by Stacy aka sallydarity published in Queering Anarchism, AK Press, 2012
Look how your
children grow up. Taught from their earliest infancy to curb their
love natures–restrained at every turn! …Little girls must not be
tomboyish, must not go barefoot, must not climb trees, must not learn
to swim… Little boys are laughed at as effeminate, silly girl-boys
if they want to make patchwork or play with a doll. Then when they
grow up, “Oh! Men don’t care for home or children as women do!”
Why should they, when the deliberate effort of your life has been to
crush that nature out of them. “Women can’t rough it like men.”
Train any animal, or any plant, as you train your girls, and it won’t
be able to rough it either. Now will somebody tell me why either sex
should hold a corner on athletic sports? Why any child should not
have free use of its limbs?
These are the
effects of your purity standard, your marriage law. This is your
work—look at it!
—Voltairine de
Cleyre, Sex Slavery (1890)
What makes me
transgendered is that my birth sex—which is female—appears to be
in social contradiction to my gender expression—which is read as
masculine. I defend my right to that social contradiction. In fact, I
want to live long enough to hear people ask, “What made me think
that was a contradiction in the first place?”
—Leslie Feinberg,
Trans Liberation (1998)
Anarcha-feminists
and anarchists in general need to have some new discussions about
gender. Feminism has had an ongoing internal argument regarding
minimizing or maximizing the meanings of the differences between men
and women. Now we are seeing the influence on many anarchists and
feminists of newer ideas about gender (i.e. queer theory) that
question the idea of a concrete concept of “woman” and “man,”
even “male” and “female.” Yet some radical or anarchist
feminists and lesbians remain stubborn about questioning the
usefulness of a category called “woman.” Meanwhile, identity
politics have come under fire in anarchist circles, often
characterizing identity-oriented projects as homogenous (represented
only by each project’s most vocal proponents), and dismissing the
importance of focusing on opposition to gender, sexuality, class, or
racial oppressions.i
Yet that which is called identity politics often does involve
essentialism, the idea that there are essential differences between
two groups. In the case of feminism, those who most often get to
speak for the “movement” are white with class privilege, and
regularly marginalize the experiences of women of color and poor
women, and exclude transgender/transsexual people when they organize
around a universal concept of women. The standard radical
feminist characterization of the way gender oppression (“patriarchy”)
works legitimizes women’s exercise of domination (through
capitalism or white supremacy, etc), and makes men’s domination
seem natural and inevitable. If the criticism of identity politics is
that it hardens identities, a queer theory-influenced
anarcha-feminism then could be outside of this criticism, and indeed
may share it, while still emphasizing the real effects of the
group-based oppression.
We’ve been made
to believe that human subordination under the law is natural—that
we need to be governed. The legitimacy of imposed government is also
emphasized through the seemingly natural differences between people.
The differences between people have been made significant so as to
promote divisions based on domination and subordination. In doing so,
those differences must be(come) clear-cut—a border must be drawn
between the two, creating a dichotomy so there is no confusion about
who is where in the hierarchy. This takes time, centuries even, to
really harden our perception of human nature. It takes laws—but
worse—it takes discipline, primarily in the form of terror and
violence, to pound a sense of hierarchy into us. Despite the
possibility that the state and capitalism may be able to function
without these imposed borders, the borders must still be destroyed.
To achieve
liberation, we must reject the binary gender system, which divides us
into two mutually exclusive categories. This gender system not only
oppresses in the form of a hierarchy of categories, but also in terms
of gender expression—holding up masculinity as superior and
policing each person into their gender box. The significance of
gender/sex differences must be exposed as a political construct, one
which has been used to form a cross-class alliance among men, and to
make heterosexuality and women’s roles and exploitation in (and
outside) the home and family to seem natural.
In effect, we are
imprisoned by a gender binary, though a sort of freedom may be
accessible to some, and if we don’t behave appropriately there are
plenty of prison guards to attempt to put us in our place. Clearly
those who do not fit into these gender boxes are seen as a threat and
are disciplined through threats or acts of discrimination, verbal
abuse, harassment, and/or violence. I argue not that gender
transgression or deviance is in itself revolutionary, but that we
must transcend or destroy the gender-based power relations, as part
of a sort of decolonizing. It is crucial that feminists not reinforce
these gender boxes, but also that anarchists not minimize our need to
pull these issues from the margins. The existence of these identities
created by power relations should not be denied, but instead should
be examined and opposed in the context of power.
Whereas sex is
usually defined by biological differences, gender has been used to
describe the prescribed social differences between female and male,
defining us as feminine or masculine, traits we can generally agree
are not universal throughout time or place. One point of contention
among some feminists and gender-transgressors (not that the two are
mutually exclusive) is the definition of gender. I agree with others
like Kate Bornstein that gender may refer to different concepts:
gender roles, gender identity, etc.ii
For lack of a better term, here I will use the term “gender
stratum” to refer to the hierarchal binary categories of gender. I
argue that what is called “gender identity” is a different aspect
of gender, which is separate from, but related to gender stratum.
