July 2010 – Feministe

being a mother isnt always a choice, not yet.

so, when i was in the west bank back in the summer of 2006, israel was bombing lebanon, and i realized i might be pregnant. my partner was in the states at the time, so i had to rely on a couple of friends to help me procure a home pregnancy test in israel since we couldnt find one in the west bank. as we were sitting in the park in jerusalem at night, eating cake, and hiding from the guards, one of my friends explained that she would most likely not be able to have kids. i nodded my head. and then she went on a small rant about how immoral it was to have kids, and be a breeder.
whoa. that word, breeder, was like a smack in the face. i wont go deep into the racial implications of that word, but as bfp pointed out earlier this week, black women in the states have historically been forced to be pregnant and to produce offspring, but not to be a mother. being able to not choose to bear a child can be a privilege. and so can being allowed to be a mother.
later that night when i was finally home, i saw the two pink lines appear on the plastic wand. and my suspicions were confirmed, i was ‘with child’.

i was pro choice before i became pregnant, but it was being pregnant for ten months that made me proclaim, loudly, to anyone who would listen: i am so pro-abortion because no one, and i mean no one, should have to be pregnant if they dont want to! anyone who thinks that adoption is an alternative to an abortion is nuts, it totally ignores that you have to be fucking pregnant for a fucking year first.

i know that giving birth, and/or being a mother is not always a choice. in a lot of the world a safe abortion is not necessarily available. here in egypt, is in a lot of the world, abortion is outlawed. and even in countries where abortion is legal, it can be out of the price range for the majority of women. in a lot of countries, an abortion is not feasible for a woman because of the red tape that she needs to go through. or the distance that the nearest clinic is. or if her family or partner discover that she has had an abortion she will be turned out of her house with no resources, no money, no job, no safety net, nothing. or she will be beaten. or the only type of abortion available are so dangerous to the woman’s health that she risks her very life in having one.

in the eastern congo, rape is used as a primary weapon of war. and women are kidnapped and raped for months until they become pregnant, then they are set free in the mountainous jungle. abortion is illegal in this country. and i talked with methodist christian ladies who were working day and night to be able to provide the morning after pill for every woman they can in their region. the work they do is but a drop in the bucket. they never have enough supplies.

maybe its because i grew up around girls in the states who didnt have a choice to become a mother. they had sex. they got pregnant by accident. and then they were stuck, threatened, beatened with no resources to be able to get to a clinic, that i dont assume that a woman chose to give birth; simply because she cares for her child. nor do i know what kind of internal choices she has made to be able to love a child.

i do know that it took everything inside of me to not start crying and never stop when i sat in rooms full of congolese rape survivors nursing their children. i know that they told me that their children were a gift, and i believed them.

this is why i work hard to do what i do. why i created the lilith plan. provide alternatives to clinical abortions that are not always available and can be traumatizing even if available. i research plants, herbs, flowers for their abortifacient qualities. i study acupressure texts. i build del-ems. i make the information available through any means i can find. cause a lot of women, women that we see everyday with their children never had the choice whether or not to become pregnant or be a mother. they walk by us, not screaming their life stories at us. and we judge them, not even with the little facts about them that we have, but with the stories and narratives that we make up about them in our heads.

i saw the lilith plan in a vision one night as i was meditating. and am slowly working to make it a reality.

Happy Birthday, Cara!

It’s the birthday of our own Cara. Some say her Beatles fannishness has no rival. Some say her feminist powers reach beyond human comprehension. Some say her only weakness is sweet chilli sauce of a kind only to be found in Australia. (I eat it for you, Cara, I eat it for you.) We just write a blog with her.

Hope it’s a good year for you, Cara. Feel free to leave birthday wishes in comments, folks!

The Essence Thing.

Essence magazine hires Ellianna Placas, a white woman, as their fashion director and the black internet (yes, there’s a black internet) goes nuts:

Placas, who used to work at O: The Oprah Magazine and US Weekly, will apparently make her debut in Essence’s 40th anniversary issue, on newsstands in September. Although Essence has been looking for a fashion director for quite some time, not everyone is happy with their newest acquisition.

