A Radical Profeminist

Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of Women's Right to Vote

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 19 Aug 2020 04:41:00 +0000

Photos courtesy of Better Days Utah 2020. L to R: Elizabeth Taylor; Alice Kasai; Zitkála-Šá (Dakota); and Hannah Kaaepa (Hawai'ian) with her mother and sister. All fought for women's rights. Source: https://www.sltrib.com/news/2020/08/16/utah-women-color-were/

“Indigenous women have had a political voice in their nations on this land for over 1,000 years,” Sally Roesch Wagner, historian and editor of the 2019 anthology The Women’s Suffrage Movement, points out. “Women’s rights is not a new concept on this land; it’s a very, very old one. And the clan mothers of the six nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, the Haudenosaunee women, have had political voice for 1,000 years.”

The passage above is from a new Time magazine article, August 18th, 2020: "5 Myths About the 19th Amendment and Women's Suffrage, Debunked": https://time.com/5879346/19th-amendment-facts-myths/

On August 19, 2020 there will be a special discussion about the leadership and strategies of Black women during the long fight for suffrage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAkgz7oYPV8

Description of the webinar/discussion:
In the standard story, the suffrage crusade began in Seneca Falls in 1848 and ended with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. But this overwhelmingly white women’s movement did not win the vote for most Black women. Securing their rights required a movement of their own. In “Vanguard,” historian Martha S. Jones offers a new history of African American women’s political lives in America. She recounts how they defied both racism and sexism to fight for the ballot, and how they wielded political power to secure the equality and dignity of all persons. From the earliest days of the republic to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and beyond, Jones excavates the lives and work of Black women — Maria Stewart, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Fannie Lou Hamer, and more — who were the vanguard of women’s rights, calling on America to realize its best ideals.

The book the conversation emerges from is Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All (September 8, 2020), by Martha S. Jones. Link: http://marthasjones.com/vanguard/

Additional new scholarship in 2020 reveals which women and women's organisations took leadership and had influence en route to this tremendous accomplishment a century ago. This sites lists several other new books honoring the Suffrage Centennial:
http://suffrageandthemedia.org/source/books-new-in-2020-for-the-suffrage-centennial/

Diana E. H. Russell (6 November 1938 - 28 July 2020)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 07 Aug 2020 19:33:00 +0000

Credit...Susan Kennedy [Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/obituaries/diana-russell-dead.html]

Rest in power and peace, Diana E. H. Russell!💔

I'm trying to imagine all the girls' and women's lives her work and its effects have helped, in part by assisting them in finding their way out of a state of current traumatic and post-traumatic despair, by popularizing the term femicide, by naming men's systematic sexual exploitation of and violence against women that the victims didn't cause or deserve, and by detailing its institutionalised structures. Thank you, Diana.

There are some parts of her story I was not familiar with until reading this article in the New York Times. And there were some appalling aspects to the article. The first was that "men" are not named in the heading which was supposedly making the point it was "men's" violence against women.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/obituaries/diana-russell-dead.html

"As a daughter of white privilege growing up in South Africa, her rebellious instincts found an outlet in the anti-apartheid movement."

Why not "...her horror at witnessing racist atrocity led her to the militant wing of the anti-apartheid movement"? That's like saying, Nikki Craft was anti-rape because of her rebellious nature.

"In 'The Politics of Rape' (1975), she argued that rape is an act of conformity to ideals of masculinity. Rolling Stone magazine called the book “probably the best introduction to rape now in print.” The best introduction to rape????

This part is astounding! Dr. Russell’s mother, Kathleen Mary (Gibson) Russell, who was British, had traveled to South Africa to teach education and drama; when she married Mr. Russell, she became a homemaker and had six children but still found time to join the anti-apartheid Black Sash movement. (She was a niece of Violet Gibson, who had attempted to assassinate Mussolini in 1926.)

The "still found time" makes it sound like she did some volunteer work at her church, maybe knitting tea pot cozies. Maybe she was an activist who still found time to look after the children. If you have a much better obit, please send it along.

She deserved way better an obituary than that.

But with enormous thanks for your life's work, Diana! 💓 Below is a list of her world-changing writings, from Wikipedia.

Books

Russell, Diana E. H. (1974). The politics of rape: the victim's perspective. New York: Stein and Day. ISBN 9780812816570. OCLC 1165996.
Russell, Diana E. H. (1975). Rebellion, revolution and armed force: comparative study of fifteen countries with special emphasis on Cuba and South Africa. New York: Academic Press. ISBN 9780127857459. OCLC 886393.
Russell, Diana E .H.; van de Ven, Nicole (1976). Crimes against women: international tribunal proceedings. Millbrae, California: Les-Femmes Publishing. ISBN 9780890879214. OCLC 2464570. Conference proceedings.
Russell, Diana E. H.; Star, Susan; Linden, Robin Ruth; Pagano, Darlene R. (1982). Against sadomasochism: a radical feminist analysis. East Palo Alto, California: Frog in the Well. ISBN 9780960362837. OCLC 7877113.
Russell, Diana E. H. (1984). Sexual exploitation: rape, child sexual abuse, and workplace harassment. Beverly Hills, California: Sage. ISBN 9780803923553. OCLC 10696523.
Russell, Diana E. H. (1986). The secret trauma: incest in the lives of girls and women. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 9780465075966. OCLC 12974265.
Russell, Diana E. H. (1989). Exposing nuclear phallacies. New York: Pergamon Press. ISBN 9780080364759. OCLC 18625199.
Russell, Diana E. H. (1989). Lives of courage: women for a New South Africa. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 9780465041404. OCLC 19723691.
Russell, Diana E. H. (1990). Rape in marriage. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. ISBN 9780253205636. OCLC 8451646.
Russell, Diana E. H.; Radford, Jill (1992). Femicide: the politics of woman killing. New York Toronto: Twayne Publishers. ISBN 9780805790283. OCLC 25367570. Front cover.
Russell, Diana E. H. (September 1993). Against pornography: the evidence of harm. Berkeley, California: Russell Publishing. ISBN 9780963477613. OCLC 29988342.
Russell, Diana E. H. (December 1993). Making violence sexy: feminist views on pornography. Buckingham: Open University Press. ISBN 9780335192007. OCLC 27106001.
Russell, Diana E. H. (1997). Behind closed doors in White South Africa: incest survivors tell their stories. Jo Campling (consulting editor). New York: St Martin's Press. ISBN 9780312173753. OCLC 36066137.
Russell, Diana E. H. (1998). Dangerous relationships: pornography, misogyny and rape. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage. ISBN 9780761905257. OCLC 38257798.
Russell, Diana E. H.; Bolen, Rebecca M. (2000). The epidemic of rape and child sexual abuse in the United States. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage. ISBN 9780761903024. OCLC 43384742.
Russell, Diana E. H.; Harmes, Roberta A. (2001). Femicide in global perspective. New York: Teachers College Press. ISBN 9780807740477. OCLC 45304762.

Chapters in books

Russell, Diana E. H. (1983). "Research on how women experience the impact of pornography". In Copp, David; Wendell, Susan (eds.). Pornography and censorship. Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books. ISBN 9780879751821.
Russell, Diana E. H. (1992). "Nikki Craft: Inspiring protest: Introduction". In Russell, Diana E. H.; Radford, Jill (eds.). Femicide: the politics of woman killing. New York Toronto: Twayne Publishers. pp. 325–327. ISBN 9780805790283. Pdf.

Tamika Mallory: Speaking Truth to Power in Amerikkka

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 04 Jun 2020 03:25:00 +0000

As you may know, Tamika Mallory co-organized the 2017 Women's March on Washington. Here she is addressing a Minneapolis rally on May 29, 2020. This is the most compressed, powerful dose of truth delivered to Amerikkka I've seen or heard since I don't know when. Four versions of this amazing speech follow.

The first is more complete than most on the web: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wxAhGhHZMI

The second has English subtitles and shows the women who were around her, supporting her:
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkGC1jdEtKc

With the rest I'll just provide the links:

The third video has Spanish subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QY3Djk68gA

And this last one is completely unedited. The volume is low at first but that changes half way in and becomes much clearer and stronger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Jzku_jx5DQ

Black Radical, Lesbian, Queer, Feminist voices

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 19 May 2020 07:24:00 +0000

image of Black feminist marchers is from here

I've been struggling to figure out how to maintain integrity of practice, of action in friendship and within communities and in isolation. How to find my footing, meaning both my voice and in what perspectives my voice is grounded. I hope to write a series of posts about who influences my thinking and doing and where I am landing at this time.

Radical Black feminism, or Black radical feminism, has been a core influence. Some of the key figures for me have been Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, bell hooks, and Alicia Garza, among others. Each woman has addressed different but overlapping concerns. I see Black radical feminist activism addressing white straight male supremacy, white and Black men's violence against Black women; white women's marginalisation of Black women in movement work, Black men's denial of male privilege and power to oppress women, white women's denial of white privilege and power to oppress women and men; men's sexual exploitation and violence against women of color; many forms of gendered-raced violence that systematically oppress and kill Black, Brown, Asian, and Indigenous women and girls; classism, poverty, and economic violence against women; State and police violence that is misogynoirist; military warfare against Asian and Brown women internationally, police violence and slaughter, the prison industrial complex; and the murder of Black trans women and queer liberation; the legacies and continuing force of European colonialism and globalised capitalism; the struggles of Indigenous women; gender; sexuality; and dealing with issues of sustainable action, responsible engagement in community, and creating systems of support for marginalised and invisibilised girls and women.

There is overlap with white radical feminist agendas in fighting heteropatriarchy, calling out male privilege and power interpersonally, socially, and culturally, and men's sexual violence and exploitation of women and girls of all colors; gender; sexuality and lesbian existence. The white radical feminists I'm speaking of include Andrea Dworkin, Catharine A. MacKinnon, Sheila Jeffreys, and Julie Bindel, to name a few key figures who have shaped the direction of liberatory struggle. The first two have been particularly influential to me, most especially Dworkin. These voices are not monolithic and have or have had different areas of focus with lots of overlap. Among some white feminist writers and activists spanning generations, intersectionality and queerness are critiqued as pro-patriarchal, anti-feminist, or not radical. In this last area, I am in disagreement in part due to a commitment respect and honor the struggles of Black feminists even when at odds with white feminist theories or agendas.

