SlutWalk: A Stroll Through White Supremacy

Note: I had long ago decided to stop blogging here for a couple of reasons. For one, I could not devote enough time to posting as regularly as I had in the past, but I also found more and more outlets with wider audiences that would publish my pieces. With so much dialogue surrounding SlutWalk lately, I wanted to insert the voice of a woman of color to add critical pressure from the margins; however, I found it difficult to find an outlet that would publish me. I first queried The Guardian, which had already printed a couple of pieces authored by white women about the event, and never heard anything back (they have, subsequently, posted more pieces about SlutWalk, all authored by white women). I then attempted to add this post on HuffPo, where I have contributed in the past – although they were nice enough to at least respond to me, they rejected my post. Rather than waste another week trying to find an outlet, I’ve taken the advice of people I love and trust and have revived my once-retired blog to post a piece that (oddly enough) explains some of the ways in which white women have constructed a conversation that women of color can’t seem to participate in.

According to its website, SlutWalk was created by women who “are tired of being oppressed by slut-shaming; of being judged by [their] sexuality and feeling unsafe as a result.” SlutWalk aims to “reclaim” the word “slut,” by taking to the streets and demanding people begin to think about the way women are damaged by stereotyping. What’s now grown into a Global North movement, SlutWalk has predictably captivated the media. One can read numerous blogs and articles, and examine diametrically opposed op-eds posted on both sides of the Atlantic – all authored by white women. With such a sensationalized event name, it makes sense that the event would gain attraction. What doesn’t make sense is the racist way in which SlutWalk has chosen to present itself – the result of the group’s white leadership, which has systematically silenced the voices of women of color. Women are left with little assurance that the word “slut” can even be reclaimed at all, and it would be absurd to imagine that SlutWalk’s dramatized events will do anything to stop any kind of violence against women.

SlutWalk was conceived after a cop reportedly told a group of Toronto students that women “should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized” during a campus event to address sexual assault, which he was invited to. I understand the need to denounce this type of speech, particularly when uttered by a law enforcement officer. But what struck me was the fact that a group of students gathered with law enforcement to begin with. As people of color, our communities are plagued with police brutality, and inviting them into our spaces in order to somehow feel safer rarely crosses our minds. I’ve attended several workshops and panels on sexual violence and would never imagine seeing law enforcement in attendance. Groups like INCITE! have done a tremendous amount of work to address the way that systemic violence is directed against women in communities of color through “police violence, war and colonialism,” as well as to address the type of interpersonal violence between individuals within a community, such as sexual assault and domestic violence. SlutWalk “want[s] Toronto Police Services to take serious steps to regain [their] trust;” our communities, meanwhile, never trusted the police to begin with. For a group of privileged students to stage such a massive event and dismiss the work that our communities have done to make sense out of the disproportionate accumulation of violence that we face is wholly unacceptable.

As Trymaine Lee has reported, black, poor and transgender women are being disproportionately and systematically branded as criminal “sex offenders” on an online database for engaging in “survival sex” in New Orleans. Under the cover of an obscure, slave-era legal term called “crimes against nature,” police officers target those who engage in oral or anal sex-for-money. Those targeted for a second time are charged as felons (vaginal sex-for-money, meanwhile, is considered misdemeanor prostitution). 40 percent of those who appear on the sexual predator database are there because they were accused of committing a “crime against nature;” more than 80 percent of those are black women.

If SlutWalk truly wanted to bring attention to the systematic ways in which women are harmed by regressive and misogynistic thinking, they could have done the heavy lifting of reaching out and supporting black, poor and transgender women in New Orleans, for whom the word “slut” carries a criminal sex offender record. Instead, they force us to keep bearing the multiple burdens that come with not only being a woman, but also being a working class woman of color. Had SlutWalk organizers considered New Orleans – or perhaps any city in the Northern Hemisphere where undocumented women possess a very real fear that a call to the police for any reason will result in her own deportation – they might have thought twice about sinking so much time and energy into their event. They might have had to listen to women of color, and actually involve them in visioning for what an equitable future would look like. Instead, they decided to celebrate a term not everyone is comfortable even saying. While I will not pretend to speak for women targeted in New Orleans, I doubt that the mere idea of naming themselves “sluts” would be welcomed. SlutWalk has proven itself to be a maddening distraction from the systematic and interpersonal violence that women of color face daily.

