An Open Letter...

As a woman of color, we face many battles on a daily basis. Whether it is coming under fire in the classroom, made spokesperson for all women of color in academia, being harassed on the street, or seen as sexually available and exotic, the one arena that always seems to plague us is our love life. Already in academia, we are a pretty isolated population and thus, finding partners can be quiet difficult. Trying to find a partner that “gets it” and says they are as equally radical, progressive, supportive, ambitious, driven, creative (the list goes on….) is damn near impossible. As a result, we have learned to “date-down” and to lower the standards. LADIES, we should not have to do this!!! We are amazing and deserve a lover/partner/friend that acts as an equal, but in order to do this we will experience lemons.

This is an open letter to myself about a former lover of mine—a man who I thought was an equal: a progressive man of color. Needless to say, he didn’t walk the talk, and I learned the hard way (multiple breakups/hookups), false promises, attempts to be friends and colleagues, etc... But at the end of the day, the very long day, I finally got it and realized I/we deserve better…

To me,

What I have come to understand and accept is that “G” is selfish and immature. Out of the many kind things I have done from the bottom of my heart, how many times has he returned the favor? How many times has “G” made me feel like a woman—like a respected woman? Rarely, if ever. I can count on one hand how many times he has paid for the entire bill or purchased anything for me.

And here I stand, meeting two male friends who have shown me more respect in the last couple of weeks than he has in years.

I deserve someone who allows me to love and to show them love. I do not need to play games and have drama in order to feel listened to or cared for. That is not me. I need to acknowledge how he has disrupted and warped my sense of romance. In do not seek control over his life, only straight communication which he cannot and does not offer. I am not a doll that can be picked up and played with whenever HE wants. I am a human, a woman, a giver, a lover, an equal.

“G” is bad for me and I need to accept the fact that I need distance from him in order to be emotionally healthy. While this will be hard, I know that for my professional and personal life to blossom—this is what HAS to be done. I cannot nor should try to contact him just for the hell of it. If he wants to contact me than he can, but still remember to be cautious.

Maybe one day “G”will realize what he has/had in front of him. Until that day, I should not focus my love and attention on an unrealistic aspiration.

While it is difficult being a woman of color, and more importantly a woman of color in a primarily white spatial construction, it is better to be alone and happy than together and miserable.

The sex is just not worth it.

Signed,
libralady

panty snapping reflections

today i was going to class. i got on an elevator and so did this guy, also presumably going to class. i was inconspicuously trying to scratch my side where my underwear band was kind of itching. instead, i snapped the band really loudly on accident, in an otherwise noiseless elevator. FAIL. EPIC PANTY SNAPPING FAIL. if the guy had been hot i might have tried to make the most of the moment by saying something like, "yeah, i snapped my own underwear...jealous?" but then i think that would have only reified the hypersexual woman of color trope.

<3 desertDIVA

It's really not uncommon...i promise...

I was talking with desertDIVA today and I'm not quite sure how I feel about "sharing" my personal experiences in class. Most of my experiences are gendered & raced and that's typically how i frame them. But today, I felt like my classmates' reactions to my experiences were overly surprised..as if this stuff was just completely horrendous and unbelievable. The stories I shared with them aren't unique...they're your typical asian fetish, we all look alike, we're all foreign, name calling, not being taken seriously, etc. Sometimes I wonder if those who haven't experienced racism directly are living/experiencing racism through my experiences. i wonder if listening to how people experience racism gives them a sense of legitimacy b/c now they know what racism feels like and looks like...and they can say "i know this girl who....blah blah blah..."

I know at the end of the day this might just be a burden we have to deal with. I DO want people who don't see how racism works to hear about our experiences and be able to understand that it really does exist and it happens to people who look like me. I just don't like being commodified.

XXunbound

typical day, same b.s.

830am
mom calls
mom: how do you say green, like remember how you were telling me what to say about going green for the environment, (as a sales promotion for the tourism industry, not b/c im a hippie) is it right to say, 'i think we should be surrounded by greens...'?"
desertDIVA: no mom, just green without the s, green, not greens.
mom: oh, hahahaha, ok. i want to tell this guy im emailing that i like earthling colors, should i say that?
desertDIVA: earthy colors? like as in the earth?
mom: no like, earthling, like that one movie with geena davis and jeff goldblum...
desertDIVA: earthgirls are easy???
mom: (lol-ing) yeah that one, is that ok to say?
desertDIVA: just say earthy colors, not earthling...and earthling is a human.
mom: oh...what else should i say to this guy?
desertDIVA: mom...im writing a paper...its due in 2 hours.
mom: (exasperation) oooooh ok fine, bye.

835am
mom calls
mom: did you fix the light at your apartment yet?
desertDIVA: no...
....
....
mom: ok bye.

1pm
heading to class, mentally preparing to discuss a book about whiteness that i'm not so fond of. most of the class is white...and study people / communities of color...cuz they are "progressive," or something. i don't get it.
desertDIVA: i thought there were a couple of problematic things in this book, some of which i will list as follows...
1. this book got all kinds of accolades from which whiteness studies emerged and was received with open arms and acceptance while the ethnic studies still have to validate and justify their existence in the academy.
2. cultural appropriation does not open the doors to antiracism for white people. i don't care how much smokey robinson you listen to or how many Che/Bob Marley shirts you have. That doesn't make you radical, that makes you a tool.
3. I don't feel sorry for white "repression." as peggy mcintosh said, this repression gives them an "invisible knapsack" full of useful tools that they get to use to get ahead in the world. getting rid of whiteness wont change this. it'll probably just make the knapsack more invisible.
4. The focus on whiteness creates a tone different from the other books we have read. this book, in dealing with whiteness, felt more tragic, melancholic and sympathetic, whereas many of our other books feel more angry and violent..and i am suspicious of anything that seems like it's trying to make the hegemonic group the victims.
rest of class: but what are you talking about, this book was totally violent...there were labor riots! and racial slurs!
desertDIVA: ummm....wat....

