White Feminists Explain Things To Me, Part 1

1. Is Marin County's Grooviest White Feminist Icon, Rebecca Solnit, "Leaning In" to Genocide? 2. A Ceasefire Petition Gains Traction in Fairfax

1: A few years ago, it became impossible not to notice a nascent, left political movement in Los Angeles that was as acerbic as the Yippies had once been, but more radical and diverse. The collective punchiness of these young LA activists belied a seriousness and a solidarity: they had candidates that could (and sometimes did!) win. How that happened seemed less a matter of traditional politics that sought a patron and curried favor, and more a matter of spilling out into the streets, relentless door-knocking, and tireless mutual aid (the photo above is of journalist Theo Henderson interviewing mutual aid providers.)

The movement in Los Angeles has been buoyed by group of insurgent journalists, some trained and many not, who took aim at the power structure in Los Angeles. I lost entire days following the personalities and actions, and weeks trying to watch all of Theo Henderson's richly detailed, empathetic, and often slyly funny video interviews.

A partial explanation of what is happening in 2020's Los Angeles is found in Mike Davis and Jon Weiner's celebration of workingclass activism, Set The Night On Fire: L.A. in the Sixties. But someday, I hope there will be a full history on the current LA scene, and if there's anyone who could make a significant contribution to that, it's a young writer many of us know only as "Ruth" who, despite being unhoused, is one of the more astute observers of Los Angeles.

I have no idea why no literary agent has yet signed Ruth – besides her obvious talent and investigative chops, she's well-regarded in Los Angeles by people in both high and low positions, in part for her willingness to build bridges. (If I had not known Ruth, I never would have known to contact nationally recognized writers who did, in fact, publish important stories about issues in Marin that local media refused to cover.)

But this is not a substack about Los Angeles, nor is this an article about Ruth, per se. This is about an encounter that Ruth had with one of Marin County's celebrated "white feminist" writers, Rebecca Solnit, author of the bestselling Men Explain Things To Me.

"I take my coffee white, like Gloria-Steinem-working-for-the-CIA-white"

What are we talking about when we talk about white feminism?

At what point should we have recognized that white feminism was missing some essential elements? Was it as early as the Suffragist Movement, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton "embarked on a Klan-like tirade" against the 15th amendment, which was to give Black men the right to vote? As historian Faye Dudden wrote, Stanton "dipped her pen into a tincture of white racism and sketched a reference to a nightmarish figure, the black rapist." This was not just inaccurate on Stanton's part, it constituted a terrible betrayal, especially given Frederick Douglass' eloquent support of women's suffrage. The white suffragist movement's treatment of its brilliant and courageous Black sisters was not much better.

With all that as depressing history, you might think that by the 1960s, a century later, people might be able to assess white feminism more clearly. That's certainly what the legendary Ramparts Magazine and various activists tried to do beginning in the late 1960s, when they first revealed Gloria Steinem's long relationship with the CIA. This started with Steinem's infiltration of student groups and youth movements through the "Independent Research Service" — a full decade before she very suddenly gained prominence as a "feminist". Unfortunately, many of those reporters and activists met the blunt end of Steinem's powerful stick – they were threatened with enough legal action to prevent them from publishing further on the topic.

Steinem's relationship with the CIA began as early as 1958, and did not end until 1969 – the same year she "spontaneously" emerged as a feminist icon, buoyed by a group of editors who appear to have also been involved in the CIA student infiltration project, including Clay Felker. At the time, many women who had long been involved in feminist organizing protested Steinem's hijacking of the movement. Betty Friedan specifically cited Steinem's CIA connection, which Steinem herself acknowledged.

By way of explanation, Steinem claimed that the CIA, which by that time had already been involved in endless assassination, torture, election interference, and general f*ckery, was an "enlightened" and "liberal" institution. Steinem would go on to date the war criminal Henry Kissinger, and she had a near-decade-long partnership with Nixon/Ford hack Stanley Pottinger, who appears to have been involved in whitewashing the FBI investigation of MLK's assassination. Pottinger later represented some of the #MeToo plaintiffs, which should give one pause about yet another establishment hijacking of what had begun as a grassroots activist effort.

And all that is to remind you that when you encounter feminists who are curiously aligned with official US State Department policy or the FBI/CIA, you might not want to maintain a reasonable degree of skepticism.

Which brings us to: Rebecca Solnit.

Rebecca Solnit: The WTO Protest Writer Who Came In From The Cold?

The Monday before Thanksgiving, I opened my email, and there, featured prominently in a fundraising drive for The Guardian, was columnist Rebecca Solnit's name. I had been up late that evening trying to follow what was happening in Gaza, a task made more difficult by the many dozens of Palestinian reporters who had already been killed by Israeli airstrikes since mid-October, and I wondered about Solnit's position.

Surely a writer who had profited nicely from writing about the environment, displacement, land rights, and indigenous peoples, would have much to say about the plight of Palestinians. The Palestinian people are, however inconveniently, indigenous to Palestine, a fact largely ignored by "eco-feminist" indigenous-obsesssed liberals in Solnit's lily-white home county of Marin.

