I’m done here

I went to the fem 08 conference and it clarified a few things for me.

Things have changed for me, I’m thinking differently and I’m being more honest, I’m listening more to people who aren’t me. I’m interested in getting my fingers dirty, in doing more practical offline activism.

I hate the thought of being referred to as a “radfem” because I think by and large the internet “radfem” community is becoming increasingly poisonous and paranoid, and increasingly single issue. While obviously I think the issues of porn, prostitution and rape are really important they are not the only thing that feminism needs to engage with and actually they are not something I wish to talk about all the time because actually I find them retraumatizing, I have wounds that are not going to heal if I keep uncovering them in settings that are not conducive to healing.

I also don’t want to be associated with any of the hypocritical narrow minded savagery that is clearly a complete failure to dismantle or even critique patriarchal attitudes.

I have seen the internet “radfem” community completely welcome people, make them feel, safe, suported, listened to and the when those people step out of line I have seen those people chewed up and spat out, ostracised and ignored, and I can see it happening again. Right now there are two bloggers who I am pretty sure this is going to happen to and I don’t want to be around when it happens.

recently I got called a a pro-porn, pro-bdsm, pro-trans, troll. (its the second to last comment) because I had the audacity to disagree and try to discuss things with certain “radfems”

I recently got kicked of a google group to organise a feminist gathering because one person didn’t like my comments on somebody else’s blog, that had nothing at all to do with them even though the blog from th egroup claims that There is no hierarchy within the group.

I’m really uncomfortable with the idea that all radical feminists are supposed to believe the same thing and if they don’t they get excluded, there was no discussion of my politics before I was kicked of the list and I wasn’t even informed that it had happened.

then when I expressed a wish to still go to the meeting but that it would need to be wheelchair accessible i was informed that the venues was already booked and it wasn’t known if it was wheelchair accessible. If we are trying to undo opressions and be as acsesable as posible shouldnt we make sure that somewhere is acseable before we choose it?

I’m also really uncomfortable that there are other women who would really like to go to the gathering but who know they wouldnt be welcome because they too are seen as the wrong sort of feminst.

And it seems some of those purer than thou radfems want to drag up some age old vindictive vile shit that they knew deeply hurt people who were part of that comunity

I dont think its up to any of us to police who and who isnt “feminist enough” so I want no part of this,

I’m going to stop blogging as nectarine, I am elswhere on the internet, if you want to know where send me an email on nectarine99@googlemail.com and I’ll send you the link

This is where I came in: Remembering Myself

This is where I came in and other transgressions.

I recently had a very drunken, rambling but for me very profound conversation about, transgender, gender diversity, queer, non heterosexuality and alliances and i feel in a way it bought me back to myself, gave me a space to reremember my history, to pay homage to who and what made me partly who I am.

Radical feminism is important to me and has been very healing for me and given me a strong place to stand, but before that there was something else. There was another community of people both in literature and physicaly that I belonged to, that belonged to me, before I found radical feminism, when I was dealing with my non heterosexuality I read everything I could find, to help me feel less abnormal. The first book I ever read that talked about not being straight was okay was Becoming a Man and it was so powerful, so profound, it doesn’t matter to me that it was written by a man, it felt like i was coming up for air. And I read everything I could find about being non heterosexual,

And I read, Pat(rik) Califia, Del(la) grace volcano, Kate Bornstien, Joan Nestle, Camile Paglia and many people who I cant remember the names of but who made it okay to be me, made it okay to be queer

It was then i met one of the people I have been most attracted to in my whole life, a preoperative transman, we absolutely zinged, there was an incredible chemistry between us

and I played femme, real high lesbian femme, because it made me feel beautiful, because I liked the sort of women it attracted, i went out with a woman for two and a half years who was so butch she got called sir, who was way more masculine than my current partner who is male

And when i wasn’t playing femme i was doing soft butch baby dyke, the uniform then was Khakis and strappy tops

I have always been Kiki who I am being and how i am dressing depends on how I am feeling, where I feel I am on the gender and sexuality spectrum at that point.