Michaela Angela Davis, former fashion editor of Essence and former editor-in-chief of Honey Magazine, revealed on her Facebook Wall, “It’s with a heavy heart I’ve learned Essence Magazine has engaged a white Fashion Director. I love Essence and I love fashion. I hate this news and this feeling. It hurts, literally. The fashion industry has historically been so hostile to black people–especially women. The 1 seat reserved for black women once held by Susan Taylor, Ionia Dunn-Lee, Harriette Cole(+ me) is now-I can’t. It’s a dark day for me. How do you feel?”

I should say, right off the bat, I don’t read Essence. My mother never subscribed, and by the time I got to college, I was a ladymag hater for life. I’ve probably read enough of its content over the years to make up two or three issues. Enough content to know that while Essence is one of the few magazines directed at black women, it certainly doesn’t meet all of our needs. For example, it’s heternormative, and deeply invested in the black middle class. I say all of that to explain that I’m not invested in the product, even though I have friends who read it religiously, and I have friends who have worked there.

Having said that, I can understand where Davis and others are coming from. Fashion highlights the often-fraught relationship between black women and white women. Remember, it’s been one scant generation since a black woman first graced the cover of Vogue (and considering whole issues can go to press without a single black model in them, we haven’t seen much improvement). There’s also the deeply ingrained societal idealization of white femininity — something a black woman will never be able to achieve, no matter how straight her hair gets. Essence is also one of the few publications nurturing a significant number of black writers and editors — there is literally a handful of black editors at fashion mags in this country. So it’s no surprise to me that hiring a white woman to determine the course of fashion and beauty at a black publication evoked such a strong reaction.

But it’s a short-sighted and ahistorical reaction. Angela Burt-Murray, the editor-in-chief, wrote a response to the furor, saying that the magazine was “founded to empower, celebrate, and inspire black women to climb higher, go further and break down barriers. Our commitment to black women remains unchanged as we continue to stay laser-focused on those principles–no matter who works with us.” And ultimately, Essence is part of Time Inc. It has shareholders to answer to, and financial goals to meet. In order to continue working at its founding principles (whether or not it actually is, is debatable, in my opinion), the editor has to make decisions that should be easy, but aren’t, like hiring the best person for the job even if that person looks nothing like the target demographic. Besides, as Burt-Murray notes, Placas freelanced for the magazine for six months, with no readers being the wiser at the ‘infiltration.’

As an aside, I also think those who are outraged are missing something crucial about the history of what we call “black” publications, or TV shows, or even colleges. White people have always been involved, to some extent. This is unlike the other side of the coin, where whites have often historically had trouble including people of color (Vogue is one example, most network television shows are another). Girlfriends and The Game, two television shows that targeted the same demographic Essence does were produced by white Republican Kelsey Grammer. Both shows featured mostly black, heavily female casts. And speaking personally, when I was a child and my father worked at a black newspaper in Southern California, the paper’s production guy was white. While he didn’t have editorial input, his work still heavily influenced the paper. It didn’t make it less black. To go further back, whites helped found many historically black colleges–although not necessarily out of altruism–including my alma mater. And today, no one would say that Howard isn’t a black school, even if it has white professors.

I don’t think there’s anything to fear in the hiring of Placas. And, if by chance, some intangibles are lost, the readers of Essence will vote with their pocketbooks and the editorial staff will learn what is and isn’t acceptable to its readership. But I predict everyone will actually forget about this in six weeks. And I wish Placas the best at her new gig.

a force more powerful

“We may not currently have the might of the Israeli army and the power of traditions confine us in certain roles, however, we know that one woman standing behind another in a line of solidarity is a force more powerful than both.”
–kefah, speaking in at-tuwani village, west bank, palestine

i am going to start with kefah. kefah will be on a speaking tour in italy this fall.

