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        • Toward a Theory and Praxis of Sustainable Feminism
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        • Who's Coming Along: Denise Duhamel, Maureen Seaton, and Collaboration Today
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Feminisms: Inclusion as a Radical Act
Linda Van Leuven

This essay is part of a larger project, "Consciousness Raising: The Heart of Feminism"

When we first started there was no precedent to what we were doing.
There were no rules where people could say do this or that.
We just put ourselves out there and took the ride.
---Ann Wilson of Heart


When the moon is in the seventh house
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars
   --- The 5th Dimension


The Houses We Live in

Apparently, the earth has moved. Things are shifting.

This morning, I can’t get the door open. I live in a sensitive and flexible house. A structure made of lathe and plaster, so it breathes--responds to all seasons and energetic changes--is alive on so many levels. It also came with a milk door--one of many openings built-in, by architects who probably had five and ten and thirty-year plans, and designed houses to last lifetimes. They paid attention to what was relevant and wanted and standard in 1938: big bedrooms, small bathrooms, and tiny but functional kitchens. Everything enclosed, and encased--maximizing the need for separated space. For privacy. They also paid attention to the weather--the double hung windows strategically placed to catch the breeze. 

But now the winds have changed. A milk chute installed for a delivery service that is no longer part of daily life; built for people who were not living “Dairy Free” because they had become intolerant to changes in the production of milk--which has little to do with cow, sheep, and goat biology, how milk is really produced--but rather, concerns man’s (sic) attempted improvement on Nature to make a buck.

Each time I look at the metal milk door
--its small latch keeping things in and out, the arrow of product selection--I see the promise of relationship and morning ritual exchanges--the homegrown giving and the receiving. I am also reminded of how things change, even in the very structure of our living. I hear people like their floor plans more open these days, with designated spaces spilling into each other--where kitchens are expansive and part of living rooms. Where bathrooms function as “retreats,” and not simply because you have locked yourself in there to get away and cry. And in this post-privacy era, the clear boundaries have been erased and redrawn to maximize movement, flow, and visibility.

This is a time of expansion.

Finding Feminisms

In generating the theme Feminisms, there was (as there often is with me), no thought. I had been teaching a class on cultural pluralism
--steeped in multiplicity, and my own rethinking of what typically passes as diversity. “Feminisms” seemed timely and appropriate to the larger conversations that many people were having--about taking a bigger perspective, about spirituality, about living differently, about new bottom lines, and paradigmatic shifts. Making feminism plural felt dimensional. Mostly, I just imagined it would make a great t-shirt.

There are so many different epochs, versions, and visions of Feminism. And this theme was ours. Here at Trivia, we like our Feminism plural. Not simply because we are rooted in (and billed as) “the many voices,” but because we are committed to continuing a Radical Vision at Trivia. And it is in this spirit that we announced Feminisms
--what’s more radical than women’s expansion and inclusion? Plus, women/womyn/wimmin know the power of spelling--and how a single letter can shift boundaries of awareness. It all seemed like a good idea at the time. We heard from some folks that it wasn’t--and well, that’s part of it, too.

What is called for—and forth—at this time is inclusion, integration, dimensionality. Feminisms. The more the merrier. But pluralizing ourselves / the work invites the fear that we aren’t enough, or that we are too much; that as a “Movement,” our energies will be diluted. That there are too many cooks in our feminist kitchen. Too many ideas. That there is no one way, or brand of Feminism. But hasn’t this always been the case?

Perhaps there is a way to think about Inclusion that invites more than fear. One that makes room for new ways of thinking and living. One that asks: Can we hold things together? And not simply because we are falling apart. But can we truly "hold things together?" Which is about Consciousness. Perspective. Positionality. The prospect of Inclusion can bring to our attention (lovingly) how we orient to life; how we (habitually) think, and where we stand. Can expose the ways we might prefer lives of clear separation, even as we work to hold doors and hearts open. How we like our duality, unmitigated. Our sense of "us or them," unwavering--while claiming we are all in this together. Indeed, we are a complicated bunch.

