feminist blogs

Today marks three years for me at Feministe.

And in three days, after I turn in this one last paper, I’ll be done with law school.

It has been a good run (law school and blogging — although I think blogging has been slightly more enjoyable). I officially graduate next week, and I’ll probably return to full-time blogging here after that.

It’s been an excellent three years, and I’m eternally grateful to Ms. Lauren for starting such a great community here and inviting me to join it. I’m also incredibly lucky to share this space with such great co-bloggers, past and present. I’m looking forward to coming back. And as soon as the rest of my life is settled, I’ll start planning all kinds of fun things for Feministe this summer — including a return of Project Guest Blogger so that we can highlight more voices and build a wider-reaching community.

So, happy anniversary! Here’s hoping this year is a good one.

I’m not posting much around these parts, but I am still working at AlterNet. A few noteworthy pieces from over there, in AlterNet’s Repro Justice and Gender Section:

“Pro-Lifers” Protest Contraception

Sex Work vs. Trafficking: Understanding the Difference

Anti-Feminist Backlash Out in Full Force

“Dykes, Whores or Bitches”: One in Three Military Women Experience Sexual Abuse

Anti-Choice Zealots Chase After Patients’ Private Medical Records

Misdiagnosis: Reproductive Health and Our Environment

Men of the Cloth: The Vatican Isn’t So Far From Fundamentalist Mormonism

More here.

And from AlterNet generally:

The Human Rights Crime in Gaza, by Jimmy Carter

Meet Gus Puryear: Bush’s Latest Villainous Nominee for a Lifetime Judgeship

The Violent Language of Right-Wing Pundits Poisons Our Democracy

An Atheist Goes Undercover to Join the Flock of Mad Pastor John Hagee. This article is written by Matt Taibbi, which gives it a whole lot of sneering elitism and progressive entitlement to mock fat people, gays, women, Christians, and basically anyone Matt deems not as cool as himself. The story itself, though, is a good one.

Are Immigration Authorities Going After School Children Now?

How Should States Deal with Polygamous Sects?

Enjoy. And in just three days, I will be done with finals and I’ll have time to read something other than AlterNet.

What did you write about this week? Leave a link and a short description in the comments.

And happy Mother’s Day!

Now that we’ve added some great new bloggers to the roster here at Feministe, it’s time for me to announce that I’m leaving.

But Zuzu! You’ve left before and you came back anyway! How can we miss you if you won’t go away?

Good question. Well, I’m not going away entirely anyhow. I’ve been invited to be a contributor at Shakesville, and of course I still maintain my personal blog, Kindly Póg Mó Thóin, where I discuss food and such fascinating topics as home improvement and realizing that the first guy I dated after I moved to New York is now 53.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Lauren for giving me the opportunity to post here, and to thank my co-bloggers, piny, Holly, Cara, kactus, Jack and — especially — Jill, for making it a memorable experience. And thanks to all for reading and commenting.

Sudy says:

The question is not what makes the issue feminist, but has a feminist perspective been applied to the issue?

Thinking cap? Check. Reading this is highly recommended.

Note: comments off. Go there.

Happy May Day. As people around the world celebrate the struggles of laborers, and as many immigrants and supporters of immigrant rights set off on protest marches around this country, I wanted to link you to one of my favorite blog posts of the last week: Sudy’s explanation of kyriarchy, a concept coined by Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza.

It’s a useful neologism for an idea that comes up a lot: multiple, overlapping, shifting pyramids of power. Try to focus too hard on just one, try to figure out with some kind of precision exactly which individuals are at the top, and you lose sight of the entire awful kyriarchy, that has any number of ways to crush people. It’s another trick that power structures play to distract you. I’ve heard this kind of concept discussed before — some people I know just use the word “hierarchies” to talk about this, and in some feminist writing this is what “patriarchy” means. But I like the word kyriarchy, not least because it doesn’t just focus on “fathers” as the top of the pyramid.

For me the word summons up a bizzare image of holographic, floating, disappearing and reappearing ancient step pyramids. Because that’s how complex the overlapping of power can be, and how surreal. Sometimes we talk about this stuff like patriarchy, white supremacy, or homophobia is a bunch of craggy old white guys having a meeting down the street where we can kick the doors in and turn over the table piled high with money and blood. Too bad that the history of oppressive cultural attitudes, social enforcement, the accumulation of religion and greed and control and security is never that simple. But don’t think I mean it’s all ideology either. Kyriarchy kills. Don’t let it get behind you — or under you.

When Jill asked me to come on as a regular blogger for Feministe, one question/concern that I had for her was about the type of stuff I could post here. Feministe is, of course, centered around feminism, so I asked whether it’s all right for me to post things that aren’t explicitly related to feminism or women. I think that I asked this more for reassurance than out of any real confusion, since I’ve read (and appreciated) many Feministe posts that don’t focus centrally on feminism. Jill gave me the reassurance that I’d hoped for - that I’m free to post what I’d like - which made me feel more confident about joining the team.

Interestingly, just as I was having this exchange with Jill, some conversations about what is or is not a feminist issue and what should or should not be posted on feminist blogs, specifically with regards to posts about the Sean Bell verdict on Feministing and here on Feministe. I made the mistake of wading somewhat clumsily into the fray and getting told to fuck off within two comments (ah, how I missed the blogosphere…) That wasn’t the most enriching experience, but it did drive home the concern with which I came to this blog.

I’m happy and excited to be joining an explicitly feminist and feminist-centric blog. But I wouldn’t be if my participation was predicated at leaving parts of my self - my identities and my politics - at the door. I live and function in this world in large part a as a woman, but also as a person of color, a Puerto Rican, a queer person, a genderqueer butch. These identities don’t merely intersect; they overlap, and they change each other in the overlapping. As I said over in that ill-fated comments thread, my entire identity is more than the sum of its parts; the overlap creates something new, something intrinsically meshed that can’t just be spliced apart into neat, discrete categories.

