RadFem. Check. LibTrans. Check. RadTrans? Checking.

The title of this post may be seen as mildly cheeky. But it is also deadly serious.

Life circumstances have kept me offline in the last while. A good friend died of metastatic uterine cancer. She was like a sister to me. And then there were other health issues in her family. The cancer and the treatment was brutal and she was increasingly brave with each passing month. The battle ended two and a half years after diagnosis. I know there are so many people fighting or coping with cancer in some regard. Most along with poverty and additional insults and insecurities of marginalisation and invisibility.

But I'm here today to speak to a few things that have been off my radar, more or less, during that period. For example, I have found that a lot more people across a much wider age bracket use the term 'radfem'.

Due partly to my age, I don't experience 'radfem' and 'radical feminist' as synonyms. I grew up before tweeting and texting when feminist terms being shortened was not usually a sign of respect. Such as when Women's Liberation was turned into Women's Lib.

So in my ancient mind, shortening means going from this: [Content Warning: the second image is stupidly sexist.]

women's liberation movement photo is from here

to this:

blatantly sexist visual is from here

So, no disrespect intended to anyone who identifies as radfem or who uses both terms. Lorde knows I'd have more time on my hands if I'd written radfem every time I wrote out the longer version.

Anyway, I realise that in the last couple of years, the shorter term has taken root more widely. And that's not all. What also seems to have amped up are distressing and awfully bitter battles over terrain and terms, land and language.

Whose land comprises the U.S. of Amerikkka? Will the Federal government or individual States or citizens ever hand back significant tracts and regions of Indigenous land, or does the government remain a land-hoarder and destroyer? Will whites ever concede, en masse, that the Confederate flag is a symbol of white supremacy? That people from Mexico aren't aliens. That Muslims aren't terrorists. Will the xenophobic CRAP that spills out of Dumpty Trumpty ever cease? Will Black Lives Matter?

Does it register that some of us don't have clean water to drink, or reliable access to water?

Will Bernie Sanders become the DNC candidate for president: how would he rule, and make reparations regarding government-stolen land and colonialist-dependent wealth? Will Hilary Clinton be the first white woman to be U.S. president?

Hey: If you want great political leadership in this country, I think Winona LaDuke and Alicia Garza are as good as you get. LaDuke/Garza 2020!!!

Winona, a revolutionary feminist, has pointed out how a curiosity, to me anyway, regarding Anglo uses of the term 'radical', relative to many Indigenist traditional values. That is, from an Indigenist point of view, one may see U.S. government policies as radical, extreme, militant, for decades, for centuries. Genocidal. Seen this way, we can concur that Indigenist feminism is deeply Conservative, but not using the term in at all the same way the U.S. Republicrats do. I read that perspective for the first time many years ago in Talking About a Revolution. We're still waiting for that and are literally dying for it to arrive. Too often, though, it is just liberal talk about terms. Here I go with that.

Digging down and scraping the bottom of the barrel of this blog's archives, from 2008, I found this:

What does 'Radical' mean here? It holds up for me.

What I bring with me as a way to understand any form of oppression are lessons taught to me by radical feminists across race, region, and ethnicity. There are many who deeply inform my thinking and feeling. Among the earliest and most significant are Audre Lorde and Andrea Dworkin. But there more contemporary voices of wisdom and radical knowledge on the scene.

I will bring radical feminist theory and agendas, of color and white, with me as I go, never settling into any perspective or practice with colonial patriarchal Certainty. Andrea Dworkin, for one, never advocated for theory being mistaken for truth. She knew theory could be made into reality--to look, feel, taste, sound, and smell like CRAP. And like everything. And like the core of who I am, which may be why so many people feel like CRAP. And the danger to us, in part, is not knowing whose theories we are living inside, which ones we benefit from and protect, and which we are under and must continue to rise up against.

The more liberal academic side of the sometimes-termed RadFem vs. LibTrans turf war is a contest over theory--issues of gender, essentialism, and privilege. But the social and legal side of it is about spaces of safety and struggle. As noted above, it is clear who is fighting for land and language. In some sense we all are. But not equally.

________________

When I approach any conversation about gender, I first center this question: Whose bodies are marked for terrorism and destruction? What I see is that the bodies, the souls, of those who are identified as female, Indigenous, Black, and Brown, especially, are being terrorised. As they have been for centuries, at least. More recently, it is also Black trans bodies that are marked and murdered.

Corporate media would rather tell us of these horrors as individual tragedies perpetrated by one, two, six, or a hundred 'bad men' or 'rogue cops'. Mainstream media will not report the violence as systematic: patriarchal, colonial. Most white people I know are willing to settle for dimensions of mass media's truth. As are most men. I wonder how many other excuses white folk can conjure to excuse a cop's murder of someone not threatening them. I wonder how many rapes have to occur before it is seen as something men do normally, whether or not most men normally do it. In some sense it should not be surprising that rape happens, even while it should always be understood as part of a complex, involving entitlement and the requirement patriarchies have for some people to be femaled, 24/7/365. It is, tragically, an arrogant and desperate need of too many people for access and accommodation; for violence as violation. For land and language.

I am speaking of a need imposed on others, by human beings who are maled, who are always complex and nuanced in their hirstories and their lives, located in positions of privilege and marginalisation, as most of us are. But the color and sex of normal brutality must be noticed and named. I am mindful, heartful, of the violent disappearance of trans and nontrans Black women, murder after murder. And of the reality of rape culture, and how it is tethered both to patriarchy and to colonialism.

Within white spaces, also always complex and multifaceted, the only L  G  B  T movement I've ever seen as being radical was the L. I have looked to white Lesbian Feminist theorists for keen analysis of heteropatriarchy for over thirty years. Among my fav of those philosophers is Marilyn Frye. But there are many. My most fav, however, is not white. She is, as noted above, Audre Lorde.

The _GBT+ organisations and campaigns which are white-led or coloniser-centered, that claim to be radical, do not appear to me to be revolutionary in theory or practice. This has been brought to my attention in detail quite recently.

In some of the next posts, I will endeavor to carefully and respectfully identify what I find to be politically problematic with a facebook group I have been in as a commenter. It is called "The Conversations Project: Radically Inclusive Radical Feminism". It is welcoming and not supportive of flame wars--that alone is rare online. It has tolerated my very privileged presence for almost two weeks: we'll see who exhausts the other first. Hopefully amicable relationships will be nourished. But unowned intellectual liberalism is toxic to me. And denial of any form of privilege by anyone, as a way of life, is atrocity-supporting. When I see it, I endeavor to call it out, hopefully respectfully and with increasing sensitivity to how my own places of privilege effect the reception of the critique.

The two founders are well known in some progressive circles that contend with gender and privilege. Cristan Williams with Trans/Gender politics. John Stoltenberg with what used to be called Sexual Politics. With the doubly radical title as my guide, I presumed they are doing something radically feminist. In at least two senses, I believe they are using the term, well, liberally.

I have already written to them about my concerns, within the closed facebook group. Projects termed radical that are, in theory and reality, liberal, are nothing new. But the name of the project did direct me to a set of expectations and I was intrigued. I am attempting, in many ways wrongly, to hold them to my expectations. It's an unfair thing to do and I can be a pest about it. They have been kind, and I do well with kindness, so I'm working diligently at keeping my critiques clear of passive-aggression and void of shaming under- and over-tones. That in and of itself is good work for me to be doing in an online or offline community setting.

___________________

I will update you, here, on my own issues by noting that I've been continuing to search for terms to locate my sense of myself relative to gender. Given that I believe (I think in a radical feminist tradition) that the subjectivity of the oppressed matters more than the subjectivity of the oppressor, how women experience me is, first and foremost, what my gender is. That means I don't get to control it: the naming. The best I can do, subjectively, personally, non-essentially, while using the English language is "a maled adult". (And, being a good Amerikkkan, I only speak one language.) I'm a white maled adult, nonbinary, with more economic security than most people, which increasingly doesn't have to be a whole hell of a lot; but I have a kind of stability few people have: I can pay my bills on time and have no debt. And, while gay (in this case: maled, attracted to men--very few, but men), I do not engage in romantic or sexual relationships. That means the ways I can harm people interpersonally are dramatically reduced. And, yes, the ways I can be hurt and misunderstood: but that's what the internet is for. Or not.

