wring our hands while others do it) but progress .

The want to have their cake , eat it, and get even more on the fact we go breadless.From perverting intersectionality to justify silencing concerns with procedure by substituting for voices that don’t make them comfortable

To sitting idly by and allowing what was essentially the criminalization of trans bodies ( ahh Robin Morgan your legacy she has survived no matter how much I pray it goes dead) and having the fucking gall to listen to it described as rape.

( and can I take a moment to ask you NOT to vote or support Courtney Martin in ANY WAY as a voice for women but the ones like her and acceptable to her. IF you like her writing fine , but she has been shown to participate in racist , transphobic, abelist dialogue with a solipsistic narcissism that goes above and beyond the scope of simple privilege. She communicates with people as if they are beneath her . We get this from plenty of people already that at least don’t have the gall to use feminism as a hook. If she loses because of misogyny that is unfortunate and unacceptable but to have her win on “change” when her self important liberal flouncing and condescension are par for the course with American editorial ESPECIALLY in light of this . An inability to honor agreements made in PUBLIC to her readers and a weak disloyalty to standing by any work that doesn’t get the reception she wants would be ghastly. I actually have little hope for that being put forth but hey)

The point is not that there needs to be a boycott of Feministing, though please don’t read or support that if you feel that you are allied in any way with the folks who have requested it,but that there needs to be a fierce , concerted love of ourselves. This positioning and tooling about has a root.

The belief that we , do not deserve to be listened to , to have health care , to be difficult, to be angry and damn sure not be seen

If it messes with “ their” agenda. And as long as we are them and not part oftheir highly vaunted us we never will be .

So please don’t boycott feministing. Support something ELSE. Don’t ask to be bigger find something effective and small, and share it, hold ourselves to that accountability .

We will always be better served by the fruits of our labor than their cake.

Deeply Deep: Good Hair Alison Samuels Class and the World

2009-11-05T08:46:00.008-05:00

So I saw Good Hair."

Now there is something about Sydette that when I said I was going to see Good Hair that let every person who had ever seen it go

" Ooh I want to know what you think?
the entity/ies on my head.

Yep , I got hair

Or as the wonderful stylist from Philly who did it for graduation noted

"THIS! THIS IS HAIR"

I don't actually think it's that great of a movie. I think it reinforces some nasty stereotypes,was kind of short, but I was moved good and bad by more than a few moments in the film . I liked it because it brought to bear my issues with Blackness. I tend to have three main issues with blackness and black media.

Class. Globalization/inter nationality .

and Race.

Yep I manage to have Race issues with my blackness and a lot of it is in my damn hair. And speaking of hair beauty too! But first the movie.

It was a Chris Rock movie, There were cheap shots and passing comments at women of the hood and their vanities. his trip to india involved a crack about scary black women that kind of made me want to punt him. HARD. While it led to a striking moment the trying to sell black hair seemed mean and forced. The hair show bits often seemed designed for laugh at not laugh with and he found all of one natural sister to speak.

Rock talked a lot about the blackness of the black hair care industry.His "gag" at confusing Chinese people and Koreans was bit cheap but the moments of the Black Hair Care workers
describing the production hierarchies and the scene of the Asian AND Black hair store worker/owner describing the dislike of African hair were visceral in their common placeness.
His time at the Dudley Center , and his interviews ( really short) with the women in them . Talk about something that is a very real part of this exchange. While many prefer to talk about the sheer money that black folk spend as evidence of avarice .

But Rock talked to the Dudley's, and the hair care owners and while I damn sure didn't like the talk ( MY three year old in a perm chair over my nappy headed corpse) but he talked to them. He didn't smash em into a collective and demand they transcended. I was really enamored of watching Chris Rock listen he didn't pretend to be unbiased but he did listen. He made sure to note that black people , maybe not where they used to be or at the heads of these things survive and thrive on it.

This post is inspired by four highschool girls , beautiful young women were asked about how they feel about natural hair , which one of them had. And it was an interesting scene, because we had to listen as this beautiful girl was told by her beautiful peers about how unserious , unprofessional she would seem. and then...

the camera cut away and she never got to answer.

SHE NEVER GOT TO ANSWER!!! She was in the room she was the funnel and vehicle by which they were discussing their own prejudices and fears , there framing of their sophistication and prejudice and she is admirably calm and quiet and serene and she never GOT TO ANSWER?!?!?

That for me was an almost perfect encapsulation of how I feel about so much of my experience as a black woman in my own skin.

and hair.

Very recently Allison Samuels published an article in Newsweek ( and a rebuttal) about the hair of Zahara Pit Jolie.

that was very widely discussed and refuted that led to a really interesting commentary.

And I felt left out of all of it.

Because while it is all well and good for people to say Allison Samuels is wrong headed ( cause she is) but I do have a deep problem with the pretense tahts he is not coming from a very reasonable place.

The fact I disagree with her doesn't make her wrong to be apprehensive about the welfare of ZPJ, meddling perhaps but not wrong.

Heck the website that Latoya Peterson has her rebuttal on has deep coverage on it.

We can sit and talk about how she is breeding a conformity , and how it's stifling to little girls and what not but on the very basic level when Black people lose jobs first in economic downturns despite education, when the rape ,torture,disappearance and death of black women as secondary subjects is a very real and continuous phenomenon, and Don Imus makes shots about nappy headed hoes.

I detest what she says but I will damned if I am going to act like it's unbased and the source of the trouble. We can say that it is problematic but while Samuels does not say it a loud couching it in an African American "dialogue" it's real, and how does that response look if we admit and I mean without the moral superiority that she's not incorrect to be worried.

I wear my hair natural,three pictures are included, me right out of bed, me washed and "curly" styled and my " OH CRAP NOTHING WORKS" style. In that order.I wanted to make sure you saw it because let me be really clear on this ,

I wear my hair natural because I have enough cultural currency, privilege and resources to do so. I love it I love the feel of my hair I love the look of it , I love the stuff i get to use in it ( I do not NOT like the rate at which the stuff I use in it and the subsequent issues with pricing, No seriously I smell like,Vanilla ,Olive Oil, Sugar cookies most of the day.), I love having my hair played with( if I know you! and approve), and leaned on , love it love it love it.

And I am going to say right now , it is a difficult thing to do and I my self esteem gets knocked around on a regular basis. People regularly compliment me on my strength ( aka YOU ARE WILLING TO GO OUT IN PUBLIC LIKE THAT?!?!) while talking about loving good hair on a woman. I understand where the fear comes from and to categorize it as arbitrary policing is hard to read. Not because it is mean but because it minimizes the very real ish it comes with. Of course some of the meanest people to black people are OTHER black people.

They are often the only ones NEAR us and for better and worse our destinies our fiercely locked. This isn't jsut oh my god how backward and holding us back . This is real connective tissue that hurts on all sides. They are not ESPECIALLY mean , they are in special circumstances, and I am sick of the well I got teased memes being played to justifying the policing charge. We are ALL going through and need to be real with that, just because I dislike what you say doesn't make teh system and prejudices I talk about disappear for you.

Writers, bloggers, stylists, and other members of culturally elite spaces seem very quick to forget that those positions and occupations aren't " average person" jobs . They are not AS bound ( for me to say they aren't at all would be folly) to the norms that other professions and to answer Samuels without acknowledging the deep reality that it still matters isn't transcendental or pushing forward new blackness , its insulting to people who really and truly have to make real considerations on this.

And speaking as a multilingual multi racial ( this is getting long so I will leave my harangue about race and blackness for later) I also boggle at the postulate that being a " Third Culture Kid" means that Samuels is applying an incorrect framework. Samuels IS African American and she is narrowing her focus but TCK's more so than anybody else have a very deep and long connection to conditions of white supremacy and hegemony . Point blank it's why they are where they are. If you are a military brat, very rich, or the child of someone very educated, or a missionaries child. You are there BECAUSE there is a very deep acceptance to you and your parents being able treat the world as an experience . Colonialism,militarianism or just plain wealth advocate for your ability to mix and match cultures in ways that are not available to people who are FROM the culture itself or even from the two cultures you are intermingling. The ability to look right or acceptable with in it is a HUGE HUGE part of MY Afro/Indo/asian BLACKNESS and yes it is not the African American experience, but it IS very much influenced by white hegemony and heteronormativity and a whole bunch of other thins that while do not apply to Samuels do not make her observations NECESSARILY flawed. While the AA isn't the only one there really isn't a fault in framing the RECEPTION of ZPJ hair with it, it's just not the only one.

( full disclosure I have interacted on this topic about such a thing with Racialicious before)

Also Peterson is not a TCK ( as I have read it and I apologize if I am wrong) so using a definition that does not apply to her herself to critique another women's reading is aggravating. As a Caribbean/South American/American 1G the progressive need for Americans to analyze race by using their privilege and ability to travel to my home country and countries like mine ( Brazil , DR,PR, Cuba) to speak on race is grating, especially it is there not BEING from the country that allows them the access they have.

My "hair story" centers around my mothers fear for my ability to love myself, take care of myself . It relates to her ( and my dad ) having their entire family abandoned in some ways for being to black, for having beaten for being to "red".

When and this is a very VERY rare when my hair is straight my mother gushes over how " coolie" I look. How now you can see the Indian in me , how finally you can see the red she gave me. She fought me to my hairdresser before I started college for that reason, she thought it was a gift I needed .

and now she checks my from everyday she sees me and is using what little internet knowledge she has to find me product ( she stops people on the street my mom is a cutie)

Being "strong" with my hair is fun and I like it and it's grand but in LIVING IT , in having to write about seeing a woman called a terrorist for having it!?!? I am gonna need more than positive thinking and theoreticals when discussing it.

Because when Nia Long gets a look of utter vulnerability about how taking a shower with someone is more intimate than having sex,because they may see her real hair.When ( and yes it is misogynistic and reductivist ) men talk about feeling a real distance from their partners, but also jsut as quickly make sure to say the understand WHY, because they can't run their fingers through their hairs or touch it all.

Samuels is wrong dead wrong, but this is NOT the open and shut, lets make a better world or flick this off wrong that it's being presented as something that is not, has is not and will not continue to be

REALLY DAMN HARD and really damn real.

And reading people get offended as if she is a bad person ,as if she ahs no basis for this , even though I AGREED WITH THEM was rough.

