And then I found this rant: 'My Feminism Will Be Intersectional Or It Will Be Bullshit!"

[Catherina]

I started writing this thread as an introduction thread because DU3 is till pretty new and I noticed we were at 90 subscribers 2 weeks ago, lost a few people but are up to 156 members now. Yesterday it was 151.

Are introductions in order?

I'll start. I'm a biracial Creole. My mom is a Second Wave Feminist who went to Med School and was a strong, independent woman her whole life. She had 8 kids. 7 of us are girls and we're all strong feminists but don't treat feminism as an end in itself but part of a much larger crusade for justice.

As I was typing the previous, Outlook said I had a new email and up popped this rant. Well dang, what kind of perfect timing is this! It's perfect on so many levels and it looks like DU isn't the only place where explosions are happening in feminism.

(Dear hosts, I quoted 6 paragraphs but the author is so fine with this being reproduced, she doesn't care about copyright, doesn't even want credit and doesn't even care if people say they wrote it themselves. It's in the 5th paragraph.)

MY FEMINISM WILL BE INTERSECTIONAL OR IT WILL BE BULLSHIT!


Now picture this: me screaming the above. Angry. VERY ANGRY as a matter of fact. Screaming this at my computer screen. Screaming it at nobody and everybody. At you. You, person I might have never heard from who might have not even commented on this blog or any of the other publications where I can be regularly found scribbling my discombobulated ideas. Even though we never met before, I AM ACTUALLY, SCREAMING AT YOU RIGHT NOW. MY FEMINISM WILL BE INTERSECTIONAL OR IT WILL BE BULLSHIT!. And I am screaming this because I want to convince you, I want to get it through you that this is not a choice or an abstract concept or an intellectual exercise. I am not screaming because well, you know, I just discovered intersectionality and OMG SO COOL GUYS. YOU NEED TO READ THIS. No. My feminism NEEDS to be intersectional because as a South American, as a Latina, as someone who knows certain parts of the Global South intimately by virtue of being a Southerner, as an immigrant living in Europe, as a woman, I am in the middle of what I like to call the “shit puff pastry”. The shit puff pastry is every layer of fuck that goes on above me, below me, by my sides, all around me. And in this metaphorical puff pastry with multiple layers of excrement, I am the dulce de leche that is supposed to make it palatable so that someone else, more specifically the kyriarchy, can eat me.

And here’s the thing: while I am screaming at you, I am also asking, nay, DEMANDING that you scream with me. And I am asking that you become as angry as I have been this past week. Because without anger and without righteous indignation and without the deep, relentless demand for change, my feminism, YOUR feminism, everyone’s feminism will fail. It will be bullshit.

This past week I’ve been screaming this a lot. Because I like to play “connecting the dots” (s.e. smith ipse dixit) as a matter of political practice. I play “connecting the dots” even though sometimes I might not get a properly outlined landscape but the equivalent of what my 1 year old niece playing with a bunch of sharpies on the coffee table would produce. Which is to say, sometimes, the pictures I draw when I connect dots might not make sense or might be inaccurate or might have missed a few dots to be totally accurate. But I am willing to pay the price of not making sense sometimes if I do eventually get it right. I would rather sometimes come across as far fetched than miss the landscape that the shit puff pastry provides. And these past few days I’ve been playing connect the dots more often than usual. Hence my anger. Hence my disappointment with feminism. FEMINISM! I AM DEEPLY DISAPPOINTED IN YOU. To the point that I even considered ditching the label altogether. And if that happened, I would use a new label that pretty much sums up my politics: Flame-throwerism. Wherein I set feminism on fire and with its ashes I fill my cats’ kitty litter box and let them pee on it. That’s how angry I’ve been at feminism this week. Kitty litter levels of outrage.

...

Layer five of this week’s shit puff pastry

I am hurting. Like real, physical pain on the right side of my torso. It’s been going on for a few days and I have no idea what’s causing it. I do know it’s gotten worse since I have been letting out all of this anger. I hurt even more so while I was researching my last post about the corporate profits behind the business of undocumented immigrants. Obviously this is not evident in the post itself but I spent days reading accounts of abuses perpetrated on immigrant bodies. I also saw the trailer to this film which Eli recommended in one of the comments. And I cried, when one of the Ethiopian women spoke of her abuse in the hands of smugglers and how she connected it with the European Union’s complicity. She had been raped in the name of my safety. Because I am a legal resident in a European country, I have to acknowledge that the State, on my behalf, deemed it acceptable that this body was abused. And I am also hurting because even though I put a lot of effort into that piece, nobody seemed to care much about it. AND YOU FUCKING SHOULD. Not because I wrote it, fuck that, no. But because all of that is done IN YOUR NAME. Because if you are a legal resident in a Western country, the State is actively abusing these people on your behalf. These immigrant, non White bodies are treated as worthless because YOU HAVE ALLOWED YOUR STATE TO DO THIS. And yet, few people seemed to connect to the piece or even find it worthy.

