feminist blogs

(Most of) The Feministing Crew 2010

When Jessica first asked me to start blogging at Feministing in 2005, I posted one thing every Sunday, because I had a full time job. Back then, we felt that it was really important to have at least one post up per day and for me, I was thrilled if I got two comments. Oh my how times have changed. I didn't realize that after three years we would be writing eight posts a day and be one of the most important spaces for the changing face of feminism online and be part of a vibrant community of feminist blogs that work tirelessly to contest the boundaries of identity, activism and theory. And I certainly didn't ever think that after five years I would have the honor of being the face of Feministing.

Recognizing this huge network of bloggers, activists, thinkers and writers that have been integral in carving out the space for feminist voices online, I accepted the executive editor role with gratitude for the opportunity to potentially shape the direction of our community. It signals that we are learning from the past and pushing ourselves in our commitment to centralizing disenfranchised voices. My co-bloggers have given me a tremendous opportunity to not only boost my own profile, but the profile of the site and the profile of the issues that I am committed to, issues that I have consistently written about for 5 years.

Feministing is a collective, as can be seen by the diversity of names on the homepage. Behind the scenes, all members of Feministing contribute in profound and important ways, committing their lives to much more than putting up blog posts. Each editor has leadership over several key pieces of our work and collaborates on that work, carving time out of her personal life and often doing much more than is expected. If it were not for Vanessa we would not have such a vibrant local community of folks that get together for our parties, not to mention her consistency in blogging on hard-hitting issues, while constantly picking up little pieces of invisible work that make the site run. As many of you may know, Miriam is "the business" and has been integral to moving us forward with her strategic mindset, allowing us to implement policies that are the core of how we operate. Jessica has taken the helm on moving our technology forward (more to come on that later!) and it was her consistent hard work and high standards that made Feministing what it is today -- not to mention her humility in stepping back after all that hard work so other people can step up. Ann's impeccable eye to edits, advice on organizational structures and ability to make shit happen has been central in making Feministing so powerful. And Courtney's support, facilitation, relationship-building with the greater feminist community and ability to be compassionate in the most difficult of situations has helped boost our morale and commitment in new ways. Feministing has run on the backs of our other jobs, in the in-between spaces of lunch breaks and meetings. It has been a project run on passion and the tireless work of myself, Vanessa, Miriam, Courtney, Ann and Jessica. More importantly, we have all stayed friends or become friends through this process which has been the most cohesive element of the group.

And at our retreats and on editor conference calls we have talked about issues of privilege and how they effect our power dynamics internally, recognizing how external perceptions of us as individuals affect our group -- that is, after all, how oppression functions. Within our editorial collective, we have worked hard to make these moments of hidden privilege visible, sharing privilege when possible. But attempting to reflect that externally has been a completely different challenge. My acceptance of this role is a concrete way to push back against dominant ideas of leadership in feminism and a recognition that power and privilege impact who is considered an authority. In order to fight these imbalances we have to be strategic and definitive in how we see leadership and who we identify as leaders. And not just as a tokenizing gesture, but as an intentional decision to fight against prescribed ideas of leadership within feminism itself.

Externally, my commitment to you, our community, is to continue the quality and diversity of the content of this site. Marginalized issues in feminism are still marginalized, and the constant work of teasing out the tensions hidden in the erasures of a mythical monolithic "feminism" lies in the conversations and unique moments of activism that make Feministing what it is and what make the feminist blogosphere such an important place.

Internally, I am committed to sustainability. The hard work of activism, how we run our collective, and the impact Feministing has on feminists worldwide is both emotionally, psychologically and spiritually satisfying and, at the same time, a huge responsibility. So while I am committed to diversity and being the strongest feminist online resource we can possibly be, I do not think that is possible without a crew of folks that feel healthy, balanced and excited about the work. This reality is more so important with the addition of new members to our team who we are so so excited about (and would be the new faces in that picture up top!). I realize this can't be all the time. The work is hard, things will get us down, we can be (and often are) overwhelmed. But I want to push us to really try and institute a culture of sustainability -- the one thing I find lacking in so many activist-oriented intentions, so we can continue to be such an important part of feminism online.