Samuels and Rock both take on hair , and it is a deeply deep ( yep I said it) , fraught, twisted , tense intimate interaction for black people, which they are. And the work they produced shows it.

While ultimately Samuels tries to couch her own struggle and issues in a concerned voice while not doing as well to hide her preconception and bias towards natural hair, dismissing her out of hand with pats on the back ,ain't actually gonna lead to the the future where hair doesn't matter. Nor should it . Having been through the fire, the pressing comb and the burn , my hair matters to me.

It is as Dr Angelou says in Good Hair my glory,a growing, changing, money INHALING testament to my history,senses,preferences, thoughts that I share with the world.

I don't want that to not matter, i just don't want people to SUFFER for making a different choice and I really would like to be expected to suffer for mine.

At the end what both me and my friend Jaz liked most about this was at the end of the day whether or not I loved it a lot . Good Hair was movie made for me, Not about me for the consumption of others, not mostly for profit, not for explaining me to someone else. He searched and talked and interacted with people I felt as part of my community as if he expected them to be able to see and hear his product, and that he thought WELL of me for doing so. He used what HE had and was eal about where he was coming from.

and the deeply deep reality is even with that even liking that the natural girl, didn't get to speak.

So I am now.

Dangerous Idea 3- it's the little things

2009-10-30T21:53:00.002-04:00

Some dangerous ideas aren't long deep explanations there things that clonk you on the head and make you go OH!

no good movement has a bad soundtrack.

good art makes you empathize through sympathy

There is a difference between building and amassing. One creates the other hoardes.

Why is it that after days/weeks/months/years of contacting cajoling and sometimes actively organizing, that when WOC finally go F*&K YOU ! I quit this! we are accused of "complaining and not DOING anything?

Also if the only people who are consistently rotating OUT of your organization are the groups who you seem to be committed to helping. You probably aren't helping.

I am not the movement. You are not the movement. Your blog is not the movement. Your play is not the movement. A movement involves lots and LOTS of people moving together creating change. If you think you are you're probably failing.

It is getting harder and harder to have conversations about people about their lives and loves that doesn't turn into a list of consumptive activities, and cool. There are now scads of verbose and adroit ways of saying absolutely NOTHING.

Love moves so much it truly is at the core of every truly great lasting thing .

Fear is the result of what we love threatened.

People think of love far too softly to be practical .

Love can cause pain but it shouldn't hurt.

Meryl Streep said that the most important thing she was ever lead to believe was that she was capable. Not special, not entitled not privileged but capable. Capable

Class is a HUGE component of racism that goes unmentioned.

The problem is not that people have prices is that no one names it while waving it in your face.

I sat in the bank today and listened to two sets of people complain about overdraft fees. One was white and in a business suit, one was hood. The suits entire argument was he hsouldn't be faulted because the online web portal was down and he couldn't know that he shouldn't have spent that money. The guy that was hood admitted he was wrong ( a little loudly and cussingly) wondered why they let him constantly overdraft but wanted a payment plan. The suit said he wouldn't pay. One of them got nearly 600 dollars in fees remitted.

Having black people does not mean you are diverse.

Black( and often Latino) people having organizational methods and good communication models is not the same as structural power and far too often the critique of those methods is colored by a belief that " those people" should know when to stop speaking for their betters"

A movement is not a place for you to get over being unpopular in high school or college.

The fact I dislike you should never mean I wish to curb your rights. That is always oppression.

marginalized people should bear better grudges.

the only acceptable reason to avoid eye contact is sexual tension

me me me should only be heard in theaters during warm ups. there is something about its use versus the "I" that signals bad.

laugh once a day if something isn't funny you ain't paying attention

Dangerous Idea 2- The Problem Isn't That You're Not Perfect It's That You Feel You Have To Be

2009-10-26T13:14:00.003-04:00

Also known as a love letter of sorts to Barbara Ehrenreich.She has a new book out which in and of it self makes me really really happy.

My last post has more than a few links which made me think really hard aout why I was restarting ro even undertaking a series on Dangerous Ideas.

One is that I am unafraid to admit I am a know it all of amazing cosmic proportions and given the chance to think out loud on something I feel passionate about with an audience is always a plus. The other is that I am greatly disturbed but hey if you read this blog you know that hasn't changed in three/four years.

But part of my rambling online is a bout having a vision or a goal for what I wanted the world to be. I am not special in that, any activist/artist/writer who doesn't have this handy streak of megalomania is a liar , a fraud, or a charaltan usually all three. You don't have to like it , you can fight it with every fiber of your being but they have it.

And I never wrote it down, I seriously never have I think in all the time I have been blogging wrote down the tenets of my values and the two pieces I linked lastpost made me go

Well That DEFINITELY ISN'T IT !

But what pray tell is it , why haven't I written it down, why don't you have a plan BIG MOUTH?!?

and the only excuse I could come up with is that it wasn't perfect and bullet pointed so I had o wait.

but if i waited for perfect I'd never write anything, and sure enough in the comment's of Trouble's dreamwidth journal spot willow made a really good point of what BIG SWEEPING CHANGES means to others and my mind went of and around on goals.

What does it mean to be perfect and whose perfect is the perfect and and and how is this discussion treated?

A friend linked this article in NewGeography and I believed that more than informed my thinking. Including the comments .

The White City.

There is a shitload of things to unpack but the idea of the " unintended consequences of the pursuit of perfection"

We define perfection according to our values, our values define our allegiance. And in bad a= b , b=c, therefore b=c.

Our view of perfection defines our allegiances, and our allegiances define our perfection.

The thing that perfection does is not only define our end goal but also our start point. The way one defines perfect or best will tell you how one protects and operates through life. When we say that " nobody's perfect" we tell each other what we believe we WOULD be aiming for if we were trying to be perfect.

But not everyone is trying to be perfect and we often put perfect into a category of

" Shit we will never attain no way no how"

AkA : If i define it as part of the "perfect" it's another way of saying pleasantly don't get your hopes up"

it also describes the process of mental triage . If we are forced to we do what we can control for what is

MOST IMPORTANT. It is our definition of the BIG PICTURE.

and it more insidiously tells us what to ignore.

Looking through my links Reconcile had the most succinct and dagger sharp way of putting it but it took my breath away:

"
Progressive blogs attract readers who feel safe at that blog. Trolls and hate-mailers aside, you have the commenters you have because you regularly challenge privilege they wish to see challenged, and you do not challenge privilege they do not wish to see challenged. Their bigotry is a reflection of your own.
"

It applies not just to blogs but replace that with cities , movements, spaces,media.

For things we want we set up systems of dealing with and handling their pursuit. I will never be PERFECTLY clean but I wash everyday. The fact that I am not perfectly sterile doesn't stop the need for SUSTAINING the basic conditions of life.

So why is it excusable to not try and attain comfortable lives for ALL citizens, why isn't diversity part of why we think of admirable cities, why aren't we going well won't be perfect but we can be better every day?

and BA if you could tell us why you like Barbara Ehrenreich before we all die of boredom.

So this article on women's happiness made me really happy. One because unlike a corresponding time article she notes realy quickly that the women are white. Something Time failed miserably at.

But it also pointed out that the idea of perfect/best/strongest is

USED TO SELL US SOMETHING.

Perfection is a fail safe for telling us what we need to do and also for realeasing whoever is telling us this from any responsibility.

Perfection ( and it's pursuit) should result in taking stock of where we are and moving forward. Instead it often results in measuring yourself against some arbitrary ( usually defined by privilege or proximity to the golden desires of the seller ) metric and receiving benefits ( or not) accordingly.

If you receive ( or are preloaded) with those benefits , you have successfully completed it and whether you recieved it through actually adhering to those steps ehh well.

Those benefits justify your superiority and also eliminate

any need for you

TO WORK!

Cities don't have to check to see if something is viable , or if it matches it's own constituents. It has a rubrick of perfect.

People don't have to examine themselves, they just have to be happy , or " fulfilled"

Doing what you " love" is the goal ( yet why does no one talk about church ladies, or underpaid teachers why are they always business ventures )

Doing what produces happiness in Holland is alright, because if they are happy it's alright.

It's perfect.

In humans it has a two fold effect

It's protestant predestination all over again. Where in if you are happy and fulfilled ( even if that means you simply drew the culture appropriate lot in birth) you deserve it.

You are validated in having no other goal than ensuring your permanent gratification

or the feeling of it.

And if you haven't you literally CAN'T critique it, because you're dislike of it and your failure to attain it is your OWN FAULT. We don't worry about you.

Perfection assures it's state

and destroying anything but the most vigilant adherents to it's implausibility.

It prevents us from being in the now , from being connected because we can't stand still in it

If we measure ourselves against " perfection" we often shut down our ability to survey because anything that isn't oriented that way is vile.

It's PATENTLY unsustainable

and it justifies treating anything that might damage even it's pursuit as cancerous.

Including other people, ideals or hey REALITY.

Marketing one's self for or as a path towards perfection is designed to leave people in the dust. It creates a solitary identity that both for these cities and HRC campaign and feminism and black politics .

Because if we can not make it we will try to cut as much as we can to seem as if we're
thisclose.

And who better to cut than people we treat as not there.

And if we ARE the people who aren't there it's gotta be our fault.

----------------------------------------------------------------
This is just an awesome piece and I think necessary reading for every " professional" identity. Would you do it if the only reward was teh advancement of the good?

Dangerous Ideas Part 1_ See us as people not tools.

2009-10-19T19:32:00.006-04:00

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all. Oscar Wilde.

What is change?
What is growth?

As Part of the Dangerous IDeas series I am asking myself that.
Why because part of change ,REAL change is admitting that we need to change ourselves. And none of these movements ( and I promise you I am on a god awful amount of list seves )

but one of the basic hallmarks that seems to be addressed LESS and LESS about movements for so called social change is that .

While bogged in theory and very vocal about fighting "systems" the first thing to go under the bus are humans usually for a form of social capital that sadly is marked and measured by financial capital within the same systems they claim to fighting.

aka When push comes to shove they measure their success not by the people they claim to be concerned with but the response of kyriarchial structures or the ability to exploit those structures.

further aka . The people aren't more important than the structure.

