A Radical Profeminist

On White and Male Privilege and Power

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Real) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 21:52:00 +0000

image is from here

First up, things for me to be grateful for today:

I have food for the day and for tomorrow too.
I am not worried about starving or dying from ingesting unclean water.
I have easy access to clean water and to shelter that is relatively safe.
I live in a region of the world that isn't being bombed (or militarily invaded) by the US and NATO.
I live in a place that white male supremacist society doesn't designate as an appropriate place to bury nuclear waste and other highly toxic, cancer-causing chemicals.
I am not considered a failure for not having children and a spouse by now.
I am not physically immobilised.

When we consider that most females are not safe in their own homes, and that most people of color are under assault by whites and their police forces, we may conclude correctly that based on this and on the implications of what's written above, I am white, male, able-bodied, and class-advantaged. The additional facts of me being ethnically and sexually marginalised and stigmatised by dominant society isn't central to what follows.

With thanks to Kathy Miriam for getting a particular conversation going, I have been re-assessing the prolific use of the term "privilege" in some self-defined progressive to radical circles. What I have been thinking about since pondering her perspective on this (see *here* for that), isn't only the individualism that can be woven into the use of the term "privilege" (which Kathy addresses).

I'm also thinking about how such a term, such as "privilege", can alienate or be off-putting to non-blogging, non-academic people (aka, "the majority"). I'm thinking at this moment of my family-of-origin, and how the only time they'll likely use the term privilege is to acknowledge that something is a pleasure to be part of, as in: "It's a privilege to be at this event." But to be honest, that's not likely a phrase that'd come out of their mouths. They'd more likely say, "I'm thrilled to be here" and leave it at that.

I'm also thinking about how the term is often a linguistic cover for something more broadly pernicious that I do believe ought to be regularly and plainly named both on the interpersonal front and on the institutional front as well: abusive power, oppressive power, and unjust advantages and entitlements afforded to some classes of people and acted out against other classes of people.

"Privilege" is frequently used to bring attention to how oppressive behavior and practice is acted out interpersonally. When this attention obscures or eclipses larger structural and systemic realities, it can leave us with the impression that if we only attended to the interpersonal realm more, we might achieve something radically better than what we now have. I do see the term used primarily to give a name to the many ways individuals aren't mindful, accountable, and responsible in the ways they act out structural position and power against oppressed people.

It might be good to investigate why this is too often necessary. One huge, on-going, decades-long critique of the white male Left (especially but not only radical environmentalists, Socialists, and anarchists) is that they declare what is radical and revolutionary in "political action" while ignoring the interpersonal realm almost completely as a site of oppressive (read: structural, political) behavior. How many white male progressives and radicals tell sexist and racist jokes or center whiteness and maleness as "just human" without questioning this as anti-radical, anti-revolutionary (harmful, hurtful, insulting, oppressive, status quo) practice? How many times do whites and men behave in racist/sexist ways without challenging one another? How do whites and men reduce horrors like the international trafficking and enslaving of poor girls of color to one system of harm only? In my experience, whites and men usually and typically do not call each other out on our racist/white supremacist and sexist/male supremacist behavior, when it occurs in words or other non-verbal actions.

The assumption that whites and men can and ought to speak for all people has not shifted much in the last forty years, although I do notice a few more men these days using less sexist language. (Police officer instead of policeman, for example.) Anthologies by and about oppressed people, when edited by whites and men, still presume that anything written by a white or male person can be relatively universal, addressing the whole oppressed group, for example. Meanwhile the voice that is female, Black, Brown, or Indigenous is structurally presented as only ever able to speak for that group only. (So, the chapter or few chapters in which the writings by women of color are predominant are not likely to be presented as addressing the larger universal themes of the book--even when they do.) Find me the book edited by whites or men that presents the views of Indigenous, Brown, and Black women as "universal" and addressing the whole of humanity, with whites and men in the same volume only speaking about white and male experience as particularly white and male, and I'll be surprised: I've not seen it.

When oppressed people call out oppressive behavior in their oppressors, I believe it is important to heed the counsel of Pearl Cleage, expressed in Deals With The Devil and Other Reasons to Riot: listen in a posture of non-defensiveness. Too often oppressor-class people, especially whites and men, in my experience, move instantly and reflexively into a posture of self-defense, defense of our allegedly good name, our allegedly good political work, our allegedly good group. We resist knowing how we are being hurtful and harmful because we are invested in a sense of ourselves as "Radical" and "Good". Radical and self-identified good people, if white or male, are still positioned to act out oppressively against women of color on all fronts: interpersonal, social, and institutional (whether religious, economic, or otherwise). And our efforts to be responsible, accountable, and conscious don't mean we stop being positioned to be oppressors every minute of the day.

Irresponsible, non-accountable, and unconsciously oppressive actions come into sharp, cutting focus in online communities, which, in the comments sections especially, are one realm of the interpersonal. I suspect that is why "privilege" shows up there as a concern.

All of that said, social-political advantages and power when exercised by speakers against those they/we structurally oppress, are reflecting and reinforcing larger social-political realities. Regardless of the thoughtfulness and sensitivity of our micro interpersonal actions, it is usually the case that many other aspects of our lives support the more macro systems and institutions that are murderous to women, to the poor, to people of color, and to Indigenous peoples globally.

Radical political change requires attention to multiple realms of human existence, not in an either/or way. My political practice ought not consist of detailing anti-status-quo analysis of race and sex while doing so in ways that are unconsciously white-splaining and man-splaining. Rendering my own racial and sexual position, location, and advantages, and power irrelevant and invisible in a radical political conversation is one form of white-splaining and man-splaining, after all.

At this blog and away from it, I work to support radical practices in myself and other people that refuse to accept the expression of whiteness as being unraced, irrelevant, or universal, and the exercise of manhood as being just human, not gendered in politically harmful ways.

When whiteness and manhood is acted out visibly as such, it often does oppressive harm. And when it is acted out while also rendered invisible, it does at least as much oppressive harm.

I want the institutional power and systemic destructiveness, not just the interpersonal "privilege" of whiteness and manhood to be made conscious, to be challenged, and to be overthrown.

After being asked several questions by interviewers on topics they wished to hear her discuss, Andrea Dworkin was asked if she had anything else she wanted to say. I hope those of us who are white, male, and class-advantaged who are working for radical social change take notice of the explicitly intersectional and pro-activist answer she gave:

AD: I want to say more than anything that the Women’s Movement has a chance to do something miraculous, which is to really tear down these hierarchies of sex and race and class. We can do it, but the way that you do it is not through rhetorical denunciations of injustice. You do it through attacking institutions of injustice through political action. That hasn’t changed. That’s what we have to do. The other thing I would like to say is, do something. You don’t have to do everything. You don’t have to be perfect, you don’t have to be pure, do what you can do. Do it. Life is short and you don’t know when it is going to end for you, so do it, do it now. [Source: here]

The Voice is Silent: Whitney Houston (1963-2012) dies too young at age 48

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Real) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 19:37:00 +0000

photograph of Whitney Houston is from here

I'm very sad that Whitney Houston is gone. My prayers are with her family and friends, especially her daughter, Bobbi Kristina, and her mother, the gospel singer Cissy Houston.

Below are two classic songs she popularised that I most associate with her.

"I Will Always Love You", written by Dolly Parton:

"The Greatest Love of All". From Wikipedia:

"The Greatest Love of All" is a song written by Michael Masser and Linda Creed and originally recorded by Jane Olivor & then again by George Benson for the 1977 Muhammad Ali biopic The Greatest. The song was later popularized by Whitney Houston. Creed wrote the lyrics in the midst of her struggle with breast cancer. The words describe her feelings about coping with great challenges that one must face in life, being strong during those challenges whether you succeed or fail, and passing that strength on to children to carry with them into their adult lives. Creed eventually succumbed to the disease in April 1986 at the age of 36; at the time her song was an international hit by Whitney Houston.

Guest post by Itoro Udofia: "Shedding Tears, Looking Back, Moving Forward"

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Real) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:39:00 +0000

Below is a cross post from Itoro's blog, Thoughts of My Mind (published Jan. 7 of this year). She has welcomed me to re-publish it below as a guest post. I am very grateful to her and am honored to have her voice and perspective as part of this blog. I hope this is not her last guest post. I also hope you take a lot from what follows. The wonderful artwork is by activist Catalina Nieto; I got her permission to reprint it here. Blessings to Itoro and to Catalina.

It's the New Year and I am well aware that a thoughtful post has been a long time coming. Much happened in the 2010-2011 year to leave the very core of my spirit shaken। To ring in the New Year I want to use this space to begin having more of a dialogue about, naming the unnamed, articulating habits and actions that often remain hidden in our circles of safety, community building and radical organizing. I am glad to know that there have been a flurry of articles and activists courageously addressing the many types of violence, violation and abuse we oppose so valiantly in the presence of our obvious enemies, and then practice those same habits in more subtle ways, sheltered in the safety of our homes, our places of organizing and our personal relationships.

My reasoning for wanting more of these conversations have been propelled by the painful experiences I went through trying to organize from the past couple of years, and finally 2010-2011 was the year that broke my heart and made me look at things as I had never done before. I had found that somewhere along the line, I allowed myself to become everything I did not want to become. When advising me on this situation, one of my close friends said, “You have to be there. And whatever you do. Don’t let them win.” By my actions, I had…let them win. I became profoundly silent and debilitated. I had internalized many of the harsh criticisms, cutting eyes, controlling gazes and all the denials, silence and betrayals that accompanied it, all of that had been stored inside myself. Finally, something deep, that thing that somehow held me together, broke. In the end, I spent most of my time in tears and confusion.

I began to believe that I did not deserve genuine relationships, honest answers and even so much as a civil conversation. More insidiously, especially in White radical spaces, I began to feel that I only existed to help others with their own liberation and that it was my job to take those risks for them. Any destructive habits or actions was “just a part of their process” and needed not to be taken so personally. If I dare uttered that I was tired, then it was a selfish gesture and I better be careful because clearly I did not have enough love for the people. In the end, I truly believed that I was a problem that needed to be fixed and perhaps the contempt was well deserved.

Therefore, any type of humiliation, bullying or downright ignorance experienced must have been warranted somehow, because after all, don’t people who often experience the worst of what humans have to offer deserve this anyway? Isn’t this the way the world is? After all, we’re not so bad, the world is much worse! And besides, White people are trying! They’re getting it, they’re moving…at their own pace, I mean so what if they talk too much! You should talk more. So really, there should be no support, no structures, no anything because this is the world anyway. Nasty. And I’m sure not gonna do anything to make it better. Better yet, I’ll watch. And besides the way I treat you isn’t really the big issue here, the issue is actually about this, so the way you are feeling is simply just that, a feeling that has no merit here. The list of the ways we annihilate one another goes on.

Never mind the sarcasm (and the speaking of bitterness), but please hear this. You can tell the type of inner work and reflection one does by the way they regard you the next morning. That’s the part of decolonization I’d like to talk more about. How far we’re willing to go in the action (or inaction) that is soon to come afterward, because when it comes time for us to really fight the more “relevant” issues, I simply want to know that you’re going to have my back and take that risk for us, rather than just try to save yourself. That’s a principled decision, and even indecision becomes a principle. The issue of how we regard one another is not mutually exclusive from the “real” issue.

I feel like so many of us have been saying this in so many ways and it still doesn’t get through. If issues of power, privilege and dominance are not addressed, or remain compartmentalized isms simply to be addressed at one’s convenience, there is a way these missing links begin to reflect the organization, its principles, its problem solving skills and analysis. Often, when particular links are carefully left in exchange for immediate comfort, the complexity of the conversations that need to be had are swiftly flattened, and entire histories and knowledges of many different people are left out only to be further forgotten as we move forward on the “real” issue. But who’s left picking up the slack later? And exactly who do we often find ourselves picking slack up for? …After all, doesn’t this economic system rely on such supreme tendencies and relations to strengthen itself? Class is fundamental, but it does not exist within a vacuum.

And this was the greatest contradiction I experienced in 2010-2011, that need. That conditioned need that has been essential to saving this system. It’s that need to hoard and save oneself, and rely on carefully guarded supremacies and secrets to do it. And let’s not play around, we often know who is allowed to get by with this type of behavior unscathed. And not to say I didn’t try many times to bury myself in silence, often because I was tired, painfully uncomfortable, afraid and at times downright cowardly. But even despite all those things, I never had the luxury to escape. I had to learn real quick how things were. The system was not built on us escaping or as Audre Lorde puts it, us even surviving. But, we’re still here to tell the tale. For 2012-2013, I want us to continue to be brave enough to tell the tale and strengthen ourselves. I want us to speak out and just say it, because we know the lies that are there to explain reality, and we also know that for some reason not enough people are being honest.

So I’ll end the story here, because many of us have lived through these stories in many ways, and hurt in many ways because of them. So this is for us who cannot simply get up and walk away, escape, and remain willfully ignorant. For us who have made mistakes and are doing the work necessary to undo the lies the master taught us. For those of us willing to risk in solidarity, risk for unity and think beyond immediate comfort. Time and energy is of prime importance, and it is often something stolen from us as we fight daily for our humanity, bread and full development. I have been weighing how I want to spend my time and energy, and have decided that there are certain things I am no longer willing to negotiate for the New Year.

I am worthy of a loving community that wants to work for the full development of all human beings, and yes, this also includes some level of “emotional” support

No more compartmentalizing! No more escapes! No more selective listening and speaking! We need an analysis that includes us all।
No more disrespect, nastiness and violence towards people we claim we love and/or support। Yes the world is nasty, but we certainly don’t make it any more sustaining or accountable by letting things go on as they are and remaining silent when we see someone we love hurting. We should try to lessen the suffering, not exacerbate it. Since when is it okay to begin looking at each other through the same eyes our greatest exploiters and beneficiaries on this earth do? We already know all too well what it is to hurt, however, it is clear we need to do more work on what it means to love and truly make a world where all our basic needs are met. We do not deserve the worst of everything!

