Feminist Book Club?

Hopefully a place where I can share and explore some feminist texts and ideas. Please message me any time with your ideas from the text and keep the discussion going. The message button on my page it's called "conversation/ask." Let's make this an accessible place!

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Image: “Stumpf/Kane solicitation placed by ACT UP affinity group The Marys. collection of Joy Episalla.” 1992.

Source: Debra Levine, “How to Do Things with Dead Bodies”

Text: “Throughout the AIDS crisis, furious activists with advanced HIV disease have been saying they want their deaths to help further the fight against this country’s neglect and incompetence in the face of AIDS.

But until now, the idea of political funerals has remained just that - an idea. Political funerals aren’t part of the American activist tradition, as they are in Ireland, South Africa, and other countries. For years, the desires of activists who want to make a final statement with their bodies have gotten lost in a flurry of bereavement, familial wishes and the plain American terror of death.

We think it’s time our premature deaths carry some of same fury and focus that have marked our lives.

We’re establishing an organization that can carry out the directives of fellow PWA’s who want political funerals.

Whether that means a procession down Fifth Avenue, delivery of the coffin to the White House, or whatever.

We’re taking this action out of love and rage. The times are only getting more desperate.

If you’re interested, we’d like to talk to you.

We can be reached through: Stumpf/Kane, PO BOX 1187, NY NY 10113″

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ANGELA DAVIS: Many people don’t acknowledge how important Toni Morrison was to the emergence of what we now call a black feminist literature. TONI MORRISON: That's true. ANGELA DAVIS: And I just I mean, I say this to my students, I don’t know whether I’ve ever said it to you. But I remember when she was publishing Toni Cade Bambara, and Gayl Jones— TONI MORRISON: And Lucille Clifton, all of them. ANGELA DAVIS: So, you know, what we know as that black women’s writing that took shape in the seventies and the eighties would not have been possible had not Toni Morrison insisted as an editor at Random House on publishing these works, so let’s (applause) and you published Paula Giddings, and she published Paula Giddings’s first book, too. TONI MORRISON: Paula Giddings’s first book, Angela’s first book. ANGELA DAVIS: My first book. TONI MORRISON: Oh man. ANGELA DAVIS: She didn’t realize that she was doing this really historical— TONI MORRISON: And in case there was a hiatus, I sort of was writing in between myself, you know, and they didn’t like that at all. They didn’t hire me to write books, they hired me to edit them, but what can I say?

Angela Davis and Toni Morrison:Literacy, Libraries and Liberation

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Many people don’t acknowledge how important Toni Morrison was to the emergence of what we now call a black feminist literature...  So, you know, what we know as that black women’s writing that took shape in the seventies and the eighties would not have been possible had not Toni Morrison insisted as an editor at Random House on publishing these works...

Angela Davis in “Angela Davis and Toni Morrison: Literacy, Libraries and Liberation”

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“Angela Davis and Toni Morrison: Literacy, Libraries and Liberation”

October 27, 2010

A PDF of a written transcription of the event can be found here 

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Finally, what difference does it make in each case that a paradigm has been borrowed from another discipline? In both cases it reveals the limitations of a feminist theorizing that begins by already knowing what masculine and feminine mean rather than by investigating how those meanings are produced. On the one hand, feminist theory, even as it protests the status quo, protects it, by accepting male-female difference as the meaning of gender; on the other hand, by focusing on a system as ephemeral as fashion, differences within a single category (women's styles) become foregrounded in such a way that gender itself might disappear. Fore Hare-Mustin and Marecek the multiple meanings produced and sustained by a postmodernism that says truth is what we agree on, and for Silverman the refusal of the boundary between 'old' and 'new' represented by vintage clothing, offer a way out of reified binaries that prove insufficient for thinking about how masculine and feminine, as well as the humanities and social sciences, are contaminated by each other.

Anne C. Herrmann and Abigail J. Stewart. “Part One: Inventing Gender.”Theorizing Feminism (1994).

This comment about certain forms of feminism reaffirming certain gender norms echos to more current arguments about LGBTQ+ assimilation. Many of the campaigns for same-sex marriage rights (ex. HRC) promote the idea that same-sex marriages are basically identical to straight marriages. The argument against this framework says that it accepts definitions of love and marriage and couples and family, not challenging or changing our society’s understanding of these concepts. The organizations rely on the stereotypical images of marriage in order to progress for LGBTQ+ rights to marriage. Lots of early women activists like Mary Wollstonecraft and Elizabeth Cady Stanton theorized around the assumption that women as a gender were specially domestic. Many of the English and American suffragettes altered their tactics, largely abandoning women of color in the struggle, to adopt a cult of motherhood and domestic femininity in order to argue for the rights of white women. The “separate but equal” mindset says that even though women and men are different, they are both valuable. So this type of thinking would say, while men can do heavy lifting, women are more compassionate. Women can teach children, and men can balance the finances. Each gender has its strong points, and both should be appreciated for what they can do to support society. Implicit in this thinking is that there are inherent differences between men and women, and it largely accepts what woman and man “mean,” as Herrmann and Stewart say. While recognizing women’s disadvantaged place in a patriarchal society and advocating for more women’s legal rights, they agree to the whole concept that men and women are inherently different, naturally, biologically, socially, etc. The focus in this line of thinking is often on “sex difference,” which has fallen out of favor with people who prefer theories about gender socialization, and gender and sex fluidity, in line with queer studies.  

