Building A Full Struggle: Against Capitalism, Against Hierarchy (2010)

From Pink and Black Attack #5

Capitalism sets up certain groups and what it creates a set of criteria about what it means to look like and be part of different social groups. Based on this, ideas are formed about people and relations stem from this. We need to create different ways of viewing each other and breaking out of these constraining stereotypes. However, while we start and continue to identify and relate to each other differently, all of us need to understand that no matter how our identify ourselves and start to relate to each other differently that we still live under capitalism and we are still treated differently according to how we are viewed by the system. In order to overcome capitalist relations we need to relate across differences but not devalue the oppression people face in capitalism. To fight capitalism and hierarchical oppression we must identify ourselves and start to relate in new ways. Part of the movement to do this focuses on the labels we use and reclaiming them. For example, folks self identify as queer, dyke and gay. Queer is a political title that allows people to reclaim an identity and form a community around shared values and building toward relations between people that are outside of capitalist thought and not commoditized.

We must transform the way queer communities talk about ourselves and how oppression against our communities is framed by the heterosexual majority. Using Homophobia and Transphobia makes it seem like there is such a thing as a phobia of these groups, which isn’t the case. They are oppressed groups under a capitalist and hierarchical society. Both of these ideologies go hand in hand with all other oppressed groups and should be called out as Heterosexism and Cissexism. If we can start to call out Heterosexism and Cissexism as they are it will help towards developing new ways of interacting with each other and develop a language we can use to work with others in a capitalist system to end these oppressions and the idea that these oppressions are a phobia.

Movements with half-analysis end up harming the very groups they are claiming to help. In this way any queer and womyn’s movement that doesn’t address the roots of patriarchy is, by default, oppression for certain womyn and queer communities. The whole cycle of capitalism and colonialism needs to be addressed for a queer movement to gain any ground. This is a large project, so each group’s form of fighting patriarchal capitalism will be much different. The reconnecting of producing and consuming are vital to the developing of a global understanding of the reality of queer and womyn’s lives that stem from these myths of capitalism.
By laying out these ideas I am attempting to prove that if we try to move forward without a full analysis we end up harming ourselves and reinforcing the things that we claim to be fighting.

Without a heterosexism analysis one can’t fight sexism, without a gender analysis, one can’t fight racism, without a race analysis one can’t fight sexism or heterosexism and without all of these one will not be able to fight classism or capitalism.