If we're talking about dominant gender--CRAP-loaded gender--then using a term like 'anti-gender' works well for me. I have been identifying as 'intergender' but as a fierce white Feminist Lesbian called out, doing so locates me, affirmatively, between the poles of a gender binary that's also a hierarchy. That is, such a term, applied to me, reinforces the hierarchy linguistically (her point). I agree. It also pretends that by being 'in between', I may have less male privilege or sense of entitlement than others who ID as men. So, as either trans and cis, or neither trans and cis, and while I don't have heterosexual privilege, and while I'm not of Northern European gentile stock, I am afforded most male supremacist advantages and benefits. No doubt about it. No denial about it. Please.

I yearn for social spaces which share and practice community-enriching, humane values that I learned from radical feminism. Values like listening, self-awareness, accountability, mutuality, humor, and assertiveness. One especially important ethic is radical honesty: digging for the truth of one's feelings and experience, not settling for the views and interpretations of others just because they appear to be mandatory or popular. And not forgetting: we live inside the theories of others--most of whom are long gone, who may not ever have had any living creature's best interests at heart. I leave you for now, with this:

The purpose of theory is to clarify the world in which we live, how it works, why things happen as they do. The purpose of theory is understanding. Understanding is energizing. It energizes to action. When theory becomes an impediment to action, it is time to discard the theory and return naked, that is, without theory, to the world of reality. People become slaves to theory because people are used to meeting expectations they have not originated—to doing what they are told, to having everything mapped out, to having reality prepackaged. People can have an antiauthoritarian intention and yet function in a way totally consonant with the demands of authority. The deepest struggle is to root out of us and the institutions in which we participate the requirement that we slavishly conform. But an adherence to ideology, to any ideology, can give us the grand illusion of freedom when in fact we are being manipulated and used by those whom the theory serves. The struggle for freedom has to be a struggle toward integrity defined in every possible sphere of reality—sexual integrity, economic integrity, psychological integrity, integrity of expression, integrity of faith and loyalty and heart. Anything that shortcuts us away from viewing integrity as an essential goal or anything that diverts our attention from integrity as a revolutionary value serves only to reinforce the authoritarian values of the world in which we live.  —  Andrea Dworkin, Letters from a War Zone, U.S. edition, pages 127-128

Kroicher and Julian Discuss Sexism and Male Privilege

image is from here

Greetings, A.R.P. readers and other visitors.

A commenter named Kroicher has offered some remarks that I accepted under an old blog post. As the exchange between us is getting somewhat involved, I wanted to share it as a new post for anyone who might be interested.

Here's the link to where our exchange began, in this post "Defining Misandry". Kroicher's latest comment has been broken up by me and is presented below in pieces, in italics and bold, with my responses in between. To read it whole, I invite you to go to the post linked to just above and scroll down to the comments section.


Kroicher, it's very rare for me to meet a male who actually wants to discuss some of these issues. So, thanks for that. :)

My issue with what you posted here is that the link's contents participates in a very over-used, tired pattern of patriarchally conservative men/misogynists/antifeminists posting quotes by a few women--a dozen or so usually, sometimes less--and making a case that there's some kind of serious problem in the world with women hating men when the actual social problem is woman-hating men. That you linked us to such a place here on a pro-feminist blog didn't feel respectful of radical feminism to me, and I don't experience it as respectful to the radical feminists and other women (not all of them would self-identify as radical) whose quotes are made to represent all of who they are, or all of what they each have to offer through their work.

So while you state that you "haven't attacked any author personally, nor have I gone against any particular train of thought" you deliberately linked us to a page that does exactly that. The people on such sites do it quite maliciously, with no regard for the significance and importance of radical feminist thought, analysis, and activism.

I'll respond more to a few points you make, and welcome you to respond.

You wrote: 
I was merely pointing out the convenience there is in any trend or fashion (for some or many social and political movements become fashionable for some people) to personally or needlessly belittling people.

For me, Kroicher, that statement participates in privileged abstractionism. It's something I see men and whites do all the time--by-pass something atrocious, like violence against women and girls, or patriarchal and racist destruction of humanity, and focus on the matter of needlessly belittling people. The social world is filled with things like slavery--millions of girls sexually enslaved, battery, rape, hunger, loss of homeland, trafficking, and poverty. In such a world, few people I know, who experience and study oppression, would name "needless belittling" as what is most painful in their lives. Do you see that? That you also state what you're doing is done "merely", is a strategy I often see males and whites engage in: downplay our words, while over-stating or over-emphasising the allegedly negative effects of the speech of people we oppress.

For me, I try and approach any radically feminist writing with the attitude that there's something in there I need to learn, to more deeply understand. Men dismissing (at best, and dissing at worst) feminist text for its tone, or for some of its content, is anti-intellectual and an anti-feminist practice, I'd say. This leads me to wonder exactly what, in class, you're objecting to.

You wrote: 
As I said, and alas this may sound pure rhetoric ... what angers me is dogmatism and ignorance

It's a privilege to be irritated by such things to the point of speaking out against them publicly. What is perhaps difficult for you to appreciate is that for many women around the world, objecting to dogmatism and ignorance is met with violence from men. Objecting to a husband's or boyfriend's or pimp's dogmatism and ignorance may be met with rape and other forms of sexual assault. Sometimes women are killed for objecting to the tone or content in a man's hostile, dogmatic, and ignorant words.

You and I get to be put off by having our feelings hurt--to register it as "an offence", because you and I don't live in a world where our adult bodies are targeted for gross violation, dehumanising objectification and threatening approach by sexually violent aggressors. Given that most of the time we will find our voices relatively valued and appreciated, when our opinions and views are met with objection, or--heaven forbid--a request to speak less, it is indeed a challenge to our presumed power to do as we wish, including saying what we want, when we want to.

More than one woman of color I know can't get employment because their humanity isn't synonymous with "competence" in a White Man's World. Even though the two women I'm now thinking of are at least as smart and competent as any white man I know, they will not generally be considered "appropriate for the job"--for many jobs they are over-skilled for. What can they do about patriarchal and racist dogmatism and ignorance? What they can do--and actually do--is fear homelessness and hunger. Complaining isn't really much of an option, or it won't get them anywhere if they do it publicly. Can they complain to the interviewer who they know is treating them with condescension or contempt? Can they describe it to a white psychotherapist and trust that the therapist won't assume they are exaggerating or overreacting?

You and I do get to complain publicly about any perceived insult, any experienced mistreatment. We won't suffer many consequences for airing them. And there will always--always--be lots of men around to say, "Wow, man. That sucks!" (And often enough they'll add something misogynist about any woman who unintentionally hurt you.)

You wrote:
when it comes to cultural studies, my opinions have been aggressively cast aside more than once for not agreeing with my radical feminist teacher's regular agenda.

What does "aggressive" mean exactly? What was done? Were you threatened? Did women put a fist in your face? Did someone grab you?

Men tend to view women's disagreements and objections, stated firmly and without apology, as acts of "aggression". Do you recognise that as being the case?

Also, I find your use of the word "agenda" to be sexist. Do you call what it is men teach--from their own biases or just from a standard patriarchal perspective, "an agenda"? This is an assumption on my part: I bet you've heard many sexist perspectives from male teachers, many assumptions about how the world works, and what constitutes "great" literature, art, or music, that is steeped in many patriarchal biases. I'd bet those male professors who teach such patriarchal perspectives--without ever naming them as such, without ever saying it is a bias--have, as a regular agenda, the invisibilisation and denigration of women's contributions to those disciplines.

I'm glad you realise "I wasn't a victim of misandry, and I didn't 'suffer' due to a biased opinion on men -- these are far too strong concepts for what happens there."

It's not just that it would overstate it to call it misandry. It's that calling it misandry doesn't properly appreciate what is going on, politically, in that room, every time you speak--no matter what you say. More on this in a moment.

