John Stoltenberg's and Cristan Williams' The Conversations Project: Some Final Thoughts

graphic is from here

Note: When I heard Prince died earlier on Thursday, what I recalled was how much Andrea Dworkin loved his work.

The message in the above graphic was never anything 

The Conversations Project endeavored to do. 

Yet they insisted they were a radical feminist group.

I may be writing more about this, but just wanted to update you that after four months of very engaged involvement, I've been purged without notice from The Conversations Project Facebook group started by John Stoltenberg and Cristan Williams, although John was largely absent.

Here are a few concluding thoughts:

1. The group was steadfastly anti-radical feminist, but couched this as
anti-T--F, as if those radical feminists who are against the liberalism and male supremacy in trans politics should and can be separated out from those who are or were not.

2. There was consistent refusal to admit that they were misusing and misunderstanding the early work of Andrea Dworkin while ignoring all of Dworkin's later work (like, at least 11/12ths of what Andrea wrote). The only passages of hers they ever referred to (a lot) were Dworkin's most liberal points in Woman Hating about multisexuality and androgyny. They refused to acknowledge Andrea's mid-70s discussion of androgyny was something that wasn't specific to her, and something that was of political interest during that decade, but never thereafter. (As was the case for so many white feminists in that period: Kate Millett, Shulamith Firestone, and Marge Piercy, for example.) They refused to consider why Andrea later rejected the last section of Woman Hating as politically and intellectually problematic. They clung to a few early ideas because dealing with anything else--such as pornography, prostitution, male privilege, male power, white and male supremacy, the process of subordinating female bodies such as through intercourse, battery, and rape--would have implicated some of their own politics as more overtly pro-patriarchal and white supremacist. The only snippets of Catharine MacKinnon's work they paid any attention to were from a grossly overly-steered interview Cristan did with Catharine. As if that's what MacKinnon's thirty plus years of radical feminist activism should be reduced to.

3. There were less than five pro-radical/pro-feminist people in the group. One person, a white transsexual (not transgender) woman, left the group only after about a week being there due to the incessant liberalism, anti-radicalism, and anti-feminism. Now there are no radical feminists in the group, although one member, Margo, who identifies as a white lesbian feminist, has consistently advocated for feminist values and sisterly approaches to dealing with the Turf War, and I respect her very much for that. And one man there has been consistently affirmative of radical feminist perspectives on gender and sex. When Margo posted things that called for respect and regard for all feminists, few to no members "liked" her comments. Cristan and John never "liked" them.

4. The group was so white (how white was it?) that the only posts made about women of color, or even more generally, people of color, were exploitive: John and one other member, early on, posted links to Navajo understandings of gender, not because he ever discussed or linked to how to end white colonialist-patriarchal genocide, but, disturbingly, just because such ideas might be useful to or of interest to whites.

5. The white members of the group (the great majority) refused to center women of color. They refused to center an examination of how their race, sex, and class privileges shaped their views, their values, and their agendas. Doing so was considered 'off topic'. Supporting white, class-privileged transwomen was always on topic. No one white and trans in the group ever made it a point to name how they had white privilege.

6. The dominant membership always positioned some radical feminists as THE enemy. They did not critique or focus on white men (as a structurally positioned enemy class). When white men were critiqued, it was without the same disdain and derision as they demonstrated for some white radical and lesbian feminists. (I call that blatant misogyny, anti-lesbianism, and anti-feminism.) They never, ever considered what trans-critical feminists were arguing against or for. It was always only viewed as "hatred" and "wanting us dead". As if white and male privilege and power--including theirs--doesn't result in the deaths of women across many differences.

7. The group was never committed, even vaguely, to an anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal, or anti-colonialist agenda. Never. Ever. Ever. In this sense and others, the group was willfully and determinedly liberal yet being called liberal was considered an insult, for reasons which remain unclear. If it is so blatantly what you are and is all you want to be, own it and be proud of it, for god's sake. I conclude they valued the term "radical" because it allowed them to discuss the rare liberal points of Dworkin and MacKinnon as if those were radical. I think it gave them a kind of cache to make it seem as if they were distinguishable from their more honest liberal comrades. When I linked to useful ways to understand historical radicalism (as an actual political stance against institutionalised oppression), they rejected or ignored them. Sadly and outrageously, there was nothing about their perspective that was radical. Nothing. And their name revealed this from the start: no group that is seriously radical (that I've ever been aware of) makes a point of cramming the term into their title twice.

8. The group never considered what it is that causes the mass deaths of marginalised women of color. It was beyond their vision, their call to action, to do so. All they could come up with is transphobia. As if.

9. It became crystal clear to me that Cristan, and more surprisingly John, did not understood the traditional political meaning of "radical" when it comes to radical feminism. Again, John was largely absent as an active member, although he read a lot of the comments. But what became distressingly clear was that he could not articulate what Andrea's radical feminism meant or was. He was and is only concerned with prioritising the points of view of white and/or male-privileged people, over and against lesbian feminists. He refuses to see that Andrea never divorced 'woman' (the patriarchal construction) from what actually happens, oppressively, violatingly, demeaningly, to almost all female people from birth to death. Instead, he believes that what Andrea said about "multisexuality" in 1974, or this, from 1975, "it is not true that there are two sexes that are discrete and opposite, which are polar...", were in fact radical things to say. They were radical things to read--for him, a white man. What the group seemed to mean by 'radical' was allegedly post-modernly complex or intellectually ground-breaking. 'Radical', for him, only addressed acts of speech or ideas in writing, not political campaigns or efforts at social change. (For some discussion about Andrea's later abandonment of such 'radical ideas', please see the notes in a book called Without Apology: Andrea Dworkin's Art and Politics, by Cindy Jenefsky.) I repeatedly pointed out, if these are such 'essential' points of Andrea's, why do they never again appear in her work, over the next twenty years? Crickets chirped. This was a stubbornly anti-activist group. The only allegedly 'radical' action John engaged in was introducing young people to a liberal idea of multisexuality. Campaigns to end violence against women? Nope. How to organise against heteropatriarchy? Nope. Talking to college students about being colors in a color wheel: that's where it's at for John.

10. Also, members had no interest in supporting or working towards a truce between some white radical lesbian feminists and some white liberal trans activists. Only Margo, and the transsexual woman who left in disgust, explicitly welcomed this as a goal. The rest were intent on demonising some feminists (not just some of their views, but their personhood), while ignoring how their own political perspective was misogynistic, racist, and, yes, anti-trans.

The Conversations Project: The Radical Inclusivity of Radical Feminism should be titled:

"John and Cristan's Project: Radically Ignoring Radical Feminism".

Sad. And predictable. There's this old expression, 'When someone shows you who they are, believe them.' Yup. Everything I first experienced in that group in January proved to remain the case in April. Lesson learned.

The Hidden Essentialisms in White, Trans, Anti-Radical Feminist Discourse

essentalism Power Point slide is from here

I want to explicitly state a Trigger Warning, in particular for survivors of patriarchal sexual atrocities. There is not anything very graphic below, but particular manifestations of rape culture are discussed by me as an important factor in understanding male socialisation and privilege.

