Under patriarchy, women have been groomed into a perpetual state of tolerance; today, “tolerance” has been taken up by certain feminists, making it impossible to define a set of collective values or assert shared goals.
Featured image: The International Coalition Against Human Trafficking
by Max Wilbert / Deep Green Resistance
“Feminism is the struggle to end sexist oppression. Therefore, it is necessarily a struggle to eradicate the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels, as well as a commitment to reorganizing society so that the self-development of people can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion, and material desires.” – bell hooks
Last weekend, I was tabling for Deep Green Resistance at an environmental conference. A young man, who looked to be in his early 20’s, came up to the table. I approached him and asked if I could answer any questions.
He pointed at the sticker on the table: “Patriarchy + Capitalism = Pornography.” With a sneer he asked, “Do you really believe that?”
I told him I did. “So are you a SWERF,” he asked, using a common acronym for sex-worker exclusionary radical feminist. “What about agency?”
What an insane thing for a leftist to ask! Would anyone say that I’m “denying the agency of U.S. soldiers” because I oppose US imperialism? Would anyone say that I’m “excluding McDonald’s workers” because I oppose capitalism and the fast food industry?
Of course not. These arguments are self-evidently bullshit. It’s possible (and I can’t believe I have to say this) to oppose larger systems while still having sympathy, and even acting in solidarity, with those who are trapped inside those systems. And just because some women “choose” and “enjoy” working in pornography and prostitution doesn’t mean that we can’t critique the industry—and even critique these women for choices that have harmful effects on others.
The fact that a member of an oppressed class chooses to participate in the oppressive system doesn’t mean their choice can’t be criticized. After all, as the wonderful anti-porn activist Gail Dines has said, “Systems of oppression are flexible enough to absorb some members of subordinated groups; indeed, they draw strength from the illusion of neutrality provided by these exceptions.”
So why does this young white man believe that when it comes to pornography, “agency” is more important than the real, material impacts of the porn industry?
What I explained to the young man is that mass media and culture shapes the way we think. This has been a fundamental understanding of the left for decades. We can call it manufacturing consent, propaganda, or cultural hegemony.
Advertising works. Propaganda works. That’s why they use it.
That’s why Arundhati Roy, writing about right-wing police forces battling indigenous land defenders in rural India, quotes the superintendent of police chief as saying, “See Ma’am, frankly speaking this problem [sic] can’t be solved by us police or military. The problem with these tribals is they don’t understand greed. Unless they become greedy there’s no hope for us. I have told my boss: remove the force and instead put a TV in every home. Everything will be automatically sorted out.”
Take the same approach and apply it to patriarchy, and you’ll have the last 50 years of this culture: pornography becoming more and more normalized, softcore porn moving into pop culture and social media, and ubiquitous access to demeaning, woman-hating content 24/7 from the device in your pocket.
The pornography industry in the United States is more profitable than Hollywood. It’s also more profitable than the NFL, NBA, and MLB—combined. Porn sites, at any given time, have about 30 million unique visitors watching.
As Sheila Jeffries writes, “Pornography, then, educates the male public. It would be very surprising if it did not.”
Do you really think that getting paid a small amount of money in order to have a strange, smelly man aggressively fuck you is “empowering?”
Here’s the reality: prostituted women are often “physically revolted and hurt by the sex.”
Women who have escaped prostitution have higher rates of PTSD than soldiers who have been in combat.
Read that sentence again.
There are an estimated 40 million people in prostitution worldwide, most of them (more than 80 percent) women and children. Women of color make up a highly disproportionate number of prostituted women. Of the 40 million, 2.5 million are trafficked. In other words, they are sex slaves. The average age of entry to the industry is 13 years old.
Thirteen fucking years old.
But in the face of this violence, the “agency” of a few relatively wealthy “sex workers” who claim to enjoy their jobs is more important.
If we call prostitution a “job” (rather than a form of abuse), it would be by far the most dangerous job in the US, with a murder rate of 204 per 100,000. Even if we don’t call every sex act within the context of prostitution a rape, about 80 percent of prostituted women have been raped, and they are raped an average of 8-10 times per year.
As indigenous feminist Cherry Smiley writes (brilliantly) in the Globe and Mail, “Prostitution, akin to the residential school system, is an institution that continues to have devastating impacts on the lives of aboriginal women and girls, who are disproportionately involved in street-level prostitution. Prostitution is an industry that relies on disparities in power to exist. We can see clearly that women, and especially aboriginal women and girls, are funneled into prostitution as a result of systemic inequalities such as their lack of access to housing, loss of land, culture, and languages, poverty, high rates of male violence, involvement with the foster care system, suicide, criminalization, addiction, and disability. To imagine that prostitution, a system that feeds these inequalities, should be allowed or encouraged, is dangerously misguided and supports the ongoing systemic harms against our women and girls.”
