On Developing as a Feminist

Part of my Femifesta is ecofeminism. I’ve been an ecofeminist for 20 years; my feminism came about when I was 16, read The Women’s Room, and realized that the ostracism, criticism and judgement I had been facing—for not doing what I was supposed to do, not valuing what I was supposed to value, not being who I was supposed to be—didn’t result from who I was but from an artificial social construct of gender called sexism. I was at the time aware of racism—its artificiality, its arbitrariness, its injustice. I had always been, for the most part, much more interested in books about girls and their adventures. I had (not so quietly) rebelled against the restrictions placed on me by parents, teachers, caretakers, even peers; but all the while I internalized the criticism and subconsciously believed I was somehow fatally flawed.

What a relief to realize it wasn’t me—it was a social injustice, not a personal flaw. I celebrated by becoming even more rebellious; and for a Southern “well-bred” white girl, that meant, more than anything else, sexually liberated and highly experimental (well, again, remember the context). I immediately jumped the color barrier—after all, my caretakers as a child had been ample, warm, honest-smelling black women. We didn’t call them Mammy, we called them by their first names: Beatrice, Anne, Hattie. And they called our parents Mr. and Miz (they only called me “Miz” when I was in trouble, as in “Miz Jane, you better get your little butt in this bathtub!”). My mother tried to control by nagging and the occasional switch; Dad hollered and hit. I respected neither of them and my response to their “discipline” was the same as a cat’s: I just didn’t let them see me do it.

But those large, firm, black women had my complete respect and obedience—well, as much as I could give it—in exchange for the warm and sincere affection they showered on me. No place was so safe after a knee scrape or a wasp sting than Anne’s ample lap; only her sweet-smelling breath could ease the burn of mercurochrome. So when Marilyn French and feminism gave me permission to follow my desires for sex (and approval and affection and love), it was natural that I crossed that forbidden color barrier.
My first black lover was a beautiful man—at 17, he was tall, sleekly muscled with the athlete’s broad shoulders tapering to a fine sinuous waist; upper arms as lithe and powerful as a race horse’s; smooth, narrow hips and that beautiful black man’s butt: high, hard and round. I wasn’t inexperienced and the size of his “member” didn’t shock or frighten me, but it definitely did nothing to dispel the size mythology that surrounds black men’s sexuality. I never had an orgasm with him—I had not yet had orgasm during sex. I’d only learnt a short while before to have one with myself and I was too shy to suggest any extracurricular activities on his part. I don’t remember the sex itself being particularly fabulous—only the urgency of my desire. It never took very long and he, like every other teenage boy I slept with, was always eager to be on his way afterwards. Most of my pleasure was in the anticipation and the admiration of his beautiful, mocha-colored body; his huge, slightly tilted brown eyes; his regally high cheekbones and aquiline nose; and those full lips, so gorgeous, so inviting—the first time he kissed me I nearly fainted. I probably would’ve been happy with just kisses.

Less than a year after our—relationship? affair? fuck-fest?—ended, he was dead. He was in an automobile accident; we’d gone to different colleges but a mutual friend told me about the horrendous wreck and that he was hospitalized. When I saw her the next day in the student center, her usually knowing good-natured features ashey with pain, I knew he was dead; I fainted at the news. I had never known anyone so close to me to die. Especially someone so vital and pulsing and arrogant with life. It was impossible to fathom. I went home for the funeral, but when I drove downtown and saw all those dignified black folks out mourning yet another loss of youth and beauty, I knew I didn’t belong. His parents wouldn’t welcome me—they’d answered the phone a few times when I’d called and I knew they were no more happy about him seeing a white girl than my parents would’ve been if they’d known. I couldn’t go to the viewing or the funeral—some time later, I went to the grave, a flat, scrubby plot, the stone tiny and nearly anonymous. I imagined that godlike beauty shrinking and crumbling in the coffin; his athletic valor, his physical grace, his demand that the world acknowledge and respect him. I certainly had. I mourned not knowing him better—his dreams, the impediments—of which there were many. He came from a upwardly-mobile black family in an old Southern town that had fought integration hard and had even come to violence not long before I was in high school. The fact that he was in college was a triumph, though I’d heard he was partying too much and not working hard enough—he was bright, very bright, but unprepared and unmotivated. It’s questionable that he’d have finished college. I think now of the Houseman poem:
“Now you will not swell the rout

