My student B. is sitting next to me, waiting as I check the polynomial she has just factored.

“Oh . . . there’s my neighbor.  Her husband just died.  But she looks happy,” B. says, looking out the dining room window at a large woman with thinning hair, laughing out loud as she walks down the sidewalk.

“She has three sons.  So . . . there is no shortage of men or anything.”

I shoot her a quizzical look, she continues.

“I mean, I know it’s different . . . you know what I mean.  I’m just trying to look at the bright side of things.  One less mouth to feed.”

Now my quizzical look turns to comical dismay.  Sleep-deprived thirteen year olds say the darnedest things.

“Balloons and banjos.  And sunflowers.  That’s what I want at my funeral,” she says.

Now I smile at her, pass her solution back to her and tear a small piece off a sheet of our scratch paper.

“I’m going to write that down,” I say.

“What?  As if you’re going to need that information any time soon?”

“No . . . because I like it and I want to remember it.  Balloons . . . and banjos . . .”

“And sunflowers,” she adds, “although it doesn’t fit.”

“Right. It’s not alliterative like the other two.  Do you know what alliteration is?”

“Yes.”

“I thought so.  And sunflowers.”  I finish writing the phrase, fold the paper into fourths and put it in my back pocket.

“Now try sixty-four x squared minus ninety-six x plus thirty-six.”

Tonight I attended a panel discussion in which I could not get the space to phrase some simple questions. This is not to say that I feel the space was not allowed me, nor anyone else, but that there were, at all the wrong moments (for my little question(s)), many other people wishing to share commentary. And so it was that I was not able to ask my questions of the esteemed panel comprised of Phyllis Jackson, Judith Halberstam, Yong Soon Min, Amelia Jones, and Jennifer Doyle. While my questions remain, I now have- at least- the ability to better articulate the ruminatory peregrinations that my mind made during the volleyed commentary between panelists and audience members alike.

My primary question is: How can we (who label ourselves feminists, or more particularly, radical feminists) show everyone else that feminism is The Answer? I know, I know: the last two words of that last sentence will turn off many critical, educated postmodern theorists simply by implying a unified anything. I posit that we can sidestep that problem by allowing the radical, liberatory definition of feminism that I have learned from studying bell hooks which is, simply, that feminism is for Everybody (for the whole, unified entirety of humanity- Everybody!!) The definition of feminism in this case implies that it is a universal solution to a universal problem: oppression (which we may also call patriarchy). Liberation from oppression: feminism crumbling the walls of patriarchy. How do we show all of society that the feminist rejection of hierarchy and oppression, whether it be on the basis of race, sex, class, nationality, sexuality, physical ability, etc., is to everyone’s benefit? How do we show that even those amongst us who appear the most privileged have the benefit of a healthier society and a greater ability to express their true selves in a feminist context?

Professor Doyle referred to writing by Audre Lorde in which she exhorts those that are meeting, perhaps policy-making, to look around at each other and note who is missing. In any organization, who is missing that will clearly not be representing themselves? Who must we represent in our conversations? Professor Jackson made a great point: younger feminists were missing from the panel. I would add that older feminists (older than 60) were also missing from the panel. The question I really wanted to raise was . . . where were the men? This is, of course, tied to my conclusion that (obviously) mainstream society is not aware that feminism is for everybody, but more importantly: why didn’t anyone bring up the lack of 1) male-created feminist art in the WACK! exhibit and 2) the possible damage that may be done to feminism when it is represented in such a public way as simplistically “for, by, and about women” and 3) the panel’s lack of male members.

