The dynamics I was seeing in the conflict between my daughter’s needs and the needs of the movement resembled the dynamics between *F*eminists and feminists. That is, between Organizations and organizing. Between Institutions and communities. Over and over again, I’d read essays and posts written by largely white, young, middle-class, cisgendered, heterosexual U.S. citizens insisting that young women call themselves feminists. As the argument went, young women did everything but claim the title, pulling the “I’m not a feminist, but…” move. It was time, they argued, for young women to eliminate the “but…” and proudly claim feminism for what it is. A movement of women by women and for women.
But it wasn’t just that young women should call themselves *F*eminists. It was also that all women should support The Movement, investing all their time into gender liberation for women. Precious few self-proclaimed *F*eminists ever wondered what they meant when they said “woman,” and even fewer spent any significant time challenging *F*eminists to consider what they really meant when they said “The Movement.” It seemed to be implicit that there was an inherent type of woman and that women needed a singular type of movement that could be encompassed in easy-to-list bullet points: abortion, equal pay, equality. The problem was that *F*eminism has long been something that was and is imposed on women, something that was done to far too many women, with little regard to the very real reasons those same women might rebel at *F*eminism to begin with. Those arguing to get rid of the “but…” were continuing the decades long patter of *F*eminism asking women to mold their needs and beliefs around a *F*eminist Movement, rather than The Movement working for them. And in a world where survivor led protests seemed more and more antiquated and the idea that fishnet stockings and pretty packaging were viable recruitment techniques, *F*eminists were becoming more and more invested in the idea that those who spoke the prettiest, most convincing way were the leaders—rather than the women developing strategies to confront gendered inequality and violence.
And yet, it took my daughter’s declaration in the middle of a phone call for me to finally realize that I was doing the same thing the *F*eminists were doing in my own organizing. Yes, I had learned to interrogate “woman” through many different lenses—but I had not seen that in my own life the most necessary way was through a lens of age. I was expecting my daughter to grow up and join me, rather than me reaching out to her as she was and listening to her needs. In my own way, I had made women of color feminism the *F*eminism to follow, the singular answer around which she needed to shape her life and of which I was the leader.
Without even realizing it at first, I began backing out of *F*eminist commitments. I stopped attending meetings, declined conference calls, and even wrote about different topics on my blog. The new silence in my life overwhelmed me. First I was bored, and then to my surprise, I physically collapsed. I rarely got out of bed, and when I did, I could only just barely sit straight up in a chair. Climbing stairs was next to impossible, and I was developing an odd body twitch about which I was too scared to ask the doctor. I found myself logging into the computer because it was an easy way to prove I was awake and “productive” rather than because I was really interested in what I was doing.
I spent a lot of time crying, reading, searching for singular magic cures to my problems, and feeling betrayed and hurt. I’d always known that there were problems with institutional *F*eminism; I’d always known that a radical woman of color feminism was formed out of a critique of the singular ideology of *F*eminism. And yet, I’d somehow managed to become so misdirected in my organizing, I’d actually managed to help institutionalize radical woman of color feminism! How had I done that? More importantly, how had I reached a point where I was working so many hours for free, giving up relationships with family and friends, and even sacrificing my own health? Why did I think that The Movement was more important than my own survival? And why was The Movement making it so easy for me to think so?
As so many of us do, I looked for answers in the words of movement elders. I spent so much time rereading Gloria Anzaldua’s La Frontera/The Borderlands that the book’s binding cracked down the middle. Although Gloria really didn’t have too much to say about The Movement, she did reflect deeply on the multiple borders in our lives. She described the physical borders like the one on the U.S./Mexican border, and the personal emotional borders that we all erect as survival mechanisms. She pointed out that those methods of survival sometimes turned into sites of destruction and violence that physically hurt us. She was emphatic to the pain of border crossing, of going home, but understood that liberation couldn’t happen without it.
Because I was not strong enough to do much else, I decided to look at the borders in my own life. Just notice them. How tall they were, where they were erected, why I had built them to begin with. It became clear that the most dominant border was between The Movement and my personal life. Any organizer knows what I am talking about—organizers, more often than not, choose to keep their radical lives, their organizing jobs, so separate from their families, their homes, their neighborhoods, that it feels like they live double lives: the life where they are accepted as normal, interesting, and loved for who they are, and the life where they sit in silence, biting tongues and rolling eyes, and are loved for who their families think they are.
I asked my fellow organizers the question I found myself staring at more and more: are you friends with your family on Facebook? Next to nobody answered yes. Most people couldn’t even answer no, their mouths dropping open and their eyes widening in shock at the utter implausibility of my question. I would’ve been a bit exasperated with their reactions, except I knew the truth. I have exactly three people from my own family as Facebook friends, and one of them is my husband. Furthermore, my husband was the only person in my family who knew that I blogged, spoke at conferences, advocated for the dissolving of the nation/state, and more than likely had been subject to FBI surveillance while attending a march with a local anti-war organization that was on the FBI watch list. Without realizing it, I’d done my very best to separate my radical self and my “family” self. I cringed with the same horror that my friends did at the thought of “outing” myself to my family.
I had also managed to create this separation between my radical self and “family” self within my own community. As doctor appointments began to take up more time on the calendar than meetings, and as my own understanding of my health became murkier, I physically felt how few local support systems I actually had. There was nobody to watch the kids when I felt particularly sick, there was nobody to take me to the doctor when the car broke down. And there was nobody with the energy to deal with the stark reality of being a young girl in the age of the Internet.
Because Gloria wondered, I wondered. What would happen if I went home? What would it mean to me, my family, my health, if I built my own home? If I crossed and merged the borders cutting through my life?
