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.)