This concerns me because I work with young people, aged 12-18 years old. I teach them in the classroom, but I also work with them in an activist context, as the faculty advisor to the campus gay-straight alliance. Our GSA has explored the liberatory benefits to all people when we educate the campus on Transgender Day of Remembrance, National Coming Out Day, etc. The GSA members know that anti-racist work is directly tied to anti-homophobic work and anti-sexist work. We’re still working on class issues, but they are seeing the connections. I have used the word feminism once with the GSA students. When I did, the hint of snickers and sideways glances from some of the students indicated to me that for these children, feminism is the real “f” word. Feminism, to them, conjures what the anti-feminist backlash has intended for it to conjure: angry, white, queer women yelling about outdated concerns. I’m quite sure that this is as far as the young people who have not been radicalized into really learning about feminism go. They have not learned that feminism is an academic lens that deconstructs oppression of all sorts. They have not learned that, in the process of making women and men equal, all sexes benefit and that this equality-producing-universal-benefit is true in terms of all other (apparent) binaries (race, class, etc.) With my young students, I avoid using the word “feminism” just as I avoid using the word “anarchism.” The media messages regarding these terms are too strongly negative for me to approach them directly. Therefore, I have been challenged to articulate around the terms . . . which, in fact, is a very effective way to teach lasting knowledge.

These young people can make the intellectual leap from anti-homophobic work to anti-racist work. My impression is that they are not able to make the intellectual leap from feminism as the outdated and angry to feminism as the utterly relevant and inclusive. Professor Halberstam raised the question of the pieces in the exhibit that represent the female body in a selfless way- as object. She described them as disarming, as unexpectedly political. [I was not taking notes: this is me paraphrasing what she said (corrections welcome!)] She pointed out that these pieces used a patriarchal expectation of women as the medium for feminist expression. This was intriguing as Professor Halberstam described the pieces, but also intriguing to me because this is not how feminism is represented in mainstream media, which is where my students have learned anything they may know about feminism. What my students have learned is the image of reactionary feminism. Feminism that has had ENOUGH! of patriarchal, sexist bullshit and is ready to say something about it. What Professor Halberstam described were pieces that could be described as a kind of evocative feminism . . . by hooking a crochet needle (if you will) through one part sympathy and one part fury and one part identification and one part sadness, a feminist might be made. This is not the feminism we see in mainstream media.

In fact, this is not the kind of activism we ever see in the media, because it’s not the form that activism most often takes. For every anti-war or anti-Bush demonstration I go to, I have the choice of myriad contingents to join. All but one of them intend to hold many signs and to be vocal. The one group that I have never (yet) chosen to join is the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. While I am affiliated with the group, I have not walked with the group in silence at a large demonstration nor sat in quiet meditation off to one side. When making this decision, the question I always ask myself is: how long can I be angry? Is this the time to reject reaction and to NOT just do something, but to sit there? Until now, I’ve decided that my daily life is the peaceful activism of intentional community and cultivated compassion and that the demonstrations are the time to speak up and protest loudly against the white supremacist capitalist [imperialist] patriarchy that is literally in the way of every beautiful possibility on the planet. To be sure, there are ways to subvert that power structure (what I do when I find a place of compassion inside myself or when my community consenses on a decision after much discussion.) However, these subversions are lost in the onslaught of media images of gyrating hipsters listening to their iPods in a false reality of materialistic bliss. What I am protesting is that denial of a voice for our subversive collectives in an age when product consumption is identity and representation is reserved for the highest bidder. At the same time, I am living one alternative and sometimes documenting such.

This may be where the schizophrenic requirement to be at the center and also in the margins, as a few people mentioned during the panel / audience discussion, arises: a movement requires visibility and representation, but is at the same time so much more than what most people will ever see and could ever try to represent. Perhaps this is where our imperative, those who would call ourselves feminists, arises. We must represent ourselves. I consider myself a radical feminist, and my questions may serve to represent not only me, but perhaps other radical feminists: Where were the men tonight on the panel, and how can we get a widespread embrace of feminism as a present solution rather than as a historic event?

