#feminists have discussed why since its emergence

[viciouslyrobotic]

Radical feminism buys into white supremacist cisheteropatriarchy and requires gender essentialism and exorsexist ideals to work. That's why it operates under the "man vs woman" framework we already live under. That's why Rowling and other radfems are called trans exclusionary, why they're so often racist, and why their communities are so often white, and why the attempt to rebrand it as trans inclusive will never work.

It functionally can't be trans or even gnc inclusive without ignoring several intersections of oppression.

[hauntedhouseghost]

Misogyny in Shifting Criticism

If you’ve heard about “Reality Shifting” but (like me) aren’t yourself involved in the community, it’s probably been presented to you as a TikTok trend amongst teenage girls obsessed with Harry Potter that emerged in response to the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. The most generous critics have framed it as an online game of pretend amongst bored quarantined teenagers; the harshest have sounded the alarm that reality shifting is a psychosis. This alarmist reaction to a trend amongst teenage girls exploring their sexuality through such a benign thing as fantasizing about Draco Malfoy was suspicious. I thought they were wrong, but I didn’t know enough about Shifting to know for sure. 

Social media in general seems to have become increasingly conservative since 2020. I see Dark Academia and Cottagecore as connected to today’s BookTok and Trad Wife (through shared aesthetics and hobbies), both of which have been criticized as anti-feminist and anti-intellectual. I wanted to see if Shifting would fit into that pattern and have a more conservative 2024 offshoot. After learning more about Shifting, I have found that:

As expected, shifting criticism is almost always laced with misogyny

It doesn’t have a conservative offshoot, but it is ideologically connected to New Ageism and the “conspirituality” wave that has swelled since COVID first hit. 

Misogyny in Discussions of Shifting

People always shit on whatever teenage girls are into, and this is just another example of that. The mindset that teenage girls are vapid/gross/stupid/etc has misinterpreted Shifting as a solo endeavor, a TikTok trend, and a mental illness. Here’s why they’re wrong:

Even though people might practice Shifting alone, it’s still a very communal practice. As researcher Sarah Perez writes:

“...to call reality shifting ‘solitary’ misses the continuous exchange of stories, tips, motivational messages and more…—making the practice highly social” (“Through the Looking Glass” 298).

Connecting to the above: “shifter” refers to anyone who believes in and practices shifting, not just people who have themselves shifted. Researcher Sara A. Kumar found that only 78.7% of self-identified shifters have experienced a successful shift (“Through the Looking Glass,” 299). 

While shifting does involve seeing/hearing/smelling/feeling/etc things that others cannot, those experiences only happen when a person intends them to. In psychotic disorders, people cannot control their engagement with/break from reality. 

Lots of religions have developed within fandoms online. Others have focused on Jedis, the Matrix, or The Lord of the Rings. What sets shifting apart is its association with young women. Interestingly, another fandom religion that got mocked a lot is SnapeWives. Also, Snape is probably appealing for very similar reasons as Draco—both are quite tortured and feminine-coded—but that's a separate tangent.

I was looking at YouTube shifting criticism and found this gem:

What's fascinating is that this guy's whole account is dedicated to videos about lucid dreaming!!! In this video, he calls [air quotes] “reality shifters” "weird," "insane," and "fucking annoying" and says “Reality shifting is just bullshit, it’s just a dream" (1:30-34). He characterizes shifters as all wanting to go to Hogwarts and “fuck Draco Malfoy” (at 1:15-17). The top comment reads: “Reality shifting is the astrology of lucid dreaming.” Astrology is another New Age spiritualist belief that is generally disparaged by outsiders and is also associated with young women. However, as a wise person once Twote:

With shifting, could we say that lucid dreaming is the version of “reality shifting” that is acceptable to men?

6. Another video I found is called “'Reality Shifting': How the Tiktok Teens are Giving Themselves Psychosis” (by Nicholas Black). In this, the YouTuber says (at 2:04-16) “It was a TikTok on Reels with a teenage girl claiming that she shifted realities so she could become Draco’s girlfriend.” He then shows a video along those lines, and afterwards says “You can imagine I was concerned.” Other videos on his page are titled in similarly misogynistic and panicky ways:

“Are Booktok girlies “corn” addicts?”

“Instagram won’t stop recommending me Tradwife Reels”

“When TikTok users get ahold of words they don’t understand”. The example of such a word given in the thumbnail is “Male Gaze,” which is connected by an arrow to the winking eye of a stock image white man. Beside this is the text: “Please actually read Laura Mulvey’s theory. I’m begging you.”

All of these position him as superior to whoever his video focuses on, and he seems to focus on women/women's sub-cultures a lot.

New Age & Philosophical Roots

Western philosophy focuses on skepticism, as in Descartes’s “I think, therefore I am.” This idea that our perception of reality is uncertain underlies conspiracy thinking (ex: QAnon), vaccine denialism, and reality shifting.

Authors Beres, Remski, and Walker coined the term "conspirituality" to refer to the combo of conspiracy thinking and New Age spirituality (think: QAnon believers who rely on healing crystals to protect themselves from COVID and psychic vampires or whatever). They define the central tenets of conspirituality as:

Nothing happens by accident

Nothing is as it seems

Everything is connected

In “Granola Fascism” (ContraPoints, at 37:51-38:06) she says, “New Age and conspiracy thinking share a hunger for meaning. They feel that all of reality should be comprehensible to the intuition of any individual human mind. This is a way of seeing that is epistemically empowering.” These emotional needs that drive people to conspiracy theorizing also drive young people to ShiftTok (and shifting content elsewhere). Of course, there are other appeals of ShiftTok - creative expression, escapism, community. Those and its main demographic are what distinguish ShiftTok, but at its core is still this search for narrative meaning and agency.

How psychologically different really are shifting and ideas about the “deep state”? What differentiates them is their emotional ~flavor~. QAnon believers of a secret deep state cabal of pedophiles craft a reality around soothing fear. Shifting can craft realities around soothing depression and hopelessness. They are both removals from, not engagements in, reality. Some shifters’ Desired Reality is just like this one, but without climate change, or just like this one, but with their family unaffected by depression. In response to the question “Why do people come back to their cr?” one Redditor said this:

Conclusion!!!

Shifting is actually super interesting!

Fandoms generate actual religions/spiritual practices that aren't any less plausible than older, established religions

Teenage girls can't do anything without people pathologizing it or acting like it's freakish and bad

[starfieldcanvas]

SUSPICION POLITICS vs SOLIDARITY POLITICS.

i was going through my old twitter bookmarks in anticipation of deleting all my activity from my old politics account and i found this absolute banger of a thread from may peterson (which WAS originally public, it's just private now because every sane person is privatizing all their old twitter shit.)

if you've been frustrated (on either side!) by the talk about reaching out to men to counter their radicalization, you should 100% read this thread so you can start to see the parallels with other problems in social justice movements.

transcript below the cut

a series of tweets from May Peterson, username maidensblade on twitter. (for context, may peterson is a trans woman.)

seeing discussion of what defines TERF rhetoric, which is a good place to practice distinguishing between what an ideology PROFESSES vs what it DOES Misandry is often seen as the core of TERFism, but this lacks explanatory power and can lead us to miss a deeper issue 🧵

Misandry isn't useful to explain why and how TERFism works, although suspicion toward men is an important ingredient (more on that later)

TERFism does a great job of showcasing something about how philosophies of the oppressed can become something harmful

TERFs *profess* suspicion for maleness, and this is advanced as their main charge against trans women. And this is for a reason, all ideologies have more than one simple cause.

But what TERFism *does* is to sharpen the divide between the sexes created by white male supremacy, by favoring gender policing, pushing for a dualistic concept of gender, and approving of fundamental parts of white male supremacy ("women are weak, men are strong")

It's normal for an ideology to have effects that disagree with what people with that ideology profess to care about. TERFs profess to want to topple patriarchy (male supremacy) but their ideology in practice feeds into reinforcing male supremacist functions like gender policing

TERFism by and large is not a threat to men, but it is a threat to trans people and especially trans women. This is partly because of what the TERF ideology declares to be the solution to the problem it identifies (which is: men oppress women)

It's likely to only add confusion to try and diagnose what the ideological root of TERFism is, because not all TERFs have the same conscious thoughts, and because thinking is not as deep or as motivating as feeling. So let's look at the emotional shape of TERFism

TERFism is a good example of a SUSPICION POLITIC. This arises from an oppressed group (in this case, cis women) coming from their emotional reality as the subject of violence and exploitation that seems relentless and hopeless to fight.

What a SUSPICION POLITIC does is offer an answer to that state of fear, rage, and helplessness, which is to encourage its followers to be suspicious toward people who are, or might be, members of the group that collectively represents their oppression.

IOW, TERFism as a suspicion politic is saying "men rape and abuse and oppress you, but there's no end in sight to this problem, so you should armor up as much as possible against men. Don't give them any chance to hurt you. Be distrustful of everything to do with men."

The original state is FEAR, which calls for action to find safety. Since a strategy to stop gender violence has not successfully emerged yet, the next response is LACK OF TRUST. The entire worldview about gender is thus poised on a trust-mistrust axis.

The action that arises from suspicion politics tends to include some kind of separatism, a call to close ranks within an in-group, and deep hostility to the out-group.

Yes, for TERFism, this does mean making women and -in-group and men the out-group.

This is an expression of the suspiciousness embedded within radical feminism in general; feminists have seen the lack of impact of liberal feminism and moved toward a more radical posture, but one that was also less hopeful and more inclined toward suspicion.

Women don't have a meaningful way of dismantling male supremacy, so as the trust-mistrust axis becomes the center of the politic, those practicing it have to funnel energy toward anything that feels like it creates armor, even if it doesn't do anything to solve the problem.

So radfems became split along this line: police the in-group as much as possible by transferring this suspicion toward trans women—whom cis women do exercise power over—as a way of *feeling like* they're sealing up cracks against the invasion of male violence.

The other side of the split is feminists who saw solidarity with trans women as a way to unite against male supremacy and give refuge to an even more battered victim of gender violence.

But to TERFs, the ones scapegoating trans women as a way to feel safer, the solidarity extended by the other radfems was a sign that the transfeminine "infiltration" was successful and exactly the thing to be feared that they felt it was.

We can absolutely narrate the development of the TERF movement as coming from an understandable fear of men among women that hardened into a politicized mistrust, which got transferred over to trans women.

However.

This narrative only makes sense if transmisogyny was already there was a path of least resistance.

We have what happens a lot with suspicion politics, which is moral discharge. You can't fight the real problem so you discharge against someone you can fight.

Feminist and queer circles tend to have very poor transmisogyny literacy partly because it's a complicated oppression that clusters together a bunch of different tools male supremacy has to maintain its gender system.

Those tools are like release valves, things people use to relieve stress on gender relations, and these become more and more critical to use when you're trying to use a gender distinction to create safety.

I fully believe that ideologically, consciously, many TERFs do feel that the real agenda is to rebuke men and that transmisogyny is just an acceptable byproduct of that.

But if we buy this without question, we miss that the outcome harms trans women much more than it harms men.

Moreover, we miss a much larger lesson that EVERYONE could be learning right now: this is a common outcome of suspicion politics.

Genders are not naturally very distinct, so to be suspicious of a gender means you need to be able to suss out who is part of that gender.

