#patriarchy is a SYSTEM and requires a SYSTEMIC approach to liberate women from it

[softbutchvodkasoup]

Idk man liberals will say "listen to sex workers!!1" until the sex workers in question are trafficking / prostitution survivors (majority of whom are women of color, from the global south, aka the vast majority of sex workers) calling for the abolition of the sex industry, and materially challenging this specific tool of the male supremacy system known as patriarchy.

[tlacatecctzin]

The Decline of the "Left" in Regards to Women's Issues: A Radical Feminist Perspective

In recent years, the decline of the "left" in addressing women's issues has become increasingly evident. This erosion is not only a matter of policy but also a deeper ideological shift that has led to a significant misunderstanding of feminism, the inclusion of trans and other queer (TQA+) people into the feminist movement, and the queer takeover of anarchism. As radical feminists, it is crucial to analyze and critique these developments to reclaim and refocus the movement on the liberation of women.

The Misunderstanding of Feminism

Feminism, at its core, is a movement aimed at dismantling the patriarchal structures that oppress women, for our liberation.

However, contemporary leftist circles often misunderstand or intentionally obscure this goal. Instead of focusing on the material conditions and systemic issues that women face, there is a tendency to dilute feminism into a broader, less defined struggle for "equality" that fails to address the unique challenges women encounter.

Neoliberalism and modern leftist ideologies have changed the definition of feminism from women's liberation to "equality" for "women" within existing structures.

However, equality for women in this system is not only impossible but could never be real while supporting queer ideologies, capitalist systems, or generally liberal politics.

This misunderstanding undermines the movement's potency and distracts from the primary goal of eradicating patriarchal oppression.

Inclusion of Trans and Other Queer People into Feminism

The inclusion of trans and other queer identities into the feminist movement has been a contentious issue. While the fight against all forms of oppression is crucial, conflating gender identity with the distinct biological and social realities of women can obscure the specific nature of women's oppression under patriarchy.

As radical feminists, we recognise that the inclusion of trans women in female-only spaces and discussions often shifts the focus away from issues that uniquely affect women, such as reproductive rights, sexual violence, and economic inequality.

This shift not only muddles the objectives of feminism but also compromises the safety and integrity of female-only spaces, undermines the well-being of women and girls, and dilutes the definition of what it means to be a woman.

The Queer Takeover of Anarchism

Anarchism has historically been aligned with radical feminist principles due to its opposition to hierarchical and oppressive structures. Anarcho-communism advocates for a classless, stateless society where resources are shared equitably, and power dynamics are dismantled. These principles naturally complement the feminist struggle against patriarchy and the liberation of women from systemic oppression.

However, in recent years, the increasing focus on queer theory within anarchist circles has overshadowed the discussion of women's liberation. The inclusion of gender theory, and the prioritization of queer and trans issues, often clashes with the foundational principles of anarcho-communism.

Mutual aid emphasizes the importance of collective support and solidarity within communities. It is rooted in the idea that individuals and groups should help each other to achieve common goals, particularly in the face of oppression. The focus on individual identity and the fluidity of these illegitimate identities, promoted by queer theory can fragment this collective approach, diverting attention from the systemic issues that affect women as a class and weakening the solidarity needed to dismantle patriarchy.

Direct action, another key tenet of anarchism, involves taking immediate, grassroots actions to address injustices and bring about social change. This approach requires a clear understanding of the specific oppressions and systemic issues faced by different groups. The prioritization of queer and trans issues often shifts the focus away from the direct actions needed to address women's unique struggles, again, such as fighting for reproductive rights, combating sexual violence, and achieving economic equality.

Anarchism seeks to abolish all forms of domination and corrupt authority, but the promotion of queer theory within the movement has introduced new forms of ideological conformity and social policing, where dissenting views on gender identity are often silenced and met with violent threats. This undermines the anarchist commitment to free thought and open debate.

Moreover, I must repeat that the inclusion of trans women in female-only spaces and discussions often shifts the focus away from the systemic oppression of women.

The prioritization of queer and trans issues within anarchism can dilute the movement's ability to address and dismantle the patriarchal structures that fundamentally oppress women. To truly advance the cause of women's liberation, it is essential to realign anarchist principles with a focus on the material conditions and systemic issues that women face, ensuring that the struggle against patriarchy remains central to the movement.

Reclaiming Feminism for Women

To counter these trends, radical feminists must assert the primacy of women's liberation in feminist discourse and practice. This involves a return to the roots of feminism, emphasizing the unique experiences and challenges women face under patriarchy. It is essential to create and protect female-only spaces where women can organize and discuss their issues without the intrusion of broader, less focused agendas.

Moreover, radical feminists should critically engage with leftist movements to realign them with the goal of women's liberation. This involves challenging the ideological shifts that have led to the marginalization of women's issues and advocating for a feminism that is uncompromising in its focus on dismantling patriarchy.

The decline of the "left" in regards to women's issues is a pressing concern that radical feminists must address. By understanding the roots of this decline and actively working to reclaim feminism for women, we can revitalize the movement and continue the fight for true liberation.

[feministtraysh]

idk why a lot of radfems are getting unreasonably intense & hostile about so many issues we discuss in our community. Disagreement & nuance is one of the reasons why radical feminism appeals to so many of us, &why TRA is so off-putting. We can disagree w/one another, defer to multiply marginalized women's experiences when relevant, and can acknowledge power dynamics w/in our community. Y'all need to start getting more comfortable sitting in irreconcilably, ambiguity, & opposition. That's what happens when a class-based movement includes 1/2 the population -- there's gonna be a wild diversity of experiences along every axis of oppression and we're going TO marginalize & BE marginalized by each other.

There is no Oppression Olympics or additive model of marginalization -- the ability to organize such a large number of marginalized groups under the banner of female liberation is what allows us to see the farce of patriarchy & how it manifests in every community to oppress women. Defer to women who experience oppression along an axis in which you belong to the dominant group. Try to understand their frustrations, take their critiques seriously, and see how you can be in active solidarity with those women.

Conversely, if you're part of a subjugated group, anger is understandable & often justifiable, but it is sooo counterproductive to levy that anger at other women (esp ad hoc attacks, etc.) b/c it shuts down conversation & discourages solidarity. If you find yourself unable to communicate without becoming hostile to others, just sit the convo out until you can better communicate your valid points later. Men are the ones creating these systems & incentives for women to participate in oppression of other women -- some women buy into that, and that's shitty of them, but the goal isn't to exclude those who make shit choices from a range of shit options from radfem community/discourse.

It is very, very possible -- and of critical importance -- that radical feminism acknowledge & withstand the reality of intra-community oppression & the specific needs of multiply marginalized women. <br>The postmodernist discourse that has led to the TRA movement/ideology got its start by exploiting intra-community disagreements w/in 2nd wave feminism. They asserted that such infighting made class-based organization under the category of woman/female useless at best & inherently oppressive at worst. At its core, radical feminism vehemently disagrees. But we can only maintain the position that oppression of women/females as a class by men/males as a class is worth organizing around if we allow for mature, reality-based acknowledgment that women do oppress each other in other ways, the anger & frustration of those multiply marginalized women is justified, and consideration/validation of that anger makes radical feminist theory/discourse stronger. The infighting is damaging and declaring women to be out of the "group" of radical feminism is such a TRA mindset. You're not in or out of radical feminism -- radical feminism is a body of feminist theory/thought as well as an activist movement & methodology that, again, fights for the rights of 1/2 the world's population. There's an inherent diversity of experiences & opinions, as there should be.

Defining the boundaries of what is & isn't radical feminism is still important (otherwise we lose coherency) but that doesn't mean it's productive to create an in group/out group based on ideological purity or marginalization membership. That is the type of fucking garbage, authoritarian approach that radical feminism rejects, as it either drives a wedge between radical feminists & weakens the movement or gets others to thought-police themselves into accepting/propagating an ideology solely out of fear of being outcast from the group. This diminishes the intellectual work, consideration, & critique that radical feminism requires of all women. AND that thought-policing is literally what the mainstream "progressive" movement has done over the past 2 decades, and look where they've ended up. Solidarity is consistently messy, sometimes infuriating, and often exhausting, but is it also one of the most (if not the most) powerful liberatory tools we have.

TL;DR -- Some of y'all have valid points but are being assholes about it and some of y'all are ignoring (valid) critiques of your behavior to focus on the assholery. You both need to snap tf out of it &start having actual exchanges of opinions/reasoning/experiences. Lots of us are fucking tired.

[fall-and-shadows]

As a women’s history scholar at Berkeley, I’ve been approached by many reporters this month — each asking me to comment on what’s changed (or not) in our gendered society since Anita Hill’s allegations of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas in 1991.

To their surprise, I raise the subject of bathrooms and lounges. These weren’t readily available to female senators in 1991. The construction of centrally-located restrooms for high ranking elected women, in 1993 and again in 2011, is perhaps one point of progress we can see.

When Hill gave her famous testimony in 1991, so few women were senators that no real provision had been made for a women’s room adjacent to the Senate floor. Men enjoyed such a convenience, but women were forced to leave and walk considerable distance for a comfort stop, which meant they risked missing the announcement of a roll call vote. The situation was the same for female House members, who actually had no bathroom at all on the first floor of the Capitol until 1962. In such ways, the very architecture of the Capitol reminded women that they were, at best, tolerated as adjuncts to the male members of government.

Are you some kind of graduate student?

The structural presumption that women would never be in the halls of power wasn’t limited to government. Just miles from the Capitol, I was told many times while I was teaching there, Georgetown University had to convert a broom closet into a women’s bathroom for its science classroom building. It had been constructed in a time when no one envisioned female undergraduates being a majority on campus — or excelling in STEM fields.

As a young research scholar at Harvard in 1991, I had access to women’s bathrooms, but experienced a chilly reception in at least one faculty lounge, where a male professor sputtered at me and asked if I was some kind of graduate student. When I flashed my faculty ID, he recovered with “Well, but you look so pretty.” This, I understood, was a compliment, but one insinuating that “real” female scholars were unattractive.

Similarly, the historic lack of bathrooms/locker rooms and showers for female athletes at many colleges mirrors the biases found in government and academia. During the 1970s, at the height of second-wave feminism, women on Yale’s crew team had no changing room boathouse, though the men’s team did. With nowhere to change from damp sportswear after workouts on the wintry Charles River, female rowers preparing for the Olympic Games caught pneumonia while seated on a freezing bus, waiting as the male crew team showered and warmed up.

Fed up, Yale rowers confronted their athletic director — topless. Across their bared, chilled chests was the reminder, “TITLE IX.”

Our society has much farther to go

Title IX law, part of the Education Acts of 1972, helped change some of the imbalances on college campuses, but many women then graduated into workplaces filled with unregulated harassment.

Anita Hill’s 1991 testimony, broadcast nationally at a time before Internet and social media gave most Americans access to government proceedings, showed America just how male-dominated our government appeared. A majority of men making critical legal decisions about women’s lived experiences suggested a system of patriarchy, not democracy. Emboldened to create change, more women than ever before ran for office and won in 1992, giving the Senate a new high of six women — with no accessible bathroom.

Finally, in 1993, a women’s restroom was built off the Senate floor, at the direction of Majority Leader George Mitchell (D-Maine.) Still, female Representatives on the House side did not get their own bathroom off the House floor for another 18 years—in 2011. Within two years it had to be doubled in size, a reflection of the dramatic gain in elected women.

I’m now teaching at Berkeley, where I have access to a new mothers’ lactation room should I require one, and I can say that much has changed. But while public life and institutions have gradually accommodated female bodies, our society has much farther to go in seeing, understanding, and believing the lived experiences which accompany those bodies.

Bonnie J. Morris is a visiting lecturer in history at UC-Berkeley and author or co-author of 16 books, including this year’s "The Feminist Revolution: The Struggle for Women’s Liberation." 

[sexytiime]

I was looking at books on Marxism + Feminism online and came across the book:

Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Toward a Unitary Theory

A woman named Susan Rosenthal wrote this 3-star review. I just skimmed it and wanted to share here to see people’s thoughts. I have not read the book myself but I am curious about this review.

“Takes us down the wrong road”

Reviewed in the United States on March 15, 2014

Can marxism guide us in our struggle against women's oppression? In her preface to "Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Toward a Unitary Theory," Lise Vogel acknowledges the value of marxist theory:

"I remain convinced that the revival of Marxist theory, not the construction of some socialist-feminist synthesis, offers the best chance to provide theoretical guidance in the coming battles for the liberation of women". (p.ix)

At the same time, she argues,

"...that the socialist tradition is deeply flawed, that it has never adequately addressed the question of women..." (p.2)

These two statements reveal the strength and weakness of Vogel's book.

The book's strength lies in its marxist analysis of the labor necessary to reproduce the working class, the portion of that labor performed by women in the home, and the role of men in the sexual division of labor.

The book's weakness lies in its description of how capitalism organizes reproduction as a "system of male domination." With this description, Vogel retains the core of capitalist (bourgeois) feminism, that the liberation of women requires a cross-class women's movement organized separately from men.

Ferguson and McNally's 24-page Introduction supports Vogel's concept of a "male-dominant gender-order."

"It is not biology per se that dictates women's oppression; but rather, capital's dependence upon biological processes specific to women - pregnancy, childbirth, lactation - to secure the reproduction of the working class. It is this that induces capital and its state to control and regulate female reproduction and which impels them to reinforce a male-dominant gender-order. And this social fact, connected to biological difference, comprises the foundation upon which women's oppression is organized in capitalist society." (p. xxix)

Dishonest

To support her position, Vogel refers to the writings of 19th and early 20th century socialists. She quotes August Bebel, "women should expect as little help from the men as working men do from the capitalist class," and Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling in The Woman Question,

"Women are the creatures of an organized tyranny of men, as the workers are the creatures of an organized tyranny of idlers." (p. 108)

She concludes that "the idea that women's situation parallels that of workers suggests a strategy of parallel social struggles for freedom" (p. 108).

