Mind the Gap

We’re taking a blog break while we sort out some group-related issues.

More information soon ….

I don’t know how long this has been the case, but Lucky White Girl appears to be blogging again. Her blog seemed to disappear at some stage last summer / autumn (I forget), to be replaced with a kind of CV-type-thing, but it looks like the blog has been back since, oh, October or something?

Yay, six months’ worth of posts to catch up on!

What’s this you say, the Pope converted to catholicism?

Depending on who you are and what your position in the food chain is, people have no scruples about stealing your work and claiming it for their own. We feminists are smart, sassy, and in-your-face, stealing your ideas out of your mouth just as soon as you put them into words.

I’ve been wondering what exactly brought on Sudy and Belledame’s posts yesterday, not to mention BFP’s own post which I linked to yesterday and is no longer there (it was pretty restrained, considering what it turned out to be about). Now this morning I notice that BFP’s site is gone (archives appear to be still there), and we have clarification from Gwen at High On Rebellion.

Others have already put it better than I could, so I’ll quote Gwen:

It’s all too easy for white women to get away with stealing the ideas of women of colour.  Women of colour often have less access to the mainstream media or mainstream academia, making it harder for them to become known to a wide audience.  Adding to the temptation is the fact that white women will get credit for being remotely anti-racist in a way that women of colour will not.  A white woman with an Audre Lorde quote for every occasion can build an entire academic or media career out of being an “intersectional” feminist.  A woman of colour who raises any of these points is just “angry” (ironically, the same thing that men say about feminists).

and Sudy from A Womyn’s Ecdysis:

And what irony I found today, the day where I needed a good laugh - the day when Brownfemipower ceased her internet presence after years of blogging about media justice, womyn at the border, transformative feminist theory, advocacy for Brown womyn, and safe space - is the same day that I find that the authors of Stuff White People Like has a new book through Random House and Jessica Valenti has a new upcoming book on sexuality. And Post Secret is probably going on Book #5 with Harper Collins sometime next Sunday.

And finally Belledame:

Meanwhile:

“A” my name is “Asshole,” my weaknesses are “Arrogance,” “Avarice” and “Ambition,” my skin is “Alabaster,” my tongue is “Acid,” my Analysis often comes off as “Airheaded,” and as Machiavellis go I am an “Amateur.”

I’ve already felt like a cog in other people’s book deals, journalistic careers, and political careers, just by becoming involved in feminism. And I’m white, and relatively middle-class. When I say relatively, I mean I don’t consider that I need or deserve to be paid for being a feminist. Then again, people relative to whom I’m most certainly working-class consider that they do deserve to be paid. 

It’s not a good feeling, to feel like a cog - it makes you feel like a sucker for caring about something that’s being used to justify privileged people’s entitlement to their money. I still believe that there’s a lot more to feminism than that - in a way, it’s incredibly convenient to some people to forget that The Personal Is Political doesn’t actually mean Lipstick Is Important, and particularly to forget what the pro-woman line actually is - , but that’s how I feel at the moment - just one of the voices being used, whether we like it or not, to boost the careers and entitlement of a few white, middle-class, ambitions, unscrupulous women. For me to feel this way is one thing, but for someone like Brownfemipower, who has been talking about issues surrounding women and immigration, for years now, to get plagiarised, is completely outrageous. And that’s not even half the problem. Using the issues surrounding women and immigration as a way to gain kudos and a bit of a career boost for yourself is beyond despicable. People being mistreated somewhere? Just another big fucking diamond for your crown!

I’m absolutely steaming about this. On a personal level, I learned shitloads from reading Brownfemipower, I discovered a couple of writers I’d never heard of even in the short time since I started reading her, and I was also incredibly glad that such a voice existed, that feminism wasn’t all about rich people’s book deals and getting misrepresented in the press as, basically, an opportunity for accomplished women to socialise with like-minded people.

So what can be done about this? The first step is, I know there has to be more than half a dozen of us who actually give a shit, who are tired of getting dismissed as ‘oversensitive’ or ‘humourless’ when we point out racism and classism, and who want to point these things out because they are incredibly important for feminism not to disappear up its own diamond-studded arsehole.

