Andrea Dworkin (1946-2005) was a radical feminist theorist, writer, and campaigner. In this excerpt from her book Pornography: Men Possessing Women, Dworkin discusses the power of naming. In her analysis, the development of the culture of patriarchy has empowered men with almost sole access to the power to define language. This control over language allows for expansions in ideological hegemony, and has serious implications for women over the centuries.
By Andrea Dworkin
How Patriarchy Works: The Power of Naming
Men have the power of naming, a great and sublime power. This power of naming enables men to define experience, to articulate boundaries and values, to designate to each thing it’s realm and qualities, to determine what can and cannot be expressed to control perception itself.
As Mary Daly, who first isolated this power, wrote in Beyond God the Father “… It is necessary to grasp the fundamental fact that women have had the power of naming stolen from us“.
Male supremacy is fused into language, so that every sentence both heralds and affirms it. Thought experienced primarily as language, is permeated by the linguistic and perpetual values developed expressly to subordinates women.
Men have defined the parameters of every subject. All feminist arguments, however radical in intent or consequence, are with or against assertions or premises implicit in the male system, which is made credible or authentic by the power of men to name.
No transcendence of the male system is possible as long as men have the power of naming. Their names resonate wherever there is human life. As Prometheus stole fire from the gods, so feminists will have to steal the power of naming from men, hopefully to better effect. As with fire when it belonged to the gods, the power of naming appears magical: he gives the name, the name enjoys she gives the name the name is lost. But this magic is illusion.
The male power of naming is upheld by force, pure and simple.
On its own, without force to back it, measured against reality, it is not power; it is process, a more humble thing. “The old naming,” Mary Daly wrote, “was not the product of dialogue – a fact in advertently admitted in the Genesis story of Adam’s naming the animals and the woman.”
It is the naming by decree that is power over and against those who are forbidden to name their own experience; it is the decree backed up by violence that writes the name indelibly in blood in a male dominated culture. The male does not merely name women evil; he exterminates nine million women as witches because he is named them evil. He does not merely name women weak; he mutilates the female body, binds it up so that it cannot move freely, uses it as a toy or ornament, keeps it caged and stunted because he has named women weak. He says that the female wants to be raped; he rapes. She resists rape; he must beat her, threaten her with death, forcibly carry her off, attack her in the night, use knife or fist; and still he says she wants it, they all do. She says no; he claims that means yes.
He names her ignorant then forbids her education.
He does not allow her to use her mind or body rigourously, their names her intuitive and emotional. He defines femininity and when she does not conform he names her deviant, sick, beats her up, slices of her clitoris (repository of pathological masculinity), tears out her womb, (source of her personality), lobotomizes or narcotizes her (perverse recognition that she can think, though thinking in a woman is named deviant).
He names antagonism and violence, mixed in varying degrees “sex”; he beats her and names it variously “proof of love“ (if she is wife) or “eroticism“ (if she is mistress). If she wants him sexually he names her slut; if she does not want him he rapes her and says she does; If she would rather study or paint he names her repressed and brags he can cure her pathological interests with the apocryphal “good fuck“. He names her housewife, fit for only the house, keeps her poor and utterly dependent, only to buy her with his money should she leave the house and then he calls her whore. He names her whatever suits him. he does what he wants and calls it what he likes.
He actively maintains the power of naming through force and he justifies force through the power of naming.
The world is his because he has named everything in it, including her. She uses this language against herself because it cannot be used any other way. […]
Whatever contradicts or subverts male naming is defamed out of existence; the power of naming itself, in the male system, is a form of force.
On this episode of the Green Flame, we interviewed Shahidah Janjua about women, writing, activism and the creation of a Women’s Centre in Kerry. Shahidah read one of her soon-to-be-published poems.
This episode is also dedicated to the memory of our beloved sister.
We share this memorial she wrote on the passing of Andrea Dworkin, whom she mentions in the interview saying, “I love that woman.”
On Andrea’s Passing.
April 12, 2005 05:53 AM
“I am gutted. It is the end of an era; not of our resistance, but of an era. I am a Pakistani woman of 55, a mother, a grandmother. I read Letters from a War Zone when I was 36 and it did save my life, not in any cliched way, but really. Everything I have done, thought and understood since then has evolved from reading that book. It laid bare what I had known and experienced. I went on to read all Andrea’s books. I wrote to Andrea to tell her this. Even if my voice was one of thousands, I felt it was important for her to know what she had given me. She replied with great humility.
At first I loved and looked up to Andrea as a child does to its mother, always wanting clarity, the truth, and cherishing the guidance when it came in articles, speeches, interviews and books. I grew from there into an adult and an equal, because this is the power that the truth gave me. It demanded that I grow in stature in the world and stand shoulder to shoulder with brave women, by becoming a brave woman myself. No other words, no other actions in the world had allowed me the full possibility of seeing myself in this way; someone of great worth and endless potential. Always her gendered analysis was the key. The abiding question it left me with in any circumstance was “where are the women in this, and what is happening to them?”, the question that followed was “where am I in this, and what is happening to me?” Asking these questions requires brutal honesty, and no place for complicity. I have lost a friend and a sister, and the way that I can honour this very precious relationship is by carrying on the resistance to male supremacy and domination.”