i met kefah in the fall of 2004 under horrible circumstances. we were living in the southern west bank. and a couple of international friends had been walking with palestinian children passed an israeli settlement, when the israeli settlers jumped out of the woods and beat my two friends down. luckily, the kids weren’t physically hurt, but they were scared, very scared. but my two friends were taken to the hospital with a punctured lung, broken knee and arm, and psychological trauma. so i and a couple of other internationals who were living in palestine went to at tuwani and walked with the children the next day passed the settlement. and the day after that.
those kids were amazing. they faced death just so they could go to elementary school.
the israeli soldiers told us that if the settlers attacked us, they would not protect us. and we believed them since a lot of the soldiers were from neighboring israeli settlements.
at night we slept in the women’s museum, a palestinian women’s craft co-op started by kefah.
kefah is amazing. she is a wife, a mother to four sons, a self-avowed feminist, a leader in her village, a visionary, a business woman, a community organizer. when i think of revolutionary motherhood, i think of kefah.
and she has a great raunchy sense of humor.
kefah expanded for me what i understood motherhood to mean. well, actually not just kefah, a lot of palestinian women did that for me. women who daily confront israeli soldiers just so they can work in their fields, harvest plants, leave their house, go to the clinic, go to the neighboring town. women who do it with a babe riding on their shoulders. women who do it with little money and a lot of strength. women. who. do. it.
dont get me wrong, i dont romanticize living under an occupation. its not pretty. its too little food, and too many people dying. its your husband, your son, your father, your brother in jail and you trying to figure out how to get the money to get him out, if that is even allowed. its eid under curfew. its watching your house be demolished simply because it was standing and then rebuilding it just to watch it be demolished again. its your mosque, your school be demolished. apartment buildings being shelled. its never having enough. its living on the breath of survival. its life. and its painful.
revolution aint pretty and it doesnt come cheap.
but it was kefah that i became friends with. and kefah who i watched as she organized women while mothering young boys.
and it was kefah and her village, at tuwani, that i wanted to return to when i tried to return to palestine in the winter of 2009.

======

in late december of 2009 israel decided to bomb gaza. and bomb her and bomb her. my lil family and i traveled during the bombing. first to scotland to see our friends theresa and jim. and then we got on a plane in mid january and flew to tel aviv, israel. (you have to enter israel in order to enter the west bank). instead of allowing us to enter israel, the airport security put me, my partner, and my one year old daughter in israeli jail for three days. (and no, we dont know why they would not allow us to enter israel, israel is like that, we have some good guesses, but no hard facts…)
there is a lot i can say from those three days in jail. i can tell you that all the guards are hopped up on speed and uppers and live in a world of paranoia that wafts through the jail like cigarette smoke. i can tell you that they refused to give us diapers for aza so she had to piss on the floor for a day until the cleaning lady came in and told the guards to give us diapers or else. i can tell you that in the cell next to us was an eight month dutch nigerian pregnant lady with her husband who had their passports confiscated. and that through the vents aza and i heard the guards torturing him while they videotaped it.
and there are things i cannot tell you. i cannot tell you the sound of aza screaming because she was locked in a room for over twenty four hours, ill never forget it, but ill never be able to describe it either. i cannot tell you the soft look in aza’s eyes when the guard told me: i dont care what happens to your daughter, whatever happens to her is your fault. because you are in here.
even though i had spent the past couple of days trying to get the fuck out of there.
i can tell you how by the end of that experience, no matter how horrifying many of the guards had been, i was so grateful that i was not them. that i still walked with my humanity. that i still could feel compassion for them even if they could not afford to do so for me.
i can though tell you that what we experienced was normal. and whatever was abnormal about our experience in jail was due to the privilege we were extended as us citizens.
after three days they let us go and flew us to amsterdam.
the bombing of gaza ended while we were in jail. and obama was inaugurated a day after we got out. i can tell you that i wasnt feeling very much hope as i watched pieces of the inauguration celebration from our hotel room television set.
i was missing palestine deeply. i wanted kefah to meet aza.