The first thing you can do, is go to Angry Black Woman’s site (see post below) and submit your posts to the Carnival of Allies.

And on a deeper level, if you give a shit, just speak up. Aside from anything else, we’re all still accountable for what our ancestors did. Being afraid of being clumsy and accidentally racist isn’t an excuse for keeping quiet. Being offended that you’re asked to care about something that your ancestors did and you’re personally against is doubly not an excuse - if anything, you’d be perpetrating their actions by being silent about it. Feel like you’re being too harshly criticised for making unwittingly racist comments? Boo fucking hoo. And just in this case, yes, you could feel like you’re unreasonably being a bitch to Ms Marcotte, but imagine how you’d feel if someone nicked your work and no-one said anything about it?

So, speak up. Personally, I’m fed up at being asked to lovingly suck the toes of high-selling book-published liberal feminists while all other voices get ignored.  

Oh, and also, speak up about this specific incident, because we all know who, one day, will get a chance to go to the mainstream media and be all ‘Oh I was criticised, people can be so awful, it was a nightmare’.  

The 57th Carnival of Feminists is up at Pandemian.

The Angry Black Woman has a suggestion for a new carnival, the Carnival of Allies.

I call a Carnival. The Carnival of Allies. Where self-identified allies write to other people like themselves about why this or that oppression and prejudice is wrong. Why they are allies. Why the usual excuses are not good enough. I figure allies probably know full well all the many and various arguments people throw up to make prejudice and oppression okay. Things that someone on the other side of the fence may not hear. Address those things and more besides.

And when I say allies, I’m talking about any and every type. PoC can be (and should be) allies to other PoC, or to LGBTQ people if they are straight, or any number of other combinations. If you feel like you’re an ally and have something to say about that, you should submit to this carnival.

To submit stuff, follow the link and fill in the form.

This is from Kira Cochrane’s Sidelines column today. I realise the column is meant to be tongue in cheek - although its sassy ‘all of us sisters together’ tone pisses me off a bit. Still, this kind of shows how out of touch this woman is, even though she’s one of the national faces of feminism in the media:

Whither sisterhood?

The classic 1973 feminist novel, Fear of Flying, by Erica Jong has always been controversial, what with its coining of the term “zipless fuck”, and some really quite unattractive descriptions of penises. And it’s still stirring up scandal. The New Yorker reports that at a recent literary conference, Jong’s sister, Suzanna Daou said that “Fear of Flying has been a thorn in my flesh for 35 years”, later remarking that she felt the book “was not a novel … it was a memoir something like James Frey’s memoir. A lot of nastiness went into that book. But I forgive her for everything, except writing that my husband crawled into her bed, which he didn’t, and asked her to perform fellatio, which he didn’t”. Jong responded by saying, “I thought I was writing a mock memoir,” and calling her sister “insane”. Proof that feminist texts can occasionally prompt some rather unsisterly feelings.

Wow, really? You could have knocked me over with a feather! Of course, I don’t want the mainstream media to represent feminism - that’s another story - but still, Kira Cochrane will be talking at this year’s Fem ‘08 conference. Yet, judging by this, she seems totally unfamiliar with 99.9% of feminist discourse over the last 30 years. Yet she feels qualified to offer a message from feminism on what shoes to wear:

Sock it to ‘em

Grazia magazine provides a useful service by showing us 10 of the perfect “in-between” pairs of heels, for women looking for extra height, and who want to be able to … you know, walk. In the same advisory vein, we offer another suggestion. Socks and trainers. Happy days!

Yeah, whatever. I may be wearing heels, but at least I’ve read the odd bit of feminist theory.

