1) Traditional feminist pedagogies:
- create “safe space” for women where personal experiences can be shared, honored, and placed in sociopolitical context.
- foster egalitarian relationship among students as well as between students and the teacher.
- personal awareness connected to political action.

2) Problem with the traditional feminist pedagogies:
- creates pretense of egalitarian relationship, when in reality there are definite power imbalances not just between teacher and the student, but also among students along their respective social locations.
- notions of “safe space” privileges women who are oppressed only because of sex (i.e. white, middle-class, able-bodied, etc.)

3) “Safe, sane and consensual” S/M pedagogy:
- explicit negotiation of power within classroom which outlines rules and responsibilities
- exercise of power is consensual and designed to maximize equity and learning (e.g. use of teacher’s power to interrupt oppressive patterns and model anti-oppressive behaviors)
- positions as “teacher” and “students” played as roles, rather than something inherent in the individuals or the relationship
- use of “safe words” to time-out

Following this, Diamond quotes the description for my UO lecture from The Student Insurgent blog:

Diamond’s inaccurate and highly offensive (and libelous) characterization of me actually proves a point I made in my presentation: The “you are with us or with the terrorists” mentality from the War on Terror has permeated the anti-trafficking movement, making it difficult to have a rational conversations about what to do about the issue. But perhaps it’s irrelevant what I said in the presentation, because as far as I know Lyzi Diamond or anyone else affiliated with Oregon Commentator actually did not come and listen to my presentation.

That said, I am sending them the following message as an open letter to Oregon Commentator:

The instructor wrote that she was hoping that I would waive the fee because she would be “using it in the classroom.” I understand that many people consider this a good reason, as education is given a special moral position in our society, but I did not feel it was. Below is my response to her.

* * * * *

Hi *****,

I am sending you a printer-ready PDF file, because my purpose for instituting the licensing fee is not to prevent someone from using my article. I am granting you the permission to print and distribute copies of the article in the class, though not the PDF file itself. This file also includes a “bonus” that explains some of the backgrounds of the Manifesto.

That said, “using it in the classroom” at an institution like ***** is exactly the situation for which the licensing fee is intended. I would challenge your assumption that liberal arts education at an elite private university might somehow deserve to be subsidized by this activist and author whose income is a fraction of the tuition necessary to attend *****.

I would question further: Do students get textbooks for free because it’s for use in the classroom? Are the chairs and other equipment donated to ***** for free because they are for use in the classroom? And of course, do instructors teach the class for free? The answers are obviously “no”–why, then, are materials published and made available online by activists any different?

As you might have gathered by now, I don’t request licensing fees just because I need the money. I do so because I want members of academic institutions to consider these questions and try to build a more respectful toward and mutually beneficial relationship with activists whose work is studied. Scholars and students often rely on countless hours of uncompensated access to activists and their work for information, source material, interviews, etc. to further their careers or degrees, and yet act as if they are actually doing them a favor by paying attention to the issues. It needs to change.

As I said in the beginning, I am already granting you the permission to use the article in your classroom. But if you feel like paying (or having students pay) for licensing, please make (and encourage your students to make) donations, in lieu of the fees to: The Network/La Red in Boston.

(By the way–the article is also available, sans the “bonus”, in the anthology Catching a wave: reclaiming feminism for the 21st century. You would still have to comply with the copyright law, but you can have students find my article in libraries that way. If anyone had to pay fees for copyright clearance, I prefer that the money go toward The Network/La Red instead of some copy shop).

Best,

Emi Koyama

* * * * * (End of email)

In this case, I decided to give her the permission to use the material for free, but only after she is forced to read the above (and hopefully it made her think); I have waived fees in other instances, for example when an isolated trans student contacts me from a small college in the Midwest because she wants to educate her classmates about trans issues in a class presentation.

That’s an example of what I’d consider a good reason for me to waive the fee, because what she is trying to do is a form of activism and it matches what I wrote the article for in the first place. Teachers sometimes think of “exposing students to new ideas” as a form of activism too, but it’s also their job and I expect to be treated professionally in that context–unless of course there are other factors.