The only way for this to work is to double down on tools used to regulating gender grouping, which always always turns into transmisogyny eventually no matter what the motivation is.

But the bigger piece of this is that suspicion politics are in contrast to solidarity politics, like I mentioned above with cis women offering refuge to trans women and trying to build solidarity with us.

Here's the thing: solidarity politics is the only method that has any chance of being effective. It is 100% impossible for oppressed groups to simply hole up in a paranoid shell and endure against oppression forever, which is ultimately a form of defeatism.

TERFism is particularly instructive about this because cis women are *the largest group of oppressed people* in the world. And even they can't simply pull away from society and hide behind armor. It isn't going to work.

But the problem with solidarity politics is that it is scary and it feels absurdly counter-intuitive.

It says "you know how X people have hurt you a lot and will hurt you again? Okay, turns out you need to make friends with some of those people"

On an emotional level, this feels like self-destruction. It's asking you to give up the one piece of armor you do you have that at least gives you a sliver of protection against the onslaught. Why would you do that?

That's the question we all need to be asking ourselves, because here's the punchline: suspicion politics of some kind is what most of us practice, and what most of us have come to when everything else stopped working. So it's, uh, relevant

Why should oppressed groups give chances to people outside of our in-groups, when so many of those people have earned our mistrust? Well, this isn't just paranoia talking, it's survival instinct. It's natural for oppressed people to become suspicious

The divide between suspicion politics and solidarity politics is the difference in emphasis on self-interest vs. shared interest. And it is really hard to tell someone whose self-interest has been continually violated that they should give it up.

This is also why it's useless to try and get TERFs to change their minds. Their problem isn't intellectual. Contradictions in their reasoning don't faze them. Their problem is emotional: they're legitimately afraid, so they double down on what power they have to curb that.

The real, lasting solution to that is to actually solve and abolish oppression. I want even TERF cis women to stop being oppressed too. No oppression is good. But that's a long way off.

Don't get me wrong, *trans women* don't owe TERFs solidarity. They owe solidarity to us. And this is also instructive because it's something else we have to ask to make solidarity politics viable—who does the solidarity need to be coming from, and with who?

With TERFism, the answer is pretty simple. With political ideologies like social justice, it's more complicated because we have vast webs of cross-community clashes and shared interests contrasting with opposed interests.

The answer to "who owes solidarity" is often "you do." And that really hurts to hear because, man, I know I'm not the only marginalized person who feels battered by neglect and aggression and wants to finally be heard about my needs and not have more responsibility put on me.

I see this a lot in dynamics on Twitter. In particular with intra-queer community suspicion toward transfeminine people, who are highly susceptible to moral discharge. But it also happens in other ways; another big example on Twitter is discharge against Black people

When a small cluster of oppressed people starts being able to create an in-group, it can be an incredible relief because finally you're able to exercise some control over the social dynamic. This is a survival response.

When one in-group has to parley with another cluster of marginalized people, who have their own in-group, what tends to happen is that each ask the other for solidarity.

And then, often, each group treats that request with suspicion.

Can you think of times you've seen this?

Do you see how rational it is? Do you see how understandable those emotions are, when pressure to relax a protective boundary feels like a threat?

The outcome I see the most is for those groups to develop an uneasy alliance, with at least some effort made on both sides to signal alliance and yet some tightness and discomfort to occur when one group has to make space for other group's needs.

The complexity of oppression systems means we all have really, really good reasons to fear being erased, and this fear is so intense that it's hard not to be suspicious when someone is asking you to think of yourself as a potential oppressor who has responsibility toward others.

Oppressed people are tired of hearing that we're the ones with responsibility. We would rather focus on how others are responsible toward us, because our needs have gone unmet for so long and when we try to center those needs, we often end up nickeled-and-dimed into compromise.

The core of TERFism in terms of *power* is transmisogyny.

But the core of TERFism in terms of *emotion and psychology* is suspicion.

There's something universal about this suspicion dynamic and it's something social justice communities need to reflect on.

We're never going to feel our needs fully being met while oppression continues. This is the sad, enraging truth of our situation.

But we benefit more from building around shared interest than we do from hostility toward other oppressed groups.

This is another place where I wish social justice would emphasize emotional work much more than mental work. Because oppressed people are often coming out in public flushed with stress hormones and fear and anger, and this is only aggravated by social media.

It makes no sense, emotionally, to tell people to be less suspicious, unless we are doing something to naturally relieve that fear and create an environment that feels safer.

Social justice communities tend to lean hard in punishment, which is also a product of a suspicion-infused environment. But this means the fear is only increasing, turning into a subculture of paranoia because trust isn't being built.

As a result, marginalized people who spend time in social justice tend to easily become burned out, to lose what trust they do have, to be socially harmed or disposed of, and to grow more suspicious and less hopeful that solidarity is possible.

Every environment has a problem with transmisogyny, yes, but that's not the only thing we can learn from TERfism. I think the appeal to see misandry as the bigger problem is an attempt to identify the problem of suspicion politics.

This is why we have to look at what an ideology professes vs. what it does. Social justice is supposed to be about making social environments less oppressive, but the outcome is often that marginalized people are only hurt more.

A big thing everyone can to do be less like TERFs is to consciously choose solidarity with trans women, in a way that's charitable, leaves room for imperfection, that gives second chances, and looks for shared interest.

This is also the model for solidarity with anyone, and it's not something you can take on as a program, a self-improvement project. Solidarity has to grow out of relationships of trust.

This isn't to say "suspicion bad." That is, ironically, the mentality of suspicion politics itself, which is motivated to root out impurities and treat reality as black-or-white.

[luxxsolaris]

The issues (and non-issues) of bimbocore

This little discussion is coming off the back of a thought (rant) I shared on another blog a few weeks ago, largely where reinvented bimbo started compared to where it is now and why is everyone blaming Chrissy Chlapecka?

the resurgence of the 'bimbo' aesthetic in the early 2020s embarked as a movement of reclamation, a way to assert that there was actually nothing demeaning about a barbie-esque appearance and to remove the power from stereotypes used against us, essentially centring the Bimbo in a queer, left-wing ideology.

If you were to ask a modern Bimbo why hot pink? Why bedazzled? Why perform this exaggerated caricature of femininity? You might end up in a seemingly unrelated discussion about the modern Western political landscape. Bimbo culture has essentially emerged upon the heels of the controversies surrounding feminine experiences and bodily autonomy across the United States- women feeling that they are being confined to a specific performance of femininity, that the government is regulating their femininity, may tell you that the idea of bimbo culture is a satirical backlash to the ideas of what a modern Western woman should be and what she is expected to be. She is nothing more than a doll to the culture that surrounds her and her response is to take what is expected of her and make it a performance a juxtaposition of what she is expected to be and what she is and make them hate her for the femininity she is presenting. And thats exactly what Lauren Pantin said in her short update newsletter - ' If you’re going to punish me for being a woman anyway, I’m going to be the silliest, brattiest, potty-mouthed no-no of a woman you’ve ever seen. I’ll be the dumbest bitch on earth! Where’s my crown!"

Ask another bimbo and she'll tell you that her bimboism stems from the movement to satirise consumerist culture and misogyny, aiming to remove the stigmas around hyper-femininity. Essentially, allowing women to empower themselves through their femininity (rather than the popular idea of in spite of their femininity cough cough inlog cough) and giving women ownership over their sexuality and their body in ways that actively combat the misogynistic standards held against them- oftentimes gearing it towards queer people. It's a new-wave feminist movement designed to avert the male gaze through women appearing as these caricatures of traditional femininity whilst emphasising their own dominance and independence as support for women's right movements.

So it's a kind of sartorial rebellion against oppressive politics and culture? Well, it was at first. And to many it still is, however, as with all trends rooted in a sartorial culture the meaning tends to get lost in the shares and reposts as it expands across social media. Those who just happen across the culture or see nothing but images of it scattered across the internet arent likely to understand that this aesthetic is also a political performance, it will become a bimbo resurgence!... but not effectively hold the same weight and meaning that the movement was intended to hold.

One way to look at this is the trend of " girl [activity]" . Trends like girl maths, girl dinner, explaining things to the girlies. Now let me get it straight theres nothing wrong in finding a little fun in these trends- girl dinner was cute, as someone who loves cooking I loved seeing what everyone was making for their dinner until it got overrun by the 'I only had iced coffee today' brigade. Sometimes I'll see a girl maths video about how if I pay in cash its basically free since the number on my bank account didn't change and I laugh because thats logic I have applied to purchases before. There's little funny things and behaviours that people will have in common, and they're being labelled as 'girl [blank]' because it is predominantly groups of women discussing them and finding a little fun in it. But again, as trends reach a wider audience their initial intention becomes lost along the way and generalisations start to set in. TV shows and radio hosts have entire segments explaining girl maths, it has become cute and quirky to explain political landscapes in terms of shopping and makeup, and bimbo culture has become less of a satirical performance and instead commonly assumed as a Karen Smith- esque personality reminiscent of the 'dumb blondes' of the early 2000s.

Removing this sartorial protest from its context can be seem as damaging, especially in the way that social media currently presents aesthetics surrounding sexuality to young people. As bimbo culture reaches a wider audience it's likely to fall into the hands of young people who are, let's face it, not going to care about the deeper meaning. Young people are likely to see celebrities, tiktok personalities, attractive people in general donning their hot pink promiscuous outfits and feel inclined to join in on what is presented to them as nothing more than the newest fashion trend.

One of the key movements of bimboisim is to embrace feminine sexuality and overcome the stigmas about women expressing their sex and sexuality and sartorially this is represented by the micro mini skirt and the skimpy shirt. Society has had no difficulty pushing teenage girls to grow up rather quickly by presenting them with teen magazines in the y2k era talking about how to get a bigger bust or butt, social media promoting the attractive body type the attractive face the attractive makeup the attractive style of clothing that will settle their pubescent insecurities and validate them in the eyes of a society run by men. Young women are ridiculed for their bodies not being developed enough at 15, for not being sexually active at 16, must have lived the life experiences of drugs and alcohol and sex and heartbreak at 17 and are then turned into high school girl fucks random guy porn at 18. Removed-bimboism has become part of the problem in which young girls not only feel the need to dress promiscuously and express a sexuality that they still haven't fully explored in order to feel validated as an active part of society but also have to present themselves as stupid in order to seem funny cute and quirky. The idea that women are only able to understand complex theories if they are presented in terms of fashion and shopping and makeup is a stereotype enforced by tv and movie comedy that women have worked endlessly to overcome, and the reclamation of bimbo culture should not actively counteract the progress of feminist activity. You don't have to be smart to be a modern bimbo by any means, in terms of intelligence the movement is centred around a more relaxed approach to success that counters the ideology of the girl boss movement- you don't HAVE to be a huge success or overwork yourself to hell and back to validate who you are as a woman.

Modern bimboism set out with the comfort of knowing there is no pressure to understand everything, you might need something explained in your own terms, you might just be a little fucking stupid sometimes but there is no active harm in not always understanding. That, however, has been twisted through these trends discussed prior to make it seem like all bimbos (and by misogynistic extension, all women) are just not as smart as men. Which, as we know, is likely to be emulated by young people as it reaches a wider audience.