This weekend, the New York Times had a front page article about the racist Atlanta billboards that Samhita covered a few weeks ago.

Unfortunately, the entire article is a detailed explanation of the Right to Life group's opinion, analysis and tactics. Loretta Ross, National Coordinator of Sistersong, is quoted in response, but her arguments barely make a splash on the piece. This doesn't seem like fair and balanced reporting to me.

Jodi Jacobson at RH Reality Check has more on what was wrong with the article:

But the Times story failed on several fronts. First, it failed to explore in any real depth the factors underlying reproductive and sexual health problems among African American women. Nowhere does the article cite the actual public health data that would immediately discredit the claims of anti-choice groups using racial wedge issues to raise money and gain power.

Second, it failed to provide context for the widespread support among African-American leaders in Congress and in the public health community for expanding access to services.

And third, the Times gave inordinate amounts of space to truly questionable characters in the anti-choice movement without exploring how these groups themselves are at fault for the problem about which they profess to be so worried. In fact, it failed to ask any questions at all about what the so-called right-to-life groups cited were doing to address the causal factors behind high rates of abortion. Nor did it really question the validity or credibility of these groups in any real way, or ask what they've done to address poverty, social isolation, or broader health concerns among African American women. The answer? Nothing.

RH Reality Check has been running a series in response to this campaign for a few weeks now. It includes Shark-fu's great response to the campaign. I also wrote a piece for the series last week, which Courtney linked to, but I wanted to re-emphasize it.

While this campaign targets African American women specifically, we've seen these arguments used to target other women of color. I argue that it is a classic divide and conquer strategy, an attempt to pit women of color against reproductive justice activists. Here is an excerpt from that piece:

Latinas and other women of color don't need to be protected by paternalistic ideologues motivated by a political agenda that disregards the needs of women of color and their families. So thanks for your concern, anti-choicers, but I think the women of color advocates working within the reproductive justice movement have got it covered. We're working in those clinics you attack, we're helping to shape policies and provide services in our communities, services that allow us to decide what our needs are.

We know whom we can trust to make decisions about family creation: women themselves. We don't need limits on what services we can access. And we don't need your ideological bullying.

The next time one of your crisis pregnancy centers, one of your dramatic billboards, or one of your bogus pieces of "sex and race selection" legislation actually works to support women through whatever choice they make for their families--we'll talk.

Update: SPARK Reproductive Justice Now has a campaign to urge CBS Outdoor to bring the billboards down. Click here to take action.

As was mentioned in Samhita's post about the despicable race bating anti-choice billboards in Georgia, antis in the state are also pushing legislation - House Bill 1155, the Sex and Race Selection Bill - that would make it illegal for reproductive health care providers to "solicit" women of color for abortions.

This deceptive legislation is designed to create a wedge between social justice communities working on issues of race and abortion access, as if the two aren't very often the same organizers and organizations.

SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective is working to expose the lies packed in this legislation. You can listen to a recent radio piece and read a partial transcript, in which Heidi Williamson from SisterSong speaks out against the legislation, here.

The following us from a press release about the legislation [pdf]:

If implemented, this bill will adversely impact abortion providers by requiring them to prove that they are not targeting women of a certain race or ethnicity. This burden could result in delayed medical services, particularly for women of color. Additionally, this legislation would alter the racketeering laws of the Georgia Code to include abortion providers. This is unacceptable as abortion is legal in the State of Georgia, and the alleged abuses of this medical procedure are unfounded.

This legislation has nothing to do with abortion providers targeting women of color. It plays into and perpetuates the black genocide conspiracy that Shark-Fu critiqued recently and that's been getting even more play than usual from anti-choice organizations during this year's Black History Month. The bill is really about demonizing providers and restricting women of color's access to reproductive health services, including abortion.