On behalf of the Women of DGR:
We lost you Shahidah in March, and we are gutted. We mourn no longer having the opportunity to work shoulder to shoulder with you, dear sister. We cherish the many gifts of your life’s work. We dedicate our lives, as you once did, to being brave, to continuing that work, wherever we are, with whatever gifts we have to give. With all our love and respect Shahidah Janjua, Thank You.
Rest in Peace. Rest in Power.
Shahidah was a woman of strength, a feminist, writer and member of DGR.
In this piece of writing Rebecca shares her deep connection with nature, her journey in love, courting and listening for responses. She illuminates how a culture of resistance sown from fierce love can empower us to stop oppression and injustice.
Do you remember the first time you fell in love? What did it bring alive? I was fifteen. His wavy, dark hair shook when he spoke, accentuating his expressions. His brown eyes flickered from behind his round spectacles on the few occasions I glanced at him. It was the 80s. He was an oddball in a jean jacket with a smiley face on the back. He spoke things I thought, but never said. Perhaps they were truths I didn’t even know I held. I was quiet. I hadn’t lived in a world where people were allowed to be so honest, but he didn’t seem to need permission.
We were in the same classes and the school play. His presence pierced the shallow high school drudgery. I’d spent many days near him, but one day awoke to the horror of discovering something had shifted inside me. I wanted to be nearer to him, yet I felt terrified to get any closer. A new angst grew within me—nothing would ever be the same.
I imagined that if we spoke, he’d understand what I wanted to say. I was too shy to approach him. I wrote to him in my journal, his name spelled backwards for secrecy, “Dear Ydna.” I missed being around him in summertime. In a flash of boldness, I looked up his number in the phone book and called. I asked if he’d like to meet in the park and go swinging. He agreed. I felt like myself on the swings—with my body in motion, my words could flow easier.
In the years that followed, we were in the same circle of friends. Without knowing I was doing it, I apprenticed to what I loved about him: the courage to speak out, inhabit my depths, and be odd (authentic). We wrote for the school newspaper in our senior year. I wroteeditorials seeking a more meaningful life and critiquing high school—hairspray to cliques to prom to our classes.
My love for this boy altered me, and it never required we even hold hands. It awoke a longing that stirred my feelings,incited my imagination, catalyzed my actions. I grew to understand the yearnings of my heart and began to find my voice and engage with those around me. I grew into someone beyond whom I thought I could be.
Romance
Romance is more than a pleasurable feeling. It’s more than finding your other half in another human. It isn’t acquisition, and it’s not sex either. Real romance opens us to the mystery and depth of our longing and unveils the secrets of our heart. Suddenly, what is truly meaningful is alive and close enough to move toward, but far enough away that we ache for it. This may impel us to act courageously. As we serve what we love, we honor it. Perhaps we become closer somehow. This guides whom we become.
Romancecan mature us into becoming someone who has the capacity to serve the world—someone willing to offer their life to what matters most. Our longingis a guidepost, offering the first scent on the path. My affection for my high school love called me out of my inner world and had me risk sharing myself. As the qualities I admired in him—authenticity, articulation, and courage—developed in me, I became more myself.
Just as romance may open our hearts and inspire our creativity, it may also initiate us into the transpersonal. We may experience the Divine, Goddess, or Mystery through the other. Many nature-based and indigenous cultures, such as the Tz’utujil Mayan culture, didn’t allow their young to touch one another until after they’d been initiated. Their readiness wasn’t determined by age, but by their infatuation, a “precious brush” with seeing and wanting “the devastating, delicious, ecstatic, and painful presence of the Divine.”
Men and women were separated from each other and the village for a year. They grieved and courted the Divine—that which they could love, but never possess—with love poems, and in so doing became capable of loving another human who could be forgiven for small thoughts and deeds.
The Inner Beloved
Romantic love can carry us to the transcendent or sink us into the depths of our truest nature. The attractive qualities we project onto another when we fall in love exist in us, too. While we may not fully embody these qualities, we can cultivate them. Through romantic love, we may encounter our inner beloved, the true other half of our psyche, who may appear in dreams, fantasies, or in the attractive qualities we project. The anima is the intuitive, feminine, heart-based side of ourselves, while the animus is the masculine, intellectual, action-oriented side of ourselves.
Romance with an outer partner can bring joy and meaning, too—if we withdraw our idealizations—but a relationship with our inner beloved is vital. Following its call can inspire and guide us toward the deepest purpose of our soul. Soul is the unique place we were born to inhabit within the Earth community. It’s the myth or image that underlies the way we’re called to serve the world. We may encounter soul through the whispers and hints of our inner beloved, as well as in dreams and conversations with the natural world.
We can fall in love with anything, a concept, a forest, a work of art or a dying planet. Stepping toward the inner beloved may feel alluring and terrifying. The possibility of death may remind us of the vulnerability of life and the preciousness of every moment. Relating with our inner beloved aligns us with our imagination and deepens our relationship with our muse, who restores our visionary capacity and inspires our unique way of seeing the world.
Sourced in our deep imagination, we can live a muse-directed life where never-before-seen forms emerge through us, and we receive visions for how we might tend the world. The qualities of my high school love still live in me, alongside those of past and present loves. My inner beloved invites me to perceive the world in the way that only I can, informing how I listen, guide, and write.