In 2012-2013, I will be tender towards myself and those I love, I will not espouse words and phrases without practicing them to the fullest extent of what they mean, I will be honest and forthright, disciplined and resilient। I am not a problem to be fixed, this system and the ways in which we regard one another needs fixing and it has to be a people effort. By no means, is this a fluffy, kumbaya type of sentiment, or something that can be simply theorized into abstraction for the comfort of not truly practicing it in reality. This is quite material and concrete. This means, that the power has to be laid down, the hoarding has to be laid down, the lies have to be laid down, put on the table and directly talked about. The ability to imagine everyone there as equals also has to be put on the table so we can say it is a true possibility for us.

Happy New Year! Happy Blog Space! And Happy many spaces we are creating to do the work that needs to be done!

The beautiful artwork featured here is from fellow warrior and activist Catalina Nieto. Her work has been featured here in previous posts. I am happy to say that many people have taken notice of her amazing work! Re-posted from Thoughts of My Mind, http://thoughtsofmymind-itoro.blogspot.com.

Living a Public and Private Life as a Profeminist

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Real) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 20:33:00 +0000

image is from photobucket here

With my next post being my 1700th, I thought it was about time I shared with my readers a few thoughts about being a socially advantaged white male and an anti-racist pro-feminist.

I've been blogging for coming up on four years (well, three and a half at this point, although to be honest it feels like seven or eight). Few of my posts are about me... I mean really ABOUT ME. There are several reasons for this. One is that I feel and think there's far too much "white males talking about ourselves" happening habitually offline and on. Also, this blog, increasingly, has become woman of color-centered and woman of color-focused, with some posts about white women's work and men of color's work, and a few tossed in about work being done by white men.

I've seen so many white males develop political agendas and perspectives that assume that what happens to white males is happening to everyone--the way it happens to white men. Not only is this false on many levels, but something happens when we make men and whites the center of our viewpoints and political agendas. What happens is, by effect or by intent, women of color's lives get invisibilised, distorted, or subsumed in the assumptions about humanity that go along with centering white men as the standard of being human.

Also, though, there's the issue of what happens when white males speak out about anything at all. People listen to us differently, often enough. And the way that white males insinuate ourselves into history books and academic journals, in Western religious teachings and secular law-making, in global affairs and sports, in medicine and music, as the heroes", "the great ones", "the experts" and "the geniuses", I am left feeling a bit reluctant to promote or communicate much about myself here.

I won't publish photos of myself for many reasons but one reason is that once a white male has a public face, that face may then be associated with all the things that are typically and habitually afforded white men in racist patriarchal societies. I also won't appear on radio or television even though I've been asked. I won't become a public figure "in person" because I think doing so ends up promoting the person at least as much as the things the person is addressing in media. I've gotten into some trouble with this. Some people think I should be far more "out there" and "public" about myself.

I've also been asked to co-lead some feminist groups. Not gonna happen. I don't believe males should do so. I've seen it happen and the way it usually works is this: white women work with white men to promote feminist practices, or men of color work with white men to promote anti-racist political perspectives. What happens time and again ad nauseam is that women of color are left out and left behind, in the work of whites and men.

What also happens a lot is that white men earn money for promoting feminist ideas and for teaching Women's Studies courses (I am on record as believing that under no circumstances should white men teach Women's Studies courses--there are too many out-of-work women of all colors with the training and education to do so). And there are white men who earn a living on their anti-racist views while people of color--especially women of color--generally earn nothing at all for promoting and advocating anti-racist practice and political work. Enough members of the liberal and progressive side of society adores the white men who do this work and public and private institutions rewards them much more than they reward women of color who do this work--far longer than the white men have been doing it. It is also the case that I can do my work not-for-money and still pay my bills. So I acknowledge that economic privilege being a factor in my refusal to be paid for any political work I do.

My whiteness and maleness shows up in my work, hopefully in self-critical, transparent, and responsible ways. That's my objective. Along with all the other readers, I want white males to read this work and see what it means to value the work of women of color--to witness an example of that happening. The fact that I know of no other white males who do this alerts me to the emergency of white males ignoring the lives and theories of politically active women of color. Not that we're surprised.

I have an emotional life. I have a private life. Each is shaped by my social and structural advantages and disadvantages. My life straddles many hierarchies. Most of my political work, by far, is done offline and most of my readers don't know about that work because that's how I've organised my life. I live privately while also fully accountable to all the women in my private life. I've welcomed the women who know me well (meaning: not just someone who I've exchanged a few emails with) to make public anything that they experience as misogynistic or a form of mistreatment. My friendships with women go back a long time from over twenty-five years to just a couple of years; thus far no woman in my personal life has found it necessary to publicly report on my behaviors as being harmful to them personally or to women generally.

This certainly doesn't mean I haven't triggered or upset women in my private life. I have--far too often. While I believe there's no way to be emotionally involved with someone without that happening, I'd add that I've also taken way too long to "get it" about some of the ways I've been emotionally triggering, to one woman in particular. Our friendship has survived my too-slow pace and fortunately that triggering hasn't happened for many months. I work hard at being accountable, which for me means being present, empathic, caring, responsible, and responsive. I don't value mind games and emotional coercion. I detest meanness and cruelty. I'm not a physically aggressive person, I suspect because I didn't grow up in homes that were that way: I didn't learn how to be physically aggressive and when picked on and bullied, I never fought back. I'm glad I've never punched or hit anyone, not that the bullies didn't deserve to be stopped. But I doubt my punches would have stopped them.

Most of my friendships are with women and I've arranged, with sufficient health care coverage in place, to bring most of my own inner and difficult emotional work to a health care professional not to my women friends: we all know how rapidly and readily men and males use women as their emotional care-takers.

I've let most of my friendships with men lapse. But there are a few that are in place and are meaningful to me. (That means you, Katlego.) One of the reasons I'm not just asexual but also celibate and non-romantic is because I know that were I to get involved with a man it would steer too much of my life towards him and away from women. It's also the case that PTSD and other personal struggles rule out me being intimate (not meaning 'sexual') with men. There's nothing especially self-effacing, altruistic, self-negating, or noble going on here in my life, just to be clear. And, also for the record: I'm gay and am not bisexual; I do not get romantically or sexually involved with women. Another reason for me being celibate (which is not a given for asexuals--we are conditioned, after all, to believe we ought to be sexually active in some way, shape, or form), is that I've seen how pro-feminist males fuck up other people's lives in fleeting or longer-term sexual relationships, heterosexually and homosexually. I won't be "that guy".

The deep and long-term friendships I have with radical and feminist women serve me well and I hope serve them well too. I am grateful for each one of them.

Good-bye, Etta James

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Real) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 19:52:00 +0000

I don't recall a time when I didn't know of Etta James. Yet for all the time I knew of her, I knew so little about her life. What I knew, like so many other people, was her music. Although her recordings varied in genre, I associate her most with the blues.

A few weeks ago a national news program did a feature on her but it wasn't an announcement of her passing. The report mentioned she was in poor health, however. I hoped she wasn't suffering. Then, on January 20, a week and a half ago, came the news I'd been anticipating. She was gone. I will miss her living presence on this Earth.

Recent Indigenous Women's Activism: Debra White Plume (Lakota), Louise Benally (Navajo), Ofelia Rivas (O'odham), and the women of Winyan Ituwan

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Real) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 19:20:00 +0000

Water and land are radical and profeminist issues. For current news in this regard, please see what follows. And please note in these stories how the US government deliberately and destructively pits oppressed groups against one another for its own greedy genocidal, ecocidal gain.

The following four news stories are brought to my attention thanks to Brenda Norrell at Censored News.You may click on the respective titles to link back to the original site where I found them. And please do, and check out many other Censored News stories.

Debra White Plume: A Thread in the Beautiful Fabric of Resistance

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Photos by Vi Waln

A Thread in the Beautiful Fabric of Resistance
by Debra White Plume
Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

Water is finite, and sacred. “Mni wicozani”, through water there is life. We must drink clean, nourishing water to live. Just as Mother Earth is made up of a lot of water, our human bodies are 70% water. That is why at Full Moon, and the tides change, some human beings have strong, unpredictable behavior. To our Lakota people, mni (water) is our first medicine, our first home. There are entire spiritual and social teachings that we learn as we grow up, our Lakota World View about water. Mni is our relative, and Lakota Law compels us to protect our relatives. Mother Earth is our relative.

This belief led our organization Owe Aku (Bring Back the Way), which is involved with cultural preservation and revitalization, Treaty Rights and Human Rights, to begin looking at disproportionate cancer and diabetes rates on the Pine Ridge Homeland. This research took us places we never thought we would be! We examined air and water quality studies, which led us to the Cameco, Inc. in situ leach uranium mine 30 minutes from our southern border. We learned that ISL uranium mining contaminates an incredible amount of water, on a daily basis. Cameco was up for license renewal and had submitted another application to open a second mine. We researched that process, and found we could submit interventions, based on science and law. We did that, and are now plaintiffs in the case against Cameco’s ‘right’ to poison our water. That was 7 years ago. This work continues.

Water protection work requires constant research, in doing so I learned about the tarsands oil mine in First Nations Territory in the Athabascan River Basin where Ft McMurry is, in Canada. Learning about that mine and its’ impacts to Mother Earth was mind jolting, so I began to speak out more about this horrendous desecration of Mother Earth and our First Nations relatives. The tarsands oil mine is decades old, and has become the dirtiest mining operation in the world. The corporations snuck in decades ago, fooling elected leaders into signing contracts of extraction, contracts that are resulting in increased forms of rare cancer, people are dying, so are fish, moose and other animals that the people depend on for food. It has become a food issue. Will it become a famine issue? The pristine Boreal Forest is being clearcut, the Amazon of the North is being destroyed, millions of birds and other animals have died, species have become extinct. The mine uses 3 to 4 barrels of pristine drinking water to create 1 barrel of oil, each day. It creates so much green house gases, the output can hardly be measured.

Studying the tarsands oil mine led to the discovery of TransCanada corporation’s intent to build and operate the Keystone XL oil pipeline from the tarsands oil mine into Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas where it would be refined and shipped out to who-knows-where. We learned the KXL oil pipeline was three feet in diameter, thin, and would high pressure slurry the heavy crude oil that had to be heated to 150 degrees F to liquefy it enough to push through that pipeline. There is a union worker who turned whistle blower when he was fired for declaring the pipe defective, which corporate workers would re-tag as approved. He gave up a lifelong career. I met him in DC.

The pipeline would cross our Rural Water pipeline, which transports drinking water from the Missouri River, 200 miles away, to our communities on the Pine Ridge. The KXL pipeline would cross 200 lakes and streams and rivers. It would be buried in the Ogllala Aquifer, which irrigates 30% of the food grown in the USA, and which provides drinking water for 2 million people, and for cattle, horses, buffalo and other four legged. Trans-Canada would use a lot of drinking water to mix with that heavy crude. Sacred and social teachings about water propelled me into devoting more and more time into fighting the life and death situation that this oil pipeline had become. I knew the threats to our ground and surface from uranium mining, and learning about this oil pipeline taught me that it threatens our very lives, for where would we get enough drinking water for the 50,000 Oglala Lakota people on the Pine Ridge when the pipeline spilled or leaked? Who would care enough to do something about it? The technology does not exist to clean up this kind of heavy crude. No pipe has been created that does not leak or spill.

Friends from the Indigenous Environmental Network contacted me, and we began a dialogue about water protection, contamination, a number of other topics. Tribes along the pipeline route took action to oppose the pipeline. Every Native Nation organization in the USA raised their voice to say No. I decided to go to Washington, DC to participate in a Senate Briefing Hearing, and meet with the State Department officials about Ft Laramie Treaty violations and violations of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples adopted by the United Nations in 2007. I traveled with others to Pierre, SD to testify at a State Dept hearing, but was not able to, as I was number 152. I saw drunken union workers testify about how they needed a job welding. They mostly came from out of state.

Then my family and I decided I would go to Washington DC. I participated in a civil disobedience direct action, trespassed at the White House and got arrested, along with 1200 other people who wanted to help get this issue into the minds of mainstream America and the attention of President Obama. There were a dozen of us Native Nations people who were arrested. The Lakota people on Pine Ridge hosted Tom Weis, who rode a solar powered bike from Montana to Texas to raise awareness along the KXL oil pipeline route. We hosted a Rally for Mother Earth in Pine Ridge, and a march. We hosted a Ride for Solidarity with ranchers, farmers, Lakota people, and an American movie star, Darryl Hannah. We had radio shows, wrote articles, attended events. Next thing I knew, I was on the Tour of Resistance, I flew 10,000 miles in 5 weeks. Halfway through, I lost my hairbrush, my comb, and only had one sock. Good thing it was almost over by then! On January 15, a group of us Lakota people hosted Winyan Ituwan, a women’s gathering with the focus on Mother Earth and Sacred Water, with guest speakers including Kandi Mosset of IEN and Tantoo Cardinal, a Cree movie star from Canada. All to raise awareness and resistance to uranium mining and the KXL oil pipeline and the tarsands oil mine, and protection for our sacred water.

Nebraska started out to protect the Ogllala Aquifer, but became involved in negotiations to allow the pipeline in along an undetermined route. South Dakota GAVE KXL $30 million in tax breaks to come here, Montana made concessions as well. However, individuals and groups got involved, big time. Environmental groups, many other civic groups, thousands of people on both sides of the Canadian/USA border spoke with the same voice, STOP THE PIPELINE. Nobel Laureates, Native Nation and First Nation Chiefs and Presidents, scientists, retired military, Olympic Medalists, Senators, Congressmen, actors, writers, students, people from all walks of life raised their voices and risked their freedom to stop the pipeline. Rarely did USA’s mainstream media cover any of this, but in the little towns and small cities, local newspapers and radio shows did. Word got out, numbers of resisters grew. The last time I went to DC, I spoke at a rally of 15,000 people, we circled the White House 4 times. People came from all over, to speak with one voice. We made friends and allies.