Last week femme on the community site brought to our attention this horrific anti-choice billboard and campaign brought to us by Georgia Right to Life. She interrogates aptly,

This billboard dehumanizes both black women and children, by asserting that black children are an "endangered species," which animalizes them, and by asserting that black women have no control over our own bodies and that we're somehow intellectually weak enough to be controlled by the so-called eugenics-crazed poor-black-baby-eaters, aka Planned Parenthood.

Georgia Right to Life has gone too far in suggesting that black women are too quick to get abortions and should therefore "choose life." By speaking to a feigned nationalistic sentiment suggesting that one crisis for the black community is that there are not enough black children and choosing the frame of "too many abortions," this advertising campaign in the last few weeks has gained support from activists around the country.

The eyebrow-raising ads depicting a black child are an effort by the antiabortion movement to use race to rally support within the black community. The reaction from black leaders has been mixed, but the "Too Many Aborted'' campaign, which so far is unique to Georgia, is drawing support from other antiabortion groups across the country.

"This campaign is in your face, and nobody can ignore it,'' said the Rev. Johnny Hunter, national director of the Life Education and Resource Network, a North Carolina-based antiabortion group.

The effort is sponsored by Georgia Right to Life, which also is pushing legislation that aims to ban abortions based on race.

Georgia Right to Life is targeting black women because a majority of the abortions sought in Georgia were by black women. And frankly, what is more threatening than a generation of black women determining what is right for their own bodies?

And in a usual move to usurp feminist talking points, the Radiance Foundation one of the billboard sponsors claims that the impetus for the campaign is to uncover the "segregationist" agenda from liberals to essentially wipe out the black community. Right, that is exactly what the pro-choice community has been putting all their energy into, getting reproductive health and information into the hands of women that can't get access to it is a clear shroud for segregation *eye roll*.

As femme writes in response to one of the advocates of the billboards,

The way Ms. Davis, and other anti-abortion advocates, frame this argument is both misogynistic and racist. She claims to care, but her goal is not to improve the lives of black women and children. Making abortion illegal will not improve our lives, and neither will any of the proposals anti-abortion groups support, like abstinence-only education and stricter laws regarding contraception.

Furthermore, according to the Center for Disease Control (via Essence) abortion has no impact on the population of black children, so if anything it will hurt the black community and the lives of black women to make it more difficult to access abortion. So not only is it a racist and sexist policy, but it also ignores the facts at hand. Disgusting.

UPDATE:

Please don't miss Shark-Fu's insightful take on the anti-choice focus on eugenics and women of color.

And today from the Guttmacher Institute,

Among women of all ages, black Americans are almost four times as likely as whites to have an abortion. Antiabortion activists use this statistic to make the groundless argument that the "abortion industry" is targeting and marketing aggressively to African-American communities. What proponents of this argument fail to recognize is that black women's higher abortion rates are directly related to their higher rates of unintended pregnancy. Disproportionately high rates of both unintended pregnancy and abortion are symptoms of the broader health disparities faced by the black community. Fundamentally, the question we should be asking is what can be done to help black women have fewer unintended pregnancies and achieve better health outcomes in general.

Oh, right anti-choicers once again not based in quantifiable data, just their bizarre interpretation of it.

Each year on Presidents’ Day, we examine the narrative of US presidential history.  While important, it also seems worthy to expand the conversation to consider the various ways in which one can assume the office of a president, especially if that president is a woman.

Last fall, a Forbes article reported that the American Council on Education indicates that 23% of college presidents are women. While Americans know we have never had a woman President, how many of us know that half of the eight Ivy League universities are headed by a woman?  Harvard is led by Drew Gilpin Faust, Princeton by Shirley Tilghman, the University of Pennsylvania by Amy Gutmann, and Brown by Ruth J. Simmons.  How many of us look to these women as models of leadership for issues that are important to us, especially as educators?

