4th of July

Freedom and Independence...

how different that looks for all of us, no?

The Face of Human Rights and Feminism: Melissa Roxas

Melissa Roxas' Press Conference: Statement by Melissa Roxas from Habi Arts on Vimeo.

Melissa Roxas is a Filipina US citizen. With family in Quezon City, she went to the Philippines to do research as a health volunteer for her writing project.

She is a writer. An activist. She was combining her commitment to human rights and social justice with her writing. It led her home to the Philippines where on May 19, 2009 she was captured and tortured for 6 days before being released.

In a press conference, she describes the abduction and torture she was subject to from the Philippine military.

Roxas is the first known US citizen to be abducted and tortured in the Philippines during the Obama administration and is seeking justice. The Arroyo presidency in the Philippines has overseen several hundred kidnapping, disappearances, torture, murder, and rape of activists, students, scholars, and educators in the name of the military which is funded by US dollars.

One year ago, I was with my family in Quezon City. I was doing research at local universities and non-profits to better understand the sexual violence against Filipino women in the Philippines. In my time there, the threat of abduction or torture was a far fear from my mind because, as everyone pointed out, I am a US citizen and, therefore, untouchable.

Roxas is the living proof that no one is untouchable and citizenship protects no one. Not even when you are doing research for a writing project. It does not protect you from beatings, being suffocated, tortured, blindfolded, or psychologically tortured.

There are no words to describe these on-going human rights violations in the Philippines. It is happening here, there, and no matter where you are, what your name is, violence, it seems, is only a knock on the door away from your house.

On a personal note, I am more than stunned by her account of what happened. Even as I write this, I don't quite know what to write except that her story needs to be told and spread far and wide. There is no way to describe the horror of what she went through. What I can do, what you can, at the very least, is listen and be informed.

This the face of human rights. This is the face of feminism. This if the front line of writers, volunteers, educators, and dreamers who want a world of peace and are willing to go to the ends of the earth to understand the reality of others. Melissa Roxas is the face.

How Imperfection and Accountability Mix: Part I

The topic of accountability has always been an incredibly important one for me. As a feminist, as a writer, as a person who tries to be wise before I leap, accountability is never far from my hand as I write.

What does it mean to be accountable anyway? Following in the linguistic footsteps of "love," "radical," and "liberation," the word "accountable" is often thrown around for weight and at times, I feel, drama.

I write about accountability because I think it is a very complicated project of self-awareness and growth. Lately, I've been thinking about the two kinds of accountability I have had struggles with - online accountability and offline accountability.

Let's dive first into offline accountability...

Roughly 16 months ago, I came to a startling epiphany that I needed to go the Philippines. It was a pilgrimage of self-discovery, ethnic pride, family tradition, and confusion. The Philippines was the native homeland of my parents. It's image had soft, billowy clouds around it. It remained, for 30 years, an elusive link to my identity. A dangling key swinging thousands of miles from my reach.

That is, until, I decided to go. Alone.

I felt a sense of accountability to myself, my parents, to the people I had never made an effort to know and yet think about so much. The Philippines. It was there that I found a grounding peace. It came from meeting family. It came from researching sexual violence against Filipinas. It came from meeting activists, scholars, farmers, and artists who welcomed me as a Balikbayan, "one who returns home."

It was there that my sense of accountability grew. It grew, specifically, to Filipino women who were abused, trafficked, raped, kidnapped, tortured, and tossed into ditches, shallow graves, and death without justice.

I was gone for June through August of 2008.

* * * *

Today I received a heartfelt and difficult letter. It was from a dear friend whom I have loved for a long time. He and I exchange writings, poems, rainy talks without umbrellas, and stories. When I looked at the rain, I thought of G*. We had more differences than similarities but our similarities were powerful. We had similar concepts of spirituality, justice, and the agonizing waves of darkness that come with passionate loving. We loved our lovers fiercely and our friendship was connected with thick cable chords wrapped in understanding. Thickly, tightly wrapped.