I assumed that I had to have missed something, so I tried to search for articles that Solnit had written about the prior six weeks of bombing, but came up with nothing. This surprised me since Solnit had apparently written much about the plight of Ukrainians (much in line with the US State Department position.)

In the aftermath of the 2016 election debacle, Solnit had morphed into a feminist champion of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (as feminist victim, of course.) But, depressingly, Hillary Clinton was the opposite of a victim – she had an abysmal and bloody record as Secretary of State under the Obama administration – a fact that had deadly results for millions of women from the Middle East to Latin America.

Solnit had also written a very disturbing article praising the far-right Narendra Modi, and when one prominent East Coast writer politely pointed out Modi's systematic use of mass rape against opponents, Solnit blocked them. The pro-Modi article, and Solnit's passionate defense of Hillary Clinton occurred after what was Solnit's breakthrough "feminist" book, Men Explain Things To Me. The success of the book elevated Solnit in the public eye, and this appears to be where she started to morph into a more commercially saleable purveyor of "hope in dark times.”

(My DM's and emails have been filled by writers who worked with Solnit, suggesting that Solnit's left credentials were never what they appeared to be. That may be so, but from the outside looking in, it does seem that there was a clear break starting around 2015.)

Still, it seemed unusual that Solnit would have written nothing about Gaza, so I checked her Twitter(X) account, which is where these things would most readily turn up, as the app is still busy with left-leaning writers and journalists, and is a still-critical if greatly diminished conduit for the left. A keyword search on Solnit’s Twitter(X) account for "Palestinian" turned up nothing at all, and there was only one oblique tweet that could be summoned by the keyword search "Gaza":

"Without in any way diminishing the horror of what's happening in Gaza, I'd note that in Ukraine there have been huge numbers of military deaths, including 70k Ukrainians, many of them civilians turned soldiers in defense against the invasion."

Consider that for a moment. Solnit's tweet does in fact diminish the horror of what had already happened in Gaza, as it very politely declines to indicate that the (now) over 20,000 deaths caused by Israel's nonstop bombardment of Gaza are overwhelmingly civilian, a fact already obvious on November 2, when Solnit tweeted that.

Solnit's lone statement on Gaza almost looks like it could have been crafted for, or by, the US State Department, which has in reality fully backed Israel's genocidal bombing campaign.

Bear in mind that as Solnit appears to have waffled on the issue of Palestine, writers of greater and lesser stature are continuing to suffer consequences for merely signing letters in support of Palestinians, and ordinary workers are losing their jobs for speaking up. Black writers and performers appear to have been particularly targeted for speaking up in defense of Palestinians, part of a long pattern.

Since I couldn't find anything Solnit had written about Palestine, I did the responsible thing, and I asked her directly via Twitter(X) if I was missing something. My question, in total, was direct:

"Am I spelling "Gaza" or Palestinian wrong? I'm just wondering: is this really the only thing that Solnit has written about the current genocidal bombing of Gaza by Israel? A passing reference?”

Solnit responded within a few hours:

"As I said to the last person policing my speech, do your homework before your condemnations because you missed a lot of stuff going back years. Also ask yourself why you're running around policing strangers.”

This was a curious reply, because I had neither policed her speech, nor condemned her. I had merely asked what the public position of a prominent public figure was. Solnit's response seemed to me classically Marin County: Ask a simple question of a public figure or public official, and they will feign offense ("How dare you ask me, you peon!") rather than simply answer the question.

I pointed out to Solnit that I wasn't policing speech, rather asking for her position on a topic that almost every other progressive or left-ish writer had opined on one way or another. Solnit replied:

"You are policing speech, because you think you get to render public verdicts on me without doing your homework first, and yeah, Mr. Cop, you can find stuff this week and this month if you bother to look, not that it's my job to do your homework."

I wasn't sure how to interpret her insistence on calling me "Mr. Cop", but it seemed possible that Solnit is so accustomed to defending herself by calling others sexist that she was incapable of considering the possibility that the person asking her a question she didn't like was female.

Aside from that, asking for someone's position on an issue as grave as the genocidal bombing of Palestinians in Gaza was not “rendering” anything close to a “public verdict” on anyone.

Further, a sincere question on a vital political issue should not be that difficult to answer for Solnit, who is paid for her public opinions. Why was Solnit so eager to take offense? Was it simply a means of distracting — or trying to distract — from her refusal simply to take a position?

Two other people ventured forward in the thread and politely asked Solnit if she wouldn't mind providing her position on the issue. Both were blocked simply for asking. One of those people was the aforementioned Ruth, who had merely asked Solnit:

"Please tell me you condemn genocide. It's sad that it has to be clarified, but it really does."

(This, by the way, is classic Ruth. A woman who does not have a roof over her head, and has not had one for many years, still always has her heart open to the suffering of other people, even those who are half a world away. Ruth is devoted to the ideal of democracy, the essential component of which is asking questions, which she always does very politely and with respect to other peoples' feelings.)