First of all, my essay was not a response to their piece in Bioethics Forum; it was a response to the “letter of concern from bioethicists” posted on Dreger’s site. In fact, I was not even aware of their Bioethics Forum piece until after I submitted the first draft of the essay, and reference to their article was added by the editor of Bioethics Forum to give readers further context.

I am castigating not just bioethicists’ inaction on behalf of vulnerable populations, but also the limitations bioethics as a field has imposed on itself on the scope of their philosophical and ethical inquiry, obsessing over policies and procedures rather than sociopolitical implication of the increasing role and authority of medicine. I did express my appreciation for the “action” of the bioethicists and other scholars responsible for the “letter of concern,” and at the same time I explained why it had the danger of backfiring, like it did on the controversy surrounding growth attenuation, because they continue to operate within the confines of the field of bioethics as it is today.

Further, I resent their dismissive characterisation of my essay as written in “postmodern feminist language” and the patronising statement, “Pardon our pragmatism.” I would concede that voices of concern from among disability rights and women’s health movements are often ineffective at changing the problematic medical practices by themselves, and we often need certain spokespersons and “experts” that transform these voices into pragmatic strategies, these spokespersons and “experts” must be held accountable to the movements which they represent. Thus, the need for pragmatic strategies is in no way an excuse for dismissing activists’ and impacted communities’ concerns as mere “postmodern” intellectual exercise.

Dreger herself has been labeled “postmodernist” by the critics of her work, and she resists this. On her website, she wrote: “Although I sometimes get labeled a ‘postmodernist’ because I write and speak about the social complexities of science and medicine, in fact I would have to label myself a raving modernist. I really believe in the power of science to improve our knowledge and our lives.” I also write and speak about the social complexities of science and medicine, including the field of bioethics, and somehow she finds it convenient to label me “postmodernist” in a dismissive way.

Finally, I find the suggestion that my “postmodern feminist language” is what prevents me from being able to “move the feds the way [Dreger et al.] have moved, as if we live in a society in which everyone’s opinions are equally respected and judged solely by their content, offensive. There is no question that their success (so far) has been made possible by the number of Ph.Ds and MDs on the “letter of concern” as well as by Dreger’s and others’ officially sanctioned academic and medical authority and connections that arose from these positions, which have been heavily influenced by their class backgrounds, educational and professional opportunities, and other social conditions. These factors inform our political sensibilities and sometimes open or close certain venues of social change.

I am a pragmatic person, and a pragmatic activist. As a pragmatist, I really don’t see any benefit from Dreger et al. and I continuing to communicate this way publicly. But I reject the idea that pragmatism is a justification for dismissing the sometimes inflexible and unpragmatic but principled work of the disability rights and women’s health movements; in fact, pragmatism and idealism are both essential elements of a successful social change movements, and even that of a successful activist.

The title of my presentation (workshop) was “Transgender Inclusion, or Demilitarizing the Borderlands of Binary Gender System.” It is a critique of “inclusion” model of transgender activism, which promotes individuals’ rights to self-define who they are while leaving the larger structure of binary gender system mostly intact, only creating rooms for minor “exceptions.” While self-determination is an important goal, the promotion of individual choice and responsibility in the absence of justice and equity is the hallmark of the neoliberal ideology and needs to be challenged.

As the title suggests, the workshop also introduced the concept of borderlands, which Gloria Anzaldúa describes as “vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary.” In the book Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Anzaldúa presents a parallel view of borderlands in the U.S.-Mexico border as well as the borderlands created by the boundaries of race, gender and sexuality. I’ve been using the metaphor of borderlands to talk about transgender issues for a long time, but I have not been able to present it in a way that was easy for people to understand, but preparing for this workshop helped me to think through how to go about writing a piece that centers on this idea. In other words: stay tuned.

I actually did this workshop at the National MEChA conference at University of Oregon a while back, but that was an audience that was already familiar with issues around borders, borderlands, and immigration. But the highly privileged Brown University crowd would have a very different backgrounds, and I worried that I might not be able to convey my ideas very well.