Nebraska politicians had a special hearing to allow KXL to come in, but the White House heard the message to protect the Ogllala Aquifer. Then TransCanada pushed the USA to make a decision, and elected politicians lifted their voices to support the KXL, attached a new bill as a rider to a jobs bill, gave the White House 60 days to let KXL in or to reject the pipeline as against the national interest.

On January 18, 2012, the State Dept and President Obama rejected the pipeline, as 60 days was inadequate to conduct environmental impact studies. However, TransCanada can still apply for a new permit.

Each of us who worked on this life and death situation, we are a thread in this fabric of resistance. Folks wrote letters, gave speeches, cooked food, wrote emails, tweeted, did FaceBook postings, made banners, pitched in gas money, made tshirts, made phone calls, did research, made copies, stood in line to testify, got arrested, lobbied Senators and Congressmen, babysat, loaned out their cars, offered a couch or a spare room, musicians/artists doing pro bono benefits, shared frequent flyer miles, took pictures, raised money, it was truly a collective action to protect our water and Mother Earth.

There is no one person, nor one organization, that stopped the pipeline, this victory that may be temporary, this partial victory, as the tarsands oil mine is still operating. It was the love of the many, for Mother Earth and coming generations, the many prayers and sacrifices that gave this movement its power. I believe love is stronger than greed. I believe that people working together can be just as effective as the world’s richest corporations. I believe Mother Earth wants to live, and we cannot live without Her. I believe our Lakota prophecy, “Someday the Earth will weep, She will cry with tears of blood. You must make a choice. You help Her, or She will die. When She dies, you too will die.”

All over the world, events are unfolding, 200 tornadoes in two days last summer? Earthquakes and shakes where there have been none for hundreds of years? Floods? Droughts? All common weather events, but uncommon in the repeated occurrences or place of occurrence. Every summer has been hotter than the last since 1996. Mother Earth is telling us something, She is crying, and She is rising. Crying Earth Rise Up! Whatever befalls Mother Earth, befalls the people of Mother Earth. Such a struggle is made up of many, many threads, together we form a beautiful fabric of resistance, and protection for our Mother, Mother Earth.

The last time we left DC, my friend and I saw a huge red tailed hawk, he swooped over us, and over the White House, and he flew to the west. The day of Winyan Ituwan Winter Gathering, we saw a bald eagle circle over us, and he flew off to the West. Sacred messages ... if we listen, we can hear, if we hear, we can understand. When we understand, we give thanks. Lila wopila iciciyapi. Hecetuye.
Posted by brendanorrell@gmail.com at 9:13 PM

* * *

Navajo Louise Benally: Arizona racism and coal fired power plants

Louise Benally during Salt River Project protest,
speaking out against the coal fired Navajo
Generating Station. Photo: Resist ALEC

By Brenda Norrell
Censored News

On First Voices Indigenous Radio today, WBAI New York, Louise Benally, resisting relocation at Big Mountain on the Navajo Nation, described the detriment of coal fired power plants and racism in Arizona.

Louise said regardless of the struggles, Navajos living on the land still live in harmony with the land. Louise described the natural herbs and healing ceremonies that come from the wild, now being contaminated by pollution. "It is doing a lot of destruction." She spoke on the chemical trails settling in the water and environment.

"Those are real problems we are faced with now, because a lot of the vegetation is being wiped out." She said Peabody coal mine releases pollution to the regional watershed on Black Mesa. "It is just devastating," she said, to live in this situation.

Louise Benally confronts Salt River Project staff.
Photo Resist ALEC.

She also described the three coal fired power plants on the Navajo Nation. There are the two in the Four Corners area near Farmington NM which leave a grey haze over the skies. Then there is the Navajo Generating Station near Page, Ariz., producing more contamination. These coal fired power plants carry electricity to cities like Phoenix and Tucson while Navajos suffer with disease and pollution.

"We can't just continue to produce, produce and produce pollution," said Louise, adding that these coal fired power plants are making the ice melt in the Arctic.

Louise described the changes to the climate and how development is creating this. If the land is not healthy, then life is not healthy either, Louise said, describing the Navajos respiratory problems and cancer.

Describing how Arizona just banned ethnic studies, she said, "It is just really sad."

Radio show host Tiokasin Ghosthorse described how the scheme was to make it look like the so called land dispute was between Hopi and Navajo. This scheme kept people from getting involved because they were led to believe it was an internal dispute between the two nations, rather than what it was: A carefully designed scheme to remove thousands of Navajos from Black Mesa to make way for Peabody coal mining, which continues today.

Louise said, "They were pitting tribe against tribe to get at the resources," explaining how they did this to get at the coal and resources.

Louise said the Navajo tribe is not realizing the depletion of the resources, and what Peabody is doing. However, she said the Hopi tribe is beginning to realize the detriment to the natural resources.

She said Native people need to revitalize the old ways and sustainable food. "We can still use the earth as our healing substance."

Tiokasin closed by pointing out that in the city, people don't take responsibility for taking care of the land and say it is the US government's responsibility to deal with it.

Listen to archive later today, Thursday at:
http://www.firstvoicesindigenousradio.org/program_archives

* * *

O'odham Ofelia Rivas: URGENT Halt Gold Mining in Sacred Quitovac

URGENT: PROTECT SACRED QUITOVAC FROM GOLD MINING
O'ODHAM LANDS -- (Jan. 30, 2012) Ofelia Rivas, O'odham, speaks on the urgent need to protect Quitovac from gold mining. Quitovac is the sacred ceremonial community of O'odham south of the border in Sonora, Mexico.
Funds are needed now for travel in Sonora, and meetings with Sonoran officials, to halt this gold mining by Silver Scott Mines, Inc. Video by Censored News.
READ MORE on genocidal gold mining planned for Quitovac:
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2011/12/traditional-oodham-halt-mining-genocide.html
Donate to O'odham Solidarity Project:
http://www.solidarity-project.org/
Direct cash donations are also essential! Please remember that every little bit helps! Donate to the O'odham Voice Against the Wall
Mail well concealed cash or money order to:
Ofelia Rivas
PO. Box 1835
Sells, Arizona 85634
Ofelia Rivas e-mail: oodhamrights@gmail.com

Posted by brendanorrell@gmail.com at 11:24 AM

* * *

Vi Waln: Winyan Ituwan Women of Vision

Winyan Ituwan holds first of four gatherings

Photos and article by Vi Waln
Lakota Country Times Editor

.
Photos by Vi Waln: Top - Phyllis Young and Madonna Thunder Hawk; 2nd - Olowan Sara Martinez and Pte San Win; 3rd - Kandi Mossett, Marie Randall, Tantoo Cardinal and Tiana Spotted Thunder; 4th Members of the Cante Ohitika (Brave Heart Society) also attended the gathering in Porcupine, SD. Faith Spotted Eagle spoke about building young women through traditional ceremony. Pictured behind her are society members (L-R) Frances Bullshoe, Brittany Poor Bear, Alex Romero Frederick, Jennifer Takes War Bonnet, Jennifer Drapeaux and Theresa Hart. 5th: More than 200 men, women and children attended. 6th: Regina Brave. Arlette Loud Hawk spoke about being a female Tokala whip bearer. Thank you Vi for the photos!

PAHIN SINTE OWAYAWA – “This is a collective effort to bring women together to share experience, wisdom and vision; our Earth Mother needs us to stand up for her to be a voice for these young girls to walk in our path,” stated Pte San Win, one of the organizers of the initial Winyan Ituwan gathering. “We hope to inspire and encourage you to go home with lots of information for your family.”

Topics discussed at the gathering revolved around the desecration of Mother Earth and water, as well as mining issues facing the people living on the Great Plains of the United States. In addition, the traditional roles and responsibilities of Native women were presented. Over 200 people attended.

Lorraine White Face prayed with her macaw feather fan and blessed everyone with sage smoke. Opening prayer was offered by Esther White Face. Singing a beautiful opening song were duet Tianna Spotted Thunder and Autumn Two Bulls.

“Each and every one of us is special. Faith, hope and love will make a better generation for all of us,” stated Marie Randall. “As women we all carry the water of life and we must care for ourselves because of the children. We must have the courage to change because the gifts that were given to us by Tunkasila are suffering. I encourage all of you to teach the children to love and respect one another. I am not afraid to be Lakota.”

“Water is the first medicine,” stated Cordelia White Elk.

“Tunkasila gave us the guidance to do this,” Debra White Plume stated. “We want to share the love we have for Unci Maka, we are trying to live in a good way.

The power comes from love, the work we do comes from our love of Lakota ways. Pine Ridge has been fighting uranium mining being done south of us. We have challenged their right to mine uranium because we have scientific evidence that the mine site near Crawford, NE is linked to our drinking water. We have been fighting North Trend for 7 years now. We use water in every single ceremony. This is the same water that was here when the dinosaurs were here; it is our duty and privilege to fight for drinking water. These are issues that are genocidal to our people. If water is contaminated where are we going to get water for 50,000 Oglala? What about water for our horses and other animals?”

“We never started out to fight the biggest uranium mine under Cameco; we started out trying to find out why things were happening to our people. It doesn’t matter who tests the water, the results are always the same. We have to fight for the water to keep it clean and keep it good. We have to speak up, we have to take action. They may have a lot of money but we have a lot of love. There can be no more desecrating of Unci Maka; we are going to defend our sacred water. It’s hard to be Lakota because you have to stand up. Our courage is greater than the corporations and government who want to take our water.

“The Keystone XL pipeline expansion will cross the Lyman Jones Rural Water System in many places. It will cross the Mni Wiconi Water System in two places. We are trying to teach our non-Indian allies to call Earth our Mother instead of a planet,” stated White Plume.

The Keystone XL pipeline expansion consists of a 1,912-mile pipeline that would transport crude oil from Alberta, Canada to Texas. The proposed project could transport up to 830,000 barrels of dirty tar sands crude per day right through the Ogallala Aquifer which supplies drinking water to over 2 million people and countless animals, trees and plants. National lawmakers have used their power of politics to force President Obama to decide by February 21 if he will sign the permit needed for TransCanada to build the pipeline.

“Even in the 1800’s geologists in the area already knew what was in that land,” stated Tantoo Cardinal, a Cree actress who grew up near the Athabasca oil sands. “Everything that had to do with our culture was outlawed. I saw people who lived a life of strength off the bush. The outlawing of language and ways was an attempt to sever our connection to the Creator. This made us mean to each other too. When I was young we would go on berry picking trips and we could get our water out of the lake. Our children aren’t going to know that. Now, 10% of the fish coming out of the water are abnormal.”

“The people who come to Fort McMurray have no love for the land, they come for money. Even though we had no ceremonies we had medicine. There’s medicine on that land. A woman from Yellow Knife has medicine to doctor AIDS. There is medicine to doctor AIDS in that land they are killing. We were right from the beginning. Our treaties were established because we know our Mother. We have the blueprint. We have to discern who are allies are, defenders of the Earth come in all colors. In that knowing, in that teaching is where the women stand. Women’s place hasn’t been respected. The Earth is being treated the same way women are being treated.

“Sands are the grit that wears and tears on that pipe,” Cardinal continued. “All we have had are lies from this civilization, so why would they start telling us the truth now?”

“In 1947 the US Government built a dam,” stated Kandi Mossett, a Mandan/Hidatsa/Arikira tribal member who is currently employed with the Indigenous Environmental Network. “We were forced into a cash economy; it was like walking through door never to go back. When women eat mercury contaminated fish it affects our bodies. We are always told that we can’t eat the big fish we catch in Lake Sakakawea anymore. There are many flares or giant candles of natural gas now. Many tribal members were paid $34 an acre for their land versus the $5,000-$6,000 an acre paid to non-Indians.

“Now, every single place you go you see trucks hauling water in and hauling water out. Many people have died in head-on crashes with the trucks. It’s all for oil mining. It’s wrong. The tribally elected leaders at Fort Berthold are not my leaders. Women have to lead, let us show you how to lead. A Tribal Environmental Code was just passed last year. There are many open valves. There are 2,500 chemicals in that fracked water that leaks out of the valves on the trucks. Tribal police have no jurisdiction over the truck drivers. People are getting money now and they are happy because we’ve been poor for so long. Drugs are coming in worse than they were before. We need to stop it at all costs.

“Why should you care what is happening on Fort Berthold?” Mossett asked. People need to care because “it’s affecting you down here. Green water found in Lake Sakakawea was said to be a blue green algae bloom which is toxic.” Also, leakage that “cannot be seen with the naked eye but infrared cameras shows the constant smoke coming from pipes and those round storage tanks along with frack trucks around the reservation. People are not dumb. People just became complacent. I survived cancer when I was 20 years old. I refused chemotherapy, I refused radiation. There’s so much to fight for an as long as I have a breath in me I am going to go anywhere to lift people up. Forget the Keystone XL pipeline; we are going to kill it. As long as there are little kids running around we are going to fight.”

“Kandi Mossett is my hero,” stated Phyllis Young, a newly elected tribal council representative at Standing Rock. “She inspired me to pass legislation against fracturing. Demonstrations are significant; we need to have an Occupy Wall Street type of event in the Black Hills. We have the Standing Rock directors working to beef up the regulations we have. We are also trying to prohibit horizontal drilling. I have been on the tribal council for two months and we will do everything we can to stop the Keystone XL pipeline.”

“What is it going to take for activism in Indian Country?” Madonna Thunder Hawk asked. She is currently working on Indian Child Welfare Act violations in East River South Dakota. “Check the NPR.org website for documents about the Department of Social Services. Lean on your tribal councils because they have to make child welfare a priority. Not one tribe in the State of South Dakota has made child welfare a priority. Kids are kept in the system for the money. They are drugged up and then when they age out they dump them back into the Indian community. I’m hoping there will be younger women who will pick up this fight.”

