#the book is called ‘governance feminism: an introduction’

[sisididis]

There’s this quote by author Janet Halley that goes “the line between prophetess and madwoman is very thin and constantly moving,” and although it speaks of how women must go to greater lengths than men to earn their credibility, it always makes me think of Elain.  

“The line between prophetess and madwoman is very thin.”

[thesorcerersapprentice]

10.02.2024

Worldbuilding: Worked on a post on the geography, flora & fauna of The Sorcerer's Apprentice universe which I meant to publish last week, but was unable to finish due to life circumstances (my favourite aunt went to intensive care, and I caught a nasty stomach bug while visiting her). At any rate, it's almost done, so it should go up sometime next week.

Continued Researching Colonialism, Neocolonialism, Coloniality as a Concept and Decolonial Practices: I've been reading Edward W. Said's Culture and Imperialism for the last few weeks and I'm making slow but steady progress. My plan is to pick up Said's Orientalism next, which I've heard is also a go-to text on colonialism. In addition, I also read A Decolonial Feminism by Francoise Verges, which I found quite eye-opening and will be incorporating into Altaluna's storyline (namely, I'll be showcasing how some forms of feminism are used to further colonial aims through interactions between Altaluna and her supposedly 'transgressive' peers); The Good Die Young: The Verdict on Henry Kissinger, a compilation of essays on how Kissinger (who I met in his declining years) used and abused human rights discourse to further US economic control (capitalism with US supremacy incorporated) over so-called 'third-world' regions, and how this is the standard practice for US foreign policy to this day (I'm borrowing this two-pronged approach for interactions between the Empire and it's subordinate 'independent' states); and Toussaint L'Ouverture: The Haitian Revolution, a compilation of Toussaint's (and a couple others, including Napoleon's) correspondence during Toussaint's fight for independence. The book features an outstanding introduction by Jean-Bertrand Aristide and offers a stark contrast to Kissinger's views on Human Rights; in Toussaint's letters and speeches, these rights come with no strings attached and are pursued on principle, out of the genuine belief that they are inalienable to all (at one point the British offered to 'make him' King of Haiti and he refused, which I have to admit, I was pretty impressed by). I also did quite a lot of follow-up reading on Haiti, as an example of the colonialism-to-neocolonialism pipeline. Given that The Sorcerer's Apprentice is set in a neo-colonial world, reading up on Haiti's history helps me better portray the continuity between these two systems and indirectly criticize the idea that today both my readers and I live in a post-colonial world. BTW, if you're unfamiliar with the horrors visited upon the Haitian people (did you know that up until 2015, when France 'forgave' them their debt, the government of Haiti had been paying the French compensation for their loss of slave labour?), check out this article. Likewise, if you're unfamiliar with the difference between colonialism and neo-colonialism (as I was for 99.9% of my life lol), take a look at the iconographic below.

Researched Fiction Genres in 'Post-colonial' Literature: The various iterations of The Sorcerer's Apprentice I've written so far have experimented with two main genres, fantasy and horror. The first iterations were straight-up typical high fantasies with Kings and Queens and dragons in a UK-style setting; the second were more realistic but much more eerie psychological horror stories set in modern-day New York City (if you scroll back far enough on this blog, you'll find evidence of both). Although I like some elements/scenes from both genre adaptations of The Sorcerer's Apprentice and, indeed, although I intend to incorporate some of these in the current draft, ultimately I abandoned the aforementioned versions because, at their core, they failed. Why? Because, while they nailed the interpersonal struggle between Valeriano and Altaluna, they did so without addressing the reason that struggle even exists in the first place. Namely, they failed to go beyond the personal relationship, to its systemic causes. The truth is that a person like Valeriano doesn't exist in a vacuum. He's a product and embodiment of a world with certain values. Yes, Altaluna may have defeated him in a high-fantasy royal skirmish for power or its modern-day equivalent inheritance drama, but engaging (even embracing) the system that produced him (royalty, birthright, etc.), undermines her victory. What was she in these earlier versions of The Sorcerer's Apprentice, but another shade of Valeriano? What did she represent, in her victory if not the desire to be the oppressor? The deep self-depreciation of the oppressed? Even the aesthetics of these earlier versions glorified Valeriano's world, with little mention of Altaluna's. This was my fault. I did not understand that these things were in me. I am beginning to. In any case, I don't intend to make the same mistake twice, so I'm doing a little research into how different literary genres have been used to tell stories about colonialism/neocolonialism/post-colonialism. I read a pretty good article from Globalization, Utopia, and Postcolonial Science Fiction: New Maps of Hope by E. Smith entitled "Third-World Punks, or, Watch out for the Worlds Behind You," and I'm trying to look into Afrofuturism and Latinfuturism.

REMINDERS:

Answer pending asks. Yes, I am bad. I admit it, I am very bad. (why am I so bad *sobs*)

Publish that promised worldbuilding post on the geography, flora & fauna of The Sorcerer's Apprentice universe.

Survive this stomach bug.

TAG LIST: (ask to be + or - ) @the-finch-address @fearofahumanplanet @winterninja-fr  @avrablake @outpost51 @d3mon-ology @hippiewrites @threeking @lexiklecksi @achilleanmafia

© 2024 The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. All rights reserved.

[damnesdelamer]

Recommended reading for leftists

Introduction and disclaimer:

I believe, in leftist praxis (especially online), the sharing of resources, including information, must be foremost. I have often been asked for reading recommendations by comrades; and while I am by no means an expert in leftist theory, I am a lifelong Marxist, and painfully overeducated. This list is far from comprehensive, and each author is worth exploring beyond the individual texts I suggest here. Further, none of these need to be read in full to derive benefit; read what selections from each interest you, and the more you read the better. Many of these texts cannot truly be called leftist either, but I believe all can equip us to confront capitalist hegemony and our place within it. And if one comrade derives the smallest value or insight herefrom, we will all be better for it. After all... La raison tonne en son cratère. Alone we are naught, together may we be all. Solidarity forever.

***

(I have split these into categories for ease of navigation, but there is plenty of overlap. Links included where available.)

Classics of socialist theory

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Capital (vol.1) by Karl Marx Marx’s critique of political economy forms the single most significant and vital source for understanding capitalism, both in our present and throughout history. Do not let its breadth daunt you; in general I feel it’s better to read a little theory than none, but nowhere is this truer than with regards to Capital. Better to read 20 pages of Capital than 150 pages of most other leftist literature. This is not a book you need to ‘finish’ in order to benefit from, but rather (like all of Marx’s work) the backbone of theory which you will return to throughout your life. Read a chapter, leave it, read on, read again. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-Volume-I.pdf

The Prison Notebooks by Antonio Gramsci In our current epoch of global neoliberal capitalism, Gramsci’s explanation of hegemony is more valuable than much of the economic or outright revolutionary analyses of many otherwise vital theory. Particularly following the coup attempt and election in America, as well as Brexit and abusive government responses to Covid, but the state violence around the world and the advent of fascism reasserts Gramsci as being as pertinent and prophetic now as amidst the first rise of fascism. https://abahlali.org/files/gramsci.pdf

Imperialism: The Highest Stage Of Capitalism by V.I. Lenin Like Marx, for many Lenin’s work is the backbone of socialist theory, particularly in pragmatic terms. In much of his writing Lenin focuses on the practical processes of revolutionary transition from capitalism to communism via socialism and proletarian leadership (sometimes divisively among leftists). Imperialism is perhaps most valuable today for addressing the need for internationalist proletarian support and solidarity in the face of global capitalist hegemony, arguably stronger today than in Lenin’s lifetime. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/imperialism.pdf

Socialism: Utopian And Scientific by Friedrich Engels Marx’s partner offers a substantial insight into the material reality of socialism in the post-industrial age, offering further practical guidance and theory to Marx and Engels’ already robust body of work. This highlights the empirical rigour of classical Marxist theory, intended as a popular text accessible to proletarian readers, in order to condense and to some extent explain the density of Capital. Perhaps even more valuable now than at the time it was first published. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/index.htm

In Defense Of Marxism by Leon Trotsky It has been over a decade since I have read any Trotsky, but this seems like a very good source to get to grips with both classical Marxist thought and to confront contemporary detractors. In many ways, Trotsky can be seen as an uncorrupt symbol of the Leninist dream, and in others his exile might illustrate the dangers of Leninism (Stalinism) when corrupt, so who better to defend the virtues of the system many see as his demise? https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/idom/dm/dom.pdf

The Conquest Of Bread by Pyotr Kropotkin Krapotkin forms the classical backbone of anarchist theory, and emerges from similar material conditions as Marxism. In many ways, ‘the Bread book’ forms a dual attack (on capitalism and authoritarianism of the state) and defence (of the basic rights and needs of every human), the text can be seen as foundational to defining anarchism both in overlap and starkly in contrast with Marxist communism. This is a seminal and eminent text on self-determination, and like Marx, will benefit the reader regardless of orthodox alignment. https://libcom.org/files/Peter%20Kropotkin%20-%20The%20Conquest%20of%20Bread_0.pdf

Leftism of the 20th Century and beyond

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Freedom Is A Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, And The Foundations Of A Movement by Angela Davis This is something of a placeholder for Davis, as everything she has ever put to paper is profoundly valuable to international(ist) struggles against capitalism and it’s highest stage. Indeed, the emphasis on the relationship between American and Israeli racialised state violence highlights the struggles Davis has continually engaged since the late 1960s, that of a united front against imperialist oppression, white supremacists, patriarchal capitalist exploitation, and the carceral state. https://www.docdroid.net/rfDRFWv/freedom-is-a-constant-struggle-pdf#page=6

Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic Of Late Capitalism by Frederic Jameson A frequent criticism of Marxism is the false claim that it is decreasingly relevant. Here, Jameson presents a compelling update of Marxist theory which addresses the hegemonic nature of mass media in the postmodern epoch (how befitting a tumblr post listing leftist literature). Despite being published in the early ‘90s, this analysis of late capitalism becomes all the more pertinent in the age of social media and ‘influencers’ etc., and illustrates just how immortal a science ours really is. https://is.muni.cz/el/1423/jaro2016/SOC757/um/61816962/Jameson_The_cultural_logic.pdf

The Ecology Of Freedom: The Emergence And Dissolution Of Hierarchy by Murray Bookchin I have not read this in depth, and take issue with some of Bookchin’s ideas, but this seems like a very good jumping off point to engage with ecosocialism or red-green theory. Regardless of any schism between Marxist and anarchist thought, the importance of uniting together to stem the unsustainable growth of industrialised capitalism cannot be denied. Climate change is unquestionably a threat faced by us all, but which will disproportionately impact the most disenfranchised on the planet. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-the-ecology-of-freedom.pdf

Why Marx Was Right by Terry Eagleton I’ve only read excerpts of this; I know Eagleton better for his extensive work on Marxist literary criticism, postmodernity, and postcolonial literature, so I’m including this work of his as a means of introducing and engaging directly with Marxism itself, rather than the synthesis of diverse fields of analysis. But Eagleton generally does a very good job of parsing often incredibly dense concepts in an accessible way, so I trust him to explain something so obvious and self-evident as why Marx was right. https://filosoficabiblioteca.files.wordpress.com/2018/12/EAGLETON-Terry-Why-Marx-Was-Right.pdf

By Any Means Necessary by Malcolm X Malcolm X is one of the pre-eminent voices of the revolutionary black power movement, and among the greatest contributors to black/American leftist thought. This is a collection of his speeches and writings, in which he eloquently and charismaticly conveys both his righteous outrage and optimism for the future. Malcolm X’s explicitly Marxist and decolonial rhetoric is often downplayed since his assassination, but even the title and slogan is borrowed from Frantz Fanon.

Feminism and gender theory

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Sister Outsider: Essays And Speeches by Audre Lorde The primary thrust of this collection is the inclusion of ‘The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master’s House’, probably Lorde‘s most well known work, but all the contents are eminently worthwhile. Lorde addresses race, capitalist oppression, solidarity, sexuality and gender, in a rigourously rhetorical yet practical way that calls us to empower one another in the face of oppression. Lorde’s poetry is also great. http://images.xhbtr.com/v2/pdfs/1082/Sister_Outsider_Essays_and_Speeches_by_Audre_Lorde.pdf

Feminism Is For Everybody by bell hooks A seminal addition to Third Wave Feminist theory, emphasising the reality that the aim of feminism is to confront and dismantle patriarchal systems which oppress - you guessed it - everybody. This book approaches feminism through the lens of race and capitalism, feeding into the discourse on intersectionality which many of us now take as a central element of 21st Century feminism. https://excoradfeminisms.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/bell_hooks-feminism_is_for_everybody.pdf

Gender Trouble: Feminism And The Subversion Of Identity by Judith Butler Butler and her work form probably the single most significant (especially white) contribution to Third Wave Feminism, as well as queer theory. This may be a somewhat dense, academic work, but the primary hurdle is in deconstructing our existing perceptions of gender and identity, which we are certainly better equipped to do today specifically thanks to Butler. Vitally important stuff for dismantling hegemonic patriarchy. https://selforganizedseminar.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/butler-gender_trouble.pdf

Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink Or Blue by Leslie Feinberg Feinberg is perhaps the foundational voice in trans theory, best known for Stone Butch Blues, but this text seems like a good point to view hir push into mainstream acceptance where ze previously aligned hirself and trans groups more with gay and lesbian subcultures. A central element here is the accessibility and deconstruction of hegemonic gender and expression, but what this really expresses is a call for solidarity and support among marginalised classes, in a fight for our mutual visibility and survival, in the greatest of Marxist feminist traditions.

