#How oppressed are trans activists if they have the time and energy to attack a group that provided services to expecting mothers?

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

You’re (Probably) Wrong About J.K. Rowling

So despite being a British person and writer with an adopted trans daughter (sort of), I never weighed in on the matter when British writer J.K. Rowling allegedly said a bunch of transphobic stuff. The reason I didn’t weigh in publicly was very simply this: I couldn’t find the tweet or statement that started it all- the root cause of people’s hatred. Everybody alluded to The Terrible Things J.K. said but nobody was super keen to say what those things actually were. Which naturally led me to suspect that the whole thing was storm-in-a-teacup bullshit- a notion that I also partially derived from the fact that Rowling is kind of a milquetoast who probably hasn’t had a strong opinion in her comfortably middle-class life. If somebody online claimed I’d said something offensive, I’d believe them, because I basically start a knife-fight every time I open my gob. But J.K.? Do me a favour. Of course, I didn’t look very hard to find out what J.K. said, because the other reason I didn’t comment was that I didn’t care all that much. I’m a grown man. My contact with the Harry Potter universe is nostalgically rewatching the films once in awhile and maybe, at some point, playing the new RPG that’s just come out, should I ever have videogame money again. It’s not like I’m super invested in that world on an emotional level, because I only have the normal number of fucks to give about wizard children and the people who chronicle their adventures. So, my plan was to just never mention any of this. And then I stumbled on the comment that started it all by pure fucking chance and it was… so dull and inoffensive that it actually amazed me to the point where I medically had to say something. Yeah. I am literally incapable of shutting my fucking mouth when someone does a stoopid, as it turns out.

“Dress however you please. Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating sex is real?” (I think the implication of the question mark s ‘er, no thanks’, basically). And that’s it. Nothing even implying that trans women aren’t real women. Nothing suggesting that they shouldn’t be treated with respect. SEVERAL opening sentences reaffirming the rights of everyone to live how and AS WHO they like… and then a gentle reminder that physical sex is real and that some people have actually lost their jobs for saying so, which sucks, because you shouldn’t be fired for stating a biological fact (unless the biological fact is that you just shat yourself and you choose to share it, loudly, at an important shareholders meeting). That’s the whole thing. I mean, there are some follow up tweets about how physical sex-based oppression is a real thing and about how J.K. feels a bit hurt by the trans activist community for turning on women-born-women when they try to address that oppression in the employment sphere. But that’s it. Now, maybe she said worse things later down the line- but these are the tweets that got everybody to dogpile onto her and anything after that point has to be viewed in the context of a harassed writer getting increasingly fed up explaining herself to people who won’t shut the fuck up on the internet when she’d probably rather be doing literally anything else.

So yeah. That’s what everyone’s got their knickers in a twist about. And that’s really dumb. In a world full of genuinely hateful bigots, attacking someone for pointing out that biological sex is a real, separate issue to gender identity and that arseholes have gotten people fired over saying that seems… well, it seems like a waste of energy more than anything else. There are people out there who haven’t actually encountered the source of this lunacy and have just taken the word of Internet Peeps that J.K. is an awful person (‘cause getting to the bottom of shit is difficult and what’s a person to do? Not just parrot the last opinion they saw fart its way across social media?).

Look, folks, folkettes, moustachioed three-titted hermaphrodites and people who identify as attack helicopters (shout out to all my homies at the Rotary Blade Club), there’s a lesson here. And that lesson is that you shouldn’t believe someone’s good or bad because someone on the internet tells you they are. People on the internet are just people, and people almost never have the faintest fucking idea what they’re talking about. There’s also a really, worryingly high proportion of internet ‘personalities’ (so called because they don’t have any in real life) who like to stir shit for the sake of stirring shit. Sometimes these people are easy to spot, because they’re bugfuck-crazy right-wingers in tinfoil hats claiming that everything in the media is a plot to destroy traditional family values (the same ‘traditional family values’ that caused women in the ‘50s to overdose on amphetamines to get the cleaning done and fathers to try and beat the gay out of their children). However, sometimes, the shit-stirrers are just a teeny, tiny bit smarter and will use the genuine disenfranchisement of a group to which they technically belong to cynically elicit sympathy for views that would be obvious bullshit if the person spouting them couldn’t claim to be oppressed. Rule of thumb: beware of anyone who wants you to believe that they have it tougher than the slave who had to clean the poop out of Abraham Lincoln’s chamber-pot hat (Fun “fact”: that’s why Honest Abe’s hat was so tall: he used it as an emergency latrine while travelling and it had to accommodate the prodigious length of his turds). Even if the person is right and they really do have it that tough, the fact that they’re prefacing what they’re about to say by EXPLAINING THAT TO YOU REALLY SLOWLY AND EMPHATICALLY should really be a red flag- a sign that they’re attempting to obfuscate the flimsiness of the actual point they’re about to queef out their face-hole. That’s not always the case (duh) but it should put you on your guard.

I can, and will, go further: I have never had opal fruit on me! Oh, hang on, that’s a line from A Bit of Fry and Laurie. What I meant to say was, I can, and will, go further: you really shouldn’t care to begin with if a creator has iffy opinions that in no way impact their work. You shouldn’t even care too much if they’ve actually done terrible shit. Because at the end of the day, the only part of them that’s relevant to you is the work they’ve created. T.S. Elliot was one of the greatest poets to have ever lived… but he was also a raving fascist. Lawrence Olivier was one of the greatest actors of his generations… but also a barely-functional alcoholic who delighted in fucking with his old Cambridge university in ways too baroque and specific to detail here. Frank Miller: amazing graphic novelist; protest-hater and all-round tosser. Don’t even get me started on all the shit Thompson and Bukowski got up to (though not together… I’d love to see that buddy movie, but it wouldn’t accurately reflect reality). There isn’t a composer in the whole world of prestigious, important classical music who wasn’t, on some deep level, a really fucked up person. Francis Bacon rates as one of the greatest artists ever to have been spat out by an uncaring world, but he also systematically ruined the lives of everyone around him, including himself. My point is that you can’t demand your art and media comes exclusively from good people… unless, of course, you’re comfortable exposing yourself to a pitifully small sliver of culture and starving your brain into grey fucking wallpaper paste. Trust me, if you have to seriously consider your options on that one, it’s alarmingly close already. Allow the personal and private failings of creators to be personal and private- even if the creator’s an egotist who keeps bringing it up in public. Accept that, for you, the work is what matters because YOU ARE NEVER GOING TO MEET THIS PERSON OR HAVE ANY IMPACT WHATSOEVER ON THEIR LIVES AND THEY ARE NEVER GOING TO MEET YOU OR HAVE ANY IMPACT ON YOU OUTSIDE THEIR WORK.

