Apparently, Feminism is dead!!!

[Vintage Paw]

It comes back to the ongoing question of why the Left is fractured, I believe.

Absolutely.

It was stated elsewhere (not in this thread I don't think, possibly in the manarchism thread), that there may be those who think that once the business of class division has been dealt with and a fairer and more equal system than capitalism instituted, then other things like racism, sexism, etc., will naturally just fall away - but what that ignores is the way in which those things are all used to help prop up the current system and need addressing right now as well. It also ignores the ways in which, as you say, some people on the left might themselves actually be supporting systems of racism/sexism; just as they themselves might be quick to highlight where some feminists/civil rights activists and campaigners might be reinforcing class-based divisions and discrimination.

 

[cesare]

Capitalism fails without competition. A completely fair society cannot be achieved in a capitalist regime - the most that can be achieved are measures of fairness, and always at the expense of someone else.

Eta: I just cross posted with yours, VP

 

[Vintage Paw]

So, this begs the question I suppose: if you can't have a completely fair society under capitalism (because it relies on systems of domination, and one person always being exploited so another can flourish), how can a fair society with something that isn't capitalism be achieved while sexism, racism etc., still flourish?

 

[Vintage Paw]

For example, if we follow the idea that capitalism could be overthrown through a workers' revolt, and something like socialism put in place (on the road to communism, or perhaps something else entirely), and that requires a critical mass of a large, mobilised section of the country's (or world's) population working together be it for a forceful, violent uprising or by more peaceful methods - if racism and sexism and homophobia etc., are still rife within certain sections of that large mobilised section of workers, what will this new, "fair" society look like?

 

[revol68]

Capitalism fails without competition. A completely fair society cannot be achieved in a capitalist regime - the most that can be achieved are measures of fairness, and always at the expense of someone else.

Eta: I just cross posted with yours, VP

Shut it hippy, I want rid of capitalism, not being able to rub losers noses in it when I thump them 6-0 at FIFA even when they are cheap fucks who choose Barcelona.

 

[cesare]

So, this begs the question I suppose: if you can't have a completely fair society under capitalism (because it relies on systems of domination, and one person always being exploited so another can flourish), how can a fair society with something that isn't capitalism be achieved while sexism, racism etc., still flourish?

I don't think it can. Hence my earlier question of what a fair society would look like, and if/how it's achievable. For a start, hierarchical structures (in any context) would have to go.

 

[cesare]

Shut it hippy, I want rid of capitalism, not being able to rub losers noses in it when I thump them 6-0 at FIFA even when they are cheap fucks who choose Barcelona.

Hippy?

 

[revol68]

For example, if we follow the idea that capitalism could be overthrown through a workers' revolt, and something like socialism put in place (on the road to communism, or perhaps something else entirely), and that requires a critical mass of a large, mobilised section of the country's (or world's) population working together be it for a forceful, violent uprising or by more peaceful methods - if racism and sexism and homophobia etc., are still rife within certain sections of that large mobilised section of workers, what will this new, "fair" society look like?

It's not even a matter of that, for things to get to such an uprising the ideologies of racism, nationalism and even sexism must have failed to maintain their role in upholding capitalisms hegemony.

My fear isn't so much a revolution upholding racism, nationalism and sexism, it's that racism and sexism etc act to forever delay such a possibility as we all descend into a shit spiral of recrimination, as various competing identities fight over a smaller and smaller cake.

 

[cesare]

For example, if we follow the idea that capitalism could be overthrown through a workers' revolt, and something like socialism put in place (on the road to communism, or perhaps something else entirely), and that requires a critical mass of a large, mobilised section of the country's (or world's) population working together be it for a forceful, violent uprising or by more peaceful methods - if racism and sexism and homophobia etc., are still rife within certain sections of that large mobilised section of workers, what will this new, "fair" society look like?

The revolution will come from the petit bourgeoisie not the workers.

 

[revol68]

The revolution will come from the petit bourgeoisie not the workers.

shopkeepers, architects, kitsch deli owners and other such assorted historical flotsam?

will it fuck!