You wrote: 
I have, however, been belittled by dogmatism and ignorance, deemed inadequate even to comment because of my supposedly biased and privileged condition.

I'd say it's because of your privileged position that you can speak about it as a serious wrong, as a personal injustice.

I'm sorry you've been belittled in your life. I get how that's painful, hurtful, and can feel diminishing. And in a classroom of mostly women, there's plenty for you to learn about the social over-valuation of your male voice; it may be experienced by at least some of the women there as hurtful or harmful or needlessly belittling, or maybe they experience you as casting aside views that they deeply value.

You wrote:
I'm sure you'd agree: whether I'm a male or not has nothing to do with having a voice in such a discussion. My arguments should suffice (or not, if that's the case).

I strongly--but not aggressively--disagree with that. Such a view pretends something that this blog tries to make very clear--that many radical feminist writings try and make very clear: wherever you go, Kroicher, and whatever you do, your male privileges and entitlements--and the power to oppress that backs them up--arrives with you and cannot be removed or set aside. Well, unless we want to deny structural political reality, which is sometimes what a liberal academy tries to do. But the denial of structural political reality is exactly what people do who complain about the problem of women's 'misandry' against white, wealthy, heterosexual men.

Often enough and far too often, male privileges are expressed in ways we don't take responsibility for or even recognise as problematic.

As someone who has seen plenty of feminists speak in academic settings, I'll share with you this sociological observation: When the audience is 80% or 90% or 98% female, the questions asked of the guest feminist will be disproportionately asked by the males in the room. Why? Because males learn from an early age to feel entitled to speak our minds, to ask questions, to challenge others intellectually or physically.

Imagine that every woman in your classroom, including your professor, has seen this play out dozens to hundreds of times: men dominating social space, taking up women's intellectual time and energy, all the while expecting to be very carefully listened to and always humanely responded to. Add to that this: the women, since childhood, have seen how their voices and opinions are dismissed or denigrated. They have seen how their their views, when not to a man's liking, results in her being insulted or degraded. Do you get how outrageous it might be to see a male in a classroom of females be upset he isn't being treated appropriately?

It's not that your upset doesn't matter. It's that the dynamic in the classroom, as you describe it thus far, can feel a lot like this: Very rich men complaining about losing $100,000 dollars in the stock market in a week, but complaining to a room of men who have only ever lived in poverty. And the rich men wanting the sympathy and comfort of the poor men. And expecting it. And being hurt when they don't get that sympathy and comfort.

You wrote:
Maybe I'm just complaining, I know. But it's frustrating. I am trying to have a better, broader understanding of the world, to be fair and respectful as I always did. But I had fingers pointed at me before I could speak my mind.

Could you please give me a couple of examples from your classroom experience of what was said to you, and what you said first that they were responding to? Because it doesn't quite make sense that people were pointing fingers at you before you spoke at all. Did you ask what they were pointing out? Did you take time to hear what they had to say? Is it possible that what you present as respectful and fair, isn't received that way?

You wrote: 
It's true that there are many men obsessed with misandry. Man who'd like nothing better than to complain about any kind of nuisance in their lives (do I fit here?). 

Probably. But not "any kind of nuisance" exactly. What I hear you complaining about is a perceived mistreatment by people who you structurally and perhaps also interpersonally oppress, people you may be belittling and harming in ways you likely won't see or name as mistreatment. I'm not presuming you're rude and don't know it. I'm suggesting that maybe you opening your mouth to critique something that is intensely valuable to many women, in a classroom in which you're one of the only males, might be seen as obnoxious and oppressive, for good reasons.

You wrote: 
But also to deny it completely as a "made-up" word-thing, pure jest and jokes, I find it hard to believe. I won't be turned to a cynic.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "a cynic". Am I correct in assuming that it means you won't accept reality being denied?

What I think is "made up" is this, Kroicher: a world in which men are systematically insulted and degraded by women. What I think is actually the case is this: a world in which women are terrorised, brutalised, and degraded in every conceivable way, by men, and a world in which men are very rarely insulted and degraded by one or a few women. It happens so rarely, in fact, that when it does occur, very privileged men collect the comments, the quotes, and pass them around on the internet as evidence that feminists (meaning, in this instance, women who speak out for justice for women, without apology) are hateful. Is isn't possible to collect in one place the comments men make about women, about feminists, that are hateful and dehumanising. I don't mean the comments men have made across the centuries. I mean just the comments men are making only in one hour of any one day across the globe.

I'll share a story with you:
When I first read Valerie Solanas's SCUM Manifesto--not named by her, but by a man, by the way--I was fascinated by it. It was unlike anything I had ever written. It shocked and stunned me. Years later, I read some of it to a group of women friends who weren't familiar with it and asked if I'd read it out loud. When I did so, it felt really different to me. Less enthalling and more mean-spirited. Several years after that, a pro-feminist male friend from another country, for whom English was a second language, asked me what I thought of it. I told him it had been important to me but lately I found it to be unconstructively mean at times. He then told me how significant that text was to him, to his understanding of the social psychology of patriarchal, Western, European-descended masculinity. So I put my feelings aside to consider that, and to remember what effect it first had on me. And to find what was of value in it and not use its tone--as I experienced it--or some of the characterisations, as a reason to distance myself from it. Because a question few men ask is this: What would have to happen to a woman, that is done to women routinely, that would produce a text like that?

Here are some of my favorite radical feminist quotes--and you can note how none of them are ever quoted by the men who love to hate feminism:

Forget about the fact that capitalism requires the existence of a mass underclass of surplus labor. Lying takes the form of mass media creating the myth that [the] feminist movement has completely transformed society, so much so that the politics of patriarchal power have been inverted and that men, particularly white men, just like emasculated black men, have become the victims of dominating women...When this collective cultural consumption of and attachment to misinformation couples with the layers of lying individuals do in their personal lives, our capacity to face reality is severely diminished as is our will to intervene and change unjust circumstances. -- bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, p. 27-29

'[T]hose who point out that women are being victimized are said to victimize women. Those who resist the reduction of women to sex are said to reduce women to sex. Subordinating women harms no one when pornographers do it, but when feminists see women being subordinated in pornography and say so, they are harming women. Words do nothing except when feminists use them. Go figure.' -- Catharine A. MacKinnon, Women's Lives, Men's Laws, page 350.

If I hated men, I would treat men the way that men treat women! -- Beth Chamblin

Men who want to support women in our struggle for freedom and justice should understand that it is not terrifically important to us that they learn to cry; it is important to us that they stop the crimes of violence against us. -- Andrea Dworkin, ‘The Rape Atrocity and the Boy Next Door’, speech at State University of New York, 1 March 1975. In Our Blood, chapter 4 (1976)

(For the rest of my favorite radical feminist quotes, see *here*.)

I'm wondering, Kroicher, when you're feeling hurt or ignored, do you usually turn to women or to men for solace and comfort? It is likely you turn to women because most men learn it is women's job to take care of men emotionally and spiritually, and sexually, and in most other ways. As I'm sure you know, men tend to assume women exist to comfort us when we're hurt.

In classes where there are at least as many males and females, and a male challenges you or dismisses something you've said, do you feel the same way as when women do it in your cultural studies class?

Would you please send me, or post as a comment, the required readings for that cultural studies class, as well as the name of the course? I'm especially interested to know which radical feminists your professor is suggesting you to study and learn from.

I await your reply.


Post script:
While I was composing this, and after I posted it, Kroicher submitted another comment, which addresses some of what I am speaking about above. So I want to include that here.

Again I say: what angers me isn't feminism (be it radical or not) -- it never was. Dogmatism, chauvinism, ignorance. I took a step into ignorance by linking this comment to quotations with no context. I think I owe you an apology. I did take the quotations at face value. I never do this, and I shouldn't have done it this time.

I believe in feminism. Or rather, to be more sincere, I believe in equality and respect at the core of social relations. I understand what it is to be privileged, and I try my best never to use that privilege. Some things pass us by unnoticed, however -- I am not a hypocrite.