That's what I used to think , until time and time again having read interactions and been part of interactions and finally reading Afro-dyte piece is that very simply

it's not that they think that people aren't more important than structures it's that to often they don't think whatever there talking about is people at all.

And unfortunately I have seen two HORRENDOUS examples of this recently online but would also like to point some trends of it generally and then

Next post is flufffy bunny happy things.

I was reading through my links page and read Daisy's piece which made me giggle uncontrollably. The semantics of white feminists acting ridiculously stupid put aside. Lets focus on Celie's experience there.

Outside of politics, outside of anything but basic HUMAN INTERACTION.

She was spoken around, ignored, became part of a collective that gave preferential treatment to anybody that wasn't her.

That's not the way you treat a human being of whom you have any regard. If you have ANY value of their exisitance , there is basic consideration that is accorded another human. She was questioned not for her skills but in many ways for her obedience.

The mind blowingly racist shit aside, the problem is that when confronted with the mistreatment of

SOMEONE IN THEIR COLLECTIVE.

The primary response was not to address the injury to the HUMAN BEING in their collective but the nebulous concept of their racism. Which of course for a " radical feminist publication" involved a run to the male dominated system of cops.

At this point you HAVE to laugh you HAVE to , or you will cry in utter despair.

The next one bothers me something powerful

BEcause a very specific part of me is just pissed . Because as I was discussing with another friend. When this happened to me and others ( who included Women of Color w/disabilities) the response was that well they'll learn. Which is often code for well you are not close enough to ur idea of acceptable human so really they'll watch it this time
It involves writers who forget whatever the hell else you've heard. Know better . ESPECIALLY writers that claim to be for women.
The community this was comitted against DEFINITELY not JUST in monetary terms can not be giving this kind of consideration away.

So really

WHAT THE F&^$%&??!?

That's just deplorable , especially for a free lancer and MORE so from a teacher . In essence after asking a community of people who risked health and ability and multiple "spoons" ( that is a beautiful and succinct analogy) to talk to your ass about something you navel gazing chronicle as part of dealing with your " privilege".

The semantics are not mine to truly unpack but I would like to point to the things that truly irked me.

Scheduling takes time, organizing a curriculum ( which essentially this was it was a "teaching moment that required an obscene amount of prep work .

And what was requested in terms of a bookslist was essentially a curriculum.

You get paid for that and Miriam and Courtney KNOW THAT. At least one of them makes a living off of that.

That the very least a PUBLIC apology isn't issued isn't just semantic , it's a slap in the face to the GRACE that is extended.

More so the textbook well sure but what we do is. Is disgusting and more so because really when you have wronged another human being. someone you care about

This is not a time to retell why your brand is okay , especially using a person whose not even on the discussion. Coopting the work of another to dismiss someone else's concerns in an effort to make them focus on your pain?

That's not the way you treat humans that's the way you treat tools. It's not a discussion it's a chess match of seeing these people as things to be moved around for your own use. And if it happened to you in ANY situation there would be hell to pay.

Except that wasn't the point .

It was damage control. It was hey lets have a conversation about why covering these other TOPIC not peopel not living breathing humans and their life and death concerns .

Which in and of itself isn't bad , it's good media strategy but frankly an entire discussion about hwo you've harmed people becomes a treatiseon YOUR NEEDS and your development and how YOU can't be held responsible for the ish you do.

Regardless of teh whole BINGO fail card.

This is a really bad example of the way you humor someone you don't think is deserving of questioning you.

And yes I know Miriam is a POC but the " Do you think we control" is patronizing beyond belief . and quoting stats at someone doesn't fix anything but merely states why YOU are too important to do simple human kindness.

The issue isn't that anyone thinks that the people who gathered to make this action are wrong or right, it's that there was no consideration at all . It was phrased as a here is why your points are wroong because we are too big to be responsible .

Because THEY felt they could not see it , the conversation was focused on making sure everyone else knows knew why it's just not right to pressure thim.

And putting in the full name of any woman is just fucking disgusting and yes I am cussing. Because it's bush league shit that as a woman online I know can compromise safety . Also the first name last name tone shit , is straight up telling someone to know there place. I only have to watch my tone with people who pay me, raised me, or fuck me . To ask that of anyone else is to basicallya sk for subserviance and is both deplorable and insulting. You don't want to talk to someone as equals without immediately falling onto your white girl bullshit don't show the fuck up.

I will leave the rest of the TEACH ME but we're too big to make any concessions ( and the subsequent half assed ooh look they have a link as if a pat on the head fixes that shit) but it is especially galling because the work that was put in, is literally consulting. Market research , resource collection, agenda setting.

Our ( speaking specifically as a black/immigrant backgroundWOC but also observing the same across phenomena across identities) generates funds, speaking times and liberal acceptance for others. The ability to vbe seen as with or NOT with us on a base level ( never by us but other post)

IS NOT WORTHLESS.

and the work Ceilie AND these women did in ANY OTHER SETTING is worth money. LOTS of it.

Done to them by a man this would be COMPLETELY JUSTIFIED all out war, but somehow it's understandable.

Oddly enough I am going to steal from a feminist quote.

" Feminism is the radical notion that women are people"

When Civil Rights workers marched on of the most prominent signs was this :

Social change and equality movements are not about in my opinion who deserves what and who doesn't, but that no matter what your ability, race color and creed that you were human.

The radical movements followed were about being a SELF DETERMINING people who had the at least the basic presumption of human dignity. Not to have to have continued conversations where in the premise is how many different ways there are to not be granted the respect or common courtesy of being engaged with as humans.

Focusing on media ESPECIALLY progressive media ( supposedly) highlights this gap. OOB did a WOC once every 10-15 years but put with an actual HUMAN of color in their midst, seemed to hit every trope of dehumanization they could.

Being of color being of varied ability does not mitigate humanity.

So rather than ask soome large theofhetical trope or idea . Lets focus on this?

How would you respond if the person you were talking to was someone you believed was human?

Would you ask them to do mountains of work and then tell them they need to watch how they spoke to you?

Would you say you were speaking to other ___ people? Implying that truly what was important was not their humanity but the identity and frankly you could get that from any "one of those"

or would you listen , try to fix the hurt and find a way to stop it.

That's what you do for humans , now do it for everyone

The Burning House

2009-10-09T09:45:00.002-04:00

The Burning House

“ I feel like I am asking my people to assimilate into a burning house”- MLK

Dear Madmaba,

so sorry about the delay but I needed to take time to think about what I am actually trying to say because , while now more than ever I truly to want to connect and communicate with those interested in making change and forging bonds, I am less interested in talking to people whose only goal is to shore up their illusions of progressiveness. I believe the first about you , others are questionable. In a world were desperation for change is rampant, there SHOULD be a deep examination of what we have done,are doing, and how we should move forward. This call for discussions from middle class well off white people, and " interest" from ensconced academics not only rings false, it seems more and more tawdry and woefully inadequate.

Let’s talk is something a high school guidance counselor says to a sulky youth or concerned superior says to underling. You have to say “ let’s talk” because bluntly it is accepted that your interactions don’t occur in the same place. Inside that same thread was a comment from A REAL LIVE WOMAN OF COLOR TALKING ABOUT WHY SHE FELT DIVIDED FORM THE CONFERENCE.

Not just ANY woman of color but a prominent blogger, a member of the HISTORY OF WOMEN’S INTERNET and an award winning writer . A scholarship winner, someone they wanted there so bad they paid for her to be there.

And she blatantly IGNORES IT.

AS WELL as another women of color who speaks about her concerns with feminism.

She IGNORES IT.

So she can tell a story.

If she doesn't want it to be white women's vision of feminist thought. Why doesn't she link to what seems like the WOMAN WHO MADE THE CRITIQUE ( or a similar one) or a woman of color who wrote about HER experience at NN09?

This gaffe isn't uncommon ( i am leaving out the women who equated progress with who you got to drink with at a bar), just terrifyingly bad strategy for a changing world. Especially a progressive media.

In a time when folks make logical decisions between food or healthcare, when magazines are folding left and right from folks unable to waste time. Media AND progressive movements are desperate to appear relative and sustainable . Targeting a demographic of POC and Queer and Disabled and poor and and and and people who they have LONG LONG ignored if not inherently devalued. Except to prove the erudition of the writer(s)The intimation that this a favor or a thing that hasn't been covered is no longer acceptable as a caveat but for progressives an illustration of gross negligance.

I half participated in discussion about whether it was a good strategy to encourage kids to become part of institutions that would not support them. One of the salient points that was brought up was that , it is only by being inside these institutions could we force salient change?

My question is do we really want to save these institutions. Do we really want to save these movement/media/companies/schools/groups?

When the FEMINIST MAJORITY says it's too late to prosecute the rape of a young girl ( and oddly enough the campaign mounted is towards Whoopi Goldberg and not Tilda Swinton , Natalie Portman, or any of the other people who in saying drop his case said the EXACT SAME THING) , what is there to save?

And please understand this not from the moral high ground. I don't want it. I keep reading this over and over and over about what power would convey and truly I don't ever actively want that. Having the moral high ground only means I'm not in the fray.

And at the end of this I have to live with people , sometimes in close quarters, sometimes ina global sense, but I can not and find it hard to imagine continuing to do work from the perspective that I am "better" than someone else , because that hierarchically kyriarchial thought process does not challenge what I think most of us are fighting.

The idea that some one is inherently better than ourselves.

Before I am patted on my unrealistic head, I don't believe this extends to having skills , or talents, or gifts.

But that somehow before any of those are mentioned someone inherently IS better . There existence IS better.

THAT better , that leads, to there words being developed instead of smothered, them getting two paragraphs rather than two words, the better that means that no matter what they will always be the reference point , rather than a parallel. The better that means no one ever questions, whether they should eat, walk the streets in peace , tell their stories without violence.

and if we are honest if we are real , that is NOT the truth of our country, of our movement, of our lives.

That seam that someone else's lived existence is conversational , that someone else's personal mindset and well being is bargain-able is the problem. It can be based on race, gender,ability,. It comes from history personal prejuidice and fear but the fundamental belief that we are weighable and measurable will ALWAYS lead to someone being found wanting.

My response to that conversation about institutions was

No.

We do not.

