Viva la Feminista

It's over. Since I participate fairly regularly, I immediately noticed who wasn't on. I'm trying not to take it personally, I really am. But being told that I'm trying to force a rift where there isn't one, that I offended people by voicing an issue I have felt since before I was a mom and that by making sacrifices...well I feel pretty beaten up. I don't know how many times I have to repeat this. I tried to bring in mom issues to feminist conversations and I got a lot of blank stares. I tried to bring feminist issues to mom conversations and I get silence or even thrown out. Thanks to the few people who have sent me "Me too!" tweets, emails & comments. Because I feel very alone on this issue right now. I am questioning whether or not I'm not imagining all of this. But I know I'm not. And that must mean that others are lucky enough to have a circle of mom friends who are also feminists. I love my non-feminist mom friends thou. We connect on ...

This post is for the Fem2.0 " What is work? " blog carnival. I've never stopped to think of what work means to me. It's just one of those words that you take for granted. But as I stop to ponder my relationship with the word, it's amazing. As a Latina of Mexican heritage, work is not a four-letter word. Lazy is. Despite the stereotype of Mexicans & our siestas, we work hard. In fact I didn't know what a siesta really meant until I got to Spanish class in 7th grade. A siesta in my household meant taking five minutes for some iced tea. I haven't studied our relationship with work to know if Latin@s are taught to work hard to fight against the stereotype or we just work hard naturally. Pollo - huevo. Either way, it was drilled in me early on that we work hard for what we have. And that continues to this day. I know that I am privileged in a way that sometimes overshadows my very humble lower income background. I have a bachelors and a masters degree. I a...

And that my dear readers is what our community at Viva la Feminista looks like. A group called linkfluence made a presentation on the "top feminist blogs & sites" on the web. It was quite interesting, especially since I sat between Kim Gandy, President of NOW, and Liza Sabater during the presentation. It was like a really weird episode of Mystery Science Theater. They had maps for a lot of different issues and blogs to show us that the feminist web (blogs & web sites) are a tight group AND fairly well entrenched in the overall progressive web. Of course, I think progressive should equal feminist, but let's not go there shall we? VLF has the white halo around it and sites that are linked to us here are outlined in black. If the circles are yellow that means I link to them, but they don't link back. Green means we love each other. Red means someone loves me & I don't give them linky love. I love this because I've found a few blogs that I had no idea...

photo by Jill Miller Zimon WOW Yeah, there I am in the blue sitting between Kim Gandy & Elisa Camahort. I've known Kim for almost 6 years now, but it still is a bit mouth-dropping that I get to sit next to her at lunch, so sitting next to her on a panel was overwhelming. At the same time I was there to do a job and I wanted to do it. The idea was to talk about where feminism has been and where we can go. After Kim & Eleanor Smeal talked about the fact that NOW and Feminist Majority Foundation were one of the first sites online, I chimed in with some friendly criticism that we need to keep moving foward. I remember when I would check the FMF website obsessively hoping for something new because it was one of the best feminist sites out there. Not that they aren't today, but I wouldn't say they are the best. I should have given them props for not changing the look of the site too much. Somehow they got the design pretty good early on. But I retold my tale of how my f...

Hi all. Just wanted to put up a quick post that I'm utterly tired, but so energized for the feminist movement both on the ground and online. I think we're going to see a lot new projects so rest up because there will be plenty of work to go around! This trip was so well worth it. I've met new people, met people who I've only known online and reconnected with people. I left my computer glasses at home, so I don't want to give myself a migraine - esp since I'm teetering on the brink of something - so this is all I'll say for now. There has been words used that lead me to believe that this will happen again next year. I'm wondering if there should be regional Fem 2.0's as I've mentioned this to locals and all have been excited about it, but couldn't make the trek out. I'm so privileged to be here and even more privileged to have spoken.

As any good WOC feminist, I am quite familiar with being a token. In grade school I was the token: On sports teams because I pushed & shoved my way there; In the gifted program for my grade because I guess I was the only gifted girl & person of color; In high school I was the token: Poor chick in class - while some of my fellow C'villers made it into the honors and AP classes, I don't recall many of my other C'ville chicks making it there despite I knew quite a few of them were pretty smart. There was also a dilution factor that kept many of us apart; Poor chick in my group of friends - this came about due to the above factor. You start to socialize with the peeps in your class; Latina in my class - Again, not too many Latinas in the honors classes & it didn't hit me until in my later years. Honestly I didn't mind so much. There is a bit of glory in being the token...or so I thought. But not every instance of being a token is laden with guilt or tokennes...