“Diana-LAEV”

I pause, realize that she has long left that hospital room and is now deceased, and delete the entry. The millisecond of the cellular phone’s processor losing the number happens, the phone screen mopped up by a sopping digital rag. The completion sees pixels fading into the center of the screen, similar to when a text message has been sent. Only this time, a trace of Diana has vanished. That’s when I realize that this is just the beginning. My friend L.A. has a book of hand-written and typed poetry of Diana’s. She wrote some of the poems when she was in college, in the sixties. The most recent one was written in July of last year. The other night I leafed through the binder, identifying with some lines of poetry and finding others quaintly amusing. I didn’t know that Diana wrote poetry. For now, we have this artifact to prove that she did. To represent her thoughts and hopes. To paint a picture of who she was. Yet this binder will not last forever. Just as my cellular phone entry disappeared into the ether, so will the poetry binder meet its end. And another piece of Diana will vanish. Like that. Her friends will forget details of times spent together. Her students will forget things that she taught. Of course, these people will take a part of Diana with them throughout their whole lives, until they die. But they will die. And with them, so will those pieces of Diana.

In June I will leave the school where I teach. The traces of my existence will slowly fade until none of the students at the school will be aware that I was ever there. This is okay. What I’m more concerned about are the seeds that I can only hope I have planted in the minds of my students.

I know that the voice that speaks through each of us is an ancient voice. Whenever we speak with someone of an older generation, what they share with us has been shaped by their conversations with those of older generations and older generations and older generations back to the beginning of human time. No person has existed without communicating with a person of the generation before them. In this way, we each speak the knowledge of the first humans capable of speech . . . and of those that followed. And, in this way, we each have ancient wisdom to share with the children on the planet. What I have shared with my students has been one part a fleeting snapshot of the state of chemistry and physics and another part a window into a vast reservoir of thought and creativity. I hope that the seeds that have been planted were those that will serve us all best to be carried into the future.

It’s similar to the blood of our ancestors flowing through us and into our children. Life, itself, is a message we are given and that we pass along. Richard Dawkins refers to this in his book River Out of Eden (which, once upon a time, my high school biology teacher assigned (thank you, Mr. Gabler)). The sanctity of (all) life is most apparent when we consider the large numbers of beings that were not successful in reproducing. So many streams of our river have wandered off to dwindle and then evaporate away. Yet we are all here (and all living creatures are here) because our ancestors were on the successful branch(es) of the river of life which, as I’ve mentioned, we may pass on to our children, if we have children.

Regarding this, some may say that the biological urge to reproduce is what makes our species successful; that it’s a good thing. I’ve been of the opinion lately that the queering of the population, leading to fewer reproductive and to more adoptive choices, is the best thing for us now. It doesn’t seem biologically positive to populate until we are barely holding onto this planet, worried for our future and squeezed into oblivion. Right now is the perfect time to make non-reproductive unions and welcome children that we may not have spoken life into, but whom we can speak wisdom to.

I can still hear Diana’s words in my mind. I thank her for the coded wisdom she has passed to me in her life anecdotes and her fears about death and her self-damnation for the cancer that took her life. Her parents, grandmother and her teachers have spoken to me in her voice. I bow to them all and those that came before them for having sent the messages that I have received and begun to decode.

Teaching physics is like programming. The teacher sets up a system where if something occurs, then the student has learned that something else shall occur and so on until the “correct” answer is obtained by the physics student.

Once the program is established, the teacher throws a multitude of case examples at the student to see if the program is robust.

Watching a classroom of physics students work together to dissect a problem and synthesize an answer is as euphoric as watching a program you have written consistently give the desired output.

Classroom-spanning shouts containing the words “x-naught” and “mu” and debates over force vector addition and frames of reference are like seeing the DOS prompt blinkblinkblink and then, line by line, output all of the expected information. Ecstasy.

Lately my attention, ever so protected from distraction so that I may create beauty and life in spite of the ugliness and death that one may see so often in the news, in other people, in the air . . . has been drawn into the ugliness. My attention has been taken, despite myself, as I increasingly cannot ignore the fact that my tax dollars and my nation of citizenry are being used to destroy those values that I hold dear and reinforce those patterns that destroy life.

