White Liberal Feminist Imperialism & Torture

*If you want more info on the white liberal feminist imperalism that’s splattering all over the feminist blogosphere, here are a couple more links for you. Again I encourage people to click on the links in each article.
Brownfemipower, Amanda, and Thieving WoC’s Efforts: Publicity or Plagarism???

Feminism and Appropriation

This has not been a good week for woman of color blogging – Acoording to some folks this one includes some comments from Marcotte herself which basically have consisted of her whining about how it’s all a personal attack. I don’t have the constitution to actually look right now but if y’all wanna check it out and report back to me, feel free.

*Daily Kos has a post which includes a memo signed by Dubya allowing torture. There’s been a lot of talk about how he was insulated from the decision in a effort to protect the resident from rightful censure, well that was a lod of lies and BS. WARNING! – The comments contain pictures of torture performed by America which may be triggering for some.  They’ve been altered so they read “Autorized by the President of the United States of America” w/ Dubya’s signature across the bottom. Powerful and if you can stomach it look at what our government is doing in our name.  

 

Maximum-Extreme-Linkage!

Okay so first off this is a very sad day in the blogosphere because BrownFemiPower of the La Chola/WOC Blog has left the internet. There was a lot of drama going on in the feminist blogosphere that left a lot of WOC feeling unheard and the victims of constant aversive (if not overt) racism. Of course this is not the first or last time that this has happened but it was particularly bad this time around . (If you guys want to know what went down go here: http://highonrebellion.wordpress.com/2008/04/09/intellectual-theft-is-still-theft/ and make sure to click on the links provided) I completely understand her decision to leave, you can only feel attacked so many times before you realize that maybe it’s not worth all the pain that you have to go through every single day. I wish her massive success in all her endeavors. A moment of silence for one of my favorite bloggers.

Micole (Coffeeandink on LJ) has a very interesting post Are Jews White? where she breaks down a lot of the ideas around Jewish folks and discusses the difference between Ashkenazi and Sephardic jews. This is always an interesting topic because there’s generally been a disconnect between WOC feminists and Jewish feminists around white skin privilege and solidarity. Micole breaks down a lot of the complex issues that exist around Jewish identity. My experience with Judaism (which includes intending to convert at one point in my life) was generally around Sephardic Jews who as Micole states tend to identify as People of Color so it was a very different experience meeting an Ashkenazi Jew in one of the organizations I volunteered with that very vehemently identified as white (she did so very specifically to acknowledge the white skin privilege that she possessed). Any way, go read.  

Saskaia shares a letter she wrote discussing Stephanie Meyer’s use of Quileute characters over at the LJ community DeadBroWalking. Meyer’s urban fantasy series has been gaining quite a following from what I understand, I personally have never been tempted to read them but Saskaia breaks down some of the issues she has with the NDN characters within the book and the way they are represented. Warning contains spoilers for the series.

Was Stanley Kubrick killed by the Illuminati for exposing their Masonic orgy rites? I’m just gonna say that I personally don’t really believe in hidden organizations that control the world (Shadow governments? maybe, conspiracies? definitely) but y’all just head over and read through that, decide for yourselves what you believe.  Because the blogger does make some intriguing assertions.

More fiction online, an anthology about body alteration/modification and more, Unwelcome Bodies by Jennifer Pelland has several of the stories online for your pleasure. Go check them out, I know I will when I have a spare moment.

Linking?

OKay so I’ve realized that lately I’ve been posting a lot of links and am rethinking if I should do that. This was started as a blog that was supposed to be a personal log of my writing and just personal stuff in general not a political blog as such. I should have remembered the old adage that the personal is political and I find myself wanting to share political links I find enlightening for myself. However I realize that it’s making me a little insane to always be up on every blog so I’m trying to decide if I should limit my linking to a certain day of the week or to a certain amount a day. We’ll see.

 

Anti-Torture

Since I just posted yesterday about immigration I decided that I would tie this into the blogging for anti-torture. Because everyone should know that torture is not only a monstrous act that makes us monstrous as a country for condoning it, it’s also a false act. When you torture someone you’re not getting the truth, you’re getting someone in so much pain that they’ll admit to whatever you want them to admit to. It’s an act/tool for those more interested in closing the case and mollifying the public than those who actually want to catch someone whose done something wrong.

Now I’m talking about widening our definition of torture. Everytime we (as in the global community but the West in particular)  turn away a request for sanctuary because we don’t consider being female and hated persecution (America specifically) or being queer and hated persecution (the recent drama in the UK) or being Of Color and hated persecution I(America, again) we are condoning the acts of whatever nation they are trying to escape from, and we are torturers. We are forcing these human beings back to an environment where they are hated, treated horribly and everyday must deal with the fear that they will attract the wrong attention and be killed, that is torture. When we limit immigration from countries going through economic/political troubles but allow mostly white people from the affluent west as many entrants as they please we are a part of torture. Every time we see “ethnic cleansing” (a more sanitized term for the wholesale slaughter of a people) and do nothing, we are a part of torture.

Yes, the physical act of torture is horrendous and flatout evil (and we are committing it everyday in the West) but torture is more than a physical act it’s also an emotional one, it’s filling someone with fear. We in the West talk a good game but when it comes to actually sticking our necks out time and time again we show that we couldn’t care less about what is happening in any place besides our country and even here we only care for certain segments of the population. When we decide to consign someone to a horrible life somewhere else and then profit off how bad that life is (*cough*NAFTA*cough*) we are not just torturers of individual but global torturers profiting off the pain and fear in others and then blocking their attempt to escape that situation.

Realize that by actively doing this or passively accepting this that you are a part of a system that continues to profit off the suffering and pain of those we view as less than (women, People of Color, queer folks, differently abled folks, those of lower socio-economic status, etc.). Acknowledge your part in this and then do what you can to change the world. It can be something as small as writing a blog, writing a letter to your congressperson, taking a day off to participate in a local protest or the larger tasks of taking it upon yourself to organize a protest or create a group dedicated to improving conditions. Everything you do count but if you do nothing, then your just being willfully blind and at that point…well you know exactly what you are.

Publication! & Forgotten Linkage.

My first publication! Woo! It’s not fiction but an essay I wrote about my experience at WisCon last year. It’s entitled Colonialism…In…Space! and on the Ground and will be in WisCon Chronicles 2 forthcoming from Aqueduct Press. It’s actually spurred me into contemplating actually writing essays to submit to Strange Horizons and such. It’s not something I’ve given much thought to before although others have suggested it because I just didn’t think I was good enough compared to what I’ve seen out there. This acceptance is like a shot of confidence/adrenalin in the tush.

Also I now realize I had forgotten to link to my last post for The Angry Black Woman: The Strong Woman & Emasculated Man. It actually got linked to by feministing which is kind of kickass.

That’s all for now but they’ll probably be a longer contemplative post in the next couple of days because someone’s comment has reminded me of something I said I’d write about and never did.

Absence & Guest Blogging

So I might be a bit sporadic for the next week since I’m visiting family in Souther Cali but I’ll try to post every couple of days anyway.

Something I probably should have mentioned before is that I’m guest blogging for the month of February over at one of my favorite blogs The Angry Black Woman. There are about six guest bloggers + the angry black woman herself for black history month and you can read their short bios, including mine, right here. One of my posts is already up and another one is coming, so check out not only mine but all the posts over there if you haven’t already.