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?

masculinist claiming

of public space

white cum-paint

splatters across the se-ment

text dominates

text imposed

your words

your reaction

disconnected from others’ experiences

and understanding

it’s all for you

your text

your territory

are marked

imposing

penetrating

impenetrable

I returned to the intentional community that I live in (the Los Angeles Eco-Village) this week, after two weeks in Colorado. Curious to see how the most recent building committee meeting had gone, I navigated to our online listserve and read the meeting notes. Discussion topic number two was documented thus:

2. Short stay for 2 people from New Mexico August 26 through September 1. APPROVED. Also, 2 traveling teachers sometime in June. APPROVED. Are they angry vegans?

I’m certainly relieved that my community is asking tough questions about people that will be sharing our space. I know I don’t want any “angry vegans” in this building. What I don’t understand is why this question, with no answer, found its way into the meeting notes? Usually we document knowns and decisions, and if there is an unknown, someone’s name is usually ascribed to the unknown, because that person has agreed to follow up on the weighty question and report back to the community about their findings. Perhaps the point person on this question was erroneously left out of the meeting notes. If so, I would appreciate someone letting me know who the point person is. This is because I have some of my own concerns about these traveling teachers.

I want our point person to call up these teachers and ensure that they are not: terrorist Arabs, poor vehicle-maneuvering Asians, greedy Jews, irrational Women, criminal Blacks, promiscuous Queers, lazy Hispanics, stupid Poor people, unrealistic Liberals, or dirty Hippies. I don’t think we should invite anyone into this community who exhibits these characteristics. I know some of the Eco-Villagers might take a more lenient stand than I am, and claim that laziness or irrationality really aren’t that bad, but I’m willing to block any conversation on this matter at the next meeting because I have seen the kinds of problems that ensue when you begin associating with these Hispanics and Women, etc. All you have to do is turn on the television to see what I’m talking about. The evidence is everywhere. The Arabs, the Asians, the Jews, the Women, the Blacks, the Queers, the Hispanics, the Poor, the Liberals and the Hippies are nothing but trouble. The Vegans, however, I’m not so sure about. I haven’t seen as much evidence of the problems that they cause as the others that I have mentioned.

Clearly, we don’t want angry people in our community just as we don’t want criminals or greedy people. However, aside from the adjective “angry,” the noun “Vegan” indicates something that we DO want at the Los Angeles Eco-Village. Vegans are actively choosing an eating pattern that is the most sustainable eating pattern possible in this urban environment. Nearly three times as many resources are needed to produce a human’s omnivorous diet compared to an entirely plant-based diet. So . . . I’m willing to argue that we, in fact, don’t worry about angry veganism because we have the Conflict Resolution Committee to deal with anger from Vegans, but that we still look closely at the possible Black, Asian, Queer, etc. status of these teachers because being Black, Asian Queer, etc. does not redeem their criminality, poor driving, or promiscuity by our Eco-standards. We’re also not prepared to deal with people with these negative characteristics the way that we are prepared to deal with anger.

I would like to communicate with our point person to express my reservation regarding selecting out Vegans from the community while still allowing the Liberals, Jews, etc. to move in. Frankly, I think this reasoning is a little bit backwards, considering we are the Los Angeles Eco-Village. Yes to Vegans. They are “eco.” No to people of color, women, etc. They are not.

For more ironic negotiated readings of hegemonic messages propagated by residents of the Los Angeles Eco-Village, continue to support and not put in check the straight white males and the women that rely on patriarchy for a sense of worth in the community. These people have every interest in keeping the status quo of the greater society mirrored in our own community, and will, so long as the rest of us are complicit.

Last night I joined up with the central LA critical mass ride. There were about 60 of us, including the always-fabulous sound system that turns our rolling conversation into a rolling saddle-dance party. After some tug-of-war at the front of the ride, we veered towards South Central, to visit the South Central Farm [or] and show support for the struggle happening there. [In (very) short, the Farm is the largest contiguous urban farm in the entire country. It has been producing for 13 years, and it supports 350 families of very low income, mostly recent immigrants. It is an irreplaceable resource for the 350 families, South Central, the city of Los Angeles . . . for the planet.]

For the last 3 years, the families and organizers have been applying themselves full-time to staving off eviction by the city after the city decided to sell the land out from under the farmers. Myriad paths have been traveled in an attempt to save the farm. As of a few days ago, what appeared to be the final path had ended up short and now the farmers are awaiting, in a hypervigilant state, the sirens of the police as they arrive to forcefully remove the farmers and allow the bulldozers onto the land to tear up their livelihoods/community/culture and replace it all with a large concrete warehouse.

