by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 17, 2018 | Gender
“Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability” aims to clarify, but succeeds only in highlighting the lack of clarity which dominates transgender theory.
“Let me define the terms, and I’ll win any debate,” a friend told me years ago, an insight I’ve seen confirmed many times in intellectual and political arenas.
But after reading Jack Halberstam’s new book, Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability, I would amend that observation: Debates also can be won by making sure a term is never clearly defined. The transgender movement has yet to offer coherent explanations of the concepts on which its policy proposals are based, yet support is nearly universal in left/liberal circles. Whether or not it was the author’s intention, Trans* feels like an attempt at an outline of such explanation, but I’m sorry to report that the book offers neither clarity nor coherence.
I say sorry, because I came to the book hoping to gain greater understanding of the claims of the transgender movement, which I have not found elsewhere. Halberstam — a professor in Department of English and Comparative Literature and the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Columbia University — has been writing about this subject for more than two decades and is one of the most prominent U.S. trans* intellectuals. The table of contents looked promising, but the book only deepened my belief that a radical feminist and ecological critique of the transgender movement’s ideology is necessary.
Rather than be defensive about the ambiguity of the transgender argument, Halberstam celebrates the lack of definition as a strength of the movement, an indication that trans* offers deep insights for everyone. If we shift our focus from “the housing of the body” and embrace “perpetual transition” then “we can commit to a horizon of possibility where the future is not male or female but transgender,” he writes. Instead of “male-ish” and “female-ish” bodies we can realize “the body is always under construction” and “consider whether the foundational binary of male-female may possibly have run its course.”
The very act of naming and categorizing imposes limits that constrain the imagination, according to Halberstam, hence the use of the asterisk:
“I have selected the term ‘trans*’ for this book precisely to open the term up to unfolding categories of being organized around but not confined to forms of gender variance. As we will see, the asterisk modifies the meaning of transitivity by refusing to situate transition in relation to a destination, a final form, a specific shape, or an established configuration of desire and identity. The asterisk holds off the certainty of diagnosis; it keeps at bay any sense of knowing in advance what the meaning of this or that gender variant form may be, and perhaps most importantly, it makes trans* people the authors of their own categorizations. As this book will show, trans* can be a name for expansive forms of difference, haptic [relating to the sense of touch] relations to knowing, uncertain modes of being, and the disaggregation of identity politics predicated upon the separating out of many kinds of experience that actually blend together, intersect, and mix. This terminology, trans*, stands at odds with the history of gender variance, which has been collapsed into concise definitions, sure medical pronouncements, and fierce exclusions.”
I quote at length to demonstrate that in using shorter excerpts from the book I am not cherry-picking a few particularly abstruse phrases to poke fun at a certain form of postmodern academic writing. My concern is not stylistic but about the arguments being presented. After reading that passage a couple of times, I think I can figure out what Halberstam’s trying to say. The problem is that it doesn’t say anything very helpful.
To be fair, Halberstam is correct in pointing out that the instinct to categorize all the world’s life, human and otherwise — “the mania for the godlike function of naming” — went hand in hand with colonialism, part of the overreach of a certain mix of politics and science in attempting to control the world. But like it or not, humans make sense of the world by naming, which need not go forward with claims of imperial domination or divine insight. We define the terms we use in trying to explain the world so that we can meaningfully communicate about that world; when a term means nothing specific, or means everything, or means nothing and everything at the same time, it is of no value unless one wants to obfuscate.
But, if Halberstam is to be believed, this criticism is irrelevant, because transgenderism “has never been simply a new identity among many others competing for space under the rainbow umbrella. Rather, it constitutes radically new knowledge about the experience of being in a body and can be the basis for very different ways of seeing the world.” So, if I don’t get it, the problem apparently is the limits of my imagination — I don’t grasp the radically new knowledge — not because the explanation is lacking.
After reading the book, I continue to believe that the intellectual project of the transgender movement isn’t so much wrong as it is incoherent, and the political project is not liberatory but regressive. What this book “keeps at bay” is a reasonable, honest request: What does any of this mean?
In other writing — here in 2014 and again in 2016, along with a chapter in my 2017 book The End of Patriarchy: Radical Feminism for Men — I’ve asked how we should understand transgenderism if the movement’s claim is that a male human can actually be female (or vice versa) in biological terms. If transgender signals a dissatisfaction with the culturally constructed gender norms of patriarchy — which are rigid, repressive, and reactionary — I’ve suggested it would be more effective to embrace the longstanding radical feminist critique of patriarchy.
Rather than repeat those arguments here, I want to try another approach, stating simply that I have good reason to believe I’m real, that the human species of which I am a member is real, and that the ecosphere of which we are a part is real. That is, there is a material reality to the world within which I, and all other carbon-based life forms, operate. I cannot know everything there is to know about that material world, of course, but I can trust that it is real.
The cultural/political/economic systems that shape human societies make living in the real world complex and confusing, and the ways those systems distribute wealth and power are often morally unacceptable. But to challenge that injustice, it’s necessary to understand that real world and communicate my understanding to others in clear fashion.
In left/liberal circles, especially on college campuses, “trans*” increasingly is where the action is for those concerned with social justice. It offers — for everyone, whether transgender-identified or not — the appearance of serious intellectual work and progressive politics. Endorsing the transgender project is a way to signal one is on the cutting edge, and work like Halberstam’s is embraced in these circles, where support for the transgender movement is required to be truly intersectional.
My challenge to those whose goal is liberation is simple: How does this help us understand the real world we are trying to change? How does it help us understand patriarchy, the system of institutionalized male dominance out of which so much injustice emerges?
Halberstam likely would put me in the category of “transphobic feminism” for “refusing to seriously engage” with transfeminism, but I am not transphobic (if, by that term, we mean one who is afraid of, or hateful toward, people who identify as transgender). Nor do I refuse to seriously engage other views (unless we describe a critique of another intellectual position as de facto evidence of a lack of serious engagement). I am rooted in radical feminism, one of those “versions of feminism that still insist on the centrality of female-bodied women,” according to Halberstam.
On that point, Halberstam is accurate: radical feminists argue that patriarchy is rooted in men’s claim to own or control women’s reproductive power and sexuality. Radical feminists distinguish between sex (male XY and female XX, a matter of biology) and gender (masculinity and femininity, a matter of culture and power), which means that there is no way to understand the rigid gender norms of patriarchy without recognizing the relevance of the category of “female-bodied women.” It’s hard to imagine how the binary of male-female could “run its course” given the reality of sexual reproduction.