“Gender identity,” which I will call “gender inclination”
since identity is problematic here, would have different meaning
without gender stratum, but should not be confused as meaning the
same thing, despite the fact that the two are conflated by many
feminists.
We can probably
agree that gender stratum is an imposed social construct. We could
take it further by questioning whether our concepts of the biological
differences between female and male existed before hierarchy, and
whether they at least have the same significance before Western
culture interpreted the differences we understand today.iii
The possibility that there are really no natural differences between
the sexes—that these sexes don’t exist other than because of
political/social reasons—can be troublesome to nearly anyone. In
many ways, these ideas exist almost exclusively in the realm of
academiaiv
and have little relevance to most people’s everyday lives.
On the other hand,
throughout the time humans have existed, there have been diverse
ideas about the meanings of the physical differences between those
with different organs associated with sex/gender. In considering the
experiences of intersex peoplev
and transgender/transsexual people, it only makes sense that a
gender/sex continuum should be the basis for an understanding of
human nature. Different ideas about gender and sexuality in various
cultures, mostly where untouched by Western civilizationvi,
show us that not only are Western dualistic ideas about gender/sex,
sexuality, and accompanying hierarchy atypical and manipulated to
manage the people, but also that the argument that modern capitalism
accommodates transgressive gender and expressions of sexuality is
beside the point. The transition to capitalism was indeed a main
driving force of the conquest over different forms of gender
expression and sexuality, enforcing a strict gender/sex binary.
The likelihood is
minimal that we could fully understand the origins of the concept of
sex or the beginnings of gender hierarchy, even though this may
provide answers about the origins of hierarchy itself. vii
Whether biological characteristics once had neutral meaning or not,
significance has been increasingly placed on these differences,
creating these sex/gender constructs as part of a hierarchy (sex is
gendered and therefore I use the two terms somewhat interchangeably),
and the construction of the divisions between men and women has been
an ongoing process.
Woman
as a Different Species
“Certainly we can
say that the language of the witch-hunt ‘produced’ the Woman as a
different species…”viii
—Silvia Federici
To understand the
construction of a gender binary and hierarchy, we primarily look at
Europe because of the ways in which, through
colonization/imperialism, Europe violently exported their ideas
throughout the world.ix
Before the witch hunts, European peasant women, having a decent
amount of social power despite sexual division of labor and
Christian-promoted misogyny, were heavily involved in revolts against
feudalism and later, capitalism. It is no coincidence, as Silvia
Federici describes in her book, Caliban and the Witch, that
the witch hunts, which involved the torture and murder of hundreds of
thousands of womenx
mostly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, occurred in
conjunction with the transition to capitalism and the colonization of
the Americas.
Federici also
explains how, over the course of a few centuries, women’s
exploitation, through their unpaid labor in the home, termed
“reproduction” (which includes procreation but is not limited to
it), as well as slave labor in the Americas, had to be constructed as
natural in the setting in which it was in the interest of capitalism
to be viewed as voluntary and contractual. By justifying their
exploitation, the dehumanization of unpaid laborers (women) allowed
Capitalists to hide/legitimize the reality that people didn’t have
a choice in the matter.
The witch hunts
were not only counter-insurgency measures. Accusations of witchcraft
and prostitution were often made to punish theft and attacks (real or
invented) on property, which increased at this time due to land
privatizationxi
and the exclusion of women from receiving wages. Especially important
was capitalism’s new demand for workers (partly due to population
crisis), leading to the construction of monogamous heterosexualxii
marriage as natural through the forced dependence of women on men,
and criminalization of sexual acts that were not for the purpose of
reproduction. Peasant women increasingly began to get punished for
crimes such as abortion and contraception, and in the case of
witches, also for allegedly causing infertility and impotence in men,
in addition to castration and killing children. Queer peasants were
disciplined by means of terror in Europe in particular (this is where
the term “faggot,” meaning kindling, came fromxiii),
but also during colonization of the Americas as homosexuals and
two-spirit people were killed, and the continuation of these
identities/practices were averted or forced underground.xiv
Federici stresses
that while some peasant men participated in and even encouraged these
actions against women, and while the church played a strong role, the
greater part of the campaign of terror against women would not have
been possible without the role and interest of the state.xv
The ruling class’s interest in promoting the differences between
the sexes is clear, and they accomplished this task by punishing
certain behaviors and using terror to discipline women.xvi
Early on, European women were defined as unruly, mentally weak, and
in need of being controlled. The witch hunts served to reinforce
this, but at the same time to discipline women into a new
“nature”—that of the docile, moral, and motherly (yet still in
need of being controlled).xvii
It is worth noting that while capitalism played a strong role in
shaping what became understood as the nature of women, there are
obvious examples of how those in power in any economic circumstances
(not just capitalism) seek to justify their rule by different means,
often by controlling sexuality and enforcing gender norms. So while
the concept of women and men as two different groups existed prior to
the witch hunts, there was now a new significance on the difference
between the two, functioning as a clear binary.