As a white heterosexual male I've learned to be silent with many topics regarding prejudice and privilege (mostly because of my experience in such discussions), but I refuse to become a cynic. Fortunately, this has proved to be an enriching experience.

Thank you.

Thank you, Kroicher. Apology accepted.

The Politics of Cultural Appropriation

image of  "American Indian" "wallpaper" is from here

What follows is a typically LONG comment I left on a blog called "Race Files", linked to *here*. I encourage you to read the conversation there. Yes, being white, middle class, and male means I feel very entitled to blather on and on about things, and, often enough, I act accordingly. 

Hi Scot. I just read your post and the comments here. I have several thoughts to add to the conversation. First, I want to commend you on keeping the focus on the political contexts in which cultural appropriation happens. For me, there are a few key issues that I try and keep central when considering this stuff.

One is: who politically benefits from such appropriations? Who is left with more or less than what they had? What are the larger patterns of appropriation and exploitation? Are those patterns part of something else that is less easily disguised as innocuous or innocently done (such as genocide)?

Another key issue, speaking as a middle class white gay Jewish male, is this: what assumptions are carried, usually unconsciously or insensitively, into the process of appropriating others' cultures?

I agree with a commenter above: I'd also say that learning from great thinkers and activists about oppression and resistance isn't "appropriation". Keeping in mind the first key issue, you are using this knowledge to co-create a less oppressive world WITH marginalised people, not just FOR yourself.

I see many middle class whites with Native American, Asian, and Caribbean art and "artifacts" in their possession. They will speak very positively about those cultures and admire the artwork. And I wonder: what do you offer to those cultures and to the people, collectively, who make the art you consume and enjoy? Because what a one-time or regular "collector" paid an individual artist or seller for the artwork isn't a way of responsibly and ethically being with other people with less social privilege and political power. It is an expression of the advantage, the privilege, and the power. This isn't to say that owning the artwork is "bad"; the money one paid for the artwork was likely needed by the artist (this is also true for most white artists I know). It is to say it is part of something beyond but inclusive of the act that is more insidious and hideous.

I learned as a white person to consume despised-while-coveted cultures in a very white supremacist/male supremacist/capitalist way, with great regard for what such acquisition could do for me, and with little to no consideration of what I ought to be offering in return. My people didn't encourage me learn what the conditions were and are that led me to be able to be that kind of consumer or coveter; instead, they taught and encouraged the behavior; after all, it serves the rulers of the oppressive status quo by mimicking their most horrible acts without revealing the rulers' bloody hands.

I see many white middle class people practice New Age spirituality which sloppily and grossly (racistly or "whitely") appropriates practices that may or may not be Indigenous North American. Workshops are offered or classes are taught, never to Indigenous people; only to other whites. The goal is to enrich the lives of whites, to make "culturally deprived" white lives seem more fulfilled, and maybe to cut a profit while doing so. But the capitalist/male supr./white supr. practice of taking-without-giving, and taking-without-asking, operates under an overarching assumption that the world is "for" me not "with" me; it exists to plunder and pillage; bodies exist to be exploited and raped. This is the problem. Appropriating more and more, consuming more and more, is not likely to be a solution--surely not an ethical, responsible, or considerate one. Lorde's caution to us, "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house", comes to mind.

The most central global atrocity, to me, is this: white/Western/Anglo and male supremacist "cultures" are built on the backs, brains, and blood of other cultures and people. The ruling classes mass murder, exploit, rape, and otherwise seek to steal from, deplete, and destroy, people and their/our ways of being as well as their/our natural "resources", including stealing and polluting land bases intimately and intricately tied to the cultures being destroyed.

Middle class whites purchasing stocks of corporations that commit genocide for retirement, and whites teaching "Native Ways", and white het men purchasing corporate, for-profit pornography or renting girls or adult women, usually poor, often of color, for sexual assault named "consensual" and "harmless" by the men, all contribute to genocide and gynocide. In my experience, men don't encourage other males to learn what the conditions were and are that led us to be able to be that kind of consumer; instead, we teach and encourage the behavior in other males.

In this view, these practices are all part of a dominant US white/male supremacist culture: these practices define, delineate, replicate, and enforce that culture. These practices, and so many others, tell us what it exists, fundamentally if not only, to do. Ignorance, sometimes feigned or willed, and arrogance, often denied, are two crucial ingredients of that culture.

So, for example, whites appropriate Indigenous North American cultures without understanding the history of whites forcing Native Americans to either give up their own cultures, "adopt" the dominant culture (religion and language, for example), or perish. Another example: men consume corporate pornography as if the people in the pictures or videos aren't as real as the consumer and without regard for the conditions that led the prostituted person to be in front of a camera to begin with. Are girls and women and LGBTIQA people across gender made to fear homelessness and poverty, or are they/we beaten or killed if they/we don't do what pimps (with or without cameras) want? The women I know who have endured and survived such abuses say racist and misogynistic threat and force are endemic and systematic: requisite and definitive rather than anecdotal or apolitically "unfortunate". And of course too often they/we are made homeless, are impoverished, are beaten, raped, and killed for doing exactly what the pimps want, which is, after all, to be a thing for him and other men to possess, use up, and discard--dead or alive.

Whites and the rich appropriate, steal, and consume the lives and cultures of people of color and the poor, including through slavery and mass murder. Men appropriate, steal, and consume girls and women, including women's sexuality and labor, including through slavery and mass murder. We do not share or borrow. We certainly do not "give back". "White-giver" or "Anglo-giver" ought to replace the deeply racist term, "Indian-giver".

I believe these realities ought not be obscured or ignored when the conversations happen. I believe those of us with at least one foot in a structurally oppressive position, if not also a hand, a home, and a retirement account, must strive to continually arrive at less exploitive, less oppressive, less lethal ways of being while challenging and transforming those larger structures and systems of harm and horror. Thank you for not putting these issues aside in your discussion here and in your work beyond the internet.

Post script:
I'll add this question to the discussion: do whites' and men's seemingly non-terroristic acquisitions, purchases, and collections of Asian, African, Pacific Island, Caribbean, Latina/o, and Indigenous cultures contribute to and reinforce the problem of Western white and male supremacist imperialism and terrorism, or do they work against it?

Pornography is the Depiction and Documentation of Sexual and Racial Oppression

image is from here

Below is a revised and expanded version of a comment I posted to a Kyler J.'s blog, A Radical Black Feminist Teenager. To read her post, titled "Erotica is not feminist and other things like Porn, BDSM, and Prostitution", please click *here*.

This is my response, adding to the discussion:

As a white gay intergender [anti-gender] male who has witnessed the effects of pornography on gay males over the last thirty years, I'll add a few thoughts about how corporate pimps exploit the LGBTIQA community.

I completely agree with you that "lesbian porn" is consumed by het men for het men's pleasure. There's nothing progressive about it in terms of its overall social effect, even if the intention by a very few lesbian producers is progressive. (Needless to say, most "lesbian porn" is not produced by lesbians.) Many times het men have asked me, "What about the porn that lesbians make for themselves?" Aside from noting that the question is blatantly (if not always consciously) self-serving, my response is this: Any such porn is such a tiny percentage of the whole of the horrific pornography-prostitution-trafficking industry; to pretend it actually effects any sort of progressive to radical change in the overall aesthetics or agendas of controlling forces (that, in the Western world, is predominantly rich white het men) is to engage in wishful thinking not backed up by "hard-core" reality. And whatever lesbians make, for whatever purposes, will, if it is public (such as being on the internet or for sale), be appropriated by het men. Once consumed by het men, it is then in service to their patriarchal, misogynistic sexual appetites, which, far too often, are acted out against pimped girls and women, usually poor and of color, with no lesbian empowerment in sight. And, as you well note, most of it is not distinguishable from dominant non-lesbian pornography in overall style and content.