It is easy, in this patriarchal, homophobic, philosophically intolerant, over-consumptive time and place where intellectualism is vilified and war is waged to dismiss someone like me and my views. I am a young queer woman who chooses humility- to ride a bicycle and eat low on the food “chain,” to aspire to follow the eightfold path of Buddhist teachings- rather than accept the dominant culture of immediate gratification interwoven with Death with a capital “D.” I am a Feminist with a capital “F,” militant without being violent. That is to say, I believe all men and all women should be free to be who they dream to be, regardless of whether a man will be able to support a family being that person or a woman will be conventionally beautiful as that person. We should all have the freedom of realizing self-actualization. That is feminism.

I am also a scientist that doesn’t take myself too seriously, and a teacher that desires to share a healthy and peaceful planet with my students rather than just knowledge. For all of these reasons, it is clear that I don’t support George W. Bush or his regime and I never have- I did not vote for him in 2000 and, when in his first few months in office he reneged on the Kyoto protocol, I had already had enough. Now that affront to the rest of the planet is forgotten in a slew of affronts and outright war crimes and human rights crimes perpetrated by the Bush administration. But I’m just an angry feminist queer, right?

Think Again.

I grew up in a highly conservative household. I was raised on evangelical Christianity, Republicanism, and Focus On the Family readings. I was a “Young Republican” in early high school, later a self-defined “Libertarian” (thank you, Ayn Rand.) I’m a Daughter of the American Revolution. I’ve heard all of the arguments about all of the controversial issues a conservative can make. I’m not categorically in opposition to all of them. But I AM categorically in opposition to leadership the likes of Bush and all of the politicians in D.C. that are supporting him. And I will be in the streets, along with thousands in LA and as yet untold numbers in over 175 places throughout the United States on October 5^th, protesting Bush and the course he has taken this nation.

I remember the time when my father signed me up with the Daughters of the American Revolution. He had spent parts of his free time for the last decade or so doing intense genealogical research on his (and my mother’s) family, eventually discovering that someone in our ancestry fought in the American Revolution. This is the only criterion for becoming a member of the Sons or Daughters of the American Revolution. So he sent the evidence in and suddenly he and I were members of the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution (but my mother wasn’t, because it wasn’t her ancestor that fought.) I was in college. I quickly heard from friends that the Daughters of the American Revolution have an unfortunate history of racism and nationalism.

As part of my joining the Daughters of the American revolution, my father sent the Daughters my email address, so I would get periodic Southern California Daughters of the American Revolution email updates about gatherings and whatnot. Well, one of those emails had a homophobic, nationalist and militaristic joke in it, which implied that French soldiers are all gay because they aren’t as interested in war-mongering as American soldiers apparently are. I was so disgusted by the email that I deleted it. And then I immediately deleted it from my trash box. And then I kicked myself because I had just lost my chance to write a scathing reply to the violent homophobe that had sent it and everyone else on the list. Soon after that, I was graduated from college and I lost that email address. I no longer receive emails from the Daughters of the American Revolution that insult other people and my intelligence. Good riddance.

I am, however- still and forever, because I can’t change my ancestry- a Daughter of the American Revolution. As such, and as an American citizen generally, I will demonstrate on October 5^th as part of the World Can’t Wait- Drive Out the Bush Regime! demonstration. I will demonstrate against the Bush regime for taking the nation that my ancestor fought to liberate from empire and that subsequent ancestors worked their entire lives- in factories, in offices, in fields, in homes, and even in the military- to create. They created the wealth of this country and upheld the early ideals of this country and served this country in whatever ways they knew how. My father’s ancestors have served this country since its inception and my mother’s ancestors have served this country since the early 20^th century. I will demonstrate on October 5^th in all of their names.

I understand that this country’s wealth has been created first on the backs of slaves from Africa and forever on the backs of those with the least monetary wealth and more recently on the backs of people in developing countries, but I also recognize that many Americans today and many Americans in the past didn’t realize these scaled power structures, repeated from international dynamics to class dynamics and race dynamics, etc. It is in the idealized America that my ancestors placed their faith, and it is the Bush Regime’s erasure of that America and worldwide endangerment of America and Americans that I will protest.

