Ani DiFranco's Full Of Fail Feminist Plantation Retreat

Another prime example of why I'm NOT a feminist is breaking out as I write this on the Net 

Ani DiFranco is planning what she calls The Righteous Retreat in The Big Easy.  It's 4 days of music, seminars and feminist conscious raising from June 25-29 in Louisiana.

Sounds like an interesting event. huh?   Just one problem.  It's not being held in the New Orleans city limits, it's being held on a plantation.  When Black women called that problematic point out, all hell broke loose.

When Black women expressed their concerns about having this event on ground where our foremothers were raped, tortured, had the children they bore sold from them, the response was predictable from vanillacentric privileged white women rushing to defend DiFranco and this jacked up event. 

Mandi Harrington took it a reprehensible step further and engaged in virtual blackface to defend the indefensible.

Now they have trotted Toshi Reagon out to make a statement in a predictable attempt to hide behind her skirts as a human shield, but it still doesn't change the fact you are having this event at a plantation and we're pissed off about it.  It's the equivalent of having an event at Auschwitz.  

I'll bet if Jewish women told you that hypothetical Auschwitz event was triggering,  you'd be changing that venue with the quickness.   And these repeated race fails and being disappointed by white feminists is why I am a womanist. 

What next Ani?  A cruise that simulates the Middle Passage?  Your silence Ani will not protect you from the seething anger that is building up over this BS.   Neither will your weak attempt to use Toshi Reagon as a human shield for your fauxgressive frack-up.

White women's tears start in 5...4...3...2...1...

Yeah, #BlackTwitter, it's time to do what we do best    #AniDiFrancoRetreatIdeas



TransGriot Update: DiFranco put out a non-apology statement written in lowercase cancelling the plantation retreat, and the Twitter hashtag is slowly gaining momentum.

WTF Advocate?

I shouldn't be surprised after 15 years in the TBLG community to see the Advocate failing when it comes to talking about trans issues.

But this disastrous May 22 op-ed from cisgender woman Suzan Revah swimming in vanillacentric privilege and appropriation was an eye-rolling experience that I fortunately read on an empty stomach. 

It was also highly insulting to read that jacked up op-ed when three girls like us who share my ethnic background were killed last month and we are two weeks from the first of the five accused killers of Evon Young being tried in Milwaukee.

When the backlash swiftly came from trans folks calling out the BS in the comment threads, the White Women's Tears came out from Revah and the 'poor defenseless white woman' had people (predominately gay men in that Advocate comment thread) rushing to defend her.  

And naw Suzan, trans people correctly pointing out where you massively failed in this piece.doesn't make us 'haters', and it's mighty white of you to part your lips to say so. 

To borrow a snippet of Gemma Seymour-Amper's comment that encapsulates much of what trans peeps who responded to the jacked up post had to say: 

FYI, the entire trans community stopped reading when you called yourself a "normal Real Girl", because when that's the mindset you hold, everything you say about trans issues after revealing that fact is immediately and automatically invalidated by your immediate dismissal of the authenticity of trans women as women, and as female, for those who think that making that distinction is going to save them from the inevitable march of public opinion.

We only get that far, because I've chosen not, at this particular moment, to point out the absolute overweening arrogance of The Advocate (once again) in choosing a white, cis, and from what I can tell from this pathetic and demeaning article probably heterosexual, person to speak for the trans community, as if we are incapable of speaking for ourselves. Kyriarchy, much? Oh, well...I guess I *did* just point it out, didn't I?

Note to the LG community, let me make this point crystal clear on behalf of my trans brothers and sisters. 

You do not EVER get to determine for me and my transpeeps what is and isn't offensive to the trans community.  We do.   We are also the final authorities as to what is and isn't trans because they are issues that we are intimately familiar with and have major impacts on our lives.   We don't like our existence trivialized, and those of us in the non-white trans community have a major problem with it especially since it's our trans women who are taking the brunt of the anti-trans discrimination and dying for it.

If you claim to be an ally, there are times when you need to be in sit down and shut up mode, respectfully ask us what help we need and when we tell you, then you make it happen.

Advocate, did it ever occur to you or the editors that let this full of fail piece fly that the best way to discuss trans issues on your site is to (gasp) have real live trans people write the fracking op-ed's?

The Trans 100 List is a nice place to start if you are clueless in finding transpeople that can expertly discuss the issues that affect our community.

You may wish to consider that point the next time you feel the need to do an op-ed piece on trans issues that doesn't piss us off in the process.