Reading: Quiet Rumours (Dark Star Collective) / Mujeres Creando (Bolivian Anarcha-Feminist Street Activists), An Interview with Mujeres Creando, An The Creative Force of Bolivian Debtors To contextualise: How Nonviolence Protects the State related tags: #HNvPtS
Mujeres Creando
“We are here because nobody is listening to us. These people are showing the typical hard-heartedness of bankers. We are here because we cannot pay our debts.” Their words echoed loudly from their fifth floor position, accompanied by insults and songs directed against the bankers.
Peter, like men before him, doesn't use this kind of... contextualisation to people's actions.
For three months thousands of debtors have been coming to La Paz from all parts of Bolivia to stage daily protests. These had pacifist beginnings but later became more radical, going as far as attempting to burn banks. During the conflict, because of the misery and desperation surrounding them, more than six debtors have committed suicide. Many have been forced to give up all their belongings and live in the street. Meanwhile, the government favors the rich by pardoning their debts and granting them immense sums of money.
He also doesn't engage with this, when it would actually help is point. It's rather strange that the more interesting parts of this that exist are the parts he skipped over.
An Interview with Mujeres Creando
Mujeres Creando is a “craziness” started by three women (Julieta Paredes, Maria Galindo and Monica Mendoza) from the arrogant, homophobic and totalitarian Left of Bolivia during the ‘80s, where heterosexuality was still the model and feminism was understood to be divisive. It’s not really a new design in a society such as ours. So we had already been developing this kind of criticism. The other part of our criticism of the Left is toward what has been a constructed social practice; that is, it was unethical, dishonest and it had a double morality.
He quotes this part but doesn't engage with it in any capacity allows for a proper contextualisation. This happens when people discuss well-known women's groups. We get this kind of lip-service statement that skips over what that contextualisation means. Here's Peter before he quotes Julieta Paredes (Mujeres Creando) and Sylvia Rivera (and then just lists a bunch of examples of women's groups and individual women):
Whether militant or pacifist, nearly every tactical or strategic discussion I have participated in was attended and dominated overwhelmingly by men. Rather than claim that women and transgender people are somehow unable to participate in a broad spectrum of tactical options (or even discuss them), we would do well to recall the voices of those who have fought-violently, defiantly, effectively — as revolutionaries.
And a lot of it reads as if he's just copy-pasting shit without analysing it.
Like, c'mon. We all know we should listen to women and trans people (basically, listen to people experiencing the shit you're talking about and be fucking diverse about it). We didn't need that shit said in 2008, and we don't need it said now either. We fucking know.
So why not analyse why it is that it still happens? Why not point out how women are often forced to drop out of anarchist groups and start their own? Because that shit's more than just nonviolence protecting the state (and also that analysis would help here).
It's like when people talk about the Mujeres Libres and gloss over why they started and why shit like that feels like it's still needed. There's no analysis of why that separatism feels like a requirement to be heard and to do the things you need to do to survive. Never. Not here, not fucking anywhere.
I can make my own list. We've had lists for decades, even before Peter wrote his shit book. He could at least look at the examples and analyse them, but he doesn't. He only does it in other chapters (and not great there, either... but at least he does it).
To be a feminist in our society means to fight against neoliberalism and its ideology; for us, being a feminist means denouncing racism, machismo/sexism (in the Left and within anarchism, as well as feminine sexism), homophobia, domestic violence, etc. It means denouncing the sexist, bureaucratized, technocratic women of this generation (for us, those women that have fallen into neoliberalism and are administrators of the murderous politics of the World Bank, IMF, etc.) Here’s the difference between us and them: they use power and are within the system, and therefore they always control the forces (military, economic, social, political) against those who oppose what they say.
Here's another point that would've been able to synthesise all of these shit chapters into one coherent piece. Julieta Paredes clearly states the interconnections between them all, that there is no feminism if we're not fighting neoliberalism, racism, etc.
