I have moved

http://reweaving.cinnamon-sunrise.com/

I’m going to respond to the comments over there (only not today, but I will respond promise)

Thoughts on “The transformation of silence into language and action”

As I said in an earlier post, I’ve been reading sister outsider by Audre Lorde and I Wanted to talk about her essay The transformation of silence into language and action because it really made me think about some stuff. She opens with

I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. That the speaking profits me, beyond any other effect.

I think about this a lot about, the things I’m saying, about what I’m not saying, about what I should be saying, and it comes down to in the end that there are things I should say, even if I don’t know how to say them, even if I don’t say them well, even if you don’t know how to hear me,

She gave this speech shortly after a cancer scare when the thought of dying had come front and centre in her life in a way most of us, most of the time are able to cocoon ourselves from

In becoming forcibly and essentially aware of my mortality, and of what I wished and wanted for my life, however short it might be, priorities and omissions became strongly etched in a merciless light, and what I most regretted were my silences. Of what had I ever been afraid? To question or to speak as I believed could have meant pain, or death. But we all hurt in so many different ways, all the time, and pain will either change or end. Death, on the other hand, is the final silence. And that might be coming quickly now, without regard for whether I had ever spoken what needed to be said, or had only betrayed myself into small silences, while I planned someday to speak, or waited for someone else’s words.

I was going to die, if not sooner then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you

And it brings up to me now that I am not in a place in my life where I would be killed for speaking up, for speaking my truths, for speaking up for others, the days when my life was in danger is long gone, but I am obviously going to die eventualy, and I don’t want to die knowing that there were things that should have been said, by myself for myself and for others

Silence when there should be words is a kind of lie I think, and if that lie is to keep yourself or other people safe, there is no shame there, no wrong there, but when the lie is to keep me comfortable then I don’t think that’s okay, firstly I think I have no right to that sort of comfort when I know my words could change things for someone or at least let them know I support them, And for myself comfort isn’t always the best path because comfort doesn’t teach us anything, doesn’t connect us,

Lorde says

But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences.

And this is it isn’t it, for feminism to work, for social change to work, just for human relationships to work ,we need to connect, but that takes honesty with all the vulnerability that entails, because if we come to each other shadowed and masked then what is being presented will, not be reall, will not be something to hang on to. But it means we have to listen to each other, to listen to those whose voices challenge us and to speak things that we know will challenge others.

And of course I am afraid, because the transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation, and that always seems fraught with danger. But my daughter, when I told her of our topic and my difficulty with it, said, “Tell them about how you’re never really a whole person if you remain silent, because there’s always that one little piece inside you that wants to be spoken out, and if you keep ignoring it, it gets madder and madder and hotter and hotter, and if you don’t speak it out one day it will just up and punch you in the mouth from the inside.”

And she speaks of how we will only know the words we need when we speak them, and it is through speaking that we understand our lives and it is through words that we must challenge ourselves and each other we must hold ourselves and each other accountable for the work we are doing.

What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? Perhaps for some of you here today, I am the face of one of your fears. Because I am a woman, because I am Black, because I am lesbian, because I am myself — a Black woman warrior poet doing my work — come to ask you, are you doing yours?

This blog here is partly because I knew there was work I should have been doing that I wasn’t doing and to do that work I needed to move myself into a different space where I could both be more honest and more fluid. And I am afraid, afraid of vulnerability, of exposure, of loss, of judgement but she says

And it is never without fear — of visibility, of the harsh light of scrutiny and perhaps judgment, of pain, of death. But we have lived through all of those already, in silence, except death.

This comes down to me hard especially since someone in the blogsphere wrote a post that I disagree with that is prejudiced and ignorant about a group of people that neither myself nor the blogger who wrote the post belong to, that I really want to refute but that I’m scared of doing for the fall out that it will cause because of the reactions of people who are not going to agree with me but that I also consider friends

And it should come down to all of us hard, because I don’t think any of us are really good at telling the truth, we live in a world that both expects us to be both fractured and smooth, so we have to hide our completeness, our complexity and connections from each other and often from our self. And I know I at least have not been as good as I should have been at breaking silence when other people are being oppressed or are in danger.