G* wrote me a letter about two things: his joy and his disappointment. He wrote me about the joy of marrying the love of his life, his unfolding career, and New England -- the city of Boston we both loved so much.

And then he wrote of his disappointment. He referenced the time period of when I was deciding to go on my trip to the Philippines, except he didn't write it explicitly. He wrote how I, essentially, disappeared and never told him to his face that I was moving, leaving Boston and our friendship, and never returning. After the Philippines, I would be moving to Cleveland to start anew, write more, and lead a life of quiet purpose. The problem was that I never told him. In the last months of my stay in Boston were the same months he was preparing for marriage. And I never called. Never wrote. Never said good-bye. I was focused on other Things, see? Things like accountability, justice, and human rights.

This letter came to me with dried disappointment. The kind of disappointment that you can almost feel in your hands. It was as if the letter had been dipped in river of hurt and then left on a desk to dry before it arrived for me to read. It was dreadful to read because it was so true.

I left Boston and my life there without saying a word to this man, my friend, someone to whom I was accountable and, quite simply, forgot about. In some of the most forming and exciting months of his life, I vanished. Left town. Let news get to him via friends and old gossip.

* * * *

Even those who pride themselves on loving and justice fuck up. In major ways, we forget some of the most simple concepts of compassion. God, that's humiliating and so painful to remember that our scarred human skin is entirely capable of scarring someone's unblemished arms. Don't you hate being graphically reminded that you're not a perfect person? Worse than that reminder is the vile acid in your stomach when you see a wound on another person that you are completely responsible for and, to make matters worse, the wound is a settled scar that was clearly left untreated.

* * * *

The letter was simple and short. It was honest and humble, hurt and truthful. Those are the best and worst words to read. Real friends are the ones who get the truth to you, no matter how long it takes or how sick it makes you feel. I read it a few times.
Went downstairs to sit. Ate dinner. Scarfed it down because somehow the raw shame had famished me.

* * * *

I wrote back. I offered a reply coated with insufficient apology. There's no usefulness in remorse one year later. I wanted to honor his honesty. A simple apology was not enough. I forgot him. What's more - I LET myself forget him. I wasn't looking for self-flagellation, but I was looking to learn how to be accountable to a friend after I so clearly let him down. And so brashly abandoned someone who was and is dear to me.

* * * *

Even when we let Love lead our actions, we somehow manage to follow imperfectly. Even in our most pure efforts to create justice, art, connection and amendments, we somehow rip the roses when we meant the weeds. In a year since I left, in a year since I've been thinking, writing, and wondering about accountability to women and gender analysis, accountability to family and friends in my life vanished.

* * * *

What does accountability look like with, despite, because of our imperfections?

No Country for Men and Fathers?

I've been thinking about fatherhood. For as much as I think about motherhood, I think about the absence of fatherhood.

That wasn't MY story, per se.

My father, still the same funny, hard-working, and insanely generous person, has been with me for 30 years.

Still, I am thinking about fatherhood.

In pop and mainstream culture, US feminism is branded and re-branded with the same ingredients, westernized notions, and colonial/racial/able-isms that have plagued it in the past. Let's get real, here. While I emphatically believe that multiple forms of feminism exist, most folks still think of mainstream feminism as the only Feminism alive.

How wrong, and how unfortunate, that is...especially for men.

It was just Father's Day on Sunday, two days ago, and nowhere, other than fleeting greetings did I find any substantial feminist-centered articles or op-eds about fathers, their place, significance, impact on their lives. In general, there rarely are any feminist bloggers who write about their fathers. There are countless reflections, dedications, and ruminations about motherhood, but it seems the feminist=women only/women-centered ideology has become so fascist, that men and fathers are not even recognized. Not even on Father's Day.

The way feminism came to me was through activism and identity politics. Feminist language and thought has equipped me to centralize my own experiences to organize my thoughts of the world and more clearly under the systematic kyriarchy that hold womyn under siege. Through the lens of gender, I am more apt to dissecting the critical role of women AND men in the vision of radical justice and equality.