======

a lot of people want to quibble over israel and palestine. they want to start with the right of israel to exist. they want to start dividing up land for a two state solution. they want it over with. done with. cause they are tired of it.
no body i have ever met is more tired of the occupation than palestinians. bone tired. they dont get a day off from genocide.
and that means they dont get a day away from struggle.
people ask me what do i think about hamas and their refusal to acknowledge israel’s right to exist.
ummm…i have a lot of critiques of hamas. a lot. but israel does not have a right to exist. no nation based on occupation and genocide does (and that most definitely includes my home country the us of a). and no one should require that the oppressed acknowledge the ‘right’ of the oppressor to abuse, violate, and murder. no real peace can be bought at such a price. (i do not believe in rewriting history and so israel does exist, whether or not it has a right to. and we have to deal with it as it exists. but damn, dont ask for the natives to thank the conquerors for their chains…)
and there are few places where this is better articulated than in palestinian hip hop.

so i will end with darg (da revolutionary arabian guys) team. a few amazing mc’s from gaza. they had been trying for months to be allowed to leave gaza and after the massacre on the mavi marmara a couple of months ago and in response israel opening the gazan borders, darg team was able to escape to switzerland where they are hanging out now, planning to come to the states in september and go on tour. if we can get the visas and the funds for them to do so.

“on December 27th 2008 Israel started it’s first strike on Gaza killing hundrends no thousands of lives for 23 days. DARG TEAM after the war recorded and filmed it’s first video clip ‘23 yoom”.
today, one year after the war and DARG TEAM steps in again but this time calling every one to participate and start rebuilding what the war left behind.”

rebuild by us

(it’s in arabic. i really can’t translate it.)

the question i hate the most when i write or speak about palestine is: but is there any hope? did you feel any hope when you were there?
what. the. fuck?
hope? fuck hope.
i saw mamas breastfeeding babies. and old men tending flocks of sheep in full defiance of the israeli military. i saw wild poppies covering a graveyard. and a boy etching graffiti on the apartheid wall. and a 12 year old girl in hijab and school uniform sing umm kulthum with a tenor that would make the stoic weep. i have seen a full bellied palestinian pregnant woman turn her back to an israeli soldier who had a gun pointed at her so she could talk on the cell phone to her four year old son and tell him that she would be home soon. and communities get together and remove the large earth mound road blocks that the israeli army puts down in the middle of highways to cut off transportation between neighboring cities. and grandmothers who will yell at soldiers and lock arms protecting their sons. thrown rocks off of mountains with seven year olds (who had a much better arm than me) and drank tea in front of the rubble that used to be my hosts bedroom.
hope? i have seen much more than hope.
i have seen life. and love. and revolution.

and someday i will see kefah again.

A Reminder on Guest Bloggers

Consider this a friendly reminder to the Feministe community and to readers who may have come in from other websites: It is guest blogger season at Feministe, which means that we have invited dozens of writers to come share our space, and to each write for two weeks. We published a list of ground rules and general guidelines for reading and engaging with guest bloggers. I’m quite frankly embarrassed by the way some of our guests have been treated over the past month, and particularly over the past two days, so these rules are re-published below.

Please note that we are also trying to (quickly) adjust our comment moderation capabilities in response to these issues. Feel free to leave feedback here. And we ask not only for your patience while we get our comment moderation strategy under control, but also for your respect and basic kindness towards the people we have opened up our blog to. That doesn’t mean you can’t engage, criticize and challenge, but it does mean that you need to curb any rudeness or knee-jerk anger that you might otherwise feel comfortable displaying towards the regular Feministe bloggers. I’m pretty tolerant of negative or rude comments directed at me; I am not tolerant of those comments being directed at a guest in my house. You can take those comments to your own blog, or you can choose to not read posts by writers who anger you, or you can choose to simply withhold comments that are rude and do not contribute to any productive conversation. Alternately, you can spend your time writing inflammatory or rude comments, and then I will delete them, and then we will both be mad and no one wins and I might also choose to ban you if you really get on my nerves. We’re mostly grown-ups here, and you can decide how you want to spend your time and how much of it you want to dedicate to Being Mad On The Internet. Your call.