The Haraway Reader by Donna Haraway Haraway is perhaps better known as a post-humanist than a Marxist feminist, but in all honesty, I am not sure these can be disentangled so easily. My highest recommendation is the essay ‘A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century‘, but it is in many ways concerned more with aesthetics and media criticism than anything practical, and Haraway’s engagement with technology has only become more significant, with the proliferation of smartphones and wifi, to understanding our bodies and ourselves as instruments of resistance. https://monoskop.org/images/5/56/Haraway_Donna_The_Haraway_Reader_2003.pdf

Postcolonialism

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The Wretched Of The Earth by Frantz Fanon Perhaps my highest recommendation, this will give you better insight into late stage (postcolonial) capitalism than perhaps anything else. Fanon was a psychologist, and his analyses help us parse the internal workings of both the capitalist and racialised minds. I don’t see this work recommended nearly enough, largely because Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks is a better source for race theory, but The Wretched Of The Earth is the best choice for understanding revolutionary, anti-capitalist, and decolonial ideas. http://abahlali.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Frantz-Fanon-The-Wretched-of-the-Earth-1965.pdf

Orientalism by Edward Said This is probably the best introduction to postcolonial theory, particularly because it focuses on colonial/imperialist abuses in media and art. Said’s later work Culture And Imperialism may actually be a better source for strictly leftist analysis, but this is the groundwork for understanding the field, and will help readers confront and interpret everything from Western military interventionism to racist motifs in Disney films. https://www.eaford.org/site/assets/files/1631/said_edward1977_orientalism.pdf

Decolonisation Is Not A Metaphor by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang In direct response to Fanon’s call to decolonise (the mind), Tuck and Yang present a compelling assertion that the abstraction of decolonisation paves the way for settler claims of innocence rather than practical rapatriation of land and rights. The relatively short article centres and problematises ongoing complicity in the agenda of settler-colonial hegemony and the material conditions of indigenous groups in the postcolonial epoch. Important stuff for anti-imperialist work and solidarity. https://clas.osu.edu/sites/clas.osu.edu/files/Tuck%20and%20Yang%202012%20Decolonization%20is%20not%20a%20metaphor.pdf

The Coloniser And The Colonised by Albert Memmi Often read in tandem with Fanon, as both are concerned with trauma, violence, and dehumanisation. But further, Memmi addresses both the harm inflicted on the colonised body and the colonisers’ own culture and mind, while also exploring the impetus of practical resistance and dismantling imperialist control structures. This is also of great import to confronting detractors, offering the concrete precedent of Algerian decolonisation. https://cominsitu.files.wordpress.com/2020/05/albert-memmi-the-colonizer-and-the-colonized-1.pdf

Can The Subaltern Speak? by Gayatri Spivak This relatively short (though dense) essay will ideally help us to confront the real struggles of many of the most disenfranchised people on earth, removing us from questions of bourgeois wage-slavery and focusing on the right to education and freedom from sexual assault, not to mention the legacy of colonial genocide. http://abahlali.org/files/Can_the_subaltern_speak.pdf 

Wider cultural studies

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No Logo by Naomi Klein I have some qualms with Klein, but she nevertheless makes important points regarding the systemic nature of neoliberal global capitalism and hegemony. No Logo addresses consumerism at a macro scale, emphasising the importance of what may be seen as internationalist solidarity and support and calling out corporate scapegoating on consumer markets. I understand that This Changes Everything is perhaps even better for addressing the unreasonable expectations of indefinite and unsustainable growth under capitalist systems, but I haven’t read it and therefore cannot recommend; regardless, this is a good starting point. https://archive.org/stream/fp_Naomi_Klein-No_Logo/Naomi_Klein-No_Logo_djvu.txt

The Black Atlantic: Modernity And Double Consciousness by Paul Gilroy This is an important source for understanding the development of diasporic (particularly black) identities in the wake of the Middle Passage between African and America, but more generally as well. This work can be related to parallel phenomena of racialised violence, genocide, and forced migration more widely, but it is especially useful for engaging with the legacy of slavery, the cultural development of blackness, and forms of everyday resistance. https://dl1.cuni.cz/pluginfile.php/756417/mod_resource/content/1/Gilroy%20Black%20Atlantic.pdf

Imagined Communities: Reflections On The Origin And Spread Of Nationalism by Benedict Anderson This text is important in understanding the nature of both high colonialism and fascism, perhaps now more than ever. Anderson examines the political manipulation and agenda of cultural production, that is the propagandised, artificial act of nation building. This analyses the development of nation states as the norm of political unity in historiographical terms, as symptomatic of old school European imperialism. Today we may see this reflected in Brexit or MAGA, but lebensraum and zionism are just as evident in the analysis. https://is.muni.cz/el/1423/jaro2016/SOC757/um/6181696/Benedict_Anderson_Imagined_Communities.pdf

Discipline And Punish: The Birth Of The Prison by Michel Foucault Honestly, I am not sure if this should be on this list; I would certainly not call it leftist. That said, it is a very important source to inform our perceptions of the nature of institutional power and abuse. It is also unquestionable that many of the pre-eminent left-leaning scholars of the past fifty years have been heavily influenced, willing or not, by Foucault and his post-structuralist ilk. A worthwhile read, especially for queer readers, but take with a liberal (zing!) helping of salt. https://monoskop.org/images/4/43/Foucault_Michel_Discipline_and_Punish_The_Birth_of_the_Prison_1977_1995.pdf

Trouble In Paradise: From The End Of History To The End Of Capitalism by Slavoj Žižek Probably just don’t read this, it amounts to self-torture. Okay but seriously, I wanted to include Žižek (perhaps against my better judgement), but he is probably best seen as a lesson in recognising theorists as fallible, requiring our criticism rather than being followed blindly. I like Žižek, but take him as a kind of clown provocateur who may lead us to explore interesting ideas. He makes good points, but he also... Doesn’t... Watch a couple youtube videos and decide if you can stomach him before diving in.

Additional highly recommended authors (with whom I am not familiar enough to give meaningful descriptions or specific recommended texts) (let me know if you find anything of significant value from among these, as I am likely unaware!):

Theodor Adorno (of the Frankfurt School, which also included Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, and Walter Benjamin, all of whom I’d likewise recommend but with whom I have only passing familiarity) was a sociologist and musicologist whose aesthetic analyses are incredibly rich and insightful, and heavily influential on 20th Century Marxist theory.

Sara Ahmed is a significant voice in Third Wave Feminist criticism, engaging with queer theory, postcoloniality, intersectionality, and identity politics, of particular interest to international praxis.

Mikhail Bakhtin was a critic and scholar whose theories on semiotics, language, and literature heavily guided the development of structuralist thought as well as later Marxist philosophy.

Mikhail Bakunin is perhaps the closest thing to anarchist orthodoxy. Consistently involved with revolutionary action, he is known as a staunch critic of Marxist rhetoric, and a seminal influence on anti-authoritarian movements.

Silvia Federici is a Marxist feminist who has contributed significant work regarding women’s unpaid labour and the capitalist subversion of the commons in historiographical contexts.

Mark Fisher was a leftist critic whose writing on music, film, and pop culture was intimately engaged with postmodernity, structuralist thought, and most importantly Marxist aesthetics.

Che Guevara was a major contributor to revolutionary efforts internationally, most notably and successfully in Cuba. His writing is robustly pragmatic as well as eloquent, and offers practical insight to leftist action.

Hồ Chí Minh was a revolutionary communist leader of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and a significant contributor to revolutionary communist theory and anti-imperialist practice.

C.L.R. James is a significant voice in 20th Century (especially black) Marxist theory, engaging with and criticising Trotskyist principles and the role of ethnic minorities in revolutionary and democratic political movements.

Joel Kovel was a researcher known as the founder of ecosocialism. His work spans a wide array of subjects, but generally tends to return to deconstructing capitalism in its highest stage.

György Lukács was a critic who contributed heavily to the Western Marxism of the Frankfurt School and engaged with aesthetics and traditions of Marx’s philosophical ideology in contrast with Soviet policy of the time.

Rosa Luxemburg was a revolutionary socialist organiser, publisher, and economist, directly engaged in practical leftist activity internationally for a significant part of the early 20th Century.

Mao Zedong was a revolutionary communist, founder and Chairman of the People’s Republic of China, and a prolific contributor to Marxism-Leninism(-Maoism), which he adapted to the material conditions outside the Western imperial core.

Huey P. Newton was the co-founder of the Black Panther Party and a vital force in the spread and accessibility of communist thought and practical internationalism, not to mention black revolutionary tactics.

Léopold Sédar Senghor was a poet-turned-politician who served as Senegal’s first president and established the basis for African socialism. Also central to postcolonial theory, and a leader of the Négritude movement.

***

I hope this list may be useful. (I would also be interested to see the recommendations of others!) Happy reading, comrades. We have nothing to lose but our chains.

[homosexuhauls]

Joanna Moorhead

Culture of silencing any challenge to prevailing ideology is damaging academic freedom, says professor

The press release that accompanies Prof Kathleen Stock’s new book says she wants to see a future in which trans rights activists and gender-critical feminists collaborate to achieve some of their political aims. But she concedes that this currently seems fanciful. As far as she is concerned, the book, Material Girls, sets out her stall – and she knows a lot of people will find it distasteful.

Stock, a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex, says the key question she addresses – itself offensive to many – is this: do trans women count as women?

Whatever else about her views is controversial, she is surely on firm ground when she writes that this question has become surrounded by toxicity. But the problem for her is, at least partly, that many people do anything they can to avoid answering it. “Very few people who are sceptical talk about it directly, because they’re frightened,” she says. “It’s so hard psychologically to say, in reply: ‘I’m afraid not.’”

Stock is at pains to say she is not a transphobe, and also that she is sympathetic to the idea that many people feel they are not in the “right” body. What she says she opposes, though, is the institutionalisation of the idea that gender identity is all that matters – that how you identify automatically confers all the entitlements of that sex. And she believes that increasingly in universities and the wider world, that is a view that cannot be challenged.

“There’s a taboo against saying this, but it’s what I believe,” she says. ��It’s fair enough if people want to disagree with me, but this is what I think.”

That last statement is loaded, too, because the gender identity row is closely linked, especially on university campuses, with freedom of speech. Campuses are a minefield for those wanting to discuss these issues, she says, and she has faced calls for her university to sack her. So she is supportive of the government’s controversial plans for a free speech bill, which critics including English PEN, Article 19 and Index on Censorship have argued will have the opposite effect.

In a joint letter, they argued that the legislation “may have the inverse effect of further limiting what is deemed ‘acceptable’ speech on campus and introducing a chilling effect both on the content of what is taught and the scope of academic research exploration”.

But Stock backs the bill: “I think vice-chancellors and university management groups have shown that they can’t manage the modern problems around suppression of academic freedom. I think there are some genuine instances of unfair treatment of controversial academics, and those academics should be able to seek meaningful redress.”

This week the University of Essex apologised to two professors, Jo Phoenix and Rosa Freedman, after an independent inquiry found the university had breached its free speech duties when their invitations or talks were cancelled after student complaints.

Stock grew up in Montrose, Scotland, the daughter of a philosophy lecturer and a newspaper proofreader, and studied for her degree at Exeter College, Oxford, going on to do an MA at the University of St Andrews and a PhD at Leeds.

Having come out as gay relatively late in life, she now lives in Sussex with her partner and two sons from her previous marriage. She regards her OBE, awarded earlier this year for services to higher education, as a signal that her views have at least some backing in the establishment.

“Academics being online, students being online – it’s introduced a whole new landscape for dealing with controversial ideas, especially when those ideas are controversial within your peer group or a student body. Threats to academic freedom don’t just come from China, or millionaires trying to buy a library wing for your college; they also come from students whipping up a petition within seconds of you saying something and trying to get you fired.”

Sometimes, she claims, it is more insidious than sackings: “For academics [the gender identity debate] has a chilling effect, because academics believe their careers may suffer in ways that are less visible: they don’t get promoted, or they’re removed from an editorial board.” The net result of all this, she says, is an impoverishment of ideas and knowledge, and damage to the dissemination of information.

Because another of Stock’s key arguments in her book is that her own profession, academia, has failed to look in detail at some claims made by trans activists. She questions some of the data that gets shared regarding violence against trans people, saying that a lot of it is produced by groups that adhere to a particular narrative.

“I don’t doubt that transphobic crime occurs, but I want to know to what extent it occurs in a way that could help the trans community better understand the problem it faces.” She’s disappointed, she says, in some fellow academics for not rising above the fray. “I thought the point of philosophy was that you would be able to argue things without resorting to ad hominem attacks – I thought that was the point of our training.”

How, then, in her view, have we got to where we are? Stock takes issue with Stonewall, the LGBTQ+ charity, which campaigns for trans inclusion and opposes the views of gender-critical feminists. The charity’s Diversity Champions programme is very popular on campuses, and Stock believes this has in part “turned universities into trans activist organisations” through their equality, diversity and inclusion departments.

Beyond this, the introduction of student fees has played its part in the current situation, Stock believes. “As soon as students started to pay, they became customers, and universities became much more deferential. They started talking about coproduction of knowledge, giving them much more choice over the whole experience.” The problem with that, she believes, is that “some young people come along with fixed ideas about gender identity theory, and it’s awkward – especially when universities are branding themselves as LGBT-friendly and queer-friendly.”

Philosophy is a vast space, most of it without risk of abuse. So what keeps her in this particular arena? “I was bullied as a child and I think that gave me experience of social ostracisation and toughened me up,” she says. “I’ve also got amazing support. Sure, some philosophers and colleagues are against my views, but others are very supportive.

“Plus it’s personal for me: I’ve struggled with my body in terms of femininity. I could easily aged 15 have decided I was non-binary or even a boy. And I feel very worried for teenagers who are now foreclosing reproductive possibilities and their future, or damaging their bodily tissues in irreversible ways, based on an idea that they may come to relinquish at a later date.”

One tragedy of the gender identity debate is how hate-filled and polarised it has become. Stock says she has suffered online abuse, but makes it clear that she is going to continue to state her case.

Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism by Kathleen Stock is published by Fleet

[samwisethewitch]

Pagan Paths: Reclaiming

Many pagans and witches are also political activists. Pagan values — such as respect for the planet and for non-human forms of life, belief in equality regardless of race or gender, and personal autonomy — often lead people to social or political action. However, as far as I know, there is only one pagan religion that has actually made this social activism one of its core tenets: Reclaiming. Reclaiming combines neopaganism with anarchist principles and social activism.