The notion of
inflexible divisions between humans had to be beaten into all the
people as a whole, thus creating profound alienation between men and
women, and marginalization, if not extermination, of those who
deviate from the norms. In addition, to compel the people to work
under the conditions that capitalism requires involved a sort of
conquest involving a new perception of the body as a machine or tool,
and through the criminalization of various communal activities and
non-productive sexuality.xviii
Workers’ subordination and women’s further subordination were
made to seem natural. Even though there seems to be no
anti-capitalist historical study of the shaping of men, this clearly
was part of the witch-hunts, the transition to capitalism, and
colonialism as well.
In discussing human
nature, we need to be critical of the ways that certain concepts such
as hierarchy, or a need for hierarchy, are made to seem natural.xix
For instance, Andrea Smith wrote, “…Heteropatriarchyxx
is essential for the building of US empire. Patriarchy is the logic
that naturalizes social hierarchy. Just as men are supposed to
naturally dominate women on the basis of biology, so too should the
social elites of a society naturally rule everyone else through the
nation-state form of governance that is constructed through
domination, violence and control.”xxi
In a speech, she said, “This is why in the history of Indian
genocide the first task that colonizers took on was to integrate
patriarchy into native communities. The primary tool used by
colonists is sexual violence. What sexual violence does for
colonialism and white supremacy is render women of color inherently
rape-able, our lands inherently invadable, and our resources
inherently extractable.”xxii
An example of
colonization of the “New World” being accomplished partly through
the promotion of sexual divisionsxxiii
is the French Jesuits’ interactions with natives in Canada (called
the Montagnais-Naskapi) with no sense of private property, authority,
or male superiority, which according to the French, had to change if
they were to become reliable trade partners. The French taught
Naskapi men to discipline their children, and to “bring ‘their’
women to order.”xxiv
Witch hunts occurred in parts of the Americas (Federici discusses
Mexico and Peru) that demonized all natives and Africans, but often
focused more on the women.xxv
Colonization is an ongoing process which includes patriarchal
indoctrination and sexual violence in Indian Schools.xxvi
Gender
Stratum and Race
The sex/gender
hierarchy is inseparable from race, colonization, and capitalism. For
example, female slaves were treated pretty much the same as male
slaves, up until importing slaves was made illegal, at which time
female slaves were made more often to breed and were increasingly
subject to the sexual violence of white men.xxvii
Aspects of femininity, defined here as culturally/socially dictated
as appropriate for “real” women, were constructed as a
distinguishing mark of class (and race), much like landscaped yards
that demonstrate that the owners need not use their land to grow
food. Women who didn’t have to work were to be unnaturally “weaker,
delicate, dependent, ‘lily-white’, housebound” and therefore
“the making of the white race involved the politicized un-making of
women to fit into ‘white.’”xxviii
Race is also a
political and social construct. Understanding one politico-social
construct can help us better understand another. Bacon’s Rebellion,
which was a more significant one of many rebellions in which European
indentured servants and African slaves joined together, frightened
the state of Virginia into passing a series of laws specifically
outlining the freedoms accessible to Europeans/Christians vs.
Africans. In doing so, they created race. “Slavery was the most
profitable form of labor in colonial Virginia, but racial slavery was
the solution to the threat of servile insurrection and the problem of
how to efficiently and peacefully get the workers—slave and free—to
work… Race emerged from the needs of the Virginia upper class to
craft a docile and productive labor force. But as the benefits of
whiteness became apparent to English laborers, they came to embrace
the system by which privileges were conferred in exchange for
policing slaves.”xxix
While prejudices and ideas about superiority based on differences
existed prior, this invention of whiteness created a new significance
on physical differences that had a particular function to form a
cross-class alliance among white people which still exists today.
The shaping of the
categories of race and sex was part of a longer history of hierarchy.
Additionally, just as the specific era of the witch hunts lasted a
couple centuries, so too was the construction of race an on-going
process, like in the example of the Irish not being included into
whiteness until later. Also, after the civil war, lynching was a
prominent way to terrorize—to discipline—Black people into
submission. “Before lynching could be consolidated as a popularly
accepted institution, however, its savagery and its horrors had to be
convincingly justified. These were the circumstances which spawned
the myth of the Black rapist—for the rape charge turned out to be
the most powerful of several attempts to justify the lynching of
Black people,” wrote Angela Davis. She explains further in her book
Women, Race, & Class, “However irrational the myth may
be, it was not a spontaneous aberration. On the contrary, the myth of
the Black rapist was a distinctly political invention.” This also
contributed to white women’s fear of black men (and to white men’s
fear of their property, women, becoming tarnished), and was part of
the precedent set which began to criminalize people of color, leading
to the high rates of people of color in U.S. prisons today.xxx
Despite there being
major limitations to drawing parallels between race and gender
stratum, the construction of these dichotomies allows us to see
partly how hierarchy functions. Those in power divide the people on
the basis of a physical difference (ignoring exceptions and gray
area) and amplify the significance of those differences through
criminalizationxxxi
and limitations of legal and economic freedoms, as well as through
violence (justified by the alleged transgressions), while affording
the favored group (men/whites) freedom from most repression. This
process functions to make “natural” the divisions and hierarchal
positions of those it involves. A cross-class alliance, rewarded with
privileges, undermines anti-authoritarian resistance and class
solidarity. In the case of women, I should point out that male
privilege includes man’s ability to dominate the women in his
family, which can be seen as more personal while being, in effect,
political.
