Sunday, December 20, 2009

Elizabeth Turner, 31, is missing. She was last seen in her hometown, Omaha, Nebraska on 11 Nov. 2009

With thanks once again to the blog La Reyna's Journal, for alerting me to this latest missing person case. What follows is from this website.

Elizabeth Turner is missing!


Can you help find an Omaha woman who has been missing since November 11th? Her name is Elizabeth Turner and she is 31-years-old.
The Omaha Police Department’s Missing Persons Unit says Turner was last seen on November 11, 2009 near 30th and Ames Avenue. Turner was wearing a blonde wig and a grey sweat suit trimmed in pink.
Turner suffers from schizophrenia and left her purse and ID behind.
Elizabeth Turner is described as being an African-American female, 5’ 4” tall weighing 170lbs. She has brown eyes, black hair and possibly a blonde wig.
If anyone knows the whereabouts of Elizabeth they can contact 444-5636 or 444-7867.You can also text “OPD” and your tip to CRIMES (274637)

Radical Profeminism: a definition, for now


fig. 1: Ghost Dance Remnant. Liquid light on muslin
© Pamela Shields, 1990

[image is of work by artist Pamela Shields is from here and here]
From the second link:
Pamela Shields (Blackfoot/Blood Band), who was born in 1956 in Salt Lake City, Utah and grew up in Calgary, Canada, currently lives and works in San Francisco, California. After receiving her BA in Fine Arts from San Francisco State University and a MA in Art from Ills College in Oakland, she began to turn to collage to explore visually her community's history. In Ghost Dance Remnant (fig. 1) she comments on the religious revival that was bringing renewal to many western tribes before the United States government suppressed it as a threat to its control in the late 1890s.
_________

Indigenous feminism without apology
BY ANDREA SMITH

We often hear the mantra in indigenous communities that Native women aren’t feminists. Supposedly, feminism is not needed because Native women were treated with respect prior to colonization. Thus, any Native woman who calls herself a feminist is often condemned as being “white.”
However, when I started interviewing Native women organizers as part of a research project, I was surprised by how many community-based activists were describing themselves as “feminists without apology.” They were arguing that feminism is actually an indigenous concept that has been co-opted by white women.

The fact that Native societies were egalitarian 500 years ago is not stopping women from being hit or abused now. For instance, in my years of anti-violence organizing, I would hear, “We can’t worry about domestic violence; we must worry about survival issues first.” But since Native women are the women most likely to be killed by domestic violence, they are clearly not surviving. So when we talk about survival of our nations, who are we including?


Over a year ago I posted my own understandings of what the term "radical" means for purposes of this blog and my life beyond this blog--such as it is. You can link to that post here.

In this post, I'd like to define what I mean be "radical profeminist", given that it is the title of this blog, and I'm not sure I've ever really explained what this term means, here, to me.

I know the term has existed for a while and that men and women have written about it as a phenonenon, as something that exists, in whatever helpful and non-helpful ways to radical feminists.

I don't know any other men besides myself who use it to describe themselves--for better or worse. As has been noted by many feminists, white men have a tendency to appropriate the language and take unjust and non-accountable responsibility for what women do to fight and end racist patriarchies. I hold myself accountable to the women I know, and many of the women I know disagree about many things, which I believe is necessary, healthy, politically vibrant, and human. It is necessary because if there were "one voice", "one perspective", and one "radical feminism" I believe that would, in the West, default to a white-, anglo-, euro-centric radical feminism, given that whites have more institutional power and press than women of color in the West.

"Radical profeminism" is an English-language term that I use in the West, in the U.S. specifically. So that locates it in a tradition of both radicalism and pro-feminism. And while it is located there, it cannot mean "work that only benefits the inhabitants of the West". It cannot mean "action dedicated to maintaining civilisation". It simply cannot. Because if it does, then it advocates, necessarily and without apology or remorse, for the destruction of women of color around the world. Not that having remorse or making an apology would make white men's acts of such destruction okay.

I have been part of radical feminist movements for twenty-five years. For a much shorter time I was part of antisexist men's movements. In all that time I have spoken with many men who define themselves as radicals, as feminists, as profeminists, and as anarchists who are supportive of Women's Liberation. I have not found community and am not sure I'd know what to do with one if I did. I have not found men, and in my case most of those men I've spoken with have been white, who are willing to do be accountable to women, especially and particularly to women of color. I have not found men who respect the need for profeminist men to follow, not lead; to always listen carefully and never assume we already know what someone is saying to us. I have been challenged to do this just within the last 24 hours. And I'm not sure I am listening well enough, which is to say respectfully and empathically enough, non-racistly enough, non-misogynistically enough. But I will make it my work to find out, and to listen more carefully with greater emotional and intellectual comprehension in the future. And that understanding will result in actions that don't find a home alone in my head.