This post is not meant to be a complete introduction to Reclaiming. Instead, my goal here is to give you a taste of what Reclaiming practitioners believe and do, so you can decide for yourself if further research would be worth your time. In that spirit, I provide book recommendations at the end of this post.

History and Background

Given Reclaiming’s reputation as a social justice-oriented faith, it’s not surprising that it grew out of activist efforts. Reclaiming began with well-known pagan authors Starhawk and Diane Baker, who began teaching classes on modern witchcraft in California in the 1980s. Members of these classes began protesting and doing other activist work together, and this pagan activist group eventually grew into the Reclaiming Collective.

Out of the founders of Reclaiming, Starhawk has probably had the biggest influence on the tradition. Starhawk was initiated into the Feri tradition by its founder Victor Anderson, but had also been trained in Wicca and worked with figures such as Zsuzsanna Budapest (founder of Dianic Wicca). These Feri and Wiccan influences are clear in Starhawk’s books, such as The Spiral Dance, and have also helped shape the Reclaiming tradition.

Like Feri, Reclaiming is an ecstatic tradition that emphasizes the interconnected divinity of all things. Like Eclectic Wicca, Reclaiming is a non-initiatory religion (meaning anyone can join, regardless of training or experience level) with lots of room to customize and personalize your individual practice.

However, to say that Starhawk is the head of the Reclaiming tradition, or even to credit her as its sole founder, would be incorrect. As Reclaiming has grown and spread, it has become increasingly decentralized. Decisions are made by consensus (meaning the group must reach a unanimous decision) in small, individual communities, which author Irisanya Moon calls “cells.” Each cell has its own unique beliefs, practices, and requirements for members, stemming from Reclaiming’s core values (see below). Some of these cells may stick very closely to the kind of paganism Starhawk describes in her books, while others may look very, very different.

As with any other religion, there are times where a governing body is needed to make widespread changes to the system, such as changing core doctrine. When these situations do arise, each individual cell chooses a representative, who in turn serves as a voice for that cell in a gathering with other representatives from other cells. BIRCH (the Broad Intra-Reclaiming Council of Hubs) is an example of this.

At BIRCH meetings, representatives make decisions via consensus, the same way decisions are made in individual cells. While this means changes may take months or even years to be proposed, discussed, modified, and finally passed, it also means that everyone within the tradition is part of the decision-making process.

Core Beliefs and Values

Like Wicca, Reclaiming has very little dogma. Unlike Wicca, the Reclaiming Collective has a public statement of values that clearly and concisely lays out the essentials of what they believe and do. This document, which is called the Principles of Unity, is not very long, so I’m going to lay it out in its entirety here.

This is the most recent version of the Principles of Unity, taken from the Reclaiming Collective website in February 2021:

“The values of the Reclaiming tradition stem from our understanding that the earth is alive and all of life is sacred and interconnected. We see the Goddess as immanent in the earth’s cycles of birth, growth, death, decay and regeneration. Our practice arises from a deep, spiritual commitment to the earth, to healing and to the linking of magic with political action.

Each of us embodies the divine. Our ultimate spiritual authority is within, and we need no other person to interpret the sacred to us. We foster the questioning attitude, and honor intellectual, spiritual and creative freedom.

We are an evolving, dynamic tradition and proudly call ourselves Witches. Our diverse practices and experiences of the divine weave a tapestry of many different threads. We include those who honor Mysterious Ones, Goddesses, and Gods of myriad expressions, genders, and states of being, remembering that mystery goes beyond form. Our community rituals are participatory and ecstatic, celebrating the cycles of the seasons and our lives, and raising energy for personal, collective and earth healing.

We know that everyone can do the life-changing, world-renewing work of magic, the art of changing consciousness at will. We strive to teach and practice in ways that foster personal and collective empowerment, to model shared power and to open leadership roles to all. We make decisions by consensus, and balance individual autonomy with social responsibility.

Our tradition honors the wild, and calls for service to the earth and the community. We work in diverse ways, including nonviolent direct action, for all forms of justice: environmental, social, political, racial, gender and economic. We are an anti-racist tradition that strives to uplift and center BIPOC voices (Black, Indigenous, People of Color). Our feminism includes a radical analysis of power, seeing all systems of oppression as interrelated, rooted in structures of domination and control.

We welcome all genders, all gender histories, all races, all ages and sexual orientations and all those differences of life situation, background, and ability that increase our diversity. We strive to make our public rituals and events accessible and safe. We try to balance the need to be justly compensated for our labor with our commitment to make our work available to people of all economic levels.

All living beings are worthy of respect. All are supported by the sacred elements of air, fire, water and earth. We work to create and sustain communities and cultures that embody our values, that can help to heal the wounds of the earth and her peoples, and that can sustain us and nurture future generations.”

The Principles of Unity were originally written in 1997, to create a sense of cohesion as the Reclaiming Collective grew and diversified. However, the Principles have not remained constant since the 1990s. They have been rewritten multiple times as the Reclaiming tradition has grown and the needs of its members have changed. Like everything else within the tradition, the Principles of Unity are not beyond scrutiny, critical analysis, and reform.

For example, in 2020 the wording of the Principles of Unity was changed to affirm diverse forms of social justice work — including but not limited to non-violent action — and to express a more firm anti-racist attitude that seeks to uplift BIPOC. This was a major change, as the previous version of the document explicitly called for non-violence and included a paraphrased version of the Rede (often called the Wiccan Rede), “Harm none, and do what you will.” This change was made via consensus by BIRCH, after a series of discussions about the meaning of non-violence and the need to make space for other types of activism.

Aside from the Principles of Unity, there are no hard and fast rules for Reclaiming belief. As Irisanya Moon says in her book on the tradition, “There is no typical Reclaiming Witch.”

Important Deities and Spirits

Just as with belief and values, views on deity within Reclaiming are extremely diverse. A member of this tradition might be a monist, a polytheist, a pantheist, an agnostic, or even a nontheist. (Note that nontheism is different from atheism — while atheism typically includes a rejection of religion, nontheism allows for meaningful religious experience without belief in a higher power.)

The Principles of Unity state that the Goddess is immanent in the earth’s cycles. For some, this means that the earth is a manifestation of the Great Goddess, the source of all life. For others, the Goddess is seen as a symbol that represents the interconnected nature of all life, rather than being literally understood as a personified deity. And, of course, there are many, many people whose views fall somewhere in between.

In her book The Spiral Dance, Starhawk points out that the deities we worship function as metaphors, allowing us to connect with that which cannot be comprehended in its entirety. “The symbols and attributes associated with the Goddess… engage us emotionally,” she says. “We know the Goddess is not the moon — but we still thrill to its light glinting through the branches. We know the Goddess is not a woman, but we respond with love as if She were, and so connect emotionally with all the abstract qualities behind the symbol.”

Here’s another quote from The Spiral Dance that sums up this view of deity: “I have spoken of the Goddess as a psychological symbol and also as manifest reality. She is both. She exists, and we create Her.”

In that book, Starhawk proposes a perspective on deity that combines Wiccan and Feri theology. Starhawk’s Goddess encompasses both the Star Goddess worshiped in Feri — God Herself, the divine source of all things — and the Wiccan Goddess — Earth Mother and Queen of the Moon. This Goddess’s consort, known as the God, is similar to the Wiccan God, but includes aspects of Feri deities like the Blue God.

For some, this model of deity is the basis of their practice, while others prefer to use other means to connect with That-Which-Cannot-Be-Known. Someone may consider themselves a part of Reclaiming and be a devotee of Aphrodite, or Thor, or Osiris, or any of countless other personified deities.

Reclaiming Practice

As I said earlier, Reclaiming began with classes in magic theory, and teaching and learning are still important parts of the tradition. The basic, entry-level course that most members of the tradition take is called Elements of Magic. In this class, students explore the five elements — air, fire, water, earth, and spirit — and how these elements relate to different aspects of Reclaiming practice. Though most members of the tradition will take the Elements of Magic class, this is not a requirement.

After completing Elements of Magic, Reclaiming pagans may or may not choose to take other classes, including but not limited to: the Iron Pentacle (mastering the five points of Sex, Pride, Self, Power, and Passion and bringing them into balance), Pearl Pentacle (mastering the points of Love, Law, Knowledge, Liberation/Power, and Wisdom and embodying these qualities in relationships with others), Rites of Passage (a class that focuses on initiation and rewriting your own narrative), and Communities (a class that teaches the skills necessary to work in a community, such as conflict resolution and ritual planning).

If you’ve read my post on the Feri tradition, you probably recognize the Iron and Pearl Pentacles. This is another example of how Feri has influenced Reclaiming.

Another place where the teaching/learning element of Reclaiming shows up is in Witchcamp. Witchcamp is an intensive spiritual retreat, typically held over a period of several days in a natural setting away from cities. (However, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, some covens are now offering virtual Witchcamps). Because each Witchcamp is run by a different coven, with different teachers, there is a lot of variation in what they teach and what kind of work campers do.

Each individual camp has a main theme — some camps keep the same theme every time, while others choose a new theme each year. Some camps are adults-only, while others are family-oriented and welcome parents with children. Typically, campers will have several classes to choose from in the mornings and afternoons, with group rituals in the evenings.

Speaking of ritual, this brings us to another important part of Reclaiming practice: ecstatic ritual. The goal of most Reclaiming rituals is to connect with the divine by achieving a state of ecstasy.

Irisanya Moon says that Reclaiming rituals often use what she calls the “EIEIO” framework: Ecstatic (involving an altered state of consciousness — the transcendent ecstasy of touching the divine), Improvisational (though there may be a basic ritual outline, there is an openness to acting in the spirit of the moment), Ensemble (rituals are held in groups, often with rotating roles), Inspired (taking inspiration from mythology, personal experience, or current events), and Organic (developing naturally, even if that means going off-script). This framework is similar to the rituals Starhawk describes in her writing.

There are no officially recognized holidays in Reclaiming, but many members of the tradition celebrate the Wheel of the Year, similar to Wiccans. The most famous example of this is the annual Spiral Dance ritual held each Samhain in California, with smaller versions observed by covens around the world.

Further Reading

If you are interested in Reclaiming, I recommend starting with the book Reclaiming Witchcraft by Irisanya Moon. This is an excellent, short introduction to the tradition. After that, it’s probably worth checking out some of Starhawk’s work — I recommend starting with The Spiral Dance.

At this point, if you still feel like this is the right path for you, the next step I would recommend is to take the Elements of Magic class. If you live in a big city, it may be offered in-person near you — if not, look around online and see if you can find a virtual version. Accessibility is huge to Reclaiming pagans, and many teachers offer scholarships and price their classes on a sliding scale, so you should be able to find a class no matter what your budget is.

If you can’t find an Elements of Magic class, there is a book called Elements of Magic: Reclaiming Earth, Air, Fire, Water & Spirit, edited by Jane Meredith and Gede Parma, which provides lessons and activities from experienced teachers of the class. Teaching yourself is always going to be more difficult than learning from someone else, but it’s better than nothing!

Resources:

The Spiral Dance by Starhawk

Reclaiming Witchcraft by Irisanya Moon

The Reclaiming Collective website, reclaimingcollective.wordpress.com

cutewitch772 on YouTube (a member of the tradition who has several very informative videos on Reclaiming, told from an insider perspective)

[snailg0th]

Mj’s Ultimate Political Reading List (that isn’t just crusty russian dudes)

Hello! Today I’m going to give you a list of books that I recommend that revolve around leftist politics!

Malcolm X Speaks by Malcolm X

Women, Culture, and Politics by Angela Davis

Women, Race, & Class by Angela Davis

Freedom is a Constant Struggle by Angela Davis

The Meaning of Freedom by Angela Davis

Abolition Democracy by Angela Davis

Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis

The Prison Industrial Complex by Angela Davis

Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde

Gender Trouble by Judith Butler

Performative Acts and Gender Constitution by Judith Butler

Imitation and Gender Insubordination by Judith Butler

Bodies That Matter by Judith Butler

Excitable Speech by Judith Butler

Undoing Gender by Judith Butler

The Souls Of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois

Black Reconstruction In America by W.E.B. Du Bois

Darkwater by W.E.B. Du Bois

This Bridge Called My Back by Cherríe Moraga

Ain’t I A Woman? by Bell Hooks

Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Fredrich Engles

Fascism: What is it and How to Fight it by Leon Trotsky

Profit over People by Noam Chomsky

The Accumulation of Capital by Rosa Luxemborg

Reform or Revolution by Rosa Luxemburg

The Conquest of Bread by Peter Kropotkin

Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault

Black Skins, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon

Orientalism by Edward Said

An Introduction to Marxist Economic Theory by Ernest Mandel

The Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith

The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir

Anarchism and Other Essays by Emma Goldman

Go Tell It On The Mountain by James Baldwin

Black Women, Writing, And Identity by Carole Boyce Davies

Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity by Chandra Talpade Mohanty

An End To The Neglect Of The Problems Of The Negro Women by Claudia Jones

Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life Of Black Communist Claudia Jones by Carole Boyce Davies

The Postmodern Condition by Jean François Lyotard

Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher

Colonize This! by Daisy Hernandez and Bushra Rehman

Socialism Made Easy by James Connolly

Bad Feminist by Roxanne Gay 

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

The Sacred Hoop by Paula Gunn Allen

Black Feminist Thought by Patricia Hill Collins

Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower by Dr. Brittney Cooper

Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon

How To Be An Antiracist by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad

So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo

Notes Of A Native Son by James Baldwin

Biased: Uncover in the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America 

The Color of Law: The Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft

The Socialist Reconstruction of Society by Daniel De Leon

7 Feminist And Gender Theories 

The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution

Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color by Andrea J. Ritchie

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

Lavender and Red by Emily K. Hobson

Raising Our Hands by Jenna Arnold

Redefining Realness by Janet Mock 

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century by Grace Lee Boggs

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America by Ira Katznelson

Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affects Us and What We Can Do

The Common Wind by Julius S. Scott

The End Of Policing by Alex S Vitale

Class, Race, and Marxism by David R. Roediger

Yearning by Bell Hooks 

Race, Gender, And Class by Margaret L Anderson 

Ezili’s Mirrors: Imagining Black Queer Genders by Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley 

Working At The Intersections: A Black Feminist Disability Framework” by Moya Bailey 

Theory by Dionne Brand

Dora Santana's Work by Dora Santana

Property by Karl Marx

Wages, Price, and Profit by Karl Marx

Wage-Labor and Capital by Karl Marx

Capital Volume I by Karl Marx

The 1844 Manuscripts by Karl Marx

Synopsis of Capital by Fredrich Engels

The Principals of Communism by Fredrich Engles

Imperialism, The Highest Stage Of Capitalism by Vladmir Lenin

The State And Revolution by Vladmir Lenin

The Revolution Betrayed by Leon Trotsky

On Anarchism by Noam Chomsky

[ginnyweaslays]

80 Books White People Need to Read

Here’s my next list! All links are now for Barnes and Noble! If you are interested in finding Black-owned bookstores in your area, check out this website: https://aalbc.com/bookstores/list.php ; I also have additional resources regarding Black-owned bookstores on my Instagram (@books_n_cats) if you are interested! As always, please continue to add books to these lists! ((please circulate this one as much as the LGBT one, these books are incredibly important)).