So it's understandable why there is concern over bimboism. But at what point does critique of bimboism begin to drift into the right wing? Blaming women who dress provocatively simply for being women who dress provocatively is not the answer, in my opinion, to the issues with the bimbo culture. There is (to the chagrin of many) nothing wrong with an adult women expressing the ownership of the sexuality that she was granted the right to express through the liberation of women, sex and queerness.

Tensions have been rising within more radical groups, or groups who are of the tendency to reject feminine presentation in regard to what they perceive as an active threat to the reputation of women. There has been a desire expressed across social media sites by these women that 'all women' should refrain from direct expressions of femininity and reject all social norms expected of women under the assertion that it 'makes us all look bad'. There is a lot to be said about the ways in which misogyny utilises stereotypes and generalisations of what is considered 'feminine behaviour' to degrade women, however, it is highly pretentious and internally misogynistic a notion that the very idea of feminine expression is to be at fault. The ideology begins to attack individual women, expressing that their online content is to blame for the ways in which men treat women, or that children have become so oversexualised.

In a way this reflects the puritan standards of online censorship frequently weaponised by the right wing in order to oppress further marginalised groups. 'Think of the Children' has been used time and time again as a way to bastardise protests of queerness, of sexual liberation of racial equity and it is being weaponised now again just as it was across the 70s against women who dare to be 'immodest' . It goes without saying that people who create content online are not responsible for the actions of teenagers who in the midst of discovering their sexuality, may seek out more mature content- not just for sexual gratification, but a newfound interest into how adults express their sexuality as a way to help them navigate expression themselves. To place limits on how women are allowed to dress or express sexuality is to revert to the ideas of puritanism that existed prior to the (well, partial) liberation of the marginalised people.

Is bimbo culture perfect? No, it's been washed out as a mimicry of early 2000s internalised misogyny. Is it worth hating on random women? No, there issue is more centred to how misgyny is so deeply rooted in our society that we are happier to blame women for the stereotypes forced upon them than to actually comment on how society cultivates these ideas.

[campgender]

from “Public Silence, Private Terror” in Skin by Dorothy Allison:

There has recently been an intensified debate on Female sexuality among feminists and lesbians, with lines often furiously drawn, with sadomasochism and pornography as key words which are variously defined according to who is talking. The depth of women’s rage and fear regarding sexuality and its relation to power and pain is real, even when the dialogue sounds simplistic, self-righteous, or like parallel monologues. – Adrienne Rich

I knew when I first met her that it would be all right to love her, that whatever happened we would emerge from this not broken. It would not be about betrayal. Loving doesn’t terrify me. Loss does. The women I need are literally disappearing from the face of the earth. It has already happened. – Barbara Smith

I keep wanting to take down the card that holds Adrienne Rich’s words so that I can file them away and no longer have to think about the fact that it is certainly fear that has dominated the debate on female sexuality, that it is fear that has provoked the shouting, name-calling, and rejection. I am tired of trying to understand why people fall into self-righteous hatred, but the card stays up for just that reason: to remember the human dimensions of the debate. The quote from “Home” serves the same purpose, but it also reaches my own fear, going deeper still to a level of desire I have known since I first realized what it would mean to my life to be queer. Home is what I have always wanted—the trust that my life, my love, does not betray those I need most, that they will not betray me.

“You confuse the two,” a friend once told me. “When we talk about love, we are not necessarily speaking of sex. When we talk about sex, love is not at issue.”

Is that true? I ask myself and read the cards over again. Sexuality. Sex. Rage. Fear. Pain. Love. Betrayal. Home. These are the words that have scored my life. I have always been trying to understand myself, to find some elemental sense of a life that is my own and not inherently wrong, not shameful, not a betrayal of those I love most. At thirteen it was the simple issue of just being a lesbian; at twenty it was the kind of woman I wanted to touch and to be touched by; at twenty-five it was the realization of what kind of touch felt like sex to me. None of it has ever been easy. Throughout my life I have felt that I was fighting off some terrible, amorphous confusion about sex itself, what I have a right to do or want, what was dangerous and what was vital, and most fearfully of all, what would make the women I loved literally disappear from my life.

Beneath the quotes from Adrienne Rich and Barbara Smith, held by a pin that positions a picture of my younger sister and her two children, is a line I have written out for myself, the beginning to an article I started long ago and could not finish. The terrors of sex are real, it reads. The awful vulnerability of the individual exposed physically and emotionally—and we are too often betrayed by our own desires or the failures of our lovers. Betrayal again, I notice, and this time failure. It does not appear that I am so very much different from the woman who called me. We are both stumbling over our private fears, worrying at desire from the downhill side, not speaking to the trust and joy I know we both are seeking.

Grief should not be where we have to start when we talk of sex. But the idea of a life in which rage, physical fear, or emotional terror prevents even the impetus of desire—that is the image that haunts the discussion for me.

[ihatetbrlists]

Review #29: Financial Feminist

Financial Feminist, by Tori Dunlap

From my TBR? Nope, read the day after discovering it.

First book of 2024 and my first book about financial education as well. Lately, I've been getting really into this sub-genre of YouTube channels and blogs about financial education content specifically directed at women. This book was recommended by Bitches Get Riches in one of their recent articles.

I picked it up expecting it to be something like Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Pérez but more specifically about discrimination in the workplace or the wage gap but it's actually an actionable guide to getting your finances together as a woman.

Now, I'm not an expert. This is, after all, the first book I've read about financial education. But I do think that someone with a bit more knowledge than I do would have found Financial Feminist to be pretty basic. I did too, at least for some chapters.

The book covers what your relationship with money should look like, how to get out of debt, how to budget, how to start investing, how to negotiate for a raise, how to be a feminist consumer (kind of) and more.

Considering that there are also many mini-essays by other (I assume) famous authors in the field, the book doesn't have the time to get into detail about any of these topics, giving us a bird view. That's fine for stuff like "how to budget" but not for the chapter about investing or ethical consumerism, something I would have really enjoy reading more about.

This book is at its best when it's explaining step-by-step how to get out of debt, create an emergency fund and set a budget — and even then, it assumes that the reader already has a high income. Jessica, the fake person we follow the financial journey of, earns 4k and budgets almost 1k for her fun money every month. In what world does the average reader of this book have 1k left after accounting for necessary spending and debt repayment

This book is also very US-centered and I'm not American. In the chapter Investing (my favorite) (since I know nothing on the subject) I had to leaf through a lot of talk of Roth IRA and 401k and you'll die in poverty if you don't start investing NOW. Useless to me, but at least it made me appreciate the social security in my country.

Other things that didn't pass the vibe check:

there are various mentions of how people of colour or LGBTQAI+ members or people with disabilities have it even worse than white women, which is not the same as actually discussing their challenges.

the author mentions Dave Ramsey disparagingly a bunch of times — like, we get it, he is Bad (and you are therefore Good).

lastly, the author used this book to self-promote her other products. Which, fair, I suppose. But also very annoying (you know when you are watching a video on YouTube when the Youtuber starts going off on a tangent that is so obviously a prelude to the inevitable "and that's why I use whatever product I'm supposed to be sponsoring". That's what some paragraphs felt like)

Verdict: This could be a good book for you if you know nothing about financial independence and want a light read. But if you want to save a few bucks, you can probably find the same information by scouring the author's blog.

[womenfrommars]

Why do you always leave out childbirth when discussion abortion? It doesn't matter if a woman (and the man) had sex knowing that there was a chance of pregnancy. She shouldn't have to go through with it if she doesn't want even if it was "her fault". Childbirth is incredibly dangerous and kills women, leaves them with lifelong disability and pain, but you're just concerned with a fetus hypothetically existing outside of the woman after 22 weeks. Babies don't emerge out of vats.

You cannot logically remove sex from its primary purpose, which is to create offspring. Secondarily, it also exists to promote partner bonding, which is why it is ridiculous that liberal feminists are writing think pieces on how to have casual sex without developing feelings. (They recommend not making eye contact, for instance...) You cannot ''cheat'' your way out of biology. I see uterus icons left and right, but we cannot make the connection that we have sex organs to allow for sexual reproduction. We are supposed to celebrate all capabilities of the female body (in sports, or the fact we live longer and are less prone to genetic diseases), except for pregnancy, apparantly.

I'm not anti-abortion, but at the same time I don't think abortion is something that will necessarily liberate women. It was needed as a last-resort option. I think it should be regarded as a means to an end rather than an end in and of itself. Women don't ''want'' abortion in the same way we want ice-cream. It's something you choose when no other option is available. Most abortions are chosen because of a lack of financial means to raise a child. That's financial coercion, not asimilar to women ''choosing'' prostitution due to a lack of financial freedom. I think a lot of abortions could and would have been prevented if it were not for poverty, and radical feminists have not addressed this key issue in their analysis

Abortion is something that can and is weaponised against women. Men pressure their mistresses into getting abortions to save their own asses. Abortion is also coerced in the context of the sex industry so pimps don't lose a prostitute who can make money for them. There are even think pieces being written about how men will suffer from Roe vs. Wade being overturned, since it will be the end of hook-up culture... A lot of men support abortion for their own self-interests at the expense of women

Childbirth is, in most Western countries, very safe these days, and if the issue is access to healthcare, then let's start there. Even pro-lifers can agree on this, so this is not an argument in favour of abortion itself

[awed-frog]

what are your views on islam?

Well - I’m still learning, and I don’t claim to be an expert on the subject. But I got interested several years ago, read many books, met a lot Muslims and ex-Muslims and non-Muslims people raised in Muslin countries in my life, and through all that there’s a fairly homogenous picture that emerges.

Let me just start by saying I have nothing against Muslims as people. Religion can play a positive role in a person’s life, and is often understood as a purely cultural phenomenon by many believers. I met Muslims who were perfectly happy to give gifts for Eid and that’s where their faith started and ended, just like it happens for many Christians. I visited a lot of Muslim-majority countries in the 90s and early Noughties and was always welcomed very warmly everywhere. In fact, reading about the recent radicalizations of those countries was one of the things that made me interested in learning more about Islam.

First of all, I think the big difference between Islam and other major world religions is that Islam was deliberately conceived to be a political entity in a way other religions were not. For instance, Judaism is not about conversion or empire-building, and Christianity and Buddhism were founded by two rebels dissatisfied with their own religion who had zero interest in building anything on the ‘reality-based’, politics-heavy side of life. So even if Christianity and Buddhism ultimately became state religions in various countries, they had to be twisted and remolded in order to fit that role. Islam, on the other hand, was created with the explicit purpose of being an all-encompassing state religion, and thanks to many Muslim leaders’ tactical genius, profound devotion and lack of scruples, it was wildly successful in that role. What this means to modern non-Muslim states with sizeable Muslim populations is that there’s a lot of stuff, from bank transactions to shopping, eating, healthcare, legal disputes and work that really pious Muslims need a parallel system for. And obviously the creation of parallel systems within a nation state is something that’s generally not desirable and can cause a lot of trouble down the way.