This is where an ecological perspective, alongside and consistent with a radical feminist critique, reminds us that the world is real and we are living beings, not machines. In discussing his own top surgery (the removal of breasts), Halberstam speaks of working with the doctor:
“Together we were building something in flesh, changing the architecture of my body forever. The procedure was not about building maleness into my body; it was about editing some part of the femaleness that currently defined me. I did not think I would awake as a new self, only that some of my bodily contours would shift in ways that gave me a different bodily abode.”
We all have a right to understand ourselves as we please, and so here’s my response: My body is not a house that was constructed by an architect but rather — like all other life on the planet — is a product of evolution. I resist the suggestion I can “build” myself and recognize that a sustainable human presence on the planet is more likely if we accept that we are part of a larger living world, which has been profoundly damaged when humans treat it as our property to dominate and control.
This is the irony of Halberstam’s book and the transgender project more generally. After labeling the project of categorizing/defining as imperialist and critiquing the “mania for the godlike function of naming,” he has no problem endorsing the “godlike function” of reshaping bodies as if they were construction materials. There’s a deepening ecological sensibility in progressive politics, an awareness of what happens when humans convince ourselves that we can remake the world and ignore the biophysical limits of the ecosphere. While compassionately recognizing the reasons people who identify as transgender may seek surgery and hormone/drug treatments, we shouldn’t suppress concerns about the movement’s embrace of extreme high-tech intervention into the body, including the surgical destruction of healthy tissue and long-term health issues due to cross-sex hormones and hormone-like drugs.
I have long tried to observe what in rhetoric is sometimes called “the principle of charity,” a commitment in debate to formulating an opponent’s argument in the strongest possible version so that one’s critique is on firm footing. I have tried to do that in this review, though I concede that I’m not always sure what Halberstam is arguing, and so I may not be doing his arguments justice. But that is one of my central points: When I read this book — and many other arguments from transgender people and their allies — I routinely find myself confused, unable to understand just what is being proposed. So, again, I’ll quote at length in the hopes of being fair in my assessment, this time the book’s closing paragraph:
“Trans* bodies, in their fragmented, unfinished, broken-beyond-repair forms, remind all of us that the body is always under construction. Whether trans* bodies are policed in bathrooms or seen as killers and loners, as thwarted, lonely, violent, or tormented, they are also a site for invention, imagination, fabulous projection. Trans* bodies represent the art of becoming, the necessity of imagining, and the fleshy insistence of transitivity.”
Once again, after reading that passage a couple of times, I think I understand, sort of, the point. But, once again, I don’t see how it advances our understanding of sex and gender, of patriarchy and power. I am not alone in this assessment; people I know, including some who are sympathetic to the transgender movement’s political project, have shared similar concerns, though they often mute themselves in public to avoid being labeled transphobic.
I’m not asking of the transgender movement some grand theory to explain all the complexity of sex and gender. I just need a clear and coherent place to start. Asking questions is not transphobic, nor is observing that such clarity and coherence are lacking.
Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability was published in January 2018 by University of California Press.
Robert Jensen is a professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of The End of Patriarchy: Radical Feminism for Men. He can be reached atrjensen@austin.utexas.edu.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 25, 2018 | Mining & Drilling
FLAGSTAFF CITY COUNCIL APPROVES RESOLUTION OPPOSING URANIUM MINING, DESPITE COMPANY CLAIMS
Featured image: Members of the Havasupai Tribe overjoyed to see the success of their resistance when the Flagstaff City Council announced their uranium hauling ban. Photo: Dustin Wero
by Garet Bleir / Intercontinental Cry
As the Canyon Mine’s operations to extract uranium ore adjacent to Red Butte edged closer to reality last November, Flagstaff’s City Council made the significant decision to oppose federal laws that would allow the transport of uranium ore through the Arizona city and the Navajo Nation’s territory. In Resolution No. 2017-38, the City Council went so far as to declare that it opposes uranium mining, while reaffirming its status as a Nuclear Free Zone and resolving “to actively work to advance social and environmental justice for the Indigenous Community.” This City Council’s bold move arrived at a crucial moment in the ongoing uranium mining debate, and it was most assuredly a win for everyone resisting the operations of Energy Fuels Resources.
More than 100 people were in attendance at the resolution vote. Many voiced their concerns about the proposal to transport large amounts of radioactive ore through communities like Flagstaff and across the Navajo Nation on its path to refinement. Members of the Havasupai, Navajo, Hopi, Apache, and Pueblo nations attended the meeting to express solidarity with the proposed motions.
Councilmember Eva Putzova issued a statement later on, saying, “With this resolution, the Council is rallying behind the Native American communities in their fight for social and environmental justice. I’m looking forward to working with our congressional representative and state representatives on legislation that bans uranium mining and the transport of uranium ore for good,” according to Haul No!, an activist and educational organization that’s fighting the uranium haul route.
Representatives of Haul No! in front of Monument Valley on the Navajo Nation. Photo: Dustin Wero.
But while Flagstaff moved one step closer to impeding the uranium mining industry, the nation as a whole opened up even more protected lands to the resource extraction industry. During the fall season, Trump talked about letting more uranium mining around the Grand Canyon region. Then, in December 2017, he reduced Bears Ears and the Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, setting off what The New York Times predicted would be “a legal battle that could alter the course of American land conversation.” The decision opened millions of preserved public acres to oil and gas extraction, mining, and logging. One month later, he opened up land in Bears Ears National Monument for further resource drilling.
The nation recently learned about Energy Fuels Resources when documents obtained by The Washington Post showed that the company “launched a concerted lobbying campaign to scale back Bears Ears National Monument, saying such action would give it easier access to the area’s uranium deposits and help it operate a nearby processing mill.” Energy Fuels officials had pushed the White House to reduce Bears Ears as much as possible to minimally protect the “key objects and areas, such as archeological sites, to make it easier to access the radioactive ore.” The Canadian company has been designing similar plans that would result in the desecration of sacred spaces and practices—earning the attention of local conservation organizations focused on the Grand Canyon Region as covered throughout our series.
