"This tribe called ‘Women of Color’ is not an ethnicity. It is one of the inventions of solidarity, an alliance, a political necessity that is not the given name of every female with dark skin and a colonized tongue, but rather a choice about how to resist and with whom."
"A woman who loves other women, sexually and/or non-sexually. Appreciates and prefers women’s culture, women’s emotional flexibility (values tears as natural counterbalance of laughter), and women’s strength. Sometimes loves individual men, sexually and/or non-sexually. Committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female. Not a separatist, except periodically, for health. Traditionally universalist… Loves music. Loves dance. Loves the moon. Loves the Spirit. Loves love and food and roundness. Loves struggle. Loves the Folk. Loves herself. Regardless."
For Alice Walker, a “womanist” is one who is “committed to the survival and wholeness of an entire people” (Aldridge 192).
via Carmen Mojica
(via biancabayard)"People are kinda like “Oh but you’re always on about something!” or “You shouldn’t say that too loud, shhhh!” But what’s the alternative to speaking my truth? Silence, some trumped up claim to subversiveness and survival, or keeping it to myself. Silence doesn’t suit me. Subversiveness rarely works for me, its more like a last resort. Survival, well, I’m doing that and one day hope to do more than just survive. Keeping it to myself, well, I might as well be dead for all the good that’ll do me. I think I prefer to speak my truth since its all I have."
Feminism is not a movement meant to solely soothe the lives of middle class white females.
Nawal El Saadawi
“They do not fear my knife. It is my truth which frightens them. This fearful truth gives me great strength. It protects me from fearing death, or life, or hunger, or nakedness, or destruction.”
"Most white feminists look at me disdainfully when I recount some of my choice violent moments. They are appalled, morally repelled by this unbecoming behavior. One even giggled, holding her breastbone ever so lightly and saying she’s not the violent type, blah blah blah. The messages are, 1) I’m educated and you’re not, 2) I’m upper class and you’re not, 3) I’m a feminist and you’re not (since her brand of feminism is equated with nonviolent moon-to-uterus symbiosis). My “men” can do the fighting, but I, gentle maiden, shan’t; the new feminism remaking a generation in the image of the suburban, wealthy, sophisticated, genetically genteel. No one protected me when a loved one cracked my head on a public street one might, not even the college educated Upper West Side white women strolling by pretending not to notice. I don’t like getting hit either, but what are you gonna do when someone grabs your tits? Meekly whisper you won’t stoop to your attackers level? and what level is that exactly? if that’s the way “women” react, how do we classify the elderly Filipinas on a subway train who, when Joe Dickwad grabbed my ass, congratulated me for whacking him as hard as I could, screaming obscenities, and chasing him - to his utter shock and dismay - through the station? They were the few who seemed to acknowledge, respect, and allow for “aggressive” forms of resistance instead of strapping on moral straightjackets for the nineties which we “women” must squeeze into. If that’s a woman, I’m not one. I am an animal who eats, sleeps, fucks, and fights voraciously - I assume a “good” woman does it gently and in the missionary position only."
This is why we still need #WomensDay in South Africa, Women’s Month everywhere, Women’s Studies, Women’s everything… for all the reasons we’re oppressed, and for the reasons we’re still oppressing each other.
“The feminist movement is generally periodized into the so-called first, second and third waves of feminism. In the United States, the first wave is characterized by the suffragette movement; the second wave is characterized by the formation of the National Organization for Women, abortion rights politics, and the fight for the Equal Rights Amendments. Suddenly, during the third wave of feminism, women of colour make an appearance to transform feminism into a multicultural movement.
This periodization situates white middle-class women as the central historical agents to which women of colour attach themselves. However, if we were to recognize the agency of indigenous women in an account of feminist history, we might begin with 1492 when Native women collectively resisted colonization. This would allow us to see that there are multiple feminist histories emerging from multiple communities of colour which intersect at points and diverge in others. This would not negate the contributions made by white feminists, but would de-center them from our historicizing and analysis.
Indigenous feminism thus centers anti-colonial practice within its organizing. This is critical today when you have mainstream feminist groups supporting, for example, the US bombing of Afghanistan with the claim that this bombing will free women from the Taliban (apparently bombing women somehow liberates them).”
- Andrea Smith, Indigenous Feminism Without Apology
Domestic workers rights are women’s rights
Domestic workers care for children, senior, and people with disabilities. They provide the necessary support so that parents can go to work and seniors and people with disabilities can live at home with dignity. Domestic work is a sector that has been historically linked with the unpaid work of women as caregivers and with the poorlypaid work of immigrants and women of color. Domestic workers were deliberately excluded from New Deal federal-level labor protections to appease Jim Crow senators. More than 70 years later, those exclusions remain, forcing 200,000 CA workers into the shadows. I need feminism because domestic workers rights are women’s rights. Join our movement: facebook.com/cadomesticworkers or cadomesticworkers.tumblr.com
Not sure why this is “brand-new” information. This has been happening for the past couple of years or so. It’s about time we get recognition. Nonetheless, big props to all the Hmong women out there hustling for their own. Actually, big props to all the women out there hustling for their own.
"At the end of the novel there’s a poem that says “When life descends into the pit / I must become my own candle / willingly burning myself / to light up the darkness around me.” Because there’s no sense of safety anywhere, no place we feel we can go that’s not polluted or poisoned, for a lot of people life has pretty much fallen into the pit. When I was working on my last novel, Possessing the Secret of Joy, I realized that sexuality is the place where life has definitely fallen into the pit for women. The only way we’ll ever change that is by affirming, celebrating, and acknowledging sexuality in our daily lives. Women must begin to write more truthfully about the profound mystery of sex. I think that race is also a mystery. Which is to say that neither can be fully comprehended except as deeply mysterious expressions through which we can learn profound lessons about life. It is almost impossible not to learn something about yourself in the sexual act. So it’s important for women to be alert to the spiritual growth and self-discovery they can attain by paying close attention to their sexuality. I was also thinking about how organized religion has systematically undermined and destroyed the sexual and spiritual beliefs of millions of indigenous people. There have been people on earth who didn’t think about sex the way white, Western men do. It is very painful to think that the “missionary position,” which reinforces patriarchal, male dominance over women, was forced upon people who once loved having women freely express their sexuality, whether they were on the top or bottom."
