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frankendeers · 3 years

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I am Made of Love and It’s Stronger Than You: Steven Universe and Models of Queer Resistance in Science-Fiction

Chapter 1. Science-Fiction and Resistance in Queer Subjectivity

“In other words, queer resistances emerge when the mechanisms of heteronormativity are exposed, when the concepts of gender and sexuality are being rearticulated in ways that defy the exclusion of subjects whose identities, desires, and practices are considered contradictory and unintelligible, and when ‘the presumption of heterosexuality’ no longer holds.” (Dhaenens, Articulations of Queer Resistance 4).

In order to articulate how Steven Universe makes use of Science-fiction conventions to explore models of queer resistance, it is first necessary to examine how queerness is woven into the fabric of its setting. Although Gems as a species are distinctly queer, their society serves as a metaphor for the various ways the centre seeks to regulate categories of identity and desire. This section will not only demonstrate how the show utilises its speculative elements to express different modes of queerness, but also argue that herein lies a possibility for resistance. In the world of Steven Universe, queerness is not merely a vector for non-normative forms of desire and expression but also a powerful tool to dismantle systems of oppression. Refusing to assimilate to the hegemonic discourse means exposing the artificial processes with which these are constructed and denaturalising them in the process. These forms of denaturalisation function simultaneously as a legitimising force for queer subjectivities. It will, furthermore become clearer, how Steven Universe sees queerness in itself as a force of positivity.

1.1. Gender and Performativity

One of the most notable aspects of the show is the fact that all members of its alien race, the Gems, are presenting as female. Due to his hybrid nature, Steven is the only alien character to exhibit a male gender identity. This immediately separates Steven Universe from the values of hegemonic society which usually sees the masculine as representative of universality: “[…] the female body is marked within masculine discourse, whereby the masculine body, in its conception with the universe, remains unmarked.” (Butler, Gender Trouble 17). The show subverts the expectation of maleness being an unquestioned neutral, by never fully explaining why the gems refer to themselves using female pronouns and to what extent they actually identify with womanhood. Instead, Steven Universe asks the viewer to accept this premise and, in the process, turn the feminine into the new “unmarked” position.

While the idea of single gender alien societies is not new, it is indicative of science-fiction’s power of questioning “heteronormative implications of progress” by “reimagining […] gender, sexuality, and identity.” (Thibodeau 263). In other words, while the Gems are repeatedly shown to be a highly advanced species, their singular gender separates them from the concept of heterosexuality. In fact, the heterosexual matrix cannot operate in Gem society, as it relies on both the existence of a rigid gender binary and the stability of the two genders it represents (cp. Butler, Gender Trouble 184).

Steven Universe’s Gem race adhere to neither standard. Thomas adds that the Gems themselves have no biological sex or gender identity, in a way that humans might understand, therefore inviting queer analysis (cp. Thomas 4). Seeing as Gems are “outside of human conceptualisations of sex and gender” (cp. Férnandez 64), it only follows that their means of reproduction must also differentiate itself from human ideas about birth and sexual intercourse. In its place, the show offers an alternative model that shows Gems as artificially grown in gigantic plantations referred to as “kindergardens” (“On the Run”). The inorganic nature of Gem production completely subverts the heterosexual narrative around the importance of birth and family making. Such an analysis harkens back to Lee Edelman’s polemic No Future: Queer Theory and The Death Drive. Here, Edelman famously argues that the centring of the Child as the symbol for heterosexual reproduction stands in direct opposition to queerness. The Child is used to always deflect political action onto the future, stalling meaningful change (cp. Edelman 3). For Gems, neither children nor heterosexual reproduction are of any concern. The show establishes that they “burst out of the earth’s crust already knowing what they’re supposed to be” (“Greg the Babysitter” 06:50— 06:59). By utilising the genre of science-fiction, Steven Universe thus suggests to the audience that a separation of creating life and heterosexuality is possible, which broadens the perspectives about queer possibilities.

The possibilities configured in the show’s alien species also expand to the realms of more profound matters of queer identity. The episode “Steven the Sword Fighter” reveals that Gem bodies are not material. A Gem’s consciousness is merely stored within her gem which in turn projects the body to the outside world. Therefore, a Gem’s appearance is merely “a conscious manifestation of light” (“Last One Out Of Beach City” 09:46—09:50). This feature of alien biology relates to Judith Butler’s theory on the performativity of gender. According to her work Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, gender is not essential nor innate, but produced through repeated performative acts. These behaviours are regulated by cultural norms which then are projected onto the body: “[…] [A]cts, gestures, and desire produce the effect of an internal core or substance, but produce this on the surface of the body, through play of signifying absences that suggest, but not reveal, the organizing principle of identity as a cause. Such acts, gestures, enactments, generally construed, are to express fabrications manufactured and sustained through corporeal signs and other discursive means.” (Butler, Gender Trouble 188). True to this notion, the Gems reflect their identity onto their bodies, proving that, at least for them “gender is always a doing” (Butler, Gender Trouble 34). Steven Universe successfully shows by means of alien biology how femininity is a performance that can be presented by anyone or anything (cp. Thomas 6). This is a notion that is conform with queer theory’s aim of rendering essentialist notions of identity obsolete (cp. Hall 93) and contributes to the larger goal of achieving queer liberation.

The ways the different characters make use of their abilities to play with gender are manifold and reflective of their progression as characters. Valentín rightfully states that one of the more interesting aspects of the show is the unique ways in which all characters straddle the lines between masculinity and femininity (cp. Valentín 203).

Amethyst in particular promises deeper insights into the potential of different configurations of gender and identity. As Gem bodies are essentially illusions, Gems have the explicit power to shapeshift, stressing the usefulness of speculative elements for queer explorations. Here, Amethyst stands out as she makes use of this power the most, constantly shifting between different appearances. She impersonates people, turns into animals, and even embodies inanimate objects for her own amusement. The casualness with which she regards shapeshifting show cases a fluid stance towards identity that is explicitly revelling in the act of imitation and queers her abilities. Moreover, it could even be said that Amethyst constantly parodies the notion of identity itself and mocks those with a more rigid mindset. Thomas implies that her experimentation with different gender expressions suggests a complicated relationship to identity, while still remaining open and playful (cp. Thomas 6). When Steven’s father, Greg, tells her, he is uncomfortable with shapeshifting, she transforms into him and replies: “Oh, I forgot. You’re so sensitive.” (“Maximum Capacity” 09:00—09:10). For Eli Dunn, these instances can force the viewer to recognise the implications of gender as a construct in ways that hold meaning for making a queer worldview more accessible: “The ability of the Gems to change their gender representation at will is a type of magic that fundamentally disconnects notions of gender from gender identity in the mind of the viewer. When the viewer is told that the Gems bodies are constructed and unreal, the viewer is forced to reconsider the implications of the female coded body traits […]” (Dunn 47).