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The differences between women and even the divisions within the category 'woman' leave us with the question of whether gender still names a viable political identity. On the one hand, everyone knows what a 'woman' is when women's issues (such as equal pay) are at stake; on the other hand, the answers to 'what is womanhood?' can be as many as there are feminists. Rather than resolving this contradiction, feminism and feminist theory are defined by this tension, whose manifestation is determined by the concerns of a particular historical moment.

Anne C. Herrmann and Abigail J. Stewart. “Part One: Inventing Gender.” Theorizing Feminism (1994).

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Recent history: Theorist Judith Butler turns down 2010 Berlin “Civil Courage Prize”

In her speech refusing the prize, Butler explains why she is doing so:

“Some of the organizers explicitly made racist statements or did not dissociate themselves from them. The host organizations refuse to understand antiracist politics as an essential part of their work. Having said this, I must distance myself from this complicity with racism, including anti-Muslim racism.” (19 June 2010. Translated and published in The European Graduate School. Original video in German here.)

Jasbir Puar writes about how the work of queer people of color was truly responsible for Butler’s decision, and ignored. 

“Let’s recognize, as Tavia notes, that Butler put her celebrity-theorist status to good use. But let’s also celebrate what she directs our attention to: the hard groundwork of queer of color, anti-racist organizations that put their lives on the line everyday, for whom violent retribution is a reality. Pointing to a primary facet of homonationalism — the manufacturing of a global progressive image through the negation of national difference — Butler states in an English interview after the award ceremony, ‘They didn’t need to look all the way to the United States to find someone with civil courage.’” ("Celebrating Refusal: The Complexities of Saying No” Bully Bloggers. 23 June 2010.)

One of the 4 groups Butler names as actually deserving the award was SUSPECT, self-described as “a new group of queer and trans migrants, Black people, people of colour, and allies. Our aim is to monitor the effects of hate crimes debates and to build communities which are free from violence in all its interpersonal and institutional forms.” They released a statement in the Monthly Review titled “Judith Butler Turns Down Civil Courage Award from Berlin Pride: 'I Must Distance Myself from This Racist Complicity'” (20 June 2010). They saw this specific Pride event and its racism in a long line of white LGBT and queer racism. 

“2008 is also the year that the hate crimes discourse enters more significantly into German sexual politics. Its rapid assimilation was aided by the fact that the hatefully criminal homophobe was already known: migrants, who are already criminalised, and are incarcerated and even deported with ever growing ease. This moral panic is made respectable by dubious media practices and so-called scientific studies where every case of violence that can be connected to a gay, bi or trans person (no matter if the apparent perpetrator is white or of colour, and no matter if the basis is homophobia, transphobia or a traffic altercation) is circulated as the latest proof of what we all know already -- that queers, especially white men it seems, are worst off of all, and that 'the homophobic migrants' are the main cause for this. This increasingly accepted truth is by no small measure the fruit of the work of homonationalist organizations like the Lesbian and Gay Federation Germany and the gay helpline Maneo, whose close collaboration with Pride ultimately caused Butler to reject the award. This work largely consists in media campaigns that repeatedly represent migrants as 'archaic', 'patriarchal', 'homophobic', violent, and unassimilable.”

In the q+a section of a panel, when asked about Butler and the award, Angela Davis picks up on this point about the myth of people of color being more homophobic than white people.

“We consider the extent to which the ideological structures of homophobia, of transphobia, of heteropatriarchy are embedded in our institutions. The assumption that one group of people is gonna be more homophobic than another group of people misses the mark. It misses the mark because we not only have to address issues of attitudes, but we have to address the institutions that perpetuate those attitudes, and that inflict real violence on human beings.” (”Angela Davis on Judith Butler's refusal to accept Berlin CSD Civil Courage Prize”)  

To end, here are the organizations Butler cited. 

LesMigraS http://www.lesmigras.de/ 

GLADT (Gays and Lesbians From Turkey) http://www.gladt.de/    

SUSPECT http://nohomonationalism.blogspot.com/ 

ReachOut http://www.reachoutberlin.de/ 

Transgeniale CSD https://transgenialercsd.wordpress.com/ 

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“Angela Davis on Judith Butler’s refusal to accept Berlin CSD Civil Courage Prize.” [video + transcription]

“Well I certainly hope Judith Butler’s refusal to receive the Civil Courage Award will act as a catalyst for more discussion about the impact of racism, even within groups that are considered to be progressive.

[That] somehow people from the global south, people of color are more homophobic than white people is a racist assumption.

We consider the extent to which the ideological structures of homophobia, of transphobia, of heteropatriarchy are embedded in our institutions. The assumption that one group of people is gonna be more homophobic than another group of people misses the mark. It misses the mark because we not only have to address issues of attitudes, but we have to address the institutions that perpetuate those attitudes, and that cause, that inflict real violence on human beings.

And I was going to say in answer to the last question about the urgency of the late 60s, that if, had people had not acted with that urgency, we would not perhaps have the expanded notion of social justice that we have, we wouldn’t perhaps have the vocabulary; and it’s always been a struggle over language, over a vocabulary. And I’ve come to believe, that when we win victories in movement struggles, that what we do is we change the whole terrain of struggle. So we don’t simply add on. We don’t add on women to black people. We don’t add LGBT people to women and to black people. We don’t add on trans people and so forth. Each time we win a significant victory, it requires us to revisit the whole terrain of struggle. And so therefore we have to ask questions about the impact of racism in gay and lesbian movements. We have to ask questions about the impact of racism in the women’s movement. We have to ask questions about the impact of sexism or misogyny in black communities. And we have to ask questions about the influence of homophobia in black communities or communities of color. This notion of intersecting or cross-hatched or overlaying categories of oppression is one that has come to us thanks to the work of women of color feminists.”