Gender Liberation
for Everyone
The naming of
political advantages (or “wages”) of whiteness or maleness as
privileges is a problem, however. If the way I described hierarchy’s
functioning is accurate, it would not really be in the interest of
the favored working class group to participate in an alliance with
the rich rulers since that means they will perpetually be ruled and
exploited (this is where the promise of mostly unattainable upward
mobility comes in to reinforce the alliance). White people have a
responsibility to our/themselves to abolish whiteness for these
reasons and to be fully human,xxxii
in addition of course to the responsibility to end racism.
Similar to the case
of white people, when men participate in domination, they do
themselves harm. While folks assigned male at birth who don’t
comfortably fit into their assigned gender box are certainly affected
by gender oppression, the ones who do conform (willingly or not)
would also benefit from undermining the ways gender hierarchy has
been naturalized through the socialization of boys and men. They can
hardly be free, and the relationships they have with others cannot be
fulfilling, as long as emotions are suppressed, competitive
masculinity has to be established, and inequality (if not abuse) must
been maintained with women (and often children as well). Yet, why
would men choose to change if they are consistently told they are
privileged, bell hooks asks.xxxiii
To change means, for one, that men would have to overcome their
training to deny their emotions. Implicating women as well as men in
perpetuating this damage done to males through parenting, hooks
wrote, “Homophobia underlies the fear that allowing boys to feel
will turn them gay.”xxxiv
Whereas “feminism” tends to imply a fight by and for women, it
is, then, also in the interest of men to oppose gender oppression and
homophobia/heteronormativity, rather than perpetuate it. It also
means that feminism, for lack of a better word, must also address the
situation of men.
While it is clear
that men largely benefit from this system while women do not, it
clearly functions by enforcing this gender border along with the
concepts “man” and “woman.” We must not, then, continue to
reinforce these false concepts as binary, essential, stable, and
universal categories. Clearly, even though viewing women as a
socially constructed gender/sex within a hierarchy is useful, caution
must be taken to avoid a sort of essentialism or sense of universal
experience of this oppressed group. Some feminists who see sex/gender
as a hierarchical social construct do not accept any other definition
of gender, which leads to major disagreements over gender identity.
Some might argue
that a realization of gender fluidity rather than a dichotomy would
perhaps accomplish the task of undermining the political construction
of gender/sex categories for the purpose of domination.xxxv
This deserves further examination. If we argue, as some have,xxxvi
that hierarchical binaries like man/woman and white/black are created
to naturalize hierarchy, this implies that a hierarchy existed prior.
Therefore, while it may have been less acceptable to people, this
hierarchy existed nonetheless, so the task is surely not simply to
abolish the binaries/constructs. Yet again, there is only so much we
can know about the origins of the concept of “man” and “woman”
aside from the ways in which they have more recently been made more
significant.
In this argument
for rejecting the binary gender system, it should not be understood
to mean that no one should identify as a man or a woman, much less
that we should vaguely “smash gender” or implement some utopian
androgyny.xxxvii
A truly liberatory position on gender/sex requires self-determination
of gender identity/inclination (including bodily alterations) and
freedom from coercive gender assignment.xxxviii
Everyone’s experiences and sense of identity should be incorporated
into an idea of what gender means. One’s inclination for femininity
(in people assigned male or female at birth) for example,
should not be dismissed or devalued by others who don’t relate to
it. Additionally, most trans people face dangers if they diverge much
from the standard ideas of femininity (and masculinity), and
therefore have to pass by conforming in order to survive (by
maintaining safety and employment), despite critical awareness by
many about gender hierarchy and heterosexism.
That said, we need
to dismantle gender stratum, to separate the power dynamics attached
to gender; in that masculinity often means domination, and
femininity, subordination. Since men are taught to be dominating—that
this is equated with masculinity (being a “real man”)—we need
to make a particular point to change this. Men are denied their
emotions, and as bell hooks writes, “Patriarchy both creates the
rage in boys and then contains it for later use, making it a resource
to exploit later on as boys become men. As a national product, this
rage can be garnered to further imperialism, hatred, and oppression
of women and men globally.”xxxix
At the very least it teaches men in general to be apathetic about the
plight of others. Because it is instilled in men that their nature
requires them to be dominating, we must extract the domination
imperative from what it means to be a man. hooks distinguishes
patriarchal masculinity from masculinity, and this deserves further
consideration. Without the naturalization of a man/woman dichotomy,
masculinity and femininity (gender inclination) and all their various
meanings are either exposed as social only, and/or as more about
individual tendencies of personality and affinity.
