Conferences

40 Days of Writing, Day 34: Letting Your Body Speak

Published on by Lisa

I gave myself permission, while at the Civil Liberties and Public Policy conference in Massachusetts, to not write if I couldn’t make it happen.  I wrote so much offline, I just didn’t post it. Some of it was too personal for online and some of it just belongs in my journal.

I presented on two different panels during the weekend.  One was to talk about independent media and the other was my work with working with survivors of sexual violence and how to create safe spaces for them to  heal.  Clearly, I had my hands full.

That night, after my presentations were finished, I was exhausted.  I couldn’t really express all that I had taken into my body.  Whenever I give talks or facilitate groups around the issue of sexual violence, the look on everyone’s faces is the same: wide, open eyes, like a wide unblinking lens on a camera, ready to catch any detail that passes their gaze.  Expressions are open, serious, and expectant.  No one talks.  Whereever there is the shadow of sexual violence, there is always silence somewhere.

Unfortunately, I have given too many presentations and talks about this because I always know what happens when I am finished.  The rhetoric of trauma, inevitably, brings up the often buried history of someone’s trauma.  Over the years, countless women come up to me after a presentation and whisper thank you, their eyes full of memory and tears, and they leave.  Contrary to my presentations, I never know what to say in those moments.  Those moments when someone else’s pain is so visceral is the closest one can come to seeing the face of vulnerability.  It’s a painful gift to share, but it’s still a gift to me.  To be in the presence of survivors, always, humbles and overwhelms me.

That night I woke up at 3am and stood in the bathroom for a while.  My stomach wasn’t upset, my throat wasn’t parched, my mind was not racing, but something was stirring deep in my soul.  I couldn’t ignore it.  But I tried.

I threw the blankets over my head, determined to outwit my soul by reminding my head that I still had a full day of conference and traveling left and if I was smart, I’d close my eyes and go dream.  But my body had other ideas.  The stirring continued.  Questions surfaced.  Theological questions, spiritual questions, activist questions, human question.

How do we teach one another how to love?  I mean, at the most basic level, how do you teach love?  Is it even teachable?  Is it something passed down from our caretakers and if we had enough of it, we spread it and if we didn’t have enough of it, we spend the rest of our lives trying to fill that hole in ourselves that never tasted fulfillment?  Is love something I can teach someone else?

How do you teach love to people who commit power-based violence?  How does one come into this world and some odd number years later find themselves inflicting spiritual murder on another person and violating another person’s most basic right: the right to share or not share their body with another human being.  Where does this distortion of power come from?

After these thoughts spilled out of my brain and onto my pillow, I realized that sleep was never going to come. I kept thinking of Andrea Dworkin and so I wrote instead.  Afterward, after 3 hours of writing, my body released whatever it was holding and I fell asleep.

Andrea Dworkin was this really loud, controversial feminist from a few decades ago who wrote groundbreaking and eyebrowing raising work around sex and sexuality.  I disagree with most of her rhetoric and don’t really think I would ever call her my hero, but she wrote amazingly important work.  One of her speeches, delivered before 500 men in the 80s, called “I Want a 24 Hour Truce.”  In this speech, she begs, pleads, demands, implores men to do something in their lives to stop other men from raping women.  (And I know that sexual violence crosses the binary line of men raping women, but this is the focus I’m referring to right now…)  It’s a powerful, haunting speech:

…men come to me or to other feminists and say: “What you’re saying about men isn’t true. It isn’t true of me. I don’t feel that way. I’m opposed to all of this.”

And I say: don’t tell me. Tell the pornographers. Tell the pimps. Tell the warmakers. Tell the rape apologists and the rape celebrationists and the pro-rape ideologues. Tell the novelists who think that rape is wonderful. Tell Larry Flynt. Tell Hugh Hefner. There’s no point in telling me. I’m only a woman. There’s nothing I can do about it. These men presume to speak for you. They are in the public arena saying that they represent you. If they don’t, then you had better let them know…

…As a feminist, I carry the rape of all the women I’ve talked to over the last ten years personally with me. As a woman, I carry my own rape with me. Do you remember pictures that you’ve seen of European cities during the plague, when there were wheelbarrows that would go along and people would just pick up corpses and throw them in? Well, that is what it is like knowing about rape. Piles and piles and piles of bodies that have whole lives and human names and human faces.