Indigenous communities know the history and the effects of nuclear colonialism. “My great-grandfather was a soldier who fought in Normandy, lived, and returned home to provide for his family,” said Sarana Riggs, a member of the Navajo Nation and the Native American Coordinator for the Grand Canyon Trust. Her great-grandfather worked at the Rare Metals Uranium Mill on the Navajo Reservation while facing the unknown dangers of radioactivity throughout his life. Riggs said the problem surfaced at its peak 10 years ago when he was suffering from pains that no one realized were due to stomach cancer.
Riggs great-grandfather soon passed away from the disease. The Rare Metals Mill has since been shut down, and houses around the mill were subsequently demolished due to documented health and environmental effects on nearby families and homes.
The Mitten in Monument Valley on the Navajo Nation. Areas like this are where the planned haul route will pass through. Photo: Dustin Wero.
Members of the Navajo Nation also struggle with the health repercussions due to the 523 abandoned uranium mines and 22 wells closed by the EPA due to high levels of radioactive pollution. According to the EPA, “Approximately 30 percent of the Navajo population does not have access to a public drinking water system and may be using unregulated water sources with uranium contamination.” A disproportionate number of the 54,000 Navajo living on the reservation now suffer from organ failure, kidney disease, loss of lung function, and cancer.
The Canyon Mine could have a similar impact on the Havasupai Nation and millions of Americans who depend on water from the Colorado River.
Riggs and others present during the Flagstaff City Council’s resolution meeting were relieved to see Flagstaff recognizing that members of the Navajo Nation and surrounding indigenous nations also make up the Flagstaff community. “Many travel over 80 miles to Flagstaff each day for work, school, or medical needs,” Riggs explained. “Flagstaff recognized the Navajo Nation, dealing with over 500 abandoned uranium mines, doesn’t need uranium hauling on top of that.”
The resolution was symbolic because the federal government, not the town of Flagstaff controls those roads. According to a press release by Haul No!, during the resolution meeting, Councilmember Celia Barotz reminded those in attendance that, “‘this is just the beginning, and we’re going to need all of you to help us through the various processes at the state and federal level if we’re going to make meaningful changes over the next several years.’” Borotz implored the community to remain engaged in the ensuing debate.
“With a unified voice of Flagstaff, Havasupai, Navajo, and Hopi communities, I hope representatives will address this,” said Riggs. “This isn’t U.S. land. They might have laws controlling Navajo highways, but ancestrally these are our lands. We’re upholding our rights. I’m looking at the Navajo Nation now to stand up, fight, and hold our leaders accountable because this is a threat to our health.”
Prior to the resolution, the Indigenous Environmental Network gave the city council a report detailing education, economic development, and social justice regarding Indigenous Peoples throughout Flagstaff, Riggs said.“The city hasn’t been so friendly to us native people. We’re more likely to get arrested or harassed by police and not always given the same treatment in businesses.” Following the report, the city council committed to addressing some of these problems. “The uranium transport resolution is one of the first steps,” said Riggs. “I hope the decision sets a precedent recognizing we have equal rights to everyone in Flagstaff.”
The final decision by the Flagstaff City Council was not without significant debate from both sides through months of town hall meetings. At one meeting this past July, the President and COO of Energy Fuels, Mark Chalmers, was in attendance to declare support for the mining operation. In defense of the project, Chalmers told the council that the uranium transported by Energy fuels is coming out of the ground in a natural state. “If you look at the Grand Canyon, and you looked at the Canyon Mine and the other uranium mines on the north side of the Grand Canyon, hundreds of these things have eroded naturally by the Colorado River over millions of years, hundreds of natural uranium deposit formations because the Grand Canyon cut through a zone of natural radioactive activity,” Chalmers said.
However, in a survey of 474 abandoned uranium mines on the Navajo Nation by the EPA, researchers have shown that 85 percent of those mines produced gamma radiation levels clocking in at twice the background level for the area. Furthermore, nearly half of the mines demonstrated radiation levels rising to 10 or even 25 times the background radiation.
Radiation warning sign in front of A&B No. 3 Mine
Throughout his speech, Chalmers reiterated that the ore being transporting is not as dangerous as some of the other materials traveling through the city like sulfuric acid that could dissolve your hands or the “immediate hazards” that could be present with chlorine gas or fuels. “Whereas uranium ore you would just literally shovel it up, scan it, you’d make sure you cleaned it up, but it is not an immediate hazard,” said Chalmers. “I think that’s one stigma with uranium mining that they don’t fully understand.”
In an area plagued by the various remnants and continuations of nuclear colonialism, from the Church Rock uranium mill spill, to the documented health effects of uranium mining on the Navajo Nation, to the desecration of sacred sites without permission of the affected indigenous nations, the crowd was unresponsive to Chalmers claims.
Councilman Jim McCarthy responded to Chalmers’ assertions. A former member of the Grand Canyon Historical Society, McCarthy once attended a meeting at the rim of the Grand Canyon, overlooking the Orphan Mine uranium mine. “I asked the man who was giving the presentation who used to be the manager of that mine and I asked if there were any health effects on the miners,” McCarthy said. “He told me that’s the sad part, almost everyone who worked there got cancer and is dead.” Studies support that anecdote. According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health’s mortality study on uranium miners, which began in the 1950s and has been updated several times through 2000, causes of death among this population that were significantly above average included lung cancer, pneumoconiosis (a type of lung disease caused by dust), tuberculosis, emphysema, and work-related injuries.
Chalmers told the audience that he also had friends who died of lung cancer from uranium mining but said that the industry had learned a lot in the last 50 years to combat that. “So does that mean that no one gets cancer anymore from these mines?” asked Coral Evans, the mayor of Flagstaff.
Chalmers attempted to respond. “Well, I mean, when you look at cancer, this is something that always drives me crazy. They say you get cancer from uranium or smoking or whatever, and then they haul you in and give you radiation to get rid of it,” Chalmers said. “People get cancer from different things, and I don’t think people really know all the reasons that people get cancer like if you’re at high altitude at 7000 feet, you get more radiation at 7000 feet than 1000 feet or 2000 feet.” Chalmers continued to argue that even with all the research surrounding cancer, there are unanswered questions as to what causes it and many contributing factors.
