(1) We are really the first generations of women with the freedom TO change our lives. Criticisms of women for our reinventions of ourselves are anti-feminist, in that they do not recognize that empowered, liberated women are going to leave the old rules old ways behind. They aren't going to hang around for long in situations in which they are abused, subjugated or forced to be who they aren't or live in ways they never chose for themselves or which are degrading or which compromise thhem. Someone who doesn't get how and why this is true, doesn't get feminism.

(2) Being accused of hypocrisy is one of the occupational hazards of being a writer. Writers write out of their lived experiences. They often write about their lives. If their lives change, their writings are going to reflect those changes and hence, misogynists and garden variety haters will find plenty with which to harrass and target them. Us.

Heart

Heart, I never ever EVER thought of it this way... ever. You have shed a whole new light on it for me. I mean, it's like the mind-blowing light that you've just shed on it for me. No shit.

Heart: "... I still honor myself in what I was trying to do back then...". WOW! Of course you would have. My foolish, selfish reasoning did NOT see that at all... not one little bit.

I am so so sorry for that comment. I now, for the first time, understand why you were hurt and I am so so sorry for the hurt I caused you with that statement. I just didn't get it. Now I do. Thank you for enlightening me on those feelings I had no idea were there. Of course you honored yourself for what you were trying to do back then. Of course... how much sense that makes to me now, as you've explained it.

No matter what we'd done in the past... if we do it with our whole selves, in a way that is true to our beliefs at the time, we're still being feminists because so few damn women even DO that sort of thing. Most women follow (are taught to follow) but never ever lead.... lead with their deepest heartfelt convictions, on behalf of women, no matter how silly or how different they look. That's the definition of feminism right there, for gawd's sake. That's it! Leading women to safety and freedom, no matter what others think. You led... with pride and conviction.

I did not understand. I did not have a clue. *sigh*

I am so sorry.

Most sincerely~ LearningOne

We did have a beautiful community of wimin on that magazine. It was a beautiful life only from the womanly aspect.... the womanly closeness and sharing and comraderie and sisterhood and all that jazz. It was never our husbands that we were "one" with... it was our wimin sisters that we were "one" with and it sounds like many of us still are.

I analyze my own disappointment after the magazine that I had come to know and love had stopped publication.... and I, for a very long time, thought that my disappointment was with your change of lifestyle and thought, Heart. But now I've come to realize it wasn't that at all. It was the disappointment that our tight little wimin's world had ended and that's what I was grieving... not the changes in your life. I wonder how many think the very same way and are STILL hostile towards you without honestly even realizing why they are... or realizing that it's the sistership they miss and not their patriarchial lifestyle that they're still bound to.

With you under the same patriarchial thumb, they thought they could survive because you were surviving. When you ceased to survive under that horrible tyranny, they lost hope that they could too... and didn't know there were other options for them. I think that's the root of the anger of many of the old world women even today. If only they knew there was fresh water on the other side of the desert. *sigh*

~LearningOne

"Women love all kinds of things, places, animals and people. They can love a place with so gut-wrenching a passion that they dream of it every night. They can love animals with such tenderness that they would die for them, whether in a burning house clasping an old cat in their arms or under the wheels of a lorry loaded with live calves for export. They can love a child or an adult person with a devotion that never flags through long years of toil and struggle. They love undaunted by ill-treatment, abandonment or death, returning good for evil. They do not kill the things they love but cherish them, feed them, nurture them, remaining more interested in them than they are in themselves. They do not come to love the objects of their love by fucking them. With many of the creatures they love the longest and the most deeply they have no genital contact at all."

~Germaine Greer

That's true, Sophia, and I agree with you. You were doing it not for the haters' benefit but for those who might not know the whole truth. I back you and I believe what you did was absolutely correct... not that you need my approval for anything in the least. But I admire you for the truth you set straight and am so glad you did it. Heart deserved it and you provided it. That's a true friend.

