anarcha adventures

I did most of my feminist reading when I was much younger, so I don’t tend to reference very much. A lot of what I have to say you will find in some books. Though there will be some things that can only be understood through experience, and talking in personal terms about experience. So I tend to personalise my feminism - afterall, it is born out of my direct experiences with the world. I am what you’d call a radical feminist. I believe that any feminist analysis and action must go to the root cause of womens’ oppression, and I believe that root cause is a system of relationships which privilege men and maleness. I call this system patriarchy. However, patriarchy is just one of a number of systems of domination that we live with on a daily basis - the money system, the boss system and the extraction of value system are also instrumental in exploiting women.

Terms

I’m going to talk about 2 concepts "women as women" and "maleness". When I say "women as women", I mean women are affected by something because they are indellibly marked as women - not because of other incidental factors, such as them being poor, or a worker, or lesbian or asian etc. When I say "malesness", I’m talking about those features of maleness that tend to define the category "man". I’m talking about those features of humanity that have been claimed in the collective consciousness as male - aggression / assertiveness, sexual drive, emotional helplessness, intellectuality, physicality, being capable of action, being capable of "making hard choices" and enforcing power upon others. (Just think of Jack Nicholson and Bruce Willis).

Feminism and Anarcha

Anarchist feminism is a linguistic redundancy. Anarchists are againsts *all* forms of domination, even those that dominate women. Anarchists should already be feminists, right? Wrong. The redundancy extends only as far as language and theory. In practice, anarchists need not be feminist, or anti-racist, or ecologically conscious. Anarcha-feminism puts the emphasis of anarchism on the experience of women within partiarchy.

Feminism and men

Anarcha-feminism is about organising to combat patriarchy (a relationship of domination). Anarchism is about organising to free ourselves from relationships of domination. The 2 should mesh well, but I think there is a suspicion of feminism as Patriarchy is a system of relationships that do privilege Maleness, meaning male attributes, attitudes, and men (both biological males and women acting in ‘male’ ways). I think that there is some confusion surrounding feminist analysis between men and Maleness. I need to make it explicit that when I talk about patriarchy benefiting ‘men’ or ‘maleness’, I am not talking about all men, nor all aspects of maleness. Nor am I trying to say that all men are to blame for the conscious creation and propagation of patriarchy, though some are clearly culpable. Also, I am not suggesting that patriarchy leads all men to a trouble-free existence. It does not. Many men live emotionally frustrated lives within patrarchy. But, they are more often offered the material rewards capital promises to those who play the domination game. We are living in a complex society.

In the Australia of the 1940s, you could confidently say that women were housewives and men went to work. Today, that can’t be said. Women line up to become board members, men take time off work to raise children. The gendered world is complicated by diversity upon diversity, and doesn’t fit neatly into a homogenous generalisations of the past. But diversity does not eliminate patriarchy. It merely complicates it.

The strength of patriarchy lies in creation of an *other*. To succeed, the other must fail. It is traditionally women who play the role of the other, but even when the sex roles are reversed, the game remains the same. The (male or female) patriarch gains power by dominating the others. Its easy to see how capitalist exploitation of workers gels nicely with patriarchal exploitation of a gendered other. Women and men still play the roles that sustain patriarchy. Women can rise to power, but to do so, they must inhabit familiar roles that enable them to succeed inside patriarchal structures. The Mother, the emasculating bitch, the Sexual Witch, and the Power Wife Behind The Throne are some examples of the roles women play to gain power in a patriarchal world.

They might also play male roles - the Benevolent Dictator, the Monster Father, the Hardnosed Agent, the Seducer, the Affable Salesman. It doesn’t matter what sex organ lies behind the veil, while these roles exist, patriarchy is at work.

About patriarchy

Divide and conquer. Patriarchy isn’t an intelligently designed system. It is an evolved set of behaviours, and it is still evolving. Patriarchy will cope with diversity - men acting as women, women acting as men. Patriarchy has already coped with and co-opted the supposed ‘threat’ of homosexuality. The ‘pink dollar’, the Petshop Boys, and the Mardi Gras show perfectly well that capitalism can swallow movements of difference and resistance. It doesn’t matter at all who it is that does the dishes WHILE THE ROLES EXIST AT ALL, WE ARE OPPRESSED BY THEM.