To my surprise, though, everything went fine. In fact, it turned out great. I have given workshops and lectures at many universities around the country, but speaking at an elite school like Brown (other schools in this category that I’ve visited include University of Chicago, Cornell, Columbia, and Yale) is actually very enjoyable and stimulating for me. Students are bright, of course, but they also possess the cultural capital that affords them the luxury of abstract critical thinking and complexity. And at the same time, I feel certain level of resentment at their highly privileged existence and prospect–these are the people who would join companies like Goldman Sachs and get huge bonuses while the rest of us suffer from unemployment and increasingly hostile labour market.

When talking about the binary gender system, people sometimes jump to the conclusion that we should simply “deconstruct” genders so that everyone is free to be who they are. I’ve been told over and over (by bunch of graduate students, scholars, and some highly educated trans activists) that the intersex movement should work on challenging the binary gender system because that is where the oppression of intersex people stem from. I have nothing against that proposal, except for the fact that intersex children are being harmed by the society’s intolerance of their variance every day and need more immediate, practical help now.

I did not want Brown students to go home only with the critique of identity-based argument for transgender “inclusion,” or with a simple understanding that “deconstructing” binary gender system (however long it would take, and however many trans and intersex people would continue to suffer until that magical day) was the way to go. My call for “demilitarizing the borderlands of binary gender system” is distinct from simply “deconstructing” the binary: it starts with an acknowledgement that trans and intersex people live in the borderlands, and take concrete steps to demilitarise their environment that is the consequences of the society’s attempt to draw a clear and unambiguous boundaries where none naturally exists.

More on that coming soon…

By the way, out of 16-18 students who came to my presentation, not one of them has ever read anything by Gloria Anzaldúa! WTF!?

There is also a dinner reception on the first day of this conference for organizers, college staff, and presenters each year. I’ve never actually attended the dinner in all those years I’ve been part of the conference, but this year I thought I’d check it out. So I walked into a room full of people I didn’t recognize, and picked a table to join.

It turned out that all four people sitting at the table I picked were administrators at Lewis & Clark who had something to do with the conference. After a quick introduction, they went back to the conversation they were having before I joined the table, which was about the small swastika drawing inside men’s bathroom at the said campus.

To summarize their conversation, they were talking about how students initially did not take the issue seriously, dismissing the drawing as an isolated incident that didn’t mean anything. But the school took time holding campus-wide conversations about the incident and how it might affect Jewish students, students of color and others targeted by the Neo-Nazis and other white supremacy groups, and many white non-Jewish students began to understand that it meant something to some students and should not be tolerated.

“Can I ask a question?” I asked. “Well I was reading the program for this year’s conference, and correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems that all main speakers and performers seem to be white this year. I don’t think this conference was like that in other years I came. Has there been any conversations about that?”

Immediately, a couple of the administrators started stressing, “it was not intentional!” “We noticed that after we planned all the main speakers, but we didn’t do that on purpose. We picked our speakers according to their expertise in this year’s theme, and it was a coincidence that they were all white.”

It wasn’t on purpose? Of course it wasn’t! If I thought it was on purpose, there is no way I would step a foot on this campus ever again (and while this isn’t the main point of this blog post, WTF is up with the name of this school anyway?). And am I supposed to feel comforted because even though all of the main speakers and performers in this conference are white, it was not intentional?

The problem, of course, is not the presence of malicious intent, but the absence of anti-white supremacy intent to create a conference whose speakers and performers are not just competent, but also diverse. It is about the lack of willingness on the part of organizers to go a little bit deeper to find and invite researchers and speakers of color with equal level of expertise and knowledge who are not receiving fair share of attention or status either because of their background or because of the focus of research that white academia deems unimportant.

And if the college is not interested in making an effort to not let very predictable “coincidence” after “coincidence” take place not just in terms of the racial breakdown of the main speakers, but in other aspects as well, what’s the point of hosting Gender Studies Symposium anyway? Besides, how did the administrators fail to see the parallel between the defensiveness of Lewis & Clark College students over the swastika drawing on the urinal and their own defensiveness in response to my query?

PSU Women’s Studies Governing Board members,

I am writing you as a former student, instructor, and frequent guest lecturer of Women’s Studies Program at Portland State University regarding the public discussion I attended this past Thursday about the potential change of the Department name.