The book could've been an essay, and it would've done a better job at discussing most things if he didn't just turn it into a fucking list and tried to copy Ward Churchill. I don't even know why Churchill likes this book; it's practically his essay word-for-word with random and somewhat meaningless additions.
Women have sympathy as well as fear. The sexist women are much more stubborn and violent than macho men. These men are careful about having sex with us; they’re afraid, it’s some kind of complex… but in the end they have a certain kind of respect toward us because we have been fighting for ten or eleven years. At first, most women have sympathy, and later they’re afraid because it’s a demanding and radical proposal, but that’s the only way to build a place where everything is not superficial and diluted. And the men that sympathize with us follow us if they’re interested in everything, but they keep wanting us to be like mothers, feeding them; they’re a little lazy because they don’t want to accept the challenge of making their own group.
This is a single paragraph and is a better analysis (not perfect, but better) than anything Peter attempted to regurgitate about how some feminists are pacifists and want a pacifist feminism.
It would've provided him a template for the kinds of discussions that we're already having, especially if he wanted to introduce it to the machismo of his audience (but I don't think he cared, tbh—he'd rather quote reactionary aspects of bell hooks's unevidenced self-help nonsense).
Whenever we’ve gone out to do graffiti, we have been afraid, and we’re always afraid. But we’ve thought about our right to do it… Coca-Cola pays and paints, Repsol pays and paints, so why can’t we paint without paying? The problem isn’t that the walls are painted, the problem is that it’s not paid for. If we must pay for public space, then it’s a big contradiction in democracy. What’s public and what’s private?
Streets are public space, the whole city’s courtyard, not a jail hallway, where you go from the jail of your house to the jail of your office job… if it’s public, then everybody can use it. But if you pay for public space it becomes private. Public space doesn’t exist. Let’s start this discussion.
What’s dirty? What’s clean? “You’re making my walls dirty!” Oh, so when Coca-Cola contracts a painter, it doesn’t make the wall dirty? That’s an aesthetic concept. It seems to me that it has made the wall dirty in a disgusting way. And what we have done, our graffiti, that’s beautiful.
This is just a good reminder.
The Creative Force of Bolivian Debtors
From table to table, I distributed our leaflet, scolding, shouting and pestering them. I described the terror of children when lawyers brought eviction orders. I said it was impossible to extract another cent from the debtors. I called the bankers inhumane bloodsuckers.
What’s the point of such direct action? It’s fun. Insolence and mockery are indispensable for our movement. Without us, the luncheon would have been a warm reception for the superintendent. With us inside, the event became scandalous, shameful and profoundly unpleasant.
This essay is also in Quiet Rumours, and Peter noticeably ignores much of what they do and say here. Interesting.
We shouted but, despite cowardly claims to the contrary by the bankers and their columnist friends, we didn’t attack or even insult them. We are humane, and we know that social change comes not from hate or violence, but from hope and creativity.
I disagree with this line, but I think it's probably because they say this that he ignored this essay... despite the fact that he claims we have to deal with sexism without violence. Racism can be dealt with violence, statism can be dealt with violence, violence makes a movement effective...
... but sexism? No. Sexism probably not, Peter says:
From another angle, nonviolence seems well-suited to dealing with patriarchy. After all, the abolition of patriarchy in particular requires forms of resistance that emphasize healing and reconciliation.
There's also the implication that it will be one of the few systemic problems that we have to deal with individually and that we can't really fight against people who hold power:
Because the distribution of power within patriarchy is much more diffused than within the state or capitalism (for example, a male general who also sits on the advisory board of a major corporation holds significant power within the state and capitalism, but does not derive much more power specifically from patriarchy than any other male, except perhaps as a role model of manliness), fighting against power holders or those most responsible plays a much smaller role. Instead, people must build a culture that allows everyone to self-identify in terms of gender and that supports us as we build healthy relationships and heal from generations of violence and trauma.
Which isn't what most of the essays in this collection state. Even the ones I find troubling are far more incendiary than he is.