The Natural World
Nature lives the most exquisite romance of all. Wind dances with trees, thunderstorms roar, and lightning brightens the sky. The cycles of the moon dance with the ocean’s tides. The sunrise bathes the mountains, rivers, and prairies in warmth and light. Bees pollinate flowers. The breeze makes music with the leaves. The crickets make a concert for the night. Rain offers itself to the grasses. Rivers carry their waters to the sea. Coyotes howl. Owls hoot. Frogs croak. The red-tailed hawk perches on a rock and spreads her wings to dry in the sun. A mourning dove’s call echoes on canyon walls.
Nature is our guide.
Romance is essential for it and imperative for us, too. And romance can happen between humans and non-humans. I’ve had extraordinary romances with tree and ocean, river and rainforest. We can tend our inner beloved and our outer relationships. Each may deepen the other. I remember the first night I spent on a river. I was in my mid-twenties on a multi-day raft trip down the Colorado River through Cataract Canyon. I stared up at the stars, planets, and galaxies twinkling in the night sky framed by the dark silhouettes of red rock walls. I couldn’t close my eyes, because I didn’t want to miss anything. The river glowed dark in the moon’s light while lapping at my toes in the sand.
Every river is uniquely magnificent—also dangerous, reminding us that the possibility of death is always near. Sometimes I awaken in the night with a knot in my stomach before guiding on a river. Sitting in meditation, I pray for my life. “Why go?” my fear voices interject. “Just stay home.” But the river calls.
When I’m in its flow, I feel alive. The ducks, beavers, and geese seem more alive too. Listening to the sound of ever-changing currents, I wonder what’s around the next bend. Sometimes the river asks me to surrender, and other times it challenges me to find my strength. My body loves this wordless conversation with waves. When the boat flips, I find myself underwater, immersed in the silence that lives there. Then my instinct emerges and propels my fight to the river’s turbulent surface.
Heartbreak
Our romance with the world brings us joy. We may smell the scent of honeysuckle, hear the song of crashing waves, or sense the moisture in the air after it rains. It also breaks our hearts, especially if we love the natural world, which is under assault.
My heart broke when three million gallons of toxic waste were dumped into the Animas River in the Gold King Mine spill of August 2015. I was a river guide, and it was then I began to learn about the waste that has always been there. With forty-four abandoned mines at its headwaters, toxins are always draining into it. The mine waste dumped into the river during the spill discharges every ten days, unnoticed. These draining mines dump three hundred million gallons of waste into the Animas every year.
Dams harm rivers too. There are about seventy-five thousand dams over six feet tall, including sixty-five thousand over twenty feet tall, and an estimated two million small dams in the United States alone. Dams kill fish, strangle streams, and harm entire ecosystems. Many dams no longer work or were illegal in the first place. When we imprison rivers, we clog the Earth’s blood, locking up everything downstream.
The harm is happening everywhere. Hundreds of species go extinct each day, as industrial civilization steals resources from the land and the poor. Personal lifestyle changes won’t stop the harm. The majority of consumption is commercial, industrial, and corporate, by agribusiness and government. Global industrial empire is built on conquest and the use of nonrenewable resources. It is inherently unsustainable. Much green technology requires mining, consuming, and ecosystem destruction. We will never be intact as long as the Earth is our captive.
Collapse
Fear constricts our hearts.We may even be consumed by it, if we are not in denial. There is no safe place. Some nights I lie awake feeling dread. There’s no security in ourgovernmentleaders or the structures of our industrial lifestyle. The coronavirus scare has offered us a frightening glimpse of things many people face every day: food shortages, deaths, loss of civil freedoms, and totalitarian leadership. COVID-19 has unveiled just how fragile our dominant system really is, and we may face a more extreme version of this in the future as seas rise, droughts increase, soil depletion and climate change continue, and clean water becomes even more scarce and precious.
I pray our fear gives rise to courage.
Industrial civilization is making the Earth uninhabitable for humans and most species. Collapse seems inevitable. Waiting for things to unravel could make the crash worse forboth humans and non-humanswho live through it, and thosewho come afterwards. Instead, we could love the wild world by championing the collapse of global empire. The sooner we stop this way of life, the more animals, fish, trees, and rivers will be left alive. The more likely there will be sustainable food sources for future generations. The natural world, developing nations, indigenous cultures, and rural people will immediately be better off post-collapse.
Government’s inability to respond to the covid-19 pandemic that threatens society reflects the incapacity to engage with the broader issues of environmental crisis. While the living world may appreciate the temporary slowing of the industrial machine, coronavirus highlights our dependence on a system that’s failing us. Our governments usethe pandemic to further destroy the planet. Recently, the Environmental Protection Agencysuspended environmental rules indefinitely, the secretary of the interior ordered the Mashpee Wampanoag Reservation “Disestablished”. It’s land taken out of trust. Several states have quietly passed laws criminalizing protests against fossil fuel infrastructure. Effectively addressing both the virus and our collapsing ecosystems would require recognizing our inherent connection: individual health is dependent on the overall health of everyone, rich and poor, marginalized and elite, human and nonhuman.