There are some silences, I can not, will not break, especially around issues concerning my family, I will speak of them here sometimes, but not to my family because there are no salvageable connections there anyway, and my honesty has always been used to wound me. but there are other silences that will be broken here, things that I will think about and explore that may make me uncomfortable and may make my readers uncomfortable and angry.

we have had to learn this first and most vital lesson—that we were never meant to survive. Not as human beings. And neither were most of you here today, Black or not. And that visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength. Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak. We can sit in our corners mute forever while our sisters and ourselves are wasted, while our children are distorted and destroyed, while our earth is poisoned. we can sit in our safe corners mute as bottles, and we will still be no less afraid.”

I think this is really important, our survival is not promised, is even often not wanted, because what is wanted is cogs in the capitalist machine that can be ground down and spat out, but it is our speaking our honesty that makes at least our emotional survival more likeley. And I also think if we can find time and space and words and noise enough to make someone else’s survival more likely then there will have been a point to all this.

And where the words of women are crying out to be heard, we must each of us recognize our responsibility to seek those words out, to read them and share them and examine them in their pertinence to our lives That we not hide behind the mockeries of separations that have been imposed upon us and which so often we accept as our own.

And then this, that for much of the time I have been not so good at, searching out and seeking other women’s voices, women who aren’t me, who aren’t positioned as I am, women who have things to say that are not about my life, women who often have less privilege and more oppressions than me, women with whom I disagree with, but I am getting better at it I think, I am more opening to listening and reading and searching for other women’s voices

Audre Lorde:The transformation of silence into language and action From Sister Outsider P40-44

No, actualy this isn’t my feminism

I spent most of yesterday reading Sister Outsider by Audre Lourde and Blood Bread and Poetry by Adrienne Rich and they blew me away, I was moved by ther honesty, their compassion their love for other women, the fluidity of their thoughts and their willingness to dialogue with other women that’s didn’t always agree with , and they wilingness to unpack there own attitudes, and the fact that they realised that calling oneself a feminist was a starting point not an end point ,

And they wrote about a whole stack of different issues, race, sexuality, motherhood poetry ,anger, history, honesty, safety, silence. Rich, thick, deep writing about stuff that really matters then and still really matters now and I was just drinking it in, infusing myself with it and as Iiswas doing the I was also thinking “What the fuck happened , where did this all go, how did we loose this ?”

I was talking later to some feminist friends and ranting about the current State of rad Feminism and how this wasn’t what I signed up for inasmuch as ‘signed up” for anything. I didn’t want a Feminism that was exlusitory, elitist, refused to examine its own privilege and atitudes, and had a very narrow agenda, I wanted a feminism that was about love and listening.

One of my friends Suggested that actually maybe there were two main branches of radical feminism. One branch Came from women such as Rich and Lourde and Hanich and Millet, women who did have other women’s interests at heart, who didn’t think you could use represive state laws to make things better for women, who listened to other women, who were far from perfect but who were mostly honest and oudward looking and understood that women were fluid.

Then later came another group of feminists such as Dworkin, MacKinnon and Jefferies who seemed to have a very narrow agenda, who decided there were certain ways that “real” feminists (and in the case of Jefferies “real” lesbians) behaved, I have read lots of both Jefferies and Dworkin and I like some of the things they say but I really dislike the idea that their ideas are right, are set in stone, I really dislike the solid unmoving rigidity of their positions, I really dislike the feeling that they think disagreement and discussion is anti feminist, and the way that there doesn’t seem to be much self reflection. I also think with this sort of feminism it totally isn’t taken into account that women are complicated, that we don’t all come from the same place, that we create ourselves and survive in different ways. This kind of feminism and its adherents also seems to be allergic to even listening to women with different views and there doesn’t seem to be the emphasis of working through stuff together, at looking how we are situated can make us blind to other women.

My feminism comes much more from feminists such as Rich, from who I drink deep, and learn from and challenge myself with, although I am influenced by Jefferies, Dworkin et all I do not consider them my inheritance in the same way I consider other radical feminists.