Regardless, Amethyst’s queer approach towards identity does not mean a complete disconnection to the concept itself. On the contrary, the effects of internalised self-hatred are most visible in Amethyst’s expressions of body variance. A later episode shows Amethyst’s physical body being repeatedly destroyed, forcing her to retreat into her Gem and regenerate (“Reformed”). Due to her impatience, she does not undergo the process as intended and returns in a deformed state. As the episode continues, her teammates chastise her to do it properly, leading to her spitefully taking on more and more ridiculous forms. While doing so, she mocks the notions of what constitutes a “proper” body at all: “Just as bodily surfaces are enacted as the natural, so these surfaces can become the site of a dissonant and denaturalizes performance that reveals the performative status of the natural itself.” (Butler, Gender Trouble 200). In this way, Amethyst’s alien abilities function as a tool of critique, revealing how the body can act as performance. The interesting part is, that Amethyst’s questioning of bodily norms does not only read as decisively queer, but also thematises how repressive norms can affect an individual.

As Gem society is extraordinarily normative, Amethysts are expected to attain a certain standard of height. Even though shapeshifting is a possibility for Gems, the ability requires conscious effort and is therefore not sustainable. It is because of this reason that Amethyst’s lack of height is considered a defect on Homeworld. Melzer states that identity performance always acts within a “highly regulative set of norms” which dictate what is considered a valid representative of any given category (cp. Melzer 43). Amethyst moves between gendered positions by means of coping with Gem society finding her to be insufficient. As height is often associated with strength and masculinity, Amethyst occasionally takes on the wrestling persona of “Purple Puma” (“Tiger Millionaire”). While in this form, she towers over ordinary people, exhibiting a flat, hairy chest and uses masculine pronouns for herself (cp. Valentín 204). Jack Halberstam recognises that some forms of female masculinity are a form of “social rebellion” or “the place of pathology” wherein women use masculine signifiers to escape restrictive expectations (cp. Halberstam, Female Masculinity 9). These observations are in accordance with Butler’s assertion that gender as a performance is “open to splitting, self-parody, self-criticism, and those hyperbolic exhibitions of “the natural” that, in their very exaggeration, reveal its fundamentally phantasmic status.” (Butler, Gender Trouble 200).

Not only does Amethyst’s repeated mockery of body and gender norms expose them as illusions, but the show itself hints at experimentation with identity possibly alleviating feelings of inadequacy. Amethyst confesses later that she does not need the figure of Purple Puma anymore, as she now accepts herself the way she is: “I needed it when I felt like I wasn’t good enough. But I don’t feel that way anymore” (“Tiger Philanthropist” 07:10—07:16). Nevertheless, the show manages to avoid pathologizing queerness. The end of the episode shows Amethyst return to her alter ego, not in search for validation but because her time as a wrestler “meant everything (to her)” (“Tiger Philanthropist” 09:03—09:06). Without disregarding the play on parodic masculinity as a coping mechanism, Steven Universe attests a healing quality to the experimentation with gender. The alien body is presented as the site of social criticism, as well as positive connotations to queerness itself. These positive feelings towards queerness are depicted as harbouring an immense power for resisting further oppression.

How an acceptance of one’s own status as a queered entity can be harvested for resistance, is perfectly encapsulated in Amethyst’s confrontation with the enemy Gem Jasper. The parallels between these two opposing factions are clear: Jasper, similarly to Amethyst, was created to be a Homeworld soldier. Contrary to Amethyst, however, Jasper is described as the perfect example of what her specific Gem type should be (cp. “Beta”). Jasper herself asserts her superiority and makes clear the consequences of not fulfilling Homeworld’s demands: “Every Gem is made for a purpose: to serve the order of the Diamonds. Those who cannot fit inside this order must be purged!” (“Earthlings” 02:00— 02:06). In this sense, Jasper functions as the embodiment of Homeworld’s hegemonic discourse that excludes undesirable bodies and identities. She looks down on queerness and explicitly connects her abilities to serve the rigid system to her own worth: “Fighting is my life! It’s what I was made for! It is what you were made for too, runt.” (“Crack the Whip” 07:35—07:42). As Jasper repeatedly judges Amethyst according to normative standards of body and identity, Amethyst’s desire for victory over Jasper is framed as Amethyst complying to Homeworld’s demands. Instead of accepting her difference and alignment to queered identities, Amethyst attempts to meet Jasper on her terms which can only result in failure: “Steven... I can't win. No matter what I do, no matter how hard I work, she came out right, and I came out... wrong...” (“Earthlings” 03:54—04:05). It is when Steven redirects her focus onto the strength of their shared status as queer subjectivities, that they decide to team up: “That's just what Jasper thinks. She's the only one who thinks you should be like her! Stop trying to be like Jasper. You're nothing like Jasper! You're like me! Because we're both not like anybody.” (“Earthlings” 04:05— 04:18). In this way, Amethyst’s acceptance of her queered body leads to a connection to Steven as an ally in shared marginalisation. Their subsequent fusion defeats Jasper with ease where both of them alone where unable to do so.

Although fusion will be examined in detail later, its role in this encounter is particularly meaningful. Fusion, as the process of merging bodies, revolves around the feminine realms of emotional connection and the queer concept of blurring the boundaries of body and mind, turning it into the perfect metaphor for the strength of acceptance and unity for queer liberation purposes. In contrast to Jasper, Amethyst’s closeness to fluid identities and queerness makes it easier for her to engage in fusion and find strength. While it is true that Steven Universe does not negate physical limitations, the show proposes queer solidarity and self-acceptance as means of liberation.