At the public meeting last Thursday, it became clear from early on that there were two main concerns/interests that the group was trying to balance: first, there was a strong sense among some outspoken participants that the word “women” should remain, in order to honour the Department’s legacy and to resist erasure of women in the rest of academia; second, there was an even stronger feeling among others that the name should be expanded to include gender and sexuality, in order to more fully represent the content of the program as well as to appeal to a broader audience. Both groups quickly acknowledged each other’s arguments, which made the conjuncture, Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, a popular alternative.

And then, several women of colour brought up a concern that highly abstract terms like “gender and sexuality studies” alienate members of their families and communities, making it more difficult to recruit and retain women of colour within our program. I felt that their concerns were very relevant and valid, but I did not hear any other people acknowledge them or to offer compromises to address them. I requested a five-minute caucus time for the women of colour in the group because I felt that the “public” in this public meeting ignored and dismissed the real concerns of women of colour who spoke up, and I wanted to hear them better and to strategies how women of colour can have real impact in the process.

The voting took place immediately after the caucus time, and “Women’s, Gender and Sexualities Studies” was the most popular name, as I had expected. It received many more votes than the second choice, which was to retain “Women’s Studies.” I do understand that there is a need to change the name if only to reflect the presence of sexualities studies curriculum, and suspect that many people expect the Governing Board to go along with the popular will. But given the fact that the split between WGS and “Women’s Studies” went almost along the racial line, with most people in the white majority preferring WGS and most women of colour preferring “Women’s Studies,” I caution against the use of simple majority rule.

At the same time, I do not expect the Governing Board to throw out the most popular choice entirely, along with two years of internal discussions, simply because most women of colour voted against the change. I suggest that the Governing Board adopt the new name: Department of Women’s Studies and Gender & Sexuality Studies. This is longer than even the longest proposal that was on the table this past Thursday, but it is the natural compromise between the two top picks from the community, and has the advantages of both: it is inclusive of scholarly explorations into gender and sexuality issues outside of the traditional “women’s studies” framework, while at the same time allowing people to continue to refer to the program casually as “Department of Women’s Studies” as a shorthand.

To be honest, I did not walk into the meeting thinking that I would be sympathetic to the argument for status quo. I am very excited about the expansion of the program into areas of gender, sexuality, and queer theory, and I would have picked something more along the line of WGS if I were to decide it by myself. But after hearing voices of other women of colour, and seeing how the process failed to include and address their concerns, I felt that it was more important for me to stand in solidarity with them than to promote the name that I personally like most. I urge members of the Governing Board to take their/our concerns seriously, and come up with a solution that satisfies their/our needs, possibly but not necessarily along the line of my suggestion.

Sincerely,

Emi Koyama

It was during my second year of college I was first introduced to the writings of Audre in a Women’s Studies course. Throughout the academic term, students read several articles each week, discussed them in the class, and wrote journal entries that reflect on the week’s readings. Week after week, most of the assigned materials were those written by white, middle-class, straight (or sometimes “political lesbian”) women, and I was having difficulty relating to much of what was being discussed. I kept writing in my journal how I didn’t relate to the reading, but I did not realize it had anything to do with the selection of the materials. I felt bad about being so “negative” about feminism and feminists.

Toward the end of the term, one week was dedicated to the work of “women of color” (yes, a whole week–woo hoo!). If I remember correctly, it consisted of selections from the anthology “This Bridge Called My Back” (Combahee River Collective statement, and I think one of the Cherrie Moraga’s pieces) and Audre Lorde’s “Sister Outsider.” For the first time, these articles spoke to me. They gave voice to my feelings of alienation and frustration that I could not point a finger on. And even though it was just a week out of the entire term, and it is possibly the worst form of tokenism within the discipline, they anchored me to feminism and Women’s Studies to this date. Without “Sister Outsider,” I may not have been a feminist today.

But one week was not enough for me to gain the confidence and strength it took to speak out when I find myself surrounded by white middle-class feminists who seemed oblivious to the emotional pain and sadness their racist or classist statements and actions caused. It was not enough to just read things written by Audre and others like her; I needed to actually construct a support system around me, people of all races and genders who are passionately committed to justice in all aspects of society and to empathically holding each other accountable.

