I'm Not...

Please read entire essay at: http://www.womanist-musings.com/2009/05/i-am-not-feminist.html



"I am not a feminist. I can declare this boldly without fear and with a certainty of will. I believe unequivocally in women's rights and the equality of all beings but have found after various years of interaction, that feminism has no room for women that look like me or have similar experiences to me.

I cannot knowingly participate in a movement that claims to be open and yet daily either appropriates or minimizes my struggle for the gains of others.
I am a heterosexual, black, disabled mother. I am many things to many people and my life though simple in its nature, is worth something to me and the people that I love. Daily I live with the legacy that was bequeathed to me from my mothers womb and I cannot in good conscience spit upon my inheritance by owning a label that seeks to privilege others.

The name of this blog is Womanist Musings for a reason. Womanism not only speaks to who I am as a person but to who I aspire to be each and everyday. It is not housed in academia or based in privileging whiteness or class advantage. It lives and breathes because women of color continue to struggle for even the most basic form of recognition that is the birth right of a privileged few on our little blue planet.

I have seen the discussions between radical women of color/womanist and feminists referred to as a war. At first the term war seemed inappropriate until I thought about the length and breathe of this conversation. Indeed it is a war, a war of attrition to be accurate. Though we are told that we have come so far because a black woman is now first lady, even that honour is appropriated as whiteness seeks to claim Michelle Obama by comparing her to women like Jackie O and alternately defiling her at will by calling her angry when she displays any form of agency"...