The theme of gender expression standing in direct correlation to healing is also explored from a different angle in the character of Pearl. Pearl’s relationship to gender fluidity and performative identity is best understood when analysed through the lenses of lesbianism and female masculinity. Naturally, this beckons the question of how technically genderless aliens can be regarded lesbian. This is deeply connected to the nature of the category woman itself. Jack Halberstam criticises the mindset of restricting the boundaries of womanhood while leaving the lines of masculinity open: “[…] why is it [….] that one finds the limits of femininity so quickly whereas the limits of masculinity [….] seem fairly expansive?” (Halberstam, Female Masculinity 28). The policing of womanhood can be traced back to the masculine as unquestioned neutral territory when the feminine is only allowed to be represented by a highly specific set of features. When we return to Butler, the problem starts to dissolve in her theory of performativity. Womanhood is a set of behaviours and not dictated by biology: “The very subject of women is no longer understood in stable or abiding terms.” (Butler, Gender Trouble 2). The category of woman is henceforth rendered queer, as it is unstable and subject to change.

To regard Pearl as a woman and lesbian is therefore to view her identity not in terms of heteronormative discourses of biology, but allowing for the possibility to extrapolate valuable insights about gendered positions in society: “However, in an exploration of the fundamental instability of the category “women” does not find against feminism but, in resisting the urge to foreclose prematurely that category, licenses new possibilities for a feminism that constitutes “women” as the effect of, not the prerequisite for, its inquiries.” (Jagose, Way Out 273). With regards to the popular definition of lesbians as women cultivating romantic relationship with other women, identifying Pearl as a lesbian is a valid point of analysis. Steven Universe takes great care to repeatedly emphasise and explore the relationship between Pearl and Steven’s mother, Rose. The romantic attraction Pearl harbours for Rose defines her character and affects most of her actions throughout the course of the show. Interestingly, her progression in terms of lesbian affiliations and resistance towards Homeworld’s demands are reflected onto her body in increasingly explicit ways. Pearl embodies a progression into female masculinity where her gender performance changes with her widening understanding of liberation. This harkens back to Halberstam’s identification of female masculinity as a tool to subvert masculine power by turning a “blind eye to conventional masculinities and refusing to engage” (Halberstam, Female Masculinity 9).

To understand this better, one needs to examine the role Pearl is meant to fulfil in the social hierarchy of her home planet. Pearls, as a category of Gems, are made to serve and entertain elite Gems: “[…] Pearls aren’t made for this. They are meant for looking nice and holding your stuff for you […]” (“Back to the Barn” 03:02—03:12). Pearls are therefore, more than other Gem categories, marked with femininity and womanhood. Simone de Beauvoir remarks upon women’s role as subservient to masculine powers, always forced to obey as the perpetual Other (cp. de Beauvoir 29). Pearls are not only meant for the purpose of servitude, but also reduced to their appearance which usually mirrors that of her master: Upon examining Pearl, a Homeworld Gem remarks: “It looks like a fancy one, too. Who do you belong to anyway?” (“Back to the Barn” 03:38—03:42). Pearl herself disturbs these lines and expresses liberation through a refusal of participation in the hegemony of Homeworld, going as far as to openly rebel against it.

The progression becomes ever so clearer when the programme offers a flashback to show how Pearl conducted herself on Homeworld. Her dress is designed to be decidedly feminine while she defaults to a subservient body position. As Homeworld demands conformity to the role of a “Pearl”, the parallels to earth’s gender discourse become highly visible. Despite the Gem at the core of their being serving as the only material reality behind their existence, Homeworld society expects a certain set of presentation and behaviours from each Gem. Deviation from the norm is not allowed and can be met with punishment. With regards to her latter transformation, Pearl’s position on Homeworld recalls Butler: “Femininity is taken on by a woman who ‘wishes for masculinity,’ but fears the retributive consequences of taking on the public appearance of masculinity.” (Butler, Gender Trouble 70). After Pearl flees to earth and joins a rebellion against Homeworld’s regime, her presentation and performance become masculinised. She takes up sword fighting, fully knowing that this is not acceptable for a Pearl (“Sworn to the Sword”), and her subsequent regenerations take on more masculine aspects with each iteration: “The lesbian body, then, (like every body) is discursively constructed, a cultural text, on the surface of which the constantly changing, and contradictory possible meanings of “lesbian” are inscribed and resisted.” (Jagose, Way out 280).

First, Pearl’s dress is exchanged for a pair of leggings with a tule skirt serving as a layer (“Gem Glow”), the second transformation shows her abandoning the skirt while still suggesting a feminine alignment by incorporating a large bow into her outfit (“Steven The Sword Fighter”). Meanwhile, the colour pink becomes less apparent in her design with time. The show suggests Pearl’s move from the feminine towards the masculine end of the spectrum that is used to embody resistance to Homeworld’s demands of femininity. In other words, Pearl’s female masculinity is constructed in the same way, even conceived through the same discursive means, as the hegemonic identity she inhabited before (cp. Jagose, Way out 278). Pearl’s identity becomes queered as her body proves to be signifier of gender fluidity that always changes within contexts (cp. Butler, Gender Trouble 188). This can be seen as a typical articulation of queer resistance, as it not only exposes the artificiality of gendered categories but also refuses to replicate them (cp. Butler, Gender Trouble 201). Steven Universe implies a connection between queer desires and the ways they are reflected on the body. Halberstam himself states that this mixture can be particularly dangerous to heteronormative society: “[…] when and where female masculinity conjoins with possibly queer identities, it is far less likely to meet with approval. Because female masculinity seems to be at its most threatening when coupled with lesbian desire.” (Halberstam, Female Masculinity 28).

The programme outright states that the moment of awakening for Pearl is directly incited by her love for Rose to whom she was gifted as a servant: “I was supposed to make her happy. I just never could” (“Now We’re Only Falling Apart” 03:06—03:10). Seeing how Rose is uncomfortable with the restrictions on Homeworld, Pearl incites the first sparks of rebellion in an effort to make her happy. She suggests tricking the authorities and spending a day on earth when it was explicitly forbidden for Rose to do so (“Now We’re Only Falling Apart”). This slight misdemeanour quickly spirals out of control, as both Pearl and Rose grow endeared by Earth and develop a desire to live there freely. The liberational implications of their actions are hard to miss. They harken back to the building of queer utopia which proves how queerness itself “is a longing that propels us onward, beyond romances of the negative and toiling of the present. Queerness is that thing that lets us feel that this world is not enough, that indeed something is missing.” (Muñoz 1).

