by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jan 24, 2015 | Colonialism & Conquest, Mining & Drilling
Image Credit: Ryan Martinez Lewis
Deep Green Resistance (DGR) is dedicated to the fight against industrial civilization and its legacy of racism, patriarchy, and colonialism. For this reason, DGR would like to publicly state its support of the San Carlos Apache tribe and the residents of Superior, AZ in the fight to protect Oak Flat from the destructive and unethical practices of foreign mining giant Rio Tinto.
Background
For over a decade the San Carlos Apache tribe and supporters have been fighting against profit-driven attacks on their land by the Superior, AZ based company Resolution Copper (RC), a subsidiary of the international mining conglomerate Rio Tinto. The foreign Rio Tinto is an Anglo-Australian mining company with a shameful history of environmental degradation, human rights abuses, and consorting with oppressive regimes around the globe.
Resolution Copper plans a massive deep underground copper mine in the Oak Flat area using a technique called block caving, in which a shaft is drilled more than a mile deep into the earth and the material is excavated without any reinforcement of the extraction area. Block caving leaves the land above vulnerable to collapse.
Despite this, Resolution Copper is set to acquire 2,400 acres of the federally protected public land in the Tonto National Forest in southeast Arizona in exchange for 5,000 acres in parcels scattered around the state. The 2,400-acre land, part of San Carlos Apache’s aboriginal territory, includes Oak Flat, Devil’s Canyon, and nearby Apache Leap – a cliff where Apaches jumped to their death to avoid being killed by settlers in the late 19th century. The San Carlos Apaches and other Native people hold this land as sacred, where they conduct ceremonies, gather medicinal plants and foods, and continue to build connections with the land. The now public land is held in trust by the federal government and is also used by non-Native nature lovers for hiking, camping, bird watching and rock climbing, and is used for field trips by Boy Scout groups.
Recent Activity
On December 4, 2014 the House passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which included the Oak Flat Land exchange as an attachment to the annual must-pass defense bill. This particular version of the land exchange included in the NDAA (the “Southeast Arizona Land Exchange and Conservation Act of 2013”) is the 13th version since the bill was first introduced in Congress in 2005 by former Congressman, Rick Renzi (later convicted in 2013 of multiple counts of corruption, including extortion, racketeering and other federal charges). AZ Senators McCain and Flake, responsible for sneaking this unrelated attachment into the NDAA, subverted the will not only of Native American Tribes, conservation organizations, the Superior Town Council, and others, but the will of the United States Congress which has forcefully rejected the land exchange for nearly 10 years. Flake, who previously worked for Rio Tinto at their uranium mine (co-owned by the Iranian government) in Namibia, acknowledged the bill could not pass the US Congress on its own merits.
Shortly after passing through the House, the NDAA was signed into law by President Obama on December 19, 2014, exactly 5 years after he signed the “Native American Apology Resolution,” a little-noticed expression of regret over how the U.S. had abused its power in the past.
The Southeast Arizona Land Exchange and Conservation Act demonstrates a total disregard for Native American concerns. Resolution Copper has also openly admitted to the fact that their process of mining would create significant land cracking and eventually subsidence. Another grave concern is the permanent damage to surface and groundwater. This mine will deplete enormous quantities of water and pollute it, which will devastate local communities.
Oak Flat is also a rare desert riparian area. Less than 10% of this type of habitat remains in Arizona. The land exchange would allow mining companies to avoid following our nation’s environmental and cultural laws and would bypass the permitting process all other mines in the country have followed. Since this mining would, by design, lead to the complete destruction of the Oak Flat area and potentially impact both Apache Leap and Gaan Canyon, the San Carlos Apache Tribe (along with over 500 other tribes across the country) strongly opposes it and the illegal land exchange.
Call for Solidarity
Indigenous peoples have always been at the forefront of the struggle against the dominant culture’s ecocidal violence. Beneath the violations of US law lies the glaring threat of sacred Apache land being further harmed and colonized. If RC is allowed to follow through with its mining plan, not only would this land be stolen from the Apaches, but it would be rendered unrecognizable.
There is a monumental need for solidarity work to save Oak Flat. The only acceptable action on the part of Resolution Copper is immediate cessation of any and all plans to mine in the ancestral home of the Apache people; anything else will be met with resistance, and DGR will lend whatever support it can to those on the front lines. The time to act is now!
For more information or to lend support, please visit the Arizona Mining Reform Coalition.
**DGR recognizes that members of settler culture are living on stolen land in the midst of a current and ongoing genocide of indigenous people and culture. We encourage those who wish to be effective allies to indigenous people to read our Indigenous Solidarity Guidelines.
References
by DGR News Service | Dec 19, 2014 | Culture of Resistance, Education
Will Falk / Deep Green Resistance
originally published at Generation Alpha
The proper cure requires the proper diagnosis.
On November 22 and 23, the Fertile Ground Environmental Institute offered the proper diagnosis for the ecological crises we all face to over 700 attendees at Earth at Risk 2014. Focusing on environmental and social justice, the conference brought together seemingly disparate voices to weave together diverse perspectives to offer a comprehensive response to global destruction. The keynote speakers were Vandana Shiva, Alice Walker, Chris Hedges, Thomas Linzey, and Derrick Jensen.
