The Seventh Annual Southern Girls Convention will be held June 17-19, 2005, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Every year for the past 6 years, the Southern Girls Convention has brought out hundreds of rad folks to meet and to talk and to learn from each other–learning skills for activism and everyday life, sharing our experiences organizing deep in the heart of the so-called Red States, and taking it home to raise hell and work together to make our homes freer, safer, more just, and more loving places to be. It’s a place for Southern women and pro-woman activists to find each other, get together, work out our plans and our priorities, and begin to build the communities we want to live in in our own hometowns.

SGC’02 organizer Natasha Murphy

SGC is an unapologetically feminist, bottom-up, grassroots meeting. Each year it’s held in a different Southern community and put together with a new set of local organizers, working together with organizers from years past (if you didn’t know, I’m one myself; together with my friends Claire Rumore and Ailecia Ruscin, I helped put on the third annual Southern Girls Convention, which drew about 600 radical activists to Auburn, Alabama). The convention’s been held in Memphis, Tennessee; Louisville, Kentucky; Auburn, Alabama; Athens, Georgia; and Asheville, North Carolina; last year it returned to its birthplace in Memphis, and this year the seventh annual Southern Girls Convention will be held on June 17-19, 2005, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. We’re working to reconnect with the radical history of the American South–the cradle of the Confederacy and the birthplace of the Klan, yes, but also–lest we forget–the home of the modern Civil Rights movement, the birthplace of SNCC, and the home of women like Sarah and Angelina Grimke, Ida B. Wells, Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, Elaine Brown, Casey Hayden, Rita Mae Brown, and others. We’re working to build an infrastructure for women’s liberation in the South — because the South is our home, it needs to change, and by God we’re the ones to do it.

There will be a weekend of workshops and social events for sharing skills, learning from each other about issues and campaigns, and just meeting and talking and networking (as they say) with each other. There will be music shows, free food, and a talk by bi feminist artist Magdalen Hsu-Li. There will also be childcare for children over the age of one, incidentally, and children will also be welcome in the convention space. Interested? Consider registering to attend. While you’re at it, if you have a skill you’d like to share or an issue or organization you’d like to talk with radical folks from across the South about, you should consider proposing a workshop! Part of the point of Southern Girls Convention is that we can all learn from each other; we don’t need professional activists coming in from the North to lecture us about how to organize ourselves. (N.B.: this doesn’t mean that professional activists from the North will be unwelcome at SGC; if you are one, we’d love for you to come. Just don’t expect it to be all about you!)

Here’s the announcement from this year’s organizers. Be sure to spread the word to anyone you think might be interested!

We are counting on you to spread the word for us! Please forward this message to any friends, family, colleagues, bulletin boards, listservs, or web pages that might be interested in the event!

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Seventh Annual Southern Girls Convention

June 17-19, 2005 Baton Rouge, Louisiana

WWW: http://www.southerngirlsconvention.org/2005/

WHAT IS SOUTHERN GIRLS CONVENTION?

The Southern Girls Convention is an annual grassroots meeting for networking, organizing, educating, agitating, and activism, devoted to empowering women and girls in the South and furthering the struggle for social justice. Each year’s convention is hosted by a different Southern community and facilitated by local organizers. Past conventions have brought together hundreds of folks in Memphis, Tennessee; Louisville, Kentucky; Auburn, Alabama; Athens, Georgia; and Asheville, North Carolina.

This year’s convention will be heading as deep South as you can get: Southern Girls Convention invites activists from across the country to meet in BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA on the weekend of June 17-19, 2005. Hundreds of activists will meet for discussion, action, and entertainment devoted to building pro-woman community in the South.

WHAT CAN I DO THERE?

Southern Girls Convention is based around discussions, workshops, and presentations which give participants the opportunity to share skills, share ideas, discuss important issues, organize campaigns, and have fun as a community. All workshops are organized and facilitated by the participants themselves–that means you! Other events will include a talk by Southern bi feminist musician MAGDALEN HSU-LI, an “un-shop” swap meet, nightly music shows, and tables for participants and organizations to display information, zines, art, and things they have made.