So in this short post I want to link to some conversations among Black feminists and Black liberation workers so that we may hear their struggles, their agendas, in their own voices:

Audre Lorde speech, Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power, 1978:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWmq9gw4Rq0

A conversation on October 13, 2014 with bell hooks and Laverne Cox:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oMmZIJijgY

A conversation from January 23, 2016, with Barbara Smith, and Reina Gossett, and Charlene Carruthers where liberation struggles are discussed directly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV3nnFheQRo

An October 2016 TED Talk on the murder of Black women by Kimberlé Crenshaw:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akOe5-UsQ2o

Why Does John Stoltenberg Call Andrea Dworkin a Trans Ally?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 22 Apr 2020 05:54:00 +0000

This photo of Andrea Dworkin and John Stoltenberg was found here.

[I have revised this piece since published on 4/22. — Julian, 4/26/2020]

PART I: INTRODUCTION

In recognition of the fifteenth anniversary of the passing of the great Andrea Dworkin, her life partner, John Stoltenberg, recently wrote a piece published online at the Boston Review. You may read it here (or see the URL in the notes): "Andrea Dworkin Was a Trans Ally."(1)

I fully appreciate and understand where John is coming from; I share his concern about any ideology or actions that aim to generate bigotry, systemic and interpersonal discrimination, or replicate any incarnation of social supremacy. Like John, I believe Andrea would have passionately opposed such efforts. Unlike John, Andrea would have done so anywhere she found it.

I find the title as well as the content of Stoltenberg's new article problematic in a few ways. Stoltenberg applies a label on Andrea to stick silence to sentiments. Her empathy for the oppressed is established. But there are no public declarations of support for trans agendas, specifically. She wasn't "anti-male" and I don't think she would be "anti-trans", nor should she be labeled as such. But you can't affix absence to affection. You ought not cut terms from a battle not hers and paste them on someone so battle-scarred. I know he appreciates that mislabeling is not cool.(2) I am calling on John to carefully state where she stood and to not misappropriate something she wrote about when her own theory work was problematic, including to her. (More later.)

Additionally, I don't see his article addressing whether Andrea was or was not a trans ally. It is about ideas and values: hers, his, and his interpretation of terms some radical feminists sometimes use. His article blurs distinctions, especially Andrea's. Far more seriously, the piece obfuscates what terms Andrea's public work required to convey meaning to incite action in service to revolutionary feminist change. In each of these ways, I feel, he is making a mountain out of a mole hole, disrespecting her in the process. Stoltenberg has said he was naive when approving a publisher's title to his 2014 article, "Andrea Dworkin Was Not Transphobic."(3) How long must naivete nestle in his defensive arsenal? Only a great deal of privilege allows that term to never expire. And this: did Andrea request to be posthumously placed in the middle of a political-polemical battle not chosen by her?

Reader, it gets worse.

PART II: REAL WOMEN

John identifies usage of the phrase 'real woman' as a moral affront to what Andrea worked for and valued. At the same time, he neglects to highlight a concern, a nightmare, abundantly evident to her in life under patriarchy that, I believe, most of radical feminism holds central in its theory and activism: womanhood is not chosen; it is enforced. It has a body; the body is female. Andrea graphically described the violence against her, her body, a female one. She described what is done to millions of girls and women, every one female. Noticing this connection (and how does one not?), does not render Dworkin, nor anyone else enduring and bearing witness to the same atrocities, a sex essentialist. As I shall illustrate, it is the most central theme, addressed in dozens of speeches and articles, and in all of her books. I saw her speak several times, I've read her books. This is what I heard:

It is against the female body that male supremacy most egregiously and systematically expresses itself in order to maintain male dominance as natural, God-given, eternal, and inevitable. It is against the female body that intercourse as violence and violation occurs most normally. It is against the female body that patriarchal force is unleashed: brutal, sadistic, bone crushing, and murderous. Through all of her work, Andrea addresses this explicitly: the violence is against the woman's breasts, her uterus, her vagina. What I hear most deeply, most fiercely, in radical feminists' angry opposition to essential elements of trans politics, in part, is this: You are making that understanding seem crazy and immoral. And increasingly verboten. John isn't helping. Patriarchy makes men's treatment of women—for Andrea, for radical feminism, the stubbornly human beings with a female form—intimately oppressive. Her words express this point far better than mine.

The acts of violence depicted in pornography are real acts committed against real women and real female children. (Letters from a War Zone, p. 11)

The woman's material reality is determined by a sexual characteristic, a capacity for reproduction. The man takes a body that is not his, claims it, sows his so-called seed, reaps a harvest—he colonializes a female body, robs it of its natural resources, controls it, uses it, depletes it as he wishes, denies it freedom and self-determination so that he can continue to plunder it... (War Zone, p. 118)

...I have also learned much about male power from [women], once I cared enough about women as such to realize that male power was the theme my own life had led me to. I know male power inside out, with knowledge of it gained by this female body. (War Zone, p. 64)

Now, this repulsion is literal and linear: directed especially against her genitals, also her breasts, also her mouth newly perceived as a sex organ. It is a goose-stepping hatred of cunt. The woman has no human dimension, no human meaning. (Intercourse, p. 9)

What is stunning and outrageous to me is that stating this aloud is controversial, unless to men—then it is still outrageous while expected and unremarkable. John, many radical feminists, and anyone who is familiar with her know this: Andrea valued naming conditions as she saw them, full voice. Mincing words or verbal tip-toeing were anathema to her. She hated words being put in her mouth or taken out context. Yet John's representation of her edits out this most incisive fact: Materially, the Venn diagram consists of one circle.

I have disturbingly discovered, over the last decade and a half, that a prerequisite for operating acceptably in white-dominated liberal queer spaces, academic and otherwise,(4) is the silencing of Andrea Dworkin specifically, and radical and lesbian feminists more generally. Those are places I have increasingly avoided due to my disdain for the prevailing ideologies and anti-feminist practice.

You cannot rationally read Dworkin and come away denying that in her worldview and in her experience, melded to the experiences of millions of women, this is realised: male means man, men are male; female means woman, women are female. She didn't shy away from saying so in academic or social circles. She didn't indulge Western theorists who value sexual diversity more than women's liberation, who think by multiplying genders we arrive at new form of freedom. There is no such charge toward metastatic metamorphosis. In the time she was alive, Andrea never articulated a hierarchy in which female women oppress trans women. Female women were, to her, a class of actual (read: real) women: 'women', unmodified by any prefix.

Unabashedly reciting those four passages above will not be tolerated in many settings influenced by the suppositions essential to liberal sex and gender theory. As Women's Studies has shifted to Gender Studies, radical feminist perspectives have been branded a violation of anti-discrimination policy, grounds for dismissal. Those courageous radical feminists who insist on naming the reality they and Andrea experienced, are losing their reputations, their careers, and their safety. Alarmingly, they are being doxed, deplatformed, threatened, and terrorised. About this, thus far, John is silent.

PART III: TRANSSEXUALS

In Stoltenberg's article and in others by him published after Andrea's death, he resurrects chapter nine from section four from her first feminist book, Woman Hating (1974). From "Androgyny: Androgyny, Fucking, and Community," the passage prior to the one in his article:

Transsexuality can be defined as one particular formation of our general multisexuality which is unable to achieve its natural development because of extremely adverse social conditions. (p. 186)

Following her discussion of transsexuality, Dworkin went on to discuss transvestism in the context of an erotically repressive society:

Transvestism is costuming which violates gender imperatives. Transvestism is generally a sexually charged act: the visible, public violation of sex role is erotic, exciting, dangerous. It is a kind of erotic civil disobedience, and that is precisely its value. Costuming is part of the strategy and process of role destruction. We see, for instance, that as women reject the female role, they adopt “male” clothing. As sex roles dissolve, the particular erotic content of transvestism dissolves. (p. 187)

In that chapter, she also wrote uncritically about stigmatised and/or abusive interpersonal contact existing in an erotically repressive society. From the introduction to the section:

Homosexuality, transsexuality, incest, and bestiality persist as the "perversions" of this "human nature" we presume to know so much about. They persist despite the overwhelming forces marshaled against them—discriminatory laws and social practices, ostracism, active persecution by the state and other organs of the culture—as inexplicable embarrassments, as odious examples of "filth" and/or "maladjustment." (p. 174)

In the conclusion, she adds: "We must refuse to submit to the fears engendered by sexual taboos." (p. 192) In 1989, in an interview, Dworkin addressed theorising with unknown and unintegrated knowledge; theory she would abandon and critique.(5)

Once known and integrated, from Pornography: Men Possessing Women (1981) to Heartbreak (2002), she never again speaks of core or peripheral issues in the terms John most utilises: there is no call for an expansive multiplicity of gender; multisexuality ceases to matter; a focus on fictive and static sex roles becomes increasingly astigmatic; the liberators of sexual taboos are revealed to be predators; she ditches androgyny as salvation. She bids a griefless goodbye to all this.

Transsexuality, too, disappears, save for two mentions in the Dworkin-MacKinnon antipornography ordinance: "The use of men, children or transsexuals in the place of women..." and, "[a]ny man, child, or transsexual who alleges injury by pornography in the way women are injured..."(6) About this, John said: "I merely want to point out that Andrea understood in a profound way that a person could be subordinated like a woman without having been assigned female at birth..."

"Subordinated like a woman." Not as a woman. The ordinance brought awareness to the fact that the pornographers can treat anyone like shit, the way women, most often and most centrally, are treated like shit. A girl, a woman: from birth to death. It is clear that Andrea and Catharine, in this radical legal mechanism for ending sex-based discrimination, did not equate being a transsexual with being a woman or a man. For the purposes of their ordinance, reflecting life as they knew it, 'women' were unto themselves as an oppressed sexual-political class.