>MTF's, for example, spend a whole lot of effort trying to
>persuade others that they've held a consistent view of
>themselves as women throughout their lives, that THAT hasn't
>changed, THEY haven't changed inside, they've merely changed
>their bodies to align with what is and has been true for
>them all their lives. A MTF calling Heart out on what may
>appear to them to be "hypocricy" in her life experience
>tells me more about them than about her. Most people DO
>grow and change over a lifetime especially if they have the
>personal integrity to express overtly the beliefs they hold
>and change
>Sophia

Oh yes, how can people NOT change over a lifetime? That's why I really and honestly don't fault my husband nor myself with us growing apart. I mean... we were married at 19, for god's sake. How can two people who were married at 19 years old NOT change over the course of the next 30 years? And whose fault is that? No one's, in my view. Gawd, how can it be anybody's fault? People change from childhood to adulthood and even throughout adulthood. When two people get married in childhood, how the hell can anything else be expected but for those two to grow apart as they mature. That doesn't take rocket science to figure out, ya know?

The whole MTF thing.... I can't help but feel the mass confusion that those men/women feel about their identity. They hate Heart and probably all WBW because they are exactly that.... WBW.....something that MTF will NEVER be but WANT to be. It just doesn't happen like that in the cosmos. Womonhood isn't something that occurs by fiat.... "O.K., I feel like a woman so therefore I am! I'll just change my physical appearance to look like a woman and bang, I'm a woman." Bullshit. It just doesn't happen like that but they want that to be the case so desperately.

There's a time and place for MTFs to mingle with WBW... in fact, there's plenty of times and places. But it seems to me that MTFs want *all* times and *all* places... even those reserved for WBW... and will settle for nothing else.

They have my pity.... they're caught in limbo, IMO. They're not in this world and not in that world. But if we wimin, as is our usual damn lot in life, keep feeling sorry for people and keep trying to fix things and say... "Oh, alright, you can come to Michfest!" then we're right back under the patriarchial rule that we've lived under practically our whole lives. And fuck that.

There's going to be people caught in limbo all over the joint, in every state in life, in every way. And just once in awhile, we wimin have to let go of the limbo folks for just a few days to recharge our batteries and be amongst WBW only... whether it be at Michfest or on these boards.... or we won't be any good to anybody, including those in limbo! And we can be a LOT of good for those in limbo but damn... they just gotta give us our space to rest once in awhile. Jeez!

~LearningOne

"Women love all kinds of things, places, animals and people. They can love a place with so gut-wrenching a passion that they dream of it every night. They can love animals with such tenderness that they would die for them, whether in a burning house clasping an old cat in their arms or under the wheels of a lorry loaded with live calves for export. They can love a child or an adult person with a devotion that never flags through long years of toil and struggle. They love undaunted by ill-treatment, abandonment or death, returning good for evil. They do not kill the things they love but cherish them, feed them, nurture over time.
e them, remaining more interested in them than they are in themselves. They do not come to love the objects of their love by fucking them. With many of the creatures they love the longest and the most deeply they have no genital contact at all."

~Germaine Greer

Heart, I don't agree that to criticize "other women's reinventions of themselves" is antifeminist. If a woman becomes a stripper, or hires an undocumented nanny for a bazillion hours a week at minimum wage so she can get some high mucky-muck corporate job, or joins a Buddhist monastery or what have you, then I'm going to critique those actions/choices from my radical feminist perspective. I don't think everything women do is equally feminist. I think if something makes a woman happy or fulfilled or what have you, that's great, but there are lots of things that are fulfilling and they're not feminist, i.e., they don't contribute to the ultimate end of women's oppression. I mean, when you were a christian, you might have been trying to live out the deepest wishes of your heart, to live with integrity, to live simply on the planet, etc. etc., and those are all good things, but I don't know that that makes that lifestyle particularly feminist. And I mean that--I don't know, given what (little) I know about christianity, fundamentalism, and your life in particular.

Someone else--sorry, I can't remember who or where --said something about women giving birth and nursing being "the real true feminists." Now, such claims about "real true feminism" can be and have been made about/by separatist women who have a very valid critique of motherhood as institution in patriarchy and who reject that role as a result of that critique. I don't make those claims here even though it is the kind of feminist lifestyle that makes the most sense to me, but it does rather irritate me when comments like the above are unthinkingly bandied about. So I would like it if we could be a bit more critical and nuanced here instead of making such sweeping generalizations about what's feminist and what's not. I think I understand where you're coming from, that this is coming out of your being trashed by TJ for your fundie past, and I totally agree that what TJ's doing is not cool. But it's also not cool for us to take an acritical stance (which I don't think you're doing, I'm just saying) such that feminism ends up meaning nothing. Because feminism does mean something, and while there are gray areas, there are also ways of living and being that are definitely NOT feminist.

