Femme writing
On line writing has not quite been my thing lately, too many other writings in process and too much work to do. Perhaps this will change when the book is finally done. In retrospect perhaps I could have blogged my way through the frustrations and writing blocks along the way of this process but somehow it seems that blogging to me still feels a bit like lecturing to an unknown audience or taking one's clothes off in front of a window. With what to me sometimes feels like too much public performance as it is (and it sure ain't much) blogging feels like an unneccessary addition.
Feminism missionary style
”In what moments are we, as feminists, authorized to speak for other women about what we, as theorists and activists, interpret as their oppression?” Gina Dent
The personal is indeed political and feminism is about coming to voice, articulating oppression and making personal confessions. But who does this serve? What particular feminist agenda is being advanced? And who benefits from it? These are the carefully thought through questions asked by Gina Dent in a text published quite some years ago in Rebecca Walker’s anthology To be Real.
In a set of reflections engaged with the question of what does feminism look like now that we are committed to moving beyond the unified subject of feminism, Dent writes:
’So i ask here quite seriously: how and when did feminism become a religion? When did we begin to proselytize, on the basis of this moral obligation we have, to save? And I ask…how do we address the question of women’s agency, of attributions of false conscousness and delusional thinking in racial and feminist and class-based terms? In other words, how do we teach and encourage feminism without assuming that those who do not proclaim it- or or who proclaim it in a way other than we might expect- do not use it, without assuming that those who are not its missionaries are living in ”sin”? (69)
In Bang’s issue on Conflict earlier this year, aside from wanting to offer a set of contradictory reflections on what it might mean to be a feminist located in Sweden if one was born in northenr Sweden in the seventies, I tried to articulate my ambivalence towards the concept of generational thinking within feminism. Reading Gina Dent, I am reminded of why I did that and what I wanted to put forth:
Dent writes:
"the generational language hides other differences within it- national trajectories, sexual orientation, professional status, etc. in effect, then, the problem is not so much in the gap between generations of feminists, but in the efforts of feminists having now matured into many levels of activity in many places and, consequently, the hierarchy in the ways those activities are claimed. Establishment feminism, then is not simply white and bourgeois, as Black feminists have argued in the past. The ”third wave’s” attempts to grapple with that hierarchy require more than the old ways of analyzing race and class. The current diversification of descriptive identities, and the (at last) more compmonly accepted notion of the impossibility of ascribing to any of those identities a single perspective, necessitates another kind of language for feminism.” (71)
My students know that I am quite fond of pointing out and thinking critically about the ways in which our albeit secularized but nonetheless deeply Christian cultural heritage shape the ways in which hegemonic stories of feminism and gender equality are being cast.
Tropes that are deeply Christian saturate feminist practices in the Western world. The notion of confession is at the heart of consciousness raising and the concept of ’the personal is political’. The idea of the testimonial. Above all, the practice of missionizing is central to the notion of enlightening those who have not yet come upon feminism as a way of understanding, and above all, narrating their oppression. And of course the age old distinction between good and bad girls can be traced back to biblical ideas about women’s sexuality, its uses and its consequences.
As we approach election day in Sweden, the missionary style of feminism is indeed alive and well, and the question many of us are asking is what is, in reality, the difference between the feminism advocated by the Green Party, The Leftist Party and the Feminist Initiative? Aside from the notion that feminism is just so? Is feminism enough to imagine a better world? Do we want an integrated feminist analysis in a party platform and if so, what is the difference between the more individualized approach of the Green Party and solid socialist materialist approach of the Left Party? Is it enough, as the Feminist Initiative repeats over and over again, to work for the presence of an explicit feminist perspective in parliament?
I have long ago stopped believing in quotas per se. I have long ago stopped believing that women as such will advance a feminist or even pro-women agenda. I have long ago stopped believing that feminists are by definition capable of understanding what a critique of heteronormativity means for a feminist analysis. I have long ago stopped believing that feminists by definition are anti-racist and anti-nationalist.
The three candidates (and yes, I appreciate that we have the privilege of discussing details in strategy and ideology) are all interested in the same feminist issues. Feminist initiative seems to think that if they get into parliament that by itself will mean that a feminist agenda will be advanced. The leftist party has in many ways advocated that very same agenda for many years. Is it enough? No. Has it reached its goals? No.
Above all, I wonder about what will happen with the movement. Organizing a feminist party has required a massive grass roots effort. It has politicized the feminist movement in Sweden and it has pointed to some serious and deep-rooted differences within the movement. Regardless of how the election turns out tomorrow, I hope that this movement will not become an institution, that the work will not stop the moment seats are taken in parliament and that if they don’t make it, it won’t mean that the next four years will be all about getting to that point in four years.