In summer of 2000, I moved to Portland, Oregon–the first large city I lived as an adult. On my second day in Portland, I met Diana Courvant, a white transsexual woman who founded Survivor Project to address the needs of trans and intersex survivors of domestic and sexual violence. Also a survivor with a complex history around gender and sexual identities, I immediately became involved with Survivor Project. It also helped that Diana was a veteran of multi-issue social justice organizing, and I learned a lot from her.

But as I got to know Diana, I also learned that not all feminists embraced trans people. In fact, she was at the time trapped in the middle of the worst nightmare of controversy within Portland’s lesbian/feminist community, which she later wrote about (see “Speaking of Privilege” in “This Bridge We Call Home,” edited by Gloria Anzaldua and AnaLouise Keating). To put it short: Diana was invited to a women’s retreat in the Oregon forest, which after she accepted the invitation instituted a “no penis” policy banning transsexual women who had not have sex reassignment surgery from attending. She declined to participate, but held a workshop on trans issues outside with the help of non-trans allies. The workshop was successful, but a rumor was spread shortly thereafter alleging that she trespassed on the women-only retreat and exposed herself. It was obviously false, but extremely hurtful.

It was in response to this climate I wrote the piece “The Transfeminist Manifesto,” which was later published in the anthology “Catching a Wave: Reclaiming Feminism for the 21st Century” edited by Rory Dicker and Alison Piepmeier. The manifesto addressed various feminist concerns, such as reproductive choice and health and violence against women, and discussed how transsexual women share many of the concerns of other women. I wanted to write a feminist theory that counter the argument that transsexual women were so different from all other women that there is no place for transsexual women within feminism (or that feminism has no use for transsexual women). I wanted to provide easy-to-repeat arguments that pro-trans feminists can use to confront blatant bigotry and falsehoods against transsexual women. And to these ends, I think “Manifesto” was successful.

But there was something unsettling about the “Manifesto.” In an effort to forge an alliance between transsexual and non-transsexual women, the piece neglected the struggles of transsexual men and other transgender or genderqueer people who do not identify as “women” unless it was convenient to include them. The piece was also weak on intersectional analysis–that is, how anti-trans sentiments and oppressions compound and complicate oppressions other than sexism, including and especially racism and classism. It borrowed from the work of women of color when it was useful–for example, to point out that transsexual women’s unique experiences should not be the basis for their exclusion because to do so would presuppose a singular universal female experience, which is obviously false–without contributing any insights as to how the inclusion of trans sensibility helps to fight racism and other oppressions.

The fact is, I had only been living in my new home town for three months or so when I wrote this piece, and I was not fully in touch with my own discomfort with the white feminism that filled nine out of ten weeks of the Introduction to Women’s Studies, nor did I feel confident enough to challenge the view that feminism is simply about advocating for women and fighting sexism–and nothing more. In short, what I had written was a version of white feminism that was modified just enough to include transsexual women. At the time, I felt that it was the only safe way to write a feminist theory that advanced transsexual women’s place within feminism. I spent next couple of years meeting more people with a common commitment for justice for all, slowly building the self-confidence it takes to “transform silence into language and action,” as Audre famously stated.

What I will discuss below is one such silence that was turned into language and action.

The invitation to speak at the panel honoring the legacy of Audre Lorde stated: “NWSA would be please to offer you complimentary conference registration as a way of thanking you for your time and expertise. Regrettably, however, NWSA has a limited budget and cannot cover your travel expenses.” But I am not a career academic, and without regular employment I cannot afford to spend hundreds of dollars just to speak at an academic conference. I wrote back explaining my situation and asking for financial assistance to attend the conference, to which the executive director of NWSA repeated, “NWSA would be able to offer complimentary membership and registration; I certainly wish we could do more.”

I began talking to some members of Governing Council (board of directors of NWSA) I happen to know, and asked them to advocate on my behalf; they emailed the director, but the response was the same. I also learned that another long-time queer social justice activist I respect was invited by NWSA last year, but she had to turn down the invitation due to the organization’s unwillingness to cover her travel expense. I could decline the invitation too, but then NWSA could go on every year attempting to exploit activists while pretending to honor and support their work without anyone challenging them on it, so I decided to do something different: I wrote to WMST-L, an international Women’s Studies email list with thousands of subscribers, explaining the circumstance and asking people to write to the NWSA to protest its practice, and to donate some money for me to attend the conference.

