Last week, a 60-year-old woman was beaten up at Speaker’s Corner by several men. She was there with a group of women, who had chosen the historic corner of Hyde Park as a meeting place, before heading off to a talk called, “What is Gender.” The men who punched and kicked Maria MacLachlan had come to protest the women on account of their interest in feminism and in discussing the way new conversations and legislation around “gender identity” could impact the women’s movement and women’s rights. The protestors did not frame their anger and inflammatory rhetoric in this way, though. Instead, they labelled the women “TERFs” (trans exclusionary radical feminists) — a word that has come to signify a modern witch: to be silenced, threatened, harassed, punched, and — yes — killed.
The idea that feminists who question the notion of “gender identity” should be beaten and murdered has very rapidly become accepted by self-described leftists. We’re not just talking about Twitter eggs, here. Men with large platforms who are publicly associated with Antifa and groups like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have amplified the “punch TERFs” and “TERFs get the guillotine” message proudly, with the support of their comrades. In reference to The Handmaid’s Tale, many have taken to saying “TERFs get the wall.”
The comparison is a surprisingly (and frighteningly) truthful admission in terms of the intent of these men. “The wall” in The Handmaid’s Tale is where executed bodies are hung, often with placards around their necks that read “Gender Treachery.” The dead bodies serve as a warning to others: do not rebel, do not fight back, do not reject the patriarchal order of things. And this is precisely what these men who use the term “TERF” are saying to women: obey our rule or you will be punished.
Rather than condemning the violence at Speaker’s Corner, numerous trans activists and self-identified leftist men have celebrated and encouraged it.
While some will claim the word “TERF” is neutral, it’s use demonstrates the opposite. It is not a word that women have claimed for themselves — like “slut,” “cunt,” or “bitch,” “TERF” is a word imposed on women to shut them up, bully them, condemn them, smear them, humiliate them, and dismiss them. But more than that: it is a threat. If I think about the times in my life I have been called these words — cunt, bitch, slut — by a man, I have almost always felt the threat of violence behind them. The spitting rage behind those words — the desire to follow through with a punch — is too often present. I have always known these words are used against me as an explicit reminder: you are subordinate. No matter how confident, tough, self-assured, strong, or brave a woman is, these words still put her in her place.
The term, “TERF,” is itself is an intentional manipulation, intended to reframe feminist ideas and activism as “exclusionary,” rather than foundational to the women’s liberation movement. In other words, it is an attack on women-centered political organizing and the basic theory that underpins feminist analysis of patriarchy.
For example, those of us called “TERF” are labelled as such for numerous crimes, including:
Understanding that women are members of an oppressed class of people (a sex class or caste, as feminists like Kate Millett and Sheila Jeffreys have called it)
Challenging the notion of innate or internal gender
Having conversations about “gender identity”
Questioning whether or not children should begin the process of transitioning
Associating with or defending women who have been labelled “TERF”
Understanding that the root of women’s oppression and male supremacy is in biological sex
Understanding that gender is imposed, and is oppressive/exists to create a hierarchy between men and women.
Questioning dogma and mantras like “transwomen are women”
Supporting woman-only space
Disputing an ideology that claims “male” and “female” are not a material reality
These things are not only not criminal, but are at the root of feminism. In other words, in order to understand how patriarchy works, you must first understand who is a member of the dominant class and who is a member of the subordinate class. You must understand that male violence against women is systemic. You must understand that women are not inherently “feminine,” and that men are not inherently “masculine.” You must be willing to have critical conversations and ask challenging questions about the status quo, about dominant ideology, and about political discourse. You must understand that patriarchy began as a means to control women’s reproductive capacity, and that, therefore, women’s biology is very much central to their status as “less than.” You must understand that feminism is a woman-centered movement, and that women have the right to meet and to organize amongst themselves, without members of the oppressor class (men), to advocate toward their own liberation.
What people are saying when they say “TERF” is “feminist.” It is “uppity woman.” What they mean when they say “exclusionary” is not, as is often claimed, “exclusive of trans-identified people,” but “exclusive of males.” Gender non-conformity is welcomed in feminism — feminism is about not conforming to gender norms. If we were interested in conforming, we would, as is often suggested to us, sit down and shut up.