And certainly, inclusion can be uncomfortable
--as we become aware of ways we are not aware, ways we are rigid. How we might not be as open minded as we believe. And in this realization, is the possibility for great tenderness. How we participate in similar patterns as those we rally against. How we, too, can be fundamentalist hardliners in the ways we approach/reproach ourselves--with parts we lock down and separate out--parts we don't include. How we might have structures of thinking or routine responses that are no longer necessary, possible to maintain, or serving our movement, forward. And yes, there's this:

If you let things in, you have to let things go.


Inclusion is a radical act. 

Finding Feminism


How we locate (and recognize) Feminism
--as a belief system, orientation, and practice--the grand vision, the everyday awarenesses and doings--includes history and perspective. Is Feminism this or that? Embodied by these women, at this particular point in time, carrying these definitions and cultural markers. Indeed, this is what a Feminist Looks Like, in (and through) Time. And of course this varies.

But what happens when we cannot identify the Feminist, or the Feminism? This is often our task as the Editors of Trivia
--discussing how a particular piece--poem, art, essay--is feminist. You might think this is an easy assignment. Certainly, it is an enlightening one, as we look for feminism, and for the possibility of feminism in each submission. And as I write this, I realize what an enormous privilege this is, and how strange. And people send us all sorts of things. Perhaps they didn’t realize it was a feminist journal. They didn’t read the call for submissions or Mission statement. Perhaps they just Want. To. Get. Published. Somewhere.

And we are here: as the voices of feminism.

So locating Feminism is of primary interest. It requires that we stay open to an evolving vision
--while reminding us that Feminism is both locatable, grounded in the realities of women’s lives and experiences (which includes the contents of their thoughts and their pocketbooks), and also, always in a state of revealing itself--showing up in new forms, and perhaps even new bodies.

So we wonder: Is it enough (essential) that a submission has been created by a woman? That we give much needed space for female voices and female work? Perhaps it is enough that the piece is something about women's lives--well written, developed, thoughtful; something impossible, inane, or inspiring. I sometimes think we are looking for the feminist spirit--a feeling, a sensibility; a way of being in and with life.
At Trivia, this process of Finding Feminism requires that we stay open to shifting understandings, evolving perspectives, and varied lived realities (while being mindful of our own commitments).

But it is not only our editorial predicament to find Feminism. It was mine.

Your mother dies.

Your job ends, you have a Ph.D. and can’t find work.

You have no healthcare and your embodied existence is slightly suspicious.

You are Dissolving: a self and cellular re-organization--an amid-life awakening.

You suddenly can't locate yourself, and yet, find yourself in everything. And it seems the tense of your life has changed, along with the boundaries of you.


What’s your Feminism Now?

And the old slogans no longer fit:

"
A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle."
"The best man for the job is a woman."

At one time these were humorous, encouraging, defining--told the story of my feminism: the claiming of space through separation, the "advocating for" through "pushing against," all rooted in a clear gender binary. Now this just feels painful, limiting, and untrue.

Consciousness is grounded and evolves. How we think is grounded and evolves. Not only in epochs, but where we are in our own life course. In our own unfolding, and evolution. In our own living Awareness. What we give our attention to not only matters, but shifts and changes.

My life and my feminism require new slogans of appreciation and inclusion:


"Start where you are."
(Pema Chodron)
"Be Here Now." (Ram Dass)
"All is Welcome Here." (Pamela Wilson)

Begin again


So how do we locate the feminism of and in our lives? Perhaps our Feminism locates us. Dates us. Finds us. Shows us what is important--in how we think and live. In how (and what) we think about Life, about Gender, about women and girls. About what's possible. In how we consider ourselves, and our Planet: our sustainability, inter-related. In how "the personal" is not just what happens to our egoic self--some slight, or even the specific circumstances of our life--but also what happens to our neighbors, our friends and enemies, to the animals, waters, plants and trees--because on some level, "that's me, too." Our material and life course conditions all part of how we frame the issues. How we (can) see things now. 

