The Trans/Gender Politics of Shaming Women-as-Women, Around and Beyond the Queer, Antifeminist Blogosphere

image of painting, "Women of Amphissa", by Lawrence and Laura Alma-Tadena (1887) is from here

[Note: this post was slightly revised by its author, on 11 Dec. 2010. And again revised on 1 April 2013.]

When I speak here in this post of women, the Anglo-English term (also sometimes spelled wimmin), usually what I am referring to is people who exist in a system where gender is a binaried and hierarchical system of oppressive and brutal power. In such a system, the population of "women", typically and normally--not anecdotally, are defined and depicted this way: 

• Human beings stereotypically and systematically presented in "great Western art" such as the painting above, as all being all five of these things: heterosexual objects, white, weak, thin, and costumed in flimsy, see-through clothes.When this population is not white, they are presented in additionally stereotypical ways in art and advertising.
• Human beings born with what is termed by medical professionals to be a vagina and vulva, and not a penis and scrotum, regardless of their hormone or chromosome pattern, and regardless of whether or not the person has a vagina and vulva.
• Human beings who, when born, may hear declarations of a life sentence of politically subordinate sexual status fused to the phrase, "It's a girl!!"
• Human beings who are raised to be girls-not-boys, whatever that means across era, region, and culture.
• Human beings who are seen as the group in the West who "can't throw well" and who are often seen to be not "behaving in an appropriately gendered way" if they are very active in or excel at team sports such as football/soccer, baseball, cricket, and basketball.
• Human beings who are told to beware of boys.
• Human beings who are assumed to be doing something negative if, when teenagers, they have lots of sex with other people, or, even, with themselves.
• Human beings who, it is assumed, if they are "normal", will willingly accept a penis or phallic object somewhere into their body, and that this will occur many times over the course of their lifetime. They will not be termed "perverted" or "queer" for doing this, although they might be termed "loose" and "easy" for doing this with more than one person.
• Human beings who, from day one through one's last day, are socially-politically targeted as THE MOST APPROPRIATE population to incest and rape when there are multiple (at least two) genders to choose among. When any other gendered person is incested or raped, they are not only seen by the dominant gender as becoming more like "girls and women", but are often targeted for such violation and terrorism because they are too much like girls or women. (As is the case with some gay males, and some genderqueer and transgender people.)
• Human beings who are molested, incested, and raped twice as much by the time they are 21 as "the other gender".
• Human beings who, from an early age, are socialised to want to be good mothers or mommies (US) or mummies (UK), primary parents, care-givers to people young and old, attentive and respectful of the needs of others.
• Human beings who are assumed to exist for "the other gender", "men", or any people who are not women.
• Human beings who are coerced or forced to be accommodating, accepting, appeasing, attention-giving, submissive, subservient, and subordinated to "the other gender" (in Anglo-English, called "men") in almost all ways, according to "great" religious texts and social custom.
• Human beings who, during adolescence and through portions of adulthood, bleed out of their genitals, with such bleeding being assumed to be "natural" yet, according to "the other gender" also dirty; these are humans who have products sold to them to absorb the blood and make their genitals smell "fresh" and unnaturally perfumed, like a spring meadow or a floral bouquet, but not at all like human genitals.
• Human beings who are assumed to exist to get pregnant, whether or not they do and whether or not they can biologically or for other reasons, like, say: the choice not to.
• Human beings who, when the say they never want children, are not told they are selfish, heartless, and soulless for feeling that way.
• Human beings who, when they wish to have children, are not violently prevented from doing so by being systematically and forcibly sterilised by allegedly professional medical personnel of "the other gender".
• Human beings who are assumed to be "bad parents" if they aren't perfect or aren't fully present, as opposed to the members of another gender who are assumed to be bad parents only if they are overtly abusive or never present.
• Human beings who are ostracised and put down for being selfish, self-absorbed, self-centered, arrogant, egotistical, self-aggrandising, aggressive, and ambitious. (If if goes unnoticed when someone is any of those things regularly, it is usually because the person isn't a "woman".)
• Human beings who are, on average, paid less for doing comparable work than work done by "the other gender". Or who are not paid at all for doing "women's work".
• Human beings who do most of the world's work, including hard labor, but are not usually recognised, appreciated, praised, or given million-dollar annual bonuses for doing so. 
• Human beings who are enslaved, trafficked, and procured for sex-and-violence from "the other gender" because--and only because--the other gender demands it, requires it, and is willing to pay slavers, traffickers, and pimps, to make sure this practice is always available.
• Human beings who are called the following names routinely, because they act in ways the other gender deems "negative" (meaning, they behave in ways that humans behave irrespective of gender or sexuality): b*tch, c*nt, nag, h*, wh*re, and sl*t.
• Human beings who aren't hardly ever called "p*ssy-whipped" because they are already assumed to be sufficiently subordinated and degraded, by culture, nature, or G-d, in ways that term blatantly implies.
• Human beings who, when they witness members of "the other gender" in a gender binary system telling one another "don't be such a girl" or "what are you, a woman?" are reminded of a socially inferior status, a negative stigma, because "the other gender" often feels as if they are being intentionally humiliated, degraded, and insulted.
• Human beings who, when visibly afraid, are not seen to be acting in ways that shame their whole gender.
• Human beings who, when socially shamed, are expected, interpersonally and socially, to bend to the will of the shamer, regardless of the shamer's gender.
• Human beings who, as a group, from day one to their last days, are never systematically and structurally given male supremacist privileges and entitlements.

I hope that's clear. We may note that nothing about the above list "biologises" gender in any "essentialist" way. But neither does it pretend gender, in racist patriarchal societies, is disembodied or can be made surgically. Gendering is a social-structural-political process that begins with day one and continues through to the end of one's days. It's an additive process temporally, but not by adding on parts or taking away parts of one's anatomy. It is not subjective alone, while it is also, obviously, very subjectively experienced. But it is also socially and collectively experienced among and by a group of people designated and treated as girls-then-women by men who oppress them and by the male supremacist systems which keep specifically gendered insults, degradations, and atrocities aimed at girls and women for being girls and women.

The characteristics I want to focus on for this post are the two in bold & italics, above.

When one of two trans-governmentally/internationally/trans-continentally recognised genders shames the other, only one is expected to bend to the will of the gender doing the shaming. EXPECTED to. ASSUMED to. And if they do not, they WILL hear about it. They will hear about it verbally, or they may "hear about it" by being physically assaulted or killed. There are systems of exploitation, coercion, and terrorism socially in place, institutionalised, industrialised, and coded in custom and law, to regulate the degrees to which one gender may refuse the will and wants of the other without penalty or punishment. There's no level playing field here. It doesn't go "both ways".

Let's pretend "A" = men, and "B" = women for the discussion that follows.

For example, if one member of "gender A" wishes to obtain sex from someone they are partnered to and living with who is of the population "gender B" (if in a binary social gender system) and the "B" person says "Not now" repeatedly, it is socially assumed that if this occurs over a period of months, it might be acceptable for "A" to rent out people from whom to obtain sex.

Should "B" do the same thing, they will be considered abnormal for doing so and also will generally be determined to be behaving in a way that is deplorable. Meanwhile, "A" doing exactly the same thing will be assumed to be "only behaving in accordance with the healthy natural needs [of their gender]", as if renting humans for sex had anything at all to do with nature, health, or needs.