While Chalmers used the idea of unknown factors to support uranium mining, Mayor Evans used it as the very reason to support the hauling ban. “I just feel like I need to say this because this is something I feel is weighing heavily on me,” said Evans. The mayor reminded the audience of the people affected by U.S. nuclear bomb tests outside of Vegas in Nevada throughout the 30s, 40s, and 50s. “My mom was one of the individuals who were downwind of that, and as a result of her being a downwinder she died of breast cancer.”
Before that, Evans said there wasn’t cancer in her family. Evans has now had breast cancer twice, and her daughter, 23, is being tested by doctors annually. “They think something might have happened with this whole downwind thing and now it might be in our genes,” she added. “While we have changed, grown, and do things differently now, future generations pay for what has happened to the generations that came before, so I just want to make sure that we all understand that.”
The mayor’s points made a case for caution, emphasizing the many unknowns surrounding how uranium could affect generations to come and urging this generation to take the proper precautions to avoid destroying the lives of those yet to come. McCarthy, who has a masters degree in environmental engineering, said that he has a background in exploring issues like this and understands that even though we have learned a lot, risk analysis in these industries can be complicated.
According to a press release by Haul No!, “Right before the resolution went to vote, Flagstaff Mayor Coral Evans shared, ‘I want to talk about the constitutionality and legality part of it. In his ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail,’ Dr. King writes about something he calls just and unjust laws. I would say that in this country, historically we have seen several laws over the course of time be changed or overturned because we, the people, have determined that they were unjust.’
“Mayor Evans challenged all council members to pass the resolution with a 7-0 vote. ‘The legacy of uranium mining in Northern Arizona is unjust. I believe that it has been clearly shown through the routes that this ore takes… [and] clearly shown through the level of cancer and cancer-related death experienced by the indigenous people in our region. We have Indigenous neighbors that have been fighting and asking for relief on this issue for decades, for generations. And they are asking us, as the largest city in Northern Arizona, to help them.’”
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 18, 2018 | Male Supremacy
Women cannot possibly be viewed human so long our humanity is determined by men’s circumstantial “civilization.”
by Julian Vigo / Feminist Current
Catharine MacKinnon’s book, Are Women Human? is riddled with examples of violence specifically targeting women. From beatings, to torture, to rape, to sexual subjugation, to murder, and to genocide, there are myriad examples that show how women are rendered insignificant in the cultural landscape of human rights. MacKinnon’s text asks how women can be considered people since, when placed next to legal renderings of other groups of people, women are excluded from similar protections. She writes:
“Women not being considered a people, there is as yet no international law against destroying the group women as such. ‘Sex’ is not on the list of legal grounds on the basis of which destruction of peoples as such is prohibited. For women as such, there is no legal equivalent to genocide… presumably because it is commonplace, built into the relative status of the sexes in everyday life.”
“Are women human?” remains a question of great significance today, as even those on the left consider us less-than. There is also the fact that, for many, women’s rights are considered “already won” and therefore part of an antiquated movement that should just simmer down.
But the facts speak for themselves: women are still underrepresented in employment in media, government, and education; women bear disproportionate responsibility for unpaid care work; while women are shown to make better use of loans, they are denied loans at a far higher rate than men; women will statistically be more prone to enlisting in credit repair services and accruing far more debt than men despite performing most of the world’s labour, earning on average 24 per cent less than men; and women are more likely to suffer from poor credit due to their relationships with men and through marriage. There are so many facts that show women are saddled with more work, lower salaries, and fewer economic benefits, no matter what level education they attain, no matter their financial investments, regardless of the few who manage to climb far up the ladder. While today, womanhood is still reduced to the superficial — “beauty,” attained or displayed through symbols of femininity, like hair, makeup, jewelry, and clothing — women’s realities are anything but decorative or camp. Women’s lives are still overwhelmingly difficult, as the burden placed on women to undertake unpaid domestic labour while being forced to pay more for beauty, hygiene, and health products stands in stark contrast to what men experience.
From articles that claim feminism is “going too far,” to the recent labelling of women who name sexual harassment and assault as taking part in a “witch hunt,”men are being positioned as victims of women’s efforts to fight misogyny. Sexism is so normalized, any challenges to it are viewed as an unreasonable attack on men.
Recently, acclaimed classicist and feminist, Mary Beard, painted herself into a corner over the Oxfam scandal. In response to reports that the former country director of Oxfam in Haiti, Roland Van Hauwermeiren, had bought sex from women and girls, she tweeted:
“Of course one can’t condone the (alleged) behaviour of Oxfam staff in Haiti and elsewhere. But I do wonder how hard it must be to sustain ‘civilised’ values in a disaster zone. And overall I still respect those who go in to help out, where most of us [would] not tread.”
This kind of comment exemplifies the way women (particularly women living in the Global South and women of colour) have historically been othered — their humanity rendered less legitimate than men’s. Beard’s comments have been described as “genteel racism,” as well as as patently sexist, and the reality is that they are both. This kind of response demonstrates the extent to which sexism has been normalized within the cultural subconscious of society, as well as the way the colonialist gaze positions dark-skinned bodies as provoking white man’s loss of “civility.”
Defending men’s violence and exploitation on account of disaster or difficult circumstances is not exactly new. From the well-documented cases of increased trafficking of females from ages 10 to 24 in India after natural disasters strike, to the recent U-turn in Russian law decriminalizing wife-beating because of the belief that the removal of this “right” posed a threat to men’s “traditional values” and masculinity, there is no paucity of examples at to how the humanity of men is positioned front and centre.
Considering her work in Women & Power: A Manifesto, which analyzes the cultural unconscious of misogyny, as well as her extensive work in the fields of ancient Greek and Roman civilizations, it is clear that Beard is skilled at analyzing misogyny in ancient cultures. Her failure to see it in today’s modern culture reveals a troubling (but common) blindspot. Indeed, her comments exist as part of a larger trajectory of British intellectual history and a long tradition of white, male colonization.
Terms like “civilized” beings, “disaster zones,” and “areas that most of us would not tread” are reappropriations of the same patriarchal language that have historically kept whites the colonizers of dark-skinned bodies and males the proverbial “owners” of females. Beard’s phrasing suggests that it is not the male Westerner who is uncivilized, but rather his proximity to the non-Western “zone” and conditions of “disaster” that leads him to behave in this suddenly “uncivilized” way.
