Reading: Quiet Rumours (Dark Star Collective) / Foreword (Dark Star), Introduction (Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz), Why Anarcha-Feminism (RAG) To contextualise: How Nonviolence Protects the State related tags: #HNvPtS
The women’s workshop began with a coherent supportive discussion in which we tried to clarify the links between our anarchism and our feminism. On the whole we were in agreement on the need both for an autonomous women’s movement and to develop feminism within the Anarchist movement. These feelings were not shared by some of the men in the conference who saw no evidence of sexism in the anarchist movement and attached little importance to patriarchal oppression. At times throughout the conference women were belittled and even insulted, and their ideas trivialised—often by men who claimed to be ‘insulted’ by our allegations of sexism...
The foreword includes this quote (in a bigger chunk of quote) that comes from the report from Zero No 5 Feb/March 78. They use this to discuss the ways in which anarcha-feminism was not welcomed into the movement at large.
I'm not sure if the foreword was part of the original text (I can only access an expanded edition from 2012), but I have no reason to believe it wasn't. Had Peter read this and actually cared, he'd realise that this is the vein that a lot of critiques of violence takes place. It's not just that it's violence happening; it's the kind of violence and the way it happens.
Introduction (Roxanne Dunar-Ortiz)
With this important collection of and about anarcha-feminists over more than a century, stunning female anarchist heroes are restored to our collective memory. And this collection is only a sampling that should lead readers to other foremothers of anarcha-feminism, such as Lucy Parsons, Mother Jones, Jessie Bross Lloyd, Hortensia Black, Sarah Ames, Lizzie Swank Holmes, Johanna Greie, Kate Austin, Helen Keller, Louise Michel, Azecena Fernandez Barba, and thousands of other historical figures and contemporary feminist anarchists.
Whew, Roxanne has a tendency to say one thing and then shove you in another direction. As I was reading these names, I was like “Sorry, since when was Mother Jones an anarchist?” But then she hits you with the “other historical figures” bit, which sounds weasely. Whatever.
Just like today, men find it difficult or unthinkable to not only give up their male privileges but also their sense of supremacy. Independent radical women often live lonely lives if they expect equality. Our task as anarcha-feminists can be nothing less than changing the world and to do that we need to consult our heroic predecessors.
Hey, another sentence that Peter could've read to contextualise the kinds of critiques he engages with. It's almost like he cherry-picks bits and pieces of anarcha-feminism and ignores everything else. What a surprise!
Why Anarcha-Feminism? (Revolutionary Anarcha-Feminist Group Dublin... or 'RAG')
Sometimes defined as libertarian socialism, the ultimate aim of anarchism is total democracy—for each person to have a direct say in issues that affect their lives, not rely on government to represent them.
Nah. That's not what democracy means. Democracy and anarchism cannot happen at the same time, and it's because of the “rule by the people” aspect of democracy. There are better ways to define anarchism, but this ain't it (and wasn't it, either).
Anarchists are too happy to cling to democracy despite the fact that whatever form it's taken in our history, it has never served everyone. And can't.
This requires the destruction of state, hierarchy and class society, and the construction of non-hierarchical bottom-up systems of organisations such as local councils and unions to replace these.
And if people in local councils don't want to participate? And what's up with this thing about the persistence of unions? What kind of unions? Workers' unions? And have we thought about what that means for the world we'd be living in? Like, shouldn't we be anti-work?
Anarchism also suffers from negative connotations, for example the misassociation with chaos and violence.
I think there are two things that we've missed. First is the redefining of chaos. People have been taught so much that 'order' is necessary that they believe that 'chaos' isn't acceptable. I think we need to revisit what 'chaos' means and how not everything that is 'chaotic' is inherently bad. (I also think we need to point to how the people defining us as chaotic are more involved with creating negative chaos; the democratic institutions we live under enforce multiple kinds of negative chaose through their violence.)
Also, I wonder why Peter didn't use RAG's essay as an example of discussions around violence. Hmm...
Although there is some acceptance by wealthy capitalist countries of difference with regard to gender and sexuality, ultimately it is acceptable only as a lifestyle choice, not as a revolutionary force, which it should ultimately be. The destruction of the systems of capitalism, state and patriarchy would lead to an explosion in different ways of being—sexualities, gender identities, family structures, etc.
Yep, yep. This book should, at least, have some good lines and better takes than any of the other anarchist nonsense I've been reading recently.