Should an "B" person who is partnered to and living with a "A" person, and "B" would like "A" to cook them at least one meal a day for the rest of their time living together, and to wash all their clothes, and to clean their abode, and to do primary child-care if they have children--however they acquire them, that is assumed to be asking a helluva lot. If "A" wants "B" to cook at least one meal a day, and have one's clothes washed, the home cleaned up, the children cared for, it is assumed to be "natural" for things to work that way, or "in keeping with G-d's laws" or the reason the universe creating As and Bs, even while most of human community across culture and history wasn't and isn't organised in this oppressive-to-women way. (CRAP is not universal, and never was. It's rulers and terrorists just want it to be.)

What we can note is there is an entirely different set of expectations and assumptions about the behaviors of these two groups: one is assumed to exist for and perform for, and no disappoint and meet the needs of the other.

Now, I'm snapping this reality into a much smaller circle of humanity, sometimes referred to as "queer community" or LGBTQ" community. When predominantly white gay men got AIDS in the Western world, it was lesbians and other gay men, and bisexuals, and heterosexual women, who took care of them. Heterosexual men, by and large, did not. When AIDS shifted from primarily infecting and killing whites to infecting and killing people of color, and from primarily infecting and killing men to doing the same to women, we may note that white gay and het men are not the populations of people who do the caring and attending to the needs of those afflicted and infected.

Now I'm snapping us back into the larger human community.

When it comes to providing care, interpersonally or socially, one group is expected to care for the other: women are expected to care for men. The expectation is backed up with manipulative and coercive or overtly violent, aggressive force.

When it comes to "making space" or "accommodating" one group, it only works one way: those without B privileges and entitlements are expected to make space for and accommodate the needs, wishes, wants, and whims, of A people.

Now I'm going to snap us into a more complex sexed and gendered reality--a society in which there are people born and heralded with comments like "It's a boy!!!", who are raised to be boys, who are also socialised to be men, but who may never have felt like a boy or a man. And, those brought into the world hearing (if not yet understanding) "It's a girl!!!", who are then raised to be girls, and who are also socialised to be women, but who never felt like a girl or a woman. We'll call these people "transsexual", "transgender", and "intergender".

Note: Some of these people may also be intersex, but being intersex doesn't distinguish "trans" and "intergender" people from "non-trans" and "non-intergender" people.

What I've observed in queer and non-queer communities is this: that the group "women" as identified atop this post, are expected to be accommodating to "everyone else" including transgender and transsexual people, regardless of how the trans people experience and name their own genders and sexes.When shame is applied systematically as a tool for coercion, it only works one way, usually, with few exceptions, which I'll get to in a moment.

If any woman refuses to accept how non-women (as identified above, atop this post) identify themselves, they are assumed to be behaving in cruel, bigoted, insensitive, callous, and contemptuous ways. There is social permission on the blogosphere to systematically shame that population (often termed "cis women" or "cisgender women") or any portion of that population, who refuses to bend to the will and wishes of trans people.

Question: If any man refuses to accept how trans people identify themselves, well, you know, they're men. So what'd'ya gonna do?
Answer: You focus back on those horrible women who won't accept you.

Question: If you want social services, such as rape-trauma support counseling and other resources for surviving rape, and men, as a class, refuse to offer you any, what'd'ya gonna do?
Answer: You focus on women who you expect to open their services for one another, to you.

Question: If non-trans men gather in ways that are exclusive--"men-only"--and you want to attend as a transgender or transsexual person, and they don't want you there, what'd'ya gonna do?
Answer: Focus on getting women to be "accommodating" and "accessible" and "accepting" and "tolerant" and "understanding" and "congenial". Because Lorde knows those men aren't gonna be any of those things, usually, as a class of gendered people.

The man and male supremacy that shows up through socialisation, structural conditioning, and learned political entitlements dictates which political groups are expected to accommodate others, or which groups will be systematically threatened, harassed, bullied, violated, and/or terrorised if they don't accept other groups.

This is what I see happening on the internet, and off of it: the political group "women", as defined above, is assumed to be a group that WILL accommodate the needs and wishes and wants of non-women, including when some members of the non-women identify as women.

And this is where the politics of shame and force really kick into high gear. Should some women refuse to accept that some people with some conditioned/structurally "gifted" male supremacist entitlements and privileges, acquired or afforded in childhood or beyond it, those women will be shamed, ridiculed, called misogynistic names, and be threatened in various ways, with at the very least insult, degradation, and derision. They won't simply be "critiqued" for not accepting and accommodating the needs and wishes of trans people. Which political group may only be critiqued, but usually not also systematically shamed harassed, insulted, degraded, ridiculed, called nasty/derogatory gender-specific names, and threatened or terrorised? Men.

I'm calling out the sexual/gender politics, racist and misogynistic to the core, of some women being targeted on transsexual and transgender blogs (on the blogs of people who have had some male privileges or entitlements for part of their lives) for such derision and misogynist bigotry, when most men are not. If that's not misogyny and sexism in action, pray tell, what is it?

I've been calling out the sexual/gender politics, racist and misogynistic to the core, of men being sexist to women, of men being insulting and degrading to women, of men being threatening and terroristic to women.

The politics of this blog call for anyone with male supremacist privileges, past or present, and anyone with male supremacist entitlements, past or present, to be called out as sexist and misogynist, if not also racist, when they target "only women" for derision and ridicule.

I've seen several radical lesbian feminists (including Sheila Jeffreys, Mary Daly, Germaine Greer, Janice Raymond, and the women of blog, AROOO), most of them white, some of them Black, be regarded as nothing more than bigots and b*tches for not accommodating to the wishes and needs of trans people. I can link to their blogs and specific posts in which they rail against these women. And I see no comparable complaints or targeting of MEN, of men who are writers and activists, of men who are bloggers, for behaving in non-accommodating and non-accepting and "intolerant" ways. What's up with that?

If that isn't a form of gross misogyny online, what is it?

Nothing in this post should be assumed to render non-existent many different forms of experiencing gender dysphoria; and nothing about what is above denies intersex conditions of being. For those who don't know, I am intergender. I have never felt like a boy or a girl when young, or like a man or a woman when an adult. I know that transsexual people have experiences of self-in-society that I do not have. I don't presume to know what those are, but I can, through listening, empathise with many of the experiences I hear about.

As noted, gender within a racist patriarchal context--in the personal and social spaces I term "CRAP"--is a category of social-structural-political meaning. It has connections to human physiology and expectations about what one's body exists to do, but not in any logical or absolute ways. What being "a woman" is, has varied with culture and era. Being a woman isn't one experience. But neither is it completely undefinable. It is not abstract, the way too many post-structuralist/pomo theorists pretend it is.

A woman friend of mine was raped a couple of years ago. She experiences pain in specific parts of her body--that pain in her body is part of the trauma and the post-trauma of rape. The meaning of that part of her body is social and personal. The rape of her body shapes her experience of herself in profound ways. And it is not the same experience, exactly, as a male being raped. It isn't not because males being raped is not terrible or horrible or traumatic. It is different because since birth, parts of her body (which is also to say, her being) have been targeted "for rape", and that's part of what she's had to live with--that social-terroristic reality--since birth through to this day.

To promote a political course of action in which one claims as one's individual and group right, the entitlement to name oneself with the primary political term a specifically and horribly oppressed group of people use to name themselves, that is also forced upon them, is to be so grossly insensitive to that condition of being human, that it warrants calling out, as long as it takes for the people to fully and viscerally understand that they are committing an act of misappropriating another political groups' experience and are violating their being through naming themselves as that group. What is called for is significantly more compassionate and non-defensive, non-offencive listening to those women/wimmin who are calling out the misogyny in many trans terms and some transgender and transsexual actions. I must note that the transgender and transsexual people I know offline are sensitive to women's/wimmin's concerns and don't obnoxiously demand to be respected for appropriating them.