This has been a PSA from the Foundation of Terrible Bastards Making Good Art. As both a terrible person and a great writer, I now give you my permission to fuck off.

ADDITIONAL: Okay, so having posted this, I decided I was curious enough to check out JK Rowling’s twitter feed properly. And, to my amazement, I might have jumped the gun when I called her a milquetoast. She actually has some pretty strong opinions,,, but none of them seem to be about trans people in general. She had a go at Nicola Sturgeon for putting a PENIS-OWNING RAPIST OF WOMEN IN A WOMEN’S PRISON PURELY BECAUSE HE CLAIMED TO BE A WOMAN, but that’s not transphobia, is it? That’s an issue of protecting prisoners without penises from being raped by prisoners with penises. The whole ‘is Prisoner A trans or not’ issue is just obfuscation being used BY A RAPIST to get into a situation where they will have the opportunity to rape more people. While JK’s phrasing might leave something to be desired (if you’re the kind of person who needs every phrase to be padded to sooth your ego), “don’t let physically strong penis-owning rapists near vulnerable vagina-owners in an environment specifically designed to make escape impossible” shouldn’t be a controversial thing to say- and has less to do with trans rights than it does with just... common sense, I guess. Look, I’m neither a TERF nor a trans rights activist, though I know people who are both vulnerable women and people who are trans. I am the fucking Neutral Zone between the Federation and the Romulans here, but could we please all agree that miminising the risk of rape in prisons shouldn’t be controversial?

[coochiequeens]

Please show British Pregnancy Advice Service (BPAS) some support. They are getting flack from the trans cult for saying ”woman”.

A pregnancy charity has rejected pressure to stop using the word “women” on the basis that it would make services more trans-friendly.

The British Pregnancy Advice Service (BPAS) is believed to be the first major organisation to publicly state that it will not remove gendered language, arguing that it is harder to fight against restrictions based on sexism if they “cannot clearly articulate” that it is “predominantly” women impacted.

It was described as a “hugely significant” move by feminist campaigners after major organisations, government departments and NHS Trusts have all dropped terms including mother and women from their policies.

Those changes came after pressure from groups including controversial LGBT charity Stonewall, which has advised organisations that they should remove all gendered language in order to be more inclusive.

Setting out its “values, vision and ambitions” for the next two years, BPAS said that its services were “inclusive” and that it was building “specialist pathways to meet individual needs”.

However, it refused to remove the word women from “campaigning, advocacy and general client materials” in part because it was how the “majority of those using our services see themselves”.

“We will also continue to use the word “women” over “people” so we can continue to campaign effectively for reproductive rights,” the charity said.

“Women’s reproductive healthcare and choices remain regulated and restricted in the way they are precisely because they are women’s issues, sadly still bound up with heavily gendered and judgmental approaches to female sexuality, ideals of motherhood and expectations of maternal sacrifice, and the need to control women’s bodies and choices.

‘We cannot – and will not – shy away from this’

“If we cannot clearly articulate that it is predominantly women, rather than people at large, who are affected by this, we will find it much harder to dismantle a framework that today is still underpinned by sexism.”

The move was welcomed by women’s rights campaigners, including birthing expert Milli Hill,who was attacked for questioning the use of the term “birthing people”.

She said that the move by BPAS felt “hugely significant”, adding: “I hope this is the beginning of an overdue re-centering of women in maternity, infant feeding, menstruation and reproductive healthcare.

Dr Nicola Williams, director of Fair Play for Women, also welcomed the decision, telling The Telegraph: “In political communications, women’s rights are the correct words to use.

“It is about balancing the needs of everyone in society rather than focusing on one small group and I think BPAS have got that balance right because in this instance the benefits of using the word woman outweighs the negative effects of using it.”

Health organisations have faced criticism for deleting gendered language, including Cancer Research which removed the word "women" from its smear test screening campaign and an NHS Trust which advised midwives to consider using terms such as “chestfeeding”.

Clare Murphy, the chief executive of BPAS, said that it had received a “hugely positive response” that showed “that this is not a controversial position… offering inclusive services is in no way incompatible with retaining the term ‘woman’.

She added: “From choice in childbirth to access to emergency contraception, our reproductive rights are undermined precisely because these are issues that affect women. We cannot – and will not – shy away from this as we continue to fight for a future where everyone can exercise reproductive autonomy and women are empowered to make their own decisions around pregnancy.”

[butchharrydalton]

How to Include Autistic Women in Your Feminism

Hey, given that this is an activist post, I might be mentioning certain issues that might be triggering to some. Check the tags and stay safe. Ily. ❤️ 

Ever since activist and feminist Audre Lorde devised intersectionality as a way of describing the experience of multiply-marginalized women, feminism has adapted to include women of color, trans women, queer women, disabled women and religious minority women. Although white, non-intersectional feminism is still pervasive and is the dominant ideology carried on by cishet white women, a significant portion of the feminist movement has embraced the identities and diversity among various groups of women.

Intersectionality allows for us to look at the various ways womanhood affects those experiencing it, instead of just slapping one catch all experience of femininity onto all women. It lets us understand that a woman of color, for example, has less amounts of racial privilege than a white woman and must deal with the burden of specific stereotypes around being a woman of color. Intersectional feminism centers the women with multiple identities, or “intersections,” that society considers unfavorable or marginalized.

However, with all the strides intersectional theory has made in social justice circles, the plight of Autistic women is largely ignored by even the most inclusive feminist circles.

Disabled women as a broader group are often lumped together, even though cognitively disabled, intellectually disabled and physically disabled women contend with incredibly different forms of ableism. Alternatively, the feminist movement also tends to cater to physically disabled women who often have more visibility (which, granted, isn’t a lot) and acceptance than those whose minds are thought to be lesser.

