What’s up, Feministe?
My name is Latoya Peterson, and I am the editrix of Racialicious.com, a blog about the intersection of race and pop culture.
I’ve also been known to write on video games every now and again for Cerise and contribute to Clutch Magazine whenever I can catch a breath.
Earlier this year, I had a major crisis regarding my understanding of feminism, where I wasn’t sure if I wanted to continue to embrace this label. I wrote about it in the context of anti-click moments (when one realizes feminism was not necessarily made with them in mind), whether or not feminism has to address race, who we think we are fighting for (or struggling with, as one of my commenters pointed out), choosing to identify as a hip-hop feminist, and on and on.
So, that leads me to why I am blogging here. When I got an email from Jill asking if I wanted to be a guest blogger for the summer, I was both excited and apprehensive.
I was initially excited because I enjoy reading what the Feministe crew has to say on most topics, even when I disagree. There are also a lot of things I get into that would be fun to analyze from a feminist framework that doesn’t necessarily have enough of a race hook for me to discuss on Racialicious. Visions of video games, manga, music videos and American comics danced in my head and I started keeping a master list of things to write about on Feministe.
But, as the summer blogging started, and I saw how some of the guest contributors were treated here, I was reminded of that apprehension. It seems that even in a space like this, it is difficult to have a discussion that honestly looks at race or colonization or religious bias without it going to hell. I’ve watched a few of the bloggers I respect be attacked for essentially being themselves; and I read all kinds of fallout attacking one of my friends.
That’s not cool. It made me wonder if I was taking the wrong vantage point while blogging here – that while I wanted to have fun and talk about pop culture, maybe it would be better to reinforce some of the other messages that were not given enough consideration.
In the end, I have decided to split the difference and blog about a little bit of everything. I’m still planning to write some things on comic and video game heroines, manga-style feminism, the Pussycat Dolls, Tila Tequila, music videos and messaging, paranormal smut fiction and reggaeton. But I will also be outlining my understanding and application of hip-hop feminism, dissecting musical lyrics and ingrained misogyny, issues with discussing feminism and class, the perils of religious bias, capitalism, colonialist bias in the feminist gaze, why feminism is a battleground, and understanding the limitations of both lived experience and theory.
So, all in all, this is going to be an ambitious two weeks.
Looking forward to some interesting conversation.
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(Sidenote: I often listen to music as I compose a piece, as well as make references to certain lyrics and artists. So, most of my posts will have a soundtrack at the end of the piece, what I was listening to while I was writing the post. Some of these will relate directly to the post, others will not. Some of these songs will probably be considered controversial to place on a feminist blog but since I plan to address these issues at length, I don’t see much of an issue. I am aware of at least one deaf feminist who reads my work on the regular, as well as another feminist who can’t play video on her PC, so I will try to include a link to the lyrics whenever I can. I cannot guarantee that all the songs I link to will have lyrics available, or an English translation. My apologies in advance.)
Public Service Announcement – Jay-Z (off the Black Album)