While “TERF” has always been a slur, what has become clear of late is that it is no longer just that: it is hate speech.
Deborah Cameron, a feminist linguist and professor in language and communication at Oxford, explains that there are key questions we must ask to determine whether a term constitutes a slur, such as:
Has the term been imposed or has it been adopted voluntarily by the group the term has been applied to?
Is the word commonly understood to convey hatred or contempt?
Does the word have a neutral counterpart which denotes the same group without conveying hatred/contempt?
Do the people the word is applied to regard it as a slur?
Considering the answers to these questions — that, yes, the term has been imposed on feminists, it is always understood as pejorative, it does have a neutral counterpart (i.e. one could just use the term “feminist”), and feminists have consistently stated that the term is a slur — “TERF” is undoubtedly that. Considering that women are the primary target of this slur and that it is commonly attached to threats of (and, as of late, real-life) violence, there is something more we must now contend with.
Following the violent incident at Speaker’s Corner (which was no accident — one of the perpetrators had publicly expressed his intention to “fuck some terfs up”), I have received hundreds of death threats from men online. I’m not alone, either. Any woman who challenged men’s celebration or defense of the violence at Speaker’s Corner became a target. All of these threats have been attached to the term, “TERF.” Feminists have been labelled in this way specifically to dehumanizethem, to spread outrageouslies about their politics (claiming feminists want to kill trans-identified people or that they advocate genocide), to reframe them as oppressorsof males who identify as gender non-conforming, and to paint them, generally, as evil witches, therefore deserving of violence.
Proliferating lies about and dehumanizing an oppressed group of people in order to justify abuse is a longtime strategy of racists and xenophobes. Hitler used these tools to commit genocide against the Jews. Indeed, propaganda was a key tool of the Nazis in their efforts to spread antisemitism, quell dissent, and turn people against one another. German newspapers printed cartoons and ads depicting antisemitic images and messages.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it,” was Hilter’s guiding mantra. He trusted that people wouldn’t think for themselves and would simply act out of fear or intellectual laziness, jumping on bandwagons without thoroughly questioning the purpose and foundation of those bandwagons. The Holocaust was successful because the public went along with it — because individuals believed the myths and lies proliferated by the Nazis, and because they didn’t stand up, think critically, or push back.
While hate speech laws differ from place to place (and can be blurry), as a general rule, making statements intended to expose people to hatred or violence, or that advocate genocide, constitute hate speech.
Because feminists who challenge gender identity ideology are often (strategically) accused of advocating genocide, let’s be clear: “genocide” does not mean arguing that biological sex is a real thing, challenging the idea that femininity and masculinity are innate, or suggesting certain spaces should be for women and girls alone. What genocide does mean is: killing members of an identifiable group or deliberately inflicting conditions of life aimed to bring about the physical destruction of an identifiable group.
In other words, suggesting that feminists should all be destroyed, fired from their jobs, forced into homelessness, harassed, silenced, removed from society, abused, and sent to the Gulag.
Under the law, advocating or promoting genocide is an indictable offence. Likewise, those who promote hatred against an identifiable group or communicate statements in public that incite hatred or violence against an identifiable group that are likely to lead to a breach of the peace (i.e. for example: what happened at Speaker’s Corner) are guilty of an indictable offence.
But these laws are hard to enforce. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. We should not be charging people willy-nilly for things they say on Twitter. What we most certainly should be doing is holding men to account for inciting violence against women and holding media and other institutions to account for normalizing hate speech.
So, beyond the law, let’s talk about accountability. When the media normalizes hate speech, they become culpable. A publication would not use the n-word to describe a black person or the word “kike” to describe a Jewish person. This is because we know that these terms reinforce racism and justify discrimination and/or abuse against particular groups of people who have been historically and systemically oppressed. When the media, institutions, and authorities become aware that a particular term is being used to incite violence against women, it is their responsibility to condemn or simply refrain from encouraging the use of that language.