The real work does not begin but it continues on Monday. The work of discussing what the effects of feminist analysis and organizing is on changing people’s everyday lives. The work of acknowledging and politicizing all the different ways in which people on the left are feminists in their practices and thoughts even though they may not define themselves as such. Feminism as such- that is recognizing that gender and power are linked- is not a radical idea anymore, it is a truism. Now it is time to talk about how we in fact understand the relationship between gender and power. The best way to do that is to discuss power as such.
Who is going to decide what makes advertising sexist? On what grounds? Who is going to represent sex workers in discussions of their rights and experiences? How are the rarely examined taken for granted ideas of everyone’s right to love, sex, desire, and children racialized? What does it mean to be free? How are we always already located in a stratified economic system where one woman’s right to choose is dependent on someone else’s lack there of?
Cherrie Moraga, "The Danger Lies in Ranking the Oppressions" (1983)
"In this country, lesbianism is a poverty-as is being brown, as is being a woman, as is being just plain poor. The danger lies in ranking the oppressions. The danger lies in failing to acknowledge the specificity of the oppression. The danger lies in attempting to deal with oppression purely from a theoretical base. Without an emotional, heartfelt grappling with the source of our own oppression, without naming the enemy within ourselves and outside of us, no authentic, non-hierarchical connection among oppressed groups can take place." (Moraga, 52-53)
From Cherrie Moraga, Loving in the War Years/lo que nunca paso por sus labios Boston: South End Press, 1983. ?
New Beginnings
What a fabulous summer. London, Paris, San Francisco, Stockholm, Manchester. I love my job. Very little time to work on this new idea of a blog and a very acute insight into how lame my computer skills are. You should get a website! You should have a blog! You should keep a live journal! You should get a Myspace account! How many times have people said this this summer? Yes, this is were all the conversations, disseminations, and representations are happening. Not to mention the dating. I can't keep up!
The femme conference was terrific. And the article on femme-inism was very timely. It seems that things are moving and shaking in the world of feminist sexual politics. It will be an interesting fall, for sure. So I might take the advice of the brilliant femmes whom I've had the privilege of playing, discussing, making photographs, interviewing and engaging with this summer. Indeed. I shall begin anew, like the school year, like academia, like the start of a new lionness calendar year, I will soon get over my fear of blogging and technology.
The femme conference was terrific. And the article on femme-inism was very timely. It seems that things are moving and shaking in the world of feminist sexual politics. It will be an interesting fall, for sure. So I might take the advice of the brilliant femmes whom I've had the privilege of playing, discussing, making photographs, interviewing and engaging with this summer. Indeed. I shall begin anew, like the school year, like academia, like the start of a new lionness calendar year, I will soon get over my fear of blogging and technology.
Rose of No Man's Land
Ah so much love for girlhood stories.
Reading Rose made me miss the days of teaching classes on girlhood. Perhaps one day I will do that again. For now it will have to suffice to read about it while I worke on my own story.
As for Tea favorites, Rose is not any where near the top. I look forward to the new anthology, coming out in december.
Last time I tried to blog and realized for some reason I could not add in links, was when I had finally finished Michelle Tea's latest novel, Rose of No Man's Land. Guess I might as well post it now.
I love the cover, it is all pink and cool and the title is promising. However, although it does tell a great story from the perspective of a teenage girl who oversleeps on the last day of junior high, her sister who wants to be a hairdresser and make it onto The Real World, and of course of Rose, her new and only friend. For some reason I keep thinking of Angelina Jolie's character in Girl, Interrupted, which makes no sense, but somehow I can see a young Angelina Jolie playing Rose in the movie if there is ever one. It's not quite as great as Valencia in my opinion (probably because Valencia is so associated with my California memories), I really liked Tea as the poet-laureate of the Mission, but it is a very cool story and Tea is definately establishing herself as an accomplished writer. She is the mistress of wicked girlhood stories, this we have known since the debut Passionate Mistakes which I like better than Rose.