This entire section is dishonest. Vogel ignores Bebel's description of upper-and-middle-class women and working-class women as "enemy sisters," and his explicit recommendation against women in antagonistic classes organizing together, except for united-front actions that benefit all women.(1)

Vogel also disregards Eleanor Marx, who could not be more clear on the matter:

"For us there is no more a `women's question' from the bourgeois standpoint than there is a men's question. Where the bourgeois women demand rights that are of help to us too, we will fight together with them, just as the men of our class did not reject the right to vote because it came from the bourgeois class. We too will not reject any benefit, gained by the bourgeois women in their own interests, which they provide us willingly or unwillingly. We accept these benefits as weapons, weapons that enable us to fight better on the side of our working-class brothers. We are not women arrayed in struggle against men but workers who are in struggle against the exploiters."(2)

In other words, socialists do not counter-pose women's liberation to the needs of the revolution; we use women's liberation to achieve the revolution.

Class matters

Vogel describes, but does not seem to understand, Clara Zetkin's class-based approach to women's liberation which is that all women are oppressed, but not all women have the same interest in ending capitalism. Women in the capitalist class are denied "free and independent control over their property," a condition that can be remedied by legal equality under capitalism.

In the middle and professional classes, women strive for equal access to education and employment compared with the men of their class. They call on capitalism to fulfill its pledge to promote free competition in every arena, including between women and men. These women form what is commonly called the `bourgeois' women's movement because they limit their demands to legal reforms.

Working-class women also seek legal equality with the men of their class, but such equality would only mean the right to equal exploitation. The liberation of working-class women requires an end to labor exploitation, and that can be achieved only by uniting with working-class men.

Theoretically and practically, the question of women's liberation peaks during the Russian Revolution. Vogel describes Lenin's emphasis on the importance of freeing women from "domestic slavery" so they could participate fully in the revolutionary transformation of Russian society. Achieving this required a two-fold process: socializing domestic labor and engaging men in housework. The latter required a systematic campaign against male chauvinism. Could such a campaign succeed?

Vogel observes that the capitalist system pays men more so they can support child-bearing women in individual family units. She concludes that this creates a system of male domination, or patriarchy. She writes,

"a material basis for male supremacy is constituted within the proletarian household... [providing] a continuing foundation for male supremacy in the working-class family." (p.88)

Vogel neglects to mention that the higher male wage comes with a price. `Family obligations' tie men to jobs they might otherwise leave. Men are legally bound to support women and children, even after they have left their families and formed new ones. And "dead-beat dads" can be imprisoned for not paying child support.

The key question is whether putting men in a financially-dominant position requires them to personally dominate their homes. The one does not automatically follow from the other. A superior financial position does not create male domination in the family, it only creates the opportunity for it.

Individual men can choose what to believe and how to treat others. Some men take advantage of their financial position to dominate women and children. Others do not. Consequently, the sexual division of labor under capitalism does not qualify as a system of male domination over women that can be compared to the system of capitalist domination over workers. The antagonism between women and men can be eliminated by re-organizing society. The antagonism between capital and labor is irreconcilable. As long as capital exists, labor will be exploited.

A system of sexism

Some socialists argue that "the current use of the term patriarchy...merely describes a system of sexism."(3) We certainly do suffer a system of sexism; every woman can testify to that. However, patriarchy implies a system of domination by men, while a system of sexism implies that society is dominated by sexist ideology. The difference is important.

A system of male domination implies that all men benefit from the oppression of women, whether they choose this or not. A system of sexist ideology allows individual men (and individual women) to choose whether to adopt or reject sexist beliefs and behaviors.

The failure to distinguish between individual interests and class interests lies at the heart of the debate over whether men benefit from women's oppression and whether women should organize separately from men.

The working class can never achieve socialism unless most women fight for it. Therefore, as a class, working-class men cannot benefit from women's oppression. However, the system of sexist ideas gives individual men the opportunity to do so. Some men embrace this opportunity; other men reject it.

Capitalism pressures all workers to abandon their class interests for the promise of personal gain. White workers can take advantage of Black oppression to advance themselves, or they can choose to fight racism. Individual workers can accept management bribes to get ahead, or they can choose to join a union, and so on.

Male superiority is the booby prize that capitalism offers men to sweeten the bitter taste of class exploitation. As Vogel notes,

"The ruling class, in order to stabilize the reproduction of labor power as well as to keep the amount of necessary labor at acceptable levels, encourages male supremacy within the exploited class. "(p.153)

While capitalism "encourages male supremacy," many men reject this role because it hurts the women they love, and it blocks them from enjoying egalitarian, cooperative relationships.

The individual man has no choice about whether or not the women in his life are oppressed; capitalism ensures that they are. However, individual men can choose either to take advantage of women's oppression or to share the burdens of the home and join the fight to socialize domestic labor.

Class comes first

The socialist challenge is to convince working-class men to put their class interests first, to convince them that whatever benefits they gain from women's oppression pale in comparison with the benefits they could have by rejecting sexism and fighting alongside women to end capitalism and all of its oppressions.

In contrast, Vogel, Ferguson and McNally offer a pseudo-marxist argument for a cross-class movement of women organized separately from men. This concession to bourgeois feminism betrays the interests of working-class women.

Any mixed-class movement of women must betray its working-class members. When working-class women demand socialized childcare, their privileged sisters moan about paying higher taxes. When working-class women demand more pay, their privileged sisters oppose the rising cost of hired help. The only `feminism' that can liberate all classes of women is the `feminism' that is based on the goals of the working class.

As Lenin argued with the Jewish Bund, advocating the right of oppressed groups to organize independently is different from promoting independent organization on principle. As a tactic, independent organization can advance the struggle against oppression within the working-class. As a principle, the independent organization of women deepens antagonisms between men and women and undermines working-class unity.

If the goal of this book was "to provide theoretical guidance in the coming battles for the liberation of women," then it takes us down the wrong road. To argue that women must organize separately from men is pessimistic and self-defeating. As Vogel documents, both women's oppression and men's role in this oppression are rooted in capitalism. Therefore, only a united working-class fight can uproot it.

There is nothing flawed or lacking in the socialist tradition of women's liberation; it simply does not meet the needs of privileged women who seek to end their own oppression without destroying the class system that enslaves their working-class sisters.

The value of Vogel's book lies in her confirmation that the sexual division of labor, male-female relations, and existing family structures are not based on biology but on the particular historical form that capitalism has chosen in order to ensure the reproduction of the working class. While not original, this hopeful message is worth repeating:

No biological barriers prevent women and men from working together to reshape the world to meet their needs. Only capitalism stands in the way.

Notes

1. Cited in Draper, H. (2011). Women and Class: Towards a Socialist Feminism. Center for Socialist History, pp.234-5.

2. Cited in Draper, H. (2011). Women and Class: Towards a Socialist Feminism. Center for Socialist History, pp.287.

3. Marxism, feminism and women's liberation, Sharon Smith, Socialist Worker, January 31, 2013.

[comrade-meow]

The term ‘gender identity’ was coined by psychologist and researcher, Dr. John Money, founder of the first gender clinic at John Hopkins Hospital in 1966. ‘Gender identity’ first appeared in print on November 21st 1966, in the press release announcing the creation of the clinic. Money would go on to develop his theory of gender by experimenting on young children.

Money recruited the parents of David Reimer to a twin study research project at the newly-founded clinic and inextricably linked the concept of gender identity to the case. Born in 1965, David, then named Bruce, and his identical brother Brian were test cases in an experiment designed to see if a boy could be brought up successfully as a girl after surgical alteration. Money’s hypothesis was termed ‘gender neutrality’. Bruce had suffered burns to his penis during a circumcision that went wrong. Money persuaded the parents to fully alter Bruce’s genitals at the age of two, removing testes and fashioning the artificial appearance of a vulva. Bruce was then renamed ‘Brenda’. Money reassured the parents that this measure was in the best interests of Brenda and that his theory of ‘gender neutrality’ would be proven correct. Money had, according to John Hopkins Hospital, solved an ethical dilemma, and so had an ethically sound basis to study how Brenda would proceed. Twin Studies are regarded as the gold standard within psychology and psychiatry and so these children appeared to Money to be the perfect experimental subjects on which to ground his ideas.

Money required that during childhood Brenda and her family visit John Hopkins to observe how the treatment progressed. This process of treatment included interviews to see if the parents were ‘girling’ Brenda correctly (enforcing femininity) and how the now supposedly differently sexed twins interacted. Brenda (David) and his twin brother Brian as adults reported that during part of this ‘treatment’ both were sexually abused by Money, who made the pair ‘role play’ heterosexual intercourse, inspected their genitals, and took photographs. Money denied these allegations, but also justified these coerced acts as, ‘childhood sexual rehearsal play’ which he considered important for a ‘healthy adult gender identity’, What is evidenced in transcribed interviews documenting Money’s interaction with the twins was that they were made to describe the difference between their genitals, repeat that these sexual differences made one a boy and one a girl and were encouraged to deliberate why Brenda fought less at school than Brian (“because I’m a girl”, Brenda is heard saying, to Money’s confirmation, “you’re a girl!”) It is very clear here that regressive gender roles became mixed with Money’s invention of gender identity.

Despite Money’s sexual liberalism and unorthodoxy regarding homosexuality, he and other researchers at John Hopkins did not consider reinforcement of strict binarism in relation to the sexes as damaging or illegitimate. For years Money wrote about the case as ‘John/Joan’ (instead of real names Bruce/Brenda), depicting the apparent success of gender identity development to support arguments for the feasibility of sexual reassignment. In contrast, Reimer decades later described how he urinated through a hole in his abdomen due to botched urological interventions by doctors.

Around the period of adolescence Brenda [David] was given oestrogen to induce breast development as part of early female puberty. Clinical notes show that shortly afterwards Brenda [David] rejected Money’s recommendations of surgery to create a vagina. From the age of thirteen Brenda began no longer to identify as a girl, reporting feelings of suicidal depression. At age fourteen, Brenda’s father told him about the sex reassignment process. Brenda shortly after took the name David and began living as a boy. In early adulthood David underwent treatment to reverse sex reassignment, including testosterone injections, a double mastectomy, and phalloplasty operations.

Throughout this period Money continued to publish on the experiment as a success, despite it being known by him that Brenda, originally Bruce, was now living as David. Only when Reimer opened his life to academic Milton Diamond did the devastating outcome of Money’s experiment become public knowledge and his research was exposed as fraudulent. Reimer committed suicide in 2004 at the age of 38. Leading gender theorist Judith Butler wrote shortly after David took his own life, ‘It is unclear whether it was his gender that was the problem, or the ‘treatment’ that brought about an ‘enduring suffering for him’, as if it were a riddle or great mystery.

The scarce amount of academic literature utilising the work of Money today might seem to indicate the widespread rejection of his methods, but the impact of these grievous scientific errors, if we can term medical violence against children under the name of science, remains paramount in informing contemporary accounts of gender identity. This is most obvious in the status of the Charing Cross Gender Identity Clinic (GIC), the largest, most renowned Gender Identity Clinic in the UK. The Charing Cross GIC from 1994 has employed Money’s colleague, Dr. Richard Green as its Director of Research. This appointment came only seven years after Green published, The ‘Sissy Boy Syndrome’ and the Development of Homosexuality. Green is important not just because of his direct link to Money, but also because he was the sole colleague to publicly defend Money. Green claimed in a BBC interview that:

“With the benefit of hindsight, based on what we knew at the time about how you become male or female or boy or girl, with the advantage of hindsight knowing the difficulties to say the least of creating a penis surgically, the decision that John Money made at the time was the correct one. And I would have made the same one at that time.”

What the failed Reimer experiment and subsequent ‘hindsight’ amounted to was a conclusion that gender identity is not simply socially constructed, but also innate. The dominant position within psychology is that sexual difference is mapped onto the brain. For over two decades a myriad of neurological research has emerged from the Western psychological establishment arguing that male and female brains are ‘differently wired’. This research has been heavily promoted in mainstream media, but equally heavily challenged by feminist authors like Cordelia Fine.

How did we get from there to here?

Gender identity, a construct created in the United States, has crossed the pond and gone global. American cultural imperialism is hardly a new phenomenon, but how exactly did gender identity come to appear on so many campuses in the United Kingdom within the last decade? The consensus around gender identity inside the humanities, emanating primarily from U.S campuses, has been established over the last three decades mainly by Queer Theorists who sought to outflank structuralist accounts of gender, that positioned gender as part of a wider system of social relations that maintain capitalist patriarchy. That systemic approach has been sidelined in favour of concepts like ‘performativity’ and gender as an essentialist quality emanating from ‘inside’ us, something that we are born with.

The emergence of the idea of gender as essential and internal is not a new one. The regressive belief in male and female souls has existed for centuries, often expressed through notions of the sexed male or female brain. It is this notion that feminist Mary Wollstonecraft addressed in her book A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) stating, ‘There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. May as well speak of a female liver’. Even Freud a century ago, wrote against the arguments of the sexologists, challenging the idea of a feminine or masculine brain in his Three Essays on Sexuality (1905).

Unfortunately, these ideas continue to dominate mainstream discourse. Gender as an element existing in the brain, or as an innate essence has been taken up and promoted by youth advocacy groups like Gendered Intelligence. For example, Gendered Intelligence organised events around the ‘Trans soul’ entitled The Corpse Project. It may seem surprising that today it is still necessary to dispute the concept of sexed brains or gendered souls, or to argue against dualist claims of the mind or brain as separate from the body, but we have in our arsenal as Marxists a key theoretical tradition, namely; historical materialism.