Within days, I received a dozen or so offers of contributions, and just as many apparently wrote to the executive director of NWSA, including members of Governing Council. Lesbian Caucus chair Lisa Burke, Women of Color Caucus co-chair Pat Washington, and Bisexual/Transgender Interest Group rep Joelle Ruby Ryan were among the most supportive. But that was when things began turning bizarre. The executive director apparently told some of my supporters that I was already being provided a hotel room on NWSA’s money, implicitly suggesting that I was being dishonest or possibly running a scheme to defraud well-intentioned feminist scholars. Thinking that the director perhaps changed her mind and decided to fund at least some of my expenses, I contacted NWSA again–only to be told that nothing had changed and I was still on my own (albeit with the help of many supporters).

I received enough donations to cover most of my expenses, so I flew to Cincinnati to take part in the tribute panel. In my speech, I talked about how I discovered the work of Audre Lorde, how important it was, and yet how reading her books was not enough to genuinely feel empowered. I read from a postscript I wrote for “The Transfeminist Manifesto” and how that piece reflects a period in my life in which I was cautiously negotiating my place within feminism. Then I spoke about the panel itself, and how I seriously struggled whether or not I should participate in this celebration of Audre Lorde and her work, when the very structure of the forum betrayed her legacy.

I have to wonder, I said, if Audre were still around, she would accept the invitation to speak at this conference under such humiliating circumstances. Audre does not deserve this. And this “tribute panel” was not the proper way to honor and memorialize Audre’s contribution to Women’s Studies. And part of the reason I felt ambivalent about speaking on this panel was due to the fear that my presence at the conference might help legitimatize what is fundamentally illegitimate.

Audre herself faced similar circumstance in 1979, when she was invited to speak in the “only panel at [Second Sex Conference, held at New York University] where the input of Black feminists and lesbians is represented,” despite the fact that she accepted the invitation “with the understanding that [Lorde] would be commenting upon papers dealing with the role of difference within the lives of american women,” which would not be possible “without a significant input from poor women, Black and Third World women, and lesbians.” Her talk, titled “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” which is included in “Sister Outsider,” is not nearly as well understood as the title is known.

When Audre said “master’s tools,” what she was referring to was white, middle-class, straight feminists’ unwillingness to recognize the differences among women along the lines of race, class, sexuality, etc. By failing to seize the strength that could come from the acknowledgement of differences, not just between white and Black women, but also among Black women–why did the organizers fail to involve more Black women, as if expecting Audre to represent all Black women?–she alleges that many white feminists are complicit in maintaining the racist, homophobic patriarchy.

In a different text, also part of “Sister Outsider,” Audre once declared that she would never talk to white women about racism again. Obviously that was not the last time she did, but I have no doubt that she frequently struggled with the urge to give up. Part of the reason I decided finally to attend the conference and to speak at the tribute was the recognition that I stand on the shoulders of Audre Lorde and her contemporaries, many of whom are still alive but many are gone. The panel was successful, and the discussion involving three panelists and the audience lasted almost three hours even though it was originally scheduled for only 75 minutes.

During the delegate assembly on the next day, Lisa Burke from the lesbian caucus spoke out. The executive director had promised her that she would “take care of” my situation, which was understood to mean that NWSA would at the least provide my housing for the conference, and yet somehow it did not happen. The director responded that NWSA did in fact booked a room for me and paid for it out of its account, and blamed her assistant, a Black woman who was not present in the room, for the “miscommunication.” Lisa protested this act of scapegoating and called for the organization to reimburse me for the lodging expense and to issue an official apology. Every delegate voted in favor of the motion. The resolution almost made me feel guilty, partly because another woman of color is pitted against me and blamed for the whole ordeal, and partly because the thought of a $170/night room sitting empty for me is too wasteful for me to think about.