It’s common in the disabled community for people to justify their humanity by asserting their neurotypicality, while erasing and oppressing non-neurotypicals. The pro-Autistic movement itself is mostly made up of women, queer individuals and people of color, and yet somehow it always ends up headed by cis white men. In both feminism and Autistic advocacy, women (especially ones with multiple intersections) are ignored and pushed to the sidelines despite typically facing greater oppression than cis autistic men.

Thus, it’s important to make sure to be inclusive towards autistic women and GNC individuals in both feminism and disabled activism. Here are some ways that I’ve compiled on how to make your feminism both inclusive and accepting as a queer, Autistic feminist.

1.       Mention Autistic Women and Bodily Autonomy

Women’s rights to their bodies are an important topic to discuss in feminism, but Autistic women deal with specific challenges in regard to consent and access to care and their bodies, so it’s important to bring up these issues in your discussions.

For starters, the court case Buck v. Bell still stands to this day. The case itself took place in the early 20th century during the eugenicist movement, and the court’s ruling allowed the forced sterilization of anyone labeled feebleminded. It’s legal for parents and guardians of the disabled to sign paper and sterilize anyone under their control regardless of whether the person in question consent to it even now. This is especially unsettling for women of color, who have historically been abused by eugenicist doctors. (See The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and the book Imbeciles for more information on these topics).

In the medical industry, there are also barriers Autistic women must deal with. Today, there are still ableist debates about whether Autistic and other disabled people deserve emergency medical treatment and organ transplants. Once again, this is especially bad for women of color who deal with medical abuse and malpractice committed against them in modern times.

The gist is, the most vulnerable Autistic women often don’t have the ability to consent to harmful and damaging procedures.

For transgender Autistic women, the burden is tenfold. Many Autistic trans people on social media have shared their stories about how people struggled to believe that they were trans because of their neurological difference. This makes transitional care and access much harder for GNC Autistic people and trans people, as their gender identity is viewed as a symptom.

2.       Talk About Consent

Along with consent to medical procedures, there’s also the fact that Autistic women are particularly vulnerable to the whims of violence against women. Here are some ideas to mention when talking about consent.

First off, many Autistic women use alternative methods of communication. Neurotypical women can usually say an explicit ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ though they still face violence. For Autistic women who are nonverbal and communicate through AAC, in a victim blaming culture such as ours their hindered ability to consent can be used against them.

Through ABA therapy, Autistic women are also further taught that their ‘no’ doesn’t matter. True ABA therapy, created by Ivar Lovaas, is essentially legal conditioning. The aim of this psychological form of abuse is to train Autistic children into seeming more Neurotypical instead of embracing their unique neurology and changing their environment to fit their needs. These kids are taught to obey authority at all times, or else they’ll deal with the use of an aversiv e. This of course, discourages their active consent to a situation and puts Autistic women in a dangerous position.

If they are physically as well as cognitively disabled, they may not physically be able to resist or run from an attacker. In many cases, an incidence of assault is justified by the perpetrator claiming that the victim wouldn’t have had a consensual encounter otherwise because they are “ugly” or unworthy of a healthy relationship. Autistic women are often considered to be such..

Trans women and women of color, who are often assaulted more frequently than cis white, women are of course very vulnerable when it comes to this issue. As such, it’s vital to mention this at any discussion of consent.

3.       Know that Toxic Femininity Affects Us More than Neurotypical Women

To preface this, I want to say that there’s nothing wrong with being feminine. I myself identify as a femme woman, out of my own personal fashion sense and aesthetic. I like being a feminine woman and wearing dresses and having long hair, though these also aren’t the only ways to be feminine, of course. Embracing femmeness does not mean that someone is servicing the patriarchy, and embracing androgyny and/or butchness also doesn’t mean said person has internalized misogyny. Everyone is entitled to the way they want to present, and feminism should be about uplifting how people choose to present themselves instead of putting down women they don’t think look “liberated” or “feminist” enough.

That being said, the patriarchy tends to enforce feminine roles on cis women and police the feminine expression of transwomen to make them “prove” they’re really trans and “sure” about being women. I like to call this “Toxic Femininity,” the way that women are pressured to conform to Eurocentric femininity regardless of how they actually want to present, but then oppressed for both their femmeness or their alternate presentation if they disregard the aforementioned. Either way, women can’t win.

Abiding by gender roles is exhausting for anyone, but for Autistic women who have limited energy to go into their daily activities and deal with sensory issues and neurotypicals. As such, gender presentation is often pretty low on our list of priorities. Autistic women are often unable to conform to society as our hindered social skills prevent us from perceiving these norms. It’s hard for us to fully conceptualize what’s acceptable and what’s not. As such, it takes extra effort for us to live up to Toxic Femininity.

With our sensory perception, certain clothes are uncomfortable for us and it’s sometimes a necessity to wear certain textures. Men’s clothing or androgynous clothing are often more comfortable, so it’s not uncommon to find us wearing those. As such, we are often labeled butch or non-femme regardless of how we actually identify our presentation. We are cast aside by Toxic Femininity.

This is of course, even more true for fat women, trans women, and physically disabled Autistic women, who’s bodies already don’t abide by the unattainability that Toxic Femininity forces us to live up to.

4.       Downplay the Voice of Neurotypicals in Autistic Women’s Issues

Despite their position of being privileged oppressors of the Autistic community, most of our advocacy is done by parents and relatives of Autistic people who believe that they are more entitled to our community and voices. They are the “Autism moms” and those with blue puzzle piece signs in their backyards, constantly yelling over us.

Most of the Autism organizations are run by these people, who often don’t consult with Autistic people about the needs of our community. Even though most of them don’t think they hate Autistic people and may even share common goals with the community, they still oppress us because they’re centering the voices of the privileges instead of the voices that are affected no matter how supportive they are.

An Autistic inclusive feminist space means downplaying Neurotypical rhetoric, meaning stopping the use of hate symbols like puzzle pieces and functioning labels. Cut out the influence of ableist organizations and monitor the use of words like “retarded” in your space. This will be difficult in a pervasively ableist society, but it will be worth it in making a more united social justice movement.