However, Pearl’s freedom from authorities may be paradoxically stifled because of her connections to Rose. The programme grapples with the fact that Pearl’s wish to follow Rose may be interpreted as her remaining subservient to her former master instead of breaking free. To counter that, it can be said that Pearl’s love for Rose is completely inappropriate to Homeworld society. When Pearl attempts to fuse with Rose, she exclaims: “This is very not allowed.” (“Now We’re Only Falling Apart” 09:58—10:01). This means that their lesbian relationship is a societal taboo that gives room to further transgression and ultimately, rebellion. How exactly queer love and the war against oppression are cause and effect of one another within the show will be examined at a later point. For now, it is important to note that Pearl’s inability to let Rose go is presented as a failure to completely liberate herself. While the relationship is still queer, it is not equal and remains tenuously connected to the hierarchy out of which it was born. Various scenes suggest that even after Rose’s death, Pearl is unable to let go of their relationship: “Everything I ever did, I did for her. Now she’s gone. But I’m still here.” (“Rose’s Scabbard” 09:30—09:35). It is when Pearl accepts Rose’s death and experiences attraction to a human woman that her arch is completed. The episode “Last One Out Of Beach City” shows Pearl trying to flirt with a mysterious girl and breaking various rules in the process: “I am done thinking about the past. Tonight, I am all about the future.” (“Last One Out Of Beach City” 04:50—05:00). The symbol for overcoming the boundaries of her past and freeing herself from the last constraints of Homeworld’s oppression are encapsulated in her wearing a jacket. As a Gem’s attire is normally an inseparable part of her body, wearing clothes overstep Gem conventions and signify human territory. Here, she crosses lines between cultures to fulfil a romantic desire. Even her interest in the girl itself is significantly queered as an example of interspecies romance.

The importance of this experience can be observed with Pearl’s last regeneration. Her new form reflects the change towards a more queer, liberated identity onto her body. The colour pink is entirely absent from her design, signifying her removal from symbolic femininity as well as her freedom from Rose. The ways the design incorporates pants and a jacket recall the events of “Last One Out Of Beach City” while suggesting a close alignment to the classical butch identity (“Change Your Mind”). (Fig. 1. Pearl in her jacket. “Last One Out Of Beach City.” 02:52) Amethyst shrugs off masculinist notions about strength and overcomes her desire to fit into hegemonic society by questioning the nature of normativity itself. Pearl, on the other hand, escapes demands of femininity and her fate as a servant with the transformative power of queer desire. Consequently, Steven Universe uses the alien biological components of shapeshifting and the fantastical element of alternative societies to subvert expectations of hegemonic gender and reveal the artificiality of identity as a construct. While doing so, the programme also refers to Butler’s theories in ways that renegotiate queer subjectivities along the lines of political change: “The critical task is, rather, to locate strategies of subversive repetition enabled by those constructions, to affirm the local possibilities of intervention […]” (Butler, Gender Trouble 200). Both Amethyst and Pearl gain the strength to overcome the hegemonic oppression put upon them by their home planet through means of performativity. The queer reality of Pearl’s and Amethyst’s victories negate hegemonic assumptions about identity in ways that threaten oppressive forces. Queering one’s own identity is deeply connected to envisioning a future where categories break down. By engaging in performative practices, one is already in the process of building this exact world: “Performativity and Utopia both call into question what is epistemologically there and signal a highly ephemeral ontological field that can be characterized as a doing in futurity.” (Muñoz 26).

Works Cited:

Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. New York: Vintage Books 1989, c1952. Print.

Butler, Judith. Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge, 2004.

--. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. 1990.

Dhaenens, Frederik: “Articulations of queer resistance on the small screen”, Continuum 28.4, 2014. Pp. 520-531.

-- “The Fantastic Queer: Reading Gay Representations in Torchwood and True Blood as Articulations of Queer Resistance”, Critical Studies in Media Communication, 30.2, 2013. Pp. 102-116.

Dunn, Eli: “Steven Universe, Fusion Magic, and the Queer Cartoon Carnivalesque.” Gender Forum: An Internet Journal of Gender Studies 56, 2016. Pp. 44–57.

Edelman, Lee. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. 2004.

Halberstam, Jack. Female Masculinity. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998.

Hall, Donald E. Queer Theories. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

Hollinger, Veronica.: “(Re)Reading Queerly: Science Fiction, Feminism, and the Defamiliarization of Gender.” Science Fiction Studies 26.1, 1999. Pp. 23–40.

Jagose, Annamarie. Queer Theory: An Introduction. New York: New York University Press, 1996. Print.

--: “Way Out: The Category ‘Lesbian’ and the Fantasy of the Utopic Space.” Journal of the History of Sexuality, 4.2, 1993. Pp. 264–287.

--: “The Trouble with Antinormativity” Differences 1 26.1, 2015. Pp. 26–47.

Jameson, Fredric. Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions. London: Verso, 2005.

Melzer, Patricia. Alien Constructions: Science Fiction and Feminist Thought. University of Texas Press, 2006.

Merrick, Helen: “Gender in Science Fiction.” The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, edited by Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn, Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 241–252.

Moore, Mandy Elizabeth: "Future Visions: Queer Utopia in Steven Universe," Research on Diversity in Youth Literature 2.1, 2019. Pp. 1-17.

Muñoz, José E. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, 2009.

Pawlak, Wendy Sue: “The Spaces between: Non-Binary Representations of Gender in Twentieth-Century American Film.” Dissertation Abstracts International, 73.11, U of ArizonaProQuest, 2013.

Pearson, Wendy Gay: “Alien Cryptographies: The View from Queer.” Science Fiction Studies 26.1, 1999. Pp. 1-22.

--: “Science Fiction and Queer Theory” Published as a book chapter in: The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction. Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn. (Eds.), 2003. Pp. 149-160.

Roqueta Fernandez, Marta: “Posthumanism and the creation of racialised, queer identities and sexualities: An analysis of ‘Steven Universe’” Monográfico: Nuevas Amazonas, 2.7, 2019. Pp. 48-84. 78 Shelley,

Valentin, Al: “Using the Animator’s Tools to Dismantle the Master’s House? Gender, Race, Sexuality and Disability in Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time and Steven Universe.” Buffy to Batgirl: Essays on Female Power, Evolving Femininity and Gender Roles in Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by Julie M. Still et al., McFarland & Company Publishing, 2019, pp. 175–215.