PART IV: ACCOUNTABILITY

I call upon John to stop inferring that her radicalism is epitomised in a pre-feminist section of Woman Hating and a colonialist chapter in her second book, Our Blood (1976), in which she unpacks the prevailing philosophy of gender, and, alarmingly, posits Columbus as a radical hero. (pp. 97, 110). I believe her radicalism, her mission, is found elsewhere. From the introduction to Woman Hating:

This book is an action, a political action where revolution is the goal. It has no other purpose. It is not cerebral wisdom, or academic horseshit, or ideas carved in granite or destined for immortality. It is part of a process and its context is change. (p. 17)

If John is to reference Andrea's work, he must unsilence her on what mattered most to her. To not do so is misappropriation in the name of radical profeminism. We know he's familiar with the practice. From John's article: "After Andrea’s death in 2005, I became increasingly concerned that she and the radical politics I learned from her were being misappropriated by some..." I call on John to just as resolutely hold himself accountable.

Following her death, it has been sad to see the degree to which John's political trajectory follows a different orbit. I've been outraged to see the ways he's obscured Andrea's. This is my view of their respective work at this point. In the Venn diagram, his circle is the one in many colors; hers is totally eclipsed.

What follows is some of John's work.(7) I believe this is where his passion is—in discussions about gender like this:

Think of a color wheel. And don’t think of one with colors segmented by lines like a pinwheel; think of one where the colors blend and blur into one another as they do in the infinitely circular rainbow that is the visible spectrum:

Figure 1: Color spectrum wheel

I submit that for any individual, what we think of as sex and gender is actually more like a point somewhere on a color wheel (rather than a point somewhere on a linear continuum with two ends, each of which supposedly represents two poles of a binary).

Reader, that work was not hers.

PART V: CONCLUSION

Perhaps Andrea didn't establish a public position one way or the other in such battles because of the time in which she wrote. Mindful of her empathy and compassion for oppressed people, there's simply no evidence of her being a trans ally as I've heard the term used.(8) I say that without satisfaction or derision. I'm stating a fact. As a point of reasonable comparison: if, forty years ago, an out heterosexual man wrote affirmatively about the lesbian, bi, and gay community and had done nothing since to support LGBTQ+ challenges to, and survival within, an outrageously heterosexist society, should he be considered an ally? I hope we'd all conclude the answer must be no. Here, John is the ally; Andrea was the analyst.

What white people—trans, queer, and otherwise—can do to honor Andrea is to read all her books and fight to end white and male supremacy in all of its manifestations, in every theory and every practice.

Andrea's views are best expressed in her own work on her own terms. Not that they can't be discussed and debated. Not that we can't wonder what position she'd take on any given issue. I can't count how many times I wondered: What Would Dworkin Do? Unfortunately, since death, she's had people who identify in many ways, embracing different ideologies, with various political agendas, metaphorically tugging, tugging on each arm, trying to make a case that she stood firmly on one side or the other of the fierce trans debate. Defended she must be, but not in indefensible ways. Andrea Dworkin fought hard enough in the war zone. Let her rest, with gifts given, in power and peace.

NOTES:
1. "Andrea Dworkin Was a Trans Ally" (2020): http://bostonreview.net/gender-sexuality/john-stoltenberg-andrea-dworkin-was-trans-ally

2. John makes an assumption that 'transsexual' and 'transgender' are synonymous terms. Many of us under the Western queer banner know that to be false. For example, there are queer and trans people of color and Indigenous Two-Spirit and queer people who reject the authority, agendas, and appropriations part and parcel of white gender and sexual politics. There are radical feminist transsexuals who do not identify as transgender for political reasons. The 'trans' moniker, that appears in the title of John's article, in fact, is often used in or by LGBTQIA communities as an umbrella term that includes many people, among whom some ID transsexual, some ID transgender, and many who identify as neither: it may also include folks who are gender fluid, gender non-conforming, and non-binary. Sometimes 'trans*' is synonymous with 'queer.' If he doesn't know this, he should, before trying to identify Andrea as a "trans ally". He, as a gay man, is also not positioned to make the claim. Trans-identified people are, especially trans women and trans men of color. His lack of accountability, if not knowledge, to radical and feminist transsexuals reveals allyhood with only some letters in our alphabet. See note 8 for more.

3. After writing this post, I found an archived article by John titled "Andrea Dworkin Was Not Transphobic." (2014) I had recalled and likely read it when released but couldn't find it. Once tracked down, I was engaged by the comments. They pertain so directly to this discussion that I want to link to them here, with particular shout outs to Morag and Lil Z:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180827101819/http://archive.feministtimes.com/%e2%80%aa%e2%80%8egenderweek-andrea-was-not-transphobic/#comments

4. The spaces I have operated in socially and academically have been white majority and led, or Anglo and Western theory dominated. When we who are white speak of feminism and queer politics, it generally means "white" but without stating so. I am aware of communities, perspectives, and agendas of color. Analysis of the complex challenges, not the least of which is Western and Anglo colonisation in culture and thought, is beyond the scope of this piece about Andrea Dworkin and John Stoltenberg and his use of her writings about sex not race.

5. Dworkin goes on to explicate this statement. Without Apology: Andrea Dworkin's Art and Politics (1998), by Cindy Jenefsky. Page 139, Note 1: https://books.telegraph.co.uk/Product/Cindy-Jenefsky/Without-Apology--Andrea-Dworkins-Art-And-Politics/23799992 (a UK source)

Cindy Jenefsky writes:
In my 1989 interview with Dworkin, she indicated she no longer agrees with suggestions proposed at the end of the book. "I think there are a lot of things really wrong with the last chapter in Woman Hating," says Dworkin. When asked about her discussion of incest in particular, she made reference to several factors which influenced this part of her writing. First, at the time she wrote this part of the book, she was taking care of a child who had been incestuously abused, and even though she had talked with police in Holland about the prevalence of incest there, she says there was a gap between her intellectual analysis and her personal experience. It was only through writing and getting responses to Woman Hating that her subjective experience—not just about the incest, but about wife battery and pornography as well—was validated by others and that she began to understand incest as a form of sexual abuse. She also made reference to being influenced by "years of reading Freud and trying to figure out abstractly what all this was about," especially in the absence of publicly available information about the prevalence and character of sexual abuse. Finally, Dworkin also noted that even though feminists and pornographers were moving in different directions at the time Woman Hating was written, they still shared common roots in the counterculture and sexual liberation movement. Dworkin, interview with the author, 1989.

6. Regarding the ordinance, see Pornography: Men Possessing Women, tenth anniversary edition (1989), new introduction, p. xxxiii. See also, the Massachusetts ordinance (1992): http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/OrdinanceMassComplete.html

7. "The Sex/Gender Binary: Essentialism" (2015): http://radfem.transadvocate.com/the-sexgender-binary-essentialism_n_508/

8. "Becoming an Ally to Queer and Trans People of Color (QTPOC)": https://colleges.claremont.edu/qrc/education/enact-allyship/qtpoc-ally/. Also, see the first paragraph in "11 Ways To Be A Trans* Ally, According To Transgender People Themselves" (2015): https://www.bustle.com/articles/76762-11-ways-to-be-a-trans-ally-according-to-transgender-people-themselves

May my white male privilege serve this call to honesty and integrity.

Interpersonally Abusive Men: the work of Feminist Kajsa Ekis Ekman and Pro-feminist Lundy Bancroft

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 23 Mar 2020 20:12:00 +0000

book cover

Although this was published several years ago, this book is new to me. It was put on my radar by Swedish feminist Kajsa Ekis Ekman, a writer, journalist, and activist. I found her via this audio recorded lecture wherein she mentions it. She addresses interpersonally abusive men's tactics and behavior in the initial stages and how those tactics may mirror and mimic the country's oppressive male supremacist government and its leaders. The audio link was sent to me from a friend in Serbia. I believe the close translation of the title of the lecture is: Types of Abuse: How to Recognize Your Relationship is Violent. NOTE: It may be very distressing to anyone who has lived through or witnessed an abusive relationship.

https://www.mixcloud.com/TNT_BeFemTalks/s03e03kajsa-ekis-ekman-deset-vrsta-zlostavlja%C4%8Da-kako-prepoznati-da-je-va%C5%A1a-veza-nasilna/?fbclid=IwAR31xA4HeQV2U4mSrSqbzNJZbVSPEeW6GjW_Xne8DTFSfVTclULwBCsyP6Y

Here is a PDF of the book by Lundy Bancroft: Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

A summary:
Has your partner changed dramatically from the man you originally got involved with? Do you struggle with trying to understand what is bothering him and how to keep him from exploding? Do you feel like you’re always messing things up in his eyes, and you can’t figure out how to get it right?
Why Does He Do That? has become the go-to book for women who have partners who are angry, controlling, or unfaithful. It answers the 20 questions that women most ask about their partners’ behavior.
Here are just a few:
* “Why did he used to think I was so great and now he often seems to think I’m terrible?”
* “Why does he make everything he does my fault?”
* “Why does he want to have sex after being terrible to me?”
* “Is he going to escalate to physical violence?”
* “How come everybody else seems to think he’s so perfect?”
* “What can I do to get him to change how he treats me?”
This book will help you to sort out whether your partner’s behavior is just “normal relationship stuff” or whether he is trying to control you. And if he is controlling, Lundy will guide you in how to keep yourself safe and sort out the way forward for your life.

Stonewall Rebellion: 50 Years Ago at Midnight

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 29 Jun 2019 00:36:00 +0000

Stormé DeLarverie is from here

Stormé was always clear: “It was a rebellion, it was an uprising, it was civil disobedience. It was no damn riot.”

Stories are missing from several accounts of what occurred that fateful night. For example, some say the grief over the death of Judy Garland, whose funeral service had ended not long before the midnight uprising, put many of her followers in a less obedient place: the deep grief may have fueled the rebellious anger and rage.

I grew up hearing that. I also grew up with the impression that this was primarily a white gay male story, of men fed up with police harassment and brutality, finally ready to fight back, for dignity and for freedom. Later I learned about Sylvia Rivera, a powerful figure in that story and in the story of NYC's political struggles at that time. There is a question over whether Sylvia was there that first night: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Rivera

I then learned that homeless queer kids, queens, and trans people of color were part of this story.

