Day 6: Transphobia and Transmisogyny CANNOT BE a Part of "Feminism"!

(Yes, this whole thing ticks me off so much, I forgot to title this post when I first published it.)

I'm new to feminism. I'm rather wholly ignorant of its history, and am just now, in pieces, starting to learn about it.

There are some names I've heard, often, and I thought they were "good people." Good women. Sisters.

They are not.

I know there are three "waves" of feminism, and apparently the third one is the least bad, shall we say, but I don't know what each one means or entails or whatever. And at this point, I don't really think I want to put the energy into finding out.

This morning I re-tweeted a quote by a supposed "feminist," saying something about women needing to let go of their own misogyny. It was a good quote. Too bad it came from a transmisogynistic hypocrite who claimed to fight for women's rights but worked even harder to oppress and erase women who didn't look like her.

Then I found out about this blog post, eulogizing Mary Daly. I had no idea who she was until yesterday, when someone else had tweeted about her death. I Googled her, and her Wikipedia entry (I was feeling very lazy) gave a brief overview of her which did not make me mourn her passing. She chose to resign from her teaching job rather than allow dirty, stinky men in her women's studies classes. She did not consider people of color to be people, and she did not consider trans women to be women.

I'm not familiar with Shakesville, but from the comments on the Daly post, and th sentiments expressed on Twitter, it used to be a fairly trans-friendly place. Even has regular contributors who are trans folk.

Yet the post on Mary Daly sings her praises as a wonderful champion of women's rights, a foremother ahead of her time, blah blah. Not a peep about her racism or transphobia. Oh, wait! What's that, there at the bottom? Oh, there it is! It's a little footnote, acknowledging someone pointed these facets of Daly's personality in the comments to the post, and the post author wanted to say someone pointed these things out to her.

No, dude. Not okay.

Maybe you write a quick footnote to note the error, apologize for it, and say "hold on while I check on it and fix it" and then you go back and fix it. You educate yourself (which, seriously, you should have done BEFORE writing the eulogy, dude. For serious -- you didn't even go to Wikipedia?? Because it was RIGHT THERE). Then you write and appropriate response, giving at least as much screen time to the lasting hurt this woman caused as you did to blowing her kisses.

You can check out the fail in the comments section. *sigh*

(I'm irked that my comment wasn't posted until after comments were closed -- I'd written it, but I had to "verify" my account before they'd show it, and I had technical difficulties. At least it posted, which makes me happy because I have apparently become a virtual exhibitionist, but I really wanted someone to respond to my comment. Oh, well...)

This afternoon I read this post on Feministe. Same violent photo, but at least both sides were presented. Fairly, equally? I don't know.

Hate harms more than good does good. The evil that men do, as Marc Anthony said, does live after them; the good is, often, forgotten with their bones. That's not our faulty selective memory; it's much easier to rally hate and fear than it is to breed love and solidarity (Tea-baggers, anyone?) I'm not going to put the energy into studying this woman to find out which legacy is more lasting -- her work to promote rights for cis-only, white-only women, or her work to oppress, other, exclude and exterminate women of color and trans women.

Later on @genderbitch tweeted this link, which tells the story of Mary Daly that cannot be erased or ignored. Please make sure you read that one.

And on that note, I'm off to unpack (yes, from the trip I returned from on Sunday. Hush it). I was so psyched when I first claimed the term "feminist" to describe myself. I had come out of two long, abusive relationships, and calling myself a "feminist" was so empowering. But the more I learn about the "feminists" who came before me, the more I wonder if I really want to be a part of that group... Can we save it? Are we, the "new" (or whatever wave) "feminists" enough to undo all that harm? Can we own our past enough to work through it, and overcome it?

Looking at the comments from "feminists" on Shakesville, it's not looking too likely, is it?

Some thoughts on race, ethnicity and what I am: The Epilogue

I realized why the whole race/ethnicity and "Am I really 'Latina'?" thing was bugging me so much.

Too often we talk about "race" when we mean "class." We say "African-American/black" and "Hispanic/Latino" when we mean "low-income," "first-generation college students," or "limited English proficiency/English language learners."

I am Latina, but I'm not low-income. I'm not first-generation college. I'm not LEP/ELL.

When we talk about "minorities" and the "minority experience," we're talking about growing up poor, with limited resources. Parents who never went to college, and either don't value education or don't know how to show they value education, encourage you and give you the tools you need to succeed. Who don't have the resources needed to make education a priority.

That's not me. That's what made me feel like a poser. I never had to overcome those obstacles, so I feel uncomfortable claiming "minority" status because I don't deserve the credit.

Both my parents went to college. They read to me (in two languages) since birth. We bought books ALL THE TIME. My parents instilled in me a love of books and reading. We never went without. I grew up with two parents at home; even after my parents divorced (when I was on high school) they were both present in our lives.

I never had a language gap/issue in school. (I had a hard time understanding the nasaly, thick Texas accent of one of my teachers when I very first arrived in the US, but I think I was over that by the second day.)

This is why the race- and sex-based affirmative action that granted me admittance into UT-Austin offended me so much: I did not need the help. I had had all the advantages one could ask for; race- and sex-based affirmative action sends the message that you are genetically inferior, because of your race or sex, and cannot compete on a level playing field. Regardless of your background, the mere fact that you are a Hispanic female means you are not as "good" as a white male (or a white female) and therefore deserve special treatment.

Which is why we need class-based affirmative action.

I'm not saying racism and sexism no longer exist, sadly they are still alive and well, but race- and sex-based affirmative action are not an effective way to fight that beast, and they are also not addressing the problems they were created to solve (at least in education).

