Cherry Smiley reflects on her PhD experience examining the prostitution of Indigenous women as a form of colonial male violence, and how academia is failing Indigenous women in Canada.
Cherry Smiley is a feminist, artist, and researcher from the Nlaka'pamux and Dine' Nations. She is currently a PhD candidate in the communications studies program at Concordia University in Montreal and founder and executive director of Women's Studies Online.
“Feminist problems.
As feminists we need to talk with each other about individual women and feminist organizations that align themselves with the woman-hating racist conservative right. Maybe sisters have that option to reach across the aisle because they are white, thin, able and willing to push aside matters of Indigenity, racism, borders, and poverty, just for now because the left has abandoned us and no one else will give us a platform. Sisters who are not white, not thin, and who cannot or refuse to push aside matters of Indigenity, racism, borders, and poverty, just for now, might have less hands waiting to hold theirs across the aisle. I understand how alone and abandoned we can feel by those we thought were our allies (they never were) but cooperating with the conservative right is not the answer, in part because they hate us just as much as the left does and their fight, like the left, imagines a very different world than we do when our struggle is won.
Another issue we need to discuss as feminists is the idea of free speech. Free speech is a lie. Free speech only applies to men because men are encouraged their entire lives to speak because they are consistently taught that what they have to say is important. Women, as Andrea Dworkin articulated, are discouraged from speaking — Constantly being told you’re worthless, useless unimportant, and wrong and lifetimes of male violence and the threat of male violence can make it incredibly difficult for women to trust ourselves and our own perceptions of reality enough to speak. I advocate for “feminist speech” and will write more about this later.
More feminist problems.
White feminism has excluded me, silenced me, called the police on me, kicked me out of conferences, and had me removed from their feminist table. I hear this a lot and I’ve said similar in the past too. Now I know that we, Indigenous, Black, and other sisters of colour, cannot be shut out, kicked out, silenced, discarded, or removed from every seat (except one if we behave) at this feminist table. They can call the cops on us but I hope not.
We can’t be ignored, discarded, or silenced because we’re already here at our own feminist table! Take a seat white sisters and join us in our fight for women’s liberation! And if you don’t want to, well then we’re just going to keep doing what we’ve been doing all along: putting women first, fighting for all women, and saying what we need to say, no matter the cost. Lack of support, agreement, and resources has not stopped us yet and will certainly not stop us now.
Feminism doesn’t need to include us and feminism can’t exclude us because we are already here at a feminist table with plenty of seats for plenty of sisters and we’re not going anywhere.
Women menstruate.
“‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud? “
-J.K. Rowling
Today, lesbian women are pressured, shamed, threatened, and accused of committing transphobic violence by refusing to be penetrated by the girldicks of men who feel like lesbians. Lesbian sisters matter and they are particularly targeted and impacted by transgender ideology. The hateful, threatening, and violent responses by men to lesbian sisters who assert their boundaries as same-sex attracted women gives us a sense of how patriarchy and woman-hating is embedded in transgender ideology; that is, if we bother to listen, to believe women when they say they are being harmed, and if we bother to imagine that maybe, just maybe, women matter.
It matters that today, long-time dedicated feminist activists who have been working toward women’s liberation for decades are called bigots and written-off, ignored, and punished for organizing for women’s liberation without men and especially without men who feel they are women. The hateful, threatening and violent responses to these feminists gives us a sense of how patriarchy and woman-hating is embedded in transgender ideology; that is, if we bother to listen, to believe women when they say they are being harmed, and if we bother to imagine that maybe, just maybe, women matter.
It matters that today, a woman who says “women menstruate” is met with overwhelming public condemnation and an onslaught of threats to rape, beat, stab, murder, set that disgusting transphobic ugly hate-filled white privileged TERF on fire don’t you know transwomen are women and transmen are men and some men menstruate and die TERF but choke on my ladydick first.
Well, too bad everybody, we’ve heard it all before and we’re still here.
Issues of sex and gender and transgender ideology are important but only and always in the context of women’s liberation. They impact our ability to see each other, recognize each other, and organize with each other. To address these issues, as well as race or class, as single-issue is a mistake but only if you believe that women matter. I’m not “gender critical”. I am a feminist who is part of the women’s liberation movement and this is what I work toward with other women: our collective liberation. The abolishment (not reformation) of gender is not the end goal, this is part of the work of feminist revolution and there is a lot more very important work to do as well.
No woman owes anyone a justification as to why she dares to say, in public no less, that she and other women matter. No woman should ever be asked, expected, or feel pressured to reveal to anyone the hurt men have caused to her to justify her analysis of issues that impact her. If and when we decide to share accounts of the horrific male violence so many of us have lived through, we do it on our terms and for our purposes.
Sisters, we are accountable to each other as a community of women who organize together for women’s liberation. We don’t owe anyone an apology or an explanation or a justification for saying that we are not menstruators, we are women, and we matter. We will continue to describe our bodies and realities as we know them to be.
And as always thank you to the brave sisters who came before and stuck their necks out for all of us: for women they knew, didn’t know, women who agreed with them, women who didn’t agree with them at all, and for the women who were yet to enter into this world through their mother’s vagina, imagine that.”
“When I was younger, my grandma didn’t teach me about all the things I wasn’t supposed to do because I was female. This included not…
Someone told me recently that I rarely show anger. The rules of femininity don’t allow for anger and showing this emotion can be dangerous for women. Maybe we’l
Important read from Cherry Smiley
“Do not tell Indigenous women and girls about all the racist abuse Indigenous men will suffer from the media and criminal justice system if their unacceptable behaviour is exposed. However true this may be, this statement works to stop Indigenous women from speaking out about Indigenous men who have assaulted them. We are already aware of the many barriers and risks we face in these situations. The last thing we need is discouragement from speaking up and speaking out. What we need is women who will have the courage to stand with us when we do.
Stop calling #metoo a movement because it is not a movement. #Metoo is a moment in feminist action that has managed to somehow sever itself from the herstory of the women’s liberation movement. It is not new that women name and speak out against male violence. What does seem to be different is that maybe, for the moment, this practice is more mainstream. Do not participate in helping to erase the herstory of feminism. Read about accomplishments and failures of our foremothers, talk to older women about this herstory – learn it and move it forward.”