Among the voices most often left out of the account is that of Stormé DeLarverie, the mixed-race Black lesbian butch who called out for others to do something when the cops invaded the Inn. Here is more about her: https://socialistaction.org/2018/07/31/storme-delarverie-the-lesbian-spark-in-the-stonewall-uprising/

Here, from a documentary, are other parts of the story of that night:
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/6/28/remembering_stonewall_on_50th_anniversary_leaders?utm_source=Democracy+Now%21&utm_campaign=4b622124a2-Daily_Digest_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fa2346a853-4b622124a2-191478001

May the rebellion continue, for all who participated back then, their memories, and for all of us who came along and came out after that night.

Kavanaugh, Trump, and the White Male Supremacist Supporters: Unleashing Unbridled Misogyny Again

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 04 Oct 2018 02:47:00 +0000

image is from Elle, here

I won't put the faces of virulent misogynists in this blog post. We all know what they look like.

What Brett Kavanaugh, Lindsay Graham, Trump and Comp are doing is showing us how blatant misogyny can be, acted out not timidly or shamefully. Unsurprisingly and predictably, this is not how the story is being told. Instead we are seeing it on cable and internet news with cynicism and sarcasm in public, or brought through testimony from private spaces, in bedrooms literally over women's bodies. The reign of white male supremacy has never gone away. From decade to decade it lives on, monstrous in its mutilated humanity.

This is what the man-infestation of its callousness feels like.

This is more than just a reaction to #MeToo, #SayHerName, and #TimesUp. This is on-going action, proactive, planned, well-executed. Any threat to white or men's power is too much. Any challenge, obscene. Any serious opponent to such aggrandizing and aggressive privilege and entitlement is mocked and ridiculed, if not also imprisoned or murdered.

When the oppressed get 'uppity' and organized there will be the white man-beast at the ready to tear them all apart.

More power to Anita Hill, Christine Blasey Ford, and all woman of all colors who are survivors of men's status quo atrocities.

Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, and Donald Trump: misogyny and predation in US positions of power

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 16:13:00 +0000

image is from here

Two of the highest ranking outed perps, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and POTUS Donald Trump, may be welcoming another predatory man into their rank ranks, reinforcing and shaping the US's laws and policies. Structurally, privately, and professionally, they all support woman-hating predation.

The potential disaster and disgrace of confirming Kavanaugh and the horror of the predicted re-election of Trump means half the US Senate and half of the US population are reinforcing patriarchal norms in the face of recent challenges to rape and porn culture.

image is from here

In other words, straight male supremacist business as usual. A seismic shift occurred over the last half century and in a more media-approved way bravely over the past year starting with Tarana Burke's #MeToo effort, #SayHerName, and #TimesUp. Before these latest efforts an incredibly brave Anita Hill spoke truth to power and was rebuked.

From Vox:

It feels like 1991 all over again.

That year, Clarence Thomas was nominated by President George H.W. Bush to the Supreme Court, and Anita Hill testified that he had sexually harassed her when they worked together several years prior. Sen. Joe Biden, then the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, failed to call additional witnesses whose testimony could have supported Hill’s account. Thomas has now served on the Supreme Court for nearly 30 years.

Today, the details are different but the basic outline is eerily similar. In July, a woman reported to Democrats in Congress that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh tried to sexually assault her when they were both in high school. He has denied the allegation.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, knew about the allegation but declined to share it with the other Democrats on the committee, according to Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer at the New Yorker. So it didn’t come up during Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings.

Hill addressed the allegations against Kavanaugh on Friday, saying through a spokesperson that “the reluctance of someone to come forward demonstrates that even in the #MeToo era, it remains incredibly difficult to report harassment, abuse or assault by people in power.” She added that “the Senate Judiciary Committee should put in place a process that enables anyone with a complaint of this nature to be heard.”

Persistent activism is needed to radically alter the structures that make Kavanaugh's confirmation possible. Misogyny is always part of a giant system, perpetually a category 5 storm.

image of 2017's Hurricane Maria is from here

Aretha Franklin (1942 - 2018) - Respect [1967] (Original Version)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 17 Aug 2018 19:41:00 +0000

Link is from here:

It is with sadness that I am remembering Aretha Franklin's great gifts without her in this world.

A few brief thoughts:
She maintained authority over her music and what she chose to share about her life. She did what few women and fewer Black women are allowed to do in the white and male-dominated music industry: require respect, and get it.

As she was the first woman, the first Black woman to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, I heard someone state that while she was honored by them they were far more honored to have her in their club.

Her truth and spirit shines through and casts into shadow and background the narrative others wish to impose on her.

For more, please see this portions of the latest episode of Democracy Now! One is a tribute and one is Angela Davis's reflections on Ms. Franklin.

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/8/17/respect_a_tribute_to_aretha_franklin
and
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/8/17/angela_davis_icon_aretha_franklin_will

All Hail, the Queen has died. But it seems certain her spirit will live on and on.

#AskMoreOfHim is #NotEnough

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 04 Mar 2018 22:39:00 +0000

As The Independent and other media have reported, David Schwimmer and David Arquette, among other male celebs, have put forth a new campaign in response to #MeToo* and #TimesUp. It is called #AskMoreOfHim.

I find the moniker and actions the hashtag calls forth to be seriously problematic for several reasons:

It doesn't identify whose responsibility it is to ask more of men.
"Asking more" of men is not what is needed. Women have asked more of men and demanded better for centuries. That's about as watered down and spineless a call to action as I can imagine.
There's no accountability or acknowledgement of the problem being men not holding one another accountable or that men, alone, are responsible for male supremacist violence.
I cannot imagine how it makes women safer anywhere for men to do what the hashtag requests. Ask more than what?

Phrasing is important, perhaps especially with social media-initiated efforts. The actual content of their call to action has some teeth in it:

"We believe that men must speak out against sexism, even as we engage in our own process of critical self-reflection, personal growth and accountability."

"So consider this our pledge to support survivors, condemn sexism wherever we see it and hold ourselves and others accountable. As advocates, actors, writers, producers, and directors, we hope that our actions will inspire other men to join us. Until now, only a small number of [men] have been actively engaged in this effort. This must change. It’s time we #AskMoreOfHim."

To Hollywood men and other wealthy prominent men:

Put forth an overtly activist and "money where your mouth is" campaign and reflect that in your name. It may be called, #MenCallOutMen, or #MenNameHim, or #MenDemandMenStop or #MenPayUp, donating money to grassroots organisations that seek to end men's violence against women and girls across class and race. With the unfair advantage celebrity men have in accumulating wealth, it's time such men not only publicly call one another and other men out by naming names and supporting their removal from industries. It's also imperative that men with resources fund women's efforts to assist and empower one another. And that men do so with full accountability both to disenfranchised and more enfranchised women.

The Problem of "Hate Crime" and Individualism

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 03 Feb 2018 17:49:00 +0000

image above is from here

[An earlier version of this has been deleted.]

An argument in opposition to First Amendment absolutists is that hate speech is antithetical to free speech: the first exists to prevent or silence the second. I agree. Speech acts seeking the continued oppression or destruction of marginalized or subordinated peoples are oppressive and destructive.

My issue in this post is with the terms such as "Hate Speech" and "Hate Crime". Specifically, what the terms imply about how we understand and act to end oppression.

A crucial tool of White Male Supremacy--the straight kind especially--is the use of individualism to misname structural and systemic problems. One key aspect of individualism, as you may well know, is that oppression is reduced to how people feel about each other in the interpersonal realm. So, if only we loved one another; if only we treated each other as we'd have ourselves treated; if only there was no more hate... then we'd have world peace, or lack of conflict, justice. The problem is presented as "prejudice" or "lack of empathy": emotional or psychological dysfunction, problems of upbringing. We were raised with the wrong values. We had bigoted parents. Even if discussed in a more social way, we hear the problem is "bias" and "intolerance". How watered down and drowned is the language that far more accurately describes the maintenance of oppression as essentially political?

It's not that hate isn't present; it's that it is sometimes in service to class-based subordination--and not always. To whatever absurd level whites fear Black hatred aimed up, any speech used to communicate that 'hate' is not a systemic or institutional problem in the least. Political translation: there is no such thing as Black supremacy in the West. The same with an alleged preponderance of "man-hating" by women, particularly feminists.

The co-called good Christian whites who operated Boarding Schools thought they were being loving, as do many white colonialist Christian proselytisers--however ineffectively. Historically, so-called better treatment or a belief in moral motive is one tool of white male supremacy. One way white male supremacy thrives is by giving an appearance of treating people better on the individual front. The perversely over-quoted passage by King about children holding hands. In such a linguistic and social world, we assume a problem is over--or getting better--if oppressors are treating the oppressed in less overtly subordinating ways. In fact, looking at the systemic problem of het husbands and boyfriends battering women, when he moves into a stage of being remorseful and sorrowful, that is the precursor to another period of physical and emotional violence.

Calling someone a threatening and racist name ought not be framed only or primarily as a hate crime. It is an act of white supremacist subordination and destruction, rarely prosecuted as criminal. Rape is also normal, not 'mean-spirited' in the sense that many men would argue they have great affection for the women they rape. Missed is the comprehension, let alone the alleviation, of the structural-political nature of rape. And in fact, their committed rape(s), self-perceived and self-named as "love-making" are not, strictly speaking, acts of 'hate' as much as they are acts of subordination. This is to say, men lovingly rape. That's only a contradiction in terms if we make emotional states a prerequisite to or component of oppressive acts.

Even terms like 'crime' are misleading. The State uses the term 'crime' as an excuse to arrest and kill oppressed people disproportionately. What the status quo has never adequately understood or appreciated is how 'criminal' the criminal justice system is. That is to say, the system is grievously attached to political and economic hierarchies and won't function otherwise. 'Crime' is a political term in service to the status quo. Routinely, what is considered 'criminal' is effectively 'by definition' in practice, 'regular everyday acts by Black people' that wouldn't be 'criminal' if whites did them. Rape and men's sexual violence against women is not even considered a hate crime!