 

[cesare]

It's not even a matter of that, for things to get to such an uprising the ideologies of racism, nationalism and even sexism must have failed to maintain their role in upholding capitalisms hegemony.

My fear isn't so much a revolution upholding racism, nationalism and sexism, it's that racism and sexism etc act to forever delay such a possibility as we all descend into a shit spiral of recrimination, as various competing identities fight over a smaller and smaller cake.

And yet (and I know it's unpalatable) it's far easier to mobilise via identity.

 

[cesare]

shopkeepers, architects, kitsch deli owners and other such assorted historical flotsam?

will it fuck!

No. The way society is moving is towards self employment where there's greater freedom for action.

 

[Vintage Paw]

It's not even a matter of that, for things to get to such an uprising the ideologies of racism, nationalism and even sexism must have failed to maintain their role in upholding capitalisms hegemony.

My fear isn't so much a revolution upholding racism, nationalism and sexism, it's that racism and sexism etc act to forever delay such a possibility as we all descend into a shit spiral of recrimination, as various competing identities fight over a smaller and smaller cake.

It's important to distinguish where the blame lies, and to not conflate the fact that the -isms act to help reinforce a system of domination, with people reacting to that and focusing on the identity politics you hate so much. It's far more constructive to see where people identify oppression and encourage a nuanced analyses that recognises the system as a whole, than it is to join in with the bickering over who is doing it right and ending up conflating the issues so as to dismiss the importance of feminist (or whatever) critique within politics as a whole.

 

[sihhi]

In the case of feminism, it's the 'immigrant male' problem.

In the anti -asylum centres/ anti-asylum seeker dispersion campaigns of 2000-1, there were women making the claim against a centre in Dorset 'these men aren't used to seeing girls in short skirts, they're from the Middle East' (ie innately more liable to rape strangers. (Even though any infraction with the law would hurtle them back to where they were fleeing from). Toyah Wilcox joined in aswell on another centre one making a similar point.
In the 1970s the NF used to give a run-down of Jewish pornographers and Jewish publishers that printed pornographic magazines. Some supporters also did freesheets - anonymous not officially NF for deniability purposes - saying things such as 'JEWISH PORNOGRAPHY' 'the Jew is filthy through and through' noting how some Jews were punished for behaviour with children. The immigrant males are degrading women, stop them by deporting them or overthrowing the Z.O.G. system.
Now it's 'if Muslim men weren't in Britain at all, things like the Rochdale case would be much diminished.' Muslims see young white girls as 'easy meat', not "sexual abusers see young white girls as 'easy meat'" because no one listens to young girls of any colour. 'We need to stop any anti-racism efforts to monitor the police in order to better protect women.
On our citizenship and visa entry requirements, let us have a test just for Muslim men for us too see how non-sexist they are, before we ever let them in. A prime policy of the VVD in Holland, as endorsed by feminist 'hero' Ayan Hirsi Ali.
Jamaican popular culture is so sexist and homophobic it needs monitoring by the state to restrict visas to foreign performers. (Are there performance permits for home grown homophobic white nationalist bands?)
Julie Burchill's defence of Israeli West Bank colonisation on the grounds that her teacher of Hebrew in Israel when she visited in 2005 or 2006 was a Jewish woman.
The battle for equality in Britain has been largely won, let us fight the male chauvinists of Afghanistan and Pakistan (using weaponry that sustains a quarter of Southampton University's engineering research programmes and British jobs in weapons factories).
Ours is a non-sexist army, hence pride in its activities (and oil tanker driver strike-breaking preparations) is logical. We mustn't let male tanker driver dinosaurs (all trade unionists become dinosaurs when action is threatened) sap resources away from the British Army that provides jobs for women.
'Foreign criminals' guilty of assaulting and punching women must be returned to their home country immediately.
We must struggle tirelessly against 'honour violence' with special outreach teams to preach against the deaths of women in immigrant communities. Anything involving white males killing or seriously assaulting females should be termed a 'crime of passion' - there's no structural sexist problem in British communities. Only British mentalists ever murder their partners, with immigrant communities it's a disease of the mind.
Immigrant men who traffick women are the real problem who keep women enslaved in prostitution, others do willingly. Let's rescue the women and return them back to their countries (regardless of whether they want to go or not).