And this goes back to your earlier statement, too, Heart, (maybe in another thread?) about working side-by-side with women who put women first. There are lots of women who would say, and probably believe, that they are totally committed to women. Look at Phyllis Schlafly, for example. She probably absolutely believes that the things she works for are in women's best interest. I seriously disagree with her, and not just in the sense that what she's working for is not a bad thing but not exactly revolutionary (like, say, advocating gay marriage), but I believe that she is actually working AGAINST the best interests of women. So therefore it's false for me to say or believe or even act like, just because a woman says she's all about women, that we're actually on the same side. Again, looking for nuance and a thoughtful (as opposed to rather romanticized) approach to feminist coalitions and such.

And now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

And the fact that a woman says she is woman-centered and/or puts woman first doesn't mean anything. Just as you say you say, all sorts of shills and pawns say they put women first. We have to look at what a woman who says she puts women first is actually doing, how she is living, with an eye to, as Robin Morgan says in that quote I like so much, where they've come from, their level of risk, the direction they are going.

The quote you're referring to did not have anything at all to do with women giving birth and nursing being the "real true feminists." I don't think there is anything feminist about giving birth and nursing, per se. Period. The writer was talking about a specific group of women -- and both she and I are part of this group of women -- who gave birth and nursed totally by our own lights, aided by midwives, and rejecting patriarchal obstetrics and gynecology, birthing at home, in other words, assuming control over our own pregnancies, births and breastfeeding and rejecting all the garbage dished out to women by patriarchal medicine. That was what her reference was about.

I'd have been glad to clarify my meaning if you'd asked me to. I think it ought to be taken as a given that I don't for one moment believe there is anything feminist about fundies or Phyllis Shlafly, and that moving in the direction of patriarchal ideologies is never a desirable reinvention of a woman's life. I don't think that's something I should even have to say. And if you are going to make reference to what someone posts here and dispute it at length, please, in the future, post what you're responding to, or at least review it to make sure you read it correctly. Because otherwise the impression is given, for example, as here, that somebody here actually said something like that birthing and pregnancy make women "real feminists" and you are here to dispute that -- as well as other things which haven't been posted here -- at considerable length, as though to set some record straight. When in fact, there is no record to set straight, and nobody, and certainly not me, made the claims you think you are refuting, or endorsed any such claims, or would have.

Heart

"I have often thought that strong birthing, nursing women are the ultimate feminists. Women who embrace their womanness and don't bring the droves of male experts into the whole process to "take care of them"."

She's talking, in other words, about women who birth and nurse by our own lights without relying on men. What she said could have been clearer, but again, I'd have been very happy to clarify my agreement here had I been asked. I don't like lengthy refutations of anti-feminist points which no one here has made.

Heart

****

Hearrrt
Charter Member
2202 posts Nov-17-05, 06:44 AM (PMT)

28. "RE: Women's Inhumanity to Women"

LAST

What *about* the issue though of
working with the Salvation Army against globalized prostitution

?

Is that

potentially too fraught with anti-woman strings for feminists

?

Radical feminists have been fairly consistently accused of alliances with the Religious Right which are short-sighted, hypocritical, or bad for women in other ways. Every last time I've been in a discussion of the Dworkin/MacKinnon anti-pornography ordinance, one or several people has popped up to say that radical feminists aligned themselves with the Religious Right in getting the ordinance passed in Indianapolis at least, and I think Minneapolis, too. The Bush administration has pushed ant-sex-trafficking legislation and has created a specific office within the State Dept. to combat trafficking in persons.

John Miller heads that up. In doing some reading, I came across this:

But the forces of decency have begun to fight back. An extraordinary cross-ideological coalition, spanning from Christian-right groups to feminist organizations, pushed the 2000 anti-trafficking legislation that created Miller's office. The coalition is still strong. Referring to the feminist writer and the evangelical Christian activist respectively, Hudson Institute scholar and anti-trafficking stalwart Michael Horowitz says, "Within the same week, I had Catharine MacKinnon and Richard Land call me and say, 'I love John Miller.'"

What about this?