On my Facebook feed yesterday, a prominent Boston-based white feminist complained that, although the BBC had interviewed her for one of its internationally highest rated programs, she “was on for like two seconds in the second hour which doesn’t air in the US. Verrrrrrry [sic] frustrating.” This woman had already participated in a 40-minute episode on a Canadian television program with four other white women, where they debated each other about SlutWalk. She was also a featured speaker at SlutWalk Boston, and her speech was posted online with full transcripts (as far as I know, not one person of color spoke at the event in question). The tremendous amount of entitlement implicit in her post felt suffocating. When I responded that two seconds of airtime was considerably longer than women of color had on the topic, she wrote that she agreed “with the larger critique,” but felt compelled to correct me by adding that “there were a number of women of color on this program.”

Her entitlement was coupled with the kind of lip service intended to keep women of color quiet, as well as a dose of correction to prove her superior ability to still be right – all typical of liberal white women who have never truly listened to begin with. Regardless of the fact that a scarce amount of women of color got international airtime on the BBC for the first time since SlutWalk was conceived several months ago, its organizers never reached out to women of color as equals to begin with; instead of making sure our voices participated in its visioning, we have been painted into a colored corner inside their white room. SlutWalk’s next turn, I’m quite sure, will be our tokenization. I imagine that women of color will be coddled by white SlutWalk organizers, eager to save (white)face, into carrying their frontline banners and parroting their messages at a stage near you. I’m hoping my sisters won’t fall for it; I know that I, for one, will stay home. This is not liberation – if anything, Slutwalk is an effective exercise in white supremacy.

There is no indication that SlutWalk will even strip the word “slut” from its hateful meaning. The n-word, for example, is still used to dehumanize black folks, regardless of how many black folks use it among themselves. Just moments before BART officer James Mehserle shot Oscar Grant to death in Oakland in 2009, video footage captured officers calling Grant a “bitch ass nigger.” It didn’t matter how many people claimed the n-word as theirs – it still marked the last hateful words Grant heard before a white officer violently killed him. Words are powerful – the connection between speech and thought is a strong one, and cannot be marched away to automatically give words new meaning.  If I can’t trust SlutWalk’s white leadership to even reach out to women of color, how am I to trust that “reclaiming” the word will somehow benefit women? The answer is, I can’t. In fact, “reclaiming” is defined as taking something back that was yours to begin with, and the word “slut” was never ours to begin with, so it would be impossible to reclaim it.

According to SlutWalk’s website, the event is slated to be reproduced in Argentina sometime this year. It’s the country I was born and raised in, among Spanish, Guaraní and Portuguese speakers – and I can assure you that the word “slut” is not used by anyone there. This is not what we need. I do not want white English-speaking Global North women telling Spanish-speaking Global South women to “reclaim” a word that is foreign to our own vocabulary. To do so would be hegemonic, and would illustrate the ways in which Global North “feminists” have become a tool of cultural imperialism. I will be going back home in about a month, and want to do so without feeling the power of white women bearing down on me from 6,000 miles away. We’ve got our own issues to deal with in South America; we do not need to become poster children to try to make you feel better about yours.

Whether white supremacist hegemony was SlutWalk’s intent or not is beyond my concern – because it has certainly been so in effect. This event will not stop the criminalization of black women in New Orleans, nor will it stop one woman from being potentially deported after she calls the police subsequent to being raped. SlutWalk completely ignores the way institutional violence is leveled against women of color. The event highlights its origins from a privileged position of relative power, replete with an entitlement of assumed safety that women of color would never even dream of. We do not come from communities in which it feels at all harmless to call ourselves “sluts.” Aside from that, our skin color, not our style of dress, often signifies slut-hood to the white gaze.

