Comments on: Racist Feminism at the National Women’s Studies Association

By: Eminism.org » Academic parasitism on activists must change.

Eminism.org » Academic parasitism on activists must change. — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 07:40:41 +0000

[...] 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. [...]

By: Lisa Harney

Lisa Harney — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 05:36:53 +0000

Wow… And just from reading the blogosphere, the same conversations about race are happening over and over again, and the status quo never really changes from the white side.

I actually read The Transfeminist Manifesto not too long after you wrote it – and was on Technodyke while you were posting there occasionally. I wasn’t comfortable with it at the time because I felt (at the time) that it clashed at points with my own understanding of myself as a trans woman – or perhaps, my understanding of myself in relation to radical feminism. That is, not the same reasons you mention above. I do, however, really appreciate reading about your mindset at the time, especially knowing now that my own approach to race, class, and disability at that time was pretty messed up.

Anyway, thank you for writing this.

By: Brian

Brian — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:39:48 +0000

Thanks for documenting some of what went down there, Emi. I was in the audience, along with a few friends and colleagues, and in the moment I commented to them about how it felt like a big dysfunctional family dinner where the panelists started brining up the family secrets and mom & dad / mom & mom / mom & mom & dad were nowhere to be found. It was an amazingly uncomfortable and necessary conversation. I’m still trying to hope that people don’t forget it and that we see some tangible, authentic change–versus one or more symbolic token (literally AND figuratively) gestures.

The event was telling in lots of ways. A panel featuring women of color scheduled last at the end of a long day… the fact that no one in an official capacity was in the room that night (or at least willing to speak up)… and that most people stayed through to the end… that speaks volumes.

By: Susan Koppelman

Susan Koppelman — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 01:10:27 +0000

After 25 years of involvement with NWSA (starting with the 1977 founding conference) I finally gave up and quit because no matter how hard I tried to bring the issues you mention plus the issues of women with disabilities and chronic illnesses and the issues of fat women and the issues of women living in poverty and the issues of women with children to the attention of the ever changing governing bodies of the organization, I finally gave up, in despair and defeat. What started out to be the organization you and I would have wished for grew steadily farther and farther from it. Women’s studies, which was originally feminist studies back in the late ’60s, was once envisioned as the revolutionary arm in the world of education of the women’s liberation movement and has since compromised itself into an academic field with all the problems of every academic field. Depressing. Depressing. Disappointing. Nothing you write in here surprises me — but it does continue to sadden me to read about the failings — the conscious intentional failings of the organization that for so long I considered my organizational home and on which I pinned such noble hopes. But you sure do write about it well! Makes my nightmares come back.

By: Nichole Weberring

Nichole Weberring — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 05:14:25 +0000

Dear Emi,

I truly loved this essay. Thank you so much. I have, for a long time now, loved the works of Audre Lorde, Combahee River Collective, Cherrie Moraga, Sojourner Truth and, most especially, bel hooks. As a woman with a transsexual history I have many times appreciated your own “The Transfeminist Manifesto.”

I feel, in many ways, a sense of shared experience with women-of-color in that I, too, am often excluded or relegated to a position of “one who speaks for all” in feminist circles. In my own graduate Women’s Issues class recently I was left cold by the fact that women of color were only given one week of the 16 week course and lesbian/queer women one week. Transsexual women were not represented at all.

I’m sorry to discover that academics stillfeel a need to protect their own neglect and tendencies to make rigid and blind distinctions and then try to hand the ‘blame’ off to others. How can one come to truth when deceit is her tactic of choice for self-exonerration? “By being passionately engaged in the struggle against the oppression of all people,” I believ you do, indeed, make Audre proud. You are also someone “on whose shoulders we can stand.”

Thank you.