mind body mama: Girl Power

So it came to pass that one of my feminist process groups had a discussion about the use of the word “girl” in the original name of our group.

One of the two African American members of the group initiated the conversation with an eloquent email. She started her sentences with phrases like, “In my community…” and “In my experience….”

The gist of her message was, “This feels really crappy to me and I’d like us to change the name.”

And so we did.

In the process, I noticed something.

I realized that I had never felt completely comfortable with the name of the group myself. The use of the word “girl” didn’t sit right with me, but I wasn’t entirely sure why. It felt somewhat anti-feminist to call a group of adult, professional women children.

It was the kind of thing the old school lesbian separatist feminists would not have liked. I thought of the thirty-year-old feminist vegetarian restaurant where the collective members call the patrons, “Women.” As in, “You women can sit by the window.” Because they don’t know our names and won’t call us “You guys,” or “You ladies,” as in the vernacular. They always call us, “Women.”

I thought of all of this. I felt uncomfortable with the word choice.

I didn’t say anything.

When my colleague described the way the word “girl” has been used derogatorily by non-Black people towards Black women in this country, I knew exactly what she was talking about. I hadn’t thought of it myself, but I got it.

About one hundred years ago when I was an undergraduate, I studied at the City University of New York. The student body of my college—Hunter College—was, at that time, over eighty-percent African-American women. The other twenty percent were not exclusively suburban blue collar middle class white lesbians.

Which is to say: the story of my undergraduate experience is the story of being different than those around me.

It is also to say: I had the incredible privilege to study feminism in a setting that was primarily Black.

By grace, I listened a lot as my classmates told their stories. I read a lot about the African American experience. I took in a lot of information about experiences other than my own. I learned to see the dominant culture and name things that had been as invisible to me as air: racism, classism, imperialism. I learned a feminism that assumes racial and economic justice as bedrock, not as secondary concerns in a hierarchy of oppressions.

So last month, when my colleague described how and why Black people have been called “boy” or “girl,” and how that nomenclature has been a tool of oppression, it was not new information to me. When she described her personal, visceral experience of having been called “girl” by the “rich, White ladies” for whom she worked, my heart hurt and I felt angry. When she suggested that we might not want her and the other Black women in our group to relive that oppression, that historic or personal memory, through our work and our name, I agreed immediately.

But it reminded me of the canary in the coal mine: the one who gets hit first, and hardest, by the deadly toxic fumes. The choice of the word “girl” for our group felt wrong to me. I had a scritchy awareness that something wasn’t right, the way you might notice a bad smell when you enter a room. But if you ignore it a while it becomes familiar and inoffensive; it requires no action.

But to my African-American colleague, for whom the language choice raised personal and community experiences of racism, it wasn’t a bad smell—it was a toxic cloud. While I was sniffing and saying, “Hmmm, smells funny here, huh?” she was falling onto the ground clutching her throat and coughing, “Ack, ack, ack!”

Does this mean that we are responsible to know in advance anytime our choice of language might translate to an experience of oppression for someone whose experiences are different than ours? I hope not. Because I know I’ll forget again. I might not forget this one, but I’ll miss something else—something completely obviously offensive to someone who’s lived a different experience than I have.

What I hope I’ll remember is how easy it was for me to brush off my own initial discomfort. How easy it was for me to discount the sexism inherent in calling adults by the childish descriptor, and how hard it was for me to access my own understanding of the racist echo. I had to be reminded—even though it was not new information; even though I had already heard many such stories.

I hope I’ll remember that the person living any given oppression is the expert therein; it is terribly hard to imagine ourselves into one another’s experience, even with good and large hearts. I hope that I’ll remember this when my straight or privileged-class or male allies tolerate the bad smell of language or action that feels like it’s killing me, and I hope I’ll have a fraction of my colleague’s dignity and wisdom with which to explain it to them. I hope that I’ll remember this when something feels scritchy but tolerable to me: that I can be a better advocate for myself and others if I speak up.

mind body mama: Fire Season

In the early morning of December 27 the fire departments of The County Seat and its neighbors responded to a flurry of suspicious blazes in the neighborhood surrounding the two-hundred year old fair grounds. Before dawn broke two houses had burned to the ground. Several cars were destroyed and thousands of dollars worth of property was damaged. Two men died.

Two weeks later another local family was shattered when police arrested their young son on suspicion of arson—and murder.