Grief
Grief is a way of loving that breaks our hearts open to the world. A nightmare jolts me awake. I’m swimming in dark water at night, and a crowd of people are swimming there, too. I’m afraid they’ll run me over. As I try to swim around them, someone swims underneath me and grabs my leg. I’m pulled down fast. I feel like I’m free falling. I can’t breathe.
I’m in love with water. Rivers and oceans are often in my dreams, but this time I’m terrified. As I re-enter the dream in my imagination, I feel lost in blackness. I don’t know which way is up. The pressure is crushing. I can’t move my lungs against the heaviness. I feel the visceral nightmare inflicted on nature every day.
Undigested grief lived in the cancer I had when I was twenty-one. A nine-centimeter tumor grew in the two lymph nodes in front of my heart, awakening me to the dam within myself, like a concrete slab forced into a river, obstructing its flow. When we don’t grieve, we become as dangerous as a dammed river. Tears free our inner river and show us that we care. Elder Joanna Macy reminds us that from climate chaos to nuclear war, “there’s no danger so great as the deadening of our response.”
Grief longs for the impossible.
I wish my words could restore rivers, ecosystems, and justice. I wish writing about the problems meant they could be overcome. Instead, I feel uncertainty and doom which usher me into despair. I wonder if I can hold this. I struggle to make a difference. I sense myself in the dark waters, and I feel them asking me to let go. As my tears flow, I remember that allowing love’s waters to flow teaches me what I love.
Being in love makes me want to live, and to serve, even if it breaks my heart. We can love what we love, and this can guide us. As my tears flow, mysteries arise from my now exposed heart. I feel powerless to protect those I love, rivers, trees, animals, all wild places. Suddenly I hear Kahlil Gibran’s words about bleeding “willingly and joyfully” for what we love. I feel like I’m bleeding. I imagine that somehow the dark waters of my tears and heartbreak are feeding life.
Courtship
Loving what we love may feel vulnerable and painful, if we risk opening to it. We court by offering, by humbly and eloquently approaching and giving ourselves to what we love. We create the beauty for which we long by becoming what we love. I court through writing, but I’m not sure if it’ll make a difference. Perhaps it’s foolish. When we court what we love, we’re willing to fail. We may not fully understand what it is we seek. It’s always somewhat of a mystery, and we can be surprised, overjoyed, or terrified when “the incomprehensible” shows its divine face.
I’m deeply in love with the wild soul and mystery, as well as with nature. While apprenticing to be a soul guide at age thirty-three, I spoke of my longing to serve them, and my willingness to do whatever it takes to develop the capacity. I was married then, and soon my marriage began to unravel. I hiked into a red rock canyon to enact a ceremony, offering the red-tailed hawk feathers my partner had given me. The grief that followed nearly undid me. Is there anywhere I belong?
Six months later, I found myself on a river. A wave pulled me out of my boat, and I was swept underneath a major rapid without a life jacket. Being deep underwater felt much like my recent nightmare. I fought harder than I knew I could, made my way to the surface, and then to shore. I’d lost a shoe, but there was another in the sand. I put it on, shaking. I didn’t get on a river again for nine years. It took that long to understand what the river was trying to show me: I belong to the dark waters. Mythically, they are a place I am here to inhabit.
In courtship, we make an offering and listen for a response. We may be asked to step away or move toward something. It may challenge us, whether we relate with someone in particular or with everything. We turn toward the world full-hearted, in an ongoing relationship with the mystery of our love. As it reveals itself through dreams, nature, and our hearts, we act on behalf of what we most cherish, believe, or grieve. When we embody what it asks, it offers more, guiding us toward what is next in a life of creative service.
Our love calls us to serve the world. If we love nature, our activism can be a way of courting. Briony Penn, Ph.D., stopped a forest with old-growth Douglas fir and Garry oak from being logged on Salt Spring Island. They didn’t listen to her scientific arguments. “I was desperate,” she explained. So she rode a horse through town in a Lady Godiva-style protest, alongside five other bare-breasted women and thirty more demonstrators. The media werethere. That forest still lives.
Revolution
True love engenders the courage to stand up for what we love. The boy I loved in high school emboldened me to find my words and show myself. The river taught me that love is not only surrender, it is struggle. My love for the natural world demands an even greater strength, while activism protects particular places or species, revolution challenges the whole of global empire. Fueled by a fierce dedication to justice, ecological revolution asks us to stand in our power and ally ourselves to the physical living planet.
While romance invites us to surrender to love and receive the visions of our muse, revolution strengthens our capacity to stand in our power. Romance arises from our feminine side, an intuitive, heartfelt dreaming that mirrors the cave-womb in a woman’s body. Revolution is birthed externally from our masculine side, with its rational impulse to act and protect. Our feminine dreaming inspires action. As webring together our visionary and revolutionary natures, romance ignites revolution. Within our psyches and the larger world.
In a red rock canyon last May, my grief-love-longing ache stirred me to ask the Earth what she needs.
“Do you want me to stand up for you more somehow?” I asked.
“Yes, I would like that,” I felt the words arise from my belly and sit in my mind’s eye. “We need help.” My dreams echoed a similar response in the months that followed.