"I love my people,” stated Regina Brave who is also a long-time activist for the Lakota. “This whole country still belongs to us; I want you to remember that. They want to build Keystone XL through here because they called this a sparsely populated area. We have farmers, ranchers and processing plants. 75% of the groceries people take for granted come from this sparsely populated area. We have a right to protest and shut down TransCanada, we have to stop it. We are a nation fighting for survival. 2012 is the beginning of a whole new era for Indian people, it’s time for women to stand up and start fighting. We waited for a long time for this to happen where we could stand together and fight.”

“I believe this is an historical gathering,” stated Faith Spotted Eagle. “We have a responsibility to recreate societies. In 1994 we revived the Brave Heart Society. We have to build these young women. There are 90 girls scattered across the country that have been through the Isnati ceremony.”

Brittany Poor Bear, a Brave Heart Society member, offered a prayer for the wamakaskan.

Russell Means’ recent bout with cancer “was a powerful and humbling experience,” stated his wife Pearl Means. “But the power of our ancestors and spirituality is hard to express. We are downwind from North Dakota which is where the largest strip mining in the country is taking place.”

Other speakers included Arlette Loud Hawk who spoke as the Whip Bearer for the Tokala Kit Fox Warrior Society. Troy Lynn Yellow Wood talked about the roles of women. Special guest speakers included Alex White Plume, Russell Means, and Lily Mae Red Eagle.

Winyan Ituwan is a collective effort to bring women together to share experiences, vision, and wisdom. There were many door prizes including propane and other gifts. Winyan Ituwan is the first of four women’s gatherings, with one set for spring, summer and fall. People can call 605-899-1419 or connect at Winyan Ituwan on Face Book for more information.

“Each of us has power in our thoughts and in prayer. When we think and pray in a good way that is what we add to the atmosphere,” stated Cardinal.

Posted by brendanorrell@gmail.com at 9:34 PM

An Anti-racist Radical Profeminist Critique of a Socialist Review of White Radical Feminism

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Real) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:21:00 +0000

image/logo is from *here*

image is from here

(The NOTES section was revised and added to on 1/31/2012.)

The excerpted writing below is from Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal. You may click *here* to link back to that site in order to read the whole article. You may also link back by clicking on the title just below:

Socialists in the Australian women's liberation movement

The author is Margaret Allan. She is a member of the national executive of the Democratic Socialist Party of Australia. This article is based on an educational talk to the party's congress, held in Sydney in January 1999.

Below is the section of that article on Radical Feminism, reproduced here for the sole purposes of radical pro-feminist political analysis and discussion.

I have not altered the content of the text in any way other than to add footnote numbers which may refer you to comments below the original writing, within this blog post. The section by Margaret Allan is reproduced here in full, but again keep in mind it is part of a larger piece of writing. Please refer back to that for the context in which the following discussion occurs.

Radical feminism
First I will look at radical feminism. “Patriarchy” was the word used by Engels[1] when describing anthropologically the different types of family or kinship units that have existed. He called families, clans or other social groupings that traced descent through the mother's side matrilineal. Descent traced through the father's side was patrilineal. Matriarchal or patriarchal were used to describe situations in which the auhtority and power over the group were invested in either the woman or the man.
The term patriarchy was redefined by radical feminism, and put into common usage, to refer to whole social systems controlled by men through their control of women's reproductive functions. That is, women are seen as oppressed because of their biology and their role as child-bearers.[2]

Adherents to patriarchy theory tend to agree on these four points:

Patriarchy expresses the totality of the social relations of male supremacy and female subordination.[3]

Patriarchy has existed in all known socioeconomic formations, though most analyses tend to focus on the particular features of capitalist patriarchy.[4]

Patriarchy is a hierarchical system in which power and control are vested in men to effect and reproduce their domination over women. Patriarchal relations are said to be reproduced through the sexual division of labour and patriarchal ideology.[5]

Patriarchy unites men across class lines. Their unity is based on the fact that although men hold different degrees of power within the patriarchy, all men dominate at least some women.[6]

Radical feminist arguments are explicitly or implicitly biologically determinist -- women are “naturally” caring, sharing, nurturing peaceful beings -- a stabilising force in society, whereas men are prisoners of their raging hormones, aggressive, warmongering.[7] Men cannot control their animal-like instincts -- they rape women and are violent, so for women to survive, they must separate from this threat to them and their children.[8]
An extreme view held by some radical feminists was summed up by Kimberley O'Sullivan in Girl's Own, a Sydney-based radical feminist newspaper, No. 5 1981:

Wimmin and men are two different species. Not different races within the one humanoid species but different species who evolved separately and differently. Wimmin are biologically and morally superior but men hold power by force of arms.[9]
The flaw of any theory that relies on this notion of patriarchy (our theory is also based on patriarchy, but as Engels defined it) to explain women's oppression is that it counterposes the liberation of half of humanity to the liberation of the other half. All men are said to have a primary interest in women's oppression.
Like liberal feminism, this type of radical feminism is fundamentally a bourgeois feminist current. While liberalism seeks to humanise capitalism through reforms -- getting more women into positions of power, etc. -- both tend inevitably to develop a reactionary aspect because of their insistence that capitalism is not founded ultimately and necessarily on class exploitation, and therefore on women's oppression.
The two most influential and original statements of radical feminism were Kate Millett's Sexual Politics and Shulamith Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex: the case for feminist revolution, both published in 1971.[10]
Since then, writings from academics such as Andrea Dworkin (a vehement supporter of censorship, who says that pornography is the theory, rape is the practice)[11] and Renate Klein and Robyn Rowland in Australia have been influential. One of the main centres for radical feminist theory in Australia in recent years has been women's studies courses at Deakin University in Geelong. This is also the base of finrrage, Feminist International Network Resisting Reproductive and Genetic Engineering, which campaigns against the use of science to violate and manipulate women's bodies and their reproductive capability.

They oppose all reproductive technology -- including things such as IVF technology and the use of RU486, the morning after pill, on the basis that male doctors experimenting with women's bodies is another form of the violence that is naturally a part of men's attitudes and behaviour. This is an ironic reversal for radical feminism, which originally argued in favour of reproductive technology to free women's reproduction from men's control.
We have argued against radical feminist views consistently, in many different forums. One area was the censorship and pornography debate, on which we wrote and distributed a pamphlet encapsulating our opposition to censorship as a path to stopping the sexual exploitation of women.[12]
One section of radical feminists advocate separatism as political practice, based on their analysis of the origins and nature of women's oppression.
The identification of men as the enemy led many radical feminists to the conclusion that women should separate themselves from men politically and socially. Lifestyle preferences for all-women households, personal relationships, cultural institutions and even communities, were often promoted as the key to liberation.
This often leads to the assertion by some separatists that a “true feminist” is one who does not have sex with men, and is celibate or a “political lesbian”.
Most radical feminists in the second wave eventually went into academia or worked in women's services such as rape crisis centres and women's shelters.[13]

NOTES:

My overall critique of the discussion about radical feminism is four-fold:

--it relies on anti-radical, anti-feminist academic assessments of radical feminist work
--it is very white-centered and white supremacist
--it ignores crucial writings by white radical feminists and radical feminists of color that directly address and contradict the points made above
--it reproduces and reinforces many of the anti-radical and anti-feminist arguments made by well-published corporate pimps and other white male supremacists interested in defending their right to rape and traffic in women and girls and otherwise maintain rule over female human beings

1. There has been a fairly thorough rejection of Engel's understanding of women's oppression based on family relations as Engels understood them. That some non-feminist Socialists still prefer to hold to his theories when better theories by radical feminists exist only means to me that some people prefer to believe, sexistly, that men (or Socialists) are the best theorists, including on matters relating to women and women's liberation. Very generally speaking, I don't find this to be the case at all. I don't think it is because men and women think and theorise differently due to biological or natural factors. Instead, I think that men's minds, as shaped and structured in patriarchal and woman-hating societies, learn to abstract reality and organise theory around hypothesis--well away from the scary feelings and emotions men dread consciously including into their intellectual work, while many feminist's minds, in response to patriarchal conditions in which men's abstractions about women are part of the problem, learn to be able both to abstract reality and keep theory grounded in it. For more discussion on what's wrong with Engels, please see the following links to a four-part post by Stan Goff. I will add that many white het men there were willing to read a pro-feminist (Goff's) and feminist critique of Engels (MacKinnon's) only because a white het man with Socialist cred produced and published it.
Why the Left should drop Engels on Gender, part 1

Why the Left should drop Engels on Gender, part 2

Engels and Gender, part 3

Engels and Gender, Last Installment

2. This goes against the bulk of radical feminist writing I'm familiar with. See, especially, Catharine A. MacKinnon's radical feminist critique of such biologically deterministic viewpoints in Feminism Unmodified and in Toward A Feminist Theory of the State.

3. I'd argue that other systems of oppression carry within them the means and methods to reproduce male supremacy. White supremacy and capitalism, to name two, are infused with patriarchal (male supremacist) power structures, values, and practices. White supremacist notions of Race are also sexed. Class positions are infused with sexual meaning. Thus, if a woman is poor and of color she is subordinated socially, sexually, and economically in multiple ways, with each reinforcing her subordination to rich white men and to various groups of less economically powerful men. We may note how this manifest in the global trafficking of girls and women, predominantly poor girls of color to predominantly rich white het men. This horrific reality cannot and ought not be understood or analysed only in terms of patriarchy, capitalism, or race oppression. It is the weaving together of the three that identify key features of the atrocity. Similarly, the higher incidence of rape of Indigenous North American women by white het men, compared to the also-alarming rate of rape of white women by white het men, cannot either.

4. This conclusion, proposed by some white-centered and/or European-centered feminists, ignores and further marginalises of the work of many other radical women of color, particularly Indigenous and Black feminists who note how white or European patriarchy is currently globalised. See, for example, Yurugu, by Marimba Ani.

5. Another key site of male supremacist (or patriarchal) oppression is the sexual subordination of women by men through normalised sexual acts and sexual behavior as men experience and define it. Among other radicals, including many male socialists, the oppressive nature (as opposed to the "natural power") of sex expressed and enforced by men over and against women has largely been ignored or relegated to the realm of the "natural".

6. It is not only that patriarchal societies function to allow and encourage all men to dominate at least some women. With female human beings denied basic human rights such as access to private safety and sustained dignity, and with so many girls and women surviving (or not surviving) sexual assault and other misogynist atrocities and gynocidal practices, boys are encouraged to dis-identify with girls, men are encouraged to dis-identify with women, and males on the whole are supported in engaging in misogynistic practices which simultaneously homosocially bond males to one another and socially subordinate women to men in various ways. One example of this may be seen in the normalised rapist practices of young men in college and university fraternities. Men across class and race from region to region in many places--but not universally--are seen as more manly by other males if they engage in such practices. In such places, the man or boy who refuses to degrade or assault women or girls in front of other males is understood by the men present to be "less of a man"; he loses sexual status among those patriarchally positioned to confirm it. See note 2 for more.

7. Even if reviewing white feminist writings alone, this is not generally the case. No radical feminists I have ever read or known make such a case, and in fact argue exactly the opposite: to be a radical and feminist is to believe in the humanity of men against much evidence that men value being inhumane to women. See, for more, Andrea Dworkin's speech to 500 men, "I Want A Twenty-Four Hour Truce During Which Their Is No Rape".

8. No anti-rape or anti-pornography radical feminist-identified women I know or have read believe that men are "naturally" prone to rape, to batter, or to otherwise exhibit masculinist or patriarchal aggression against girls and women. To be an activist is to believe that such behavior and systems which promote it are "not natural". The only women I know who do believe this are not "Radical Feminist" identified. Instead, some are Radical Lesbian identified.

9. For a good example of how this was challenged within a predominantly white branch of the US Women's Movement, please see: "Biological Superiority: The World's Most Dangerous and Deadly Idea", by Andrea Dworkin.

10. This would be true only according to mostly white academics who only consider white authors and activists to be worthy of writing about, reviewing, and critiquing. That white editors compile the writings of white writers is nothing new and ought not be seen as an indication that women of color were not and are not centrally involved in all realms of radical anti-patriarchy activism.

11. This is inaccurate in three respects:

Andrea Dworkin was not an academic. She as a front-line Women's Liberation activist and author. She quit college before graduation. She marched in streets to protest women's subordination to men. She didn't teach except once in Minneapolis (a course on pornography, and also a course on literature), while also doing non-academic activist work.
Andrea Dworkin was not "a vehement defender of censorship". She was against all state censorship and was opposed to the ways her ordinance was (mis)used in Canada in a censorial manner. She wrote eloquently about what censorship is and she and MacKinnon wrote about the myth--perpetuated by corporate pimps and spread by liberal academics who defended them--that their stance on pornography was pro-censorship. For more, see Pornography and Civil Rights: A New Day for Womens' Equality. See also, Andrea Dworkin, "Against the Male Flood: Censorship, Pornography, and Equality".
Andrea Dworkin never said or wrote "Pornography is the theory; rape is the practice". The quote belongs to Robin Morgan. Dworkin said "Pornography is the practice; rape is the practice." Andrea understood pornography materially, not primarily or centrally as an idea or a theory; it is one white and male supremacist (racist patriarchal) industry that makes sexual subordination socially existent, marketing rape as entertainment primarily for men. Meanwhile, pornography's defenders--including those who materially profit from the industry--see it as only idea, fantasy, and subjectively determined. (One wonders how they got so rich only engaging in thinking.) Dworkin and MacKinnon have argued convincingly against such a determination. (Source: *here*.)

12. I have witnessed how debates among Socialists misunderstood--often willfully--Dworkin's views and activism on the issue. She was a key proponents and crafters of a radical feminist anti-pornography law, and other actions against the industry, and she's already been miscategorised above. This doesn't surprise me as anti-radical feminists in Socialist and Libertarian circles commonly and purposefully misrepresented the positions and actions of radical feminists against pornography. The Socialist anti-feminists I'm aware of did this, in part, as a means of protecting the power of men against women practiced and promoted in industry pornography.