The pornography that is marketed to gay males is also produced and owned by white het males and functions to reinforce white supremacy, het supremacy, male supremacy, corporate capitalism, and Western anti-Indigenous imperialism. Gay males have been willing to consume this material for complex reasons, but the effect on our community has been to teach us how to "do sex" the way patriarchal het men "do sex", except to one another not to women and girls. But the aesthetics of het pornography show up in white gay men's actions. A disheartening example of this in the "legitimate" film industry is the new film "Rock of Ages", which Adam Shankman had a strong hand in shaping as the director: the "look" (which means the racist misogynist behavior and the values) of white het men's pornography is infused into it. (You can get a sense of that from the movie's trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USxhXb5VC5E)

The effect of gay male consumption of het male-made pornography has been to promote and promulgate white power, masculinist power, and anti-queer heterosexism among gay males of all colors and ages and to forge an alliance between gay and het men against feminist lesbians who have been taking on the rulers of pornography and prostitution, showing them up for what they are: corporate pimps, serial rapists, traffickers, and slave traders of girls and women of all colors.

The pornography of allegedly "transgender" people has been historically racist, anti-transgender, anti-gay, anti-lesbian, and anti-woman. It, too, serves the same dominant forces mentioned above. And it also promotes some very dangerous ideas about what being transgender is: male-bodied people with silicone breast implants and bleached, straightened hair, for example. Similarly to females in the sexxx-ploitation industries, gay and non-gay males, and intersex and transsexual people are economically coerced to alter our bodies to appear the way white het male consumers, procurers, and pimps insist we appear--and do what they profit from us doing. Similarly to "lesbian porn", very destructive portrayals of transsexual people of all colors are marketed by the pornography industry's owners as a niche fetish for non-transgender male consumers.

Liberals habitually promote "gender" as a social difference in need of greater diversification, while the radicals I know believe that it is the power of capitalism and heteropatriarchal white supremacist gender hierarchies that must be abolished. Gender has been diverse outside of white imperialist societies; this is both destroyed and forgotten by ruling classes of people. To argue for diversification of gender while keeping ruling structures in place is to participate in anti-Indigenous genocidal behavior.

Pornography, as an industry, is virulently anti-queer, anti-woman, anti-female, anti-transgender, anti-Black, anti-Brown, anti-Asian, and anti-Indigenous. The fact that many gay males and other queer people have supported it financially and otherwise only speaks to the effectiveness of the ruling class in trying to convince all oppressed people believe that we need to buy what the ruling class sells as if our sexual and social lives depended on it.

Pornography: Andrea Dworkin (1991) a British documentary about her work against graphic sexxxism

portrait of Andrea Dworkin is from here

What is sometimes forgotten when one considers Andrea's work against the pornographers, pimps, traffickers, and men who consume pornography as a way to get a sexual male supremacy fix as well as another lesson in how to be a misogynist, is that Dworkin was not a single-issue activist. Her work was against white and male supremacy and that included a lot of social-economic-political terrain.

The problem with the pornography industry, first and foremost, is that it is white and male supremacist and promotes anti-woman and anti-feminist practices in men. It also promotes those practices in women and trans people too.

When I hear her addressing an audience or crowd, what strikes me is that it is so uncommon for anyone in media or in front of a camera to be deeply outraged by any form of structural violence that targets women and girls specifically and systematically, perhaps most especially if the women and girls are not privileged by class and race. We all know that the chances of dominant media caringly, insightfully, and consistently reporting on the disappearance and murder of poor women and girls of color are low to non-existent.

To hear Andrea address a group on political matters is to be reminded of what an appropriate response is to white and male supremacist and racist-misogynist violence.

Here is the link to the documentary, on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9j7-zZks08

Liberal vs. Radical, and the Politics of Critique

image is from here

I begin by asking: what's problematic or privileged about categorising differences in strategies to challenge the status quo “liberal vs. radical”? I don't want that question ignored or to pretend it ought not exist.

I move on to say: my experience is that there are dominant ideologies ruling the society I live in and that white and male supremacist pro-capitalist liberalism is one of them, with white and male supremacist pro-capitalist conservatism being another. “Radical” is a term used a lot of different ways by people all along the dominant political spectrum, but it is also used by people off that spectrum too.

I am working to be one of the people off the spectrum. That means I am conscientiously trying to figure out strategies for surviving and overcoming CRAP (corporate racist atrocious patriarchy) that is responsive to the struggles of people with less social privilege and structural advantages than I have.

I see unacknowledged liberal perspectives and points of view far more than I see radical ones, as I understand those terms, anyway.

For example: I see people write about ideas as if they are exactly as powerful as systems of brutal force exercised against people in order to oppress and kill them. I consider that part of what Liberalism in my “Western” country wants us to believe, so that if someone is said to be “a Communist”, “we” will all be more afraid of them than if they say they are a “Capitalist”.

Another example: I see people treat, act out, and discuss gender as if it were more a matter of difference than of dominance (in patriarchal societies the ruling ideology and system of force, violation, and control is male supremacy: dominance of people who are not men by dominant men; especially: the subordination and gynocide of girls and women by men).

Another example: I see people treat race as a matter of difference than a matter of white supremacist violence and control of people who white supremacists do not consider to be white.

Another example: Among region-, class-, and/or education-privileged people, I see the privileging of gender over sex when discussing “oppression by gender and sex”. Part of this involves considering the core social-political problem “the gender binary” rather than experiencing or naming it as male supremacy and female subordination. Part of the this involves considering the problem as being limited to two choices (girl or boy, woman or man) rather than two gendered realities being enforced and rigidly controlled within a virulently and violently girl-hating and woman-hating male supremacist society.

“Radical Queer” or “Sex Radical” are two terms often used to describe people who consider the social practice of transgression to be politically and structurally revolutionary, or to describe people who don't consider the need for revolution at all. For example: many people see Western Civilisation as basically good but in need of being more tolerant of “deviates” (a term reclaimed by some radical queers and sex radicals as affirmative) and non-dominant people. I see the problem more as this: Western Civilisation, capitalism, white supremacy, male supremacy, heterosexism, ecocide, and anti-Indigenism.

I see transgression as more or less acceptable within the dominant society, more or less tolerated depending on region. (In parts of San Francisco, transgressive actions and behavior may be tolerated—which ought not be taken to mean that people who transgress some boundaries are always safe or free from violence from the most terroristic and controlling members of society. I see revolutionary action, for the most part, as not tolerated at all anywhere. I see transgressors calling things that are oppressive to many people “acceptable” such as sexual violence and sexual abuse. I see revolutionaries seeking to end sexual violence and sexual abuse.

A practical matter is this: given how anti-revolutionary and anti-radical society is, most of us grow up only having liberal-to-conservative forms of naming and understanding available to us. That means many of us will use liberal terms if we have experiences and responses to us that place us outside various norms. We may then consider identifying with those differences as “radical” whether or not they are. Is it “radical” to be a vegetarian or a vegan in a meat-producing society? I'd say no. But I think some v'gans would say yes. Is it “revolutionary” to be into bdsm? I'd say definitely not. But I think some people into bdsm might not agree with me.

One of the components of having a radical perspective on social matters is that everything must be open to being interrogated including the terms we use to describe ourselves. I see it as a profoundly and problematically liberal-to-conservative posture of many social dominants, and some subordinates, that such questioning, in and of itself, is seen only as a threat, not a constructive activity. As Pearl Cleage writes, it is incumbant on social dominants, when challenged by social subordinates, to maintain a posture of listening, openness, and humility, rather than a posture of self-centered and too often aggressive defence. It is argued that the interrogations by subordinates brought to dominants ought to happen in ways that are not overtly violent and in ways that are not designed to be terrifying and shaming. But some of those guidelines are likely shaped by privilege and an unowned wish to maintain oppressive power structures, or a fear of being assertive and appearing non-accommodating and not deferential to social dominants. Those of us who have occupied positions of social subordination learn quickly to appear to appease our masters or risk being harmed either individually or as a group.