…

And I want one day of respite, one day off, one day in which no new bodies are piled up, one day in which no new agony is added to the old, and I am asking you to give it to me … I want a twenty-four-hour truce during which there is no rape.

…

And on that day, that day of truce, that day when not one woman is raped, we will begin the real practice of equality, because we can’t begin it before that day. Before that day it means nothing because it is nothing: it is not real; it is not true. But on that day it becomes real. And then, instead of rape we will for the first time in our lives–both men and women–begin to experience freedom.

If you have a conception of freedom that includes the existence of rape, you are wrong. You cannot change what you say you want to change. For myself, I want to experience just one day of real freedom before I die. I leave you here to do that for me and for the women whom you say you love.

Andrea Dworkin gave that speech in 1983 to 500 men and only 1 in that crowd of 500 men threatened her physically.  Andrea Dworkin also died on April 5, 2005.  She wanted to live to see the day when not one woman was raped. She died never seeing that day.

It came to me this weekend that the power I hold as an educator, as a mother, as a friend is all the power I need in this world to try and make a difference in the lives of those I can build relationship with.  I believe I will make a difference and will continue to try, but, after all the stories I’ve heard and all the tears I’ve witnessed fall off the cheeks of women, I know that, like Andrea who died without seeing that day of no rape, I will never see that day either.

40 Days of Writing, Day 20: Memoir as an Act of Self-Destruction

Published on by Lisa

…memoir is the ultimate act of self-destruction… writes Dave Eggers.  That’s how he sees memoir writing — it should be something like the “shedding a skin.”

This Pulitzer nominee describes memoir as an act of self-destruction.  “Shedding of skin.”

This sounds familiar.

ECDYSIS:  the shedding of an outer lay or integument.  Molting.

It’s a sign, I think.  I’m on the right path.

I’m going to see Eggers speak tomorrow.  I don’t know why.  I have a quarter of a million things I need to be working on, but instead, I’m going to go see the author who sees memoir exactly as I do.

Memoir.

I’ve always written memoir.  Since I was, I don’t know, seven years old.  I thought there was rich potential in writing my life out at the end of the day and thinking about what I could share with others.  It never came a from self aggrandizing, quite the opposite.  My life was superbly ordinary in many ways.  I just happened to have a keen eye for detail, a heart created for writing.  But I was embarrassed by it, embarrassed by my desire to write about life, my observations, events that shaped my perspective.  To do so, in my opinion, was self aggrandizing.  And, I figured, someone probably said it before and said it much better than I ever could.

But I never met anyone who thought like me, or could say it like me, or write it in the exact same why I did.  It wasn’t that I thought my way was the best, but I never agreed with what I was reading.  Eventually, I grew listless for waiting for someone to write my thoughts.

Maybe someone has written it before, but no one has or ever will express something to the depths and character that you will express it.  Because no one is you, an old therapist told me when I confessed my desire to write but my fear surrounding the egotistical assumption that what I would write would be useful to the world.  No one is you.  No one can be.

The best way I describe things is through the filter of my life.  I explain through the ecdysis of my life, through the impact upon my mind, the shattering of my expectation, the displacement of my comfort, the movement of my borders.  I write to explain it to myself.  What comes out is what I offer the reader.

Which is the only way I can describe the experience I had at the A/PIA Movement Building conference in Ann Arbor this past weekend.  It breathed new ideas and vocabulary into my system.  It surprised me how easily my head shifted from Mommyhood to activist thinker and writing philosopher.  I took it as a good sign that the side of me that so loves to engage with the activist, academic, fighting, high fists in the air world is just quietly waiting inside me, ready whenever I am to immerse myself back into the trenches.

A/PIA.  Asian Pacific Island Americans.  Us, building a movement.  I had no idea what I was in for during this conference, but walked away with a pride and certainty that my skin is not a curse, not a gift, but an unfolding story in the history of country still unfamiliar with how to reconcile difference.  I learned how community activism is about a life of love, and joy! and that fighting for equality is not always about policy and infrastructure, but fighting for others to have the right to enjoy simple pleasures that are we all seek in our daily survival.  Bike rides, warm blankets, a clean water cup, decent education, an anti-colonial, anti-imperialistic existence.

At 32, I learned when I met Grace Lee Boggs at 96, I may have a long ride ahead of me.  And, I was excited.  I was excited to live long and envision myself talking to a 32 year old young Pinay mother when I am old and gray and still scribbling in my sketchpads because I still hate lined paper.