And in expansion, Feminism asks us to stay rooted. Grounded. Connected. And Alive.
Invites us to become Conscious. Mindful. Awake and Aware. And it seems nothing has changed--these ideas are not new, but they remain--essential. Our feminism evolves as we do. Containing all that came before, expressing it in new ways. The Being and the Becoming. Fractal and Full Circle.

And Sisters are doing it for themselves (tho they are not doing it alone).

The Internet response to the horrific Isla Vista shootings is overwhelming. It is feminism in practice. Moving from women’s deaths, and lives. No books, or grand theories. No Conference or formal living room chats. Just a hashtag #yesallwomen. A different kind of locating--a set of shared experiences. No discussion about "well, what do we mean by All Women? What do we mean by 'Yes?'” Just a statement of Inclusion: "yes all women." How radical. And this is Happening. Now.

Sometimes I think we will find our way to liberation, equality, and valuing women, without a defined theory--without a formal structure. Perhaps without agreement. Would this be okay? Fine by me. But we won’t find our way to liberation, on any level, without awareness and movement. Without the energy, work, and lives of all the women who came before. We are here now because of them. And what of the men? Are we not here now because of them, too...?

Inclusion is a radical act because it invites consciousness to (our habituated thinkings about) Gender.
Feminism is a project of Gender Liberation: be it liberation from roles, ideas of limitation, or massive systems of violence and social inequity. Our stories of Gender matter, especially the ones we tell ourselves.

So I wonder about the voices we are listening to. This is not (only) a question about formal feminist “leadership,” or which voices get the most airtime or Facebook “likes.” But rather, which voices resonate with our own: call us forth, help us to remember who we are—our place in this ancient process called Life. Which voices and visions do we hold onto, recycle, release?
  The Many Voices of Feminism include the one(s) inside ourselves: the small directions, the hints, the sledgehammer of “enough!” Perhaps it is time to set the voice of the Good Girl down, to let her rest; she must be very very tired.

And whatever our feminist movement, whether we choose to lean in, lean back, let go, step forward, stay steady, or step off:
May we listen to the voice of our Heart
.

***

So, in this time of expansion, where do we go from here--with Trivia, and with Feminism?

Where are the new margins, and edges?
What do we let in?
Can we hold on and let go?

And Monica asks: What is sustainable?
And I ask: How do we stay open (and Alive)?

In lives filled with so many demands and opportunities; with so much pain, suffering, and joy; with so much complexity, uncertainty, and (im)possibility. Might Inclusion transform us to the core?

"Hold the sadness and pain of samsara in your heart and at the same time the power and vision of the Great Eastern Sun. Then the warrior can make a proper cup of tea" --Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, quoted in Chodron, 1991:102.

***

One day you wake up, and things have changed. The earth of you has shifted in a fundamental way--you can’t recognize or locate yourself, and yet, find yourself everywhere, in everything. Maybe you just can’t get the door open. Whatever is happening, things will never be the same.

And Feminism remains--defined by everyday actions, by growing realizations, by sharing the details of women's lives--of human lives--and connecting them to larger issues. The big picture is also a grass roots movement of Awareness, a project of education and consciousness raising.

Hand over hand we go. Separate & Together. A House of Inclusion.

May you find your Feminisms here.

About the author

Picture
Linda Van Leuven, Ph.D. (“LVL”) is a sociologist--a writer, teacher, and consultant. A recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award at UCLA, she considers sociology a transformational science, and practices it as an art.  She has written articles about personalized service work, workplace sexualization, negotiating relational boundaries, and the suburban metropolis. Her work has appeared in scholarly collections and urban style magazines, and often includes her photography. 