If SlutWalk has proven anything, it is that liberal white women are perfectly comfortable parading their privilege, absorbing every speck of airtime celebrating their audacity, and ignoring women of color. Despite decades of work from women of color on the margins to assert an equitable space, SlutWalk has grown into an international movement that has effectively silenced the voices of women of color and re-centered the conversation to consist of a topic by, of, and for white women only. More than 30 years ago, Gloria Anzaldúa wrote, “I write to record what others erase when I speak.” Unfortunately, SlutWalk’s leadership obliterated Anzaldúa’s voice, and the marvelous work she produced theorizing what it means to be a queer woman of color. They might do us all a favor now and stop erasing the rest of us for once.

Moving On

Inmate in Sheriff Arpaio's Jail

I am now blogging on Huffington Post…. See you there!

Census 1910… Oops, I Meant Census 2010.

Dear People Who Make Up Alienating Census Categories,

Your website encouraged me to “explore the questions [you] ask,” and “why [you] ask them.” More than anything else, the form left me with plenty of questions of my own.

As your survey clearly indicates, it’s 2010. Isn’t it about time you add Intersex as an option, along with Male and Female? Come on, that’s so 19th Century of you! While you were at it, couldn’t you have mixed things up a bit and not have listed Male first, like you’ve done since at least 1880?

Also, Why did you decide to use “Argentinean” instead of “Argentine”? In this time of economic crisis, the shorter form would have saved you a great deal of ink. When spoken and/or read, the shorter, more elegant option would save your individual census workers and takers a good deal of time, when multiplied in the millions. Seriously, though.

Finally, why are Mexican, Mexican American and Chicano all considered the same? Did it not dawn upon you that someone could be Mexican American but not identify as Chicano? Or that someone of a different Latin American decent could identify as Chicano?

(Not holding my breath, but) Sincerely,
Aura Bogado

P.S. Don’t get me started on the fact that Black, African-American, and Negro (yes, Negro) are all considered the same. The good folks over at 99 Problems are already trying to tackle that one (h/t: Chris Nsiah-Buadi!).

Bratton Weighs In on 287(g)

Departing LAPD Chief Bill Bratton joined what may be a growing number of chiefs around the country who think local police have no business in enforcing federal immigration law. Bratton, who leaves office at the end of this week to persue a dubious private sector security job back East, outlined his logic in the LA Times Opinion column today, writing that he will encourage his soon-to-be-named successor to do the same.

Policing Language

It seems Dallas cops have been handing tickets out to individuals for being “non-English speaking drivers”. Ernestina Mondragon was pulled over by rookie cop Gary Bromley after making an illegal U-turn, and cited for a law that doesn’t even exist! Although Bromley was in training at the time, whoever was supervising him saw nothing wrong with ticketing a mother for not speaking English. What’s more, Dallas Municipal Courts even lists the fine for the (technically non-existent) infraction to the tune of $204. In a press conference, Police Chief David Kunkle has apologized for the incident, and says that at least 39 people have been ticketed by six officers for not speaking English. Seeing as a fine is already on the courthouse books, I would be surprised if it’s not a lot more. Officer Bromley, meanwhile, is still in training.

Surprised? We shouldn’t be. Cirila Baltazar Cruz gave birth to a baby girl November 16, 2008 at a hospital in Pascagoula, Mississippi. Because Baltazar, an indigenous immigrant from Oaxaca, primarily speaks Chatino, hospital staff called the Department of Human Services, which deemed that Baltazar was a danger to her daughter because she didn’t speak English, and because she was undocumented. Her daughter, Rubí, was taken away from her just two days after Baltazar gave birth. NNIRR is demanding Rubí be returned to her mother, and you can hear an excellent interview with Baltazar on Radio Bilingüe, which details her horrible ordeal. Baltazar faces a hearing in the case next month — one year after her daughter was taken away and given to an adoptive family.

I think back on my arrival to the U.S., and to my own struggle around various language cops. I imagine most immigrants that grow up speaking a language other than English do too, once they arrive here. Yet I can think of few human rights as fundamental as speaking one’s language, regardless of which one it is. I look back and realize that different languages (and even different accents) can sometimes only be heard as verbal threats, and perceived as a danger to hegemony. Speaking English does not make one a better driver, and it certainly isn’t a skill that would qualify one to be a mother. It’s simply challenges an already precarious U.S. American identity.