We do not send ourselves blind into places that do not support us. Sadly there isn't a way for many of us not on the heavy side of the measurement to avoid that . Because to beat the metaphor into death

When asked to be part of the burning building we are being always asked to save it.

Some may go in, and for those we must provide support and protection and preparedness . Which means we must be truthful in how bad the fire actually is. Not advertising it in hopes of what will msot make them come out.

and more importantly we must build strong places and skills and water and people for those they bring out. Because teh question that is forefronting my mind is not teh state of teh building

but teh lives inside.

Conversations build up teh need to save the building, teh caucaus, the secrecy, because it justifies the protection of continually using resources but what saves teh lives ?

That is what I need to knwo, what will make THIS conversation different?

What will make it so that when a WOC speaks she is believed ?

What will make it thata disabeled woman doesn't have to wait on a timetable for someone to behave decently?

What will make the news cycle less important than justice and equity?

Where is the dangerous idea?

HELP

2009-10-08T12:41:00.001-04:00

Quick not I have joined linked in if you know me and like me please link me and recommend me PWEASEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

Sydette/Blackamazon

Vision Statement

2009-09-20T22:58:00.000-04:00

We can tweet post, Facebook, Myspace, blog and flickr our selves across the world, without having meet face to face the people who see it. We can make media at the push of a button within the blink of an eye, often with as much context and memory. Our identities are now intertwined for far too many in what site we are on, how many hits we have, what other people we are connected to. Instead of providing a sense of belonging and interaction we live on a quest for fame. Are we talking to the right people? Are we part of the zeitgeist? Are we reading the right media? Dangerously hyper aware, our lives veer perilously close to being simulacrum, reflected images of the things we wish we were saying, doing feeling, staged increasingly to convince an audience that we are in fact worth it and alive.

Which is a nice way of saying I asked all my friends on Facebook what media should be. And the responses all said the same things. More, more danger, more mess, more. More thinking. Media that looked like notebooks, that brings us together that made us think.
As we seek to define what we mean by being Women’s Media Equity Collaborative, I ask that we use this time to embrace the mess. When we speak about Women, we should mean ALL women and be adamant that instead of policing who is and isn’t proper womanhood, but concentrating on how to support and love all of our sisters.
Are we a Women’s group because that is our leadership or because that is our constituency? And if the latter do we include protection and care and support even for those women we disagree with.

Media, is not just the things that we believe that power responds to? More and more as black women everything from my hair, my body, my sex life and my breathing is worth of dissection and analysis. Youth on trains say more with their clothes than many a pundit has said in four books. Are we not only trying to combat the media we dislike but also uplifting and preserving the media that love’s and sustains us, and those who make it.
Coming from an internet/social networking work background and theatrical training, the rising concern with media to entertain, is frightening. Driving towards our basest impulses, and broadest caricatures, we follow templates, stereotypes, and fireworks. The easy tools of irony, and cliché, aiming for low targets (Rush Limbaugh is a jackass?!?! the sky will be above my head the day will end in y) are exciting and in the Internet it ups your popularity and gets you to conferences, but does it change anything.

The respect for the objective, the idea that the proper vantage is a room of one’s own, or some vantage point above the fray doesn’t improve quality, and most important does not inspire the change we wish to seek .We are and must be in it. Rather than furthering my career in hopes of moving back, how do we construct our media that it sustains AND moves what we believe in and forward as well, and not just puts us one more time in a room we hope this time may be the right one. Especially if the price of entry is the need to disconnect, disassociate, or bargain away the things that first made us able to be brought in. If my power is disruption then it doesn’t matter what room I am in if the thing I agree to is to not disrupt. I seek to the possibility beyond simply destroying others but in building for myself. The self that includes the identities that are undesirable, intangible, and especially the ones that are most disruptive.

I can only do that by being honest, I must feel what I feel and see what I see and say where I am . For this I believe that would be one of the greatest gifts that could be put into the media landscape, an HONEST upfront assessment of our media activities. How are we funded, how do we interact, who does what, what gets “ play” how do we actually support each other and who is benefiting and not. If that is all we get then an enormous service will have been done. Where the heck are we actually?

Because when what is a “ thing to miss for one woman” is a suicide watch for another, and it means something if we are still unwilling to admit that we still question if we even truly pay attention or care if that woman is not cisgendered/white/correctly classed/abled or appropriately apologetic about not being those things. Are there books worth our safety and mental health? IS it enough to have women in anchor chairs if what they say still colludes with the basest instinct to marginalize those outside that studio/classroom/blog/?

Those of us who are outside and I am inside outside many rooms have always found ways to survive, but what has been most damaging as been the denial of the things that have asked us to develop these mechanisms. Media is the desire to tell the truth about the world as we see it and want it to be seen. That part cuts across class race money. We are making our media to shape our world, release ourselves, and guide and instruct others. Be it to liberation, capitalism, voting or market share.

Rather than reach out and move, we reach out and brand, and sadly the left/progressive/liberal movement is not outside of this. Our music is Auto Tuned and tweaked within an inch of its life till the tool has become genre rather than an aide. Movements talk about tone, conversation and pitch and no one has asked whom are we playing for.

It is an opportune moment to do so, and a tenuous one. As more and more of our media tools move to erase our imperfections and “flaws”, honesty, commitment, and development are considered expendable. Imperfection is a weakness of character, not a part of life. Except no one is exactly sure whose idea of perfect we’re aiming for. And when that imperfection is used as reason to not feed, clothe, or educate, as a justification for eradication or dismissal, or strangulation by silence it is imperative we begin in whatever small steps in whatever failed, unfailing attempts to TRULY examine where are we going and why.

We demand an explanation!

2009-08-27T11:10:00.003-04:00

Face palm
and the addendum

I think I am done explaining things to people.

To explain things to people is to relegate the thing you are explaining to an open source object. It has a cause, a reason, that led to a very basic result. It also implies that whoever you are explaining the thing to has some right to an explanation.

( Side note an explanation is NOT an apology,why you did something is not the same thing as being sorry you did something)

That New York Times article and it's comments ( sweet blistering Christmas the comments) hits all of my major problems right now with media as I am relating to it as a Black woman.

An institutionalized practice of violent omission, minimization and tokenism, is being used to justify shoddy historical contexting, minimization of personal realities,classist posturing and cocktail drenched inner circle justification masquerading as insight.

It's the Black experience as distilled for white folk, so they don't feel offended . Often times written BY POC. ( and oddly enough about Black Women often NOT by them I have no idea Ms. Saint Louis race nor does it matter but I had a heart to heart with someone I love who is a POC but not black about getting opportunities to write about Black Women as her foot into industries while her culture is/was erased exoticized and not "marketable" enough )

These recent articles are written with a presumption that writing in any way AT ALL about issues facing Black women is " cutting edge" ( mind you the addendum is so laughably obtuse on the significance of the moments it chooses as to ellicit my straight HUH?!? face) and that letting a black/brown woman write about it is EXTRA special.

Because objects don't get explanations. The presumption is that the comings and goings and even the bodily states of Black women particularly are up for consumption.

Not engagement, discussion but consumption . The article itself is written with the offhanded flippancy one discusses lipstick changes. The audience that this is directed to and for is not expected to be moved by this much less living it every day in blood curdling reality.A demand for an explanation of why on Earth we have to pay real attention to WOC bodies, in a waythat reaffirms our alieness. Money quotes thats ound like astronomical figures when most everybody else spends ten times as much on their own hair care and breast implants.

It also carefully constructs itself to create a world where the natural haired are authenticity watchdogs arbitrarily judging the level of others blackness. Even though being natural is STILL in the minority.

A minority that was called by no less than an editor of Glamor unemployable political and used to symbolize terrorist radicalism in the New Yorker

LAST YEAR

that the interest in this topic is sparked because no less than the President's ELEVEN year old is regularly called ghetto trash for being seen in public with her natural hair.

And reduces the actual physical effects of a perm to a mild nuisances.

And I know to some I am nitpicky and don't I see the good in being mentioned at all.

And they would be completely and utterly right.

This isn't NEW this isn't even remotely unknown, this isn't even THAT DEEP ( want a deep convo ask about fashion versus kulta use of dread locks that one PHEW ). This is what it ALWAYS is.

It is the pain and suffering and consistent societal beatdown of black women as an " interesting tidbit"

It is the simplistic assertion that if it was only about Black women , it wouldn't be enough to get a dander about. That while every beauty, sexual and othe rissue that is entirely white centric is SRIUS BIDNESS.

Women of Color, and black women have to EXPLAIN, and if that explanation is accepted she must then submit to invasive consumptive abrasive attention.

While everyone whistles a happy tune and shows up a day late and a dollar shot on Caster Semenya being treated like a modern day Saartje Baartman at

EIGHTEEN. EIGHTEEN THE CHILD IS EIGHTEEN. GOD BLES IT THIS CHILD IS EIGHTEEN!

based on the fact her very black body is considered always fit for public dissection ( please remember that people said the same thing about Florence Griffith Joyner being to "muscley" possibly the most femme athlete who ever walked the planet and competed in sport forever Amen)

So you know what ?

Someone else get really excited that someone deigned to "translate" black women for you, someone else get really hyped that OOOOH we're in the New York TImes liek someone isn't getting paid off of doing the bare minimum when it comes to black folk.

I will take comfort in the fact that there are amazing spaces for Black women to work it out and no you aren't invited and nope

You get no explanation.

2009-08-25T21:14:00.001-04:00

http://immigration.change.org/blog/view/hate_crime_victim_julio_maldonado_wrongfully_convicted_now_being_deported

Happy Birthday To Me.

2009-08-13T11:31:00.005-04:00

Free write response to this by Lisa ( x posted Feministe)

and I want your eyes.

I am not alone in the wanting of your eyes everybody wants them.

We need youto look at us and where we tell you to.

I am kind of failing at an AMC wrap up I know but to be honest I am not so sure what to say.

I know I saw my loved ones but I also know my wife felt overworked , the people who advised her my sisters barely got to use the things they did all the advising for. I know I watched peopel race because this is the only space they had to be happy and had to spend most of it networking rather than enjoying it because how often would this come again

I know I was excited to meet the babies I have loved from afar but frankly were they happy were they comfortable were their mamis comfortable.

I know that from a session on the state of media , the time I ( and others BFP,Ilyka,Bint Sudy) have said is upon us.