Michelle Tea's affinities with another favorite storyteller of coming of age as a girl, Dorothy Allison, has long been clear, and I still remember when Allison read with Michelle Tea after Without a Net: Growing up Female and Working Class came out. Dorothy Allison is one of the best theorists of class I can think of. The reading was at the Community Center in San Francisco I think and it was a benefit for something. A reading about growing up working class and I think the cover was something like 20 bucks. Sliding scale of course, and there was always the option of paying with labor. Dorothy Allison, unlike some of the younger cooler types in the book, took the time to walk around and shake all the volunteers' hands and introduce herself. I can't wait for her to write a new book. Someone I love is
(By the way: I hate having to do advertising for Amazon.com in order to get images of things I like. Please support your local bookstore. If you live in Sweden, go to the one and only bad ass feminist queer bookstore, Hallongrottan. More on this great place to come.)
Anyways, writers like Dorothy Allison, Eileen Myles, Michelle Tea have always inspired how I think about class. Allisons writings have always taught me how femme is tied to class in the US context. The femme conference taught and reminded and confirmed a lot of things. Among them, that there certainly ain't nothing normative, middle class feminine about femme.
I love the cover, it is all pink and cool and the title is promising. However, although it does tell a great story from the perspective of a teenage girl who oversleeps on the last day of junior high, her sister who wants to be a hairdresser and make it onto The Real World, and of course of Rose, her new and only friend. For some reason I keep thinking of Angelina Jolie's character in Girl, Interrupted, which makes no sense, but somehow I can see a young Angelina Jolie playing Rose in the movie if there is ever one. It's not quite as great as Valencia in my opinion (probably because Valencia is so associated with my California memories), I really liked Tea as the poet-laureate of the Mission, but it is a very cool story and Tea is definately establishing herself as an accomplished writer. She is the mistress of wicked girlhood stories, this we have known since the debut Passionate Mistakes which I like better than Rose.
Michelle Tea's affinities with another favorite storyteller of coming of age as a girl, Dorothy Allison, has long been clear, and I still remember when Allison read with Michelle Tea after Without a Net: Growing up Female and Working Class came out. Dorothy Allison is one of the best theorists of class I can think of. The reading was at the Community Center in San Francisco I think and it was a benefit for something. A reading about growing up working class and I think the cover was something like 20 bucks. Sliding scale of course, and there was always the option of paying with labor. Dorothy Allison, unlike some of the younger cooler types in the book, took the time to walk around and shake all the volunteers' hands and introduce herself. I can't wait for her to write a new book. Someone I love is
(By the way: I hate having to do advertising for Amazon.com in order to get images of things I like. Please support your local bookstore. If you live in Sweden, go to the one and only bad ass feminist queer bookstore, Hallongrottan. More on this great place to come.)
Anyways, writers like Dorothy Allison, Eileen Myles, Michelle Tea have always inspired how I think about class. Allisons writings have always taught me how femme is tied to class in the US context. The femme conference taught and reminded and confirmed a lot of things. Among them, that there certainly ain't nothing normative, middle class feminine about femme.
Reading Rose made me miss the days of teaching classes on girlhood. Perhaps one day I will do that again. For now it will have to suffice to read about it while I worke on my own story.
As for Tea favorites, Rose is not any where near the top. I look forward to the new anthology, coming out in december.
The view from whore street
So there we sit, as the sun finally, thankfully, sets. A small balcony on the 5th floor, two tiny chairs and Sacre Coeur like a snow white dream of perfection against the blue sky in the background. How many years has the view been the same from here? My father always walks all the steps up there she says as she pours the wine. Being from the countryside is important to who she is she adds. Back in Pigalle and I love it, I love the tall entrances to the buildings, I love the seediness of it, I love the voyeurism that lives there. It has changed a lot in the last ten years she says and I nod, I remember shaking legs at 18 walking through these streets, curiously and with little shield to the tough confrontational gender politics of this city.
She has learned to walk on heels by a drag queen she says. First following a line, making sure you can walk without tripping. Then you have to do all the housework in them, vacuuming, dishes, cleaning. You do this until it really starts to hurt, and that's where it starts.
The heat gives me surreal dreams. I am unsure of where I am in time, remembering viscerally different moments in this city before. It is a question of maturity she says. That is what I know that I want now. The view from whore street is not a view from nowhere. It views gender politics with the sharpened awareness that we live in the charged battlefield between danger and pleasure. It is knowing the codes so we can explode them from within, it is the snickery out of focus of making porn in a graffittied bathroom stall. It is laughing at the phantasm of webcam sex. Time and space implodes in the city that never sleeps and I could stay here for eternity.
Public women
Made the mistake of making eye contact with a man while sitting on a terrass at Place de la Republique last night. He proceeded to follow us all the way home, without my companions ever knowing he did it. What did he think I said to him when I made eye contact? Did he just want to look at me? Did he think I was offering him something?