One key question I ask in critique of that point about style of critique is this: when people who are systematically harmed by a social and structural practice—a practice that is enforced and controlled by an oppressive group and by institutions—how “shaming” and “terrifying” is it to the oppressive group to hear criticism of that practice? That is, what are the politics of “feeling shamed and terrified”? I bring this into focus because many whites feel very threatened and in danger around many different people of color (regardless of what the people of color are doing) while white supremacy in practice, in society, in reality, systematically snuffs out the lives of people of color while most whites don't give a damn in visible ways—and even more rarely in well-organised ways. Men often speak about fearing being shamed by women. (While women speak or remain silent about fearing being killed by men.)

A privilege of many oppressors is to equate what happens interpersonally and subjectively with what happens externally, institutionally, to groups of people. So “feeling and being hurt, harmed, degraded, or oppressed by someone's words” is equated with “feeling and being hurt, harmed, degraded, or oppressed by individuals' verbal actions and institutional non-verbal actions”. In my liberal society, a woman calling a man a prick is the same kind of harm as a man calling a woman a “c—t”. Liberals I know believe there is a war between the sexes. I believe there is a war among the sexes: men's war on women.

In conservative society, a man being insulted or disrespected by a woman individually or anecdotally is a much greater offence, or speech crime, than a man insulting or disrespecting a woman interpersonally and systematically.

Liberals, operating out of a value for an abstract idea of “fairness” and “equality” might condemn me for writing out the word “prick” but not spelling out the word “c—t”. But I don't see the terms as equal in their capacity to do harm, and nowhere is fairness practiced systematically. In the real world, women are called c—t (or the b word, or any number of other misogynist terms) before being punched and beaten by a man. Or when scripted and videotaped by a corporate pimp's photographer to mass produce misogyny sold as “hot sex” for male consumers. I know of no men at all who were beaten by women while the women called the man a prick.

Abstraction of values is a key tool of the liberal worldview in which lived ethics are assumed to be present institutionally and meaningfully prior to coming into existence. Liberals tend to abstract or isolate social phenomena in ways that either disappear institutional and structural realities or downplay their significance and role in maintaining systems of oppressive harm and horror. Or, the institutional and structural dimensions of harm and horror are only paid lip service to but are not substantively addressed in critique or other action.

So, for example, words used to shame and harm people are thought to exist on an as yet non-existent playing field. In my world, words are one tool used by oppressors against the oppressed in many social, political, economic war zones. Playing fields are mined and dangerous. Wars don't happen between sexes: they happen by men against women. Wars also are perpetrated by adults against children; by whites against people of color; by the rich against the poor; by settler-colonist-imperialists against Indigenous Peoples; by the white-dominated Global North against the non-white American, African, and Asian Global South; by structurally dominant humans against the Earth and its living beings.

While there may well be various forms of social privilege layered into the practice of radicals naming some political strategies of resistance and challenge to oppressive controlling forces liberal and not radical (or, transgressive but not transformative, or rebellious but not revolutionary), I find meaning and value in at least preliminarily identifying such differences in perspective and approach among members of CRAP-loaded societies. I do this hopefully with sensitivity to their various locations as both privileged and marginalised people. By and large, in my experience, it is the radicals who see the problem with liberalism; self-identifying liberals, in practice, in my experience, hold little to no comprehensive critique of their own paradigmatic beliefs, terms, or agendas. And, for me, systematic critique is a fundamental, crucial tool for radical (not liberal or conservative) social change.

Liberal vs. Radical, and the Politics of Critique

image is from here

I begin by asking: what's problematic or privileged about categorising differences in strategies to challenge the status quo “liberal vs. radical”? I don't want that question ignored or to pretend it ought not exist.

I move on to say: my experience is that there are dominant ideologies ruling the society I live in and that white and male supremacist pro-capitalist liberalism is one of them, with white and male supremacist pro-capitalist conservatism being another. “Radical” is a term used a lot of different ways by people all along the dominant political spectrum, but it is also used by people off that spectrum too.

I am working to be one of the people off the spectrum. That means I am conscientiously trying to figure out strategies for surviving and overcoming CRAP (corporate racist atrocious patriarchy) that is responsive to the struggles of people with less social privilege and structural advantages than I have.

I see unacknowledged liberal perspectives and points of view far more than I see radical ones, as I understand those terms, anyway.

For example: I see people write about ideas as if they are exactly as powerful as systems of brutal force exercised against people in order to oppress and kill them. I consider that part of what Liberalism in my “Western” country wants us to believe, so that if someone is said to be “a Communist”, “we” will all be more afraid of them than if they say they are a “Capitalist”.

Another example: I see people treat, act out, and discuss gender as if it were more a matter of difference than of dominance (in patriarchal societies the ruling ideology and system of force, violation, and control is male supremacy: dominance of people who are not men by dominant men; especially: the subordination and gynocide of girls and women by men).

Another example: I see people treat race as a matter of difference than a matter of white supremacist violence and control of people who white supremacists do not consider to be white.

Another example: Among region-, class-, and/or education-privileged people, I see the privileging of gender over sex when discussing “oppression by gender and sex”. Part of this involves considering the core social-political problem “the gender binary” rather than experiencing or naming it as male supremacy and female subordination. Part of the this involves considering the problem as being limited to two choices (girl or boy, woman or man) rather than two gendered realities being enforced and rigidly controlled within a virulently and violently girl-hating and woman-hating male supremacist society.

“Radical Queer” or “Sex Radical” are two terms often used to describe people who consider the social practice of transgression to be politically and structurally revolutionary, or to describe people who don't consider the need for revolution at all. For example: many people see Western Civilisation as basically good but in need of being more tolerant of “deviates” (a term reclaimed by some radical queers and sex radicals as affirmative) and non-dominant people. I see the problem more as this: Western Civilisation, capitalism, white supremacy, male supremacy, heterosexism, ecocide, and anti-Indigenism.

I see transgression as more or less acceptable within the dominant society, more or less tolerated depending on region. (In parts of San Francisco, transgressive actions and behavior may be tolerated—which ought not be taken to mean that people who transgress some boundaries are always safe or free from violence from the most terroristic and controlling members of society. I see revolutionary action, for the most part, as not tolerated at all anywhere. I see transgressors calling things that are oppressive to many people “acceptable” such as sexual violence and sexual abuse. I see revolutionaries seeking to end sexual violence and sexual abuse.

A practical matter is this: given how anti-revolutionary and anti-radical society is, most of us grow up only having liberal-to-conservative forms of naming and understanding available to us. That means many of us will use liberal terms if we have experiences and responses to us that place us outside various norms. We may then consider identifying with those differences as “radical” whether or not they are. Is it “radical” to be a vegetarian or a vegan in a meat-producing society? I'd say no. But I think some v'gans would say yes. Is it “revolutionary” to be into bdsm? I'd say definitely not. But I think some people into bdsm might not agree with me.

One of the components of having a radical perspective on social matters is that everything must be open to being interrogated including the terms we use to describe ourselves. I see it as a profoundly and problematically liberal-to-conservative posture of many social dominants, and some subordinates, that such questioning, in and of itself, is seen only as a threat, not a constructive activity. As Pearl Cleage writes, it is incumbant on social dominants, when challenged by social subordinates, to maintain a posture of listening, openness, and humility, rather than a posture of self-centered and too often aggressive defence. It is argued that the interrogations by subordinates brought to dominants ought to happen in ways that are not overtly violent and in ways that are not designed to be terrifying and shaming. But some of those guidelines are likely shaped by privilege and an unowned wish to maintain oppressive power structures, or a fear of being assertive and appearing non-accommodating and not deferential to social dominants. Those of us who have occupied positions of social subordination learn quickly to appear to appease our masters or risk being harmed either individually or as a group.

One key question I ask in critique of that point about style of critique is this: when people who are systematically harmed by a social and structural practice—a practice that is enforced and controlled by an oppressive group and by institutions—how “shaming” and “terrifying” is it to the oppressive group to hear criticism of that practice? That is, what are the politics of “feeling shamed and terrified”? I bring this into focus because many whites feel very threatened and in danger around many different people of color (regardless of what the people of color are doing) while white supremacy in practice, in society, in reality, systematically snuffs out the lives of people of color while most whites don't give a damn in visible ways—and even more rarely in well-organised ways. Men often speak about fearing being shamed by women. (While women speak or remain silent about fearing being killed by men.)