The fact that the vast majority of those connecting the word “TERF” to threats of violence, death, and genocide are men is notable. The word has been offered up to those who identify as leftists, who have been, on some level, prevented from making misogynistic statements publicly or otherwise advocating violence against women. Their “progressive” credentials meant that they had to maintain a facade of political correctness. But because women labelled “TERF” have been compared to Nazis and bigots, and because trans activism claims to be allied with the interests of the marginalized (despite its overt anti-feminism and individualist ideology), these leftist men have a socially acceptable excuse. Indeed, they seem to revel in it. It’s as if they were given the green light to scream “bitch” (or perhaps “witch” would be more accurate, considering the targeting of specific unruly women to “punch”… or burn…) over and over again, cheered on by their comrades.
If “TERF” were a term that conveyed something purposeful, accurate, or useful, beyond simply smearing, silencing, insulting, discriminating against, or inciting violence, it could perhaps be considered neutral or harmless. But because the term itself is politically dishonest and misrepresentative, and because its intent is to vilify, disparage, and intimidate, as well as to incite and justify violence against women, it is dangerous and indeed qualifies as a form of hate speech. While women have tried to point out that this would be the end result of “TERF” before, they were, as usual, dismissed. We now have undeniable proof that painting women with this brush leads to real, physical violence. If you didn’t believe us before, you now have no excuse.
Featured image: Jollene Levid (Photo: AF3IRM LA Coordinator Roxanna Avila). National chairperson of AF3IRM, Jollene Levid, speaks with Meghan Murphy about rise of white nationalism in the US, how the alt-right is connected to male supremacy, and what movements can do to better address violence against women of colour.
While the rise in white nationalist activity in the U.S. (and the recent death of a woman named Heather Heyer, who was killed when a car plowed into a crowd of people protesting a white supremacist rally) has sparked discussions, anger, and protests against the alt-right and the white supremacist movement, what has been discussed less is the role of male supremacy. Male violence against women of colour is too-often ignored both in the media and by leftist groups. In order to discuss the connections between misogyny and racism, and what the feminist movement and other progressive movements can do to better address those connections and that violence, I spoke with activist and feminist Jollene Levid.
Jollene Levid is a second generation Filipina-American union organizer and social worker from Los Angeles. For the past 15 years, she has been involved in AF3IRM, an anti-imperialist, transnational feminist organization with 10 chapters across the US. AF3IRM fights for im/migrant women’s rights, and against trafficking and militarism. Jollene is the Founding Chairperson, and currently serves on AF3IRM’s International Committee.
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Meghan Murphy: While the fact of racism as a direct motivation for what happened recently in Charlottesville is a clear, what’s been discussed less, in terms of the rise of the alt-right and (public) white nationalist activity, is male supremacy. Do you see patriarchy and misogyny as connected to the incident in Charlottesville and the rise of the alt-right more broadly?
Jollene Levid: It is no coincidence that the faces of the Charlottesville white terrorists are men. I think that this is an important thing to pause and think about. I think it’s also important to think about the fact that in the few centuries that the US has existed as a country, white supremacy’s spokespeople have always been white men… Bedsheet or no bedsheet.
What we learned in AF3IRM through the study of the history of patriarchy itself is that the first place that a man learns about subjugation of women is in the home. It is programmed, it is structural, and it is no surprise that the alt-right espouse male supremacy just as vehemently as white supremacy.
M: Websites and online forums like 4chan, 8chan, and Reddit have provided a way for Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs) to congregate and increase their presence in public discourse, as well as to recruit and build their numbers — do you see this bolstering of MRA activity and discourse as connected to the white nationalist movement?
J: Yes. This is an important moment we are living in. When we take a step back and think about US history and stages in which there is a sharp economic turn – Reconstruction Era, the Great Depression, the 1970s — we see the same trends amongst white men who see themselves as “attacked” or “disenfranchised.” That trend is to increase xenophobia, racism, sexism. Who is allowed to work the “desirable jobs”? Who is allowed to enter the country? Who is allowed basic rights like voting and fair housing?
When you look at MRA public discourse and white supremacy, the intersections are apparent and the grievances are the same. We live in an imperialist era and these white men are feeling “victimized” — so they in turn increase violence against those with less power than them.
MRAs and white supremacists are of the same crop.
M: While people of colour are subjected to various forms of violence in North America, via the state, the police, the prison system, on the street, in their homes, etc., the issue of race as a factor specifically in terms of male violence against women is also a reality. Do you feel this issue is discussed or addressed effectively in public discourse or in the media? Do you feel women are left out of the conversation about racist violence in the US, specifically?
