Last week we finally figured out with the help of the seven African powers, what the heck was going on with this site. Lynn and I thought the craziness was due to lack of memory juice in our server. That was only part of the problem. It's true, this here site is huge and sucks lots of bandwith even with the small community we have. What was really harshing our mellow was the blasted discussion groups (organic groups in Drupalese). So I stripped the site down for the fourth time but this time without that module and, voila! We have a site that is, albeit slowish, definitely not crashing. (Of course, as I type that, you know the server is going to go haywire.)

Much teching has been done, along also with much cup-caking and mothering : my baby turned six this past Thursday. Which is why this is a tweek recap.

After I did my previous recap, things got heated up with news that Cecilia Fire Thunder, president of the Oglala Sioux nation in South Dakota will open a Planned Parenthood Clinic on their territory since the laws of South Dakota do not apply to them. Mole333 has outline a plan over at The Daily Gotham to help them with their effort. He will be posting here shortly as well. As blog is my witness, I will be smacking some wood with a hammer in the name of every sick pregnacist that thinks reproductive slavery is the new black.

It wasn't until I posted my vain attempt at snark with serious criticism with Tennessee Guerilla Women's Red Burka : Is this what bigoted, racist, imperialist feminism looks like? that things burst into flames here. For one, even though most of the negative comments that I received were from people who did not read my assessment of the campaign (I don't thing it is bigoted, racist or imperialist at all), I can't but wonder what possessed women in Tennessee to use a religious icon for their campaign.

The whole discussion really started after several women of the radical women of color group grumbled about how white feminists were racists because they coopted their writings without giving them traffic. This is problematic for me on so many levels, because, first, reblogging and traffic are protocol and technology issues not race issues. Also because, even though we bring to the net the power structures we live by everyday, I don't believe those power structures are contingent to dialectics of race.

Textaisle's post White woman of color is really remarkably complex and thought provoking in the in the convoluted notions about race. Particularly when race is predicated as an absolute opposition to an other. To me the issues are of expectations : I find particularly interesting that instead of networking through community sites like ours or mediagirl's, people are complaining about access to more popular, more white sites.

And that's when our site exploded. Needless to say, I've gnashed many a teeth and rended multiple shirts stamping out the server trixies.

What this as brought me to though is to a discussion about how US feminism, in the hands of it's "white" crusaders, has been a more about social mobility than social justice.

Which is why, Gloria Steinem is wrong.

Which is why people applaud forced pregnancy as celebrity porn.

Which is why we should remember the fact that many muslim women who follow hajib, do so out of a sense of personal beauty, cultural pride, religious fervor or political dissent. To call hajib fascist, backward or anti-feminist is to not understand its complexity nor its significance within Muslim religion and culture.

This led Lorraine to tell all fundamentalists to ... ahem ... shut the fuck up.

You go gurl.

Sex, sex, sex. It all comes down to sex.

Our site has been censored by Google and Computer Solutions on the grounds of being pornographic. They say we trade in sexual materials and mature content. Say what? Trade in sexual materials? Our language may be blue once in a while. That does not make me a pornographer. But cries of pornography, from both the left and the right, have been used in order to stamp out dissent. Meanwhile, pedophiles, pornographers and sex workers abound in the hallways were Republicans fear not to tread.

Religion.
Ideology.
Race.
Sex.
Technology.

And people wonder why we focus on these instead of the war in Iraq.

Other notables in no particular order:
I am failing my race

Saving My Family History and Remembering the Holocaust: A Personal Diary

Sound bites I love to hate

Musical Theater as shocking culture

Walking to Russia: A Reminder of How I Almost Went to Jail in Russia

Were Freedom and Patriotism Different Then? Immigration Ire and Irony"

New Walks, New Talks: Tetrapods and The Gospel of Judas

What we have here is a failure. Period.