Guiding is a way I love mystery, soul, and Earth. I usher a kind of inner revolution in the human psyche, whereby nature and soul overthrow the current regime that directs a person’s life. I guide others to resource themselves in wholeness and allow their dreams, the natural world, and soul to lead them rather than less healthy aspects of their ego. This work is vital—it teaches self-healing, provides purpose, and brings alive what is most extraordinary in humans. Individual change can seed cultural transformation but the Earth remains imperilled and more is needed.
To belong to the Earth is to stand up for her. Joanna Macy named three dimensions of Ecological Revolution ~ 1) holding actions to stop the harm, 2) life sustaining practices, and 3) shifting consciousness. To be effective, these perspectives must work together. Tending the world begins with imagining the rivers running clear and the oceans full of fish, and envisioning what actions will make this happen.
Global industrial empire is destroying the living planet.
As revolutionaries, we stand with Earth, bear witness to the harm being done, express the reality of what’s happening, and defend what we love. We recognizeinjustice by observing how power operates and acknowledgingthe everyday cruelty of our society. Millions of people participate, either directly or as bystanders with benefits. It’s painful to experience our own complicity, but ecological revolution requires socio-political consciousness.
Power
Engaging politically is an act of love that attunes us to the challenges of the world and urges us to change things. I used to hate politics, because it seemed like a never-ending parade of lies and corruption I couldn’t stop. Perhaps I wasn’t able to stand in my power, or perhaps I’d grown up in a culture that taught me I had no power.
When I was young, my mom had my brother and I campaign for President Carter and then Mondale. They lost. My actions didn’t change anything. I joined my college boyfriend, a political science major and leader of the environmental action coalition, in debates and protests. His aim was to be president. I did not want to be the first lady. Engaging politically threatened to embed me in its web of injustice.
I am in love with rivers, trees, oceans, and animals, and love often calls us forth to reckon with what we’ve avoided.Change is difficult, because our dominant culture, based on multiple systems of power—industrialization, capitalism, and patriarchy—is rooted in violence, ecocide, and domination. It exploits the natural world and oppresses some people while privileging others.
Everyday violence is overlooked, because it’s considered normal.
The indigenous, the poor, women, people of color, and most especially the natural world are subordinate. They are objectified as commodities. Even though it may seem like those who are marginalized consent to this hierarchy, it is not voluntary. It is expected that they will submit. They (most) do so to survive. Our global industrial-agro-corporate-military complex is powerful. It will use force. Activists who defend wild places are often imprisoned or killed. Pipelines are built. Oceans fill with plastic. Ice melts. Those with power have armies, courts, prisons, taxes, and the media.
Resistance is power.
A culture of resistance sown from fierce love can empower us to stop oppression and injustice. Theinstitutions that control society can be dismantled, and we can remember another way to live. The Underground Railroad was controversial at the time Harriet Tubman was guided by God to free slaves. We need a similar kind of boldness now. Reasoned requests will not stop systems of power. Our legal system is designed to support them. A voluntary transformation is unlikely. Our withdrawal allows the planet to go on being harmed.
Organized political resistanceis crucial. All strategies must be considered, from “revolutionary law-making to strategic non-violence to coordinated sabotage of industrial infrastructure.” The Earth and future humans need us to come together in a co-creative partnership with the natural world. We need to stand in our love and power, to abolish the violence against our planet. To stop industrialization, patriarchy, and capitalism, which place the privilege of a few over the welfare of all humans, nonhumans and Mother Earth. We must not overlook the urgency of this moment.
Dark Waters
I have always been in love with dark waters. As a teen, I often sat at the edge of the sea near my home at night. I preferred it there, imaging myself submerged under water. I felt the presence of another world with its potent unseen possibilities. When I emerged from the river missing a shoe at thirty-three, it was a call to live with one foot in the dark waters. Similar to the myth of Persephone, who lives half her life in the underworld.
The dark waters are a mythic place I inhabit that gives me soul power. These waters are pure mystery and the womb from which all things are born. They invite dissolution and steep us in uncertainty. Most of our universe is darkness, confirming the existence of mystery, more is unknown than is known. Sixty-eight percent of the universe is dark energy and twenty-seven percent is dark matter. Less than five percent of our world is real matter, everything else understood by science. When we’re in darkness, our eyes cannot see, so our imagination , a powerful and intuitive strategy to listen, grows stronger. Visions and unique phenomena emerge from darkness which can source our romance and our revolution.
Primordial waters are a mythological motif found across cultures, a cosmic ocean or a celestial river enveloping the universe and symbolizing chaos and the source of creation. The womb of dark waters is a feminine place from which visions arise and all actions are best sourced. We are born of the womb and return to the dream stream every night. When our day world finds us overly focused on the masculine tendency to act, our psyches become as out of balance as our culture. We restore the feminine when we listen to our dreams, our muse, and the dark mystery. It is as radical and necessary to let these visionary womb waters guide us as it is to confront patriarchy.
I offeredvows to the dark waters several years ago, while guiding on an island near the Irish lands of my ancestors. A seal’s head surfaced only a few feet away. Peering into its soft, dark eyes carried me into the depths of the ocean. I return to those depths in my imagination often. When I perceive the world from these dark waters, I feel a heaviness against my chest which grounds me in the Earth and is fraught with grief. My eyes well with tears as I feel love for the world. I stare into the blackness, longing for a vision, awaiting the mystery of things. Living here feels powerful and vulnerable.
