Square One

When I mentioned recently that I was quitting the feminist blogosphere, I might have clarified I didn’t mean I’d ceased to be a feminist (um, hardly). I have, however, ceased to participate in the constant internecine warfare between factions of various kinds. Persons from Gleamingly Righteous Faction X, for example, might construe my efforts to engage in nuanced explorations of issues common to nearly all our factions, with strict, uncritical allegiance to the principles of Dastardly Hateful Faction Y. (Meanwhile, Faction Y would be vigorously asserting its own claims to gleaming righteousness, proving in comment threads across hundreds of blogs, with hundreds more fiercely engaged participants, that it was Faction X, in fact, which had been truly “dastardly and hateful.”)

I came to find this modality draining and unproductive, so I quit.

This is not to say that there isn’t any value, to feminist discourse, in these “blogwars”; rather, it is to say that I no longer have anything useful to contribute to them, nor to take from them; I am, quite simply and irrevocably, done with them, in acknowledgment of which I recently deleted four years’ worth of my blog, and started over. (Because it had all come to seem inexorably tainted by those wars, and my own embarrassing habit of resorting to polemic narrative over all other forms, even when - or especially when - other forms were most critically needed.)

That said, I understand there has been a brouhaha lately involving the feminist publisher Seal Press (one of several involving highly charged, and absolutely substantive, issues of white privilege). Beyond the link in that last sentence, I won’t go into the details - I trust the curious reader, not already eyeball-deep in the details from same, knows how to Google “Seal Press controversy” and such.

I will, however, share what I just posted to the publisher’s page on Facebook. Note that I was (mercifully) limited to 1,000 characters in leaving my comment for them, making it easier for me to resist various polemic temptations:

I’ve been loving Seal Press since the late 80s. My most prized Seal Press volume? Maybe the wonderful short story collection by Barbara Wilson, “Walking on the Moon.” Or perhaps Gerd Brantenberg’s “Egalia’s Daughters.” (I’ve since purchased a more recent edition of same for my now-teenaged daughter. Along with, most recently, Amanda Marcotte’s book. Both volumes she devoured whole. That’s my girl!)

But really? Part of why I will always support Seal Press is because of a volume you published when, I am certain, no one else was brave enough to: Kerry Lobel and the NCADV’s “Naming the Violence: Speaking Out About Lesbian Battering.” (That book saved my life once.)

And now I see you have quite a range of new material, and that you are doing your damnedest to survive as a feminist publisher. I understand you’ve had some travails of late, and I hope they’ve been a learning and growing experience for you. I’ll be cheering you all the way.

Long live Seal Press.

…And when I say that one of their books saved my life once? That’s not hyperbole.

I mean it actually saved my life.

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Edited to add: I expound more on the (again, entirely warranted) criticism leveled at Seal further here, in comments at Hugo Schwyzer’s post titled “Seal Press Saved My Life.” (And since I’m in a clarifying mood, the “Seal Press Saved My Life” title - referencing my post here - rings more of a histrionic note than I might have wished to convey - no offense, Hugo - I said one individual book of theirs, published in the mid-eighties, saved my life, which, while it is still a sort of high-drama thing to say, is a bit different.)

Between my husband getting laid off last week (with all of three weeks’ severance - Jesus God what are we going to do?), his aunt dying yesterday, and an increased severity of political disillusionment on my part, I’m not much inclined to blog right now.

Fortunately, my favorite living author, Augusten Burroughs, has a new book out: A Wolf at the Table. I’m debating between devouring it whole (as I was starting to do this morning; see below) and savoring it for as long as possible. Or perhaps both. (Devour, then start over. Lather, rinse, repeat.)

In any event, I now have a place in which to engage my consciousness that doesn’t make me want to scream bloody murder. Or it does, but in a productive, Jesus-what’s-wrong-with-me-I-need-to-be-writing-like-this way. Augusten Burroughs is nothing if not an existential shot of courage, an escape hatch that isn’t such a benign “escape” after all (considering some of my own history that requires a fair amount of confronting; Augusten’s most recent book, notably, concerns his father).

Meantime, you can (almost) always find me on Twitter.

As some of you know, I recently deleted my entire blog. I had several reasons (of which this episode was less an immediate trigger than it was the icing on the hyper-rhetorical cake), but the bottom line was that my life had been overtaken by (overt) political blogging, such that most other subjects and activities had become subordinate.

There was also a growing disgust with the state of political discourse within the feminist blogosphere. Many of the feminist blogs to which I had once looked for nuanced explorations of crucial issues of politics and culture were now doing little besides spewing constant streams of grossly distorting invective against Barack Obama (or what they would oh-so-innocently refer to as “vetting the candidate”).

When I took a deeply felt, authentically diplomatic approach, my would-be sisters advocating for Hillary Clinton generally ignored me (with precious few exceptions - you know who you are). And when I took more of a fighting approach, I began to deplore the sound of my own voice.