Ruth J. Simmons was a major influence during my education at Smith thirteen years ago. I remember her inauguration at Smith clearly, as 2,800 Smith students celebrated her arrival as the college’s first African American woman president.  During the course of that weekend, members of the African American intelligentsia came to celebrate their friend and colleague’s new leadership of a major women’s college. During the course of her inaugural weekend, I remember meeting Toni Morrison at a reception at Smith’s Museum of Art and watching Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Cornel West debate issues of education, race, and culture at Smith’s John M. Greene Hall.

More importantly, I remember her leadership.  During my years at Smith, I was a student government wonk.  Ascending the leadership ladder, I was first a student senator and an honor board representative, then junior class president. During the fall of my first semester as junior class president in 1995, Simmons was entering her first year as President of the College.  Because of my role, I was able to join college-wide and trustee level committees, such as the College’s Committee on Planning and Resources and a Campus Center Task Force that Simmons herself commissioned.  As a member of these committees, I was able to watch and learn from Simmons as she ushered in a new era at Smith.

Through it all, I watched a leader of exceptional presence and vision.  It was from Simmons that I learned how a leader should listen carefully and speak thoughtfully.  It was from Simmons that I also learned the power of mentoring.  I’ll never forget how I went to her office the spring of my senior year in 1997 feeling downtrodden that I had not been offered a teaching position at a public girls school.  She immediately invited me to her office in College Hall and gave me advice about entering the field of education, and the ways in which it is sometimes fraught with disappointment but that one should persevere even through the challenges.

Simmons is now President of Brown University and has been since 2001; by taking the helm of Brown she became the first African American to lead an Ivy League university.

In 2003, Simmons established the University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice to examine Brown’s connection to the slave trade, which led to the publication of two reports:  one, the Report of the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice and the Response to the Report of the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice.  In 2007, Simmons also delivered a lecture at St. John’s College at the University of Cambridge titled Hidden In Plain Sight: Slavery and Justice in Rhode Island.

During her tenure at Brown, Simmons has also helped expand financial aid and develop institutional diversity.

It came as no surprise then when I learned through reading an article from the Brown Daily Herald that BET (Black Entertainment Television) recently honored her accomplishments as a leader and educator. Here is a video of Simmons’ acceptance speech at the BET Honors awards ceremony, which was aired on February 1.

On education, her words are unforgettable: “I came to understand the value of education, not just to enable me to make a good living, but to enable me to make a worthwhile life.” Equally as powerful, her words on leading as a woman of color: “One can lead ably from difference.”

So perhaps celebrating Presidents’ Day should be about not only celebrating our presidential history but also about celebrating the leaders who have influenced us in some way: our mentors, our coaches, our teachers.  Our women presidents.

This post can also be found on the teacher group blog Equality 101.

A lot of other people have already written about John Mayer's shameful interview in Playboy where he basically throws everyone he knows into his spotlight of woman hate and racism.

I have never been a fan of John Mayer, I think his music sucks. And after reading this interview and others like it, I can safely say that he sucks. But I don't care about him, I care about what his words say about discourses of race and sexuality.

This above apology is hilarious and narcissistic in a way that only someone who thinks making racist and sexist comments about people he knows as "being edgy and witty." Yes, he cries and so do his back-up singers, but I think it would be more touching if his apology actually got to the heart of the problem of what he said.

As Kenyon Farrow discusses on his blog, it is not his use of the "N-word" I find most troubling about his interview. It is his depiction of black women, white women and sexuality. From the interview,

PLAYBOY: Do black women throw themselves at you?

MAYER: I don't think I open myself to it. My dick is sort of like a white supremacist. I've got a Benetton heart and a fuckin' David Duke cock. I'm going to start dating separately from my dick.

PLAYBOY: Let's put some names out there. Let's get specific.

MAYER: I always thought Holly Robinson Peete was gorgeous. Every white dude loved Hilary from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. And Kerry Washington. She's superhot, and she's also white-girl crazy. Kerry Washington would break your heart like a white girl. Just all of a sudden she'd be like, "Yeah, I sucked his dick. Whatever." And you'd be like, "What? We weren't talking about that." That's what "Heartbreak Warfare" is all about, when a girl uses jealousy as a tactic.