For I am a Jew. And being Jewish means something very politically specific to me, that is not unique to being Jewish but is inextricably a part of it: I must actively oppose all forms of slavery and genocide. This necessarily includes all behaviors and systems that contribute to gynocide, the ethnically gendered political killing of women for being women. I must oppose rape, and all other sexualised violence against women. This is what it means to me to be a Jew and a radical profeminist.

For the most part, but not entirely, I have met men who think "racism" and "white supremacy" are not radical profeminist issues. This doesn't mean such men aren't out there. I have not met many men in the last fifteen years who do activist work, so it's possible there's a whole generation of younger activists who are accountable to women of color and to white women, who do see race and gender, and specifically whiteness and manhood, as indivisibly political and oppressive forces in the West.

This blog is not meant to be read only by Westerners, but because it is in English, it likely will be. I can know this somewhat by seeing from where people come to read this blog's posts. Overwhelmingly it is from "the West": North America, the UK and Western Europe, and the white fringes of Australia. I do not know how many readers from those areas are men or how many are white, however. But I know that I must focus my posts on what white men do. And I have received criticism for doing this. And I try to attend to the reality that men of all colors harm women of color. So a pro-WOC blog must address some of the crimes and atrocities committed by men of color against the women who live near or with them, in community, in ethnic bonds, in nationhood.

The primary reason for me to focus on white men is that I limit my posts to what I know most about, or what news I find that is relevant to what this blog is here to do, which is to name the white heterosexist male supremacist elephant in the room. To name what it does and how it operates. To name its methods, its dynamics, its systems, and the institutions and interpersonal behaviors that keep white heterosexual male supremacy flourishing, if also headed for death due to its own unsustainability. And those methods, dynamics, systems, institutions, and behaviors are not stagnant, even while they are deeply embedded and in need of radical transformation or removal-at-the-roots. Human systems are alive, and so are always in some level of flux.

From this perspective, being a radical profeminist means being willing to re-evaluate conditions and ways of being more accountable and responsible to women, every day. It means never believing I am "not sexist and not racist" because I am antiracist and antisexist. I am racist, white supremacist, sexist, misogynistic, male supremacist and all the rest that comes with being a white man in this time and in this part of the world. I am all those things so I must challenge all those things in myself and beyond myself. I know men who consider challenging it in themselves sufficient work. That is plenty of work, indeed, and I respect men who are willing to do that. But it is not enough.

To me it must always be combined with action-in-the-world-beyond-oneself, in part because men have a tendency to focus only on ourselves, as individuals and as the definition of what it means to be human. We are not "the definition". We are one definition that has had far too much staying power. White men, especially and most egregiously, in my lived experience, are arrogant and ignorant about what is most important to know and how to be in the world, non-oppressively, with respect for all Life. We tend to think white men who have come before us, who are presumed to have been "great thinkers" such as the Founding Fathers of the U.S., Plato, Descartes, Marx, Engels, Freud, Darwin, postmodernists like Foucault and Derrida, great artists and writers such as Picasso and Hemingway, and many others, often "hard" scientists, knew what we need to know. They didn't and couldn't, and they don't serve as intellectual or political role models for me, and never have. Not ever.

I do not locate radical profeminism on Western white men's model of a political spectrum running from communism on the left to fascism on the right. For me, radical feminism and radical profemism has always existed off that continuum, which is why the actions of some radical feminists are often miscategorised by the spokespeople for the status quo, for the white malestream. The status quo's spokespeople, its defenders, its promoters, tend to get most stuff wrong when it comes to comprehending radical feminism and radical profeminism. This surprises me not at all and is generally annoying to me. As the cartoon atop this post recognises and articulates, white men tend to make everything "All About Us". It isn't. Politics isn't; philosophy isn't; art isn't; Life isn't, G-d--whatever that is--isn't. None of it is or ever has been, except in the minds of white men and too many of those people who we terroristically, forcefully, and consistently colonise and otherwise oppress.