I have had the feeling, for years, that important stuff ain't getting named, when I read some arguments white anti-RF pro-trans people make to discredit and distance themselves from those seemingly essentialist white Radical Feminists. What isn't getting named, are the experiences of most people in the world. What isn't getting named are hidden forms of 'essentialism'. I'm not yet hearing anti-essentialist pro-trans activists call this stuff out in trans-friendly spaces, possibly because that would mean decentering whiteness as a norm.

While I made a very small change to some of the content, the whole of what follows has been copied and pasted from the comments section of an A.R.P. post from late 2011: https://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2011/11/andrea-dworkin-on-transsexuality-and-on.html

The comments, however, are brand new as of February 2016.

 enhanta bodlar said...

Julian: it seems like you believe that trans women specifically are subject to male socialization and thus, male privilege--and in the case that they are also white, another level of advantage. However, despite being exposed to a form of male socialization, transgender women do not receive the same social instruction that shapes cisgender males, as they still internalize the example of female behavior that influences female socialization. Trans women's socialization really is distinct to trans women, and in reality they do not really benefit socially from any element of male socialization they may retain.

 Julian Real said...

Hi enhanta,

TW for discussion that includes violating practices in rape culture.

My response is in a few parts.

Thank you so much for your comment. I'll do my best to clarify my position. Most trans women I have known grew up with some levels of male socialisation, male privilege, male entitlements, and so forth. Some with a great deal of it. Here's one example. A white, class-privileged trans woman was raised to be a boy and a man. She excelled in Anglo-white-masculine pursuits, including using firearms, negotiating a world from the vantage point of having wealth, and having a military career. She transitioned in her forties. She got involved with a nontrans lesbian and became controlling and abusive, in ways typical of people socialised to value power and domination as white men practice it. She was possessive. She leaned on her partner for economic survival. (Her family disowned her and she had no poverty survival skills.) This rendered her especially dependent on her partner, who grew up in poverty. She was sexually coercive and insensitive to her partner's reality as an incest survivor. (Of course some nontrans lesbian women can be batterers and committers of sexual assault: the point is that it is still learned from patriarchal socialisation.)

And, of course, regardless of being trans or not, whatever sex or gender we were or are, we are all raised, systematically, to value maleness, manhood, and masculinity. Some of that maleness and manhood is more despised, due to being raced Black or Brown, being effeminate, and so forth. And some forms of femininity and womanhood are less despised in colonial patriarchies, such as lighter-skinned people of color relative to darker-skinned people of color.

So I would say *we all do*, to varying extents: we are, collectively, subjected to colonial and patriarchal male socialisation, regardless of gender. And, in this view, there's no way a U.S.-raised trans woman would be exempt from such male socialisation, even if one never identified as a male, or boy, or man. If the issue is whether and how we benefit from it, I'd argue that, too, is very complicated, due to age, region, ethnicity, race, sexuality, generation, class, weight, height, build, tone of skin, abilities, and religion, among other variables.

 Julian Real said...

When you state this, "transgender women do not receive the same social instruction that shapes cisgender males", do you mean pre-transition or post-transition? And, are you assuming all transgender women are transsexual, or have transitioned in medical or other ways? The current measure of being trans in trans spaces I'm familiar with is how one identifies, not what one has done in an effort to mitigate dysphoria, to whatever (again very varied) extents that has existed in one's life. Many trans, non-gender conforming, and genderqueer people do not identify as male or female, as masculine or feminine, and so have a different relationship to binary socialisation than do those who find meaning in expressing what they understand to be 'one end' of the binary. I find that younger people in queer communities are less 'observant' of the gender binary.

I reject the cis and trans linguistic binary because many, if not most, trans people also carry various forms of what is termed 'cis' privilege--particularly if one did not suffer greatly from dysphoria and if one is not transsexual. "Trans womanness" is not one thing, does not necessitate having dysphoria, does not mean one didn't feel like the gender of the child they were assigned at birth. For some, dysphoria comes later, for some 'dysphoria' isn't the compelling experience leading one to ID as trans.

Also, many people are 'trans' to gender dominants: whites view Black nontrans women's cisgender as unstable, for example. Many nontrans people who cannot but help present as gender ambiguous, or as effeminate males, or as butch lesbians, are not viewed as 'cis' by nontrans people. We all have our own relationships to the values and victimisations of male socialisation.

You write, "they still internalize the example of female behavior that influences female socialization".

On what are you basing that? Again, who is the 'they'? Black women internalising misogynoir? Many nontrans gayboys positively internalise the example of female behavior that influences their own socialisation--this is true of some non-gay boys too. The very elements that are highlighted as 'female behavior' may be embraced by a group of Brown gay men while rejected by white lesbians.

 Julian Real said...

***TW for discussion of the violations of rape culture***:

You continue, "Trans women's socialization really is distinct to trans women, and in reality they do not really benefit socially from any element of male socialization they may retain."

What is this alleged universal (or 'essential') distinction? I'd appreciate it if you could articulate that.

Do class-privileged white trans women not benefit from any element of rich white male socialisation, if that socialisation acculturates someone to be a more successful navigator of white male supremacist society, such as the corporate business world? What are the lessons learned when one's experience in childhood, when socially regarded as an adolescent boy by other boys, was to not be targeted for sexual 'interest' and assault by those boys? Being bullied and being forcibly fingered are two distinct experiences, are they not? How does not being part of the group targeted for sexually violent groping and physical invasion benefit one? Perhaps the answer is: One isn't sexually assaulted by those boys at age 11 through 13. That's quite a specific benefit of male socialisation, is it not? What about a father by-passing 'the boys' bedroom to rape his daughters down the hall? Are you saying there's no benefit to that socialisation, for the trans child who the father regards as a boy (even if this child feared being discovered as a nonbinary child)? This trans child likely does not live with the internalised disgust and shame of their body that their sisters may carry, nor the fear of men entering their sleeping space. That child's shame may be quite different, but we ought not conclude there were no benefits to not being raped from ages three to ten.

To make the arguments you present, we have to essentialise transness, do we not? And cisness as well? And to standardise male and female socialisation out of the real world, such that race and other factors don't 'factor in'?

I look forward to your responses and to continuing the conversation.

On the importance of appreciating intersectionality if one cares about remedying or ending the oppression of women

image is from here

Curiously, obnoxiously, or infuriatingly, depending on your political location and tolerance for stupidity, some whites are into dissing the concept of "intersectionality" as post-modern nonsense designed to unnecessarily or obfuscate the oppression of women by men, or of poor men by rich men, or of people of color by whites.

We might note that for people oppressed by race, class, region, religion, sexuality, and gender, "intersectionality" may well be one of the most useful conceptual tools for describing one's own experience of being in the world. But for the less complexly oppressed, it may well seem like a messy addition to the language of anti-oppression and liberation work.

I've been hearing of whites dissing this term most of all: class-privileged, non-Lesbian, regionally and educationally privileged whites at that. How convenient for them to disrespect and dismiss a way of understanding the world's human populations that makes more visible women who are not white, class-privileged, and advantaged structurally in other ways as well. How white supremacist to pretend that such a term is unnecessary and needlessly distracting from the "core" issue: men's oppression of [white] women. Also, without utlising the concept of intersectionality to the problem of women's oppression, we might (dangerously) be able to ignore how white women and men across race oppress women of color.