Finally, I did a post specifically on the dangers of the Obama/Clinton divide among progressives (using a one-shot opportunity to guest blog at Huffington Post), and while responses were generally favorable (I was thanked, for instance, for “inserting a little sanity into the divisive discourse”), it was also clear that my words could not begin to counteract what was, after all, a tsunami-sized wave of grossly cynical, and sometimes openly hateful discourse.

So, does my about-face with regard to overt political blogging mean I no longer care - passionately - about these issues? Hardly. (Indeed, what woke me up in the middle of the night, provoking me to write this, was a dream containing the audaciously brassy and insistent chorus line from Skunk Anansie’s Yes It’s Fucking Political.) Well then, does it mean my support for Barack Obama’s candidacy is in any way lessened? Most certainly not.

But if months engaging in what had been a labor of love - writing about the issues in this election - have gotten me absolutely nowhere in terms of fostering open, substantive dialogue with progressives’ common interests in mind, why on earth would I continue with that labor now? (For while it is my candidate’s prerogative - and, indeed, mandate - to respond as needed¹ to constant attacks coming from the Clinton camp, I don’t see that my doing so adds to the current discourse.)

Today, as Pennsylvania voters go to the polls, I’m going to impose a total news blackout in this household (from TV to newspapers to blogs to Twitter) until I know most of the returns are in, and my kids are in bed. Because, in the event Clinton’s last-ditch effort to save her campaign, by deploying that most Rovian of all despicably Rovian tactics - using the image of Osama bin Laden in campaign ads, in an effort to scare voters (remember when Democrats were in universal opposition to this practice?) - is successful (where ’success’ would mean more than a marginal victory in this particular state, with significant net gain in pledged delegates), I am going to be incredibly angry. And I’d rather my kids didn’t see me like that.

Whatever the outcome, this time tomorrow, I’ll compose myself again, and deal with whatever comes next. If, somehow, Clinton becomes the Democratic party’s nominee, I will certainly vote for her, because McCain is by far the more dangerous candidate.

In the Huffington Post guest blog entry referenced above, I included in a footnote this somewhat out-of-place comment: Each post I write on the election, I die a little. Extricating myself from these debates, then - despite a constant stream of outrages to which I might otherwise have been compelled to react - has been in the interests of self-preservation, and I don’t regret it.

Going back to something I jokingly said on Twitter, awhile back:

Feminist blogosphere, I wish I knew how to quit you.

I’m happy to say that with this last post, I finally have.

Good luck, Pennsylvania. I hope you’ll vote your conscience.

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¹ As Obama said, in an interview to be aired in full on the Today Show later this morning:

This is an old trick, right? Somebody attacks you and attacks you and attacks you, and when you finally call them on it, suddenly you’re ‘engaging in the same tactics.’ We have been extraordinarily restrained during the course of this campaign and have generally responded only to attacks that have already been leveled at us by Senator Clinton.

Teenagers: An Alien Life Form, originally uploaded by vmarinelli.

She may be an alien life form, but she’s my alien life form, and I love her so much it’s ridiculous.

(Did I mention she got into four different extremely competitive academic specialty centers for next year? Oh, only thirty-seven times? Well, make this thirty-eight.)

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* No, not The Teenagers. Just mine.

9725 Jeremy Street, originally uploaded by vmarinelli.

…in April of 1984¹, I left this house, appropriately enough on Friday the 13th. I was thirteen, and I was not leaving of my own volition. This was the point at which my mother, who had relinquished custody of me just prior to my starting third grade, was compelled to take me back.

While this set into motion a number of events for which I now have cause to be deeply grateful (so that I can say, honestly, that I have no regrets), at the time, I experienced it as a complete rupture of my time-space continuum. Which is to say it was unfathomably traumatic, and served to compound any number of previous traumas that had built up to my father’s and stepmother’s decision to kick me out.

Everything I write eventually traces itself back to what happened in this house. (For further notes, click through to image on Flickr.)

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¹ Photo taken in January, 2002, during a trip to see my grandmother, who was then dying. Stopping by this house and taking this picture was at least as important as seeing her draw her last breath.

[and this post will mean little to anyone outside the circular firing squad known as the feminist blogosphere, with particular concern for this debacle]

At the time I was deciding to delete my blog, I had no idea whatsoever brownfemipower/La Chola had deleted hers.

As my comments on this post reflect, that particular episode was but one of many sources of inspiration for deleting my blog, and the idea to do so was, indeed, entirely my own.

Persons wishing to transpose onto the above statements their own ideas concerning what I might “really” mean by this post can kiss my ass.

Talk To The Hand, originally uploaded by vmarinelli.

My teenager, who was sassily trying to avoid the camera.

As with my recent blog deletion, her reticence was hardly personal.

For any number of reasons, I just deleted my entire blog.

And I feel much better now, thanks.