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh

Killing Rage: Ending Racism by bell hooks

Where We Stand: Class Matters by bell hooks

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race by Jesmyn Ward

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice That Restores by Dominique DuBois Gilliard

Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forget by Mikki Kendall

Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces by Radley Balko

Open Season: Legalized Genocide of Colored People by Ben Crump

The Black and the Blue: A Cop Reveals the Crime, Racism, and Injustice in America’s Law Enforcement by Matthew Horace and Ron Harris

From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America by Elizabeth Kai Hinton

Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Y. Davis

They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice Movement by Wesley Lowery

White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson

A Promise And A Way of Life: White Antiracist Activism by Becky Thompson

White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo

Disrupting White Supremacy From Within edited by Jennifer Harvey, Karin Ac. Case and Robin Hawley Gorsline

How to Be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi

Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge

Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: And Other Conversations About Race by Beverly Daniel Tatum

So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo

Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice by Paul Kivel

Witnessing Whiteness by Shelly Tochluk

Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race by Derald Wing Sue

Towards the Other America: Anti-Racist Resources for White People Taking Action for Black Lives Matter by Chris Crass (be advised, this came out in 2015 and is not up to date with current events obviously)

Understanding White Privilege: Creating Pathways to Authentic Relationships Across Race by Frances Kendall

The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identify Politics by George Lipsitz

Waking Up White, and Finding Myself in the Story of Race by Debby Irving

How I Shed My Skin: Unlearning the Racist Lessons of a Southern Childhood by Jim Grimsley

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi

White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son by Tim Wise

Benign Bigotry: The Psychology of Subtle Prejudice by Kristin J. Anderson

America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America by Jim Wallis

Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We Say and Do by Jennifer L. Eberhardt

Raising White Kids by Jennifer Harvey

Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi

The Guide for White Women who Teach Black Boys by Eddie Moore Jr, Ali Michael, and Marguerite Penick-Parks

What White Children Need to Know About Race by Ali Michael

White By Law by Ian Haney Lopez

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

My Soul Is Rested: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement in the Deep South by Howell Raines

Race Matters by Cornel West

American Lynching by Ashraf H.A. Rushdy

Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-First Century by Dorothy Roberts

White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism by Kevin Kruse

This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color edited by Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua

Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla F. Saad

Racism Without Racists by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva

The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit From Identity Politics by George Lipsitz

Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment by Patricia Hill Collins

When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Inequality in Twentieth-Century America by Ira Katznelson

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde

Habits of Whiteness: A Pragmatist Reconstruction by Terrance MacMullan

Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower by Brittney Cooper

Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America by Melissa V. Harris-Perry

Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon

I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown

An African American and Latinx History of the United States by Paul Ortiz

Blueprint for Black Power: A Moral, Political, and Economic Imperative for the Twenty-First Century by Amos N. Wilson

The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood by Tommy J. Curry

Freedom Is A Constant Struggle by Angela Davis

Your Silence Will Not Protect You by Audre Lorde

Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America by James Forman

The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist

The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, From Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation by Daina Ramey Berry

Slavery by Another Name: The Re-enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon

The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America by Khalil Gibran Muhammad

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein

The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit by Thomas J. Sugrue

From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America by Ari Berman

One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying our Democracy by Carol Anderson

Antiracism: An Introduction by Alex Zamalin

The Racial Healing Handbook: Practical Activities to Help You Challenge Privilege, Confront Systemic Racism, and Engage in Collective Healing by Anneliese A. Singh

Chokehold: Policing Black Men by Paul Butler

Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul by Eddie S. Glaude

Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America by Michael Eric Dyson

Things That Make White People Uncomfortable by Michael Bennett

When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Khan-Cullors

[paulineguillouzichnd1]

Personal Project

What is it and why?

It’s a combination of things that have made me realised that working on home and more particularly bedrooms and myself would be interesting. I am going to use my own experience of bedrooms as a way to tell stories:, magical stories, dark and light stories. 

I have just finished this book called “the Yellow Wallpaper” that my flatmate has lent me (she is good advice when it comes to books as she’s worked at Glasgow Women’s library) which I highly recommend. I must admit I have really struggled to read. I had to stop after a few pages as it was hard to read: hard to see how this woman trusted her husband’s thoughts about herself more than hers, hard to witness her crave for freedom through mental and physical work -whilst she was advised to rest and do nothing , hard to witness this woman becoming mad, and madness as a last resort against this oppressive, infantilising husband of hers (and brother).

No name woman:

This woman doesn’t have a name, and I think it’s very well done: this isn’t just about her but about all women, them behind the wallpaper, them readers or witness. And so should the woman in my pictures: she shouldn’t have a name, as she could be them all (or part of them).

Bedroom: hate and love

It’s a place of great intimacy and life for most women: birth, sleep, sex, tears, laugh and death. It’s a place, I sometimes seek, and sometimes hate. I wish at times, I could push away the walls of my bedroom to give myself more space for thoughts, more space when I feel constraint in my body, space and time, when I feel limited. Sometimes, I feel the urge of wrecking the place and leave nothing but broken nails and blood.

Other times, magic happens and the place, mostly because of its opening possibilities: windows. I can hear the world from outside and the outside world comes in: that’s a smell from the garden, a cool breeze, night sounds and whispers, a hot summer heat, kids playing in the street, conversation half-heard  from afar. Then, my bedroom becomes a handy place to witness without being seen: hidden behind the walls, I pop my head out the window and find out about what’s happening.

Bed

Bed: that’s a place of assault. That’s a place of anger, and frozen body. That’s a place that let me down and it’s strange how I now get to sleep there too.

Bed: that’s a place of death too. I have seen bodies in bed, resting and being looked at. Close relatives, people who’d died slowly in front of my young eyes. Dying, I’ve learnt, doesn’t necessarily take a last breath. It can take years of last breaths, like an upside-down, dark, growing tree inside of your body.

Approach Essay:

Introduction:

With the recent outbreak of the Coronavirus, I have been trying to reorganise my thoughts and change my idea from shooting in a studio, to shooting wherever I’d be allowed to by the government. It also involved a lot of research towards a project that, realistically speaking, would have be to shot at home. While processing the idea of having to stay home for three weeks, I starting thinking about the broad meaning of home myself. When asking my friends and family what home meant to them, I got a large range of answers such as place of intimacy, residence but also social unit, origin. Most of them related their home to family but also mostly pleasant feelings.

With that in mind, I decided to explore different artist’s work, related to the ‘loose’ idea of home. I took the freedom of including not only photographers but also painters and writers ; mostly anyone whose own definition/work on home would somehow echo my own definition. I also kept in mind that shooting a project at home, with less material than usual would be more challenging and require more creativity from me. Therefore, this list of artists does not just include people working around the idea of home, but also artists whose techniques and composition seemed relevant and useful to me in order to help me grow a strong and powerful project.

I) Freedom of space and movement: Exploring techniques in photography

Francesca Woodman (1958-1981). She was an American photographer whose parents were both artists and professors at the Department of Art at the University of Colorado. She was surrounded with Art and artists and starting taking pictures at the age of 13. She also spent her Junior Year in Rome, Italy, where she frequented the Maldoror bookshop-gallery, that specialised in Surrealism. She committed suicide at the age of 22. Her artwork is mostly self-representation, as she explained “It’s a matter of convenience, I’m always available.” As noted by Jui-Ch’ i Liu in her essay on Francesca Woodman’s self-Images (Transforming bodies in the space of Feminity)

“The theme of Elusive Space, absorbed into a nostalgic space, is central to Woodman’s self-representation. [… For example,] in house #3, from her House series, Woodman displays herself in a transformational state. She is curled in a foetal position under a window frame […]. She hides behind the peeling sheets of wallpaper picked up from the pieces of debris scattered on the floor. These effects make her disappear into the wall.” (p.26)

 Strangely enough, several specialists have linked Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892) to Woodman’s work. Themes such as madness, physical restriction and woman’s space in the household seem to be central in both artists’ work. The setting of most of the images I looked at were in what seemed to be an abandoned place. Although most pictures seemed to be shot ‘inside’, I felt that somehow, the space itself remained very open and bright (windows, light, fireplace, mirrors), almost ‘breathing’. She uses long-exposure, movement and composition in a very free manner. At times, I couldn’t understand if the picture was taken whilst she was attempting to merge with the house itself or whilst she was hiding herself.  

From looking at her pictures, I could sense the need and search of physical but also mental freedom, refusal of constraints in the framing through the choice of space and movement in her shots. It’s also interesting to note that she uses time (for instance in the length of her exposure, time of the day but also investing her own personal time) to explore freedom.  The construction of her photographic techniques (long exposure, use of light, props, space, movement and time) invites us not only ‘chase her’ almost physically and mentally (where is the model going? What does she want to say?) but also perhaps to pause and reflect on our own physical and inner boundaries: how do we access the content of the picture  both in terms of visibility (elements of the picture we can physically see or not) and understanding (elements of the picture we need to process and analyse in order to understand what she means).

II) Women and home

Satu Haavisto (1975 -) and Aino Kannisto (1973 - ). Delicate Demons is a collaborative, ongoing project between two Finnish photographers (Satu Haavisto and Aino Kannisto) who have made a series of photos staging women in domestic spaces. Although the shots are fictional and models play a part, some aspects of the pictures might resonate with most women’s experience of womanhood at different ages and moments in their life. I was impressed at how they’d chosen to depict women in very normal, almost dull and/or ‘embarrassing’ moments of their everyday life: getting dressed, washing the dishes, breastfeeding…

In her article for the British Journal of Photography, Clare Gallagher describes Space in the pictures as:

“[…] tight, with a room corner in most of the scenes, compressing the viewer and the subject into an uncomfortably proximal relationship and emphasising the sense of home as a potentially oppressive place.”

All throughout the series of photos, women always have a strong, intense gaze, expressing what appear to me as anger, sadness, reflection or anxiety.

When describing Woman on the balcony, Clare explains that “her stare out of the frame feels somewhat over-constructed until, with a jolt, we see in a reflection she is in fact gazing directly at the camera. Face on, her look is more vulnerable, more anxious and raw.”

Jo Alison Feiler (1951-): She is an American photographer who was born and successively studied in California at the University of California, at the Art Centre and at the California Institute of Art where she graduated in 1973. Specializing in Gelatine silver prints, she seems to have mostly picked home as a setting to shoot her photos. Most of the prints and photos I have been able to access to are dated back from the mid 70’s and beyond, after she graduated.

     Untitled [Two women, two heater vents], 1975

Untitled, 1973  

Untitled [Nude below Window]

Untitled [nude between 2 beds],US, 1975

I was impressed with the enigmatic aspect of most of her images: nudes or partially nude models, where you can’t see their face. Body position that are mostly lying on the floor or on diverse surfaces, use of horizontals and lines. Movement, unlike Francesca Woodman is rather static apart from the [two women, two heater vents] and show a position of vulnerability and abandon (both as in letting go and giving up). I was also interested in the way she has used windows as a link to the outside world through what we can see and how the scene is lit. Thanks to the Gelatine Silver Prints, her pictures have a high contrast, which accentuates the tension and dramatic effects of her prints.

III) Light and Cinema

As a great admirer of the Italian painter Caravaggio (1571-1610), and more particularly his dramatic composition and use of the chiaroscuro,  I have been delighted to be shown examples of Gregor Crewdson’s photos, which I thought, had a few things in common with Caravaggio’s paintings: the cinematic aspects of it (although when talking about Caravaggio’s paintings, it would be anachronistic), the use of darkness, light and shadows within their frame, the tension in the frame but also the narrative.

American photographer Gregory Crewdson is very likely one of today’s most famous artists specialised in tableaux photography. Crewdson has developed various techniques of lighting throughout long exposure, using a mix of natural lights but also staged lighting (described as “choregraph[ing] lights” by Crewdson in the video). He also mentions his great interest in “tensions [and the] collision between the familiar and the strange” as well as the “unexpected sense of mystery” and a great amount of preparation with his team.

As a conclusion to my Approach Essay, I asked myself a few questions on how to overcome the diverse challenges we are all going through. How can I, in these times of self-isolation and movement restriction, use home and my immediate, every-day life to document but also enable people to relate to my pictures?  In this essay, I have chosen a few artists who had been working in similar places and on similar projects. I have also tried to think about challenges that might come up such as lighting a scene and working from home. I believe that I would want to reuse Francesca Woodman’s explorations of time, movement and frame, Satu Haavisto and Aino Kann’s dedication to ‘normal life’, composition and use of space at home to convey feelings, Jo Alison Feiler’s sense of abandon, strangeness and use of windows (especially the Two women, two heater vents picture), and finally Caravaggio’s and Crewdson’s use of daylight and darkness as well as tension in their respective art.