It also means allowing Autistic people to have input in their own issues, and allowing them to reclaim their agency. Know that no matter how many Autistic people you know, if you’re Neurotypical, you will never truly experience being Autistic even if you know more about the condition.

5.       Autistic Women Can Still be Racist, Homophobic, or Transphobic – Don’t Be Afraid to Let Them Know

There are usually 2 stereotypes Neurotypicals believe about us, and strangely enough, they’re complete opposites. We’re either hyperviolent, unfeeling school shooters to them or perfect innocent angels who never do anything wrong. Obviously, these are ableist because they assume that all Autistic people are the same, but most people tend to look at us as the latter stereotype because it’s more “politically correct” even though both viewpoints are hurtful in different ways.

As such, when Autistic people are genuinely oppressive, they aren’t held accountable. I’ve had interactions with homophobic Autistic people who accepted me for my Autism but not the fact that I was a girl who loved girls. I’ve met misogynist Autistic men who viewed me as an object and wouldn’t respect my boundaries and right to say ‘no’ to a relationship. As an Autistic white person, I myself hold institutional power over Autistic people of color and as such, am able to be racist.

Autistic people shouldn’t be given a free pass for their bigotry, and assuming that they should denies them their agency and oppresses others in that space.

Autistic women have a lot to contribute to feminism, and neurotypical women should allow them the opportunity to rise against their own oppression. Thanks for reading and for making your feminism inclusive –

Trust me, it means the world to us.

[cyberneticpeoplespolis]

Inaction and Liberalism

I write this mainly in response to Ti Lamusse’s excellent On Building a Revolutionary Organisation. Since this was shared as an internal document in Organise Aotearoa I wanted to generalise some of the critiques of organisational liberalism and add some of my own, in order to analyse the inertia that paralyses many left organisations. 

Organisational Liberalism:

No doubt many of On Building a Revolutionary Organisation’s critiques of liberalism within the party come from Mao’s seminal Combat Liberalism directive of 1937. You don’t have to be a Maoist to recognise this as a vital resource for any organiser, and a good source of self reflection for anyone who worries about their ego influencing their activism. Combat Liberalism’s central message is that there are multiple forms of Liberalism. The Ideological strain is something most socialists are already intimately familiar with, and can be generalised as the ideology of individualism. Political and Organisational Liberalisms stem from this ideology, and they can paralyse any organisation in a number of ways. Mao identifies eleven types of organisational Liberalism:

Inability to criticise friends when they are wrong.

To gossip rather than make public criticism.

Playing it safe and ignoring things that don’t affect us.

Finding our own opinions more important than those of others.

Engaging in personal attacks.

Ignoring incorrect views

Forgetting we are Communist and never agitating.

Allowing the masses to be harmed, and doing nothing.

Working half-heartedly, without plans.

Considering ourselves better than others out of pride.

Being aware of our own faults and doing nothing.

To say that organisational liberalism infects the left isn’t a personal criticism of anyone. Everyone internalises liberalism to a certain degree, as liberalism is a reflection of the cultural hegemony of capitalism. It is a creeping influence of petty competition and personal interests into politics, and the only defence is  mindfulness and introspection, along with robust democratic structures when that is not enough. Organisational liberalism can take the form of members taking on too many responsibilities at once. What at first appears to be selfless devotion of time and energy to organising can in truth be an inability to see our own weaknesses and limits due to pride. This kind of liberalism easily takes hold in a left where a small group of organisers have to spread their energies very thinly across multiple projects and movements. It can be the inability of activists to criticise their own parties because of the social pressures and benefits of being in such a tight-knit group. Looking to the party for our social and emotional needs goes hand in hand with this, as does the problems that come with cadreism - the idea that the party must be incredibly cohesive, small and ideologically pure.

Finally, Liberalism can take the form of “cultural problems” within an organisation. An uneasy atmosphere of unspoken party lines, ignored arguments and domination by unelected leaders. A lack of criticism and introspection allows for these problems to occur. Note that freedom to criticise is different to the “Freedom of Criticism” that Lenin spoke against - he was specifically railing against the treatment of all criticism (especially ideologically liberal criticism) as equal to radical criticism.

Fetishising Membership

Treating the desire to gain members as a form of Liberalism may seem odd when Mao’s 7th form of liberalism is “To be among the masses and fail to conduct propaganda and agitation.”

However the fetishisation of membership is much more of an issue in the modern context of a socialist movement divided along historical lines that date back a century or more. There are points that many of us will never agree on, and they are not invalid arguments simply because they are old ones. But the vast majority of these historical questions - what happened in 1863? 1905? 1929? 1968? - are extremely distant to the majority of working people today. There are deep contradictions in the socialist movement, and a lot of them will be worked through only in practice, experimentation and struggle, but to not work with other tendencies wherever practical is liberalism. Our own parties are not as important as the broader task of raising consciousness. Gaining members is not as important as raising consciousness, and ultimately basing the success of the party on membership deeply misunderstands where our appeal lies. Two people blocking a small path between police and an oppressed group raises consciousness more than a party of thousands that submits to reformism and liberal infighting. A party in its naive infancy can embolden workers in a city much more than a bigger organisation that has long since alienated themselves from workers and fellow activists, through infighting and toxicity. Ultimately having members counts for little if members aren’t utilised well, with sound theory and a culture that fights organisational as well as ideological liberalism.

Members aren’t drawn to a party through a thousand text messages and the feeling that they are a contact that the organisation desperately needs in order to perpetuate a revolving door membership of burnt-out students. Members gravitate towards parties that inspire through their actions. Organise Aotearoa appeared to have instantly gained a highly respectable number of members when it first formed, only to find that many lost interest after months of inaction.

Democracy

Any activist would do well to read Jo Freeman’s (Joreen’s) The Tyranny of Structurelessness. It’s an excellent dissection of how anti-democratic structures take hold in unstructured organisations, and how a set of seven principles is necessary to ensure equality. It pairs well with Combat Liberalism and when reading both it is easy to see how many of the problems Joreen describes originate in organisational liberalism, as the egocentric individualism of liberalism easily leads to tyranny in unstructured parties. The seven principles Joreen describes are:

Delegation: assigning authority through democratic procedures.