What do I want to say here? Can I talk about the failure of feminist organising

I ran into Stephen, a mate/comrade yesterday. We asked how each other was going, and what we’re up to. He said something funny: "I’ve always considered myself a sophisitcaed feral". And that brought up a conversation about how much we’ve changed (or not) in the last year. I said that I’d moved into a female house-hold, got a cat, started collecting greaywater and gardening… a year ago I would’ve been cynical about how "hippy" that is.

Yeah, what a problem that cynicism can be. Stephen said how ridiculous it is that some anarchists will dismiss anyone who showers, or isn’t queer, or actually buys clothes, while others get dangerous saying "oh worm farming is lifestylist, we just chuck our waste in the garbage".

I am a bit sick of this pandering to staid stereotypical mages of anarchy… the workerists can’t talk to the lifestylists - but why, exactly? What we need most is unity, but we also want to preserve individuality.

Its the old anarchist connundrum. We are strongest in community, but we are divisible because the individual is the basic unit.

Someone recently called on my tolerance for a comrade "not like us" who was supposedly "more workerist" than "us". Well, leaving aside my doubt that said comrade was at all workerist, I can only answer that I have aklways been workerist. But I am also a lifestylist too.

You see, I won’t wait. Yet I won’t live in denial either. Its dialectical - in striving for an ideal, we must admit its ideality and therefore inability to be fully realised in materiality. But we don’t stop striving! 

I once wrote: "we are the people who will fight for revolution even though the benefits will not be seen until after we are dead". Those words return now as I think about the failures of my life. But the possibility of death brings such a joy to the thought of living! Living fully, living as free as possible, living for myself and for a future that is not mine.

Plurality, an understanding and handling of complexity, is what makes the anarchist brain strong. So let’s drop these bad labels - they weren’t made with union labour anyway.

Abolishing hierarchy - yo. You can’t say its a bad thing. But there is one kind of hierarchy I’m not keen to get rid of. That is the hierarchy of engagement. Put another way - "no work, no food".

So its just not on, in my opinion, for someone who has put no effort at all into a project to tell you that it must be run in such-and-such a way. That doesn’t mean they aren’t welcome to join, or aren’t welcome to give an opinion. But its that sense of entitlement that I don’t care for.

An open collective doesn’t mean that its open for anyone to come and direct. It means openness of engagement, and freedom to work to your own rules within the collective, so long as it works.

I do not enjoy it when someone tells me that to do my own thing, I must first do their thing. Or when I make something wonderful, and all I get are criticisms from people who could have contributed, but didn’t. Or when someone says "Oh, we should all do this", gets people excited about something not completely on track, and then quietly issues the disclaimer that they can’t possibly put any work in… meanwhile, we needed them to lead the way a bit because it was their idea that interested everyone.

Gah!

I think equality is a myth, and the longer we persist in that myth, the longer we deny ourselves any possibility of equity.

For now, though, no work, no food. I don’t need another boss, especially not an anarchist boss.  

It is difficult to ask for solidarity and support. At least for me it is.

I am currently going through a tough process, but what makes this one different is that I have to keep reminding myself that this time there are lovely people around who want to help.  And that makes a difference. An amazing difference. Its still tough to come out and ask for support, though. It is still tough to know you are asking for a favour by asking someone to listen to you rant and rave for an hour… even when you’ve gladly done it for them. 

It is scary, removing all those layers of alone-ness! 

http://sallydarity.livejournal.com/5771.html

NSW Minerals Council attempts to silence critics

A satirical website created by climate action group Rising Tide
Newcastle has twice been shut down this fortnight by powerful coal
industry lobby group, the NSW Minerals Council.

The website was conceived as a response to the Minerals Council’s “Life.
Brought to you by Mining” advertising campaign. The Minerals Council
campaign, which argues that mining is inextricable from modern luxury
can be viewed at www.nswmining.com.au. Rising Tide members created a
parody website at www.miningnsw.com.au in order to present the other
side of the story and address the damage wrought by mining to the local
and global environment and to the local community.

The parody website has twice been shut down following complaint by the
Minerals Council that the site breached copyright law. That claim is
hotly contested by the authors of the website, Rising Tide Newcastle,
who believe that the coal industry lobby group is simply trying to
silence growing public disquiet about the contribution of the export
coal industry to climate change.

