What's that word again? I can't seem to remember...

I think it rhymes with "voice".  Like we should all have a...voice?

B-b-but she's my gynecological twin!

FTR, I love Samantha Bee, my fellow Vagina American!

I fucking hate you

If you ever thought or wrote this about Sarah Palin:

Let's face it, if she had really wanted to spare her daughter the harsh
glare of the spotlight, she could have respectfully declined the job

then you are a piece of human scum and I fucking hate you. Bonus points if you are a woman.

What the fuck is wrong with you people? I can understand you are gung ho on voting the party that hates you and treats you like scum, but at least have the fucking decency of leaving others alone.

You know, I am starting to see Sarah Palin as a feminist hero, for the shit the so-called progressives and feminists lob at her for having the audacity to not kis Barky's ass while possessing boobs. They don't hate her for being a republican- behold the similar hatred Hillary got from them, they hate her for being a woman. Plain and simple. What is worse is that people who were upset when it happened to Hillary think it's OK to pick on Palin on those exact things.

The truth of 2008 finally comes out: Hillary didn't lose because she was Hillary, or wrong, she lost because she is a woman and women who run for political power are horrible people . Nothing they will ever do will be good enough for it. How dare they forget they are inferior, worthless and generally irrelevant?

Mind you, per se, Hillary didn't LOSE. She was robbed of the nomination. But that is another animal isn't it?

I fucking hate people.

Dear Senator Hillary Clinton

Thank-you.

Thank-you for all of the amazing things you have accomplished in your life.  Thank-you for being a wonderfully strong and confident woman to whom my daughter can look for inspiration.

Thank-you for being a champion for women's rights.

Thank-you for your fight for health care.

Thank-you for smashing through the glass ceilings that you have and most of all, thank-you for running for the Democratic nomination.

Thank-you for staying in the race this long and giving as many people as possible a choice.

I am awaiting your next move, for I know that it will break ground and pave ways for future generations of women.  I know that whatever you choose to pursue next it will make my life better, and it will make the future better for my daughter, and everyone with whom she will share that future.

I know that you will not let me down, for you haven't done so yet.  I know you are not perfect and that you have made mistakes, but being that you are human, I know you have learned from those mistakes and will use them to better prepare to forge ahead. 

I hold you to the highest of standards, and wait anxiously for the great things I expect to see from you in the future.  

Our Future.

Thank-you.

Warmest Regards and Endless Admiration,

Chang'e

Not to Change the Subject...

but something has been really pissing me off lately.

Swearing.

I swear.  A. Lot.  I use "colorful language" pretty loosely.  I use the word "Fuck" like a comma.  Sometimes when I write I use a lot of slang and "profanity", and I feel like it gets my point across.  I am a grown up.  A fucking "adult", so if I want to rip loose with a few good "fuck that"'s and "to hell with this"'s, I am going to.  My writing is pretty damn good, I wouldn't be getting published now and then if it wasn't.

I am getting a little sick and tired of hearing people criticize writers, speakers, activists, especially women, for swearing.  If I had a dollar for every time I heard or read in a comment that I should watch my language, or that swearing makes me seem immature, or that using a "cuss word" (seriously, does anyone who actually "cusses" use the word "cuss"?) detracts from my point I could give up writing altogether and retire to a tropical island.

Whether it is people saying that Jessica Valenti is really smart until she opens her mouth (even her wonderful feminist primer, Full Frontal Feminism is sharply criticized for it's conversational writing style) because her swearing takes away from her point, or a woman being completely discredited on a valid point or not taken seriously about assault because she had the audacity to say "Don't fucking talk to me like that" I am getting seriously pissed that people are being judged on their choice to thrown "shit" into a sentence or not.

Swearing doesn't show that you are uneducated or that you don't know what you are talking about.  It doesn't mean that you lack the skills to verbalize something in a more "friendly" way.  It sure as hell doesn't mean that we have no better way to say something.  Sometimes the best sentiment out there is "right the fuck on".