I envisioned myself at 96 years old, too young to give up, and surrounded by the energy of young hopeful activists determined to see a better world still in front of them.

I saw myself telling them that I lived through the election of the first black and black-identified president and how it was such a big deal back then.

I smiled at my dream – Isaiah wheeling me in to attend an movement building A/PIA conference, and Nick eating a sandwich in the front row with me.

My whole life, at that point, will be memoir-ed.  Ecdysis-ed.  It will all have been lived out, and written about, and processed.  Even at 96 years old, I’ll still be jotting down my ideas to radically love my community, how to improve as a person, and hopefully encourage the young people before me that 64 years ago I sat in their place, with hopeful eyes and restless hearts and the best thing I ever did was write about it.

NWSA

Published on by Lisa

These are my notes, at times hard to follow, from my first session. My style for this session was to record the comments of both the panelists and participants and letting my mind (read in bold) go where it felt called. So my thoughts unspoken are in bold and the rest are the discussion points.

Session One: Feminist Leadership in Student Affairs:
A Critical Look at Scholarship and Practice

Definition of Feminism
Intersection of Race, Class, and Gender

It’s about not bemoaning that we’re not where we want to be, but action toward building toward where we want to be.

Common language:

What is your definition of feminism?
Radical inclusion that works toward the empowerment of all individuals and the dismantling of all personal and systematic oppression.

How does it play out in your leadership style in the Women’s Center on your campus?
I challenge, speak out, seek mentoring and being a mentor in every situation that I am involved.

Others Sharing:
Egalitarian, so student focused.
Examining power and privilege in individual schools (what percentage of the student body is women)

I feel an acute sense of individualism, high intellectual streamlined thinking where people want to self-talk talk talk, than collaborate and share. Community is about supporting and laughing, not just working together.

Piercing eyes, not the most welcoming of leaders.

Why is there power and privilege and assigned worth in every thing?
“We’re as smart as the faculty,” say staff.
“We’re as smart as the psychologists,” say social workers.

“They think the women dress like whores.” – audience participant, on introducing a dress code and someone’s thought on how it would apply on women

I have serious issues with the word whore. What is a ‘whore?’ A women who has a lot of sex? A woman who will sleep with anyone? A woman who charges or takes money in exchange for sexual activity? What is a whore? Regardless, there is an incredibly unjust label, a pejorative label, to assign any individual. Never mind there is no equivalent for the male gender, but there’s something about the word WHORE, as if it’s something we strive to NOT be, be afraid of. If it is a woman who is hypersexually active, there is usually a much detailed backstory that necessitates privacy and/or understanding that women, especially, are so slow to give one another.

From a perspecive of clinical pedagogy, experiential learning:
“If you don’t name it, you’re not doing it.” – law studenton practices that are feminist, but not labeled as such; if you don’t use it as a critique of the hierarchal approach, it’s not enough for me

Are we more obsessed with things being labeled feminist than just the reality that things are in practice without being labeled as such?

“I was first aware of my whiteness than before my gender.” – far more committed to issues of social justice; talking about how few student affairs administrators identify as feminists; identifying in an academe that is NOT feminist and pointing out contradictions

A researcher compares experience of academic feminists and the experience of immigrants in the 1920s and 30s….

That last comment is a bit of a stretch. Sounds a bit too Friedanian for me. Like when the Betster compared stay at home middle white class women to the torture of the refugees in Nazi camps.

I first thought of myself as a black person, then as a women. WOC are always asked to choose. I began struggling with what it meant to be woman, looking at womanism. Moving to a women’s center, I felt a personal mission to talk about race, social and economic class in the context of feminist work, which I found was often left out.

Good stuff. Nothing new. I think the
lack of new thoughts has more to do with the academe than the speaker. Academe might be the slowest place to catch up with the trends. It’s more about the venue of distributing one’s knowledge than it is a place for change.

Feminist leadership: not many resources. Good number on women and leadership; gender and leadership, but not feminist leadership; organizational development and transformational leadership – they’re feminist principles! But now it’s called *** and *** and now it’s ok for men to claim it. Feminism caused a split between woc feminism and mainstream feminism; conversations are different, especially with men; split between communities; relegated to issues; it’s opened my perspective but has constrained my work –doctoral candidate for educational leadership

Finally.

Dated a man who was gay and came out after a long time – I’m going to support him or be angry. Obviously, she took the caretaker road.