I was searching for stuff about the differences between Rich and Dworkin and I found this,

Others more deserving of the badge of radical feminism, such as Adrienne Rich, have developed thoughtful and constructive critiques of heterosexuality as a compulsory institution. Such contributions have an important place in our evolving socialist/feminist theory and practice; they enrich our understanding and provoke critical questioning.
In contrast, MacDworkinism offers us nothing liberating; its emotion-laden screed comes down to nothing more sophisticated than “pornography is bad, sex is dangerous, and men are violent.” Positing that words and pictures cause violence and oppression, it scrupulously avoids any meaningful discussion of the root causes of these social problems.
In the real world, this version of “feminism” has disaffected countless women who do not experience male violence as the defining characteristic of their lives, and has distracted countless others from the economic and political battles we should have been fighting while we have been squabbling about “pornography.”

To be honest male violence has been one of the defining charcteristics of my life but it is far from my only issue and i’m also really aware that other women have other diferent issues also

This explains why I have been so frustrated with radical feminism/radfems lately because there is an assumption that we are coming from the same place and belive the same things when actually we are on very different tracks that often don’t meet in the middle. Its like we’re speaking the same langauge but the words meant differnt things.

Porn!Porn!Porn!Porn!Porn! (or not)

Lots of branches of feminism are involved in anti porn or anti prostitution activism in one way or another, and I was for a while and I did some stuff, and I tried to get some stuff of the ground which didn’t happen, but now I think I’m done with it. Firstly I don’t want to talk and read about porn and prostitution all the damn time (especially the sort that anti porn campaigners talk about) it uncovers unhealed wounds and it stops me having space to think about what I think about sexuality, it stops me having space to examine, reweave and heal my still extremely damaged sexuality.

I also have real issues with the fact that at many feminist blogs and gatherings the only things that gets talked about are porn, prostitution and rape and while those things are important I think it is both hypocritical and dishonest to only work around those issues, because It means we don’t have to examine ourselves, we don’t have to examine our privileges or the way we oppress other women, we don’t have to think about the way war kills more women than porn, or the way bad business practices that we partake in every time we buy cheap goods kills more or damages more women than porn.

Also if we are working on issues around porn it almost seems to give us an excuse not to interrogate our “isms” like “oh but I’m doing this for women why are you criticising me for being classest/racist/ablest?” etc but I think no feminism or no work to change the system is going to turn out the way we want it to until we stop behaving and reacting in patriarchal ways and that’s never going to happen unless we examine our privileges, whatever else we are doing

Also there are other women who I want to work with and who I will work with on other issues who have a really different stance than me on the issues of prostitution and porn and if we make that the lynch pin issue nothing else will get done.

I also don’t think its porn that upholds the patriarchy, I pretty much think its patriarchy, that upholds the patriarchy and I don’t think if porn and prostitution were eliminated the patriarchy would fall, there is so much other work to be done.

So I’m stoping writing about porn, stoping reading about porn and stoping working on anti porn stuff

thoughts on families

this weekend I have to go “home” well okay I don’t have to I choose to, but still it will be full of stress and awfulness because my parents are toxic to the extreme and there’s a history of all sorts of abuse there.

gearing up to this I’ve been thinking a lot about the nuclear family and how damaging it is, My family isn’t even a nuclear family not really, it is very much a blended family as all the children in it are adopted and have six biological parents between us and some of us are not related to each other, but there was always this enormous pressure from both my adoptive parents and the larger environment to appear like the perfect nuclear family, which obviously meant lying, keeping secrets and cutting of really large bits of my emotional self. Because to uphold the idea that my family was “normal” on some level I had to deny that there were people out there, some of whom I remembered and loved deeply that shared my blood and my heritage with

I think part of the problem with the nuclear family is the way they are supposed to present as independent coherent entities with no slipage or overlap. There is very rarley the space for fluidity that is part of being a healthy human being.