I do not give a damn that I wrote it. Moreover, I hereby give you permission to use my words as yours. Do not credit me if you do not feel like it. Use the words in that piece to discuss the subject. Tell people you wrote it if you need to. BUT IF YOU CALL YOURSELF A FEMINIST AND YOU DO NOT CARE THAT SOME WOMEN ARE GIVING BIRTH IN INHUMAN CONDITIONS AND THEIR CHILDREN ARE UNDER SUCH GRIEF THAT THEY HAVE SEWN THEIR LIPS TOGETHER THEN I AM NOT PART OF YOUR MOVEMENT. And if you cannot actively unpack your share of responsibility in these actions, which are happening right in your backyard, then one of us cannot call herself a feminist.

And if you cannot see how this issue is so deeply interconnected with all of the above, with racism, with violence on WoC, with rape culture, with colonialism, with our disdain for people from the Global South, with whose bodies are deemed human and whose are not (and as such, unrapeable), with institutionalized violence, with wars waged by our Nations on the countries where these people come from… if you cannot see all of this as part of the same landscape, as part of the same gigantic, oppressive shit puff pastry, then maybe I should not call myself a feminist. Maybe, indeed, throwing flames in the direction of feminism is all I have left.

http://tigerbeatdown.com/2011/10/10/my-feminism-will-be-intersectional-or-it-will-be-bullshit/

That righteous rant is me in a nutshell.

Who are you?

[Lisa D]

1. Now that's what I call a rant!

Interesting read. Thanks for posting it.

[Catherina]

2. I'm enthralled with that site and totally hooked

Their blogroll of other sites is just as interesting.

What a rant that was

[gkhouston]

4. That's what I call a righetous rant!

[Catherina]

10. Incredibly so

Thanks sister

[tammywammy]

3. Posting so I'll remember to read later...

I want to really check out that link.

Creole, huh? I'm part Cajun myself.

I would also say that my own mother has been a strong influence in my life. Though she would not call herself a feminist, she's a strong woman that has been through a lot of crap. I find her will power and tenaciousness amazing.

[gkhouston]

5. I've known a lot of people who are feminists in practice

but don't call themselves that or know any of the lingo.

[Catherina]

12. Kewl!

The next time I make boudin, I'll know where to come for help. It's nice to meet you

[sabrina 1]

6. That is the kind of outrage that every, single person in the world should

be feeling over the injustices that abound on this planet, and never seem to diminish despite the best efforts of those who work hard to try to make a difference.

I remember after reading about the women in Abu Ghraib, one woman in particular named Noor, (who I believe was discovered by Robert Fisk but even he was not certain if what he was learning was true, it was as we tragically discovered later).

I know what this woman is saying, I felt physical pain that this country was responsible for the horrors taking place in that hell hole. And I swore never to stop feeling the anger I felt right then. But sadly, there has never been any justice for Noor. And the last I read of her was that her family had left the village and could not be found. She was raped, she sent out a note begging her 'brothers' to destroy the prison as they did not want to live anymore.

The silence about these horrendous cruelties is deafening and can make you lose hope that anything will ever change.

[Rex]

9. At moments like that you have to say thank goodness for friends.

When there is no hope and all seems dark and trouble will not leave your heels...you can always know that you have a friend to kick trouble to the curb, light up the sky with a funny line and dust off all your doubts and insecurities. It is like seeing hope walk and talk to you. It is uplifting. It is needed in this amazingly cruel world. It is, sadly, lacking for women like Noor...no voice, no choice, not even a footnote in life. I've had to try and mentally block some of the things I learned about what when on there. I can't handle that level of rage for an extended period of time.

The silence itself is horrendous.

[Catherina]

13. Noor :(

It's been so long since I thought of her and now you and Sabrina have me thinking of her right now.

All I have is pure emotion thinking about it.

RIP Noor and all the other voiceless women who were so abused. All the men and children too. And all the people still being abused today while we live and breathe.

The silence is horrendous.

[Kitty Herder]

7. Never heard of feminism that wasn't intersectional.

Feminism is about ALL women.

[justiceischeap]

8. Would love to see this cross-posted in the new group

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=forum&id=1254

[Catherina]

11. I'll do that right now

Thanks sis.