What I will say is that the Seal Press apology was meaningless in my opinion. The fact that they felt it was necessary to excuse themselves by pointing out the sexism in the images was pathetic. And whether they meant it as an attempt to excuse their actions or not (as noted in their “update”) doesn’t change the fact that yes, it was functioning as a type of excuse.

I didn’t know much previously about the opinions and work being done on immigration as a feminist issue, but from what I’ve read, Amanda misappropriated the work of women of color, and that deserves its own, separate apology. In fact, it deserves more than an apology, since more and more people are pointing out that this is an endemic problem in the feminist community. This problem deserves attention, critical analysis, and activism to counter it.

If anything good has come from this, it’s that the recent eruption of these issues has provided an opportunity for many white feminists to reflect on their own white privilege, and how ignoring racial privilege is antithetical to the goals of feminism. I can honestly say that in my recent immersion of the feminist blogosphere, I have seen very little acknowledgment or discussion of this outside of WOC blogs, so the prominence of these recent issues has really given the a bigger stage to discussions of racism within feminism. I would say that’s long overdue.

I personally don’t find satisfaction in getting “revenge” on people for doing shitty stuff… But at the same time, I think a lot of people are hurt. Bad. And any kind of positive response to Amanda and Seal Press rubs salt into the wound. So I think my response will be based on what the people cut deepest by this want… and I’m pretty sure that’s not just forgetting about what has happened in the past couple of weeks.

I have other issues with many things Amanda has done which just reinforce my lack of support or belief in her good faith, but I don’t want to use Cara’s post as a place to air all my grievances.

Point being, her blindness to privilege is not a new thing or a one-time thing, and while I may keep an eye out for her to learn something from this, I don’t feel any inclination to support her.

And, then, I also realized that in Amanda’s little world, there’s no such thing as a trans* person. If it weren’t for Pam Spaulding’s cross-posts, I doubt that the word “trans” would have even appeared once on her blog.

So, yeah, “How dare you question my awesomeness and magnanimity? … Trans people – what’s that, someone on a high-fat diet?”

Her apology doesn’t mean much to me, nor does Seal Press’s. The loss of Brownfemipower and Black Amazon from the blogosphere means a lot more.

Personally, I’m done with Pandagon. I do hope Amanda makes an effort to reach out and genuinely engage the entire issue. Right now the least I wish she’d do is make it clear on her apology post that all the people continuing to be hostile to people who called out the images are NOT helping. It’s ugly over there, and that has confirmed my decision to discontinue reading at Pandagon for now.

Three things tho:
1. according to Brooke Warner, Seal Press is not a feminist press and since this is being used to justify why we should not be questioning them, I think it is important to make that clear
2. The Editorial Team is two white women, there are no woc on the Editorial team even if a woc works there.
3. Brooke says they cannot afford to hire right now and that they have lost several positions during the transition to Perseus Group. At the same time, and I say this in my follow up post “why seal press is off the syllabus pt. 2″ she uses this as an excuse to make no commitment to diversity hiring in the future – which is what I called for.

I for one am a little tired of the “I didn’t mean it” excuse and I suggested to Brooke on my blog that she read an article about why that excuse upholds racism even when it is true. I have an even harder time swallowing “I didn’t mean it” when this is the third book cover that has caused controversy, and where multiple meetings were called to discuss changing the cover because Amanda was finally responding to feedback that it was offensive.

Anyway . . . thanks for the ping and the link. I know my readers will want to read our post.