13. The whole "wave theory" of feminism is academic mythology as much as anything else, steeped in narrow white- and euro-centric understandings of activism and liberation struggles against men's cultural and systematised subordination of women. Asian, Black, Brown, and Indigenous radical feminists, self-defining as such or not, are usually written out of such "wave theories", or are marginalised in special chapters or sections on race--as if women of color must only ever speak for people of color as a class, never for women as a class. The above discussion by Margaret Allen, unfortunately, perpetuates this euro-centrism and white supremacy. And the supposition that a great many radical feminists went into academia is in itself classist; most radical feminists are poor women of color globally, with little to no access to the academic institutions run by ruling class whites and men.

I hope that future discussions among Socialists about radical feminism demonstrate more awareness of the many theories and practices of radical feminist women of color, and also don't distort the political viewpoints of white radical feminists usually misinformation provided by corporate pimps and their defenders and apologists.

I encourage radical and feminist activists to offer comments at the original site.

On being intergender and anti-gender: a profeminist statement

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Real) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 20:07:00 +0000

image is from here

A while ago, sometime last year or the year before, I 'came out' as intergender. I understood this name to apply to a set of experiences I'd had since childhood in which I didn't socially or spiritually fit into one or the other of two dominant/enforced gender categories. What's important for me to remember is that gender categories themselves are part of a vicious set of interlocking systems of oppression by race, region, and sex.

In English and in the US, "woman" is a term that linguistically and structurally place women beneath men as both less advantaged and as socially inferior. "Man" is a term used to mean "humanity" which, if you follow the male supremacist logic, means women aren't human--at least not AS fully human as men. Were this a linguistic matter alone, I might decide not to pay it much attention. But given that women worldwide, relative to men in their own communities, cultures, and civilisations are often enough economically and sexually subordinated to men, we must note how language and treatment fuse in the human experience.

A white Lesbian once challenged me on my use of the term "intergender" to describe myself. I have never forgotten her challenges. What I realise now is that it is in vogue--and has been for decades--to privilege the naming of ourselves in anti-radical, anti-feminist ways over being responsible to radical activists, including feminists seeking to abolish sex as an oppressive system and gender as a hierarchical and terroristic force.

Nowhere in contemporary white Academic queer-positive theory do I see any commitment to radical social change wherein systems of race and sex are understood as both inhumane and unjust. Instead I see lots of acquiescing around sex and race as naturalised and normalised phenomena. Perhaps now more than ever, we have terms proliferating through our communities that uphold rather than challenge race and sex as markers of who gets treated like shit and who gets treated as if they were fully human.

In our raced and sexed system, only white men are fully advantaged, which isn't to say white men have it all good. And on the class level, whites and all men fare better than women of color.

In white- and male-dominated queer theory, transgender identity has become one way for liberals to test each other's "tolerance" of "difference", sometimes quoting Audre Lorde when challenging cis people to respect trans existence. But to take tolerance of difference as the end all and be all of political work is, imo, to misunderstand or ignore what Audre Lorde, a radical feminist and a lesbian, was speaking out about. As I see it, her call for oppressed people--namely and specifically, women across sexuality, age, and race--to find mutual regard and respect across such differences, was not to claim that accomplishing this was the sole goal. It was, rather, a means to a far more difficult end: the eradication of gendered and raced oppression entirely. To fight oppression based on sexuality, sex, age, and race is unlikely to be successful if in-fighting and horizontal hostility (to use Flo Kennedy's term) isn't also challenged as employing the master's tools.

I don't see hostility directed against trans people as appropriate, personally and politically. And everything I write, I write from the structural location of someone with lots of social advantage, as a male and as a white person. As a radical, I see the liberal acceptance of terms put forth by conservative and liberal people as inappropriate or pro-status quo.

I want to clarify that me naming myself "intergender" is a subjective experienced molded by social mistreatment in childhood (and beyond), including bullying and harassment by males naming me things that meant "girl" as if being a girl was something all males should avoid. Many males in my childhood seemed preoccupied with avoiding being seen as "like a girl". This preoccupation was never my own in part because I respected girls at least as much as boys, and often more so than boys. But also because I didn't feel like a boy and so wasn't so keen on trying to be something I wasn't.

My political work in adulthood has been to not behave like a man in the male supremacist sense while acknowledging that being a man isn't something I control in the structural or macro-social sense. And to the extent that women experience me politically and personally as a man, I am one, regardless of whether or not such a name feels accurate to me. To try and silence women by saying that they are trans- or inter-phobic for stating their truth is, to me, yet another act of male supremacist bullying on my part.

One of many things that troubles me in the current male- and white-dominated queer discourse on being transgender is the ways in which it is either naturalised--an oppressively conservative intellectual tactic--or made to seem as if it ought to trump all other social and structural realities, such as whether or not someone born and named as "male" acquires and benefits from the various advantages handed to males in male supremacist societies.

There is an argument put forth by some conservative-to-liberal politically active M2F people and some allies of such politically active M2F people. (Such activists are a very tiny minority of trans people who ought not be seen to be representative of most trans people; most trans people do not medically or socially transition and don't identify as M2F.) The argument is this: as soon as someone comes into a M2F transgender (in this case, transsexual) identity or transitions medically or socially to be more like a woman--as some trans and non-trans people narrowly and often oppressively define the term and experience, that necessarily means they don't have any of the advantages that being male has given them.

As someone who accepts and regrets how powerfully oppressive racist and hetero/sexist socialisation acts on us, especially but not only in the first few years of life, I find it untenable that all the ways we males learn to disrespect all who are female, and position ourselves as superior to girls and women, would vanish when we alter our social and personal understandings of ourselves. Similarly but not in perfect analogy, I find it untenable that if someone white came to realise that they were of mixed ethnic heritage in their mid-twenties, for example, with some of their heritage being European and some of it being African and Indigenous, this would result in all their racist views, values, and political practices simply and suddenly disappearing. I mean really: how could that happen?

Even if our structural location shifts somewhat with this new information and identity, old patterns and habituated practices are well-established aren't they? (I'm not saying gendered and raced ways of being are "fixed" in any absolute sense. I'm saying we learn to be racist and sexist, and as anyone can tell you, such socialisation is difficult to uproot. This is why males who identify as profeminist and whites who call ourselves anti-racist ought not be assumed to be non-sexist and non-racist. But beyond that, our structural, institutionally protected locations as males and whites are not as fluid as our intellectual and emotional locations.

If someone is raised white, does a childhood of believing one is superior to people of color evaporate with the news later in life that one's grandparents and great grandparents weren't all of European and white descent? What are the political means or social mechanisms through which this psychic and structural transformation occurs?

If our political lives worked this way, we need only work together to transition every white person to being, in appearance and identify, a person of color. And voila, white supremacy and its future genocidal ravages would disappear. We need only convince all men that they are really women to end male supremacy's death-grip on humanity. As someone who has been a peripheral part of white-dominated and white supremacist gay male society for decades, I've seen how white gay men accept the idea that we are girls-not-men, and also how we resist, in pro-patriarchal ways, heterosexist and homophobic males who insist we are girls-not-men. In no instance does this social viewpoint result in gay men not being misogynistic. In fact, many of the ways gay males embrace "femininity" and "effeminacy" are grimly and glaringly woman-hating. This hasn't gone unnoticed and unchallenged by many feminist lesbians and a few profeminist gay men.

A claim I hear from some white trans- and queer-identified people is that they/we are unfairly targeted for political interrogation and critique. I'd argue that gay males and lesbians, as well as heterosexual women, have been targeted for such critique for as long as we've existed in heteropatriarchal times and environments. And to confuse the radical critique of lesbian feminists with the critique of patriarchal het men is to turn structural political reality on its head.

I take the white Lesbian's challenges to heart and mind. And I conclude that my political position with regard to gender is to be anti-gender, not pro-gender, not pro-gender binary, not pro-gender hierarchy. Especially, my political position as a white Westerner isn't one of pretending the gender binary or dual sex system I grew up inside, isn't a hierarchy. Sex and gender are hierarchies that exists fundamentally and foremost to allow and encourage non-transitioning men and males to oppress women, girls, and females as patriarchal men define and enforce the terms.

P.S. After publishing this post, I was sent *this* found at Feminist Reprise, by a friend and colleague. It is written by someone who is not anti-trans but will likely be termed "transphobic" for critiquing some of the behavior of a few white M2F trans activists. Here is an excerpt from the whole piece, titled "Radical Feminism and the Transgendered, or, how to write a post that will infuriate everyone", by Jane Doe, 05/15/2006:

Many MTFs I know minimize the effect male privilege has on their behavior. I suppose it is like the proverbial fish who asks "what is water?" - being the beneficiary of male privilege during one's formative years, even if one begins to question one's identity as a man, confers benefits upon one that are invisible to the recipient (although obvious to women, who do not receive these benefits). Since MTFs do not want to be male, they would like to imagine they can just toss male privilege away along with their unwanted boys' clothing. The human mind does not work in this way, however. It is ironic that those resorting to violent, invasive tactics in order to enter the Michigan Women's Music Festival, for example, with the excuse that they are NOT men and should be accepted as women, are resorting to an ingrained male privilege which tells them they have a right to go anywhere they want to go.

I see it is a critical matter of radical sexual politics, not liberal or conservative gender theory, when female's and women's spaces are contested as appropriately exclusive or sovereign by people with male privilege and male supremacist power. It is also a matter of radical sexual politics when a vocal group of people--a tiny minority of class-privileged whites pretending to represent the whole of the population--declares its members immune and exempt from radical and feminist critique of the ways white and male supremacy is enacted socially. Surely white and male supremacy is being enforced when such a declaration of immunity takes place.

Woggy on Answerbag is at it again: this time with the myth of man-hating among white feminists

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Real) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 18:40:00 +0000

image is from here

I've written a great deal about the myth of man-hating, including about the allegedly anti-man quotes, that misogynists and other anti-feminists promote and peddle online as "truth". Here's the latest incarnation of it, presented as a seemingly innocuous question:

by woggy on January 15th, 2012

Did Andrea Dworkin hate men?
How about Susan Brownmiller?
Catherine MacKinnon?

An answer, by JulianReal

Andrea Dworkin didn't hate men and the proof of it is in her work and her life. She was very close with and respectful of her father, brother, nephew, and life-partner, who was a man. People who accuse her and other white feminists, like Susan Brownmiller and Catharine MacKinnon, of hating men just don't appreciate it when women of any color name and challenge the myriad ways men hate women in law, custom, and daily personal life. Not respecting or catering to men's misogyny (in the form of rape, battery, trafficking, sexual harassment, sexual and economic discrimination by men against women) as God-given or natural-and-inevitable isn't an example of women being "hateful" to men; it's a simple declaration of respect and love for women.

Andrea Dworkin, Susan Brownmiller, and Catharine A. MacKinnon spoke out eloquently and intelligently about patriarchal abuses, male supremacy, and misogyny perpetrated and perpetuated by men. What's hateful to anyone about doing that?

The more relevant question, imo, is why do so many men hate women, discriminate against women, harass women, batter women, rape girls and women, traffic and enslave girls and women, and insult and degrade women for entertainment and economic profit?

Read more: http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/2652040#ans11727702

Women Activists in Haiti: Two Years after the Earthquake

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Real) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 17:40:00 +0000

photo of activists, including Elvire Eugene (second from left), is from here

It has been two years since the devastating earthquake devastating Port-au-Prince, killing hundreds of thousands and leaving many people vulnerable to the ravages of gross governmental neglect, the violence of globalisation and poverty, the on-going efforts at colonlisation by the US, and the ceaseless threat and violence of men against women.

Many women like Elvire Eugene fight back. Here is an exceprt of a news story about the work of Elvine and other women in Haiti (source: vday.org, *here*)

Lawyers and women's activists representing 30 grassroots organizations from across Haiti came together to discuss what needed to be done to address gender-based-violence in post-earthquake Haiti.

The meeting was coordinated by longtime V-Day activist Elvire Eugene, who is connected to many local partners and national networks working on women's issues in Haiti and is well suited to lead critical work on the ground. Judie C. Roy, a former presidential candidate and prominent activist, was also in attendance, as well as members of the Women's Ministry. During the meeting, a Task Force was formed to see the group's work through to completion. Members chose Elvire Eugene, Judie C. Roy and activist Marie Gislhene Mompremier to lead the Task Force.

Here are some links to other stories about activist women in Haiti.

From the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti:

“Haitian Peasant Women as Poto Mitan, Central Pillar”: An interview with Iderle Brénus Gerbier (Other Words)

20 December 2011 Comments: 0

By Alexis Erkert, Other Words

[Excerpt:]

The Haitian society is essentially macho, and the Haitian politicians and international interests oppress Haiti’s own children. Farmers become victims again and again and women are always held back. But these women continue to support their country.

Our goal is to achieve respect for the rights of Haitian women. Despite their position as poto mitan, as the main carriers of the national economy, rural Haitian women always suffer in our society. Most of these women have no direct access to agricultural lands and income is strictly controlled by men, despite their role in agriculture.

See also:

Two Years Later, Where Is The Outrage? (Lethaitilive.org) — January 3, 2012

and,

http://ijdh.org/projects/rapp

And finally, for now, From MADRE's website (please click on the title just below for more):

Press Release: Groups Release Report Analyzing Sexual Exploitation in Haiti
Posted on: Thursday, January 12, 2012
Keywords: Haiti, Latin American and Caribbean, Combating Violence Against Women, Human Rights Avocacy
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
CONTACT: Stephanie Küng, MADRE, media@madre.org;
Blaine Bookey, Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, bookeybl@uchastings.edu;
Margaret Satterthwaite, NYU Global Justice Clinic, satterth@exchange.law.nyu.edu

Haitian Women and Girls Trading Sex to Survive
Groups Release Report Analyzing Sexual Exploitation

January 12, 2012—New York, NY—Two years after an earthquake devastated Haiti, a report detailing the impact of sexual exploitation on displaced Haitian women and girls has been released. The report is authored by MADRE, the Commission of Women Victims for Victims (KOFAVIV), the International Women’s Human Rights (IWHR) Clinic at the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law, the Global Justice Clinic at NYU School of Law (GJC) and the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies at UC Hastings College of the Law (CGRS).