When Marx famously wrote in 1852, ‘Men [ed: and presumably women!] make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past’ he pointed towards a wider understanding of how the already established social world determines us as subjects within it through social conditions. This is exactly complimentary with the materialist understanding that gender is ‘socially constructed’ – that gender as a system of social relations and norms is socially contouring, creating a web in which we sit and constituting us as gendered subjects (a Marxist understanding considers ‘ideology’ as the key method of this). We, as subjects, do not determine the world around us purely as individuals.

If gender is the system of norms that underpin the social relations and sexual politics between men and women under capitalist patriarchy i.e women’s role within the home and the associated qualities of femininity, such as passivity, the suitability to the private world of the domestic sphere, coupled with the conception of men as embodying masculine traits, such as being outgoing and suited to the public world of work. We can see why it is so important for the existing social order to naturalise and reify these codes of behavior. Women’s subordination must be secured in order to sexually and socially reproduce our societies. Men’s domination must be established to help secure women’s subservience.

The contemporary version of gender ideology with its reliance on femininity and masculinity (women’s subordination and men’s dominance) as inescapable points of reference to understand ourselves, and society, is simply a rearrangement of the building blocks required to accept patriarchy as it exists today.

That men who identify with feminine dress or feminine beauty practices can be considered women only re-establishes the idea women are feminine. Women, as adult human females, have no natural predisposition towards ideological gender norms and radical politics should reject any imposition of the acceptance of femininity as anything other than a social construct designed to secure women’s subjugation. Similarly, masculinity, attributed to men, constructing men, underpins male domination as the natural order.

When women reject femininity and submissiveness, instead seeking power for ourselves, or even engaging in traditionally male activities such as sports, we are sometimes called ‘men’ or ‘mannish’ — as if only men can dominate and structure their environments. Of course, within patriarchy, that is precisely the norm; but we are meant to think of it as natural, rather than merely normative. Gender is needed in order to maintain the social order of male domination and female subjugation.

The best that we, as Marxists can do, is to be truly gender non-conforming by rejecting ‘gender’ entirely.

[kukkotar]

Maternal gift-giving

"At the beginning of my research on motherhood—then a young mother in my twenties myself—I realized that there is something deeply wrong with family and motherhood and the way motherhood is presented in the media and in politics. The public discourse is dominated by two subjects. One is about work and family, that is, the economic view; the other is about procreation—birthrates and their political implications. Within both debates, mothers as such do not appear …

'Having it all' is supposedly the objective (e.g., Sandberg) for women who want both children and work. In Europe this debate is dominated by the social democratic viewpoint and its concept of freeing women by including them in the workforce and encouraging a career. … This economic discourse is based on the concept of liberal feminism's understanding of equality (with men) without questioning neoliberalism or its philosophy, rules, and practices.

The other subject on the daily agenda is the reproductive one—abortion legislation and practice, birthrate decline in Europe, and reproductive technologies. All these debates are dealt with in a moral and normative manner. Women's bodies and procreative ability are objects of discussion, though not debated with women themselves. ...

The low birthrates in Europe since the 1980s also brought a new incentive to accelerate population politics. The norm of the two-child family is constantly pursued and propagated in politics, media, and—not the least—by the economic demands of a higher amount of human resources. … We thus realize that motherhood is central to political and economic debates, but not so for the mother herself with her needs, accomplishments, or constant giving. Maternal gift giving is not labelled as such, and is thus nonexistent in political and economic terms. …

My thesis is that the idea of motherhood today—which I call 'patriarchal motherhood'—is based on the historical matricide, which can be retraced in myth, psychology, science, medicine, law, politics, philosophy, and religion. The mother is still alive—as she is still required as breeder, caretaker, and worker—but the conditions and the constraints in which she is living are the result of a violent transformation. …

A key term here is patriarchy … [it] consists of the Latin term pater (meaning father) and the Greek term arche (which can mean dominance or beginning). It is the father who wants to replace the mother as the origin and creator. That is done in material form, but also by means of symbolism and myths, such as that of Zeus who 'gives birth' to his daughter Athena out of his head. What the historically younger version of that myth conceals is that before supposedly giving birth, he had swallowed the goddess Metis who was pregnant with her daughter. Thus, like today, patriarchy depended on absorbing maternal potency to imitate the creation of life. ...

During the last decades, Michel Foucault's postmodern approach and critical theory of modernity was applied to feminist theory and ousted feminist social science approaches. Judith Butler and others developed the theory of gender performativity, denying that there is anything natural in the female body, thus rendering it impossible to talk about women in a collective sense. Furthermore, this concept, widely accepted in academia, has caused a shift toward individualizing the 'female problem,' and leaving a systemic view behind. In a 'gender neutral' world, the collective understanding of women is vanishing and political activism against structural injustice and violence is rendered impossible.

By favouring an individualistic view and an 'identity approach,' 'womanhood' is reduced to a rhetorical problem and feminism is losing is transformative power. It may be speculation as to whether this was, in fact, the aim of the theory of gender performativity, but what we do know for sure is that this approach contributes to the patriarchal project of abolishing the mother. …

I am unable to even find a word that can describe the 'constant weaving a net' that women provide on a daily basis. It contains the world of emotions in which mother and child are immersed from the day of birth; the sharing of time; the process of cooking and sharing meals; and the female and maternal network that comprises mothers and friends. Maternal culture is embodied by the whole sphere of artisanal and handcraft activity by sharing circles and creating spaces by its acts of production. ...

Motherhood was historically split into physical (the womb) and caring functions (which were oppressed, ridiculed, and exploited). … There is an ultimate goal, namely to get rid of the mother altogether. It is her body and her creative potency which has to be eradicated, at which time the male creation puts itself in her place, turning female creativity on its head. Her vividness is to be eradicated, and pregnancy is to be turned from a supposedly uncontrolled, wild, and unpredictable act to a calculable, controlled, and measurable one of modern technology. …

Patriarchal motherhood must be understood as an institution, as the mother's body, her work, and her creative potency are transformed into a kind of administrative unit. By providing food, housing, and care, the mother and housewife embodies economy in its true sense. This is the shadow economy upon which the official economy is based …

The frame in which maternal life is permitted is the nuclear family, a concept created in the beginning of patriarchal times to impede woman's free sexuality and pregnancies regardless of the father. Within marriage, procreation became transformed into a controlled and supervised duty. Since then, a non-married mother was considered to be a shame, and the married mother a blessing. The seizure of 'illegitimate' children was common throughout Europe until the 1970s. Over time and space, the family was normatively shaped in manifold ways, but its aim of preserving control over the reproductive process never altered.

Also the European/North American idea of motherhood and the nuclear family is an export good to non-western societies. It is communicated or violently imposed by means of religion (missionaries), economics (private property, creation of a new workforce), or political measures (introduction of paternal family name) on non-patriarchal societies—for example, the Khasis in Assam, India, or the Mosuo in South China. …

A characteristic of mothers' lives in patriarchy is the constant state of being overworked and exhausted, not only when the mother is single, but also when she is in a relationship. Statistics prove time and time again that working mothers are usually subject to an imbalance of childcare and household work. Today paid employment is an economic necessity to maintain the household; the leftist slogan of gaining freedom through employment is and was never true. Female salaries are low and usually considered an add-on to the main income of the male, which is still considerably higher. Female employment was and is seldom self-realization, but simply a matter of survival. Thus mothers gain exhaustion instead of the promised freedom of economic independence. …

In making the burden of the constant care, responsibility, management, and raising of each child the responsibility of an individual, society rids itself of any understanding of common sharing. … Instead of sharing work with others, mothers perform their day-to-day tasks in 'solitary confinement' (Rich) according to detailed instructions on carrying out motherhood. … The mother is led to believe that she should not care about or prioritize her own needs, that neglecting herself is normal, and that her notion of constant failure and guilt is natural. The patriarchal mother is also unaware of the norms that make sure that she will never be able to keep up with expectations.

In this sense, the perverted mother shall follow an ideal of a heterosexual relationship that is supposedly the best place for her children and herself. It is presented as 'natural,' as children are conceived by a man and a woman. In this 'natural' pairing, men and women are kept together in a lifelong unit as a nuclear family. The patriarchal mother is made to believe that a lasting romantic relationship in marriage is the norm. The truth contradicts this all the while: the family is the most dangerous place for women and children because of sexual, physical, and psychological abuse, and danger of a violent death. A lifelong loving relationship is the exception while unhappy unions, divorces, and separations are the statistical norm. …

The perverted mother has to be kept under control and under psychological, pedagogical, legal, and medical observance. She has to function within that framework and within the nuclear family. If she fails she is punished socially and legally. In other words, she represents the essential role of the family machine—a kind of family caricature, free of spontaneity and liveliness, an entity of constraints and of duty to society and nation. The world of the creative mother-child culture is belittled, devalued, supposedly old fashioned, unnecessary, and undesirable. These efforts are vilified and reduced to providing fast food, getting the children ready for school in a militaristic manner, organizing and managing them, and turning them and the mother herself into factory inmates. …

We have to become aware of our own colonized mind. We have to stop believing that mothers ought to be in an isolated state. We have to give up the idea that individual motherhood is the norm.

We also have to realize that the nuclear family is the worst place to live in peace and to raise a child. We also have to consider the next generation and not fall into the trap of raising our children with the wrong pictures of the holy and sane family that are portrayed in the media and popular culture. We have to sustain them in finding their autonomous ways to a satisfying life, raising children in community, and having a healthy personal sexual life and romantic relationships that may vary over the course of time.

What should be our model for this new understanding of a freed personal life? In fact, the solution is old and the models are still in place. The answer is matrilinearity, which has been in practice since the beginning of civilization all over the world, and in some (mostly remote) areas of the world still exists, although the attempts to patriarchalize these societies are increasing. …

Starting to live by way of matrilinearity means:

▴ Understanding motherhood as a collective caring principle carried out by many—thus the opposite of an idealized isolated mother image. Motherhood itself, from the time of pregnancy, is to be understood and respected as the embodiment of connectedness.

▴ Family and kinship is defined through the maternal line, not by marriage. Like Russian nesting dolls, the offspring of the maternal body form a linear tradition that can never be denied. Family is about belonging to and sharing with a specific group or clan. When the father tried to make himself symbolically and in reality the head of the family, he turned the logic of matrilineally completely on its head.

▴ The maternal brother is the social father of his sister's children. He is the support of all the mothers in the family. So the maternal line also includes men, but not husbands or lovers. Sexual relationships are considered a private, very personal matter, and thus not an integral part of the familial community system. Love within the family has a completely different character and importance than the desire for a lover. For the Mosuo, who practice visiting marriages, the idea of building a life on mutual sexual attraction seems completely incomprehensible and irresponsible.

▴ Housing in a close vicinity is an important factor for the interdependence of the community and family. By forming a net of relationships, mutual support can help children grow up safely in an enduring community.

▴ Contrary to the Western concept of ego, which can only be developed by matricide, there is no need of a violent act in order to be an independent person. The idea of the 'mature ego' is usually equated with an attitude in which the objective reality is thought of as being radically separated from the subject. Instead of 'cutting the cord' as is demanded in European and North American cultures (or else risk the accusation of having failed in 'adult life' if you return to your parents' house), adult children and grandchildren in matrilinear families are still connected to their maternal home by a movement of back and forth, continually leaving and returning."

Mariam Irene Tazi-Preve, from her essay, "The Perversion of Maternal Gift Giving: Initiating the Matrilinear Motherhood NOW Movement," published in The Maternal Roots of the Gift Economy, edited by Genevieve Vaughan, 2019,

[ritchiepage2001newaccount]

#CorpMedia #Idiocracy #Oligarchs #MegaBanks vs #Union #Occupy #NoDAPL #BLM #SDF #DACA #Humanity

YPJ International: "Women are a guarantee of the revolution"

https://www.anred.org/?p=113417

TRANSLATED FROM SPANISH BY GOOGLE

The delegation of the feminist campaign "Gemeinsam Kämpfen" (Fighting Together) had the opportunity to visit the International Academy of Women's Defense Units (YPJ) in Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan) which opened in September 2017. There she was able to speak with women from countries such as Italy, Catalonia, Germany, Finland, Czech Republic, etc. First, Commander Heval Asmîn presented the Academy. Later we began to talk with Comrade Medya, who comes from Germany. By Campaign «Fighting together» / Kurdistan Repor

-Can you describe the jobs that are done in the academy?

-Heval Asmîn: Before opening the academy, the internationalist women in Rojava had difficulties. There were many who could not follow the classes carefully due to the lack of language skills. However, in particular after (the battle of) Kobanê, there was great interest and many compañeras wanted to participate.

Self-defense was and still is a big issue. Before, there was no such structure for intensive training anywhere, not in Europe or in any other country. The image of the YPJ that is transmitted in all parts of the world is often only that of the beautiful young women with long hair, but we know that this is not the reality.

Our task is to fight for the future of humanity. We want to defend ourselves as women, but also protect the population. It is not only about being able to defend ourselves, but rather we are a guarantee of the revolution. We want to move forward, move forward, be an example, be motivation. Women can build another world, beyond patriarchy, a world without oppression, and for that we have to organize all women.

This requires ideological knowledge. On the one hand, we have to learn to use weapons, but on the other hand there must be an ideological background. We are dealing with, among other issues, the history of revolutions, the history of the liberation struggle, democratic confederalism, jineolojî, social sexism.