John Lennon Is Kept Alive in Minds and Hearts, Globally, on December 8, 2010: And Yoko Ono offers a story of remembrance, of laughter, not of tears

photo taken on Dec. 8, 2010, at Strawberry Fields in Central Park, NYC, across from the Dakota, Yoko's home

Original captions reads:
Cards, candles and pictures adorned a John Lennon memorial in Central Park, New York

[This A.R.P. post is a companion post to one done earlier in the day. You may link to it *here*. See also the post of fellow Beatle fan and feminist blogger, Cara, *here* on her blog, The Curvature.]

Above is a BBC News photo which appears the article on the source website, may be linked to by clicking on the title which appears later in this post ["John Lennon celebrated on anniversary"]. But first a story from feminist and artist, Yoko Ono, published in Wednesday's New York Times. You may link back by clicking on the title. The photo just below is also from that NYT piece and is credited to its photographer in the caption.

photography courtesy of Kishin Shinoyam. For more by her, on her amazing images of Yoko and John, please see *here*.

Op-Ed Contributor

The Tea Maker

JOHN and I are in our Dakota kitchen in the middle of the night. Three cats — Sasha, Micha and Charo — are looking up at John, who is making tea for us two.

Sasha is all white, Micha is all black. They are both gorgeous, classy Persian cats. Charo, on the other hand, is a mutt. John used to have a special love for Charo. “You’ve got a funny face, Charo!” he would say, and pat her.

“Yoko, Yoko, you’re supposed to first put the tea bags in, and then the hot water.” John took the role of the tea maker, for being English. So I gave up doing it.

It was nice to be up in the middle of the night, when there was no sound in the house, and sip the tea John would make. One night, however, John said: “I was talking to Aunt Mimi this afternoon and she says you are supposed to put the hot water in first. Then the tea bag. I could swear she taught me to put the tea bag in first, but ...”

“So all this time, we were doing it wrong?”

“Yeah ...”

We both cracked up. That was in 1980. Neither of us knew that it was to be the last year of our life together.

This would have been the 70th birthday year for John if only he was here. But people are not questioning if he is here or not. They just love him and are keeping him alive with their love. I’ve received notes from people in all corners of the world letting me know that they were celebrating this year to thank John for having given us so much in his 40 short years on earth.

The most important gift we received from him was not words, but deeds. He believed in Truth, and had dared to speak up. We all knew that he upset certain powerful people with it. But that was John. He couldn’t have been any other way. If he were here now, I think he would still be shouting the truth. Without the truth, there would be no way to achieve world peace.

On this day, the day he was assassinated, what I remember is the night we both cracked up drinking tea.

They say teenagers laugh at the drop of a hat. Nowadays I see many teenagers sad and angry with each other. John and I were hardly teenagers. But my memory of us is that we were a couple who laughed.


Yoko Ono is an artist.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on December 8, 2010, on page A35 of the New York edition.

*           *           *

8 December 2010 Last updated at 19:00 ET

John Lennon celebrated on anniversary

By Ian Youngs Entertainment reporter, BBC News

John Lennon fans have sung his songs, laid flowers and lit candles on the 30th anniversary of the Beatle's death.

Vigils have been held in New York, where the music legend was shot dead, and his home city of Liverpool.

"I really do feel like I got a sense of peace here tonight," said Adam Byrne, 34, from Liverpool. "I think his message is still as strong as ever."

His widow Yoko Ono played a concert in Tokyo, while gatherings have also taken place in cities from Prague to Havana.

The musician was 40 years old when he was killed by crazed fan M*** C****** [edited by Julian] outside the Dakota Building in Manhattan.

In Liverpool, several hundred people with candles and glowsticks braved cold temperatures to sing Lennon songs and listen to poetry inspired by the late Beatle.

The vigil was held next to a peace monument that was unveiled by his first wife Cynthia and son Julian in October and has been dedicated to John Lennon.

A giant photograph of John with Julian watched over the crowd, alongside a banner bearing the name of one of John's signature songs, Give Peace A Chance.

 

Crowds gathered around a peace monument (right) dedicated to Lennon in Liverpool

"That message is still loud and clear today as much now as it was then," said Mr Byrne.

"It's nice to see that people still remember John and we still carry a piece of John with us. Peace is possible."

Chris McIver, from the Wirral, said it was a "very nice, peaceful, happy evening".

"We're here just to remember John and to reflect on the night that we heard the news ourselves, to think of John and to celebrate."

Mr McIver recalled hearing the news of Lennon's death on TV. "I just couldn't believe it," he said.

"I remember just going into the lounge, sitting on a chair and I couldn't move for about an hour. I was in complete shock."

Phil Hanson, another fan in Liverpool's Chavasse Park, described the atmosphere as "lovely, warm and loving".

"He's one of my idols," he said. "John Lennon saved my life. I've even got a tattoo of him on my arm."

We still learn so much from him today. John, I love you!” End Quote Yoko Ono

In New York, hundreds of fans gathered in Central Park, near the spot where Lennon was shot.

Flowers were laid in the Strawberry Fields area, which was converted to a memorial garden after his death.

Ono performed at a charity concert in Japan called Dream Power John Lennon Super Live, which raises money for schools for deprived children all over the world.

"On this tragic anniversary please join me in remembering John with deep love and respect," she said in a statement.

"In his short lived life of 40 years, he has given so much to the world. The world was lucky to have known him.

"We still learn so much from him today. John, I love you!"

Their son Sean, now a musician, used Twitter to respond to the tributes to his father.

"Thank you for all the kind words," he said. "Let's all just pray for peace on earth. That's what he cared about most."

More on This Story

Related stories

• Musicians' photoshoot for Lennon 08 DECEMBER 2010, LIVERPOOL
• Lennon's death: I was there 08 DECEMBER 2010, ENTERTAINMENT & ARTS
• Archive: John Lennon shot dead 07 DECEMBER 2010, ENTERTAINMENT & ARTS
• Where were you when? 07 DECEMBER 2010, MAGAZINE

((°J°)) Remembering Feminist John Lennon (9 Oct 1940 - 8 Dec 1980)

((°J°))

This was a favorite photograph of John Lennon's of himself with his partner in art and life, Yoko Ono. It was taken by famed Rock n' Roll photographer, Bob Gruen. Thanks Bob, for taking such wonderful portraits of the Ono Lennons. For more, please see www.bobgruen.com and also here.

[There is a companion A.R.P. post that accompanies this one, posted later the same day, which may be found *here*.]

We are both sensitive people and we were hurt a lot by it. I mean, we couldn't understand it. When you're in love, when somebody says something like, 'How can you be with that woman?' you say, 'What do you mean? I am with this goddess of love, the fulfillment of my whole life. Why are you saying this? Why do you want to throw a rock at her or punish me for being in love with her?' Our love helped us survive it, but some of it was pretty violent. There were a few times when we nearly went under, but we managed to survive it and here we are.

-- John Lennon

Thirty years ago. It was a Monday night. I was watching TV. A special announcement came on with a very sober-looking newsperson stating that John Lennon had been brought to the Roosevelt Hospital after being shot and was pronounced dead on arrival.

Shock. What???!!! No. Can't be. No.

But it was the case. I spent the next hours in grief, having two radios on, each one broadcasting various memorial programming, mostly airing Beatles and John Lennon/Yoko Ono songs. Double Fantasy had been released weeks earlier and had brought their music back into the lives of the public. The whole album was a love song in the form of a musical conversation between Yoko and John.

