Femmethology Spotlight: Lucy Marrero

How do you define your femme identity?
Glitter. Lots of glitter. Femme, for me, is what I make of it. I don’t believe in defining femme for anyone else, and I wouldn’t presume to impose my definition of femme on anyone.

For me, though, femme is:
Fishnets and 6” stilettos… and worn-out, dirty Chucks.
Perfecting a look with peacock-inspired eyeshadow.
Proudly walking my son to school in PJs, boots, and a stocking cap with no makeup on, not even to cover my blemishes.
Baking the perfect dark chocolate-bottomed pie wearing a sheer, red vintage apron.
Building an outfit around hot pink earrings, hot pink shoes, and the perfect sheer hot pink lip gloss.
Boldly occupying my space in the world and generously making room for others to occupy it with me.

Read the rest at http://www.homofactuspress.com/index.php/hfpspotlight/femmethology_contributor_lucy_marrero/

Follow Lucy's new blog God Lives in Long Beach at godlivesinlongbeach.wordpress.com.

Femme Conference 2008

Femme2008: The Architecture of Femme
August 15-17, 2008
Chicago Wyndham O'Hare

Saturday Keynote Speaker Dorothy Allison

Mission Statement

Femme Collective is committed to creating conferences by Femmes, about Femmes, and for Femmes and their allies. We understand that Femme is more complex than just being a queer person who is feminine; it is a part of how we interact with and shape our world as queer academics, activists, artists, homemakers, parents, professionals, students, teachers, etc.

Our conferences seek to explore, discuss, dissect, and support Queer Femme* as a transgressive, gender-queer, stand-alone, and empowered identity and provide a space for organizing and activism within Queer communities. We hope to attract people of all genders who are interested in a deeper understanding of Femme identity, culture, and history as well as Femmes interested in learning, teaching, connecting, and building community geared towards social change. Recognizing that queer Femme gender can be constructed independent of and/or intimately connected to biological sex, this conference will build coalition among queer Femmes of every stripe. Taking into consideration the various ways in which Femmes across the country and the world construct Femme based on region, class, race, ethnicity, access and ability, the Femme Collective will strive to create a safe place for open dialogue among a plethora of Femme-identified persons and their allies.

We are dedicated to: creating a Femme-positive environment; selecting programming to honor differences in ethnicities, physical abilities and gender expressions; and highlighting the intersection of queer Femme identity with issues of race, class, age, and body. We hope that together we can create a space to explore many of the complexities of Femme identity, including (but not limited to) questions of privilege, invisibility, intersecting identities, class mobility, aging, and the differences between femininity and Femme identity. We hope to contribute to giving voice to queer Femme identity, and to building unity, coalition, and solidarity in and among genderqueer communities.

*We recognize that for many lesbians and same-gender-loving Femmes 'queer' is not a term that works and that it can often feel alienating and unwelcoming. We want to recognize that language is always imperfect, and make it clear that we use the term as an umbrella to include all of us who identify as Femme within LGBTQIA/SGL and genderphile communities. We are using this term to specifically and intentionally include lesbians and same-gender-loving women as well as
genderqueers, transwomen, and folks of every sex and gender who identify as Femme and see themselves as part of LGBTQIA/SGL and genderphile
communities.

Register now!

Femme Conference 2008

Call for Workshops, Papers, and Art
Femme2008: The Architecture of Femme
Chicago Wyndham O'Hare
August 15th - 17th, 2008
www.femmecollective.com

The submission deadline of May 1, 2008 is fast approaching! To submit a proposal, please submit the following to us at

http://www.femmecollective.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=27&Itemid=42

We are still seeking contributions from anyone interested, including (but not limited to):
> workshops
> research presentations
> skill shares
> activist & organizational topics
> visual art
> video or film

Please note the requirements for each type of submission:

*For research presentations, send a 300 word abstract
*For workshop and skill share proposals, send a 300 word description of
your workshop or skill share ideas
*Visual artists should send samples of work and a 300 word description
of their artistic vision

Submissions of all kinds are welcome, particularly submissions by
femmes. We encourage proposals by and for people of color, working-class people, fat folks, people with disabilitites, trans and intersex folks, young people, aging communities/femmes and femme allies.