I invite others into the dark waters—you, too, may close your eyes and be there now, in your imagination. Sensing the world from here is a unique and valuable vantage. I have witnessed the dark waters usher inner revolution in the human psyche time and again. How I long to bring these revolutionary powers to the planetary!
The dark waters are wiser than us. Returning to these mystical depthsallies us with the greater forces of unseen worlds and infuses our romance and revolution with a fierce creativity that allows the Earth to dream through us so that we may act both mythically and directly.
As we write this, the world is in a precarious position. She needs more protectors, warriors, and healers—more care and compassion—than ever before. At no time in history has the systematic abuse of this beautiful planet and it’s inhabitants (human and nonhuman) been more obvious.
This Is An Offering To You
If you have wondered how to help. If you have wanted to do something to ease the suffering. This is your chance to step up, to speak out. You must be prepared to work with nothing, be adaptable and creative with whatever resources you have. This work is centered around Deep Green Resistance analysis but the methods can be used to generate general community resilience and resistance for any campaign.
How to Get Started
Look for opportunities to plant seeds of information. Use any platform available to you, chatting with your neighbours, discussions in your work place, the bloke walking his dog who always says hello. Building trust; developing human relationships is fundamental to creating a community. We have more in common with most people than we have differences; find those common grounds. Avoid rising to divisions so the seeds you offer are met with space for the growth of more radical thought.
Most people long for community and a sense of belonging, take responsibility for making them welcome if they have trusted you with their time and support. Most activists are seeking a direct path to action and tangible results. Always illustrate the big picture in concrete steps: why we are doing this, what the issues are, where they come from, how they directly relate to us, and what we are doing to address them. Offer training and express trust by delegating tasks. Create platforms to support them in sharing relevant knowledge and skills.
Group Dynamics
Mostly unconsciously, people bring their emotion history with them into groups, often generating strong dynamics. Even one disruptive individual can create substantial damage in a group. Holding a zero tolerance approach to in-fighting, gossiping and power struggles will help create a healthier group. Lead by example and refuse to allow toxic behaviour permeate your group. There will be disagreements, but never allow anyone be “called out” in front of the group, this is unfair and likely to cause defensiveness and further polarisation. If problems arise address them one to one or with a mediator. It can be healing and help others grow if you model forgiveness and understanding for those who have chosen to work alongside you. This can provide balance, and help to smooth interpersonal relationships.
Look After Yourself
Personal boundaries are vital so you do not burn out. It is okay to say no. Avoid over committing by honouring your limitations but never shy away from stretching your comfort zone to allow yourself to develop your skills. This is a long haul, so make it fun, enjoy the people you work with and show appreciation.
When building a local campaign or mutual aid group, you can build a social media presence with little effort, invite other local activists onto your page once it has a respectable following rather than a small number. Do not let someone who is unclear of your purpose moderate. Offer them a different task.
If any local journalists are connected to specific community or environmental issues do keep in touch. Keep abreast of local campaigns and issues, and support on the ground as much as possible. This will show others that you are committed.
We Are Stronger Together
If you are in contact with other organisations, work out the similarities and potential divisive issues. Plan how you are going to address them in advance. Work out group dynamics and gain the respect of leaders. This will automatically give credence amongst the others. Identify those who are more radical and work towards potential allies rather than wasting time in circular conversations with those of a fixed mindset. If you are joining local campaigns, always be respectful of the work done before you became involved. Be supportive of that work and other organisers.
If you are contributing to public events such as talks, training, film nights, or fundraisers, it will help to find current topics that hold local relevance and build your messaging around this. People have more interest if there is even a vague local connection. If possible offer webinars/trainings tailored to your audience (e.g. increasing council tax, destruction/development of a local area).
Be Visible in Your Community
For instance create or join mutual aid groups. Your positive work will draw interest. It is okay to use your work as a reference point in general conversation with positive examples. It may be that people have not thought about or been exposed to radical ideas. Some may have limited education and experience rather than a genuine unwillingness to broaden their horizons. If you have the opportunity, join working groups to have input into policy and/or foundational documents.
If presenting/speaking, incorporate as much helpful material as possible: slides, pamphlets, quote’s etc. The DGR analysis is not palatable for a broad audience. The majority of people have not thought about radical ideas. Often because there is a lack of education and experience rather than genuine unwillingness to think outside the box.
There are 3 main contentious issues in DGR analysis. You do not have to tackle these issues head-on if it risks alienating your audience. Using specific examples can help others connect to your view. Asking others questions is also helpful; it shows an interest in their views and illustrates aspects they may need to think through.
1. We Are Anti-Civilization
We deeply support resilient communities, mutual aid, health and wellbeing of the planet, for human and non-human life. We do not support industrial technology, the creation of which is destructive. We are fundamentally opposed to the toxic culture of patriarchy and capitalism. How can we have infinite growth on a finite planet? Do you believe that there will be a voluntary shift to a sane and sustainable way of life?
We are deeply supportive of systems that generate health and well-being to all life. The creation, maintenance and life cycle of so-called “green technology” is harmful to our planet and perpetuates the capitalist/destructive system in place. Ask about the life cycle of products, supply chains, ask how they can ethically endorse it without educating themselves of the true impact, especially in the Global South.
