Hiding in Plain White: the problem of protecting institutionalised power in allegedly radical political theory and practice

archived photo of feminist activists is from here

Across the web and offline as well, there are many arguments being made about "men" or "women" or "transgender people" that fail to mention this: only a small minority of people in any of those groups are speaking on behalf of everyone else.

So, we ubiquitously hear white rich men speak about the value of capitalism all the while ignoring how it is fused to both white and male supremacy. They do not speak for "the 99%" of men who do not benefit from capitalism.

We also hear socially empowered transgender people speak about what it means to be trans, using elitist terms like "transmisogyny" and "cisgender" without considering that most trans people are cisgender and most trans people internalise misogyny that is acted out against women and trans people too. We also see some white lesbians speak out against trans people as if trans = M2F or F2M transsexual people. As someone who has described myself as intergender--a politically problematic term I continue to wrestle with--I see most trans people as not being described or represented anywhere in dominant social discourse.

The invisiblisation of most trans people, most women, and most men, by social elites, be they whites, men, or the wealthy, is part of the problem for those of us seeking to end all forms of oppression and for those seeking to survive those systems of callousness and cruelty.

When we put forth theory or advise others on political practice, we ought to consider who we speak for, who we represent, and who has the ability to do what we promote if we promote acts of resistence and revolution. To what extent are our views white? To what extent do they reinforce male supremacy? Do our theories center the experiences of girls and women of color? Of women who do not live in white-majority countries? Of women who are not part of the Western world?

This blog supports the work of women who name how race, region, sexuality, and class impacts their own and other women's lives. Whites--women and men--who refuse to do this are not acting in radical ways. Pretending "white-majority" views are not only representative of all women but are also radically feminist is a well-known practice of misogyny and racism both: it is white male supremacy in action. What's "radical" about that?

A Call for Contributors to Black IS an Emotion: Essays on the de-racialization of Queers of Color by their White Lovers

photo is from here

This was sent to me and I hope some of the readers of this blog will find (or be) contributors:

Black IS an Emotion: Essays on the de-racialization of Queers of Color by their White Lovers

White lovers who have attempted to diminish our right to have a wide spectrum of emotions by attaching negative and racially charged connotations to things we say: “I’m afraid,” “hurting,” “lonely” or “unsure,” suggests that there is still not enough honest discussion occurring in interracial relationships. In our attempts to understand and support our partners in their quest for wholeness, legitimacy, direction and self-awareness, we often put aside the essence of who we are, thereby allowing ourselves to be compartmentalized into “lesser” roles, such as: caretaker, sounding board, strong and/or silent other.

As lesbians and gay men of color, we believe that turning a wide range of personal experiences into literary disquisitions on racism in intimate interracial relationships, might in some way illuminate our own internal struggles at locating, naming and ultimately reversing the slow erosion of our unique identities/voice.  We ask: “Have we, for the sake of love and/or acceptance, allowed ourselves to become racially and culturally neutered in order to make our lovers more comfortable being next to ‘our skin?’” Have we allowed our emotions to become pathologized?

Through an interdisciplinary approach--relying in part on anti-categorical complexity to intersectionality as a possible jumping off point for discussion--this project will explore the largely unexamined issues of race/racism/sexuality in interracial queer relationships.

We are interested in engaging work that questions the social, political and racial divides within interracial relationships. Writers should avoid the over-use of jargon as this work seeks to present nuanced ideas in clear, straightforward language that will appeal to a broad audience.

Criteria

Send an 850 word abstract via email attachment to Monalesia Earle at: soho2paris@gmail.com or Russell Campbell at: rhotsoup@aol.com

The deadline for abstracts is December 15, 2011.

For general enquiries: soho2paris@gmail.com

Include a cover page with your contact information and a brief biographical statement of approximately 150 words. Final essays will be approximately 3,500 to 5,000 words, with an estimated deadline (if abstracts and the subsequent proposal is accepted by a publisher) of March 2012. Please put “BIAE” in the subject line.

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

Yeah, what they said... Lierre Keith, Debbie Cameron, and Joan Scanlon on Radical Feminist Theory and, for example, Liberal Queer Theory

I just want to place these discussions front and center for the time being, for others to read, listen to, and find clarity of political purpose within.