There are many, countless intelligent writers out there, many more so than myself, who are more than comfortable using "foul" language regularly.  Whether it be Cara at the Curvature, or Roy at No Cookies for Me, Jill or Zuzu et al at Feministe, the wonderful team at Shakesville, any of the ladies at Feminising, BlackAmazon, or our very own Red Queen, the fact that we swear doesn't detract or lessen the message.  I would dare anyone to call any of them uneducated.  There are plenty of people out there who are saying things "politely", and frankly, I don't think it is getting the message across.  What is happening when we decide to swear in our writing is that we are making people pay attention.  We are making people wiggle in their chairs and think "Oh, no!  She didn't!", and I am going to tell you, "Oh, yes!  She did!".  We have got you thinking, and if all you can see is the swearing and "impolite" language, then I think you might be either reading the wrong blogs, books, articles, or your brain just isn't capable of handling the message.  If all you can see are the trees, get the hell out of the forest.

I am done taking criticism because I use any type of swearing.  If you want to police language, put your efforts on the people throwing around "gay" or "faggot" as if it is an insult, or have a round or two with someone who thinks it's OK to call a woman a "bitch" or a "cunt", or to say that someone who enjoys having sex is a "slut" or "whore".  Focus your censorship on someone who is using hateful speech to keep someone in their place, usually a woman (or, for that matter, calling a man a "pussy" or "girl" as a way to insult him, cuz you know, that is the worst thing a man can be, the strongest human anatomy unit ever...don't believe me...what do men have that stretches to about 300 times it's size and shoots whole people forcefully out of a ten centimeter hole?).

We are a culture all our own.  We are writers, speakers, activists and feminists who are finished being "polite", worrying about who is going to be offended reading a few choice four letter cherries and we are going to say exactly what we think exactly the way we see fit.  If you don't like it the door is over there, and I promise not to get choked up.

And if you are one of us, thank-you for taking the time to stop by.  Take the message with you when you leave and pass it on.

And have a great fucking day.

Dropping "F-Bombs"

And I want to go first by saying "Fuck Yeah!", after reading this article in the Washington Post where Juno and X-Men actress Ellen Page gave an interiview, and wasn't afraid to use her own F-Bomb:

I call myself a feminist when people ask me if I am, and of course I am 'cause it's about equality, so I hope everyone is. You know you're working in a patriarchal society when the word feminist has a weird connotation. "Hippie" has a weird connotation. "Liberal" has a weird connotation.

(emphasis mine)

(I am not going to mention the idiot interviewer asking dumb questions like "Don't all Canadians know each other?".  Moron.)

But I just had to say "Yay!" to Ellen Page, and let everyone know that I have added her to my Girl Crush List.

Also, read that article...because I have to drop another F-Bomb:  Fuck you, anti-choicers!  Juno isn't a "pro-life" movie like you morons would have everyone believe!  Ha!

(I promise I am finished now)

We now return you to your regularly scheduled web-surfing.

All Together Now

There is no such thing as "grey rape".

Fuck you very much.

Chang'e

Ok- I'll bite

Echidne has a great post up about choice feminism (I feel like I should be using scare quotes around choice).

Another was the idea that feminism somehow made all choices any woman made into feminist ones or at least immune from feminist criticism. If a woman chose to stay at home, that was a feminist choice. If a woman chose to be employed, that was a feminist choice. If a woman chose to relinquish all her rights and to subject herself to her husband's authority, well, even that was a feminist choice! (No, I'm not making that last one up.) The very definition of "feminist" became identical with "some woman has chosen it" and that "some woman had chosen it" became identical with "feminist." This is circular thinking, but what is worse is the usual addition that these choices cannot therefore be criticized or discussed. After all, wasn't feminism all about giving women more choices?

Women are humans, and as humans, we sometimes make stupid choices. Somehow, feminism has become tied to unconditional support of women's choices no matter what. But how is that any better than the old thinking that women shouldn't get into politics because they were too good for it? Both cases make us into things that are not quite human, on one hand we shouldn't get involved in politics because we're too ethical and pure, on the other hand our choices should not be questioned because we are women. If a man made a choice to do something stupid that drastically impacted the welfare of himself and his family, we would have no problem calling him a tool. If we really want equality, we need to stop patting ourselves on the head for making any choice, regardless of how stupid it is.

