It's Always Personal

Back when Lubu was a cub, there was a movie that came out that did pretty well at the box office. Didn't do too bad at the Oscars, either. And that movie was The Godfather, an iconic piece of cinema that still lends dittus to the world at large. The most popular? "It's not personal, it's just business." (actually, strictly business) That particular saying is probably one of the most well-known filmatic expressions of all time, and is extremely popular here in the 24-Hour Church of Capitalism otherwise known as the United States. Where the business of l'ammerica is business. Such is the ubiquity of this quote that another box-office smash, You've Got Mail, works it into the plot. It's supposed to mean just what it says---nothing personal, but yeah, too bad for you. But in its original context, that wasn't what it meant at all.

See, Michael had to convince the older gangsters that he was up to what he had volunteered for---killing "the Turk" and the police captain. The old hands saw him as a hothead, and maybe still thought of him as a "kid". It wasn't that they doubted his ability of get the job done; Michael was a decorated combat veteran. But they did doubt his ability to get the job done right. Not sloppy. Not hotheaded. When Michael said, "it's strictly business," he meant that he could keep a cool head. That he wouldn't lose control. That he would be businesslike---that is, unemotional, in his actions. Because make no doubt about it, it was personal. He was going to kill the people responsible for attempts on his father's life. Remember, we're talking about sicilian people here, my people. The people who brought you the word "vendetta". With us, whatever else it may be, it's always personal.

Now, despite the reification of stereotypes, I do have a serious love for Mob Movies. Partially because I get to see folks like me on the big screen---and behind the scenes, too (my mother and I would watch the credits roll after every episode of the Sopranos to see all the surnames). But also because of the not-so-subtle critique of those selfsame stereotypes for those who are watching---hidden messages hung like quilts along the Railroad, like sotto voce shadowed conversation about weather and fronts and which way the wind blows and it ain't about meteorology at all, nor about predictions....

And it's intensely personal.

Some people have lifestyles, while others have lives spent scrapping and scrambling for whatever we can get our claws into and hang in there, baby! like the little kitty who could...

Frequent flyers in the feminist blogosphere might get the idea this is about a book, but it isn't. Naaah, it's about the omissions. The margins. The vast amounts of empty white space between the words. It's about what doesn't make it into the written record. The legitimate record. And not just whose stories are considered important to tell, but which audience is coveted.

I have an eight-year-old daughter. She brought home a paper on Christopher Columbus awhile back that referenced how the New World was called that because "no one had ever been here before." What the fuck, Chuck?! Welcome to No Child Left Behind. She said, "But what about the Indians?" and this odious school literacy paper became a touchstone for important concepts like "sanitized history" and "colonization" and "broken treaties" as well as lies-my-teacher-told-me and canned curriculums. And she got it. Not acted like she got it, 'cuz Mama was watching; she actually received the message, and added some of her own. Am I indoctrinating my daughter? Sure the fuck am. I prefer to think of it as inoculations against the bullshit she'll be receiving from many fora throughout the years. My parents didn't do everything right, but they did speak to me this way; as if I was an adult and could understand political messages. Because make no doubt about it, even in the second grade, it's political.

And personal.

Watching her grow and come into her own is quite the event. She's quick on the uptake, understands nuance, knows when not everything is being revealed, and usually has a well-educated guess on the wherefores and whys. Sharp as a butcher's knife, and cuts her eyes like she's been here before. Yet I know as the sun rises in the morning and the moon follows it at night, that her native intelligence won't be valued, her voice won't be respected, and she isn't likely to be the subject of anyone's "marketing" campaign, particularly not in the marketplace of ideas. At the age of eight, she is already getting a sense of this; she knows what the royal "we" is, and when it does and doesn't implicitly include her. She is particularly sensitive to when it doesn't. As I've said, she's eight, and she gets it. She'll be getting a lot more as the years move on.

Speaking of moving on, the years have an easier time of it than I do. Like a bad habit, like the sweet taste of something promising that contains no small hint of poison, I just can't let go. I still want a feminism that prioritizes the issues central to my life. A feminism that isn't satisfied with "yes" as the most important liberatory response. Because from where I stand, "NO!!" remains a crucial site of resistance. I'd like to pass some shit on by....but dammit, it means something when powerful politicians center certain voices as the last word on feminism. It matters when policy is made.

See, I was a part of that last-ditch effort march for the ERA in Chicago. It was in 1980, in Grant Park. I was a kid, a testadura who welcomed the opportunity to demonstrate my dissatisfaction with the status quo. I rode up in a van with some women from my dad's union; they suggested he ask me if I wanted to go. I felt at the time like I was part of history; I felt a momentum, even though we all knew at the time of the march that it was for demonstration purposes only---that we wouldn't get ERA, and would have to go back and pick up the pieces and start over. I felt it in my blood and bones; that the struggle would continue. And it has. But.

Neither I, nor most of the women (and one other girl like me!) in that van are the coveted audience of mainstream feminism. We aren't expected to be feminist. And now, we aren't even expected to be the hod carriers for feminism, the warm bodies to fill out a demonstration. I'd bet that like me, none of the other women have been to an explicitly feminist demonstration since. Labor events, rallies, political fundraisers, community organizing, Labor Day and MLK Day parades, marches against police brutality, protests against the war, sure. But feminism? Nahh. It's not that we've lost the faith, it's that mainstream feminism lost faith in us. And then wonders what's the matter with Kansas.

But I haven't lost my hard head. Not yet. It's not over yet. And it remains, as always, personal.