First up: Debbie Cameron and Joan Scanlon *here*.

Second, third, and fourth up, these videos by Lierre Keith:

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.

Andrea Dworkin on Transsexuality, and my own thoughts on Trans and "Rad Fem" Politics

image of book cover is from here

There is an update following the main post, which is below.

Earlier this year I wrote a great deal here about concerns regarding liberal queer politics, including liberal trans politics. Please see those posts for more detailed discussion on those topics, if you wish to. In this post I'll take on some current mischaracterisations and oversimplifications of radical feminism. (I've also posted a fair amount here over the years about misogynist men's nonsense about radical feminists. This post won't concern itself with those virulent anti-feminists.)

Any time anyone speaks of what "those radical feminists" or "those radical lesbian feminists" are doing, or believe, or feel, I'm skeptical to disappointed. For one thing, when "they" are accurately referenced, the criticism of radical feminism tends to reference only a very few region-, race-, and academically-privileged white women.

Two women who get touted as exemplars of radical feminism are Mary Daly and Janice Raymond. So let me begin by saying that while Mary Daly and Janice Raymond are two voices in the herstory of US radical feminism of the last forty years, they aren't "US radical lesbian feminism" to me. Alice Walker and Audre Lorde are two key voices in US radical lesbian feminism. Their work has had a much greater impact on me. Why are they rarely-to-NEVER referred to when anti-radical feminist spokespeople are expressing their own critiques?

One answer is racism: the obnoxious and erroneous contention that all radical feminists are white women is but a wee part of the on-going effort within and beyond the cultivators and purveyors of anti-feminism to erase women of color from the "canon" of radical feminist writers and activists. Another answer is that Lorde and Walker's written views and values don't necessarily match up with those of Daly and Raymond. And this inconvenience for those who wish to lump all radical feminists together as being all "transphobic" or "anti-male" or "anti-sex", isn't so easy if one contends with the depth and breadth of US radical feminist writings.

Personally, I never read Janice Raymond during the long years of my own initial education in radical feminism. I've read very little by Mary Daly. Neither woman represents "radical feminism" to me, while I fully acknowledge the significant--and amazing--contribution to radical lesbian feminist thealogy by Mary Daly. As noted above, Lorde and Walker, and also Andrea Dworkin, have been far more influential in teaching me what radical feminism can do in responsible theory and activist practice.

I found what follows typed up online, on a Tumblr account called Head Girl (*here*), and so cannot vouch for the accuracy of the text, but it sounds like what I remember reading in Woman Hating (1974). I'm checking online for the text and from what I can find there are several inaccuracies in what was at the Tumblr page and so I've made some corrections in what appears below.

Transsexuality

How can I really care if we win “the Revolution”? Either way, any way, there will be no place for me.

A transsexual friend, in conversation

Transsexuality is currently considered a gender disorder, that is, a person learns a gender role which contradicts his/her visible sex. It is a “disease” with a cure: a sex-change operation will change the person’s visible sex and make it consonant with the person’s felt identity.

Since we know very little about sex identity, and since psychiatrists are committed to the propagation of the cultural structure as it is, it would be premature and not very intelligent to accept the psychiatric judgment that transsexuality is caused by a faulty socialization. More probably, transsexuality is caused by faulty society. Transsexuality can be defined as one particular formation of our general multisexuality which is unable to achieve its natural development because of extremely adverse social conditions.

There is no doubt that in the culture of male-female discreteness, transsexuality is a disaster for the individual transsexual. Every transsexual, white, black, man, woman, rich, poor, is in a state of primary emergency (see p. 185) as a transsexual. There are 3 crucial points here. One, every transsexual has the right to survival on his/her own terms. That means every transsexual is entitled to a sex-change operation, and it should be provided by the community as one of its functions. This is an emergency measure for an emergency condition.

Two, by changing our premises about men and women, role-playing and polarity, the social situation of transsexuals will be transformed, and transsexuals will be integrated into community, no longer persecuted and despised.

