![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marjaerwinI see this going around on tumblr, about how “radical feminists are worth none of [our] time,” and I find it really leaves me feeling angry, and othered, and erased. I too am angry at so many betrayals from so many cis radfems. I am feeling too exhausted, and stressed out, and everything after an awful day that had me curled up in a ball at the doctor’s office, to really unpack why this makes me feel so awful. But it does. I know that’s not the intention, but that’s the result.
odofemi:
RADICAL FEMINISTS ARE WORTH NONE OF YOUR TIME
a litany of prayers to the self and the Trans Ancestors
*
In the names of the Mothers, Sylvia Rivera and Marsha Pay-It-No-Mind Johnson,
the Daughters, Venus Xtravaganza and Greer Lankton,
and the Holy Ghosts, Mark Aguhar and Candy Darling,
I pray for the strength to not let my attention be diverted,
from the artwork and lifework of those Beautiful Queens.
[full version:] http://odofemi.tumblr.com/post/43485654587/radical-feminists-are-worth-none-of-your-time
RADICAL FEMINISTS ARE WORTH NONE OF YOUR TIME
a litany of prayers to the self and the Trans Ancestors
*
In the names of the Mothers, Sylvia Rivera and Marsha Pay-It-No-Mind Johnson,
the Daughters, Venus Xtravaganza and Greer Lankton,
and the Holy Ghosts, Mark Aguhar and Candy Darling,
I pray for the strength to not let my attention be diverted,
from the artwork and lifework of those Beautiful Queens.
[full version:] http://odofemi.tumblr.com/post/43485654587/radical-feminists-are-worth-none-of-your-time
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Sylvia
Date: 2013-02-20 05:40 pm (UTC)When she first came into our lives she was drinking so much that she seemed delerius in the evenings. Folks at Transie house helped her get hormones and shortly afterwards she quit drinking. She never stopped smoking pot.
Sylvia often told stories about her hooking days that would destroy the current Sylvia hagiography. She once stole 2000 dollars from a trucker while going down on him and then did it again to him a week later wearing a different color wig.
I think she would have told the writers of that poem that they were crazy ;-) She would have told them that Marsha was the saint.
Sylvia was very good for the young street kids at Transie house, though she could be VERY touchy if she was angry or triggered.
In the first few months Sylvia was at Transie house i would come up almost every weekend from Princeton. We got pretty close. One year the weekend after gay pride i helped pull my current partner out of a very abusive relationship. At that point i was thinking of my partner as a person needing help - not as a lover. ...But Sylvia backed off and started acting as if my current partner and i were a couple. She was a good observer of human behavior.
Sylvia then paired up with Red Haired Julia (also a former lover of mine). They were together til Sylvia died. Their relationship was complicated.
Why do i ridicule the hagiography of Sylvia ? Because in some ways it did harm. I'm not at liberty to talk about all of it, but her memory even shortly after her death was used to forward agendas that she would not have approved of.
To hell with 'Saint Sylvia' - i just want 'Ma Sylvia' back.
I did not realize how much the loss of Sylvia still hurts
Date: 2013-02-20 07:57 pm (UTC)Sylvia.
Sylvia was a revolutionary - she believed in Socialism.
STAR was in many ways, one of the many spin offs of the
Black Panther Party.
Like the BPP, STAR's main work was helping desparatly poor people,
mostly kids who got kicked out of their houses for being gay or trans.
Sylvia was not welcome at the NYC GLBT Center for many years
because of an incident where she brought a bunch of homeless
queer kids off the street on a freezing day. They would not allow
them shelter and warmth. Sylvia flipped out and basically pulled
up the front desk kiosk.
Despite being kicked out of her home at a very early age - Sylvia
was quite well educated. She understood politics like many radicals
of the 60's and 70's did.
STAR was revitalized around 1999 to protest the murder of Amanda Milan.
As far as i know some of the more recent kids who worked with Sylvia are still working under the banner of STAR. Most of those kids lived at Transy House which in itself was partially inspired by the old STAR house. Central House in upstate NY was also inspired by STAR House.
Sylvia felt that the fight for gay marriage was irrelevant when queer kids were out on the streets dying. First things first.
Sorry for my chatter - old wounds opened again.
Re: I did not realize how much the loss of Sylvia still hurts
Date: 2013-02-21 12:32 am (UTC)Re: I did not realize how much the loss of Sylvia still hurts
Date: 2013-02-21 01:15 am (UTC)I think you would understand. While i don't think the person you quoted really want to do revisionist history, so many people do.
There are quite conservative people that claim Sylvia. If she were alive, well she would "Probably" have something to say about that. She was never particularly diplomatic. (Really, what she cared about were matters of economic justice especially for the street kids.)
I guess that is true about many historical figures. People talk on and on about MLK but conveniently forget that he fought for more than civil rights he fought poverty and supported the Memphis sanitation workers strike.
--- Marina
no subject
Date: 2013-02-21 11:21 pm (UTC)I recently came across this post: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/camelswithhammers/2013/02/the-camels-with-hammers-civility-pledge/
... mostly about atheism and Christians, as well as the new phenomenon of "Atheism Plus"--which is also threatening to turn into a bloodletting within the atheist community (or already has). And you can see some of that in the comments, too. (Dan went ahead and accepted the incivility in the comments, to talk about the incivility!) (yeesh)
I really liked the post and wish I could get **everyone** to sign on. If we could discuss things (ANY things, including with the MRAs) using these rules, we might be able to get to the heart of some issues, you know? But nobody is going to be deliberately degendered or called "cis scum" or whatever, and continue to engage. (I sure won't.)
But that's the thing... we can't even agree on any ground rules. I wonder if we could start some kind of blog or group in which we all agree first on these kinds of rules, if not Dan's list specifically?