Large corporations are bum rushing blog space. They want to be liberal and with it , they have more resources than your average blog , even your average big blog .

And in terms of progressive blogs there is no cohesion and even less of a plan.

People got the careers they wanted and quietly , surely but quietly did EXACTLY what they pledged not to do.

Pop culture rules the day rather than any substantive report or support of anything not " cool" and consumable.

Success is measured not by affect in the community but the ability to model themselves after the oppression kyriarchy in getting colonialist " rooms of our own" MSM mentions and the ability to be slightly more enlightened in gut wrenching privilege and ignorance. Archival history has begun and is OVERWHELMINGLY white and middle class, menawhile most of the innovative ideas being watered down and commodified

were POC/queer generated

but they wonder where we are*

oh and all of the leders we are battling supposedly are white women.

Sexual rights and freedom is till about creating experts and product rather than spirit respect and space.

While a Bi-racial president has resulted in race issues coming forward, they are as narrow and insulting as can be. Shallow as possible and entirely focused towards white audiences with POC as subjects or case studies not agents. Did you know Biracial also meant POC/POC mixes? OR that certain cultures ( mine being one ) are inherently multicultural?

And that while blackness is the currency du jour it is till tinged with an insiduous classism that seems only to allow certian folks to provide thinly disguised racist commentary behind " post black/modern posturing"

Because for some reason , the only "important black work" is the stuff white people recognize" or the traumas only matte rif it's where white folk can see it.

and that comes at what cost
.
Folks are so quick to be colorblind they'll destroy any POC they come across to be that way

Your eyes , your web clicks justify existance now, feed or don't feed people and are the difference between action and non action. Your email is being trolled, and peopel are having four figure lunches in " liberal" circles to send you blasts on how to be better.

BUT

In order to justify it's bloating system , must also instill in you the feeling that you are not there yet. That it is never enough , that you MUST listen to them, that this next thing this next demographic, or push is the ONLY thing to get us closer.

More and more media literacy, has NOT been a part of this "movement". No one wants to show the work , because even "change" and " Hope" and liberalism .feminism and progressivism , are based on keeping you scared,beliving that never not yet are you ready now

find the pain

But that is not the point

for me.

It never was . It was about getting love.

It was about getting attention, about getting your eyes.

It was about a naked need to be affirmed

and now it still is.

It is a need to not feel helpless, and hopeless and distraught when things happen like this becuase they will.

It was about my family my iological family , and now it is about my family my internet family , my biological family my work family my job family.

It does not work if there is no goal beyond just your eyes. for me now I

I want your eyes ,because well shit I want food and money and decent credit

but I want your eyes because they shouldnt go towards fear but the horizon.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*I feel like an asshole bringing this up. I do but frankly I am pissed .

The short of it.

I am asking anybody who was and did boycott Seal Press to continue.

I am asking anyone who stopped to pick it up.

The offensive ass pictures that caused the boom of 2008, are still for sale . In fact at netroots right now.

Where there will be a presentation of Women and blogging and essentially why aren't WOC bloggers more succesfull.

even when it was happening to ME in teh maelstrom I didn'ts ay too much about it but now I am.

Because essentially it is being treated as if everyone forgot.

Yes means yes? I looked through finally and no mention is made of the extensive battles and changes made FOR free by WOC/LGBTQTS bloggers from it's original offensive ass pitch.

Mind you I am NOT calling for a pile on a flip out or any other flame war.

But straight up this is now MOCKERY .

They keep hoping we forget ignoring critique,using ideas and then allowing the same five people to pump out more shit that is racist, exclusionary and highhandedly self serving.

While using pictures of people like me and mine as kitch or zeitgiest.

Then telling POC they have no market.

While pointing to "their POC" as proof that it isn't racism , while continue to sell and market racism .

It's not even an anger issue it's a what's right and this is not it. And since our felling words and adding yet another piece of media that is silencing and violent to teh experiences of POC is not reason enough.

Maybe a hit the bottomline will be.

Pain Porn

2009-08-04T17:15:00.003-04:00

It's been a real rough time to try and blog not so much personally rough. But rough in the 500 piece Beatle White Album puzzle.

The first thing I did at AMC was the Women's Equity Media Caucus ( which full disclosure I am still involved with for hope ) .

And my sisters
can tell you
more about that.

The inside/outside role is special in those cases.

Because you can't forget

No matter what you are IN the room. Something about you , your work your life, luck of the goddamn draw means your in the room.

And when your there your glad , sometimes cause you've arrived.

Other times because being in the room lets you know how many decisions and discussions and deals .

God the deals.

Listening to someone say I am here because I know what deals get made and I need to be here because my people get fed or not fed by these deals.

That you can't walk out , that god maybe maybe this time it won't be that again.

That inside the room you won't be outside.

And then you open your mouth, maybe you ask can we clarify gender ?

Please don't take my picture.

What black folk are you exactly talking to? How is this my rep . I didn't elect this person?

And you think people think you're an outsider like a vampire a leather jacket.

And you get there and the tension makes you ssquirm and burn because for you this is not just "awkward".

That that outside, that foreign is in the room in your body, in this chair wondering if right now it's safe to be here.

And I'm scared because I don't want to.

I don't want to become that girl with the story again.

Because when I say it someone releases someone comes to something and it feels like porn sometimes.

Pain porn a line I am stealing from witchsistah here:

That no one believes you till they come somewhere to a realization to an understanding. Safe set up distant from the dirt . Raw enough to get off on but far enough to be processed " intellectually"

" People will KILL me"

" ICE has been in my house"

" He beat me "

" People told me I was ugly every day"

" People treat me like a zoo animal now"

That climax that part of yourself that gets hurt over and over and over again

gets hurt one more time.

Pain porn. It's made on our sweat and passion and lives and it's packaged digestably into bite size bits . And really it's never good until a liquid flows.

Maybe if we are very very lucky it's just tears.

It gives a release a shake off a boost if you will.

Now you can sieze the day ,now you can believe the words,

Maybe you feel justified in the mission to save " those poor girls"

as if the problem was the porn itself, as if it was our lives that were the issue

and not the feeling that we were disposable digestable and used for certain purposes.

That peopel talk about us all the time , we're ON the agenda but we don't set it

And many of us ain't gonna do it no more.

But I

I honestly don't know.

I'm built like an ox maybe I can take it?

Maybe if I keep ending up in rooms, and saying

" No really this thing these people you keep talking about and around and planning for , NO really maybe this time you stupid stupid assholes you'll get these are people!?!?!"

That we're not a documentary where you can write about us from 64 million dollar budgets and Maybach Benzes and tell us why we shouldn't be angry about you making your name telling the world how we fail at life.

That I am real, and those immigrants are real, and those women are real and not conditional and that mama is real.

And those cuts we made and the sheer pain we feel at those sounds and the eating to feel the ground or the starving just to clock out are real real.

That maybe this screaming match about the lies you believe about us/me /this/that.

Maybe if we coallate the data and postulate and point out and figure it out one more gain we can get into the NEXT room that if we cry hard enough

We'll finally STOP having something to cry about.

Where's Aniysah

2009-08-02T09:37:00.003-04:00

Really

What amazes me a time and time again is the level of incompetency that is not only allowable but encouraged when it comes to brown and/or poor children and their safety.

A never ending maze of unaccountability that not only is damn near impossible to navigate then blames you for that inability.

But it's not like the people in this system love their children, or these children are worth anything to those who love them.

I mean that's what we will hear, that this is happening because no one wanted or cared for her, that that's why she is now lost.

We are looking.

Find this child

Inside Outside Part 1- All about me

2009-07-23T12:29:00.005-04:00

I am trying to achieve some synergy between Sydette and the Amazon.

Personally I have long situated myself as an "outsider", outside the mainstream, outside the feminist blogging powers .

Outside Outside.

My first day at AMC I was in a space where not only could I see myself as outside, I actually spent a good amount of time walking OUTSIDE, as my body went OH HELL NO.

I speak outside my experience a lot because the proper voice, the voice I learned in my Ivy League/private travails is

Outside.

I had to be objective, or I had to claim that I wasn't doing the "inside" thing to be left alone by the rules I felt strangling me.

Some of it is bravery , hearing you don't matter and going f-off I do. Some of it is cowardice, hearing you are this, and you can't do this unless you this and going well yep you are right.So I guess I don't want it that much.

And it hurts to admit that you have allowed yourself so far from the things you love to maintain a proper distance.When I sat in the rooms at AMC I came with the idea that I would be firm in my ability to make contacts and progress as a media maker. And having family reunion.

Media makers have value. Family members have value .

Underperforming Fat ivy leaguers, platinum voiced non singers, frustrated writer/actor with MONUMENTAL stage fright? Yeah not so much.Weeping under student loan socially anxious,WOC, permanent ICE watch members,assault victims, hooddwellers, let's not even pretend.

Outside

I started blogging because of wanting to see even if it was just myself, that voice reflected in some kind of media.

And in someways over the past couple years it has become much more open and more prevalent.

Except it has become from the outside.

Topics are now " zeitgiest" , they are trended and compiled.

The subject of things that make me , race sex gender geekery, are new fresh and in demand.

The identity of it , the parts of it that are non digestible, that are not transferable are not.

Immigration is a great topic, centering immigrants making safe spaces for them to talk to be credited and set the tone for their work

Not so much

Talking about black women/people , issuing dictums and easily digestible pieces for non black audiences, or even having to prioritize non black audiences over black ones.

Can make you famous.

Being one often makes the act of reading news something to be accompanied by a finely tuned bullshit meter and someone to hide the sharp objects so you don't go to jail.

Outside Outside.

This phenomena makes news kind of easy to take writing steps and paths that take us outside.

Let's speak about events as snippets that we can skim or miss, let's write more and more about populations we are not a part of , or frame the populations we are apart of as voiceless by not actually hearing from them.

Because news is moving that way , people go to more places to get less news. Find ways to keep them where we are , show em we are worth it.

Outside.

How can we become powerful to push,not sustainable to live.

Except when I started blogging it was about being

Inside.

Inside the skin of A WOC, of a brillant mind, of a person undergone state violence,

inside.

And forcing the change and the dialogue I wanted required me to be inside my skin. To not be trying to get somewhere but to live right now.