Three, community built on androgynous identity will mean the end of transsexuality as we know it. Either the transsexual will be able to expand his/her sexuality into a fluid androgyny, or, as roles disappear, the phenomenon of transsexuality will disappear and that energy will be transformed into new modes of sexual identity and behavior.

Andrea Dworkin, in Woman Hating, 1974

At another blog called Transmeditations, with posts written by Joelle Ruby Ryan, there was a post documenting tensions between a few non-trans radical feminist-identified people and one trans-identified person (who I believe also identifies as a radical feminist). The account of what happened is one person's experience of it; I've heard differing accounts by people who were also there about inaccuracies in Joelle's description. But of course that is likely to be the case with any upsetting or triggering experience.

I've commented there, most recently to another commenter. I just saw that my comment was not posted (so far) and I'd like it to be on record here. First, the link to the post and comments is *here*.

Amber is the name of the recent commenter. Here's that comment edited slightly (please see the full comment in context at the site linked to above), and after that is my response to her:

[...] The vicious hate related here truly upset me. Dont these so-called “rad-fems” understand that the people they hate so badly are real people with real things and that they detest am entire group of people, with no reason, who mean them no harm and who are often a great danger but only to themselves.

amber said this on October 26, 2011 at 11:26 pm | Reply

• Hi amber,
  I know of countless examples of trans-identified people demonstrating willful, purposefully aimed misogyny and anti-feminism at lesbians. From arrogantly insisting on invading lesbian spaces, to disrespecting lesbians interpersonally, I’ve seen it happen and I have read so many accounts of it happening that I really have to challenge, as woefully inaccurate, the statement you make above. Misogyny and anti-lesbianism is flourishing right now in many queer spaces. Gay and bi men have been perpetrating it for decades and more recently far too many trans people do too. Do you doubt that?
  JulianReal said this on Your comment is awaiting moderation. November 3, 2011 at 8:39 pm |Reply

I probably ought to note that people who identify as "rad fem" are not necessarily representatives of radical feminist thought or exemplars of radical feminist practice. I'll tell you a story that illustrates the necessity of me making that point. A pro-radical, pro-feminist male I know told me a year or more ago that he was considering giving up on radical feminism as a valid political theory and practice. I asked him why. He told me that he found some of the beliefs there absurd, such as the anti-sex viewpoints. I told him that radical feminism, in my experience, isn't anti-sex at all. He referenced an online discussion among a few privileged white women that did seem to be anti-sex. I suggested that he not assign to those few women what is most notable and necessary from the vast writings and activism by radical feminist women. It hadn't really occurred to him to doubt the validity of what some "Rad Fem"- identified women said as allegedly accurate about "radical feminist" on the whole. So if Amber is also referring to a few privileged white women online who express themselves as if speaking for all of radical feminism, that might be important to know.

Given the significant contributions to radical feminist theory and practice made by heterosexual and other non-lesbian women, radical lesbian feminism and radical lesbian politics are not the sum total of radical feminism. In fact, I know of at least one Radical Lesbian who doesn't ascribe to what many "traditional" radical feminists believe about gender and sexual oppression. And I know of another woman who has identified more as a revolutionary lesbian feminist than as a radical lesbian feminist for most of her long activist life. Her own views are different than either the Radical Lesbian woman I am referring to or the views of many other radical feminists.

All of this should help build a case for the danger or saying that a single person or group's viewpoints are representative of what all radical feminists believe and do. I find the whole herstory of radical feminist accomplishments--named as such in writing and in life, to be complex, compelling, and anything but monolithic, which isn't to say the term "radical feminism" refers to anything at all.

But the assumption that some online and offline white, class-privileged trans activists or spokespeople--who often enough seem to speak for all trans people--do no harm and mean no harm is nonsense. There are too many examples of gross insensitivity and blatant hateful behavior towards radical lesbian feminist people to pretend that all actions by trans people are benign and free of misogyny and anti-feminism. (How could it be, really, that trans people, as one of many diverse populations of people--many of whom don't identify as "trans"--are free of misogyny and anti-feminism? I know of no group of people who have managed to accomplish that, including the group "radical feminists".)

