Thanks
–
Amol

Oh the #Occupy movements are so deeply racist, cissexist, misogynist etc etc BUT for the first time, the 99% has semblance of voice and agency in mainstream media, and that’s something, no?

However, this cannot and should not be the *only* thing communities of colour, trans* people, basically the marginalised people in the OWS movement should get out of it — this is Step 1.

I never was a feminist. I just exist between the labels of female activism, since I cannot support feminism based on the Eugenics stuffs. I think rooting the word in our respective cultures shows very different things. Also, I never stop complaining and fighting but I am so white I glow in the dark, can’t be the brown that makes you awesome lady. That’s just a nifty DVD extra.

One of my great wishes if I had any wish granting objects on hand would be the awareness of what these words mean to people who aren’t the one percent that controls everything. Even in the real Occupy movement, there is an element of privilege in a lot of the advocacy. Its still more open than a lot of previous attempts and that is the success and the start I think.

Feminism for me is a wee different, for me it’s Kamala Das’s poetry, fiction by Mahashveta Devi, hearing Ismat Chughtai’s stories at my grandmum’s feet — I am unwilling to give up the label just because a few (okay well more than a few) fuckwits from other parts of the world are unwilling to see our histories — I am not going anywhere, will remain in the movement and never stop complaining — I’m brown, it comes naturally to me, no? XD

Mainstream feminism wants people to think that the right to vote came for all women in the 20s, and a lot of other things that preclude the ideals of others. I might have considered feminism once if my inability to walk hadn’t made me invisible at a meeting and then my choice to tell someone being racist made the entire organization look bad AND hurt people, not just you know caring about how we looked, got me shouted down. Mainstream Feminism sure looks like the 1% from where I sit. So of course they would want to occupy Rape.

I do feel a similar distance, from my parents and native tongue, yet, still, always. Moved out recently and skype conversations are similarly peppered with static — as if we’ve started speaking different languages all at once. I’m quite certain I will never be at ease in any one. These days, when people ask “which language do you prefer/write in”, I just walk away. Le sigh.

i cant stop feeling though, that i really dont fit anywhere. talking to my own parents on skype gets hard, maybe because they are so unapologetically and emphatically “indian” (i don’t mean this in a bad way at all, just using it as a mark of difference between them and me – having lived abroad for 2 years and having had pretty shitty experiences back home has changed me profoundly as a person to the point where i’m not sure who i really identify with anymore, but i know don’t see things the same way my parents do). when i think about it – i also think, speak, read, write in english. i grew up on a steady fare of american television (late 90s, early 00s, star world, zee cafe ftw!) so i get a lot of their pop cultural references. but when i think about it, i wouldn’t want to be white – aside from becoming really really dark if i spend too much time in the sun, i like my skin colour a LOT (wheatish). i couldnt think of myself as anything but indian – but when it comes to being myself in an “international setting”, self-consciousness about my accent inevitably kicks in. I don’t have the most pronounced Indian accent, it’s actually pretty neutral – but just when i think i’ve resolved all my insecurities about indian and being able to live happily and without worry – boom! the insecurities come back out again. maybe this is partly because of the occasional dicks who like to call me out on the way i said this word or that word, but i wonder if I’m ever going to be able to live in any part of the world reconciled with myself and sans worry.

sorry about this long long rant – i guess it’s just a big issue in my life right now! i’m not sure if this really has much to do with this specific post, but the blog in general resonates with me a lot. what do you think? have you ever felt this way?

*facewall*

I’ve noticed that even in discussions in the US, when [white/middle-class] people say “access to abortion is one of the most important feminist issues” I think “right…tell that to the people who were forced/pressured to get abortions or sterilized against their knowledge/will.”

And yet, even I don’t notice this fail all of the time, so we still need to be more vigilant here to guard against such assery.

Too much of anti-racist discourse is for white people — yes, it’s unavoidable — but we don’t focus on us enough. How we empower and marginalise each other, how we perpetuate similar –isms. So this is how *we* can perhaps get past this, no?

Slutwalks (sigh) have become such a sore point for me. While I don’t oppose SW’s, I will never support them. The whole movement is for people who are read as desirable — trans* people, disabled people, old people etc quite obviously get left out. In that sense, the movement is based on further silencing these people — at this point I can’t even see the *point* of SW’s anymore.

Maybe then, in the gaps and silences a translation leaves western feminists will understand learning our tongues won’t do much — as learning a tongue and thinking in one are two entirely different things and that one is a skill and another a re-clamation of the marginalised; I hope I’ll reach there someday.

Learning my tongue won’t make you magically understand the culture I come from — *that* was the point.

Also: People with learning disabilities have to learn English too out here. So, what is your point again?

What do they expect we'll do? Moo verses from the Bhagvad Gita?