We hope to draw participants from across disciplinary, medium, and
social boundaries. We encourage submissions from anyone interested,
regardless of gender or sexual identity. We do ask that you read our
mission statement before submitting. To learn more about us, our mission and to contact us with any questions, comments or concerns, please find us at our website:


http://www.femmecollective.com


Submission deadline is May 1, 2008.
To submit a proposal, please submit the following to us at

http://www.femmecollective.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=27&Itemid=42

Hot Mess! Get your hot mess! Nice and hot!

Seal keeps the mess served up nice and piping hot.

I don't have any energy in reserve to say anthing particularly articulate at the moment. There's this huge macaw next door that squawks to wake the dead during the day and the upstairs neighbor with a sewing machine and a killer sound system during the night that's taking up any mental space not occupied by work, schoolwork, or six year olds.

But damn. Just... damn.

Seal Press: Suggested Rectification

As the WAD* turns. In this week's episode, Seal Press gets cranky with those damn "negative discoursing" women of color, who for some reason just aren't beating down their door . [Scroll down for the goods.]

Shocking, I know. (And we won't talk about how they seem to beat down the door of white feminists who want to talk about sex.)


And since you asked, Seal, here's what you can do: start by not giving some asinine excuse about how we're "dissecting your every word" and by:

1) Examining how you have created and/or contributed to the lack of women of color at Seal. This includes stopping with the "they don't come to us" and asking first if that's true or if it's an assumption based on your erroneous perception of the problem and whose responsibility it is to fix it and second, if women of color aren't beating your door down, why?

Because I'm just speaking for me here, but if I feel unwelcome somewhere, I'm not going to trust someone with my life's work. I'm going to find a publisher who seems interested in what I have to say and, perhaps, gets it. Or at least shows interest in getting it. And I'm definitely not going to go somewhere that thinks I'm too negative, too angry, or just plain unpalatable. Because chances are if you can't hear a critique of why WOC aren't impressed with you, then I doubt you're going to want to publish my work, seeing as it's probably just as negative and angry as I am.

2) Issuing a sincere apology based on the insight you've gained in your careful examination of where you went wrong. Now, I realize it's hard to be put on the spot like that, but you know it's just a bad idea to stick with the "it's not my fault" schtick even when it's not working. The most graceful and respectful thing to do is to apologize and learn from your mistakes, even if they weren't made intentionally. Because let me tell you, I can't count how many times a white person/institution has unintentionally hurt me. Or how many times I've comforted a friend who's been hurt--held their hand or given them a hug as they recount the painfulness of betrayal, ignorance, and hurt.

Chances are, if you've got a grip of angry brown women saying you fucked up? You fucked up.

Give it a few to think about it, will ya?




* WAD (White Asshat Disorder): "Primary symptoms include but are not limited to: colorblindness, positive stereotyping, calling all wo/men of a particular racial/ethnic background 'so hot,' divide-and-conquer mentality toward social categories and subsequent deprioritization of race, repeated inquiries about where someone is 'really from,' passing judgments on whether someone does or does not look and/or act like their stated race/ethnicity, assorted head-in-sand disorders [see subsections on ignoring non-whites in life-or-death situations and 'the past is past, get over it'], exclamations that 'mixed babies are the cutest,' purse-clutching, assumptions about a speaker's native language(s), assumptions about class, piling on non-whites when they make a mistake, calling all members of a particular racial/ethnic background 'exclusionary,' making irrelevant references to someone's race/ethnicity, caricaturizing of non-whites, unsolicited hair touching. Disorder, if left unchecked, may lead to death by shin-kicking." Suggested course of treatment: Repeated blows to the head with a heavy object followed by slamming the fingers of at least one hand into a door (repeat as needed). Resistant strains might require treatment of one or more sessions with at least three Angry Brown PeopleTM in order to reverse the Special Snowflake damage. Unfortunately, outlook is not good, with most cases still resulting in significant damage to the portions of the brain most implicated in empathy, consideration, and developing a sense of how to be a fucking decent person.
(Term coined by parlance and defined by chitinous. Course of treatment suggested by yours truly.

This whole Margaret B. Jones pretendian nightmare is really getting on my nerves. Although this take on it from a food writer made me LOL. It's exploitation, pure and simple. And I'm disgusted by the whole thing. Imagine! A light-skinned woman of color who is lower middle class pretends she was raised by a French ambassador! Cooks up a fake accent and makes up a debutant ball and a million-dollar sweet sixteen party. Is that nearly as compelling? Interesting, sure... but only if we know that the woman is a fake. Ms. Seltzer's story was compelling only when everyone thought it was true.