For the whites who only listen to other whites, who insist the term isn't appropriate or useful--or necessary--in the struggle to end patriarchal and male supremacist atrocities, who won't take the work of Kimberlé Crenshaw and so many other radical womanists and feminists seriously, I recommend they review this lecture by a prominent U.S. white radical feminist. MacKinnon has, herself, problematically discussed the condition of white women in an essay critiqued for appearing to minimise the political meaning and racist-misogynist oppression acted out of the whiteness of white women--against women of color. See *here* for that. And see *here* for the PDF which contains a response/critique.

If anyone obtains the transcript of text of MacKinnon's lecture, I'd be interested to read it.

Oct 12
Intersectionalities: Theorizing Multiple Discrimination, Identity and Power
Speaker

Catharine A. MacKinnon, University of Michigan
Location

William and June Warren Hall, Room 207
Time

6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
Description

Sponsored by the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies and co-sponsored by The Center for Gender and Sexuality Law

Catharine A. MacKinnon is the Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. She is among the most heavily cited scholars publishing in the English language, and is world renowned for her groundbreaking work in the areas of feminist jurisprudence, pornography and civil rights, and politicizing rape and other forms of gender-based violence as a "gender crime" in the context of international human rights law. Since 2008, she has served as the Special Gender Advisor to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (The Hague).

*Introduction by Beth Ribet, Research Director, Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies [source for this: http://iserp.columbia.edu/content/intersectionalities-theorizing-multiple-discrimination-identity-and-power ]

When White's Not Right: A Substantive Challenge to the White Bloggers at Rad Fem Hub

image is from here

Revised and edited on the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th of July 2011. With apologies for the on-going changes. Dear women at Rad Fem Hub, I write to you with congratulations and concern. First, I am impressed to see so many women bloggers come together declaring yourselves unapologetically radical feminist, putting forth a woman-centered and woman-first politic and practice. My concern is with the significant white-centeredness and unacknowledged white supremacist entitlements and privileges put forth by the white members of the group. Not just that, but the radical political meaning of whiteness and the real harm it causes to women of color around the world, isn't discussed on your blog, at least in the places I visited. If such a critique of whiteness is present, I surely welcome you to alert me to where that exists. Given how many white women you have as part of the group, I was hoping that some of you would make identifying and calling out racist-misogyny a focus or at least a part of the political practice there so that other whites who come to the blog as a central source of information about radical feminism will have a good example of how this is done responsibly among whites. In my experience, whites rarely bring to one another's attention how our whiteness shows up in racist-misogynist ways in our perspectives, values, and practices. It is my genuine hope that this letter is received by you not at all as an attack or as an act of aggression, but as a statement of concern and challenge brought forth with the desire to see more accountability among whites and less burden on women of color to call out white racism. I'm very open to discussing this matter of white dominance, white exclusivity, white supremacy, and white- and euro-centrism that I see existing structurally at Rad Fem Hub. (You of course may disagree that some or any of that is present; I'm willing to publicly put forth why it is I've come to that conclusion and if you're unclear about anything that follows, I'll do my best to be clearer and appropriately responsive in ways that further explicate my statements.) I hope you will address writings by women--of color and white--that I didn't see linked to or referenced on your blog's resources pages. If they are new to you, please take to heart and mind what they say, so that your politics and practice might indeed be radical with regard to race. As it currently exists, what I see on your blog is liberal to conservative with regard to race. For this reason, I don't know any Black or Brown radical feminist women of color who would want to join such a white-dominated, white unconscious, and white-protected space.  Black, Brown, and white radical feminist writers I hold myself accountable to or regard as significant feminist theorists and practitioners have presented a very clear and cogent critique and analysis of white supremacy as it is manifest in white radical and feminist discourse and other behavior. Two of the women I got to know through their posts as bloggers, who have brought forth a critique of white privilege and entitlements showing up in white women's spaces or in white women's writings are brownfemipower, formerly of La Chola and currently the host of flipfloppingjoy, and dedgurl of The Vagina Conspiracy. Bev Jo, a long-time white radical Lesbian activist and blogger has also clearly articulated what's white supremacist and oppressively misogynistic about white racism in feminist spaces. I have read her challenges on some of your individual blogs; she has also courageously challenged some of you on anti-Lesbian and heterosexist practices. I appreciate the work of all of these women. Over the last thirty years, I have only encountered a small number of Western white radical feminists who have carefully examined what their own whiteness means. Perhaps the best known and most published of these women is Marilyn Frye, who has written explicitly on this subject. I hope you will consider including her excellent books of theoretical essays, The Politics of Reality and Willful Virgin, in which she discusses whiteness, in your reading resources list. While you do recommend one of Audre Lorde's books of poetry, Cables To Rage, I was saddened to not see listed her extremely important and classic radical lesbian feminist book of essays and speeches, Sister Outsider. Several of those writings are excellent learning resources for white women. I'll link to those at the end of this letter. I'm concerned that you also made no mention of the books by the extraordinarily prolific radical feminist bell hooks. She has written a great deal on the subject of white women's racism being an obstacle to women's liberation. Her first book on this subject was Ain't I A Woman? Her writings cover so many topics relevant to radical liberation struggles across gender, race, and class. I hope you get to read a lot more of what she has put forth for serious consideration. *Here is a link* to many of her books. I also recommend adding the work of Andrea Smith, an Indigenous radical feminist. A book that greatly impacted me was Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide. In Deals With the Devil and Other Reasons to Riot, Pearl Cleage deals superbly with interpersonal politics and the importance of whites and men maintaining a posture of listening, not defensiveness, when challenged on racism or sexism by women of color.  Of all the many radical feminist books that are available in English for white women to learn about and be responsible with their white power and privileges, not one book, essay, or speech makes your recommended readings and resources lists. This deeply concerns me because without such perspectives and challenges white radical feminism stays stuck in a tradition of entrenched white-centrism which while not always intentionally harmful, is always effectively oppressive in misogynist-racist ways. I'm curious to know if you believe the white-only or white-majority lists you promote speak for all women and to all women's struggles in patriarchal societies? Is this form of white supremacy something you are wanting to perpetuate? Regardless of matters of intention or oversight, it is unacceptable and not at all radical in my view, if women of color matter to you as women.  For an astoundingly superb understanding of whiteness and white supremacy, I strongly recommend all of you who are white at Rad Fem Hub reading Yurugu: An African-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior, by Marimba Ani, which has one of the most comprehensive and sophisticated analyses of euro- and white-centrism of any book written in English. I also recommend that you list the many books of the radical and feminist writer-activist Angela Davis, including the feminist classic, Women, Race, and Class. More of her books are listed *here*. Vandana Shiva is a radical feminist whose books, in my opinion, ought not be ignored or passed off as something other than radical feminist. Whether or not she identifies as a radical feminist, I truly believe radical feminism needs her contributions of experience, perspective, and values, in order to thrive and address the many problems killing women. *Here is a comprehensive list of her many books*. Do you see your own unacknowledged and unexamined collective whiteness—among those of you who are white—as a significant political obstacle to radical revolutionary action and community-building? How could it not be a seriously oppressive obstacle given that whiteness-in-action is always an obstacle to liberation for women of color? I entirely respect you setting up your blog to be woman-only. I wish there were more woman-only spaces on- and off-line and in an era when women's space is disrespected by so many people, I will defend your right to create woman-only spaces as you define them. I therefore welcome you to visit me here on my blog, to discuss how white feminists historically and presently practice conservative to liberal racist-misogyny. I welcome engaging with you on the matter of whiteness and how white-majority spaces regulate what can be expressed within them, just as majority-man spaces determine what women can say and do there. I believe that the very fact of being white-majority and white-centric means that many radical feminist women who are not white are not likely to feel at home at Rad Fem Hub. Does that concern you in terms of your own collective objectives for the kind of space the blog is and will become? In my experience, as long as any blog or social space is unaccountably or unconsciously white-dominated, white-led, white-majority, and white-centric, it cannot be effectively radical and revolutionary. One of the first radical feminists who drew my attention to this was a woman I know many of you admire, Andrea Dworkin: you can read her challenge to white, class-privileged women in the introduction to her 1974 book, Woman Hating. There she discusses the exemplary revolutionary feminism of Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman, noting that revolutionary feminism will not succeed if white and middle class women do not contend with and responsibly negotiate the power of their privileges. I'm wondering if you believe that the forms of unacknowledged whiteness that are replicated at Rad Fem Hub are any less oppressive, hurtful, and lethal to women of color than men's male supremacy? Marimba Ani and many other radical women detail how whiteness, including that practiced by white women, is very destructive. It's not that I think your blog is in any way lethal to anyone; it's that I think it participates in a history of unconscious and/or willful white behavior that is very harmful and exclusionary to women of color and racistly possessive of the term "radical feminism". It's those structures and practices, globally, that are indeed grossly oppressive and commonly lethal. I hope you will consider making your blog a place where those structures and practices are not present. It seems to me that one of the ways for those of us who are white to invisibilise and deny the racism so often embedded in white radical feminism is to only take up issues that appear to be free of it. For example, your blog may appear to some privileged folks to not be overtly racist and classist; I'd argue these forms of oppression are blatantly present in the views you present to the readers. Narrow, while importantly anti-patriarchal, views of prostitution, pornography, and some forms of heterosexist sexuality may be discussed at (or linked to from) Rad Fem Hub without recognising how the discussions themselves are imbued with and shaped by white and class privilege and entitlement. When we who are white and class-privileged deal also with immigration, economic class warfare, imperialism, colonialism, genocide, and globalisation, there is a greater opportunity to witness ourselves as the structural and institutional oppressors of women of color internationally. If and when prostitution, pornography, some trans politics, and PIV sex are spoken about, discussed, analysed, and challenged only on the grounds that they perpetuate patriarchal oppression of women-unraced, we lose both the opportunity to know how women (and trans people across gender) of color have different experiences of those oppressive systems and practices and how white women have their own experiences as well. What tends to happen a lot in white radical feminism is that the white experience gets turned into a "human experience" as if whiteness isn't particular and partial in its political location. We have all seen how many times white het men frame up their sexed experiences as "human experience, ungendered". Obviously the point isn't that whites and males aren't fully human; it's that whites and males are not all humans and ought not speak as if we are. Another way I've heard white women dismissing and discarding any radical feminist theory and analysis that is white-critical is to turn away from an intersectional understanding of oppression and to view intersectionality itself as entirely located within a seemingly unraced liberal academic post-modern politic. In my view, such a (de)valuation is blatantly and unabashedly white supremacist, anti-radical, and anti-feminist, if the intersectional work being turned away from belongs to women like Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, Barbara Smith, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and bell hooks, to name just a few US radical feminists. I hope you support intersectional analysis at your blog. If you do not, could you please explain why you don't. If you do, can you please explain why no texts utilising this analysis appear in your recommended reading list? Why, for example, doesn't the excellent and tremendously important philosophical and sociological work of Patricia Hill Collins not make your list? I believe Black Feminist Thought and Black Sexual Politics ought to be on any radical feminist reading list. And it seems to me that any white, class-, and education-privileged English-speaking women who identify as radical feminist have no excuse if they are unfamiliar with the works of Lorde, Walker, hooks, Collins, and so many other US and international feminists who are both intersectional and radical, and not at all "post-modern" in the sense in which that term and tradition is critiqued by some radical activists. You also don't appear to acknowledge radical feminism's past and on-going debt to Indigenous feminists. The blog in its current form appears to firmly hold to a white- and euro-centric view that radical feminism rises primarily out of European Marxism. Do you see how erroneous and racist that is, given that most women's lives are not historically rooted in Western political philosophies or conditions? I recommend directing your readers and colleagues to read Sally Roesch Wagner's history of white appropriation of Indigenous feminist practice in her book, Sisters In Spirit, or to Andrea Smith's "Without Bureaucracy, Beyond Inclusion: Re-Centering Feminism". I'll close by recommending some of the writings of one of the women who is most responsible for shaping my understanding of deeply ethical, woman-loving radical feminism: Audre Lorde, "An Open Letter To Mary Daly", and "The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism", and "Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference", which may be viewed *here at Google Books*, in the astoundingly brilliant radical lesbian feminist text, Sister Outsider. From the latter essay: “…white women face the pitfall of being seduced into joining the oppressor under the pretense of sharing power. This possibility does not exist in the same way for women of Color. The tokenism that is sometimes extended to us is not an invitation to join power; our racial “otherness” is a visible reality that makes that quite clear. For white women there is wider range of pretended choices and rewards for identifying with patriarchal power and its tools.” I look forward to your answers to these questions, and to hearing your own questions and concerns. I wish you well. In the struggle, Julian with dedgurl