First Sketches

For each picture, I have documented myself on other artists and watched various tutorial videos on how to work with: long shutter speeds, mirrors, taking pictures from the ceiling, effective composition for your photos.

As a plan of action, I have drawn 10 first pictures, that I visually imagined. They are a way for me to start taking pictures, ‘visions’ of what the picture would be. They obviously need to be refined, and I do so by testing out the pictures and working on them. They start as ‘feeling’ ‘intuition’, ‘clear image’, ‘impression’ but always need a lot of work (most of them aren’t easy to realise as there is no limit to what is doable in the real world. A bit like a dream.

Here is a link to my Spark Page where I have decided to continue to develop my project.

https://spark.adobe.com/page/S9C6DpaFNNAVl/

[arcticdementor]

Four feminist law professors at Harvard Law School have been telling some alarming truths about the tribunals that have been adjudicating collegiate sex for the past five years. Campus Title IX tribunals are “so unfair as to be truly shocking,” Janet Halley, Jeannie Suk Gersen, Elizabeth Bartholet, and Nancy Gertner proclaimed in a jointly authored document titled “Fairness for All Students.” That document followed up on a previous open letter signed by 28 members of the Harvard Law School faculty in 2014 arguing that the updated sexual assault policy recently installed at Harvard was “inconsistent with some of the most basic principles we teach” and “would do more harm than good.”

I recently profiled Gersen and her colleagues in a piece for the Chronicle of Higher Education recounting their effort to defend the “most basic principles we teach” against a movement that is working tirelessly to subvert them. It is significant that they speak from within that movement—the feminist movement—not just because this gives them a margin of credibility within a discourse that tends to assign standing on the basis of identity, but also because their intimate knowledge of the antecedent and ongoing struggles within feminism helps them to understand the intellectual roots of what is happening, and where those ideas are taking us.

Though the four women find themselves opposed to visible tendencies within the movement, no one can doubt their standing within it. They are important theorists and practitioners who have made crucial contributions to historic feminist reforms. They represent a strain of longstanding internal critique that is native to the movement itself. Collectively, they have a stern message about the present course of the movement: As Halley, writing in the Harvard Law Review about a case in which a loud demand for punishment accompanied indifference to the guilt or innocence of the accused put it, “We have to pull back from this brink.”

…

When I spoke with her in her office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Gertner acknowledged that activists seeking to combat sexual violence had resorted to extreme measures out of a justifiable sense that they were addressing a harm that had been ongoing for decades without remedy. “Exhorting people had not worked, nothing had worked,” she said.

But she also described with astonishment a training session she had attended in which the concept of “trauma-informed investigation” was taught. “There was one slide that was extraordinary—it said that if there is a story with inconsistent details that seem to shift from one telling to another, that reflects post-traumatic stress disorder, period. I thought, oh my goodness. Well, of course it might. It might also reflect lying! That they would present one side without even considering the other was extraordinary to me.”

…

Whether judicial powers to surveil and punish are suitable instruments for the pursuit of an emancipatory feminist vision has always been a hotly contested debate within feminism itself. What has long been debated in theory has now been released into the world through interventions aimed at changing that world through an embrace of such instruments. “Feminists now walk the halls of power,” Halley notes in the introduction to her co-authored 2014 book, Governance Feminism. The movement has transitioned, in Halley’s term, “from the megaphone to the gavel,” and must, Halley argues, take on an ethic of responsibility and scrutinize the effects of what they have wrought.

Together, these professors’ work on the new campus sex bureaucracy, consisting of law review articles, open letters, manifestoes, and op-eds written both singly and jointly, is an exemplary instance of the project Halley proposed. That work looks closely at the empirical reality of what has been wrought and reaches a conclusion about its implications. Taken as a whole, the work provides a kind of Rosetta stone of the broader social justice movement of which its subject is a part. The work is sober and restrained and presented without drama precisely because the story it tells is so upsetting and implausible to outsiders, and thus prone to accusations of hyperbole. The gravamen of their work is that, whatever their stated or actual intentions, Title IX feminists are working to superannuate the meaning of consent and embed within the criminal law a principle, subversive to the foundation of the law, that the feelings of the accuser determine the course of the law without reference to any other material fact. As Catharine Mackinnon, the progenitor of the school of feminism from which this movement proceeds, once put it, “Politically, I call it rape whenever a woman has sex and feels violated.”

Title IX activists, including those operating within the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Education—from whence they issued a letter in 2011 threatening to cut off federal funds from universities who did not get tough on sexual assault—have put in place a system in which it is “commonplace to deny accused students access to the complaint, the evidence, the identities of the witnesses, or the investigative report, and to forbid them from questioning complainants or witnesses,” as Gersen described it in The New Yorker magazine. Though administrative law proceedings routinely rely on constructions of due process that fall well short of those pertaining to criminal proceedings where the freedom of the accused is at stake, in practice the totality of measures adopted by a great many colleges made mounting a defense all but impossible.

The system promulgated a definition of sexual misconduct so expansive that it “plausibly covers almost all sex students are having today,” as Gersen wrote in an article in the California Law Review. It required investigators to start by believing accusers (rather than starting from a place of impartial neutrality), instructed them against using a “reasonable person” test to constrain their judgment of whether sexual conduct regarded as unwelcome constitutes harassment or assault, and required them to reach a finding of wrongdoing if they felt confidence that misconduct had occurred greater than 50+1 percent. It housed the function of adjudicating individual cases within the same office tasked with ensuring compliance with federal government mandates demanding stronger enforcement—aligning incentives in ways hostile to the accused.

A system so designed is “overwhelmingly stacked against the accused,” as Gersen and her colleagues wrote in their original petition. “In this very large continuum of unpleasant interactions that can happen, at some point you draw a line and say, ‘These are consensual, these are not consensual,’” Gersen told me. “Lots of people disagree about where to draw the line. But most people would want to draw a line so there is such a thing as consensual sex.”

…

Federal judges have left no ambiguity about whether the conduct of the campus sex crimes bureaucracy is “consistent with the most basic principles we teach.” In nearly 200 cases, students suing their universities for violating their due process rights in campus proceedings have obtained favorable rulings or settled out of court, vindicating what Gersen and her colleagues have maintained from the outset would be an inevitable outcome. And yet when Gersen and her colleagues roused 28 of their peers in opposition to a policy that the courts were sure to repudiate back in 2014, they stood alone in all of American academia.

It’s worth lingering for a moment on this bizarre tableau. Here, we had a group of professors at the most prestigious law school in America making standard critiques of reforms whose ends the professors shared but whose means were marred by deficiencies that any minimally informed person could see, and that experts like themselves were authorized to identify. These deficiencies would in practice produce hundreds of unjust rulings and undermine the legitimacy of the effort at reform itself. Those professors said aloud what few of their colleagues would have disputed in private. Yet they nonetheless found themselves isolated, unable to influence the course of events beyond their own subsection of the university and were accused of being “on the side of rapists,” as Gersen put it. Gersen and her colleagues wrote up their own version of a policy that the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights found to be compliant with their demands—one that balanced the right of the accused and the accuser in a manner more likely to survive the scrutiny of federal judges—and to actually just be more fair. Harvard University chose to quell their protest by applying this policy to the law school, while retaining the policy that 28 of their law faculty had declared publicly to be in violation of basic principles of law.

…

The story, I will argue in this and subsequent columns, is about the rise and bid for hegemony of a new ideology. This ideology is a successor to liberalism. It brandishes terms that superficially resemble normative liberalism—terms like diversity and inclusion—but in fact seeks to supplant it. This new regime, in which administrative power has been fashioned into a blunt instrument of deterrence, marks off a crucial distinction—between the liberal rule of law, and the punitive system of surveillance rooted in identity politics known as “social justice.”

[themyskira]

Wonder Woman: Earth One, Vol 2 - Part 1

I’m going to break this into a few parts, because it turned out I had a bit to say. I’ll start with my overall impressions, then dive into the spoilery recap.

General thoughts: Next verse, same as the first.

Grant Morrison purports to want to explore Marston’s ideas, but he’s more interested in the kooky, kinky trappings than the sentiment behind them.

Marston was radical and progressive in his time. Writing in the 1940s, he told his readers that women were men’s equals — and even superiors! — in every way. He told young girls there was no limit to what they could do. His stories promoted love over hatred, peace over violence, rehabilitation over retribution.

If Morrison had taken that bold sentiment and reimagined it through a lens of modern society and feminism in 2018, he might have had a compelling story to tell. Instead, he takes Marston’s ideas as he understands them and transplants them wholesale into a time in which they’re no longer radical and progressive, but rather backward and out-of-step with modern intersectional feminism, and then proceeds to ask such deep, incisive questions as “yes but realistically could we actually replace all world governments with a matriarchy?????”

He never truly deconstructs any of Marston’s ideas, just parrots phrases like “submission to loving authority” a lot and raises questions without ever making a decent attempt at answering them. To be fair, part of the problem is that he’s simply trying to do too much at once: juggling parallel stories in Themyscira and Man’s World, an interrogation of the Amazons’ philosophies and the introduction of three new antagonists and the tensions they cause, all within a limited page count, Morrison is unable to devote the necessary time to properly developing any of them. It’s no wonder the result is so half-baked.

But hey, just throw in a bunch of vagina planes and a dusting of kink and watch as everyone crows over how subversive he is.

Yannick Paquette’s artwork is still beautiful. His page layouts are still dynamic and expressive, and his character designs are still lovely. Diana in particular gets a variety of very cool outfits, including a beautiful modest costume for a trip to the Middle East.

But he still can’t shake his tendency towards drawing women’s bodies in weirdly-contorted poses with bizarre pornfaces. Wonder Woman shouldn’t look like she’s orgasming as she’s leaping into battle, ffs.

Oh, and the series is still being edited by noted serial sexual harasser Eddie Berganza. HASHTAG FEMINISM!

Let’s get into the recap.

Content warning for some skeevy mind control content and general discussion of the gender essentialist, body-shaming, TERFy attitudes of Morrison’s Amazons.

The story opens with a flashback to 1942, with Paula von Gunther leading a Nazi invasion of Themyscira, and god I’m already so tired.

idk, I mean, I get that Nazis were a major Golden Age antagonist, and Morrison is harking back to that. But there’s a broader historical and cultural context to consider. Cartoonish Nazi villains in patriotic WWII-era American comics carried very different associations than they do in 2018, in the midst of a presidency steeped in white supremacy and hate speech, on the eve of a midterm election in which a record number of neo-Nazis are standing for office, at a time when hate groups are surging, when migrant children are being separated from their families and held in detention camps— just. Not a time when I want to be reading about cartoonish super-Nazis, personally.

And I don’t really see why they necessarily need to be this story? The battle serves to illustrate how Amazons combat and… “rehabilitate”… their adversaries. Paula ultimately serves as a plot device. Couldn’t that maybe have been achieved without Nazis?

Anyway, Paula announces that she is claiming the island for the Third Reich, and Hippolyta is like “lol no”.

Okay, that part I like. Evil army storms the island, backed by guns and warships, surround a half-dozen barely-armed women… who all but roll their eyes. ‘Pfft, children. Fine, if you want to play this game��’ And the evil army can only gape in bewilderment as the women proceed to take them apart in minutes.

But this is where it gets weird.

The Amazons fire a purple ray at all of the Nazis, which… makes them all drop their weapons and start screaming “YES!” orgasmically?

Hippolyta tells Paula that the soldiers “will be taken to the Space Transformer. They will be transported to Aphrodite’s world where Queen Desira and her butterfly-winged Venus Girls wait to purge them of their need for conflict. They will be taught to submit to loving authority. They will learn to embrace peace and obedience. They will be as happy as men can be.”

Paula attacks Hippolyta, rips off her magic girdle and heaves a great boulder over her head— wait, were we supposed to know that Paula had superpowers? That seems like something that should have been flagged.

She effortlessly takes down the Amazons who rush to the queen’s defence and takes a moment to cackle villainously. “Behold the pride of Germany! The ultimate daughter of the thousand-year-empire of Adolf Hitler!” To which Hippolyta— okay, I like this part, too.

Hippolyta calmly gets to her feet and puts Paula in a stranglehold. “We are the Amazons of myth, my dear! I am Queen Hippolyta eternal.” She swiftly and efficiently brings Paula to her knees.

But, welp, never mind, it’s about to get fucking creepy again.

Hippolyta forces Paula into “the Venus Girdle”, a device that “charges every body cell with vitalising currents and harmonises the brain, encouraging obedience.”

Paula: Let me go! What is that? What are you doing? Hippolyta: The Venus Girdle? It charges every body cell with vitalising currents and harmonises the brain, encouraging obedience. A dainty thing, is it not? Paula: I won’t— I won’t— You can’t control me— you can’t— can’t make me— make me... oh… make me…

Paula: nmmuhhh… What’s happening? My Nazi ideals— slipping away— they— they don’t make any sense now… I— I thought— I thought— I was strong. What’s wrong with me? I’m so weak— I must be weak to wish to serve weak, cruel men— like— like Herr Hitler— I— I— Hippolyta: If you truly long to be a slave to the ideas of others, well… we can find a loving mistress to help you explore your desires in a healthier context. Paula: Yes. Yes! My queen— [sob] —how can you ever forgive me? How wise of you to know— to know this is all I ever wanted! Hippolyta: Devote yourself to me by following the Amazon Code. Go with out sweet Mala to Improvement Island. There you will come to know yourself until the Venus Girdle is no longer required.

Paula: But all I want is to serve you, my queen! I love you! Please don’t turn your back on me!

Basically, Hippolyta forcibly uses a mind-altering device on Paula that alters her brain chemistry to make her placid, compliant and suggestible, then immediately washes her hands of her.

So… let’s talk about this, because I think it strikes at the heart of the problems with Wonder Woman: Earth One.