Right, because the only black women that are gorgeous are the ones that white men want to bone. Kenyon writes,

Now, let me say that he also discusses his sex life with his former girlfriend Jessica Simpson in detail, which is also repulsive, and with no regard for what that might mean for her. But for now, I am talking about the black women who found themselves in this story. It's clear that he associates all these black actresses as some nearly-white enough in class, hair texture or affect as to be "white enough for his David Duke dick" to fuck, but clearly also views them, based on his description of his imagined Washington, as sexually as loose and irreverent as the white women he normally fucks. All of this is every kind of wrong.

Mayer's response to the interview isn't that he shouldn't have said the things that he said, it is that in his "great" service to us, the public, he is worn out and tired of coming off like an asshole no matter what he does.

And ultimately I am forced to ask, will he be hated forever like Kanye was after his mess up at the American Music Awards? Will the victims of his little racist sexualized tirade be upheld, the way Taylor Swift has been as the "pure and innocent" victim of big bad mean Kanye? No, probably not, because it is still considered edgy, deserving and just to say racist and sexist things about black women with no accountability, mechanism for remorse or narrative to say otherwise.

And let's be clear, his depiction of how he perceives white women also feeds into hateful ideas of women's sexuality and fear of the vagina. It is all just very sad and very telling.

Hey Mayer, take a tip from Kanye and quit while you are ahead. It is not that you sound like an asshole, it is that you are an asshole.

Horrifying. According to HuffPo, it's now more dangerous to give birth in California than in Kuwait or Bosnia. (Check out this chart for more.) It's also worth noting that the maternal death rate of women of color has long been known to be high, but this study is getting play because of the "dramatic increase in deaths among white, non-Hispanic mothers."

The Frisky has an awesome series of images and stories about black women writers and artists, that are not as often heard of, including Ntozake Shange, Judith Jamison, and my very favorite Zora Neale Hurston.

I recently re-read Their Eyes Were Watching God, for the book I am writing (more to come on that later!), because of her ability to write a story about finding love in a time where it was very difficult for a black woman to do so, on her own terms. Rereading it as an adult gave it a new political resonance and importance that I had not felt as a teenager, when I had first read it. Rereading it also made me think about how it is still difficult for women of color to defy cultural norms when it comes to love and find paths that are self determined.

Through reading about notable author Richard Wright's squabbles with Hurston, I was given an early language for how I would negotiate finding sexual identity and sexual politics that often worked against nationalist sentiments for the place of my "people" and for the rightful place of women. It is her legacy that I remember when I am fighting with my favorite hip-hop heads about sexism in lyrics and pornographic style videos or fighting in the field of movement building that places gender and race as diametrically opposed. Hurston carved out a story of intersectionality before there was a term for it, before there was a way to understand someone as complex and outside of their lived experience as black, female, oppressed and poor. And for that I remember her this month and am eternally grateful for her work.

February marks the annual Black History Month.

In honor of the start of the month, I want to link to an article written by the always insightful Melissa Harris-Lacewell. She writes about the Obama she remembers.

During the election, Harris-Lacewell was one of the most enthusiastic supporters of then Candidate Barack Obama, but that has not stopped her from critiquing his policies. I always look out for her thoughts about his Administration and I trust her perspective.

I thought the words of one leading African-American feminist scholar on our first African-American President would be an appropriate way of honoring the beginning of this month.

I don't know Barack Obama personally, but I had a kind of political intimacy with him during the years I lived in Chicago. He is familiar in a way that makes it impossible for me to see the President through the same prisms of perfection or loathing that many employ when assessing him.

I distinctly remember the last time I had a personal interaction with him. We were both standing in line at the 55th Street Walgreens. He was wearing flip-flops, short basketball shorts, and an old t-shirt. He was buying ice for a family picnic. Hardly the icon of fashion cool he became within two years of that moment.