Including, inviting, teaching, loving, needing, welcoming men and fathers into feminisms is not the same as centralizing them. Men do not threaten feminism, false ideologies of gender, power, and "natural" order do. Most people confuse the oppression tactics with the men who exercise it. I'm not advocating these men - or any persons who abuse positions of power - are innocent or anything, but I think it's good to remember, using the adage of 80s and 90s feminists, men aren't the enemy. Far from it.

I think one of the saddest corners of many feminisms is ignoring men and fathers. It's as if the concept of centralizing womyn, valuing womyn, and studying the global trends affecting womyn has isolated men from the concerns of feminists. And while, yes, women constitute the majority of the world, the close second half of the population needs to be equally considered as we fight for justice, advocate for freedom. What freedom looks like for women will not be the same for men, but that difference doesn't automatically cause friction, or even conflict.

The world feminists need is not simply a reordering of numbers so women hold the same positions as men, so CEOs and business partners, and professionals all have equal footing. That might be nice and have good value in changing the landscape a bit, but I don't think it'll solve our problems which run much deeper than just a numbers game of equality. I'm not minimizing representation or the necessity to provide equal access for girls and women to hold the same opportunities as boys and men, but why is that representation so often becomes the measuring stick of progress for mainstream feminism? Why is that - "men can and therefore, I can too" mentality resonating in the same sphere as freedom?

What if the "men can" way is a path that leads to dissonance, destruction, violence, and brokenness? Restructuring the path, I believe, is just, if not more, important than filling that path with the feet of women.

For example, our military could one day be half and half, but if the philosophies of our military stayed the same, would that 50/50 really represent radical change? Wouldn't it be more radical to hear that our military had taken a more serious stance toward sexism, the rapes occurring within, sexual violence used as a tool of torture and genocide?

* * *

So what does feminism look like with men and fathers with us? What does a Father's Day sound like in the feminist blogosphere?

Silence.

What kind of lessons have we learned from our fathers, surrogate fathers, the men, transmen, male-identified individuals who changed our perspectives with love, bravery, vulnerability, and support?

Silence.

And what are our strategies for mobilizing men and fathers?

Silence.

And how do we get past the ridiculous notion that men and fathers are more than just "allies" in the movements for radical love and justice?

Silence.

* * *

My father raised me the only way he knew how - with love. That love might have been patriarchal, ageist, and sexist, but feminism taught me how to receive and give love, not shun, my father. Every father/daughter relationship is different. I'm not blanketing my experience of the only father I've known with yours or others. But, more often than not, feminists overlook the need for justice seeking men who know and practice radical love beyond boundaries.

The answer to unpacking my childhood was not lashing, ignoring, or not sharing my life with my father. The answer was looking into his past, understanding the context of his life and upbringing and then loving him more so I could show him the colors of my life.

There were cultural differences. There were disagreements. Miscommunication galore. And it was hard. Damn hard.

But for my father to know me and how important these issues are to me, to have my father send me articles and magazines he hopes I like that center women and justice solidifies my belief that the community of feminism will and must include our fathers, the men we claim to love, and the young boys we hope will help transform the world.

CALL TO ACTION: Reunite a Baby with Birth Mother

I normally don't post alerts or campaigns on my blog, but this is unspeakably important.

As a pregnant womyn, the story of Cirila Baltazar Cruz is unbearable. The past three months have altered my perspective. Standing at the threshold of a new unfolding of responsibility, love, fear, and acceptance has been a journey of unbelievable difficulty. The fact that this - illegal adoption from immigrants - is happening REPEATEDLY is unthinkably barbaric. IT'S TIME TO ACT. Write a letter to the folks at the bottom of this email. FORWARD THIS WIDELY. Repost on your blog. The denial of basic rights, the denial of a mother's rights is taking on new monstrous faces and it's enraging. I cannot imagine what this mother must be feeling. Perhaps I do not want to imagine what she's feeling and getting this story out, getting this atrocity to the public to ACT and REACT with calls and letters is the least I can do as a womyn of color, an expecting mother, as a daughter of immigrant parents.