J: Race and violence against women are absolutely not discussed enough in the media or in our communities of colour, even in our movements.
I want to provide some concrete examples. When Trayvon Martin was brutally murdered by George Zimmerman in Florida in 2012, there was an all-out call to take the streets for Trayvon and all black people murdered by the state and those not held accountable by it.
AF3IRM in its eight chapters at the time attended protests nationally, attended meetings, answered the call, chanted, screamed, and wept.
We proudly followed the leadership of the queer black women who founded Black Lives Matter — Alicia Garza and Patrisse Cullors. Many of us who are mothers of black and brown children found an additional home in the movement.
After Sandra Bland was killed and there was a call for #SayHerName protests, we showed up with the same voracity, even joining planning and leadership groups in our respective cities like the Bay and New York City.
When we got to the mobilizations across the countries, what did we see? Emptiness. Maybe a hundred protesters at each mobilization, maybe not. There was a moment on a national AF3IRM call when we had to ask one another how the mobilizations looked and a slow realization that they were smaller than any of the other protests.
We immediately turned inwards and looked at our work — did we not organize effectively or work hard enough? Was the messaging and media around deaths like that of Aiyana Jones not covered or projected enough?
We came to the conclusion that, no, the problem was not with failures in organizing or ineffective messaging. This is a result of all the people who did not have as strong a lens on gender violence, gender oppression, and patriarchy, deciding it was not as important to protest the killings of black women and girls as that of the men and boys targeted by the police. Instead of double or triple the amounts of people showing up to protest because of double oppressions, we see less. The crowd was predominantly women of colour.
Even more — where were the white American feminists who work day in and day out against violence? Were the lives of black women and girls not as important, were their deaths not enraging enough to show up for?
The experience is reflected in other protests — why is it that AF3IRM is one of the only feminist groups in the US putting forward the crisis of the 1,200+ missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in North America? What about the fact that, in the Philippines, the fascist President Duterte is allowing — even encouraging troops — to rape women under martial law in Mindanao?
We go back to the feminist question that brought us to women’s organizing to begin with: why are women secondary, even in our social justice circles? Why are women and girls of colour not on the radar of the liberal, white feminist movement?
M: Do you believe the left — and specifically groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter — are addressing misogyny and male violence against women in their activism? If not, why? What could be done differently?
J: Regarding Antifa and BLM and other groups: In our interface with BLM, which has been positive, we understand that each chapter looks different. I know their platform, their leadership, their written strategic plans include and prioritize women. The #SayHerName protests had BLM leaders in our respective cities. They did not have the mass mobilization of people that the other protests had. I hope that folks that subscribe to BLM’s ideological and political platforms follow the lead of women like Alicia Garza and Patrisse Cullors in their calling for the abolishment of patriarchy along with race and class oppressions.
For Antifa groups who have taken the forefront of defense against Nazis even moreso in recent months, their public stances do not have a strong stance against patriarchy.
I spoke with an AF3IRM woman who navigates these spaces — primarily in the anarcho feminist collectives. In those spaces, which have overlap with Antifa, there was strict accountability for men who engaged in sexual assault, harassment, etc. They were removed immediately. It is the lack of a programmed, public stance that is the problem (unlike BLM).
M:Helen Lewis recently wrote about the “Day Three Story,” explaining that many terrorists’ first victims are their wives (or girlfriends/other female family members). How does terrorism connect to domestic abuse? Do you think feminism has a role to play in addressing the mass shootings and terrorism that have become so commonplace these days?
J: I think it’s important to first talk about who is a “terrorist.” I think when we step back and look at where we are politically, economically, we also have to see the US in its complicity and in its role for creating, training these terrorists.
Feminism has a role in addressing mass violence if it does what it should do: be a comprehensive movement.
Feminists are not responsible for the mass violence happening in the world, but we are responsible for building a movement to address the roots and the product (the mass violence). Feminism is responsible for anti-racist work, for anti-imperialist work, for expanding our work to a global level. This issue in particular exposes our weakness as a movement. Why are feminists — who are thoroughly and publicly and ideologically feminist leaders — not at the forefront and deeply embedded in the anti-war movement, in the immigrant rights movement, in the workers’ rights movement? Why are they separate?