Responsibility: delegates need to be responsible to the other members

Distribution: authority needs to be spread evenly to prevent monopolies.

Rotation: authority can’t be permanent and should be subject to recall.

Allocation: roles should be assigned based on skills, which members develop together.

Diffusion of Information: every member should be told as much as possible.

Equal Access to Resources: every member should be able to request resources. 

Since a certain degree of liberalism is unavoidable when working under a capitalist society, it’s important to have processes in place that prevent the liberal tendencies of members from subverting the organisation. Structure is essential in keeping organisational liberalism from flourishing, and anywhere that structure isn’t clearly visible and observed by members, liberalism will find a way.

Aotearoa’s leftist organisations seem to do a particularly poor job of principles four and six. Speaking from personal experience, transparency and clear structure are the main things that make left parties appealing to me. Any party that doesn’t clearly tell you who is in charge, and how their power is limited, probably has something to hide.

Internet Socialism

This is a more minor point, but a concrete reason as to why our leftist parties are so inactive. Internet activism offers a lot in the way of catharsis and aestheticised politics (more on that later), so much so that it’s easy to feel as though a lot has been accomplished without any real movement. Meetings are much more useful, democratic and deliberative spaces for discussion than the internet. Facebook’s structure in particular leads to anti-democratic structures in the form of unelected admins, facilitators and regular posters who can drown out anyone else. I’m no luddite, but until we make our own digital architecture, the structure of our groups will be defined by the enemies of our movement. Until such a time comes that we can fight against the de-neutralisation of the internet, it can only supplement rather than replace our in-person organising.

The depoliticisation of aesthetics.

This is perhaps the most esoteric of my arguments as to why we’re gripped by inactivity, and yet I see this as a recurring theme in what I’m told by people who are relatively new to left activism. We should be listening to new activists most of all as they have the most to tell us about what radicalises people in the present moment.

If there’s one thing that marxist meme pages have taught us, it’s that aesthetics, specifically aesthetics that are appropriated by politics, actually radicalise people. This makes a lot of sense in the context of Walter Benjamin’s work on the aestheticisation of politics, which he described as a fundamental precursor to fascism. Conversely, the appropriation of aesthetics by politics is a redeeming factor, a radicalising factor that marxists can utilise. Fascists obscure politics from the material plane by turning it into an art form, and we need to respond by bringing materialism into art. I keep hearing from new leftists that marxism should be fun, vibrant, and with defined aesthetic sensibilities. This is often ignored by the more serious voices in the room who take it as the naivety of newcomers, when it actually scratches at deeper truths about what brings people to politics. We are artistic beings and we need to bring politics to where people are. The art world has already degenerated into an elitist agent of gentrification, so we need to democratise and politicise art in response, allowing it to infiltrate every space in the same way that capitalist art (advertising) infiltrates every corner of our field of vision.

Just this week I watched as a new leftist, a trans marxist who recently joined the DSA in the US, created a facebook frame that said “Communist Cutie” with a little love heart, and a hammer and sickle. The frame did the rounds so quickly that a council communist on the other side of the world, with no connection to the creator, had applied it to their own profile within 48 hours. That is the power of politicised aesthetics, and it is very telling that it was a new leftist that best exhibited this. Aesthetics is how we normalise our politics, how we make the depoliticised think about us in a new way.

There is no excuse for inaction. There are so many tools available to us that the only question is where to begin, and really, anywhere would do.

"Every step of real movement is more important than a dozen programmes"

[faeriekim-blog]

P.I.S.T. - Chapter 8

               Christine doodled in her notebook as she sat in the circle of chairs and waited for the meeting to begin.  She didn’t even notice when Sophie entered the room.

               “Hi, Chris,” Sophie said, sitting down next to her. “What’s that you’re doing?”

               Chris looked up and beamed a smile at her friend. Then she looked back down at her notebook briefly, feeling a little embarrassed.  She had been drawing a picture of a ghost and another picture of a werewolf.  In between the drawings she had written the words:  “what’s next?  Vampires?”

               “Oh,” said Sophie, looking at the doodles and reading the words.  “You’ve been thinking about what happened the other night.”

               “It’s silly,” Chris said, hurriedly closing the notebook and putting it away in her bag.  “I must be nuts.  One drunken experience and a weird blood sample don’t prove anything.  Vampires…” she laughed.  “Of course they’re not real.”  Then she looked up at Sophie again, a moment of fear and doubt in her mind. “Are they?”

               Sophie looked as worried as Chris felt.  She shrugged her shoulders, her eyes wide with bafflement.  “I don’t know,” she replied in that beautiful Indian accent of hers.  “If you asked me a few weeks ago I’d have told you that ghosts and werecreatures weren’t real too.  Now I’m not so sure.”

               “Any updates on the blood sample?”  Chris asked.

               Sophie tightened her lips and looked down at her feet. “I should never have told you about that,” she said.  “Patient files are confidential.”

               Chris let it go.  It was none of her business really and she shouldn’t pry.

               “It’s looking no clearer though,” Sophie told her. “I’m a woman of science.  I always prided myself on not believing in superstition. I don’t even follow my parents’ faith. But now I don’t know what to believe.”

               Chris felt sympathetic to her new friend’s plight. She felt much the same way about it. “Well, whatever it is,” she explained, as helpfully as she could. “It’s not religion or superstition, is it?  If it’s real then it’s scientific.  It’s measurable.  It’s fact.”

               Sophie looked up at her and smiled.  “But I keep wondering.” She said, her eyebrows crinkling slightly in puzzlement.  “What if the scientific facts turn out to support the idea of the supernatural?  What do we do then?  It will overturn everything.”

               “Then we’ll just have to deal with that when it comes to it,” Chris assured her.  “In the meantime there are lots of possible explanations that don’t necessarily involve ancient curses or souls surviving death.”

               “It’s a problem for the philosophers in any case,” Sophie agreed, visibly relaxing again.  “Not doctors and scientists.  We just collect the data.  It’s up to society to work out what it means.”

               “Exactly,” Chris said with a reassuring smile.  “Try not to worry about it.”