Don't just read - MOVE.

h/t to Flip Flopping Joy

Request for Action from the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance (MIRA):

Cirila Baltazar Cruz gave birth to her baby girl in November of 2008 at Singing River Hospital in Pascagoula, MS. She speaks very little Spanish and no English, as her native language is Chatino, an Indigenous language from Oaxaca, Mexico that is spoken by some 50,000 people.

The hospital provided her with an “interpreter” who is from Puerto Rico and does not speak Chatino, the language of the mother. Because of the language barrier and the misunderstanding by the hospital’s interpreter who only spoke Spanish and English, a social worker was called in.

The hospital’s social worker reported “evidence” of abuse and neglect based on the following:

* The “baby was born to an illegal [sic] immigrant;”
* The “mother had not purchased a crib, clothes, food or formula.” (Most Latina mothers breast feed their babies).
* “She does not speak English which puts baby in danger.”

Ms. Baltazar Cruz’s baby was snatched from her after birth at the hospital and given to an affluent attorney couple from the posh Ocean Springs who cannot have children.

The authorities made no effort to locate an interpreter in her native tongue. MIRA located an interpreter who is fluent in Chatino in Los Angeles CA and has interviewed the mother extensively with the interpreters help. The mother has been accused of being poor and not being able to provide for this child. No one has asked the mother to provide evidence of support. She owns a home in Mexico and a store which provides both secure shelter and financial support, not counting the nurturing of a loving family of two other siblings, a grandmother, aunts, uncles and other extended family.

Meanwhile, there is word in the Gulf Coast community that the “parents to be,” have already had a baby shower celebrating the “blessed arrival” of this STOLEN child!

PLEASE MAKE CALLS & WRITE LETTERS DEMANDING THE SAFE RETURN OF BABY & REUNITE WITH HER MOTHER

If you believe this is unjust and outrageous and goes against all moral and religious beliefs and values, please call or write to the presiding Judge and the MS Department of Human Services to STOP this ILLEGAL ADOPTION! Stealing US born babies from immigrant parents is a growing epidemic in the United States. Many Latino parents have lost their children this way!

Honorable Judge Sharon Sigalas
Youth Justice Court of Jackson County
4903 Telephone Rd.
Pascagoula, MS 39567
(228)762-7370

Children’s Justice Act Program
MS Dept. of Human Services
750 North State Street
Jackson, MS 39202
Call (601)359-4499 and ask for Barbara Proctor

For more information please call MIRA at: (601) 968-5182

MIRA Organizing Coordinator
Victoria Cintra at (228) 234-1697 or Organizer Socorro Leos at(228) 731-0831

Digital Poetry

Sometimes my passion for photography, art, and poetry collide on Fridays and I make some digital collage with poems on them. Lately, I've been ruminating about technology and connection. The way Facebook, Twitter, Blogging, and online communities have brought energy, community, and information to my life.

And, with some unexplained twinge of sadness, I think about how my offline relationships are so scattered because of proximity, time zone differences, and growing up and away.

I watch people wherever I go. On the bus, at a Fish Fry, in New York, at a protest, at church, at a children's birthday party and wonder if technology has enabled us to share our stories more with the world and less with those in our everyday lives. As my writing grows with disciplined practice and immersion into the internet, I often wonder if there's a correlation to my growing need for human touch; face to face conversation; body language accessibility, and audible laughter.

Has digital technology enhanced your relationships? Has it changed the way you see people, including strangers on the street? Where do you see us heading with all this media advancement?

Stand With Sotomayor

I stand with her

because she's committed to marginalized communities
because she hasn't forgotten where she's from
because she was raised by a single mother and rocked Princeton and Yale

Speak! and "I Will Survive" Book/ Listening Party

It's A Boy, It's a Girl

There's no better dumping ground for socialized gender stereotypes than the ears of a pregnant woman. For a womyn like myself, it raises my blood pressure to listen to all the gendered talk and so I see writing about my pregnancy as one of the necessary exercises to stay sane and keep the kid healthy.