And it was off to school in the morning, with my eyes only wanting to find the eyes of one other person: a classmate who I knew would be mourning too. She came in looking so sad. The way I felt. So very sad. We hugged. Everyone else, for most part, seemed oblivious. It was just another day. Hardly. John Lennon was gone. It was inconceivable, yet true. Grief and mourning is the soul's process of coming to terms with great loss, however personal or social.

Three decades have passed since that night. In those years there have been many wars by the U.S. against the rest of the world--both military and economic. In that time many millions of women have been brutalised by men who believe they have the right to do so.

What has struck me most in the remembrances of John since what would have been his 70th birthday on 9 October 2010 and since, through to this day, is how little mention has been made about his feminism, his attraction to Yoko Ono as a romantic/idealistic/artistic/creative/intellectual/political equal. When media folks remember his activism, it is focused on him being against the Vietnam war (which he was, at least since 1966), and for peace. But John understood that being for peace means being against men's control and brutality of women. He understood that being pro-feminist is the principled, honorable stance for any man to take. If they're humane, that is. If they wish to be fully human. I am hoping more men will get the message and take it to heart, and to other men.

John Lennon always had a deep connection to several women. His love of specific women he knew was a force, directing him lyrically and in life. John admitted his propensity for violence against women (and also towards other men). He understood it was no way to be a man, and he figuring out how to stop it, even while so much of his earlier socialisation had promoted him being a brute, misdirecting his own feelings of grief and anger and hurt and frustration through his male supremacist entitlement to harm others. He learned how to not be violent against women, which shows us that every man can. He missed out on raising his first child, Julian. He was sure not to make that mistake with his second son, Sean, who he stayed home with during Sean's first five years, until John was murdered in front of their home in The Dakota apartment building, across from Central Park in NYC.

I remember seeing live footage of tons of fans gathering there that night, December 8, 1980, singing his songs, tears streaming down their faces. I wished I could have been with them. I found out many years later how difficult that was for Yoko, to hear her deceased husband's songs all night long. But she understood their need to gather.

Sean picks up John's love of Yoko in singing this track of his father's, written by John to his mother, Julia, about his love for his spiritual-intellectual-political-creative life-partner Yoko Ono, who aside from being a great visual, conceptual, and musical artist, is also John's widow and Sean's mom:

When you think of John Lennon today, please remember the man who learned how to stop being violent to women in his life. Remember the man who chose to spend time with a woman who sparked his imagination more than three guys he'd spent the prior several years with and how this choice of his outraged so many men, who believe there is nothing more sacred than male bonding and that women "get in the way". Remember the quote that begins this post, about how hurt they each were that so many people said such ignorant and insensitive things about their love for one another, and about Yoko Ono specifically. Remember the man who understood that Yoko Ono was not beneath him or above him--she was with him, as an equal: a partner in love and life. And please don't forget that he was her love too. The love story isn't just about what she gave to him.

From The Scotsman. After the short article is one more video by John Lennon about his love for Yoko Ono. Please click on the title to link back.

Yoko Ono plea for love on 30th anniversary of John Lennon's death 

Published Date: 08 December 2010

By Claire Smith

John Lennon's widow Yoko Ono gave a heartfelt plea for the former Beatle to be remembered "with deep love and respect" on 30th anniversary of his murder today.

As she spoke yesterday of her continued love for the star, she said: "On this tragic anniversary, please join me in remembering John with deep love and respect.

"In his short-lived life of 40 years, he has given so much to the world.

"The world was lucky to have known him. We still learn so much from him today. John, I love you."

Ono, who was beside Lennon when he was gunned down in New York 30 years ago today, will lead the tributes as millions of people pay their respects to the Imagine singer.

She will perform at a charity concert she has organised in Japan called Dream Power John Lennon Super Live.

Jerry Goldman from the Beatles Story, a museum dedicated to the band, was behind the European Peace Monument coming to Liverpool.

He said: "Although the European Peace Monument has only been on public display for just over a month, it's already taken on a global significance of its own.

"People from all over the world are coming to the city to pay their respects and consider Lennon's message of peace through his music.

"The city is very excited that we finally have a focal point at which to remember Lennon and look forward to a vigil that will reach out to people the world over."

The vigil of remembrance will last from 8pm to 9:30pm.

Lennon was shot dead outside the Dakota building where the couple lived in Manhattan on 8 December, 1980, two months after his 40th birthday.

Fans on the other side of the Atlantic are expected to pay their respects at the Strawberry Fields memorial garden in Central Park, directly opposite the spot where he was shot by crazed fan M*** C******. [edited by Julian]

• Last Updated: 07 December 2010 9:14 PM
• Source: The Scotsman
• Location: Edinburgh 

Who are "The Rich"? What is their race? Their gender? How many of the most wealthy are non-white? How many are not men? Let's have a looksee, shall we?

image/chart is from here

An excerpt of the featured article that follows in this post:

That story [of how the wealthy got super-wealthy and came to dominate all of U.S. political life] begins in the late 1970s and continues through the Obama years, a period in which American policy has been so skewed toward the rich that we're now living through the worst period of income inequality in modern history. Consider the statistics: 50 years ago, the wealthiest 1% of Americans accounted for one of every 10 dollars of the nation's income; today, it's nearly one in every four. Between 1979 and 2006, the average post-tax household income (including benefits) of the wealthiest 1% increased by 256%; the poorest households saw an increase of 11%; middle class homes, 21%, much of which was due to the arrival of two-job families.

[...] On the one hand, the number of Americans earning a steady income declined by 4.5 million between 2008 and 2009, and the average wage in the U.S. dipped by 1.2%, to $39,055. On the other hand, the average wage among Americans earning more than $50 million per year was $91 million in 2008 and $84 million in 2009.

Harvard University economist Lawrence Katz put the situation Americans now find themselves in this way:

"Think of the American economy as a large apartment block. A century ago -- even 30 years ago -- it was the object of envy. But in the last generation its character has changed. The penthouses at the top keep getting larger and larger. The apartments in the middle are feeling more and more squeezed and the basement has flooded. To round it off, the elevator is no longer working.

This means that those drowning in the basement have no way up and out. And those at the top can make their servants climb stairs to supply them with fresh food and clean laundry, and new "things", and portfolio statements.

Reflecting on the image atop this post, what do we notice when we scan a list of super rich U.S. Americans? AlterNet calls them "Oligarchs" which is true enough, or not quite true enough, depending on what you want to say about them. What they are, in addition to oligarchs (and oilgarchs), is kyriarchs, and, quite specifically, white male supremacists, disproportionately overtly or covertly pimping and procuring women and girls. What you need to know, aside from the fact that they dominate and control all of us, is that they also fund and profit from war, genocide, rape, wage and sexual slavery, child sex trafficking, prostitution, poverty, famine, the disappearance of animal species, and ecocide, whether they admit it or not. All of 'em.

And what they are, almost every single one of 'em are WHITE and MEN. Now how could that be in this land of opportunity for all? Could it be because in corporate capitalist Amerikkka, where capital has always been defined, controlled, and regulated by rich white men, that rich white men financially benefit the most from the economic system? I'm gonna say, "Yup" to that question.