Vasques Vital, André: “Water, gender, and modern science in the Steven Universe animation”, Feminist Media Studies, 2019. Ward, Pendleton, creator. Adventure Time. Cartoon Network Studios, 2010.

Wälivaara, Josefine. Dreams of a Subversive Future: Sexuality, (Hetero)normativity, and Queer Potential in Science Fiction Film and Television. Umeå, 2016

#Steven Universe #Steven Universe meta #Steven Universe analysis #SU analysis #SU meta #SU #Queer Studies #Academia #Media analysis #Long text #Rebecca Sugar #LGBT media #My M.A thesis #at least part of

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revlyncox · 2 years

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What Is Hope

This Platform Address is about finding hope in the midst of struggle, especially struggle for liberation. It was written for the Washington Ethical Society by the Rev. Lyn Cox and delivered on December 12, 2021. This Platform Address, in part, prepares the people of WES for a Moral Monday assembly the following day.

In this morning’s reading, we heard about “hope” as a transitive verb from the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II. Bishop Barber has been a force in movement building for justice for a long time now. While I’m not a full-time movement builder myself, I have been present for a few of the actions of the Poor Peoples Campaign, and before that with Repairers of the Breach. I have been inspired by the capacity for hope in all of the organizers and witnesses who come together to declare a new vision of who we can be as a community, as a society, as a country, as a world.

Sometimes I have the strength and energy to participate in an embodied way, and sometimes I don’t. Each one of us can be a wave that goes in and out with the tide, as long as we keep being an ocean of acceptance, gathering to send energy to each new wave going in, and to lift up with potential energy the waves returning.

I’d like to speak about hope today. Some of us need to draw from hope to hold out a vision of the world that can yet be. Some of us need hope to sustain the relationships, the communities, and the institutions that are holding people together during these difficult times. Some of us need hope to get through the day, to care for ourselves and the people we love in a personal way. I’ll be drawing from examples of justice making, and I want to be clear that hope is for all of us. You do not have to earn your inherent worth. Your path to creating a world where love and justice cross all borders might be caregiving, or science, or statistics, or direct service, or mutual aid, or actually physically creating the infrastructure our community needs, or something else. We can respect each other’s paths, and not beat ourselves up for failing to travel every path at the same time. Hope is for everybody.

When we seek change in coalition, we collaborate with people of many different faiths and no faith, each one speaking out of their own tradition about what moves them to be part of the movement. We each need to reach down to the roots of who we are and what our mission is in this life, because the status quo is not set up for this work, and the energy has to come from somewhere. Dr. Barber speaks eloquently from his tradition, but hearing him does not mean we have to draw from the same roots. Instead, it can inspire us to look to our own and answer in response based on the legacies and communities that energize us as Humanists.

For instance, when Dr. Barber speaks of hope, he might bring up a story from the Biblical book of Zechariah, comforting and energizing his people who were trying to put the pieces of themselves back together after a time of oppression; or from theologians like Walter Brueggemann or Reinhold Niebuhr, who speak about faith and realism. Those stories and essays can help illuminate points in our own philosophy, even if the texts that Dr. Barber references aren’t part of our own canon.

As Humanists, we act based on the philosophy that people are ends in themselves. People should not be used as means to an end. Each human has inherent worth and dignity. Part of our work is to humanize the spaces we go out into, to create spaces where inherent worth becomes more evident. In humanizing the spaces we inhabit, we help dismantle obstacles to human thriving like racism and other forms of oppression. An economic system that exploits the many to increase the wealth of the few is a system that uses people as a means to an end and is unacceptable in Humanist philosophy.

Therefore, if we declare ourselves to be Humanists, we have some responsibility for helping to make that philosophy a reality, to call attention to the places where human dignity is being disrespected and to increase the momentum of the world of interdependence and justice that we know can be.

When we look back at the first generation of Ethical Culture, and admire the institutions that were founded in that period that showed respect and care for people who had been previously regarded by the upper class as disposable, the point is not to rest on our laurels and brag about our ancestors. The point is to remember that the supreme ethical rule was never meant to be exclusively about individual interactions. Act in such a way as to bring out the best in others, and thereby in yourself. Yes, certainly, treat individuals you meet with care and respect and curiosity to bring out their best. And also realize that bringing out the best in people on a large scale requires that our society be built upon justice and compassion. Nobody can bring out their best in a situation of oppression, poverty, war, coercion, or environmental devastation. And so those who declare—as an axiom—the worth of human beings have a responsibility to bring a just and compassionate society closer to fruition. Again, there are many paths for doing that, political activism is only one, and we need to coordinate those paths and see ourselves as part of something larger.

This is where hope becomes difficult. As Humanists, we are also a people of data. We are a people who respect concrete research; we aspire to take an unflinching look at the world as it is. We don’t rely on promises or predictions or fantasies, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a vision for a different future. Felix Adler exhorted us to sing, to “Hail the Glorious, Golden City,” to imagine a gleaming society where justice reigns, where wonders abound, where people collaborate in unity of purpose. It is OK to have an imagination. And, yet, if we unveil the depth of suffering and injustice at work in the world as it currently is, and compare the data with that vision, we can easily become discouraged. True hope—the hope of staying the course, the hope of refusing to let dehumanization win even when we know what we are up against, active hope—is not easy.

So let’s be sure we’re framing hope consistently. Hope is not wishful thinking. Hope is not pretending things are OK. Hope is not glossing over the grief and pain around us and within us. Quite the opposite. Hope is strengthened when we can bear witness to suffering, to be in companionship with one another in the midst of pain and setbacks, and to keep doing the right thing anyway. Hope is staying committed to the values we have declared in our Statement of Purpose, acting on those values even when we cannot be assured that our vision will prevail in the short term. Dr. Cornel West puts it this way:

This hope is not the same as optimism. Optimism adopts the role of the spectator who surveys the evidence in order to infer that things are going to get better. Yet we know that the evidence does not look good. The dominant tendencies of our day are unregulated global capitalism, racial balkanization, social breakdown, and individual depression. Hope enacts the stance of the participant who actively struggles against the evidence in order to change the deadly tides of wealth inequality, group xenophobia, and personal despair. Only a new wave of vision, courage, and hope can keep us sane-and preserve the decency and dignity requisite to revitalize our organizational energy for the work to be done. To live is to wrestle with despair yet never to allow despair to have the last word.