The women of Şhengal sold them in Raqqa as if they were merchandise. Our job is to prevent this from happening again. In the Middle East, you can not say: "We want the same rights as men." We do not want to be like men at all, on the contrary, it is only after our struggle that men also become free. Men are not a measure of liberation for us. They are not a reference for liberation. The YPJ are an autonomous and collective structure. Men can not decide about us, all they can do is make suggestions. Of course they are our companions and therefore there is also a love companion. In this academy, however, men can not teach, but conversely, we do teach classes to classmates.

Training in the use of weapons is, of course, part of this, but training does not focus on it. We should be able to defend ourselves. You have to be able to defend yourself in the Middle East, in northern Syria. They taught us that weapons and women are a contradiction. That is why they constitute a symbol of patriarchy and the power of men. However, we have found that it is often women who fight much better in war. When they are at the front they do not abandon a position, they are willing to sacrifice themselves and give their lives for others.

Here in the academy we can see that all over the world there are women with whom we have common goals. I was part of this academy from the beginning and I can say that the training here has been getting more and more depth. Here we teach each other and learn things from each other.

Şehîd Hêlîn was the first fall of this academy. All the compañeras that come here, with their decision to have joined the YPJ, also commemorate her. This means that the fight will continue, even if you yourself are no longer there. This idea is very beautiful. At that time, we did not want Şehîd Hêlîn to go to Afrîn, but she, thanks to her determination, won. We could not stop her, and after all, she came here to fight.

-With what special difficulties are internationalist but also Arab women here?

- It was not easy for the Kurdish women to fight against the Al Nusra Front. Hundreds have fallen, tens of thousands are now in the YPJ. At this point you have to go deeper. Arab women are very closed. They are not used to moving within society. It takes a lot of energy for them to open up. For a long time they dare not say anything. On the other hand, European women say it all, but sometimes it's not so good to say it all. You have to learn that first.

To European women, the system has made them very liberal. Her individualism is very strong, in the case of Kurdish women it is the opposite. Assuming responsibility is very difficult for them and they do not realize that. We do not want to kill individual freedom, but to develop the communal. It is about creating a good system in which each one gets involved in collective life. You can not treat everyone equally, because there are different needs. Some have never lived in such groups. Sometimes they feel the need to be alone. Of course there are difficulties, but gradually they are resolved. Discussions are held, responsibility is assumed, love arises. Then they have a good time together. This is very important because you never know if you will meet again in the same constellation.

-Heval Medya, how did you get to YPJ International?

-Heval Medya: I came to Rojava last summer to participate in the revolution that is taking place here. At the beginning, I was part of a delegation from the Internationalist Commune.

In a conversation about what I am going to do later, it was suggested that I could participate in the formation of YPJ International. This education consists of an ideological block, a doctor and a military. So I did it. I saw the proposal as a great opportunity to obtain extensive training within the autonomous structures of women and to get to know these structures.

-What is the precedence of women in YPJ International?

-This is quite varied, women come from Europe, from the United States, and from different continents and also their background is very different. For example, there are many anarchists. Others simply heard about the attacks of Daesh (Islamic State) in the media and joined because they wanted to fight against Daesh and perceived it as an attack on themselves. Some had previously been in military structures. Others come for humanitarian reasons, because they want to support local people with their knowledge and in general. In this case, too, their backgrounds differ from each other.

-Can you describe the content of education?

-The ideological formation lasted almost two months, so it was very long and detailed. Some subjects were treated for several days. All very exhaustive, for example, the history of the Middle East and that of the Kurdish liberation struggle, the history of women or social sexism. It was also about the regime of truth, that is, the way in which people approach the truth. Other topics included jineolojî, self-defense, then the whole model of democratic confederalism and the democratic nation.

- In what language was the training made?

-The education was in English and if the commission, that is the instructor, did not speak English, then there was a translation. If some of them do not speak English or do not understand English well, that's not really a problem, because there are always other female friends translating.

-In the YPG International there were some problems, for example with people who came alone to fight and then got frustrated because instead of going to the front they received ideological education. How is that in the YPJ International?

-There were no such problems and there was also no disappointment regarding ideological education, because all were prepared for it and the training itself is very deep. The reports are written after each block. It reflects again and it is checked if everything was understood. If not, the issues continue to be discussed and there is room for questions. Education is always linked to daily life. In the academy, the group is relatively closed. One sees itself and the others in a very clear way, with criticism and self-criticism there is a development of the personality, which can also be observed mutually. If we talk, for example, about hevaltî, that is, camaraderie, companionship, or about the principles and values ​​of the women's movement, these are issues that make us think. And that, of course, is reflected in everyday life. Maybe at the beginning it is more likely that everyone has a very individualistic attitude, such as not sharing or saving things for herself. With time this is dissolving. It is even noticeable that the atmosphere is changing. During training, of course, contact with the local Kurdish population is limited by the fact that you are in an internationalist structure. But the commission, the ones that come to teach, usually come from Kurdish structures and, of course, it's just about women. There are no men to teach in the academy.

During the last education, people from social structures were also invited. For example, a teacher who was involved in the creation of the entire educational structure in Rojava. She gave a seminar and all the friends could ask questions. Some Kurdish mates also participated in our education to learn English, so we also lived together as a group, which was good for us, because in this way, of course, we were able to learn Kurdish better.

- In the battalion of the YPG International, after the training everyone will fight, they have to commit for nine months. How is that with you?

-We have to stay for at least six months, and only for the training topic. Sometimes, a topic has to be dealt with two to three days more than planned. Therefore, education is scheduled for two to three months. After the training there are many different possibilities. Some compañeras go directly to the front, others go to the civil or security structures. Right now, for example, a cooperation is being created between the Jinwar women's village and the YPJ International, meaning that the YPJ International will be responsible for the security of Jinwar and will also organize the training of women who live there. So some will go there, others go to the YPJ. The YPJ are not only in charge of the struggle on the front, but also of the Houses of the Herids or of the work of the press. The compañeras can choose between all these areas of work. There are also some that come from other women's structures, participate in the formation and then return.

- What have counted the compañeras that were in the front? The YPJ International could fight or were more in the rear?

- Under certain conditions, the combatants who go to the front also participate in the attack groups. They know different types of weapons and, therefore, they go to different battalions. When you go to the front for the first time you do not go directly to an attack group, but you are a little behind. In Deir Ezzor it happened, for example, that during a sandstorm the rear line was attacked. Although it is believed that the attack group is the one that is engaged in a confrontation on the battle line, there is no certainty that the part that remains behind is more secure. Therefore, there are very different experiences. There is no independent YPJ International battalion. The combatants participate in the normal units of the YPJ.

- How is your daily life in the YPJ International?

-The day starts early, depending on when it dawns. In our case, we started doing sports at five in the morning. This has increased over time. At some point, the training with weapons began. Of course you'll need it later, on the front. A sports committee is constituted by two compañeras, who take turns to prepare the sport every day.

Breakfast starts at seven o'clock and education starts at eight o'clock. Lunch is at 11.00 or 11.30, then education continues until the afternoon. Sometimes there is a program in the afternoon, a classmate prepares a seminar or we watch together a documentary film. There are also marches or night military exercises. It must be emphasized that all life is organized communally, together. That is, each day a partner is responsible for cooking for all. We always eat together, we always get up together. Regarding the cleaning tasks we are changing, this works without more. In everyday life they are all close together, they also sleep together in a room. We are divided into small teams and at night each team has its own tekmîl, an evaluation of the day, so that the problems can be clarified immediately. Each team has a commander. The commanders write the evaluations and present them to the whole group the next day. Then solutions are proposed. Guard mounts day and night.

-It sounds pretty exhausting.

-That depends, they all have days when they think "how exhausting!" But in general that's fine. You do not sleep so much. Sleeping a whole night does not happen often. But as the group is relatively isolated and we spend a lot of time together, we are also very focused, very focused. Developments in ourselves and in others are recorded quickly.

-Erdoğan has threatened to invade the north and east of Syria, and now there is a serious threat of war. How are you dealing with the threat situation, has something changed in your day to day?

-From November to December 2018, security measures in general are stricter. As in all other places, we are also preparing ourselves. For example, we now stand guard during the day too. The alertness increases. This already has a direct impact on our daily life.

1548/5000 Character limit: 5000 Beyond that, of course, we observe the current situation. Every day you have to reevaluate things. Recently there was a major attack in Manbij with 15 dead *. At this time there is also the question of how Americans will position themselves. But for us it does not matter what name the fascists have with whom we have to fight. All of us are clear that we will also fight against the Turkish army and defend the revolution. That's why we have joined the YPJ.

It would be important to block the airspace, because, of course, it makes a big difference if we fight on the battlefield or bomb warplanes, as happened in Afrîn. But just the Afrin experiences are also an important aspect. There many experiences were collected. Many analyzes and self-criticisms have been made to avoid repeating mistakes. Consequently, it is preparing. Therefore, all are determined to defend the revolution, not to accept Erdoğan in Rojava and not to accept the so-called "buffer zone" with Turkish participation.

Notes:

* Attack of January 16, 2019. https://anfespanol.com/noticias/el-recuento-de-victimas-mortales-en-el-atentado-de-manbij-se-eleva-a-15-8878

** Other reports of the feminist campaign "Fighting Together" that Rojava visited at the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019 can be found at http://gemeinsamkaempfen.blogsport.eu/en/

SOURCE: Gemeinsam Kaempfen / Kurdistan Repor / Translation: Translation: Rojava Azadî Madrid Kurdistan, Kurdish women, Syria

[frantzfanonarchives]

The Year of Frantz Fanon

Achille Mbembe

Four moments that stirred heated debate in France this year were the cases against rapper Youssouphaand IMF Head Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the unveiling of the Paris exhibition Human Zoos: The Invention of the Savage, curated by former French footballer Lilian Thuram, and the 50th anniversary of Frantz Fanon’s death. With the latter came the publication in French of Fanon’s Œuvres (La Découverte, 800 p.), with a preface by Achille Mbembe (‘L’universalité de Frantz Fanon’). When we approached Mbembe for an English version of the text, he sent us the following shorter essay — which we offered to translate from the original French.

Fifty years ago, Frantz Fanon passed away leaving us with his last testimony, The Wretched of the Earth.

Written in the crucible of the Algerian war of independence and the early years of Third World decolonization, this book achieved an almost biblical status. It became a living source of inspiration for those who opposed the Vietnam War, marched with the civil rights movement, supported revolutionary black struggles in America, the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa and countless insurgent movements around the world.

Fanon’s life had led him far away from the island of Martinique in the Caribbean where he was born a French citizen. He took part at the age of nineteen in the war against Nazism only to discover that in the eyes of France he was nothing but a “Negro”, that is, anything but a man like any other man.

By any means necessary

He would end up feeling a deep sense of betrayal. Black Skin, White Mask — his first book — partly relates the story of this and many other fraught encounters with colonial forms of dehumanization.

But it was in Algeria where he worked as a psychiatrist that Fanon finally cut the cord that bound him to France. The country for which he had almost lost his life in the struggle against Hitler had started to replicate Nazi’s methods during a savage and nameless war against a people which it denied the right to self-determination.

About this war Fanon often said it had taken the look of an authentic genocide. Having sided with the Algerian people, France disowned him. He had betrayed the nation. He became an enemy and long after his death, France treated him as such.

For those committed to the cause of oppressed people or fighting for racial justice, his name nevertheless remained not only a sign of hope, but also an injunction to rise up. Indeed to Fanon we owe the idea that in every human being there is something indomitable which no domination — no matter in what form — can eliminate, contain nor suppress, or at least completely.

Fanon tried to grasp how this “something” could be reanimated and brought back to life under conditions of subjugation.

He argued that this irrepressible and relentless pursuit of freedom required the mobilization of all life reserves. It drew the human subject into a fight to the death — a fight he was called upon to assume as his own task, one he could not delegate to others.

Fanon was also convinced that colonialism was a force animated at its core by a genocidal drive.

To destroy colonialism could only be ensured by violent means, an “absolute praxis” whose goal was to produce life and to free the world from the burden of race.

Post-liberation culture and politics

His diagnosis of life after colonialism was uncompromising.

For him, there was a distinct possibility that post-liberation culture and politics might take the road of retrogression if not tragedy. The project of national liberation might turn into a crude, empty shell; the nation might be passed over for the race, and the tribe might be preferred to the state.

He believed that the liberation struggle had not healed the injuries and trauma that were the true legacy of colonialism.

After liberation, the native élite had been ensconced in intellectual laziness and cowardice. In its will to imitation and its inability to invent anything of its own, the native bourgeoisie had assimilated the most corrupt forms of colonialist and racist thought.

Afflicted with precocious senility, the educated classes were stuck in a great procession of corruption.

The innermost vocation of the new ruling class seemed to be part of the racket or the loot. It had annexed state power for its own profit and transformed the former liberation movement into a trade union of individual interests while making itself into a screen between the masses and their leaders.

Fanon was equally scornful of nationalization which he saw not as a genuine mechanism to build a national economy but as a scandalous, speedy and pitiless form of enrichment.

He warned against the descent of the urban unemployed masses into lumpen-violence. As soon as the struggle is over, he argued, they start a fight against non-national Africans. From nationalism they pass to chauvinism, negrophobia and finally to racism. They are quick to insist that foreign Africans go home to their country. They burn their shops, wreck their street stalls and spill their blood on the city’s pavements and in the shantytowns.

Surveying the postcolony, Fanon could only see a coming nightmare – an indigenous ruling class luxuriating in the delicious depravities of the Western bourgeoisie, addicted to rest and relaxation in pleasure resorts, casinos and beaches, spending large sums on display, on cars, watches, shoes and foreign labels.

In his post-liberation nightmare, he could distinctly see stupidity parading as leadership, patriarchy turning women into wives, vulgarity going hand in hand with the corruption of the mind and of the flesh, all in the midst of hilarity and demobilization.