lots of people argue that the traditional nuclear family doesn’t work, well I think it works fine as long as if what we mean by fine is it does exactly what its designed to do and what its designed to do is teach rigid gender roles and divide society into little pods that all have an “us and them” mentality and an aversion to working together, while creating the need for as much consumption as possible. It fosters a complete lack of accountability because those without the power in the pod have no way of knowing that what goes on when the curtain of privacy is pulled is not normal, and they have very little recourse if they do realise this. And it gives women and children no recourse against male violence and aggression, because it separates them from sources of support. I would like to think that if people lived in bigger groups the level of domestic violence would fall massively. And because the family is still seen as sacrosanct still seen as essentially private things can get hidden and brushed under the carpet. What goes on within a family is essentially seen as nobody else’s business.

which means that if keeping secrets is already seen as the norm in families then getting children and women to keep secrets that are damaging them is a really easy small step for a man to make.

As I was thinking about these things I sumbled across Maias post
consequences

What is the consequence of giving Woman to Man?

What is the consequence of placing an individual at the head of a closed family, of giving him authority to rule and guide his family, the family that is his?

What is the consequence of giving Woman in submission to Man? Of placing children, his children under his absolute care and control as the head of his household?

What is the consequence of empowering Man and, as a corollary, disempowering his family, his woman, his children? Allowing him to rule and guide through the mechanisms of submission, obedience – control.

Is it, sometime, abuse? Could we, perhaps, expect that abuse will happen almost inevitably as a result of such a family structure?

…………………………………………………………………………

Why he did it is not guessable – we can say no more than that he did it because he could.
Why is it that he could?

And you know we are always looking for reasons, as to why men hurt women, why they abuse them, why they ride roughshod over them and often I do think men do destructive things because they too are wounded by this fucked up society we live in but often, yeah the answer is they did it just because they could.

I used to tie myself in knots trying to work out why my father abused me and eventually it did just come down to “because he could” because he had an absolute overload of male privilege, because he got what he wanted, because he grew up thinking the whole world belong to him and eventually when I became part of that world I belonged to him so he could do whatever he wanted to me.

I grew up in a crazy religious environment that was not woman or child friendly and was very much about the man being the head of the household and the rest of the family submitting to his needs/wants/demands

so yeah I think families pretty much suck, even good families, with the best will in the world the traditional nuclear family is going to be a hot bed of frustrations, resentment and exhaustion because of the isolation that is expected to happen.

This ones about the Menz

One of the biggest and most annoying myths about feminists is that we hate men, that man hating is integral to feminism and feminists, Now , its true I am not a big fan of men, I have very few men in my life, I generally prioritise women over men, I prioritise working for women’s rights over men’s rights and there are very few men I am comfortable with or ever want to be in close proximity to but to say I hate men is wrong, I have hated individual men and I hate patriarchy but that doesn’t conflate to hating all men or thinking all men should be annihilated. and I don’t think most feminists hate men, but really? When a woman who calls herself a feminist writes this

Yes, the boys are mad. Their minds have gone completely around the bend and they’re totally off their rockers. They are raping and killing women and children at will now. The more they get away with it, the more powerful and emboldened they will feel and become. At this point, they might as well just declare open hunting season on women. In fact, I think they already have.

Men got where they are by being the most murderous motherfuckers in the history of the planet.

Despite the evidence all around them, many women still remain in denial and refuse to see how much men hate them. I fear for these women. Kissing men’s ass is not going to save their own.

The good news is, the dragon is dying. Masculinist societies historically do not survive. They self implode and reach the logical conclusion of self destruction. But as the dragon dies, he becomes more dangerous than ever. Men want their sex class, their slaves and their free labor and they will destroy the entire planet before they will ever allow women to be equal, must less, liberated or free. So be prepared. Things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.

The burning times are upon us again. Men have declared war on women and we are in the midst of a holocaust. Still, people refuse to see. History is repeating itself. The Jews, too, refused to see or believe. Until it was too late.

The good news is, men will not survive. This is a female planet and Mother Nature has grown tired of the boys’ and their fuckery. Males have been scheduled for termination and extinction. Which includes human males. Males in several species have already disappeared. The Y chromosome in human males continues to progressively degenerate. Until finally it will eventually go *poof.* Trans can take it up with Mother Nature. Somehow tho, I don’t think she’ll be impressed. Have a Y chromosome? Bye, bye.

