Guest Blogger: 2 from Kathy Miriam
Two new pieces from Kathy, with gratitude.
Manifest(o)ing Feminism: Occupy Patriarchy!
The New Now-Moment of Occupy Wall Street
The whole world was erupting as we U.S Americans were watching. Our noses pressed to the screen-monitors of history we watched as waves of mass rebellion rippled from Greece and Spain to Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria in the Arab Spring where dictatorship after dictatorship was toppled. And then, who knew? I for one never expected that the waves of protest would find our own shores. As we watched, only occasionally would a plaintive or angry question pop up: When will we get out on the streets? Yet when pushed to the brink and over of desperation at the beginnings of the economic onslaught on this country, people were still echoing the noxious nostrums of the new president who preached “no more excuses” and “individual responsibility” to a people suffering the brunt of a crisis put in motion by a financial system that–contrary to the delusions of the left–had put Obama in office.
When the nation began to crash in the first month of the new president’s first term, we did not rush to the streets when Obama appointed for fixing the crisis the same miscreants culpable for creating it. Nor did we riot upon word that while record numbers of people were plunged into joblessness, homelessness, and health crises, corporations were making record rates of profits. Yet Obama called for self-sacrifice and personal responsibility, instructing us that “everyone” had to pitch in in hard times. That we are all one family. Our uncles presumably are not then the thirty major corporations who paid no income tax in the last three years, while making 160 billion dollars?
And there was no revolt among people of color despite the fact that f…
and the second article:
Branding Feminism
Branding Feminism: Brand-Slutwalk
By now everyone knows the comment that sparked the first Slutwalk (Toronto) and its wild-fire spread across the globe. It began with a classic scene of mansplaining: A man schooling women about how to avoid rape. To make things worse, the man was even more legitimized/authorized as a mansplainer due to his status as a police officer. In this instance the cop advised his audience that if women didn’t dress “like sluts” it might help with the rape-prevention. The feminist outrage spurred by the comment was fierce and a terrible thing to waste—which is precisely what happened when outrage against victim-blaming in a rape culture was (and is) redirected and de-fused into shallow and bubble-headed libertarian credo: If you’ve ever been called a slut, stand up now and say together – I am a slut. . . stand up and say it with me: I am a slut. I am a slut. I am a slut. This is Third-wave feminist celeb, Jaclyn Friedman working the crowd at Slutwalk Philadelphia. For those who don’t instantly visualize a Saturday Night Live style parody of feminism, that’s due to years of priming by the “sex-positive-empowerment-industrial-complex” which has hollowed out feminism from within to a one dimensional version of itself. One dimensional feminism means minimally a feminism that joins the pop up individualisms of a neoliberal era.
Thus rather than arousing sheer incredulity from the Left, the pageantry called Slutwalk earns points from the main bastion of liberal-left media, namely The Nation where…
Winston Warfield:
Thank you Kathy for your exciting and moving article on Occupy Patriarchy. We are struggling with the question of patriarchy in our own way in the Smedley D. Butler Brigade, Boston’s Chapter of Veterans for Peace. The struggle hasn’t been joined in any explicit way, but I intend to “bring it” in further interactions with my fellow vets, as we struggle over the question of peace, or rather, the lack thereof. It isn’t enuf to “want peace”. Everyone “wants peace”. The important thing at this exciting juncture (we have been a steady element at Occupy Boston) is to struggle to understand why we don’t have it. Your critique or patriarchy will help, and I will distribute it around to the other vets. In our annual “occupation” of Boston’s Veterans Day Parade this year, in which we have de facto become an integral part, besides the forest of “Veterans for Peace” flags in full view of the marching high-school NROTC units (kind of guerrilla branding – we want peace to be a powerful brand in the visual diet of Americans), a most prominent banner right across the street from the American Legion’s reviewing stand was “Occupy Patriotism”, not too far removed from “Occupy Patriarchy”, wouldn’t you say? Now we need to flesh out what this might mean in our internal discussions. Thanks for your analysis.
12 November 2011, 6:41 pmMichael Anderson:
“But if the choice of sexual self-presentation for women was such a free choice why does it seem to come in only one flavor, namely, some variant of the patriarchal construct of “slut”? And why does corporate patriarchy have such a mammoth investment in this construct?”