Shiva detailed how multi-national corporations like Monsanto and DuPont are using genetically modified organisms (GMO) to undermine local communities’ ability to produce their own food. Walker shared her experiences as a Pulitzer Prize winning author to give an artist’s perspective for the necessity of solidarity with women. Hedges drew upon nearly two decades as a foreign war correspondent to argue for the moral imperative of resistance to topple industrial civilization. Linzey, an attorney, illustrated how citizens come to him asking for help drafting ordinances against fracking and are converted into revolutionary cadre when they learn through the legal system that they do not live in a democracy. Jensen addressed the question “Why are so few of us fighting back?” with an explanation that most of us in this culture are suffering from complex post-traumatic stress disorder.
Time is short and Earth at Risk displayed the appropriate urgency in the face of total environmental destruction. Studies around the world confirm what we feel in our hearts to be true. A recent study by the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London shows that half the world’s population of wild animals has died off since 1970. This is consistent with the findings of the University College of London showing insect populations crashing 50 percent in the last 35 years. Human destruction is necessarily implicated in the death of the natural world. We know, for example, dioxin – a known carcinogen – is now found in every mother’s breast milk.
A mere conference is insufficient to stop the madness, but Earth at Risk offered the most complete examination the movement has seen to date offering six panel discussions to go with the five keynote speakers. The first day was devoted to sustainability and featured panel discussions titled Colonization and Indigenous Life, Indicators of Ecological Collapse, and Building Resistance Communities. The second day was devoted to social justice with panels covering Capitalism and Sociopathology; Race, Militarism, and Masculinity; and Confronting Misogyny.
Personal Reflections
In a world gone mad, there are simply too few resisters struggling on. This is one of the reasons we are losing so badly. I left Earth at Risk feeling that patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism are the most serious threats to a living world. To save the world, alliances must be built on all fronts. While our movements remain relatively small, strength can be maximized in this way.
Earth at Risk’s speakers illuminated opportunities for coalition building and pointed out weak spots in the system ripe for targeting. There were too many highlights to document in one article, but my favorite moments included native Hawaiian filmmaker Anne Keala Kelly’s stinging remarks on the colonization of Hawaii and implorations for real decolonizing help from the mainland during the Colonization and Indigenous Life panel. Fighting for Hawaiian sovereignty would necessarily involve undermining the United States’ military presence there. Hawaii is the site of the United States’ Pacific Command that polices over half the world’s population.
During the Building Communities of Resistance panel, Mi’kmaw warrior Sakej Ward described how native warrior societies protect land bases so they may support the next seven generations. He drew attention to the 500 years of experience North American indigenous peoples have in resisting colonization and offered this experience as a valuable resource.
I was deeply moved by the entire conversation during the Race, Militarism, and Masculinity panel where military veterans Kourtney Mitchell, Vince Emanuele, Stan Goff, and Doug Zachary called on men to topple the patriarchy, stop rape, and support women with actions instead of words.
I attended the conference as a director of the Vancouver Island Community Forest Action Network (VIC FAN) in support of Unist’ot’en clan spokeswoman Freda Huson and Wet’suwet’en hereditary chief Dini Ze Toghestiy who spoke on the Building Communities of Resistance panel about their experiences at the Unist’ot’en Camp. The Unist’ot’en Camp occupies the unceded territory of the Unist’ot’en Clan of the Wet’suwet’en people and is a pipeline blockade sitting on the proposed routes of 17 fossil fuel pipelines in central British Columbia.
My visits to the Unist’ot’en Camp have taught me the strength in connecting the rationales for different social and environmental movements under one banner. It has also taught me how to think strategically. The Camp, as just one of many examples present at Earth at Risk, incorporates principles of indigenous sovereignty and environmentalism to bring activists from both communities together to combat imperialism and fossil fuels. More importantly, perhaps, the Camp demonstrates how a handful of volunteers can effectively neutralize huge, multi-corporate projects by focusing physical strength on chokepoints in industrial infrastructure. From a strategic perspective, the military-industrial complex wrecking the world runs on fossil fuels. Corking the fossil fuels would be a grievous blow to the dominant culture’s ability to continue business as usual.
Additionally, I am a member of the worldwide social and environmental justice organization Deep Green Resistance (DGR) based on the strategy developed by Lierre Keith, Derrick Jensen, and Aric McBay in the book Deep Green Resistance. DGR played a large role organizing the event. Keith brilliantly points out that, “Militarism is a feminist issue. Rape is an environmental issue. Environmental destruction is a peace issue.”
Hearing Kourtney Mitchell explain how his education in pro-feminism enabled to him to overcome the inherently abusive training he received as an infantry soldier in Georgia’s National Guard proved this to me. When Derrick Jensen was confronted for describing the destruction of the natural world in terms of rape and sexual violence and he refused to stop making the connection on grounds that both hinge on men’s perceived entitlement to violation, I understood that radical feminists and radical environmentalists were logical allies. Finally, hearing Richard Manning explain how dire the world’s lack of topsoil has become drove the point home that those of us sick of war would do well to defend the land’s ability to support food.