This past Sunday, Our House of Worship rocked with a lay-led Martin Luther King Day service. After lunch I took Small contra-dancing and ran into the Birth Pie family along the way. It was after sundown when I finally got home and booted up the PC to see how my Facebook friends had passed their day. Sweetie turned on the evening news to get some intel on the slushy mix starting to fall from the sky. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Small on Sweetie’s lap, transfixed by the television screen.

I heard my wife murmur, “Yes, it’s sad, someone’s church burned down.”

In a second I was at their side to see a steepled New England meeting house engulfed in flames. With a few keystrokes I confirmed that this was the church beloved by a new friend; visited often by SpecK; whose minister performed the perfect wedding of the Life Coach and her sweet man in October.

There is something about the image of a church burning that makes me cringe. There is something about the image of a church burning on Martin Luther King Day, in a season of fires, that was too much for me to see. I turned my eyes away but not before my insides curled like singed paper. The picture I could only look at for an instant hit the morning paper above the fold and followed me through Monday. It was gorgeous and repulsive, haunting and indelible.

There is, as yet, no reason given for the fire at the hilltown church. Churches burn, apparently, brilliantly well. They are filled with fuel and oxygen that feed a hungry fire. It is a great blessing that no one died.

On Tuesday afternoon I looked up from my computer to see my factory-working, motorcycle-driving, beer-drinking neighbor coming up his driveway in a suit and tie, his body hunched against the icy rain, arriving home from his mother’s burial. Later that night the Massachusetts Democrats were sucker punched and ceded Ted Kennedy’s senate seat to a right wing centerfold model. A week after natural disaster struck the most devastated nation in our hemisphere, the desperate people of Haiti still waited for help.

I curled up with Small on the sofa and finished reading Dennis Lehane’s masterpiece, The Given Day. The novel chronicles the human cost of the 1919 Boston police strike, the Spanish influenza epidemic, and a few crystalline moments of our nation’s bottomless capacity for racist, xenophobic violence. The next book I reached for was Geraldine Brooks The Year of Wonders, a chronicle of the 1666 plague in a small English village.

Reading, it appears, is not always a great respite. My mind became a soup of suffering, endurance, loss, humiliation and defeat. How tragic the death of any one of us is to those who live on, whether an elderly woman at the end of a life filled with love, or a sleeping young man victim to another’s cruel indifference; a little girl in a fire bombed church or a man fevered with a virulent flu.

Grief clings like ash. There is no getting clear of it; loss defines our time here. It seems almost senseless to speak of it; it is like trying to describe air.

Which is why I am looking upon my neighbors with nothing short of wonder this week. I am amazed that we keep getting up in the morning, given as it is that each of us will die—yes, even our mothers. We dig in rubble every day, whether the rubble of a nation that has nothing reduced to even less than nothing, or the rubble of our hearts when hope is buried by hurt.

I am thinking of that burned church’s congregation and how they will be called upon to love one another and hold each other’s grief and work for their common future. I am thinking of Martin Luther King shot down in cold blood for dreaming and of Sasha and Malia Obama waking up each day in the White House. I am thinking of the workers who died for our rights to an eight hour day and of the fact that someday there will be better health care in this country, whether or not I live to see it. I am thinking of the Democrats and how wildly we screwed up this election, and how nothing is really to be gained by self-recrimination and hurling accusations at one another.

We just have to dust ourselves off and begin again, because we are human, and that’s what humans do.

Mind Body Mama: Unity Strengthens, Diversity Transforms

I did just re-enter the world from a feminist idyll of sorts.

It was not a purely separatist feminist idyll, but it was six days of being surrounded by powerful, committed and delightful women and girls in my residence, conference sessions, meals, and workouts.

Unfortunately, it was not the kind of feminist idyll where no one was triggered by her memories of violence, objectification or harassment. But it was a place where, when a woman was triggered, she was able to ask for help from someone who had the skills to gently reground her in the present moment.

It was not a post-racial idyll where no one need attend to issues of race and racism. But it was a setting where teachers were interested in the challenge of teaching across race, language and culture and discussed concrete strategies for doing so effectively.

It wasn’t a conference where instructors and volunteers would not benefit from diversity training. It was a conference where top notch diversity training was provided and participants talked about what they learned all weekend.

It wasn’t the kind of feminist idyll where the founding mothers establish a succession and power sharing plan from the organization’s inception. (If you know of a women’s organization like this, please let me know—I want to join RIGHT NOW!) But it was a week within which the elders came to the next generation of leaders in direct and indirect ways and said, “We are getting tired, and you are enormously skilled. We have raised you well and it is time for you to help us lead this thing.” And we made plans to do so.