I have no problem with white heterosexual male supremacy dying as soon as possible; I have a problem with how it will probably die, not so soon. I wish for it not to harm and kill women in the process of dying. I wish for Indigenous people globally to thrive while it dies. I wish for it to not take all the soil and glaciers with it. I don't know if it will play out that way. I will hope so, against all odds and evidence, not because my hope means it is more likely to happen that way, but because without this hope, without a certain level of optimism about what can be, my activism sinks into depression.

I know Derrick Jensen has a strong critique of "hope" and I appreciate his views on this. And I think he is right, probably, about a lot of what hope does in people who are not willing or able to work to radically change "civilisation" into sustainable ecosystems that include but are not dominated by human will and want. As far as I know, only Indigenous people have figured out how to live sustainably on the Earth. Not all Indigenous peoples, of course. I don't assume "Indigenous" is one thing, is one people, is one perspective or way of living, or is synonymous with any one thing in particular--not one value system, not one worldview, and not one code of ethics and practice.

But Indigenism is a word with meaning for me. And it means being anti-civilisation, and pro-Life--but not as the U.S. white Right narrowly and horrendously defines that term. For me, to be pro-Life is to be anti-civilisation. To be pro-Life is to be pro-sustainability, pro-soil, pro-sentient being, pro-human-as-inhabitant not as human-as-ruler of the Earth or Gaia.

Indigenism has increasingly become centralised in my radical profeminism because it is necessarily anti-colonialism, anti-Western imperialism, and anti-racist, and anti-civilisation. It is pro-sustainability and pro-Earth, which is also to say pro-Life. And white feminism has much of its roots in the life experiences, the values and practices, of Indigenous women. So too must my radical profeminism, to the extent that it can, given my relational removal from such people due to my pernicious privileges and ethically questionable capabilities to live with and among mostly white people. Given that, it is my practice to not have my closest friends be white or men. And that is how it is: most of my closest friends are women of color, Black women particularly, mostly but not entirely African American. The learning from Black women that has happened, due to me listening, not do to me asking much, is also central to my radical profeminism. Hours and hours of dialogue, discussion, and increasingly less defensive debate from me, has been invaluable, and I hope helpful to each of the women who I have been honored to call "friend". Additionally and with great impact on my thinking and being, white radical feminism has been crucial to me. And remains so. And connection to white radical feminists--lesbian and not lesbian--has been a source of great learning and understanding about what it means to be a woman living in a patriarchal society.

I fully acknowledge and find important that the radical feminist perspectives I pay the closest attention to come from women of color directly, and are formed from the soil of experiences women of color face globally, in great diversity, with many necessarily different priorities. But to say I don't care about or listen to white radical feminists would be a gross lie. As many know, Andrea Dworkin is one of the people whose work I look to most for guidance and direction. But so to is the work of Andrea Smith and Audre Lorde. So to is the work of so many women who may never write several books, but who ought to have several books written about them, such as Yanar Mohammed for all the radical feminist work she does.

Radical profeminism, then, is a way of life, a way of listening, and a way of being accountable to women as I act in the world, or one tiny portion of it, to effect change geared toward exposing and eliminating white heterosexual male supremacy from the Earth. Whether white heterosexual men will deeply challenge themselves to change, to radically transform themselves into more humane and responsible beings, remains to be seen. If they resist such change, I welcome them to leave women alone while they await their deaths. For white male supremacy is anti-Life and is pro-Death. And so it will die, one day, one way or another. And human Life will return in greater harmony with the Earth, with Life In Balance, or Suyanisqatsi.

A Pacific Indigenist Perspective on the Copenhagen Climate Conference 2009 ECD


[image is from here]
All that follows is a repost from an Indigenist Intelligence Review blogpost here. With many thanks to all who work so hard and report to that blog. URL: http://indigenist.blogspot.com/2009/12/copenhagen-day-6-7-report-pacific.html

Copenhagen Day 6 & 7 Report: A Pacific Perspective

Talofa all,

As we come to the end of the first week in Copenhagen, we look back with somewhat a degree of satisfaction as a Pacific Islander here watching the process unfold from an observer's perspective. Whilst most of the discussions this week have been held in closed doors with many of us in the indigenous peoples caucus being excluded from taking part directly, we have nevertheless continued with our own corridor and outside work engaging in lobbying activities and involved in the Klimaforum09 civil society conference giving presentations to the rest of the world represented there on the issues about climate change that are relevant for our Pacific and Indigenous peoples.