And, to be clear, it's not because the rich white men, most if not all of 'em heterosexual, are any of the following: the smartest U.S. Americans; the hardest working U.S. Americans; the least lazy U.S. Americans; the least criminal U.S. Americans; the least corrupt and most honorable U.S. Americans. What these fellas are, if we're going to grab at adjectives, is this: greedy mutherfuckers who use a system that rewards corruption and abuse of power, dominance and control of laws and governments, and regulation of public opinion about them through ownership and production of news and diversionary media.

image of text is from here

You'd kind of think with Dems being the majority in the House and the Senate that blocking tax cuts for the wealthiest fuckers in the country would be a no-brainer. But again, these folks that weasel their way into high paying positions didn't usually get their because they were smart, wise, good, or honorable. They got there usually because they knew how to play the corruption game, and were willing to sell their souls to play it.
Including President Obama. Sorry to say. I've seen little to no evidence he has anything resembling "integrity" since he's taken office and sent more troops to Afghanistan to rape and murder Afghan children and women--oh, and to pay corrupt misogynists lots of money to continue to be corrupt. But, you'll note, he's nowhere near the most wealthy of all U.S. Americans. And that's primarily because he's Black. And while relatives on his mom's side may have gone back to being slave owners, relatives on his dad's side are African, not African American.

So there's no GREAT WHITE wealth coming down through inheritance, built on the backs of Black slaves, built on the sexual and labor exploitation of Black women, built on the bloody battlefields where illegal alien invader European men, and other colonists and settlers, butchered Indigenous North Americans by the scores of millions. And scores of millions of women were raped in the process too, by white het men--the men who keep telling us all that them be the ones who built Amerikkka into the great nation [still genocidal, still rapist; still warring against non-white men and all women] that it was and remains. There may have been some inherited wealth on President Obama's mom's side. I don't know for sure. But this I know: white women have primarily achieved wealth by taking care of white wealthy men.
 
And those who refused to take care of white wealthy men, and who acquired property and wealth in other ways, historically in the U.S. and Europe, were burned as witches by the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands. So there's a whole lot of massacring going on to make sure them white boys stay on top in the wicked white West. And they stay on top of everything there is to stay on top of--every conceivable social-political-economic hierarchy there is. Except, of course, the "most honorable, moral, compassionate, socially and politically responsible citizens" list. They come out damn low on that list.
 
If we gave out awards for greatness, a kind of greatness that demonstrates concern and regard for whole classes of oppressed people, I'd give one of those awards posthumously to Harriet Tubman. And to Sojourner Truth. And to Fannie Lou Hamer. And to Johnnie Tillmon. And to Andrea Dworkin. And to Audre Lorde. And to those among the living also: to Angela Davis and to Catharine A. MacKinnon. And to many thousands of women of all races and ethnicities who have been the smartest U.S.ers--the most brilliant, the most intellectually rigorous, the wisest, the strongest, and the bravest, while also, always, the most vulnerable.
 
To the rich white men, I only will ask: How do you sleep at night? I know it's relatively easy if you don't have a conscience, but I imagine that some of you--a few at least--must still have one.

In the piece that follows on oligarchy in the U.S., here's a partial list of terms the author uses to describe "people":

the rich; liberals; conservatives; Democrats; Republicans; front groups, deep-pocketed donors; the right-wing; shadowy outsider organisations; candidates; Republican consultant Fred Malek; former Republican Senator Norm Coleman; the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; Karl Rove; conservative candidates across the country; Barack Obama; wealthy Democrats; Left-wing media mogul David Brock; liberal and centrist Democrats; Chamber of Commerce and others of its ilk; the Obama administration; Democratic strategist and fundraiser Harold Ickes; voters; friendly lawmakers; Steven Law; citizens in large numbers; labor unions; political parties; a swelling middle class; working and middle classes; wealthy counterparts.

What you need to ask yourself is how many of those people were poor women of color? What percent? Who are "people" in the U.S dominant imagination? And what does this tell us about the interlinking of white, male, and class supremacy? Will progressive media give us that answer? Let's read and see.

What follows is from AlterNet.org. Please click on the title to link back.

How the Oligarchs Took Over America

Creating a country of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.

December 6, 2010  |
 

There is a war underway. I'm not talking about Washington’s bloody misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, but a war within our own borders. It’s a war fought on the airwaves, on television and radio and over the Internet, a war of words and images, of half-truth, innuendo, and raging lies. I'm talking about a political war, pitting liberals against conservatives, Democrats against Republicans. I'm talking about a spending war, fueled by stealthy front groups and deep-pocketed anonymous donors. It’s a war that's poised to topple what's left of American democracy.

The right wing won the opening battle. In the 2010 midterm elections, shadowy outside organizations (who didn’t have to disclose their donors until well after Election Day, if at all) backing Republican candidates doled out $190 million, outspending their adversaries by a more than two-to-one margin, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. American Action Network, operated by Republican consultant Fred Malek and former Republican Senator Norm Coleman, spent $26 million; the U.S. Chamber of Commerce plunked down $33 million; and Karl Rove's American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS shelled out a combined $38.6 million. Their investments in conservative candidates across the country paid off: the 62 House seats and six Senate seats claimed by Republicans were the most in the postwar era -- literally, a historic victory.

Knocked out of their complacency, no longer basking in the glow of Barack Obama's 2008 victory, wealthy Democrats are now plotting their response. Left-wing media mogul David Brock plans to create an outside group dubbed American Bridge in response to Rove's Crossroads outfits that will fight in the trenches of 2012 campaign spending. Many more outfits like Brock's will surely follow, as liberal and centrist Democrats brace for a promised $500 million onslaught by the Chamber of Commerce and others of its ilk.

Even the Obama administration, which shunned outside groups in 2008, has opened the door to a covert spending war. The Democrats will now fight fire with fire. "Is small money better? You bet. But we're in a fucking fight," Democratic strategist and fundraiser Harold Ickes told me recently. "And if you're in a fistfight, then you're in a fistfight, and you use all legal means available."

The endgame here, of course, is non-stop war. No longer will outside groups come and go every two years. Now, such groups will be running attack ads, sending out mailers, and deploying robo-calls year-round in what is going to become a perpetual campaign to sway voters and elect friendly lawmakers. "We're definitely building a foundation," was how American Crossroads president Steven Law put it.

This is what nowadays passes for the heart and soul of American democracy. It used to be that citizens in large numbers, mobilized by labor unions or political parties or a single uniting cause, determined the course of American politics. After World War II, a swelling middle class was the most powerful voting bloc, while, in those same decades, the working and middle classes enjoyed comparatively greater economic prosperity than their wealthy counterparts. Kiss all that goodbye. We're now a country run by rich people.

Not surprisingly, political power has a way of following wealth. What that means is: you can't understand how the rich seized control of American politics, and arguably American society, without understanding how a small group of Americans got so much money in the first place.

That story begins in the late 1970s and continues through the Obama years, a period in which American policy has been so skewed toward the rich that we're now living through the worst period of income inequality in modern history. Consider the statistics: 50 years ago, the wealthiest 1% of Americans accounted for one of every 10 dollars of the nation's income; today, it's nearly one in every four. Between 1979 and 2006, the average post-tax household income (including benefits) of the wealthiest 1% increased by 256%; the poorest households saw an increase of 11%; middle class homes, 21%, much of which was due to the arrival of two-job families.

Tax guru David Cay Johnston recently crunched new Social Security Administration data and discovered an even starker divide. On the one hand, the number of Americans earning a steady income declined by 4.5 million between 2008 and 2009, and the average wage in the U.S. dipped by 1.2%, to $39,055. On the other hand, the average wage among Americans earning more than $50 million per year was $91 million in 2008 and $84 million in 2009.

Harvard University economist Lawrence Katz put the situation Americans now find themselves in this way:

"Think of the American economy as a large apartment block. A century ago -- even 30 years ago -- it was the object of envy. But in the last generation its character has changed. The penthouses at the top keep getting larger and larger. The apartments in the middle are feeling more and more squeezed and the basement has flooded. To round it off, the elevator is no longer working. That broken elevator is what gets people down the most."