Echidne also goes on to say that:

My own observations suggest that feminists criticizing housewives or strippers for their occupational choices are less common than non-feminists criticizing employed mothers, say. But in any case feminism never promised the total lack of any questioning about the choices people make.

Here's where I bite. I'm one of those feminists who will criticize women for choosing to be housewives. By choosing to be housewives, women choose to do a very difficult job for no pay, and by not getting paid for it, they devalue the work that they do (and that the rest of us have to do even if we work full time outside of the house).

The work of caring for children and the home is no less difficult than being a garbage man, yet garbage men are paid reasonably well and generally receive benefits and retirement packages. And they get time off, housewives don't. But because of how we idealize motherhood, mothers do not receive payment for their services. They are expected to satisfied with being paid in kisses and love and their children's accomplishments.

Yet all the services that housewives provide are vital to the continuation of society. If no one ever cooked a meal or did laundry or read bedtime stories or even just had babies, society would literally end. And we have ways of paying for these services. Even housewives use dry cleaners and restaurants. There are nannies and daycares that will read to children and house cleaning services that will scrub your toilets. Hell, you can now even outsource your pregnancy to an Indian surrogate. All of these things are jobs that pay you for your time and effort.

By doing all of these jobs for no pay, housewives set the bar very low for the wages of the people who do those jobs for pay. The job of the housewife is idealized so that we can continue to get vital services without paying for them. And they should be paid for. All we need to do is look at Germany to see what happens when women realize that the costs of having children outweigh the benefits. Birthrates drop, drastically.

So I will criticize women for being SAHMs. You're bringing us all down. Either get work or start demanding to be compensated for your time and energy in something more tangible than sentimental fluff.

Is motherhood harder than

Being bent over all day picking lettuce for minimum wage

Being a grave digger

Being a secretary who knows more about whats going on that the boss that makes 10 times what you do

Being a customer service rep answering the same questions over and over again during the day and being yelled at for things you have no control over

Being a prison guard

Being a counselor to rape victims or domestic violence victims

Being a nurse in a burn unit

Being a pilot flying a 747 full of people in rough weather

Being an immigration lawyer

Being a published author

Being a social worker

Being a scientist working on a cure for cancer or AIDS

Being a hospice care provider

Being the head of you own company


Probably not.

The Mommy Fetish- short version

My piece for the anthology is about how we fetishize motherhood so we don't have to pay women to do the actual work of mothering. It's also about calling bullshit on the "motherhood is my greatest accomplishment" line that moms (both SAHM and working moms) are supposed to spew out instead of any accomplishments that might get the recognition outside of the home.

Over at RandomBabble and today at Pandagon and with some of the people (mostly guys) that I have talked to about the essay, I have started some shit. Apparently being pissed off that women get pigeonholed into an unpaid and thankless role means I'm bitchy or something. Fine.

But here's the thing. Women have been having babies and raising them to adulthood for at least 200,000 years, and pretty damn successfully. In developed countries with access to prenatal care and childhood vaccinations and general freedom from the violence of wars and famine, raising a child to adulthood is a given. We don't spend every day of our child's life worrying about whether they are going to starve to death or be turned into war fodder. We worry about whether they are reading at grade level or socializing properly or getting the right organic nutrients and college entrance test scores. These are not life or death concerns, they are marginal. Being a mother in a developed country rarely means making life or death choices for your kids.

So if you're a SAHM in America claiming that your kids are your greatest accomplishment- I call bullshit. If you're a working mom in America and you say the same thing- I call bullshit on that too. We (moms) are doing a tough and thankless job, yes. But not a job that hasn't been done by billions and billions of women before us.

And lots of people have tough and thankless jobs. Fast food workers, secretaries, farm workers, customer service people. I have yet to hear any of those people demand that people acknowledge their sacrifice for showing up everyday at a crap job. Because we pay them. Moms, on the other hand, get paid in stupid cards and flowers one day a year and a giant shitload of platitudes and sentiment the rest of the year.