Queen Desira, the Venus Girls, magnetic golden Venus Girdles that “harmonise the brain” — all these things are drawn from Golden Age Wondy comics cowritten by Marston and his collaborator Joye Kelly. Marston played with mind control a lot in his stories, and not all of it came from the bad guys.

Morrison’s bold, subversive approach to these story elements is to export them wholesale into the present day and force us to feel uncomfortable about them.

In other words, he’s taking some of the weirder and more fucked up story elements from a collection of comics that are widely agreed to be very weird, and then plonking it before your readers and asking, ‘hey guys, have you ever considered… that this might be weird and fucked up???’

There’s nothing clever or insightful about that. And there’s certainly nothing groundbreaking about a cis white male writer imagining a fictitious feminist dystopia where women strip away men’s free will.

Like, if you really want to be subversive with Marston’s Wonder Woman, how about you start by hiring a woman to write it? Why not see what this iconic feminist hero conceived by a cis white man in the 1940s and written almost exclusively by cis white men for over 75 years might look like if she were reimagined and reinterpreted by LGBTI women, by women of colour? By the women left out of those original comics?

That would be subversive. Morrison is just being a smartarse.

So yeah, Hippolyta turns her back on the helpless, brainwashed, lovesick Paula and walks over to Diana, who’s defied her mother’s orders and run down from the palace to get a glimpse of the action. She’s full of questions; Hippolyta brushes them off with the usual (for Morrison’s Amazons) ‘men are shit’ line.

There’s a moment where Paula and Diana meet eyes from across the beach, and each asks, “who is she?” Diana is simply curious; Paula is instantly lovestruck.

Paula: That girl… the image of my queen.

This looks like foreshadowing, but spoilers: it goes absolutely nowhere.

Sidenote: If the Amazons deal with invaders by brainwashing them, why did they want to kill Steve Trevor in Volume One?

Cut to present-day America, where a room of faceless men discuss the threat posed by the Amazons and their superior technology, which they assume extends to deadly weaponry. The only in they have with the Amazons is Wonder Woman, and to get through her defences they’ve called in “an expert in female psychology”, aka a misogynistic monster.

Doctor Psycho: Gentlemen. She may be strong and tough and smart and beautiful… but she’s just a woman. I never met one I couldn’t break.

Oh, goody.

Cut to a cute splash page of Diana playing baseball. She gets a lot of great outfits in this book.

She’s also clearly making an impact in Man’s World; her face is plastered across every magazine, and people flock to hear her speak.

A Q&A sessions serves as a thinly-veiled opportunity for Morrison to answer some of the criticisms of the first book. His response leaves something to be desired.

“Amazon training can make any of you into a Wonder Woman,” says Diana. We teach a system of physical and psychological health and vitality. The grace and beauty of Aphrodite, the skill and wisdom of Athena.”

Woman: What about Wonder trans women? Is there room for people like me in your utopia? Diana: There’s room for everyone. The Amazon Code was evolved by women over thousands of years and outlines a progressive, pacifist way of living and thinking that anyone can follow.

I’m sorry, but that’s a fucking bullshit answer. It’s a weak, superficial gesture towards inclusiveness that conspicuously fails to express any real support or solidarity.

And depressingly, this is 100% in-character for Earth One Diana, because Morrison’s Amazons? are absolutely TERFs. As with the mind control content, Morrison has exported Marston’s 1940s binaristic gender essentialism unchanged into the 21st century in order to ask searing questions like ‘hey but what if??? the idea that women are genetically more suited to ruling??? is simplistic and flawed?????’ But the most he’ll engage with the genuinely insidious implications around the exclusion of trans and nonbinary people is a smiling noncommittal, ‘Are trans people welcome? My friend, everyone is welcome! No further questions!’

Morrison’s Wonder Woman displays a profound disregard of context. He ignores not only the cultural, historical and individual contexts that shaped the original 1940s Wonder Woman, but also the contexts of the time in which he’s currently writing and the cultural space that Wondy has come to inhabit today as a feminist and LGBT icon.

Removed from context, Morrison is simply taking a hero who traditionally hails from an advanced utopian society, taking another look at the views that society actually espouses, and reframing her as a well-meaning but naive hero from an advanced but deeply flawed and unsettling society.

In context, he’s doing exactly what Brian Azzarello did in turning the Amazons into murderous man-hating monsters, just with more kink and vagina planes.

Woman 2: Umm, there’s a lot of stuff on social media about how you dress provocatively and promote an unrealistic body type, which is basically setting a bad example for women. I mean, the stuff you do is amazing and all, it’s just… does any of the criticism bother you? Diana: I don’t think there’s any such thing as an ‘unrealistic’ body shape. My own body is the result of diet, exercise and… um… sophisticated genetic engineering. Otherwise, I dress as I please.

Volume One made it clear that all Amazons have the physique of supermodels, and when they encounter the diverse body types of the women in our world, they are disgusted and respond with body-shaming insults. Here, Diana again avoids voicing any actual support (she doesn’t say that all women’s bodies are beautiful and valid, she suggests that her body type is not unrealistic), while also throwing out eugenics as a reason for the lack of body diversity among the Amazons. Oh good, I was hoping we’d get more Nazi parallels!

Finally, a militant white feminist stands up and observes that if the Amazons are capable of half of what Diana says they are, then they could dismantle the patriarchy overnight — so why is Diana wasting time giving philosophy lectures? “You can control people’s minds with that lasso of yours. Like you did with that dude on TV— so why can’t you put a lasso ‘round the whole world?”

Afterwards, talking to Beth Candy, Diana’s like, ‘gosh, Beth, I’ve never seriously thought about world domination before, but maybe it is time to consider stripping all mortals of their free will, dismantling all nations and compelling everybody on the planet to bow down before Amazonia.’

Then Diana gets on her mental radio and calls her mother, confessing her doubts about her mission.

It was around this point in the book that the Amazons’ dialogue began to grate on me. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was at first. Every line read like a ceremonious pronouncement. They used antiquated syntax and words, like “whole systems … must o’erturned be” and “she did, without due caution, this, her island home, depart!”. Even Diana would become infected with it whenever she was speaking to them. It felt like they weren’t so much conversing as they were reciting… 

...verse… 

oh my god, that motherfucker.

Surely he hadn’t.

I scanned the dialogue again. I double-checked it.

He had.

Grant Morrison, that obscenely pretentious wanker, wrote all of the Amazons’ dialogue in dactylic hexameter.

For fuck’s sake.

After finishing her call with Diana, Hippolyta learns that somebody has vandalised one of the temples with the symbol of “a backward-turning sun”, i.e. a swastika. Unseen by everybody, Paula breaks into Hippolyta’s palace.

[kayla1993-world]

Some government critics consider a new high school textbook published under the aegis of the conservative administration as an attempt to indoctrinate young people. In recent days, criticism of the current history book has centered on a paragraph that outlines what the author sees as modern attitudes to sexuality and childbearing. Without mentioning the phrase, the paragraph appears to be critical of in vitro fertilization.

As ways of isolating sex from love and reproduction become more advanced, sex is seen as entertainment and fertility as human production or breeding. This begs the question of who will love the children so generated?

During a meeting with Tusk supporters last week, Tusk condemned the passage as well as Czarnek and other members of the right-wing government. The Education Ministry has denied that the section deals with IVF. If Tusk does not apologize, Czarnek has threatened to sue for slander.

Czarnek insisted that neither he nor the ministry wrote or published textbooks and that History and the Present do not state that no one loves children conceived through IVF.

Only the sickest and most insane minds would interpret the passage in this manner. Roszkowski has previously used similar language to describe in vitro fertilization, citing a recording of him saying that the effects of this in vitro ideology have not yet been fully revealed, but they are expected to be nightmarish.

Other passages in the book bothered critics. Popular ideologies include socialism, liberalism, feminism, and gender ideology. The book was added to a list of school books in July in preparation for the introduction of a new subject called history and the present by the government this fall.

In July, Education Ministry representatives faced questions about the book from the political opposition in parliament, and they emphasized that teachers continue to have the freedom to choose which textbooks to use. Lubnauer argued at the time that a textbook should educate rather than serve as a vehicle for the ideological indoctrination of children.

Many Poles were outraged when the father of a daughter born through IVF launched an online fundraising campaign to raise 30,000 zlotys for the legal costs of suing Czarnek and attempting to prevent the distribution. His petition raised more than 280K zlotys.

The ruling Law and Justice party is closely affiliated with the Roman Catholic church and advocates for conservative social policies. The already restrictive abortion law became even more restrictive as a result of the rule, and abortions are now illegal in almost all cases.

The party also ended a national program aimed at assisting couples in funding fertility treatments, resulting in a significant decrease in the number of births aided by fertility treatments. Party leaders have also criticized the LGBTQ rights movement.

Meanwhile, the traditionally Catholic nation is becoming more secular, with conservatives and liberals increasingly clashing.

[madeleinesbooks]

Upcoming Reads

Hello, all.

This month I am going to work on four different books. Some for enjoyment, some for school, some for both. I’m not sure how I am going to review them all, or if I ever will, so I’m going to give them a little introduction. Long post ahead!

From Goodreads:

“Agatha is pregnant and works part-time stocking shelves at a grocery store in a ritzy London suburb, counting down the days until her baby is due. As the hours of her shifts creep by in increasing discomfort, the one thing she looks forward to at work is catching a glimpse of Meghan, the effortlessly chic customer whose elegant lifestyle dazzles her. Meghan has it all: two perfect children, a handsome husband, a happy marriage, a stylish group of friends, and she writes perfectly droll confessional posts on her popular parenting blog—posts that Agatha reads with devotion each night as she waits for her absent boyfriend, the father of her baby, to maybe return her calls.

When Agatha learns that Meghan is pregnant again, and that their due dates fall within the same month, she finally musters up the courage to speak to her, thrilled that they now have the ordeal of childbearing in common. Little does Meghan know that the mundane exchange she has with a grocery store employee during a hurried afternoon shopping trip is about to change the course of her not-so-perfect life forever…”

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33584818-the-secrets-she-keeps

Why I’m reading:

 I love thrillers. I haven’t been able to find a good thriller since I finished all of Gillian Flynn’s books, but this just popped into my feed and it sounded very suspenseful.

This is by the same author behind The Girl on the Train, which has been highly recommended to me.

What I like so far:

This book reads a lot like a Gillian Flynn novel. There’s this sort of cynical, dirty view of everyday life. 

I can already feel the suspense building up.

From Goodreads:

“This gothic horror by Radcliffe is considered an evolutionary work between the enlightenment and idealism, as it is an established horror story. Emily, the protagonist is a young woman of mature thoughts and has deep love for the sublimity of nature. The novel pursues her struggle as she tries to resolve her father's teachings of reserve and temperance with the reckless passions of love and fear. Thrilling!”

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23583915-the-mysteries-of-udolpho-in-two-volumes-volume-one 

Why I’m reading:

I became very interested in the genre of Gothic Romance, one of the earliest genres ever written about. The Mysteries of Udolpho is widely considered, if not the first, one of the most quintessential novels in this genre.

Pre-feminism women writers are amazing.

I want to look more closely at forms of the early novel for my thesis.

What I like so far:

The drama! Following the style of some of the mid 18th-century novels/stories/poems/plays that I love: scandal is not glossed over. It’s blatant and gasp-worthy, and I feel that as the novel transforms into the 19th-century, modesty and satire replaces some of the scandal and intrigue discussed in earlier writings. I love them both equally, though!

I am pretty early on in the book, but I am already seeing some of the tropes of the genre that Radcliffe popularized. So cool.

From Goodreads:

“Marianne Dashwood wears her heart on her sleeve, and when she falls in love with the dashing but unsuitable John Willoughby she ignores her sister Elinor's warning that her impulsive behaviour leaves her open to gossip and innuendo. Meanwhile Elinor, always sensitive to social convention, is struggling to conceal her own romantic disappointment, even from those closest to her. Through their parallel experience of love—and its threatened loss—the sisters learn that sense must mix with sensibility if they are to find personal happiness in a society where status and money govern the rules of love.”

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14935.Sense_and_Sensibility

Why I’m reading:

I recently read Pride and Prejudice, and I desperately wanted more. I’m hoping to read all of Austen’s “Big Four” this summer. 

Partly for enjoyment, partly for study. This was written on the tail-end of the 18th-century so it falls within my realm of interest for study.

What I like so far:

I am reading it on tape from my drive to and from work, and I really like the narrator. Her voice isn’t distracting and I’m really amazed how she can manipulate her sound like it’s coming from a variety of characters. I know, not really a comment on the book itself, but I feel like I needed to give her a shoutout.

Pride and Prejudice was hilarious, but this book seems a little more focused on romance. Perhaps a little more serious. I like the dichotomy between the two sisters who stand to represent “sense” and “sensibility”-- or reason and emotion. It’s an interesting idea to explore.

The drama!!

From Goodreads:

“As language evolves faster than ever before, what is the future of -correct- style? With wry cleverness and an uncanny intuition for the possibilities of Internet-age expressiveness, Favilla argues that rather than try to preserve the sanctity of the written language as laid out by Strunk and White, we should be concerned with the larger issues of clarity, flexibility, playfulness, and political awareness. Her approach to the new rules--as practical as they are fun--will fascinate and delight believers and naysayers alike.

This engaging, provocative book about how language changes is as full of humor and charm as it is full of useful advice. Featuring uproarious emoji-strings, sidebars, quizzes, and style debates among the most lovable nerds of the Web copy world--of which Favilla is queen--A World Without -Whom- is essential for anyone invested in the future of words and writing.”

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33590624-a-world-without-whom

Why I’m reading:

I’m a grammar geek. Or, at least I try to be.

I’m working on a style guide for my job and this book is actually very helpful!!

The English language and the rate at which it changes is amazing. This is my first out of two linguistic reads planned for the summer.