But first NO NAME CALLING. No GUILT BY ASSOCIATION. NO BULLSHIT. And of course, I think lots of people **really enjoy** that form of argument and their accompanying righteous indignation... whereas people like you and me can get actually *sick* over it. It's not "fun" FOR US.
That is how I know we are kindred spirits. :)
(((hugs for Sister Marja)))
Yes--the the old radfems in the 70s would call us, Sister Daisy, Sister Ann, Sister Whoever, LOL. I am terribly nostalgic for the moment right before it all busted apart.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-24 01:41 am (UTC)I do see a lot of guilt-by-association in the community, and can be guilty of it myself. I tried dating at one point, and was put off by her apparent support for Julie Bindel, who was then unapologetically cissexist, and for prohibiting sex work. I wouldn't be surprised if she was put off by my politics. But we didn't connect anyway.
I had someone dismiss my friend Valerie, today, as one of Cathy Brennan's sympathizers. I was a bit puzzled, given Cathy Brennan's harassment of both of us. But apparently because Cathy Brennan is a PTERF, and PTERFs support patriarchy and white supremacy, and Valerie is open to supporting MRAs, and MRAs support patriarchy and white supremacy, they're
objectively counterrevolutionaryobjectively anti-feminist Trotskyite-Patriarchal Wreckers, or at least that's the rationale.It would take a strange sort of genius to be wrong at absolutely everything. It is easier to be wrong about almost everything, but right about two things every day.
Anyway, it's self-defeating for someone who's interested in men's rights to be anti-feminist, and self-defeating for someone who's interested in womyn's rights to be anti-men's rights. After all, both movements are challenging sex-role expectations and enforcement, as well as hierarchies between sex roles and within each sex role.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-24 02:14 am (UTC)I see her pretty much as an internet brawler who loves the fight. ...Well her profession is to argue - she is a lawyer.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-25 02:54 am (UTC)What is PTERF? I know what TERF is, but what is the P for?
no subject
Date: 2013-02-25 03:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-21 11:23 pm (UTC)http://ozyfrantz.com/2013/02/18/cis-by-default/
I think ze really hit on something... check the comments too.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-24 01:52 am (UTC)You're more familiar with second-wave feminism than I. But I get the impression that Shulamith Firestone, Andrea Dworkin, and the founders of queer theory, tend to seem cis-by-default. And they don't understand trans people, and don't get trans concerns, but they are rarely deliberately transphobic. On the other hand I get the impression that Mary Daly, Janice Raymond, et al., or Norah Vincent and Dirt today, tend to seem cis-by-nature, and aware of it. In particular, Janice Raymond starts off supporting androgyny but ends up hating androgyny, almost as if she'd experimented with it, encountered some kind of dysphoria, and rejected it. And hating trans people because of our supposed association with it.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-25 02:45 am (UTC)By contrast (your examples) Dworkin and Firestone (as well as Steinem, Adrienne Rich, Phyllis Chesler) were Jews, and had no such religious definitions of gender to adhere to. Jewish theology would be cis-by-default, in that case.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-26 09:41 pm (UTC)Well, actually quite conceivable... I now recognize my sense of being female as part of my self, and accept that many [most?] other people have some sense of being a specific sex. or none. or more than one. But I grew up with the idea that human nature was not sexed.
Early in transition I asked some other Christians for advice on female-centered spirituality, and the answer was usually that because God has no sex, we should have no sex differences or divisions in worship [not even to focus on specific needs or specific issues]. I gave up. I do find it surprising to hear that the Catholics so fervently believe what many other Christians so fervently deny. I suppose it's better to say there are no differences than to essentialize these differences, and rigidify these, and assume everyone must always fit set a or set b.
I haven't read *Beyond God the Father* and gave up partway through *Gyn/Ecology,* but both Daly and Raymond refer to a prior belief in androgyny. So they seem to move from [conventional] Catholicism -> androgynous radical feminism -> cultural feminism, and I don't think the Catholicism is enough to explain the rejection of androgyny in cultural feminism.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-28 07:43 pm (UTC)This subculture is all about Marian sightings and Marian oriented books, music, conferences, devotions, gatherings, etc. The old movies "Song of Bernadette" and "The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima" as well as the song "My Maria" (really personal and important to me! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdBvTvxHy7E )
would be the only above-ground manifestations of this culture I can readily identify... most is pretty underground and has not broken through much to the mainstream (as cultural feminism did). This is because it is not dogmatically correct and nobody wants to invite Vatican interference; it is under the radar. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-Redemptrix
There is no Marian subculture in Protestantism. Also, I think cultural feminism fed into it (I was feminist long before I delved into the Marian subculture) and it tended to criss-cross in membership, or 'run parallel' to cultural feminism. Can't describe it too well, this might mark the first time I have brainstormed on the topic (of the similarities in Marian culture and cultural feminism). You make me think in new ways, Marja!
I met lots of women in Marian groups who claimed to be (or had been) feminists, and these would *always* be cultural feminists.
Anyway, consider this influence. JPII was very tolerant of the subculture and it grew astronomically under his papacy. (he was said to be a closet Marian himself. The current Pope? not so much!) This cultural manifestation would dovetail with the rise of cultural feminism and Daly/Raymond's theory. They were affiliated with Catholic colleges and would have been surrounded by it.
no subject
Date: 2013-03-01 01:25 am (UTC)I grew up protestant, and I grew up with the occasional pronoun-switch in the liturgy, and the occasional sermon on the limitations of describing God as 'he' or 'she' and the ways this can shape our perceptions. But that was it.
Rad Fems
Date: 2013-02-24 02:05 am (UTC)Just saying.