Hello. Most women usually take the “caretaker” road. I think the majority of women in this situation would take the supportive role in the sense of “Staying friends, being there for him.” I can only speak for myself, but in my history of being in a relationship where the other person at the time is not certain of who s/he is, and what their identity is, it ALWAYS turns unjust for the other. Always. It’s so imbalanced that it’s impossible for mutually healthy relationship to flourish. I think there are ways to end relationships out of self-respect. I take, “I love you, but go figure your shit out and quit screwing me over,” road. I don’t think “support” always necessitates standing by one’s side presence and enduring emotional daggers to the soul.

I came to social justice in this relationship experience, first time to think about these issues. Began another “turning point” after working in a dv/sa position. Women with multiple identities are often forced to choose communities. In all white women communities, I didn’t find a mentor or anyone who broke down race, class, gender. We need to hold our partners accountable as partners because once you talk about women in student affairs we immediately talk about balancing family; also getting men involved in the movement; bring men into the conversation in constructive ways that do not take away from the work that women have been doing for ht past several decades; hold them to higher standards; do not exclude women who choose not to have children and respect that they have the need for balance as well.

Yes.

I was here from the beginning. It was easy to come to before.
I was the first to join the hockey team. There are still more firsts to be had. There is still more work to be done. – audience

Talking about the .76 to a man’s dollar. “I’m not satisfied with that.”

Why do we always hold this as one of the mainstays? Like, always.

Practical ways; being intentional about the library; south end press utilization; it is NOT feminist practice to give so much money to other “big” speakers and privilege that over smaller, grassortts activism, like using the money to really expand the resources (what movies, documentaries do we need? What else can we support?)

Activism should be focused on broadening the definition of feminism
Hiring practices – search committees – should work on shifting the language “I’m looking for an activist,” not a student affairs professional. Look at the students who are working in your office.

I realize it is a privilege to talk about gender all day. At NASPA, we had a session on feminist leadership, we had a room this size and it was full and women CRIED.

Sweet.

I’ve had grievances filed against me for hiring practice, but you have to have the courage to do it and hopefully you lay the ground for someone else to do the same. These are various forms of activism, but you have to find other people who do it. You find yourself talking to yourself a lot.

What does your activism look like?

Be transparent with students
There was an immediate gag rule
I can’t talk about this or do it, but you can. What can I do to help you? We can’t support you because some things are too institutionalized. It sucks and I hate it, but I can personally support you. – says Duke Women’s Center employee

Be sure there is sustainability in your feminist activism.
How do you get people jazzed about sexual assault preventative education?

I think getting men jazzed about it is more important.

We work well together because we all identify as feminists. We all have women-centerd principles. Feminism is a wonderful foundation for social justice work – you can call it what you want – just adopt it and use it.

Get feminism into the headlines and titles into topics, dissertations, conferences, national boards, literature

Of course Women Writing for a Change in Cincinnati came up – feminist leadership academy – Mary Pierce Brosmer

It’s more important to be more collective.

Word. Why’d that come at the end?

NWSA

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Not that I am one to complain, but in Detroit, I was in a singular bedroom dorm, suite style, with NO comforts of home. Hey, I enjoyed it and I loved the accessibility it gave me to Blackamazon next door and Fabi a few floors away, among other awesome WOC. But, here in St. Charles, I’ve got a few luxuries, to say the least.

Post AMC

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Sleep is never overated, especially as a woman of color. I debate, fight, expose, compliment, choose, live…it’s an exhausting world and I love the rejuvenating process of closing your eyes while the body recharges.

I am officially recharged after not letting Adonis out of my arms for a second and a restful night’s sleep.

If you have not noticed, I have been live blogging, covering the AMC conference. Because I did a lot of uploading and writing at 3am, I was unable to put things in descending order, so to get an accurate chronological depiction, you must scroll down and work your way up.

Read: I was that tired.

So much is churning in my head and I love the world this morning.

AMC 2007

Published on by Lisa

I am functioning on minimal amounts of sleep. I can only write in non-elaborative sentences.

So much happened today but I need to travel, go home to love. My first love.

The conference is over.

I am heading home in five minutes.

Leaving, I am amazed by the power of technology, its ways of corruption and the possibilities of revolution.

The women I met this weekend are streamlined, natural, hilarious, beautiful, giving people.

I am heading home. I am ready.

Detroit… out!