Our ride through South Central residential streets was met with confusion, mostly, but also the cheering and clapping and reciprocated “peace” signs that we get from pedestrians and some motorists when we go the usual north or west direction from our starting point. In reality, the “confusion” I just ascribed to most who witnessed our passing last night was something more than that. Most people don’t know what critical mass is, so there is some confusion for people who see a very motley group of people NOT in racing clothes (for the most part), on bicycles and trailing a large sound system. We aren’t carrying signs or passing out xerocracy, lately, so there’s really no indication what we are riding for. In fact, that is our most commonly received question: “What are you all riding for??” My usual response: “Fun!”

While everyone has some confusion about us, the majority of folks we saw last night in South Central met us with suspicion. Like the farmers, the whole of the low-income people of color in this city (this nation) have reason to be suspect of unusual people entering their community. In short, their own hypervigilance begs, “are these people here to exploit us?” So the joy of sharing a different vision of a Friday night with the children who were running on the sidewalk, cheering at us, was sharply counterweighed by the squinted eyes and crossed arms of the weathered men in front of their humble homes and the momentary stress our large group with no obvious purpose caused them.

And so our mass birthed out of 41^st street heading east, crossed the blue line tracks and took a sharp turn north on Long Beach Ave., past the main entrance to the farm as a whole line of activists were walking around the perimeter of the farm, holding candles and cheering at the vision of us flooding into the street and past them. We did a loop around the entire farm in the opposite direction of the marchers, and on the far side of the farm the people on watch with walkie-talkies took notice and quickly picked up their radios to report / get feedback on what all the people on bikes with a sound system was about. Hypervigilance.

As we rounded the bend back towards the main entrance, our cacophonous and blinking mass of cyborgs was in distinct juxtaposition to the tranquility of the quiet vegetables and the palpitating candlelight at the farm. Then, out of our group, came a loud “beeeoooooop!” police-car-imitating yelp originally meant to get the attention of motorists who might otherwise crush us, as cyclists, if they weren’t forced into attentiveness by the threat of a cop car in the vicinity. Most people have no idea about this sound, so any non-cyclist who witnesses it has nothing to conclude except that there is a cop car behind the mass of cyclists . . . or, in the case of THIS situation, if someone saw that it was, in fact, a cyclist’s mouth that made the sound, that the farmers’ hypervigilant state was being mocked. It’s like entering a sweatshop in downtown LA and yelling “La migra!” Insensitive, idiotic, or both. As the cop car imitation is now a greeting in the cycling community, another cyclist shot a loud “beeeeeooooooooop!!” back. I did what I could to quickly shut those people up, and I think no hard feelings were experienced by the farmers guarding the front gate, as they allowed us in. We all stayed for some amount of time, hearing the speakers, eating some food, touring the farm, enjoying the music, checking to see how Julia Butterfly Hill, up in the oldest tree at the farm and on her 11^th day of a hunger strike, was doing.

The night was not ruined, but the issue arose: as a subculture in this city, we have a responsibility to be sensitive to other subcultures. We, of all people, should be able to identify with the vulnerability and concomitant hypervigilance that being in a subculture can cause. While a large group of our cyborg beings of flesh and bicycle steel might be considered threatening in some places, we’re usually roaming the city by ourselves, and, as such, we are vulnerable to the much larger and sometimes much faster-moving cyborgs known as people in cars. Whether we dwell on it or not, we are aware of our vulnerability. If someone behind us honks, we jump because we are in, even if we don’t know it, a hypervigilant state. If we hear a skidding car somewhere behind us, we think “oh SHIT . . .” because the car could be heading straight for us. It is ironic and appropriate that from this vulnerability was spawned the cop-car-imitation as a weapon against those that could harm us.

We are imitating a (multi-leveled) oppressor in order to manipulate another oppressor. And so our weapon was inadvertently turned last night, for a moment, against a sister subculture in this city: some recent immigrants of low income that are finding sustainable, culturally appropriate ways to exist.

It’s easy to be caught up in one’s own experience, regardless of who you are. This is a call to each of us, as members of some cultures and some subcultures and as over-privileged in some regards and under-privileged in others, to THINK . . . about those around us and their positionality and to be sensitive to such, particularly when they are inhabiting a more oppressed subculture than we can claim.

[This post cross-posted with Biciblog and published on CICLE.]