Wear Clean Draws  (because there’s 5 million ways to kill a ceo)

i just read BfP’s rant about some new blowout in bloglandia. I haven’t any idea what happened and don’t have time to learn more until next weekend. gotta hit the gym for a second full body routine for the week, taxes need to be done, house cleaned, gotta get to the clay room, and then, maybe, i’ll find time to read The Space Between Us, which I’m reading for feminist book reading group — oh, and decide which books I want to suggest for reading b/c part of what we’ll do next week is pitch out some thoughts and decide on the books, in a more collective, consensus-building way.

Meanwhile, I read an expample BFP gave about feeling played as tokens, http://flipfloppingjoy.com/2009/02/19/the-latest-blow-up/ . It reminded me that this was exactly how I felt a few years back when a reproductive justice group contacted me to participate in a conference call. I asked who else was participating, learned it was all white women, was shocked because the people who wrote most about this group, who cared most and who had already done the most to advertise its existence, tended to be WOC bloggers!

What the fuck? Why, if this org knew damn well that it was women of color and poor women of all races and ethnicities who supported their work, did they shit all over WOC bloggers like that? Why, if this org claims to be about and for women of color and poor women, did they shit all over WOC bloggers like that?

I assumed it was for the usual reasons: they wanted free publicity, so they had to work with the big bloggers — or so they thought.

So I told the coordinator that they should invite some WOC bloggers, at the very least BFP who seemed to be a moral leader among RWOC bloggers and she would be able to get the ball started on bringing other WOC bloggers in. I said that I felt I wasn’t really crucial to the conference call but that RWOC were, so if there was a limit on participant #s, then count me out. She said that wasn’t a problem, so no one need drop out. Maybe later I’ll dig out the emails if I saved them. She proceeded to contact the WOC bloggers I’d suggested. My plan was that, if she hadn’t, I was going to blow the whistle. At the time, they’d invited one WOC blogger who largely didn’t associated with the RWOC — at the time. And they invited her mainly because she was a big blogger. It irritated the fuck out of me that all these bloggers simply chose to keep it all under wraps and appeared to have never once bothered to mention that, gee, there were other bloggers out there who actualy spent lots of time writing about the issues this organization dealt with.

So what was I supposed to do — about the fact that they’d planned on shitting on WOC bloggers had no one said anything? And what about all the other bloggers who’d been invited, who hadn’t said shit about voices that ought to be included? I was pissed and wrote a post or response to a post, can’t recall, in which I created a recipe for oppression cake — or something like that. The old blog appears to be dead and I can’t be arsed to fix it, so I can’t find that post at the moment. At any rate, it was a response to some related convo that had gone down at Republic of T or something.

I wanted to avoid hurting feelings by noting that a large org was treating WOC like shit and that yes, indeed, they would have ignored them had someone not spoke up. I just didn’t know what to say — in public. I was stuck there, knowing that an organization RWOC had been devoted to as somehow different than and less racist (or something) than NOW, etc. turned out to be just as idiotic as the rest. It turned out that, in the interest of getting their PR out there, they were willing to toss RWOC bloggers under the bus and focus on “big” bloggers, white and klewless as they might be about the org.

Besides, you can always count on WOC bloggers to support your ass. More important to cater to big white bloggers who, largely, could not give two turds.

Not to mention that, as an outfit trying to exploit the intert00bz without really being part of it, they couldn’t be bothered to actually learn anything about the racial justice center of the intertoobz and apparently only looked at statistics and traffic numbers to tell them who was “important” — namely pandagon, feministe, feministing, alas, shakespeare’s sister, and ABB.

I fretted about what to do: let the RWOC bloggers know that, had no one piped up, they would have been excluded and shat on? That, even tho someone spoke up, they were being shat on anyway because the organization didn’t give a rat’s ass about connecting with women of color, they only did it because some white ass woman with a “bigger” blog told them to do it and best to go along, elsewise someone would actually know they were pieces of shit and might, gosh, blow the whistle on them.

I tried to have that conversation. I’d started by asking about timing: when did you get invited I asked? I got that far, the merest hint that maybe RWOC had been invited very late in the game, and end up getting brownfemipower ’s chola knife stuck in my thigh.

Not surprising: usually the messenger gets the knife plunged in their thigh, not the assholes actually responsible for the harm and damage, not the hypocrites who act contrary to their supposed organizational principles, who weren’t even capable of tokenizing initially because they didn’t see it in their lazy ass interest to even bother with that turd ball.

I participated in the conference call because I was excited to “meet” the RWOC who participated in the call and hear what their concerns were. I never brought myself to say anything about it any more than an off blog conversation that turned out poorly and ended with a post of a pumpkin puking its guts out as a gesture of reconciliation.

The only thing I felt I could do at that point was utterly refuse to help that organization via my blogging. Which felt bad because then I looked like a jackass to the women of color who’d participate din that conference call. Oh well.

But, I had so little respect for the outfit, I just couldn’t stomach it. And now I have so little respect that I can’t even be arsed to look up their name on the Interwebz because I’ve completely forgotten their name, blocking it from consciousness. I want them to stay there, out of my consciousness.

So, when BFP writes about the same shit happening over and over again — and being so over it — well, yeah. And though surely it’s not exactly the same thing, the dynamic’s still there. It’s the nausea I felt everytime I saw that org’s coordinator’s name in my inbox because I’m still on their stupid ass mailing list.

I’d point brownfemipower at a post she wrote long ago, about identity and women of color, where she was able to articulate the answer to her concerns right now, a post that seemed to have foregrounded the kind of problem she has recently encountered, reminding her that, ultimately, it’s about politics. that there really is *no* essential identity upon which to form a political practice, so she will always be disappointed if she forgets that. She once understood that, or so I thought. She seemed to have renounced identitarian-based ways of political knowing. And yet now, seems to have lost that somehow. Her work seems to have moved from a continually, unrelenting divergentism where no one *center* can every be enough, where no one *center* will hold, a divergentism where there’s no need for a centering but a constantly decentering movement to one that focuses on a unrelenting convergentizing thought where an essentialized identity is continually framed as the basis upon which to form a politics.

it makes me sad that someone who so inspired me, who was a model for divergentist thinking has lost the thread.

BTW, my copy of June Jordan’s _Some of Us Did Not Die_ finally finally arrived. I tried reading Thursday night but I was shot to hell exhausted because I’d been running since 5 a.m, what with pottery class and all. I want to read that for feminist book club in the next couple of months so that, among other books, I’m going to suggest.

gotta fly!

later later.