Paris is the city of flaneurs. The flaneur was born here. It has become increasingly clear to me that the flaneur has no feminine equivalent. Who is the woman who enjoys walking the streets, looking at people, enjoying their looks? She is certainly not a flaneuse.
Decided that I needed to look up geezer, as it is a word i am currently enchanted with, in my new favorite of word tributes, in the Urban Dictionary:
”A Geezer is a male englishman who likes drinking, football, and violence, preferably all at the same time. Wants to be the typical cockney jack the lad. They dress up smart to normally pull 'birds' favourites being Stone Island and Burberry. Theyre basically like a better meaner version of a Chav and not bad people to know aslong as you just prove your a 'geezer'. Sorted me ol' mucker...”
”A person who enjoys consuming large amounts of alcohol, acting rowdy, and splitting peoples wigs. All because they have entirely too much time on their hands.
Believe me, you don't want to go to that party. It'll be full of geezers, all getting sloppy and looking for trouble.”
Gay Paris
Oh hold me mommy. It is *hot* in Gay Paris. And so romantic in a seedy way that I can't help but love. I get to sleep in the most delightful room that has nothing other than a large bed, a fire place and huge french windows to the busy street. I feel the bad girl's genealogy very strongly in a city that has a special term for that person that you shag between 5 and 7.
It has been an intense few days. Meeting with the lovely ladies who queerupt this place was so far the highlight of the trip. Or perhaps the rooftop balcony party overlooking the Eiffeltower last night. Or looking for a boa in La Pigalle with the most stunningly sharp red head femme. Or going on the back of the vespa to the outdoor club by the canal. The boys say that my ass was on french TV but I think they are lying. There was a camera there. There were also a few other rather bizarre elements to the evening.
I have not had time off in a long time that is one thing I am realizing. I could easily spend a summer in Paris. My french is much better than I actually thought which of course means nothing since I didn't expect to be able to talk at all. Apparently I managed to explain jämställdhetsfabriken fairly well the other night. Or perhaps I just thought I did. We had consumed a magnum bottle of champagne.
Bad Girls
Vad är då en bad girl kan man undra i dessa tider av sexualpolitisk debatt? För två år sedan skrev fittavgjutaren och sexradikala feministen Ylva-Maria Thompson så här på sajten Girls Corner:
”Dåliga flickor” är till skillnad från ”fina flickor” en etikett man sätter på vissa kvinnor som inte beter sig enligt normen – normen för hur flickor ska bete sig.
Men när kvinnor själva kallar sig Bad Girls finns det ett medvetet ställningstagande med i bilden.
Men när kvinnor själva kallar sig Bad Girls finns det ett medvetet ställningstagande med i bilden.
Men det krävs mer än ett avvikande från normen för att vara en riktig Bad Girl.
En Bad Girl experimenterar och utmanar bilden av hur en kvinna ska bete sig på olika sätt, men framför allt gör hon det offentligt och bryr sig inte om ifall hon provocerar.
Det finns alltid en sexuell provokation eftersom kvinnans sexualitet genom tiderna varit så starkt reglerad.
Det finns nästan alltid humor.
En ”Bad Girl” är respektlös såtillvida att hon inte tar hänsyn till omgivningens behov av att konservera gamla förlegade värderingar när det gäller könsroller och sexualmoral.
Just det, medvetenhet, omförhandlad femininitet, offentligt agerande och ett aktivt motstånd mot de normer som finns kring kön och sexualitet. Ska det vara så svårt att förstå?
(Y) är också inne på det som Rosie Lugosi ofta talar om, nämligen den låga status som kvinnor utan barn erhåller i vårt samhälle. "Kan man redan nu se frivillig barnlöshet som en slags feministisk protest mot det patriarkala samhället och dess förväntningar på oss som kvinnor" undrar (Y). Jag kan inte erinra mig om att jag sett det resonemanget någonstans i de senaste årens återuppfunna och återantända föräldraskapsdebatt. Att barnlöshet inte diskuteras mer bland svenska feminister är intressant. Om det diskuteras är det nästan alltid i termer av barnlösas rättigheter att skaffa barn på andra sätt. Att begreppet barnlöshet över huvud taget finns är ett tydligt uttryck för en väldigt stark norm.
Resten av artikeln hittar du här
Det finns alltid en sexuell provokation eftersom kvinnans sexualitet genom tiderna varit så starkt reglerad.
Det finns nästan alltid humor.
En ”Bad Girl” är respektlös såtillvida att hon inte tar hänsyn till omgivningens behov av att konservera gamla förlegade värderingar när det gäller könsroller och sexualmoral.