Now, as a refresher, our rules for guest blogger season:

1. Please think of our guest-bloggers as invited guests who are staying over at our house, and think of yourself as a friendly neighbor dropping by. Show them the attendant respect. All of the permanent Feministe bloggers will have far less patience with rudeness to guest-bloggers than we have even to rudeness directed at us. Engaging with and even challenging the posts is always ok — just do it respectfully and in good faith. If you aren’t sure that your comment achieves that, please refrain from posting it.

2. Know that guest-bloggers are fully allowed to moderate their own comment sections. Some of them will have stricter moderation rules than others. Some of them will have looser rules. These rules will not always accord exactly with what you expect from the regular Feministe bloggers. Know that the Feministe comment policy still applies, but that each blogger will have a slightly different style and you may not like it. If you don’t like a particular blogger’s moderation style, we suggest reading their posts and just skipping over the comment sections.

3. Know that the guest-bloggers have a wide range of histories, backgrounds, viewpoints, politics and feminisms (and non-feminisms). Part of the point of the guest-blogger series is to introduce Feministe readers to different perspectives and new writers. Not all of the guest-bloggers are going to have views that accord exactly with what you’re used to seeing on Feministe. That’s a good thing! We can all learn and be challenged and hopefully move forward.

4. Know that the guest-bloggers have been given full reign to write about whatever they want. Some of them were selected precisely because they write about things other than feminism. Complaints that they are not covering what you think is important, or questions of “Why is this on a feminist blog?” can be answered right now: Because that’s what we, the Feministe team, wanted. We wanted a wide range of topics to be covered. We wanted to cover some topics that are not, at first glance, glaringly feminist. You are welcome to skip posts that don’t appeal to you. And you are welcome to blame the regular Feministe bloggers for the occasional non-feminist post! But do blame us, not our guests.

5. Be conscientious of what you may not know. The guest-bloggers, as stated above, come from a wide variety of backgrounds. Take care not to assume a writer’s gender, race, physical ability, religion, sexual orientation, location, citizenship status, nationality, history, etc.

6. Finally, have fun! Learn some new stuff. Add some new blogs to your RSS feed or google reader or blogroll. This is our favorite time of the year, and we hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

-The Feministe Team

SYTYCD Season 7 Top 6 (Again)

Spoilers below!

This week on SYTYCD: Toni Reopath was a guest judge, and no injuries!! Jump over to the recap and discuss with me.

Comment Moderation, Redux

[UPDATE: Edited to reflect change in the function of the feature.]

Some concerns about comment moderation have been brought to us by the community, so we have decided to try something new.

Below every comment you will have “thumbs down” link with the ability to report a comment for moderation. This icon should also be accessible for screen readers. With enough “thumbs down” votes, the comment will “hide” with the option of being seen only by those with exceedingly curious minds until the official moderator can get to it. We hope this will flag offensive comments more clearly for us while we attempt to moderate amidst our daily work/life duties.

This function should not be used to shut down discussion you disagree with. This function SHOULD be used to notify others that the comment is abusive or egregiously off-topic.

We are trying to figure out a friendlier way of moderating that doesn’t rely on a sole entity to bear responsibility or make questionable moral calls on comment content. If you have additional ideas or concerns, please weigh in below.

Mid-week intro!

Soooo I’m a little late to the game this week. But I’m here and very excited to guest-blog for Feministe.

My name is Nona Willis Aronowitz. I just turned 26. I’m the author of Girldrive, a book based on a road trip my friend Emma and I took across the country to find out what young women think about feminism. I just finished up my last day at the Chicago Tribune, but I’ve also blogged and freelanced for places like Feministe, The Nation, Slate, The Frisky, and Firedoglake. I also have a weekly radio show called Feminist Wednesday on Chicago Public Radio’s Vocalo. Writing-wise, I have two feminist loves: sex and pop culture. But I get riled up about a variety of political and cultural issues.