I don't know what Andrea Dworkin would say about the various contests for safe space and the power to name reality that are currently occurring between those two groups in some places on- and off-line. I also wouldn't presume to know. What I've found in Andrea's writing is a commitment to name male supremacy wherever and whenever it exists, displays itself, and asserts dominance in social and personal spaces. I've seen some trans and many more non-trans people be (or, rather: act) male supremacist in many different ways, almost never owning the male supremacy embedded in the behaviors.

I think there is plenty to critique in contemporary liberal, white, class-privileged trans and non-trans understandings of gender and social justice. I make it a point to have this blog be a space that values such critique. And people telling me I'm "transphobic" or "anti-male" for doing so won't silence me. I find those sorts of accusations typical derailing strategies almost always by people with significant social privilege and power. And I see such strategies being designed and implemented to stop the radical inquiries and interrogations, not deepen and expand them.

Andrea Dworkin's own views developed and deepened. She has critiqued some of what she wrote in Woman Hating and that self-critique may be found in a 1998 book by Cindy Jenefsky titled Without Apology: Andrea Dworkin's Art and Politics. Part of Dworkin's own critique has to do with lack of interrogation of the Freudian influence she accepted in her own understandings of sexuality in her first feminist book. I have never read anything else she wrote since that demonstrates a lessening of regard and respect for transsexual people, however. (Please see the update in purple for more.)

9 Nov. 2011 UPDATE: 
I just found this post, which is a cross-post from other Tumblr accounts but is added to at The Trans Woman's Anti-Violence Project: 
http://transfeminism.tumblr.com/post/12371381560/andrea-dworkin-wasnt-a-friend-to-trans-people

As an anti-misogyny/anti-patriarchal violence activist, I don't agree with the writer's assessment or conclusions. I think regarding Andrea's views as identical to Jan Raymond's is a spurious thing to do: Andrea had her own voice. What she wrote in her own voice is what should be used to either agree with or disagree with her, not the writings of other women. The guilt by association tactic for condemning a writer-activist is not a respectable or responsible thing to do, imo.

The fact that Andrea didn't speak directly to this issue after writing Woman Hating means something. What it means is up for interpretation, of course. But what I know about Andrea is that she was a deeply compassionate person towards anyone who enduring the violence and violations of male supremacist harm and horror. I do not know Jan Raymond at all. But I did know Andrea and I regard Dworkin's work as a tremendously important resource, theoretical base, and activist approach to all anti-misogyny work. That someone is framing her work as being pro-misogyny (supportive of misogyny directed at some trans people) is rather absurd to me.  On that Tumblr page, there is a statement about Dworkin's promotion of "androgyny" as being terrifying. I'm troubled that an idea in a book that has no institutional or social support in the actual world, is regarded as more of a threat than the rampant, unowned, unacknowledged white and male supremacy inside and outside white-dominated queer communities. Here is that passage:

Also, I think Dworkin’s militant advocacy for replacing the sex binary with a monolithic compulsive androgyny is terrifying. Androgyny as the socially enforced norm would lead to something like the gender repression featured in “The Outcast” episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, or Tobi Hill-Meyer’s The Genderfellator.
privilegedandgoodlooking:

“Andrea Dworkin (yes, THAT Andrea Dworkin) on Trans people: …

WOMAN HATING- by  Andrea Dworkin 1974
BRB, Continuing to be amazed that Dworkin is like, right next to Raymond and Delay as the patron saints of 2nd wave hardline anti-trans stances.
(via unobject)

As discussed a bit below in the initial post I wrote recently, Dworkin repudiated what was in parts of Woman Hating and what she believed in 1973 and 1974 ought not be held against her, given the amount of more thorough work she did on male supremacy in the twenty years that followed.

I find it troubling that people working to stop misogyny don't attach that work to addressing and challenging male privilege and male supremacy in our lives--including in the lives of people who are queer and trans. I experience that as far more terrifying than Dworkin's later-rejected theory of androgyny from a book published over 35 years ago.

CRAPPY HALLOWEEN: The Today Show, Brian Williams, Rock Center, and their collective CROCK OF CRAP

The CRAP-loaded media has been pissing me off a lot lately. I'll highlight a few reasons why.