A privilege of many oppressors is to equate what happens interpersonally and subjectively with what happens externally, institutionally, to groups of people. So “feeling and being hurt, harmed, degraded, or oppressed by someone's words” is equated with “feeling and being hurt, harmed, degraded, or oppressed by individuals' verbal actions and institutional non-verbal actions”. In my liberal society, a woman calling a man a prick is the same kind of harm as a man calling a woman a “c—t”. Liberals I know believe there is a war between the sexes. I believe there is a war among the sexes: men's war on women.

In conservative society, a man being insulted or disrespected by a woman individually or anecdotally is a much greater offence, or speech crime, than a man insulting or disrespecting a woman interpersonally and systematically.

Liberals, operating out of a value for an abstract idea of “fairness” and “equality” might condemn me for writing out the word “prick” but not spelling out the word “c—t”. But I don't see the terms as equal in their capacity to do harm, and nowhere is fairness practiced systematically. In the real world, women are called c—t (or the b word, or any number of other misogynist terms) before being punched and beaten by a man. Or when scripted and videotaped by a corporate pimp's photographer to mass produce misogyny sold as “hot sex” for male consumers. I know of no men at all who were beaten by women while the women called the man a prick.

Abstraction of values is a key tool of the liberal worldview in which lived ethics are assumed to be present institutionally and meaningfully prior to coming into existence. Liberals tend to abstract or isolate social phenomena in ways that either disappear institutional and structural realities or downplay their significance and role in maintaining systems of oppressive harm and horror. Or, the institutional and structural dimensions of harm and horror are only paid lip service to but are not substantively addressed in critique or other action.

So, for example, words used to shame and harm people are thought to exist on an as yet non-existent playing field. In my world, words are one tool used by oppressors against the oppressed in many social, political, economic war zones. Playing fields are mined and dangerous. Wars don't happen between sexes: they happen by men against women. Wars also are perpetrated by adults against children; by whites against people of color; by the rich against the poor; by settler-colonist-imperialists against Indigenous Peoples; by the white-dominated Global North against the non-white American, African, and Asian Global South; by structurally dominant humans against the Earth and its living beings.

While there may well be various forms of social privilege layered into the practice of radicals naming some political strategies of resistance and challenge to oppressive controlling forces liberal and not radical (or, transgressive but not transformative, or rebellious but not revolutionary), I find meaning and value in at least preliminarily identifying such differences in perspective and approach among members of CRAP-loaded societies. I do this hopefully with sensitivity to their various locations as both privileged and marginalised people. By and large, in my experience, it is the radicals who see the problem with liberalism; self-identifying liberals, in practice, in my experience, hold little to no comprehensive critique of their own paradigmatic beliefs, terms, or agendas. And, for me, systematic critique is a fundamental, crucial tool for radical (not liberal or conservative) social change.

Winnie Small and Julian Real chat about Radical Feminist Lesbian Space and Liberal Het/Trans/Queer Politics

image of book cover is from here

For many reasons, the preservation and supportive maintenance of Radical Lesbian Feminist spaces and political practices is very important to me, as they are foundational to my political work. I am a firm believer in and supporter of Woman/Womyn-only space, of Lesbian-only gatherings, and of Radical Lesbian Feminist work not catering to the needs and wishes of anyone who is not Radical, Lesbian, or Feminist, as life-long Radicals, life-long Lesbians, and life-long Feminists define those terms.

We may note that anyone female, among humans, is targeted by patriarchy as a girl or a woman; part of what the targeting does is mark female human beings as the people who will serve males, from birth to death. This marking isn't primarily textual or abstract. It is done aggressively, with manipulation, coercion, and force. With violence: social, physical, sexual, spiritual, cultural, intellectual, medical, and mental.

These and related oppressive aggressions generate post-traumatic stress, and are sources of despair and fierce resistance both. But as June Jordan has noted, resistance isn't sufficient for those of us working to bring humanity to a more humane place. We must also win. We must also defeat the powers that are so cruel and callous as to insist that it is there way or no way at all. It's a compromised, accommodating life under patriarchy or it's death.

I have seen how male supremacy operates in queer-only and queer-majority spaces. I have also seen how it operates in het-only and het-majority spaces. In every community I've been part of, what I see is that appeasing men and male supremacists is taken as a given--we are all expected to bow down or bend over to the force men unleash against everyone.

Whether the men are het, gay, bi, or queer in other ways, male supremacy is never rooted out by the males themselves, but is challenged by a few brace women. Sometimes a man also "gets it" but this is, in my experience, the exception that proves the rule.

In the last fifteen years, especially, I have seen a male supremacy-denying and terribly liberal-to-conservative Trans and Queer politic come on the queer/lesbian/gay scene, demanding things that most women I know have no institutionally protected right to demand. Especially Lesbians. In queer spaces where there are contests of privilege and power, including of "Who gets to name reality and have their experience matter most", I only see very privileged gay and trans people having that power. Liberal and Conservative Queer/Trans Politics, bound up in unexamined ways with het male supremacist politics and practices, have taken over like an invasive plant. attempting to strangle the life out of Radical Lesbian Feminism, and largely succeeding.

In a patriarchal society where all female human beings are forcefully and coercively required to accept the terms of pro-patriarchal agendas and practices, I will use my own male privileges to demand that spaces be protected for Radical Lesbian Feminism and its practitioner-activists.

Below is a recent discussion I had with a tribade white Canadian young woman activist named Winnie Small. (If you, like me, didn't or don't know what "tribade" means, read on...)

2:31 PM me: hey winnie!

  u there?

2:34 PM Winnie: Hey!

 me: HEY!

 Winnie: :)

 me: I was just typing out a message to you but I'll copy and paste it here! :)

 Winnie: K

 me: I'm hearing from various Lesbians that Queer spaces are increasingly hostile or, well, at least unfriendly and unaccepting of any Lesbians who don't accept the terms Trans people set for discussion and community. Is this your experience as well? My sense is that Lesbians, if radical feminist, are being shoved out of our community, such as it is.

I'm wondering though, what you're own experience with that is.

2:35 PM And, I hope all is well with you, in this very strange and mean world.

 

2:39 PM Winnie: Thanks. "Women's space" is increasingly becoming women and trans space, and most homosexual women I know (eg in teens to thirties, many in or graduated from university) do NOT call themselves lesbian, but gay or queer. Julia Serrano's Whipping Girl is becoming a bible of feminism for them. (which has useful and correct points at times, but left me going wtf? At other times and contradicted itself all over)

2:40 PM me: How does this effect you, dearie, socially and personally and so on?

  (For me, it just means being ever more alienated from my community.)

2:43 PM Winnie: Identity over reality is taking precedence. For example "female-identified" rather than female or female assigned at birth. Specifically self identifying, eg even in regards to people of colour. So lesbians, females, indigenous people, black folks, etc aren't those things and that's reality, but they self identify as those labels, hence they are.

5 minutes

2:48 PM Winnie: I think it actually reduces the chance for a concrete analysis of power and who has it, how much, and why. Most of the trans folk I know are nice people and I get along with them, but I feel trans theory is taking away our ability to say this group is different from another group, particularly based upon how they are materially treated regardless of how they personally identify. I identify as a tribade and prude and such, but I am still female, and those reclaimed labels are shaped by being a poor, white female. I'm those things because I AM (poor, fab, white) not because I tell myself I am and get validated for my special snowflakeness by others.

2:50 PM (In fact I am a tribade based upon having a vulva, but I digress ;) )

 me: Tribade is a new term for me! What does it mean?!??

  (And I've always suspected you had a vulva.) ;)

2:53 PM I'm increasingly upset by efforts to distance the realities of girls' and women's bodies from gendered experience/identity. For example, growing up knowing breast cancer, cervical cancer, uterine/endometrial cancer, ovarian cancer are risks for one's own life and the lives of other women in one's life is rendered "transphobic" in some spaces, it seems. I don't think growing up knowing one's chest will be a visual and tactile battleground in ways male chests never are, isn't "essentialist": it's social reality. The medical/health and other social/sexual experiences and concerns ought not be turned into sources of shame, if any girl or woman wants to identify those struggles and issues as important.