We can’t decry violence and not be part of dismantling the system at the root of it. That includes the multiple oppressions in addition to patriarchy.
M: What role do women play in the alt-right, if any? Do women have any responsibility, in terms of the rise of white nationalism in the US, or do you consider them to be victims of male supremacy (as well as victims of the individual men who spout racism and anti-semitism, and perpetrate acts of violence like the one that took place recently in Charlottesville).
J: Yes they do. White women are also to blame for the rise and consolidation of the alt-right. White women voted for Trump. They are more than complicit — they are comrades in the white supremacist movement. They may experience patriarchy, of course, but that does not excuse them. They become a tool of patriarchy and sexism in their both their active engagement in the white supremacist movement as well as their complicity in it.
To learn more about AF3IRM, visit: www.af3irm.org. Af3irm’s national summit will be held on October 21st in New York City
Featured image: A Miskito elder stands watch in what has become a daily vigil – awaiting the promised return of armed Colonos who recently attacked her village with sophisticated weaponry, covering her home in bullet holes and terrorizing the Miskito community. Courtney Parker, 2016
Recently published statistics from watchdog group, Global Witness, have confirmed what Indigenous Nicaraguans have been trying to tell the world for years – the battle to protect Indigenous land rights in Nicaragua is not just one of the most dangerous…it is the most deadly.
Faced with such mounting evidence, however, the global human rights community continues to shrug its shoulders.
A recent article lauding a new partnership between The Guardian and Global Witness – aimed at increasing surveillance and reporting on land activists’ deaths worldwide – bizarrely blacks out a single mention of Nicaragua, which emerged from recent analysis as the deadliest nation in the world for land rights struggles, per capita.
The Guardian’s omission is glaring, as the authors specifically call out conditions in countries such as Colombia, the United States, Brazil, Honduras, and Mexico. They avoided even naming Nicaragua, which has a higher death rate for land activists than any of these regions. Even more disturbing, such deaths in Nicaragua remain grossly underreported still, due to the relative isolation of high conflict zones such as the northern Caribbean coast.
Women from the community of Santa Clara gather to denounce the violence inflicted by the encroaching illegal land settlers. The woman in the center describes the unthinkable; her daughter (in the yellow shirt) was shot in the head by colonos during one such horrific attack. Photo: Courtney Parker, 2016
There are hints the authors sought to, by excluding the socialist country, frame the escalating crisis in a thematic, but ultimately myopic, critique of capitalism – which could perpetuate a popular (sometimes populist) false narrative that socialism (or Marxism) is some sort of vaccine against environmental exploitation. Regardless of intent, such implications could not be less true.
A few cases in point…
The great socialist nation of Canada – even with human rights superstar, Justin Trudeau, now at the reigns – continues its deadly, imperialist, extractivism activity in Latin America, and remains a driving force behind the controversial and potentially devastating oil pipelines to the north. An imperialist Chinese mining operative has waged violent attacks against Indigenous community defenders with direct support from the military in Ecuador – a country once famous for their groundbreaking constitution codifying the ‘Rights of Nature’. Nicaragua, meanwhile, is busy destroying the second largest tropical rainforest in the western hemisphere in attempts to sustain the oft praised ‘era of economic growth’ under Daniel Ortega.
Subhabrata ‘Bobby’ Banjeree’, a professor of the University of London’s Cass Business School, provided some insight about media inconsistencies on land rights struggles through a statement to the Thomas Reuters Foundation (concerning the Global Witness report.)
“Right now there are more than 2,000 reported hotspots around the world. The reality is that there are probably three times that number which are not reported because they are not as sexy and don’t make TV news.”
As The Guardian attempts to take the lead on resolving the disparities in coverage, it has somehow found cause to preemptively omit the deadliest case. One is left to wonder if calling out so-called capitalist nations is in fact sexy, and hard evidence which might dilute this motif is somehow…not.
The tombs of two community heroes in Santa Clara – acclaimed Miskitu warriors who sacrificed their lives attempting to shield their families and friends from encroaching violence – are displayed in reverence at a central point in the village.. Photo: Courtney Parker, 2016
In an insight especially relevant to Nicaragua, Banjeree also noted to Reuters how the role of the state is often compromised by conflicting responsibilities in encouraging economic development for a given nation and protecting the citizens who live there. The ostensibly ‘Christian-socialist’ government of President Ortega seems to be repeatedly and incomprehensively erring on the side of violence and neoliberal economics.