Let's call those select few in the penthouse the New Oligarchy, an awesomely rich sliver of Americans raking in an outsized share of the nation's wealth. They're oil magnates and media tycoons, corporate executives and hedge-fund traders, philanthropists and entertainers. Depending on where you want to draw the line, they're the top 1%, or the top 0.1%, or even the top 0.01% of the population. And when the Supreme Court handed down its controversial Citizens United decision in January, it broke the floodgates so that a torrent of anonymous donations from this oligarchic class could flood back down from the heights and inundate the political lands below.

"The Thirty-Year War"

How did we get here? How did a middle-class-heavy nation transform itself into an oligarchy? You'll find answers to these questions in Winner-Take-All Politics, a revelatory new book by political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson. The authors treat the present figures we have on American wealth and poverty as a crime scene littered with clues and suspects, dead-ends and alibis.

Unlike so many pundits, politicians, and academics, Hacker and Pierson resist blaming the usual suspects: globalization, the rise of an information-based economy, and the demise of manufacturing. The culprit in their crime drama is American politics itself over the last three decades. The clues to understanding the rise of an American oligarchy, they believe, won’t be found in New York or New Delhi, but on Capitol Hill, along Pennsylvania Avenue, and around K Street, that haven in a heartless world for Washington’s lobbyists.

"Step by step and debate by debate," they write, "America's public officials have rewritten the rules of American politics and the American economy in ways that have benefitted the few at the expense of the many."

 

Most accounts of American income inequality begin in the 1980s with the reign of President Ronald Reagan, the anti-government icon whose "Reaganomics" are commonly fingered as the catalyst for today's problems. Wrong, say Hacker and Pierson. The origins of oligarchy lay in the late 1970s and in the unlikely figure of Jimmy Carter, a Democratic president presiding over a Congress controlled by Democrats. It was Carter's successes and failures, they argue, that kicked off what economist Paul Krugman has labeled “the Great Divergence."

In 1978, the Carter administration and Congress took a red pen to the tax code, slashing the top rate of the capital gains tax from 48% to 28% -- an enormous boon for wealthy Americans. At the same time, the most ambitious effort in decades to reform American labor law in order to make it easer to unionize died in the Senate, despite a 61-vote Democratic supermajority. Likewise, a proposed Office of Consumer Representation, a $15 million advocacy agency that was to work on behalf of average Americans, was defeated by an increasingly powerful business lobby.

Ronald Reagan, you could say, simply took the baton passed to him by Carter. His 1981 Economic Recovery and Tax Act (ERTA) bundled a medley of goodies any oligarch would love, including tax cuts for corporations, ample reductions in the capital gains and estate taxes, and a 10% income tax exclusion for married couples in two-earner families. "ERTA was Ronald Reagan's greatest legislative triumph, a fundamental rewriting of the nation's tax laws in favor of winner-take-all outcomes," Hacker and Pierson conclude.

The groundwork had by then been laid for the rich to pull definitively and staggering ahead of everyone else. The momentum of the tax-cut fervor carried through the presidencies of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and in 2000 became the campaign trail rallying cry of George W. Bush. It was Bush II, after all, who told a room full of wealthy donors at an $800-a-plate dinner, "Some people call you the elites; I call you my base," and who pledged that his 2001 tax cuts would be a boon for all Americans. They weren't: according to Hacker and Pierson, 51% of their benefits go to the top 1% of earners.

Those cuts will be around a lot longer if the GOP has its way. Take Republican Congressman Dave Camp's word for it. On November 16th, Camp, a Republican from Michigan, said the only acceptable solution when it came to the Bush-era tax cuts was not just upholding them for all earners, rich and poor, but passing more such cuts. Anything in between, any form of compromise, including President Obama's proposal to extend the Bush cuts for the working and middle classes but not the wealthy, was "a terrible idea and a total non-starter."

Why should you care what Dave Camp says? Here’s the answer: in January, he's set to inherit the chairman's gavel on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, the body tasked with writing the nation's tax laws. And though most Americans wouldn't even recognize his name, Camp's message surely left America's wealthy elites breathing a long sigh of relief. You could sum it up like this: Fear not, wealthy Americans, your money is safe. The policies that made you rich aren't going anywhere.

Tear Down This Law

Where rewriting the tax code proved too politically difficult, demolishing regulations worked almost as well. This has been especially true in the world of finance. There, a legacy of deregulation transformed banking from a relatively staid industry into a casino culture, ushering in an era of eye-popping profits, lavish bonuses, and the "financialization" of the American economy.

April 6, 1998: it's a useful starting point in the story of financial deregulation. On that day, two well-known Wall Street denizens, Citicorp and Travelers Group, agreed to a historic $140 billion merger. The deal required much lobbying, but eventually the chiefs of these banks won an exemption from the Glass-Steagall Act, the New Deal-era law walling off commercial banks from riskier investment houses. The resulting institution, dubbed Citigroup, would be the largest supermarket bank in history, a marriage of teller windows and trading desks, customer banking and high-stakes investing -- all suddenly under one deregulated roof. It would prove an explosive, if not disastrous, mix.

The merger stirred visions of a future in which the U.S. would dominate the planet financially. All that stood in the way was undue regulatory red tape. At least that's the way free marketeers like then-Republican Senator Phil Gramm of Texas saw it. Gramm, who as an aide to presidential candidate John McCain infamously called America a "nation of whiners," was, in fact, the driving force behind two of the most influential pieces of deregulation in recent history.

In 1999, President Clinton signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, a bevy of deregulatory measures that obliterated Glass-Steagall. In December of the following year, Gramm quietly snuck the 262-page Commodity Futures Modernization Act into a massive $384-billion spending bill. Gramm's bill blocked regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from cracking down on the shadowy "over-the-counter derivatives" market, home to billions of dollars of opaque financial instruments that would, years later, nearly demolish the American economy.

As presidents, both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush wrapped their arms around financial deregulation. As a result, in a binge of financial gluttony, Wall Street grew fat in ways never previously seen. Between 1929, the year the Great Depression began, and 1988, Wall Street's profits averaged 1.2% of the nation's gross domestic product; in 2005, that figure peaked at 3.3% as industry bonuses soared ever-higher. In 2009, bad times for most Americans, bonuses hit $20 billion. So much wealth in so few hands. Nothing explains the rise of the new American oligarchy more starkly.

Of course, it's not just what politicians did that helped create today's oligarchy, but what they failed to do. A classic example: in the 1990s, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), a private American accounting regulator, set its sights on a loophole big enough to drive a financial Mack truck through. Until then, stock options included in executives' skyrocketing pay packages -- potentially worth tens of millions of dollars when exercised -- were valued at zero when issued. That's right: zero, zilch, nada. When FASB and the SEC tried to close the loophole, however, big business leapt to its defense. An avalanche of money went into the pockets of an army of K Street lobbyists and leviathan business trade associations. In the end, nothing happened. Or rather, everything continued happening. The loophole remained.

Citizen United's Brave New World

Hacker and Pierson ably guide us through 30 years of "winner-take-all" policymaking, politicking, and -- from the point of view of the wealthy -- judicious inaction. They offer an eye-opening journey across the landscape that helped foster the New Oligarchs, but one crucial vista appeared too late for the authors to include.

No understanding of the rise of our New Oligarchs could be complete without exploring the effects of the Supreme Court's January Citizens United decision, which set their power in cement more effectively than any tax cut ever could. Before Citizens United, the rich used their wealth to subtly shape policy, woo politicians, and influence elections. Now, with so much money flowing into their hands and the contribution faucets wide open, they can simply buy American politics so long as the price is right.