Beard is not alone in thinking this way. Too many progressives cannot recognize misogyny when it happens within particular contexts and excuse it circumstantially. We see this in the way the left has excused prostitution and pornography, in terms of the vast numbers of women who are raped by relief workers in Syria, and when we look at the recently reported assaults on and harassment of female aid workers by male staff. But even if Beard’s words are not excusing the acts of rape by relief workers, they reveal a view that women’s bodies must bear the brunt of men’s “civilization” (or lack thereof).
I took a picture in my first months in Haiti while working on child protection projects in Port-au-Prince showing two tents — one factory made, the other a series of bed sheets put together on a clothesline hung upon trees. All around: the rubble from buildings that fell during the 2010 earthquake. The buildings in Haiti fell largely due to shoddy building materials and lack of steel reinforcements, as expensive cement from the US forced many contractors to pour in more sand and less concrete, creating a weaker structure, meaning that this particular disaster was very much man-made. In other words, these sites of “disaster” are created by the very “civilized” men who turn around and exploit the victims of their imposed “civilization.”
Cheapened materials sold at extortionate rates to a people whose lives are dictated by Western G7 powers results in destroyed infrastructure and situationstraffickers take advantage of. Where Beard sees chaos, I see a legacy of colonial encounters and the buttressing of colonial institutions. Let us not forget that it was the British elite who unwittingly engineered the murders of at least one million people and the rapes of thousands of women by hastily planning the Great Partition, continuing the British rule which segregated Indian society along the lines of religion, creating acrimony in a country that had previously been united. This would turn out to be one of the most politically catastrophic decisions made by the UK’s most “civilized” leaders.
Image: March 2010, Port-au-Prince (Photo credit: Julian Vigo)
Several generations of male colonialists have brought us this still present view of “foreign” female bodies as objects of curiosity and the mechanisms responsible for interrupting their “civilized” gaze. We have seen this metaphor of savagery throughout history. In Labyrinth of Solitude, Octavio Paz discusses the “Chingada,” a term which references the systemic rape of women during the Conquest of Mexico by Cortès. He writes:
“[I]t is possible to answer the question, ‘What is the Chingada?’ The Chingada is the Mother forcibly opened, violated, or deceived. The hijo de la Chingada is the offspring of violation, abduction or deceit. If we compare this expression with the Spanish hijo de puta (son of a whore), the deference is immediately obvious. To the Spaniard, dishonour consists in being the son of a woman who voluntarily surrenders herself: a prostitute. To the Mexican it consists in being the fruit of a violation.”
Paz’ insight into how colonial encounters in the Americas were directly tied to the violation of female bodies serves as looking glass into later centuries, wherein women were similarly violated through enslavement, rape, and the exchange of their bodies.
In the late 19th century, explorers returning from faraway lands attempted to authenticate their experiences by taking the “real native” from their habitats, bringing their captives back to the West, and putting them on display in the World’s Fairs popular during this time. From the Khoikhoi (in the West, known by the derogatory term, “Hottentots”) of Botswana who were displayed in fairs from Britain to France, to the Indigenous Americans on display at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, to the Apaches and Igorots of the Philippines on display at the Saint Louis World’s Fair in 1904, the black and brown body was something of a boon in the scene of freak shows that toured Europe and North America.
The ethos of these males who peddled in the trafficking of women is astonishingly contradictory, just as the aid workers raping and exploiting women in Haiti today: on the one hand, these men set out to instill upon the native, “dark-skinned other” their supposedly progressive values, and on the other, these men set up their objects of curiosity as caged spectacles, imprisoned as a means for the white Westerner to understand their own humanity. These World’s Fair installations were part of the rise of both eugenics and social sciences in the 19th century — specifically ethnology, where people were put on display in human zoos to show Westerners how people around the world lived in what was believed to be an “rapprochement” between West and East, even if entirely curated. The obvious problem with these zoos and expositions is that there was little consciousness at the time about how these “natives” felt about being kidnapped and enslaved.
Where these fairs concerned women, the stories were always the same: kidnapping, sexual slavery, freak shows, then death. Sarah Baartman was taken from the Gamtoos Valley in the Eastern part of the Cape Colony (present-day South Africa) and brought to England in 1810. Bought and sold from handler to handler and shown at various fairs in England and Ireland, she was exhibited as part of a freak show under the name “Hottentot Venus.” Finally, in 1814, she was brought to the Palais Royal in Paris where she was enslaved and became the object of scientific study.
Parallel to male colonizers sexually objectifying women during this time were French scientists who were interested in knowing the size of black women’s labia. The head of the menagerie at the Muséum national d’Histoire, Georges Cuvier, used Baartman in his new discipline, comparative anatomy, developing his theory that Baartman was the “missing link” between humans and animals, with Cuvier referring to her as an “orangutan” and a “monkey.”
Baartman died in 1815 at the age of 25. After her death, Cuvier dissected her body, displaying her remains. Her brain, genitals, skeleton, and a plaster cast of her body were on display until 1974 at the Musée de l’Homme, not repatriated to Hankey, South Africa until 2002. For all the scientific knowledge Cuvier hoped to amass by violating and dissecting Baartman’s body, what he really brought to light was the kind of “civilized” behaviour Western culture interprets as “normal.” Indeed, generations of violations against dark-skinned bodies have had the effect of normalizing rape as a necessary part of civilization.
What would lead someone like Beard to view women as necessary victims of male violence and white male “civility” as something that comes and goes like a headache? The question surrounding our humanity didn’t begin with women’s absence from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, nor did it begin with Sarah Baartman’s labia on display for over 150 years. The answer to the question, “Are women human?” lies somewhere between these historical moments and our modern excusing of men’s abusive behaviour, supposedly brought on by “disaster” and the presence of othered bodies and cultures. Women cannot possibly be viewed human so long our humanity is determined by men’s circumstantial “civilization.” These men are in fact the “disaster zone,” ignoring the very civilized request they treat women and girls as human beings.