Global Witness itself has emerged as a truly objective watchdog group in an ideologically tainted atmosphere of human rights activism, in which various struggles are routinely ennobled or suppressed according to how well they fit into ongoing narratives supporting capitalist or anti-capitalist fervor. In their own statement about the new Guardian partnership, Global Witness conveyed:
“We’re hoping this will help break the silence that fuels this rising tide of violence. Many activists who are murdered live in remote villages deep within rainforests or mountain ranges, and their deaths pass under journalists’ radars. Without the exposure that comes from media coverage, governments and businesses have fewer incentives to protect people under threat, or to punish perpetrators. “
Their clearly defined goal gives cause to remain optimistic that commitment to truth and transparency will guide and reorient coverage generated through their partnership with The Guardian – though things are not off to an encouraging start.
To their credit, The Guardian has featured other coverage on the struggle for Indigenous land rights in Nicaragua, such as this piece from March of this year. While fairly comprehensive, the article still preserves a certain aura of credulity, a benefit of the doubt, in regard to the underlying intentions of Daniel Ortega and the ruling party of the FSLN – a credulity, that is facing regional extinction in Moskitia with the escalating murders of Indigenous Miskitos at the hands of ‘Colonos’ (armed invaders who have placed the autonomous Indigenous nation of Moskitia under a violent siege while FSLN militarized police routinely look the other way.)
It is high time to embrace, what is for many, a painful and perhaps counterintuitive truth. The differences between socialism and capitalism, regarding environmental justice and environmental exploitation, have proven slim to none. And nowhere is this demonstrated more clearly than in the nation of Nicaragua, currently under socialist rule by the once dogmatically Marxist Sandinista. Quasi-intellectual dogma and calcified political ideologies are not going to save the Earth or protect its most dedicated defenders. Hence, it is time we get realistic in attempting to discern what will.
At The Establishment, Tori Truscheit asks, “How can the queerest generation ever still believe in gender roles?”
If that question seems jaw-droppingly lacking in self-awareness, congratulations: you have been paying attention. If, on the other hand, you’re scratching your head, trying to get to the bottom of why a society drowning in rainbows and glitter, with endless “genders” to choose from, remains so steadfastly misogynistic, you’ve probably spent too much time at Everyday Feminism and The Establishment…
We have one problem to start: the word “queer,” which in the past (first as an insult, then reclaimed) referred more explicitly to gay and lesbian people, has recently come to mean pretty much anything. We have heterosexual women and men calling themselves “queer” because they claim to be “non-binary,” like “kinky” sex, or wear glittery makeup. In other words, today, “queer” and “gay” do not mean the same thing. And mushing together homosexuality with a variety of chosen identities or funky haircuts means that the question of why “the queerest generation” might not be progressive on the issue of women’s liberation is flawed from the start, because it’s unclear what the word “queer” even means in this context.
Either way, whether we are talking about gay men or those who identify as “queer,” there is one glaring reason why sexist gender roles have stuck around: being “queer” is not necessarily the same thing as being feminist. In fact, in many ways the queer movement has wholly rejected women’s liberation, as a political aim.
Truscheit is right on one thing: the gay marriage movement was not particularly feminist. Rather, this was a liberal effort that chose not to challenge the institution of marriage itself — which exists only because men wished to trade women as commodities, among themselves — and instead fought for inclusion in a heterosexist, patriarchal tradition. This is actually a useful demonstration of the difference between liberal feminism and radical feminism: one fights for equal access to already existing institutions, the other fights for a new system (and therefore new institutions) entirely.
Most (if not all) American liberals support gay marriage, unequivocally, but don’t necessarily have any vested interest in destroying male supremacy. (This is evidenced, for example, by liberal support for things like the porn industry and the legalization of brothels.) Liberals are capitalist, also, which means, again, they are invested in maintaining the systems already in place, but tweaking them a little, in order to offer an illusion of equality (i.e. if we all are allowed to make more money, get married, and own property, the world will be a better place.)