It is this
domination that should be opposed, no matter who is doing it or in
what form. No one ought to identify domination as part of who they
are, nor should women excuse their own (or other women’s)
participation in domination just because they believe they cannot be
oppressors. This applies to male privilege, hetero privilege, class
privilege, white privilege, etc., in addition to hierarchies perhaps
inadvertently created by those judging others as not revolutionary,
queer, or gender non-conforming enough.
In the past there
was an expectation that the radical lesbian movement (and before
that, women’s suffrage) would strongly threaten the dominant order.
In fact, it has been viewed as a threat, but as we can see, it has
been defeated, recuperated or co-opted under the larger system of
domination.xl
If much of radical feminism/lesbianism was really the only real
threat to the system,xli
then it served the dominant order to marginalize the particularly
militant tendencies and/or those of women of color, or divert the
movements to re-embrace essentialism, which reinforced the order of
things.
Some radical
feminists were certainly on to something. According to Cellestine
Ware, a black woman activist (1970) who was quoted in bell hooks’
Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, “Radical
feminism…postulates that the domination of one human being by
another is the basic evil in society. Dominance in human
relationships is the target of their opposition.” hooks comments,
“As feminist movement progressed, critiques of the notion of power
as domination and control were submerged as bourgeois activists began
to focus on women overcoming their fear of power (the implication
being that if they wanted social equality with men, they would need
to participate equally in exercising domination and control over
others).”xlii
Attributing
violence and abuse to the nature or necessary political position of
men gives women the opportunity to participate in domination while
insisting that they can do so in a more ethical way (or that they are
by definition incapable of participating in domination). In addition,
this attitude makes male violence seem inevitable and allows us to
avoid critical thinking about systemic/institutional oppressions,
such as the likelihood that capitalism and the state promote rape.xliii
If rape is natural to men, then the survivors (mostly women) can
rationalize that their only recourse is through the state. Yet
prisons and police are not the solution to this problem. In addition,
acknowledging that being a woman, queer, or transgressing gender
boxes, and/or having feminist or anarchist politics does not make one
necessarily incapable of being a perpetrator of abuse and sexual
assault, we must see this as a larger project of addressing issues of
consent. Additionally, uniting around the freedom to choose what will
be done or not done to or with our bodies ties together many people’s
struggles.
As far as identity
politics go, there must be some focus on identity in the sense that
there are very real effects of these unreal constructs. Yet the point
is to understand the gender and race divisions not only to end gender
and race oppression, but to end domination totally—to undermine
these cross-class alliances created in the process of power seeking
to naturalize itself, its law, and its divisions. Certainly
capitalism, with the state, made the divisions between genders and
races politically significant in a way that they never had been
before. This shows that much of the racism and sexism that has
existed in the last few centuries is not innate, not organic, not
grassroots, but rather manufactured. Part of this struggle will be in
exposing the ways in which our beliefs have been shaped in the
interest of power—that many of the things we consider to be natural
are in fact not just man-made, but state-made.
Illuminating the
ways that our oppression is not “natural” can be done partly
through the actual demonstrations and experiences of gender fluidity
and queerness, sometimes referred to with other concepts as “Queer.”
“Queer is…an identity that problematizes the manageable limits of
identity. Queer is a territory of tension, defined against the
dominant narrative of white-hetero-monogamous-patriarchy, but also by
an affinity with all who are marginalized, otherized, and
oppressed.”xliv
In the sense that queer is unstable and destabilizing, it has much potential. Clearly the refusal to participate in privileging political relations would not be co-opted. We know that “LGBTQ” is co-opted just as feminism is, and therefore the potential lies in the ways in which queer is unco-optable. Where identity politics seeks inclusion for its respective group, it chooses participation in domination and reinforces binaries. Would a rejection of inclusion and participation be the antithesis of identity politics, even if it were a politics that focused on a specific group-based oppression?
Gender
transgression alone may or may not succeed at destroying the gender
hierarchy. If it does, it is because it is able to render the binary
meaningless. Yet few are so optimistic about this possibility since
it would probably require a lot of participation and clear intent
because of this co-optability of transgressions of gender and
sexuality by the power structure. However, I argue that binary gender
and compulsory heterosexuality has to be destroyed because they
regulate us all into our gender and sexuality boxes, limiting our
ability to be liberated and to participate in resistance. It is
necessary to come up with new ways of resisting gender
oppression/patriarchy without reinforcing the idea that woman is a
useful category to organize around. Finally, the exposure of
gender/sex as a social construct on which a binary hierarchy was
naturalized and functions through cross-class/race alliances may
activate a clearer general understanding of how this occurs, thereby
allowing white women, for example, to better see how whiteness
functions similarly, crumbling multiple constructs at once. Imagining
new possibilities for gender, race, and power/economic relations is
necessary for liberation.
i
See lilith, “Gender Disobedience: Antifeminism and Insurrectionist
Non-dialogue,”
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Lilith__Gender_Disobedience__Antifeminism_and_Insurrectionist_Non-dialogue.html
(accessed January 28, 2012). In response to Feral Faun/Wolfi
Landstreicher’s “The Ideology of Victimization” and other
texts on gender.
ii
“In hir book, My Gender Workbook,
Kate Bornstein characterizes gender's components as fourfold: gender
assignment, gender role, gender identity, and gender attribution.