Finally, the Earth at Risk 2014 website promised to craft “game-changing responses to address the converging crises we face.” The conference successfully fulfilled its promise. The truth is we simply do not have the numbers to mount an effective resistance movement without forming coalitions between groups serious about stopping the murder of the planet and other humans.
I wrote earlier that a conference is insufficient to stop the madness. This is still true, but Earth at Risk 2014 accurately analyzed the world’s sicknesses and gave us a treatment plan to work from. Now, it’s time for all of those fighting so hard in our various causes to link up in solidarity to bring down the patriarchy, stop capitalism, and undermine the colonialism that is killing humans and obliterating the natural world.
by DGR News Service | Aug 4, 2014 | Colonialism & Conquest, Lobbying
By Will Falk / Deep Green Resistance San Diego
There’s a common joke I’ve heard many indigenous people tell. It goes like this: “What did indigenous peoples call this land before Europeans arrived? OURS.”
This joke – or truth – reflects many of the problems inhering to the Supreme Court of Canada’s recent ruling in Tsilhqot’in Nation v. British Columbia, 2014 SCC 44. From my radical view, the Tsilhqot’in decision leaves much to worry about. In this article, I examine the decision written by Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin to show why the decision is not as helpful it would seem and I anticipate how the government and corporations will bend the decision to their goals.
For me, the term “radical” denotes going to the roots of the problem. First Nations are suffering under the yoke of colonialism. Colonialism is the problem. To undermine colonialism, we must understand the processes making colonialism possible. One of the most powerful institutions perpetuating colonialism is the Canadian government and the Canadian court system as a branch of the Canadian government. It is my view that – for now – we must read the Tsilhqot’in decision not so much as a victory, but as another step down the long road of insidious colonialism.
First, there’s the general and underlying defeat that comes with the fact that colonialism has been so dominant in Canada that First Nations must submit to decisions made by Canadian courts. My second problem with the decision involves facing that there can be no true ownership of land when a dominated people must ask the courts of their conquerors for validation of their right to their own homelands. Placing the burden on First Nations to prove their land claims is another act of arbitrary power that works against cultural survival. Finally, I am deeply anxious about how clearly the Court spells out just what kind of governmental projects would be the type that the Court would sign off on. These projects include mining, forestry, agriculture, and the “general economic development of the interior of British Columbia.”
What Appealing to the Legal System Means
When celebrating what we view as a “good” decision by an imperial court it is easy to forget that the goal is to dismantle the power that gives the court its authority. We must not begin to view the so-called justice system as something like a benevolent paternal figure to appeal to when big-bad corporations come to destroy the land.
We must never forget that there will never be true justice in the courts of the oppressors because the courts of the oppressors are designed to protect the oppressors. Private property laws are the perfect example of this. What happens if you’re starving, walk into Walmart, take a loaf of bread, and are caught? You will be charged with transgressing property laws, dragged into court, and punished by the court for your transgression. Walmart’s right to a loaf of bread trumps your right to eat.
What does it mean, for example, that the Tsilhqot’in had to ask the courts to give them a right to land that they have lived on for thousands of years? Can a people ever truly own their land if they have to ask an occupying court to recognize their claims to land? The court protected the Tsilhqot’in after twenty-five years of deliberation, but what happens to the next aboriginal group that appeals to the courts and loses?
How is Aboriginal Title Established?
First, the Court lays out the process for establishing Aboriginal title. The burden falls on the Aboriginal group claiming title to prove its title. This means that a First Nation existing on its land for thousands of years must pay lawyers and subject its people to the stress of a legal proceeding – in courts established by settlers with access to First Nations land through centuries of genocide – to prove that the land is, in fact, theirs.
Aboriginal title is based on an Aboriginal group’s occupation of a certain tract of land prior to assertion of European sovereignty. A group claiming Aboriginal title must prove three characteristics about their occupation of a certain tract of land. First, they must prove their occupation is sufficient. Second, they must prove their occupation was continuous. Third, they must prove exclusive historic occupation. (¶ 50)
Proving Sufficient Occupation
To prove sufficiency of occupation, an Aboriginal group must demonstrate that they occupied the land in question from both an Aboriginal perspective and a common law perspective.
The Aboriginal perspective “focuses on law, practices, customs, and traditions of the group” claiming title. In considering this perspective for the purpose of Aboriginal title, the court “must take into account the group’s size, manner of life, material resources, and technological abilities, and the character of the lands claimed.” (¶ 35)
The common law perspective comes from the European tradition of property law and requires Aboriginal groups to prove they possessed and controlled the lands in question. As the Court explains, “At common law, possession extends beyond sites that are physically occupied, like a house, to surrounding lands that are used and over which effective control is exercised.” (¶ 36)
Simply put, proving sufficiency of occupation requires that the group claiming Aboriginal title were involved with the land in question more deeply than just using it in passing.