It is here that North American liberals tend to get lost on the question of feminism: they fail to understand that in order to achieve liberation for women and other oppressed groups, capitalism and patriarchy need more than a few tweaks.
Truscheit writes:
“More than half of high school students identify as something other than straight, 12 per cent of millennials are trans or gender nonconforming, and millennials overwhelmingly support gay marriage.
In a world where millennials are increasingly embracing marginalized groups, you’d think their accompanying views on gender would follow suit.”
But the thing is that none of the positions or identities listed here are necessarily anti-patriarchy. By and large, the male-led fight for “marriage equality” ignored the plight of women in its effort, meaning that the oppressive system behind homophobia remained intact, despite marriage rights. Gender identity discourse misunderstands how the system of gender works and that it exists to oppress women and legitimize male supremacy. And “embracing marginalized groups” doesn’t mean understanding or fighting the underlying systems that ensure certain groups are oppressed as a class. To liberals, “marginalization” doesn’t need to happen on a class basis — it can happen on an individual basis, which is why liberal societies keep digging themselves deeper into these pits of violence and vast inequality — because fighting structures of oppression can’t happen within an individualist framework.
Truscheit’s big mistake is to look towards yet another anti-feminist, liberal movement for a solution to patriarchy: queer politics.
Trans activist Mya Byrne at Pride San Fransisco, June 25, 2017.
While Truscheit blames “mainstream gays” for not “questioning gender,” she lets the trans movement off the hook — an odd blind spot considering that trans activism is largely responsible for re-popularizing the idea of gender itself. Whereas feminism has said gender, under patriarchy, is something we should reject, not embrace, today’s queer movement has positioned gender as fun and liberatory. Indeed, transgenderism itself can only exist so long as we have gender and believe gender roles are fine, so long as we choose them.
Truscheit says the “white male activists behind the marriage equality movement… sacrificed trans rights on the altar of their own desired outcome,” connecting this to what she perceives as a failure to “question gender.” But what she doesn’t realize is that an end to gender means an end to transgenderism — we can’t “identify” with gender roles if there are none to identify with. Indeed, if the gay rights movement had explicitly gone after gender, the result would not have been allyship with the transgender movement.
While I understand feeling let down by those around us who claim to want a more just, more equitable world, what feminists have learned over and over again in the past 150-odd years is that we can’t rely on male-centered movements. In order to liberate women, we need to put our energy into political activism and ideology that centers women and addresses the root of male supremacy.
Transgenderism isn’t going to save us from male dominance anymore than liberal gay men or male anarchists will. If we want real change, we need to look back, and take our cues from the women who broke ties with the men who sold them out and took matters into their own hands. From Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who, after being betrayed by their abolitionist allies, formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), which refused to support constitutional changes that did not enfranchise women; to the radical feminists of the late 1960s, who told the left to fuck off because “we’re starting our own movement;” to the black women involved in black militant politics who were expected to take a “traditional feminine role,” allowing men to lead the movement and hold positions of power within it — these women learned the lessons we should have memorized by now.
There is one answer to the question of patriarchy — there always has been. While queer politics may be more trendy (a result, in part, of its marketability and individualist ethos), feminism is the only political movement that can free women from the shackles of male domination.
Liberals like Truscheit and her colleagues at The Establishment will continue spinning their wheels until they decide to pick up where first and second wave radicals left off. We need to stop looking around, and asking ourselves who to turn to next: our sisters have the answer.
Featured image: Francisca Ramírez. Photo: Jorge Torres / La Prensa
by Courtney Parker / Intercontinental Cry
For those who have not yet heard of Nicaraguan activist, Francisca Ramírez, that is about to change. The apolitical, movement-focused leader of the growing anti-canal mobilization in Nicaragua is not backing down from state intimidation tactics, and is – self -professed – ready to die for the cause.
Ramírez heads a civil society group in Nicaragua that opposes government plans to construct an increasingly notorious trans-oceanic canal, financed by the Chinese HKND Group. Ramírez has mobilized a unified movement of Indigenous Peoples and campesinos (small farmers) against massive government oversight on respecting their rights to free, prior and informed consent for the project, which will displace thousands of individuals from ancestral and family farming territories.