SGC also allows hundreds of activists from across the country to meet, network, strategize, and organize in their efforts on behalf of social justice. Feel free to bring video projects, zines, writing, and anything you are interested in sharing to the convention.

Childcare will be available at the convention space.

Past workshops at SGC have included:

• Group discussions on fatphobia, abortion rights and access, radical parenting, “100 Years of Revolutionary Wimmin,” the criminalization of women, “Queer and Trans Youth in the South,” gender bias in schools, sexism in the activist community, “Marginalization and Tokenization within the Grrrl Movement,” roles and strategies for boys in the struggle against male supremacy, and “Radical, Southern, and All Fired Up–Where Do We Go From Here?”

• Skill-sharing on radical cheerleading, community access television, gun safety and self-defense, workplace union organizing, screen printing, sexercises, Internet organizing, and how to start a consciousness-raising group.

• Organizing meetings for campaigns from Amnesty International, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, and Planned Parenthood, and state-by-state caucuses for people to meet fellow organizers in their own area.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Website: http://www.southerngirlsconvention.org/2005/
E-mail: SGC’05 Organizers organizers@southerngirlsconvention.org

PLEASE FORWARD THIS E-MAIL FAR AND WIDE! Send it to friends and e-mail lists, post it on your website, blog, or bulletin board… we are counting on YOU to help us spread the word. A fresh copy of the e-mail can be sent from our website at: http://www.southerngirlsconvention.org/2005/spread-the-word

Thank you, and we hope to see you there!

Southern Girls Convention 2005 Organizers
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

I’m doing my part with this note and a banner at the top of the page. If you support SGC and can help out by forwarding an e-mail to activist groups you’re a member of, putting up a banner, posting on your website, or whatever you like, don’t hesitate to do so–or to get in touch with me or with the Baton Rouge organizers to see what you can do to help us out.

Further reading:

• GT 2002-07-24: SGC’02 rocks the South from Athens, Georgia
• GT 2001-07-27: Southern Girls Convention builds pro-woman community in the Deep South
• Southern Girls Convention: History
• Kate Zernike, New York Times 2002-07-22: Where a Southern Girl is also a Feminist
• Ashley Sayeau, The Nation 2004-11-18: Southern Ms.
• On a related note, see GT 2004-11-09: Dear Democrats, GT 2002-05-30: It’s Time To Stop Blaming the South, GT 2001-11-14: And the other shoe drops, GT 2001-03-16: Anti-Southern Bigotry and Elitist Yankee Faux Liberals

Bitch. Ph.D. is always a good place to go for a good discussion. Several days ago she started one that has been fascinating reading, and that I’d like to see spread more broadly: we often talk about so-called feminisms–emphasizing the variety amidst our unity. Well, O.K.; but that does mean that at some point you’re going to have to come out and say what your commitment to feminism does mean for you. So, she asks, What is your feminism about?

Here’s what the good doctor had to say about it herself:

In many ways, I suspect my feminism is fairly bourgeois. I don’t want a revolution that doesn’t allow me to dance, flirt, and buy shoes. On the other hand, my feminism is fairly absolute in that I will not allow myself (or others) to demonize “radical feminists” or to ignore poor women or women of color, and I object very strongly when I see women fighting with each other over crumbs. I’m sure I do it too, sometimes, but I try very hard not to. My feminism is material in the sense that I believe that the body is irreducible (more and more so, as I age, and more since becoming a mother). I do not believe that there are no differences between men and women; but I believe that what differences there are have been vastly exaggerated by social conditioning, and I reject essentialism. My feminism likes men, and is sympathetic to the ways that they, too, suffer from narrow definitions of gender. My feminism insists on being heard, and will not give up a fight, and will not back down. On the other hand, my feminism deplores unfairness, meanness, and insensitivity. I believe in principles, including the principle that people matter. I believe in forgiveness and second chances, and in teaching, and in learning; and I also believe in having high expectations and firm boundaries. My feminism is polemical but embraces ambiguities. My feminism is aggressive and protective.

