I did a brief search of what came up if you Google “feminism and 9/11” or “a feminist perspective of 9/11.” There are two surprises that should not be surprising:

1) There isn’t much
2) What is available – you gotta pay for it

Now, I’m no fool. I know that writers and thinkers need to make money somehow. I know scores of feminist writers who are scrimping by and need means to live so they can continue to offer their fem perspectives of cultural issues and global conflicts. However, why am I surprised that all the articles you must pay for are all academic? All scholars? All the ones you gotta pay for are housed in the academy.

No $ = No Reading of Feminist Perspectives of 9/11
Maybe I can’t be stimulated cuz I ain’t got the bucks to pay for some words.
I get pissed like that.

I’m a thinker. I’m an initiator, but I’m also a young feminist reactor. I need to read to be further stimulated for deeper reflection. There ain’t much out there about feminism and 9/11. What do I do on this anniversary?

I don’t have much. My skin is stll crawling from 9:03am, 9/1//01. I don’t pretend that I have a conspiracy theory or that I even have a feminist approach to what transpired in my country that tragic day. Over six years, I have gathered questions, documentaries, clips of loud politicians, and have stayed away from anyone who supported the war that 9/11 spurred.

i have a small bag of rocks, my divots, my kickings of 9/11 and what my country has done to the world since that fateful day:

I hate what the government has done post 9/11 and has inflicted a war upon a country that has no ties to 9/11. [Stop your Saddam arguments right now, please.]

I do not believe in justifying violence in the Middle East – or anywhere in the world – to liberate women. Liberation via fallacy? No. We are not liberating anyone, we are killing, starving, squeezing the throats of women and children in the poorest areas of the world. Even before 9/11, our nation has imposed sanctions on nations that have thwarted the livelihood of hospitals and social service agencies that provide basic necessities to the people who most need it – usually women with children.

I can’t stand Ann Coulter for calling the widows of 9/11 “broads” who were milking the system after their husbands were killed in the line of duty as police officers, EMTs, firefighters, and emergency responders.

I have trouble reconciling the fact that so many citizens believe that our billion dollar military makes our communities safer.

I question how so few us define patriotism for ourselves and leave it to bumper stickers and ribbon magnets.

I wonder when we will suffer further attacks.

My eyebrows furrow when people say that 9/11 proved that our country is not safe. WOC and POC communities are born into a reality where safety is never assigned or assumed.

I wish we all better understood the relationship of utilizing fear of the Al-Qeada as a tactic to bring a country to war.

My memories my friends who could not be faithful to their partners who were serving in Afghanistan and Iraq still makes me nauseous because of all the intimate pain of both people.

Blame is easy these days. I don’t blame just one president or one party or one attack or one generation. Violence is rarely a spontaneous act, it is often pre-meditatied, lurking in the minds of the powerful, waiting for the right opportunity to attack.

My Pet Goat became just as symblic as the towers, PA site, and the Pentagon that day.

I still wonder how I was expected to function that day at work.

Osama Bin Laden. Who is this man?

How have so many people forgotten to be one, not as a country, but as a world?

Muslims, religion, radicalism, violence, misunderstanding, violence, misconception, fear, hate, war. Violence, violence.

If I could create a headline tomorrow that signifies what I have seen of my country and many of its citizens since 9/11, it would be: A US-Adopted Mentality: “Out of Sight, Out of Mind”

Remember this: Not Hillary, Michael Moore, Obama, Everybody’s Mayor, nor Edwards can fix this.

The most sacred of things are also the most easily tarnished – unity, remembrance, silence, and Truth.

“They” are “us.”

Stop making movies about 9/11 that do not entirely benefit those who suffer/ed the most.

Why don’t we have flag at half mast during wartimes?

Six years is a scattering of dirt on one of thousands of coffins.

Patti Duncan.

In my endless surfing of women of color on the net, I have found Patti Duncan.

A woman who, from what I’ve read, has dipped her personal identity to mingle with her scholarship has published a book that has come out this past spring.

A woman who focuses on women of color organizing.

Enough.

That deserves some spotlight.

This essay aged a few months, but it came at a time when a borrage of requests landed in on my doorstep to “help” White feminists become more aware of their racism. In my own work to combat internalized oppression, internalized inferiority and superiority, I have found an invaluble community of Radical WOC to challenge and support me. Many thanks to BFP, Blackamazon, Lex, Fabulosa, Sylvia and the fierce supporters both on and offline.

For every human, fear is a natural component of life. In every situation, fear plays a part of our decisions in whom we choose to love, leave, vocation, direction, and faith. Fear, without discernment, can have a paralyzing, sometimes permanent cage in one’s life.

When I counseled individuals struggling with addiction, this quote hung on my corkboard, “The possibility of change is so fearful that most will stay with what is familiar to them, even if it is hell. The unknown is that daunting.”

For a feminist of color, fear encapsulates much of the process of self-actualization, or as I call it, tapping into the often frozen fountain of love and potential. Feminism, the multi-defined movement that centers justice on issues relating to women and gender, is hardly the warm home where a woman finds herself. Feminism, for women of color, depends largely on the level of ready availability of community, resources, support, and education.* (Education, not the formal academia style, but the roots of educating. A means of broadening one’s knowledge to lead a richer, fuller life.)

Mainstream feminism, theory and political action that receives primary attention and recognition, will often directly clash with the culture and experience of women of color. Mainstream feminism, while boasting strides that women of color are in fact included; transgender folks, individuals with disability, and non-heterosexual identified women continue to remain unwelcomed. In other words, mainstream feminism has fallen short of creating a place of friction. You want easier winds. The objectivity of mainstream feminism is often mildly fought negotiation and radical sisterhood, overlooking the basic premise that most non-white women were born with in their blood: Difference is inevitable, necessary, and good. Compromise is not always necessary or even needed. The simple existence of difference is needed. Compromise is not.