Just det, medvetenhet, omförhandlad femininitet, offentligt agerande och ett aktivt motstånd mot de normer som finns kring kön och sexualitet. Ska det vara så svårt att förstå?
(Y) är också inne på det som Rosie Lugosi ofta talar om, nämligen den låga status som kvinnor utan barn erhåller i vårt samhälle. "Kan man redan nu se frivillig barnlöshet som en slags feministisk protest mot det patriarkala samhället och dess förväntningar på oss som kvinnor" undrar (Y). Jag kan inte erinra mig om att jag sett det resonemanget någonstans i de senaste årens återuppfunna och återantända föräldraskapsdebatt. Att barnlöshet inte diskuteras mer bland svenska feminister är intressant. Om det diskuteras är det nästan alltid i termer av barnlösas rättigheter att skaffa barn på andra sätt. Att begreppet barnlöshet över huvud taget finns är ett tydligt uttryck för en väldigt stark norm.
Resten av artikeln hittar du här
Transfabulous Femme Summer of 2006
Hurra. Summer is approaching and its looking damn good. Many many fun events. Beginning with Transfabulous and ending with Femmes of Power at Femme 2006.
All hail the goddess, hold me mommy, I can't wait for the femme conference. The program is finally up, including for the cabarets on Friday (Shawna Virago, Dossie Easton, Meliza Banales, and others) and Saturday (Rosie Lugosi, Tara Hardy, Diamond Daggers, Burlesque-esque, Krista Smith) are going to be amazing. So many old friends, respected performers, brilliant poets. Not to mention the keynoters and all the workshops. I love my job.
Stockholm Pride is bound to be more femme-inist than ever with the bad ass girls in charge of Pride House. As for the rest of the politics of Pride, we shall see. One learns to pick one's battles, that is for sure.
Hootchy Kootchy Club
Went to the much talked about Hootchy Kootchy Club at Södra Teatern. Lovely space, lovely show, lovely idea all around. Yet, there was something weird about it. Perhaps it was all the men with their tongues hanging out, drooling over the kittens in what seemed like a less-than-unusual way. Perhaps it was the boy running around sneakily taking pictures of all the gorgeous femmes with his mobile phone like it was his fucking birthright. Perhaps it was the surprisingly low number of queers there (those present were gorgeous shining stars, that is for sure). Somehow, despite all the excellent outfits, the wonderful music, the excellent show, it didn't quite seem to work for me and my friends. Somehow it all felt like the same old story. Does the performance of burlesque hootchy kootchy kittens do anything exciting for sexual politics in a heteronormative world? Or is it just a supposedly "radical" and "alternative" way for the same old thing- men enjoying women as entertainment? It made me wonder what makes something queer. What makes something subversive. What makes expressions of feminine sexuality powerful? Is it context? Audience? What bodies we see on stage? I wondered about this performance in relation to, say, the Diamond Daggers, in San Francisco. I wondered if it would have made a difference if the club had been filled with genderbending queers.
"Everyone", especially among the enlightened leftist cultural elite of Södermalm, agrees that trafficking is a bad idea, that women suffer in the porn industry, and that there is something boring about mainstream airbrushed representations of female bodies and so forth and so on. Then why did it feel like there was something strangely gross about the consumtion of these kittens? Why did I have the occasional feeling of being at a fraternaty outing at a stripclub?
In a time when the sexualization of public space is intensely debated and there seems to be some kind of agreement about what kinds of sexualizing we don't want to see, it is more important than ever to think critically about the alternatives that we all yearn for. I include myself. As long as all we do is whine about all that is wrong it is great to dream about alternatives. I love burlesque, I loved the themes, I loved the gorgeous women. And surely, it is precisely when new representations and new alternatives start to emerge that we can BEGIN to have an interesting conversation about what feminist sexual politics might mean and what kinds of representations, in what kinds of spaces, and for what kinds of purposes. I welcome the Hootchy Kootchy club and what it stands for. I think it is interesting and potentially important.
Beginnings
Right. So Herculina has a blog. A dreamspace for the marvels, musings, and manicness of a transnational, transsensual queer femme bad girl who is born every day with partial connections in multiple networks delightfully entangled but never lost in webs of significance with no nostalgia for foundations or origins, yet eternally dreamy and insistently persistently convinced that the world is a place where home is everywhere and nowhere and it is clear that acts of translation are acts of love and compassion and that revolution is a state of mind and more than ever we know that absolute submission can be a sense of freedom and above and beyond, that every tool is a weapon if you hold it right.