On October 5^th, with respect for the ideals with which this nation was conceived, such as democratic representation and division of powers and the agency of the people that are governed to demand justice and a government that reflects their best interests, I will demonstrate. The zeitgeist producing this nation and its founding ideals are clearly described in the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

I recognize that every government is established by idealists, truly believing that their form of government will lead to a peaceful and prosperous existence. I also recognize that, while the founders of the United States of America had very clear ideals, shaped by the fire of tyrannical rule by a foreign king, they were also racist and engaged in a genocide of the indigenous peoples on this continent. Our history is a shameful one. I am proud of the ideals, and not proud of the hatred and killing that came alongside those ideals. Even at the beginning of this nation, those that called themselves citizens of the United States did not see the blatant connection between the imperialism they were escaping by declaring their independence and the imperialism they were perpetuating by claiming a land and murdering its people.

The clauses of the Declaration of Independence following the one above are a litany of the abuses suffered by residents of the British colonies under the thumb of the king of Britain. These are the abuses shaping the “absolute despotism” that motivated the colonists to “throw off” the king’s rule and declare themselves an independent nation.

Most of the abuses directly describe the tactics taken up by the Bush regime. More importantly, the arrogant, imperialistic, militaristic and self-interested attitude defining all of them equally describe the Bush regime’s actions. The founders of this nation declared this type of ruler a despot. They used the lessons from the oppression and suffering endured under the king to create a nation where such abuses would not happen again. And yet, before our very eyes, the Bush regime is bucking all of those protective devices against intolerance and despotism- the right to one’s own religion, the separation of powers, the right to privacy and fair trial . . . the list doesn’t end. It is time to throw off this government. This government that not only doesn’t represent most U.S. citizens’ best interests, but doesn’t represent the United States, as a nation’s, best interest as it perpetuates our “addiction to oil” and our military-industrial complex that, while it fattens the pockets of Bush’s CEO friends, places our nation at the top of every list of most despised peoples. We are despised for allowing our government to get so out of hand that the health of the global ecosystem and the life of people all over the planet are ominously at risk, both indirectly through our refusal to take responsibility for the planet’s health or directly, as the targets of our weapons.

As a Daughter of the American Revolution and as an American citizen, both labels conferred upon me not through any particular virtue of my own but by happenstance of my birth, I declare this government despotic and demand that the Bush regime step down and take its program with it. Please join me on October 5^th, in the town or city that you live in, to demand the same. It is our patriotic duty.

The World Can’t Wait- Drive Out the Bush Regime!

So yesterday I met Peggy McIntosh . . . and in her presence I felt as though I was in the presence of the aging Emma Goldman herself, with her greyed hair pulled back in a loose bun and her loose-fitting, business-casual attire and spectacles and not a speck of the make-up or posturing that is so rampant in Los Angeles. She came to us from Massachusetts, where perhaps intellectual pursuits are encouraged.

I was so honored to meet her because I read some of her White Privilege work last year, as part of our faculty reading group, and she's . . . right. I've also seen Tim Wise speak twice, and he's also right, but she was his inspiration. She gave him the ammunition-in the form of acknowledging white privilege- and the target- in the form of all of the white folk who can't or won't see the fact that, in order for people that are "underprivileged" to exist, there must be some group of people, in comparison to them, that are "overprivileged" and that that group is white people.

Of course, there are many binaries in the over-versus-under privileged world, but skin color is the one which Wise speaks about. As for McIntosh, she addresses many of the privilege dichotomies that exist, including queerness. I was able to meet her because the Gay-Straight Alliance that I advise was invited to speak with her, and I was very glad to hear her excitement about our group.

I was glad because, from all that I can see, everything (literally) comes back to gender. And the queer space and the feminist space seem to be the most effective realms for deconstructing (or fucking, if you will) gender.

Gender is that quintessential, polar example of submissive vs. dominant that gets repeated in every inequitable relationship on the planet. And I believe in equality. Anti-racists believe in equality. Feminists believe in equality. Anti-capitalists believe in equality. The founders of the United States claimed some kind of belief in equality.