Or at least the white people did. As the food writer Malcolm Gay (linked above) said, "In other words: If you're going to publish this sort of book, find someone who knows what black-eyed peas and pork neck bones really taste like."And that's exactly why Seltzer got her book deal! Because the people she associated with had no idea what a true story from the 'hood might read like. She wasn't hob-knobbing with other gang-rape survivors and single mamas from South Central. She was buddies with the likes of Inga Muscio, the purported "antiracist" activist and author. ... the wha??

I'm sorry, I just had a little mental short circuit. Could someone explain to me how being an antiracist ally equals angry missives about mean people and crickets chirping when it comes to "Peggy's" agency in deciding to exploit the lives of poor people of color for monetary gain? Because this is what I'm not sure white people get: that what Seltzer did has a very real impact on people's lives.

Racist stereotypes are trotted out for refreshing and updating for the 21st century. Once again.

A white woman of money steals the stories of marginalized people as her own.

A white woman makes connections based on her false identity and gets chummy with famous white people who are more than happy to make her their pet Negro.

She's palatable. She's singing a song they know all the words to. She's white-skinned, and this sets them at ease in ways they don't even realize but just know that she's "relatable." I can hear that meeting happening: "She's just so gritty and real! But so relatable!" Yes, real light-skinned people know about being palatable to white people. And this white bitch capitalized on that. A white woman tells a story that's not hers to tell and then says that she was giving voice to people who don't have one.

Excuse me? What? There are no poor people of color writers? What's that you say? You can't think of any? Well, perhaps that's because their stories rarely get told, and when they do, they're by WHITE LIERS.

This is how the system works. A poor woman of color from Central LA writes. She writes well. But her story is no bootstrapping story. No gem full of "Big Mom" and neck-bones for dinner. But it's real. It's authentic. It's moving. And it's not at all what the white publishers want to hear. She's not "relatable."

I am concerned about dominant groups coopting the stories of marginalized people. Because to steal a story is to steal a life. To steal a voice. And as an abuse survivor, I can tell you that the very thought of having my voice taken from me--my truth coopted and distorted for the gain of someone else--makes my guts seize up.

And that's exactly what racism does: steal people's voices and leave them feeling helpless and alone, forcing them to fight constantly. Fight to take your voice back. Fight to learn how to use it again. Fight to have other people hear it. Fight to not have it stolen back from you over and over and over again. Racism is constant abuse. It is a constant emotional gang rape. And the triggers, unlike a blue shirt, are unavoidable.

I was browsing racialicious.com and came across a most interesting article by a woman of color, who talks about how she stopped being racist... against white people.

It piqued my interest because I have pondered more than once how personal growth and antiracist ideology intersect for me personally। What I mean is, as I work to become the most whole person I can, I try not to harbor resent, bitterness, or anger. This isn't because the targets of my negativity don't deserve it, but because it's not very conducive to living as happy and healthy a life I possibly can. The author doesn't deny racism [against people of color, just to clarify], and in fact details some of her frustrations with white people who don't get it. ...my attempts to foster a dialogue about race with non-PoCs has been a less than satisfying experience.But instead of breaking down how her frustrations with white people are caused by systemic racism implemented in white denial and interpersonal communication tactics, she leads us into a discussion of her personal "racism."

"So why did I start to challenge my racist beliefs?" she asks rhetorically. The blogger, Latoya Peterson, says she doesn't have an answer. She just knew she had to change.I applaud anyone's efforts at personal growth. I've faced a really intense, really tiring couple of years now in which I've been working hard on being as whole and authentic as I can be. Where I find her logic to breakdown is the leap from systemic racism evidenced by white people's cluelessness and/or silencing of her (and by extension, all people of color) to personal efforts to eradicate bitterness.I don't equate a bitterness, resentment, wariness, or avoidance of white people with "racism." Where Peterson puts her personal negativity toward white people and her antiracist activism in one big bucket, I'd put them in two:1. Antiracist work, systemic racism, white people's complicity in white supremacy.2. Personal aversion to white people based on experience with white supremacy and white people's complicity to white supremacy.