Dr. West and others refer to being “prisoners of hope,” people who can do no other except the next, right thing in pursuit of justice. He is speaking of a commitment to act toward justice, to be held by ancestors and promises and community. It’s partially a Biblical reference, and even if we do not share the same relationship with that source, I hope we can identify with the strength of a commitment to values held in our community yesterday, today, and tomorrow. It’s a hope based in action, not speculation.

If we do not have assurances, and we don’t have illusions, our hope has to come from somewhere else. And one of the places it comes from is our interdependence. We get that hope from each other, and from the world of relationships we inhabit. That’s not as simple as trading platitudes with one another. It means caring for one another and the earth as best we can. In the reading we heard earlier from Dr. Barber, the practice of community care both spread hope among the people and energized the sharers of hope. When we create practices and spaces of humanization, places where those who are despised by the dominant society are treated as worthy and capable agents in their own lives; when we learn and perpetuate practices of respect and care, we are creating pocket universes that can grow into aspects of the glorious, golden city.

Our Pastoral Care Associates create hope by being present, by being peer listeners. Our Welcome Team and Zoom Ushers create hope in the way they hold us in community and hospitality. Our Tech Team creates hope in the unbelievable feats of science and engineering that allow us to weave our community together across time and space. Our Earth Ethics Team creates hope in holding out a different way to be in relationship with each other and the planet. Our Immigration Justice Team, Afghan Welcome Team, and Global Connections Team create hope in their border-crossing practices of love, support, and empowerment. Our Widening the Anti Racism Lens team creates hope by reminding us that we can humanize this space as we un-learn and dismantle the white supremacy culture we’re swimming in. Members of our Board of Trustees create hope by doing the unglamorous work, day in and day out, of creating and sustaining the container of this community, a place where we can meet to seek the highest. Our education staff and volunteers create hope by conveying this vision and these values to a new generation of Humanists. All of this is part of the work of humanizing, of opening up new pocket universes that connect to the glorious golden city. All of these aspects of hope link us together as part of something larger than our individual selves, larger than this community, larger even than the Humanist movement.

There are many paths in the practice of hope. If your hope-making activity is caregiving, teaching, caring for institutions like WES, or simply surviving when the world tells you your survival is inconsequential, your hope-making is vital. And. If you have energy for social change, there are plenty of hope-making opportunities there. Activities aimed at social change—direct action, public witness, electoral organizing, policy work, union organizing, and other forms of social justice—encompass some of the practices for hope.

If you have been by the Meeting House on 16th Street, you may have noticed the return of the immigration justice banner in front of the building. Even with regime change, there is still a need to advocate for human rights in immigration policy. We know that reproductive justice is under threat. And we know that any goals we have for justice and for the wellbeing of the people of this country rest on voting rights, which are also under threat. So-called labor shortages and supply-chain issues are being used as excuses to roll back labor protections, living wage initiatives, and environmental protections. Passing the Build Back Better act in the Senate, before Senators leave for a recess, would be a first step to addressing some of these issues, along with the For The People Act and restoring the Voting Rights Act. For all of these reasons - environmental justice, economic justice, voting rights, immigration justice - the Poor Peoples Campaign is calling those who are able to come to Capitol Hill tomorrow. UUA President Susan Frederick Gray will be there. Our friends from UUSJ will be there. I’ll be there. Our contingent is meeting up at 10:45, and the main event is at noon. If you would like to come along, sign up at SideWithLove.org. And if you can’t make it, but you want to know what else is coming up to address these issues, go to SideWithLove.org and sign up on the Action Center.

We may not achieve our goals. Short term success would be nice, but that’s not the deepest well from which we can draw hope. We increase the strength of our hope by showing up for each other, in whatever way is possible for us in our own time and place. Being at Capitol Hill tomorrow or watching the livestream is creating hope because it is demonstrating to the other people involved that we are not alone. All of the ways we humanize the spaces we inhabit are practices of creating hope. We might not win. But we might. And, even if we don’t achieve our legislative goals in the short term, we’ll be building a movement for the long term. Dr. Barber reminds us:

Dr. King said we are called to be thermostats that change the temperature, not thermometers that merely measure the temperature. Gandhi said first they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win. And the truth is, every movement that has ever changed America began when electoral politics, the majority, and even the law were antagonistic. The abolition movement didn’t have the majority with it, or the politics, when it bagan. The women’s suffrage movement didn’t have the majority when it bagan. The fight against legalized lynching didn’t have it. The fight for Social Security the battle to end segregation and Jim Crow, the campaign in Birmingham, the Greensboro sit-ins, Selma, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, none of these efforts was popular. None of these efforts had the Gallup poll with them. None of these efforts had political sway with them. But what changes the country and what changes the world is not just electoral politics, but moral movements that change the atmosphere in which electoral politics have to exist.

(Revive Us Again, p. 77)

I don’t know what will happen legislatively in the short term. I do know that my own resources for hope are increased when I can stay in touch with the network of relationships that sustain me, keep me rooted in my values, and help put my hope in context with the inspiration of the past and the future people and planet to whom I am responsible. I know that when I practice gratitude for communities like this one, where we are surrounded by people practicing hope-making activities, it’s a little easier to do the next, right thing. I know that I am not alone in holding a vision of a world of love and justice, a world where the inherent worth of people and our relationship with the planet are both evident in the fabric of society. Humanizing the spaces we inhabit is a hope-making activity. Let us be Humanists for hope. May it be so.

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all-things-are-nothing-to-me · 4 years

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The Fetishization of the Working Class

The left is mired in identity politics. While leftists often express their opposition to systems of domination based on class, gender, sexuality and race, they tend to oppose such systems by accepting and reinforcing the very identities created and imposed by such systems of domination. While all such identities are problematic, I believe that none of them is as harmful as the left’s idealized and fetishized identity of “the worker”.

The working class as an identity differs from identities such as identities based on gender and race in the sense that a worker is an actual thing that exists apart from how we define it(as opposed to a “black” person or a “woman”). That being said, the worker only exists as long as he reproduces social relationships that define him as a worker. The moment he stops working he ceases being a worker. But why do I consider embracing the working class identity to be so harmful?