Stopping sexual harassment and other forms of work site threat and violence is an endemic problem requiring a structural solution. Ending capitalism is part of that. Some call it a need for 'culture change' and I'd agree it is that too, but it is also and far more importantly a permanent political rearrangement. The solution is not only an end to the interpersonal abuse.

Even terms like 'misogyny' and 'homophobia' make it sound like hate, fear, and bigotry are the problem. The corporate media will now occasionally use the term 'misogyny' but avoid the term 'male supremacy.' That says it all. If 'white supremacy' replaces 'racism' as the term used by such media, we may be that much closer to eradicating it. Not that such media has any interest in moving that effort along.

The heinous problems before us are not individualistic, or necessarily hateful or criminal. I support using language that reflects the systemic, historic, structural nature of oppression as the foundation of law-making and efforts to radically change society.

From here: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbpm9y/black-lives-matter-cofounder-patrisse-khan-cullors-is-only-getting-started

One of the most striking things I read in the book was how your pre-teenage brothers didn’t complain that it was unfair police had harassed and abused them for doing absolutely nothing. You write, “By the time they hit puberty, neither will my brothers have expected that things could be another way.” They internalized the devaluation of their lives at such a young age. Can you talk a bit about other ways in which young black children receive this message?

For many marginalized communities, we are told from birth that our lives are valueless. We are told that we don’t deserve things. That poverty is our fault. That our parents’ addictions and prison and inability to feed us is our fault. So if you internalize that, if you internalize the ways in which the world has literally shoved you out, then of course as you get older, you’re not going to believe in yourself. And that translates into not being able to do the things that are the most important and most healthy. We have to talk about changing systems first. We live in a culture that wants to talk about individual first, that tells people they need to take personal responsibility for their hardships. Let’s not do that. Let’s change the system that creates the hardships. That’s the work of Black Lives Matter, that’s the work of #MeToo, #TimesUp, the Women’s March, so many other important organizations that have come together in the past few years. [emphasis mine] -- Co-founder of BLM, Patrisse Khan-Cullors, in an interview about her brand new book, When They Call You a Terrorist

Please Contribute to this Fundraiser for Girls Escaping Trafficking, War, and Genocide

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 21:33:00 +0000

I sincerely hope anyone able to send $10 or more dollars will generously support this excellent effort! Almost one half of $1500 has been raised! This is direct care to girls in need by hands-on activists, with trauma counseling and leadership training!

https://www.gofundme.com/Zithandeafrica1

#NotMe[n]Too: men's invasion of women posting #MeToo

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 18 Oct 2017 02:58:00 +0000

image is from here: http://www.theimgrum.com/p/metoo

For anyone who doesn't know the history of the #MeToo campaign to challenge and put an men's sexual harassment against women and the climate which encourages it, you may find the story here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAidz_PK9so

"I have heard in the last several years a great deal
about the suffering of men over sexism.

Of course, I have heard a great deal
about the suffering of men all my life.

Needless to say, I have read Hamlet.

I have read King Lear.

I am an educated woman.

I know that men suffer.

This is a new wrinkle.

Implicit in the idea that this is a different kind of suffering is the claim, I think, that in part you are actually suffering because of something that you know happens to someone else.

That would indeed be new."

Andrea Dworkin,

"I Want a Twenty-Four-Hour Truce During Which There Is No Rape"

(1983, Letters From a War Zone)

Across Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook this week, I've seen the courageous effort by women to come out to other women, and men, as yet another women who has experienced predation via sexual harassment by men, often men in positions of power above and beyond standard, run-of-the-mill male supremacist power. Whether in the workplace or home front, school or street, or anywhere else, sexual harassment of women is something men are learning is profoundly widespread and devastating. The women I know find the sharing of the hashtag as a public notice that, yes, me [another woman] too--it happened to her also, it happened again, here, to her, and to her, and her and her and her. No surprise. At all. Have not most women been harassed sexually at least once, if not dozens of times?

I heard today a story of a 14 year-old girl harassed by a boy in her grade at school. I will spare you the details, but what I also noticed was how 'normal' the whole thing was for her, like walking or talking. Oh, yeah, and by the way, he ..." Scary and disgusting. I see this happening as it has ages due to capitalist colonialist patriarchal norms and entitlements and privilege bestowed upon men. In part due to pornography--one of the most normalized forms of misogyny being passed off as what women and girls want. And in part due to men's refusal to see the world from women's point of view, however varied that is. And in part because it serves men well, on the collective political front, to keep quiet about the whole thing: what men do to women that is invasive and violating.

So what is deeply troubling to me is the fact that men are joining in posting or tweeting #me too. This infuriates me and I've already gotten into some heated arguments with guys about this--about how fucked up it is that men are turning this into a "Men's Lives Matter" kind of thing. Yeah, we get it. When did we not get that? As Andrea so clearly states: we know you suffer, men.

You inflict that suffering on women all the time.

I told one guy, #me too, when posted by a man, means only one thing: #men too. And at a groundbreaking--hopefully groundbreaking--time when women are coming out about this trauma, this utterly ubiquitous trauma, men want their/our pain to be front and center. There are so many things wrong with this but I'll identify two for now.

1. We know what the effect off this is: Men expect to be congratulated and empathised with far more energy than will women. Men expect to be told how brave they/we are and are eager to hear: "thank you for joining women, for standing with women" in the struggle for visibility about this form of predation. But honestly, that's not what I see men coming out about. I see men speaking of being sexually abused in other ways, thereby taking the focus off the issue at hand in yet another way. This week the story on the news is about a Hollywood mogul, Harvey Weinstein*, a producer with extraordinary power within one industry acting like all the other men with structural power in the industry. He got called out for his blatantly criminal acts by enough women to get the public to believe he really did all these vile things. See two links below for more. We all have learned what Harvey Weinstein did to them, against them, terrorising and/or seeking their further subordination to him, the prick. We learned it is still going on, rampantly and without stop. I hope this is more than a pause, but we know these fuckheads are doing it as I type this and later today and tomorrow ad nauseam. (*And before him, in 2017, Roger Ailes and Bill O'Reilly of FUX Women Over NEWS. And most notably and visibly, our new President, Donald "the predator/terrorist" Trump.

2. What is amazing to me is that this becomes a moment, a week, perhaps a much longer period of time, in which women are publicly supporting other women as they continue to come out with these horror stories, these utterly predictable and persistent horror stories. So men getting in on the act means they/we are leeching away from women that potential bonding and camaraderie through the various levels of pain, disgust, and/or triggering when revealing something so shameful--with all the shame belonging to the men.

3. What women tell me is that a too common dynamic in men's misogyistic manipulation is to plead to women about how much pain THEY'RE in, while abusing those same and other women all the while. It becomes part of an abusive cycle that is intended to keep women's sympathies and guilt about realizing the guy is a predator flowing. It is designed to insist he is real, a full human being while making her less than, a kind of human who ought not take care of herself, against the interests of men, at all times.

I am saying NO. No men, DO NOT DO THIS. Do not make this about you too, again, as you/we always do. Do not egocentrically detract from the power of what is going on by throwing yourself into it as a victim no less! Why not post #IDidItToo on your walls and in your tweets? Now that would be courageous, potentially revolutionary, if you did so and then made sure you and your friends and colleagues and family members and men on the street never did it again.

I will leave the reader with the link to the rest of Dworkin's speech that I think stunningly describes what men SHOULD be doing in the face of such news: http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/WarZoneChaptIIIE.html

Author and Activist Kate Millett (September 14, 1934 – September 6, 2017)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 07 Sep 2017 00:17:00 +0000

Source of portrait of Kate Millett is from here,

which also contains extensive biographical information

I will leave it to one of the feminists I most admire to describe the impact of Kate Millett, who died today. Above, within the caption to the image, is a link to a wiki page on her life and work.

Here is the opening paragraph of an article linked to just below:

The world was sleeping and Kate Millett woke it up. Betty Friedan had written about the problem that had no name. Kate Millett named it, illustrated it, exposed it, analysed it. In 1970 Kate Millett published the book Sexual Politics. The words were new. What was "sexual politics"? The concept was new. Millett meant to "prove that sex is a status category with political implications". She pointed to male dominance in sex, including intercourse. In challenging the status quo, she maintained: "However muted its present appearance may be, sexual domination obtains nevertheless as perhaps the most pervasive ideology of our culture and provides its most fundamental concept of power."

http://www.newstatesman.com/node/197953

With condolences to her loved ones.

Julian

The new photo of Harriet Tubman: this is what a GREAT American looks like!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 07 Feb 2017 18:32:00 +0000

Note her signature at the hem of her dress.

Source:
http://auburnpub.com/news/local/new-photo-of-harriet-tubman-surfaces-biographer-calls-it-remarkable/article_e1b56432-c234-55f1-b1fb-fbc8cf1fd5b9.html

Trump and Comp (TM), Chistofascism, and Dominant Identity Politics

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 21:01:00 +0000

image is from here

Most but not all of my friends are being terrorised by the values and practices of January 2017 immigration policies and cabinet member approval. Public protest is reinvigorated in the U.S. due especially to police violence and murder of unarmed Black and Indigenous citizens. Tragically, whites view Blackness and darker skin as a dangerous weapon. The chess match Trump and Comp is playing is operating in 3D.

Those dimensions are:
Oligarchic and autocratic rule.
Patriarchal Christian rule.
White straight male supremacist rule.

Upon that tripod of tyranny we see playing out before and against us a more naked display of what we have seen over the last many decades, centuries, millennia. The influence of wealth, the on-going consolidation of power among men, and the dominance of Christofascist colonialism. A weapon in one hand, a NT Bible in another, and the missionary position's physical and spiritual subordination of women preached around the world.

Trump and Comp (TM) has been empowered by electoral success in an election steeped in misogyny, racism, and the cultural dominance of white Christianity and Oligarchy.

What does that mean? It means whether with full intention or primarily by effect, he is working a few steps ahead corporate media's grasp of what is going down. Or, such media is in bed with Trump and Comp, making for a disturbing and messy coalition--rumors of his exploitation of Russian prostitutes by demanding water sports not withstanding.

What I am worried about is Trump and Comp's success in tossing out hand grenades of over-the-top violations of the US Constitution while shoving into government institutions their long-term objectives.