On Prisons, Safety, Borders and Privilege: An Open Letter to White Feminists by Jessica Hoffman (of Make/Shift magazine)

In 1983, when I was in kindergarten, white (Jewish) lesbian feminist Adrienne Rich implored a white-led feminist movement: “Without addressing the whiteness of white feminism, our movement will turn in on itself and collapse.” Twenty-five years later, I’m dubious about a movement — “ours” or otherwise — that has not only failed to honestly and consistently address its whiteness but has also, in so doing, become something far less than a movement for social change.[1]

My comments here are hugely influenced by critiques of white feminism put forth over generations by women of color,[2] critiques I’m guessing you’re familiar with. Maybe you’re even nodding because you feel like you’ve reckoned with them. Maybe it bums you out that past generations of white feminists had such a white-supremacy/class-privilege problem. Maybe This Bridge Called My Back was required reading in your first women’s studies class and you know all about “intersectionality,” making a point in your feminist projects to “include” the voices and issues of women of color, working-class and poor white women, and maybe even trans folks and members of other groups historically marginalized by dominant feminisms. I’m pretty sure about all this because many of you have told me so — in personal conversations and workshops, in your books and blogs and …

Yet it doesn’t look to me like you’ve really reckoned with those critiques. It looks more like you appropriate or tokenize them, using their language while continuing to center white, class-privileged women’s experiences in your “feminism” and engaging in political work that upholds and strengthens white supremacy and economic exploitation — sometimes directly undermining the social-change work of feminists of color.

And, yes, you deserve some concrete examples of that, which is why I’m writing. My intention isn’t to repeat the critiques of feminists of color, but to offer some specific instances in which I, a white, class-privileged feminist who is often privy to your conversations and who can identify with the experiences and perspectives of privilege, have recently seen this playing out. At this particular historical moment, it seems to happen frequently around the disconnect between white feminists’ notions of “safety” as an ideal we should organize around, and, on the other side of the not-so-fun funhouse mirror, organizing by feminists of color around policing/prisons and immigration/borders — issues that expose the fantasy of “safety” as a product of privilege; issues that feminists of color have increasingly centered in their activism while white feminists seem to be struggling to understand whether they are feminist issues at all.

And thank fuck, finally, for the bit in bold, which has been bothering me for some time. Jessica uses the words ‘entitlement to safety at one stage as well, which just makes me go ‘Yes! Finally!’.

Difficult to pick specific bits to quote, but all the same:

Where are white feminists?

As far as I can tell, white feminists’ “solidarity” with the immigrants’ rights movement amounts to occasionally featuring a woman who works at an immigrants’ rights nonprofit in a publication or panel, and occasionally mentioning a sensational case of violence against a particular immigrant woman on a blog. I was at the mass May Day marches for immigrants’ rights in 2006 and 2007 in Los Angeles, and I saw no notable presence of any of the major U.S.-based feminist organizations. In 2007, I could find no mentions of the upcoming marches, or report-backs the next day, on popular feminist blogs. Hundreds of — some places millions — of people were on the streets for social justice. Where were white feminists?

Even coverage of outrageous cases of state violence against immigrant women has been scarce in media created by white feminists. In July 2007, a trans woman named Victoria Arellano died after being denied AIDS medication and proper health care in an immigration detention center for men. White feminist media makers mostly missed the story — though it was reported in the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, and other major media outlets. It seemed simply not to register as a feminist issue.

Confused by this, I mentioned it on an e-mail list where most of the active participants are white, self-identified feminist journalists. That day, they were discussing the demise of GreenStone Media — a liberal/centrist, white-, rich-, celebrity-dominated “women’s” radio network founded by Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem, et al. The conversation, which started as a call for a moment of silence to collectively grieve GreenStone’s short life, broadened into a discussion of the scarcity of funding for feminist media, which led to a few mentions of The Revolution Will Not Be Funded — the incisive, grassroots-organizing-focused anthology by INCITE! Some folks even expressed interest in forming a reading group to discuss the book. Meanwhile, my questions about feminist media makers’ lack of attention to Arellano’s story were largely blown off. When a couple of these journalists did eventually mention Arellano’s story on their blogs, the focus was on violence against trans women of color (framed as perpetual victims), with no analysis connecting the story to movements to abolish the prison system or defy the legitimacy of national borders.

What, I wondered, is the feminist media they so desperately want funded for? That the conversation for a moment veered toward The Revolution Will Not Be Funded was only more disturbing: a book by radical feminists of color calling for mass, autonomous movement building as an alternative to the state- and capitalism-based “nonprofit industrial complex” that has co-opted social-change activism was being plucked for possible use (co-optation?) by privileged and powerful advocates of precisely the kind of liberal/reformist so-called feminism that has relied on and actively developed that structure.