I lived in a big shared house that was always full of people that didn’t live there and almost all of us were some form of queer: bi, gay, lesbian, trans, undecided, unlabeled, We were young desperate, vulnerable, many of us parentless or faced the possibility of becoming parent less if our parents found out who we were, and many of us were crazy because the pressure of living in a homophobic heterosexist society wore us out, wore us down, there was a place to sleep if parental prejudice created homelessness, we fed each other when we were poor, we mopped up the blood weather it was self inflicted or weather it was a homophobic attack. we visited each other when we ended up in the psychiatric hospital, we went clubbing every weekend to celebrate being us, to celebrate our love for us, to celebrate survival

I have never felt so much that people I loved had my back as I did then, and we didn’t care, it didn’t matter who was fucking who, or how, or what shape their genitals were, or weather they were buying into gender roles.

And I think this, the need for purity is often what stagnates movements because people make alliances with people for reasons other than gender and people make alliances with other people who are similarly oppressed even if that crosses gender lines and people are messy and beautiful and we find our joy and our freedom in unexpected people and situations.

I have always lived on edges and boundaries and I think edges and boundaries are where the truths are, shoring up the boundaries to hard doesn’t create safety, it creates a trap.

for most of my life I have been very fractured and I have only recently, like in the last year been able to start weaving myself back together. Its time to start weaving the queer part of myself together with the radical feminist part of myself, so none of me, none of who I honestly am, gets left behind

This is what I came here for

This spring from the heart of the mountain runs cool and clear, runs with the knowledge of womens pain, poverty and fear, but also the sound of our laughter and fingerlinked power, quenching the thirst. Fullfilling the need for each others voices, histories, eyes, Saturating us with the knowledge that this stream will wear away the rock and become a river, a torrent to change the shape of the landscape with.

(IWD left me buzzing with joy!)

mental health blog

 Thanks for the response to my call out for bloggers, that was aweome (and more are always welcome)

I set up a yahoo group so we can talk about how we want to do this and such

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

for those of you who dont want to be regular contributers thats cool, just sent me occasional writings and i’ll post it up onto the blog

(Winter, would really like you to write about feminism and eating disorders)

Disability rights

Go read Its awesome.

My thoughts on the matter later on in the week.

it’s not about this

It’s not about performing for the boys and playing with the girls, it’s not about being gay when its easy and straight when it’s hard, it’s not about needing one of each, it’s not about which I prefer, which I like best, it’s not about being confused, being greedy, being selfish, its not about phases, it’s not about being sexually adventurous, it’s not about being sexually insatiable, its not about gender not mattering, it’s not about fucking and moving on, it’s not just about mechanics. its not about fifty fifty splits, it’s not about non monogamy, it’s not about hiding or lying or pretending, its not about fashion trends.

Dedications, Adrienne Rich

I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a gray day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plain’s enormous spaces around you.
I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight
but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem
as the underground train loses momentum and before running
up the stairs
toward a new kind of love
your life has never allowed.
I know you are reading this poem by the light
of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide
while you wait for the newscast from the Intifada.
I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room
of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.
I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,
count themselves out, at too early an age. I know
you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick
lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on
because even the alphabet is precious.
I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove
warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your
hand
because life is short and you too are thirsty.
I know you are reading this poem which is not your language
guessing at some words while others keep you reading
and I want to know which words they are.
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn
between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else
left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are.

- Adrienne Rich

Collateral damage: thoughts on being a survivor of prostitution

Don’t talk about it like you know what it is, don’t talk about it like I’m not in the same damn room and for fucks sake don’t call it work, its not work its slavery and don’t think because I’m a middle class university educated women that I haven’t done it, that it hasn’t happened to me.

You say this is contested territory while looking sideways at the big words, as if its a game, a discussion to be had, well my body is, always will be, contested territory because of what they did to it, because they bought it, sold it, used it, discarded it.

Don’t argue that there is no difference between this and other forms of capitalism, i would much rather do a sixteen hour shift in a freezer getting soaked through when sorting watercress than be fucked for money, I know this, unless you’ve been where I’m standing you don’t, so stop talking stupid crap, really.

Saying this OUT LOUD, in a public space, scares me, makes my heart hammer in my chest and the words, whatwilltheythinkofme? whatwilltheythinkofme? slide through my mind in shame.

But I can’t be the only one and I was brave enough, strong enough but most of all LUCKY enough that I made it out alive, and if anything I say makes a difference to JUST ONE other woman, the shame will have been worth it.