I would rather have the cash than the sentiment. And I am sorry if you feel hurt because I think choosing to stay at home with your kids isn't an accomplishment worthy of my admiration. Whopdee fucking do. You're not some poor Sudanese mother who has managed to keep all of her daughters from being raped and her sons from being slaughtered (which would be an accomplishment). You've just managed to get little Chloe or Zack to sleep through the night or pick up cheerios in a pincher grasp or whatever. And so have we working moms, with half the time and twice the workload.

Be your own damn greatest accomplishment, let your kids be theirs. Give them an example to follow, not a fucking martyr.

Better Man

In the comments to the last post, Wonder and I were talking about a phenomena we frequently run into in relationships.

"You make me want to be a better man"

"You're my moral compass"

If we had a dollar for every guy that said that kind of stuff, we'd be much better off than we are. I don't know how widespread this idea is that woman are supposed to be the ethics moderators for men, I only know how common it is in my relationships. And it SUCKS!

Granted, this is a kind of power can be sort of an aphrodisiac, at first. It seems like it's the power to teach someone something hugely important to the human existence (whether or not you believe in god). But the truth usually shows itself soon enough. You are not teaching them to be better people, you are the excuse they use to continue to be selfish and small minded. They don't have to do the hard thinking or feel guilt over being an asswipe because you are there to do it for them. It's the relationship version of catholic confession, a way to rid yourself of sin without doing the hard work of actual atonement.

And I wonder if this isn't the natural progression of making women the gatekeepers of sex, something that comes up way to frequently when talking about morals. Personally, I think any kind of sex between consenting adults is fine and not any sort of moral failing, but when you make morals so much about sexuality, and you make women the gatekeepers of sex, then it's not a giant leap to think that women are the gate keepers of morality too. (Add the not small belief that women are responsible for original sin and we get the extra burden of making up for that for all eternity by being the sacrificing and compassionate sex).

Wonder says she wants a guy who is a better feminist than she is. (Good luck with that). I would be happy with a guy has his own strong ethical beliefs and internal moral compass. I am already teaching one male (the Kid) how to be moral, I don't want to do it for a grown up.

Feminist lessons for the kid

The Kid is reading the Da Vinci Code, and like most people who have read it he has become OBSESSED.

I remember this age, I think I went batshit over the Mist's of Avalon, but I am sure I was not nearly as cute in my obsession as the Kid

Kid: Mom, did you know that the symbols we use for man and women, you know the one with the arrow and the one that looks like a person, are wrong.

Me: Really, what are they supposed to be?

Kid: Well, the woman is really a cup, but it looks like a V. And the men, it's an upside down V. It's supposed to mean spear but (In super quiet whisper) it really looks like a phallus.

Me: You know why I like the other symbols better?

Kid: Why?

Me: Cause in Christianity there is this idea that women aren't really people, but empty vessels that are useless till you fill them up, like a cup. I like the other symbol better cause it let's women be people, not empty objects.

How poverty really works, and how sometimes the universe gives you presents

Three months ago, when I started classes, I stopped receiving food stamps. My income level is such that based on income alone, I am unequivocally eligible for the full amount of food stamps per month for 2 people.

But I had the gall, as a poor person, to get an education. And not just an education, but I was going for an academic degree. And people in academic programs are not eligible for food stamps.

If I had known my place and instead went for a technical certificate in something like medical assisting (a career where I would make less hourly than I do now) then I would have been eligible not only for food stamps but for a whole host of other programs.

With few exceptions*, technical and vocational programs do not lift people out of poverty permanently. They stave off poverty only as long as those skills are in high demand. And once the demand is met, those technical certificates are worth little.

So we have been without food stamps for three months. It is not a coincidence that those are the three moths I owe rent for. It was a choice. Feed the Kid or pay rent. That is the total of what my meager earning can provide. I chose feed the kid.

So now Christmas is looming along with an eviction. Payday isn't until Friday and my bank account is overdrawn. The cupboards and fridge are near bare and last night I had the Kid eat a super loaded baked potato for dinner. The last potato, actually. He was mortified that I was skipping dinner and kept trying to give me his potato. If he had known that I skipped lunch too, I don't think I could have gotten him to eat. After he went to bed, I had some celery and some chicken stock. I swear I'm not on some super restriction diet, though it sounds like it.