There's no mistaking how, in less than a year, Citizens United has radically tilted the political playing field. Along with several other major court rulings, it ushered in American Crossroads, American Action Network, and many similar groups that now can reel in unlimited donations with pathetically few requirements to disclose their funders.

What the present Supreme Court, itself the fruit of successive tax-cutting and deregulating administrations, has ensured is this: that in an American “democracy,” only the public will remain in the dark. Even for dedicated reporters, tracking down these groups is like chasing shadows: official addresses lead to P.O. boxes; phone calls go unreturned; doors are shut in your face.

The limited glimpse we have of the people bankrolling these shadowy outfits is a who's-who of the New Oligarchy: the billionaire Koch Brothers ($21.5 billion); financier George Soros ($11 billion); hedge-fund CEO Paul Singer (his fund, Elliott Management, is worth $17 billion); investor Harold Simmons (net worth: $4.5 billion); New York venture capitalist Kenneth Langone ($1.1 billion); and real estate tycoon Bob Perry ($600 million).

Then there's the roster of corporations who have used their largesse to influence American politics. Health insurance companies, including UnitedHealth Group and Cigna, gave a whopping $86.2 million to the U.S. Chamber to kill the public option, funneling the money through the industry trade group America's Health Insurance Plans. And corporate titans like Goldman Sachs, Prudential Financial, and Dow Chemical have given millions more to the Chamber to lobby against new financial and chemical regulations.

As a result, the central story of the 2010 midterm elections isn’t Republican victory or Democratic defeat or Tea Party anger; it’s this blitzkrieg of outside spending, most of which came from right-leaning groups like Rove's American Crossroads and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It's a grim illustration of what happens when so much money ends up in the hands of so few. And with campaign finance reforms soundly defeated for years to come, the spending wars will only get worse.

Indeed, pundits predict that spending in the 2012 elections will smash all records. Think of it this way: in 2008, total election spending reached $5.3 billion, while the $1.8 billion spent on the presidential race alone more than doubled 2004's total. How high could we go in 2012? $7 billion? $10 billion? It looks like the sky’s the limit.

We don't need to wait for 2012 to arrive, however, to know that the sheer amount of money being pumped into American politics makes a mockery out of our democracy (or what's left of it). Worse yet, few solutions exist to staunch the cash flow: the DISCLOSE Act, intended to counter the effects of Citizens United, twice failed in the Senate this year; and the best option, public financing of elections, can't even get a hearing in Washington.

Until lawmakers cap the amount of money in politics, while forcing donors to reveal their identities and not hide in the shadows, the New Oligarchy will only grow in stature and influence. Left unchecked, this ultimate elite will continue to root out the few members of Congress not beholden to them and their “contributions” (see: Wisconsin's Russ Feingold) and will replace them with lawmakers eager to do their bidding, a Congress full of obedient placeholders ready to give their donors what they want.

Never before has the United States looked so much like a country of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.

Andy Kroll, an associate editor at TomDispatch, is a reporter for Mother Jones magazine. He lives in Washington, D.C. To listen to him discuss the geometry of delusion in the Ponzi Era on the latest TomCast audio interview, click here, or download it as a podcast by clicking here.

"Welfare is a Women's Issue" (Ms., 1972), by a U.S. Feminist Shero and Welfare Warrior, Johnnie Tillmon (1926 - 1995)

image of book on women and welfare, with Johnnie Tillmon front and center, is from here

Johnnie Tillmon is mentioned throughout the book above. As well she should be.
She is one of several defining voices addressing the welfare state
as part of the racist patriarchal state called the U.S. 

More on the book may be found
*at Amazon.com* and *on Google Books*.

The full image that was made into the cover of Welfare Warriors:

photograph of Johnnie Tillmon is from here

Behold herstory.

What follows is a brilliant piece of writing. Below it is biographical information the author, feminist activist Johnnie Tillmon. It is with full permission from Ms. (thank you, Jessica!) that I reprint the article here on A.R.P.

It is originally from Ms. magazine's very first issue in 1972!
It re-appeared in Ms. thirty years later. Please click on the title to link back to the source website of this writing, at msmagazine.com.

FEATURE | spring 2002

Spring 2002 Table of Contents 

---

Welfare is a Women's Issue (1972)

by Johnnie Tillmon


I'm a woman. I'm a black woman. I'm a poor woman. I'm a fat woman. I'm a middle-aged woman. And I'm on welfare.

In this country, if you're any one of those things you count less as a human being. If you're all those things, you don't count at all. Except as a statistic.

I am 45 years old. I have raised six children. There are millions of statistics like me. Some on welfare. Some not. And some, really poor, who don't even know they're entitled to welfare. Not all of them are black. Not at all. In fact, the majority-about two-thirds-of all the poor families in the country are white.

Welfare's like a traffic accident. It can happen to anybody, but especially it happens to women.

And that's why welfare is a women's issue. For a lot of middle-class women in this country, Women's Liberation is a matter of concern. For women on welfare it's a matter of survival.

Survival. That's why we had to go on welfare. And that's why we can't get off welfare now. Not us women. Not until we do something about liberating poor women in this country.

Because up until now we've been raised to expect to work, all our lives, for nothing. Because we are the worst educated, the least-skilled, and the lowest-paid people there are. Because we have to be almost totally responsible for our children. Because we are regarded by everybody as dependents. That's why we are on welfare. And that's why we stay on it.

Welfare is the most prejudiced institution in this country, even more than marriage, which it tries to imitate. Let me explain that a little.

Ninety-nine percent of welfare families are headed by women. There is no man around. In half the states there can't be men around because A.F.D.C. (Aid to Families With Dependent Children) says if there is an "able-bodied" man around, then you can't be on welfare. If the kids are going to eat, and the man can't get a job, then he's got to go.

Welfare is like a super-sexist marriage. You trade in a man for the man. But you can't divorce him if he treats you bad. He can divorce you, of course, cut you off anytime he wants. But in that case, he keeps the kids, not you.The man runs everything. In ordinary marriage, sex is supposed to be for your husband. On A.F.D.C., you're not supposed to have any sex at all. You give up control of your own body. It's a condition of aid. You may even have to agree to get your tubes tied so you can never have more children just to avoid being cut off welfare.

The man, the welfare system, controls your money. He tells you what to buy, what not to buy, where to buy it, and how much things cost. If things-rent, for instance-really cost more than he says they do, it's just too bad for you. He's always right.

That's why Governor [Ronald] Reagan can get away with slandering welfare recipients, calling them "lazy parasites," "pigs at the trough," and such. We've been trained to believe that the only reason people are on welfare is because there's something wrong with their character. If people have "motivation," if people only want to work, they can, and they will be able to support themselves and their kids in decency.

The truth is a job doesn't necessarily mean an adequate income. There are some ten million jobs that now pay less than the minimum wage, and if you're a woman, you've got the best chance of getting one. Why would a 45-year-old woman work all day in a laundry ironing shirts at 90-some cents an hour? Because she knows there's some place lower she could be. She could be on welfare. Society needs women on welfare as "examples" to let every woman, factory workers and housewife workers alike, know what will happen if she lets up, if she's laid off, if she tries to go it alone without a man. So these ladies stay on their feet or on their knees all their lives instead of asking why they're only getting 90-some cents an hour, instead of daring to fight and complain.