We can't accept asylum seekers from places like Latin America, sexism may be bad there but it's not Middle-East levels.

 

[Vintage Paw]

And yet (and I know it's unpalatable) it's far easier to mobilise via identity.

And I think it's reasonably obvious why. We're all products of our society, and we're groomed to be individuals, packaged and sold our identities, which we pick out for ourselves because there's fuck all else to bring us together. And the system continues to keep us packaged up in those neat(ish) boxes by pitting us against each other, creating hierarchies of which type of person is more worthwhile than another. It's hard to fight against that tide.

And precisely because we're packaged up and sectioned off, because it's on those issues of 'identity' that we face various discriminations most tangibly, it's those things that mobilise us. And because it's far easier to imagine being able to achieve equal pay for women, equal marriage for people of all orientations, that we feel able to take on those battles.

And class, capitalism, the structure that acts as the scaffold for it all - that's far harder to experience as something tangible. It just is. Apart from those right at the very top, all of us experience really boring issues to do with working out how much you have to spend on something this month, or being treated like shit by the boss, or whatever. While for a lot of people right at the very bottom these issues can be to the extent that they are actually life or death issues, for most we probably experience them with the mundane acceptance we've been encouraged to. They're just a really shitty part of life. But stuff around identity? We've seen things change there - little bits of legislation being passed to make it no longer illegal to be gay, or to make racial discrimination in the workplace illegal, and seen some attitudes slowly change as a result. That's tangible. It's really no surprise that's what many people will focus on so stridently, and I don't think it's always as simple a case as to say it's only the middle classes who are concerned with this stuff (e.g. a lot of the intersectional stuff that comes out of the US around race and feminism deals very specifically with class as it relates to poor women of colour).

 

[revol68]

It's important to distinguish where the blame lies, and to not conflate the fact that the -isms act to help reinforce a system of domination, with people reacting to that and focusing on the identity politics you hate so much. It's far more constructive to see where people identify oppression and encourage a nuanced analyses that recognises the system as a whole, than it is to join in with the bickering over who is doing it right and ending up conflating the issues so as to dismiss the importance of feminist (or whatever) critique within politics as a whole.

But this treats identity politics, rather naively, as simply a reflex action by victims of racism, sexism etc, when infact it is much more than that, it is a political project with distinct goals, aims and vested interests and serves various sections of the ruling class very well.

The fact that criticising identity politics can be seen as dismissing feminist critiques per se only goes to show it's fundamental dishonesty and true function.

And for what it's worth I find it interesting that some people seem to think identity politics are only really about anti racism, anti sexism or homophobia, they aren't, those are relatively harmless expressions of it's logic at present, marginalised as they are. The logic of identity politics shows it's real danger where I am in ethno nationalism, in the pitting of communities against each other. Identity politics isn't simply someone shouting someone down at an irrelevant meeting on whether or not males should sit down to pee or not, it's sectarian violence and real divisions, it's Saravejo not a gays only Stonewall march.

I thought I'd put that out there because it seemed that some people think that the contempt many anarchists and communists have for identity politics is out of proportion, it really isn't.

 

[cesare]

it [identity politics] is a political project with distinct goals, aims and vested interests

Is it? Where's that set out?

 

[revol68]

Is it? Where's that set out?

I mean various identities (or those pushing them) have distinct goals and vested interests.

 

[cesare]

I mean various identities (or those pushing them) have distinct goals and vested interests.

Ok.

What's different about the situation in Northern Ireland at the moment, for it now to be identity politics? Or is that what it always was, now relabelled?

 

[revol68]

Ok.

What's different about the situation in Northern Ireland at the moment, for it now to be identity politics? Or is that what it always was, now relabelled?