A second thing about Islam is that it went through the same philosophical arguments Christianity was having in the West, but unfortunately the ‘wrong’ side prevailed - and by that I mean the ‘question nothing, God is always right’ anti-intellectual side. You often hear people wondering why Islamic science and general progress seems to stop after the Middle Ages, and while there’s generally a lot of overt bias, underlying racism and ignorance in the idea, there’s also a basis of truth. By conquering most of the Middle East, the Muslim world found itself inheriting the rich melting pot of cultures and ideas that stretched from Byzantium, through the Persian empire, to and beyond the Indian borders and found its natural heart in the vibrant, multicultural city of Baghdad. Almost immediately, erudite philosophers like Al-Kindi (801–873 AD) started to turn this inheritance into something even richer: he and his disciples, the Mu’tazilites, were arguably the main drivers of the Islamic golden age. They studied and discussed philosophy, medicine and science thanks to books and experts from the four corners of the world, and the Islamic world flourished as a result. But then, in the 10th century, the ongoing theological dispute between the Mu’tazilites and their opponents was finally lost for good: the Mu’tazilites were branded as heretics and hunted down, their works destroyed. Since the other side basically saw no way to reconcile Islam with philosophical enquiry or scientific thinking, those pursuits were mostly abandoned. And that continues in the most extreme currents of Islam today, although their leaders can be very selective in what they do and don’t consider haram (most of them, of course, are perfectly happy to use glasses, modern appliances and the internet).

And a third thing is that a lot of what we now consider as simply ‘Islam’ and defend tooth and nail against Islamophobes was heavily influenced by Saudi Arabia’s extreme version of Islam, which spread like poison over the last 30 or so years through ‘charity’, mosques, carefully trained imams, and ‘schools’, and that’s how countries who’d taken centuries to develop their own version of Islam - which was generally moderate and ‘normal’, and mixed in with other faiths and local pre-Islamic traditions - turned into something that’s barely recognizable - often to the dismay of their own - Muslim - citizens.

As ever, the West and other big powers weren’t much help here, what with colonization, racism, proxy wars, actual wars, their profound and stubborn ignorance of how Islam works and their exploitation of Muslim soldiers in various wars and Muslims workers to do cheap labour in Europe in appalling conditions, but this is not just about the West. There are powerful forces in the Muslim world itself who think there is only one ‘true’ Islam and that Islam can only work as a state religion, and who are deliberately funding a well-oiled machine to brainwash Muslims - and non-Muslims - into believing this. In this sense, the work they do is not that different from how some cults operate, only it’s on a much larger scale. And our governments, through inefficiency, ignorance and greed, are mostly content to let these influences do their job unhindered.

(From feminist Tunisian and Turkish mothers who are appalled by their daughters’ insistence in wearing a veil to old people in Albania tearfully wondering why their sons used their university money to covertly join ISIS and die in Syria, there are a lot of heartbreaking eyewitness accounts who show just how quick this transition was.)

Despite the work of hundreds of moderate imams, activists and philosophers, and despite the desires of a majority of Muslims everywhere, on the whole I’m not optimistic about the future. I think that the most extreme parts of the religion will continue to be preached and to spread, that the Middle East (and the world) will be more unstable and dangerous as a result, and that our politicians will never agree on a way to make any of this better - or even have the will to. 

[mithliya]

Okay, so I want to be clear when I say again that white women in the suffragette movement said/did racist things, just as white women in feminists movements today say/do racist things,. Even white anti-racist activists will, at least on occasion, say and do racist things simply by growing up in a white supremacist society. I don’t want to give the impression that I’m disputing that reality. I only mean to illustrate some of the nuance (and why that matters today).

I sent those quotes in an effort to illustrate how the women’s suffrage movement was intertwined with universal suffrage, both white women and black men campaigned for each other’s right to vote. The women’s suffrage organizations grew directly from the basis of abolitionist movements. The initial suffrage (and wider women’s rights) movement was indistinguishable from the civil rights movement. When the 14th/15th amendment was proposed splits in the civil rights movement deepened — both white women and black women (and presumably some black men) campaigned against any amendment that didn’t include women. Similarly, black man and both white and black women favored the 15th amendment even without including women (of any race), who argued that women could wait. Ultimately the latter group saw their wish, and the division resulted in two separate organizations that continued to campaign for women’s suffrage.

The quotes you screen-shotted are undeniably terrible and exemplify the racism within the movements. To be nuanced however, they also span a wide range of individuals — from actual slave owners to women who said something racist but also directly participated in anti-racist activism.

To illustrate (from the quotes you provided):

Rebecca Latimer Felton - terrible human, slave owner, all out white supremacist

Carrie Chapman Catt - she later said “our task will not be fulfilled until the women of the whole world have been rescued from those discriminations and injustices which in every land are visited upon them in law and custom”, lobbied against the word “white” being added to the 19th amendment, and lobbied congress/used her presidency of the League of Women Voters to advocate for people of color and Jews

Elizabeth Cady Stanton - she also founded the Women's Loyal National League that led the largest abolitionist petition drive at the time, organized the American Equal Rights Association a suffrage organization that explicitly supported universal suffrage. The organization split when (mostly) the black men in the organization supported the 15th amendment without advocating for it to be extended to women. (She definitely said racist things around this time, similarly Frederick Douglass, who was both her friend and one of her main critiques at the time, said many sexist things.) The split was later merged back into one organization that she headed.

Anna Howard Shaw - I know very little about her. She definitely said many racist things, but she did champion universal suffrage and campaigned to end racial violence (arguing that universal suffrage would end lynchings). Still, she also failed to condemn racist actions by her peers.

Same as (1)

Belle Kearney - terrible human, slave owner, all out white supremacist

Frances Willard - confusing mix of actively recruiting and working with black women and also promoting racists myth that white women were in danger of black men that facilitated lynchings (due to her “temperance reform”). Also appeared to be more laissez-faire when president of the WCTU since she let conservative states hold on to conservative and/or moderate positions regarding reform for both women’s rights and racial justice.

Same as (1)

As for why it matters today:

No, women definitely won’t have the right to vote revoked for discussing racism in past movements. But there’s a difference between discussing racism, and perpetuating misinformation. One of the main ways the American government disrupted activist movements throughout history was to sow dissension in their ranks. (And the American government/military taught many of these techniques to foreign countries.) An excellent example of this is the COINTELPRO operation, but it’s only the tip of the iceberg. Their goal was to divide and conquer - a movement can’t make progress if it’s busy fighting itself - and poison the public’s opinions of the movements, so as to dissuade new members from joining. (At this point, I want to reassure you that while this may sound like a conspiracy theory, it is very much proven and it/other programs did much harm to domestic and foreign reform movements.)

The myth that the suffragette movement was specifically racist, rather than operating in concert with and emerging from, anti-racist activism contributes to this divide and conquer method of disrupting activism. If you (general you) can convince women of color that the “original feminist movement” (ignoring the ahistorical nature of such the label itself) actively campaigned against them, then it’s much easier to dissuade them from considering feminist activism or to divide activist movements. (And, if it were true, it would be entirely justified!)

Of course, that’s not to say that feminists shouldn’t criticize (or disavow, to the extent possible) white supremacists like Felton or Kearney, or that we shouldn’t discuss and reform the racist sentiments in past and current movements. (In fact, I believe, and expect you do as well, that doing so is not only permissible but necessary, because to deny the racism that did exist in past/current movements would alienate women of color just as much as the idea that the feminism-of-old was solely for white women, and would in fact be an expression of racism in and of itself.)

I hope this clarifies what I’ve been trying to convey.

im surprised about the claim that white women and black men campaigned for each other's right to vote. i was under the impression that the civil rights movement was largely focused on black men and often outright excluded black women having a say, so i don't really know why they would support other women (such as white women) having a say when i heard they didn't support that for black women, who were always black men's biggest supporters.

i do get your point, to a degree-- and i think we agree overall but simply word things differently. i don't think that the women's suffrage movement was Bad and i don't think the white suffragettes back then were like, all evil and more racist than the avg white person in their society. i would say overall, those women were quite forward thinking and progressive for their time. i don't doubt that a significant portion of women were far worse than that, and even opposed women's rights (bc of the society they grew up in where this was a controversial thing). my only argument is that pretending they weren't also racist and had traits worthy of criticism (such as their racism) is innaccurate. a lot of prominent suffragettes were quite racist, and that's not to say that their feminist beliefs lead to that or that women's rights is interwined with racism, but just to point out that even those women who fought for the right to vote for women were not particularly good allies to poc but most specifically black people, and more importantly, black women. i also wanted to point out that being anti-slavery and campaigning against it, did not mean they were generally anti-racism or fighting against racism overall. they were fighting against the worst and most extreme forms of racism in their time, but they were all still racist in their own right. i'd like to reemphasise what i initially shared that you disagree with (+ my tags, and my previous comment on it so as to be fully transparent), which is not that different from what you're saying imo:

now i'm not trying to argue the origin of the movement, what it rose out of, how it relates to racism or anything else; my qualms are with the claim that the suffragettes were not racist. maybe back then, they were closer to allies to black people than most, however they were still quite racist. similarly, since you brought up white allies, white allies today may be the best we have and the best in our time, but they are also still often quite racist themselves.

my main and only point is that these women were still racist, and this is not to discount the women's suffrage movement, i just think that when we deny that aspect of the past then what we're doing is alienating woc. i've noticed a general trend of white women on here saying that white women were targetted by the KKK for example, fixation on stuff that is targeted at white women like 'karen' and placed on equal grounds with calling black women 'laquisha' to berate them, arguments that white women dont have racial privilege, etc and while i don't think the people making such arguments are necessarily coming from a bad place, many woc seeing this will end up feeling like the movement is geared towards white women and does not properly consider & include woc. that's why i take issue with the claim that xyz white female historical figure wasnt racist bc she was pro-slavery abolition, like, sure that must've been really progressive for its time but at the same time it doesn't change that the same woman did work w white supremacists and white supremacy was used as an argument to support white women's suffrage. it probably worked as a strategy and helped pave the way for other women, but its good to acknowledge these issues and criticise them esp since they remain relevant today when people are still indirectly debating how much woc should be considered in feminism.

[cecilyneville]

well it’s been a couple of days since i watched this week’s episode of tsp and i can’t stop fuming over the last two scenes so i just wanted to get this out of my system. so here we are: on catherine the baby-snatcher, what i think (????) the writers are trying to tell us here, and the trauma bessie blount is subject to.

(beneath the cut for length & discussion of assault)

the whole idea of catherine of aragon performing an episiotomy on bessie blount is so outrageous that when i first watched it i almost wanted to laugh - the idea that she knows how to do that, the idea that she would be there delivering a baby because apparently never having midwives on hand makes sense for a show that constantly has its women being told “omg you are PREGNANT, you must go into confinement ASAP, to underline the point here is a birdcage in catherine’s rooms, get it guys, it’s a metaphor, we are very clever”.

but thinking on that scene again i just come away from it totally appalled. what catherine does to bessie in that scene is assault  - it’s not intended to be, but i think it is. she leaps on bessie with a knife and, without telling her what it is she’s about to do, cuts her perineum so the baby can be safely delivered. the scene is totally unconcerned with the trauma and additional pain bessie experiences as a result of this. compare, if you will, the episode of call the midwife where valerie has to perform a similar emergency procedure on a woman who suffered female genital mutilation and as a result, is experiencing a difficult and traumatic labour. throughout the scene, valerie clearly and calmly explains what it is she is about to do to her, and why she is doing it. emma frost* doesn’t afford bessie anywhere near the same level of respect. and why would she? bessie is barely even a character in her eyes - she’s just henry’s ~foolish sidepiece~, a plot point to underscore the downward trajectory of catherine and henry’s marriage (funnily enough, bessie, as chloe harris plays her, is sweet and kind and eminently likeable, although i suspect these aspects of her personality were supposed to be a red herring so the audience is shocked when we see her ~betraying catherine~ with henry).