No, I thought, the revolution will not be funded. And also: the revolution would not have been broadcast on GreenStone Media.

 

Privilege is a kind of poison — insidious, it obscures, misleads, confuses — and this is part of how power is maintained, as well-meaning privileged people miss the mark, can’t clearly see what’s going on and how we’re implicated, are able to comfortably see ourselves as not responsible. Liberalism and assimilationist politics are safe ways for privileged people to believe they are fighting the good fight; liberalism and assimilation, I think, are privilege’s — power’s — instruments.

On the afternoon of May 1, 2007, I stood with a friend on the sidewalk outside MacArthur Park in L.A., where immigrants’ rights advocates had relaxedly gathered after a long day of marching. A cop decked out in riot gear told us — the only white people in sight — “You’d better get out of here; we’re gonna clear everyone out.” We talked back, asked whether he was gonna tell everyone else and what he was gonna do if we stayed put, rolled our eyes, wondered if these rows of LAPD officers wielding batons and guns were really about to enter the park unprovoked, and stayed where we were. Minutes later, the cops did indeed enter the park, where they brutally shot and shoved to disperse the crowd, injuring many. The next day, my friend and I wondered why we didn’t think of calling or texting our friends inside the park to warn them about what was looking increasingly likely to happen. Inexperienced because of privilege, we hadn’t thought well on our feet, and we’d been in a certain denial about how bad things might get; we’d been pissed and well meaning, but not useful. (”I’m wearing flip-flops,” my friend said to me with sad eyes as we walked away from the park that night, after the violence. We’d shown up feeling that safe. I hope my eyes told her, “I know, I know . . . “)

 

If feminism is about social change, it is about recognizing that safety in this society is a fantasy afforded only by assimilation to power, and the cost of that fake safety is the safety of those who cannot, or will not, access it. If feminism is about social change, it is about radically challenging prisons and borders of all kinds.

If feminism is about social change, white feminism — a feminism of assimilation, of gentle reform and/or strengthening of institutions that are instrumental to economic exploitation and white supremacy, of ignorance and/or appropriation of the work of feminists of color — is an oxymoron. And it is not a thing of some bygone era before everyone read bell hooks in college. It is happening now; you might be part of it.

Struggling not to quote the whole thing here. Go read the rest, there’s plenty more!

This was linked to another great post at La Chola, by the way, go read that too. This bit particularly resonated with me:

I had thought at one time that feminism was about justice for women. I had thought it was about centering the needs of women, and creating action in the name of, by and for women. I had thought that feminism has its problems but it’s worth fighting for, worth sacrificing and sweating and crying and breaking down for.

It was all worth it to me, because it meant that I existed and my daughter existed and the women I love existed and we had the right to demand the violence committed against us ends.

I see now that feminism is nothing more than erasure. A conversation between white women and men. A commitment to the safety and well being of people who are never women of color.

But all the while–even as there is a studied avoidance of the women of color in the room, the women of color are there nonetheless. They are working and agitating and moving and changing the world–and they are doing all this without money, without support, without mainstream media, without jobs, without praise and admiration. And to me, it’s a sin and disgrace to force such an unworthy label on them–they who wouldn’t steal food from a neighbor if they haven’t eaten all day.

You see, sometimes when people don’t want to be called feminist, it’s not because they don’t know what feminism is, so there’s no need to explain it to them. It might be because they know all too well.

Well, well. Something odd happened yesterday, the following Google search terms were all higher than ‘Marge Simpson Porn’:

Assuming that last one was about Teodor Adorno, that mix of hardcore feminist theory and horror sci-fi B-movies is pretty gratifying.

If I could just direct you people to these links:

Defining Black Feminist Thought

Black Feminist Thought in the Matrix of Domination

The Personal Is Political

Minimal Moralia

The Thing

The Thing from Another World

It’s been just over a year since I got actively involved in feminism, and a nebulous number of years since I’ve considered myself to be a feminist, on and off. It should be a simple question of answering ‘because women are still second-class citizens’. However, I think it’s still a good idea to take some time and assess what I’ve learned, how I feel about the whole feminism deal, and whether I still want to continue applying the word ‘feminist’ to myself or not. So let’s have a look at some of the factors to take into consideration. What’s prompting this? Well, a need to question my own political beliefs every once in a while, more than anything else, and, I won’t lie, a certain discomfort with some of the attitudes I’ve seen among feminists.