230pm
desertDIVA: WAAAT WAAAT WAT??! are those people in my class effing serious!?! eff that shit!
libralady: i know honey, i know.

400pm
choco taco and shit talking / emotional support

700pm
going to theothergrlnxtdoor 's potluck
desertDIVA: (after first plate) i'm gonna get more food. (looks at 2 containers of yogurt, looks at host) are these two the same kind of yogurt?
random white dude who isn't host: (displays cultural capital / cultural appropriation skillz) oh thats raita, its indian yogurt and cucumber, you eat it with the spicy chicken.
desertDIVA: (looks at dude, spoons yogurt into bowl) ... (walks away with a samosa in mouth).
desertDIVA: (to libralady) ummm
libralady: yeah...

945pm
at a bar with othergrlnxtdoor, libralady, and XXunbound, shit talking / emotional support /defeated trolling
desertDIVA: (grabs arm of XXunbound, motions for her to look at hot Asian men at the bar who could possibly be undergraduates) where did they come from?!?!
XXunbound: i don't know!!!
All : (stare in awe and wonderment at hot Asians until they leave bar. we are chicken and don't talk to them)

100am
eat pie. talk shit / emotional support. go to bed.

hyper sensitive my ass

So I recently posted an article on facebook about Annie Le's murder and my friend thought I was being hyper sensitive. My problem with the article was that the entire article was about who was at that point, a potential suspect (he's now under arrest). The article humanizes him and paints this portrait--the guy next door. He could have been anyone. This is how the article starts off:

"As a high school student in the shoreline town of Branford, Conn., Raymond Clark III joined the Asian Awareness Club, which made spring rolls for a faculty lunch and organized a trip to Chinatown for the Chinese New Year. He joined the Interact Club, which focused on community problems like homelessness. And he played football and baseball, throwing long bombs as a quarterback and knuckleballs as a pitcher."

He's then addressed as "Mr. Clark" for the rest of the article. The article portrays him as your standard all-american white boy. Now, we don't know for sure whether or not "Mr. Clark" had an Asian fetish or if he was cracked out on something when he strangled Annie Le to death and shoved her into a wall, but there's a history of the media and the legal system deracializing racially motivated violence against Asian women and being sympathetic to white male perps.

This is why the article irked me. I like to think it's a pretty reasonable and legitimate reason for being pissed. My fb friend, however, thought I was being "hyper sensitive" and cautioned me about racializing the situation.

Um. I'm not hyper sensitive-- I just see it for what it is. What it could potentially be. Ok, so maybe I'm a little sensitive but it's because I'm just tired of it. I'm not being abnormally critical--I'm just freakin annoyed. So what? I HAVE THAT RIGHT.

I have that right because Michael Lohman has the right to get psychological treatment in exchange for a clean criminal record after putting his piss & jizz into Asian women's drinks and masterbating with a mitten filled with snippets of Asian hair he stole off the heads of unknowing women. I have that right because three racist pathetic white perverts in Spokane, WA kidnapped and raped two Japanese women for 7 hrs to satisfy their sexual fantasies of young Japanese girls but this wasn't considered a hate crime. I have that right because violence against women of color is usually deracialized by the legal system & the media. If they have the right to ignore the root cause of violence against women of color, I have the right to call them out.

And it's not just white men who are protected by the media and the legal system--as long as the perp has some social capital, the media makes an effort. Take a look at the media coverage of Tila Tequila charging her hot shot football playing partner of battery and false imprisonment. Regardless of what "actually" happened and regardless of what you think about Tila, if she felt violated, she felt violated. If she wants to press charges, more power to her. That's her right and the media's job is not to protect or make excuses for her potentially abusive partner. Just because Tila doesn't fit into the good girl narrative "worthy" of being protected doesn't mean she should be villified and treated as if she "deserved it." Nobody deserves it and nobody deserves to be strangled to death. not Annie, not Tila.

So, no. I don't think I'm being hyper sensitive. I'm sick of the media devaluing the lives and bodies of women of color.

peace,

XXunbound

a manifesto....

"We are a family who first only knew each other in our dreams, who have come together on these pages to make faith a reality and to bring all of our selves to bear down hard on that reality. It is about physical and psychic struggle. It is about intimacy, a desire for life between all of us, not settling for less than freedom even in the most private aspects of our lives. A total vision. For the women in this book, i will lay my body down for that vision. This Bridge Called My Back." - Cherrie Moraga, excerpt from, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings By Radical Women of Color.

We resolve, in the spirit of the women who have gone before us, to be uncompromising in our pursuit of total freedom. We understand that as academic women of color, our ideologies are inextricably and irrevocably tied to our intimate lives, and that although this places an unfair burden upon us, it also brings us closer to that complete freedom we desire. We acknowledge that as professional women of color, the odds are heavily against us in terms of the prospects of truly free intimacy, be it camaraderie or romance. We know that our backs will be consistently walked on throughout our lives, but we refuse to tolerate this from the people we choose to let enter our lives. We offer our backs to these, and bear the weight gladly. We will not be your cultural capital, your token/trophy, your walk on the "wild side," that makes you think you are legitimate and down with the brown. We will keep the hope alive, and we will do it in style.

xoxo,
desertDIVA, libralady, othergrlnxtdoor, XXunbound