Julian Vigo is a scholar, filmmaker, and human rights consultant. Her latest book is Earthquake in Haiti: The Pornography of Poverty and the Politics of Development. Contact her via email: julian.vigo@gmail.com.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 11, 2018 | Movement Building & Support
by Internationalist Commune of Rojava
Presentation of the campaign in cooperation with the Democratic Self-governance of Northern Syria
Introduction
Five years have passed since the beginning of the Rojava Revolution. Beginning with the heroic resistance of Kobani, the YPG/YPJ have pushed the reactionary gangs of ISIS back again and again. At the same time, the people of Rojava have successfully resisted all hegemonical attempts to corrupt the revolution. Inspired and shaped by the ideas of Abdullah Öcalan and the struggle of the Kurdish freedom movement, Rojava is a revolutionary project with the aim of challenging capitalist modernity through women’s liberation, ecology, and radical democracy. Despite the ongoing success of the Rojava Revolution, the people remain under pressure; the war against ISIS, the daily terror attacks by the Turkish state and the economic embargo, are obstacles for building up a new society. In this situation, Rojava needs worldwide support more than ever.
Internationalist Commune – learn, support, organize
For many years, we, internationalists from all over the world, have been working on many facets of the Rojava Revolution. Inspired by the revolutionary perspective of the Kurdish freedom movement, we are here to learn, and to support and help develop existing projects. It is our aim to organize a new generation of internationalists to challenge capitalist modernity. Supported by the youth movement in Rojava (YCR/YJC), we established the Internationalist Commune of Rojava in early 2017. To date, our projects have include organizing educational activities, delegations, language courses, and the construction of the first civilian academy for internationalists in Rojava.
A pillar of the revolution: ecology
People who are alienated from nature are alienated from themselves, and are self-destructive. No system has shown this relationship more clearly than capitalist modernity; environmental destruction and ecological crises go hand in hand with oppression and exploitation of people. The feckless mentality of maximum profit has brought our planet close to the edge of the abyss, and left humanity in a whirlwind of war, hunger, and social crisis. Because of this, developing an ecological society is a pillar of the Rojava Revolution, alongside women’s liberation and a total democratization of all parts of life. This is about more than just protecting nature by limiting damage to it; it is about recreating the balance between people and nature. It is about a “renewed, conscious and enlighted unification towards a natural, organic society” (Abdullah Öcalan).
Monoculture, water shortage and air pollution: colonialism against humanity and nature
The results of the capitalist mentality and state violence against society and the environment are clearly visible in Rojava; the Baath regime was and remains uninterested in an ecological society throughout all of Syria. The regime always focused on maximum resource exploitation and high agricultural production rate at the expense of environmental protection, especially in colonized West Kurdistan. Systematic deforestation made monoculture possible: wheat in Cizire Canton, olives in Afrin, and a mixture of both in Kobani have altered the landscape of Rojava. For several decades it was forbidden to plant trees and vegetables, and the population was encouraged by repressive politics and deliberate underdeveloppment of the region to migrate as cheap labour to nearby cities like Aleppo, Raqqa and Homs. Energy production and use (fossil fuels), senseless waste management policies, and careless over-reliance on chemicals in agriculture, damaged the ground, air and water. But the Rojava Revolution and the Rojavan people struggle not only with the ecopolitical heritage of the Baath regime, but also with the ever-present and grave threat of the hostile policies of Turkish State. Beside military attacks, the constant threat of an invasion, and an economic embargo, we also face the problems caused results by Turkish goverment dam construction in occupied North Kurdistan, and the consequent uncontrolled use of groundwater by Turkey for its agriculture. This aggressive siphoning reduces the flow into Rojavan rivers and lowers the whole region’s groundwater level. We are witnessing how Turkish State is systematically closing Rojava’s water tap.
Between war and embargo – ecological works in Rojava
The attempts of the Turkish and Syrian regimes to strangle the revolution in Rojava by military, political and economic attacks, the war against ISIS, and the embargo, supported by the South Kurdish KDP, are creating difficult circumstances for ecological projects in Rojava. Although there are many current projects, including reforestation, creation of natural reserves and environmentally-friendly waste disposal facilities, the infrastructure of the Democratic Self-Administration is still in a difficult material situation, making these goals harder to achieve. The projects of most regional committees are either just beginning or in the planning stage. The ecological revolution, within the larger revolution, is still in its infancy. It lacks environmental consciousness among the population, expert knowledge, necessary technology, and a connection to solidarity from abroad.
Our contribution to the ecological revolution: Make Rojava Green Again
We, the Internationalist Commune of Rojava, want to contribute to the ecological revolution in Northern Syria. To this end, we have started the campaign “Make Rojava Green Again”, campaign in cooperation with the Ecology Committee of the Cizire Canton. The campaign has three aspects:
- Building up the Internationalist Academy with an ecological ethos, to serve as a working example for comparable projects and concepts for the entire society. The academy will facilitate education for internationalists and for the general population of Rojava, to strengthen awareness and environmental consciousness, pushing to build up an ecological society.
- Joining the work of ecological projects for reforestation, and building up a cooperative tree nursery as part of the Internationalist Academy.
- Material support for existing and future ecological projects of the Democratic Self-administration, including sharing of knowledge between activists, scientists and experts with committees and structures in Rojava, developing a long-term perspective for an ecological Northern Syria Federation.
The first two concrete projects of the “Make Rojava Green Again” campaign are:
- Realization of the concepts of an ecological life and work in the Internationalist Academy, partly with the building up a nursery as a part of the Academy. In the spring of 2018, we will plant 2,000 trees in the area of the academy, and 50,000 shoots in the nursery.
- Practical and financial support for the Committee for Natural Conservation in the reforestation of the Hayaka natural reserve, near the city of Derik, in Cizire Canton. Over the next five years, we plan to plant more then 50,000 trees along the shores of Sefan Lake.
The collective work in the nursery will also be a part of the education in the internationalist academy, as well as a concrete expression of solidarity with the communes, institutions, and structures of the population.
‘Make Rojava Green Again’ as a bridge for internationalist solidarity
These are some of the ways people can support the the campaign ‘Make Rojava Green Again’, the ecological work in Rojava, and revolution in Northern Syria.
- Share this campaign with activists, scientists, and experts from fields such as ecological agriculture, forestry, water supply, and sustainable energy production.
- Contact and liaise with activists, journalists, politicians and others who would be interested in this campaign.
- Write, publish and share articles and interviews about the campaign.
- Share information with friends and family. Spread the word about the growing ecological revolution in Rojava.
- Establish contacts between persons/groups/organizations and the Internationalist Commune of Rojava.
- Work in Rojava itself.
- Support the work financially.