Definition

First of all, whether you fight for women’s rights or not, calling yourself a feminist is largely dependent on your cultural background, partly because of who dominates feminism in terms of visibility, who gets intellectual kudos for talking about panties on national TV while hundreds of others are somewhere in the background discussing the complexities of intersectionality and doing all the hard work, but mainly because, well, the word is culturally specific, it has a latin root, although there are things we could retroactively call ‘feminism’ going far back into the middle ages and all over different continents, I think it’s a mistake to identify anything that differentiates you from a doormat as feminism – I’ve known lots of women  who would never identify as feminists, and none of them were doormats, whether they were elderly French farmers, German business-owners, Polish neurologists, students from the Cameroons who ran market stalls and did hair-weaves on the side, nuns from Madagascar, or Alsatian anti-globalisation activists. None of the women I mention here would describe themselves as feminists – and it’s really not up to me to go up to them, particularly if they’re about 30 years older than me, and say ‘oh but you are, or you wouldn’t be a neurologist’. Some of them might even have attitudes I would described as submissive. But so do I, so it really has nothing to do with being a feminist or not.

Feminism is just one way of looking at relations between people, that implies the existence of a Feminine which is partly inflicted on women as a means of discrimination, and partly the consequence of women being discriminated against. [On a side note, it’s interesting that one of my friends, who studied English, told me all the feminist lecturers and professors loved Adorno, but the feminist students tended to hate him.] For me it’s very much about liberation, not so much equality. Of course equality should exist, but it’s not enough, because after all men are discriminated against too on various grounds, though not for being men – so equality with men still implies discrimination, particularly if you don’t factor in class or race. In fact, the characteristics of the Feminine or the Mysterious Other are applied to men quite often to justify discrimination against them on grounds of race or class, which is, by the way, what was originally meant by saying that sexist discrimination was the oldest form of discrimination and the model for all others – not that sexist discrimination is worse and older, which is highly debatable.

Women the world over aren’t all discriminated against equally, or for the same reasons. There is a thread of sexism going through it certainly, but the consequences are far different, depending on your position in society. In fact, one way to look at it would be to say that we’re generally discriminated against slightly more than the men in our own social group. That’s why it makes sense to say ‘it’s all about equality’ if you’re privileged to start with. So really, calling yourself a feminist isn’t ‘just common sense’, it has culturally specific implications. Being a woman is a very different experience depending on your cultural background, and femininity changes too.

History and personal background

I realise that I bang on about feminist history quite a lot. But my knowledge of feminist history seems to be quite specific, and it’s interesting to see which parts we all tend to know a lot about, and that by and large, UK feminists seem to identify more with American feminists than European feminists – possibly a language thing, I guess. Then again, there is a problem with the fact that certain feminist writing is considered to be just plain ‘feminist theory’, whereas other works of feminist theory, which are just as fundamental as Germaine Greer or Betty Friedan, are considered to be ’specialist’ feminist theory, like foreign feminism, feminism for black people. But how is the work of Angela Davis, for instance, less central to feminism than that of Andrea Dworkin?

So let’s take a look at my knowledge of the different parts of my background. I know a wee bit about French feminism, from 18^th Century feminists and women’s rights advocates such as Olympe de Gouges or Francois Poulain de la Barre, through to Simone de Beauvoir, and second-wave feminists such as Luce Irigaray and Helene Cixous, activists such as the lawyer Gisele Hallimi, and later names like Samira Bellil. I know next to nothing about Irish feminism, it has just occurred to me, although I’ve read quite a bit about the UK suffrage movement, enough to know that there’s a lot there I can get behind, and a lot that I can’t. But the fact remains that I, like many other feminists, seem to know the most about feminists whose history has nothing to do with me. Although the ones that I have gained most inspiration from have been Simone de Beauvoir, Sylvia Pankhurst and Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, for reasons that seem pretty clear to me from my background of libertarian conservatism and atheism with the odd bit of colonialism thrown in, the ones I feel obliged to know a lot about are 60s and 70s white, American and middle-class feminists, who have absolutely nothing to do with me culturally – and let’s face it, of the three above, the one I have most in common with culturally is Simone de Beauvoir, and even that connection is tenuous.