— Bitch. Ph.D. 2005-04-17: Feminisms

I think that most of what I would have to say at length would come around to many (tho’ not all) of the same points. I’m actually probably less concerned than she is with whatever suffering men might face (as men–gay-baiting and gay-bashing are different issues) under patriarchy. But I thought this was beautiful, and when it comes to teaching, and learning, sympathy and solidarity, high expectations and an absolute commitment to compassion over hurtfulness and meanness, I couldn’t agree more.

And for myself? Here’s how I try to put things when I come to think about what my commitment to feminism means for me:

My feminism is simple and direct. Politics is hard and complicated, but ideology shouldn’t be. If you like ticking things off, you could say that my feminism rests on Five Pillars. Here they are:

1. It’s wrong to hurt other people. There are no excuses for hurting other people who have done nothing to deserve it.

2. Women are people.

3. In the society we live in, men hurt women who have done nothing to deserve it, all the time, more or less with impunity, because these men regard hurting women as something that they have a right to do.

4. I have a responsibility (and so do you) to do what I can toward ending that–immediately, entirely, and for good.

5. Women know more than I do about how men hurt them, and about how to end that.

The rest is all details.

So. What about you? What is your feminism about?

(Link via Amazonfemme 2005-01-06.)

FORT WORTH, Texas – A man sentenced to just four months in prison for killing his wife, after a jury concluded he acted in a blind fury, drew a 15-year term for wounding her boyfriend.

…

The jury at his 1999 trial found Watkins guilty of murdering his wife but decided he acted with “sudden passion” when he discovered her with Fontenot.

In a decision that provoked an outcry, the jury recommended 10 years’ probation. Because of the jury’s recommendation, the most the judge could have given Watkins was six months behind bars. He sentenced Watkins to four months.

…

Watkins had admitted the attack but claimed temporary insanity. Texas defines “sudden passion” as being so overcome by rage, resentment or fear that the defendant is “incapable of cool reflection.” Jurors said they recommended probation because they didn’t think Watkins could be rehabilitated in prison.

— The Miami Herald (2005-01-06): Man Sentenced in Attack on Wife’s Lover

(Links and commentary from Pinko Feminist Hellcat 2005-04-21: As long as we’ve got our priorities straight, Mr. Altman, Pinko Feminist Hellcat 2005-04-21: You broads have no sense of humor, feministing 2005-04-21, Pseudo-Adrienne at Alas, A Blog 2005-04-21, and Hopelessly Midwestern 2005-04-22, inter alia. I read most of these through Feminist Blogs, of course.)

(Columbia) April 20, 2005 – The State House took up two pieces of legislation this week aimed at protecting two different groups. Up for debate was cracking down on gamecock fighting and protecting victims of domestic violence.

A bill protecting cocks passed through the House Judiciary Committee. Rep. John Graham Altman (R-Dist. 119-Charleston) was in favor of the gamecock bill, “I was all for that. Cockfighting reminds me of the Roman circus, coliseum.”

A bill advocates say would protect victims against batterers was tabled, killing it for the year. Rep. Altman is on the committee that looked at the domestic violence bill, “I think this bill is probably drafted out of an abundance of ignorance.”

…

Both cockfighting and domestic violence are currently misdemeanor crimes, punishable by 30 days in jail. If the bill passes, cockfighting will become a felony, punishable by five years in jail. Domestic violence crimes will remain a misdemeanor.

Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter (D-Dist. 66-Orangeburg) says of the two bills, “What we have said by the actions of the Judiciary Committee is we aren’t going to create a felony if you beat your wife, partner. But now, if you’ve got some cockfighting going on, whoa! Wait a minute.”