I've done a lot of thinking about it, for obvious reasons. On the one hand, I want, for example, DV shelters for battered women, as many as can be created. On the other hand, I don't want battered women turning to shelters which, as it turns out, are operated by fundamentalists intent on saving their souls. Which has happened all across the country. I want sex slavery to END. But I don't want those who find their way out of sex slavery, sex trafficking, to be manipulated or conned or propagandized by the Religious Right. The RR has a lot of power and a lot of influence and feminists have, at this moment in history, comparatively, very little.

I WANT to put money into the Salvation Army buckets because I am so glad they are giving so much money to end sex slavery, organizing people to that end. But most of those people are conservative religionists. And I know this latter to be dangerous. The theology and politics of the RR are dangerous to me as a woman. I know that SO up close and personal. Dangerous to all women and girls.

Going back to the subject of this thread, do I include Phyllis Chesler and Donna Hughes in my list of radical feminist links, even though they support faith based initiatives? Is it consistent with radical feminism or ANY feminism to form alliances with those who are all about faith-based initiatives? Whether in support of DV shelters or rape shelters or anti-sex-trafficking organizations and work or support for the nation of Israel? What about tactics and strategies? How much do we willingly align ourselves with those who underneath it all believe women are to be in submission to men? Are "easily deceived"? Are biologically predetermined to be this whole list of things that constitutes the traditionally "feminine"? Are happiest at home, married to men and raising children? All the way, of course, to being anti-lesbian and pro-patriarchy-movement and theonomists, for that matter. The taliban doesn't approve sexual slavery, you know? Fundamentalist, patriarchal religion opposes prostitution and sex-trafficking, whichever of its manifestations we are talking about. Which doesn't keep the patriarchs IN the movement from, individually, patronizing prostituted women, using pornography, and especially, thinking and acting in all of the ways which perpetuate a culture which CREATES prostituted women and sex trafficking.

Heart

I'm a radical feminist, not the fun kind. -- Andrea Dworkin

Anyway, I would have liked to discuss this but nobody really took me up on it. I think all sorts of people CAN engage even in work which I agree with -- anti-prostitution work, anti-sex-trafficking work, anti-pornography work -- and yet align with religious or political ideologies and groups that I, as a radical feminist, cannot support. Which is a huge problem.

Anyway, my views as expressed here (and elsewhere) provide the context for what I've written in this thread as to lies about radical feminism, and it seems important to me to be very, very clear about this stuff.

Heart

>And I mean that--I
>don't know, given what (little) I know about christianity,
>fundamentalism, and your life in particular.
>

Hey radfemlezzie~

Ya know, I think that's where the problem comes in at... "critiqueing" other women's choices... without even knowing the women.

That's what men do. Critiqueing means judging and men judge women without even knowing their name or their circumstances. They judge them by how they look... by what kind of car they drive... by how they shake their ass when they walk... by how drunk they are in a bar... by how good they can cook... by how "modest" they dress... by now petite their feet are... by how wide their hips are for bearing children... men judge women depending on what they're looking for in her, without ever knowing her name or her circumstances first.

You don't know why that woman is a stripper... you don't know why that woman has a nanny... you don't know why that woman joined a Buddhist monastery... so how can you critique any of these women?

If you want to write an article about why you feel strippers are wrong or hiring nannies is wrong or joining a Buddhist monastery is wrong, that's your free choice and there's nothing anti-feminist about doing that in the least. But when you start judging particular women, without even knowing them, then that to me is a very anti-feminist action and in no way furthers the cause of feminism.

If you see a woman who's a stripper then befriend her, find out her circumstances, and then help her out of that life if after befriending her and talking to her, she agrees with you that a stripper's path is no place for a woman. To me and in my opinion, that's what true feminism is.

Just a couple thoughts from me.... still

~LearningOne

"Women love all kinds of things, places, animals and people. They can love a place with so gut-wrenching a passion that they dream of it every night. They can love animals with such tenderness that they would die for them, whether in a burning house clasping an old cat in their arms or under the wheels of a lorry loaded with live calves for export. They can love a child or an adult person with a devotion that never flags through long years of toil and struggle. They love undaunted by ill-treatment, abandonment or death, returning good for evil. They do not kill the things they love but cherish them, feed them, nurture them, remaining more interested in them than they are in themselves. They do not come to love the objects of their love by fucking them. With many of the creatures they love the longest and the most deeply they have no genital contact at all."

~Germaine Greer