The people I have learned the most from are (in no particular order): Audre Lorde, Andrea Dworkin, James Baldwin, Catharine A. MacKinnon, Sheila Jeffreys, Alice Walker, Winona Laduke, Jennifer McLune, and Yolanda Carrington, among others. Without radical feminism–its woman writers and woman activists, my mind would be confused and depressed. (Not that it still isn’t confused and depressed, mind you!!)

I have been reading Pearl Cleage’s essays in “Deals With The Devil and Other Reasons To Riot” and Sapphire’s novel “Push” most recently.

My radicalism comes from my life lived, the lives of those I know–in person, via corresponding, and through books, and seeing the suffering in each of our lives for what it is, and refusing to call it anything else, even while dominant society calls it everything else.

Peace to you.

Julian

You’re welcome, Julian. I always learn something new when I read your posts. Your ideas, and how you phrase them, help me make sense of so many things!

Thank you so much for those kind words.

My grief over Andrea’s death is on-going, which means, to honour her memory, so is my activism to assist in the revolutionary efforts to end all forms of sexism and racism, every manifestation, in identity, interpersonal exchanges, and in systems and institutions which maintain these atrocities.

I am also learning each day, how to be more responsible, more accountable, to my radical feminist anti-racist friends, to those who know more about racism and sexism than I ever could.

Any day is a better day when kind words are part of it, and so you made this a better day for me, even while I am sad.

http://www.andreadworkin.net/memorial/toandreawithlove.html

Wonderfully written, Julian. Thanks Anne, for bringing it to my attention, at least.

Randy

Julian, I read the piece you wrote at andreadworkin.net last night, and I just wanted to say that it is amazing and heart breaking.

But I am happy I read it, and I wanted to thank you for writing it.

So thank you.

When male supremacy and male domination of women by men is history only, we cannot know what gender will be, if anything.

When race supremacy and white domination are history only, we cannot know what race will be, if anything.

This does not mean, that in the very “mean” time, we ought not take pride in being survivors of racism and sexism, and/or classism, and/or heterosexism. This does not mean that identities constructed for us through force become, somehow, not ours.

It also does not mean that “the Black experience” is one experience, nor that those experiences have only been shaped by white supremacy. I support any Black person’s right to own their Blackness with pride and dignity. I used to own my gayness that way, until I realised how fully male supremacist it was. I take no pride in that, although I support efforts to eradicate heterosexism.

I take pride in being Jewish, but not in what the Israeli government is doing to the Palestinian people. I also know something that too many Gentiles seem anti-Semitically to forget, that being Jewish cannot be equated with being a Zionist. Being Jewish predates and will, perhaps, outdate the current imperialist/colonialist/classist/racist battle Israel is waging against Palestine. And Israel may one day not be, in part, a puppet of the U.S. government.

What all of this means is that the radical antiracist feminist project is not to defend, protect, and preserve those identities forged in oppression, at the expense of ending the oppression. As I understand it, the protection of these identities of oppression is the liberal and socialist approach; they define “woman” and “man”, or “white” or “Brown” or “Yellow” or “Red” or “Black” or “Colored” as naturally or socially occurring, outside of some form of male and/or race supremacy. And I do mean the labels, as such, backed by force, benefitting the oppressor in whatever social binary/hierarchy is being examined. This has not been demonstrated sufficiently, and is not apparent in how CRAP is conducting itself, in our communities, lives, and minds.

What must be acknowledged here, then, is who is to decide what identities, what societies, remain? I only know this: it better not be white men.

I believe real coalition work means being in struggle together, as we fight to root out of ourselves all that opppression has made us into, which necessarily means dismantling all the systems from which oppression flows and grows. This means, for those “on top”, learning and transforming our learned patterns of domination, condescension, and invisibilisation, while we engage in revolutionary political struggles. This means, in other words, that those “on the bottom” must have an equal voice at every stage of change, including by defining what that change is to be, as opposed to following some white-European model, for example.

From there, we see where we are.

I support Indigenous People’s rights, for example, to reclaim and re-establish their pre-colonial cultures, if that is their wish and will.

I personally believe white people ought not to be able to own land on Turtle Island (aka Amerikkka). I think as each generation of white people dies, the land ought to be returned to the Native people (originally) of that land, if they are still surviving. And if they are not, that land should be open for the rest of us who were brought here against our will, which does not include most people of Northern and Western European descent.

This is simplistic, but gets at some assumptions about the rights of white men to own and control other beings, as well as demolish and destroy the Earth and its other inhabitants. I am speaking as someone who lives in the U.S. with great privileges, and also with great knowledge, viscerally and otherwise, about degradation and dehumanisation in the U.S.