The spectacle of Africans representing themselves to the world as the archetype of stupidity, brutality and profligacy, he confided, made him angry and sick at heart.

To read Fanon today means to translate into the language of our times the major questions that forced him to stand up, to break away from his roots, and to walk with others, companions on a new road which the colonized had to trace on their own, by their own creativity, with their indomitable will.

All around us, it is easy to see elements of his nightmare. Globally, new forms of colonial warfare and occupation are taking shape, with their share of counter-insurgent tactics and torture, Delta camps, secret prisons, and their mixture of militarism and plundering of far-away resources.

New forms of social Apartheid and structural destitution have replaced the old colonial divisions. As a result of global processes of accumulation by dispossession, deep inequities are being entrenched by an ever more brutal economic system. The ability of many to remain masters of their own lives is once again tested to the limits.

No wonder under such conditions, many are not only willing to invoke once again Frantz Fanon’s heretic name, his sparkling, volcanic and exploding face. They are willing to stand up and rise again.

I myself have been attracted to Fanon’s name and voice because both have the brightness of metal. His is a metamorphic thought, animated by an indestructible will to live. What gives this metallic thinking its force and power is the air of indestructibility and the inexhaustible silo of humanity which it houses.

[dgrwomenscaucus]

An excerpt from the book Deep Green Resistance, Chapter Three: Liberals and Radicals, by Lierre Keith

Distinguishing Categories of Violence

It’s understandable that people who care about justice want to reject violence; many of us are survivors of it, and we know all too well the entitled psychology of the men who used it against us. And whatever our personal experiences, we can all see that the violence of imperialism, racism, and misogyny has created useless destruction and trauma over endless, exhausting millennia. There are good reasons that many thoughtful people embrace a nonviolent ethic.

Violence can be used destructively or wisely: by hierarchy or for self-defense, against people or property, for self-actualization or political resistance.

“Violence” is a broad category and we need to be clear what we’re talking about so that we can talk about it as a movement. I would urge the following distinctions: the violence of hierarchy vs. the violence of self-defense, violence against people vs. violence against property, and the violence as self-actualization vs. the violence for political resistance. It is difficult to find someone who is against all of these. When clarified in context, the abstract concept of “violence” breaks down into distinct and concrete actions that need to be judged on their own merits. It may be that in the end some people will still reject all categories of violence; that is a prerogative we all have as moral agents. But solidarity is still possible, and is indeed a necessity given the seriousness of the situation and the lateness of the hour. Wherever you personally fall on the issue of violence, it is vital to understand and accept its potential usefulness in achieving our collective radical and feminist goals.

Violence of Hierarchy vs. Violence of Self-Defense

The violence of hierarchy is the violence that the powerful use against the dispossessed to keep them subordinated. As an example, the violence committed for wealth is socially invisible or committed at enough of a distance that its beneficiaries don’t have to be aware of it. This type of violence has defined every imperialist war in the history of the US that has been fought to get access to “natural resources” for corporations to turn into the cheap consumer goods that form the basis of the American way of life. People who fight back to defend themselves and their land are killed. No one much notices. The powerful have armies, courts, prisons, and taxation on their side. They also own the global media, thus controlling not just the information but the entire discourse. The privileged have the “comforts or elegancies” (as one defender of slavery put it) to which they feel God, more or less, has entitled them, and the luxury to remain ignorant. The entire structure of global capitalism runs on violence (Violence: The Other Fossil Fuel?). The violence used by the powerful to keep their hierarchy in place is one manifestation that we can probably agree is wrong.

In contrast stands the violence of self-defense, a range of actions taken up by people being hurt by an aggressor. Everyone has the right to defend her or his life or person against an attacker. Many leftists extend this concept of self-defense to the right to collective defense as a people. For example, many political activists supported the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, even taking personal risks in solidarity work like building schools and harvesting coffee. Indeed some people refuse to call this collective self-defense “violence,” defining violence as only those brutal acts that support hierarchy. I believe it is more honest to call this violence, and accept that not all violence is equal, or equally bad.

Violence against Property vs. Violence against People

Again, some people reject that violence is the correct word to describe property destruction. Because physical objects cannot feel pain, they argue, tools like spray paint and accelerants can’t be considered weapons and their use is not violent. I think the distinction between sensate beings and insensate objects is crucial. So is property destruction violent or nonviolent? This question is both pragmatic—we do need to call it something—and experiential. Destroying property can be done without harming a single sentient being and with great effect to stop an unjust system. Can anyone really argue against the French resistance blowing up railroad tracks and bridges to stop the Nazis?

But violence against property can also be an act meant to intimidate. This is the source of the unease that many progressives and radicals may feel toward property destruction. If you have been a person so threatened, you know how effective it is. Indeed, if violence against property were an ineffective approach to instilling fear and compliance, no one would ever use it. Burning a cross on someone’s lawn is meant to traumatize and terrorize. So is smashing all the dinner plates to the floor. A friend who survived a right-wing terrorist attack on the building where she worked was later hospitalized with severe PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder). Property destruction can have a crippling effect on sentient beings.

Whatever we decide to call property destruction, we need to weigh the consequences and strategic benefits and make our decisions from there. Again, “violence” is not a bad word, only a descriptive one. Obviously, many more people can accept an attack against a window, a wall, or an empty building than can accept violence against a person, and that’s as it should be. But wherever you stand personally on this issue, basic respect for each other and for our movement as a whole demands that we acknowledge the distinction between people and property when we discuss violence.

Violence as Self-Actualization vs. Violence for Political Resistance

Male socialization is basic training for life in a military hierarchy. The psychology of masculinity is the psychology required of soldiers, demanding control, emotional distance, and a willingness and ability to dominate. The subject of that domination is a negative reference group, an “Other” that is objectified as subhuman. In patriarchy, the first group that boys learn to despise is girls. Franz Fanon quotes (uncritically, of course) a young Algerian militant who repeatedly chanted, “I am not a coward, I am not a woman, I am not a traitor.” No insult is worse than some version of “girl,” usually a part of female anatomy warped into hate speech.

With male entitlement comes a violation imperative: men become men by breaking boundaries, whether it’s the sexual boundaries of women, the cultural boundaries of other peoples, the physical boundaries of other nations, the genetic boundaries of species, or the biological boundaries of ecosystems. For the entitled psyche, the only reason “No” exists is because it’s a sexual thrill to force past it. As Robin Morgan poignantly describes the situation of Tamil women,

To the women, the guerillas and the army bring disaster. They complain that both sets of men steal, loot, and molest women and girls. They hate the government army for doing this, but they’re terrified as well of the insurgent forces ostensibly fighting to free them. Of their own Tamil men, one says wearily, “If the boys come back, we will have the same experience all over again. We want to be left in peace.”

Eldridge Cleaver announced, “We shall have our manhood or the earth will be leveled by our attempts to gain it.” This is a lose-lose proposition for the planet, of course, and for the women and children who stand in the way of such masculine necessity. Or as the Vietnamese say, when the elephants fight, it’s the grass that suffers.

As we can see from these examples, whether from a feminist understanding or from a peace perspective, the concern that taking up violence could potentially be individually and culturally dangerous is a valid one. Many soldiers are permanently marked by war. Homeless shelters are peopled by vets too traumatized to function. Life-threatening situations leave scars, as do both committing and surviving atrocities.

But violence is a broad category of action; it can be wielded destructively or wisely. We can decide when property destruction is acceptable, against which physical targets, and with what risks to civilians. We can decide whether direct violence against people is appropriate. We can build a resistance movement and a supporting culture in which atrocities are always unacceptable; in which penalties for committing them are swift and severe; in which violence is not glorified as a concept but instead understood as a specific set of actions that we may have to take up, but that we will also set down to return to our communities. Those are lines we can inscribe in our culture of resistance. That culture will have to include a feminist critique of masculinity, a good grounding in the basics of abuse dynamics, and an understanding of posttraumatic stress disorder. We will have to have behavioral norms that shun abusers instead of empowering them, support networks for prisoners, aid for combatants struggling with PTSD, and an agreement that anyone who has a history of violent or abusive behavior needs to be kept far away from serious underground action. Underground groups should do an “emotional background check” on potential recruits. Like substance abuse, personal or relational violence should disqualify that recruit. First and foremost, we need a movement made of people of character where abusers have no place. Second, the attitudes that create an abuser are at their most basic level about entitlement. A recruit with that personality structure will almost certainly cause problems when the actionists need sacrifice, discipline, and dependability. Men who are that entitled are able to justify almost any action. If they’re comfortable committing atrocities against their intimates and families, it will be all too easy for them to behave badly when armed or otherwise in a position of power, committing rape, torture, or theft. We need our combatants to be of impeccable character for our public image, for the efficacy of our underground cells, and for the new society we’re trying to build. “Ours is not a war for robbery, not to satisfy our passions, it is a struggle for freedom,” Nat Turner told his recruits, who committed no atrocities and stole only the supplies that they needed.

Only people with a distaste for violence should be allowed to use it. Empowering psychopaths or reinscribing the dominating masculinity of global patriarchy are mistakes we must avoid.

A very simple question to ask as we collectively and individually consider serious actions like property destruction is, is this action tactically sound? Does it advance our goal of saving the planet? Or does it simply answer an emotional need to do something, to feel something? I have been at demonstrations where young men smashed windows of mom and pop grocery stores and set fire to random cars in the neighborhood. This is essentially violence as a form of self-expression—for a very entitled self. Such random acts of destruction against people who are not the enemy have no place in our strategy or in our culture. It’s especially the job of men to educate other men about our collective rejection of masculinist violence.

Editors Note: The organization DGR is founded on the ideas and analysis laid out in the book by Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith, and Aric McBay. To increase the book’s accessibility, especially to international audiences, we’re now making it available for free in two ways:

Read Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet as a browseable website.

Download an epub or PDF through the DGR Store. (We suggest a $5 donation, but you can set it to whatever you like, including $0.)

[englishchinesetranslations]

Authored by Wendy McElroy via The Mises Institute,

Gender feminism, the New Left, and Marxism (FLM) are often said to be politically aligned, and, certainly, there is significant overlap. But does a political FLM axis exist?

The answer is important. A surreal dynamic has politicized every crevice of society and decent people now need to defend themselves against groundless accusations of racism, misogyny, and other “hate” crimes in order to keep their jobs, their reputations, and their futures.

An understanding of where the dynamic originates gives them more of a fighting chance. The answer begins with defining FLM and describing their interconnection.

(Of necessity, the ensuing analysis is highly simplified.)

Gender feminism became prominent in the 1970s and ’80s. It is called “gender” feminism because this form of feminism explains the world by dividing men and women into antagonistic classes. Also known as third wave feminism, its ideological successor is sometimes called fourth wave feminism; it focuses on equity for women and minorities, the use of social media as a political weapon, and on intersectionality.

The New Left was a broad coalition of liberals, radicals, and unorthodox Marxists in the 1960s. The word “New” distanced it from pure Marxism and the Old Left which focused on labor. By contrast, the New Left championed cultural causes such as feminism and gay rights. This is a Maoist approach to revolution—a cultural revolution to change “the system” by upending the traditions and institutions upon which everything else rests. That’s why the New Left was sometimes called the counterculture. Social justice emerged in its wake.

Marxism is the theory and practice of communism; it advocates class warfare as a path to a society in which there is no private property and goods are available based on need. The different schools of communism are united by some core beliefs. Two of them: capitalism is exploitation, and people are defined by their class affiliation.

All three movements condemn capitalism and believe that people are their “identity”—their race, for example. “Identity” is now the word preferred over “class” but the words mean basically the same thing. Because class is a fundamental concept to FLM and their successors, examining how it is handled can test how closely they are aligned politically.

A class is a group of people who share a common characteristic that serves the purpose of whoever is doing the grouping. A cancer researcher may group subjects according to types of cancer, for example. FLM all approach class for the purpose of forging ideology and political revolution. They all use relational class analysis, in which a class is defined by its relationship to an institution. Marx used the relationship to ownership of production to divide people into capitalists and workers.

The influential gender feminist Catharine MacKinnon called herself a “post-Marxist feminist.” The word “Marxist” indicated the movement’s embrace of anticapitalism, class warfare, and the redistribution of wealth and power. The “post” means they stumbled over Marx’s class theory of capitalists and workers.

Gender feminists rebelled against this division because men and women were to be found in both categories; this made gender irrelevant to class analysis. And so, while accepting the other basics of Marxism, they used a different dividing line: Are you male or female? In her book Of Woman Born (1976), Adrienne Rich argued that women’s class nemesis is the “social, ideological, political system” through which men control women. Today, this is called “the patriarchy” or male capitalism. Thus feminist class analysis fused with Marxism, giving it an ideological twist as it did so.

The New Left also deviated from Marxist class theory and spoke instead of the “power elite” or the military-industrial state—that is, state capitalism, which they viewed as capitalism itself. The power elite consisted of leaders in the military, business, and politics who manipulated average people into oblivious compliance; this middle class might include many workers, but they had been subsumed by the power elite. The true revolutionary class consisted of radical intellectuals who led marginalized groups, such as minorities or gays, into political battle. Thus the New Left fused with Marxism but put its own spin on class theory.

How do FLM’s successors view class?

Gender feminism’s successor relies heavily on intersectionality, which is a complex form of class analysis. It is the way in which a person’s different identities interconnect to define that person’s level of oppression. For example, a woman is said to be subjugated by men. A black woman is doubly subjugated, by both men and whites, and has a louder voice. A transgendered black woman...and so on. In calculating a person’s total oppression, different aspects of her or his identities are added together. A black male gains points because of his race. A white feminist loses points because her race. But the enemy of them all remains the same—white male capitalism.