Watch at 2:20 into this clip from the Today Show. How many things are disgustingly wrong with dressing a white-appearing woman and a chihuahua in "Indian Chief" costumes?


The Today Show cast, writers, and producers, and the writers and producers for Brian Williams and Rock Center are collectively nothing more than shills and sold-out vehicles for the Racist-Misogynist Right-wing and for ecocidal Big Oil.

On the Today Show on Halloween, there was an unbelievably blatant display of white supremacist racism. There was a segment on costumes for human and dog, and it was presented as a fashion show. Much to my disgust and horror (not the kind one might expect on Halloween), a white-appearing woman and a dog she was carrying came out dressed in what I can only refer to as a perverse native Amerikkkan costume: feathered headdress on each of them and a “Pocahontas”-type dress on the woman. And no one—not Matt Lauer or anyone else bothering to comment on how inappropriate, hurtful, and racist such an exploitive display of religious and cultural callousness and cruelty is. In case Matt and other NBC news and entertainment cronies are not aware of it, we live in a country where genocide against American Indians is on-going, and one of the ways it occurs is by appropriating and exploiting Native American cultures and religions; also by honoring with holidays the genocidal rapist savage named Christopher Columbus and by celebrating the beginning of the end of life as it was lived for thousands of years on Turtle Island, when Murderous Settlers sat down with Wampanoag Indians in "New England". See the following link for more:

http://www.uaine.org/dom.htm

We are also being fed the most racist-misogynist story--an endless story about how missing white girls and women matter, and missing or murdered girls and women of color do not:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/295168/nbc-today-show-investigator-takes-tour-of-missing-baby%E2%80%99s-home

Let's read a report about all the stories that are "too dark" for the Today Show and the NBC Nightly News to report on:

http://madamenoire.com/79158/no-one-misses-the-missing-black-girls/


Also on NBC is a new "news" program hosted by the nightly news anchor for NBC, Brian Williams. It is called “Rock Center” for Rockefeller Center in mid-town Manhattan. Let's keep in mind that Rockefellers helped make Corporate Capitalism the sleazy, greedy, unjust system it is. The Rockefellers have been the largest beneficiaries of the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank. The Fed makes damn sure the Filthy Rich stay ever filthier and even richer. For more, please see here: http://www.apfn.net/doc-100_bankruptcy27.htm

The first story of the hour was about there is an economic oasis in this miserable-for-the-middle-class economy. (This is an economy and economic system that has been miserable and murderous for working poor people for far longer than three years.) The media loves to toss us bones and pretend it is good news. In this case it's worse than that. There is no oasis, only the opportunity to make Big Oil Execs and their Shareholders ever more filthy rich than they already are. In a small town in Montana fracking is taking over, destroying the Earth, using up and polluting water, and turning the land of the Black Feet into wasteland. It is being funded by Big Oil and we are led to believe “it's all good” there. There's absolutely nothing sustainable about what's going on. It's same old ecocidal, genocidal atrocity packaged up NBC with by Brian Williams as the friendly-faced deliverer of more bad news that he actually believes is good. White people get to move there and get jobs doing awful things. They may get a house for a home out of it. When oil is no longer in the rocks there, the economy will die and the area will likely become a Ghost Town.

Let's see how sleazily the story-writers for Brian Williams and the very white Harry Smith evade responsibility for the systemic problems with the US globalised economy, which murders millions worldwide and is utterly unsustainable. Instead of responsible reporting, we are told that all any one needs is "opportunity" which is code for "Our immoral economic system will not offer you any meaningful way to live; but if you're privileged enough, or are willing to do work that most people cannot do, you may get the chance to earn enough money to stay in debt for the rest of your life."


http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/boomtown-north-dakota-town-becomes-hot-job-market/60kg0iy?cpkey=70e0703b-3ba2-434e-aabb-1c56c22aecf9%7c%7c%7c%7c

See, for the unacknowledged future of the story above:

From Boomtown to Ghost Town

Overview:

In order to fully understand the geographic concept of natural resource use, students should learn about the ways that resource extraction affects the physical and human landscape. In this lesson, they will discuss how a specific economic activity in a region can facilitate the creation of towns, which often turn into ghost towns if the economic activity ends.

