So, even as mothers need the support of the … whaddya call us? Non-mothers? … we need the support of the mothers, goddammit!

That's right! We want the mothers to step up.

She goes on to talk about the how and the why, the shorter version being that motherhood as it stands right now is a tool for the patriarchy. This is what the feminist mothers are having a hard time swallowing. Hmmm. Why I find the level of outrage problematic: I don’t agree with Twisty’s take on het sex or makeup, and I sure as hell still giggle mightily when she derides my — yes, my! — four-inch heels. Not that my four-inch heels are babies, or my choice to by them as Large, Looming and Very Important as the decision to breed, but come on… do you really have to take down a whole person because she kicks you in the DNA?

So, Twisty says that becoming and being a nuclear-family mother supports the patriarchy. Twisty thinks a lot of things that many mainstream-y leaning feminists like also support the patriarchy (see aforementioned heels). She talks about them in almost every single post. But all of the sudden it’s not okay because she’s talking about your own personal uterus? You gotta read it within context, people– the context of Twisty’s brand of radical feminism.

The job of the bleeding edge of various movements — political, cultural/artistic, etc.. — is to continually push the envelope of the boundaries of the conversation. By pushing farther out than what’s been tread before, we create the space for conversation to happen. Out of conversation comes (hopefully) enlightenment and understanding, and following that, progress and/or revolution.

Radical feminism is no different, and calling what serves as the current Western role for mothers, or my four-inch heels, tools for patriarchy really isn’t that radical. It’s examination and self-criticism that maybe doesn’t happen too much because we’re busy attacking misogynists that live outside feminism-country (necessary, valid, worthwhile, just to be clear). But when someone on your side points something that could be problematic out, and you go buckwild? I don’t know, it reminds me of when we point out sexist behavior by Good Lib’rul Guys and get bombed out for it.

Pot, kettle. Meet. Talk amongst y’selves.

More than anything, I’ve been a bridge-builder for most of my political career. I come from working class, conservative roots, and I have been fueled in the past by a passion to build understanding between worlds that don’t talk to each other. A lot of that has to do with the tight relationship that I have with my folks; I find myself wondering how they would react to things that I’m working on, or how a particular issue is framed. Far more than I do now, I’ve used them as guinea pigs: Pop’s the hard-line conservative, Mom’s our swing voter.

I’ve come to terms now, or at least I’m trying to come to terms with (did I mention the therapy?) the fact that I am tired of building bridges. I’m over it, I’m sore, my resources are expended, my back is broken, and I am, quite simply, spent. I want to spend a little time with like-minded folk who will let me explore my beliefs; I want to find my safe spaces. But where on Earth do I begin? Who are my people?

Immediately it became clear to me that feminism was going to play a large role in process. I’ve been a feminist since I can remember, though I don’t know where I got the idea that this was thing Thing To Do. All I know is that I chose Amelia Earheart for my living biography project in 4th grade, and the rest is pretty much history. So, I’ve known that The Feminists were the kids in the political schoolyard for me to pal around with.

I am lucky to have found a community of women with whom I can toss things about with, who fascinate me with their listserv banter and arguments, who dazzle me with their annual killer conference: Women Action & The Media. Or, more simply and more fun: WAM!. Full disclosure, I am a volunteer WAM!bassador of technology. It’s fun to say, and it’s even more fun to be a part of. I’ve attended the conference for three or four years now, brought into the fold by Tracy van Slyke and Jessica Clark. I don’t always agree with everything that happens on- and offline within the WAM! community, but it has become a rewarding home for me, the beginning of a safe space for my explorations.

In the last year or so, my frustrations with external liberal forces have become louder and stronger, at least in my head, though not so very publicly. I’ve found myself commiserating with people of color and folks working on poverty issues at various conferences. To wit, I remember sitting with Christopher Rabb, Roberto Lovato and a few others, talking about the Take Back America conference and just how bizarre the “take back” frame is. “Ummmm, ummmm,” Chris would start ribbing, gently raising his hand. “Um, who exactly are we taking it back for? ‘Cause some of us never had it.” We’d giggle our rage away. Like ya do.

So, more than ever, I was looking forward to this year’s WAM! Conference, to regroup, to kick back, kick back many cocktails, kick back my brain, and for the love of God, just relax and have fun with peeps that I only get to see in this setting but once a year. I was excited to see all of the crazy panels and workshops that been stacked up, excited to meet Helen Thomas (I’m a celebrity hag, yes I am), excited to not worry about a damn thing. Because, what do I have to worry about?

The conference was all that (and slightly more, since it’s more than doubled in size compared to when I first started going), and I left completely exhausted from lack of sleep and yet feeling connected to my little spot of the universe again. When I got home, I finished putting up my presentation materials online, and started trolling around for other people’s post-mortems.

That’s when I started reading about a whole group of people who didn’t have so good a time at the conference, and who don’t feel the unending waterfalls of warm fuzzies that I feel for this community. I was, perhaps naively, surprised. The more critiques I read from the queer and women of color communities, the more confused and frustrated I started to feel. How could they say that my community, my beloved WAM!, was not welcoming, inclusive, transformational, radical enough?

