For women and fem peoples who strike, who sit, who roll, who sad, who rise, who rebel and rabblerouse. Who are “too much” and “not enough” and lost. Who cannot see themselves in this society. Who work the most. Whose survival is work. Who are alienated and recovering and agitated. Who find themselves in rubble, and more piles on. Who want to be themselves. Who want to be themselves and create. Who want to be themselves and create without the confines of structured gender violence, patriarchy, racism, ableism, the state, masculinity and it’s entitlement. Who, without this freedom to be, insist on resistance and structural change or revolution.
Resistance includes deconstructing what we’ve learned, taking context of power into account, and applying theories and strategies in order to create different outcomes. We don’t just want boss women. Women at the top of the hierarchy or heteropatriarchy. More capitalist-profit-making women. More diverse capitalism or hierarchy. For this would mean there are still poor women, exploited women, women and genders at the bottom of the hierarchy. We don’t want women making colonial nation-states look more “progressive” by leading them. Women, femmes, and non-binary folks may occupy positions of power yet the definition and implementation of that power looks the exact same.
We don’t want just want more women in the military, when the military sabotages invades and enacts genocide by bombing the reproductive health out of other countries, destroying families destabilizing regions to the point that authoritarian patriarchy seems like a better option than US/Western capitalism. If equality looks like assimilating women and marginalized peoples/genders into these institutions and systems built by patriarchy, we want more than equality. Stop promoting assimilation and calling it progress, when femininity and genderqueerity is under attack all over the world by these institutions, by these militaries, by these governments.
There is a need for much resilience and collective solidarity to all peoples surviving femicide and gender violent entitlement, harassment and violence, especially trans women/ trans femmes and nonbinary peoples. Woman as a category should not simply be a restriction of femininity as it has HIStorically been restricted against women by patriarchy.
I don’t just want to carve out space and call it Feminist. I want the totality of the space to be transformed and the basis of this society reevaluated entirely. The abuse-hierarchy-coercion of patriarchy (and all other hierarchies) should be exponentially diminished until it is no longer the guiding force of our socialization. It is not enough for women and fem peoples to continue to survive within and between this macho, hands that know no boundaries, fight-first-question-never, pride and ego centeredness of masculinity. We are not just trying to change the pace at which it kills us! We refuse to accept that which kills the spirit, confuses friend for foe, confuses attraction for entitlement, continues violence as power and so on.
This requires deeper, layered, interpersonal and structural changes–an alternative to patriarchy that is not rooted in the “reverse” of patriarchy, but instead is rooted in an inverse of its power structures. This is not just women in power and power wielded the way it is now, shaped by white supremacist colonialist patriarchy, but it is the decentralization and redefinition of power, of social organization and labor entirely. Think restoration and exploration of intuition, collective decision making, consent and communality.
In general, it is great to affirm the collective action of people opposed to patriarchy, of women surviving and thriving, of all marginalized genders transforming the world. With the recent popularization of the Womens March and the subsequent push and pull of radicals on how to participate, this conversation is a long time coming.
Though the left seeks mass, we must ask ourselves how the mass congregates and according to what ideals/goals. Post-Election and before #MeToo women decided to have mass permitted rallies with police escorts to “resist Trump”. The most recent march in LA was oriented around registering people to vote Team Democrat. And for most left leaning activists, this was tolerable in exchange for finally having a mass presence in the streets and feeling that catapulting (yet obviously suppressed) collective energy once more. For most, this presence feels like an opportunity to outreach the masses. Radical women and fem peoples were challenged- do I go and participate and push the narrative, do I seek sisterhood? Yet many of us were unenthused to the disappointment of our comrades.
Still articles came out about how it’s our “revolutionary duty” to go to these events. Yet having agitated, outreached, disrupted, wildcatted before, I am not excited about doing more work for Liberals who mostly refuse to deepen their analysis beyond their Team and their long failed strategy of voting and electing within a capitalist hierarchy. I was not seduced by the “solidarity of women” narrative and I really had to look at why.
- I think it’s incorrect to presume that people who no longer appreciate liberal mass marches as “entry point” are not sufficiently “outreaching liberalism” (reliance on state violence/government/ established political process and capitalism to regulate itself) when we are literally surrounded by folks who support the state and capitalism everyday.
- As a radicalizing youth I was told it was my job to agitate liberalism and that was a central strategy towards inciting revolutionary energy and I did that over and over and over again only to walk away with trauma, enemies, burnt out and feeling used by coalition-type efforts.
- I think we compromise too much. I do not have to support mass marches that do not diverge from the currently constructed mass thinking.
I think we should care as much about our comrades as we do the imagined people to be outreached at these events. This means not shaming our people for not digging these events. This means crafting willful and intentional strategies about how to engage these events rather than just saying “show up”, “it’s our job” or “shut up or put up” without having support in place or when we critique without attending. I am not knocking rad participation in these events, but just putting forward that liberals are not entitled to it. And I know that personally, I need more than “let’s go” because I’m not going to a pro-government march without agitating it, and that takes planning! Otherwise, I wish people much deeper vats of empathy than I currently have reserved, endless patience, reduced repression from the people you outreach. I wish wholeness and mutual aid to be returned to you.
For those looking at options for HOW to participate in these spaces hostile to actual transformative change, I offer Ways to Deal with Management of Struggle and Democrat Cooptation in these large unity marches:
You could go to organizing meetings to fight for inclusion and push tactics, organize with an affinity group to hold your own space or take direct action, show up anyway and create space within the larger space (which provides contrast). Create counter-media; say fuck that and create a separate action entirely; wildcat march (split off and do your own creative thing). Spark an assembly, theater of the oppressed, distribute counter-propaganda, organize pop-up actions within the larger event, and organize a contingent or bloc with your own flavor and goals. Disrupt it, shut it down, rush the stage (with planning cause that’s basically direct action if they work with the cops) etc.
The potential is really endless. But please don’t feel pressured to run to every site of liberal mass unity because it could potentially be *more*. These spaces are often hostile or dangerous toward radicals and noncompliant agitators. Also, trends of mass and popularization tend to build themselves from the cooptation of radical energies and practices while erasing the origin stories of these movements. Often this produces shallow and gutless policy reforms to be used by mainstream platforms. This results in our having to struggle against both intersecting oppression and cooptation/erasure/opportunism simultaneously. Without deep and wide networks of support built up for our own autonomy, survival and resilience, this can be incredibly draining.
Movements, like each of us, grow and evolve through asking questions, self criticism, practice, reflection, action, intention etc. Movements grow with criticism, because the depth of oppression is so extensive and movements need to engage that reality. Just like every time a celebrity speaks on another struggle expecting only gratitude and not… you know… people speaking up on what was left out/erased/mis-framed/perpetuated; similarly, the liberal is also going to take positions that will not just be addressed with gratitude as so many have been struggling against oppression and learned liberalism (devotion to state violence and authority) for so long.
If a welcome is needed, then it must be a welcome to the practice of question, action, reflection, and critical process of resistance.
*Shout out to the comrade for encouragement and editing*
EXDYSTOPIA 