Dan Savage Needs Some Asexual Education

photo of Dan Savage is from here

Gratefully, I've been led to a post by a radical feminist colleague. The Q and A on that post is already two and a half years old. It contains some of Dan Savage's sex advice.

Dan Savage is the very white, pro-mainstream, Liberal to Conservative Gay [Male] columnist who ought not be positioned as a spokesperson for the queer community, in my opinion.

You might know him as one of the  founding voices behind the It Gets Better Campaign (an anti-bullying effort and a supportive video series for queer youth). Every time I see the public service announcement on television, I'm struck with how few women are in it, and also how few people of color there are, regardless of gender. It makes it seem as though queer women of color don't matter as much to Dan as white gay boys.

What could possibly explain his strange attitudes about asexual folks? Let's have a look at what he says. You can read it for yourself, uninterrupted by me, *here*.

You can read it below, interrupted by me. I'll comment in brackets and bold. As you're about to see, Dan's positioning himself as an expert on sexuality. He's clearly no expert, however, on asexuality. He's downright ignorant and insulting, actually.

I'll address these remarks directly to Dan.

The post was titled as follows:

The truth about asexuality 

It’s just as confusing as all of the other ones.

Q Does asexuality actually exist? My partner's younger brother claims to be asexual, but I think he's just a maladjusted little shit and that he's intimidated by the thought of sex. Your thoughts? --The Sister-In-Law
A Asexuality must exist, TSIL, seeing as it has its own website---asexuality.org---where you can read this:

"Asexual people have the same emotional needs as anyone else, and like [those] in the sexual community we vary widely in how we fulfill those needs. Some asexual people are happier on their own, others are happiest with a group of close friends. Other asexual people have a desire to form more intimate romantic relationships, and will date and seek long-term partnerships. Asexual people are just as likely to date sexual people as we are to date each other."

[Correction: we're far more likely to date sexually active people because there are so few of us asexual-identified people to date! We also do have sex, sometimes, for many, many reasons. I'm asexual AND celibate, but that's not the case with all asexual people. I used to be sexually active, for example.]