“what did you think i was going to do, slice him in two?” catherine says to lina when the baby is delivered. we’re supposed to see catherine in this moment as a good person. earlier in the episode she confides in lina how she hates bessie, how she even wishes she and the baby might die. this scene is supposed to be all about catherine performing a good deed - she’s told by lina that the baby might die, and her actions ensure that he will live. bessie’s traumatic experience is irrelevant to what emma frost wants to say.

and then, of course, is the scene we’ve all been laughing at - catherine snatching up the baby, ignoring bessie’s desperate pleas to hold him, and marching to henry’s rooms to present him with his son. the most generous interpretation of this scene is that we’re supposed to empathise with catherine - she just wants to present henry with a living son (which she did...when henry duke of cornwall was born...not that we got to see that on screen...anyway). she’s so desperate for this experience that taking henry’s bastard son away from his mother and presenting him to henry is as close as she can get. it’s a poor facsimile of the real thing, but she can pretend otherwise, for just a moment.

only there’s nothing to actually telegraph this to the viewer. perhaps we could have had a close-up shot of catherine, just before she enters henry’s rooms, pausing with baby henry fitzroy in her arms and feeling a whole mix of emotions - jealousy that bessie has done what she has not, relief that the king has a living son, sadness and fear that this baby might replace princess mary in the line of succession (not that tsp!coa gives a shit about her daughter). beyond the fact that charlotte hope is not a talented enough actress to display all these emotions, the writing and the directing aren’t up to scratch in this instance either. 

i’m not sure what i’m trying to say here overall, only that these scenes are badly written (like, even by tsp standards) and offensive - to the character of bessie, to the audience in general. this is why i see red when i see articles telling us that the spanish princess is a feminist show - nothing could be further from the truth. emma frost and her fellow writers don’t respect women, and they don’t respect their audience enough to tell a story that actually makes sense.

*the writing credits for this ep are attributed to kate o’riordan and emma frost, but, you know

[gateauxes]

the war on gender terror

At this point in my life, the presence of mostly-white liberal feminism is inescapable. While I'm excited to see more people taking baby steps to a radical analysis, largely I am frustrated. On the other hand, involuntary exposure to popular feminism is the reason why I'm noticing a trend in it. Here's my report from where I'm standing: the liberal feminists don't know it, but reactionaries are trying to scare them.

Reactionary feminist projects begin the same way as any other reactionary project - concern trolling liberals over topics at arms' length from the main goals of exclusion and domination. With regard to reactionary feminists the progression of topics are well-known: women's sports & 'human trafficking', then domestic violence shelters & kinky porn, then policing gender-segregated bathrooms, defunding trans healthcare, and opposing sex work of any kind. I've been watching a pessimistic thread emerge in liberal feminist (and radical!) circles which I believe has been pushed into place by reactionary feminists. This bio-pessimism places women into a perpetual state of victimhood that can never truly end due to the essential rapacious nature of men. If this seems like the same shit the second-wave lesbian separatists were peddling, that's because it is. What I want to question is how today's essentialist pessimism differs from its initial appearance.

RADFEMS ARE OBSESSED WITH DICK

Reactionary feminists have not dispensed with a religious-conservative perspective on the power of the penis - and by extension they imagine women identically to how the rest of the right views women. The penis, apparently, is the mechanism by which rape becomes possible. Therefore, any engagement with a person with a penis is a grave risk. Vulnerability is a mistake if you might be dealing with a rapist. The MeToo movement activated an enormous public forum about how incredibly prevalent the violence is, but I now see it used as a tool for re-framing this prevalence as a biological reality. (MeToo, even without being used as a tool, was ineffective at acknowledging that violence is perpetrated by all sorts of people). An explosion of survivors talking openly about violence as an unacceptable status quo has been infiltrated by reactionary feminists who whisper that this is the fate of all women, always. The new bio-law absorbs the third wave's progress in acknowledging diversity of experience - right up to the point where it would be forced to note that sexual nature, like categories of racially-dictated nature, is a myth.

This pessimism rooted in the power of the penis is hypervigilance beyond a realistic assessment of risk. (I also blame true crime podcasts and the media in general) This is not the careful awareness of one's surroundings which comes naturally to many of us. What I'm describing is avoiding going out at all, because of statistics on sexual violence which may not even reflect the risks in the neighbourhood. This, for instance, is purchasing and insuring a vehicle for the express purpose of avoiding public transit. I frequently notice that popular discussion of domestic violence neglects to mention the disproportion of violence toward people with disabilities, asserting that all of us have identical risk. Ultimately, this is the justification for a culture of exclusion as the only recourse to the ever-present threat of men. The fortress must be defended, and the enemy could be anywhere.

BUT HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO GET LAID?

I do not want love or children, so my interest in sex is purely recreational. I have been told this is not in line with my female nature - I stand before you deviant and happy. However, anyone attracted to men must grapple with the contradiction of desire and very real risks. I support caution, and even precaution. My concern is with a bio-law that requires a baseline of suspicion if one is to survive, the assumption that one is always a moment away from violence. To be explicit, how am I supposed to have fun when I am letting the enemy penetrate my figurative fortress?

I think this is why kink is such a problem for reactionary feminists. The only way to make the horror of sleeping with the enemy worse is to find that some people like to confront, satirize, and role play the power dynamic. To choose recreational pain or literal bondage flies in the face of the notion that a woman’s lot is to be in constant pain, and to tolerate penetration as a miserable necessity. The reactionary feminist must sleep with one eye open, aware that her biology has already sealed her fate, and mitigate vulnerability by excluding the threat, since she can’t defend herself (biologically speaking). This is why trans women can’t stay at the domestic violence shelter, this is why you should worry for your life if your boyfriend watches kinky porn. As with vanilla dating, there are true risks - and reasonable precautions. But kink is about play with vulnerability - there is no room for play under the martial law of bio-pessimism. By hijacking post-MeToo popular feminism, reactionaries can reinsert the bone-chilling suggestion that it’s all rape, all the time. All the men want kinky sex, because it’s the closest they can come to hurting women the way they secretly wish to. According to this logic, the only way to safely navigate the risk is constant surveillance of men, the self, and any woman who could be a traitor. He’d better not be watching kinky porn, you’d better not be watching kinky porn, and the women in the kinky porn are either hapless victims or remorseless collaborators. Once we have arrived at this point, it’s obvious why the next step is a crusade against any pornography, and a mission to ensure that kink is understood as something men want and women tolerate. 

How can reactionary feminists get this done? By linking the prevalence of trauma with the increased visibility of alternative sexuality & gender, from kink-at-pride to polyamory to transcending assigned gender. They ask, do you feel uncomfortable when you see all this change? We’ve all been traumatized - who do these people think they are, flaunting a lifestyle that feels wrong to feminists like you? You should trust your gut, they urge. Perform a little more vigilance to be sure you’re safe. If you find yourself unable to open a dating app or sit next to a man on the bus without feeling deep dread and revulsion, that’s vigilance, and realistic given the state of things. Any - and most - men mean women harm.

REDPILLS AND RADFEMS BELIEVE THE SAME SHIT

Incels hate women, reactionary feminists love a certain kind of woman. This distinction is relevant, especially since incels pose a physical threat to women in general whereas reactionary feminists only attack trans people, black athletes, sex workers, the wrong kind of queers, kinksters, child athletes... Despite their own active hostility toward many types of women, reactionary feminists hold up incels/redpillers/the far right as evidence of the threat that all women live under. There is no doubt that women face misogynist and antifeminist violence. Reactionary feminists are are far from the only ones highlighting this. What’s worth investigating are the given reasons that a target is vulnerable, and what should be done to mitigate risk in the future. In these, an incel and a reactionary feminist are in perfect harmony. Instead of a realistic assessment of risk at an individual level, or an assessment of group dynamics that allowed a survivor-victim to fall through the cracks, both parties will insist that all women are simply unsafe at all times. This notion suits a reactionary feminist’s goal of closed-rank suspicion, and an incel’s dream of terrified submission. This perspective neglects to really ask why things turned out the way they did, because that’s not the point. Whether women are innately inferior or innately vulnerable, we must travel in flocks if we want to survive. The reactionary feminist offers herself as the shepherd, having assured the flock that the enemy is close at hand. Women cannot, of course, be a pack of wolves. Members of a wolf pack work cooperatively but diverge at will.

THE WAR ON GENDER TERROR

The cumulative effect of this mindset and focus is a miserable hypervigilance, which is further hostile to any who are not miserable and vigilant. We know this scrutiny well from living inside a war on terror, which resulted in a vast expansion of state power to exclude, surveil, and punish. Because they have not abandoned their desire to dominate, reactionary feminists would like to do the same along the lines of gender law. Exclusion requires a concrete set of criteria by which a person can be marked acceptable or unacceptable, and there is trouble when a person shifts between the two. Whether you’re an immigration agent or an officer of the gender police, you’ve got to demonize those who shift, and shifting itself. Special attention should be paid to possible ulterior motives. At the overt end, this looks like the myth of the predatory trans woman and the slavery-complicit sex worker. However, these will not be widely accepted until the audience is made nervous by less ridiculous threats with a basis in reality. Sex trafficking is real, and pickup artists really do share tips online about how to pick up, manipulate, and coerce women. However, alarmist chain-mail suggesting that ‘gang members’ are stealing women off the street via box trucks does not reflect reality, but rather supposes that the threat could be any construction worker or labourer with a truck. Given the way people of colour are disproportionately represented in blue-collar work, the implications of this racially-biased hypervigilance should be obvious. The rapid dissemination of information (true or false) online is useful when stoking fear of ulterior motives. Genuine desire to spread a message that could save another woman fuels the sharing of partially-true and emotionally charged statements. Given the existence of incel and pickup artist subcultures, it seems believable that most men could have consumed advice on how to covertly film during sex, or remove a condom without being noticed. Whether that is true or not is irrelevant - the thing to do is be cautious. No matter how they seem, anyone could be concealing their motives. It begins to make sense to suspect a male social worker, or police bathrooms. Furthermore, failure to agree to this assessment of risk is evidence of insufficient solidarity with the rest of the female sex. Solidarity is imperative, given the horrors made visible by feminists who just want to protect women. Inaction could suggest complicity, and asking for a source on a claim is indicative that one does not believe victims. An avalanche of scorn awaits those who ask questions out of turn. the terror cannot end until the defenses are fortified and the infiltrators exposed. As footage of atrocities is replayed during news coverage of foreign occupations, the danger inherent in womanhood must be grimly acknowledged when we consider stepping out into the world.

WHAT IS MY POINT?