I invite into this discussion other perspectives from other places: geographically, culturally, and politically.

^^^^

CB: First, you mean to tell me that you believe that wives were not obligated to work in the marriage ? The fact that it is not mentioned in the law doesn’t mean that in fact wives weren’t required to work. I can’t see how feminists would accept the male supremacist claim that wives weren’t required to do work. That was a big part of the male suprmacy of the situation. Being pregnant and giving birth is work. Taking care of children is work. Cleaning the house and preparing dinner and meals FOR THE MAN, cleaning clothes AND ALL TYPICAL WIFLEY CHORES ARE WORK ! How is it that we are feminists and we are not saying that wives have to do work ? The main thing the man ordered the wife to obey was doing work. Just like the main thing the worker is required to do is obey the boss’ orders to do work.

There’s a whole feminist school of thought and movement on demanding pay for wifely work. Are we going to take a step _back_ from that ? What gives here ?

How is it that having sex is not work for a wife who doesn’t want to have sex ?! And especially for prostitutes, I hope you aren’t claiming that they don’t do work when they have sex with a john ! What kind of feminism is that ?

Secondly, where do we get that a worker’s employment agreement doesn’t require the workers to obey the boss ? The worker in a worker-capitalist agreement _must obey the boss_. Therefore, the obedience aspect exists in both relationships, making them analogous on that point. I hope nobody here is claiming that workers are not obligated to obey the boss under a capitalist employment contract. Is MacKinnon an important Marxist thinker claiming that workers are not obligated to OBEY the boss ? Wow , some Marxism.

If the workers was required to have sex with the boss, then it wouldn’t be an analogy. It would be the same thing.

But finally, I can’t really understand what you are objecting to in what I said. Do you deny that the “force” placed on women both to marry and to be prostitutes is economic ?That’s what I said ( and I think what Marx means). To deny that , again, seems to take a step back to a less critical conception of the situation. Seems to me I’m more the feminist one on this point than you are, if you are denying that it is economic compulsion that forces women to marry and to prostitute.

^^^^^^^

The wage laborer is called the “civil equal” of the boss.

^^^^
CB: Yea, but you aren’t buying that fraud , are you ?

^^^^^
Until very recently, that was NOT the case in a marriage contract. The housewife — in the emblematic case — does not receive wages, but subsistence. This is not what happens with wage labor, but with slaves.

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CB: That’s right. They are not wage-laborers, but in the legal conception they are not owned. They can “choose” not to marry. However, they are compelled to marry _by economic need_, just like the wage-laborer is compelled to work by economic need. The slave is not compelled to become a slave by economic need, but by force of arms. The slave has no choice even theoretically, not to be a slave.

So, the analogy to the wage-laborer is in that both wives and wage-laborers are under economic, not physical compulsion, to enter the unequal relationship. By the way, in slang, wage-laborers are termed “wage-slaves”, which gets at the issue you raise, i.e. econmic compulsion is just as effective as physical compulsion. We might term wives “house-slaves” in this vein.

^^^^^^^

The oppression of women cannot be fully understood within the categories laid out by orthodox Marxism. The Holy Texts were not omniscient.

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CB: Yea, see my paper on the need to extend the concepts. However, I don’t think the above statment is correct. Engels and the Holy Texts ( I dont’ give a goddamn if people want to keep making that slander; what they are is scientific documents; it’s like calling Einstein’s or Darwin’s writing a holy text, in other words, nonesense; Adhering to the important principles discovered by Einstein, Darwin or Marx is the complete opposite of religious thinking; as a matter of fact those who don’t use Marx and Engels in this context are the ones most likely to stray over into religious, i.e. holy text type thinking; so get ready for me to start pointing out all the holy text type thinking in the non-Marxist discussion;)…Engels and the “Holy Text” do take the full measure of the economic compulsions on women to marry. So the claim that Engels and Marx’s concepts are not adequate to analyze bougeois marriage is probably out and out wrong. In fact, I believe they call the whole bourgeois system of marriage “prostitution”. Engels main practical proposal is that women must become involved in social labor ( i.e.not confined to houseWORK, and it is WORK) as a main path to women’ lib. If women have their own incomes , then there won’t be any compulsion on them to do anything with men, because the main compulsion on women is economic. Q.E.D.