I'll probably be accused of asexophobia 

[Or not--because it's a stupid term, unless you're fearful of "asexo".]

for suggesting that asexuals who date "sexual people" are obligated to disclose their asexuality, preferably on the first date and certainly no later than the third date.

[Thanks for that time frame, Dan. I'll make a point not to remember it. What makes you assume that all queer folks who date are lookin' to get laid? Or have sex? Do you really think people have to discuss a/sexual preferences and orientations by the third date? How's about people actually take more than three weeks to get to know one another? 

Or, how's about people who are not asexual let those of us who are asexual AND celibate know that they're dating us to get us into our pants, so we might have the information we need to decide if we want to pursue a closer connection? Would you please make sure that happens within the first three dates? We don't need to be led on, after all.]

Asexuals may have the same emotional needs as anyone else, but most of us sexuals---heterosexuals, homosexuals, bisexuals---expect to have our emotional and sexual needs met in our "intimate romantic relationships," thanks, and we're going to want to know if that's not in the cards before we get involved, not after.

[Most of you "sexuals"--het, bi, or neither--get your sexual needs met using pornography, Dan, while pretending no one gets harmed in that vicious industry. Come on now--surely you know that. Not 'in the cards' huh? (I'm going to assume you're speaking for yourself because I know you're not speaking for all gay, bi, and lesbian people--asexual or not.) Is dating all about getting YOUR needs met, then? I thought dating was about two people getting to know each other. Silly me. Isn't it one traditional process by which we determine who we want to get to know intimately--with or without sex?]

Someone who is incapable of meeting a sexual's needs has no business dating a sexual in the first place, if you ask me. At the very least, asexuality must be disclosed.

[Well, you might want to consider not dating then. Because life doesn't happen according to your rules and regulations for queer society. It might take those of us who are asexual at least three dates to determine how bigoted people like you are about asexuality. We may not want to come out until we have a sense of that. Of course if we've read this, we'd know before hand what sort of nonsense you believe about asexuals, and could avoid dating you altogether. What needs are you and your 'sexual' sexually active friends functionally or dysfunctionally attempting to get met by having sex, anyway? I'd say it's probably at least as important that we know about each other's abuse histories, regardless of whether or not sex is 'in the cards' and I don't imagine that's always going to happen within the first three dates for the sake of the more impatient sexually active person.]

And I'm still trying to wrap my head around this: "Figuring out how to flirt, to be intimate, or to be monogamous in nonsexual relationships can be challenging..."
Um...since monogamy is understood to mean sexual exclusivity---you don't fuck other people---I'm not sure how you define monogamy in a sexless relationship. Does your asexual partner promise not to not fuck other people?

["Monogamy" means "one mate", Dan. Not one sex partner, necessarily. It is sometimes used in our community to distinguish people from those who are polyamorous. And not all poly people have sex with everyone who is in their mate or friendship network. So how about if we define monogamy in terms related to its etymology. And let's not forget: many married couples--across sexual orientation--don't have sex with one another.]

As for your brother-in-law, TSIL, I don't see what his asexuality and/or hang-ups have to do with you. If you're prying into your BIL's sex life, I'd say he's not the only maladjusted little shit in the family.

[I agree that this really ought not be of any concern to her. I'm concerned about you using a term like "hang-ups" with the term "asexuality" as if they are synonymous. They're not. An example of a "hang-up" might be someone who isn't asexual thinking that asexuality is a hang-up.

Asexuality is not something to be dismissed or otherwise dissed. As someone who is asexual, I don't appreciate Dan Savage pretending he has a fucking clue. Or an afucking clue, as the case may be.

Those of us who are asexual are not easily pigeon-holed. We're not all celibate, for example. We don't all experience the world with no sexual feelings or desires for physical intimacy. If you want to find out what we feel and think, I recommend meeting and getting to know us with as few ignorant biases as possible. And please don't expect us to tell you what you need to know in the first three meetings.]
 

[Here are two of the comments that were posted on Dan's site:]

Comments

I would love to be asexual! Imagine how much better life would be, especially if you're a guy, if you don't have to worry about wanting and chasing tail all the time? You could focus on other more important and more productive things. You could still have close and loving relationships, you just wouldn't want to sleep with the other person. It usually just complicates things anyway.

For now, I'll just have to put up with being horny.

Posted by qpmzwonxeibcruv on September 20, 2009 at 8:31 PM |

Jesus Christ, K., get over yourself. You don't sound like you have an anti-feminist axe to grind or anything. So sorry *your* "widdle feelings" appear to be hurt by this complicated world we live in.

*I* don't care what term you use. Use the pseudo- or at-best-questionably-scientific term 'frigid' all you like, go with the cultural flow of forcing sexual minorities to reduce themselves to pathologies or "information" that you're not entitled to, be an asshole and refuse to consider anyone's identifications (while no doubt, holding strongly to your own, which we could just as easily dismantle). Just be prepared for the verbal [b-tch]-slap when you meet a person who considers themselves to be asexual (or who is a friend of such a person) and knows what they're talking about from experience.

[I hope you read that carefully and thoughtfully, Dan.]

Dark Daughta, Priya Kandaswamy, Marlon M. Bailey, Matt Richardson, Kenyon Farrow, Dean Spade, and more Great People: Is the Same-Sex Marriage Agenda Racist? ... among other problems

photo of Priya Kandaswamy is from here

photo of Marlon M. Bailey, PhD is from here

photo of Dean Spade is from here

Some of what follows is from makezine.enoughenough.org/prop8

I Still Think Marriage is the Wrong Goal 

Resources for Further Reading

The Beyond Marriage Statement
www.beyondmarriage.org/BeyondMarriage.pdf
Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage, by Nancy Polikoff
Book website (Introduction free to download)
The Audre Lorde Project's statement on marriage
http://www.alp.org/whatwedo/statements/marriage
"Is Gay Marriage Anti-Black?" by Kenyon Farrow
http://www.nathanielturner.com/isgaymarriageantiblack.htm
"Ban Marriage," by Craig Willse
http://makezine.enoughenough.org/banmarriage.html
"Is Gay Marriage Racist" by Marlon M. Bailey, Priya Kandaswamy and Matt Richardson
download pdf
"Freedom in a Regulatory State? Lawrence, Marriage and Biopolitics" by Dean Spade and Craig Willse
download pdf
"Intimate Investments: Homonormativity, Global Lockdown and the Seductions of Empire" by M.D. Bassichis, Anna M. Agathangelo and Tamara L. Spira
download pdf

Join the discussion on Facebook.

Statement
by Dean Spade & Craig Willse

A lot of stories are circulating right now claiming that Black and Latino voters are to blame for Prop 8 passing. Beneath this claim is an uninterrogated idea that people of color are "more homophobic" than white people. Such an idea equates gayness with whiteness and erases the lives of LGBT people of color. It also erases and marginalizes the enduring radical work of LGBT people of color organizing that has prioritized the most vulnerable members of our communities.

Current conversations about Prop 8 hide how the same-sex marriage battle has been part of a conservative gay politics that de-prioritizes people of color, poor people, trans people, women, immigrants, prisoners and people with disabilities. Why isn't Prop 8's passage framed as evidence of the mainstream gay agenda's failure to ally with people of color on issues that are central to racial and economic justice in the US?