Proving Continuity of Occupation
Proving a continuity of occupation “simply means that for evidence of present occupation to establish an inference of pre-sovereignty occupation, the present occupation must be rooted in pre-sovereignty times.” So, the group claiming Aboriginal title must provide evidence that they were on the land in question in pre-sovereignty times. (¶ 46)
Exclusivity of Occupation
The last of the three general requirements for establishing Aboriginal title burdens a group with proving they have had the intention and capacity to retain exclusive control over the lands in question. As with sufficiency of occupation, the exclusivity element requires that the court view the evidence from both the Aboriginal and common law perspectives. According to the Court, “Exclusivity can be established by proof that others were excluded from the land, or by proof that others were only allowed access to the land with the permission of the claimant group. The fact that permission was requested and granted or refused, or that treaties were made with other groups, may show intention and capacity to control the land.” (¶ 48)
What Rights Does Aboriginal Title Confer?
This is one of the most important issues addressed by the Court in Tsilhqot’in – for what it says and what it does not say. The important thing to know here is that Aboriginal title does not provide Aboriginal groups with complete control of their own land. It may be common sense to assume that once an Aboriginal group gains Aboriginal title to their ancestral lands they are free to use their land how they see fit free of government interference. This simply is not true. And the Court is very clear to explain that this is not true.
According to the Court, “Aboriginal title confers ownership rights similar to those associated with fee simple, including: the right to decide how the land will be used; the right of enjoyment and occupancy of the land; the right to possess the land; the right to the economic benefits of the land; and the right to pro-actively use and manage the land.” (¶73)
In the English common law, “fee simple” refers to the highest form of ownership of land. Traditional rights associated with “fee simple” are the ones mentioned in the quote above. As the Court explains, “Analogies to other forms of property ownership – for example, fee simple – may help us understand aspects of Aboriginal title. But they cannot dictate what it is and what it is not.” (¶72) The Court quotes Delgamuukw, “Aboriginal title is not equated with fee simple ownership; nor can it be described with reference to traditional property law concepts.”(¶72)
It is important to note, of course, that Aboriginal title does not actually give Aboriginal groups full ownership of their own land. Aboriginal title has some key restrictions.
The Court explains: Aboriginal title “is collective title held not only for the present generation but for all succeeding generations. This means it cannot be alienated except to the Crown or encumbered in ways that would prevent future generations of the group from using and enjoying it. Nor can the land be developed or misused in a way that would substantially deprive future generations of the benefit of the land. Some changes – even permanent changes – to the land may be possible. Whether a particular use is irreconcilable with the ability of succeeding generations from the land will be a matter to be determined when the issue arises.” (¶74)
So, once Aboriginal title is established, Aboriginal groups can only sell or give their land back to the Crown. On top of this, the Court creates open doors for future litigation with all the restrictions. Aboriginal groups will be subject to defending their decisions from accusations that they do not know how to manage their own lands for the benefit of future generations. Forcing Aboriginal groups to defend their actions in Canadian courts is a statement that the courts know how to manage Aboriginal lands better than Aboriginal peoples.
Finally, through Tsilhqot’in, Aboriginal title is subject to being over-ridden by governments and other groups on the basis of the broader public good – which often spells disaster for First Nations and natural communities.
Infringing on Aboriginal Title
Government and other groups may infringe on Aboriginal title – or use Aboriginal lands against the wishes of aboriginal peoples – on the basis of the broader public good if it “shows (1) that it discharged its duty to consult and accommodate, (2) that its actions were backed by a compelling and substantial objective, and (3) that the governmental action is consistent with the Crown’s fiduciary obligation to the group.” (¶ 77)
The Duty to Consult
The Court predicates the duty to consult on what it calls the “honour of the Crown” and says that the “reason d’etre” of the duty to consult is the “process of reconciling Aboriginal interests with the broader interests of society as a whole.” (¶77 and 82)
It sets up a sliding scale for adjudicating just how hard the government or other groups must try to consult Aboriginal groups. The duty to consult is strongest where Aboriginal title is proven and weaker where the title is unproven. The Court quotes the Haida decision, “In general, the level of consultation and accommodation required is proportionate to the strength of the claim and the seriousness of the adverse impact the contemplated governmental action would have on the claimed right. The required level of consultation and accommodation is greatest where title has been established.” (¶ 79)
Nowhere does the Court say that a government or other group must literally accommodate the wishes of Aboriginal groups. Yes, the government has a duty to consult. But, the government is not charged with an absolute duty to respect the wishes of an Aboriginal group with title to land the government wants. No never actually means no when the government is concerned.
Compelling and Substantial Objectives
The Court is very careful to articulate that there are compelling and substantial objectives that would justify infringement on Aboriginal title. Just like we saw with the duty to consult, the Court will view what objectives will justify infringement through a desire to reconcile Aboriginal interests with the broader interests of society as a whole.