I’m white, Jewish, middle class, straightish, and a New Yorker. I was raised atheist and kinda socialist—a baby of two semi-famous red diaper babies. I voted for Obama, in a hopeful moment, and even shed a tear or two in Grant Park. But my heart lies with radicals, and nothing gets me more pissed off than how much our country’s left keeps getting nudged to the center.

In other words, I’m the on-paper definition of a feminist stereotype, at least in the media’s imagination. But my interests lie in flouting these stereotypes, in creating and participating in a more inclusive convo where every type of person—young, historically marginalized, religious and/or conservative—has a say in what feminism should mean and what kind of power it has. Girldrive made me a “feminist populist”; in the moments after talking about gender issues with a 19-year-old bible college student or a Cheyenne-Arikara, Fargo activist, I’d realize how narrow my previous definition had been.* Also, I’d never use the phrase, “S/he’s a feminist but s/he doesn’t know it.” Maybe I’ll expand that more in a different post.

A personal note: y’all are getting me at quite an interesting time. I’m all of a sudden back in New York after a 3-year-long stint in Chicago, without a job or a plan. I’m at a crossroads personally, professionally, feministically—which often makes for some juicy blogging, which in turn works out for you!

Oh, and comment moderation: it’s simple…no personal attacks or derailments. Pretty much everything else is fair game. Thanks to Feministe for having me, and looking forward to the next two weeks!

*Although I don’t think that anyone can be a feminist, just because they decide to call themselves one. The Sarah-Palin-as-a-feminist debate has made that crystal clear.

ain’t i a mama?

ain’t i a mama…

you know how alice walker says that feminism is to womanism. like purple is to lavendar. ive always loved that quote. lavendar is my favorite color and one of my favorite scents.

well, last night as i was falling asleep after reading the comment thread of doom, i realized:

feminist is to mama like yellow is to:
waking up with the first rays of light hitting your face as the sun rises over the ocean and you stare into the sun’s reflection in the water and then jump in and swim celebrating this new day.
the colostrum nectar that i breastfed my daughter her first days after birth
the color of my mixed race daughter cheek as she sleep at night
the crushed wildflowers that aza picks in the park and then brings to me saying in her singsong voice: mama i have a present for you!

——-

a list:

people who have asked why i dont identify as a feminist

-random strangers on the internet
-random people who have just met me and like to push buttons

people who have never asked me why i dont identify as a feminist

-zapatista women when we lived in chiapas
-palestinian women when we lived in a small village in the southern west bank mountains
-women community organizers in the east congo
-young black american and african immigrant mothers whose birth assisted in north minneapolis
-the eight month pregnant kenyan-dutch woman who i shared a couple of days in israeli prison with
-my grandmother who grew up in the south, was college educated in the 40s, worked and earned her own money for years as a teacher, didnt have children until she was nearly thirty, was a community organizer, and taught all of her daughters and grand daughters to speak their truth and respect people

most of these women did call me ‘mama’ though. as i called them.

i wrote this last year on the word ‘mama’:

i love the word: mama. when i was doing research in east africa, mama was my name. mama maisha (which means life in swahili). mama works as an honorific there. it replaces ‘miss’ and ‘maam’ and whatever ways of respectfully addressing women. it is not dependent on whether or not the woman has children.

sitting in a room with dozens of community women leaders all of us addressing each other as mama… mama fayida, mama esperanze. as we talked about ways to address the violence in the communities. was powerful.

especially since i had miscarried a couple of months before. i was ‘mama’ before i ever gave birth.

it was also powerful because mama is how the boys back home address me. and once again it acts as an honorific a term of respect and kinship.

and being able to travel half way around the world and still be addressed by the same name that southern boys knocking on my grandmother’s door use…just another way that one can travel so far…rural south carolina to rural east congo…and still find home.

mama. is just such an evocative word. here, in cairo, the equivalent to mommy is umi. and umi is a beautiful word. but even here. everyone knows what ‘mama’ means. ma. ma. ma. there is something primoridial about it. something that speaks to millions of years of walking on this earth. i dont have any scientific data to back up my claims.

