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I haven't posted about either WAM or the rest of my trip east because, frankly, I haven't had time — I got back to Portland with a teetering pile of pre-production work about to fall off my already stacked-sky-high plate, and I'm still slogging through it. But I have been reading what others out there have had to say about their conference experiences, and it's a combination of unsurprising, enlightening, and depressing.

Among the postconference musings I read today were those of Blackamazon, one of which has started something of a...situation with Seal Press. Namely, the musing — which came at the end of a long and sort-of-unrelated-to-said-musing post — was "Fuck Seal Press," and the situation was that the ladies at Seal jumped in to defend themselves, with less than satisfactory results. And when I say "less than satisfactory," I mean for everyone.

As a Seal Press author — I just finished a book on feminism and pop culture that's coming out sometime this fall, as part of their new academic series Seal Studies, and I've contributed to two of their previous anthologies, one edited by Lisa — I have very mixed feelings about adding my voice to the already very amplified conversation that has resulted from the whole dust-up. On the other hand, the fact that I am a Seal author also makes me feel compelled to do just that. So I'm gonna say it: Seeing the Seal folks respond they way they did to Blackamazon's post — really, the fact that they responded at all in that space — was like watching from afar as your friend exits the club bathroom with her skirt tucked into her pantyhose and walks straight up to the guy in the "Too Drunk to Fuck, So Just Give Me a Blowjob" t-shirt. You're trying to yell, "No! Retreat! Rewind! Bad idea!" but the music's just way too loud.

Seal Press's subsequent post about the incident, then, was sort of like watching that same friend, a second later, whip out a big bag of glue and start huffing it. I mean, put the glue away! You've done enough damage already!

I'll stop with this analogy now, I think. My point is that it's hard to watch an entity you care so much about dig itself deeper and deeper into a mess. And I do care about Seal Press — Seal books like Listen Up, Adios Barbie, Colonize This!, Whipping Girl, and many more have been part of the bedrock of my ongoing education, and I was honored to be invited to be part of the Seal Studies series. Furthermore, with the rapid winnowing of both feminist presses and feminist bookstores, I feel like it's important to support as many of both as possible. Which is why, when we get the Seal catalog each season, I refrain from wondering if the world really needs another memoir of wacky motherhood hijinks written by an alternative-styled white gal, and instead feel happy that the press has managed to stay kicking. (It's also why I'm a little baffled that Seal, in that response in which they listed the several excellent woman-of-color–centric books they have published, chose to link to Amazon.com. But that's a whole other post.)

The other thing, which I would be remiss not to mention, is that I absolutely understand that it's hard not to be defensive sometimes. There are very likely people out there who've said "Fuck Bitch magazine" for the same reasons Blackamazon said "Fuck Seal Press" — and, indeed, that would feel personal to me, no matter how much I wanted to get past that part of it. So I get it, Seal people, I do. There's much more to this discussion — so much more — but sometimes it's better to apologize, pull your skirt out of the pantyhose, and just listen.