Of lads that wore their honours out,

Runners whom renown outran

And the name died before the man.”

and wonder if, despite all his beauty and potential, his life would’ve got better or worse; if, were he alive today, I’d still admire and respect him.
But I digress. The radical-ness of my feminism never diminishes, though its form morphs and shifts—a belief in liberated, free sexuality has only developed; but my philosophy of feminism grows, becomes larger and more inclusive. The first foray outside of women and sex was ecofeminism. I visited a friend at Evergreen State College in Olympia Washington. Famous for producing such 90s radicals and creatives as Cobain, Vedder, Love and Cornell, in the 80s Evergreen and Olympia also nurtured (and probably still does) a quite radical green pocket—and one that fully incorporated a feminist perspective. In Olympia, I met my friend’s “goddess-Mother” Willow, who soaked the blood out of her menstrual rags and used the water on her moon plants—which produced the most lush, amazing flowers I’ve ever seen! I learnt about Starhawk and Charlene Spretnik; James Lovelock and Deep Ecology; Alice Walker and Marge Piercy. It being the 80s, and a crest in the wave of women’s empowerment that began in the 70s, these ideas got a lot of play at the time. I was lucky enough to visit some of the places they got their start: Olympic National Forest, for example, is a place where the philosophies of Deep Ecology seem not only possible, but undeniable. It is like the Narnian forest that Lucy tries so hard to waken in Prince Caspian; the trees are like Tolkein’s quiet, deeply raging Ents. You feel their energy, their power—at the time, I also felt sadness. I did not belong in their forest, it was clear. Even though my intentions were good, I had no place there. I had flashes of the dryad who comes to tell King Rillian that the Lantern Waste is being murdered; but I was not the king, nor were these trees subject to me. Nor did they know that I was not one of those who laid them waste in broad, murderous swathes that caused the topsoil to wash away and the land to bleed its rich, red clay into the rivers of the Pacific Northwest. It was a powerful connection I made with the trees there, one that has never left me. It also opened me up to many more connections with the natural world—connections that I remembered from my early childhood but that I had lost in the process of “civilization”.

(to be continued)

Activist Burnout and the GOOD NEWS

Ok, back at the Pink House, having taken Ann Wright to the airport and gotten her opinions on how leaving Iraq is the best thing we can do for them; on Hugo Chavez and how his recent shutdown of opposition TV is bad for his international image; on her choice to become a peace activist after 29 years of military service; and on how Adam Kokesh of IVAW is facing a revocation of his honorable discharge status because of his anti-war activities and disrespect to superior officers, and how PTSD is affecting his actions.

At that comment I also think of Cindy Sheehan, who announced today that she has resigned as the “face” of the Peace Movement, in part because of criticism from the groups and people who should be on her side (my interpretation, not Cindy’s words). Commentary in the Pink House mentioned Cindy also having been affected PTSD—but also, Cindy has organizing and protesting and confronting and speaking truth to power almost nonstop since her son Casey died in Iraq 3 years ago. She has to be burnt out. And this put me in mind of a young man I met yesterday who walked with us and Nick Kimbrell on the last leg of Nick’s journey from Charlottesville to DC in support of bringing the troops home.

Jeff of World Can’t Wait is 19 years old and angry. I accused him of being cynical, but perhaps that was harsh. His anger is certainly justified—when I first got active (back in the Reagan years, which seemed so frightening then but now in retrospect seem like the “kinder, gentler” days) I was angry too. I didn’t see much hope for the future. I was furious about US interventions throughout Central and South America (it would be 10 years before I learnt about Allende in Chile and Lumumba in Zaire) and the fact that despite Roe vs Wade and a clear 2/3rd majority in favor of choice, we were still fighting that battle when there were so many more that needed out attention.

This kind of anger and energy can be good if channeled into positive action. But (with the hindsight of wisdom) I realize that I burnt out being so angry all the time, never allowing the pleasure of enjoying small gains and taking pride in small victories. It was never enough, the voice in my head always said, “Gotta do more, gotta do more”—kind of like the house in D.H. Lawrence’s, “Rockinghorse Winner”: “More money, more money.”