As Indigenous Peoples, we took part yesterday in leading the more than 100,000 protesters marching for some more than 6 hours in the very cold streets of Copenhagen to Belle Center where the official negotiations are taken place in demonstration about the lack of progress in heeding the clear science about the urgency with which this meeting needed to address climate change. Malia Nobrega and myself were joined by our colleague Sina Brown-Davis from Aotearoa but resident in Melbourne Australia in the protest march and we hope we did our Pacific constituency justice in being your representatives in this international advocacy activity.

Malia and I also met the Ulu of Tokelau, His Excellency Foua Toloa, who I understand is here as part of the New Zealand delegation to lobby observer status of Tokelau in the Association of Small Islands States (AOSIS), and allegedly receiving a TV crew assistance from the Danish government to take advantage of the opportunity in Copenhagen to speak out for his small island and peoples now suffering serious impacts of climate change. I was privileged to have been part of his TV interviews as I expressed with him the privilege of having this opportunity to join more than 100,000 global protesters as a voice and representative of our voiceless peoples in the Pacific who are in the forefront of the impacts of climate change yet contributed negligibly to the causes.

There were also other opportunities which I took with a number of television crews from climate justice supporters interested in our Pacific situation and I was able to speak about our issues as Pacific countries affected by climate change and shared our concerns with their audiences on things like false solutions as in geo-engineering such as ocean fertilization in the Pacific ocean; lack of political will in the current negotiation process to take serious actions to curb climate change despite the clear urgency called by the sciences; the unacceptable process of shifting liability by the developed countries to developing in terms of commitments already made in UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol; the denouncing of the attempts by Annex 1 (developed countries) parties to kill the Kyoto Protocol; the importance for all parties to be sincere and genuine about the spirit of the Bali Action Plan and its building blocks; the need to heed the call of Indigenous Peoples as well as ensuring their rights in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous peoples UNDRIP, are given due respect and recognition.

Whilst the Indigenous Peoples were very vocal singing, chanting and marching about our issues during the march, more than 900 campaigners were arrested and police have been accused of overreacting to sporadic street violence as many protesters urged conference delegates to work out a legally binding deal to tackle climate change.

I said that as a Pacific Islander, I feel somewhat encouraged in the activities of the last week, and this is because of the leading role that the chief negotiator of Tuvalu takes the drivers seat in this United Nations Forum for Climate Change, UNFCC, process and is turning into the little island nation that could just be the game changer in these talks. After making headlines at least twice this week about insisting for a legally binding outcome from Copenhagen, Tuvalu again in the plenary meeting of the resumed COP yesterday made an impassioned plea, which many observers immediately called the signature moment of the talks thus far. In an earnest, emotional address, lead negotiator Ian Fry called on the United States Senate and President Obama directly.

To paraphrase:

"I understand that we are waiting for the U.S. Senate. It seems the fate of the world lies in the hands of a few U.S. senators. It is difficult that we are waiting for one country to decide before the international community can move forward. President Obama was currently in Sweden accepting a Nobel Prize, whether rightly or wrongly. For him to honor his Nobel Prize, he should address the greatest threat to humanity, climate change, and the greatest threat to human security, climate change."

He defended his standing firmly in the way of consensus, demanding that the legally-binding nature of a deal be discussed in open sessions, not closed door backrooms. Fry urged that the entire population of Tuvalu lives within 2 meters of sea level, that their very existence as a nation is at stake, and that he isn't trying to embarrass anyone, cause trouble, or make a show, but merely serve the people of Tuvalu and protect their future. With tears in his eyes, Fry closed saying: - "I woke this morning, and I was crying, and that’s not easy for a grown man to admit. The fate of my country rests in your hands". As a Pacific Islander and an Indigenous representative of the Pacific, I feel very touched and agree with a number of my colleagues who have suggested that it is time we seriously consider proposing an international human rights recognition for this courageous climate justice defender of the Pacific small island countries.

Yesterday, Saturday 12 December, was International Indigenous Peoples Day. To celebrate this, the International Working Group on Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) and Tebtebba organized a day of activities in cooperation with the International Indigenous Peoples' Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC) where the President of the Sami Parliament (see footnote below), Head of the Greenland delegation in Copenhagen, a Canadian Inuit Environmental Human Rights Activist, and Chair of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) addressed the members of the IIPFCC. A series of workshops and panel discussions took place in the areas of climate change and human rights; forests, biodiversity and climate change; Indigenous Peoples' traditional knowledge and western science on climate change; conversion and tensions; Indigenous' Peoples Local adaptation and mitigation measures; and closing at 5.00pm with messages and reports from the various workshops. Malia and I were only able to participate in the morning sessions before we joined the protest march for the rest of the afternoon and evening.