Contact: Mail: makerojavagreenagain@riseup.net Web: www.internationalistcommune.com Facebook: facebook.com/CommuneInt Twiter: twitter.com/CommuneInt
Donations to: Rote Hilfe IBAN: CH82 0900 0000 8555 9939 2 BIC: POFICHBEXXX Post Finance Reference: “Make Rojava Green Again”
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 10, 2018 | The Problem: Civilization
Editor’s note: Read the German version of this article here.
by Boris Forkel / Deep Green Resistance Germany
On July 10th 1985 the Rainbow Warrior, ship of the environmental organization Greenpeace, was sunk by agents of the French Service Action.
From the 1940’s til the 60’s, the US-Army had been testing atomic bombs on the Marshall Islands. What used to be a South Pacific Paradise, was now contaminated. The people suffered diseases and cancer, children were born with abnormalities. In 1985, the residents of the Island Rongelap asked Greenpeace for help. The Rainbow Warrior came and relocated 300 people to the Island of Mejato. From Mejato, the ship was supposed to move to New Zealand for a short stop and then to the Moruroa-atoll (French Polynesia), to protest against French atomic-bomb tests. While the Rainbow Warrior was anchored in the port of Aukland, New Zealand, during the night of july 10th two bombs detonated in the ship’s hull. While the ship sunk, most of the crew were able to save themselves, except for the photographer Fernando Pereira, who drowned. Tragically, he was a parent of two small children.
The investigations of the New Zealand police lead to the French secret service. Under growing pressure, the government under Francois Mitterand steadily admitted being responsible for the attack.
The people in charge of the French government were never held accountable. In 1987, the French government paid compensation of 8 million US-Dollars to Greenpeace, and more than 7 million to the New Zealand government. All of the people involved stayed in charge and kept their positions in the French government, some received the highest military honors.
In 1985, I was six years old. The pictures of the Rainbow Warrior were on the media everywhere. Since then, the Greenpeace-activists have been my heros. I would look at the Greenpeace-magazines, that shocked me deeply with pictures of baby seals slayed with clubs, burning rainforests and dead whales, swimming in a sea of blood.
©Andrija Ilic/Reuters
If you take the perspective of a six or seven year old child, you see buts all around you and you hear the voices of grown-ups from above. In my memory, most times the grown-ups spoke about work. “How was work?” “Well, ok…” “I have to work tomorrow.” “Will you go to work?” “Yes.” “I hear that you have a new job? How do you like it?” “It‘s pretty ok…” work…” “at work…” “for my work…” “in my work…” “work…” “work…” “work…”
I felt there was a huge chasm between the conversations I overheard from the adults, and the pictures that stuck in my childish mind from the Greenpeace-magazines. They always wanted to know, what I wanted to be when I grew up. The question is hard to understand for a six or seven year old. What should I become? I’m a human being already, and there is not much more I can actually become. Well, a grown-up human being, someday. But such a stressed out, worried human being, which is at the same time dependent and plagued by its daily work, like the grown-ups around me, I certainly didn’t want to become. Why is their work so important to them, when at the same time such horrible things are happening?
Later, when I understood better what they were up to with that question, I always answered that I wanted to become an environmentalist. This was very important to me. After I learned to read and write, I printed business cards, stating environmentalist as my profession.
Back then, questions evolved, that didn’t change much over all these years. Why do these people, by all costs, want to kill whales? And seals? And why do they want to destroy these rainforests everywhere? And why are the people from Greenpeace obviously the only ones who care and try to stop the killing?
I asked these questions as a child, but soon stopped, because I would never receive a satisfying answer. “You won’t understand this, you are to small…” They would avoid my questions. They didn’t like these questions. They were unpleasant to them, and they had no answers.
As a child, one tends to think, that the grown-ups are very smart and know more than children. Unfortunately, this is a fraud. Most adults are very stupid indeed, highly indoctrinated, and don’t know any answers to the really important questions.
Still, the questions stay the same. Why are the grown-ups always talking about work, while there is a horrible slaughter going on? Nowadays, I‘d boil all the questions of my childhood down to one: Why is our culture killing the planet?
When I asked my grandmother why all the Indians had to die, she answered that this had been God’s will. The Indians, soon enough, would have built big ships on their own, sailed to Europe and would have exterminated us, she said. How great that God is with us…
Thanks to answers like this, over time I learned to forget my questions and hide my feelings, which after all arose from a very normal empathy I felt for our fellow beings.
I went through the mainstream-culture with severe depressions. I held myself together with books, which helped me to survive disturbing dreams, think deeply and question everything. I will always be grateful to the authors of these books.
Finally, I found myself realising, that the decision I had made when I was six years old was still right and valid.
Within a culture that mistreats its fellow creatures like ours, resistance is a moral imperative. I understood this as a child. Actually, it isn’t very hard to understand. All we have to do is to look around us. Foolishly, we have built a whole culture based on not looking around us.
It also has to do with the form of social organization this culture is based on. Which might be the most destructive invention, that humans have ever made. Gunpowder, for example, is surely a very destructive invention, especially if you use it, like our culture does, for firearms. It is symptomatic for our culture, to use all technological inventions for destructive purposes, most times for ever more destructive weapons. Without firearms, it would have been far more difficult to drive big animals like bears, bisons or siberian tigers to the brink of extinction. Without firearms, the conquest of the Americas and the genocide of indigenous peoples worldwide would have been far more difficult. Firearms therefore, take the second place on my list of the most destructive inventions.
The plow and the combustion engine compete for the third place. While the wheel, which is often mentioned as one of the most important inventions, isn’t very destructive, the car, with all the surrounding infrastructure like roads, is one of the most destructive inventions one could think of. It is an extreme waste of energy, to move a machine of about two tonnes of weight, most times only to transport one single human being. Car culture is the most energy intensive form of transportation to ever exist. We can only afford this unbelievable decadence, because we learned to use fossil fuel for combustion engines. Apart from the waste of energy, it is also not very intelligent to poison the air that we need to breathe. This is a crime we commit to our future generations.
Martin Prechtel says:
“Technological inventions take from the earth but give nothing in return. Look at automobiles. They were, in a sense, dreamed up over a period of time, with different people adding on to each other’s dreams — or, if you prefer, adding on to each other’s studies and trials. But all along the way, very little, if anything, was given back to the hungry, invisible divinity that gave people the ability to invent those cars. Now, in a healthy culture, that’s where the shamans would come in, because with every invention comes a spiritual debt that must be paid, either ritually, or else taken out of us in warfare, grief, or depression.”