Inside

It also required of me to be honest about seeing things from other people's points of view inside.

And while it sounds wonderful and is in many ways healing and exciting.

It jarrs not just myself from a position of outsider but conversations.

Because inside the skin, certain things have much more significance.

Part 2 What does that mean for media?

Black/Bottom

2009-07-21T12:24:00.002-04:00

So Henry Louis Gates got arrested

In his own damn house.

And I am in a weird place about it .

Because during AMC I was sitting with the lovely BFP and Elle and we got to talking about thangs and one of them was the " class thing" among black folk.

I then had to haul butt to the session I was presenting on Broad Band Internet and spoke about my " class background" ( short story insanely well educated insanely broke)

and then this happened and my networks, exploded.

Full disclosure I am a graduate of one of THOSE schools. Subsitute Cambridge for " University City" and you're golden.

And frankly this is so common for POC professors through THESE schools that my first reaction was wow this ain't at all new. and second was

THEY MESSED WITH GATES AND HE BROUGHT IN OGLETREE

Let's get it!

But something more strange hit me

The feeling/ then the concrete knowledge that had it NOT been HLG we would have barely heard about it. That the outrage isn't so much that a black man was disrespected and abused in his own home while disabled but that it was a certain KIND of black man.

Mind you the person who called the cops on him worked for a magazine that often has him ON THE COVER. Also knwo that HArvard is okay with this kind of policing for the most part

And the incident that broke the damn door in the FIRST place, unseen.

So color me doubting as Thomas when I I read people being shocked and awed.

This goes on often without fail and it is mostly something that is tsked tsked and line itemed.

Lets be clear unless someone dies or that someone is famous and or insanely wealthy and in the case of the football player who was detained outside the hospital of HIS DYING MOTHER IN LAW with her GRIEVING FATHER ( hey sir not only must you deal with the reality that you are about to bury your baby you can't go see her cause you are brown).

The twinge in me is the constant reminder that those degrees, that money are supposedly ways to get OUT of that sort of treatment.

That teh outrage is more than a little grounded in you don't treat "us" this way.

And there is a very specific us that comes to mind .

And in that "us" the rest of those treatements are kind of silently condoned and understood or overlooked because well that's the world.

My university is built on Black Bottom where gentrification meant pushing black folks as far west as possible.

So I wonder what the outrage and shock actually is.

That being said

Give em hell HLG.

Ota to Ishi, Malia and Philly

2009-07-10T21:59:00.002-04:00

It is summer and it is not safe for our brown bodies to be out.

We contaminate everything we touch.

We are unfortunate ghetto displays

I refuse to make you feel enlightened today.

I don't care to " call you to action".

Right now someone will write you a beautiful moving essay about the struggle of pain they felt when it happened to them.

Even when we were supposedly over it. Someone else will will wax philosophic about believing t could not happen to their child/children/friends kids because time/location/class/money

was supposed to protect them this time.

Forget that there will be no " public pain" for this one .

I speak three going on four languages. And in none of them today will you here me talk about why I need you to fix this issue for me and " ease my pain"

Frankly fuck this and your " feel good campaigns".

I don't want to read nor write another essay about how you can feel good about your contribution to the great fucking utopia you imagine in your head.

I want to stop hearing words like " can't believe, and unreal and unbelievable".

Because all your telling me is when we say there is racism, you don't believe us .

All it tells me is that for every cred from the left to the right you flash, you still believe the ultimate decision of racism is up to you.

Save me your indignation that "forced you to write a letter".

All that says to me is that for you , a letter will fix this.

For these few morsels , it is expected that some vein will be slit open , some damaging memory laid forth , some heartache on display , attached like a post it note

" This one this time you should do something ,here's my soul to prove it"

Your shock and amazement and horror show me nothing except that when we spake and spoke and speak.

You do not listen, except for the show.

here you are excited because you can use your force your screaming your yelling.

And I will quietly think that every news source that looked like us... Had between two and three days ago.

Here is a time to be excited because you can be an advocate and ally perhaps experience the rush of .

And I will remember the silence of what happens when we ask that we work to make sure I don't need you to advocate for me all the time because the world believes me when I advocate for myself.

of when I ask that another brown baby doesn't heave and sigh and bear a weight larger that any bookbag, and remember to never hope for certain things because NOTHING could feel as awful as being disappointed like THIS.

That little girl can not have her hair in any way and have you

That still after all this the only way of being treated like an animal in a zoo, is to display a little more for your viewing pleasure.

Because truly we have to bleed and beg to be treated as human, because you are doing enough aren't you, because god you actually could care about us

Because really you only pay attention to us to feel good about yourselves , because as soon as it is "enough"

Really they are other things to worry about rather than stopping the pain

Like how much better you can feel than the next person when it happens again

Liek how much better you are than the people who ignored it , but none on how better you made it for us.

How strong will you ask us to be , how much will you ask us to bleed, till you remember that

maybe ust maybe we are telling the truth.

2009-07-04T10:42:00.003-04:00

Sick BlackAmazon is sick ( in many ways)

Bring these fabulous to AMC

Why not help send me and some other lovely ladies? Via Noemi:

AMC. We need to get there.We have fundraised, asked for grants, compromised, felt energized, asked for days off, gotten free airline tickets, borrowed time, overcharged credit cards and emailed/talked/made plans with friends and strangers across the lines.And still call us shameless, we ask for more. Y porque no?

please consider donating to these fine, chingona mujeres

Maegan “la Mala” Ortiz, raising chingona mujeres. Sending single mami love
laMamitaMala.com
mamitamala@yahoo.com

Elle, southern sistorian, who I shall meet one day even if we live closer than other folks. Oh we shall share a beer very very soon
http://elleabd.blogspot.com/
mselleg@aol.com

blackamazon Sydette otherwise known as the bad ass who I love
http://guyaneseterror.blogspot.com/
Sydette@gmail.com

Fabiola, fabmexicana who guest blogs here, leaving pedacitos de su corazon.
Otra mami soltera de Califabmexicana@gmail.com

Noemi Martinez
spiller of dreams-single mami hermanaresist.com
csdistro@gmail.com

ms. cripchick
a powerchair-roaring queer radical woman of color
cripchick's weblog
stacey.milbern@gmail.com

Many of us will be taking part in the Women’s Media EquitySummit on July 16th.At the AMC, we’ll be involved in several different caucuses, meetings and generally raisinga ruckus wherever you may find us. And OUR KIDS WILL BE CAUSING ALL SORTS OF MAYHEM AT THE KIDS TRACK AND IN GENERAL. It will be a sight to see. Things will happen. We will write/blog about it.

I need the swing

2009-06-23T19:48:00.004-04:00

I am shakinga nd crying over necessary harsh but real work being done and I have nothing to say so I am listening and it is safer to do this because to be honest this is hwo little it matters

the idiotic stupid bullshit( I'm cursing all up and through this one DEAL)

SO i am going through my technorati and see that Octa has linked me

Ooh shiny, lemme see....

WAIT CAN I UNSEE CAN I UNSEE.

Because this " furor" , this mastubatory solipsistic, journalistic neglagiance , and narcissistic blowharding that is passing for coverage of this

is exactly why this " feminist movement" is leaking water everywhere.

NO ONE LOOKS GOOD IN THIS

because no one is attempting to do anything BUT LOOK GOOD! Not to mention a bevy of slipshod journalism and reporting that seems only to try and stir up the idea of a "vibrant engaged internet discussion" where there is none cause frankly

NO ONE GIVES A DAMN

And here is where I get really mean and nasty and ornery and ageist but hey since its being used lets get it.

I am really really tired of hearing about " young feminists" who are AT LEAST 6-10 years older than I am talking about young feminists wanting blah blah and strictly talking about people responding to how they don't get presidencies, articles, and press attention. ESPECIALLY IN ORGANIZATIONS WOMEN HAVE BLED FOR FOR OVER 40 YEARS

ANd this article here....

Well doesn't that take the cake.

So I am supposed to take the word of a WHITE WOMAN m who presumes to speak for all young women., mind you she ADMITS NOT HAVING FOLLOWED ELECTIONS needing more youth led work

and here's the words I love.

" cutting edge"

I'm sorry but if DB Sweeney isn't Pamchenkoving Moira Kelley , I'm sorry I want no part of the fucking cutting edge.

And I'm sorry to burst the hard Mainstream media attention bubble but the fact that peopel aren't connecting to you online is not the end all be all of their relevance. Also if it is so important so relevant why did you use that cutting edgeness to write about it.

Meanwhile what is the cutting edge ? Name some of it . OH wait those things tend to sound more like issues and policy.( and if what you name is also part of the OPPONENTS platform as well you fail)

And as we know Young Women ( most of them now 6-15 years older than ME) are concerned with the look of things because essentially the endorsement is

" as a brown woman she looks better to young feminists"

I do not ofr a second believe that Lyles is a token ( I actually do follow now somewhat having the mistaken belief that if I am going to run my mouth on something I should know it VAGUELY)

but how are these endorsements based on WEBSITE USE ANYTHING BUT

the desire to capitalize on a mythic Obama effect to make these mythical young women feel better

because you knwo those older owmen use facebook and twitter to right so much so GRADY RAN ON IT AS WELL

Mind you none of the articles quote

YOUNG FEMINISTS OF COLOR the demographic NOW IS SCREWING UP ON.

But never let facts good discussion and ya know actually leading a dialogue get in the way of being quoted or saying " You know what I'm gonna sit this one out"

( Lets make it plain bemoaning slutty brides took up more space)

First and foremost what are the differences in the two women's positions?

Why is Latifah Lyles so " invigorating"?

Tell me when you find it cause oh right no one knows or cares to know. Even Salon is asleep wait (I Don't mean even I'm kind of going with as usual), needing a commentor to remind them s( something ) basic searching could find that LYLES IS A VICE PRESIDENT .

So now we have a tale of two women somewhat FIRMLY entrenched in NOW's power structure, making promises at which the out going leader "chuckles"at, about this time THIS TIME they will make this organization relevant again.

BE written by people who are so eager to have a " feminist wars" piece of copy the abscond with basic journalistic thoroughness ( like Google and THE WEBSITE OF THE ORG THEY ARE WRITING ABOUT well except to be assholes about site design)

even going so low as to say essentially I trust them they don't have to provide facts?!?!?

being more concerned about feminisms marketing than it's actual function.