On its surface, this sounds great, but then the Court quotes the Delgamuukw decision to illustrate just exactly what kinds of activities might qualify as a compelling and substantial objectives (when reading this list, keep in mind the kinds of projects we are fighting against right now): “The development of agriculture, forestry, mining, and hydroelectric power, the general economic development of the interior of British Columbia, protection of the environment or endangered species, the building infrastructure and the settlement of foreign populations to support those aims, are the kinds of objectives that are consistent with this purpose and, in principle, can justify the infringement of aboriginal title.” (¶ 83)
We have to recognize how dangerous this language is. Enbridge has long anticipated the language. You could pick any number of prominent quotes from Enbridge’s Northern Gateway website www.gatewayfacts.ca to see how Enbridge is already spinning rhetoric to match the Court’s Tsilhqot’in ruling.
Take this one, for example, under the heading, “A boost for our economy,” “Northern Gateway will bring significant and long-lasting fiscal and economic benefits. Economically, the project represents more than $300 billion in additional GDP over 30 years, to the benefit of Canadians from every province.”
Or this one under the heading “Building communities with well-paying jobs,” “The pipeline sector creates thousands of jobs across the country. In B.C. alone, Northern Gateway will help create 3,000 new construction jobs and 560 new long-term jobs. The $32 million per year earned in salaries will directly benefit the families and economies of these communities.”
This is exactly the type of governmental objective that the Court in Tsilhqot’in suggests is compelling and substantive enough to pass constitutional muster.
It is important to understand how easy it is to be misled by our desire for good news in the fight to defend the land and First Nations communities. While there are helpful aspects of the Tsilhqot’in ruling on Aboriginal title, the Court is a long way from giving First Nations total control over their own lands. It may be safer for land defenders to assume that nothing really has changed. Yes, Aboriginal title has been defined, but how meaningful is that title if governments and corporations can override title by pointing to the “general economic development of the interior of British Columbia”?
The Crown’s Fiduciary Duty
The final hurdle a government or other group must clear in infringing on Aboriginal title is proving that the proposed action is consistent with the Crown’s fiduciary duty to the Aboriginal group. This fiduciary duty supposedly requires the Crown to act solely in Aboriginal groups best interests. The problem, of course, is that it is the courts that decide what is in an Aboriginal groups best interest.
The Court explains that the Crown’s fiduciary duty impacts the infringement justification process in two ways. “First, the Crown’s fiduciary duty means that the government must act in a way that respects the fact that Aboriginal title is a group interest that inheres in present and future generations…This means that incursions on Aboriginal title cannot be justified if they would substantially deprive future generations of the benefit of the land.” (¶ 86)
The second way it impacts the infringement process is by imposing an obligation of proportionality into the justification process where the government’s proposed infringement must be rationally connected to the government’s stated goal, where the government’s proposed action must minimally impair Aboriginal title, and where the benefits the government expects to accrue from the proposed action are not outweighed by adverse effects on Aboriginal communities. (¶ 87)
Another glimpse at the Enbridge’s Northern Gateway website (http://www.gatewayfacts.ca/benefits/economic-benefits/) demonstrates how Enbridge anticipates the Court’s ruling. Under a heading titled “Aboriginal inclusion” the website reads, “First Nations and Metis communities were offered to become equity partners providing them a 10% stake in the project. With the $300 million in estimated employment and contracts, it adds up to $1 billion in total long-term benefits for Aboriginal communities.”
I do not think it is a stretch to expect that Canadian courts will rule that Aboriginal groups denying projects like the Northern Gateway are working contrary to their own best interests. But, this isn’t even really the point. The point is, for all the progressiveness we want the Tsilhqot’in decision to stand for, it still allows the courts to decide what the best interest of First Nations is and not First Nations themselves. The longer this system remains intact, the longer First Nations communities will be in danger.
by DGR News Service | Jun 17, 2014 | Indigenous Autonomy, Mining & Drilling
Deep Green Resistance is dedicated to the fight against industrial civilization and its legacy of racism, patriarchy, and colonialism. For this reason, DGR would like to publicly state its support for the Oglala Lakota in their current fight against the genocidal mining operations of the Cameco Corporation.
Cameco is currently attempting to expand its already illegal resource extraction campaign despite undeniable evidence that their abuse of the Earth is leading to increased rates of cancer, diabetes, and other life-threatening illnesses among the Lakota people.
The only acceptable action on the part of the Cameco Corporation is immediate cessation of any and all mining activities in the ancestral home of the Lakota people; anything else will be met with resistance, and DGR will lend whatever support it can to those on the front lines.
The indigenous peoples of this land have always been at the forefront of the struggle against the dominant culture’s ecocidal violence, and DGR would like to offer its support and encouragement to Debra White Plume, the Lakota activist group Owe Aku, and all other indigenous women and men fighting for the future of the planet. The time for resistance is long past, and we are thankful every day that the Earth has warriors like the Oglala Lakota fighting in its defense.
For more information, please visit Owe Aku International at http://oweakuinternational.org/
by DGR News Service | Mar 24, 2014 | Gender, Women & Radical Feminism
By Rachel / Deep Green Resistance Eugene
The following is a response to an open letter written by Bonnie Mann to Lierre Keith.