^^^^^^

“Sexuality is the social process that creates, organizes, expresses, and directs desire. Desire here is parallel to value in marxist theory, not the same, though it occupies an analogoous theoretical location. It is taken for a natural essence or presocial impetus but is actually crated by the social relations, the hierarchical relations, in question. This process creates the social beings we know as women and men, as their relations create society. Sexuality to feminism is, like work to marxism, socially constructed and at the same time constructing. it is universal as activity, yet always historically specific, and jointly comprised of matter and mind. As the organized expropriation of the work of some for the use of others defines the class, workers, the organized expropriation of the sexuality of some for the use of others defines the sex, woman. Heterosexuality is its predominant structure, gender is its social process, the family is a congealed form, sex roles are its qualities generalized to two social personas, and reproduction is a consequence. (Theorists sometimes forget that in order to reproduce one must first, usually, have had sex.) Control is also the issue of gender.”

-Catharine MacKinnon, one of the top marxist thinkers of our time.

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CB: My main problem with this is that it indulges the myth that women don’t “desire” sex. Women value having sex too. Women desire sex. So, the idea that inherently in sex between women and men, men get something and women give something is problematic.

Also, to make an analogy between the concept of production of value in the Marxist Holy Writs and reproduction of people is best made at the level of childcare and other caring labor ( See my paper “For Women’s Liberation” ). The sex act is not analagous to the working act in the Marxist conception of value production. Otherwise the man and the woman _would_ have equal input, and the woman wouldn’t be doing more of the reproductive labor than the man. The inequality is not in the sex act, but in the childcare labor and other caring labor that is done predominantly by women.

^^^^^
-Catharine MacKinnon, one of the top marxist thinkers of our time.

^^^^
CB: And got a job as a law professor at the University of Michigan ? My how things have changed there since 1979.

We stand for an end to enforced subordination, limited options, and social powerlessness–on the basis of sex, among other things. Differentiation, to feminism, is just one strategy in keeping women down. Liberalism has been subversive for us in that it signals that we have the audacity to compare ourselves with men, to measure ourselves by male standards, on male terms. We do seek access to the male world. We do criticize our exclusion from male pursuits. But liberalism limits us in a way feminism does not. We also criticize male pursuits from women’s point of view, from the standpoint of our social experience as women.

Feminism seeks to empower women on our own terms. To value what women have always done as well as to allow us to do everything else. We seek not only to be valued as who we are, but to have access to the process of the definition of value itself. In this way, our demand for access becomes also a demand for change. (p. 22)

[Quote]: We made the fires. We are the fire-tenders. We are the ones who do not allow anyone to speak for us but us. –Beth Brant, Sinister Wisdom (1983)

The white man’s law, recognizing what he calls equality, has since the late 1950s prohibited discrimination. Under this law, equal treatment, without regard to race, ethnicity, and sex (among other characteristics) is thought to be secured in many areas of social life. The idea is that people should be free from arbitrary and unreasonable treatment on the basis of qualities that have no fair or reasonable or just relation to the purpose for which they are being used. People shouldn’t encounter built-in bias everywhere they go. In this idea of equality, group characteristics have no necessary relation to one’s ability to perform tasks, to merit, to potential contributions to society, or to needs for particular benefits. (p. 63)

When do you see a viewpoint as a viewpoint? When you don’t agree with it. When is a viewpoint not a viewpoint? When it’s yours. (p. 212)

[…] I have learned that feminism–in the form of a tacit belief that women are human beings in truth but not in social reality–has gone deep into women and some younger men, becoming taken for granted, becoming part of the background. The feminism of women who do not identify as feminists, feminism delivered in the form of self-respecting identity and a lived commitment to change for women, came to matter more that the identification. Women everywhere articulated their situations and analyzed their pain with confrontive realism, indominability, and solidarity–with, in short, more feminism than anything yet called feminism has exhausted or expressed. Those who have lived through or worked hands-on with violence against women displayed a more nuanced and systemic conceptual understanding than most published writing on the subject. Sometimes it seemed as though the more invisible the woman, the deeper the truth she possessed. More than any other group, former prostitutes were possessed by truth, haunted by truth, vivid with knowledge against a canon of credibility that has all but obliterated them. The professed feminism of many others, by contrast, began to seem tepid and removed, like heads talking, brittle and second hand, like upward mobility.

In the established abstract refuges of academia I have often encountered a tendency to turn women into a field or an idea or a subspecialty, an artifact of one theoretical approach or another. Little deep challenge to existing approaches is happening in these places, less understanding of the lives of most women (or, even, say, the sexual violence in academic women’s own lives) and virtually no commitment to change. (p. 216)

I think that men are the way they are because they have power, more than that they have power because they are the way they are. If this is so, women who succeed in male forms of power will largely be that way too. This will seem inappropriate only to those who expected less and to those who expected more. Which includes nearly everybody. (p. 220)