Sharing your pregnancy with others is like an invitation for the worst gender assumptions to pass through my ears. There's nothing, I repeat nothing, more annoying to me right now than the comments that sound like misogyny on steroids.

"It's just better to have a boy. You'll worry less."

"I wanted my first born to be a boy. 'Cause after that, you can just relax and not worry about what the others will be."

"Girls just are too much."

"It'll be better if you have a boy. With a girl, it's just, it's so...it's so much more worrying."

What is this equation in birth? Labor + boy = relief
while Labor + girl = stress

Let's go past all the generalizations (all BS in my opinion anyway) about girls spending more money when they grow up, you'll have to deal with more emotional crises, you'll worry more about violence, etc...

I see both boys and girls as precious and vulnerable little things who will look up at me and not know left from right, evil from good, right from wrong...and they'll learn what from me? --> That because she was born female, I will worry more about her being a victim of violence? That the world will treat her less, pay her, view her less because she was born with a vagina? What impact does that have on how she confronts the world? Will she fight it or believe it?

And what will I teach my son? I presumably don't worry about him because he was born with a penis and we all know that the world prizes that much more than if he were born my daughter. Maybe he'll have it tough from time to time, but he'll never worry about his safety or getting raped or drugged because he's a male.

The reality of the world is not hidden from me. I see misogyny, I see the violence, I see who takes the brunt of poverty, brutality, trafficking, and abuse. I understand how the world will treat my child differently based on its genitalia. I get it. But how does knowing how the world mistreats girls and women lead to the thought it's better to parent a boy?


How radical is my mothering if I just walk the stereotyped line and accept the world as it is, not as I want it to be? Am I more of a mother if I protect more, worry more if it's a girl? Or does that make me a coward?

My deepest fear is not in having a girl. I feel like I would know how to raise a girl because I identify womyn. I've never been a boy, I've never been a man. I don't know how to teach masculinity in healthy, loving ways except in what I imagine it SHOULD be. My fear is that I do have a son and he grows up, eating the garbage available from media, peers, and school. And instead of regurgitation, he'll swallow it, whole. And in my naivety of not knowing how to raise a man, he'll grow to eventually be one of those fathers telling a young mother that it's best to first have a son than to ever have a daughter.

That's more terrifying to me than having a daughter.

It's 1994: Do You Know What the Internet Is?

The Great Wall of Mainstream Feminism

There are few things in the world I hate more than when the words "prominent," "feminist," "icon," and "won" are jumbled together in a feminist context.

I don't know why I do this to myself. I have long sworn off mainstream feminism and yet, like a moth to a flame where I know I shall burn myself to death, still, I am drawn to read articles that ponder whether Angelina Jolie is "the next feminist icon."

According to "prominent feminist," Naomi Wolf, Jolie "is hot" and "has it all."

Let's skip the whole song and Hollywood dance of her celebrity and take a closer look at what Naomi Wolf says of her,

"Against every Western convention, she has managed to draw together all of these kinds of female liberation and empowerment. And her gestures determinedly transgress social boundaries — boundaries of convention, race, class, and gender — giving many of us a vicarious thrill."

Um, pardon me, but am I the only one that nearly puked up colonialism when I saw her adopt children all over the world, bringing more wind to the Oprah theory that we, those with money and in industrialized countries, should feel free to "save" these other children from the violence and poverty they would be otherwise subject to?

It's not as if I expect Bazaar or Forbes to take that kind of approach to celebrity analysis. Far from it, I expect mainstream media to further confuse the notions of liberation with colonialist domination. But from writers, thinkers, and philosophers teaching from the walls of feminisms (yes, read it, again my friends - it's plural) -- in what orbit are you circling where you think Ange-freaking-lina Jolie is the "next feminist icon?" What kind of sound minded, socially-just conscience gets a "vicarious thrill" through ethnocentric, heteronormative practices and then sings ignorant praises and files it under Liberation, Best Practices?