Let's remember the politics of marriage itself. The simplistic formula that claims "you're either pro-marriage or against equality" makes us forget that all forms of marriage perpetuate gender, racial and economic inequality. It mistakenly assumes that support for marriage is the only good measure of support for LGBT communities. This political moment calls for anti-homophobic politics that centralize anti-racism and anti-poverty. Marriage is a coercive state structure that perpetuates racism and sexism through forced gender and family norms. Right wing pro-marriage rhetoric has targeted families of color and poor families, supported a violent welfare and child protection system, vilified single parents and women, and marginalized queer families of all kinds. Expanding marriage to include a narrow band of same-sex couples only strengthens that system of marginalization and supports the idea that the state should pick which types of families to reward and recognize and which to punish and endanger.

We still demand a queer political agenda that centralizes the experiences of prisoners, poor people, immigrants, trans people, and people with disabilities. We reject a gay agenda that pours millions of dollars into campaigns for access to oppressive institutions for a few that stand to benefit.

We are being told marriage is the way to solve gay people's problems with health care access, immigration, child custody, and symbolic equality. It does not solve these problems, and there are real campaigns and struggles that would and could approach these problems for everyone, not just for a privileged few. Let's take the energy and money being put into gay marriage and put it toward real change: opposing the War on Terror and all forms of endless war; supporting queer prisoners and building a movement to end imprisonment; organizing against police profiling and brutality in our communities; fighting attacks on welfare, public housing and Medicaid; fighting for universal health care that is trans and reproductive healthcare inclusive; fighting to tax wealth not workers; fighting for a world in which no one is illegal.

Now, check out this awesome comment from Dark Daughta, which will close this post because it's so awesome.

photo of my friend Dark Daughta is from here

Dark Daughta said...
I think that as the different segments of various movements spend more time interacting with each other and reading each other there will be a kind of coalescing of political agendas. I will definitely appreciate lefty men developing a layered analysis that includes the people of colour and native people they oppress. I'd also appreciate the middle classes of various communities who do radical work to incorporate an analysis of status, hierarchy, class and career that points fingers back at them. I'd like people of colour who are immigrants like me to think and read and write more about the relationship between their immigration, their status as low level settler occupiers and the plight of native and inuit peoples. I'd like married radical political folk to think more regularly about queers and nonmonogamists. I'd like to have more conversations with people about the politics of aging both in and outside communities of resistance. I'd like to talk more about beauty, evil limited construct, with people inside communities of resistance who nonetheless set up artificial standards related to who is attractive and who is not. If I see one more bony jutting hipped white dyke or transman with limp jauntily cut kewl hair presented as the epitome of what it means to be politically radical, conscious and kewl, I'm gonna scream. Well...err...not scream, really. :) But it's just that every community, instead of obliterating oppressive standards and beliefs based in hierarchy seems really comfortable creating new ways to exclude and/or raise up a handful. It's frustrating.

What's wrong with this image from V magazine (summer 2011, "The Asian Issue")?

How about "everything". 

image of V magazine cover is from here

There use of the female body, turned into something utterly unnatural, to sell magazines is nothing new. The use of white and Asian women, and Black and Brown and Indigenous women, presented in sexist ways to sell magazines is nothing new. What's new for me is seeing a white-Western magazine which promotes itself as "The Asian Issue" wherein a white woman is made to have three heads, one of which is Asian. I suppose I'm supposed to think about dragons, what with the issue being about Asian people and all. Even if the dragon as a symbol is specific to only some ancient and contemporary Asian cultures.

Ableism, ageism, sexism, heterosexism, racism, and classism combine to form this image. Take those elements out, there's nothing left but the grey background.

The cover image alone--without venturing into the interior of the magazine--is enough to make you wonder what ever happened to human rights struggles for dignity and respect. I'm not sure there's much else to say about this image, other than, "shame on V". I don't expect them to get it. I do hope you won't get it--the magazine, that is.

Please respond to Hank Pellissier (and especially his followers) on his proposal to Ban "Baby-Making" (Births) in the U.S., "for the sake of the children"

Hank Pellissier

I've heard similar things from white folks in the U.S. But this guy is coming out with a book. Everything that follows was written by Hank Pellissier, except my comment below his post. You can link to his post and comment, if you think it's worth it, by clicking on the title below. Much of what he's written is so fucked up, it's a wonder anyone can come to these viewpoints. The appropriate conclusion is that one comes to viewpoints like this when one passes through some kinds of "education" with gross entitlements and privileges to be ignorant about the world while doing so--and since. This tells us a lot about how WHM supremacist the education systems in North America often are and why 'being educated' isn't at all the same thing as being intelligent, moral, good, or wise.
 
A White Het Supremacist Man with class-privilege demands that we...  [TRIGGER WARNING: what follows is profoundly misogynistic, classist, and racist.]

Ban Baby-Making Unless Parents Are Licensed

by Hank Pellissier

Ethical Technology

Posted: Apr 20, 2011

For the sake of the children, let’s control human breeding. No one should be permitted to reproduce until they pass a battery of tests.

---

Does that proposal enrage you? Go ahead, hate me. Call me vile names like “Neo-Nazi-Elitist-Baby-Killing-Totalitarian-Sicko.” Or simply “Eugenicist.” I don’t care. I know I’m right.

It’s blatantly clear that 15-year-old intoxicated half-wits can easily spawn, but should they? Hell no. Let’s control human breeding, please. Let’s keep babies away from buffoons, and let’s test fetuses meticulously to guarantee healthy infants. No one should be permitted to reproduce unless and until they pass a battery of tests.

[for the rest of his article, please go to the site linked to from the title]

_________________

What follows is a slightly revised version of what I posted to his discussion page.

JulianReal • http://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/ • May 2, 2011

Hank, that's a very classist, misogynist, and racist perspective. You should know only the most privileged people have the option to do such things. How, for example, would you recommend an immigrant woman called "illegal" by our racist government, get licensed? What makes you think women usually choose to get pregnant? What about girls impregnated by their father or their mom's boyfriend? What about women who are routinely raped by their boyfriend or husband?

You'll have to end incest and rape--and all of patriarchy, as well as racism, sexism, heterosexism, and classism, before such a position would be at all considerable and considerate of most women.

And, you do know you, a white man, is declaring yourself as Holder of The Truth in a nation that remains pro-genocide, yes? We whites are still committing this atrocity against Indigenous people across the land that was stolen--and many Indigenous nations' people are struggling in many ways to survive the atrocity. We whites allow our government to plant nuclear waste nearest to Indian reservations, don't we? And we whites have a history of forcibly sterilising poor women of color--especially Black, Brown, and Indigenous women and girls. And forcibly removing culture, religion, and language from Indigenous children. As well as taking children from their own communities. As well as white men trespassing on reservation land and raping Indigenous women and girls.

Your proposal also does nothing to substantively stop white wealthy het men from traversing the Earth to rape girls and women in systems of trafficking and sexual slavery.

I hope you know that the term "breeding" for child-bearing is one that was used by white men against Black people throughout U.S. history--and never, ever to describe the "breeding" of white wealthy men.

Do you see any of these very related issues as relevant to a discussion of "ethics"?

Julian

Update: a recent exchange. I'll put Hank's words in italics. Mine won't be.

Hi Hank.

I'll reply in sections.