The whole notion of a SWERF is ridiculous. As Jindi Mehat writes, “Supporting an argument that excludes the majority of women in prostitution, while calling the very women who consider the whole picture ‘exclusionary,’ shows how intellectually vapid and hypocritical so-called liberal feminism is. Just like calling support of prostitution, which exposes the most marginalized among us to increased levels of violence and abuse, a feminist position, this isn’t about women’s liberation, it’s about feeling good and progressive and not having to actually change anything…
“Supporting prostitution and screaming ‘SWERF’ at abolitionists isn’t feminism, it’s capitulating to male supremacy and writing marginalized women off as collateral damage. It’s living in a dream world of consequence-free individual choices. It’s refusing to go beyond scratching the surface, and instead hiding behind buzzwords and tepid half-measures while trying to silence women who are willing to dive deep no matter the cost.”
So what do we actually want?
Radical feminists generally advocate for what is called “The Nordic Model,” a legal approach in which the people (almost entirely men) who buy sex are criminalized, and the people (almost entirely women and children) who work in the industry are provided with resources and programs to help them exit the sex trade and build alternative livelihoods.
This approach has been proven to result in positive outcomes. First, it teaches sex buyers (“johns”), who are primarily men, and the broader society, that women are not for sale at any price. Second, it provides support and full decriminalization to those who are prostituted, giving them options to exit the inherently-violent industry.
In my book, that’s not exclusionary, that’s human rights. That’s feminism.
To repost this or other DGR original writings, please contact newsservice@deepgreenresistance.org
by Meghan Murphy / Feminist Current
On Sunday night at the Oscars, the big #MeToo moment was brought to us by Ashley Judd, Salma Hayek, and Annabella Sciorra. While these women have been incredibly brave in sharing their stories of abuse and harassment in Hollywood, it seems the industry is still dictating the message.
“This year many spoke their truth and the journey ahead is long but slowly a new path has emerged,” Sciorra said. And while a new path has indeed emerged, as women have banded together to speak out against men’s abuse in numbers I have never witnessed in my lifetime, I’m left wondering where that path will lead us, without a clear understanding of the issues at hand.
“The changes we are witnessing is being driven by the powerful sound of new voices, of different voices, of our voices, joining together in a mighty chorus that is finally saying, ‘Time’s up,’” Judd said. “And we work together to make sure the next 90 years empower these limitless possibilities of equality, diversity, inclusion, intersectionality.”
But what is truly powerful about the voices leading #TimesUp and #MeToo was strangely excluded from Judd’s list of “limitless possibilities”: women.
This past year has been made possible only by the feminist movement. Our understanding that sexual assault and sexual harassment are bad things is a direct result of the work women have done to show how men’s power is systemic and how their violence is normalized because women are constructed as less-than-human under patriarchy. Feminists’ work analyzing and articulating sexual objectification underlies what preceded this mass conversation, allowing comments about grabbing women “by the pussy” to be seen as a literal manifestation of that objectification. So to hear three women who took great risks in speaking out about what Harvey Weinstein did to them, in order to contribute to a larger conversation about how men’s dehumanization of women leads to violence and to hold men accountable for behaviour they’ve gotten away with for centuries, because of a system that institutionalizes men’s dominance, without mentioning either women or the feminist movement was shocking to me.
While all good and progressive concepts, neither “equality,” nor “diversity,” nor “inclusion,” nor “intersectionality” will stop men’s violence. None of these vague, gender-neutral terms address the system that offers up women as things to be used and abused by men. Indeed, these terms have been used to usurp the women’s liberation movement, in large part because of their lack of clarity and political investment in ending patriarchy, specifically.
“Diversity,” for example, can easily be (and, consequently, has been) manipulated to defend the idea that simply allowing more diverse people and bodies to be objectified will resolve any problematic aspects of, for example, the beauty industry or sex industry. Hugh Hefner touted himself as a champion of diversity for allowing a black woman to sell his magazines for him, making Jennifer Jackson Miss March in 1965. He was similarly self-congratulatory (and celebrated) for putting trans model Caroline “Tula” Cossey in the magazine in 1991. In an attempt to escape their sexist reputation, American Apparel, a company then-run by a man famous for sexually harassing and exploiting his young female staff, launched “The Next Big Thing,” a contest to find plus-size models.
Clearly, these are not people or companies invested in women’s liberation… Yet, it’s easy for them to pose as allies when we offer up vague, gender-neutral terms to replace more accurate ones. Similar to “diversity” and “equality,” terms like “body acceptance,” “strength,” and “empowerment” have all been co-opted to further sell porn culture and objectification for the same reason: lack of specificity.