Today is the last day of class, and I filed for food stamps this morning. In a week or so, we can go to the grocery store and restock the cabinets (if there are cabinets to be stocked). In the mean time I just have to get through till Friday.

So I came into work today. On the last day of every quarter we have a big pot luck lunch, but I usually get here too late to get anything. The universe smiled on me today though, cause I have never seen such a spread in over four years here. I just loaded up a plate with turkey and potato salad and orzo salad with artichoke hearts and mashed potatoes and .......

I was planning on skipping lunch today too. I'm really glad I didn't have to.

*Exception- the program I work for actually teaches skills that people can use to start their own business. They have high earing potential straight after graduation. This is a program that was originally designed for a very male dominated field, which might explain why the income potential is higher than that of other vocational programs. We have a large population of female students and a very gender friendly campus.

Maybe Hillary is OK

My insomniatic self is watching some Wall Street Journal Review (I think) show with Maria Barteromo interviewing Hillary about sub prime mortgages and tax breaks. When Barteromo starts whining about how repealing the Bush tax cuts will put pressure on people who are already stressed, Hillary cracked up before Maria could even finish the question. Her response , once she finished laughing, was "You're talking about people who are in the same tax bracket as Bill and I, and we aren't feeling the pressure".

That needs to be a media clip played over and over and over, every time a rethuglikan stars whining about taxes. Every single time.

Class-Food-Babies-Women-Media

“As a diner, the idea of me chewing 17 bites of one thing and another 17 bites of another is absolutely boring, and not how I want to eat,” said the chef Mario Batali."

Entrees are dead! claims the NY Times. Wives get expensive push presents after pushing out a kid!

Why should we care about the lives and tastes of people who, unlike most of us, are not worrying about whether their ARM mortgage is about to give up it's teaser rate or if we can keep the heat on with the rising utility prices?

Because these are the types of stories the NY Times, arguably the most read newspaper in the country, is publishing. And when those are the kinds of ideas that are pushed onto the rest of us, the competition to succeed (or at least appear that you are) gets tougher.

One of the most awesome aspects of the American dream and capitalism is the idea of social mobility. We have this idea that through hard work and the right opportunities we can succeed and give better opportunities to our children. Part of that involves giving our kids the cultural cues to be part of a better class than they are currently in. It starts with basics like better food and housing, access to doctors and dentists, education. But very quickly it goes to non necessities, the right clothes, the right schools , tutors and extracurriculars, technology, etc. While a huge part of this can be seen as spoiling a child, the reasons for doing it are so that our children feel comfortable and confident in a better social class. It is our version of teaching them what fork to use with what course. And a lot of the work of making sure kids have these opportunities falls on women who play chauffeur and shopper, negotiate parent teacher conferences, make sure that the home looks right for the class they are aspiring to and that the food the kids are getting is not just enough calories for growing bodies but the right kind of calories from the right kind of food in the right kind of portions grown in the right kinds of places with enough variety so that the kid won't look like a complete idiot when someone says "let's have a prosciutto sandwich".

So when the Times comes out with a story about how the entree is dead, I groan internally. This means I am going to have a much tougher time cooking if I want the Kid to have the right social cues.

I am a fabulous cook. I throw awesome dinner parties. People have suggested I open a restaurant or go to cooking school to be professional. I have no interest in cooking for money. Pulling together a meal made entirely of appetizers and small plates is something I could do, but the amount of work involved in coming up with several complementary small dishes on a daily basis is too much for the average mom. We barely have time to cook to begin with, and if we do, we also have the clean up to think about later. The cookware dirtied by a tapas dinner would make a Thanksgiving cook cry. But if we want our kids to fit in, we will do it. Heaven forbid our child gets bored after chewing 17 bites of a one dish meal of beef stew with organic beef and veggies done in a slow food style (slow food being the last trend women had to follow to prove their devotion to their families bellies).