In an IPS article by José Adán Silva, Ramírez is described as an Indigenous farmer who grew up in Nueva Guinea, an agricultural municipality in the Autonomous Region of Caribe Sur. After surviving the U.S.-financed war against the Sandinistas in the 1980’s, Ramírez got married, became a farmer, and had five children.
A former child of war, Ramírez carved out a relatively happy and peaceful life in later years. She first heard of plans for the canal over a radio broadcast in 2013, and initially believed government claims that the megaproject would lift her country out of poverty. “They said that we were no longer going to be poor”, she told IPS.
Then one day, a group of public officials accompanied by military and national police, as well as a delegation of Chinese business interests, arrived in her community and told them, “The route of the canal runs through your property and all of you will be resettled.”
It was at this point her journey of resistance began.
Ramírez is not involved in any other political causes other than the canal movement. The main goal of her organization, the Consejo por la Defensa de la Tierra, Lago Soberania (Council for the Defense of the Land, the Lake and Sovereignty) is to repeal Nicaraguan Law 840, passed in 2013. The collective opposition to the government project has set their sights on this statute because it grants a 100-year concession to the Chinese financers for all land subject to the proposed canal route.
Because of her outspoken activism and leadership, Ramírez has been on the receiving end of various intimidation tactics, including: harassment, intimidation, arbitrary detainment, and even violent attacks on her family members.
Ramírez met with Berta Cáceres in August of 2015 during a forum on the defense of natural resources. Approximately one hundred women met in Juigalpa, Chontales for the meeting during which Ramírez recalls Cáceres speaking with them about her own journey in the struggle for Indigenous rights and environmental justice against the mining industry. Cáceres also shared with the women her experiences of intimidation by government and private interests.
Inspired by Cáceres’s story, Ramírez told Nicaraguan media outlet, Confidencial:
“I thought about all the suffering we had to go through in the struggle for our rights against the transnational companies and powerful economic groups that always try to run ragged over the rights of the poor and those of limited resources in the country.”
Ramírez came to believe [development projects] inflicting damage to the earth is a way of eradicating Indigenous and campesino peoples’ right to live in peace. After Cáceres’s alarming and untimely death in 2016, Ramírez joined a march in her honor in the capital city of Managua.
Photo: confidencial.com.ni
Amnesty International has been monitoring the targeting of Ramírez by Nicaraguan state officials. In a publication on her struggle, the human rights watchdog group took special note of the intersectional threat facing women human rights defenders in Latin America, citing that:
“Women human rights defenders are often at risk of violence and experience intersecting forms of discrimination. Particularly in Latin America, as highlighted by the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, women defenders are among the most threatened owing to the nature of their human rights work and to their gender.”
Recently, the European Parliament joined the momentum of international solidarity with Ramírez’s struggle and urged Nicaraguan state officials to strengthen protections for human rights activists, and to desist in the harassment and intimidation tactics aimed at opponents of the transoceanic canal. The EU resolution produced a long list of escalating violations of human rights, civil liberties, and democracy in Nicaragua, and specifically demanded compliance with international statutes on Indigenous rights.
Also specifically mentioned in the joint motion, was Ramírez, in regards to her leadership of the mobilization against the environmentally catastrophic canal. The joint motion disavowed her detainment and intimidation after she attempted to file a complaint about attacks against her and her family, urging “the government to refrain from harassing and using acts of reprisal against Francisca Ramírez and other human rights defenders for carrying out their legitimate work.” The official EU document also publicly issues, “calls on the Nicaraguan authorities to end the impunity of perpetrators of crimes against human rights defenders”; asserts that it “supports the right of environmental and human rights defenders to express their protest without retaliation”; and, also formally, “calls on Nicaragua to effectively launch an independent environmental impact assessment before engaging in further steps [on the proposed canal] and to make the whole process public.”
In a statement to Nicaraguan independent media outlet, La Prensa, Ramírez relayed that President Daniel Ortega dispatched the former political secretary of the FSLN in New Guinea, Alcides Altamirano, to try and convince her to meet with the government for private talks on behalf of the anti-canal movement.
Ramírez affirmed in her public statement that the movement is willing and open to dialogue, but not behind closed doors, “because we do nothing hidden.” She confirmed such discussions are good when they are open and transparent, and doubled down on their central demand that the government repeal the 25 articles of Law 840.