Society is fundamentally patriarchal. Men as a class dominate and oppress women. Ask questions around the prevalence of violence towards women and girls. As hard as it is, offering concrete examples demonstrates the pandemic of violence against women. Offer a real life example of women’s sex-based protections being eroded. Talk about inequality, poor legal and social remedies for women in all contexts.
Familiarise yourself with specific examples so you can offer clarity on your position. Do resist being drawn into an argument, ask carefully considered questions so their answer (or inability to do so) will affirm your point, or at least force them to think about it. Dealing with others righteousness, apathy and/or cognitive dissonance can be disheartening. Keep going, keep building relationships within your community. Many people are still in a comfortable enough position that they can pretend the systematic destruction of our planet is not happening. As things deteriorate, when they are personally impacted, they will no longer have that option. We need to be ready for this, trained in necessary skills with strong grassroots networks. This is what we are working towards.
If you find yourself with no audience or one that is inhospitable, think about the hurdles, the jarring point between your audience and our analysis. Introduce questions, illuminate the gaps in their perception of the issue. Keep gradually reinforcing your points. Direct people towards writing, leave books in workplace libraries, share links to DGR articles on social media.
DGR are not aiming for a mass movement, it is not about branding, if people sign up great, but by consistently sharing grains of our analysis whenever, possible we are sowing the seeds for a culture of resistance.
Keep Focused, Stay Grounded
The revolution can be boring. Interpersonal issues, paperwork, screen-time, phone calls . . . the resistance hinges on some seriously laborious and dreary tasks. Find what grounds you—something that always brings home the gravity of what we are facing. It could be an image, a story, a sound e.g. the soundscape of extinct birdcalls or sprawling development clearing feeding grounds and habitat for our non-human kin.
When you feel frustrated or lose focus, stay grounded, centre yourself. Remember what we are doing could not be more important. Make the most of the people around you. Draw support from our community, never be afraid to ask for help or advice, to reach out for support, when you do it gives others permission to do the same.
These are strange days – we all need support to stay strong so we can keep fighting the good fight.
Susan Breen is a political campaigner, feminist and cadre for DGR Ireland.
Today is the 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day celebration. In this piece, Paul Feather describes how hope and optimism live alongside knowledge of the destruction of Mother Earth. He brings it home with the need for direct action, ceremony, and love of the self, family and the wild, natural world.
Today I saw the first blossom on the pea vines. It is a rite of spring. I’ve retreated to the warmth of my woodstove to weather a blackberry winter, but I believe this is the last fire my stove will hold this season.
It’s a time of accelerating change, days lengthen, T-shirt weather followed by surprise frosts that wilt the leaves on the potatoes. Every day new green leaves to eat after the boredom of turnips and turnips and turnips. It’s no wonder that we celebrate this time. The small community where I live has held Earth Day celebrations at this time of year for longer than I’ve been here, twenty years at least.
This year marks the fiftieth national celebration of the holiday. There will be no gathering here this year. We’ll spend this Earth Day quarantined in our homes—hopefully very pleasantly—some of us with our most immediate family, and some of us alone. What does it mean to miss our little celebration? It means songs not sung, meals not shared; recipes not exchanged, games not played; community connections not maintained, created, or reborn. It also means other things undone: cars not driven, drinks not drunk, cans not crushed; tinfoil not thrown away, fancy foods from faraway lands not cooked and eaten. Our place as part of the “solution” un-confirmed. I do not know what to do with this.
Earth Day Gatherings
For several years, I was well fed by our yearly gathering. I do not wish to cheapen it by wallowing in hypocrisy, self-righteousness, or the unavoidable imperfections of an impure world. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but cringe last year at the food still on plates in the trash cans. I do not mean to be this way. I’m preoccupied with the meaning of what we’re doing. Why are we here? What does this mean?
The Earth Day Network aims to “flood the world with hope, optimism, and action” on April 22nd, and I presume these are all good things, indispensable to any progressive movement. With good reason the Network celebrates their many successes. From organizing what’s become the largest secular observance in the world to their contributions toward very real and practical actions such as getting lead out of gasoline and planting hundreds of millions of trees. Their narrative is contagious. It is full of young people refusing to accept platitudes; global outpourings of energy, enthusiasm, and commitment; action at all levels; we are transformational, galvanized, unparalleled, and bold. Are we though?
For all the work put into building a successful narrative—the need for which I don’t doubt—where has fifty years of Earth Day got us? There are almost four times as many cars in the world as there were in 1970. There are twice as many people. Atmospheric CO2 is up nearly 100ppm (doesn’t sound like much, but it’s rather a lot). I’ll spare you the litany. Things aren’t getting better. There’s food on the plates in the trash cans at Earth Day.
Hope and Optimism
I wonder what we’re trading for this optimism and hope. Do we exchange honesty for enthusiasm? Truth for positivity? How much hope do we really need? Author and activist Janisse Ray, in The Seed Underground questions this preoccupation with hope and optimism:
“The assumption is that hope is a prerequisite for action. Without hope one becomes depressed and then unable to act. I want to stress that I do not act because I have hope. I act whether I have hope or not. It is useless to rely on hope as motivation to do what’s necessary and just and right. Why doesn’t anybody ever talk about love as motivation to act? I may not have a lot of hope but I have plenty of love, which gives me fight. We are going to have to fall in love with place again and learn to stay put.”
