First Order of Business

I’ve been thinking about putting up a blog for some time. I mean, I definitely need one more thing to feel guilty about not doing enough of, and this really fits the bill! But what decided me to act was something important that I want to be a part of: The Carnival of Allies at The Angry Black Woman’s blog.

I’m absurdly new to the blogosphere, and don’t know whether I’ll really be having much to do with it as a whole; my main goal is just to post some funny stuff and random thoughts for my friends to read and laugh at. But a couple of weeks ago I stumbled onto the controversy that had erupted over what basically amounts to Olympic-style under-the-bus-hurling of women of color by white so-called feminists. I don’t think I need to recapitulate that whole debate, but if someone is reading this and doesn’t have the background, this post does a brilliant job of rounding up the discussion and the issues.

(Also, I’m not sure – I seem to have read something somewhere that implied that linking without permission might violate some form of netiquette. If this is true, and someone comes looking to see why the dumb newbie did that, it’s ‘cause, um, I’m a dumb newbie. I hope you’ll accept my apologies and point me to some source of info that can school me so I won’t do dumb things anymore. I know I should do my own homework, but I’m in a hurry because I don’t want to miss The Angry Black Woman’s May 5^th deadline.)

I’m a straight, upper-middle-class, middle-aged white woman who’s cared about social justice all her life, although for a number of years I wasn’t doing a lot about it; I’m trying to change that now in various ways. In reading what I have of these discussions, the rage I’ve felt at people for the level of abject hypocrisy and mendacity often evidenced has had my stomach in knots. As of now, many of the people involved have, at least to some extent, apologized; some, it seems to me, more sincerely than others. Bully for them. I’m glad they’ve chosen to take responsibility for their words and their actions, and for the unquestioned and, for at least a time, hotly defended privilege that underlay them.

I’m not really interested, at the moment, in the white feminists at all. I’m interested in the WOC who’ve shut down their blogs, or who must have felt almost entirely hopeless about feminism in reading and reacting to all this crap. I don’t want a cookie from anybody, honestly, but I want to bake some for them. Because after the rage subsides, I imagine it must be so fucking tiring and saddening to still be arguing with people about this shit in the year of somebody’s Lord but not mine Two Thousand and Goddamn EIGHT already.

I understand why many women, in the aftermath of the past few weeks, are no longer identifying with, or as, feminists. I, too, dislike the idea of some kind of bogus injustice pyramid that must have a single locus of oppression at its pinnacle. I HATE THAT PEOPLE ARE OPPRESSED. I hate that women of color are oppressed. I hate that men of color are oppressed. I hate that white women are oppressed. I hate that working class people are oppressed. I hate that lesbians, gay men, bisexual and transgendered people are oppressed. I hate that people with disabilities are oppressed. I hate it all, and I can’t imagine looking at anyone and telling them that they need to answer to my notions about which of those identities they have to ignore in order to have the dubious honor of organizing with me.

I want you to know: I am your ally. I want you to know that your oppression matters to me as much as mine. And for the love of everything that’s good and right, if you see me in any way contributing to it, I want you to tell me, immediately, please. Don’t wait to make sure my feelings won’t be hurt (although if you can be specific, that will be helpful). I’m a grown woman, and my feelings are my business -- I know that protecting them isn’t yours, not if I’m doing something that I’m blind to that makes your burden heavier. And I very well may be, because I am a human being, with limited powers of perception, who grew up in a thoroughly fucked-up society and is constantly having to call herself on racist, sexist, heterosexist, and other kinds of crap that has seeped into the back of my head entirely against my will. If you will help me in that endeavor, I will be in your debt, not the other way around.

I am your ally. My eyes and my ears and my arms and my heart are open to you. I imagine a world where all of our differences enrich and fascinate us, and we celebrate them late into the night. Thank you to all the women whose words I’ve read over the past couple of weeks who’ve helped remind me of how important that dream is to me, and what I should be doing to help accomplish it. I’m sorry for the bleakness you may have felt; I’ve felt it too, if perhaps not at the same depth. But we are here, and maybe others are waking up, and maybe this whole difficult and painful episode will have value in showing a lot of people what needs to change, in a way that a continued pleasant, undisturbed surface would never have done. I hope so.

And in any case, I hope we can share these cookies.