AMC Quotes

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Here are the top five quotes for Day Two of the 2007 AMC:

5) I charge $2 for my zine, which I think is pretty fair in exchange for part of my soul. – Hermana, Resist

4) There is a plot to keep us from eating and I don’t like it. – Moi, after Fabulosa Mujer and I tried to get lunch and discovered the doors of Subway locked; the cashier at the cafeteria informed us carry out boxes were unavailable; Paesano’s didn’t deliver; the driver from Dominos didn’t show up to work; and descending upon a salad sharing moment, found that we had no utensils.

3) Mom, now I know why I am hungry. I don’t want to eat this. Do you? – Baby BFP holding up a ROTTING banana to BFP’s face to which several radical women of color bloggers advised her to feed her starving children

2) When I got a reply from that organization, not only did they tell me they would not fund me, but they also said a black woman has no place in being in a man’s room at two in the morning. – Aishah Shehidah Simmons, retelling the 11 year process it took her to fund, direct, and produce the documentary NO! about sexual assault within the African-American community

1) You had me at Shalom. – AMC participant’s tshirt

AMC 2007

Published on by Lisa

I’m sorry to report that we, the radical women of color bloggers, in fact did NOT succeed in fixing all the problems of the world today. Damn. We came soooo close though.

Today felt like I had known these women my whole life. We worked through the whole, “I can’t believe I’m finally meeting these people in real life,” to endlessly teasing, laughing, and a sharing salad with no utensils (that *actually* happened during the 3pm pizza lunch hour). We dined over fallafel, hommos, pita, lentil soup, mango smoothies (LARGE, not small), with grilled lamb and chicken for dinner. We, literally, closed down the restaurant, only to spend another 15 minutes laughing outside, only to end up talking and laughing until 2am in a study lounge. As bloggers, we do what we do best: grab our laptops, surf the internet, share pictures of our weddings, families, and gawk over the Eddie Murphy impregnated Scary Spice and talk like sisters.




AMC 2007

Published on by Lisa

The Women of Color Zines was a moving presentation, a safe space created for womyn of color to talk about why personal expression is so vital, distribution challenges, and weighing the advantages of sharing your soul with the world.

The Women of Color Blogger’s Caucus was held at 12noon. Women of Color may be amazing, but they also need to eat. Many of us jumped from session to session with little in our bellies to absorb every possible available moment. To see and meet so many great women was just downright joyous. The hour sped by and we vowed to continue the conversation over dinner. Besides, it was time for:

Hijacking the Master’s Tools, a panel to talk about how online organizing can be used for activism. Another AMAZING group of folks from Ubuntu, Broken Beautiful Press, and A.H. Simmons (NO! Director). At this point of the afternoon, Fabulosa Mujer, Blackamazon, Ubuntu, and BFP had not eaten. It was almost 2pm and our minds had been working in over drive. To say we were ravenous would be an understatement. Let’s put it like this: WE HAD PIZZA DELIVERED TO THE DOOR OF THE WORKSHOP. Yep, the pizza delivery person even knocked, and Fabulosa was kind enough to walk back into the room with a gigantic pizza in hand as if we were partying in a frat house and walking into a conference room with pizza was the most natural thing in the world. When WOC need food, NOTHING will stop us.

I then attended Empowering Our Communities Through Oral History, presented by Filipina Emily Lawsin. You know the hour is gonna be pretty sweet when she welcomes late comers with, “Come on in! Find a seat, it’s the Pinay hour. You know it!” She is a professor, spoken poet, and centers everything on Filipino/Asian-American culture. Thrilling. Simply thrilling to just be in the know, even if only for a little while, effortlessly.

There were amazing resources everywhere today. Tables, info, pins, bumper stickers, and media of all sorts contributed to the infectious energy.




AMC 2007

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Saturday morning began (late for me!) with the Morning Plenary: Breaking Silence Building Movements. On the panel was Mariana Castandeda and Pual Richardson who do amazing work here in Detroit with youth and issues concerning the 70%, yes you read that correctly, 70% dropout rate. Alongside was Aishah Shahidah Simmons, creator of the unparallel documentary NO!, about sexual assault in the African American community. Ora Wise was another amazing panelist doing incredible work with Palestinean Youth Movement, not to mention the object of crush (she’s unbelievably fun, friendly, and gorgeous) for both myself and BFP.

Afterward, we viewed a digital story of a 16 year old Palestinean girl speaking out about fear, violence, and war. Can we say POWERFUL?