Today is Sunday the 7th day of the conference and as the leaders arrive, we as observers will find it impossible to penetrate the securities that surround the Belle Center and we will do our best to work with our sources that are in the official delegation to keep updating you on what will transpire during this important week for all of us in the Pacific.

As we head into these final few days, I can only pray that the man of our time, President Obama of the USA, will be the agent of change, as he alone seem to be the saviour for climate change; the person that has the capacity to fill all the gaps in these negotiations; the one to ensure that there will be a meaningful outcome of Copenhagen for Pacific Island Countries, Small Islands Developing States, Indigenous Peoples, and many of our developing countries; and the signs are there with this great man to heed the urgency with which the science is saying to take serious actions to address the disastrous impacts of climate change. At least all his speeches on this issue point to that, and the fact that there are already some change in the USA leading negotiator's attitude to allow language on UNDRIP, safeguards, reference to indigenous peoples in the latest draft text on AWG-LCA 8 item 3 on REDD and REDD plus that came out yesterday, I am hopeful that the analogy of the Saviour of the World is not far from the truth when Obama makes his visit to Copenhagen later this week to ensure that the outcome of Copenhagen will indeed be worthwhile for all of us.

With my best regards from Copenhagen.
Fiu

Executive Director of Ole Siosiomaga Society Incorporated (OLSSI) - Samoa
Pacific Indigenous Representative to Copenhagen

(Note: The Sami people, also spelled Sámi, or Saami, (also known as Lapps, although this term is considered derogatory) are one of the indigenous people of northern Europe inhabiting Sápmi, which today encompasses parts of northern Sweden, Norway, Finland and the Kola Peninsula of Russia but also in the border area between south and middle Sweden. Their ancestral lands span an area the size of Sweden in the Nordic countries. The Sami people are among the largest indigenous ethnic groups in Europe. Their traditional languages are the Sami languages, which are classified as members of the Finno-Lappic group of the Uralic language family)

Guest Post from BroadSnark blog: How did it come to be that the U.S. is "a Christian nation"?


[image of pro-U.S. as a Christian nation button is from here]

With thanks to Mel!!! -- Julian (all that follows in this post was written by Mel and can also be found at its original blogsite here @ BroadSnark)

How Are We A Christian Nation?

March 18, 2009 By: Mel
Category: Civil Rights, Human Rights, Immigration, Racism
 
People may dispute that the United States is a “Christian nation,” but nobody disputes that the majority of the people living here identify as Christian. When Columbus stumbled upon the Americas, there weren’t any Christians here. So how did it happen that the most common religion in the country became Christianity?

On the west coast of what is now the United States, Spanish priests set up a string of missions. Natives were forcefully converted and used as slave labor. On the east coast, the Puritans had far less luck converting natives. Devastating European diseases, a constant influx of new Christians from Europe, and violent competition for land soon made the non-Christian, native populations tiny and powerless.

It wasn’t just Europeans that wanted to come here. Asian immigrants also came in huge numbers to work on railroads, mining, and lumber. In 1852, about 10% of the population of California was of Chinese descent. The Chinese population decreased exponentially after California residents pushed for our first anti-immigrant law, The Chinese Exclusion Act. Chinese were barred from coming here and ineligible to become citizens until the 1940s. Had it not been for that, we would have many more Taoists, Buddhists, and Confucians in our midst.

Jews were also a target of immigration laws. The Immigration Act of 1891 aimed to stem the tide of Russian and Eastern European Jews that had been coming to the U.S. in large numbers. The House of Representatives also tried to require literacy tests for any immigrants, mostly to restrict access to undereducated, Yiddish speaking Jews from Europe. Even when Jews were dying by the millions during World War II, the U.S. continued to block Jewish immigrants.

Until 1965, when President Johnson signed into law sweeping immigration reform, our immigration laws were intended to keep the United States as white and Christian as possible. If we are a nation of mostly Christians, it is because of systematic discrimination supported by the very un-Christian, Christians who designed U.S. laws.
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Indigenous North Americans at White Christian Boarding Schools: Surviving Physical, Sexual, Spiritual, and Genocidal Abuse

TRIGGER WARNING: Graphic stories of ABUSE AND SURVIVAL follow.