Rep. Altman responds to the comparison, “People who compare the two > are not very smart and if you don’t understand the difference, Ms. Gormley, between trying to ban the savage practice of watching chickens trying to kill each other and protecting people rights in > CDV statutes, I’ll never be able to explain it to you in a 100 years ma’am.”

…

Rep. Cobb-Hunter says, “The reality is the law says domestic violence regardless, first, second or third offense is a misdemeanor, and what they passed yesterday says cockfighting is a felony.”

Rep. Altman spoke about domestic violence, “There ought not to be a second offense. The woman ought to not be around the man. I mean you women want it one way and not another. Women want to punish the men, and I do not understand why women continue to go back around men who abuse them. And I’ve asked women that and they all tell me the same answer, John Graham you don’t understand. And I say you’re right, I don’t understand.”

Gormley, “So it’s their fault for going back?”

Altman, “Now there you go, trying to twist that too. And I don’t mind you trying. It’s not the woman’s fault, it’s not blaming the victim, but tell me what self respecting person is going back around someone who beats them?”

— WISTV 10, Columbia, SC (2005-04-20): Judiciary Committee passes cockfighting bill, tables domestic violence bill

(More from Trish Wilson 2005-04-21)

The bill’s name is “Protect Our Women in Every Relationship (POWER)”. Mr. Altman had wondered why only women were mentioned, and not men. This isn’t about abused men. It about abused women because the vast majority of domestic violence victims are female.

One of the jokes committee members made had to do with the title of the bill. Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Harrison wanted to change it from “Protect Our Women in Every Relationship (POWER)” to “Protecting Our People in Every Relationship” Act, or “POPER.” A voice on the tape can be heard pronouncing it “Pop her.” Another voice then says, “Pop her again,” followed by laughter. Harrison said the advocates for abused women were “overreacting” and the comments weren’t intended to diminish the gravity of domestic violence. “If you take it that way, you’re overly sensitive,” he said.

Meanwhile, in the writings of insane radical feminists who nobody listens to or has even heard of and are clearly hysterical and completely out of touch with reality and who don’t ever write about politics anyway:

The state is male in the feminist sense: the law sees and treats women the way men see and treat women.

–Catharine MacKinnon (1989), Toward a Feminist Theory of the State, Chapter 8 ¶ 11

And:

There is not a feminist alive who could possibly look to the male legal system for real protection from the systemized sadism of men. Women fight to reform male law, in the areas of rape and battery for instance, because something is better than nothing. In general, we fight to force the law to recognize us as the victims of the crimes committed against us, but the results so far have been paltry and pathetic.

–Andrea Dworkin (1979), For Men, Freedom of Speech; For Women, Silence Please, in Letters from a War Zone

This is also from Nervous Interview (1979). It may be good for Ampersand and anyone else who is dealing with obsessive anti-Dworkin trolls or out-of-left-field, illiterate jibes from psychos on their memorial posts.

Q: People think you are very hostile to men.
A: I am.

Q: Doesn’t that worry you?
A: From what you said, it worries them.

TONIGHT, on News of the Obvious:

• International correspondents John Lopez and Donald Rumsfeld: U.S. Has No Exit Strategy for Iraq

• International correspondents Anthony Gregory and Terry Jones: Bombing is bad for children’s health.

• International correspondent Thaddeus: The US armed forces are facing a major crisis as commitments throughout the world continue to demand fresh recruits and, despite the fact that the army has lowered its standards, the number of people willing to enlist is falling fast.

• In New York, Tom Tomorrow: Cops abuse their power and lie about it. Film at 11.

• In Atlanta: Eric Rudolph is not an anarchist. But he is a a real asshole.

• Correspondent Trish Wilson: E-mails disclosed to News of the Obvious reveal that the Father’s Rights movement are weaselly apologists for male violence.

• Correspondent Michael Berubé: David Horowitz isn’t just a far-right ideologue. He’s also a sorry old fraud.

• And in History of the Obvious a couple of days ago: Leninists kill people after claiming to be their “comrades”, and just because he’s the one who lost doesn’t mean that Leon Trotsky was any better.