Reactionary feminists cling to the second-wave notion of sex and gender as stable categories by which most oppression can be measured. For reactionary feminist strategies to be accepted by a popular feminism informed by intersectionality, popular feminists must at least partially believe in the inherent vulnerability of women or the base instincts of men. While this sentiment was more readily at hand during the second wave of feminism, third wave feminism resists homogenizing by sex, race, or class. While white liberal/popular feminism has an embarrassing tendency to acknowledge intersectionality only out of politeness and/or use it as a cudgel, even performative acknowledgement is a ward against overt essentialist dogma. For this reason, reactionary feminists must harness movements like MeToo, incel attacks, and further misconstrue actual misogynist violence to encourage hypervigilance against terror. The war on gender terror perverts the desire to confront diverse facets of misogyny into the pursuit of covert internal threats. The war compels commitment to defending the home front. A feeling of perpetual vulnerability is the perfect environment for the proliferation of exclusionary strategy. We must feel our goodness and our weakness to the core. Fully enjoying relationships with men, sexual diversity, and private moments of peace are collateral in pursuit of remaining ever-vigilant.

[collegeburnoutsuperstar]

2020 FALL SEMESTER WRAP-UP

These are all the textbooks I was assigned for school this semester. They were all incredibly interesting to read, so I thought I should share them in case anyone has any interest in studying topics such as ecofeminism, women studies, and modern yoga history.

Since these are textbooks, I am not giving them star ratings.

-Why Women Will Save the Planet | Friends of the Earth |

Cities across the globe are growing fast and many simply unsustainable, with polluted air, excessive energy consumption, and an absence of nature. But big cities don’t have to mean a dystopian future. They can be turned around to be powerhouses of well-being and environmental sustainability—if we empower women. C40 Cities Group, a global network of the largest and greenest cities across the planet, is leading the way by delivering practical environmental changes right now. The mayors and city leaders of C40 are committed to make cities good for people and the planet. To help realize this, they have launched Women4Climate, an initiative to promote and support women as climate leaders. This book is a unique collaboration between C40 and Friends of the Earth showcasing pioneering city mayors, key voices in the environmental and feminist movements, and academics. The articles and interviews collectively demonstrate both the need for women’s empowerment for climate action and the powerful change it can bring. They are a rallying call for the planet, for women, and for everyone. [Goodreads]

-Intersectionality | Patricia Hill Collins, Sirma Bilge |

The concept of intersectionality has become a hot topic in academic and activist circles alike. But what exactly does it mean, and why has it emerged as such a vital lens through which to explore how social inequalities of race, class, gender, sexuality, age, ability and ethnicity shape one another? In this new book Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge provide a much-needed, introduction to the field of intersectional knowledge and praxis. They analyze the emergence, growth and contours of the concept and show how intersectional frameworks speak to topics as diverse as human rights, neoliberalism, identity politics, immigration, hip hop, global social protest, diversity, digital media, Black feminism in Brazil, violence and World Cup soccer. Accessibly written and drawing on a plethora of lively examples to illustrate its arguments, the book highlights intersectionality's potential for understanding inequality and bringing about social justice oriented change. Intersectionality will be an invaluable resource for anyone grappling with the main ideas, debates and new directions in this field. [Goodreads]

-Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction | Rosemarie Tong, Tina Fernandez Botts |

A classic resource on feminist theory, Feminist Thought offers a clear, comprehensive, and incisive introduction to the major traditions of feminist theory: from liberal feminism, radical feminism, and Marxist and socialist feminism to women of color feminisms, care-focused feminism, psychoanalytic feminism, existentialist feminism, postmodern and poststructural feminism, and ecofeminism. The fifth edition has been thoroughly revised, and now includes a new chapter on third wave feminism and queer theory. In addition, the discussion of women of color feminisms has been expanded into two chapters: women of color feminisms in the United States and women of color feminisms on the world stage. Learning tools like the end-of-chapter questions and the bibliography organized by topics within chapters make Feminist Thought an essential and handy resource for students and thinkers who want to understand the theoretical origins, current state of, and future trajectories of feminist thought and action. [Goodreads]

-Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice | Mark Singleton|

Yoga is so prevalent in the modern world--practiced by pop stars, taught in schools, and offered in yoga centers, health clubs, and even shopping malls--that we take its presence, and its meaning, for granted. But how did the current yoga boom happen? And is it really rooted in ancient Indian practices, as many of its adherents claim? In this groundbreaking book, Mark Singleton calls into question many commonly held beliefs about the nature and origins of postural yoga (asana) and suggests a radically new way of understanding the meaning of yoga as it is practiced by millions of people across the world today. Singleton shows that, contrary to popular belief, there is no evidence in the Indian tradition for the kind of health and fitness-oriented asana practice that dominates the global yoga scene of the twenty-first century. Singleton's surprising--and surely controversial--thesis is that yoga as it is popularly practiced today owes a greater debt to modern Indian nationalism and, even more surprisingly, to the spiritual aspirations of European bodybuilding and early 20th-century women's gymnastic movements of Europe and America, than it does to any ancient Indian yoga tradition. This discovery enables Singleton to explain, as no one has done before, how the most prevalent forms of postural yoga, like Ashtanga, Bikram and "Hatha" yoga, came to be the hugely popular phenomena they are today. Drawing on a wealth of rare documents from archives in India, the UK and the USA, as well as interviews with the few remaining, now very elderly figures in the 1930s Mysore asana revival, Yoga Body turns the conventional wisdom about yoga on its head. [Goodreads]

-Ecofeminism: Women, Culture, Nature | Karen J. Warren |

Here the potential strengths and weaknesses of the growing ecofeminist movement are critically assessed by scholars in a variety of academic disciplines and vocations, including anthropology, biology, chemical engineering, education, political science, recreation and leisure studies, sociology, and political organizing. [Goodreads]

[camaradarulitos]

There is something very odd about the prostitution debate. While the absolute majority of sex buyers are male, an overwhelming majority of intellectuals defending prostitution are women. It’s a strange phenomenon that most definitely needs its own analysis.

The john should, in theory, have every reason to worry right now. He is, for the first time, at the center of discussion. Legislators are increasingly targeting the sex buyer, or “demand” as NGOs call it. The Nordic model has been praised by the EU parliament as the most efficient legislation to curb trafficking, and the survivors’ movement is growing all around the world. Women are speaking out, as in the recently published book, Prostitution Narratives: Stories of Survival in the Sex Trade, about what johns really do to them. It is the first time in history that so many women are collectively revealing what goes on in the world of prostitution — a world where a man, up until now, could do almost anything with a woman and no one would find out. Those times are over — the sex buyer is becoming visible. Tension is mounting. Have we reached the point in history where a man actually has to be liked by a woman in order to get inside her pants?

Despite all this, the john remains, for the most part, silent. He does not need to speak. As always, when a man is threatened, a woman comes along to help him out. At the forefront of international “sex work” discourse, we generally do not find a sex buyer, but a female academic. In any magazine, at any conference, at any event where the john is to be even remotely criticized — a pro-prostitution female academic is there to defend him.

Who is she? Well, she calls herself “subversive,” “revolutionary,” even “feminist.” That is exactly why the john needs her as his ambassador. A defence of prostitution coming from this woman makes prostitution look queer, LGBT-friendly, modern, fair trade, socialist — the very epitome of female liberation. But most importantly, when she speaks, we forget that the sex buyer exists.

The tacit agreement between the john and the pro-prostitution female academic is that she will do anything to defend his acts, while ensuring that he stays in the shadows. She will speak incessantly about prostitution, but never mention him. Her task is to make sure prostitution seems like an all-female affair. The queer academic will use the prostituted woman as a shield, blocking the john from the limelight. She will use the prostituted woman any way she can — analyzing her, re- and deconstructing her, holding her up as a role model, and using her as a microphone (i.e. a career booster), thereby positioning her as “good” vs. the “evil” feminist.

This move perfectly mimics prostitution itself: the prostitute is visible, standing on the street or in a bar, while the buyer only visits and leaves — there is no shame attached to him, and no myths surrounding him. The function of the queer academic is to ensure things stay that way.

What we are dealing with here is a defense of prostitution constructed of a double shield. Anyone wanting to debate prostitution will have a hard time getting to the john, since the female pro-prostitution academic and the “sex worker” are standing in between. Any attempt to speak to what the john does, says, or thinks will bounce back into discussions of female identities and become a cat-fight in an alley of mirrors.

This academic has her own definition of intellectual debate. When she speaks, she calls it “listening.” According to her, she doesn’t actually speak in favor of prostitution, she merely “listens to sex workers.” The louder she speaks, the more proof that she “listens.” When someone opposed to prostitution speaks, however, she calls it “silencing.”

The emergence of the survivors’ movement has, however, shown that this “listening” is anything but unconditional. When survivors of prostitution speak out against prostitution, the queer academic either does not listen, or actively debates against them. Here it is revealed that the person she really defends is not “sex workers” at all, but the john.

She is the type who will start a Twitter storm if a man is caught “mansplaining” or “manspreading,” if someone calls her “sweetie,” or states that women get pregnant instead of “people.” One must wonder how her outrage at details can co-exist with her complete callousness towards an industry which is, according to studies, the most deadly one women could be in.

We must not forget that for her, just like for the john, a woman in prostitution is and remains an “other” type of woman. Sure, she’ll adopt a tone of admiration where the john has a tone of contempt, but the meaning is the same.

Here is the truth: the function of this academic is not that of a revolutionary or a feminist — she is not trying to defend women — rather, she is the sex buyer’s nanny. One of the oldest patriarchal functions that exists. She soothes him when he is worried and takes on his enemies. She makes sure nobody will take away his toys, whatever he does to them.

Remember, the live-in nanny of yesteryear always treated the son of the house as simultaneously master and child — obeying him, cleaning up after him, and letting him cry on her lap. The nanny, more than any other character in patriarchy, is the understanding woman. She cannot stand to see her young master hungry — he will always eat before she eats — but she does not treat him as a man with responsibilities. No matter his age, he will always remain a boy who can’t help what he does. This function has allowed men of the upper classes to be bosses and reckless children all at once. One cannot understand patriarchy without understanding how the nanny has shaped the upper echelons of masculinity.

The john embodies exactly this type. He is the man who will command and expect his every whim to be catered to, but will not take responsibility for what he does. If he ruins other people’s lives, spreads STDs to women in prostitution and to his wife, contributes to the organized slave trade — so what? Not his problem.

Today’s john might not have a literal nanny anymore, but what he has found in the female pro-prostitution academic is akin to it: A “queer” nanny who soothes his worries, takes care of his needs, and defends him against the outside world.

The john can go on bragging about his business trips and all the “whores” he’s going to fuck, though he would never accept his daughter becoming one (nor would he, for that matter, marry one). He can watch porn but forbid his girlfriend to “act slutty,” and never will his nanny hold him accountable. She will never enter the online forums where sex buyers discuss and “review” the women and girls they pay to inform these johns that, “Actually the term is ‘sex worker,’ not hooker.” She will never scold him for stigmatizing or having double standards. Men are men, after all…

Well, if that’s the case, let them grow up and speak for themselves. If buying sex is such a great thing, let the men come forth and say what they do and why — in their own words, the same words they use when they go to brothels. And when survivors call johns out, step aside. Don’t let these men cling to your skirt for protection. Queer nannies of the world, are you even paid to act as sex buyers’ ambassadors? Or are you volunteering for them — protecting them from accountability, responsibility, and maturity — as women have always done?

Queer nanny, it’s time to resign — you too deserve a better fate.

[impertinentleft]

And She Ought Suffer What She Must?

Just because she works with her hands? Just because she works in the skies? Just because she works out of sight? Just because she works with guys? Just because she works in the spotlight? She ought suffer what she must? No factory floor, no mile high, no shop floor, nor trade plied. She must not.