The drastic increase in sexual violence in displacement camps has been well documented since the disaster. But another face of the epidemic has emerged as a pressing issue: the sexual exploitation of displaced women and girls.

Displaced women and girls have lost family and community members, along with the protection and safety nets those relationships offered. Because of poverty and a lack of economic opportunity, many women and girls are forced to trade sex for shelter, money or even a single meal. In many cases, those demanding sex are the very people who hold themselves out as representatives of the people—members of camp committees.

The report was compiled based on interviews with Haitian women and girls who have either engaged in transactional sex or who know people who have. Information was also collected through interviews with Haitian government officials, service providers and women’s rights advocates. The report highlights current barriers to addressing sexual exploitation and offers recommendations to protect the human rights of women and girls engaging in transactional sex. In addition, the report offers a unique legal analysis of the protections available for women and girls who have experienced a wide range of human rights violations associated with sexual exchanges.

Marie Eramithe Delva, co-founder of KOFAVIV said today, “Displaced women and girls are being forced by circumstance into survival sex. It is an epidemic, but one that has gotten little attention from the Haitian government or international community.”

Lisa Davis, MADRE Human Rights Advocacy Director and Clinical Professor of Law for the IWHR Clinic at CUNY Law School said today, “International law recognizes that an individual’s decision to engage in sex should be the result of free choice. The majority of women and girls interviewed do not have a choice. They are displaced and with few other options. In turn, they are at increased risk of sexual violence and health threats. We must shed light on this crisis.”

Blaine Bookey, Staff Attorney for the CGRS said today, “Although almost all individuals interviewed for this report recognized that sexual exploitation is widespread, representatives of government agencies responsible for addressing sexual exploitation hold stereotypes related to gender and poverty that present an obstacle to implementing practical solutions. Beyond this, the Haitian government’s inability to develop a meaningful response to sexual exploitation is also due to a stark lack of resources. I am hopeful the report will help breakdown these harmful stereotypes and bring much needed resources to bear.”

Margaret Satterthwaite, Professor of Clinical Law for the GJC and Faculty Director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU School of Law said today, “Survival sex will not end until Haitian women and girls can access what they need to live. Haitian women want economic opportunities and the capacity to access basic resources. The international community should work closely with the Haitian government to create jobs, extend microcredit to women, and provide free education to all.”

Virtual Briefing: Join the authors of this report on Tuesday January 17 at 1 pm EST, for a conference call. RSVP at media@madre.org for call-in information.

To read the report in full, click here.

Someone on Answerbag.com asks a really misogynist question about feminists

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Real) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 16:45:00 +0000

image is from here

Just another of a billion examples of how the Internet makes promoting and perpetrating misogyny all too easy. All that follows is on Answerbag.com. The link to the site is below.

Question
Help answer this question below.
Did the existence of Andrea Dworkin prove that Neanderthal women were feminists?

response to the above question is by JulianReal

Your question is obnoxious and insulting.

Andrea Dworkin (1946-2005) was a very important US white feminist philosopher and political activist. She was also a brilliant writer. She worked for justice and human rights for and with women across race and class.

Her work including fighting to establish for all women the right to be free of ridiculous and misogynist attitudes like the one glaringly displayed in your question. Your remark proves we haven't come nearly far enough in the struggle to attain justice and human rights (or, even, basic respect) for women, including feminists.

People, like you, who promote the insulting mischaracterisation of women, including of feminists, are contributing to the overall oppressive condition of women being publicly and privately disrespected and assaulted--verbally and otherwise--by men.

Feminism is hated because women are hated. Anti-feminism is a direct expression of misogyny; it is the political defense of women hating.
-- Andrea Dworkin

Read more: http://www.answerbag.com/category/life-and-society_32

Interview with Dr. Vandana Shiva on sustainability, seed banks, organic agriculture, and spirituality

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Real) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 21:00:00 +0000

Uploaded by DedanZumbi on Jan 9, 2012

This is what the male interviewer says about the interview:

Dr. Vandana Shiva and I speak on sustainable ecological agriculture and how it relates to the environmental, culture, nationality and spirituality. I was a bit nervous meeting my heroine and kinda sick from the new Indian environment.

The Radically Feminist Vandana Shiva on Patriarchal Economics and Agribusiness

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Real) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 19:14:00 +0000

image is from here

Small farmers, many of them women, are threatened the world over by corporate agribusiness that follows an aggressive economic-cultural-political anti-Life practice steeped and infused with Western White Male Supremacist values and worldviews. In India, among many other places, there is a crisis. Dr. Shiva has been addressing this crisis, offering radically feminist solutions to the problems of an increasingly globalised conservative capitalist patriarchal way of being that is as unethical ans it is unsustainable.

For some of the written history of this analysis and protest, please click on the following link (title):

Monocultures, Monopolies, Myths And The Masculinisation Of Agriculture
by Vandana Shiva
Director Research Foundation for Science,
Technology and Ecology - India

I found what follows at Toward Freedom *here*. But the original is from Al Jazeera and may be linked to at the end of this excerpt.

Vandana Shiva: No Therapy in Retail
Monday, 09 January 2012 09:15 Vandana Shiva

Share
Al Jazeera

The entry of big corporations into the food chain pushes up retail costs and decreases the share of the farmer.

New Delhi, India - In November 2011, when the UPA government announced that it had cleared the entry of big retail chains such as Walmart and Tesco into India through 51 per cent Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail, it justified the decision saying that FDI in retail would boost food security and benefit farmers' livelihoods.

But the assurance that FDI in retail would ease inflation did not resolve the political crisis the government was facing; it deepened it. Parliament was stalled for several days of the Winter Session, after which the government was forced to withdraw its decision.

The story of FDI in retail goes back to 2005, when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed an agriculture agreement with the US, along with the nuclear agreement. On the board of the US-India Knowledge Initiative in Agriculture, as it is called, sit Monsanto (the world's leading producer of GM seeds), ConAgra (among the world's biggest agribusinesses, along with Cargill) and Walmart (the world's largest retail giant).

Protests had prevented Walmart's entry into retail, but, in 2007, it did get a backdoor entry through a joint-venture with Bharti (their stores go by the names of Easyday and Best Price Modern Wholesale). No back-end infrastructure has been built so far, one of the other claims of the government about why we need retail giants.

The way the UPA government tried to ram through the decision on FDI in retail - without consulting the opposition parties, or even its allies - was clearly undemocratic. But the decision itself was also flawed. It illustrated a disconnect between an ideology based on market fundamentalism - which is the leaning of the present government - and the Indian reality of small farms and small retail.

Continue reading

Caribbean Feminist News for the first few days of 2012 and links to CODE RED

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Real) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 18:33:00 +0000

SEEING RED

Links and things from the CODE RED feminist collective. Visit our website for critical Caribbean feminist commentary.

CODE RED for gender justice | Promote your Page too

what appears above is from CODE RED's tumblr *here*

This is cross-posted from CODE RED. I encourage you to link to them directly by clicking
just below and reading more news there.

Feminist conversations on Caribbean life

You may also click on the title just below to link back to what follows. With thanks to everyone in the collective.

The Good, Bad and the Ugly of Caribbean feminist, gender & sexuality news this week
Here are some of the top stories in Caribbean feminist and gender news for Jan 1-9, 2012:

The Good
Guyana to begin vaccinating girls against HPV this week! This month is Cervical Cancer Awareness month. What a great way to begin the month! Time for the other Caribbean countries to follow Guyana’s lead!

WIN-Belize is in the process of revitalizing its Young Women Mentorship Program and you can get involved.

Some Good, Some Bad
Dominica and The Bahamas have been ranked among the top 10 ethical destinations in the developing world for 2012. Countries were evaluated in three main categories: environmental protection, social welfare and human rights. Dominica was lauded for its renewable energy policy and for being one of the few Caribbean nations to sign a statement of LGBTQ rights at the UN in 2011. The Bahamas received kudos for its commitment to shark conservation. Both Dominica and The Bahamas were ranked highly in terms of political rights, civil liberties and press freedom. Barbados was on last year’s list, but wasn’t included in the 2012 ranking; the reason given was that the government has not shown itself to be committed to its promises of environmental protection and sustainability.

The Bad
Woman in Guyana dies after unsafe abortion even though abortion has been legal there since 1996. Former Minister of Health says that women may be uninformed about certified abortion providers.

The Ugly
JLP described PM Portia Simpson Miller’s decision to appoint three women to the Cabinet as ‘jobs for the girls’.Three woman cabinet members dismissed as illegitimate, unnecessarily costly excess baggage just because they are women, no, girls!

Want more Caribbean feminist/women’s/gender news?
Find CODE RED on facebook or follow us on twitter.
CODE RED is a feminist collective of Caribbean women and men. We are the only online source for daily updates and aggregation of Caribbean news and links related to feminist, gender and sexuality issues (via our facebook page)

Do the Ends Justify [the Meanness of] the Means? What are the Values and Practices of the Internet Blog-and-Comment Culture?

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Real) — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 20:36:00 +0000

DO THE

image is from here

A friend recently reminded me that a blogger colleague of hers insists on a strict set of values and practices at her blog: no insults, no ad hominen attacks, no disrespect, no tearing down of other human beings to build oneself up. The blog is defined as feminist and that understanding of 'feminist' is one I grew up with. Audre Lorde took issue with stuff Mary Daly wrote; Andrea Dworkin and Audre Lorde had very different perspectives on the erotic; Dworkin and MacKinnon weren't on the same page with what happened to their anti-pornography ordinance in Canada, but that didn't mean they couldn't be respectful of one another. Audre Lorde wrote explicitly about the need for oppressed people to find respectful and compassionate ways to engage across differences such as race and sexuality. Alice Walker has demonstrated an increasingly rare form of compassion for people who structurally oppress women. See this piece for more, from her blog:

http://alicewalkersgarden.com/2009/12/a-letter-to-tiger-woods-from-alice-walker/

I don't see much care, respect, or mutual regard on the internet any more among people who are not the most socially dominant. Or, even, among those who are--to each other. Insults fly easily. Disrespect and snark is the increasingly defaulted mode of communicating disagreement.

The whole of contemporary Western society, of many societies, is set up to infuse spoken and unspoken acts with misogynist hatred and degradation. When women notice and speak out about it, the act of objecting or resisting or organising against such misogyny is itself termed another form of hatred: misandry. I don't believe objecting to one's people being denigrated as a class by another more powerful class of persons constitutes a form of hatred. Self-love on the class level is not hatred. Resistance to being used and abused on grand and grotesque scales isn't hatred either. So we have to be careful about how language is used to mean anything at all.

In my own experience, any challenge to white power and entitlement by anyone who isn't white is considered an insulting thing to do--to whites. As noted above, the same holds true for women's serious challenges to men's unearned and lethal power over and against women and girls. It makes sense, in a perverse sort of way, for the uplift and mutual support among members of an oppressed group to be portrayed as action that is hostile to their oppressors. Such a portrait of marginalised and subordinated people by those who exploit and assault them is part of how social dominants maintain control and power over them/us. The very use of the term "uppity" for politically active anti-racist African American men and women and for anti-sexist women across race is proof enough that trying to get where white men are structurally located is not acceptable to most white men. The amount of anti-feminism among men across race demonstrates men's contempt not only for women but for women's efforts to be free of men's dominance. Andrea Dworkin, among other feminists, noted that whether women resist men's dominance or not they will still be degraded by men. This truism applies to many oppressed people and is reason enough to resist and organise revolutionary strategies of social change.

I have tried to create a blog space that is free of snark but I have failed at times. I think I used to be a snarkier person than I am now, only in part because I see it taking over what were once reasonably compassionate zones of discourse. Snark is "in". I've never been one to do what is fashionable, especially if it is part of how the status quo stays empowered. But another reason for doing away with snark is that I've come to see the raced and gendered dynamics of snark and self-satisfied insult-hurling. It wears thin, in my experience, as a way of communicating important ideas and political challenges. If I had it to over again, I might withdraw all the insults I've hurled at MRAs here. Not because I think MRAs are respectful of women or care about being respectful even among themselves. I see most MRAgendas as profoundly dangerous to women and I've seen how bullied MRAs are among each other. I guess I now see how being snarky towards MRAs is practicing their own well-honed values.

I just want to opt out of the pattern of anti-feminist disrespect and degradation. It isn't what brilliant radical feminist authors and activists like Audre Lorde and Alice Walker taught in their own work.

I believe in having role models as long as we don't turn them into idolised G-ds. I've been accused of doing just that with the use of a term I occasionally have used here, "Lorde knows..." My point in bringing Audre's last name into the term wasn't to pretend she wasn't human. It was to note that her humanity was as divine as anyone else's, and so why not say "Lorde knows" instead of "Lord knows"?

I understand Audre Lorde and Alice Walker to be deeply human beings. I studied their work to understand what "feminist ethics" means, in practice, in daily life. It means, in part, not participating in bully-culture.

A lot of what I've seen men and whites do is bully other people to bolster their/our own already structurally well-supported sense of self. Of course any individual's sense of self may be worn down by verbal or physical assaults against them. Or by various injustices flowing from institutionalised heterosexism, racism, and misogyny. People with white power don't necessarily have the powers afforded people who are heterosexual and male. Men are degraded socially by class, race, and sexuality if not by gender.