Some days, she also works in a Mall, selling high-end designer eyewear and new perspectives. Her work under all conditions is to hold a big space--helping people envision and revision their lives. She loves rocks and dirt and plants; old rusty bits – things and ideas on their last leg – and crafting something new. She lives in Long Beach, California, and shares the path with her Border Collie/Retriever mix, Maizie. 
To contact her, please visit  www.lindavanleuven.com

"We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change.
There are new mountains." (Ursula K. Le Guin, 1986)
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      • Issue 16: "Feminisms" >
        • Toward a Theory and Praxis of Sustainable Feminism
        • Feminisms: Inclusion as a Radical Act
        • Grace
        • Three Ekphrastic Poems
        • Braids
        • Medusa
        • Who's Coming Along: Denise Duhamel, Maureen Seaton, and Collaboration Today
        • We had rituals we didn't know what for
        • A Brief History of a Feminist Mind
        • Marge Piercy: On Feminism, Politics, and Writing
        • Lack of Cover
        • Refresh
        • Crabby Apples
        • A Place of Storytelling and Sustenance: Molly Sutton Kiefer's Nestuary
        • When She Was Two
        • Margaret Sanger Speaks
        • A Song for Maman Dantor
        • Listen
        • Abiquiu
        • Changing
        • Barbie at Rest
        • When We Crack, Let's Do It Together
        • Duel
        • Domestic Constellation
        • America the Beautiful
        • Death of a Valkyrie
        • Old Woman Who Grieves War
        • I Read My Death in the Winter Stars
        • Femenina Sube: My Aquarian Age
        • The Straight Mind at Work at the Heart of Queer Theory
        • Journal: In the Bois de Vincennes
        • Landlady Emily Carr
        • Scenario For a New Agenda
        • I Could Do That
      • Issue 15: "Animal Instincts" >
        • Women. Horse. Mountain.
        • My Pre-Feminist Animal Instincts
        • Our Animal Selves
        • Presage
        • Animal Self
        • Comings and Goings
        • And the Hawk Flies
        • Birds of a Feather
        • Proper Adornment
        • Reverie
        • Algonquin Anthology
        • Sea Stars
        • Immortal
        • Spirit Horse
        • First Cousins: A Suite of Poems
        • Bird of Prey
        • Crows
        • Harpy
        • Snake I Come
        • Approaching the Gate
        • Horses in Winter
        • "Domestic Terrorist"
        • Homeless
        • Displacement
        • The Mornings After
        • Gust of Win
        • Squirrel Dick
        • Cats
        • Frankie
        • Worms
        • Animal Cracker
        • I Don't Believe in Marriage
        • Drawing on the Dream
        • The Cow with a Human Face
        • Orangutans at the Jardin des Plantes
        • Abattoir
        • In for Life
        • I Am Shark
        • Giving Voice to Bear
        • Threshold Crossing
        • The Mark of the Bear
        • Discernment Is All
        • Bears at Midnight
        • The Musky Scent of Bear
        • Baggage
        • The End of Our Friendship
        • Four Mile River Road: 1 Mile
        • The White Dog
        • White Dog/Blue Pearls
        • Baby Dream #15
        • Baby Dream #39
        • Fish Songs
        • Today I Fished
        • The Surgeon's Territory
        • Boudoir Portrait
        • The First Six Months of Survival
        • P for Patience
        • French Pout
        • My Next Girlfriend
        • Winter Solstice
      • Issue 14: "Preoccupation" >
        • Wheatpastes
        • An Editorial: "It's not time to worry yet."
        • Courage
        • Dispirited
        • Voices
        • Falling
        • Sunset #2
        • Cut You Out
        • Brooding
        • Planetary
        • Sleeping. Dreaming.
        • Drama with the Neighbor
        • Woman to Woman
        • The Conspiracy of Chores
        • Murder
        • White Sunset Through a Mesquite Tree
        • Patricia Cornflake's Lesbian Lifestyle
        • Doldrums, Horse Latitudes, and Tropics