First with the bow in her hair, then the colour of her dress, then the row of dolls she’s given, then the words of her Aunt Bess, and the hands of her Uncle, then her mother’s cooking, and her father’s rage. Then the roles she’s given, then the magazines and the banners, and the movies and the ads. Then the words and the shame.

It does not detract from others’ suffering when we see hers. We must stand for her, in every case. From one bears all – the whole is built from smaller parts. What’s evil permeates not just the worst but much of the mundane.

It’s not okay. It’s not okay in public, it’s not okay in private, near or far, wherever: it is our concern. Her home must be safe. Her street must be safe, her commute must be safe, her work must be safe.

It’s not a matter of personal preference or performance, it’s seeing others with full humanity. We must side with her when she’s yelled at, when she’s cornered, when she’s leered at, and when she’s groped, cut, raped, bashed or slaughtered.

I wrote these words more than a year ago. Reading over them again I feel a bit embarrassed by their forced nature, and my attempt at a poetic structure. I stand by the feelings behind them, and what I think my argument was - that misogyny should be met at all levels with resistance, no matter how trivial. This is because the social structure is pervaded by an ideology of masculine supremacy. There is a connectedness between the trivial and the hyperviolent, and recognising that makes it imperative to alter our behaviour at all levels, if we truly are concerned about the cause of gendered violence.

The context of what I wrote bears analysing too. I put pen to paper after having a heated discussion with a co-worker in 2019, regarding allegations made by an actor, who claimed a co-worker of hers at the time, Geoffrey Rush, had acted inappropriately towards her. It is here that I would link an article describing the allegations, but Australia’s defamation laws are so skewed that none exist and, strictly speaking, I too am beholden to those laws. Suffice to say that the discussion I had with the colleague assumed the allegations true, but this does not detract from the impetus for my writing, after having that discussion.

My recollection is that my co-worker felt that the complainant had overreacted by making a complaint about the alleged conduct. She felt not only that it was not worth making a complaint about, but also that by making that complaint the accuser was detracting from other, presumably more ‘real’, conduct and behaviour perpetrated against women. My colleague also seemed vaguely suspicious of the then emerging ‘#metoo movement’. As I hope is apparent from what I’ve written, I did not (and do not) agree with her arguments. As far as I see it, the victim in this instance, as well as those who spoke up about their own experiences during that time and since, are workers demanding safe working conditions. The end goal of which is not merely to demand that bosses improve those conditions (albeit, this is extremely important), but the end goal should also be worker control of the arts and the banishment of capital’s hold in the industry.

Thinking on the discussion now, my co-worker’s arguments remind me of Helen Garner’s book, The First Stone, which I would recommend to all interested in these issues (even if I do not particularly agree with Garner on much of what she says in that book). In her book Garner investigates allegations made by two students of the University of Melbourne, who alleged that the head of a prestigious college had sexually harassed them. Garner’s book still attracts controversy for some of the conclusions she entertains, and some utterances she makes (particularly in regard to the claimants).[1]

Garner is frank about her initial response to the news,[2] her past encounters with men acting inappropriately,[3] and her feelings about the players involved (the accusers, the accused, and everyone around them). She sways between wanting to understand the young women’s intentions,[4] feeling that they were overreacting,[5] and perversely extolling the polite virtue of the accused and lamenting his lost career. It can make hard reading for the converted feminist (or ally thereof) who believes both in sexual liberation and the existence of a patriarchal social structure. It should also be said, for me at least, the book offers important insight into how a woman, longing for the days of sexual playfulness, has come to feel increasingly invisible.

I recommend it, despite it’s challenging subject matter and defense of arguments I don’t agree with, because it is a well-written and complex analysis of competing schools of thought in modern feminism and criminology. Garner offers compelling arguments in favour both of my co-worker’s view and the more radical approach (I like to think I inhabit).

I share the feelings well summed up by Rachel Hennessy, writing 20 years later for Overland (hard copies of which can be found on many Melbourne university campuses including the one in question). Hennessy describes the experience of reading The First Stone as ‘being betrayed by a good friend’.[6] It is important to read the book because Garner’s ultimate conclusions represent an alternative view of sexual equality that many still hold, and clearly, the dialogue with my colleague is precisely what Garner was grappling with herself, and continues to be debated among those of us who deign to call ourselves feminists.

It is also tangentially an important book for its criminological content. Garner analyses what institutional response ought be taken against sexual violence, and makes interesting arguments about proportionality. We often argue for harsher penalties and sanctions for perpetrators (and understandably so), but this can be uncomfortable for those of us who know that our penal institutions are woefully inadequate to deal with any form of anti-social behaviour. It can be easy to argue for the end to the carceral state and defunding the police when we talk about the wrongly convicted and racialised policing (for instance), but it is far more challenging to argue for those things in the face of what is clearly objectionable conduct. If the state is to be involved in preventing harm (which it should be), does the argument against imprisonment hold true for all crimes or just some of them? Exploration of that question is best left for another time.

What we see from Garner’s book, and what I learnt from my discussion with my co-worker, is that, generationally, as well as politically, we are still divided on the issue. For those of us who have a more absolutist approach against sexual misconduct, it can be confronting to have these discussions. My writings above were an emotional response to what was a challenging dialogue. An attempt to elucidate the thinking that sexual violence is a part of a wider culture, one of misogyny, which finds expression not only in depraved acts of violence (like rape) but also in the mundane gender distinctions (like a man badgering a woman on public transport). If we act on principle that we ought be treated equitably as well as that all are inherently equal, then how is that we justify not resisting the trivial expressions of inequity as well as the more dangerous.

[1] Gay Alcorn, ‘Helen Garner’s The First Stone is outdated. But her questions about sexual harassment aren’t ‘, The Guardian (7 January 2018) <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/08/helen-garners-the-first-stone-is-outdated-but-her-questions-about-sexual-harassment-arent>.

[2] Helen Garner, ‘The First Stone’, page 16.

[3] See, eg, ibid page 62.

[4] Ibid page 78.

[5] Ibid 16.

[6] Rachel Hennessy, ‘ Why Helen Garner was wrong’, the Overland (24 July 2015) < https://overland.org.au/2015/07/why-helen-garner-was-wrong/comment-page-1/>.

[crimethinc]

Interview with the Internationalist Commune in Rojava: Facing the Threat of Invasion

As Turkey begins its attack on Rojava, the autonomous region in Northern Syria, we are calling for people all around the world to mobilize to impose consequences on Turkey and the Trump administration for this senseless atrocity. We present the following short interview with participants in the Internationalist Commune, one of several projects in Rojava that involves participants from around the world, to offer visibility to some of the many people who may be murdered in a Turkish offensive and to the worthwhile projects they are undertaking. The interview was conducted after Trump gave Turkey permission to invade Syria two days ago, with death’s scythe hanging in the air.

A list of upcoming protests in the US and Canada scheduled in solidarity with Rojava is available here.

A call to action to respond to the Turkish invasion.

A revolution began in Rojava in 2012, radically changing the lives of millions of people in northern Syria. The Kurdish people joined with several other peoples in the region, organizing themselves into autonomous councils, communes, and cooperatives, in the vacuum created by the withdrawal of the authoritarian Assad regime at the beginning of the Syrian Civil War. Women’s self-organization has been a driving force in this social and political revolution. A unique multi-ethnic and multi-religious project has emerged, which today provides for the peaceful coexistence of millions of Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians, Yazidis, Armenians, Christians, and Muslims. At the same time, people in Rojava have been at the forefront of fighting the Islamic State (ISIS), sustaining casualties well into five figures.

For months now, Turkey has threatened to attack the Democratic Federation of North-East Syria. The government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has announced that it is determined to invade Rojava, which will inevitably result in the ethnic cleansing of Kurdish groups, the resumption of jihadist violence from ISIS and others, and the rekindling of civil war in the country.

After the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) achieved victory over the last territory remaining to the Islamic State, the US government tricked the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) into dismantling defenses along the border with Turkey, promising to secure peace in the region and discouraging them from seeking other international allies. As soon as they had done this, Trump gave Turkey permission to invade.

In the midst of this terrifying situation, our comrades Facção Fictícia conducted the following brief interview with the Internationalist Commune, a revolutionary enclave in Rojava that welcomes volunteers from all over the planet interested in ecological, horizontal, and communal practices.

Describe the work of the Internationalist Commune of Rojava. Where are you located and what is your relationship with the surrounding communities?

The Internationalist Commune is a place of communal living and learning situated near Derik, in the Cizre canton of North-Eastern Syria. Its aim is to be a place where internationals first learn the bases of the revolution, such as Jineolojî and the history of Kurdistan and Middle-East, as an introduction to the activities in which they will participate then in other places. This educational aspect is organized through the Internationalist Academy Șehid Helîn Qereçox, which is located inside the commune. This is one of the main activities of the Commune. But it is also a place that serves as a base for internationals involved in variety of activities, where we can discuss our experiences, exchange on ideological topics and further our understanding of the revolution. Practical activities are also carried out with the Make Rojava Green Again campaign, which implements ecological projects.

What are the main principles and values of the commune? How is it connected in people’s daily lives there with other forms of struggle such as anarchism, Zapatismo, feminism, and ecology?

One ongoing discussion at the Commune is—what does it mean to be an internationalist ? So we can say that it is behind this word that a lot of our values are placed, such as international solidarity, remembering our şehids [martyrs], and the desire to learn from this revolution as well as from all revolutionary history.

The internationals here come from very different backgrounds, which cover said topics, so we can say that these struggles are part of this new internationalism, and we learn from all of them every day through discussion. More concretely, here, women have their own space and are organized autonomously. People who want to take part in ecological activism can do so through Make Rojava Green Again, but also everyone at the Commune is involved in the ecological works. Our connection to anarchism and Zapatismo is expressed by the portraits of figures from these movements that hang on the walls, such as Comandanta Ramona or Federica Montseny, and their achievements are discussed in education or more informally. Also, through our media projects, such as the Internationalist Commune website and the RiseUp4Rojava campaign, we share information and perspective on radical movements around the world and maintain solid bonds with them.

A video about the RiseUp4Rojava campaign with English subtitles.

What has changed in the context of daily life and grassroots organizing since the collapse of ISIS as an organization that controlled territory?

The fall of ISIS has made it possible to go further in organizing society in a communal way and with a longer-term perspective than we could while facing the constant threat they posed. But some hidden cells still exist and terrorist attacks are happening regularly. In addition, the presence of many members of ISIS in the region, for whom it is unclear whether they will be judged in their home countries, poses a serious security threat.

Turkey has openly declared itself the chief enemy of the achievements of the revolution in Rojava. How does this impact the region and the politics there? Is this threat indeed the greatest so far?

Right now, as we write these lines, we are facing the threat of an immediate invasion, as Erdoğan has announced that Turkey is about to attack and the USA is removing its troops from the region. These threats have been made several times, with increasing intensity over the past year, peaking before in December/January and July/August, when we thought a war could start any time—possibly as a total war, since we know what Turkey has been capable of in the past. Indeed, they’ve been announcing it: they want ethnic cleansing, they want genocide.

So yes, Turkey is the greatest threat in the region since the beginning of the revolution. In such times, when we have to freeze our projects to think about our security, it impacts all aspects of society. Everyone asks themselves: what do we do if war starts? So a lot of our activities are undertaken in relation to the context of war, and our politics become focused on finding a democratic [sic] solution to the Turkish threats and post-ISIS situation.