Among males and among whites, I've seen many hierarchies develop and how the values of social dominance infuse interactions designed to have a few control the many.

I was bullied for seven years in grade school. I felt the emotional burn of humiliation and the visceral fear of being beaten. I generally avoided being hit but not always. I'm not into physical fights. I was called a coward for not fighting boys. "Cowardice" in male supremacist and masculinist world is often understood to be akin to "pacifism". As I recall from my early life and accounts since of the era, white male hippies were called misogynist names by old-fashioned patriarchal white men who believed real men shoot and kill one another--well, not one another necessarily, but shoot and kill men and women of color in many parts of the Americas and across Asia. I was too young to be part of hippy culture but I did grow up with an erotic aesthetic build on the idea that males could be gentle and caring people. One of the boys who bullied me when I was young was degraded at home by his father. I didn't know this at the time. I kind of wish I had, as it might have helped me despise him less. That I despised him wasn't evidence of me being a man-hater. It was evidence of me trying to find some way to feel better about myself by distancing myself from him and his hurtful behavior.

On MRA sites over the years, I've seen little to no evidence that any of those men value care and gentleness. I see how the culture of bullying, meanness, and self-aggrandisement pervades particular disagreements and overall discourse. I see how terrorism and threats of gross brutality are collectively passed off as appropriate treatment of those they disagree with.

The last time I engaged with an MRA on this blog, I did so with the understanding--his and my own--that we would attend to each other's perspectives with regard and respect, no flame throwing, no verbal assaults. I regret he ducked out of the conversation. It was indeed refreshing to have one like that with someone I strongly disagree with on several points. See the links just below for more of that. They are from the blog in late May and early June of 2011.

http://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2011/05/can-enemies-become-allies-conversation.html

http://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2011/06/enemies-or-allies-part-2-of.html

http://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2011/06/can-enemies-become-allies-conversation.html

http://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2011/06/are-womens-rights-also-human-rights-for.html

Some women have written to me privately about how much bullying there is among white self-defined feminist bloggers and commenters online. Facebook, in particular, can be a vicious place to hang out in: I go there rarely. I know women who have been driven out of there by other women who apparently valued being very mean and hurtful. (And by men too. Lots and lots of men.) The women who have written to me don't or won't speak out against the very patriarchal practices (their determination, which I agree with) of woman-demeaning and woman-hurting done by white women; they don't want to be more targeted for harm and degradation than they already are by people they want to believe are on the same side of their political struggles.

I've witnessed some white women engaging in the very threatening tactics of the men's rights activists they claim to oppose and be so different from. According to some radical feminist women of color I know, they are behaving in similarly cyber-terroristic ways in the name of doing feminist work. I can't say for sure but I don't believe Audre Lorde, Andrea Dworkin, or Alice Walker would call such behavior "feminist". Alice is still alive and perhaps somewhere in her work she addresses this directly. If you know of such passages, please let me know of them. Some of Andrea's and Audre's work is still being published and somewhat available to be read. I'll refer you to their writing to verify my hunch and not to rely my own suppositions about it.

Meanness, callousness, and cruelty weren't feminist values according to every feminist activist and writer I grew up reading and adoring--unless I greatly misread their work, of coure. Given what I've witnessed early in my life and more recently, I currently understand being mean and cruel as definitionally white and male supremacist ways of being human. And while anyone can participate in such behavior, the practice of it seems to only reinforce and maintain white and male supremacist power not ameliorate, mitigate, or eradicate it.

I don't mean to put value on a liberal kind of humanistic kindness or on "civility", which as I understand it, is a dishonest and despicable form of covering up the bloodiness of a society's genocidal and gynocidal practices by appearing to be 'good-natured' and 'reasonable' in the classist, racist, misogynist sense. I admire oppressed people who don't prioritise caring about oppressors over caring about the oppressed. And all of the most radical activists I've known personally didn't make it their practice to consider any class of people inhuman, no matter how entitled or oppressive.

I've encountered some white women, mostly women who don't identify as radical feminist, who consider men to be less-than-human. When I've asked them if they'd advocate a political perspective that supports women of color viewing whites--men and women, as less-than-human, they don't answer the question. I believe this means they don't see how lethal and horrific the power of their institutionalised whiteness is. I've encountered men of color who believe they are more oppressed than women of color. When I note that men of color systematically assault women of color in their homes and beyond, they don't respond.

More startling still, I've encountered many white men--heterosexual and economically-empowered at that--who believe they are the most oppressed and put-down group on Earth. To this there isn't much to say, really. Such avoidance of knowing how other people live demonstrates a kind of self-centeredness and willful refusal to empathise with people-not-oneself. Meaningful intervention into such normalised sociopathy, unfortunately, is difficult for me to imagine. I've certainly not had much luck shifting that kind of political self-unawareness and spiritual myopia through conversation. I attempted to address these issues with James Huff in the posts linked to above but he disappeared before we got that far.

I wish us all luck and strength as we find ways to radically transform a very mean society into one that cares about humanity and all life on Earth, off-line if not also on.

Audre Lorde Remembered

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Real) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 00:26:00 +0000

Lorde in 1983. Photograph: Robert Alexander/Getty Images. Click *here* for where I found this photo of Audre Lorde

It startles me to write it: Audre Lorde left us twenty years ago this November. I had the great pleasure of meeting Audre Lorde at a conference a few years before her passing. I shall never forget it. I was nervous, the way people talk about being nervous about meeting a great leader or famous actor whose work they've admired. I held back, wanting to be sure the women in line had the opportunity to greet her and share their own moments. Finally when there was no one else in line, I moved towards the table where she sat and greeted her. We exchanged a few words. She was kind and strong. Beyond that meeting, both before it and since, my overall politics and understandings of "what's wrong with the world" have been profoundly shaped by her work and words; the deep insight and wisdom in each enriches me to this day.

I've come across the following article and am reposting just an excerpt linking you to the full story. This is an account by Jackie Kay of how Audre Lorde affected her life. The article may be linked to *here at The Guardian*.

Lorde was openly lesbian before the gay movement existed. Her wise words often seem eerily prescient. "Sometimes we are blessed with being able to choose the time and the arena, and the manner of our revolutions, but more usually we must do battle where we are standing." Back in the 70s and 80s Lorde's was an important and singular voice: "I began to ask each time: 'What's the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?' Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, 'disappeared' or run off the road at night … our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered for ever."

For more with Jackie Kay, please see this (you may click on the title just below to link to the web page that has the podcast):

Guardian children's books podcast: Jackie Kay talks about writing for young people and reads a poem
Audio (7min 28sec), 29 Sep 2011: Jackie Kay talks to children's books site member Luke Shore about her half-Nigerian, half-Scottish upbringing and her creative process.

Indigenous Day of Resistance press release

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Real) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 00:13:00 +0000

What follows was found *here* at the Inteligenta Indigena Novajoservo™ (IIN). You may also click on the title below to link to this news at another website. With thanks to the activists at both sites and with support for all who attend.

INDIGENOUS DAY of Resistance, Friday, January 27, 2012, San Francisco, CA

INDIGENOUS DAY of Resistance, Friday, January 27, 2012, San Francisco, CA on Betty Tuininga's TwitWall: INDIGENOUS DAY OF RESISTANCE

INDIGENOUS RIGHTS RALLY & FORUM

January 27, 2012
Indigenous Unity March at 10:30 AM

Meet at the Human Rights Commission
25 Van Ness Avenue
San Francisco, CA

March to the United Nations Plaza
Indigenous Rights Forum & Rally 11:00 AM

An Indigenous led Movement to Decolonize and Occupy the United Nations to demand repatriations for the theft of Tribal Lands, gold & other natural resources; and address issues of Civil Rights Violations, Hate Crimes, Broken Treaties, and the Human Rights inherent to ALL Indigenous People.

For More Information Contact:

United Native Americans,Inc.
United Native Americans,Inc@gmail.com
(510)672-7187

Censored News Honors Many Indigenous Women, selected by readers

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Real) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

poster image is from here

There are many groups of activists and heroes who are utterly ignored and willfully shut out of dominant society's cultural, economic, and political news. One such group is Indigenous women. In North America, there is a corporate media policy of not reporting news from an Indigenist perspective, or that is produced by Indigenous people. Anti-Indigenist white male supremacy works very hard to leave all of us with the idea that if Indigenous people exist and are activist, they must be men.

Leave it to Brenda Norrell at the very appropriately named "Censored News" website to publicly honor and make more widely visible the centuries-long reality of Indigenous women's activism. What follows is copied and re-posted with permissions granted by Brenda. She states:

Please feel free to repost this article and photo, with author and Censored News credits appearing at top of the article. Media, for contact info for interviews of the heroes: brendanorrell@gmail.com

Thank you to all the named and unnamed, recognised and unrecognised Indigenous women activists who fight battles unseen by most non-Indigenous people. And thank you, once again, to Brenda Norrell. Love and justice to you in 2012.

You may link back to the original site by clicking on the title just below. There are many more honored Indigenous activists named in that post beyond what I have re-posted here. I also provide at link back to the original site and article at the bottom of this post.

Censored News Person of the Year: The Indigenous Woman

By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com

Who made a difference this year?

The Indigenous Person of the Year, selected by readers of Censored News, is the Indigenous Woman.

Debra White Plume, Morning Star Gali, Waziyata Win, Tantoo Cardinal, Kahentinetha Horn and her daughter Dr. Ojistoh Horn, Corrina Gould, Kandi Mossett, Louise Benally, Buffy St Marie, Rigoberta Menchu, Hacha C Norris, Cheyenne Bellecourt Eagleman and many more were selected by readers as the Person of the Year. Censored News focuses on Indigenous Peoples and human rights.

Debra White Plume, Lakota grandmother and longtime activist from Pine Ridge, S.D., received the most nominations. Shown in the top left photo, White Plume, grandmother and voice against uranium mining on Lakota lands, was among those arrested this year at the White House during the action to halt the Tarsands and Keystone XL dirty oil pipeline during September.

Gwen Caldwell said that Debra White Plume was her top choice. "I selected Debra, because she sets an excellent example of what we as women should be doing and how we should be living. She is humble courageous, speaks her truth with honor and integrity!"

CJ Christian said, "Debra White Plume has made herself visible before the UN, fighting to save the Black Hills and to stop the Keystone pipeline. She works tirelessly for the First Nations People with sincere devotion, dedication, spirituality and integrity."

Roxann Karonhiarokwas selected Kahentinetha Horn, publisher of Mohawk Nation News, and her daughter, Dr. Ojistoh Horn, the first female Mohawk medical doctor from Kahnawake. Roxann described the mother and daughter as, “An amazing duet and strong women."

Roxann said, “I nominated Ojistoh because she delivers our babies. Being a matrilineal society she is responsible and takes a hands on role in the delivery of the mothers of our nation." She added, "That woman does not sleep. She does house calls and even looks after people during family events on her time off! I love that beautiful woman. She’s an inspiration and deserves it!”

"Kahentinetha is a woman who always worked for our people! I am honored to say I know these lovely ladies personally.”

Ben Manuel selected four dynamic, tireless human rights warriors: "Waziyata Win, Jessica Yee, Morning Star Gali and Debra White Plume." Richard Flittie added another voice of recognition for Morning Star Gali and Corrina Gould, both longtime activists struggling to save sacred places and reclaim Indigenous lands in California.

Manuel was among many who selected Dakota activist Waziyata Win for her work to bring Indigenous perspectives to the Decolonize/Occupy movement. (Shown in top right photo. Click for Oakland video.)

Among the dynamic Native American youths honored was Kandi Mossett, who hosted the Indigenous Environmental Network annual gathering in her homeland this summer, was arrested at the White House protesting the Tarsands Keystone XL pipeline in September, and was featured as a voice to protect Mother Earth at COP 17 in Durban, South Africa, in December.

Hahana Bear selected Kandi, shown in lower left photo at top of page. Kandi was compelled to speak out after the deaths of friends and family from the oil and gas trucks, and devastating pollution, on her homeland, the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nations in North Dakota, also known as Three Affiliated Tribes and Fort Berthold.

Indigenous Women Honored

Ruth Nolan honored Cahuilla Indian Elder and Tribal Leader Dr. Katherine Siva Sauvel, Morongo/Cahuilla, who passed away this past November.

Nolan said, “I selected Dr. Katherine Siva Sauvel, Cahuilla elder. elder, teacher and Cahuilla culture bearer (1920-2011) because she has been instrumental in saving the endangered Cahuilla language and way of life, and dedicated her life to passing along the oral histories and language and culture of the Cahuilla into the modern world. She was the first American Indian inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame, and is a co-founder of the Malki Museum, the first American Indian museum in the United States.

“I had the incredible honor and good fortune to have met and learned much from Dr. Sauvel through my California desert Indian scholarship and position at College of the Desert, and was and remain incredibly touched, professionally and personally, by her extreme generosity and gentle yet strong touch in all matters related to sharing with so many others her native culture, to which she dedicated her passion and life's work. She is deeply appreciated by people across the country and globe, and truly missed.”

Toni Reynolds selected Cheyenne Bellecourt Eagleman. “She tells it like it is. She doesn't care if people get upset with her or not. She fights for Native rights, works with young people, raises her own children as a single parent, and works with numerous other issues. She is very respected and well known.”

Richard Flittie honored Pte San Win. "She is a young Lakota woman who lives on the Pine Ridge Reservation and works hard to take care of all the people there who need help. She is raising money for propane and for firewood and continues in her fathers footsteps on the political front for the Lakota people.Things like the Keystone XL pipeline. And she is always supporting and encouraging the carrying on of tradition and ceremony for her people."

Jeanne Combo selected Wangari Muta Maathai, who passed away in September of this year. She started the Green Belt Movement in Africa in 1977. She was honored for working with women to improve their livelihoods by increasing their access to resources like firewood for cooking and clean water. "She became a great advocate for better management of natural resources and for sustainability, equity, and justice."