Now, I try to take time to realize and celebrate every victory, even the tiny ones, even the ones that seem so insignificant in the face of so much carnage and horror. The problem is, I often don’t remember to do it until confronted by someone like Jeff, who—no matter what I offered him as a positive step, had a reason why it wasn’t good enough. He’s right. It’s not good enough. It’s never going to be good enough until we have peace and justice for all people—and for the Earth as well. I returned to the US after living most of the last 15 years abroad not because I like living in the US better—I don’t, though there are definitely some wonderful things about this country that I miss when I live abroad; more about that in another missive—but because as a US citizen, even if I’m not living here, what this country does is my responsibility. What this country does reaches almost ever crack and crevice in the world—so not only is there no escaping it, there’s also no forgetting it. In order to live here, be active, and not have regular nervous breakdowns, however, I have to constantly remind myself of the positive changes that have occurred in my lifetime—even, shockingly enough, during the Bush administration. Here are a few:

• When I was 19, if someone told me that in 2007 the two leading candidates for president would be a woman and a black man, I would never have believed them. For the first time in my life, not to mention those of my parents’ and preceding generations’, Dr. King’s dream that people would be judged “not by the color of [their] skin (or their gender) but by the content of [their] character” has been actualized. Of course, that content is still questionable. But the fact that the vast majority of US people have got beyond color and gender is something of a miracle.
  
• The most powerful diplomat in the US government is a black woman. I thought having Madeline Albright as secretary of state was an accomplishment (no matter how much I disagreed with her perspective), but Condoleeza Rice is another miracle. As a feminist and a Southerner, I admire and am proud of her, although I disagree with everything she says and the administration she works for. I don’t believe that it’s better to have a woman in the job if she doesn’t do a good job—but I do believe that it’s fabulous to have women in public positions, in order to show little girls what they can do with their lives, and little boys that it’s OK for women to be powerful.
  
• The next person in line for the presidency after those two war criminals is a woman. If we can get congress to act on what are without a doubt some of the greatest crimes committed by the executive branch of the US government in history, we could even have a woman president.
• There has been a sudden, monumental shift in mainstream attitudes toward the environment and climate change. I had despaired of this ever happening; it’s my primary concern as a progressive because, hey, even if we stop all the wars and eradicate racism, sexism, homophobia, child abuse, poverty and disease, it doesn’t matter if we can’t breathe the air and drink the water or don’t have habitable land. Thank you, [legitimate President] Al Gore, and while I don’t know what kind of president you would’ve been, your work over the last couple of years is invaluable, not just to this country but to the whole world.

• And last but certainly not least, the technological revolution has made activism and organizing on a global scale not only possible, but unavoidable. I love Bob Geldof, and Band Aid and Live Aid were the greatest events of my generation, but I’m really fucked off with him about his snide remarks about Al Gore and Live Earth. This is an essential cause (see above) and, like poverty, it is a moral issue, not a political one. Raising consciousness and giving hope are absolutely imperative in these scary, dark times; and Geldof does the organizers of this event a grave disservice. Imagine what Live Aid could’ve accomplished in 1985 with the Internet? I don’t know all the details of Gore’s plan for Live Earth, but as the “inventor” of the Internet, I’m sure that the Information Superhighway will be packed with travelers for this event.

There are hundreds, thousands, perhaps millions more bits of good news here and there that we can all indulge in from time to time. So at the risk of being called Pollyanna (I have always loved the name, though), I will say before you burn out, indulge in a little good news—remember, even activists cannot live on rage alone!

kk

PS A new book out by one of my heroes, Riane Eisler, is The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economy is a great treatise on the things that are or could be (with just a little help and attention) good news and progress. Author of The Chalice and the Blade, which challenges dominator (some might call “patriarchal”) social structures as the only model, and offers up another possible—and in many places and times existing—structure, the partnership model. The Real Wealth of Nations further analyzes the potential for and current movement toward this more humane, more sustainable, and ultimately only social structure for a viable future.