A quick browse

Welfare rights action on now's website hasn't been updated in five years

International Rights AND Immigration IN SIX MONTHS

Domestic Violence is a n article on Chris Brown that is short and does NOT mention how for a first time offender in DV the tragedy is not JUST that he isn't in prison but that his sentence WAS ACTUALLY ABOVE THE AVERAGE . But hey pithy quote on what it tells us!

Economic justice is all about fair pay not about FINDING JOBS, PAYING LOANS ,HOUSE FORECLOSURES or any of the things that are actually being dealt with by young women ( and BOTH parties are involved with this website yes?)

And Media Justice is more involved with HALL OF SHAME THAN PRAISING FEMALE EFFORTS.

Trans Women are NOT O N IT and Gay rights is ALL PROP 8 ALL THE TIME

mind you nobody mentions that as reason why NOW MAY NOT HAVE MEMBERS

NO It's there mean to the pretty white girls!!! or the change candidate wasn't elected MUST BE PALIN!

This vapid empty nasty silencing discussion is why there aren't members. The ignorance and silent refusal ( and don't fucking dare come to me with we cover it here because when you cover it as much as rush limbaugh THEN WE CAN TALK) to be honest about the truth and history of NOW ( while started involving WOC so no Lyles is not NEW )

this false young versus old that is essentially all white all the time, to the extent of fetishizing someones blackness as an " image make over"

a myopic responsive,elitist response to the future

that has brewed an idea that better marketing is a more important than actual information and has people RESPONDING TO IT

and the continued desire to do nothing by both YOUNG AND OLD to respond to the reality of the lives of women they are trying to reach

but mean while

the things like

WOMEN RUN MEDIA JUSTICE CAMPAIGNS

MEDIA CONFERENCES

MEDIA PROJECTS

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

the amazing things being DONE WITH THE INTERNET rather than just talked about

women having to run for themselves and making decisions and having discussions so painful and SO NECESSARY that don't even show up on RADAR of these places who are so CONCERNED because they would rather worry about who has the big desk in Washington?

That the real revolution is HERE

Lisa is so amazing I copied it VERBATIM

wouldn't it be revolutionary if someone acknowledged that the future of feminism should look invisible because the work for justice and peace has been taken up by everyone? and the "future of feminism" is more than just NOW and the latest books or curriculum from some academic theorist?

When every one is as concerned as making our lives better and listening to us and actually working with us as whose in charge maybe I'll take this seriously till then.

The only remotely good thing about this hailstorm of stupid is the desire to see a good 90's film.

Waaaaaaaaaaaay to close to home.

2009-06-20T23:49:00.003-04:00

Poor women shouldn't have anything rich people want.

including children.

One of the reasons my blog is kind of quiet recently is that I am starting something important to me .

Dedicated to my mother.

Because my mother had to fight to keep me.

She could speak "the" language.

But why is that the only thing that should save her?

This is a "choice" as well . the choice to raise your children,speak you language and be yourself without having to suffer for it.

It being daring to exist.

Request for Action from the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance (MIRA):

Cirila Baltazar Cruz gave birth to her baby girl in November of 2008 at Singing River Hospital in Pascagoula, MS. She speaks very little Spanish and no English, as her native language is Chatino, an Indigenous language from Oaxaca, Mexico that is spoken by some 50,000 people.

The hospital provided her with an “interpreter” who is from Puerto Rico and does not speak Chatino, the language of the mother. Because of the language barrier and the misunderstanding by the hospital’s interpreter who only spoke Spanish and English, a social worker was called in.

The hospital’s social worker reported “evidence” of abuse and neglect based on the following:

* The “baby was born to an illegal [sic] immigrant;”
* The “mother had not purchased a crib, clothes, food or formula.” (Most Latina mothers breast feed their babies).
* “She does not speak English which puts baby in danger.”

Ms. Baltazar Cruz’s baby was snatched from her after birth at the hospital and given to an affluent attorney couple from the posh Ocean Springs who cannot have children.

The authorities made no effort to locate an interpreter in her native tongue. MIRA located an interpreter who is fluent in Chatino in Los Angeles CA and has interviewed the mother extensively with the interpreters help. The mother has been accused of being poor and not being able to provide for this child. No one has asked the mother to provide evidence of support. She owns a home in Mexico and a store which provides both secure shelter and financial support, not counting the nurturing of a loving family of two other siblings, a grandmother, aunts, uncles and other extended family.

Meanwhile, there is word in the Gulf Coast community that the “parents to be,” have already had a baby shower celebrating the “blessed arrival” of this STOLEN child!

PLEASE MAKE CALLS & WRITE LETTERS DEMANDING THE SAFE RETURN OF BABY & REUNITE WITH HER MOTHER

If you believe this is unjust and outrageous and goes against all moral and religious beliefs and values, please call or write to the presiding Judge and the MS Department of Human Services to STOP this ILLEGAL ADOPTION! Stealing US born babies from immigrant parents is a growing epidemic in the United States. Many Latino parents have lost their children this way!

Honorable Judge Sharon Sigalas
Youth Justice Court of Jackson County
4903 Telephone Rd.
Pascagoula, MS 39567
(228)762-7370

Children’s Justice Act Program
MS Dept. of Human Services
750 North State Street
Jackson, MS 39202
Call (601)359-4499 and ask for Barbara Proctor

For more information please call MIRA at: (601) 968-5182

MIRA Organizing Coordinator
Victoria Cintra at (228) 234-1697 or Organizer Socorro Leos at(228) 731-0831

GIRL TALK FEATURING MY ROSE!

2009-06-15T18:28:00.001-04:00

Girl Talk: A Cis & Trans Woman Dialogue
Curated by Julia Serano & Gina de Vries
Wednesday, June 17th
LGBT Center - Ceremonial Room
1800 Market Street
7:30pm
Tickets: $12-$20
Buy Tickets on-line!!: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/66001
http://www.queerculturalcenter.org/Pages/QFest09/GirlTalk.html

Queer cisgender women and queer transgender women are allies, friends,
support systems, lovers, and partners to each other. Trans and cis
women are allies to each other every day -- from activism that
includes everything from Take Back the Night to Camp Trans; to
supporting each other in having “othered” bodies in a world that is
obsessed with idealized body types; to loving, having sex, and
building family with each other in a world that wants us to disappear.
Girl Talk is a spoken word show fostering and promoting dialogue about
these relationships. Trans and cis women will read about their
relationships of all kinds – sexual and romantic, chosen and blood
family, friendships, support networks, activist alliances. Join us for
a night of stories about sex, bodies, feminism, activism, challenging
exclusion in masculine-centric dyke spaces, dating and breaking up,
finding each other, and finding love and family.

Late night think rant

2009-06-12T23:52:00.001-04:00

Cereta's excellent post on men and rape by way of Coffeeandink's links and post
( Hat tip yelo son and sex _and Race)

So I'm doing that thesis THANG and some of you knwo I am a "blogger"
Mostly WOC issues and I'm hoping to be getting my grad in that.SO combine that with my propensity to say whatever the blue blazing hell comes to my pretty napptural head.

I am read/talking/ pondering on date rape and sexual assault.

First and foremost I continue to be a fucking amazed by the consistent use of " oh no oneI know would?"

Please tell me how many people YOU KNOW who would go

Hi I am the type of person who will willfully and openly use another person and disregard their will, and frankly how many of you really would take action into isolating that person?

Know how many times people have explained "away" a person's racism sexism classism ?"

How many of you have brushed off or giggled off someones nastiness cause well

"their not that way to you"

and I'm not saying dis own them but even ACKNOWLEDGING THE REALITY OF WHAT THAT COULD MEAN FOR OTHERS

( its part of the reason I talk bout myself so damn much in addition to my big ego I want you to knwo I am speaking ONLY FOR ME)
yeah sure you really would stand up and fight that.

Oh you would?

Prove it when a woman says she is assaulted of has concerns

Make the first thing out your mouth NOT

" not all guys/I would never /you should"

but what can I do to help?

or even the mere attempt at understanding the world i go through in THIS BODY IN THIS SKIN

isn't the world you go through

but I have a real shit time of up front no bullshit working with any white feminist org to taklk about this

Why?

because my " rape " ain't your "rape"

It's why i hate the fucking " this is what a feminist looks like/take back the night/ psuedo sex positive ( as opposed to sex AND SEX WORKER ) positive

the night ?

never mine .

Me this body this skin a CONSTANT reminder of colonialist rape , people like me only come up when it's in relation to THEIR experiences at social events .

Meanwhile we're trying to deal with the systematic sexual assault by social events, government etc etc etcit's something they "missed" or you know petition worthy

but vibrators and the right to hen peck boyfriends

RALLY TIME.

I want to be less bitter but every time i hear this shit it becomes a well we fight for EPEW blah blah oh and *insert horrible soulcrushing experience of LGBTQ WOC* so TAKE US SERIOUSLY as we were slogans

But my final FINAL HUh moment.

Is this gray rape/ we can teach sexual yes cues/ oh___didn't know?

Nope sorry I ain't letting nobody of the hook that easy.

I m gonna need you to explain in VERY VERY SMALL WORDS AND SLOWLY

hwo you can miss someone wanting you.

How you can miss someone asking and pleading you to continue , being involved enough to HAVE ANY VOICE AT ALL while you BUT NAKED AND RARING TO GO?

if part of you roll is to let the person you're with KNOW WHAT YOU WANT

AND TO MAKES SURE YOU KNOW WHAT THEY WANT

how do you" miss cues".

How is it UNSEXY ( i have heard this I immediately knew why this fools girl was so cranky)

to make sure asnd ask permission to be thoughtful

How truly unimaginative do you have to be to not figure out hwo to make ENJOYING SEX SEXY

unless

wait a minute

YOU ARE NOT LOOKING??

So help me out since I give you TOO MUCH INFO but I ma also (one of ) The MOST INTERESTING friend on facebook.

splain me?

yell at me say I'm a dottering nitwit

but when I am analyzing text ( friday night I know)about ways to position the singular black female body in performance and how much of that comes from witness to violence and I hear the sheer ignance that passes as discourse

From there to here

2009-06-09T21:46:00.003-04:00

I am struggling with the role of writing, with the roles of activism, journalism,privilege race and technology.