When discussing mainstream feminism, One radical feminist of color wrote,“ I normally do not participate. I want woc feminism to be so much more than just anger. I want it to be so much more than just reacting to stupid white people.” (Ahh, Fabulosa Mujer…)

Perfecto.

The empowerment of WOC, a force that history has yet to fully document, strikes fear into the heart of mainstream feminism. After all the careful thoughts, studying, language acquisition, and open panel discussions, many White feminists have asked me is it possible that I have been participating in oppressive behavior? Toward other women? These questions prompt pause and, in that pause, fear.

This fear often yields two reactions. One White and or mainstream feminists to sink their desperate claws in to the shoulders of WOC feminists and beg for a tutorial, a lesson for change, how to be better, live better, make others feel better. How do you get rid of conflict? Discomfort? This ugliness between us? This ugliness between us is not something that can be rid of by simply talking about it. It must be undone by your mind, your soul, your truthful admittance that you are living off the expenses of the marginalized and your extravagance has a price. You center yourself in your theory, why not center yourself in your decolonizing, de-racist work?

The second reaction is my favorite, and by far, more entertaining to read on blogs: TOTAL DISMISSAL of WOC and anger of the possibility that a progressive feminist has not thoroughly checked her knapsack and must be sent back to Peggy McIntosh for further examination.

What woc have known is that their lived experience is that of an entirely different species than that of their dominantly privileged counterparts. The corners of life that most privileged people dare not even speak or consider are the shadows in which woc not only visit, but exist and breathe in. How could their perspective not be deeper, to include the light and the shadow, the blood and the cells, the suffering and the redemption?

These truths of antiquity for WOC flow from their pens as if from their blood. They know mess. They hold both the blunt and the shy in their calloused hands. Our forefeministmothers knew they needed a different space and feared what that might be, where it would be. And so, many of them waited. They waited in the margins, too afraid to approach the center, too afraid to leave.

Then, suddenly, a shift occurs. A momentun begins. WOC realize that the margins extend beyond ourselves, and there are Others, so many Others hanging onto the little bit of faith, hoping Something will change, hoping their voices will be heard, hoping their blood will stain deep enough that will rouse an feminist investigation.

Radical WOC can spot each other. We find community and have broken off from the margins and turn our backs to an agenda that never served us, never truly listened to us, or even loved us enough to try and understand Brown, Black, and grey matter.

This shift, the No More Margin Living illustrates the current state of grassroots organization and separatism that is currently transpiring: WOC planning, strategizing, theorizing, building, and moving away from the margin and recreating a circle of their own, one with no margins known; an open circle with nothing in the center but deliberate inclusion and focus on the Other. It’s a circle, but with no vortex. It emphasizes knowledge, history, colonialization impact, imperialism – all found in self stories, in the narrative, not the text. It is no wonder, then, that when WOC begin to voice their own experiences White women begin to cry from dismantled sisterhood and intersectionality.

Please understand this: sisterhood was never whole to begin with.

The ability to live, move forward, progress WITH, not despite, difference is a conception that mainstream feminists have yet to embrace. And while the “mentionable” effect( aka giving shoutouts, sidebars, quick links, and forget-woc-not stats) provides a literary alibi which testifies that WOC are not being ignored, the truth is that the agenda on the clipboard largely remains dictated by white, middle-class, academy educated, Eurocentric American women. And the clipboard is not being passed around.

Well, we don’t need your clipboard. We have our minds. I am over this and am unafraid. So the only tutorial I can give is this: get over your fear. Walk out into the unknown, if you are that committed to anti-racism within feminism. Be willing to give up your comfort and privilege of ignorance and safety.

Let me know, but I’m not waiting.

Because if one more person gives me a book about feminism written for young women in which YOUNG women of color are given a sideglance

Because if I bitch anymore without offering options

Because if I don’t do my part in highlight women of color who are standing up and speaking out

I MIGHT GO NUTS BEFORE ’08 GETS HERE.

Want to give young women of color books to read where they may feel more at home with the author?

Here’s an option, order a copy or download the entire work of a woman from Advocates for Youth

Marcela Howard’s, “Walk in My Shoes: A Black Activist’s Guide for Surviving the Women’s Movement.”

I have yet to finish it in its entirety, but this is a series of essays meant for a younger crowd, a telling of why one woman of color stayed with the Women’s and Reproductive Rights Movement despite its history of racial exclusion.

This article from Reappropriate tackles some of the most pressing issues for women of color bloggers who have been run off their own blogs with threats and silencing.

I can’t say that I’ve encountered as much hate as some other bloggers, but I can only imagine the level of intimidation and hostility they have encountered.

The online and offline world are connected, whether you want to believe it or not. Human behavior translates onto the screen and affects the blogger similarly to offline encounters of racism, sexism, and homophobia. The only difference is that commenters get to “anonymously” threat and attempt to silence WOC. Cowards.

And similar to how I will not be silenced in the “real world” offline, I will not be silenced in my own space, my blog that I have created. “Sudy” is not untouchable or immune to the verbal hurts, but she is most certainly fierce and resilient. So, let this be my declaration of buoyancy. I may take breaks, I may sometimes need to regroup, but I will not be silenced, so don’t bother leaving threatening comments at my door. You are not welcome here, trollers. I am in solidarity with women who have been silenced by rape and violence, and I am in solidarity with women who have been silenced by stalking, threats, and initimidation.

So, listen up trollers:
I cannot and will not be bullied on my own blog, so take your mouth foam elsewhere.