Centering the appeal and influence of Mike Pence and Steve Bannon through less protested actions.

As a whole, the tyrannical and genocidal Western world is imperiled far more by Right-wing fascism and WHM supremacy than by Central Asian opposition to the West's warmongering and mass murder. What is also exposed is how 'white', 'heterosexual' and 'man' are identities at least as much as 'Black', 'LGBT', and 'woman'. WHM disdain for "identity politics" pretends that theirs are not the political identities most promoted and protected.

The White Political Spectrum: Far Right to Far Left

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 06 Dec 2016 14:59:00 +0000

If the image doesn't appear above, it may be viewed here.

There is a myth among many along the white political spectrum that there are locations along it that are not white supremacist. Let's see...

--White Nationalists, white separatists, neo-Nazi, Klan members, or proud neofascists. Celebrated outcome: the bolstering of white male supremacy; the sexual and social subordination of women; white male led race warfare; a whites-only nation; genocide. Key concepts: Race is natural. Whites are the most advanced and supreme humans on Earth. Whites culture is seriously threatened and will soon become extinct. Patriarchy is God's plan.

--Right-wing Conservatives (Christian and secular) are against rights and equality for people of color, the weakening of patriarchal rule, meaningful democracy, 'racism' against whites, media diversification, and protect white male supremacist law and order, the maintenance of warfare against Black and Brown people globally, economic exploitation of the system by the wealthy. Maintained outcome: white supremacy, patriarchy, oligarchy, genocide, and ecocide. Key concepts: Reverse racism. Men are under attack. White women and men are in danger from Black people, immigrants, Muslims, and China.

--Libertarian Conservatives focus on government being too big, poor people getting a free ride, and advocate for the protection of private property, wealth inequality, and corporate capitalism. Desired outcome: blaming the victim (support of a bootstraps solution to economic woes); ignoring or decentering the conditions of Black, Brown, and Indigenous people across gender, white women, LGBT people; and the conservation of white, straight, and male supremacy, economic violence, and ecocide. Key concepts: Private property rights must be protected. There is no problem with racism or sexism. Government interventions into rich people's lives is worse than climate change.

--Conservative and Liberal Moderates oppose mass violence when it threatens the status quo, fair trade, the weakening of law and order, and believe white Republicans and Democrats should understand, get along, and work together, footnoting the experiences of people of color, tokenizing LGBT people, and ignoring women of color across sexuality and ethnicity. Planned outcome: the protection of corporate capitalism and warfare against Black and Brown people; poverty; and white, straight, and male supremacy. Key concepts: Reverse racism and sexism. Political correctness. Global warming exists.

--Liberals talk about the problems of bigotry and interpersonal racism, limits on women within the existing systems and institutions, the excesses of corporate capitalism, and the intensifying climate crisis. Usual outcome: the unconscious maintenance colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy. General lack of activist participation in the liberation struggles led by people of color, especially women of color. Key concepts: Optimism without practice. Individualistic solutions. Climate change is a serious problem.

--Progressives talk about the problems of oppression, militarism, white supremacy, misogyny, racist institutions, rape culture, and economic injustice. Probable outcome: modest to radical adjustments to oppressive systems which can accommodate reforms; no plan to eradicate any core humanitarian and environmental atrocities. Modest attention paid to the struggles of people of color but less so to women of color. Key concepts: Privilege, oppression, progress is inevitable and good. Climate change is caused by corporate greed."

--Left-leaning Radicals talk about the problems of white and male privilege, entitlement, advantage, power, and supremacy; the inherent violence of the status quo and capitalism, heterosexism, and gendered and raced violence including masculinist warfare and Western colonialism. Ideal outcome: Collectivist action toward the liberation of oppressed people and transformation of the status quo. Still centering white experience, theories, and history. Hopefully less actively racist, hopefully more conscious of how being white effects all social relations, but in my experience that's not the case. Anti-racist while racist. Key concepts: White and male supremacy. Structural oppression. Allies. Liberation. Ecocide.

Conclusion:
--Whites are racist, white supremacist, consciously or not, interpersonally or not. This is determined by one's location on a race hierarchy, not primarily by attitudes and thoughts. Attitudes, thoughts, and actions are shaped by one's structural position.
--Men are sexist, misogynistic, and patriarchal, consciously or not, interpersonally or not. This is determined by one's location on a race hierarchy, not primarily by attitudes and thoughts.
--White straight Christian men rule the West and have no intention of that being different--whether White Nationalists or Radical Liberationists.
--Any whites and men can choose to be anti-racist and anti-sexist but doing so doesn't shift one's location off the top of race and sex hierarchies.
--It is imperative that whites and men work against their own privileges, advantages, entitlements, and structural power, toward the liberation of all people from all systems of oppression and dehumanisation.

The Original U.S. Viral Fake News Story: The Good White Man's Thanksgiving

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 24 Nov 2016 02:25:00 +0000

image is from here

On this eve of Thanksgiving, I will post a link to the true story, not the Good White Man story, of Thanksgiving. The Wampanoag story.

From this website: http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/11/23/what-really-happened-first-thanksgiving-wampanoag-side-tale-and-whats-done-today-145807, an excerpt:

So the Pilgrims didn’t invite the Wampanoags to sit down and eat turkey and drink some beer?

[laughs] Ah, no. Well, let’s put it this way. People did eat together [but not in what is portrayed as “the first Thanksgiving]. It was our homeland and our territory and we walked all through their villages all the time. The differences in how they behaved, how they ate, how they prepared things was a lot for both cultures to work with each other. But in those days, it was sort of like today when you go out on a boat in the open sea and you see another boat and everyone is waving and very friendly—it’s because they’re vulnerable and need to rely on each other if something happens. In those days, the English really needed to rely on us and, yes, they were polite as best they could be, but they regarded us as savages nonetheless.

The Privileged Rapist: Brock Turner

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 07 Jun 2016 23:26:00 +0000

Before some assessment and analysis of this case, I'll begin with this snippet from NBCnews.com:

It was the epitome of white privilege, the narrative went — a student and star swimmer at prestigious Stanford University is arrested on rape-related charges, and after more than 16 months, he's sentenced to only six months.

And the authorities refuse to let the public see his arrest photo.

Until Monday. Here it is:

This is attributed to the Santa Clara Sheriff's office

Prior to that we got variations on this image:

This is attributed to Stanford University

One set of questions pertains to the assumptions behind the lack of release of the mug shot. Does wearing a blazer and tie mean someone is safe to be around? Does a hoodie and unkempt hair mean someone is more likely to rape? These are typically classist and racist media and cultural inferences.

If he were poorer and Black, he’d be called ‘a wild animal’ or ‘a vicious thug’ among other white supremacist coded language for ‘normal Black man’.

Thank goodness two Swedish male students intervened on her behalf, witnessing the rape. Thank goodness he was caught doing such vile violence to her. Here is the statement by one of them, Carl-Fredrik Arndt:

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/swedish-hero-recounts-nabbing-stanford-rapist-brock-turner-n587421

And another link to both their statements:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/emaoconnor/meet-the-two-swedish-men-who-caught-brock-turner?utm_term=.oinMKRrK3#.lp94EBZEb

Thank goodness he was caught doing such vile violence (vile-lence) to her. Sexual violence has a long raced, classed history in Amerikkka, against women white and Black, Brown, and Indigenous. From the rape of Indigenous women being slaughtered, to the battering and rape of slaves, to the forced sterilisation of Brown poor women.

What the predator can be thankful for is his race, class, and ethnic background. And his status as a male college student at an elite school and a star athlete to boot–in a predominantly white sport at that. And a few rape culture apologists and accomplices: judge, a father, and a friend who not only have been more than willing to ignore the woman behind the dumpster, but also toss her squarely under the bus.

Brock's father, Dan A. Turner, reportedly also a former Stanford student, issued this inhumanely callous statement, completely obliterating the humanity of the assaulted woman:

“His life will never be the one that he dreamed about and worked so hard to achieve...” “That is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of life.”

“He will never be his happy go lucky self with that easy going personality and welcoming smile,” the letter says, noting that the former Olympic hopeful is now a registered sex offender.

No mention of being ashamed at what his son did ‘for 20 minutes’. No acknowledgement it was rape, even though there were witnesses. It morphs into a politically and morally neutral 'action'.

Let's replace "His" and "He" with "Her" and "She" and reread the statement.

Her life will never be the one that she dreamed about and worked so hard to achieve.

She will never be her happy go lucky self with that easy going personality and welcoming smile.

Here is John Pavlovitz's response to Dan Turner:
http://johnpavlovitz.com/2016/06/06/to-brock-turners-father-from-another-father/

Judge Persky has acted on behalf of rapists before. Read about that here:

http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/06/brock-turner-judge-aaron-persky-controversial-history.html

Most importantly, here is the statement from the victim:

https://www.sccgov.org/sites/da/newsroom/newsreleases/Pages/NRA2016/Turner-Sentencing.aspx

As Andrea Dworkin once wrote, "the punishment for getting drunk and going in a frat boy's dorm room should be a hangover, not rape."

Or being outside. Or at home. Or being anywhere when inebriated. Or not inebriated. What patriarchal rape culture does so well is punish women for simply being.

An Introduction to the Founder of the Lavender Kitchen Sink Collective: YM Carrington

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 21 May 2016 03:11:00 +0000

YM is a long-time radical activist. They combine analysis of patriarchy, capitalism, and colonialism in nuanced and comprehensive ways better than anyone else I know. YM has influenced my own thinking and action in countless ways over the last ten years.

There will be more videos to come.
Please share widely.
Thank you.

Julian

Single-cause Analysis in the Age of the Three-Headed Monster

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 08 May 2016 20:33:00 +0000

King Ghidorah is a kaiju film creature, also known as the Three-Headed Monster.
The image is from here.

I grew up with an understanding that 'radical' meant 'root' and so 'radical feminism' is the feminism that seeks to expose the root cause of women's oppression. And to uproot it, eradicate it. What I grew up learning was that eliminating patriarchy is what it will take to liberate women.