On the same program, xenophobia, racism, and misogyny combined forces to produce a vile segment on the danger of Chinese women coming the US to give birth, so that their child is US-born and entitled to all that the US has to offer, such as a failing (and murderous) economic system, gross and rampant racism, wholesale destruction of the Earth, and heteropatriarchal practices that the US Right thinks are good for what ails Amerikkka. While it was noted that not many women from China are actually doing what the report said Chinese women are doing, it was also noted, in a way that made me think FOX News and NBC were now one and the same, that any and every incident of this occurring was an outrage and must be stopped.

From *the Asian Nation website*: 

Empress Tsu-his ruled China from 1898 to 1908 from the Dragon Throne. The New York Times described her as "the wicked witch of the East, a reptilian dragon lady who had arranged the poisoning, strangling, beheading, or forced suicide of anyone who had ever challenged her autocratic rule." The shadow of the Dragon Lady -- with her cruel, perverse, and inhuman ways -- continued to darken encounters between Asian women and the West they flocked to for refuge.

Far from being predatory, many of the first Asian women to come to the U.S. in the mid-1800s were disadvantaged Chinese women, who were tricked, kidnapped, or smuggled into the country to serve the predominantly male Chinese community as prostitutes. The impression that all Asian women were prostitutes, born at that time, "colored the public perception of, attitude toward, and action against all Chinese women for almost a century," writes historian Sucheng Chan.

Police and legislators singled out Chinese women for special restrictions "not so much because they were prostitutes as such (since there were also many White prostitutes around) but because -- as Chinese -- they allegedly brought in especially virulent strains of venereal diseases, introduced opium addiction, and enticed White boys into a life of sin," Chan also writes. Chinese women who were not prostitutes ended up bearing the brunt of the Chinese exclusion laws that passed in the late 1800s.

Racist-Misogynist Corporate greed and exploitation of the poor, working class, and middle class is apparently not an outrage to The Filthy Rich. Neither is the destruction of the Earth. Why doesn't Brian Williams report on the history and present of forced sterilisation of women of color in the US? Why doesn't the CROCK Center report on how Right-wing Republican cockholes work so diligently to control US women of color's and white women's reproductive organs and choices? Would such reports reveal that it is not Chinese women who exploit and abuse our system, but rather Filthy Rich White US Men?

What “offends” the big white cockholes who run this country is a very few Chinese women coming here. Last time I checked—and thanks to a friend of mine for reminding me of this—the US is heavily indebted to China because The Filthy Rich have run what was an apparently functional (while completely dysfunctional and deadly) economic system into the ground, where it now must blow water into rocks to get oil and call that “good”.

Why doesn't Brian get any other point of view—utilising all the many news reporters and newscasters he boasts will be appearing on the program over the weeks—on things like fracking, the harm of Big Oil to people, animals, and the Earth, and xenophobic racism and misogyny? Is Brian not able to do this? Is he just a puppet for his show's corporate producers. (Yes, he is.) Brian Williams is not allowed to say anything at all that might threaten the profits of those he serves—those who have bought his soul and who own his spirit.

If he does have a soul that is not thoroughly possessed by NBC Execs and Shareholders, then let him do a half-hour interview with Dr. Vandana Shiva on all that is fucked up about fracking and Big Oil's solutions to economic problems faced by the middle class. The sad truth is that even if he wanted to do it, his bosses wouldn't let him. You won't see Dr. Shiva on Rock Center any time soon. The only Asian women you'll see are the ones filling up a propaganda segment pretending it is Chinese women, not white US men, ripping us off and taking advantage of our allegedly moral and honorable and good systems of governance and commerce.

http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/born-in-the-u-s-a-chinese-women-escape-one-child-policy/6c5e6t7

NBC wants us to believe that everything out of the friendly-faced Brian Williams' mouth is truthful and responsible, when most of what he reports is neither.

Shame on you, Brian Williams and Harry Smith--and, especially, on your writers and producers--for misleading the US public and doing so to fatten the wallets and pad the off-shore bank accounts of the Filthy Rich. Does NBC stand for Nothing But CRAP?


(Note: CRAP: corporate racist atrocious patriarchy)