Hello Professor Mann,
You wrote an open letter recently to my friend and fellow activist Lierre Keith. You don’t know me, and I don’t know you, but as your letter discusses issues which are very important to me, and as I feel that you’ve gravely misconstrued those issues, it feels incumbent upon me to respond. You may choose to write me off as “uncritical,” since I share the views that you have dismissed as such in your letter, but I hope that you will instead choose to listen and reflect on my reasons for finding your letter uncritical at best, and in all truth, irresponsibly misleading at worst. At the risk of casting too wide a net, there are two things I’d like to address: the things you say in your letter, and the things you don’t say in your letter.
You write that you don’t support those who tried (and failed) to get Lierre’s invitation to speak rescinded, because “you don’t get ‘safe space’ in the public sense from not being subjected to attacks, or to the presence of those by whom you consider yourself to have been attacked.” You don’t specify whether by attacks you are referring to political disagreement, or the kind of rape and death threats, stalking, sexual harassment, and occasional physical assault to which I and other radical feminists are regularly subject. This ambiguity, which pervades your letter’s arguments, works to stymie direct discussion of the issues. If by “attacks” you mean “political disagreement,” then I agree. Contrary to the beliefs of many who try to blacklist radical feminist thought from the public sphere, I do not believe that mere disagreement is equivalent to physical violence.
You go on to say: “I think you get safe space, or as safe as space gets, from having your community stand by you in the face of attacks.” If that’s true, then “as safe as safe space gets” feels pretty damn unsafe when you dare to question the inevitability or the justice of gender. I and the radical feminists I know have formed a community that supports each other in the face of attacks. Unfortunately, supporting each other has not stopped the bullying, the rape and death threats, the intimidation and the stalking and the harassment. This is as safe as space gets for radical feminists who stick to their convictions instead of abandoning them. It’s disturbing to me that nowhere in your letter do you even acknowledge the reality of what we deal with every time we open our mouths to disagree with the currently popular ideology around gender.
You mention having watched a presentation of mine on gender that I wrote about a year ago, entitled “The End of Gender” (or alternatively “I Was a Teenage Liberal”), so I won’t waste time on details of my past that you, presumably, are already familiar with. Suffice it to say that my views on gender have taken the opposite trajectory from yours. One of the most easily challengeable and, frankly, one of the cheapest ways that you dismiss Lierre’s politics in your letter is by suggesting that they are less valuable because they are so old as to be archaic or outmoded. You imply this by describing how reading her arguments brings you “back in time,” and by mentioning several times that you also heard those same arguments from her thirty two years ago. That argument might seem slightly more viable if Lierre, or others in her and your generation, were the only ones who hold similar convictions today.
My very existence (much less my work as an activist) renders that line of criticism less-than-viable. You wrote that you last spoke to Lierre in 1989, but I was born in 1989, and women closer to my age are some of the most vocal and active gender-critical feminists I know. Some of us, the lucky ones, benefit from the support and guidance of women who have been feminists since before we were born. Others came to radicalism because they could see that the ideology we’ve been fed by academia and the dominant culture – individualist, neoliberal “feminism” – is actively working against the advancement of women’s human rights. Young women organize radical feminist conferences, write gender-critical analysis, fight to maintain the right of females to organize as a class, and support each other through the intimidation, threats, and ostracization that such work earns us. We do not appreciate being ignored by those who would take the easy way out in dismissing our politics.
You write that the ideology of gender that gave rise to today’s trans ideology and practice was “brand new” to you at the time you first encountered it, and that it “freaked you out” because it “didn’t match the analysis” that you held at the time, which you equate to the analysis that Lierre and I and so many others hold today. Your implication, and the dismissal it contains, is clear – radical feminist disagreement with liberal gender ideology stems from cognitive dissonance and unease toward unfamiliar ideas, not from reasoned analysis. You imply that radical feminism is an artifact from an earlier time, and that the only women who still cling to it do so because they are afraid of new ideas. Again, you write as if women of your and Lierre’s generation who share your early experience of feminism are the only radical feminists who still walk the Earth.
This argument falls completely flat for me and so many radical feminists of my generation. Liberal gender ideology has never been “brand new” for us. It is not unfamiliar to us; we grew up swimming in it. We’re not clinging to relics, we’re reaching for a politics that actually addresses the scope of the problems. It was gender-apologism that began to give us cognitive dissonance, after our experiences brought us to some uncomfortable and challenging conclusions: Female people are a distinct social class, and its members experience specific modes of oppression based on the fact that we’re female. All oppressed classes have the right to organize autonomously and define the boundaries of their own space. Gender is socially constructed; there are no modes of behavior necessarily associated with biological sex. The norms of gender function to facilitate the extraction of resources from female bodies. The extraction of resources from female bodies forms the foundation of male supremacy, and thusly, male supremacy fundamentally depends on the maintenance of gender.
Like many of radical feminism’s detractors, you have chosen to focus your response to our politics on one statement, perceived belief, or piece of writing, which is taken as a representation of us as a group in order to make it easier to misconstrue and dismiss our views. This is called scapegoating, and Lierre’s email is an oft-selected target for it. I understand that your letter was addressed to Lierre, and so it makes sense that you would focus on her stated views. However, there are multiple other more recent and detailed pieces of writing from her on the subject that you chose to ignore. Maybe the choice to exclude these was “a symptom of not listening.” Maybe it “marks a distaste for complexity, ambiguity, nuance.” I don’t pretend to know, but it was clearly a choice that allowed you to sidestep direct engagement with the basic principles and broader conclusions of radical feminist politics.