 Winnie: Care and compassion are really important, but they shouldnt supplant political analysis and ethical discernment. I also think as I mentioned earlier, lesbian in particular is getting a bad rap as "exclusionary" and whatnot. It's not cool to be a lesbian, especially if one doesn't also identify with male-centric labels like top/bottom or engage in roleplaying. Lesbians are supposed to call themselves queer, gay, genderqueer, bi, etc not lesbian.

2:54 PM me: I find there's little else other than misogyny going on among male-bodied people claiming "breasts" are things one has implanted.

  (Don't get me started.)

  What do you think/feel about any of that, Winnie?

9 minutes

3:03 PM Winnie: Haha, I'm always having to explain tribade ;) it is historically used by psychiatrists, sexologists to mean "female homosexual" althlough it comes from to rub (like frottage), and specifically denotes a female rubbing her vulva on her partner's body. Those men, instituting and trying to ensure male supremacist sex (eg penetrocentric sex), applied tribadism and tribade only to the big bad lesbians ;) and tried to erase it out of heterosex. So I'm using it as an actual reclaiming. I even asked my lesbian friends online if I could use it ;) people, mainly females and young gay/queer men, are pushed into dichotomous, hierarchical sexual labels based around penetrative sex and/or sex based on inequality (eg dom/sub, top/bottom), so I'm hell nawwing to that :) it is also a way of identifying within bisexuality as a female who doesn't have PIV. Sorry that was so long

3:05 PM me: No apologies! I'm glad you took the time to take me through the intricacies of the definition--historically and presently!

  May I copy and paste this chat and send it to a Queer woman friend who I've had some discussions with about Trans issues?

3:06 PM I got an email from a Lesbian woman expressing gratitude that I'm speaking out about the misogyny and anti-Lesbianism in Queer/Trans-accepting spaces.

  I'm realising how marginalised Lesbians and Radical Feminists are in Queer spaces/places.

3:07 PM And how male supremacy is taking hold--or is continuing to, in spaces that are supposed to care about women/wimmin.

3:11 PM Winnie: Bodies matter, yes! And menstruation, and avoiding pregnancy, and white men fucking with women of colour and indigenous women's reproductive abilities (eg forced sterilization, contraception without informed consent), medicalization of female bodies (eg healthy uteruses and vulvas as diseased and in need of removal/cosmetic surgery, childbirth becoming a hospital with male doctors who disempower females and deny midwifery and would rather cut into vulvas than massage them (massaging the vagina really helps it to stretch without tearing), etc

6 minutes

3:17 PM Winnie: Yes, you can copy paste this convo. It really sticks in my craw how gender has replaced sex as a basis for feminist analysis and categorization. Gender and sex operate differently, and fab folks experience oppression regardless of how we are gendered or gender ourselves. My view re: trans women is that they are women, but not female. It's not their fault, obviously, but it is different and just as trans theory goes on about lived experience of trans folk, we/feminist theory needs to go on about female lived experience, sexed reality.

3:19 PM me: I don't see why trans people cannot hold to a theory of being trans, cannot own being trans as a particular experience of being human and struggling with gender, without taking from women the term: women.

3:20 PM And, gender is largely economic, not theoretical or social, in many parts of the world. Contemporary Western theories of gender simply don't apply in places where being female and a girl-woman are one and the same political phenomenon.

3:21 PM Winnie: Feminism needs to deal with both gender and sex, and prioritize sex, and work to dismantle gender. Gender was created to help oppress females and consolidate male rule (both males as class, and groups of elite men like men who didn't not just want to have power over women, but most men too), not make people comfortable and fuzzy inside.

3:22 PM me: I won't advocate women changing (for example) "the Boston Women's Health Collective" to the Boston Female Health Collective" as what is done to female people is done to women because they are female and women, both. I see a reticence in some queer spaces to call out the male privilege--and power--that some trans people, and many non-trans Lesbians, wield against non-trans Lesbians who call out the male supremacy of contemporary pro-trans theories and practices.

3:24 PM Yes. I agree with you. The masculinism and male supremacy punishes many people, including girls, women, intersex people, trans people, and any boy or man who doesn't isn't willing to do what many men do to be men, politically.

3:25 PM a Lesbian sent me this link: butch-femmeplanet.com

 Winnie: Gender is so about material resources in most of the world. Andrea Smith and Silvia Federici goes into that when they say that in order to successfully have capitalism and colonialism, you need to naturalize patriarchy and colonize/capitalize locally (eg Europe had to have witch hunts, organized prostitution/rape/mandated PIV, destroy communalism in order to spread its rule to the Americas)

 me: As one place these discussions are fierce, I guess.

  Exactly!

3:26 PM Is that work online, Winnie? Can I link to it?

 Winnie: Yep, how we are perceived, and the meanings attached to it matter ;) sex and gender interrelate

 me: (I mean, is there a link I can publish on my blog, to that work?)

  When it is said that women's bodies are "text" what I think of most is that most women's issues with men is not that men "read" them. You know?

3:27 PM "Text" is a woefully inadequate and misleading term for what men do with women's bodies.

3:28 PM Winnie: Yes! And "rewrite". Wha??

 me: Yeah. Totally.

3:29 PM Has this critique we are sharing with one another been written up somewhere that you've seen, Win?

3:30 PM Winnie: Federici and Smith wrote separately, not together. I just synthesized them lately myself :) caliban and the witch: women, the body and primitive accumulation, and conquest (which I know you know about :) )

3:31 PM me: Yes, the latter I know well. But not the other. Have you written about this anywhere, win?

3:35 PM Winnie: I've written it on fb, including on a closed radfem group. I can copy paste a coherent theory on mah blog. And of course, the domesticization of animals really enabled to then argue that rule over other humans (slavery, genocide, rape) was ok because they weren't really human but animals. And controlling female animal reproduction really set the stage for controlling human women's reproduction. And carries into even now, eg reproductive technologies developed on farmed animals then applied to human females.

3:37 PM me: I wonder which came first, honestly: men controlling the reproduction of what is termed "domesticated" non-human animals, or of women.

  Yes, please do copy and paste and send to me any/all writing on this topic, and please also let me know if you welcome me to publish it, along with your name and any other info you'd like to have with your name.

6 minutes

3:44 PM Winnie: I can put something up next time I'm on a real computer (I'm on a phone). Either tomorrow or Friday. Yes, it is a scurvy knot, figuring it out. I figure in some geographical areas/groups of people sex was the first oppression, in others species. Oppression based on race is relatively new, but xenophobia is old too. But I think their needs to be another othering first before fear and oppression of those in another nation/tribe can take hold. Meaning probably oppression of a group one is familiar with somewhat needs to happen first before of the idea of oppressing (as opposed to avoiding, being apathetic, disliking) an unknown group can happen.

3:46 PM me: Perhaps. I think speaking with people in many different cultures can help us all identify how oppression morphs and transmutes into other forms. And, thank you for sending me writings! I'm looking forward to reading them, and publishing them to the blog with your permission.

3:47 PM Winnie: Did you want the trans stuff or just the origins of oppressions wonderings?

3:51 PM Yes, and looking at lots of old stuff from millenia ago from around the globe, and tracing changes. Oral histories are important too. And reexamining things already interpreted and giving them an in context analysis. Eg things from several thousand years ago are interpreted by universitied European white men and either ignore other possibility or apply racism, male supremacy, etc to them.

 me: Yeah, exactly!

3:52 PM Winnie: For example, art by women is assumed to be by men, one specific case I read, art that was done by women and focuses on happy naked women bonding is interpreted as "revenge porn" carved by a jealous man. Wtf?

11 minutes

4:04 PM me: WTF indeed.

4:05 PM Toodles for now, Winnie. Thanks for being you. <3

4:13 PM Winnie: :)