While I feel the two are separate, I don't at all mean to imply they don't inform each other. Clearly #1 is a cause of #2. But #2 is a personal response to experienced systemic racism. And I don't know that a negative personal response to systemic racism has much to do with organizing to end systemic racism, as Peterson argues, except in possible limited or missed opportunities to organize with white people. [And boy do I have thoughts on that, but I'll save it for National Hate White People Day, which I believe is right around the bend.]But moving back to the whole personal growth not-hating-white-people thing, she says this:

Post-adolescence, I had let go of a lot of my anger toward white people. But it was not until recently that I began to actively challenge my perceptions of white people. To work toward overcoming all the internalized prejudice I held. One day, I hope to be able to look at a group of white people and see people - not just run anthropological commentary in my head. I made a conscious decision to work to overcome these racist perspectives. To listen to and try to understand where white people are coming from. To share experiences, rather than just talk at each other.

I agree with her that talking at each other isn't very productive, yet I think she neglects to consider how white people--especially the ones she describes encountering--are more than happy to "talk at" her without trying to "understand where [she is] coming from." And Lordisa knows you can try all you want to have a come-to-Jesus with someone, but if they're only willing to talk at you and not listen to you, it doesn't really matter one way or the other if you're an active listener who's willing to try to understand the what the other person's saying. I'm taking a class right now on race and rhetoric and I'm reminded of two things: how it feels to try to engage with white people who "talk at" me and don't listen and the discussion about Mary Daly's and Audre Lorde's public disagreement. In my Race and Rhetoric class, I am the only person of color in a class full of mostly white women and two white men. And boy-howdy is that a blast. It's mostly your run-of-the-mill white rhetoric about race, saturated in ignorance, denial, guilt and silencing. A few times I've attempted to communicate how racism applies to me and to people of color in a more general fashion, invoking personal experience as well as well-known scholarship. As someone I know says, it went over about as well as a lead balloon. The class discussion erupted, what was before a palpable-only-to-me coldness becoming an openly hostile environment in which I was told I was an "angry" person full of "discontent" and was challenged to prove how racism has hurt me. In detail.

This is not a unique situation; it's pretty much what Peterson describes in her encounters with white people throughout the years. Whereas I used that information to decide to not cast pearls before swine, Peterson decides that a change in her negativity toward white people will improve her relations with them and further her antiracist efforts.

In the encounter that Audre Lorde has with Mary Daly after Daly's publication of Gyn/Ecology, she describes a similar struggle, saying that she'd previously decided not to engage with white women about race because it'd had such negative results. Yet, she says, she wants to give it a whirl with Daly, in order "not to destroy [her] in [her] consciousness." And this is the fundamental struggle that women of color have with white women (and people of color in general have with white people): we cannot avoid them completely. Occasionally they say something fucked up enough we'd like to address and so we have to emerge from our protective POC hideouts to engage with them--knowing full well it's likely to have a high emotional cost.As we as adult human beings continually work to better ourselves individually and in the way we interact with others, we find ourselves bumping up against the barbed-wire fence of oppression. As whole as I would like to be, I will never be able to heal the wounds of sexism and racism; my wounds are opened anew continuously. As such, even if I go to therapy, anger management, parenting, and relationship counseling, I will still encounter sexism and racism in my life. And I will have to deal with it.

It's this dealing that Lorde, Peterson, and I struggle with. How do we respond to the wounds of oppression inflicted on our bodies and psyches? Our coping mechanisms vary individually and even within ourselves as we grow and change and experience life. Lately I've let a few white people into my life, whereas last year I knew... well, only my mama. I wouldn't applaud myself as being less "racist," only acknowledge that I'm willing to take risks I was not willing, possibly even able, to take a year ago. And I can't judge any person of color's coping mechanisms in the face of constant oppression as "racism." The shoe just doesn't fit.

Further, calling a person of color's negative feelings about white people "racism," even if I could get behind that idea at all, still opens the door for the crazy. To hear a person of color confess how she is "racist" (against whites) seems to give people permission to redirect the conversation to people of color and their "bad behavior", how white people's fee-fees get hurt, and equate POC's wariness of whites with institutionalized [white] racism.And in the meantime, people of color's pain at dealing with racism and an antiracist discourse about the real issue gets lost in the wash.