The New Left’s successor is social justice, which wants to redistribute wealth, opportunities, and privileges in order to enrich those who are viewed as oppressed. Raising the subjugated, however, requires grinding down white male capitalists, who are responsible for the oppression. One class must lose for the other to gain. This means that the real goal is not equality, but what is known as “equity”—a form of political, social, and economic egalitarianism—which is enforced through the state and by law.

In short, the conclusions of these movements align well with Marxism. It is their methodologies that differ.

Theory is a wonderful thing but—assuming the theory is sound—does it translate into practice? This is akin to asking whether understanding of a problem makes solving it easier. Consider one example.

Those who have not been called racist, sexist, or the product of privilege are living on borrowed time. When the accusation does happen, its mere utterance can threaten livelihoods, reputations, and prospects for the future. If the claim is true, then an apology is due. If it is not, then it is important to understand the context from which such an accuser proceeds, and how she or he views the exchange. They proceed from class analysis, whether consciously held or absorbed from the culture. The exchange is not between two individuals but between two identities with irredeemably antagonistic interests. Reason, appeasement, and proof of innocent are not defenses. Simply by being white, male, or part of some other “privileged” class, the accused is guilty and an act of violence on two legs.

This verdict will not change, because it is foregone.

The dynamics established by concepts like intersectionality are a direct threat to any person who lacks a high score on the FLM axis of oppression. Unfortunately, the way of today’s world means that such concepts cannot receive the treatment they deserve—to be ignored. They need to be understood.

[fuckthegovfucklove]

Abandoning the conventional relating framework.

“The state is not something which can be destroyed by a revolution, but is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of human behaviour; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently.”

― Gustav Landauer

The way things are now, navigating relationships are by no means an easy exercise. It’s trying to keep up with what the new standard of a good partner or friend is and trying to fulfill the covert code of conduct that is culturally instilled in us. It’s goes from playing to win favour, to walking on eggshells. Crafting an identity that will sell on the market, to trying to remind your buyers of your (volatile) worth. It’s blindly devoting ourselves to formulaic ambitions of a private nuclear family, a house, wealth and not imagining beyond that.

It’s a shame though that, for the most part, our relationships are being remotely controlled by mainstream conventions, so we get little say in how they play out. It’s a shame that relationships are only marketed as source of joy and pleasure and not spaces where we can join to reform practices and aid wider humanity because that would involve challenging every system .. too much commotion.

Connecting and growing with other complex human beings is a transformative endeavour, and is the crux of our existence as social creatures.

I for one want to relate with others in a way that is ethical, supportive, mutually beneficial to our growth and our aid of others, but I don’t trust the dusty normative scripts handed to each of us once we are forcefully integrated into society. From the customary practice of demoting long-running friendships to accommodate shiny new romantic relationships, to the comical fact that 50% of “ti’ll death do us part“ marriages end in divorce - the results thus far have been dismal.

These categories, hierarchies, practices and ideas attached to relationships were placed on a platter as illusionary contentment but are better recognised as tools of control and surveillance. They don’t serve humanity, but those in power who press us into building a patriarchal capitalist family.

We do need a post-conventional approach to performing relationships in order to get us closer to relating with others in such a way that is liberatory, fair and nurturing for the collective before the individual. One that relies not on deeply flawed societal norms, but relies reflexive thinking on choices and operates based on higher principles. But well acquainted are we with reflexion?

to be reflective vs. to be reflexive

Reflection is no stranger to us. Most of us consciously and unconsciously reflect on our actions, past events, feelings daily I’d imagine. Reflection is solitarily reviewing or reliving an experience outside of oneself. We learn and undergo personal development through examining what we think happened, what we thought or felt about it, why, who was involved and when, and what these others might have experienced and thought and felt about it too.

Reflection might lead to insight about something not noticed in time, pinpointing perhaps when the detail was missed. It’s looking at whole scenarios from as many angles as possible. However, this is all done in the context of, and in comparison to what we objectively believe to be correct action in the normative social environment we’ve been bred. Our unquestioned assumptions and unrecognised aspects of context all influence the by-products of our reflection and yield half-baked conclusions.

Reflexivity is finding strategies to question our own attitudes, thought processes, values, assumptions, prejudices and habitual actions , to strive to understand our complex roles in relation to others. To be reflexive is to examine , for example, how we - seemingly unwittingly - are involved in creating social or professional structures counter to our own higher values. It is becoming aware of the limits of our knowledge, of how our own behaviour plays into interpersonal practices and why such practices might marginalise others or disregard their individuality.

Through reflexive thinking, we recognise that we are active in shaping our surroundings, and begin to proactively and critically take circumstances and relationships into consideration rather than merely reacting to them, and help review and revise ethical ways of being and relating.

Reflexivity involves the willingness to consider aspects of the self strange: focusing close attention on your own actions, thoughts, feelings, values , identity, and their effect on others.

The reflexive thinker has to stand back from belief and value systems, habitual ways of thinking and relating to others, structures of understanding  themselves  and  their relationship to the world, and their assumptions about the way that the world shapes them. This can only be done by somehow becoming separate in order to look at it as if from the outside: not part of ‘habitual experience processing’, and not easy.

Strategies are required such as internal dialogue, and the support of others. This critical focus upon beliefs, values, professional identities, and how they affect and are affected by the surrounding societal and cultural structures, is a highly responsible social and political activity.

Reflexivity involves being comfortable with personal uncertainty, critically informed curiosity as to how others perceive things as well as how you do , and flexibility to consider changing deeply held ways of being. Asking questions, reading widely and speaking with others who exist in nonconformity are useful avenues.

Reflection: “I blew up and started that argument because I felt disrespected. I need to learn to take things easy and not let my ego get the best of me.“

Reflexion: “Why did I feel disrespected? How often do I feel this way? How do I position myself in respect to others? What’s my relationship with power and entitlement? What influenced my behaviour/where have I seen this done before? Did something unjust really occur? Let me speak to someone about it.“

To develop my own reflexive thinking, it’s important to me that my choices hold up to political analysis just as the feminist expression ‘The Personal is Political’ instructs us.

The personal is political

The personal is political’ is a renown feminist phrase coined by Shulamith Firestone and Anne Koedt, the editors of an essay Carol Hanisch published in Notes from the Second Year: Women’s Liberation. From the late 60’s, through discussions in several consciousness-raising groups, many women of the era began to realise that the issues in their personal lives and daily activities (unequal housekeeping distribution, gender pay gap) were shaped by unconscious assumptions about male superiority and prerogative. The personal quickly became political, in the sense that daily seemingly minor offences inflicted by men (sexism), were in fact symptoms of oppressive norms and structural inequalities.

‘The personal is political’ served to provide an explanation for the issues in the lives of individuals in relation to social systems, ideologies, polices and practice. It also acts as an excellent prompt to open dialogue on issues traditionally view as “personal“, ”private” or ”social”, allowing for political analysis. The phrase now has a couple of different meanings and here are some common ones:

"The personal reflects/serves the political status quo”

“One can make personal choices in response to or protest against the political status quo”

“One's personal choices reveal or reflect one's personal politics”

“One should make personal choices that are consistent with one's personal politics”

“Personal life and personal politics are indistinguishable”

Politics is loaded with meanings but in this context it’s important you understand politics as a process concerning the distribution of power and resources and why putting the power relations of interpersonal relationships under the microscope is crucial. The choices we are seemingly empowered to make for the most part are  socially constructed and deliberate, which is why majority of us follow such strikingly similar scripts when it comes to relating romantically, platonically, familially etc.

‘The personal is political‘ becomes important too when looking at our relational practices and the choices we make within those realms. From acknowledging that how we go about relating with others is really not a simple as following our individual desires and thus using personal preference as a justification, we must recognise that they are in fact governed by relationships of power, conventional morality, inequality and personal interest. For example, The Equal-But-Different Myth is often used to justify clear double standards in gender conversations and can also be extended to make excuses for any form of inequality within interpersonal relationships.

Our relationships, conventionally performed, are a reflection of a society dominated by patriarchy and economic power, a society that doesn’t actually exist to serve our needs.

That’s why we must subvert conventional relating and redesign how we relate with others. I’ve had a go creating my own relational framework, have a look {here}

[republicstandard]

The Striptease of Toxic Feminism in the Brett Kavanaugh Freak Show

The first time I saw a striptease show was at the ripe age of six. A snooty, upper-crust cousin from my mother’s side was setting fire to rupees as if they were autumn leaves by hosting a wedding at a five-star hotel in Bombay. The cousin printed the invitation cards in Portuguese. The pomposity instantly pissed off my dad. He didn’t bother to read the notice below the RSVP, which stated that the reception was Strictly Adults Only.

So there we were – pop, mom, yours truly and little sis (aged four) in tow – witnessing our first cabaret. Since Post-traumatic Striptease Disorder hadn’t yet been diagnosed by the American Psychiatric Association, little sis and I were scurried in under cover of darkness to watch a nymphet-of-sorts casting away various outer and inner garments, while a spotlight played light and shadow tricks with her anatomy and a jazz band with an Indian-imitation Louis Armstrong musically massaged her with velvety notes from the musical Cabaret.

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Like Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, I don’t remember the day or date or the place but I do recall being driven by taxi to the hotel and I can assure my readers that the artiste didn’t try to grope me although she did offer me a cuddle of a non-sexual nature, amused that a dwarf (I’m sure she thought I was a retarded adult) would take time to come and applaud her Nijinsky-like acrobatics.

The second time I saw a striptease show was yesterday, today and each day since the commencement of the Brett Kavanaugh freak show. All this while I had assumed that this was essentially about the Democrats holding power in the Supreme Court—the politburo of the American Left for over seventy years. The façade began to wear thin when Diane Feinstein and her fellow-vampires like Kamala Harris ganged up to crush Kavanaugh on his views regarding abortion.

During the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Harris asked if Kavanaugh knew of any laws “that the government has power to make over the male body?” The entire room was silent for three seconds before Kavanaugh replied: “Um … I’m happy to answer a more specific question, but …” “Male versus female,” Harris snapped. Kavanaugh fumbled. Harris repeated the question. “I’m not aware of any right now, Senator,” Kavanaugh finally responded.

As the process accelerated to its finale and a victory for the white male judge became certain, toxic feminism revealed its real, repulsive face. The feminist matriarchy began flinging off every threadbare garment of gender equality, justice, oppression, etc. that forms the socially acceptable accoutrement of feminist ideology in its striptease dance of death. It was like a Grimm Brothers’ fairytale with the nice lady inviting Hansel and Gretel into her house constructed of cake, candy and confectionery revealing herself as an ugly, cannibalistic witch.

The feminist cannibalism of Kavanaugh climaxed with false accusations of sexual assault by Christine Blasey Ford followed by sirens Deborah Ramirez and Julie Swetnick. The culmination was the collective feminist aneurysm and the mob-of-the-matriarchy gone mad with protests, arrests, screaming, wailing and an outbreak of hysteria and delirium tremendum that would have led Arthur Miller to write an updated edition of The Crucible.

And what the world saw is feminism stripped naked, displaying raw toxicity and flashing itself as the virulent and noxious sepsis of civil society. Feminism exposed its primal quest: making a Faustian deal with the devil in order to become like God, as in the archetypal story of Eve and the serpent in Genesis.

Needless to say, feminist matriarchs from Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan to Sandra Lee Bartkey and Gloria Steinem explicitly outlined the aims and objectives of feminism in their writings—but who bothers to read this junk philosophy unless you are doing a degree in Gender Studies? Don’t worry. Now, you can watch the toxic feminism in all its glory on television or YouTube.

The striptease around the Kavanaugh show trial is revealing to us how gender feminism isn’t fundamentally a pro-woman but an anti-man movement. It isn’t driven by the adrenaline of a genuine concern for women, but by a deep-rooted hatred of men. Feminism isn’t trying to correct misogyny; it is seeking to create a dark and bigoted misandry.

Just before the Kavanaugh event, sociologist Suzanna Danuta Walters, Director of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Northeastern University wrote a Washington Post column titled “Why can’t we hate men?” arguing that it was “logical to hate men”. She rankled at the women who said accused the “system” and not men. She thundered;

“We have every right to hate you. You have done us wrong. #BecausePatriarchy. It is long past time to play hard for Team Feminism. And win.”

Toxic feminism is about winning. Not just the war, but the spoils of war. “You have to ask yourself, why would anybody put themselves through this if they did not believe that they had important information to convey to the Senate?” asked Hillary Clinton. “Nobody fails to understand that this is like jumping into a cauldron,” echoed former vice president Joe Biden, referring to Anita Hill, who falsely accused Justice Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment for telling off-color sexist jokes.

Cauldron, my ass, Joe! If anything it is jumping into the cauldron of instant celebrity fame and success. In a culture where the self-proclaimed victim is instantly canonized the rewards of accusing a Very Important Man at a Very Important Moment of sexual assault can be colossal. Leveling an accusation is the easiest task in the feminist DIY manual. Fabricating a story with a pedestrian plot does not require the genius of a Dostoevsky.

Guess what happened to Anita Hill, the paradigmatic victim of the patriarchy? “For Hill, the cauldron of attention cooked up a lot of career opportunities,” notes Professor Janice Fiamengo of the University of Ottawa in her video called “The Anita Hill School of Success”.

Following her testimony at the Thomas hearings, 1992, Hill received the American Bar Association’s “Women of Achievement” Award. In 1993, she was inducted into Oklahoma’s Women’s Hall of Fame. In the same year, she co-edited a book called Race, Gender, and Power in America: The Legacy of the Hill-Thomas Hearings.