Gender assignment is what the doctor calls you at birth, so it can
be written off as a description of sex (Bornstein reserves the word
sex for sex acts so as to circumvent Essentialist argumentation).
Gender role is described as what culture thinks your niche should
be, while gender identity is totally subjective. Gender attribution
refers to how another person might interpret your gender cues.”
Stephe Feldmen, “Components of Gender,”
http://androgyne.0catch.com/components.htm (accessed January 28,
2012).
iii
"Nothing could be less abstract than the idea of a natural
social group, or it never occurs except in the context of an
existing power relationship, and that is the crux of the matter. An
ideology or interpretation of reality which balanced the right of
the oppressors against the nature of the oppressed, each conceivable
only in terms of the other and both belonging to the actual practice
of appropriation, could hardly be described either as reflection
(which presupposes the separateness of the practical and symbolic
levels) or as rationalization, which presupposes not only the same
separateness but also an intellectual ingredient in the exercise of
domination which is not always present in hard fact." Colette
Guillaumin, Racism, Sexism, Power and
Ideology (1995), 79.
iv
Judith Butler wrote in Gender Trouble,
“Can we refer to a ‘given’ sex or a ‘given’ gender without
first inquiring into how sex and/or gender is given, through what
means? And what is ‘sex’ anyway? Is it natural, anatomical,
chromosomal, or hormonal and how is a feminist critic to assess
scientific discourses which purport to establish such ‘facts’
for us? Does sex have a history? Does each sex have a different
history, or histories? Is there a history of how the duality of sex
was established, a genealogy that might expose the binary options as
a variable construction? Are the ostensibly natural facts of sex
discursively produced by various scientific discourses in the
service of other political and social interests? If the immutable
character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called ‘sex’
is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed perhaps it was always
already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between
sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all.” Stevi
Jackson discusses Christine Delphy’s position: “She argues that
rather than the difference between men and women being a
self-evident anatomical fact, recognizing that difference is itself
a social act… It is not enough, she argues, to treat the content
of gender as variable, while assuming that the container (the
category woman or ‘man’) is unchangeable. Rather, we should
treat the container itself as a social product.” Stevi Jackson,
“Theorizing Gender and Sexuality,” in Contemporary
Feminist Theories (1998), 136.
v
“Social construction of biological sex is more than an abstract
observation: it is physical reality that many intersex people go
through. Because society makes no provision for the existence of
people whose anatomical characteristics do not neatly fit into male
or female, they are routinely mutilated by medical professionals and
manipulated into living as their assigned sex…” (Emi Koyama,
TransFeminism) The Intersex Society of North America website states
that the figures for the total number of people whose bodies differ
from standard male or female is one in one hundred births. From
www.isna.org/faq/frequency (accessed January 29, 2012).
vi
“Patriarchy…rests on a gender-binary system; hence it is not a
coincidence that colonizers also targeted indigenous peoples who did
not fit within this binary model. Many Native communities had
multiple genders—some Native scholars are now even arguing that
their communities may not have been gendered at all prior to
colonization—although gender systems among Native communities
varied.” Andrea Smith, “Dismantling Hierarchy, Queering
Society,” Tiqqun Magazine (July/August 2010). From
www.tikkun.org/article.php/july2010smith (accessed February 6, 2012)
vii
I am hesitant to argue what John Zerzan does in the following quote
because addressing its significance prior to the witch hunt and
capitalism is a rather overwhelming task. Yet it is likely
significant: “[Gender] is a cultural categorization and ranking
grounded in a sexual division of labor that may be the single
cultural form of greatest significance. If gender introduces and
legitimates inequality and domination, what could be more important
to put into question?” John Zerzan, “Patriarchy,
Civilization, and the Origins of Gender.” From
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/John_Zerzan__Patriarchy__Civilization__And_The_Origins_Of_Gender.html
(accessed February 6, 2012). While many feminists see gender
hierarchy as the first hierarchy, those materialist feminists who
argue that gender/sex categories were created to naturalize an
already-existing hierarchy might then argue that gender did not
introduce, but did legitimize inequality and domination. Gender
might be the first category-based hierarchy, but may not have been
the first hierarchy. The question is whether that hierarchy was in
any way gendered prior to the attempts at stabilizing the categories
of gender.
viii
Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch
(2004), 192.