That says a lot right there! Edward Bernays & the Chesterfield cigarette company would be proud.
Still digesting…mo’ think. Thanks.
14 November 2011, 3:43 pmMichael Anderson:
Occupy—
Looks like “Patriarchy” is starting to backlash today—-6 encampments in various cities cleared by police. I wondered how long it would take before they just said “the hell with them”. To quote Warren Zevon:
Send lawyers, guns and money
the shit has hit the fan
Hooverville 1932…
14 November 2011, 3:49 pmMichael Anderson:
From NPR—Patriarchy (in the form of the Koch Brothers) makes a move. Don’t like the look of this AT ALL:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=142493957
Occupy Memphis, Tea Party Members Meet
by The Associated Press
MEMPHIS, Tenn. November 18, 2011, 05:44 am ET
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Occupy Memphis member Mallory Pope had just finished telling a group of about 75 tea party followers Thursday night that politicians should not allow themselves to be influenced by lobbyists and unions when she received an unexpected invitation.
“It sounds to me that y’all ought to be joining us,” said Jerry Rains, a 64-year-old computer programmer and tea party member. “You have a lot of the same goals we have, which is to take our country back.”
Pope and fellow Occupy Memphis protester Tristan Tran had a lively, sometimes strained and confrontational, but mostly civil discussion with members of the Mid-South Tea Party at a municipal meeting hall outside Memphis.
18 November 2011, 7:49 amStan:
Talking without fighting is good. A step.
18 November 2011, 1:33 pmMichael Anderson:
I agree—-but are these TPubs on the up and up, or are they a co-opt movement? Are they acting independently? If they are, they won’t be TP’ers long (THAT would be a good thing, anyway). Time will tell.
18 November 2011, 5:33 pmWinston Warfield:
Doesn’t matter. When you substitute cooperation and common-ground for sectarianism (a form of patriarchy in action), you build unity. Unity around actually-existing conditions in the real world, as experienced “on the skin”, and in our emotions. Alienation. Anger. Victimization. All real, real , real. This is where unity gets built, and then the (independent) intellect steps in to try to make sense of it. That “making sense” is what gives movement its staying power, its ability to hang in there for the long haul. Because the stakes are understood, and the next generation is at stake, our children and grandchildren. Those we love.
18 November 2011, 7:57 pmMichael Anderson:
“…sectarianism (a form of patriarchy in action)…”
Thanks, Winston. Never thought of it that way. Another synapse awakened.
19 November 2011, 11:03 amxenia:
“Moreover, we are careful not to set a precedent for our young girls by giving them the message that we can self-identify as “sluts” when we’re still working to annihilate the word “ho”, which deriving from the word “hooker” or “whore”, as in “Jezebel whore” was meant to dehumanize. Lastly, we do not want to encourage our young men, our Black fathers, sons and brothers to reinforce Black women’s identities as “sluts” by normalizing the term on t-shirts, buttons, flyers and pamphlets.”
I am obviously not Black (though everyone has African ancestry, more or less remote), but this completely expresses my intellectual opinion and my feelings alike.
Ideally, women should be able to walk any way they want, and that includes being naked as well as having one’s hair covered (hijab or otherwise), and everything in between, without being stared at or commented upon.
But seeing the Sluts movement has always made me alienated. It is similar to the actions of the FEMEN girls in the Ukraine. FEMEN’s intentions seem to be good and in many ways I support them, but they also reify themselves (no older women — a few of them help them organize, but only young and slim women, most of whom look alike, undress) and primarily they want to appeal to men, including state officials and rich people.
In some way, I feel temporary enthusiasm when I see them, but I also feel humiliated and empty later. When almost every man can view hard-core pornography every day, I don’t want to have the word “slut” sticking to me. Sometimes it’s difficult enough just walking around while having breasts or ass. Many men don’t seem to realize those are real body parts and not an accessory that I (and other women) put on to attract them.
19 November 2011, 2:45 pmMichael Anderson:
Maybe a little off-topic, but the concept of gender being cultured has been discussed here:
http://front.moveon.org/two-lesbians-raised-a-baby-and-this-is-what-they-got/#.TtgGw7d5_u_.facebook
2 December 2011, 2:21 pm