Hmmm… I wonder if we can somehow speed this process up?

P.S. HIV/Aids is virtually non-existent among the Lesbian population. There isn’t a single case on record of a lesbian transmitting the disease to another lesbian through sexual contact. It was labeled a “gay disease” because it was epidemic among gay males. It is males who sexually spread the HIV virus and are primarily responsible for most other STDs, like the HPV virus (which causes cervical cancer in women). Men are walking viruses.

So warning: Having sex with men may be hazardous to your health. Protect yourself. Become a lesbian.

From where I am there is so much wrong with this comment I hardly know where to start

Yes, the boys are mad. Their minds have gone completely around the bend and they’re totally off their rockers. They are raping and killing women and children at will now

The men who hurt women do not hurt them because they are mad, they do it because they are angry (or indifferent) and entitled, to accuse men who hurt others of having a mental illness is abelist against people with actual mental illness who in contradiction to current mythology are more likely to be victims of violence rather than perpetrators

Masculinist societies historically do not survive

Surely if we take the long view societies do not survive?

The burning times are upon us again. Men have declared war on women and we are in the midst of a holocaust. Still, people refuse to see. History is repeating itself. The Jews, too, refused to see or believe. Until it was too late.

Wait what? It’s the Jews fault that the holocaust happened? Yeah heard that before just not from a feminist. As a third generation holocaust survivor I am less than impressed. And as a woman who has been the victim of male violence not impressed with the implication that I should have seen it coming either.

It was labeled a “gay disease” because it was epidemic among gay males. It is males who sexually spread the HIV virus and are primarily responsible for most other STDs, like the HPV virus (which causes cervical cancer in women). Men are walking viruses.

Wow that’s original and progressive, blaming gay men for aids! In our next instalment we explain how breast cancer is women’s fault for not having babies!

And I’m not even going there with the junk science and the transphobia

But the thing I really wanted to pick up on was the violent hatred of all men, everywhere, Men are not the problem, patriarchy and men who buy into patriarchy are the problem. Luckynkl proves here that the wish to control and exterminate large chunks of humanity is not something only men do.

Also on a global level patriarchal capitalism kills men too, through war, poverty, and lack of healthcare to name just a few. In lots of ways western women are far more privileged than men in the developing world, and in some cases partake in kinds of violence against them (such as supporting companies that support totalitarian regimes.)

On a personal level I have some men (okay two) in my life who refuse and resist patriarchy, who are not violent, who are not porn users, who do not see women as unequal, who do not expect sex, who are not part of the war against women, I’m sure other women know similar men, these men may very well be in the minority but they are there, which kind of proves that men do not have to be the way patriarchy says they have to be (and personally as a feminist I always thought this was one of the things we are fighting for, not the elimination of men but the elimination of patriarchy.)

I don’t say this often in feminist spaces but I will say that the man who is now my partner saved me. Not in a “I’m a better person than I would have been otherwise” Kind of way but in a “I would be dead now otherwise” kind of way. And I know this isn’t fashionable to talk about in feminist spaces, but he is my solace, he accepts me just as I am and soothes my wounds, He is the first person I ever met who loved me unconditionally.
So yes I know that not all men buy into what patriarchy says men have to be (this is not at all the same as saying they don’t benefit from male privilege BTW)

And on a political level there are men’s organisations that are working to end violence against women such as The white ribbon campaign I don’t work politically with men’s groups because for the most part I choose not to work politically with men, but I think its important that those groups are there and I think that its important that women are working with them and in no way see that as

Kissing men’s ass

One of the things that really disturbed me about this comment was that no one else refuted it on the comment thread. This may be because they didn’t feel it was apropriate because of the original post (which is horrifying and made me go cold with anger) but I haven’t seen it refuted on any radical feminist blogs either (I found it through belldame222)

And it just makes me feel that if someone who considers herself a radical feminist feels like its okay to say that and other people who consider themselves radical feminist don’t say anything to show they disagree with that, its no wonder the mainstream thinks feminists hate men.