ix
I am not arguing here that gender inequality is only a Western
phenomenon. I am arguing that the period of the witch hunt created
new meanings for gender, and these meanings were spread throughout
many parts of the world. It is worth noting that this has influenced
anthropological interpretations of gender as well.
x
The small percentage of those hunted as witches who were men were
usually relatives of women charged with being witches. Silvia
Federici, Caliban and the Witch
(2004), 189.
xi
Ibid., 200.
xii
The terms heterosexual and homosexual were not used until much
later.
xiii
Ibid., 197.
xiv
Ibid., see also Walter Williams, The Spirit
and the Flesh (1986), chapter 7: The
Abominable Sin: The Spanish Campaign against “Sodomy,” and Its
Results in Modern Latin America. Williams describes the motivation
resulting partially from the Spanish attempt to regain control of
their country from the Moors, who were more relaxed about same-sex
relations. Also, the Spanish used the rampant homosexuality in the
“New World” to justify their conquest.
xv
Federici describes one way women’s power in the anti-feudalism
movements was broken down involved the state legalizing rape (of
proletariat women) and prostitution (during a specific time period,
since prostitution was also criminalized for other reasons), making
women’s bodies the new commons in place of the access to land and
other natural resources they were losing. Men were afforded these
privileges to damage the more equal relationships they had with
women. Interestingly, municipal brothels also served the purpose of
addressing the rampant homosexuality of the time. Silvia Federici,
Caliban and the Witch
(2004), 48-49.
xvi
Ibid., 168. There were plenty of skeptics regarding the reality of
witchcraft, but many, like Thomas Hobbes, “approved the
persecution as a means of social control.”
xvii
Ibid., 103.
xviii
Ibid., 136-140.
xix
“Like the social Darwinism that preceded it, sociobiology proceeds
by first projecting the dominant ideas of current society onto
nature (often unconsciously, so that scientists mistakenly consider
the ideas in question as both "normal" and "natural").
Bookchin refers to this as "the subtle projection of
historically conditioned human values" onto nature rather than
"scientific objectivity." Then the theories of nature
produced in this manner are transferred back onto society and
history, being used to "prove" that the principles of
capitalism (hierarchy, authority, competition, etc.) are eternal
laws, which are then appealed to as a justification for the status
quo! What this procedure does accomplish," notes Bookchin, "is
reinforce human social hierarchies by justifying the command of men
and women as innate features of the 'natural order.' Human
domination is thereby transcribed into the genetic code as
biologically immutable." [The Ecology of Freedom, p. 95 and p.
92]” (Their emphasis). An Anarchist FAQ Section A.2, “What does
Anarchism Stand For?,”
http://infoshop.org/page/AnarchistFAQSectionA2 (accessed January 28,
2012).
xx
“By heteropatriarchy, I mean the way our society is fundamentally
based on male dominance—dominance inherently built on a gender
binary system that presumes heterosexuality as a social norm.”
Andrea Smith, “Dismantling Hierarchy, Queering Society”, Tiqqun
Magazine (July/August 2010). From
www.tikkun.org/article.php/july2010smith (accessed February 6, 2012)
xxi
Andrea Smith, “Indigenous Feminism without Apology.” (2006)
http://www.awid.org/eng/Issues-and-Analysis/Library/Indigenous-feminism-without-apology-Decentering-white-feminism.
xxii
US Social Forum 2007, Liberating Gender and Sexuality Plenary,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5crWlrksZs (accessed January 28,
2012).
xxiii
Overall, though, and especially after the first phase of
colonization, men and women were equally accused as
devil-worshippers and treated as such. This was done to justify to
Europe and to the Church specifically that the conquest was a
mission of conversion, not a conquest for riches. Federici, Caliban
and the Witch, 220-21.
xxiv
Ibid., 111.
xxv
The witch hunts in the Americas were “a deliberate strategy used
by authorities to instill terror, destroy collective resistance,
silence entire communities, and turn members against each other. It
was also a strategy of enclosure, which depending on the context,
could be an enclosure of land, bodies or social relations. Above
all, as in Europe, witch-hunting was a means of dehumanization and
as such the paradigmatic form of repression, serving to justify
enslavement and genocide.” Ibid., 220.
xxvi
“Strengthening of this male power [in tribal councils] is
inextricably linked to a long history of colonialism, as well as to
federal government policy and law, such as Indian boarding schools…
The boarding schools’ purpose, for example, was to insert
patriarchy into tribal communities and to socialize children to
believe in patriarchal gender norms.” Renya Ramirez, “Race,
Tribal Nation, and Gender: A Native Feminist Approach to Belonging,”
Meridians Vol. 7, No. 2 (2007), 22-40
xxvii
Angela Davis, Women, Race and Class,
(1981) 5-7.
xxviii
Butch Lee and Red Rover, Night Vision,
(2000) 29.
xxix
Joel Olson, Abolition of White Democracy,
(2004) 37. I would say that “peacefully” is not a good word
here, as Olson elaborates on some of W.E.B. DuBois’ analysis of
this cross-class alliance as ensuring the stability needed to
maintain capitalism “largely through the terrorization and
subordination of the rest of the working class.”