What I like so far:

The author’s take on writing in the English language in the internet age is fascinating and open-minded. She knows that languages changes and that grammar must change, too. It makes me not feel so bad when I misspell a word or incorrectly use a comma.

It’s comedic, in typical BuzzFeed fashion. 

It’s relaxed-- no grammar police here.

I’m learning!

Anyway, thanks for reading! I just wanted to get all my excitement out and talk about these books a bit. I’ve started on all of them, I’m eager to see where this reading journey takes me.

[gravitascivics]

HOW ACADEMIC SHOULD PUBLIC SCHOOLS BE?

The last posting began this blog’s effort to relay a developmental description of how America, from its origins – its colonial past – to the years following World War II, held onto a version of federalism.  That version, this writer calls parochial/traditional federalism.  It held – more than any other perspective – on how Americans viewed governance and politics.

As any theoretical approach, this version promoted a set of values and beliefs that were not at all times consistent or even pristinely logical.  And, during its years of dominance, people varied in how exactly each interpreted its tenets.  Generally, the view upheld the values of cooperation, collaboration, and community.

         It is these values, among others, that one can detect underlying the principles of the US Constitution as the founding generation came together and formed the nation’s government.  In a public relations coup, the faction that proposed and argued for the ratification of the Constitution took on the name, the Federalists, even though the term today is associated with local or state governments.  This cast their opponents as the Anti-Federalists who argued for maintaining the bulk of power at the state level.  

But at its heart, the term federalist fit the national effort because what the new agreement was calling for was a federated relationship among the states and the people of the United States.  And to be federated means that those entities were committed to work toward cooperation, collaboration, and community.  But a problem remained:  who constituted “the people”?  Since the original settlers in the eastern seaboard first arrived, there were already a slew of “Others” who had arrived by 1800.  

Mostly, this consisted of voluntary immigrants, but some were forced.  By the time of the Constitution, many immigrants from a variety of European nations had made the trip over the Atlantic and the pure Anglo makeup of the American population already had become significantly mixed.  Of course, the forced element consisted of African slaves who began to be brought over in 1619 and by the time of the Constitutional Convention, the slave population was at 500,000, a significant number since the population of the nation was roughly 3.9 million.[1]

Americans – its original Anglo contingency – were more or less forced to accept the other European nationals and by the late 1700s, when several generations of this mixing had transpired, they defined the white population of the US. But this was their extent of inclusion. Even those who opposed slavery, by and large, saw the acceptance of blacks as an inclusionary step too far.  For them, one can detect a bigoted view of Africans which was extended against indigenous peoples and the Asians that began making their way here in the 1800s.  

Racism, under parochial/traditional federalist view was alive and well.  And one can to a degree see this racism being detrimental to the survival of this view. With the New Deal in the 1930s and its limited efforts to deracialize federal policy, then with the contributions of blacks during World War II, and desegregation of the armed forces under Truman’s administration, the undermining of legal segregation began.  

And these democratizing developments debased the legitimacy of the parochial/traditional federalist view and bolstered the popularization of the natural rights view.  But the challenges to this earlier version of federalism did not begin in the 1930s. One subplot of the American story, according to this writer, is this building criticism of federalism, some of it reflected in public policy, some of it in the form of social developments.

The effort here is to take note of the major events and the development of ideas that led to this shift.  And this blog has chosen a telling story concerning American public schools to initiate this effort.  The choice is not because this story happened first, although this writer has shared a Tocqueville account of 1830s America,[2] this story reflects America in the 1840s.  These accounts provide evidence of what is generally being claimed in this blog:  that federalism held strong till the years after World War II.

The last posting began that history with an introduction to Horace Mann and his work in Massachusetts to establish its public school system.  That posting related that under Mann’s leadership, that system encouraged and advanced defining the profession of teaching as one that should be “manned” by women.  At its base, the reasoning seems to have been motivated by funding considerations – simply stated, one could hire women at a cheaper rate than men.

Beyond funding, the policy also reflected Mann’s sexist beliefs that were described in that posting.  What should be mentioned, was that he was not alone in these beliefs, they were generally accepted to varying degrees among Americans, including women.  One of his main advisors was a woman by the name Catherine Beecher.  She promoted women’s role in education and, in time, was instrumental in getting women to go out west and fill teaching positions across the rough western communities in what is now considered the Midwest.

She supported Mann’s initiative to shift the occupation of teaching as being defined mostly as a female profession.  They fought against certain prejudices that held that if teaching was feminized it would lead to weaken academic standards and debasing school discipline especially among male students.  Mann defended his policy by various arguments, but somewhat central, beyond the $11,000 (worth $329, 334.94 today) female teacher corps saved Massachusetts’ taxpayers in an 1800s’ budget, by writing:

As a teacher of schools … how divinely does she come, her head encircled with a halo of heavenly light, her feet sweetening the earth on which she treads, and the celestial radiance of her benignity making vice begin its work of repentance through very envy of the beauty of virtue![3]

         As an ideal one can detect some biases and presumptions about teaching.  And these views reflect religious leanings.  To remind the reader, from the last posting, the connection was made between federalist thinking and Puritanical/Calvinistic beliefs. In all of this, while congregational thinking of this tradition affected constitutional thinking in all American states, it was strongest in the New England states.  And in this, there is an irony.

         Initially, Mann rebelled against Puritanical, religious thinking and adopted phrenology (a belief that physical features affect behavior).  By diminishing predestination, Mann saw phrenology as beliefs that led to proactive education to meet the shortcomings of young people.  But in this, which was ironic in of itself, he downgraded the importance of academic goals in educating the masses.

         His view of public education emphasized the social – congregational – qualities that led to a cooperative, collaborative, and communal population with a religious bent. The overall purpose of public schooling should promote students’ “affection outward in good-will towards men, and upward in reverence to God.”[4]  This stood in counter distinction to European public schooling.

         For example, Prussian schools – of which Mann saw through admiring eyes – upped teacher salaries to hold on to their male teachers and French schools promoted high academic standards with secular content (the French were prone to critique German school curricula as being too religious).  

         Next posting will look at what Mann’s contributions meant to the religious, parochial foundations of American federalism as it was considered in the early 1800s.  This writer hopes he is expressing that a culturally based idea with its associated ideals of governance and politics is not a well thought out ideology.  

It is instead a mixture of beliefs and emotions that are expressed in a more or less logically congruent argument about how and why a polity exists. But that level of coherence is enough to project a clear sense of what is considered politically legitimate. And in the 1800s it was securely considered legitimate for schools to promote a view of morality.

[1] “How Things Have Changed in Philadelphia Since the 1787 Convention,” Constitution Daily (May 25,2016), accessed January 21, 2021, https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/how-things-have-changed-since-1787#:~:text=The%20population%20of%20the%20United,were%20being%20held%20as%20slaves.

[2] Robert Gutierrez, Toward a Federated Nation: Implementing National Civics Standards (Tallahassee, FL:  Gravitas/Civics Books, 2020).  See pages 78-79.

[3] Dana Goldstein, The Teacher Wars:  A History of America’s Most Embattled Profession (New York, NY:  Doubleday, 2014), 27.  The historical information concerning Mann in this posting is drawn from this source.

[4] Ibid., 28.

[topmixtrends]

FOR WOMEN WHO came of age in the 1990s, women-led rock bands like Bikini Kill, Sleater-Kinney, and Bratmobile struck an empowering chord with their in-your-face hardcore punk style and patriarchy-smashing lyrics. The introduction of these female-fronted bands into pop culture kick-started the feminist-focused punk rock revolution Riot Grrrl, a music movement that continues to reverberate today in the girl-powered anthems of Ex Hex, Pussy Riot, and Tacocat.

Spitboy, a hardcore punk band formed in 1990 in Berkeley by drummer-lyricist Michelle Cruz Gonzales, was not a Riot Grrrl band — and she won’t let you to forget it. In her memoir, The Spitboy Rule: Tales of a Xicana in a Female Punk Band, Gonzales hits all the right notes in the telling of her band’s unique contributions to punk and feminism, with unabashed details of the sexism, classism, and racism they incurred.

Recently, I spoke with Gonzales about Spitboy’s unapologetically feminist agenda and her inspiring journey of self-discovery.

¤ 

KITTY LINDSAY: What did the punk rock scene in the Bay Area look like at the time you started Spitboy?

MICHELLE CRUZ GONZALES: I lived in San Francisco for about a year and a half, then I moved to the East Bay, and the punk scene was definitely male and predominantly white. There were a lot of women and people of color in the scene — I was there and I’m a Xicana — but they just weren’t as visible. I definitely saw other people like me in those days, but as a woman playing music in that scene, you felt a little bit like a novelty act.

In your experience, did you find the punk rock scene to be a welcoming space for women?

Gilman Street strove to be a welcoming space for women because it has always, and still does, strived to be a place for everybody and a safe place for young people; no alcohol, no violence. But it wasn’t always a safe place for women. I was groped in the pit several times at Gilman and other places, too. There are always people who come with evil intentions and there are guys who don’t care anything about consent. I remember having my rear end pinched, and I turned around and punched the guy who did it.

Punk rock is an aggressive art form. What attracted you to the hardcore genre of music?

It started with The Clash being very political, singing about Latin America and Latin American issues and struggles. I grew up during the Reagan era in Tuolumne, which is a very small, very white, conservative town in California, and my mom was a single mom. There really is nothing like being a single mom in a conservative American era, than being the daughter of a Xicana single mom in a conservative era to politicize you at an early age. I became very aware that things weren’t fair in my life and for my mother, and that the government was using us as examples of people who ought to be criticized for being drains on the economy. That made me very angry.

I was also bullied a lot at school; bullying puts a chip on your shoulder. I looked like an outsider; I was Othered by people from a very early age, and then being politicized through Reagan and through having a single mom, I just latched on to the anger of punk rock. When I found that some bands were actually singing about political issues that I could relate to, it seemed like a no-brainer.

What inspired Spitboy?

My first band, Bitch Fight, broke up and I was really sad. I joined another band, Kamala and the Karnivores, briefly, playing guitar. It was a pop-punk band that I loved, but it wasn’t a political band. The songs were very, very feminist, but they were more feminist break-up songs, feminist love songs; which is cool, but at the time, I wanted to get back to playing drums and writing lyrics.

So when Kamala and the Karnivores broke up, I started looking for women who wanted to be in another female band like Kamala and the Karnivores and Bitch Fight, but who wanted to play harder music and wanted to be political and sing about women’s issues and I just happened to cobble together the right people.

Why was it important that Spitboy was an all-female band?

I didn’t ever really want to play music with men. From a very early age, I remember being around men thinking, “They’re a club and I will never be a part of that club.” There were subtle things; language and mannerisms, that men have, that showed me that women might not be taken as seriously. It made me angry. So when I started playing music, I wanted to be in my own band. I never considered being in a band with a man. If I’m going to be in a band, I’m going to be in a band with my girlfriends.

Feminism plays such a large role in Spitboy’s artistry and identity. Was that a conscious choice?

Yes, it was conscious. When I met Adrienne Droogas [who would become Spitboy’s lead singer], she was making a feminist zine. I met her with [bassist] Paula Hibbs-Rines and I said, “I want to put together an all-female band and sing about women’s issues.” We came with this fully formed idea. Paula knew [guitarist] Karin Gembus and invited her. I had already written a song called “Seriously,” about being sexually harassed, so that sort of set the tone.

Did you ever worry that Spitboy’s hardcore feminist message might alienate some audiences?

We decided it wasn’t going to be a concern of ours. This is our message, and we won’t play places that aren’t into that. We figured the right places would book us.

But there was also this other element to it, too; that alcohol and men in the audience is a really bad combination for a band that sings about feminist issues. If you want to get harassed at a show, play at a bar and lecture men about feminism.

A lot of people don’t want to go to a punk show and get a lecture, but we didn’t care. We want to be a band for women in the scene and while we’re at it, we’d like to tell the young men a thing or two and maybe prevent harassment, prevent rape, or get people thinking about these issues. We knew that we were alienating some people, but the music was loud and fast and angry, so it was a combative, and we just thought, we’re never going to break into a major label. That wasn’t our aim, so we didn’t really spend a lot of time worrying about that.

In your book, you wrote about an uncomfortable moment during a gig when you announced to the audience, made up of Riot Grrrl musicians, that Spitboy was not a Riot Grrrl band. What were the differences between Spitboy and Riot Grrrl bands, and why was it important to you to distinguish yourselves from that movement?

We had been on tour for a couple of weeks and even before the tour, in interviews locally or around California, we’d always get asked about Riot Grrrl. Usually the question would be: “Are you a Riot Grrrl band?” We’d always say no, but we tried never to say anything negative because we believed pretty much everything that Riot Grrrl espoused.

We were all for the Riot Grrrl ideals about girl love and not being competitive and supporting one another, but as Bay Area feminists, we did not want to be called “girls.” That was just a really big thing in the Bay Area feminist scene, in particular. We felt like we were grown-ups and had earned the title “woman” and that’s what we wanted to be called.

Then we had an issue with the boys-to-the-back thing. Riot Grrrl bands would play and they’d tell all the boys to go stand in the back. It’s actually a brilliant thing that they did; it just made us really uncomfortable. As a woman of color, it felt a little like the back of the bus. Even though men are dominant in our culture and we live in a patriarchy, I didn’t like the separatism.

The reason why I said, “We’re not a Riot Grrrl band” onstage at that show in front of members of Bikini Kill was because the men had come up to us before we played and asked, “Do you want us in the back?” At the time, we didn’t know the Riot Grrrl rule, so we’re like, “What? No, that’s horrible.” We’re not here to tell people what to do. We’re here to share our ideas and tell you about some injustices that woman face. I could have been a little more diplomatic, but I was young and we were learning a lot of things as we went.

During the Spitboy years, you played drums under the stage name, Todd. How did that moniker come about? How did assuming this identity affect your visibility as an Xicana musician in the punk rock scene?