Well since it's moved from a quite explicit low level civil war to a politically managed settlement centred around cooper fastening two identities and narratives, which demand total parity of esteem and function within a zero sum game where a gain by one (privilege) is the oppression of the other, or as the famous saying goes "That lot get everything but the blame". What we have now is sectarian violence sublimated into cultural battles over street signs, language funding and the like. It's reduced the majority of northern irish politics to competitive victimhood.

 

[cesare]

Well since it's moved from a quite explicit low level civil war to a politically managed settlement centred around cooper fastening two identities and narratives, which demand total parity of esteem and function within a zero sum game where a gain by one (privilege) is the oppression of the other, or as the famous saying goes "That lot get everything but the blame". What we have now is sectarian violence sublimated into cultural battles over street signs, language funding and the like.

And do the inhabitants find it better or worse than at the height of the troubles?

 

[revol68]

Also the St Columbus Day episode of The Sopranos is one of the greatest satires of identity politics you'll find.

 

[cesare]

Also the St Columbus Day episode of The Sopranos is one of the greatest satires of identity politics you'll find.

Never seen The Sopranos, I'll try and remember.

 

[revol68]

And do the inhabitants find it better or worse than at the height of the troubles?

well the decrease in paramilitary violence is welcomed by most but the actual increase in sectarian attitudes and increase in peace walls isn't.

certainly it offers nothing for the working class as a class for itself.

 

[sihhi]

Well since it's moved from a quite explicit low level civil war to a politically managed settlement centred around cooper fastening two identities and narratives, which demand total parity of esteem and function within a zero sum game where a gain by one (privilege) is the oppression of the other, or as the famous saying goes "That lot get everything but the blame". What we have now is sectarian violence sublimated into cultural battles over street signs, language funding and the like. It's reduced the majority of northern irish politics to competitive victimhood.

Do you disapprove of this kind of thing R68?

"Ulster Scots Agency Music and Dance Tuition grants

Open for Applications
Application Deadline: 26th October 2012 @ 12noon
Grant Value: not specified

Announced on the 1st October on their website The Ulster Scots Agency is seeking applications for Music and Dance Tuition Programme 2013. The programme closes to applications on 26th October 2012.
To assist groups interested in making an application to this programme a series of Roadshows have been organised.

The remaining dates, including today's are listed below

Wed 3rd Oct Desertmartin Orange Hall
Wed 3rd Oct Millbrook Lodge Hotel Ballynahinch
Thurs 4th Oct Ulster-Scots Agency, Belfast
Tues 9th Oct Regional Office, Raphoe, Co. Donegal (drop in service 10am to 4pm)
All meetings will commence at 8pm. They have devised new application forms and guidance notes to assist groups applying."

 

[cesare]

well the decrease in paramilitary violence is welcomed by most but the actual increase in sectarian attitudes and increase in peace walls isn't.

certainly it offers nothing for the working class as a class for itself.

How long before a sharp increase again in para violence, do you think? Or will people continue to prefer to settle for *slightly* less oppression?

 

[Delroy Booth]

No. The way society is moving is towards self employment where there's greater freedom for action.

You're right, but there's a big difference between those who are self-employed in a skilled trades or professions, and those in unskilled precious self-employment, such as cleaners who are self-employed and getting less than minimum wage, those in poorly paid cash-in-hand work, people who are underemployed part-time and so on, the so called "precariat".

Someone self-employed in possession of a skill has some degree of autonomy in how they work, chosing their own hours, setting their own terms directly with an employer. It's definitely better than wage-slavery. Someone who turns up at the back door of a pub kitchen in their chefs whites and a CV hoping for a shift is not in this position. It's like being cap in hand in front of the factory gates all over again.

And historically the self-employed, even the wealthier ones, have been quite militant. Especially when they undergo a sharp deteroriation in earnings or status.

 

[cesare]

Many of the precariat will mobilise more quickly than the waged, too.

 

[cesare]

And if you want to change the status quo, and not just tweak it a bit; you need to use what works to change things, even whilst knowing you've got to change it again later.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

Many of the precariat will mobilise more quickly than the waged, too.

Where has this happened?