In describing your views before you adopted your current ideology around gender, you write that “we weren’t afraid of the people so much as we were afraid of the phenomenon. Why? Because if gender is a sex-class system, and that’s all it is, there is no way to explain the existence of trans women at all. That’s like white people trying to get into the slavery of the 1840s. If gender is a sex-class system, and that’s all it is, then the only “trans” should be female to male, because everybody should be trying to get out and nobody should be trying to get in – yet it’s the transition from male to female that is cited as troubling.”
First of all, if you had bothered to take a broader and more accurate view of Lierre’s gender politics and her writing on the subject, you’d have found that she does not only cite the transition from male to female as troubling. She cites the entire system of enforced stereotypes called gender as troubling, including the trans ideology that justifies enforcing the categorization of qualities and behavior, and presents cutting up people’s bodies to fit those enforced stereotypes as a solution. I do appreciate that you actually engage with some of her arguments, since most who choose to scapegoat her usually skip directly to threats and insults. However, your analysis of the two analogies you chose to address leave some things to be desired. You begin with:
“I am a rich person stuck in a poor person’s body. I’ve always enjoyed champagne rather than beer, and always knew I belonged in first class not economy, and it just feels right when people wait on me.”
This is only a reverse analogy, as you call it, if you believe that she is only intending to address the phenomenon of male people identifying themselves as female. You’re correct that this example, when applied to gender, is analogous to a female person identifying themselves as male. I do not believe that this fact lessens its illustrative power. If this “rich person stuck in a poor person’s body” tried to “transition” to higher economic status based on their inner identification with wealth, how do you think they’d be treated by actual rich people? Might the treatment of this person mirror, say, the treatment of a trans man trying to join a group of men’s rights activists (MRAs)? Here’s a better question: Even if this person was able to “pass” as wealthy by appearing and acting to be so, would their passing have any affect at all on the capitalist structures of power that keeps them in poverty in the first place? Would passing as wealthy in appearance help them acquire actual financial power? Would it retroactively grant them a silver spoon at birth and a BMW on their sixteenth birthday?
You reverse the analogy (“I’m rich, but I’ve always identified as poor, so I divest myself of my wealth and go join the working class”) and say that it’s less powerful that way. I disagree. I think that the reversed version is extremely illustrative of the flaws in your argument, and in liberal thinking more generally. You write:
“Who wouldn’t welcome you, if you really divested yourself of your wealth and joined marches in the street to increase the minimum wage?”
Do you really think that someone can divest themselves not only of their material wealth, but of their history as a wealthy person? I don’t know about you, but if a rich person voluntarily gave up their wealth and said to me “Hey fellow member of the working class! I’m just like you, and there is no difference between our experiences of the world,” I’d tell them to fuck off. Becoming penniless now is not equivalent to going hungry as a kid, struggling to afford education throughout your life, watching your parents pour their lives into multiple underpaid jobs, or having to decide between rent and medical bills. It’s insulting to suggest that someone can shrug off years of privilege and entitlement and safety at will. In large part, growing up with privilege is the privilege. The punishment meted out to males who disobey the dictums of masculinity (a punishment that is yet another negative effect of the sex caste system) can be severe, and of course it’s indefensible. However, it is distinct from the systematic exploitation that females experience because we are female.
You go on to the second analogy: “I am really native American. How do I know? I’ve always felt a special connection to animals, and started building tee pees in the backyard as soon as I was old enough. I insisted on wearing moccassins to school even though the other kids made fun of me and my parents punished me for it. I read everything I could on native people, started going to sweat lodges and pow wows as soon as I was old enough, and I knew that was the real me. And if you bio-Indians don’t accept us trans-Indians, then you are just as genocidal and oppressive as the Europeans.”
You respond: “Maybe we thought gender was a ‘a class condition created by a brutal arrangement of power,’ and only that, but we would never have made the same claim about being native American. Why? It’s blatently reductive. It’s reducing a rich set of histories, cultures, languages, religions, and practices to the effect of a brutal arrangement of power – which is of course a very important part of it. But “being native American” is not merely an effect of power, in the way we thought gender was.”
Your objections to these analogies consistently prove the points that you’re trying to challenge. Of course gender cannot be parallel to “being native American” in this or any other analogy. Gender is parallel to colonial ideology in this analogy. More specifically, male supremacy is parallel to the colonialial power relation in this analogy, and gender is parallel with the stereotypes that colonialism imposes onto the colonized. The “drunk Indian” stereotype, or the image of the “savage,” only have anything to do with “being native American” because the ideology and practice of white supremacy was and continues to be imposed by Europeans on an entire continent’s peoples in order to exploit them. The female stereotypes we call “femininity” (domestic laborer, mother, infantalized sex object) only have anything to do with being female because the ideology (gender) and practice (patriarchy) of male supremacy was and is imposed by males onto females in order to exploit them. Of course it’s reductive to condense an entire distinct, specific set of experiences, the good and bad and everything in between, into a brutal arrangement of power – and this is exactly what gender does.