So, it’s all very well to ‘remember our feminist history’, but do I have one? Well, I get to vote and I get to choose whether to have kids or not, for one, so I’d have to say, yes, definitely. But I’d have to conclude that history has very little to do with great women and big names – something we’d probably do well to remember, especially those who are interested in becoming ‘big names’, prominent feminists, and so on. Actually, I think it’s probably a mistake to think in terms of ‘feminist history’. None of us live outside of history, and it’s up to us to remember it, and that includes, for white feminists, a huge amount of colonialism and oppression.

We can’t pick what we like and don’t like about it – and that means we need to acknowledge the racism and classism that has been in the white feminist movement from the start, as well as the accomplishments of previous generations of feminists. It’s not all portraits of Emmeline Pankhurst and cool black and white photos of protests. My main problem with feminist history is to determine where ‘reclaiming’ stops and co-option starts.

Gender and sexuality

Now, there’s a problem right from the start here: I know what I like and I’m fine with it. But I don’t even identify as bisexual, or as anything – in fact, a lot of my ideas on sexuality are based around Lacan’s idea that trying to define your sexuality for certain is a form of neurosis, and that sexuality is a symptom – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s not, you know, an idea that feminists are terribly enamoured of. In fact, gnarly old male psychoanalysts aren’t a feminist favourite, even though a lot of feminism is based on the combination of psychoanalysis and Marxism that a lot of theory is based on.

I also find my sexuality to be a hugely emotional issue – probably because it took me ten to twelve years to stop trying to convince myself that I wasn’t attracted to women – I probably spent the first five trying to convince myself of the obvious, that this didn’t mean I wasn’t attracted to men. There are probably many deep, psychological reasons why I still refuse to define myself one way or the other. But it’s no less of a thought-out decision for all that, and this doesn’t tend to sit well with feminism in general, and to be honest, I often feel that I’m not even qualified to talk about my own sexuality because ‘real’ queers and ‘real’ heterosexual people will immediately recognise me for a massive fraud. This is pretty neurotic, but the fact remains that it’s not just in my head, there are vast portions of feminism that have a huge ‘not welcome’ sign on the door to people like me.

As for gender performance, I don’t really have a problem in the world at large – most people would just notice that I buy my clothes in charity shops, have a thing for coats, hats and shoes, and wear a lot of big, dangly jewellery. However, as soon as I walk into a feminist space, I feel like a sore thumb. And a lot of feminist discussion around personal adornment revolves around people talking about how they don’t wear this and that and the other, because they’ve emancipated themselves from all that nonsense – which may well be true, but I do get the feeling when they see me they see someone who has failed to emancipate herself from feminine trappings. I could dress down specially for feminist meetings, but let’s face it, that would be ridiculous.

It’s not like I want to walk into feminist spaces going ‘I must be acknowledged!’, but women are supposed to be able to be open about stuff like their gender and sexuality in these spaces, and there’s a lot of work still to be done on that count.  

Practical stuff

Now, why would I want to be involved in feminist politics in the first place? Of course, something needs to be done about certain issues, so there’s a sense of responsibility. There’s also a certain amount of looking for a community of (least favourite word coming up here) like-minded people. Well, there are more 30-year-old women into noise rock than I previously thought, but still, why feminist activism rather than any other?

There are certainly points against it. I’ve gone on at some length about the problems I have with large feminist events, a lot of which leave me with my head in my hands going ‘Oh good grief!’. I’m also unable to accept that if I can’t say anything nice I shouldn’t say anything at all. And after all, why should I sit there while people call working-class men Neanderthals and assume African women are all horribly submissive and need to be emancipated from their culture? I wouldn’t stand by if someone was making a sexist comment along the same lines, you wouldn’t put up with someone asking which country had the finest women. Yet I’ve got into the most trouble with feminists for trying to highlight our internalised racism and classism – mine as well, mind. In fact, I’m more interested in pointing it out in big, influential names than in my fellow bloggers. Still though, it’s present and it’s ugly. And I don’t particularly enjoy people trying to imply that I just get excited about this stuff because I’m cynically looking for stuff to criticise for irrational reasons of my own, either.