We communicate more about the achievements of the revolution, to show what is in danger. But we also try to keep life going as it should, and somehow this pushes us to be even more democratic, go further in the revolution, as a response.

What is your perspective regarding the future for the revolution and the legacy of the Internationalist Commune for revolutionaries around the world?

The moment we are living now is historic: the revolution will either grow stronger or be annihilated. What is at stake is not only the revolution in North-Eastern Syria, but the possibility of a revolution in the whole Middle-East and worldwide. We hope the seriousness of the situation will push people around the world to express solidarity, rise up, and maybe come and join us. The Rojava Revolution should illuminate and inspire other revolutionary movements. The Internationalist Commune will keep on providing news and perspective on the situation here, with an international focus, and welcome expressions of solidarity from around the world.

Thank you very much for taking some time in this delicate moment. We hope this interview will convey to people around the world why it is important to support to the people in Rojava. Any final considerations?

The Rojava revolution is a women’s revolution and it’s everyone’s revolution. Everyone should be concerned about what’s happening here because what is threatened is the possibility to live a free life, a democratic and communal life, with grassroots, feminist, and ecological principles. So talk to your neighbors, to your colleagues, to your grandmother about it!

Thank you for your solidarity. Down with all fascists!

From the Internationalist Commune of Rojava

[a-room-of-my-own]

quillette[.]2019/11/04/meet-the-gay-activists-whove-had-enough-of-britains-ultra-woke-homophobes/ 🙌

Are gay people allowed to meet and organise in defense of their interests? A hard yes, you might have thought. But some apparently disagree.

Witness the response to the London-based LGB Alliance, a newly created British group that asserts “the rights of lesbian, gay and bisexual people to define themselves as same-sex-attracted.” The group’s creation has sparked vitriol, not from the traditionalist Christians or social conservatives who might have opposed such groups in the 1980s or 1990s, but from the self-described progressive left.

Readers who aren’t steeped in the most fashionable iteration of identity politics might now be scratching their heads. Unless you’re taking cues from Leviticus, what could possibly be wrong with saying it’s okay to be gay?

The answer is that, in acknowledging the reality of same-sex attraction, you are indirectly acknowledging the reality and importance of biological sex as a driver of attraction. You are also indirectly acknowledging that members of the opposite sex are not members of your dating pool—even if they tell you that they share your gender identity. Which means you have effectively pled guilty to that grave modern thoughtcrime, transphobia.

If you are not on Twitter, have not set foot on a college campus in the last few years, and don’t read woke web sites such as Teen Vogue, where this sort of thing is taken very seriously, you may imagine that I am engaged in some kind of Swiftian send-up of identity politics gone amok. After all, just about every single person reading this knows quite well how sexual attraction works. But I am quite serious: Activist groups that brand themselves as mainstream representatives of the LGBT community not only preach the idea that true attraction is based on gender, they also have sought to de-platform and mob anyone within their ranks who points out that this idea is completely divorced from the way the human brain actually works. In this make-believe world, to be gay—in the way gay people actually experience being gay—is to be a transphobe.

This is not an entirely new development. As gay-rights groups pivoted to become “trans-inclusive” in recent years, this de facto homophobia has emerged in plain sight. Rather than simply combat violence, bullying and discrimination against trans people, and press for better health care and representation for them—all noble and important goals—those groups have taken on an ideological mission. One might even call it quasi-spiritual: They have replaced biological sex with gender identity—an indefinable internal essence that one demonstrates outwardly by adherence to masculine or feminine stereotypes—throughout their literature and activism.

Stonewall UK, for example, was set up in 1989 to fight Section 28 of the Local Government Act of 1988, which banned schools from “promoting homosexuality” and “pretended” (i.e., gay) “family relationships.” But that same group now defines gay and lesbian people as those who are “attracted to the same gender” (my emphasis), and that evidence of transphobia shall be taken to include “the denial/refusal to accept someone else’s gender identity.” The logical consequence of these distorted definitions is to define same-sex-attraction as bigotry. In 1988, it was conservative homophobes in government claiming that homosexuality was a dangerous, counterfeit identity. Now the homophobes are the progressives running organizations that claim to champion the interests of lesbians and gay men.

Of course, doctrinaire trans-rights activists might attack straights with equal vigour—since straight men and straight women are just as focused on the reality of biological sex as gay men and lesbians. But all bullies seek out the weak and vulnerable, which is why they now rail against the LGB Alliance with more fury than they direct at society as a whole. That’s why the LGB Alliance’s launch meeting was an invitation-only affair, held at a secret location—the sort of security precaution that one might implement when moderate Muslims break away jihadists. “This is an historic moment for the Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual movement,” tweeted Allison Bailey, the criminal-defence barrister who chaired the event. “LGB Alliance launched in London tonight, and we mean business. Spread the word, gender extremism is about to meet its match.”

Based on the reaction from defenders of the new gender orthodoxy, you would have thought Bailey were a Cossack leader announcing a pogrom. “This is frightening and nasty. There is no LGB without the T,” tweeted Owen Jones, who is perhaps Britain’s best-known gay journalist. (This is not new behaviour for Jones, who often starts pile-ons against anyone he regards as transphobic—especially women.) Anthony Watson, an advisor to the opposition Labour Party, said he was “horrified and disgusted,” and described the Alliance as a “#hategroup.” Linda Riley, the editor of Diva, a lesbian magazine that proclaims itself “trans-inclusive,” adapted Martin Niemöller’s famous 1946 confession, First They Came, Tweeting, “First they came for the T…”—thereby suggesting that refusing to prioritize the artifice of gender ideology over inborn sexual orientation is the first step toward some kind of real or metaphorical Holocaust.

Trans activists also used a despicable tactic that now has become a common feature of these cultish campaigns: attempting to beggar those they disagree with. Gendered Intelligence, a non-profit group that works exclusively with trans people (and apparently sees no irony in attacking an organisation focused exclusively on the rest of the LGBT grouping), urged followers to write to Bailey’s law chambers in London, “expressing your concern with the barrister in question and with the new group.” This same mob also sent equally spurious complaints to JustGiving, which hosted the Alliance’s fundraising page. The company panicked and temporarily suspended the Alliance’s account.

The original mover behind the Alliance was Kate Harris, a lesbian and veteran civil-rights campaigner, who a decade ago was a Stonewall fundraiser. She had become increasingly enraged by the harassment of lesbian women that was tolerated, even encouraged, by such groups. Harris and Beverley Jackson, another veteran campaigner, had been writing to Stonewall executives for months, seeking a discussion about the malign impact of gender-identity extremism. They asked Stonewall’s chief executive at the time, Ruth Hunt, whether she was worried about the enormous increase in the number of teenage girls attending GIDS, Britain’s gender-identity clinic for under-18s, and what she would say to the growing number of “de-transitioners”—people who abandon their trans identity and return to an identity corresponding to their biological sex. Many of these girls (as most of them are) describe themselves, with hindsight, as having been motivated by internalised homophobia.

“What upsets me most is that this is all based on the legitimacy we created,” Harris told me. It was this anger that inspired her to gather a group of notables, some of whom had been involved in Stonewall during its early days, to draft an open letter to the group’s current management and board for publication in the Times of London on October 4, 2018. The signatories included Simon Fanshawe, one of Stonewall’s founders, novelist Philip Hensher, actor James Dreyfus, feminist campaigner Julie Bindel, and several trans people who regard Stonewall’s divisive approach as likely to harm the interests of the trans community in the long run.

“We urge Stonewall to acknowledge that there are a range of valid viewpoints around sex, gender and transgender politics, and to acknowledge specifically that a conflict exists between transgenderism and sex-based women’s rights,” the authors wrote. “We call on Stonewall to commit to fostering an atmosphere of respectful debate.”

In response, Ms. Hunt pretended that the letter writers were inventing some kind of non-existent tension. “The petition also asks us to acknowledge that there is a conflict between trans rights and ‘sex based women’s rights,’” she wrote. “We do not and will not acknowledge this. Doing so would imply that we do not believe that trans people deserve the same rights as others.”

A year after this fruitless exchange, it had become clear no change of direction was forthcoming. Ms. Hunt had stepped down, and Stonewall was looking for a new CEO. One potential candidate who was approached by a recruiter disclosed that exploratory questions about whether it might be possible to soften the organisation’s dogmatic position on gender were dismissed out of hand. Many of the signatories of the 2018 open letter decided it was time for a decisive break from an organization that, while pretending to represent L, G,B and T alike, had come to prioritize the most extreme T faction.

Despite all the harassment to which LGB Alliance already has been subject, the group still got off to a flying start. Its JustGiving page has been reinstated, and is on course to hit a £25,000 initial target. The attacks on Bailey sparked widespread outrage and sympathy. Gendered Intelligence deleted its outrageous tweet about her. (Such a personal and highly politicized attack is unlikely to have gone down well with the Charities Commission, which regulates non-profits). Even fans of Owen Jones think a witch hunt against Bailey—a black lesbian from a working-class background—was a low blow. Several publications have written about the LGB Alliance, painting it as everything from a saviour of left-wing politics from its own worst elements, to a front for U.S. evangelicals seeking to export America’s culture wars. The articles in praise were pleasant to read; those lambasting the group neatly underscored the urgency of its mandate. All in all, the Alliance can be said to have arrived. So what next?

Like many of us, Bailey saw parallels with the actions of an abusive spouse. “Just think about what this means LGB,” she Tweeted. “The T has said that this is a marriage that we cannot leave, even if the T becomes abusive. If we try to leave, we will be threatened. If we do manage to leave, we will be starved of cash.”

On its agenda will be protecting women’s sex-based rights—including the right to have certain services offered in spaces free of male bodies. The group will also be campaigning against legislative changes that would compromise female safety.

Stonewall and other trans groups frequently misrepresent Britain’s Equality Act of 2010, which states clearly that single-sex spaces and facilities are perfectly lawful provided they are a “proportionate means to a legitimate aim.” They insist, falsely, that separately stipulated protections against discrimination and harassment for trans-identified people ensure that they can access all spaces intended for the opposite sex. Under such false guidance, Girlguiding UK and Sport England have gone “trans-inclusive,” a euphemism used to describe policies that enable males and females to “self-identify” into spaces intended for the opposite sex. Anyone with even the faintest grasp of biological reality will see immediately why such policies impact most heavily on girls and women.

The Alliance also will lobby for a change of tack at GIDS, Britain’s gender-identity clinic for under-18s, which is under fire for being too quick to affirm children’s claims of a cross-gender identity. It will disseminate unbiased information on the risks of transition and the evidence that gender confusion in children usually resolves itself during puberty, so that young people and their parents have an alternative to a gender-identity narrative based wholly on mechanical affirmation of a child’s claims. It will also seek to give a voice to detransitioners, whom trans activists often accuse of never having been trans in the first place (a claim that completely contradicts these same activists’ insistence on a policy of unfettered self-identification, which equates thinking you are trans with being trans).

If the Alliance flourishes, it could help forge a new consensus on trans rights, one that doesn’t rely on a denial of the reality of biological sex or sexual orientation. And who knows? If sanity prevails, the LGB and T communities may one day find rapprochement.

Helen Joyce is finance editor for The Economist.