I went through several days of this, and by Wednesday night, I was seething and stewing in my defensive thoughts. The moment that I realized I was talking to myself while stirring pasta on the stove, a la “Well let me just tell you something…”, I knew something profound was happening in my psyche. Said pasta nearly hit the floor when I realized that much of the defensive words I was spouting were the same words that mainstream non-feminists (often men) had thrown at me when I called into question their recruitment and organizing tactics. (“But we just don’t know that many women who do [insert job here]!”)

I felt like crap.

Ah, I retorted to myself, but my good liberal white guilt will get me nowhere in this life!

So, I sat on it uncomfortably for a night, still occasionally chatting with myself, and the next morning, I read Jessica Hoffman’s critique of the conference over at The Bilerico Project. This is probably the post that got my brain churning the most (though I am questioning why that is now, since, as will soon be revealed to you, I am now questioning everything– it’s like being 17 and discovering communism all over again). What I realized I had to do was to take all of these experiences into my own experience. I was, and am, guilty of treating communities to which I do not belong as Other, as not me or mine.

Conservatives are very good at the game of Other. My friend Sasha once said to me, “Conservatives have the mistaken notion that there is a difference between you and me. Part of the liberal or progressive ideology, why we care what happens, is that we know there’s no difference spiritually, really, between us. We really are in it together, for better or worse.” This was my first exercise in breaking down not someone else’s Other issues– but my very own. I’m not done yet.

Watching the ensuing conversations over email and blog comments enabled me to wait a long time to write this essay. I watched as women that I consider friends react to individual words and ignored overall concepts, while others reached out and went a little further than they had in the past. I watched as some tried the bridges, and in some cases, from one side or another (there are many islands needing connection here) were ignored or flamed. Women who had been through these discussions in other iterations offered thoughtful advice or jaded dismissals. The conference organizers answered all of the open questions in a variety of forums, and folks seem to come out of the woodwork to defend the conference itself. Which was, in the end, a Good Thing. We couldn’t have the whole damn thing falling apart, now could we?

Throughout this intake process, I’ve become more uncomfortable, instead of less so, and this makes me think I’m probably on the right path.

I question my own role in the manifestation of WAM! and other feminist communities as interpreted by some as mainstream, white, straight, privileged, what-have-you. Many of the women I’m friends with in the community are women that I work with, either through my own tech work or through sites like AlterNet.org, and most of them are white and not super radical in any one way. In this process, I wonder if there is something about my place in the world and how I’ve presented it that has not attracted radical, queer and women of color to my secret plan for world domination through technology. I talk a good game. Am I walking it? Perhaps… not. I don’t know.

It’s hard to write “I don’t know.” I just read an interview with Spike Lee in this week’s New York Magazine that was sort of a retrospective of “Do The Right Thing.” His comment about critics who ripped the movie apart was telling: he was criticized because he didn’t have an “answer to racism” at the end of the film. Because, you know, a movie could do that. And if you’re so smart, Mr. Smarty Pants, smart enough to make this whole movie with all these complex characters, then how come you’re not smart enough to have an answer at the end?

I’ve found that most of the people participating in various parts of this discussion at the intersection of race, gender, queer, identity and radical politics just don’t have The Answers, and each of the camps are frustrated with others for was feels like an unwillingness to explore answers, to stumble and make mistakes (and have other camps accept them) along the way. Some folks are broken, tired, sick of building bridges out to people like me and beyond– and with this, I can sympathize, and I cannot fault them.

One minor conclusion that I have come to out of this is that people who are desperate for change — the real kind, the kind you can taste in your WAM!tini and feel in your bones and live in your sustainable life — will put a good chunk, if not all, of their hopes and dreams into a gathering like WAM!. I know that I do, every single year. Along with your basket of hopes-’n'-dreams also comes a helping of fears and disappointments, and those are forces to be reckoned with. Heartily, madly reckoned with. If we won’t do it, how will we expect others to?

There are now more conversations happening about race and feminism around the ‘hood, and I’m not qualified to comment on them yet (note that it took me nearly two weeks to write this one piece), but I think so far that Ampersand had what seem like the clearest words on one set of arguments (especially sprinkled throughout the comments), and Jessica Hoffman’s Open Letter To White Feminists has the best line I’ve seen in recent years about what’s wrong with privileged people of all sorts: “We’d been pissed and well meaning, but not useful.” (Especially you upper-class white men! Yes, you! Just kidding. But not really.)

Now is the part where I write a neat, clever conclusion for my “What I Did At Camp” essay, wherein I solve the problems of my community with a quick flurry of keystrokes. At least, that’s what I thought I’d have to do in the past when I tried to write these essays. The new, improved, desiring-to-break-free-and-be-a-good-deal-more-radical DZ is instead going to be over there in the corner, thinking and writing, emailing with folks and taking it all in… and figuring out what being “useful” is going to mean for me.

Brad taught me about white balance on my camera, how to walk slowly enough to not mess up your picture, and to always point the mic at what you’re shooting. He was earnest and spirited — a wide smile and a big heart. He believed, and dedicated his life to showing others the truth.

More from Jason, and the AP report with quotes from Beka and Brandon.

News on vigils and protests, and latest reports: http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/bradleywill/archive.html

“Love is a memory that never fades. May memories be your comfort.” — anonymous