Getting Google Reader to aggregate my readings has truly changed the way I read news. It has made it easier but it has also made me believe that it does not and should not be EASY.

With fading paper news, a black president, and the rise of the internet , the world does not look , the discourse does not look the way it has before ,

and although my entire ability to even run my mouth in it , I am becoming more and ore disturbed by the " new media" tongue bath being given .

About the Voice of the people.

Let us be plain, the ability however small however much it doesn't always feel like it.

To engage in a public intellectual life, as a blogger or teacher or professor or writer or artist and not have it be your side hustle or your " hobby" thanks to the ever crush of bills or whatever

is a confluence of privileges ( yep even as much as I bitch about it I know I am treading on privileged ground here)

and we have to have to start asking the very serious question of "To who are we accountable"

It is an amazing bit of writing . AMAZING , but it reinforced the growing ( and it's gonna be repeated ) pit in my stomach about media and MOVEMENT and ARTISTIC and RACIAL accountability.

While people are becoming excited about a discourse and very keen a on using these tools to ad d to it, to become large figures in it, no one seems as excited about having the tough discussions about what and who they seek to "improve"

It plays out in my mind of course and in writing in terms of race and gender.

I black I am multi-ethnic , I am Ivy League educated.

I am not enthusiastic about the "opportunities presented by America's election of a black president" and I am deeply troubled by the frame of the discourse present by the "Soul Patrol AND the Melissa Lacewell Harris response.

While the sum total of my response of Tavis Smiley is too long it often can be sum mated in " ARE YA SERIOUS?". I have deep reservations about MLS's dissection of it and the Soul Patrol.

First and foremost the fact that the first thing mentioned is the production value is bothersome, especially when later on it attacks the fact that they are all well endowed professors and or corporate backed ( in a CNN article by a Princeton professor , who is now being critiqued by a Penn grad yeah I'm getting to that)

While yes it is democratized, lets be clear on what voices even within these formerly underserved communities, are gtting play, or even in fringe circles ( I am an intsy bitsy blogger but i gots ome truck) why certain voices and certain credentials KEEP RISING, and keep getting play, as well as counterpointed. It si in this age I believe no longer enough to mention it or point at it but it has to be laid bare and ultimately destroyed.

Meanwhile equating the ability to become part of a system that STILL disenfranchises black americans ( not all black americans are African Americans) with maturity

Further, Smiley and his "soul patrol" seemed to have missed the intervening 40 years between the era of King and the election of Obama. African-Americans are no longer fully disfranchised subjects of an oppressive state.
African-Americans are now citizens capable of running for office, holding officials accountable through democratic elections, publicly expressing divergent political preferences and, most importantly, engaging the full spectrum of American political issues, not only narrowly racial ones. The era of racial brokerage politics, when the voices of a few men stood in for the entire race, is now over. And thank goodness it is over. Black politics is growing up.

While I totally like the idea of avoiding the race men( and women) , I dislike the use of this phenomena as a chastisement of the way TS and em are going about this. Because this phenomena this need of race men was predicated on a deep racism that predicated the use of perfect blameless people for organizing ( Rosa Parks anyone). And Barack Obama's election , which is being used to even as many people cringe to herald a " post racial era" gives us a deep hint that no it's not actually that far gone.

While I agree fully and totally that the TS and Soul Patrol critiques are often baseless and unproductive and ignorant of people who are not in their vision of productive. I also say that a view that hold up racial neutrality is any better,especially as a black president isn't all races nor does it indicate a clear race history.

Which is where I really disagree with Jay Smooth and a lot of the we're further along than we were rhetoric framing of the " post Obama moment". While his observation is brill ant and funny. The why is NECESSARY this rush for post racialism is not benign.

It is part of a continued and multi pronged death grip of entitlement and privilege to move from not having to care cause it didn't affect them to not having to care cause we're beyond that. Because if we're not beyond it and people are still concerned we might have to talk about why and that's not just boundaries and it's tied up in a whole lot of things that make racial neutrality a LOT more difficult than presented and the variety of voices not only presented but centered a LOT BIGGER

What i do think it is important to talk about and address is this constant portrayal of this action of ' fam correction" as jealousy and unproductive and baseless. My Google Reader sends me news alerts on race and racism and feminism and it picked up this article that featured the MLH piece from feministing this is the part that made me go yeah well no:

This question of authenticity in identity is a very frequent theme in argument between different types of feminists and specifically different generations of feminism. The older "watchdogs" are disappointed with what they see is a diluted brand and less than tough stance on issues by younger generations. The reality that material conditions have changed for women, people of color and other disenfranchised communities is not explored in depth, which has allowed for different types of political identifications, different types of movements.

Because frankly the "watchdogs" are not disappointed with out reason, and these material conditions improving for SOME of these groups is not enough for them to stop being vigilant, not to mention the constant belief that these watchdogs are themselves a homogeneous group is baseline insulting. Especially if only certain sections ( or people) are getting these improvements based on representing themselves as or being represented as standard bearers for the whole group. The other reality is that often the material conditions for many of these groups HAVE NOT MOVED AT ALL IF THEY HAVE NOT OUT RIGHT REGRESSED.

And the fact that these opinions often come with identification or absorption into capitalistic or commerce based affluence isn't something that changes things for everybody else. The fact that we can discuss this does not change the fact that there are more homeless and trans murders and service reduction to the disabled and that if they are annoyed or upset or so angry they can barely achieve coherency , pointing at my article in make/shift doesn't change that.

and if I am accountable to them and not the next run for the zeitgeist or the possibilities or the evolution the dialogue MUST CHANGE and must stop being posited as an old vs new,and start digging into the SCARY issues, in ways that ARE NOT territorial defense and predicated on hoping a voice speaks privilege enough to be comprehended and "hip " enough not to be dismissed.

But instead predicate themselves on pushing us as far as we can as deep as we can to exposing the parts of ourselves we hide the most to the BEDROCK of our views. Of what we move for , who move for and WHY

It is swinging in my head so hard because frankly it's going to get harder. Asking the tough necessary questions without a "hook" or a spin or a niche.

is getting more and more difficult and surprise it's dryng up and going away along very familiar lines.

Not only does the world need our voices, and everyone Else's but it needs OUR PURPOSE

and while yes our ability to do it ourselves, and challenge old wisdom, and be creative is good.

It is being done ( YEAH MAEGAN AND NEZ AND KAI AND THE SANCTUARY)

What is necessary are our loves our allegiances, and our purpose because

MLK?

sacrificed the good graces of LBJ for the unions and opposing the war.

Because moments opportunities moments epochs are merely after thoughts in describing one thing

What finally moved you from there

here.

walking

2009-06-02T19:48:00.002-04:00

I am trying to write to stave off a massive depression.

I am very very tired.

I feel safe almost nowhere, I feel full of unfinished ideas , and thoughts and drives

and I have little desire to finish them.

I eat when I remember to which is mostly defined by a work schedule, i do not enjoy the sun.

I am finally beginning to understand the message.

I take up too much space.

I read that and I want to say yeah, and in my hear I do for Baby BFP. Someone should take up space I'm just not sure it should be me anymore.

What gives me any right?

I do not take pictures for the most part because I believe they are giving away parts of your soul.

And little bits of my soul get taken from me everyday

and that is the way the world works.

I have to smile and be thankful and cheery because maybe just maybe that little bit of dignity here, that piece of your heart there.

Might pay your cell phone bill.

Everyday people quietly and silently or loudly and repeatedly let me know

they are better than me.

Or I am not worth it.

and you steal yourself because it is all you know how to do.

but why do that .

Because you are not allowed to feel pain.

" But I didn't know that"

Because finding out what happens when it comes to me/my community/my loves /my life, it's not like anyone could be bothered to research.

It's not like we are worth it in the face of whatever book/article/shiny movement that PROMISES PROMISES THIS FUCKING TIME

to get it right.

and it's not like when you leave the door , you don't see very pot hole, abandoned building shitty train line that will not get fixed no matter how many times you call or scream or cry .

Won't be getting fixed.

That never getting a good's nights rest , that horrific feeling that no one is coming for you if you cry.

Might very well be true.

To take up space because every little bit you do is some that's something hurtful can not that doesn't delight it watching you bleed that hurts

That eating and eating because you think that space means you will be left alone

And finding out you won't

and losing and losing because you are just to tired to try for any real food anymore

To witness yourself being talked around and spoken around and denied while people make meals off of ideas that you even know aren't new when you did them and damn sure aren't new when they got torn from a woman you love?

Of literally people talking around the existence of women doing amazing work to one line cheer blurbs?

of loosing friends and loved ones because you just have no time to pick up the phone.

of letting others go because if one more person goes well you know you'd fit in more if you

and lying alone wondering what if they are right

of after every erasure and nastiness and theft and disregard

being discovered

and while you and yours decide between the fucking rent or your loans. Your jewelry or your fare

demanding to be sympathetic when someone isn't getting a fucking handstand over another bourgeoisie appropriating class marker.

demanding you condone violating victims because hey it makes them SUPER liberal

and by super liberal it means they watch the daily show and ask other writers to do their analysis FOR THEM

and bad mouth mediums that are doing better at their "inclusion" THAN THEY ARE

THAT EVEN YOUR REST PLACES

are

zoos

and fish bowls

where people can't say your name

like you aren't in a skin everyday that makes life DIFFICULT but you are so scary!!!!

and for what

for people who don't possess have the gumption or fortitude to understand the real work of writing

who would celebrate the dying of a industry VITAL to our survival

because they get to be "important" when it goes on the cheap but have little to nothing to say

to support a world where men beat a man to death for speaking Spanish and go FREE!.

To live a life like this

where your world is abused and hurt and dumped on and you have to apologize for having feelings

where people think so low of you and what you love and work for that you tell them there is death and murder and rape

that trey push you and push you and push you till you have no place left but to do what they ALWAYS want make it you attacking them

and then no matter what , no matter what you say or do, they get chance to leave a fucking room cause no matter what has been done is being done if they're uncomfortable they get to leave.

that you can't shake the feeling that is what you get for taking up any space at all.

Sometimes I am so sad I don't know how i get up in the morning