                 Eventually the meeting started.  Wendy, the group co-ordinator, made some announcements and then got everyone to introduce themselves, going round in the circle.  

“So,” Wendy said after the introductions were finished, and casting a sideways glance at Chris, “if we can avoid getting side-tracked by discussions about whether the transgenders count as women, there are several important activist concerns to attend to this month…”

               There were a few murmurs and giggles around the room and Christine noticed Heather looking in her direction with a self-satisfied smirk.  Wendy started talking about a woman’s march and the attention turned back towards the issue at hand.

               But Chris found it hard to even listen to the meeting after that.  She was starting to feel like she didn’t belong here and wasn’t welcome anymore. It was like playground bullying and it was horrendous.  Why should she be humiliated and thought less of just for voicing a difference of opinion? She wondered, not for the first time, if this was really the right group for her after all.  Should she side with the intersectional fourth wavers?  Maybe they weren’t so bad and she had misjudged them all this time.

               Sophie seemed to notice her discomfort.  She felt the Asian lady’s slender hand reach out to touch hers.  They held hands then and Sophie squeezed her fingers comfortingly in Christine’s palm. Chris looked up at Sophie.  Their eyes met.  They smiled.

               At least she had a friend in Sophie.  And they had experienced something that no one else here had seen.  They had also shared something else very special, Chris thought to herself with a naughty rush of joy.

               Just then the meeting was interrupted by a sudden low moaning sound, like a woman in pain.  Everyone stopped talking.  Chris and Sophie let go of each other’s hands, their faces no longer smiling but looking at each other in alarm.  Chris remembered that groaning sound well.

               “What the hell is that?”  One of the other women asked, looking round the room.

               “Is she alright?”  Another said, also searching for the source of the sound. “Where’s that coming from anyway?”

               “It’s probably nothing,” Wendy said, waving her hand dismissively, although her eyes looked as frightened as everyone else’s. “If we can just ignore it and try to carry on…”

               They tried their best to continue the discussion but Chris suddenly found herself dragged away from the present moment, as if by a waking dream.

                 “I can’t believe this!”  The young woman screamed at them all, standing up suddenly so that her chair fell backwards.  “I was attacked!” She said, gesticulating wildly as she spoke.  “I’ve experienced all the same things you have.  And you talk to me about male privilege and how I’m not a real woman!”

               Christine realised with shock as she experienced this that she had been here before.  This had actually happened a few years ago.  Looking round the circle of chairs, she could see that Wendy was there too, and Heather also.

               “There you go again,” Heather replied with a rolling of her eyes.  “You know, you’re giving off a lot of male energy right now.  This is a woman’s group.  And while I appreciate that you might also have been a victim of male violence,” she added in a smug voice, her eyes half shut, “your claim that you have experienced actual sexism and misogyny when you were socialised as a boy and experienced nothing of what it’s like to grow up as a little girl is quite frankly disgustingly insulting.  You don’t know what it’s like to be oppressed because you have a womb and every man sees you as a baby making machine.” She continued, pointing accusatorily at the woman and looking her in the eye.  “You’ve never had periods.  You don’t have to worry that sex with a man might make you pregnant.  You don’t know what it’s like to be a real woman and so maybe you should just sit down and listen to real women’s experiences, instead of talking over us like a man.”

               The woman who had stood up to speak, a woman that Chris now remembered was called Jessica and who was transgender, looked utterly heartbroken and crestfallen as she sat down again.  Somehow Chris hadn’t remembered that part from when it happened years ago.  She had written it off as a weird bit of drama that happened in the group one month. She had only met Jessica that once and the memory had faded from her mind quite rapidly.  Knowing what she knew now, Christine was honestly shocked that a vulnerable trans woman had entered her life for one brief moment and she had been so unaware of transgender issues at the time that she had been complicit in the group’s ill treatment of her.

               “But I’m not a man,” Jessica said in a voice so hollow and wracked with pain that it broke Chris’s heart to hear it.  “I am a woman.  I was beaten and raped and…”  She broke off, almost sobbing.  “I thought I’d be welcome here,” she added, standing up again.  “I thought I’d find some support.  I can see I was wrong.”

               Jessica turned round and left the room. Christine could hear now that she was sniffing back tears as she went, her high heels clacking hurriedly on the floor.

               “Good riddens,” said Heather heartlessly. There was laughter.  Christine noticed with shock that she also had been laughing, relieved that the drama was over.

                 Suddenly Chris was back in the present day.  But no one was talking anymore.  They were all looking at each other in fear and confusion.  Had they all just experienced what she had seen?

               The moaning got louder and then a wispy, indistinct shape appeared in the middle of the circle.  It was in the form of a woman, her skin pale and white, red marks on her wrists.  Although the woman’s gaunt face was wailing, the skin was drained of colour and her hair was draped over her eyes, Christine could just make out from the facial features that this woman was indeed Jessica, the trans woman from years ago.

               Suddenly Jessica lifted her head and the hair fell back to reveal a look of fury in her eyes.  The moaning turned into a growl of anger and an echoey, otherworldly voice sounded from that open mouth.  “It’s your fault!”  Jessica screamed at them all.  “All of you! You did this to me!”

               The lights flickered and blew.  A gust of wind swirled around the room.  And most horrifyingly of all, drops of red liquid fell from the ceiling.

               The apparition flew wildly around the room, screaming incoherently at them all with a terrifying mixture of rage and torment, bleeding all the while from her thin wrists.

               Everyone panicked and fled the room.  Chris grabbed Sophie’s hand once more and together they ran outside, fleeing the building and running out into the street.

               Panting for breath as they ran round the corner, they stopped outside a posh looking cafeteria.  Chris turned to her friend and lover and spoke what was foremost on her mind.  “That does it,” she said.  “We’re going to grandma’s house.”

                 “What’s this all about, dear?”  Grandma said as she opened the front door to greet them.

The sun was shining and the birds were singing outside Grandma’s quaint little house on the edge of town.  There were pink roses painted on the white door frame and an array of real flowers, yellow, red and blue, in the flower beds of the front garden. The lawn needed cutting a little, but was otherwise neat and tidy.  On the left hand side there was a driveway without a car and another door at the back that led to the kitchen.  