So, why feminism rather than socialism? Well, most left-wing groups I’ve encountered so far make me want to chew off my own face, for a start. I wanted to feel all idealistic about them, but really they’re mostly about the privileged few teaching everyone else how oppressed they are and how they should rise up and overthrow… who, exactly? Well, yeah,  the bourgeoisie. Who are the ones telling everyone to protest in the first place. Seeing rich students in their gap years identify as ‘the oppressed’ is enough to make me shit my own brain out. In fact, you could almost say that left-wing activism has turned into a movement of middle-class people fighting against their oppression by the readers of less sophisticated newspapers.  

As for feminism, well, so far my experience has been positive at the local level. By and large, I’ve met lots of feminists who are incredibly positive about getting stuff done, or about feminism itself being kept alive, and who seem sincere about it. There’s a lot more variety of political opinion in feminism as well, which I like because it keeps me on my toes intellectually.

However, as to being ‘a feminist’, well, I’m increasingly feeling that the more I learn, the more I realise I don’t know enough about the world to say ‘I’m a [           ]ist!’. But it looks like I will certainly stay involved in feminism for a little while yet.

Just wanted to share this post by Christian Feminist Philomela.

And once again I find myself crossing boundaries, weaving together my feminism and my Christianity despite criticism and rejection from both sides. Christians are often opposed to feminism because they buy into the idea that women are there to serve men, they read the bible uncritically, it doesn’t occur to them that maybe Paul was wrong, they don’t know christian history and that actually women have been a really important part of the church forever not just as supporting characters but as priests theologians and mystics.

and mainstream feminism is very anti religion (except maybe for certain types of paganism) it tells me that all religious people are misogynistic, are anti women, and its true many are, but so are many doctors, and lawyers, and socialists and journalists. it doesnt take into account that actually most women in the world have some sort of religious affiliation, it doesn’t take into account that religion can be a liberating force, supporting and comforting feminists when they are working at the sharp end, it doesn’t take into account that people are messy and beautiful and the need for god(esses) comes from the same place as sexuality/sensuality and creativity,
Both sides tell lies and uphold stereotypes about each other often without ever having had a dialogue with those on the other “side”

Speaking as an atheist / ignostic / pantheist, I think religion is an incredibly important part of our history and culture, as Philomela says most women have some sort of religious belief, so as feminists we need to be a lot less dismissive of religion. There’s a tendency, particularly among white, liberal, Western feminists, to assume that we were all sensible and gave up that nonsense when we ‘converted’ to feminism, but that attitude in itself shows that even those of us who are atheist can never divorce our religious roots. Nor should we try to - if you dismiss Christianity as a load of cod’s wallop, you’re throwing out an important part of your identity and culture.

I mean ‘in town’ figuratively of course. The new blog is called High On Rebellion, and its owner, Gwen, asked me if she could add Mind The Gap to her blogroll. Since we don’t have a blogroll, I’m linking her from here instead.

Her statement of purpose looks promising, here’s an extract:

It is impossible to sort out sexist oppression from racism, capitalism, homophobia, transphobia, abelism, or any other form of oppression. Modern ideas about gender roles, for example, the idea that women should stay at home while men go out and work, are racialised and classed. Working-class women and women of colour were expected to work, not only because the capitalist system demanded their labour (wouldn’t want to have to pay a man enough to support a family), but because the ideal of “domestic motherhood” for middle-class white women could only exist in opposition to a constructed “other”. If every woman stayed at home, then domestic motherhood would not longer be a marker of class and race privilege , and as such, would no longer be so highly valued.

Therefore, sexism cannot be fought effectively if we are not simultaneously fighting racism, capitalism and other forms of oppression. There is no such thing as a “women’s issue” separate from “race issues” and “class issues”.

Go read the rest here