xxx
See Angela Davis, Women, Race and Class,
(1981).
xxxi
In the case of race, criminalization is now used in such a way as to
not seem related to race, even though it clearly targets people of
color at a disproportionate rate. Race-based identity politics,
focusing on inclusion and exceptionalism, tend to overlook the
criminalization of people of color.
xxxii
“…so-called whites must cease to exist as whites in order to
realize themselves as something else…in order to come alive as
workers, or youth, or women, or whatever other identity can induce
them to change from the miserable, petulant, subordinated creatures
they now are into freely associated, fully developed human
subjects.” Noel Ignatiev, “The Point Is Not to Interpret
Whiteness but to Abolish It,” paper presented at the University of
California-Berkeley conference, "The Making and Unmaking of
Whiteness," April 1997. From
racetraitor.org/abolishthepoint.pdf (accessed February 6, 2012).
xxxiv
bell hooks, The Will to Change
(2004): 45.
xxxv
“Like the apartheid of race, blurring of class boundaries is the
gravest offense because it challenges the reality of the division of
reality...sexual continuity is threatening—it destroys the
male-dominated power structure completely. If there are no hard and
fast sex types, then there can be no apartheid of sex." Martine
Rothblatt, The Apartheid of Sex,
(1995): 19. “The continued oppression of women proves only that in
any binary there's going to be one up and one down. The struggle for
equal rights must include the struggle to dismantle the binary.”
Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw,
(1994): 106.
xxxvii
"Many in the movement who yearned not only for women's
liberation, but also for human liberation, embarked on a bold social
experiment. They hoped that freeing individuals from femininity and
masculinity would help people be viewed on a more equal basis that
highlighted each person's qualities and strengths. They hoped that
androgyny would replace masculinity and femininity and help do away
with gendered expression altogether. Twenty years after that social
experiment, we have the luxury of hindsight. The way in which
individuals express themselves is a very important part of who they
are. It is not possible to force all people to live outside of
femininity and masculinity. Only androgynous people live comfortably
in that gender space. There's no social compulsion powerful enough
to force anyone else to dwell there. Trans people are an example of
the futility of this strategy... People don't have to give up their
individuality or their particular manner of gender expression in
order to fight sex and gender oppression. It's just the opposite."
Leslie Feinburg, Trans Liberation
(1998), 53.
xxxviii
See Emi Koyama, “Transfeminist Manifesto.” (2000) From
eminism.org/readings/pdf-rdg/tfmanifesto.pdf (accessed February 6,
2012); Michelle O’Brien, “Trans Liberation and Feminism:
Self-Determination, Healthcare, and Revolutionary Struggle.”
(2003) From
anarchalibrary.blogspot.com/2010/09/trans-liberation-and-feminism-self.html
(accessed February 6, 2012); and Carolyn, “Politicizing Gender:
Moving toward Revolutionary Gender Politics.” From
www.spunk.org/texts/pubs/lr/sp001714/gender.html (accessed February
6, 2012).
xxxix
bell hooks, The Will to Change,
(2004): 51.
xl
I would note that “bisexual” denotes a binary, and thus does not
necessarily upset gender, but pointing to the recuperative nature of
the power structure, Paula Rust wrote, “Thus lesbianism was
initially constructed as a challenge to gender. But once ‘woman’
was reconstructed to include ‘lesbian’, lesbians became part of
the prevailing gender structure. In effect, lesbianism was co-opted
into gender and ceased to be a challenge to it. Furthermore, the
rise of cultural feminism reified rather than challenged gender,
maximized rather than minimized the differences between women and
men, and created a concept of lesbianism that was dependent on the
preservation of gender… Given lesbians’ initial challenge to
gender, one might expect bisexuals’ efforts to break down gender
to be well received among lesbians. But because of the change in the
relationship of lesbianism to gender..., bisexuals’ contemporary
challenge to gender is also a threat to lesbianism.” Paula Rust,
“Bisexual Politics,” reprinted in Judith Lorber, Gender
Inequality, Feminist Theories and Politics,
(Roxbury Publishing Co., 1998), 93-94.
xli
“The development of sisterhood is a
unique threat, for it is directed against the basic social and
psychic model of hierarchy and domination…” Mary Daly quoted in
Peggy Kornegger, “Anarchism and the Feminist Connection.” (1975)
From
anarchalibrary.blogspot.com/2010/09/anarchism-feminist-connection-1975.html
(accessed February 6, 2012).
xlii
bell hooks, Feminist Theory from Margin to
Center. (1984): 83.
xliii
Angela Davis, “Rape, Racism, and the Capitalist Setting,” in
Angela Y. Davis Reader
(1998), 129.
xliv
Mary Nardini Gang, “Toward the Queerest Insurrection,” From
zinelibrary.info/toward-queerest-insurrection-0 (accessed January
28, 2012).
No comments:
Post a Comment