Feminist Intersection

Several of you saw the ultra cultural appropriation performance of performances from Ke$ha on American Idol last Wednesday night - who decided in all her infinite wisdom to come out half-way through her "blah, blah, blah" song in a headdress and her version of "war paint" (I think).



It's obviously racist, ignorant, and beyond silly, but it's also an interesting statement (that I definitely won't give Ke$ha credit for knowing) about mainstream society's imagery of Native women. Not that it's her first time donning Native gear - apparently it's something she does on the regular with different pieces.

In 2008 I wrote about Juliette Lewis and her continued decision to "dress up like an Indian" with her band and what this means in her attempt to appear strong, raw, and yes even "savage" with her music. There are some particular intersections to address when we see women dressed up like this - and it has nothing to do with the fact that these people are of course getting our actual culture, traditions, and teachings all wrong.

A lot of us working/breathing/organizing in feminist/humanist/womanist communities were running from event to event last week during International Women's Day (IWD) week, and I thought I'd share some of the deconstructing thoughts I've been having aloud about what I witnessed and participated in.

Many of you already know all too well the tokenization that happens when we Indigenous and racialized women get invited to things our own communities are not putting together, the envelopes we sometimes have to push, the chastising we get from both white people and people in our own communities who don't like that we're calling ourselves feminists/womanists/humanists, so on and so forth.

Hello Bitch Media peeps. My name is Jessica Yee and I'm going to be guest blogging here over the next month. I'm a self-described Indigenous hip hop feminist reproductive justice freedom fighter.

I'm a huge fan of Bitch and was asked, like Nadra, to come and do a stint here from Racialicious. I live in both Canada and the United States and try to have my finger on the pulse of the social, political, and pop culture of both as much as possible since I travel across both countries for about 90% of the year.

Oh and I titled this post with the long-ass "deconstructing the academic industrial complex of feminism" because I'm really interested in having discussions about decolonization and feminism as it exists outside of the confining walls of college and university. It's going to get way more intersectional and comprehensive from here.