Gender takes the lived experiences of being female or being male and reduces those experience to sets of stereotypes. Transgender ideology retains those same oppressive stereotypes, but liberalizes their application by asserting that anyone can embody either set of stereotypes, regardless of their biological sex. This does not take away the destructiveness and reductiveness of the stereotypes, and in fact it reinforces them. The existence of outlaws requires the law, and maintaining an identity as a “gender outlaw” requires that the law – the sex castes – be in full effect for the rest of us. If “twisting free” of gender and the power relations of male supremacy is possible for a few of us, doesn’t that mean that those of us who fail to twist free are choosing the oppression we experience under gender? Perhaps we’re not trying hard enough to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. How about other oppressive power arrangements – do the colonized, the racially subjugated, or those in poverty ever get to “twist free” of the power relations they live within? Do racial stereotypes, for instance, “take on a life of their own in the imaginary domain”? To defend gender as even occasionally being estranged from the machinations of power is to defend male supremacy, and to argue that any aspect of society can be apolitical is to completely ignore the ways that hegemony actually functions.
The only other groups of people who have argued to me that gender stereotypes are natural, biological, or apolitical, aside from gender-apologists, are fundamentalist christians and MRA’s. Forgive me if I don’t see how this is remotely progressive. This represents an adjustment in the rhetoric of patriarchy – not resistance to it. These stereotypes are not arbitrary; just like the stereotype of the Indian “savage,” or of the lazy (brown) immigrant, or of the freeloading (brown) “welfare queen,” the stereotypes called gender function to facilitate the extraction of resources. In the case of the “savage” Indian stereotype, the resource in question was and still is land. In the case of women, the resources are labor, reproduction, and sex, and the stereotypes (housewife, mother, infantalized sex object) come to match. It’s not an accident that these stereotypes correspond with the resources that women are exploited for. This is the purpose of gender. What does it mean that those in the academy almost universally embrace the idea that these regressive stereotypes must be reformed, justified, normalized, fetishized, idealized, and extended – but never challenged at their root?
I think you’re right that misogyny is not the conscious reasoning of every male person who begins identifying themselves as female. When I was a high school teacher, I had male students who were told by counselors that they were sick with “gender dysphoria” and put on hormones by doctors because they failed to live up to masculine stereotypes. These boys aren’t consciously out to invade female space – but they, and the abuse that they receive at the hands of the medical and psychiatric establishments, certainly aren’t poster children for why gender castes deserve to be rationalized or maintained. The fact that some males have a negative experience of gender does not erase the fact that structurally, on the macro level, gender exists to facilitate the extraction of resources from female bodies. Gender is the chain, and male supremacy is the ball. Just because males sometimes trip over that chain does not erase the fact that the ankle it’s cuffed to is always female.
I think you’re right that when you say that we “negotiate and take up and resist and contest or affirm these structures in profoundly complex ways and sometimes deeply individual, creative, and unique ways,” but it sounds like you’re using the fact that individuals have varied experiences to dismiss or minimize the reality of the larger structures that those experiences occur within. Individual experiences may not always match up with the larger structures of exploitation, but this does not mean that those larger structures become irrelevant. I also think you’re right that each of us “seeks a way of living, a way of having the world that is bearable.” But this does not erase the fact that gender, the stereotypes that it is composed of, and the exploitation it facilitates, compose one of the oppressive systems preventing us from finding a bearable, much less a safe or just, way of having the world.
You end your letter by, yet again, expressing a patronizing disapproval that Lierre has held the same convictions for thirty two years. I agree that we should constantly be seeking new information, new perspectives, and actively incorporating them into our politics. However, holding consistent core convictions isn’t always an indication of stagnation or dogmatism – sometimes it’s called “having principles.” Would you use this argument against others who stick to their political guns in the face of backlash and opposition? Indigenous communities that have fought for sovereignty for centuries? The women who struggled through the generations for suffrage?
Putting radical feminist principles (like the right of females to organize autonomously) into practice comes with a cost. I and others have come to accept that cost after challenging, painful analysis of radical feminism’s merits. You dismiss Lierre’s radical feminism as an “uncritical” relic from a simpler time, but for me and others in my position, radical feminism has been a lifeline of critical thought. We grew up within a “feminism” that uncritically accepted the inevitability and the naturalness of gender, the neoliberal primacy of individualism, and ultimately, the unchallengeability of male supremacy. You characterize those who hold firm to feminist political convictions as fetishizing clean lines, simplicity, and the safety of familiarity. I’m here to tell you that my worldview was a lot simpler and more familiar back when I believed that gender stereotypes were voluntary, natural, defensible, inevitable, even holy. My life was a lot simpler and safer when I was content to keep quiet and continue parroting liberal nonsense. You’re right that individual experiences of gender differ, and you’re right that the situation is complicated, but complexity does not have to derail the fight against male supremacy on behalf of women as a class – at least, it doesn’t have to for all of us.
-Rachel