I accept that as true, but only if that root is understood in its complexity. Because in the world the women I know live in, "patriarchy" isn't only "male supremacy" and "men's violence against women". Most women--if not all women--are harmed and subordinated by those forces. But so too are most women harmed and subordinated by white supremacy and capitalism and other economic systems that require poverty and other gross economic injustice.

I also grew up seeing the limits of Marxist analysis--how it traditionally holds no deep understanding of what causes the oppression of women by men. Also, analysis of white supremacy and racism too often ignores how it is entwined with male supremacy or capitalism.

If I consider any centuries-old atrocity that causes mass destruction to girls and women, it is tied directly to patriarchy (male and hetero supremacy), colonialism (white, Anglo, and Western supremacy), and capitalism (and wealth supremacy).

Trafficking disproportionately exploits and kills girls and women of color, globally. The globalised enslavement and rape of female human beings for profit for pimps and slavers, for the pleasure and dominance of men. All three heads of the beast are implicated.

Seeing patriarchy as a force that operates separately from colonialism and capitalism is an abstraction. But it isn't just abstract: it denies what is happening and to whom it is most happening.

When women and girls of color are centered, it is impossible to ignore how colonialism/white supremacy, capitalism/wealth supremacy, and patriarchy/male supremacy are always operating against the efforts of girls and women to be free.

This blog will not ignore those forces or pretend only one form of supremacy is deadly. Radically supporting the liberation of marginalised girls and women around the world necessitates naming each head of the monster.

John Stoltenberg's and Cristan Williams' The Conversations Project: Some Final Thoughts

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 22 Apr 2016 06:02:00 +0000

graphic is from here

Note: When I heard Prince died earlier on Thursday, what I recalled was how much Andrea Dworkin loved his work.

The message in the above graphic was never anything

The Conversations Project endeavored to do.

Yet they insisted they were a radical feminist group.

I may be writing more about this, but just wanted to update you that after four months of very engaged involvement, I've been purged without notice from The Conversations Project Facebook group started by John Stoltenberg and Cristan Williams, although John was largely absent.

Here are a few concluding thoughts:

1. The group was steadfastly anti-radical feminist, but couched this as
anti-T--F, as if those radical feminists who are against the liberalism and male supremacy in trans politics should and can be separated out from those who are or were not.

2. There was consistent refusal to admit that they were misusing and misunderstanding the early work of Andrea Dworkin while ignoring all of Dworkin's later work (like, at least 11/12ths of what Andrea wrote). The only passages of hers they ever referred to (a lot) were Dworkin's most liberal points in Woman Hating about multisexuality and androgyny. They refused to acknowledge Andrea's mid-70s discussion of androgyny was something that wasn't specific to her, and something that was of political interest during that decade, but never thereafter. (As was the case for so many white feminists in that period: Kate Millett, Shulamith Firestone, and Marge Piercy, for example.) They refused to consider why Andrea later rejected the last section of Woman Hating as politically and intellectually problematic. They clung to a few early ideas because dealing with anything else--such as pornography, prostitution, male privilege, male power, white and male supremacy, the process of subordinating female bodies such as through intercourse, battery, and rape--would have implicated some of their own politics as more overtly pro-patriarchal and white supremacist. The only snippets of Catharine MacKinnon's work they paid any attention to were from a grossly overly-steered interview Cristan did with Catharine. As if that's what MacKinnon's thirty plus years of radical feminist activism should be reduced to.

3. There were less than five pro-radical/pro-feminist people in the group. One person, a white transsexual (not transgender) woman, left the group only after about a week being there due to the incessant liberalism, anti-radicalism, and anti-feminism. Now there are no radical feminists in the group, although one member, Margo, who identifies as a white lesbian feminist, has consistently advocated for feminist values and sisterly approaches to dealing with the Turf War, and I respect her very much for that. And one man there has been consistently affirmative of radical feminist perspectives on gender and sex. When Margo posted things that called for respect and regard for all feminists, few to no members "liked" her comments. Cristan and John never "liked" them.

4. The group was so white (how white was it?) that the only posts made about women of color, or even more generally, people of color, were exploitive: John and one other member, early on, posted links to Navajo understandings of gender, not because he ever discussed or linked to how to end white colonialist-patriarchal genocide, but, disturbingly, just because such ideas might be useful to or of interest to whites.

5. The white members of the group (the great majority) refused to center women of color. They refused to center an examination of how their race, sex, and class privileges shaped their views, their values, and their agendas. Doing so was considered 'off topic'. Supporting white, class-privileged transwomen was always on topic. No one white and trans in the group ever made it a point to name how they had white privilege.

6. The dominant membership always positioned some radical feminists as THE enemy. They did not critique or focus on white men (as a structurally positioned enemy class). When white men were critiqued, it was without the same disdain and derision as they demonstrated for some white radical and lesbian feminists. (I call that blatant misogyny, anti-lesbianism, and anti-feminism.) They never, ever considered what trans-critical feminists were arguing against or for. It was always only viewed as "hatred" and "wanting us dead". As if white and male privilege and power--including theirs--doesn't result in the deaths of women across many differences.

7. The group was never committed, even vaguely, to an anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal, or anti-colonialist agenda. Never. Ever. Ever. In this sense and others, the group was willfully and determinedly liberal yet being called liberal was considered an insult, for reasons which remain unclear. If it is so blatantly what you are and is all you want to be, own it and be proud of it, for god's sake. I conclude they valued the term "radical" because it allowed them to discuss the rare liberal points of Dworkin and MacKinnon as if those were radical. I think it gave them a kind of cache to make it seem as if they were distinguishable from their more honest liberal comrades. When I linked to useful ways to understand historical radicalism (as an actual political stance against institutionalised oppression), they rejected or ignored them. Sadly and outrageously, there was nothing about their perspective that was radical. Nothing. And their name revealed this from the start: no group that is seriously radical (that I've ever been aware of) makes a point of cramming the term into their title twice.

8. The group never considered what it is that causes the mass deaths of marginalised women of color. It was beyond their vision, their call to action, to do so. All they could come up with is transphobia. As if.

9. It became crystal clear to me that Cristan, and more surprisingly John, did not understood the traditional political meaning of "radical" when it comes to radical feminism. Again, John was largely absent as an active member, although he read a lot of the comments. But what became distressingly clear was that he could not articulate what Andrea's radical feminism meant or was. He was and is only concerned with prioritising the points of view of white and/or male-privileged people, over and against lesbian feminists. He refuses to see that Andrea never divorced 'woman' (the patriarchal construction) from what actually happens, oppressively, violatingly, demeaningly, to almost all female people from birth to death. Instead, he believes that what Andrea said about "multisexuality" in 1974, or this, from 1975, "it is not true that there are two sexes that are discrete and opposite, which are polar...", were in fact radical things to say. They were radical things to read--for him, a white man. What the group seemed to mean by 'radical' was allegedly post-modernly complex or intellectually ground-breaking. 'Radical', for him, only addressed acts of speech or ideas in writing, not political campaigns or efforts at social change. (For some discussion about Andrea's later abandonment of such 'radical ideas', please see the notes in a book called Without Apology: Andrea Dworkin's Art and Politics, by Cindy Jenefsky.) I repeatedly pointed out, if these are such 'essential' points of Andrea's, why do they never again appear in her work, over the next twenty years? Crickets chirped. This was a stubbornly anti-activist group. The only allegedly 'radical' action John engaged in was introducing young people to a liberal idea of multisexuality. Campaigns to end violence against women? Nope. How to organise against heteropatriarchy? Nope. Talking to college students about being colors in a color wheel: that's where it's at for John.

10. Also, members had no interest in supporting or working towards a truce between some white radical lesbian feminists and some white liberal trans activists. Only Margo, and the transsexual woman who left in disgust, explicitly welcomed this as a goal. The rest were intent on demonising some feminists (not just some of their views, but their personhood), while ignoring how their own political perspective was misogynistic, racist, and, yes, anti-trans.

The Conversations Project: The Radical Inclusivity of Radical Feminism should be titled:

"John and Cristan's Project: Radically Ignoring Radical Feminism".

Sad. And predictable. There's this old expression, 'When someone shows you who they are, believe them.' Yup. Everything I first experienced in that group in January proved to remain the case in April. Lesson learned.

To Andrea Dworkin, With Love: 11 Years Gone (Sept. 26, 1946 - April 9, 2005)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 09 Apr 2016 04:00:00 +0000

portrait of Andrea Dworkin is from here

GONE TOO SOON.

I wrote this exactly ten years ago, on the one-year anniversary of Andrea's sudden and shocking death.

This is the original and permanent website, with great thanks to Nikki Craft for her assistance with the graphics and layout: http://www.andreadworkin.net/memorial/toandreawithlove.html

by Julian Real, April 9, 2006
Copyright 2006. All Rights Reserved.

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, 'n' how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

How many years can a mountain exist
Before it's washed to the sea?
Yes, 'n' how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
Yes, 'n' how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesn't see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.
-- Bob Dylan, "Blowin' In The Wind", 1962

I wanted instead to write books that were fire and ice, wind sweeping the earth. I wanted to write books that, once experienced, could not be forgotten, books that would be cherished as we cherish the most exquisite light we have ever seen. I had contempt for anything less than this perfect book that I could imagine. This book that lived in my imagination was small and perfect and I wanted it to live in person after person, forever. Even in the darkest of human times, it would live. Even in the life of one person who would sustain it and be sustained by it, it would live. I wanted to write a book that would be read even by one person, but always. For the rest of human time some one person would always know that book, and think it beautiful and fine and true, and then it would be like any tree that grows, or any grain of sand. It would be, and once it was it would never not be.

In my secret longings there was another desire as well, not opposite but different, not the same but as strong. There would be a new social order in which people could live in a new way. There would be this new way of living which I could, on the edges of my mind and in the core of my being, imagine and taste. People would be free, and they would live decent lives, and those lives would not be without pain, but they would be without certain kinds of pain. They would be lives untouched by prisons and killings and hunger and bombs. I imagined that there could be a world without institutionalized murder and systematic cruelty.

I imagined that I could write a book that would make such a world possible.