From the same brand that said Sex and the City was a cultural phenomenon that further liberated US women, that also denounced Obama during the primaries because Hillary Clinton was the first women to potentially clinch the White House, which also says NOTHING in celebration of or in defense of Sotomayer -- comes the newest installation of mainstream feminism: the (slightly) nuanced message that tells women that, YES, we CAN have it all. By golly, if a big boobed and heavy lipped white actress who makes millions off of her sex appeal can fly a plane, snag a handsome and doting beau, and have her pick of the world's poorest children, well, shit! I CAN HAVE IT ALL TOO!

Ah, mainstream feminism...how many times must I say this? The demise of our efforts will not be neoconservative right-wing bats who look an awful like Dick Cheney. It won't even be the machismo. I'll even go as far to say the collapse won't come from a thousand reincarnations of Ann Coulter.

The damning crack in the great wall of feminisms is caused by the mainstream feminists, the "prominent" writers and thinkers who jump and down on the wall, throwing praise to other White women who have money, small waists, and heterosexual sex. They continuously and knowingly break the backs of the women and daughters who need more advocacy than they need to hear about a wealthy, country-jetting actress. This wall will certainly cave from the Utah-sized egos that ignore race and colonial theories and teachings, who offer their souls to Hillary Clinton and nothing to Sonia Sotomayer. And when this wall crumbles, the dust will settle and reveal two things that mainstream feminism has caused: the majority of women are trapped under the wall and are dead while the women who walked the the top and caused the crack are still alive.

Letter # 8

Dear Veronica,

I've been thinking about how these letters will be if I find out you are, in fact, a boy, not a girl as I have been thinking.

I don't think it will matter much. You'll be either Veronica or Isaiah and what I have to share with you is the same, regardless of what sex you happen to be.

I'm about to enter my second trimester with you and I can scarcely believe it. The picture Dr. David gave me yesterday of you nearly took my breath away. You LOOK like a baby. A head, limbs, and the outline of a body...I couldn't believe it. I also couldn't believe how I already thought you looked so cute. You're, literally, a picture of shadows and, to me and your Pops, you looked simply adorable.

I've been thinking about what kind of world you are about to come into when January 2010 strikes and what captives me most is you are in me, yet not of the knowledge that I have. You have no knowledge of what evil looks like, or how it will pain you once you come into this world. You have no knowledge of what kindness looks like. The only thing you know is peace inside a floating sac of my blood, nourishing you with no disturbances or worry. All of that will change soon.

I shared with your father yesterday that I have observed how protective of children I feel these days. Suddenly, the world seems like a cold, cold place. An unloving and precarious playground with sharks in the pond, strangers leering at the fences, and untrustworthy mystery figures walking about. Isn't it clear? I'm afraid to bring you into this world and the responsibility I will have to protect you as best as I can. So far, the only person I've really looked out for is myself. Selfishly, I sometimes think I will be a good protector because I don't know if I can handle any amount of harm done to you. A selfish mother, indeed.

The wonder and innocence you symbolize to me right now cannot be adequately communicated. You are life, a breathing life waiting to grow and come into the world through my body and I find myself writing about the rights of women's bodies, the rights of our voice and the place of our humanity. Your mom's writing is often misunderstood and I hope you can learn from me. There is nothing wrong with being misunderstood. Actually, it only confirms that the more you speak your own way, the more of your own path you'll find, the more others will misunderstand your ways.

I spoke to you this morning of individuality and trusting the voice you will develop inside you. The voice may not always be certain, but it will be strong in curiosity and wanting to do the most loving thing. That will lead you to where you will need to go. I don't know if you can hear me, let alone understand the little talks we have in the car, but I hope you can soon understand that individuality can and should only exist in the context of community, accountability, and justice. Never, in all the days you will live, should you ever think you are alone in this world or this world was made just for your path. It is a beautiful, intimidating mudball where you will be pressed to find your own path. If it resembles anything like mine, it should be crooked with lots of uneasy turns that are hard to navigate. But it'll be your path.

And then you are to share it with others. Should you ever be misunderstood along the way, know these letters serve as my companionship in your journey. To be misunderstood, my dear Child, is a blessed thing.

Love,
Mama