Becka Nan Amos selected Hacha C. Norris. “Hacha is a strong and fearless woman who has taken her own education seriously -- and by this I mean learning truths and concepts the overculture has tried to hide and/or eradicate. She understands deeply the wrongness of the overculture and speaks out about it regularly with her actions as well as her words. I have learned so much from her, especially concerning my own white privilege -- and that's what I respect the most about her -- she's not afraid to call out people on the ways of thinking that we so badly need to change but often cannot even see. She's got guts, and not the greedy kind.”

Hacha C Norris, said, “Debra White Plume, Bertha Gutierrez, Buffy St. Marie, Tom BK Goldtooth, Alex White Plume, Kris Barney, Evo Morales, Subcomandante Marcos, Rigoberta Menchú, and yes all the 'Protestors' (whose names are many) who fight for Indigenous sovereignty, self-determination, truth, justice and an end to capitalist exploitation and plunder of Mother Earth, and those who fight for food, heat, housing, education, jobs, health care and a voice.”

Bertha Gutierrez thanked Hacha C. Norris for selecting her. "I am humbled. All the people you have mentioned are people who inspire me and in no way shape or form do I feel I could fit in their shoes. Thank you for also inspiring me. Mi respeto para ti."

The women of the Blood Reserve are honored who faced off with oil and gas trucks this year in Alberta, Canada. On the southern border, O'odham Ofelia Rivas, and O'odham struggling against border agents and repression are honored. Northern Paiute traditional gatherer Wesley Dick, Kwassuh, is honored for refusing to accept the charges of Nevada Fish and Wildlife, and demanding justice. The longstanding efforts of Western Shoshone Carrie and Mary Dann are also recognized for their decades of struggle for the land and people. Lakotas Kent Lebsock, Debra White Plume and Alex White Plume, are honored for the Owe Aku International Justice Project.

The Navajo and Hopi of Black Mesa are honored who work together in their struggle to protect the land, air and water. Navajo Louise Benally and Ofelia Rivas, O'odham, are honored for speaking out at protests in December against the corporate profiteers, now coopting Arizona legislators, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in Phoenix.

Please click *here* for the rest of the post.

Yanar Mohammed on The War (Men's Against Women) In Iraq

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Real) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 22:33:00 +0000

photo of Yanar Mohammed with a male soldier is from here

What follows is an excerpt from an article I read at OpEdNew.com. For the whole article, please go *here*.

... Yanar Mohammed , founding director of the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), was interviewed on the state of Iraq as the American occupation ends. She described Iraqi cities full of destroyed buildings and broken streets, with intermittent electricity and unsafe drinking water. Iraq, she said, is now a country of 99% poor and 1% rich living in the Green Zone, burdened with the most corrupt government in the world that is giving control of oil resources to multinational oil companies.

Iraqi women "are the biggest losers" in this war, Mohammed asserted, ending up with extreme lack of freedom, lack of social security, lack of opportunity, and increased sexual terror. Her organization has conducted extensive high-risk investigations into the prevalence and plight of Iraqi widows, women kidnapped and killed, and women trafficked into prostitution. Fifteen percent of Iraq's 1 to 2 million widows are seeking temporary marriages out of economic desperation and extreme insecurity in being a single woman. By 2006, OWFI had observed an "epidemic rise" in the number of women prostituted in brothels, workplaces, and hideouts in Baghdad. Through covert investigation, they learned of the trafficking of women within Iraq for Iraqi men in all regions and for US military, as well as to nearby countries. Democracy in Iraq has been crushed for women.
American women soldiers in Iraq were big losers, also. Nearly 200,000 served there, in as dangerous situations as men. Though barred from combat, they patrolled streets with machine guns, served as gunners on vehicles, dismantled explosives, driven trucks down bomb-ridden streets, and rescued the dead and injured in battle zones. These same women found themselves, concurrently, caught in a second, more damaging war - a private, preemptive one in the barracks. As one female soldier put it, "They basically assume that because you are a girl in the Army, you're obligated to have sex with them." Resisting sexual assault in the barracks spills over to battlefield, according to many women veterans, in the form of relentless verbal sexual harassment, punitive high-risk assignments, and the morbid sense that your back is not being watched. ...

Andrea Dworkin Quote on a T-shirt made by activists!

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Real) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 22:11:00 +0000

For more about what you see below, including how to purchase the t-shirt, please click *here*.

Feminist Political Patch -Feminism is hated because women are hated -Andrea Dworkin
From DuckDuckClothing

Black patch with print of Andrea Dworkin quote:

'Feminism is hated because women are hated. Anti-feminism is a direct expression of misogyny; it is the political defense of women hating.'

Patch measures approx 20cm x 10cm

Lovingly hand printed by friendly activist types.

For more about the shop that produces this, please see:

Duck Duck Goose, Adelaide, Australia

Thank you to all the activists in Adelaide!

Feminist Action and Event Alert: The 12th AWID International Forum: "Transforming Economic Power to Advance Women's Rights and Justice", April 19-22, 2012 in Istanbul, Turkey

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Real) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 22:06:00 +0000

This was sent to me and I'm happy to post it here for all who are interested:

EARLY BIRD DEADLINE EXTENDED TO JANUARY 20th 2012
The 12th AWID International Forum:
Transforming Economic Power to Advance Women's Rights and Justice
April 19-22, 2012 | Istanbul, Turkey

The deadline to register and take advantage of the Early Bird rates has been extended to January 20th, 2012. http://www.forum.awid.org/forum12/registration/

Join us at the 2012 AWID International Forum where 2,000 women’s rights leaders and activists from around the world will come together to strategize, network, celebrate, and learn in a highly charged atmosphere that fosters deep discussions and sustained personal and professional growth.

Exhibit Hall and Marketplace: From publications and products to handicrafts and textiles, the Exhibit and Marketplace has something for everyone. Shop around and peruse the latest publications, tools and resources from publishers, funders and others. Or stock up on one-of-a-kind, handcrafted treasures from women-owned businesses and collectives in the region. If you are interested in being part of our exhibit or marketplace area please download the application form. http://www.forum.awid.org/forum12/about/activities-and-events/

Campaigns Corner: This is a space where organizations currently involved in campaigns can share information and literature about their campaign and how to take part. Campaign exhibitors should be present at their table for the duration of the display. If you are interested in being part of the campaign corner email us at forum12@awid.org

Hotels: Hotel rooms have been blocked at various hotels in various locations and can be booked when you register for the forum here. http://www.forum.awid.org/forum12/registration/

Free shuttles will be provided between Forum hotel areas and the AWID Forum 2012 venue twice daily. Meeting points will be announced closer to the date of the Forum. Please make your hotel reservations early; bookings are on a first-come first-served basis. Deadline for hotel reservations is April 10, 2012.
For any queries about hotel matters, please contact us via email: info@awidregistration.org

Visit the 2012 Forum website and find out more http://www.forum.awid.org/forum12/ about the Forum theme, program, logistical information and answers to frequently asked questions.

If you have any questions on registration, please contact us at forum12@awid.org . Be sure to check the website regularly for frequent updates on Forum 2012 preparations including fundraising information.

Please help us spread the word and forward this message to all your relevant networks, colleagues and friends!

Warmest Regards,

AWID Forum Team

A Message from Gloria Steinem to the Public Regarding the Trafficking of Girls and Women

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Real) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:31:00 +0000

While I wish it were the case that Western whites asking for money wasn't necessary to achieve justice and liberation for all girls and women worldwide, it remains the case that whites asking for money to support the activism of women of color is an on-going necessity. This is so in large part because whites in the West have much more money than people of color in the West, and whites listen to whites more than to people of color, especially female people of color.

With gratitude to all the women and girls, white and of color, who work so hard to liberate women and girls from systems of gross exploitation, economic abuse, and misogynistic harm.

I was what follows by email and may also be found *here*:

Dear Friend of Women and Girls,
Many things have changed in the years since I lived in India as a student, but one thing that has continued - and grown worse as the worldwide network of sex trafficking has spread - is the destruction of the lives of women and girls bought and sold in the sex industry.
When I go back to the India that I love - the world's largest democracy, one in which a greater percentage of people vote than in the United States - I know I can go to a section of all major cities and see young women lined up in the street like cattle. If I look through the doorways of brothels in, say, Sonagachi, the main sex trafficking district of Kolkata, I can see the little girls of six or ten that brothel owners tell reporters don't exist.
Among the brave people in India fighting this lethal sex trafficking industry is my friend Ruchira Gupta. A journalist herself, Ruchira was reporting on rural poverty, and was surprised to find villages with almost no young girls and women. When she asked why, she was told, "Don't you know? They've all been taken to Mumbai and Kolkata."
Once she discovered the depth of this reality for at least three million women and girls in India - entrapped, de-humanized and often sent to an early death by injury, despair and disease - she started Apne Aap, which means Self Help; a healing and respectful safe place where women and girls could find refuge, support, advocacy, community and skills to support themselves and their children.
Ten years later, Apne Aap Women Worldwide has grown into a model for anti-sex trafficking activists in other countries. It now has centers in New Delhi and Bihar, as well as Kolkata, and it supports human rights against the sex trafficking and prostitution industry, from working for legislation and law enforcement at the top to offering alternatives and community at the bottom.
The truth is that if Apne Aap had as many supporters outside India as the brothel owners have foreign customers - men from rich countries who literally buy "sex tours" to exploit the poverty of women and children in India - Apne Aap would win.
At an Apne Aap community center, each woman and girl gains access to vocational training, literacy classes, basic education, and learning about her rights and how to recognize when they've been denied. She learns how to file a police report. And I'm proud to announce that in the last year, four teenage girls campaigned against their traffickers and helped to put those criminals behind bars. This is the way the law should function, but sadly, this story is the exception.
In addition to your financial contribution, Apne Aap appeals for your support to help strengthen the Indian anti-trafficking law, the Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act. By signing on, you will be joining Apne Aap's thousands of members in asking for measures that protect girls and women, and impose realistic penalties on the pimps, johns, and traffickers who exploit them. Click here to sign the petition.
I am personally inspired by the bravery, wisdom, innovation and impact of this small organization. It has transformed the scared, abused, uneducated girls and women I met when I first visited India into women who are speaking out for themselves and for others, from the halls of government to international survivors' conferences.
I ask for your support for all the women of Apne Aap. They have given you and me a practical, hopeful way out of the worldwide human rights abuse of sex trafficking.
No longer will you feel helpless, with nowhere to start, when you see and read the news.
And that is a gift in itself -- for you -- or for friends and family in whose name you contribute.
With new hope,

Gloria Steinem
Advisory Committee Chair
Apne Aap Women Worldwide

** Donations made in India to Apne Aap Women Worldwide or in the United States to Apne Aap International are tax deductible.

Happy Solstice, Kwanzaa, Christmas, and Hanukkah to all my readers

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Real) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:18:00 +0000

image is from here

And to those who celebrate none of the above, a very Happy New Year if you celebrate that holiday at this time of year.

Thank you to each of you, dear reader--whether you are new or have been reading here for a longer time.

Thank you for being part of the efforts of this blog to expand and deepen consciousness, and also to support and incite activism geared to bringing into the present a wider world of women of all colors and ages free from patriarchal and white/racist abuses and systems of political and economic oppression.

Blessings to every one of you.

Love, Julian

A Radical Profeminist

On White and Male Privilege and Power

The Voice is Silent: Whitney Houston (1963-2012) dies too young at age 48

Guest post by Itoro Udofia: "Shedding Tears, Looking Back, Moving Forward"

Living a Public and Private Life as a Profeminist

Good-bye, Etta James

Recent Indigenous Women's Activism: Debra White Plume (Lakota), Louise Benally (Navajo), Ofelia Rivas (O'odham), and the women of Winyan Ituwan

An Anti-racist Radical Profeminist Critique of a Socialist Review of White Radical Feminism

On being intergender and anti-gender: a profeminist statement

Woggy on Answerbag is at it again: this time with the myth of man-hating among white feminists

Did Andrea Dworkin hate men? How about Susan Brownmiller? Catherine MacKinnon?

Women Activists in Haiti: Two Years after the Earthquake

Haitian Women and Girls Trading Sex to Survive Groups Release Report Analyzing Sexual Exploitation

Someone on Answerbag.com asks a really misogynist question about feminists

Question

Did the existence of Andrea Dworkin prove that Neanderthal women were feminists?

Interview with Dr. Vandana Shiva on sustainability, seed banks, organic agriculture, and spirituality

The Radically Feminist Vandana Shiva on Patriarchal Economics and Agribusiness

Caribbean Feminist News for the first few days of 2012 and links to CODE RED

SEEING RED

Links and things from the CODE RED feminist collective. Visit our website for critical Caribbean feminist commentary. CODE RED for gender justice | Promote your Page too

Do the Ends Justify [the Meanness of] the Means? What are the Values and Practices of the Internet Blog-and-Comment Culture?

Audre Lorde Remembered

Indigenous Day of Resistance press release

Censored News Honors Many Indigenous Women, selected by readers

Yanar Mohammed on The War (Men's Against Women) In Iraq

Andrea Dworkin Quote on a T-shirt made by activists!

Feminist Political Patch -Feminism is hated because women are hated -Andrea Dworkin

Feminist Action and Event Alert: The 12th AWID International Forum: "Transforming Economic Power to Advance Women's Rights and Justice", April 19-22, 2012 in Istanbul, Turkey

A Message from Gloria Steinem to the Public Regarding the Trafficking of Girls and Women

Happy Solstice, Kwanzaa, Christmas, and Hanukkah to all my readers

Did Andrea Dworkin hate men?
How about Susan Brownmiller?
Catherine MacKinnon?

Haitian Women and Girls Trading Sex to Survive
Groups Release Report Analyzing Sexual Exploitation

Links and things from the CODE RED feminist collective. Visit our website for critical Caribbean feminist commentary.

CODE RED for gender justice | Promote your Page too