I called the hotel next morning to find out how much NWSA had paid for the room that I did not know was reserved for me, but the clerk informed me that there was no record of reservation for any nights this past week. There is still a remote possibility that NWSA made a reservation at another hotel nearby because the conference hotel was sold out. But that seems unlikely, especially since the organization had no idea which date I was planning to come to Cincinnati or to go home. It is too depressing to think that the executive director of a national feminist, scholarly institution would engage in such pattern of dishonesty and racism in the process of organizing and hosting a tribute to the legacy of Audre Lorde.

In a sense, the tribute panel turned out to be the perfect commemoration of Audre’s legacy. It exposed the ugly reality of what Audre calls “racist feminism,” which was lurking behind the superficial public rhetoric of anti-racism. It brought up intense emotions, including anger, and we sought to channel them for constructive uses. We paid tribute to Audre the best way we could, which was not by reading some academic papers about her, but by being passionately engaged in the struggle against the oppression of all people. I hope that I did my part to make her proud.

However, there’s one problem: all NWSA can offer in exchange for my service is a complimentary conference registration and membership. Since my resources are extremely limited as I do not have a regular source of income (I pay my bills and fund my organization, Intersex Initiative, by giving lectures at universities across the country, which doesn’t happen frequent enough to be reliable), I can’t attend the conference unless travel and lodging expenses are provided.

So I wrote Allison Kimmich, the executive director of NWSA, to explain my circumstance, and asked for some financial assistance so that I could attend the conference. She replied “I do not have discretionary funds available to cover travel and lodging for invited speakers. As our letter of invitation noted, NWSA would be able to offer complimentary membership and registration; I certainly wish we could do more.”

I realize that NWSA’s resources are limited, and might not be able to offer all the expenses for all speakers. But if it wishes to invite activists, artists, independent scholars and others who do not have a tenured or tenure-track academic appointment or a conference budget through their job, I believe that they need to provide expenses. Otherwise, only those activists who are independently wealthy would ever be represented.

I asked some members of the Governing Council of NWSA to advocate for funding on my behalf, and they did, but in vain. At this point, I wrote an appeal to WMST-L, an international women’s studies mailing list, explaining the situation, and asked members of NWSA to help me by 1) writing letters of support to NWSA, 2) pledge a donation to cover my expenses, and 3) arrange a speaking gig for me to raise money.

The response was very encouraging: thanks to supporters who circulated my appeal in other women’s studies and NWSA-affiliated email lists, about a dozen people came forward to offer contributions ranging from $25 to $300 (wow) within several days, and I was able to quickly raise enough money to pay for the airfare between Portland and Cincinnati, where the conference is being held.

It also began to mount a pressure on NWSA, as several caucus presidents and Governing Council officers began asking Allison why NWSA couldn’t provide travel and lodging expenses for an invited speaker. Then strange thing happened: when contacted by Barbara Howe, the Governing Council President of NWSA, Allison Kimmich told her that I had been offered free hotel room at the conference site.

What is going on? Allison did not offer to assist me with any expenses except registration and membership fees (which doesn’t cost NWSA anything, as the marginal cost of adding a member or attendee is virtually zero) in her initial invitation dated March 3, and also in her second email (after I explained that I could not attend the conference without assistance) on March 14. But she is telling other people that I was offered free lodging, directly contradicting what she has told me before.

Did Allison change her mind, because of the bad publicity my appeal has generated? I truly don’t know, since I still haven’t heard directly from her about the hotel room. But by (falsely) telling Barbara that I was offered free lodging at the conference site, Allison is making me out to be a swindler, a con artist, for seeking donations to cover the very expense that has supposedly been paid for by the NWSA.

Was this an intentional spin of the Karl Rove variety designed to smear me? I’m not sure, but it makes me feel sick to my stomach to think about it. In fact, I almost don’t want to attend NWSA after all this, although I still feel that it’s important for me to be there. I can’t allow them to pay superficial tribute to Audre Lorde and her work while the organization continues to operate in ways such as this that alienate and marginalize women of color, poor women, queer and trans people, etc.

Oh, did I mention that this year’s conference is “dedicated to the ongoing process of undoing the long history of racism and homophobia in Cincinnati, NWSA, and beyond”?

(Just to remind everyone: there are many great people within NWSA, including the folks who have offered contributions and advocated on my behalf. I’m just addressing the general organizational tendency and historical patterns within NWSA, not its members…)