--Andrea Dworkin
First Love, 1978

How can I tell you now, Andrea, on this, the one-year anniversary of your unexpected exit from this horrific world of misogyny and racism, among other atrocities, how can I tell you what your writing has meant to me, and what you, courageous author, mean to me, only one grief-filled year after you are gone?

How can I express in words of simple gratitude the gifts you have given to me, to us--the human community? These gifts, your books, contain the keys to radically, lovingly, and, (dare one think it) permanently ending the locked-door world of women's systematised suffering. Can we still dream of a humanity that does not require women and men to be less or other than fully humane?

What you did in writing no one else has done for me. No one else I have encountered has written so directly, so unflinchingly, from the body. Your books contain your particular body of knowledge, but with an insight and wisdom deeply informed by the invisibilised lives of so many others, who shudder to tell their stories, and who will never write down what happened to them. This visceral knowledge is not abstracted and intellectualised into mental concepts, which academically well-educated folk love to verbally toss back and forth over tables that never see the light of day. Education is important to me; I spent eight privileged years in undergraduate school. Learning about life is necessary, but abstracting or denying the harm and suffering real people live with is callous at best, malicious at worst, inside or outside the academy. I wish more of your work was taught, with deep understanding of what you were saying.

Your knowledge is fired directly out of a kiln of torment and tears into palpable truths, felt, experienced, known by the mind, yes, but also by the heart that bleeds until it dies. In your body, you held truths no one without unfathomable courage wanted or wants to face in this era of a lonely, desperate individualism that ignores, and perhaps cannot bear, the collective suffering of the masses.

Andrea, it is now April 9, 2006. You have been spared one whole year, dear feminist warrior, of men and women arguing for rights to do things patriarchy demands men and women do to themselves in the first place. Another year in which men, predominantly, maintain and enforce those compulsory and mandated choices through simple interpersonal methods: expressed desire, rejection, ridicule, brutality; and complex systems and industries: prostitution, pornography, cosmetic surgery.

I hope you didn't live to know that in suburbia, there are strip-aerobics classes in gyms, and U.S. talk shows discussing to what degree middle-class heterosexual women should modify their bodies so they look more like the women used by men in pornography. Is it worse that women and men with webcams make themselves into pornography because they experience it as uniquely desirable and politically empowering? What power and desire is this, to become a sexualised thing for someone else, or, as sadly, for oneself? Surely this is not the power your generation of feminists had in mind when dreaming of an end to male supremacy. Once upon a time, the promise of political self-determination assumed that women and men might dream beyond the confines and limitations of gender and race, rather than purposefully eroticising and getting defensive about those same dehumanising parameters.

Racist patriarchy has won, it seems, if women want what white male supremacy requires from them, while declaring it "meaningful feminist choice". What meaning does feminism have if it is "feminist" to be used callously or compulsively by men who trade money for sex? Whose interests are served when it is now called "feminist" to be made into a flattened, fetishised image for men's (or women's) sexual viewing pleasure? What does feminism stand for when it no longer demands an end to all forms, manifestations, and expressions of male dominance and control over women's human lives? If women have no choice but to be politically female, and call all choices to be politically female "free", then patriarchy has indeed won.

That is what I learned from you, and I won't forget it. Your books are my political life-sustaining broth in a world where most books published are the spiritual-intellectual equivalent of toxic water. My spirit is strengthened by your passionate, poetic, informed, incisive descriptions of realities people know and instantly banish from their minds. Your work is the body of knowledge that those who seek "the good life" in patriarchy must not pay close attention to if they seek uncomplicated comfort. (Not that the materially comfortable are actually at ease).

Some of us, not just a few but not nearly enough, with material means and access to resources, do not seek "the good life" in patriarchy. We know such a life depends on the ignored destruction of humanity, including of heterosexual, lesbian, and gay lives, poor white people's lives, the lives of people of Colour and others who are ethnically despised, the lives of Third World women who do more work each day than the U.S. white middle class can possibly imagine. We know a society that is not radically activist will help ensure that all women will be relegated the task of being politically female indefinitely. We know biological determinism, also called sociobiology, is one of patriarchal men's self-serving excuses for maintaining a political system no gene or hormone could possible encode or regulate.

Your books are now in my blood, Andrea, coursing through me, sustaining my rage and compassion. You taught me those can be the same spiritual force for a feminist, which is to say a humanitarian who sees men--and women--as human.

Most caring men I know don't understand that definition. They have absorbed the liberal to conservative media's distortions of feminism and feminists. And so, with regard to women's political freedom, they are complacent. I feel despair and outrage as otherwise very active and relatively patriarchally benign men become utterly impotent, passive and speechless, when challenged to confront other men who are less benign: more predatory, more misogynist. I plead with them, as a Jew and as a profeminist, about the crimes of the good people, about how any degree of passivity in the face of atrocity is perpetuating that atrocity. Men, generally, cannot (or will not) hear me. Because I speak the truths of radical feminism, my words register as a foreign language in men's ears trained to only hear what non-feminist men say. That your work infuses my speech means it, like you, will too often be misheard, or rendered incomprehensible to those who cling to the benefits of privilege and the compromises of denial. Your living speech was the language of unrepressed social reality, of undenied political truth.

Yesterday I was informed that a white male dentist has been charged with injecting his own semen onto the tongues of his female patients. (See: Former N.C. Dentist Indicted on Seven Counts of Assault.)

This past year you have also been spared the knowledge of a current Duke University sexual assault case, in which three white male students are charged with raping an African American woman they hired to dance at their party.(See: Duke University Rape Case Raises Issues of Race and Class in Durham,BlackFeminism.Org and Ferel Scholar's Duke Rape-Reprinted from Biting Beaver)

How inhumane does humanity have to get before we recognise sexist-racist atrocity as such? What remedies exist to help us out of this nightmare of myriad forms of misogynist exploitation, rape, and ethnic bigotry? The answer is blowing in the winds of your words, Andrea. The answer is blowing in those winds.

Andrea Dworkin's written work:
Non-fiction
Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant (2002)
Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women's Liberation(2000)
Life and Death: Unapologetic Writings on the Continuing War Against Women (1997)
In Harm's Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings (co-edited with Catharine A. MacKinnon, 1997)
Letters from a War Zone: Writings 1976-1989 (1993)
Right-Wing Women: The Politics of Domesticated Females (1991)
Pornography and Civil Rights: A New Day for Women's Equality (with Catharine A. MacKinnon, 1988)
Intercourse (1987)
Pornography: Men Possessing Women (1981)
Our Blood: Prophesies and Discourses on Sexual Politics (1976)
Woman Hating: A Radical Look at Sexuality (Dutton, 1974)

Fiction and poetry
Mercy (1990)
Ice and Fire (1986)
The New Woman's Broken Heart: Short Stories (1980)
First Love (a chapter from an unfinished novel, 1978)
Morning Hair (self-published, 1968)
Child (1966) (Heraklion, Crete, 1966)

The Components of Oppression in White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 22 Mar 2016 04:10:00 +0000

this image, of a mural by Jim Chuchu,
inspired by the poetry of Staceyann Chin, is from here

The components of oppression in white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, or as it is known here on this blog, Corporate Racist Atrocious Patriarchy (CRAP):

Power-over/Status: The dominant group has a material interest in the system being oppressive and hegemonic. It is in the dominants' material interest to maintain the status quo. These interests include various entitlements, privileges, advantages, benefits, and forms of enfranchisement. Having power means, simply: If you want things done, they get done. If you want something to be a certain way, it is made to be that way; you have meaningful choices of action; you can choose to change political locations on one or more hierarchies. Your values are valued; your personhood is humanised; in myth and legend, in fiction and reality, your humanity is revered as great, genius, holy, or authoritative. Power-over is distinguished from power-with, such as in healthy friendship and communal action.

Subordination/Stigma: There exists a social hierarchy in which there are two main groups, one on top, one on the bottom. The bottom group is thought to exist for the top group. there is no identity for the subordinated group that is not in stigmatised relation to the statused dominant group.

Discrimination/Marginalisation/Segregation/Rejection: Sometimes, as needed, the oppressed group may be cloistered off, kept out, kicked out, removed from society, or purged. This may be done using culture, religion, and law, through uncentering or persistent decentering in theory and social experience. Examples: Jim Crow; poverty; pogroms.

Objectification: the dominant group dehumanises the subordinated one also through physical and sexual objectification. The group is turned into a thing, a commodity. Media reinforces this. Pornography makes it feel like 'sexual fulfillment'. For the oppressed group to be 'sexy', they/we must be available for the dominant group, to do what they want. (Even if they want you to be sexually dominant.)

Exploitation: The dominating group makes economic use of the subordinated group: their resources--emotional, physical, sexual--are taken/stolen or systematically used/used up, or withheld from the oppressed. The oppressed work directly for the benefit of the oppressor class in one way or more. The subordinated group is may be 'merely' used, or also impoverished, imprisoned, or enslaved.

Violence: the oppressed group, in part by being objectified, is targeted throughout their lives as appropriate to do violence to, including violation--being interpersonally abused directly or through proxy bullies and thugs. The violence and violation is coded into law; made to be natural, scientifically or socially inevitable, or God-ordained. Example: heterosexual couples must consummate their marriage--she must be penetrated at least once, by legal/cultural/religious mandate; "the rule of thumb"; lynching.

Bigotry: in addition to being stigmatised, it is common and normal to reduce the subordinated group to a negative characteristic, trait, or quality of being. (Note: bigotry against a dominant group doesn't = oppressing or dominating them.) Example: women are dirty; Black people are dangerous and criminal; gay men and lesbians are child molesters and perverts; trans women being misogynist predators.

Silence, threat, and death: The dominant group successfully silences or destroys the oppressed. Examples: femicide, genocide, systematic lack of access to medical care or refusal of the dominants to develop and distribute appropriate care (AIDS deaths), potable water, nourishing food, one's own homeland; the voices of the oppressed are not given the mic, are not allowed on the stage unless to promote the status quo. The oppressed group is seen as perpetually threatening the stability and status of the oppressor class. Humiliating the oppressor class is punishable by death. So is taking power from them. Serial murder and mass murder of the oppressed group is normal.