Steve Phillips, spokesperson for Rising Tide Newcastle said, “The coal
export industry constitutes NSW’s biggest single contribution to global
climate change. There is also growing public awareness of the terrible
impacts of coal mining on biodiversity, water and air quality. The
Minerals Council want people to know that luxury is dependent on mining:
All we want is for the public to be fully informed about the
consequences of that luxury, and to realise that while we can have jobs
without coal, and we can have energy without coal, we cannot have a coal
industry without climate change.”

Rising Tide has now moved the site to an off-shore host in order that
the information contained within it can remain in the public domain.

The website is officially relaunched as of today.

“The Minerals Council is abusing legal process to ensure that its
public-relations spin is unquestioned and that community criticism of
its methods or message is quashed as quickly as possible” said Ned
Haughton, the site’s graphical designer.

Mr. Phillips continued, "We have issued a counter-notice rejecting the
Minerals Council’s spurious claims. The Minerals Council now has ten
days in which to take the matter further."

“The Minerals Council say they want a “balanced debate” on the impacts
of coal mining on local, regional, and global environments – we welcome
that wholeheartedly. Their rhetoric however, is sharply at odds with
their attempts to silence legitimate criticism from community groups.”

Please see the following page for background information on this case.

For more information:
Ned Haughton on 0417 484 735
Steve Phillips on 0437 275 119.

Background

On February 19th this year, the NSW Minerals Council (NSWMC) launched an
expensive public relations campaign with the slogan “Life: Brought to
you by mining.” The campaign includes billboards, television, and
newspaper advertisements, and the website www.nswmining.com.au

Shortly after the launch of the NSWMC website, Rising Tide Newcastle
(RTN)set up a satirical and critical website at www.miningnsw.com.au.
This website was a mirror image of the NSWMC website, except that the
text was different, describing the negative social and environmental
effects of the mining industry.

The hosts of the RTN website were contacted by NSWMC lawyers within 24
hours of the launch of the site. The NSWMC lawyers abused a clause of
the Commonwealth Copyright Regulations to forced the website hosts to
remove the site. RTN created the original website as a satirical
imitation of the NSWMC site, with rewritten commentary. While this was
most probably legal under the Copyright Act’s Fair Dealing clause as a
parody, the hosts were legally required to remove the site pending a
response to the Minerals Council’s claim of copyright infringement,
which did not specify the articles of alleged copyright.

RTN then completely re-made the site, with original layout and images
that were either original or used with permission, in order to remove
all possibility of copyright infringement. The NSWMC lawyers
nevertheless contacted the new website hosts within 24 hours, with a
similar claim letter, and again had the site removed under Regulation
20J of the Copyright Regulations.

While the site had not contravened any copyright laws, as the lawyers
for the NSWMC may well have known, the host was again legally obliged to
remove the site.

RTN have submitted a counter-notice, rejecting the allegations of the
NSWMC. The NSWMC now have a 10 period in which they can take the matter
further, which would require taking RTN to court over the incident.

In the meantime, the RTN website has been relaunched with an offshore
host. International copyright law does not have the same automatic
take-down clause of Australian copyright law.

Basta, enough.

I’m leaving Jura. Hey, I may well return at some point. But for now, I’m freeeeeeeeee!

Why am I leaving? Its that ofld cestnut: Patriarchy again. Or will we call it "interpersonal dynamics"? I’m a bit sick of being undermined, however subtly. I’m a bit sick of not being thanked and given my due by one particular member of the collective, who nonetheless, relies heavily on my work. I’m a bit sick of having every achievement of mine first derided, then appropriated out from under me by this same person.

I’m a bit sick of having other people think I’m a bit loopy - because it doesn’t happen to them.

I’m a bit sick of the passive-agression. I’m a bit sick of having my natural agressiveness and assertiveness stifled because it is uncomradely and unseemly to be pissed off.

Don’t get me wrong: I love Jura. I love the space, I love what I and others have acieved there. I love what the website has become. I hope other people can do some good there. But I can’t handle the hierarchies. I can’t handle the passive-agressive shit. I can’t handle being treated badly anymore. I can’t handle the hypocrisy with regards Rebel Worker. I can’t handle the mistrust of other anarchists (with better track records than Rebel Worker). I can’t handle the covert sexism. I can’t handle the lack of politics. I can’t handle the lack of organisation and process which entrenches that informal authority.

Let’s face it: Jura isn’t the only game in town. I can be stimulated, not abused, while I do my lovely revolutionary work.

Paint it how you want to, S, I am leaving because of you.