You wrote:
For example, I don't believe that just because I am a white man I am supposed to be silent and not have an opinion. I also don't believe that past historical atrocities - like African-American slavery and Native American genocide - are supposed to dictate policy forever, especially in rather unrelated fields.

I don't see whites' genocide against American Indians, which is current, as something that is unrelated. And I'm not suggesting you be silent. There are also more slaves now than in the past. So neither genocide nor slavery are matters of the past, and whites benefit to this day in all kinds of ways due to their on-going reality. I won't take up this thread detailing how that works. I recommend reading Tim Wise's work for more on this, though.

You wrote:
I can't buy into the "white shame" that you seem to want me to feel, for a variety of reasons.

I'm not at all suggesting you feel any guilt or shame. I'm asking you, I suppose, to be responsible for the structural location you inhabit. We are not all placed into this world equally, even if equality is a value for some of us. Surely the Royal Wedding proves this point. And also the fact that bin Laden can have a bullet blow his brains out and U.S. Americans can cheer, but if such a thing happened to Cheney or GWB, or Rumsfeld, we'd bomb the CRAP out of the countries we determined to be involved. Oh wait: we already are doing that.

You wrote:
I find your notion of "white guilt" and "white shame" very silly and non-productive.

Where do I use those terms? I don't. So why are you quoting them? And that's not what I'm speaking about at all. Please don't presume what I'm saying. If you're not sure, I welcome you to ask.

You wrote:
You regard my parent-licensing proposal as invalid, and you claim it is racist and classicist.

Yes, the proposal is. And I apologise for saying that you are racist and classist, if I did. I meant that the proposal was. I still find that to be the case.

You wrote:
 I maintain, as I have throughout this thread, that my motivations are charitable,

I find most white people's charity to the less materially fortuned to be racist and classist as well.

You wrote:
 I am interested in guaranteeing that children are born into this world in good health and that they live in family situations that promote their well-being.

Riches not only don't guarantee it, but rich folks tend not to even raise their own children: they have servants do it and send their kids away to boarding schools. This is addressed to the person who seems to think that having more money makes someone a better parent, automatically.

You wrote:
We are looking at situations from a different perspective -- I see children as the victims and I want to remedy this, perhaps you see Native Americans as the victims and you want to protect them.

Not at all. I see people as people. And political location as a meaningful factor in what people say and how they say it. For example, I find that rich folks tend to talk down to poor folks. And whites tend to talk down to people of color. And that middle aged people tend to talk down to children and to the elderly. Not each and every time, and not without plenty of exceptions. But these are patterns that correlate well to "what one has experienced" and if someone has never been treated as a non-person by whites because they are white, they likely don't know what it is like to be treated the way Black and Brown people are often treated by whites. I'm speaking about the real world, in reality. Anyone who isn't white will likely have plenty of stories to tell about not being treated as well as the average white person similarly economically located.

You wrote:
You have also resorted to calling me names, and that is unfair. You say I am racist and classicist,

I meant that the writing, what you say, participates in patterns of racist and classist writings by others. Sorry for not being clearer.

You wrote:
 let's just talk about Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. I am interested in ending this horrible maiming of human beings before they are even born, and I am interested in doing it quickly.

Hank, you can't. I hope you truly understand that you can't do that. That's an aim well beyond your capabilities, or mine, or anyone else's.

What we "want to do" is not at all what we can do, necessarily. And I think it's important to soberly realise that.

You wrote:
Your attitude about Fetal Alcohol Syndrome seems to be that it is a Native American issue and I should not have any say in it? because I am just a white male perpetrator of genocide?

I said nothing of the kind. I never asked you not to speak. And I never called you a perpetrator of anything. My comment is up there. Please re-read it. What I wrote about was your political structural location in society as white person, as a man, and as someone with relative class (economic) privileges. And nowhere did I associate fetal alcohol syndrome with being Native American, and for you to do so is, in your writing, "racist" to me. Because it plays into a common negative stereotype about American Indians--that white folks write about and think they're being "charitable" to American Indian babies when doing so. I welcome you to engage with American Indian children and get their point of view, and not try and speak for them. Or for any children who you don't know personally. That's not asking you to be silent. It's asking you to speak responsibly about what you know--not from reading, but from life outside of reading. Are you implying that white babies don't suffer from F.A.S.? And every other color of babies? Rich, middle class, and poor babies too?

You wrote:
I very adamantly disagree and I am happy to represent the infants in this situation.

I'm saying that you don't represent them, Hank. Nor do I. In theory or in abstraction you might. But not in reality. You don't, unless you're an attorney or a social worker. You're speaking here, writing here--that's not "representing" them. I'm asking you to be honest with what you say and write.

You wrote:
I believe they have the right to be born healthy

So do I.

You wrote:
 and I believe we all have a moral responsibility to help them.

Hank, I find this to be an issue of abstractionism. How does you having this discussion in cyberspace materially or spiritually benefit any children in the U.S., or any fetuses? Can you explain that to me please?

You wrote:
 Do you think the threatened fetus, in a womb toxic with alcohol, if it had a vote, would side with its mother, or with me?

Assuming a level of distinguishing itself from its mother, which cannot happen before birth, my answer is: no doubt with its mother. The baby doesn't know you at all and would likely be frightened by you pretending to be someone who "represents" it.

You wrote:
I think discussion of ethnicity and even gender in regards to my proposal are just paralyzing distractions and that I've been subjected to very foolish name-calling and finger-pointing.

I'm addressing the content of your writing. I'm naming it a certain way. You get to disagree, but that doesn't mean I'm right and it doesn't mean I'm wrong either. We get to disagree about what you're saying above, and to me here. A person above noted that there are unowned biases in your work. I agree. I'm asking you to be more conscious of those and to be responsible with them.

You wrote:
 I believe that the USA should be much more egalitarian - my recent article on Denmark exhibits this - but waiting for that to happen while babies are born unnecessarily damaged and children are severely abused - is cruelly negligent.

Hank, you haven't shown how writing about this makes any difference at all in the lives of real fetuses, babies, and children. Writing out ideas isn't the same thing as shifting societal patterns and systems of harm. We might call it a written proposal, or a statement of belief, or an argument for something. But that doesn't mean it is more than that.

You wrote:
I know who I am defending in this discussion - the future children.

I'm calling that statement dishonest. I don't think future children will likely ever know you or me, honestly. I doubt much that either of us has to say will impact their lives at all. So I hear you attributing to yourself as power I don't believe you (or I) have: to advocate, in material reality, the lives of children, unless you are raising them or being an uncle or teacher to them directly.

You wrote:
 WHo or what are you defending? The right of Native American women to drink heavily when they're pregnant?

I wish you'd please stop putting really sexist-racist statements in my writing that aren't there. Is that a fair thing to ask of you? I'm not defending anyone at all. I'm only speaking for myself. I object to racist and sexist and classist speech. I find your writing in this post to be all of those things. Am I not entitled to come here and state that? You welcomed me to come here and post comments, so I did.

You wrote:
 I oppose their right to do that. Is that what we're disagreeing on?

You don't oppose a racist-sexist stereotype; you promote and perpetuate it. How does that help anyone of any age?