In 1997 she was given a visiting scholar position at UC Berkeley, and soon after that she was hired by Brandeis University, where she teaches courses on gender, race, social policy and legal history. In 1997, she made her role in the Thomas hearings the subject of her autobiography, self-effacingly titled Speaking Truth to Power. She now regularly makes guest appearances on news and current affairs shows as an expert on sexual harassment.

“I think it’s fair to say that nothing Anita Hill ever did contributed more positively to her public profile than her claims about Clarence Thomas, even though they were never proven,” says Fiamengo. Even liberal Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law School professor emeritus admits, “One fact is beyond dispute: Anita Hill has made a fortune off speaking and book fees solely on the basis of her accusations.”

You can already see a new star added to the feminist Milky Way in the person of Christine Blasey Ford. Her supporters have already raised over half a million dollars to cover her costs and you don’t need to look into a crystal ball to predict her meteoric career rise. As Che and the workers sing in the musical Evita: “When the money keeps rolling in, you don’t ask how. Think of all the people guaranteed a good time now.”

Malcolm Muggeridge, the English journalist, once quipped that if Jesus were alive at the advent of television, the devil would approach him and offer him a slot on primetime global TV so instead of a ragtag lot following him in Galilee, everyone will know him. There will be no commercials, just one public relations sponsor—Lucifer Inc. No more than: “This program comes to you courtesy of Lucifer Inc. at beginning and end with credits.” Jesus, of course, says “No,” and is dismissed by all as irrelevant and “crazy.”

Christine Blasey Ford and her fellow-feminists have said a resounding “Yes” to the fourth temptation. This is not surprising because the Hebrew root for “Satan” means “adversary” or “accuser” while the Greek “Diabolos” means “accuser” or “slanderer”. The book of Revelation calls the devil the “accuser of our brethren”. Jesus refers to him as a “murderer from the beginning” who “does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies”.

More than anything else, abortion is the holy grail of feminism and the Brett Kavanaugh freak show was all about abortion. The striptease of feminism exposes feminism as a baby-murdering movement. In Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, Kristin Luker’s study of attitudes on abortion, one feminist put it this way: “we can get all the rights in the world … and none of them means a doggone thing if we don’t own the flesh we stand in”. Feminists, of course, have to first dehumanize the fetus by telling a scientific lie that it is “my body” before they can murder the baby, even if it is a girl baby!

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But the biggest revelation of the striptease is the gargantuan effort to perpetuate the diabolic slander that women in the West continue to be oppressed by men. It was left to the truly brave Kristy Swanson, who originated the role of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the 1992 film, to expose this monumental lie.

Woman have ALL the power. We decide Everything, when to eat dinner, go to sleep, wake up, date, have sex, get married, when we will have babies, go to school, go to work & have careers, play sports, run for office & even for potus. What’s with the victim train? #WomenHaveItAll https://t.co/ZJRq8RXq85

— Kristy Swanson (@KristySwansonXO) August 21, 2018

I had felt a great deal of sympathy for Christine Blasey Ford when I watched her testify. As more and more of her lies were exposed and as more and more of the feminist agenda was unveiled, the spotlight in the striptease fell on Christine’s face. To my horror, I saw that the plaintive victim Christine had morphed into the manipulative Queen Jezebel. In the biblical story, Jezebel gets “two worthless men” to bring false accusations against the peasant Naboth. Jezebel’s husband King Ahab steals Naboth’s vineyard and Naboth is stoned to death.

The feminist lynch mob is spitting blood. Jezebel is back with a vengeance.

from Republic Standard | Conservative Thought & Culture Magazine https://ift.tt/2IINzEG via IFTTT

[daringcoolguy-blog]

IN SERVICE OF FEMINITY CHAPTER 1

Materialist ideologies Rosemary Hennessy and Chrys Ingraham say that materialist forms of feminism grew out of Western Marxist thought and have inspired a number of different (but overlapping) movements, all of which are involved in a critique of capitalism and are focused on ideology's relationship to women.[92] Marxist feminism argues that capitalism is the root cause of women's oppression, and that discrimination against women in domestic life and employment is an effect of capitalist ideologies.[93] Socialist feminism distinguishes itself from Marxist feminism by arguing that women's liberation can only be achieved by working to end both the economic and cultural sources of women's oppression.[94] Anarcha-feminists believe that class struggle and anarchy against the state[95] require struggling against patriarchy, which comes from involuntary hierarchy. Black and postcolonial ideologies Sara Ahmed argues that Black and Postcolonial feminisms pose a challenge "to some of the organizing premises of Western feminist thought."[96] During much of its history, feminist movements and theoretical developments were led predominantly by middle-class white women from Western Europe and North America.[69][73][97] However women of other races have proposed alternative feminisms.[73] This trend accelerated in the 1960s with the civil rights movement in the United States and the collapse of European colonialism in Africa, the Caribbean, parts of Latin America, and Southeast Asia. Since that time, women in developing nations and former colonies and who are of colour or various ethnicities or living in poverty have proposed additional feminisms.[97] Womanism[98][99] emerged after early feminist movements were largely white and middle-class.[69] Postcolonial feminists argue that colonial oppression and Western feminism marginalized postcolonial women but did not turn them passive or voiceless.[9] Third-world feminism and Indigenous feminism are closely related to postcolonial feminism.[97] These ideas also correspond with ideas in African feminism, motherism,[100] Stiwanism,[101] negofeminism,[102] femalism, transnational feminism, and Africana womanism.[103] Social constructionist ideologies In the late twentieth century various feminists began to argue that gender roles are socially constructed,[104][105] and that it is impossible to generalize women's experiences across cultures and histories.[106] Post-structural feminism draws on the philosophies of post-structuralism and deconstruction in order to argue that the concept of gender is created socially and culturally through discourse.[107] Postmodern feminists also emphasize the social construction of gender and the discursive nature of reality;[104] however, as Pamela Abbott et al. note, a postmodern approach to feminism highlights "the existence of multiple truths (rather than simply men and women's standpoints)".[108] Cultural movements Riot grrls took an anti-corporate stance of self-sufficiency and self-reliance.[109] Riot grrrl's emphasis on universal female identity and separatism often appears more closely allied with second-wave feminism than with the third wave.[110] The movement encouraged and made "adolescent girls' standpoints central", allowing them to express themselves fully.[111] Lipstick feminism is a cultural feminist movement that attempts to respond to the backlash of second-wave radical feminism of the 1960s and 1970s by reclaiming symbols of "feminine" identity such as make-up, suggestive clothing and having a sexual allure as valid and empowering personal choices.[112][113] Demographics According to 2015 poll, 18 percent of Americans consider themselves feminists, while 85 percent reported they believe in "equality for women". Despite the popular belief in equal rights, 52 percent did not identify as feminist, 26 percent were unsure, and four percent provided no response.[114] According to 2014 Ipsos poll covering 15 developed countries, 53 percent of respondents identified as feminists, and 87% agreed that "women should be treated equally to men in all areas based on their competency, not their gender". However, only 55% of women agreed that they have "full equality with men and the freedom to reach their full dreams and aspirations".[115] Among women, some of the strongest support for feminism was found in Sweden, where one in three (36%) agreed very much that they defined themselves as feminists. They were followed by women in Italy (31%) and Argentina (29%). Those in the middle of the ranking were from Great Britain (22%), Spain (22%), United States (20%), Australia (18%), Belgium (18%), France (18%), Canada (17%), Poland (17%), and Hungary (15%). Women least likely to agree very much were from Japan (8%), Germany (7%) and South Korea (7%).[115] One quarter of men in Italy (25%) and Argentina (25%), and two in ten of those in Poland (21%) and France (19%), agreed very much they defined themselves as feminist. They were followed by those from Sweden (17%), Spain (16%), the United States (16%), Canada (15%), Great Britain (14%), Hungary (12%), Belgium (11%) and Australia (10%). Men least likely to identify this way were from South Korea (7%), Germany (3%) and Japan (3%).[115] Women were more likely to self-identify as being feminists than men in every country except Poland, where men (21%) were four points more likely than women (17%) to agree very much with the statement. In South Korea, there was no difference between men and women (7%) on this measure.[115] Sexuality Main article: Feminist views on sexuality Feminist views on sexuality vary, and have differed by historical period and by cultural context. Feminist attitudes to female sexuality have taken a few different directions. Matters such as the sex industry, sexual representation in the media, and issues regarding consent to sex under conditions of male dominance have been particularly controversial among feminists. This debate has culminated in the late 1970s and the 1980s, in what came to be known as the feminist sex wars, which pitted anti-pornography feminism against sex-positive feminism, and parts of the feminist movement were deeply divided by these debates.[116][117][118][119][120] Feminists have taken a variety of positions on different aspects of the sexual revolution from the 1960s and 70s. Over the course of the 1970s, a large number of influential women accepted lesbian and bisexual women as part of feminism.[121] Sex industry Main articles: Sex industry, Feminist views on pornography, Feminist views on prostitution, and Feminist sex wars Opinions on the sex industry are diverse. Feminists critical of the sex industry generally see it as the exploitative result of patriarchal social structures which reinforce sexual and cultural attitudes complicit in rape and sexual harassment. Alternately, feminists who support at least part of the sex industry argue that it can be a medium of feminist expression and a means for women to take control of their sexuality. Feminist views of pornography range from condemnation of pornography as a form of violence against women, to an embracing of some forms of pornography as a medium of feminist expression.[116][117][118][119][120] Feminists' views on prostitution vary, but many of these perspectives can be loosely arranged into an overarching standpoint that is generally either critical or supportive of prostitution and sex work.[122] Affirming female sexual autonomy For feminists, a woman's right to control her own sexuality is a key issue. Feminists such as Catharine MacKinnon argue that women have very little control over their own bodies, with female sexuality being largely controlled and defined by men in patriarchal societies. Feminists argue that sexual violence committed by men is often rooted in ideologies of male sexual entitlement, and that these systems grant women very few legitimate options to refuse sexual advances.[123][124] In many cultures, men do not believe that a woman has the right to reject a man's sexual advances or to make an autonomous decision about participating in sex. Feminists argue that all cultures are, in one way or another, dominated by ideologies that largely deny women the right to decide how to express their sexuality, because men under patriarchy feel entitled to define sex on their own terms. This entitlement can take different forms, depending on the culture. In many parts of the world, especially in conservative and religious cultures, marriage is regarded as an institution which requires a wife to be sexually available at all times, virtually without limit; thus, forcing or coercing sex on a wife is not considered a crime or even an abusive behaviour.[125][126] In more liberal cultures, this entitlement takes the form of a general sexualization of the whole culture. This is played out in the sexual objectification of women, with pornography and other forms of sexual entertainment creating the fantasy that all women exist solely for men's sexual pleasure, and that women are readily available and desiring to engage in sex at any time, with any man, on a man's terms.[127] Science For more details on this topic, see Feminist epistemology. Sandra Harding says that the "moral and political insights of the women's movement have inspired social scientists and biologists to raise critical questions about the ways traditional researchers have explained gender, sex and relations within and between the social and natural worlds."[128] Some feminists, such as Ruth Hubbard and Evelyn Fox Keller, criticize traditional scientific discourse as being historically biased towards a male perspective.[129] A part of the feminist research agenda is the examination of the ways in which power inequities are created or reinforced in scientific and academic institutions.[130] Physicist Lisa Randall, appointed to a task force at Harvard by then-president Lawrence Summers after his controversial discussion of why women may be underrepresented in science and engineering, said, "I just want to see a whole bunch more women enter the field so these issues don't have to come up anymore."[131] Lynn Hankinson Nelson notes that feminist empiricists find fundamental differences between the experiences of men and women. Thus, they seek to obtain knowledge through the examination of the experiences of women, and to "uncover the consequences of omitting, misdescribing, or devaluing them" to account for a range of human experience.[132] Another part of the feminist research agenda is the uncovering of ways in which power inequities are created or reinforced in society and in scientific and academic institutions.[130] Furthermore, despite calls for greater attention to be paid to structures of gender inequity in the academic literature, structural analyses of gender bias rarely appear in highly cited psychological journals, especially in the commonly studied areas of psychology and personality.[133] One criticism of feminist epistemology is that it allows social and political values to influence its findings.[134] Susan Haack also points out that feminist epistemology reinforces traditional stereotypes about women's thinking (as intuitive and emotional, etc.); Meera Nanda further cautions that this may in fact trap women within "traditional gender roles and help justify patriarchy".[135]

[yourethicalenviro-blog]

Blog #12 Biocentrism

With a specific end goal to build up a greener future, it is basic that our way of life figures out how to perceive the importance and pride of all life on this planet. The theory of biocentrism, which has been created by philosophers/environmentalists like Peter Singer and Paul Taylor, endeavors to give a system to regarding the respect of life, using five widespread laws. In any case, before we can figure out how to treat all species, as equivalent, we have work to do among individuals from our own species. Ecofeminism is a moderately new natural development that endeavors to address the imbalance amongst men and women around the globe in circumstances, for example, cultivating, sustenance generation, and political positions concerning the earth. The biocentric way to deal with ecological morals is comprehensive. It perceives the cravings and consciousness of people while also giving strict rules that call to regard for the earth, in view of it's inborn good worth. While this approach might be awkward, it is apparently the most ethically just of all major biological morals rationalities.

