bell hooks on Feminist Revolution

I belong to a feminist book club and we're reading Feminist Theory:  From Margin to Center by bell hooks.  This was written in 1984 and is considered a classic feminist text.  Last night I read the final chapter on Feminist Revolution.

Although I think I read this book 20 years ago as part of my curriculum in feminist psychotherapy, this books feels fresh and relevant to me.  I jumped into her last chapter on Feminist Revolution because I've felt very frustrated by where women's movement is these days.  I've been saying that we have developed into fiefdoms of feminisms, where women are now busy running their own non-profits, holding conferences, writing books, appearing on TV, etc.  This is all good, but it ain't revolution and it isn't going to change the power structure.  OK, this is what I've been saying before jumping into bell hooks' chapter on Feminist Revolution.  These are the conclusions I've come to as a result of living online and spending every day roaming the femisphere to find out what people are doing, who they are, what their thoughts are about women's movement now.

Then I land in language that so speaks to me it is like water to my thirsty throat.  Here is the paragraph that sums up, for me, what is missing in feminist/womanist movement:

"Feminist consciousness-raising has not significantly pushed women in the direction of revolutionary politics.  For the most part, it has not helped women understand capitalism--how it works as a system that exploits female labor and its interconnections with sexist oppression.  It has not urged women to learn about different political systems like socialism or encouraged women to invent and envision new political systems.  It has not attacked materialism and our society's addiction to overconsumption.  It has not shown women how we benefit from the exploitation and oppression of women and men globally or shown us ways to oppose imperialism.  Most importantly, it has not continually confronted women with the understanding that feminist movement to end sexist oppression can be successful only if we are committed to revolution, to the establishment of a new social order."

That's what I'm working on!  It sounds daunting, almost grandiose, to say that feminists/womanists should take this on, and yet that's where my evolving analysis has led me.

And here's another idea from bell hooks that I had to highlight in yellow:

"Women must begin the work of feminist reorganization with the understanding that we have all (irrespective of our race, sex, or class) acted in complicity with the existing oppressive system.  We all need to make a conscious break with the system."

Pretty mindblowing statements...and I think I know what she's talking about...in fact, I think I'm starting to organize around these ideas.

(Here's another link for the book club.)

What's a Radical To Do?

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FAB4Obama/

I'm studying activism wherever I find it because I'm looking for a way to unite people in a pushback with demands. This pushback, which I'm calling a STRIKE (but is much more), incorporates community-growth, community-building, art, education, and identifying needs locally and globally. I'm working on this with a small group of thinkers in a Yahoo group, and participation is required.

My critique of feminism and progressivism is HEY YOU ALL! CONSOLIDATE! Enough with the fiefdoms of progressivism and everybody having a jolly good time running your own non-profits and conferences! This has become a circus of hype-a-me, get me a cool career, and confusion about what is social networking and what is hardcore organizing. I'm on Twitter and FB solely to organize, and at this moment I'm questioning the intelligence of being on either of these networks: people are here to play and to advertise themselves. Or because they're lonely. Signing petitions and sending money is NOT a movement.

Where are the radicals? Where are the people who think strategically, know how to engage in contentious dialogue without getting their feelings hurt, know how to research, know how to plan and think longterm? I'm looking.

Right now, it seems to me that these people are and always have been in the labor movement. There are some committed, longtime organizers in all movements, including women's movement (Ellie Smeal comes to mind as a longtime, commited feminist organizer and there are others), but overall, uttering the word "strike" sends shivers down the spine of just about anyone except those in the labor movement.

My view: very strategic pushback that hurts the status quo, followed by demands, followed by repeat pushbacks as we build the tent, the consciousness, the solidarity, the support.

All of the education, consciousness-raising, listening tours, etc., have a purpose, but the goal is fuzzy and unfocused. WHAT DO WE WANT? ARE WE WILLING TO DEMAND IT? ARE WE WILLING TO DRAW THE LINE AND HOLD THE LINE?

People don't even want to know what the hell I'm talking about. They want to write a book, have a conference, make money and feel good about themselves. That's not a movement.

So, what's a RADICAL to do???????????

STRIP STUPAK--HOW TO

Strip Stupak

WHAT YOU'LL NEED

• 
  

  • mobs of angry women who understand visual/dramatic communication
    

    
    

  • a very tall woman dressed in gazillions of layers of men's clothing, e.g., suit, ties, shirts on shirts on shirts, down to a very PADDED fullbody pink leotard
    

    
    

  • a faux bigger than life-sized pink penis attached to the pink leotard
    

    
    

  • flamingo pink bamboo sticks or other lightweight sticks at least 60 inches, painted hot pink, flamingo pink, fluorescent pink, one per activist...the popular styrofoam noodles (PINK!) can also be effective...
    

• 
  

WHAT WILL HAPPEN

• 
  

  • ritual re-enactment in COMPLETE SILENCE of the following scenario
    

  • mobs of women march SILENTLY up Capitol steps (or steps of any government building), bring forth STUPAK (the bodydouble wearing the pink, padded leotard under the layers of pre-ripped men's garb)...might also want to write "STUPAK"  in big red lipstick letters on the bodydouble's face
    

    
    

  • slow-motion, highly ritualized ripping of clothing from the STUPAK bodydouble
    

    
    

  • when you get down to the pink leotard layer, slow-mo, ritualized, intense and completely SILENT FLAYING of the bodydouble, using the pink sticks in a ballet-like, Kabuki-esque, choreographed display of rage
    

• 
  

RINSE, WASH, REPEAT

a short lesson on PTSD

flash
re-assembles
power less ness
left brain down
right brain screaming
nothing = in
nothing = out
words = won't
I = stutter
should scream?
I = don't wanna hear
complete = recapitulation
pop alprazolam 0.05mg
letter opener
rip bills
slash slash
comprehension = none
slash = relief
mute
dumb
cornered
slash

Day After Fort Hood & Reply to Tammy

what's the point?

the point is to rant
to rant is to live
to rant is not to accept the silence
to live is to hammer away at your truth
until it haunts you on a sunny day

hammer until it stares back at you
horrifying blueblack glossy mammoth you can't un-recognize
now you've carved half your life
you've arrived at self

from here on out your job
is to live true to self
so you scream when it hurts
you holler when stupidity smothers
the pain-talkers
the question-askers
you train to be strong in struggle
have a popsicle or sit in the sun or cuddle a kitten
whatever cools your brain out
you get breaks, you don't get release
or redemption
just fuhgeddaboutit...you're in the army now...

when you decide you're a warrior
you're already past the point of individual will
you've already smashed into too much pain to handle
alone
you can't hold it inside yourself quietly ladylike
gentlemanly controlled terror kills
explodes in shootouts, suicides and stage 4 cancers

war and controlled terror got married zeons ago
collective trauma
collective terror
forced into a suppository of deadly lead

my job is to transmit my pain as stubbornly
as flagrantly
as doggedly as I can muster the call to arms
I would forget...might actually forget...
if I did not see abandoned babies on the news
and remember my own lonely, terrorized core

and forgive my personal mother
and forgive my personal father
and rage against a system that made me abandoned
neglected
slapped and beaten
sacrificed
ignored and dismissed
molested and used
belittled and railroaded
refused and refused

nothing left of me
but rage and forgiveness
daily

I will inflict myself on the world
until it understands


MadamaAmbi
November 6, 2009
all rights reserved


"When the well's dry, we know the worth of water." --Benjamin Franklin
WOMEN NEED TO STRIKE
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FAB4Obama/

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