Chomsky’s Book Banned at GITMO

Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky’s Interventions, published by City Lights, has been banned from the Guantanamo Bay prisoners’ library. In a very brief interview, I spoke with Chomsky a few days ago about the ban, about the bait of “hope and change”, and a bit about why right-wing ideologues are so effective are animating a disgruntled public.

You can hear the interview on FSRN.

La argentinidad, a lejos

Juan Sebastián Verón and The Beautiful Game

As I make the decision to re-commit myself to blogging after a rather long hiatus, I am blasting a song fom Bersuit Vergarabat titled “La argentinidad al palo”, which roughly translates into something that… I can’t even translate.

The song highlights countless Argentine claims, icons and contradictions, ranging from the invention of the bus to the ironic suicide of historian and surgeon Dr. René Favaloro, who created the coronary bypass surgery technique. Through no fault of his own, Favaloro’s foundation was in deep debt by 2000, during an already crippling national economic crisis. He was dismayed at recent layoffs and at the possibility of having to slow down his research. After he was repeatedly ignored by a degenerate government, the doctor shot himself in the heart, but not before writing a scathing suicide note, calling government officials a group of corrupt politicians who live at the cost of the workers and steal public funds.

The song, “La argentinidad al palo”, is replete with references to fútbol, and even makes mention of the the bloody coup that was ruling during Argentina’s at-home World Coup victory in 1978. Millions of dollars were stolen, borrowed and spent to rehabilitate stadiums and erect luxury hotels and hospitality centers. There was plenty of dirty money behind the scenes as well: during the semis, Argentina had to beat Peru by at least four goals in order to make it to the finals. The final score favored Argentina 6-0. Thirty years later, the son of a powerful Colombian drug lord would claim that his family helped fix the game through tens of millions of dollars supplied by the military junta.

Whether or not the junta attended a meeting in Peru to bribe the team into losing, what remains certain is that  (Nobel-Prize Winning) Henry Kissinger was in Argentina during the 1978 World Coup, bolstering strong US support for a dictatorship that would claim the lives of some 30,000 mostly young women and men. As the country won the World Cup, millions of Argentines waved flags and somewhat unwittingly aided the junta in fomenting nationalism through popular sentiment. This sense of nationalism protected a murderous regime: political prisoners held at ESMA in Buenos Aires City say they remember not only the screams inside from their fellow prisoners who were being tortured, but also the screams outside from Argentina’s fans during and after the final game against Holland. Fútbol, like torture, it seems, permeates everything in Argentina. And although I am not old enough to remember the 1978 World Coup, I did grow up during the dictatorship that followed, and had family members on what was then the losing side of resistance, who faced their own terrifying consequences as a result of their convictions.

Yet every four years, I become a fanatical proxy nationalist. I choose to ignore the way a right-wing fascist dictatorship used an international sporting event as part of their campaign to disappear loved ones. I write off that the ’78 game may have been fixed, and I forget the fact that my family comes from Paraguay and Brazil, or that each branch of government is just as nasty and corrupt as it was in  1978 or in 2000, when Favaloro killed himself. More than anything else, I suspend my suspicion of nationalism so much, that I embrace it and hold it tight. As I mentioned to an Irish ex-pat friend in a correspondence yesterday, I lose sleep, make agreements with a higher power, and even catch myself humming parts of the national anthem. In the past few weeks, I felt even more  motivated towards my team, since Argentina faced the possibility of not making it to the World Cup this year. Although, considering our briberous past, it’s likely a corporate sponsor would have muscled a way in for Argentina to participate: FIFA’s main sponsor is Adidas, the result of a contract secured by FIFA’s Senior Vice President Julio Grondona — who just happens to be the President of the Argentine Fútbol Association as well. Lionel Messi, arguably the world’s best player and certainly Adidas’s most valuable contract player, plays on Argentina’s national team. Between Grondona, FIFA, and Adidias, I find it highly unlikely that Argentina would not have somehow made it to the World Cup.