And with all this extra work women are doing, it is no surprise that expensive presents are the part of the barter system. We would think it unconscionable for a woman to say to her husband "Let's see, 40 weeks of pregnancy, that's 6720 hours plus the hazard pay for labor and delivery- that will be $50,000 please, plus a bonus cause I managed to push out a kid with penis who will carry on your family name". But a shiny bauble of sentimentality provides a financial motivation in a less crass way.

Quick analogy

Sex is to rape what open heart surgery is to a vicious stabbing.

Sure, in surgery and a vicious stabbing you have someone taking a knife to your chest, but no one in their right mind would ever confuse the two.

How to teach boys

Aunt B over at Tiny Cat Pants has an awesome post about Masculinism 101 and how men need to be the ones to change rape culture. (I've said it before- women have been trying to prevent rape for eons, if we haven't come up with the perfect way of walking, acting, dressing or never leaving the house yet- then there is no way for women to prevent rape).

In comments the question was asked:

It gets fairly difficult for to differentiate when you start talking about date rape. Or a sex act that occurs when both are drunk. That’s harder to define, no? Is it rape because the law says a party can’t consent when drunk? What if the party really meant to consent? What if the party consented when drunk but felt guilty [about being drunk, about the sex] the next morning? What if the party wouldn’t have consented when sober but got up the nerve, so to speak, when drunk?

THOSE are the kinds of situation that scare the fool out of me as the mother of a son. What do I tell HIM to ensure he is safe?

Well, as the feminist mother of a son, lemme tell ya.

When Kid was very small, I started teaching him about consent. When we would roughhouse or tickle fight, one "no" was all it took for me to stop. And I taught him that one "no" was the line I drew at him stopping. Period. End of game. We both got to say when it was too much and those boundaries were absolute.

I taught him this not just because it would help him pay attention later in life when things with girls start happening, but also as a way for him to judge the behavior of another grown up and to give him a kind of toolbox for dealing with Catholic priests or Boy Scout troupe leaders. If he was secure in the knowledge of his own bodily autonomy, then he would be better able to judge when someone was trying to take it from him.

Now that the Kid is of an age where girls are very soon to be The Most Important Thing In The Universe! I can take those experiences and show how they relate to sex. Consent must be an absolute "Hell yes" and anything short of that is a "no". "Maybe" is a no, saying nothing is a no, "I don't know" is a no, "Not now" is a no- and not an excuse to ask again five minutes later. I am teaching my son that the only good way to enjoy pleasure is when both people are ready and happily excited about it.

I did hear one super rad idea at TCP though. If you want to make sure the girl is willing and able to have sex, ask her to put the condom on for you. I am definitely adding that to the lesson plans. And that is how you teach boys not to be rapists.

Say it with me!

Gender is a construct. Repeat: Gender is a construct.

What does that mean. exactly?

Gender, as opposed to sex, is an idea created by society. Sex is biological. The only inherent difference between men and women is the ability to produce children. Period. Everything else that you think of as male or female is an idea created by society.

Women are not naturally more nurturing, men are not naturally more aggressive. Women were not just gatherers, men were not just hunters. Not all men feel the need to sow wild oats, not all women fall in love with every guy they sleep with. These are ideas created by society to keep the basic power structures intact, regardless of whether those power structures are fair or even the most efficient way of running a society.

From the moment we know the sex of a child, we start putting gender roles on them. Tiny babies who wouldn't know blue from pink get dressed to match their sex. Guess the wrong sex of a non-distinct baby in a gender neutral color like green and the mother will issue a sharp correction pdq. The sex of a baby shouldn't even matter, since it will be a good long time before that baby is having any sex of it's own.

Everything that we think of as feminine or masculine is created, and if it's created rather than inherent- it's changeable. Men can love babies and fashion, women can love football and fast cars . Liking things that don't "belong" to your gender doesn't make you a Tom boy or a Girly man, it just makes you a human with varied tastes and experiences.

Stand there in your wrongness and be wrong.

A post over on feministe about the flooding in Mexico has sparked quite a bit of anger at brownfemipower . Well, not the post itself, but rather, the insensitivity and ignorance of the (mostly-white?) commenters, especially the first few.