What’s so great about the term “feminism” is that it is specific about its focus on women and it’s opposition specifically to patriarchy. Though many attempt to water-down its radical roots and and meaning, the term “feminism” is not in fact about “equality.” Women do not want equal access to misogynist systems, we want an end to those systems.
The notion that “rights” and “equality” for marginalized people will be achieved by fitting them into a patriarchal vision of the world is exactly the problem with these words. “Including” women of colour or women who don’t fit conventional standards of beauty in pornography or other misogynist industries does not address the problems with those industries.
While it is necessary for Hollywood to address it’s white-centric, male-centric blind spots, it’s disappointing to see what is truly a feminist movement erase its roots and radical aims. What’s even worse is that I’m certain this was done in order to avoid making those not on board with the feminist project uncomfortable. In other words, these actresses were likely concerned about alienating men in the room.
But there’s a very good reason that feminism makes men uncomfortable: it centers women, and refuses to cater to male feelings and preferences. For once, we have a movement that is about us and us alone. Altering the language to avoid the uncomfortable feelings men might have about their power being named and challenged strikes me as contrary to our goals.
Feminists have long championed the mantra, “name the problem.” If anything, that is what #MeToo has done. Let’s not stop now.
by Gender Critical Action Center
A collective of people who are concerned about society’s growing obsession with “gender identity” ideology announced today that they are launching the Gender Critical Action Center (GCAC) – a weekly international call-to-action.
About the GCAC
The purpose of the GCAC is to organize collective activity to push back on growing efforts to redefine sex to mean “gender identity” in laws, schools and universities, private settings, events, language, crime reporting, incarceration, journalism, etc. The organizers of the GCAC maintain that human beings are sexually dimorphic mammals, that women are female, that men are male, and that there is a small percentage of the human population that are intersex.
“We believe that ‘gender identity’ ideology undermines free speech, denies biological reality, and when legislated into law violates the human rights of women and girls,” said one of the organizers, who wishes to remain anonymous due to fear of threats of violence and sabotaging of her livelihood. “’Gender identity’ is an amorphous ideology with no stable or coherent narrative. Changing laws to override biology with ‘gender identity,’ an idea that is hyper-individualistic and constantly morphs, cannot serve society and will only sow chaos,” she continued.
How To Get Involved
The GCAC is an effort to coordinate the shared concerns of parents, feminists, doctors, other professionals, and people across the political spectrum who are concerned about the dangers of this ideology. The organizers will evaluate the most important actions to be posted on a weekly basis. They will provide a description of the issue, a concise statement of action you can take, scripts, and contact information for targets. They are committed to making every action as easy as possible. Interested users can go to the page once per week, or sign up to receive weekly email notifications.
“’Gender identity’ ideology is not grounded in material reality,” said another one of the organizers, who also wishes to remain anonymous. “Insisting that ‘gender identity’ is innate and demanding that people use particular pronouns based on ‘gender identity’ constitutes thought policing. Human beings are sexually dimorphic mammals,” she continued. “This statement is neither conservative nor bigoted. It is simply an assertion that is grounded in material reality.”
Contact
http://gendercriticalactioncenter.org/
by Corine Fairbanks / Oglala Lakota American Indian Movement Southeastern Ohio
“Revolutionary struggles cannot achieve collective liberation for all people without addressing patriarchy, nor can women’s freedom be disentangled from racial, economic, & social justice.” -Victoria Law
The Zapatista women will host the First International Gathering of Politics, Art, Sport, and Culture for Women in Struggle in Chiapas, Mexico from March 7-11, 2018. A delegation of women from all walks of life, racial, social-economic, and cultural backgrounds strongly feel that we could learn much from our Zapatista sisters. Their indigenous perspectives and willingness to decolonize and reshape the political landscape into something that works for all people speaks to us as we look at the challenges we face in the US and Canada.
Here is an updated notice that the women of the Zapatista Movement put out.
The desire to go to this gathering and to form this delegation came after much discussion regarding women’s liberation and women voices after the January 20th, 2018 Cincinnati Women’s March. The national theme and platform for Women’s Marches across the United States was “Hear Our Vote”. Many of us were disappointed with this because we felt that it marginalized women that could not vote, or chose not to participate in voting. In response, Black Lives Matter Cincinnati (not affiliated with National BLM) organized an open forum discussion about how to effectively fight for women’s liberation. The dialogue about women’s liberation, was to be approached from several different angles, ideas, and points of view, and addressing the problems of believing that voting is the greatest and most important power as oppressed and exploited people.