——-

bfp recently did one of my favorite posts:

I do not identify as a woman.
Or a feminist.
Or a womanist.

Mami.
Chicana.
Woman of color.

They mean what that mean for me.

and then she dropped one of my favorite comments yesterday:

Fuck feminism, fuck feminists and fuck their obnoxious entitled bullshit attitudes. And fuck all of you who think you did a goddamn thing for my daughter. MOTHERS did that, not you.
Mamis, mommies, mothers, M/others–NOT YOU.

i know that when i have been seen as being helpful to another’s liberation, that is when they start calling me mama.
——

srsly, if the common definition for feminism to be treated equal to a man. im not interested in feminism. that is not the goal of the women with whom ive worked. 1/3 of black men are in the prison industrial system. i am working for a different world for my daughter.

so, why did i agree to blog for feministe?
well, frankly, i have been and continue to be pretty critical of mainstream feminism. mainstream feminism is pretty irrelevant to my work, my family, my life, and to the communities with which i work in solidarity. and ive been critical of feminist media productions, including this blog, feministe. and the role they play in public discourse and understanding of the world that we live in. after a lot of consideration, i figured it was only fair of me to know the media productions better if i am going to critique them well. and considering how critical ive been, the bloggers of feministe still wanted me to guest blog, well, i have a bit of respect for people who engage their critics rather than just attack them.

——

i throw a side eye at folks who call themselves feminists, especially without an adjective in front of the word. and i have made it clear that if i had to be one, (and thank god i dont) i would be a crunk feminist. those girls keep it crunk.
Beat-driven and bass-laden, Crunk music blends Hip Hop culture and Southern Black culture in ways that are sometimes seamless, but more often dissonant. Its location as part of Southern Black culture references the South both as the location that brought many of us together and as the place where many of us still do vibrant and important intellectual and political work. The term “Crunk” was initially coined from a contraction of “crazy” or “chronic” (weed) and “drunk” and was used to describe a state of uber-intoxication, where a person is “crazy drunk,” out of their right mind, and under the influence. But where merely getting crunk signaled that you were out of your mind, a crunk feminist mode of resistance will help you get your mind right, as they say in the South.

and if your brand of feminism does not embrace and push to the forefront the critiques of itself, then i have no interest in your brand or your movement. actually i dont have an interest in brands at all. and if your movement isnt aligned with crunk feminists, and rasta feminists, with the zapatista women’s critique of feminsm, with palestinian women dressed in hijab with a fist in the air, with little girls who walk through war zones to get to school whether on the streets of washington, dc or the streets of goma, drc (democratic republic of congo) then i want nothing to do with your movement. cause those women dont bother to ask me why i am not a feminist. they just call me ‘mama’.

these movements center mamas, overflow with mamas, because mamas have been at the center of every major movement in the world for change. we give birth to and nurture, in various ways, revolutionaries everyday, whether or not that has been acknowledged in the ‘official’ records. being a mama is not a description of one’s biology or genitalia. it does not describe how many children we have nestled in wombs. it is not a description of age or even male/female gender.

it is who we are. it is what we do. it is love by any means necessary.

Ugh Jon Hamm.

You make me so sad with this:

The 39-year-old actor also weighed in on the brand of sexism depicted on ‘Mad Men’ versus the plight in modern times: “There’s a cordialness that men had when dealing with the opposite sex [in the 1960s], even when they were being blatantly sexist. It’s a weird conundrum. But that’s been replaced with men treating women like absolute garbage and not even being polite about it, which is too bad.”

Yeah… too bad…