The plow stands for monocultural agriculture. I like to describe agriculture as the blueprint of colonialism. They take a piece of land, drive away or kill all indigenous living beings, animals, humans and plants, and replace them with a monoculture of one species, with individuals entirely brought into line.
The most destructive invention that humans ever made is not a technological innovation, but a form of social organization (indeed one which is very technological). It is the megamachine; a form of social organization, that makes is possible for a hundred thousand people to spend the majority of their lifetime happily working for the goals of a company like Daimler-Benz, BASF, Bayer, Deutsche Bank et cetera. Hundreds of thousands of employees, working strictly organized and brought into line within a hierarchical organization. Often, there is a very strong identification of the employees with their company. This is the modern version of what made it possible for the ancient Egyptians to build the giant symbols of their civilization. In ancient Egypt, the slaves already formed an organized caste, that used strikes as a way to fight for better food, housing or working conditions. Even back then, people had already accepted their fate as a working class, as part of the machine, and tried to ensure slightly better conditions within it. Derrick Jensen talks about dismembering, and about how suppressors bring their victims to identify with them in this video.
Ultimately, slavery is the cradle of civilization in the same way as agriculture. Both are related, because large-scale monoculture is only possible with slaves. Initially, slaves must be hold in captivity and forced to work. Nobody volunteers to be a slave. At the beginning at least. Over a few thousand years, our culture perfected the machine more and more. With a permanent combination of organized violence, lies and propaganda, alongside powerful institutions like state, church and school, the original forms of social organization were destroyed, and replaced with a breed of totally isolated human beings, who by themselves identify as workers and do not resist any more. These are the happy slaves, that serve the machine. Without them, factories are unthinkable, there would be no industrial agriculture, no machines, no industrial production. Nothing of this would be possible without the innovation of the mechanical social organization, which in the ancient civilizations began as massive slavery. About 80% of the population in ancient Greece were slaves.
Hence, industrial civilization is the most extreme and by far most destructive form, because it combines this form of social organization with actual machines. Actually, these two have merged already. The humans, who are functioning as part of the machine, are themselves handling machines all the time. They identify more with their car, their computer or their smartphone than they identify with other living beings –including humans. This is why the people of our culture don’t care about the mass extinction of our fellow beings. The extinction of the insects and songbirds doesn’t lead to an uproar, unlike, say, driving restrictions due to increasing air pollution. The parts of the machine can’t imagine a life without cars and other machines; the machine belongs to them as they belong to it, and they are absolutely loyal to it.
Unfortunately, neither the machine nor its parts are intelligent or know any kind of morality. It is not intelligent to poison the air we need to breathe, the water we need to drink and the soil we need to grow food.
People who strike, fight for better working conditions or against cutbacks of jobs are already perfectly oiled gears of the machine. These people identify as working class, as parts of the machine, they have been born and raised as parts of the machine; the gainful employment, the profession, is in our culture a very important part of individual identity.
Being part of the machine is all they know. The limits of their perception are already very restricted. They don’t know real freedom. As part of a machine, you don’t need to think, but to work. This is our dominant industrial culture.
If humans exist as parts of a machine, they forget how to be responsible for their own lives and the lives of their children. This is why so few people are resisting against the slaughter of our fellow beings and the destruction of the planet. The liability for the machine is never carried by its parts, but its inventors. It is a strictly hierarchical system. Only with a system like this, it is possible to build institutions like the police force, the giant bureaucratic apparatus of state and government, or huge corporations, with people simply following orders without taking any responsibility for their actions. The responsibility is always up in the hierarchy. There is no humanity within a machine.
A machine has no empathy. It works exactly like it has been built. Some call that structural violence, or, like Samuel Huntington, organized violence. “The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion […] but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.”
This form of social organization made it possible for Europeans to conquer almost the whole world. The machine made the brutal extinction of most of the life on the American continent possible. Propaganda and rationalizations, like the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, served as instruction manuals for the machine. It is actually needless to say that the Third Reich, with the industrial mass extermination of unwanted human beings, exactly worked according to the principles of the megamachine. Of course, the IG Farben knew what their products would be used for.
For the few people, who are still able to think clearly, this culture is long since a dystopian nightmare. For the indoctrinated, this nightmare is the bare reality.
If a creature learns, to completely accept captivity and slavery, it can drive out the pain. But to be free, one must look at the pain; one must go through all the terror.
Jack D. Forbes
If people can’t get out of this nightmare, because they think this is “the way things are,” they are trapped in a life-long horror trip. It’s a horror trip to believe, that we must sell eight hours per day or more of our lifetime, to work and do things we would rather not.
Institutionalized religion works as another instruction manual for the machine. Christianity plays an important role for the indoctrination by teaching us for thousands of years that life is full of privation and a vale of tears. Later, the evangelical christians declared the morale, the work ethic, to a new religious doctrine, and therefore created the basis for capitalistic ideology.
The reward comes after death, if we behaved well and obedient during our lifetime. Thus, institutionalized religion has proven to be one of the most effective tools for suppression. Due to almighty belief systems like this, people don’t have to be suppressed by brute force; through faith, they will suppress themselves, others and their own children. Says Robert Combs: “Unquestioned beliefs are the real authorities of a culture. Nowadays, parents raise their children according to the religion of capitalism and the believe in an almighty market, in order that they will have a chance to be successful in this culture.”
Our culture is based on institutionalized lies, that have been erected as barriers to truth. One of the most obvious and thus most propagated lies is, that we can have industrial civilization and a living planet. The bare truth is, that we have to decide. As things stand, most people in our culture made their choice in favor of the megamachine and against a living planet.
After all, humans are animals. The wild packs of wolves, being the enemy of civilization, have been exterminated nearly everywhere; nowadays, all that is left are state-owned, domesticated dogs. Dogs can be raised to be the most loving and caring creatures, like guide-dogs who take care of blind humans with a highly developed social competence. But they can also be conditioned to become terrible monsters, like the Spanish conquistadores with their fighting dogs that were fed with butchered Indian children.
Violence has always been the most effective tool of our civilization.
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