It wasn’t the kind of a feminist idyll where we felt confident that the larger world shared our vision and concerns. But it was a feminist, anti-racist gathering on the campus of Oberlin College, renowned for its early admission of women and African Americans, in a city where pride in its abolitionist and civil rights heritage runs deep.

It wasn't the kind of paradise where no one ever said or did anything racist. But it was the kind of place where at least one white woman took responsibility for saying something ignorant and hurtful by making a public apology to the entire gathering.

It wasn’t the kind of feminist idyll where a young girl was never struck still by anxiety, panic and grief. But it was a place where, at the moment that happened, the girl was partnered with a mama whose own daughter struggles with anxiety every day. And the girl was passed seamlessly, within seconds, to a skilled practitioner of Trauma First Aid.

It wasn’t the kind of feminist idyll where all the white women know that anti-racism is their cause too. But it was a place where, when the word went out through the grassroots that “the women of color want more white allies,” a few more of us got over our racist selves and showed up at the Anti-Racism Council meeting.

It wasn’t a feminist paradise far-reaching enough to carry us through the airport without Homeland Security catching up one of our group--a middle aged African American woman with a few too many (beautiful, wooden, handcrafted) martial arts weapons in her carry-on. But it might have had some kind of halo effect. Because the young, white, male officer who held her at security for a long, long time finally spoke in a tone of genuine respect and regret. “You have several choices: You can surrender them. I’m sorry I can’t offer to mail them for you; they are too large for the mailers. You can give them to someone who is not flying today. Or you can go back and check your bags, and we will escort you through the lines.”

It wasn’t a feminist idyll strong enough from keeping our acquaintance from getting stressed out through the long delay and intense scrutiny. But it was a community strong enough to stand with her. So that she finally emerged literally into the arms of black women and white women standing together—some friends and some merely colleagues—bearing witness, keeping an eye out for trouble, and practicing relaxed readiness.

Suffice it to say, it was hard to re-enter the world to hear Judge Sonia Sotomayor being grilled in tones condescension by a bunch of white male yahoos whose names I perhaps should recall, but I prefer not to.

It was a delight to hear Sotomayor’s own voice—gravelly and measured, with the distinctive tones of Puerto Rico and the Bronx. But her staid and steady answers to the most obnoxious of questions left me restless and frustrated. I’m glad NPR’s Ari Shapiro explained it to me: Sotomayor’s strategy for these hearings is to be as boring as possible. If that’s what it takes to get a brilliant, ambitious Nuyorican Latina onto the Supreme Court, I can handle snoozing through her confirmation hearings.

But if Sotomayor cannot say it herself, I wish that an analyst somewhere—someone with the same gravitas and power in her voice— would put things this baldly:

“On the subject of Sotomayor’s remarks about the unique perspective and strengths of a ‘wise, Latina’ jurist:

The fiction that one’s identity—including such things as race, class, gender, religion, national origin, ability status, and sexual preference—do not influence the sum total of one’s experience, and thus come to bear on one’s perspective and judgment, is an illusion which is not only more easily maintained by those in positions of power, but which directly and concretely benefits those who have traditionally controlled access to political power: namely white, male, upper class, apparently heterosexual, Christian North Americans.

You may choose to believe that your identities as white, upper class, apparently heterosexual, Christian North American men do not influence your ability to have compassion, empathy and deep understanding of the broadest diversity of Americans influenced by your law making and justice. I say “choose,” because I do not believe that good judgment and self awareness accrue disproportionately to any specific race or gender. I believe that you have the capacity to recognize your own biases, to look into your own experience and understand how it may limit your comprehension of the law and its effects. I believe you have the capacity, and I believe that some of you choose not to exercise it.

So you may choose to believe that you are “neutral.” But those of us who you define as other: women, people of color, immigrants, non-Christians—know better. We know that our intellects are forged within our experiences, and we know that yours are as well.

We know that your judgments are exercised through the prism of your privilege and that your choice to deny this is a handicap that limits your ability to fairly and effectively govern.

Our legal system is a triumph of civilization. Our pledge as jurists to be as impartial as possible, to treat all who come before us fairly, and to maintain systems that ensure equity, are a hallmark of the unity of our great nation.

But our citizenry is not—and has never been—a homogeneous monolith. And the extent to which our leadership in the judicial, legislative and executive branches can reflect the diverse experiences of our people, the stronger, more effective, more compassionate and more equitable our government will be.

Unity strengthens. Diversity transforms.”