Yet you can't have equality when every human is raised from birth to either act in a dominant way or act in a submissive way. These gendered humans act out their pain and their rage caused by having their dynamic, free beings squeezed into some narrow description of what is feminine and what is masculine by perpetuating their pain in their relationships with people of different classes and different abilities and different physiologies and different nationalities and different belief systems and different skin colors and different attractions . . . and also in their relationships to the planet and its other creatures. In order to deconstruct the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy that encompasses all of the "isms" of oppression, such as racism and sexism, we must first deconstruct gender. This gender deconstruction should be the primary goal of feminism. For some feminists, it is.

McIntosh's work in pedagogical theory relating to the creation of classrooms that take the privilege out of the material being studied and that place privilege in the hands of the students- who not only see reflections of themselves in the curriculum, but are given the space to make their lives part of the curriculum- reminded me of a book I once read called Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom by bell hooks. It said exactly that. Maybe hooks was influenced by McIntosh, like Wise was. Or maybe McIntosh by hooks. In any case, just today I read a brief by Senator Sheila Kuehl to the LA Times discussing her recent bill to the CA legislature asking for the inclusion of LGBTQ people in anti-discrimination in school curriculum laws and for efforts to increase visibility of LGBTQ contributions in the curriculum.

It's the same message, from McIntosh, hooks, Kuehl . . . And it's true. Our experience is our reality. What good is education, if we have no point of entry? What good is education, if it only serves to disenfranchise? Just today, amidst all of this, I was teaching about star evolution and I was talking about the Orion constellation. I took a side trip in my teaching to explain that the constellation names we use in this country come from the Romans and Greeks, but that every civilization had its own astronomy and its own stories for why the stars are in the patterns that they are in. A student then asked if there were any "American" names that we use for constellations and I thought for a moment and said, "well, the big dipper is 'American,' because that constellation was actually called Ursa Major by the Romans." And he pressed, "Wasn't it named the big dipper by the slaves?" and I said "I don't know!"

Well, I looked it up, and the student was right. I'm glad to be able to report back to this student and the class tomorrow that, indeed, he (who happens to be African-American) was right and, yes, people that look like him DID contribute to our knowledge of the heavens. How many times a day do I, alone, miss opportunities to engage and affirm my students?

This process of stripping away the privilege in the curriculum is as much a way of subverting gender as crossing gender lines is a way of subverting white privilege. Kate Bornstein writes about how being straight, male, white, rich, etc. is the pinnacle of being gendered. She refers to the privilege gradients between people of differing skin colors as aspects of gender, as well as all of the other privilege gradients that can and do exist.

"The Man" is most surely straight, rich, white, male, able-bodied, masculine, and conventionally attractive. But only one person will ever be "The Man," and that person isn't me and he isn't you. So we're all out in the world with "clouds of inferiority forming," trying to demonstrate how we're ALMOST "The Man," or at least a closer resemblance to him than the person next to us.

This is how patriarchy functions to keep us insecure, to keep us tearing each other down, and to keep us in the damning business of perpetuating privilege binaries. There will always be something to grasp after. The grasping only leads to suffering.

However, it's not enough to reject one's own gender assignment and just BE as one feels most comfortable being. The dominant paradigm and the media are still heavily gendered, damaging most people's abilities to truly be free. The hierarchies that patriarchy supports are not only antithetical to the anarchistic world view, but cage individuals, on a personal level, in a state of imprisonment with significant expectations regarding behavior and lifestyle. We need to actively and publicly question gender, gender assumptions, gendered behavior, and gender expectations.

When I read Emma Goldman, the gendered nature of her assumptions and propositions sadden me. Even though she was radical and revolutionary for her time (and ours,) a cross-gendered consciousness could have taken her to even greater levels of freedom. Instead, she suffered in her grasping after the feminine role, assigning it and sexuality to utmost (essentialist) import.

And so it is with great excitement that I met Peggy McIntosh, a modern-day Emma, with a racial and sexual and gender consciousness that form a state of true liberation. I honor her and her work in schools, where we obtain our first understandings of power and privilege systems. May the universe allow that our paths cross again.