You know what I'll never regret about this year?
Rambling post that I may delete because of confidentiality reasons
Walking out in the middle of a Slutwalk meeting. I only wish we had done that a week earlier like we had planned to. Especially since that meeting a week prior was dominated by white people hijaking the meeting to make it all about them and how not-important the actually important issues were.
Honestly I should have left after that meeting two days before the walk. I was recently going through my notes from the meetings (I was pretty much the only person who went to every single meeting from the very first one till the walk out) and I had found my notes were angry about what was happening right from the start. My notes from the first ever meeting about who would speak especially convey my confusion about the very problematic thing I had gotten myself into. But I kept going. I kept participating. I mistakenly thought that I could change something with my presence.
But there, in my notes from two days before, was a disturbing side conversation I had with another organizer.
One of the MCs, a WOC, had just declared that she would only speak at the rally if she was allowed to address the critiques of the march. The person sitting next to me scribbled in my notebook: "I feel really manipulated right now." I wrote back "Better manipulated than Silenced." there is a scribble where she began to respond but did not. I remember her giving me an angry look and moving seats. On the next page I wrote a rant about how much I hated everything happening in that room right then, how much I wanted to leave, but was too invested at that point.
The next day people were supposed to come to my apartment to make the front banner. (they never did BTW) I was already written in on all the permits as the lead front marshal. I was the security point person. I had materials at my apartment people had stored to bring down to the march. I was was a back up MC in case something went wrong (it did and I and the other back up person went on stage to close the rally). Already before the event happened and it all went so wrong I knew I should get out. I really did. I was so angry that I could not leave without causing the whole thing to crash and burn. And when it became clear that everything had indeed been wrong, that was when I heard about the walk out.
Less than one week after the march. That was when we first started planning it. And when the other camp in the room held that "talkback" many of the people who would later walk out sat together and passed our critiques to one another as notes. Up until that point we had thought we were alone in so many of our criticisms, but then we knew we were all on the same wavelength. That is how it was planned. As a group of angry organizers who were too fed up to keep working with the greater group. We would also meet outside meetings to vent to one another about what was happening, what we felt we could do to recover from it. As it is now, some of the members of my current political organization get triggered by the name "Slutwalk" alone, they feel so hurt and betrayed.
And when we walked out, someone tried to pass it off as just a clique leaving (if we seemed that way it was because we felt safe with one another, in a way we didn't with others in the room) and an other person (who we all admire) then pointed out to them that almost all, almost all, POC were part of the walk out. Because somehow, somehow!, there was a collective case of not getting it.
I will never regret being a part of the group that planned and executed that walk out. No, I am grateful. I am honored that those who felt marginalized in SWNYC meetings trusted me as an ally enough to include me in their plans. That we managed to do it, to stand up and tell that room that we could no longer participate in their problematic political discussions, that we had reached the end of our tolerance for bullshit. That we created a new organization, one that will hopefully actual center on what needs to be centered on (we have already hit some fairly major bumps, but I hope we will be able to work that out together). I am so proud of my found family. We made it through all of that together, and now we can begin to actually do the work that needs to be done to create a feminist organization we can be proud of.
So yeah. My eulogy for slutwalk is a gleeful one. Because while it is not yet fully dead, I do not regret seeing its end. I will never regret leaving it behind. My relation with that org had turned poisonous. I was crying almost every day because of just how.... awful the whole thing was.
Why?
Why did we have to have a conversation about what PGPs are at every meeting? Why did we only state PGPs one initially until a trans* woman involved in organizing demanded it be returned? Why did I have to stand up at the public forum and insist having people tell us their PGPs become mandatory, as it was somehow up for a vote again?
Why did one of my fellow organizers, a person I admire so fucking much, have to read to the group a seven fucking page letter about how torn up she felt by all that was going on, literally crying as she read it, only for the next comment from the group to be a white cis dude to announce he was not comfortable with us centering on the voices of those who felt thrust to the margins?
Why did the discussion about the destructiveness of binary gender have to be repeated time and time again?
How?
How are our reasons for leaving even a question, when they seem so blatently obvious, when i can remember them being vocalized sometimes cried or yelled at countless meetings only to be ignored.
So while slutwalk is not yet fully dead, I no longer consider it a part of my life. Those who wish to continue in that problematic group may continue to do so, but I am not a part of them. What they do has no connection to me and what I do. I have moved on. Moved on to a group that will hopefully hear the voices and complaints of those who are less privileged when they are raised. A group that actually understands intersectionality and how it works.
A group I can be proud to be a part of.
I don't talk too much on here about my political work. It is personal for me in a way my actual personal posts are not. Mainly because this is not just my personal life. It is deeply personal for everyone I work with, and I can not speak for them. I can only speak for my own personal experience, and my political work is more than that, and unless I am specifically given permission by my fellows I feel uncomfortable talking about it. But with all the posts I see going around about SW and the end of the year, and with that anon ask I was just given about my feelings towards SW now, I felt it prudent to express all of this.
Just a few months ago I was one of the key organizers of Slutwalk NYC. Today I would be glad to never hear the name Slutwalk again. It was a very long and rocky journey, but I think I like where I am now heading. Finally.