We need class-based affirmative action. We need to recognize the need to level the playing field based on class, socio-economic status, not race. Unfortunately, a disproportionate amount of low-SES people are racial minorities, but when we focus on race we're focusing on the wrong thing and ignoring the root of the problem, which prevents us from ever solving (or aleviating) the problem.

We don't like talking about class. And the worst part is those who have the discussions, those who make the decisions, are the priviledged, the members of the high classes. This causes two problems: A) they don't want to admit they are the priviledged (and there's always someone who's better off than you, so how can you say you are priviledged, when they guy over there had MORE advantages than you???), and B) they don't understand the problems that afflict the not-priviledged. They don't get it because they haven't been there. They don't know what it means to not have. They don't know what they don't know about how the other half lives.

I'm at the Council for Opportunity in Education's National Conference, finding out how much I didn't know. And how to fix it, for me and for you.

Some thoughts on race, ethnicity, and what I am

A few weeks ago, I saw this video on Literanista's blog:

Last year (and the spring semester before that) I taught at a high school that was over 50% Hispanic. The six years before that, I had been teaching in the rich white kids' schools.

One of the first things a student said to me, when I was being presented to the Spanish classes at the mostly-minority school, was "What's up with all the white Spanish teachers?" Which was a valid question -- the three other Spanish teachers in the school were white (this kid was in the Spanish IV AP class, where everyone but the teacher was Hispanic).

The kids later found out I was a little weird. Because I spoke Spanish without an accent; I was from Chile, so I was "Hispanic." But I looked "white." This was cause for great confusion from the students: "Miss, what are you? How come you're Hispanic, but you're white?"

Being in an environment where white was the minority (at least when it came to students) was definitely a new experience for me. In the other schools where I'd taught, we didn't talk about race. Because if you talk about race, it means you notice it. And if you notice race, well, that means you're a racist.

But at my last school, the kids talked about race. It was there. It was part of their lives because it was right there -- if you didn't notice it, then you were stupid. It wasn't generally qualified; it wasn't "good" or "bad," it was just there.

I don't have anything else to say about that. I just found it different. Something that stood out to me, and I thought I'd share it.

In Chile we didn't talk about these things either. When my mom and siblings moved to the US, my brother and I filled out our own school forms while my mom worked on my sisters' stuff. Name, address, phone number, date of birth...

"Mom, what 'race' are we?"

Because we looked white, but we were fresh off the boat plane from Latin America.

After thinking about it for a second, my mom said, "Put Hispanic/Latino. That way you'll be eligible for more scholarships."

Seriously.

At fourteen, I didn't take notice of this. Enough to remember the conversation, so my subconscious must have known this was something I'd want to blog about later. (I'm not one of those people who remembers details of her youth. At all. I can give you the names of maybe a whopping two of my elementary school teachers. That's it. So, me remembering this convo? Significant.)

Maybe this situation started me on the path that finds race classification (on government forms) so arbitrary and construed. When I taught third grade, the first year students take the almighty Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, we had to go through our class rosters and make sure each student's race/ethnicity was entered properly. I wondered how I was supposed to know each student's race and/or ethnicity, since I was not each student's parent and therefore did not know each student's genetic history. Also, what about the two girls who'd been adopted from China? Were they Asian, because they looked it? Were they White, because they's grown up in white, upper-middle-class US suburbia?

(And, while I'm at it: race and ethinicity are not interchangeable, they are two different things. But those forms treat both words as if they were synonyms, which is further proof that these classifications are arbitrary and construed and the people making these forms and trying to classify us into checkboxes have no clue what they are doing.)

When I was in college, my mother's words came back to haunt me. Because I realized that my not-impressive SAT scores and my not-impressing GPA were not likely to be the reasons why I'd made it into the prestigious and overcrowded University of Texas at Austin: my status as a Hispanic female, a subgroup that needed me to fill its quota, was much more likely to be the culprit.

This royally ticked me off, on several levels.

• I am a person of my own, I am not a checkbox. There is a lot more to me than my ethnicity and/or gender.
• I had no reason to be in college. My first semester I made four Fs, a C and a D. And two of those Fs were in dance classes. I had not meet the entrance requirements, and my performance proved I did not deserve to be there. I was taking a hard-working, non-minority student's seat, just because of the box I'd checked.
• Affirmative action by race ignores the current problems: race no longer automatically designates socio-economic status or presence/absence of priviledge.

I grew up in a Latin American country. I am fluent in Spanish, and I can dance to salsa music.

But I'm white. With freckles. I sunburn like the dickens. (No, I'm not sure what that expression means either, but you get the point.)

I went to a private school. I've been upper-middle-class my whole life. I've never been rich, but I've never wanted for anything. No, I didn't get a brand-new truck for my sixteenth birthday (and complain to my parents they the truck didn't have a CD player... but I'm not talking about my drill-teammates...), but we always had what we needed.

I don't have an accent. The faint accent I had when we first moved to the US faded within the year, but even that, I was told, was "cute," "interesting," "sexy."

I'm tall, thin, and pretty.

I've lived a life of priviledge. I've never had the minority experience. So can I really call myself "Latina"? Can I claim that? I don't have any of the life experiences that most Latinas growing up in the US face. The only thing I share with the brown-skinned girls in my classes is that we can both sing along to Mana's songs and don't need to turn on the subtitles when we watch Almodóvar films. (See my point? None of those girls watched Almodóvar films!)

I'm going to be working with minority students again this year (different job, but similar student population). I want to be a role model for them, but I know my looks are working against me. I want them to see me as one of them, but not only do I not look it, I'm not it.

(Yes, I know -- poor little white girl, troubled by her life of priviledge. Boo-hoo.)

More on this tomorrow, because this post has gotten long enough as it is.