Being somewhat new to feminism as a current (rather than historical) "thing" I've been reading a bit lately. on various blogs, including the Women of Color Blog. So I was a bit more prepared to hear what she had to say on this topic than I would have been a week ago. See, it seems that many non-white feminists have a lot to say about white feminists. And it's not all "hey what a great job you're doing promoting equality for everyone" It's more like "Hey you're really fucked up and NOT promoting equality for everyone!" It's more like "You're really biased and you just can't see it!"

And you know what?

They're right.

And I'm just as guilty as anyone. One of my first comments on Red's post about the floods was an idiotic attempt to make a humorous connection between this tragedy and the immigration discussion we were having earlier. Mercifully, it was removed from the page in a matter of minutes by either Red, The Almighty, or Teh Internet Gremlins. Or Deek. He hasn't posted in a while, but I'm sure he's still got edit-power, and hates this kind of bullshit.

And I'm thankful, because it was offensive, and I never should have said it. It was offensive because people are dying, and I used it as an opportunity to make a joke. From safe in the heart of "white america," I made a joke. not an overtly racist joke, but the fact that I, in a position of unearned privilege took advantage of that privilege to show how witty i'm not, reeks of racism.

And that is WRONG.

• Nearly a million people homeless, and we giggle over "Tabasco".
• I can't find a number on how many dead, and we excuse ourselves with "class, not race" as if the two bear no connection, and white people don't benefit economically from the color of our skin.
  
• Our government offers the insult of 3oo,000 crumbs off our table for relief, while spending millions(billions?) on a "border fence" and military aid to fight a phantom "drug war" and we try to prove how clever we are.(my mercifully deleted comment)
• The Mainsteam US Media largely ignores the tragedy, and we quibble over whether the CA fires can be compared to Katrina

And then we go over there and reply to brownfemipower's post with our "oh-no-i'm- embarassed-to-be-white*- we're-not-all-like-that-please-don't-hate-us-all" hand-wringing.

To Which she says:

brownfemipower

"We’re not all so hopeless, and many of us benefit from the education."

First, i want to say that I get everybody’s point and i think that it’s great, really really really great that so many people take this shit to heart and really genuinely want to learn and understand and change etc. I trust every single one of you, and understand you are coming from a good place.

but I just want to pause and reflect here and point out that there is some very real and very righteous rage here–Aaminah has Latin@ family, I am Latin@, several of the woc who posted are intimately connected to Latin@ communities or women through organizing or have seen their own communities similarly traumatized and then mocked by white majorities–and I just want to point out that even as women are *politely* pointing out that you want to learn and you are very grateful–this rage, this hurt, this pain that women of color are feeling is being very subtly rewritten to be about white women and how they hope that we won’t stop teaching them.

because what is this really about, this hope that we won’t stop teaching? I look at it as a defensive reaction. As, even in sympathy and understanding, being a bit defensive and needing to point out that *you* aren’t *them*–that you aren’t *that*. that *you* are not hopeless, even if those others are–it is a way of distancing yourself, and at the same time, sort of absolving yourself–you are not them, and you don’t have to call *them* out because you’re busy letting us know how much you want to be taught.

Now is not the time, even politely, to let us know that you hope we never stop teaching you–now is the time to cut through the bullshit and respect that when a community’s world is collapsing, a little human sympathy and understanding would be perfect. of course, there are other things that could be talked about and reflected on as well–but when a community is in pain and suffering–they owe nothing to anybody. They have the right to speak their anger, their pain, their rage, their hurt, without any pressure or expectations on them at all.

thank you so much for understanding–and I appreciate all of the support.

We don't get it. So we need to shut up and listen, and realize that it's not always about us.
And we need to, as BFP said, call each other out when we act racist, even inadvertently, and not expect our hands to be held every step of the way.



*(Actually I kinda am... Or, rather, I recognize how inherently unjust and shameful it is that my being born with less obvious pigmentation places me in a "protected" category whose interests are served at the expense of people who are, well, browner than I am.)