Ruth was blocked by Solnit, but not before Solnit sent her a very curious message, complete with an image of what appears to a historical photograph of a Nazi official checking identity papers that was not only inappropriate, but was, particularly in this context, downright bizarre.

"Obviously, I codemn all genocides and I've condemned this one publicly, and I also condemn complete strangers who, in a 'show me your papers' way, demand responses like this out of the blue."

Let's examine Solnit's reply to an unhoused woman writer in Los Angeles who very politely asked a simple question:

Solnit wrote that she condemns the genocide, including this one, but still does not mention the word Palestinian. Solnit wrote in the very next sentence that she also condemns anyone asking her position, which seems to imply that "genocide" and "being asked a question" are both to be condemned. Wait, what? Why should asking a reasonable and valid question (and of a public figure such as Solnit) be condemned? What sort of a writer would try to discourage valid and relevant questions at all? Particularly a question about one's position on an ongoing genocide?

I like to imagine the possibility of a better world. Not a world wherein a wealthy white writer like Rebecca Solnit mocks an unhoused woman in Los Angeles, but one wherein Rebecca Solnit, an influential writer who still has a conscience, both answers the woman’s question and extends a helping hand to that unhoused woman in Los Angeles who is also a terrific writer. (Let me dream, baby!)

It would have been simple enough for Solnit just to provide a link to a public statement or an article. Was it merely an ego problem on Solnit's part, or something more complicated? There is a clear affinity, as repeatedly emphasized in Solnit's own recent writings, with US State Department policies.

And here, in Solnit's blustering, one can hear an echo of Gloria Steinem's (far smoother and more confident) defense of the CIA.

The Bechdel Test? Why Isn't There A Caceres Test?

Some years back, the writer/illustrator Alison Bechdel formulated a test, a quick measure of women's representation in film and fiction. The test is whether a book or film features at least two women who are permitted to hold a conversation about something that does not involve a man. Bechdel herself never intended this to be a serious test, and so I offer the following not as a test but as contemplation:

Berta Caceres was an indigenous environmental activist in Honduras who fought everything from a hydroelectric dam to logging interests. She was a real-life hero, whether she won the prestigious Goldman Prize for environmental activism (she did!) or not. Caceres had allegedly pleaded with Clinton's State Department for protection after the US supported the 2009 overthrow of the democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya; Caceres was inundated by death threats after a new (U.S.-friendly!) government was installed. Although many groups attested to the threats Caceres faced, Secretary Clinton dismissed her concerns, and Caceres was subsequently assassinated on March 3, 2016 by a soldier who had been trained in part by US Special Forces.

Berta Caceres was only 44 years old, 11 years younger than I am now, and 17 years younger than Rebecca Solnit is now. Which is to say that Berta Caceres was not given the luxury of time that Solnit and I, both raised in Marin County, have been given.

Berta Caceres is also a name that is barely mentioned in Marin County, even amongst women who claim to be environmental activists, feminists, and defenders of all that is indigenous. I have not been able to locate an article by Marin County's Rebecca Solnit about Berta Caceres, but it does not mean she did not write one. (I was blocked by Solnit on Twitter after my questions last Monday, and queries to her publishing team earlier this past week have not yet been answered.)

But if we can consider a "Bechdel test", we might also consider a Caceres Test:?Are the influential white women who claim to be feminists, environmental activists, and champions of all that is indigenous refusing to speak the name of Berta Caceres? Does the name Berta Caceres embarass the local political machine that endorsed the Clintons, and still hews to the worst of their neoliberal policies?

If you look more closely, how many degrees of separation exist between some of these white feminists and the business interests that Berta Caceres was fighting? Why did white feminists need to strip all the essential parts - the intersectional parts relating to class, race, labor and property ownership - from feminism itself?

2.

A Petition Gains Traction in Fairfax

One of the most patient of activists, Joe McGarry of Fairfax, has been arduously collecting signatures for a real ceasefire (not the four-day ceasefire that was immediately breached by the IDF.) The petition is to be delivered to the Marin County Board of Supervisors this Tuesday. Starting a petition such as this is not an easy thing to do in Marin County, and McGarry has done a heroic job. This is a bold petition, as one of its lines requires an ending of military aid to Israel. (When you think about it, why negotiate from the middle?) I hope you'll consider signing it if you reside in Marin, and if you don't, please share it with any of your friends and family still in Marin.

I understand the skepticism about City/County resolutions in support of ceasefires. In Marin County, I think it's worth doing, as McGarry's effort is the most organized effort yet in a County that has been alternately mostly silent on the plight of Palestinian civilians, and full-throated in its defense of US/Israel policy.

©️2023 Eva Chrysanthe

Add’l Note:

More articles are coming this week, there was a delay due to the holidays. Thank you for your patience if you were waiting for the followup article on Dan Pulcrano’s handling of Peter Byrne's article, or the overview of Bay Area Palestinian American writers.