Earth Day is a Rite
Many of us are staying put now whether we are in love with place or not. Perhaps this is a call to find that love we have been missing. Perhaps we don’t need these optimistic narratives with long lists of “successes” that somehow end in failure. Perhaps we need to fall in love.
I think a lot about these rites of spring. The first pea blossom. The last fire in the woodstove at blackberry winter. These passages from one thing into another. We often say that, “every day is Earth Day,” but the truth is, it’s not. Earth Day is a rite. A ritual. A symbolic event. When we gather in community to observe a special day, there is meaning in what we do and how we do it. Our celebration of Earth Day conveys our beliefs about the Earth and our place in it, both in the content and form of that event.
The Need for Ceremony
There are different kinds of ritual, but we don’t do them very well. This essential part of what it means to be human has been long scattered to the wind, and we must do the best we can with scraps and pieces. Malidoma Somé, in his book Ritual draws from a knowledge base within tribal communities of West Africa and insists on the need for ceremony at all levels of the social structure: individual, family, and community. Without careful attention to ritual at each of these levels, the community and each individual will suffer.
Perhaps our celebrations and rituals, such as they are, need to come home.
Long before the quarantines, I found that I had inadvertently isolated myself within this community that I respect and love so dearly. My efforts to push our community toward greater integrity in various ways have moved others very little but left me on the edge. (Perhaps I am clumsy in my efforts.) But, as I have become increasingly unable to shake this empty feeling about our collective celebrations and community rites, I have become occasionally more attentive to my own rituals and observances. I wonder if that is our next step.
We cannot separate the individual from the community, the personal from the structural; the self is embedded in the system.
If our community rituals are failing, if Earth Day feels empty, if half a century of “success” by the largest environmental organization in the world leaves us worse than we’ve ever been, perhaps there is something missing from our community space.
Perhaps it is time for something different
This year, the Earth Day Network is going digital. We are unable to gather during quarantine, so we will gather in the virtual world … on Earth Day… Seriously?
I am reminded of something from the book Becoming Animal, in which David Abrams pushes back against the conventional symbolism of environmentalism embodied in the image of the whole Earth from space. Supposedly, this symbol conveys the isolation of our fragile and finite planet in an otherwise inhospitable space. Since Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth movement succeeded in introducing this image to the environmental movement in 1970, it has become one of the most familiar and widely distributed images in history—inseparable from Earth Day. Abrams suggests that there are ways in which this image is unhelpful. When we are asked to imagine the Earth, we imagine this view from space—from outside. As a phenomenologist, Abrams suggests that our perception and imagery of the Earth should remain rooted in our physical and bodily experience. The Earth is what you see before you in this moment, right now.
Finding a wild place
Is it good then that we respond to this quarantine by moving our environmentalism online into the virtuality of screens and digital interactions with far-away humans? Or is this a call to usher that movement through the front door, to invite it in, or listen as it calls us out through that door and into the yard and the streets? What would happen if we turned the screens off? What would happen if we went outside and felt the snap of blackberry winter? What would happen if we dusted out the backwoods of our DNA for remnants of remembering of being alone in a wild place, or found one and went there? Would we be braver? Would we become more galvanized and bold?
Earth Defenders
Indigenous people make up less than 5% of the world’s population, but they protect 80% of the remaining biodiversity. In Odisha India, a group of women have protected forests from timber smugglers for the past 20 years, keeping vigil in groups of ten and carrying sticks. Activists in the Philippines continue to blockade mines in spite of targeted killings that make this country the deadliest place to defend the planet. Unfortunately, in spite of these efforts, land defenders aren’t winning either: deforestation in the Amazon is up 80% since Jair Bolsonaro took office. Twenty defenders in the Amazon were killed last year, but this number fails to capture the physical attacks, threats, and criminalization that these people endure to protect us all.
Every day.
Perhaps I do us all a disservice, but it’s hard for me to imagine many people I know, people whom I love, respect, and cherish, voluntarily taking this level of personal risk to defend anything. I wonder if this galvanization can take place in a community space, at least here in this culture. I wonder what it will take for individuals to summon the strength that protection of the remnants of our future will absolutely require of us.
Think about that on Earth Day. Think about it with your family, and then go outside and think about it alone or with the blackberries and the budding trees and the orioles who have just turned up in the yard.
Make it a rite of spring.
Paul Feather is a an animist farmer and writer living in Georgia, USA. He advocates for direct, community-scale, production of basic needs. To find out more: www.paulandterra.com
This conversation between Max Wilbert and Vince Emanuele covers mutual aid, organizing strategies, revolution versus reform, coronavirus, survival, the Iraq war, the crumbling of the United States, and more.
Vince Emanuele was born and raised in America’s Rust-Belt and lives in Michigan City, Indiana. In 2002, he joined the United States Marine Corps. In 2005, Vince refused orders for a third deployment and immediately began working with the antiwar movement. Today he works in Michigan City and is co-founder of a community space called PARC—Politics, Arts, Roots, Culture.
The Green Flame is a Deep Green Resistance podcast offering revolutionary analysis, skill sharing, and inspiration for the movement to save the planet by any means necessary. Our hosts are Max Wilbert and Jennifer Murnan.