Taylor's biocentric reasoning enormously takes after Tom Regan's species libertarianism, however incorporates plants in the qualification, and sets up an elaborate scheme of principles. These rules are known as the five need standards for the reasonable determination of clashing cases, and fill in as criteria for the justification of activities that would hurt different species. The initially, and least difficult guideline, is simply the standard barrier. This standard capacities much like genuine self preservation laws do. If our essential advantages are undermined by an assaulting species, then we are permitted to sacrifice their fundamental advantages. This tradeoff must be maintained a strategic distance from no matter what, and different alternatives must be investigated. The guideline of least wrong takes this further, expressing human nonbasic intrigue might be organized over nonhuman essential enthusiasm the length of the fundamental interests of the nonhumans are in direct rivalry with the nonbasic interests of the people, the human interests are not inconsistent with deference for nature, and that sane and educated individuals would concur that the enthusiasm for question is of incredible significance to people. A case of this would be the working of an air terminal in a backwoods. This air terminal may associate with remote towns, enabling transportation to a range. Since presence of the air terminal is fundamentally imperative to human intrigue, and not building it would accomplish more mischief than building it would, the development of the airplane terminal would not damage the standard of least damage. At last, the guideline of restitutive equity expresses that the nonbasic interests of an animal varieties can be wronged with a specific end goal to reestablish the nonbasic interests of a group encountering unfairness. A case of this in history is the gift of Israel to Jewish individuals soon after the Holocaust.

The standard of ecofeminism, created in the 1970s and clarified in Karen Warren's indistinguishably titled book, embraces most of the biocentric perspective, taking the position promote, expressing that everything in nature is an ethical patient. Ecofeminism is basically an association amongst woman's rights and environmentalism, saying that to really be a piece of one gathering, a partner must be a piece of alternate too. Acknowledgment for goodness' sake and "respecting the other" are significant principles of the development. Respecting the other basically implies that we should acknowledge differences amongst individuals and things. Ladies are different than men, and alongside that, people are different than nature. Warren composes that we should acknowledge those differences if we are to gain social ground, and that people have taken after the strides of the patriarchy's control of men over ladies, by ruling nature comparatively. To be an ecofeminist, one must not command, but rather acknowledge.

One of these fields is concentrate the connection between the earth and ladies, which expresses that women have a special association with the earth and that both can profit by the other's inclusion. Ecofeminism, notwithstanding, appears to have a more thorough comprehension of the connection amongst ladies and nature. It makes guarantees about how the part amongst nature and culture adds to the mistreatment of ladies and nonhuman substances, for example, plants. This development is identified with developments of social equity, which VanDeVeer also addresses, and expresses that topics of persecution and disparity are resounded in nature and that values that are normally connected with ladies can be effortlessly found in nature too, and that therefore they are associated.

Thoughts that ladies and nature are supporting or have solid regenerative capacities or even thoughts of sustaining are found in nature, would be a stage in the correct heading as they get to highlight issues of social bad form that should be tended to. Social equity issues may appear like expansive issues to manage however they are in reality identified with numerous other natural unfairness issues and are an amazing approach to scaffold human culture with the earth. While change can absolutely occur from different perspectives that assess a different all the more environmentally cognizant level of ecology, change can likewise come to fruition when individuals interface trains and make associations with the end goal that nature and individuals are associated on a physical level as well as profoundly or ethically. Figuring out how to regard nature is a vast piece of changing the way we interface with the world and start to handle issues of the world, as exhibited in the video cuts seen before. It is intriguing to perceive how much harm we've delivered when our nearness on Earth is so short. It appears to be practically unthinkable that such genuine and outrageous activity is required when different life forms have existed for millions if not billions of years before us. Thusly, the call for change is maybe considerably more dire in view of this reality.

This sort of speculation is also important for working up connections amongst individuals and nature. While a few people may think it is excessively outrageous, making it impossible to consider plants and creatures as equivalent or deserving of as much regard and respect as individuals to start the discussion and start feeling that creatures, for example, plants may have moral status and even be associated with people in different routes than we may have at first thought can also change our perspectives in a way that will lead us to be more aware of our activities and how they influence different creatures which will prompt a general more advantageous world and may even help us to repair a portion of the harm we have done and maybe more vitally have a superior reasoning advancing if we can rescue what we jar of the Earth. Furthermore, opening our brains to these far-fetched associations can help us to wind up plainly more comprehensive of new thoughts and developments, and even evaluate current methods of insight that may at no time in the future fit the necessities of a developing society, or even of a world that has been formed and harmed by individuals acting absolutely. If we can open our brains to thoughts of resistance and balance, among other individuals and among different species and even whatever remains of nature all in all, we can move towards a more beneficial world and one that is keen as opposed to careless. It can associate us to other life and even other individuals and cover up the moves in perspectives that are expected to make an additionally sustaining and less damaging world.

Regardless of the way that women's liberation and environmentalism handle boundlessly different social and natural issues, the path in which they battle and the issues that they battle against are very comparable. Furthermore, Warren is right in the way that one can't call themselves a tree hugger without being a women's activist. All things considered, it is unimaginable for a man to really be populist if they sacrifice the interests of another gathering of people for their own. If a man can't perceive the battles of ladies or declines to address societal issues with respect to sexual orientation, they can't hope to verge on comprehension and regarding the interests of another species.

My question is: what can be done to catalyze the connection between women and nature in a basic sense?

Word count: 1362

[daringcoolguy-blog]

IN SERVICE OF FEMINITY CHAPTER 2

Materialist ideologies Rosemary Hennessy and Chrys Ingraham say that materialist forms of feminism grew out of Western Marxist thought and have inspired a number of different (but overlapping) movements, all of which are involved in a critique of capitalism and are focused on ideology's relationship to women.[92] Marxist feminism argues that capitalism is the root cause of women's oppression, and that discrimination against women in domestic life and employment is an effect of capitalist ideologies.[93] Socialist feminism distinguishes itself from Marxist feminism by arguing that women's liberation can only be achieved by working to end both the economic and cultural sources of women's oppression.[94] Anarcha-feminists believe that class struggle and anarchy against the state[95] require struggling against patriarchy, which comes from involuntary hierarchy. Black and postcolonial ideologies Sara Ahmed argues that Black and Postcolonial feminisms pose a challenge "to some of the organizing premises of Western feminist thought."[96] During much of its history, feminist movements and theoretical developments were led predominantly by middle-class white women from Western Europe and North America.[69][73][97] However women of other races have proposed alternative feminisms.[73] This trend accelerated in the 1960s with the civil rights movement in the United States and the collapse of European colonialism in Africa, the Caribbean, parts of Latin America, and Southeast Asia. Since that time, women in developing nations and former colonies and who are of colour or various ethnicities or living in poverty have proposed additional feminisms.[97] Womanism[98][99] emerged after early feminist movements were largely white and middle-class.[69] Postcolonial feminists argue that colonial oppression and Western feminism marginalized postcolonial women but did not turn them passive or voiceless.[9] Third-world feminism and Indigenous feminism are closely related to postcolonial feminism.[97] These ideas also correspond with ideas in African feminism, motherism,[100] Stiwanism,[101] negofeminism,[102] femalism, transnational feminism, and Africana womanism.[103] Social constructionist ideologies In the late twentieth century various feminists began to argue that gender roles are socially constructed,[104][105] and that it is impossible to generalize women's experiences across cultures and histories.[106] Post-structural feminism draws on the philosophies of post-structuralism and deconstruction in order to argue that the concept of gender is created socially and culturally through discourse.[107] Postmodern feminists also emphasize the social construction of gender and the discursive nature of reality;[104] however, as Pamela Abbott et al. note, a postmodern approach to feminism highlights "the existence of multiple truths (rather than simply men and women's standpoints)".[108] Cultural movements Riot grrls took an anti-corporate stance of self-sufficiency and self-reliance.[109] Riot grrrl's emphasis on universal female identity and separatism often appears more closely allied with second-wave feminism than with the third wave.[110] The movement encouraged and made "adolescent girls' standpoints central", allowing them to express themselves fully.[111] Lipstick feminism is a cultural feminist movement that attempts to respond to the backlash of second-wave radical feminism of the 1960s and 1970s by reclaiming symbols of "feminine" identity such as make-up, suggestive clothing and having a sexual allure as valid and empowering personal choices.[112][113] Demographics According to 2015 poll, 18 percent of Americans consider themselves feminists, while 85 percent reported they believe in "equality for women". Despite the popular belief in equal rights, 52 percent did not identify as feminist, 26 percent were unsure, and four percent provided no response.[114] According to 2014 Ipsos poll covering 15 developed countries, 53 percent of respondents identified as feminists, and 87% agreed that "women should be treated equally to men in all areas based on their competency, not their gender". However, only 55% of women agreed that they have "full equality with men and the freedom to reach their full dreams and aspirations".[115] Among women, some of the strongest support for feminism was found in Sweden, where one in three (36%) agreed very much that they defined themselves as feminists. They were followed by women in Italy (31%) and Argentina (29%). Those in the middle of the ranking were from Great Britain (22%), Spain (22%), United States (20%), Australia (18%), Belgium (18%), France (18%), Canada (17%), Poland (17%), and Hungary (15%). Women least likely to agree very much were from Japan (8%), Germany (7%) and South Korea (7%).[115] One quarter of men in Italy (25%) and Argentina (25%), and two in ten of those in Poland (21%) and France (19%), agreed very much they defined themselves as feminist. They were followed by those from Sweden (17%), Spain (16%), the United States (16%), Canada (15%), Great Britain (14%), Hungary (12%), Belgium (11%) and Australia (10%). Men least likely to identify this way were from South Korea (7%), Germany (3%) and Japan (3%).[115] Women were more likely to self-identify as being feminists than men in every country except Poland, where men (21%) were four points more likely than women (17%) to agree very much with the statement. In South Korea, there was no difference between men and women (7%) on this measure.[115] Sexuality Main article: Feminist views on sexuality Feminist views on sexuality vary, and have differed by historical period and by cultural context. Feminist attitudes to female sexuality have taken a few different directions. Matters such as the sex industry, sexual representation in the media, and issues regarding consent to sex under conditions of male dominance have been particularly controversial among feminists. This debate has culminated in the late 1970s and the 1980s, in what came to be known as the feminist sex wars, which pitted anti-pornography feminism against sex-positive feminism, and parts of the feminist movement were deeply divided by these debates.[116][117][118][119][120] Feminists have taken a variety of positions on different aspects of the sexual revolution from the 1960s and 70s. Over the course of the 1970s, a large number of influential women accepted lesbian and bisexual women as part of feminism.[121] Sex industry Main articles: Sex industry, Feminist views on pornography, Feminist views on prostitution, and Feminist sex wars Opinions on the sex industry are diverse. Feminists critical of the sex industry generally see it as the exploitative result of patriarchal social structures which reinforce sexual and cultural attitudes complicit in rape and sexual harassment. Alternately, feminists who support at least part of the sex industry argue that it can be a medium of feminist expression and a means for women to take control of their sexuality. Feminist views of pornography range from condemnation of pornography as a form of violence against women, to an embracing of some forms of pornography as a medium of feminist expression.[116][117][118][119][120] Feminists' views on prostitution vary, but many of these perspectives can be loosely arranged into an overarching standpoint that is generally either critical or supportive of prostitution and sex work.[122] Affirming female sexual autonomy For feminists, a woman's right to control her own sexuality is a key issue. Feminists such as Catharine MacKinnon argue that women have very little control over their own bodies, with female sexuality being largely controlled and defined by men in patriarchal societies. Feminists argue that sexual violence committed by men is often rooted in ideologies of male sexual entitlement, and that these systems grant women very few legitimate options to refuse sexual advances.[123][124] In many cultures, men do not believe that a woman has the right to reject a man's sexual advances or to make an autonomous decision about participating in sex. Feminists argue that all cultures are, in one way or another, dominated by ideologies that largely deny women the right to decide how to express their sexuality, because men under patriarchy feel entitled to define sex on their own terms. This entitlement can take different forms, depending on the culture. In many parts of the world, especially in conservative and religious cultures, marriage is regarded as an institution which requires a wife to be sexually available at all times, virtually without limit; thus, forcing or coercing sex on a wife is not considered a crime or even an abusive behaviour.[125][126] In more liberal cultures, this entitlement takes the form of a general sexualization of the whole culture. This is played out in the sexual objectification of women, with pornography and other forms of sexual entertainment creating the fantasy that all women exist solely for men's sexual pleasure, and that women are readily available and desiring to engage in sex at any time, with any man, on a man's terms.[127] Science For more details on this topic, see Feminist epistemology. Sandra Harding says that the "moral and political insights of the women's movement have inspired social scientists and biologists to raise critical questions about the ways traditional researchers have explained gender, sex and relations within and between the social and natural worlds."[128] Some feminists, such as Ruth Hubbard and Evelyn Fox Keller, criticize traditional scientific discourse as being historically biased towards a male perspective.[129] A part of the feminist research agenda is the examination of the ways in which power inequities are created or reinforced in scientific and academic institutions.[130] Physicist Lisa Randall, appointed to a task force at Harvard by then-president Lawrence Summers after his controversial discussion of why women may be underrepresented in science and engineering, said, "I just want to see a whole bunch more women enter the field so these issues don't have to come up anymore."[131] Lynn Hankinson Nelson notes that feminist empiricists find fundamental differences between the experiences of men and women. Thus, they seek to obtain knowledge through the examination of the experiences of women, and to "uncover the consequences of omitting, misdescribing, or devaluing them" to account for a range of human experience.[132] Another part of the feminist research agenda is the uncovering of ways in which power inequities are created or reinforced in society and in scientific and academic institutions.[130] Furthermore, despite calls for greater attention to be paid to structures of gender inequity in the academic literature, structural analyses of gender bias rarely appear in highly cited psychological journals, especially in the commonly studied areas of psychology and personality.[133] One criticism of feminist epistemology is that it allows social and political values to influence its findings.[134] Susan Haack also points out that feminist epistemology reinforces traditional stereotypes about women's thinking (as intuitive and emotional, etc.); Meera Nanda further cautions that this may in fact trap women within "traditional gender roles and help justify patriarchy".[135]