Maybe we poor welfare women will really liberate women in this country. We've already started on our own welfare plan. Along with other welfare recipients, we have organized so we can have some voice. Our group is called the National Welfare Rights Organization (N.W.R.O.). We put together our own welfare plan, called Guaranteed Adequate Income (G.A.I.), which would eliminate sexism from welfare. There would be no "categories"-men, women, children, single, married, kids, no kids-just poor people who need aid. You'd get paid according to need and family size only and that would be upped as the cost of living goes up.

As far as I'm concerned, the ladies of N.W.R.O. are the front-line troops of women's freedom. Both because we have so few illusions and because our issues are so important to all women-the right to a living wage for women's work, the right to life itself.

*          *          *

What follows next is from *here* at blackpast.org.

Tillmon, Johnnie (1926-1995)

Johnnie Tillmon was born in Scott, Arkansas, in 1926. A migrant sharecropper’s daughter, she moved to California in 1959 to join her brothers and worked as a union shop steward in a Compton laundry. Tillmon organized workers and became involved in a community association called the Nickerson Garden Planning Organization which was established to improve living conditions in the housing project.

Tillmon became ill in 1963, and was advised to seek welfare. She was hesitant at first, but decided to apply for assistance to take care of her children. She immediately learned how welfare recipients were harassed by caseworkers who went to their apartments looking for evidence of extra support and who designated how they should spend money. In order to fight against this dehumanized treatment, Tillmon organized people on welfare in the housing project and founded one of the first grassroots welfare mothers’ organizations called ANC (Aid to Needy Children) Mothers Anonymous, in 1963. When a former CORE activist, George Wiley, brought together local welfare recipients’ groups and transformed them into a national movement, ANC Mothers joined the movement and became a part of the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO). Tillmon quickly emerged as a leader and became a chairperson of the NWRO. Together with other welfare mothers, she struggled for adequate income, dignity, justice, and democratic participation.

While the NWRO was officially run by welfare recipients, the male middle-class staff managed the finances and administered the national office, wielding great influence over the organization. Tillmon and other welfare mothers became increasingly critical of Wiley and his supporters who dominated leadership positions, and sought to place control of the organization in the hands of the welfare recipients. When the number of recipients rapidly increased and the NWRO was under fierce attack, the internal conflict between the staff members and welfare recipients came to the forefront. While Wiley and his advisors tried to mobilize the working poor, especially the white blue-collar workers, into the welfare rights movement, welfare mothers led by Tillmon sought to align with a women’s movement and gain support from feminist organizations such as the National Organization for Women (NOW).

In 1972, Tillmon published an article in Ms magazine entitled “Welfare Is a Women’s Issue,” articulating how the welfare system controlled the lives of women on welfare and constantly placed them under the scrutiny of government authorities. She tried to broaden the horizon of the feminist movement by redefining poverty as a “women’s issue.” When Wiley resigned in late 1972, Tillmon was chosen as the new Executive Director of the NWRO. The funding for the organization, however, had become depleted by the time she became the director. After the NWRO folded in 1975, Tillmon returned to Los Angeles, continuing her struggle for welfare rights at the local and state levels. In 1995 Tillmon passed away at the age of 69. 

Sources:
Johnnie Tillmon, “Welfare is a Women’s Issue,” Ms Magazine (Spring, 1972): 111-16; Guida West, The National Welfare Rights Movement: The Social Protest of Poor Women (New York: Praeger, 1981); Premilla Nadasen, Welfare Warriors: The Welfare Rights Movement in the United States (New York: Routledge, 2005).
 

Contributor(s):
Tsuchiya, Kazuyo
University of California, San Diego
 

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For more on Johnnie Tillmon and her activist work, please also visit these linked-to websites:

A Tribute to Johnnie Tillmon

Adventures in Feministory: Johnnie Tillmon and the Welfare Rights Movement

The National Welfare Rights Movement: The Social Protest of Poor Women, by Guida West (1981) 

The Battle for Welfare Rights: Politics and Poverty in Modern America, by Felicia Kornbluh (2007) 

Calling All Intersex, Intergender, Asexual, Anti-binary Gender Radicals and Anti-Heteropatriarchy Activists

image for trans/gender activism is from here

I am wanting to organise support and empowerment to those of us who are not part of the binaries of sex and gender to gather in cyberspaces to discuss how to better support radical feminist activism and other radical women's activism who may not ever identify as "feminist". (It is, after all, an English word, and for most humans, English is not a first language. And many women do perceive "feminist" to be a specifically "Western" or "white" term, and that doesn't mean those activists aren't doing radical anti-patriarchal work.

The sex and gender binaries are set up patriarchally and oppressively in the West, and elsewhere--but not universally, with violence, with coercion, with harassment, with subordinating practices including bullying, beating, and rape. These forms of violence, as well as institutional discrimination and industrial strength degradation, disproportionately targets females, girls, "feminised" or "feminine" children and adults, and women. The violence and discrimination is disproportionately perpetrated by males, boys, and men, against girls and women, and also against male children and adults.

Class and race are gendered such that being dominant in any hierarchy adds "masculine" status and privileges, while being "on the bottom" of any hierarchy "feminises" the oppressed groups.

 Across class, race, region, and ethnicity, there are people who "don't fit" the binaries, because the binaries are not natural or inclusive of all humans. One strategy has been for gay men to claim to be "real men", which often has misogynistic implications and courses of political action. Another strategy has been for transgender and transsexual people to insist on being identified using the terms of the master which reinforce the oppressive/misogynistic/patriarchal binary.

I'm hoping to hear from people, by email, by comment, here, who support the group "woman" being identified as radical feminists identify that group: the people who are not male and not men who are oppressed by male supremacy and by men interpersonally and institutionally for being "girls" and "women".

I'm wanting to support the realities and existence of asexual people, who, for many reasons, opt out of hetero/sexual social rules and codes of conduct, including how we "do" relationships, and how we express affection and intimacy. I'm wanting to explore, here, how being sexual can be a form of acting out child sexual abuse or heteropatriarchal upbringing. I see heteropatriarchal upbringing as a form of spiritual and psychic harm, privileging some, punishing others. Some of us, like me, experience both privileging and punishment. As someone who is asexual, politically and personally, I reject hetero/patriarchal ways of being in relationship as inhumane and oppressive, misogynistic and often racist and classist too. I see my white gay class-privileged brothers not usually questioning and resisting CRAP, instead of confronting and working to end capitalist, racist heteropatriarchy.

I'm wanting to support the realities of lesbian existence, of women's existence, who do experience assaults against their female bodies because of the political meaning of them in patriarchal societies. I believe this experience of oppression, dehumanisation, degradation, violation, and subordination due to being a girl or a woman with a female body warrants respect and regard as we strategise resistance movements and political courses of action to challenge the ideologies and imperatives of white het male supremacy and to effectively compost CRAP.

I'm also calling on all WHITE WESTERN non-trans and trans activists who proclaim "transgender people" or "transsexuals" to be THE MOST OPPRESSED GROUP ON EARTH to knock off the racist, Western privileged nonsense. It's an insult to all people of color, especially girls and women, who experience things you'll never even hear about, unless you go out of your way to do so. This isn't to minimise anyone's pain or suffering, but it is to note that you DO have white and Western privileges, and often non-ESL and non-Third and Fourth World privileges. And, in case you didn't notice, most non-trans women and girls do not.

Thoughts? Interest? I welcome hearing from people who basically are in agreement here, not from non-trans and trans activists who want to reinforce the gender binary by insisting that everyone is either "one [dominant, statused] gender" or "the opposite [subordinated, stigmatised] one". And from intersex people generally--those who were raised as girls or as boys, but who have had to find their own ways as intersex people, who had surgeries they didn't welcome or want, or who have had no surgeries and want to be fully statused as complete and whole human beings just as you are.