Problem Chylde: In Her Solitude

I can’t keep doing this to my stomach and my health, my consciousness and my emotions, my work and life. And since the woman I did it for has asked for it to stop, I will honor that.

But before I saw her request, I wrote this at Hugo Schwyzer’s in response to Elaine Vigneault and probably to many others who feel the same way. I should have just sipped the hemlock directly instead of mixing it into some red Kool-Aid. This is it until May 16th.

Regardless of whether or not Amanda outlined the article prior to the speech, her refusal to include WOC who obviously wanted to be included in the discussion is the real issue here.

Oh my Jesus, no. It’s not. It’s really not.

The real issue is the work of women of color gets trivialized or rendered invisible every time our feminisms intersect.

I don’t know how anyone could read the Seal Press situation as a request for inclusion unless they have a highly inflated sense of their worth. “Fuck Seal Press” is not a cleverly short and provocative book proposal, not a plea for love, or a request for respect. It’s a dismissal. Though it may lack context in the post it’s written in, it is NOT without context in Seal Press’s decline in incorporating and publishing works by women of color.

I also don’t know how anyone can read this situation as a request for inclusion into dialogue. It is about work and respect for that work which is ongoing, with or without the weigh-in of white mainstream feminists. Just tossing our names in isn’t enough. But it’s a start in showing that the ideas that you’re presenting are not novel and that they have a foundation beyond the “zeitgeist” of the time. This is not a new concept. It’s called appropriation. May not have the force of “stealing” or “plagiarism” but it’s much worse in its impact.

That’d take knowledge and engagement with the idea that women of color do feminist work, anti-racist work, work involving people with disabilities and LGBT that decidedly does not depend on white feminists noticing them. Yet the ideas and information from the work of women of color find its way into the books and articles of white feminists without attribution.

Feminism is not limited to one action or conceptualization. There is not only one movement. We are not trying to join anything or to have ourselves included in anything. Once again, please stop ego tripping. There are publishing houses, copyrights, programs, networks, opportunities and consciousness for women of color. We pour our experiences and our passions into the work we present, the work we do, the work we live everyday. We want credit for what we’ve done and what we’re doing when it trickles down and through to white middle-class feminism.

We don’t want disembodiment from issues that affect us because it reached someone [else] later than it touched us. We don’t want our bodies and our lives and our truths dependent on whims and zeitgeists and bound to arbitrary timelines. Our strongest claim to these issues beyond dates and clear similarities of theory and synthesis is we live in them and they live in us.

The red herrings tearing this discussion away from this fundamental request for respect are galling.

Now back to building this bridge called my life.

addendum

THAT’S the sinister nature of appropriation. And in this instance, by not linking to anyone that inspired her viewpoint — forget BFP, even — Amanda tapped into this narrative that has been tapped into by countless folks online and offline. And each leaking into this scheme hurts and makes the victims of invisibility less than charitable once someone white sees us and says, “Hey, what’s wrong? Please write us a book report with cross checks and proper cites, perfect spelling and grammar, and completely objective — that means don’t interpose your oversensitivity into it — yes, please write us a great screed telling us everything very clearly about what’s wrong. One ‘t’ uncrossed, and you lose your argument. And please, make sure you note everyone involved; if you fail to do so, that’s intellectually dishonest and we’ll refuse to engage with you!”