I'll try and be clearer. I don't believe that people writing things down means they magically happen. I don't believe you have the power to do what you say your statements can do. I don't believe you are, in reality, advocating for any Native American children. I believe you think you are. But that's not the same thing. If you were working with poor women and children, assisting them in finding more social services slashed because the rich don't want to be taxed 3% more, I'd argue you are, in fact, helping those very few women and children. Is that your line of work? If you were a doctor attending to babies, white ones, or not, with F.A.S., I'd argue you are helping those few children. Is that your line of work?

I hope I'm being clear. I'm not insulting you, I hope. I mean to be communicating truthful statements. I'd like racism to go away, and sexism too, and classism, and for all children to be loved and cared for in family systems if that's the social model, or in community, raised more communally. But me writing that doesn't do much of anything to make it socially real. It helps no children in the present. And future children aren't here. And I don't believe you or anyone else speaks for them. When they are born and grow up, if they grow up, if they can speak, they will speak for themselves.

Indigenist Action Alert: Civil Rights and Civil Liberties don't apply to All People: PROTECT GLEN COVE (Vallejo, CA).

Photo Corrina Gould. Photo is from here

Tribal members fulfilled their part of what was thought to be an interim agreement, including taking down tents used for sleeping during the around the clock ceremonies. GVRD however has now refused to do anything they had agreed to do, while stepping up the police presence and monitoring of the ceremony.

Support for the efforts of tribal members to protect the site continues to grow. Last night over 50 people gathered for ceremonies and to welcome Mohave and Chemehuevi visitors from the Colorado River Indian Tribes who came to express their solidarity and encouragement.

Sunday evening begins Yom HaShoah, or Nazi Holocaust Remembrance Day. Which means we who are U.S. Jews--as well as non-Jews--ought not forget the genocides happening all around us.

Genocide has lots of components: stopping specific groups of people from living their lives is part of it. Also: occupying their land, preventing people from practicing their religion, from being able to gather and protest. And threatening specific groups of people with cultural and physical extinction is also part of it. How it is that we allow genocide in this country--this allegedly GREAT country that portrays itself as against things like genocide and racism--is beyond me.

I see this move by the Greater Vallejo Recreation Re-destruction District as a violation of people's civil rights and civil liberties to gather peacefully and to protest, and to practice their religion. This is part of a genocidal war against Indigenous people in the U.S. 

Please support the protest.

What follows is being cross-posted from Censored News with thanks to Brenda.

 

Protect Glen Cove Day 15: More Civil Rights Claims Filed

Sacred Site Protection & Rights of Indigenous Tribes (SSP&RIT).

For Immediate Release: Thursday, April 28, 2011
Contact: * Corrina Gould 510-575-8408 * Morning Star Gali (510) 827 6719 *Norman “Wounded Knee” Deocampo 707-373-7195 * Mark Anquoe (415) 680-0110

Day 15 : Spiritual Vigil and Gathering to Protect Glen Cove Sacred Site Enters 3rd Week as Greater Vallejo Recreation District Breaks Agreement to Negotiate in Good Faith

SSP&RIT Files More Civil Rights Claims Against GVRD for New Violations as Threats Against Spiritual Ceremony and Sacred Site Escalate

By Protect Glen Cove
http://protectglencove.org/

Vallejo, California – As the spiritual gathering and vigil being held by local tribal members and supporters at the sacred burial site at Glen Cove in Vallejo entered its third week, Native Americans working to protect Glen Cove filed more complaints this morning with the Attorney General of California in response to new and serious violations of civil rights by the Greater Vallejo Recreation District.

The organization Sacred Site Protection & Rights of Indigenous Tribes today filed an addendum to the civil rights complaint filed on April 13, 2011 with the State Attorney General in response to GVRD’s attempt to intimidate and limit the number of participants in the spiritual ceremony, attempts to restrict certain ceremonial practices including songs, and GVRD’s refusal to negotiate a resolution of the dispute. The new complaint also further documents the presence of cremations as well as burials at the site, highlighting the risk that bulldozing the hill poses to the ancient human remains.

In a major development, GVRD has informed the United States Department of Justice that they will not sign a proposed agreement allowing the ceremony to temporarily continue without threat of arrest, and GVRD has failed to follow through on their agreement to meet with tribal members to try to resolve the burial site dispute.
Tribal members fulfilled their part of what was thought to be an interim agreement, including taking down tents used for sleeping during the around the clock ceremonies. GVRD however has now refused to do anything they had agreed to do, while stepping up the police presence and monitoring of the ceremony.

Support for the efforts of tribal members to protect the site continues to grow. Last night over 50 people gathered for ceremonies and to welcome Mohave and Chemehuevi visitors from the Colorado River Indian Tribes who came to express their solidarity and encouragement. Hundreds of Native Americans and their supporters have pledged to peacefully defend the sacred site in response to any attempt to desecrate the site or remove the ceremony. “I dont believe any of our tribal people would agree to outright grave robbery and disturbing sacred sites. We will not allow it to happen,” said Fred Short, Spiritual Leader of the American Indian Movement and a participant in the spiritual gathering at Glen Cove.

Glen Cove is located near the intersection of South Regatta and Whitesides Drive in Vallejo. For more information and directions: www.protectglencove.org

A copy of the Civil Rights Complaint and Addendum is available by contacting Bradley Angel at Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice

(415) 722-5270 or bradley@greenaction.org

Earth Day: March or April? And who is truly working to Take Back The Earth?

photograph of Winona LaDuke is from here

Winona LaDuke is an activist, writer, and the founding director of  WELRP. See *here* and below for more:

We work to continue, revive, and protect our native seeds, heritage crops, naturally grown fruits, animals, wild plants, traditions and knowledge of our indigenous and land-based communities; for the purpose of maintaining and continuing our culture and resisting the global, industrialized food system that can corrupt our health, freedom, and culture through inappropriate food production and genetic engineering.

From the WELRP website:

Winona LaDuke is an Anishinaabekwe (Ojibwe) enrolled member of the Mississippi Band Anishinaabeg who lives and works on the White Earth Reservations, and is the mother of three children. She is also the Executive Director of Honor the Earth, where she works on a national level to advocate, raise public support, and create funding for frontline native environmental groups.

In case you haven't noticed, there are patterns and systems at work in the destruction of the Earth. Wealthy white men, corporate capitalists, and government leaders are all key power-brokers working very hard to kill everything on Earth in order to earn profits and gain power for the very short term.

What you are likely to see in corporate media news is how whites do good things to help decrease pollution or trash. What you are not likely to see in the same media is how white men do atrocious things to Indigenous people, women and girls of all colors and nations, and the Earth.

*Here* is a discussion of the history of Earth Day by Adam Monroe, which seeks to keep the idea that it is white men who care about the Earth: a blatant lie if viewed on the collectivist level. On the systemic and collectivist level it has been Indigenous People globally who have always fought for the Earth's survival, and their own; living sustainably with the Earth traditionally, historically, is not a white cultural tradition. The white tradition is to consume everything in and on the Earth, giving back nothing but poisons, toxins, and pollutants.

*Here* is the promotion of a book that also makes the case it is the White Man who can rescue the Earth from white men. Work for the Earth by promoting and supporting the efforts of Indigenous people around the world, including by advocating for land being returned to the Indigenous people from whom it was stolen by European men. Support and remember Indigenous Feminism and Indigenist Feminists in the U.S.

End the myth of the White Male Hero. His time to lead has passed. Promote the Indigenous Woman Hero Reality. Her time has never left.