There were many subjects touched on, and not everyone in the audience was comfortable with it, yet the forum was a huge success with almost 300 people in attendance, many of whom were standing. Featured panelists included were from Black Lives Matter Cincinnati, American Indian Movement of Southeastern Ohio, Concerned Citizens for Justice, Cincinnati Revolutionary Students, and Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) Metro Cincinnati. Video footage of this panel can be found at Black Lives Matter Cincinnati Facebook group page. The final thoughts concluded that there needs to be more discussion on Women’s liberation, community empowerment, and teaching our young and old people to learn how to organize around these issues.
Then in the first part of January, a few of us within the radical justice community in Cincinnati, saw a call out for the Women’s gathering by the Zapatista Women. Knowing what we know about the Zapatista Army, women play an equal role in leading armed resistance and use the “Revolutionary Law of Women”. This document gives an overview of the combination of social and political struggles that the Zapatista women identified as needing to change. Some of these factors included; Poverty, Rape, Domestic Violence, Access to Health care, Medicine and Treatment, Alcoholism, issues of sovereignty over bodies and land, and to be treated fairly and with equal political voice at home, in the community, and in the Zapatista Army.
The women I spoke with about going to this gathering in Chiapas, agreed that our work in our own communities largely encompasses the same issues with that of the Zapatista women. An Anishinaabe Elder that lives in a rural area of Canada commented that these are the same issues she deals with in working with Residential Boarding School survivors. A Dineh young woman living in Los Angeles, working as a Social Worker for Los Angeles County, said the same thing. As the delegation started quickly forming, it became obvious that in order to continue discussion on women’s liberation, we had to also go to this gathering to get some more “tools” and bring them back to share with our communities to analyze and have critical discussion.
This delegation is led by Native women. We are fundraising for 12 women to attend this gathering in March, Some Native, some not. Some of the Elders and Native women identify with “Indigenous feminism”, some do not. Some of the non-Native women identify as feminists. Yet all of us are working in our communities to better it; to keep our air clean, our waters protected, our lands from being raped by fuel extractions, and collaborating with various grassroots radical and revolutionary organizations on rural and urban landscapes with all of this and with social justice issues too. As activists and organizers, we are women, and we too are fighting to destroy patriarchal systems and structures- even within our own movements and within our Nations/Tribal structures. We believe that what we can learn from the experiences of the Zapatista women can be applied to our everyday struggles and within the current movements in our communities. In addition, we will be having fundraisers with a table set up to encourage attendees to write messages that they want us to take and share with the Zapatista people. We are not just limiting it to fundraising events to gather these messages, but also, we have made this request and offer on social media.
“We women attending the gathering would like to bring our Zapatista Relatives offerings from our homes. If you have any words of solidarity you would like us to share with our Zapatista sisters, please let us know. Upon our return, we hope to have community meetings and discussions to share what we have learned & our Zapatista Relatives responses to your messages as a way to provide a connection to them through us. “
If you are reading this before March 7th, and would like us to include your message, please send me an email at corine68@yahoo.com to be included in our presentation in Chiapas.
This conference is fast approaching and we are making a call out for help. We have fundraisers planned throughout the month of February to meet our goal of $8,000 for travel expenses. Please invest in our communities. Invest in us. Our Delegation is small but our women are from various areas of the US and Canada: represented:
American Indian Movement
Big Mountain Dineh Nation
Black Lives Matter Cincinnati
Biindigen Healing & Arts
Feminactivist
Idle No More Canada
Idle No More Detroit
Women of All Red Nations (WARN)
Water Protectors North/South Dakota
Any dollar amount that you can spare to help us reach this goal would be appreciated. Any effort to spread this message far and wide is greatly appreciated. Here is a link to our go fund me request.
Perhaps this endeavor of getting 12 women to Chiapas for this gathering is a bit ambitious. Perhaps the main purpose is to also role model to other communities that it takes a spark from an idea, and collectively working together, we can make it happen. Either way, we were not going to be intimidated by costs or pessimism to achieve this goal. Our Native Elders have taken this to ceremony and prayer and we feel that the women that are meant to go on this trip, will go. We believe that the 2 most important components to this mission is to first show solidarity because our Struggles are similar. Secondly, to bring back what we learn from our Zapatista Sisters, and share with our families and communities.
As diverse as this delegation is, we all agree that when women are free, communities are empowered, and everyone is free.
WOPILA TANKA /MIIGWECH/ AHEHEE’ / ANUSHIIK / GRACIAS/ THANK YOU
Yours in Solidarity
Corine Fairbanks, Oglala Lakota
American Indian Movement Southeastern Ohio