The name was originally given to me in high school by my crush, Kevin. He was a drummer in the jazz band. He showed me a couple of things when I started teaching myself how to play the drums. He had a foster brother who my Bitch Fight bandmate Nicole Lopez became friends with, and his foster brother could never remember my name. One day we were all hanging out and he called me Todd and I’m like, “Why are you calling me that?” He said, “Oh, I don’t know, when I lived in Modesto in this other foster home, I had a friend named Todd and his girlfriend’s name was Nicole, so I just think Nicole and Todd.” Then Kevin started calling me Todd. Kevin could’ve called me anything and I would’ve answered — so much for my feminism — and after that, everyone at school started calling me Todd.

When I first started getting into punk, I cut my hair really short. I’m a mountain girl and mountains girls are always somewhat androgynous, so the name Todd fit me right away. It’s somewhat cooler in punk to have a name that’s not so normal, but it hindered me because we only used our first names on our records and people didn’t see me as an Xicana. My name was never an indicator of my identity as a Mexican American, and I started having that prototypical fractured identities that a lot of Latinos and people of color have in the United States. People don’t see you as American, but you’re not a Mexican national either, so the name Todd didn’t really help because, in some ways, it prohibited other people from seeing me for who I really was.

Your book strikes a chord for me in terms of your personal journey toward understanding all the identities you inhabit — Xicana, drummer, and feminist — and all of their intersections. During your time in Spitboy, were these identities ever at odds with one another? If so, how did you reconcile them?

Sometimes I didn’t. For me, Mexican misma, was connected with class. In terms of the band, there were major class disparities between the rest of the band and myself. Two of my bandmates were very upper-middle class and, on tour in particular, the differences in the way we saw the world clashed and I realized, “Wow, they don’t see me the way I see myself,” and I thought, “How much have I participated in my own invisibility and the erasure of my ethnic identity? How much have I contributed to that or participated in that and how much of this is how they grew up and see the world beyond their own experiences?” I think it was a combination of both.

Much of it can be explained by the fact that we were very young. We were navigating some very sophisticated things in our early 20s and we didn’t always do it right. We didn’t know how to talk about class differences and we just said things based on how we saw the world and assumed everyone else saw the world that way.

As an Xicana feminist musician, what did you learn through your experience as a performer in Spitboy?

Mainly I learned that I’m in charge of my identity and that that means I have to be vocal about my identity. I have to be patient with people who don’t have direct experience with my culture. I also have to demand that people allow me to identify myself the way that I want.

There are so many practical things that we learned how to do on tour that I was able to apply once I went back to school and that I use at my own job as a teacher. I try to be interesting and dynamic and never boring in class, and all the years that I performed in Spitboy, I just learned about a sense of audience. I don’t know if I would’ve had the courage to go on and do all the things I had if I hadn’t been in Spitboy. I didn’t grow up with a lot of privilege or around people who went to college. The women in Spitboy did go to college and that inspired me to go back once the band broke up.

The years in the band made me realize a band is not an identity. A band cannot be your identity. It’s just your job. Our identities are way more complex and meaningful than that. That’s probably the most important thing I learned.

The Spitboy Rule is as much a critical historical text as it is an intersectional exploration of personal identity. What do you hope resonates with readers?

The ideas about identity, and the gentleness with which I tried to approach writing about identity and the understanding that I try to have for the other people who were kind of navigating my identity with me — even though we didn’t all realize that was happening.

The fact that Spitboy was an all-female band that could easily be erased from history, especially since we weren’t a Riot Grrrl band; but we existed. When I first started writing the book, I just wanted to write about Spitboy; the experience of being in a feminist band and being the only person of color in that band. As I got about half way through writing it, Carrie Brownstein’s book [Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl] came out and Kim Gordon’s book [Girl in a Band] came out, and I realized I had to make sure that everyone understood that Spitboy was not a Riot Grrrl band, but that we were around at the same time and we were just as important.

In my book, the Riot Grrrl chapter was originally called “The Riot Grrrl Controversy.” But I changed it on purpose to “Not a Riot Grrrl Band” to create the opportunity to have that discussion about what it was like to be an all-women punk band that started at the same time as Riot Grrrl, but was not part of that scene. When people think of women’s punk bands, they think of Riot Grrrl. Those two things have become synonymous and that is really upsetting because it potentially erases a lot of bands. I realized that one of my jobs in finishing the book is to make sure that didn’t happen.

¤

Kitty Lindsay is a Ms. blogger and a regular weekend contributor at Hello Giggles. Her writing as appeared in Ms. magazine and on the Feminist Majority Foundation blog, The Establishment, Los Angeles Review of Books, AwesomenessTV, and Theatre Is Easy.

The post Not a Riot Grrrl Band: Musician Michelle Cruz Gonzales Sounds off on Punk Feminism appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books http://ift.tt/2E94Rev

[milleniumy2kay]

Constant Output #7 Ecofascism Research

Introduction

Ecofascism is a theoretical model of authoritarian government that requires individuals in a society to sacrifice their own goals and interests for the better good of nature. It essentially uses fascist policies to enforce environmental change. The trend of environmental justifications for fascist ideologies and policies dates back all the way to Nazi Germany. It takes advantage of people’s natural anxieties around dwindling and exhausted resources in relation to rising populations.

Lifeboat Ethics

Lifeboat ethics is one of the primary beliefs that fuel the belief of ecofascists. The metaphor was made up by “ecologist” Garrett Hardin. In this metaphor, a group of people have a lifeboat, they have the room to add a few more stragglers to the boat, but there are currently hundreds of stranded swimmers who want to get in the lifeboat. Who do you let on the boat? This metaphor is made in part to be a critique to the “Spaceship Earth” Model. Hardin believed that model to be flawed because ships have captains and Earth will most likely never be unified under one leader. In this lifeboat metaphor, the lifeboat is supposed to be rich nations, while the stranded swimmers are supposed to be poor nations, implying we don’t have the resources to help everybody, and therefore, groups of people suffering are not only unavoidable but also natural.

The Lifeboat scenario raises a whole bunch of question such as:

How do you choose who the ten seats go to?

Can you let ten more on without losing the boat to the frantic effort of the remaining 90 swimmers trying to board?

Is it acceptable to deny an obviously dying passenger food and water to save it for others with a better chance to make it?

Is it acceptable to kick out a dying passenger (knowing they will die within minutes) to make room for someone else?

These questions have no easy answers, especially for those who view all of the survivors’ lives as intrinsically valuable and worth saving. No matter the specifics of your answer, you’d naturally assume that most people with passable morals would devise an answer that attempts to save as many of those swimmers as possible. But, to no surprise to literally anyone, such thinking is considered irrational to an ecofascist. To an ecofascist, someone who “loves and respects life” does not attempt to save any of those swimmers, as that would risk capsizing the whole boat. Rather, those who love life, according to Pentti Linkola should “take the ship's axe and sever the extra hands that cling to the sides”. Jesus Christ.

Weird Tidbits

Ecofascists have an obsession with Norse Mythology

They unironically view themselves as respecting all life

Forefathers = white heritage

Have a strong desire to preserve land indigenous to white people, but have little to say about the genocide of Indigenous Americans, surprisingly (not)

A common practice is to refer to non-white people by the Latin versions of animal names. For example, one term used to refer to black people is “Australopithecus” – the technical term for a two million year old, extinct ape.

Despises urbanization and industrialization, and wants to form white ethno-states in the woods or some shit.

“In the early twentieth century, Madison Grant, a Manhattan lawyer, joined the conservationist efforts of Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir, who had founded the Sierra Club in 1892. These men shared an affinity for scientific racism. Roosevelt praised Grant’s 1916 white supremacist tome The Passing of the Great Race, or The Racial Basis of European History as “a capital book.” Another fan, Adolf Hitler, wrote Grant a letter, calling the book his personal “bible.”

Some find the pleasantries of civilized and industrial life “feminizing”

[we-legodesk-lawfirm-things]

Cornelia Sorabji: Who Became First woman Lawyer in India

Introduction

What can be said about India that hasn't been said already? A country so big and beautiful where the culture and history run so deep! The Indian culture is known to be rich and diverse and one of the key components of our culture includes giving respect to women. The principle of gender equality is also enshrined in the preamble of the Indian Constitution. Despite India's reputation for respecting women and to an extent even treating women as goddesses, history tells us that women were ill-treated or neglected in various spheres of life. Right from the early days, women have been seen as nurturers and the providers of emotional caretaking, while men have been considered providers of economic support. The birth of a boy has always been celebrated more while the birth of a girl – especially a second or subsequent daughter – is often perceived as a crisis! Read Also: Copy linkWhy We Need More Women Lawyer In India? It might be a different story now that we're in the 21st Century. It's not a challenge to find inspiring women doing powerful work in today's world. However, it is worth remembering that those living here and now aren't the only names to draw from. One such inspiring woman who broke the shackles of gender stereotyping and forged her way ahead in the legal field and went on to become the first woman Lawyer in India was Cornelia Sorabji.

Flashback to Cornelia's Early Childhood and Education

Cornelia Sorabji was born in 1866 to a Christian Parsi family. She enjoyed the support of her parents when it came to her education and career as her parents were great advocates of girl child education. Her father Reverend Sorabji Karsedji, was a Christian missionary. He played a key role in convincing Bombay University to admit women to its degree programs. Her mother, Francina Ford, on the other hand, helped to establish several girls' schools in Pune. Cornelia was one of nine kids in her family. She had to experience loss early on in her life when two of her brothers died in infancy. Despite these setbacks, the Sorabji's encouraged all of their children, especially their daughters, to attend Bombay University. However, female applications were rejected until Cornelia, the fifth daughter finally broke through the barrier to entry. Read Also: Plight of Women Employed In Unorganised Sector Cornelia received her education both at home and at mission schools. She got enrolled in Deccan College and duly completed her law degree with top honours in 1888 but was denied a scholarship that would have allowed her to study in England. These days we are quick to voice our opinions on gender-based inequalities and discrimination but this is the story of a woman from a time when words like 'feminism' or 'women empowerment' weren't even coined, where women had to struggle to break the so-called 'norms' of society! Despite all this, Cornelia was undeterred and she took up a temporary teaching post at a men's college in Gujarat. After becoming the first female graduate of Bombay University, Sorabji wrote to the National Indian Association appealing for funds to allow her to continue her education abroad. In the year 1892, she was given special permission to take the postgraduate Bachelor of Civil Law exam at Somerville College and became the first woman to ever do so. She eventually graduated from Oxford University and became the first female advocate in India and the first woman to practice law in India and as well as Britain. A Look into Cornelia's Legal Career and the Social & Reform Work  A couple of years after graduating, Sorabji returned to India and became a specialist advocate for purdahnashins, women who were forbidden to communicate with the outside male world. She was, however, unable to represent them in court due to a blanket ban that discriminated against women and barred them from practising as a lawyer. It is indeed unfortunate, that one of the biggest battles she had to face was a battle against patriarchy itself. She wasn't recognized as a barrister until 1923 when this law was finally changed. However, in her zeal to help the socially excluded communities, she often worked without pay and fought courageously for both the inheritance rights of these neglected women and her own as a professional. Read Also: Copy linkFirst Chief Justice of India Sorabji became a government legal adviser on the issue and won the right for purdahnashins to train as nurses. She was awarded the Kaisar-i-Hind Gold Medal in 1909 for her social reforming efforts on behalf of these women and other causes. She fearlessly challenged the orthodox Hindu attitudes and promoted reform of Hindu laws regarding child marriage and Sati by widows. When the legal profession finally opened its doors to female lawyers in the 1920s, Sorabji opened her practice in Kolkata. Unfortunately, even then, she was denied the chance to make her pleas in person before the court and was reduced to preparing arguments in absentia. Cornelia Sorabji is thought to have helped over 600 clients fight legal battles throughout her career. It's no mean feat considering the obstacles stacked against her by deeply oppressive and conservative patriarchy and a legal system that failed her more times than we can count! Cornelia was an ambitious and courageous woman and many regarded her as a feminist who paved the way for women in India in the field of law. However, while this is true, her approach to Indian Independence was rather conservative and she did not see eye to eye with Gandhi and his Independence Movement. Although she recognized that colonialism wasn't ideal, she supported the British rule and was against the Independence movement and Gandhi, in the latter part of her life. Having spent so much time in England, she developed great friendships with a lot of English people, who showered her with a lot of support throughout her career and Cornelia being loyal to them, formed opinions in favour to the British Rule. Her approach was, of course, challenged. Some of her words were misappropriated, and her work was also maligned in some circles. A complicated and complex figure, nevertheless, Cornelia having worked for 20 years in the legal field, eventually retired and left India in 1929. Despite her countless achievements, Cornelia has somehow escaped the pages of history. Our history books are more or less a narrative dominated by men writing about men, women often only appear when they're being vilified. But that doesn't mean it's true. India's history is, in fact, replete with powerful women like Cornelia Sorabji. Her life story is opaque in many ways and more has come to light through scholarship and her papers in recent years. However, in this case, a lack of clarity in the narrative was more or less purposefully created by Cornelia herself. Since her career primarily involved assisting women who lived behind the purdah, she wasn't always free to speak of the details of her work. Consequently, it appears that identities were often concealed and the timelines in her narratives were tweaked. She also spoke through literature, and, at times, simply avoided mentioning specific details altogether. She followed the same strategy in speaking of her personal life as well and was a private person. After having left India, she returned to England, where she spent her last years. She passed away in London in 1954. Cornelia was indeed a remarkable woman who changed the course of history and is someone worth celebrating! A brass bust was unveiled in her honour at Lincoln's Inn, London's judicial heartland, in 2012, on what would have been her 151st birthday. This brass bust, by another female sculptor, Sachidanand Unavane, shows Cornelia in her sari which is partially draped over her head. Read Also: Top 7 Inspirational Female Lawyers in India

Conclusion

Cornelia Sorabji was a woman ahead of her time who was not willing to let others define her role in society and dictate what she can or cannot do. Let us never forget the sacrifices of this female hero who truly made a difference to thousands of lives with her unwavering patience and resilience! Read the full article