This is where I came in: Remembering Myself

This is where I came in and other transgressions.

I recently had a very drunken, rambling but for me very profound conversation about, transgender, gender diversity, queer, non heterosexuality and alliances and i feel in a way it bought me back to myself, gave me a space to reremember my history, to pay homage to who and what made me partly who I am.

Radical feminism is important to me and has been very healing for me and given me a strong place to stand, but before that there was something else. There was another community of people both in literature and physicaly that I belonged to, that belonged to me, before I found radical feminism, when I was dealing with my non heterosexuality I read everything I could find, to help me feel less abnormal. The first book I ever read that talked about not being straight was okay was Becoming a Man and it was so powerful, so profound, it doesn’t matter to me that it was written by a man, it felt like i was coming up for air. And I read everything I could find about being non heterosexual,

And I read, Pat(rik) Califia, Del(la) grace volcano, Kate Bornstien, Joan Nestle, Camile Paglia and many people who I cant remember the names of but who made it okay to be me, made it okay to be queer

It was then i met one of the people I have been most attracted to in my whole life, a preoperative transman, we absolutely zinged, there was an incredible chemistry between us

and I played femme, real high lesbian femme, because it made me feel beautiful, because I liked the sort of women it attracted, i went out with a woman for two and a half years who was so butch she got called sir, who was way more masculine than my current partner who is male

And when i wasn’t playing femme i was doing soft butch baby dyke, the uniform then was Khakis and strappy tops

I have always been Kiki who I am being and how i am dressing depends on how I am feeling, where I feel I am on the gender and sexuality spectrum at that point.

I lived in a big shared house that was always full of people that didn’t live there and almost all of us were some form of queer: bi, gay, lesbian, trans, undecided, unlabeled, We were young desperate, vulnerable, many of us parentless or faced the possibility of becoming parent less if our parents found out who we were, and many of us were crazy because the pressure of living in a homophobic heterosexist society wore us out, wore us down, there was a place to sleep if parental prejudice created homelessness, we fed each other when we were poor, we mopped up the blood weather it was self inflicted or weather it was a homophobic attack. we visited each other when we ended up in the psychiatric hospital, we went clubbing every weekend to celebrate being us, to celebrate our love for us, to celebrate survival

I have never felt so much that people I loved had my back as I did then, and we didn’t care, it didn’t matter who was fucking who, or how, or what shape their genitals were, or weather they were buying into gender roles.

And I think this, the need for purity is often what stagnates movements because people make alliances with people for reasons other than gender and people make alliances with other people who are similarly oppressed even if that crosses gender lines and people are messy and beautiful and we find our joy and our freedom in unexpected people and situations.

I have always lived on edges and boundaries and I think edges and boundaries are where the truths are, shoring up the boundaries to hard doesn’t create safety, it creates a trap.

for most of my life I have been very fractured and I have only recently, like in the last year been able to start weaving myself back together. Its time to start weaving the queer part of myself together with the radical feminist part of myself, so none of me, none of who I honestly am, gets left behind

This is what I came here for

This spring from the heart of the mountain runs cool and clear, runs with the knowledge of womens pain, poverty and fear, but also the sound of our laughter and fingerlinked power, quenching the thirst. Fullfilling the need for each others voices, histories, eyes, Saturating us with the knowledge that this stream will wear away the rock and become a river, a torrent to change the shape of the landscape with.

(IWD left me buzzing with joy!)

it’s not about this

It’s not about performing for the boys and playing with the girls, it’s not about being gay when its easy and straight when it’s hard, it’s not about needing one of each, it’s not about which I prefer, which I like best, it’s not about being confused, being greedy, being selfish, its not about phases, it’s not about being sexually adventurous, it’s not about being sexually insatiable, its not about gender not mattering, it’s not about fucking and moving on, it’s not just about mechanics. its not about fifty fifty splits, it’s not about non monogamy, it’s not about hiding or lying or pretending, its not about fashion trends.