Grandma was dressed modestly and simply, her feet still in slippers as she met them. “Who’s this?”  She said, looking at Sophie.

               “This is my friend, Sophie.”  Chris told her hurriedly.  “I need to see Grandpa’s old things.”

               “Oh, Christine,” said Grandma in a disappointed tone of voice.  She sounded just like Chris’s mum.  “What do you want with all that junk?”

               “I want to honour his memory,” Chris said fiercely.  “Can’t a granddaughter reminisce about her dear old Grandpa?”

               “Well, of course,” grandma replied, turning round to lead them inside, visibly flustered by the sudden outburst.  “Far be it from me to stand in the way of your grief or your love for your Grandpa.”  They followed her into the kitchen.  A pot was on the hob, boiling what smelled like vegetable soup.  There was an unmistakeable scent of leek.  “You always were a strange girl.  And you and your Grandad always got along so well. It was touching really.  But that hobby of his…”

               Chris didn’t want to hear it.  “Down in the cellar, is it?”  She asked.

               “Well, yes…” said Grandma, again taken aback by Chris’s attitude.  “It always has been.  Do you and your friend want a cup of tea or anything?”

               “Yes, thank you,” Sophie said, smiling and polite. “That would be lovely.”

               “Yes, thanks Gran,” Chris said, more dismissively than her friend.  There were important things at stake and no time for chit chat.  She turned to leave for the cellar, taking Sophie with her.  “We’ll be up in a bit.  Just after I’ve shown Sophie all Grandad’s old things.”

               “Fine, fine,” Grandma called out as they left.  Chris could still hear her talking as they walked down the steps to the cellar.  “I don’t know what you youngsters see in all that old nonsense but be my guest.  I’ll get you some cake too, shall I?”

                 Reaching the bottom of the stairs and switching on the light, Chris and Sophie got to work, rummaging around in some old boxes, cupboards and drawers.  Eventually Chris found all the paperwork for the Psychic Investigation Group, along with many old photographs of paranormal phenomenon, some measurements from archaic equipment the investigators had used and various correspondence and eye witness accounts of paranormal activity.

               “This is amazing,” Sophie said, flipping through the pages and marvelling at what Chris showed her.  “Did he make a lot of money or any kind of name for himself with all this?”

               “He had a book published,” Chris told her. “I’ve got a copy in my room.  And he was sort of semi-famous at the time, yes. But he didn’t really make much money from it, I’m afraid.”

               “Well,” she replied, “it seems like an interesting life, anyway.”

               “Junk she called it!”  Said Chris, feeling that indignant need to defend her Grandpa from her family’s disapproval of him.  “Ridiculous bunkum, my Dad said.  Well, we know different now, don’t we?”

               “You said the explanation might not be supernatural after all,” Sophie reminded her, putting down what she was reading to look Chris in the face.

               “Maybe,” said Chris, collecting as much of the paperwork together as she could, “maybe not.  But it still needs investigating, doesn’t it?  That’s what he was about, and that’s what we need to do too.” Chris looked up, making eye contact with Sophie.  “We both saw that ghost; not just once, but twice.  And you found a man with corvid DNA in his blood, a man who said he turned into a crow every month at new moon.”

               “Well, yes…” said Sophie, looking away slightly, her brow furrowed with doubt.

               “So we have ghosts and were creatures to investigate,” Chris concluded, reaching out to touch her friend’s arm.  “It’s time, Sophie.  It’s time to honour Grandad’s memory.”  Sophie looked up again and their eyes met, as Chris stated her intent with new confidence and determination.  “I’m going to rebuild William McInnery’s Psychic Investigation Group for the modern age!”

This is the last chapter of the story that I’m posting on this blog.  To read the rest of the book, please buy The Psychic Investigation and Study Team on Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk

[cmkshama]

On March 8, 2017, over a thousand people braved wet and cold weather to rally on International Women’s Day in Seattle. The energy at the rally demonstrated the emergence of a new women’s movement in America. Amidst renewed attacks by Trump and the Republicans on abortion rights, trans rights, and health care, millennial women and young people of all genders are starting to rise up.

Speakers from NOW, NARAL, Planned Parenthood, and Socialist Alternative urged the audience to get organized and fight to preserve and expand women’s and trans healthcare. We were also joined by national Black Lives Matter Activist Shaun King, and Seattle’s labor movement leader, Nicole Grant. Thanks to the Martin Luther King Jr. County Labor Council, the Transit Riders Union, the Seattle Women’s Commission, UAW Local 4121, Socialist Alternative, Socialist Students, and the Family Residency Advocacy Coalition of Seattle for supporting our call and sponsoring the rally this year.

Read my speech below, and reach out to my office at kshama.sawant@seattle.gov or 206.694.8016 to discuss how we can help build our movement and organize the strongest possible strike and protest action on May 1st, International Workers’ Day!  

Today is one of the largest ever celebrations of International Women’s Day. In more than 50 countries around the world, women are marching, rallying, and going on strike. Many globally are protesting against Donald Trump. Because the Misogynist in Chief and his vile right wing agenda are not just a threat to women in the United States, but to millions of working women everywhere.

While the protests today are much smaller than the tremendous Women’s Marches just 6 weeks ago — the biggest single day of protest in US history — today is also historic.

Because today’s Women’s Strike has brought forward the question of power, of our power as working women. Schools closed down in a number of cities today, and, around the country, thousands of women courageously took the day off, called in sick, or left work early.

We, as women, have begun a crucial discussion about what is really needed to defeat Donald Trump. And what is needed is the enormous potential power of strike action. To hit Trump and his billionaire backers exactly where it hurts — by shutting down their profits!

But, to do so, we will need to get better organized. And we will need to build on a far larger scale than we have.

Sisters and brothers, as Sarah said, Women’s Day was originally called “International Working Women’s Day.” It began in this country, in the United States, over a century ago.

And it wasn’t about flowers or chocolate.

It was about working women standing up against their exploitation in their workplaces, for the right to vote and full civil rights, against sexual harassment, for the right to make choices about their own bodies, and for the right to equal pay for equal work.