First we hear from a woman about her experience of gross physical abuse. The we hear the story of a boy whose hair was forcibly cut off. There were many horrible things that happened at the hands and policies of white people, by white men and white women. For me, these are but two of far too many examples of how white Christian supremacy is a genocidal force in the world. I feel rage and sorrow when I hear these stories of abuse. And it makes me wish white Christianity had never been born upon the Earth.

Lakota woman Joanne Tall describes the abuse she received as a 12 year old girl in a "christian" boarding school:


In 1869 the US government forced large numbers of Indian children into Boarding Schools where brainwashing techniques were used to try to assimilate them and teach them the ways of western society. A popular term was "Kill the Indian, Save the man". Children were stolen from their family, humiliated, physically and mentally abused. More than 100,000 Indian children were stripped of their language, cultural heritage and identity:

Radical Feminist Andrea Smith on WHM Supremacist Christianity and Cultural Genocide of American Indians



See also: http://www.aclu.org/hrc/NativeRights_AndreaSmith.pdf

My struggles with White U.S. Christianity


[image of Audre Lorde is from here]

I grew up in the U.S., which has always been proclaimed by powerful white heterosexual men to be "a Christian nation". I am a Jew, and I know Jews did not found this country. Christian-identified, Bible-reading heterosexual white men did, by enslaving West Africans and by committing genocide against the Indigenous people of the Americas, and by possessing and raping women of all colors.

I have never known a time where white heterosexual male supremacist Christianity was not the dominant religious tradition in the West. Most of the teachers in my early life were white Christians and they taught me horrible lies about this country, and about what this country has always required to exist. I was told it required democracy and "freedom for all" but found out as I grew up that this Christian-dominated country I live in, this white, male, and heterosexual dominated society, this anti-Semitic society, this anti-Muslim society, this anti-Indigenous society, has thrived by hating and killing people who are not Christian/white/heterosexual males.

My whole life I have heard white Christian people tell me that white = superior, heterosexual = superior, male = superior, and so I hope it comes as no surprise that I have no great fondness for a Christianity that, when spoken about and practiced by people, is heterosexist, racist, misogynist, and genocidal.

I have never really taken what white men say to be "the absolute truth" including when it comes to "G-d". I have my own experiences of G-d, which are not exactly theistic. And the G-d I know does not will racism, heterosexism, or misogyny. Or capitalism, or money economies, or the death of Life on Earth. The G-d I know isn't "willful" and cannot intervene in the matters of people. The G-d I know is Life and Being on Earth, and so is harmed at the hands of white heterosexual men who promote and participate in oppression. The G-d I know is the fight for Life and Liberation.

The G-d I know, that is not a Being but is Being, is therefore not patriarchal, is not white supremacist, and is not anti-lesbian or anti-gay. The G-d I know is not anti-woman. And never has that G-d been preached to me by any white Gentile man. Never, in any white church, have I heard that Christianity celebrates me as a Jew or a gay male. Never, in any white church or by any Christian brethren, has my pro-radical feminism and radical profeminism been celebrated, honored, or respected.

My white Christian family "tolerates" me being gay and me being Jewish and doesn't understand my interest in Buddhism or feminism at all. They will not speak of me being gay, except to joke about it, and use disparaging terms for lesbian women and gay men, sometimes thinking to apologise to me when they do so, but usually not. So, with great difficulty, I have had to separate from my family of origin, and now have very little contact with them. This is true of many lesbian and gay people I know: we create our own families, because we have been rejected or are condescendingly "tolerated" by those that raised us.

One of the women who is part of this blog's community is Black and a Christian. She doesn't live in the U.S. And Christianity is very important to her, and is central to her feminism. I respect that reality. I have great respect for many liberation-loving Christians, of color and white. As has been stated elsewhere, my radical feminist (wo)mentor was a white lesbian Christian woman. She was always Christian, and struggled with the meaning of that for her. She also worshiped and prayed to many Goddesses.

I know that Christianity is a powerful source of strength for many people of color, and that in the U.S. Black women, particularly, have held to a form of Christianity that is not what white men here preach.

And their experience is not mine.

So I have little to no respect the Christianity, and the Christians, who preach with alarming regularity, that my lesbian sisters and gay brothers are more sinful than heterosexuals simply because they are not heterosexual.

I have little to no respect for any Christianity that tells me I need to "find and accept jesus as my one true lord and savior". I have found the Lorde, and her name is Audre.

I hope that all who come here respect and honor what I have written above as my experience and my Truth.