Before we get into that, let’s look back at the creation of the working class and the working class identity. We can trace the birth of the working class back to the dawn of the industrial revolution in England, which needed a disciplined workforce to run the factories that were emerging like mushrooms after the rain. There was, however, one major problem for the owners of these factories: nobody wanted to work in them.

Peasants preferred to work their plots of land, and autonomous artisans wouldn’t dream of submitting themselves to the nightmarish factories. Both saw wage labor for what is is: paid slavery. Unfortunately, the state and the bourgeoisie were determined to turn both peasants and artisans into workers, and they had the tools and the power to accomplish that. Land enclosures robbed peasants of their lands, creating a mass of landless vagrants. Anti-vagrancy laws forced these ex-peasants to chose between being criminalized or reduced to mere cogs in an assembly line. Mass-produced goods out-competed artisans, and the creation of the modern police made sure that the population was proletarianized whether they wanted it or not.

This process sparked a wave of resistance. The most emblematic revolt against the new conditions being imposed was the Luddite uprising, when textile workers and weavers rose in revolt against industrialization and proceeded to destroy as many machines as they could. Eventually, the uprisings were put down and people were forced into becoming workers.

The shared experienced of being forced into becoming workers and of working together under grueling conditions (16 hours work journeys, miserable wages, poor workplace safety, etc) forged a solidarity among the first wave of proletarians, which created the conditions for the birth of the labor movement.

Accepting their new role, workers began to organize and fight for better conditions. Struggles for better wages, working-hours and for the legalization of unions took place, and the tactics of the infant movement began to develop. Working class solidarity grew, and the identity of the worker slowly took hold upon the new class as new ideologies were developed around it. These are the ideologies that eventually gave rise to the modern left.

It is in this context that socialism appeared. As a critique of capitalism emerged from worker struggles and from the thoughts of socialist thinkers, the bourgeoisie was identified as an enemy of the working class. From this perspective, visions of struggle and “liberation” began to emerge. The most well known of these perspectives is that of Karl Marx, which originated marxism. Marx recognized the antagonist nature of the relationship between classes, and sought to create a vision that could lead to a stateless and classless society (which he termed communism). His revolutionary subject was the working class, which Marx believed to be the only inherently revolutionary class under capitalist soiety. The non-workers who were excluded from the system were seen by him as crude “lumpens” with no revolutionary potential.

According to Marx, workers should seize the state through a violent revolution and create a “proletarian” (and socialist)state. With the state in their hands, workers would dismantle capitalism and speed the development of the “productive forces”, which Marx believed are being held back by capitalism. As the socialist society ran it’s course, the state would supposedly become increasingly unnecessary and wither away (although no marxist ever made clear how this process would actually happen).

Bakunin and other anarchists living at that time (correctly) predicted that the takeover of the state would simply create a class of state bureaucrats that would become a new self-serving elite. This critique was essential to the development of anarchist theory and praxis, which views the state as an inherently oppressive institution that cannot be used for liberating purposes.

That being said, both Marx and Bakunin (as well as socialists/anarchists at the time with very few notable exceptions) believed that the productive forces should not only be maintained but also developed. Not only they failed to identify the inherently oppressive nature of industrial technology, they also failed to see that workers can never be liberated as long as they remain workers.

Much time has passed since then, but the left still glorifies and fetishizes industrial society and the working class that keeps it running. Even the vision of the most “radical” elements of the left (contemporary revolutionary socialists and left anarchists)refuses to go further than the idea of a society where the means of production are administered by the working class. But what good is it to get rid of the bourgeoisie if we are still enslaved by work, civilization and industrial technology? Should I be exhilarated at the possibility of managing my own misery instead of seeking to abolish it?

And why should I look upon the working class as “The Revolutionary Class” when the vast majority of the working class would defend industrial society with teeth and nails even though it is the source of their misery? Now, don’t get me wrong. In the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the working class I will always side with the working class. That being said, I cannot envision more than a small fraction of the working class rallied behind a true liberating vision, not when most workers cannot even imagine (and wouldn’t want) a world free from the shackles of industrial civilization.

And how can the “radical left” claim to fight for the liberation of the working class when most workers don’t want to be liberated? If forced to choose between the radical left and their capitalist overlords, most workers will side with the latter (not to mention the increasing number of working class folks who are willing to turn to fascism in response to an increasingly crisis-ridden world). You can always claim that this is simply a matter of educating workers so they can see their own oppression, but it doesn’t change the fact that you cannot speak for those who would never wish to be represented by you. Also, Seeing workers as mere pawns of capitalist propaganda is a patronizing and elitist attitude which denies people their agency as individuals. Yet, such attitude is prevalent among the left.

This is not to deny the social dynamics that are at play shaping people. What we can accomplish as individuals is always limited by our social environment. Yet, if we are nothing more than products of our environment with no individual agency,there isn’t even a point in trying to oppose society.

Either way, it is clear that the left’s ideas about the working class and its revolutionary potential are as irrelevant as their ideas about revolution and “liberation”. The working class can only be liberated to the extent that it is destroyed and transcended. As for me, I will side with members of the working class that are willing to rise up when it suits me, but I won’t let off the hook those that get in my way. As for those who refuse to be molded into workers and are willing to steal back their lives, they can always count on my strength and solidarity.

#guará #post left #nihilism #leftism #communism #anarchism #post left anarchy

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arcticdementor · 3 years

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On July 16, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken sent a cable to American embassies across the globe with new instructions. In the face of what he described as the growing threat from authoritarian and populist forces emanating from countries around the world, he urged U.S. diplomats to actively “seek ways to exert effective pressure on those countries to uphold democratic norms and respect human rights,” and vowed that “standing up for democracy and human rights everywhere is not in tension with America’s national interests nor with our national security.” This, he specified, must apply even to America’s allies and partners, declaring that “there is no relationship or situation where we will stop raising human rights concerns.”

U.S. President Joe Biden has explicitly characterized his foreign policy as waging “a battle between the utility of democracies in the 21st century and autocracies,” and described the world as at an “inflection point” that will determine for the future “who succeeded, autocracy or democracy, because that is what is at stake.” And while he has named China and Russia as the top threats to democracy, he has stated that, “in so many places, including in Europe and the United States, democratic progress is under assault.”