        • A Woman Poet's Critique of Words Too Commonly Spoken
        • Memory's Witness
        • Finding Edges
        • Oh, That Bed! That Bed!
        • Mother, Daughter
        • Here We Are
        • Crazy Jane Addams Occupies Hull's House
        • Virtue
        • The Canary
        • White Sunset #3
        • Flow
        • Citrus
        • The Devil Finds Work for Idle Hands
        • Occupy Wall Street Poster
        • The Tent
        • Occupy Me!
        • (post)Occupation
        • The Poison Our Grandmothers and Mothers Drank
        • Hellish Clout
        • Tangle
        • The Bathing Scene from Marguerite Duras's "The Lover"
        • As I Lie
        • The Therapist
      • Issue 13: "Death" >
        • A Feminist Editorial on Death
        • Plucked
        • Chromosomal Geography
        • The Clinic
        • Offal
        • I Have Come to Show You Death
        • The Making of a Peaceful Death
        • Sayonara
        • Sitting in the Lap of God
        • Cycle
        • My Assailant
        • New Jersey Spring
        • Something Missing
        • Triptych: Art Essay on Death
        • The Heroes of Ecbatana
        • Jane is Dead
        • The Miscarriage
        • A Spiritual Death? The One-Eyed Doe...
        • Black Bears
        • Circus
        • The Road to Nowhere
        • American Jisei
        • Nothing to Lose
        • For Linda
        • For Ryan
        • Mindfall
        • Rest in Peace
        • Love Is Stronger Than Death
        • Twins and M/Others: A Survival Story
        • Due Diligence (A.K.A. Cracking Open Her Case)
        • Empirical Evidence
        • Dissociation
        • 27.2727273 Readers
        • The Nomad
        • Manifesto
        • Baby Island
        • Chinatown, Death, and Women
        • Surrounded by Death
        • Where Sanity Returned
        • Whitney
        • In the Shadow of Mumtaz
        • Of Woods
        • The Egg Broke
        • Playing with Dolls
        • Threadbare
        • Because We Must Lose You
        • Clock Time
        • Gynosis One: Samhain
        • The Last Trimester
        • Crossing
        • Tiny Eve
      • Issue 12: "Southwestern Voices" >
        • Issue 12 Editorial: "Southwestern Voices"
        • Trojan Horses in the Desert
        • You Can See the Silence
        • Fleeing Oklahoma
        • North Rim, Grand Canyon, AZ
        • Mobius Arch, Alabama Hills, CA
        • Vasquez Rocks Natural Area, CA
        • Our Lady
        • Mothers of Beauty
        • Talking Incest
        • Desire
        • Tales from the Health Club
        • Three Years Old Watching the Open Sky
        • The Missing Girls
        • It Has Become Our Will: Onward with Adrienne Rich (1929-2012)
        • A Conversation with bell hooks
        • Gertrude Stein, Hitler, and Vichy-France
        • Tinker Tailor Soldier Stein
        • Organic Evolution
        • Eclipse of Hope
        • I Lied
        • First Apartment
        • Translations of Poems by Shez
        • In Memoriam: Christa Wolf
      • Issue 11: "Are Lesbians Going Extinct," #2 >
        • Editorial_11
        • Invisible Outline
        • We Live as Two Lesbians
        • PrognostiKate
        • Dinosaurs & Haircuts: A Performance Monologue
        • To Be Real
        • Matrices
        • Coming Into Word
        • Prince of Paris
        • Ending Patriarchy
        • The Revolutionary Is the One who Begins Again
        • Always a Lesbian
        • Anti- Rape
        • Walking the Moon
        • Entanglement
        • Women Alone
        • No One Lives Her Life
        • Coming Out of the Straightjacket
        • Oscar of Between
        • Michele Causse
        • Jill Johnston
      • Issue 10: "Are Lesbians Going Extinct?" #1 >
        • Editorials
        • Before and after Sappho: Logos
        • On Living with a Poem for 20 Years: Judy Grahn's "A Woman Is Talking to Death"
        • And Will Rise? Notes on Lesbian ExtinctionNew Page
        • My Mid-term Exam in Lesbian Theory
        • Letter for Cynthia Rich
        • Dispatches from an Australian Radicalesbianfeminist
        • No Longer Burning
        • Reinvention and the Everyday