Likewise, my politics are interconnected. I can look at my politics and point out some different, distinct threads - “Oh, that’s a feminist politic right there; and that one, that’s anti-racist; and this one here’s trans positive.” But things aren’t always so discrete. I find few issues to be purely feminist, or purely about race or class or anything else. Just as I, as a person, am multi-dimensional and made of many different identities and experiences, my political perspective is a tightly-woven tapestry of the many issues that are important to me. My feminism informs my anti-racism, which informs my anti-classism, which informs my anti-imperialism, which all inform everything else. If I were to try to pull out one pure discrete thread, I think the whole damn thing would start to unravel. Remove one thread and the rest would be incomplete and may not hold together.

I can’t see what would be gained, then, by having me and the other bloggers here set aside all issues that are important to me yet not (obviously, on their face) related to women when blogging at Feministe. Some might argue that it would provide a space more purely and exclusively devoted to feminism; I, however, would argue that it would lop off great big important pieces of what shapes the feminism and larger politics of me and the other writers here.

I also think that if we were made to focus only on what affects women because they’re women, it would be easy to slide into the same traps that drove feminists of color away from second wave feminism, that drove some of them to even separate themselves from the entire term “feminist” and take on a new one, “womanist,” that they could define for themselves. Assertions like apostate’s that feminism must be “race-neutral” eerily echo the sorts of assertions that drove many women of color away from feminism back then, and I think that they’ll only serve to drive many women of color - and other women who refuse to segment themselves or their politics artificially - away now. Check it, y’all - those days aren’t behind us. They’re still here. I’m barely getting clued into the blogosphere again and already I’ve read two women of color talking about how they have already or are considering shedding the label “feminist” (here and here.)

Well, it’s 1:31am and I feel like I’m beginning to ramble. I’d hoped to start my blogging here at Feministe off with something a bit stronger, more cohesive, more focused. But maybe I just needed to get all that off my chest before I could really get down to work here. I hope it’ll at least resonate a bit.

Also, what Latoya said.

I’m happy to announce that I’m the newest blogger on this awesome Feministe team! A big thanks to Jill for inviting me and to my fellow bloggers for welcoming me. (And to Jill, have a good break. I strongly believe in blogging breaks for sanity’s sake. Looking forward to your return.)

A bit about me: I’m a stateside-born Puerto Rican, queer, genderqueer butch, originally from New Jersey and now living in Brooklyn. I’m a techie and tech trainer who works primarily with non-profit progressive community organizations. I’ve been blogging in some form or another for almost 10 years now, most recently over at AngryBrownButch. I’ll be continuing my blogging over there, too.

Before the past week or so I’d been on a bit of an informal blogging hiatus so I feel a bit out of the blogosphere loop, but I’m happy to be back and excited and energized to be blogging here. I hope I can contribute some good stuff to this tremendous community that folks have created here!

I need to leave the internets for a while.

About a month ago, I arranged to have a guest blogger start today so that I have time to prepare for finals. So as you can see from the previous posts, Thomas will be covering for me for a while, and of course the other Feministe bloggers will of course hold down the fort. And the new Feministe blogger will also be starting soon. The original plan was for me to keep blogging, just lightly — one or two posts a day. But I’m going to cut myself off.

It’s probably no big mystery why I’m bowing out for a while, but I’m feeling an unusual confessional urge, so here goes: I am not cut out for this. I have a big bleeding heart, but no guts. And after the past few weeks, I know everyone is feeling shitty and licking their wounds. I sure am. And I feel like every step I take, I screw up. I’m really questioning my own judgment, and every time I try to fix a mess I’ve made, I walk away feeling worse. After putting up this post, which in my head was nothing more than an alert to a feminist event that I was attending, I felt like I sold out an entire community, which wasn’t my intention, of course, but it never is. I thought I would at least feel a little better once I apologized, explained my thought process and tried to set things right, so this post came next. Instead of feeling like I accomplished anything, I feel like an untrustworthy back-stabbing bitch who threw someone she likes and respects under the bus in order to give herself some undeserved moral superiority and undo un-doable wrongs. That wasn’t my intention, of course. It never is. But that’s what it feels like.

And no, this issue isn’t about me, and yes I am being self-indulgent and whiny, but I figure an explanation is in order.

That isn’t to say that I don’t stand by what I wrote in the apology post. I do. I just I feel like I’m spinning in circles and I have no idea what I’m even trying to accomplish anymore. And when I look around, the one thing I’m sure of is that I’m being thoroughly self-destructive (Example A: Writing this at 3am when I have to get up in four hours) and that I’m doing a lot of damage to other people.

So I need to just stop.

I also need to focus on my real life. I need to take exams. I need to write papers. I need to get up in the morning and study. I need to do the job I actually get paid for. I need to go to sleep at night, instead of tossing and turning and obsessing over what I broke today and whether it can be fixed. I need to graduate from law school in three weeks.

So I need to leave the internets for a while. I know it’s time to stop blogging when it’s doing me more harm than good, or when I’m doing others more harm than good. Right now, both of those things are true.

I’m putting a bunch of Feministe Feedback posts, short news pieces and link round-ups in the queue, so those will go up throughout the week under my name, but I probably won’t be checking comments or writing anything else (and definitely not anything analytical or long). I’ll come back in a couple of weeks.

See y’all around.

And I couldn’t be more excited, because she’s one of my favorite writers on the internets and she’ll be an awesome addition to the Feministe team.

I will let her announce herself, so keep an eye out for the new kid.