I am currently in Phoenix, a place where I have yet to meet anyone from South America, much less from Argentina. Because I haven’t found a sports bar that has aired any of Argentina’s qualifying matches, I’ve found myself watching them online by myself. I’ve cried by myself through games with Brazil and Paraguay in September. I was thrilled and celebrated our recent victory against Peru by jumping up and down, alone, on this seat at a desk. Yet yesterday’s game against Uruguay was the most significant, because the win automatically (and legitimately) qualified us for a spot in South Africa. The game was considered so important that local residents in Gualeguaychú, Argentina, who have shut down the international bridge that connects to Uruguay in protest of the World Bank-funded, Finnish-owned and highly-polluting Botnia paper pulp mill, decided to open the route for the first time in two years to allow some 2,500 fans to cross for the game. World Cup games, and in this case, qualifiers, change everything. As midfielder Juan Sebastián Verón (seen above) claimed, this wasn’t a celebration, it was a relief.

Because I watch the games online, the feed is sometimes dropped due to a copyright violation, so I find myself watching feeds not from my own country, but hateful feeds with venomous announcers — particularly from Brazil and England, who find any reason to desecrate Argentina. It makes my isolation here even more isolating. The defensiveness heightens my sense of being Argentine, and adds additional specks of ultra-nationalism. I cried when I saw coach Diego Maradona cry, and in that instant realized how much I want to be back home again.

In the hours that followed after the win, I turned to my favorite Argentine paper to try to share in the joy I felt so far away from. I read that Buenos Aires became a naked city as residents hovered around television sets, and that even Congress came to a halt. I wanted to be in that naked city, or anywhere in Argentina, and stop this feeling of detachment in an empty room. I wanted to embrace the contradictions of what it means to come from a land that is both enchanted and haunted, from a place that knows how to dream underground as a form of immunity from real nightmares. I wanted to be back home in the country that, despite our numerous losses, still knows how to win.

Palin: Can’t Think of a Supreme Court Case She Disagrees With

[PLEASE NOTE: I am quite disappointed... none of you have told me where they got these Palin people from.]

You’ve likely already seen the part where Sarah Palin can’t name one newspaper she reads in an interview with Katie Couric. But which conservative doesn’t have a handful of Supreme Court cases they disagree with, just ready to pull out of their hat? Let me guess: Palin!

By the way, it was certainly not my intent to bash Palin all the time on this blog. In fact, I am doing very little bashing, and just letting this severely under-qualified candidate speak for herself. And for those of you who have pointed out that she is just too stressed out to be doing interviews like this, I’d like to remind you that it’s part of the job. If you don’t know how to talk to the press, if you stumble over your words, and if you cannot remember things like the name of a newspaper or the fact that you already publicly stated your opposition to the high court’s ruling on the Exxon Valdez spill, then keep you day job, Governor – we certainly don’t need you running for VP on any ticket.

Let’s Pray for Sarah Palin

[AGAIN: If anyone can tell me where these get these Palin people from, please contact me immediately. Seriously.]

Remember Jeremiah Wright? Barack Obama’s (former) Reverend that had the audacity to use the presidential election to talk about race and failed domestic and foreign policies? Of course you do! The networks couldn’t get enough of him, when videos of his sermons illustrated that he preached (among other things) that the U.S. government placed crack in black communities as a way to insure the future of the prison industrial complex. I’m still not sure what the big fuss was all about - and the last time I checked, the United States has the biggest population in the world (yes, in the world; yes, more than China), and the highest number of prisoners in proportion to its population (about one in every 100) – mostly due to this ghetto fabulous War on Drugs. Oh, and about 12 percent of black men in their 20s and 30s are in the system, compared to less than one percent of white men in the same age group. Like I said, I don’t get the big fuss.

So anyway, it seems Sarah Palin has an interesting Pastor of her own. His name is Thomas Muthee, and below is a video of him praying to protect Palin from witches. Yes, witches… Not to be confused with the part where he asks God to help finance her campaign:

So one candidate has to drop his Reverend for making truthful comments, while another gets a pass from the networks after video surfaces that he is a complete basket case. Hallelujah!

Some 200 More Arrested Outside RNC, Including Democracy Now’s Sharif Abdel Kouddous

Just making my way back to the RNC from the what has been a crazy night on the outside full of concussion grenades, tear gas and other oppressive tactics… Whew. I saw Sharif get hauled away, along with many other members of the press and legal observers. Some minors have been taken as well.