Over at Leftist Looney Lunchbox AradhanaD appended a post with this:
PS. If you're from the pro-pornstitution feminist tag team (you know who you are) that somehow miraculously appears to suddenly 'befriend' every dissenting feminist voice on the net, to support them with their 'radical feminist bashing', there's no nice way for me to say this 'don't bother'. Seriously, on any other post I'd love to hear your comments - just not this one. Pornstitution is racist, it harms WOC and I have no desire to get support from any of you - just because you think 'I'm bashing your enemy'. No thanks. I do however, encourage you to comment on my other posts if you ever feel like it because like "white radical feminists", I do know that we have things in common - just not as many as I'd like.
Then she miraculously appeared over at BFP's place to continue her 'pro-pornstitution feminist tag team' bashing, and BFP had this to say:
AradhanaD–
I’m sorry I left the comments at your blog, and as I soon as I paid careful attention to your p.s., I took down the link I had put up here, and sent you the note retracting my stuff.
I don’t know where I fall in your p.S., if I am the radical feminist basher or the “rest of the camp” or whatever, but all I can say is that bitch and belle have been good friends to me for a very long time–about 3/4 of my blogging career (which, comparably, has been about 1/10th of what you and heart and bitch et al have had). So I am not sure where you got the idea that they are “suddenly” befriending anybody. They have posted regularly here, at amazon’s, and at pretty much every radical woman of color’s blog who posts here. I may not agree on everything they write, but they have made a committement to this community that has lasted for about a year now, and to insinuate otherwise is just wrong. period.
Having said that, I am wondering why I am positioned in your p.s. as somebody who belle and bitch just randomly choose to tag along with and support because….why? I don’t have anything really that worthy to say? Because they couldn’t possibly be interested in and support any of the anti-violence posts that I have made? And on that note, I couldn’t have possibly disagreed with and had long intense conversations with them on their stances on sex-positivism? This is not the first time that bitch and belle have been accussed of supporting radical women of color bloggers just because they hate “x” group. Is it really that unbelievable that women of color could have anything worth discussing if it doesn’t center white women?
And as I said before, I am sick of trying to sift through the politics of all the different radfems, when those radfems don’t return the favor–apparently now not on radical feminists of color theory/activism OR on my own history in this blogging world
I will not make the mistake again of trying to talk about or even think about the radfem community. As I stated up above, the beginning of that huge conversation had nothing to do with the radfem community, it had to do with a bunch of fucked of commentors talking some really horrible shit about people that are my friends, allies, and a part of my community and somehow, within the course of the conversation it shifted into a conversation about radfem’s. Next time, I will not allow that turn to happen.
But the bottom line is that the very first point I made still stands and I support and will not back down from and if that makes me a feminist basher, so be it. I don’t need to know anybody’s theory or who belongs to what to know that the things that were said were fucked up and that just as the trans community is not considered worthy, women of color are not considered worthy. As heart so politely pointed out–women of color work, theory, activism is nothing more than a paragraph to be entered into a *real* discussion.
So as I see it, there’s nothing left to talk about with this. All I know is that I’m not going to keep centering “that” community (whatever “that” community may consist of) in my discussions any longer. This blog is not about trying to figure out factions of bloggers that have been around forever (in other words, trying to gain entry into a community where radical women of color have not been before), it is about using the internet as a tool of social justice. I really don’t care if heart or twisty or anybody who loves reads and supports them thinks that gender will not survive the “fall of the patriarchy”–I really don’t care. And I just don’t care enough about any of those communities, whatever and whomever they may be, to devote any more time or energy to any of them.
So, AradhanaD, thank you for your comment, and again, I am sorry that I posted on your blog. But this blog is moving on now. This is the second time a conversation about trans people of color and women of color has been interrupted, and it’s not going to happen again. As you said in your p.s. maybe on a different post on a different topic, we can talk about things. right now, however, is just not the place.
I make a couple of notes of my own now, first B|L, belledame222, and sex-positive feminists in general have been true allies. They do actually read our blogs and engage us on our blogs and at their own. Not all of them, but there really is this tendency to being open to listening and learning. Radical Feminists, unfortunately, not so much. Often when we go to their spaces we soon find out we are ignored, dismissed, or tokenized and patronized. While we have gotten that sexism trumps racism card thrown at us from both sides, it is more likely to come from the RadFems and more quickly.
In fact, AradhanaD may know this deep down because the title of the post where interaction with Sex-Pos feminists isn't necessary is, "How to Stop Being an Ignorant/Indifferent White Feminist..." which I read to mean that sex-pos feminists aren't the ones who tend to be ignorant or indifferent, they don't need the dressing down or to learn anything from AD.
I now turn the podium over to Bitch|Lab who has a few things to say about this too. And maybe AD will understand why labeling sex pos feminists "pro-pornstitution" is as offensive and unfair as labelling radfems as "man haters".
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