I remember the first time I heard him give a public speech. He was a last minute replacement for an ill Professor Cornel West during the University of Chicago's Martin Luther King, Jr. celebration. (Pause for irony) The address was adequate, but neither memorable nor particularly inspiring. Hardly the soaring rhetoric that he so regularly and effectively delivers now.

I remember the first time I saw him campaign. He was running against Bobby Rush for a congressional seat on the Southside of Chicago. He could barely fill a community center room with 25 people. Hardly the teeming crowds who now stand in lines for hours in inclement weather to hear him speak or who braved bitter cold to see him inaugurated.

These early encounters with Obama remind me that he is President not solely, or even primarily, because of innate gifts, but because he moves up a learning curve more swiftly and fully than anyone else in public life. My consistent support for President Obama, despite my real differences with him on a number of policy issues, is deeply rooted in my understanding of his openness to and capacity for learning.

Read more about Harris-Lacewell's work at her website, and the rest of the article at The Nation.

Just when you think that the human rights of sex workers aren't violated enough, take a look at this centuries-old law that allows sex workers to be branded as sex offenders.

New Orleans city police and the district attorney's office are using a state law written for child molesters to charge hundreds of sex workers like Tabitha as sex offenders. The law, which dates back to 1805, makes it a crime against nature to engage in "unnatural copulation"--a term New Orleans cops and the district attorney's office have interpreted to mean anal or oral sex. Sex workers convicted of breaking this law are charged with felonies, issued longer jail sentences and forced to register as sex offenders. They must also carry a driver's license with the label "sex offender" printed on it.

Of the 861 sex offenders currently registered in New Orleans, 483 were convicted of a crime against nature, according to Doug Cain, a spokesperson with the Louisiana State Police. And of those convicted of a crime against nature, 78 percent are Black and almost all are women.

The law impacts sex workers in both small and large ways.

Tabitha has to register an address in the sex offender database, and because she doesn't have a permanent home, she has registered the address of a nonprofit organization that is helping her. She also has to purchase and mail postcards with her picture to everyone in the neighborhood informing them of her conviction. If she needs to evacuate to a shelter during a hurricane, she must evacuate to a special shelter for sex offenders, and this shelter has no separate safe spaces for women. She is even prohibited from very ordinary activities in New Orleans like wearing a costume at Mardi Gras.

This is one of the best articles I have seen that has brought an intersectional lens to this aspect of sex work. This article uses intersectionality to explore the plight of how members of our society who are already marginalized face additional discrimination by the criminal justice system as sex workers. Intersectionality is an important device in this piece because it allows for us to view the current marginalization of sex workers in the context WOC and transgender women live.

On many fronts, transgender women and WOC--whether they are sex workers or not--have their rights to sexual privacy contested. This can be seen in the incessant, inappropriate line of questioning transgender folks face about their sexuality or the way Black women's sexuality has been demonized when black women have non-traditional paths to motherhood. All in all, violations against the sexual privacy of WOC and transgender women are countless.

As the writer tells the story of these women, she attempts to offer them redress by granting them some modicum of privacy that has been taken away by a punitive, unjust system. One example of this is the writer grants the sex workers' request to not reveal their first and last names in an environment where the state has effectively revoked these women's rights to privacy, and particularly sexual privacy, simply because they have engaged in sex work.

Time will tell whether next month's Mayoral elections in New Orleans will yield an elected official that reappoints a police chief that views these "unnatural copulation" laws on the books as antiquated and therefore not worth enforcing. However, Melissa Harris-Lacewell, a feminist favorite around these parts, has a partner that is running for mayor in New Orleans, James Perry. He vows to reduce crime by 40 percent. Ostensibly, this will involve some level of decriminalization. At this point, this issue is impossible to take a public position on as a candidate.
But, if I was a betting woman, I would guess his commitment to civil rights makes him the most likely to be sympathetic with the unfortunate plight of New Orleans' sex workers.