        • The Personal is Political
        • Notes on Reinvention and Extinction
        • Dyke on a Haybale: A Lesbian Teen in Kansas Speaks Out
        • Gay Trans and the Queering in Between
        • Lesbian Lament
        • The Inconvenient Truth about Teena Brandon
        • Who Says We're Extinct?
        • She Who
        • Lesbians Going All The Way
        • Trivia Saves Lives
        • Notes on Contributors
      • Issue 9: Thinking of Goddesses >
        • Vulture Medicine Augury
        • When hens were flying and god was not yet born
        • Canoeing our Way back to the Divine Feminine in Taino Spirituality
        • Testify
        • Young Pagan Goddess
        • Goddess is Metaformmic
        • For Want of a Goddess
        • Amaterasu- The Great Eastern Sun Goddess of Peace
        • What is Goddess? Toward an ontology of women giving birth. . .
        • Inanna Comes to Me in a Dream
        • First Blood Well The History of Bleeding
        • The Song of Lilith
        • Freedom Speaks Through Us
        • Dulce's Hands
        • Notes on contributors (9)
      • Issue 7/8: Unabashed Knowing >
        • Bad Manners All That Jazz
        • Hypatia
        • Amerika in 5 Parts
        • Screens: The War at Home
        • Invisible Nature
        • Woman-Woman Bonds in Prehistory
        • I Saw a Woman Dance
        • The Edible Parts
        • The Happy Hooker Revisisted
        • Re-membering an Interrupted Conversation:the Mother/Virgin Split
        • Notes on contributors (7/8)
      • Issue 6: The Art of the Possible >
        • The Aerial Lesbian Body: The Politics of Physical Expression
        • Wanting a Gun
        • Red Poppies Among the Ruings
        • Returning Home with Mago, the Great Goddess from East Asia
        • Noah's Wife
        • Reclaiming the Spooky: Matilda Joslyn Gage and Mary Daly as Radical Pioneers of the Esoteric
        • Grand Right and Left
        • Notes on Contributors (6)
      • Issue 5: The Resurrection Issue (2/2007) >
        • Waiting for Sappho
        • A Song of Captain Joan
        • Blue Mojo
        • Why Do Something If it Can be Done
        • In Memoriam: Monique Wittig
        • The Loudest Self
        • Clear and Fierce
        • (B) Orderlands' Lullaby
        • Borderlands
        • akaDARKNESS: on Kathy Acker
        • Remembering Barbara Macdonald
        • The Making of Power
        • Octavia Butler: A note on Xenogenesis as a love story
        • The Essential Angel: Tillie Olsen
        • Carol's Hands
        • Notes on Contributors (5)
      • Issue 4: The Wonderful & The Terrible (9/2006) >
        • Cunctipotence
        • Global Lovers
        • Our Lot
        • Doe a Deer
        • Degendering Sex: Undoing Erotic Alienation
        • Seven Stages of Lesbian Desire (What's Truth Got to Do With It?)
        • That Easter
        • Amazon Grace: Read it Aloud
        • Athene, 2002-2005
        • Notes on Contributors (4)
      • Issue 3: Love & Lust (2/2006) >
        • Conversation with Michele Causse
        • Chloto 1978
        • The Woman with the Secret Name
        • She is Still Burning
        • In the Beginning
        • Sanctuary
        • When Sex is Not the Metaphor for Intimacy
        • Arielle
        • Quotidian Love
        • Leverett
        • After Sappho's Fragments Tips for Natural Disasters Said Before
        • A Lesbian is a Memoir
        • Notes on Contributors (3)
      • Issue 2: Memory (12/2005) >
        • The Lost Days of Columbus
        • Agenesias of the Orld World
        • The Power of the Earth Shake/Rousing
        • Return to Earth
        • Forces of Nature
        • The Beauty Shop
        • The Other Shore
        • Notes on Contributors (2)
      • Issue 1: The Body (10/2004) >
        • Lovesick
        • Guerilla Girl Ponders the Situation
        • The Secret Pornographies of Republicans. What's left? Preferably Knot
        • Communing with Bears
        • TRIVIA LIVES: Division Street
        • After Reading: Les Gueilleres
        • Notes on Contributors (1)
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