And it was about capitalism. Because it is not only Donald Trump who is sexist, misogynist, and racist. The capitalist system is deeply oppressive at it’s core — it has sexism, sexual violence, and racism written on its DNA. Capitalism relies on the brutal exploitation of women and other oppressed groups to divide and weaken the working class.

One hundred years ago, the Russian Revolution began on International Working Women’s Day. In Petrograd, thousands of women went on strike, led marches, went into the factories to call on other workers to down their tools. And they began the process that led to the overthrow of capitalism for the first time in the world, and to the creation of the first workers’ state: a government of, for, and by working people.

The Russian Revolution was the most progressive event in human history. It spurred a transformative change in society, the likes of which have not been seen before or since. Women won free and legal abortion, the right to vote, and equal pay for equal work. For the first time, divorce became legal and highly accessible, and community services such as laundries and cafeterias were set up to free women from domestic drudgery and patriarchy.

Many of the gains of the revolution were lost under Stalin’s counter-revolution and the rise of the bureaucracy, but that does not change the historic importance of what was won by women, all working people, and socialists in Russia a century ago. Gains that have still not been won, even in the so-called “progressive” countries under capitalism today.

But these victories were no accident. They show the link between capitalism and women’s oppression. And of the need for women, and all oppressed people, to come together, to use our social power as a class to shut down this system and build a different kind of society.

Today, we are watching the birth of a new women’s movement.

Millions of us see Donald Trump as completely intolerable.

We have entered into a new period of radicalization of young women and working women who increasingly recognize that powerful collective action, civil disobedience, and mass strike action are what will be needed to stop Trump and the billionaire class.

As our other wonderful speakers have mentioned, this week the Republicans announced their replacement for the Affordable Care Act.

And at the same time they have announced their attacks on Planned Parenthood.

But my question is, why should the people of Washington State be held hostage to Trump and his billionaire cabinet? Why doesn’t the state legislature and the governor tax the rich, and fund a single-payer system in Washington State? Such a system would give guaranteed affordable access to healthcare to all women, to the trans community, to everyone.

California has already started talking about this. Imagine if Washington, Oregon, and California all taxed the rich, and set up single-payer, so we would have a West Coast-wide single-payer health care.

But you know what? I am not holding my breath that the Democratic Party will show any leadership on this. We will need to build a powerful independent movement on the streets and in the workplaces to make it happen ourselves.

It is good that some elected Democrats are fighting against Trump, but it is not sufficient. We need an opposition that is 100% against Trump, and against the billionaire class, and not an opposition that is also looking to find some “common ground” with Trump.

We cannot wait for establishment politicians to stop Trump.

We must take him down ourselves!

The women’s marches in January, and today’s incredible events are a huge step forward for our movement.

They are vital in beginning to build an ongoing, radical resistance.

And we need to go further. In order to fully tap into the power of working women and of the broader working class, we need to organize for broad strike action.

As Leticia and Nicole said, May 1st, or “May Day,” is International Workers’ Day — a day of historic labor struggles, but also of historic immigrant rights struggles.

We need to stand in solidarity with immigrants and refugees on May Day!

We have the potential to strike a major blow against Trump, but it will take organizing. It will take planning.

The discussion within the labor movement is already underway. Several local unions have passed resolutions supporting strike action on May Day, including the Seattle Education Association and the Washington Federation of State Employees.

The discussion is also beginning in the graduate students’ union at the University of Washington, which is UAW Local 4121. I wanted to quote a member of the graduate students’ union. Her name is Arshiya. She is a PhD student there, who studies renewable fuels. She’s also a proud and active member of her union.

As an international student from Iran, Arshiya has long dealt with our country’s unjust immigration system. Even before Trump’s executive orders, travel was so difficult that she couldn’t leave her country to attend her own father’s funeral. Now in response to Trump’s executive orders, Arshiya is courageously speaking out, along with other leaders in her union. Will you stand with Arshiya?

Arshiya has a message for you. She says, “Now, more than ever, it’s critical that we all join together, join unions, make demands, and organize for justice.” She says, “I don’t just want to do it for me — I want to do it for a stronger university, a stronger community, a better world.”

We need to build on this. All of us who are in unions should actively make the case for strike action on May Day! And we will need to be flexible about what that will mean for different workers. But whether we mean collectively leaving work early, lunchtime political actions, or a powerful strike action and shutdown, we need to push as far as we can.

There are many workers not in unions who will not be able to formally go on strike, but there are many other ways to take action: We can call in sick, as many of us did today; we can take a day off; but we can also collectively organize in our workplaces to leave early together, or to put pressure on our businesses or our school campuses to shut down for the day. Students can organize walkouts, lunchtime teach-ins, or occupy administration buildings.

Here in Seattle, Mayor Ed Murray should declare a public sector shutdown on May Day — allowing the employees of the City of Seattle to take a paid day off, so that they can march with their immigrant sisters and brothers on a day of conscience, in solidarity with immigrants, Muslims, refugees, women and everybody under attack by Trump.

Outside of workplaces, we can also organize for mass civil disobedience, shutting down airports, highways, ICE offices, light rail, and other key infrastructure.

The threat of Trump shows clearly that the need is not only for strike action, but for maximum unity in action.

We need to come together in solidarity with one another to build a powerful, united movement of resistance.

And to do that, we will need to not only be playing defense. We need to also fight for real gains that can make a difference in the lives of ordinary people, like you and me, and inspire thousands more to join our struggle.

We do not only demand an end to attacks on reproductive care, we demand free and accessible abortion for all, free childcare and paid family leave. We demand not only that we preserve the gains of the Affordable Care Act, but we demand Medicare for All. We not only defend against “Right to Work” legislation, but we demand a federal $15/hour minimum wage, and millions of new good-paying union jobs through mass green infrastructure and clean energy projects.

We need to not only fight to stop Trump’s worst attacks; we need to keep fighting until we drive him out of office.

But let’s be clear: This is not only about an end to Trumpism or to corporate politics. We also have to demand fundamental change, and, for that, we will need a powerful movement independent of corporate politicians. We need our own political parties. We need a new socialist party, as a step toward a new mass workers’ party.

Because like the women in Russia a century ago, we are not just fighting for a less brutal system. We are fighting for socialism.

Solidarity to you all.