This kind of rhetoric has led many to describe Biden as gearing up to lead a new round of global ideological competition akin to the Cold War, and Blinken’s cable appears to be a step toward operationalizing this conception into everyday U.S. policy.

…

Blinken’s invitation had in fact been a response to a June 26 declaration made by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, which itself followed the completion of a “comprehensive report on systemic racism,” which had unsurprisingly discovered its titular subject ingrained around the world – especially in the “excessive policing of Black bodies and communities” in the United States. In her statement, Bachelet castigated the West for a “piecemeal approach to dismantling systems entrenched in centuries of discrimination and violence,” declared that “the status quo is untenable,” and called instead for an immediate “whole-of-society” “systemic response,” with a “transformative agenda” to uproot systemic racism everywhere and implement the “restorative justice” urgently demanded by “the worldwide mobilization of people calling for racial justice.”

The Biden administration could hardly have responded with anything less than full-throated support for such an idea, given that battling the omnipresent specter of America’s “systemic racism” has become a core feature of the administration’s political identity.

And few administration officials have embraced this battle with as much personal zeal as Blinken, who moved immediately after his confirmation to not only install a Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer at the State Department (in a powerful new position reporting only to himself), but ordered every bureau in the department to also appoint a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Diversity and Inclusion as well – with his stated goal being “to incorporate diversity and inclusion into the [State] Department’s work at every level.”

…

Speaking of that kind of thing, most of those upset about Blinken’s invitation of the UNHRC’s racism inquisitors strangely seem to have missed another development in a related front of the global culture war.

This despite the fact that the State Department is eager for you to know that, “On June 23, the United States led, and 20 countries co-sponsored, its first-ever side event on the human rights of transgender women, highlighting the violence and structural, legal, and intersectional barriers faced by transgender women of color.”

So there’s that. But side event to what? That would be the last session of the UNHRC, where the U.S. worked to address assorted “dire human rights situations” by helping to pioneer the launch of the “Group of Friends of the Mandate of the United Nations Independent Expert on Protection Against Violence and Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity” (GoF IE SOGI).

Besides the United States, the inaugural SOGI Group includes: Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Costa Rica, Denmark, Greece, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Israel, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, Norway, Netherlands, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Switzerland.

Who is this Independent Expert with so many friends? That would be Víctor Madrigal-Borloz, Senior Visiting Researcher at the Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program.

After its formation, the Group’s first act was to consider a report produced for the UNHRC by Mr. Madrigal-Borloz titled “The Law of Inclusion.”

“The Law of Inclusion” states that all evidence necessarily “leads to the conclusion that all human beings live in gendered societies traversed by power hierarchies,” and declares that, as we all seek to “build back better” (here inexplicably adopting Joe Biden’s campaign slogan) the “adoption of gender-based and intersectional analysis” is “a fundamental component of a diligent discharge of [all countries’ human rights] responsibility.”

Crucially, an intersectional approach leads to a “recognition of how race is gendered and gender is raced, as well as the many other factors which affect how one is allocated rights.” Plus, as a bonus, “gender theory is also relevant as a tool to address, analyse and transform systems of violent masculinity.”

…

Ultimately, based on his intersectional analysis, the Independent Expert declares a new “fundamental duty of the State” based on his careful investigation:

To recognize every human being’s freedom to determine the confines of their existence, including their gender identity and expression.

(I don’t think you will find a more flawless one-sentence summation of the End-Stage Liberalism I’ve previously outlined, characterized by its endless quest to liberate us from any and all limits, than this, by the way.)

…

The United States and the rest of the SOGI Group immediately issued a statement fully endorsing the report, noting that they “would like to reaffirm” that: “As clearly demonstrated by the thorough analysis provided by the report, gender is a social construct”; that intersectional analysis has “proven to be fundamental to the design and implementation of inclusive public policies”; that they support “the importance of advancing legal gender recognition based on self-identification”; and that they “oppose any attempt to erase gender from international human rights law instruments and processes.”

I hope you will retain at least one takeaway from my subjection of you to this word salad of intersectional jargon on race and gender: that the distinctive language and doctrinal ideological concepts of the New Faith have extended far past the Harvard Quad, crossed the oceans, and have now, as the report puts it, thoroughly “permeated” themselves through elite-managed global institutions like the UN Human Rights Council.

Conservatives, in particular, are typically dismissive of the UN in general and the UNHRC in particular (President Trump officially pulled the U.S. out of the council in 2018, after which Biden rejoined as an observer), as they see it as a pointless talk-shop that spends a majority of its time criticizing the United States and its allies, though with little practical effect. This is a mistake.

What is happening here is the steady creation and entrenchment of new norms that aim to redefine what is considered the normal and acceptable window of cultural, political, and legal practice by countries the world over. The UNHRC may have no direct political power, but it is precisely the ignorance or flippant disregard for the transformative long-term power of norms that has so far lost conservatives every culture war battle they have fought. Somehow conservatives – and now Liberals – have been consistently blindsided by norms falling out from under them (gradually, and then suddenly) even as they have held positions of political power.

Meanwhile, under the Biden administration, Washington has now embraced this kind of norm-setting mechanism for remaking the world in its new and ideologically improved image.

…

Not every country is completely woke to the need for unlimited gender self-identification or a “whole-of-society transformation” to address its hierarchies of oppression, however.

International Expert Mr. Madrigal-Borloz has also noticed this problem, which is why he and the SOGI Group are producing a follow-up companion report to “The Law of Inclusion,” this time to be titled “Practices of Exclusion.”

…

Probably in most other contexts, when an external power or powers attempt to “deconstruct” and replace the “traditional values” and “cultural and religious” norms of a distinct people against their will, this would be called that what it is: imperialism (or, occasionally, worse).

Nonetheless, “Practices of Exclusion” is set to be published at the upcoming UN General Assembly meeting in New York this September and will undoubtedly be endorsed by the U.S., U.K., and the other progressive members of the SOGI Group at that time – even as many of these same countries are actually still experiencing their own fierce bouts of “resistance” to its core ideas.

What does this all mean? In short, that the ideological battles of Cold War 2.0 are not going to be limited to categories similar to those which at least broadly seemed to characterize Cold War 1.0, or necessarily even uphold the classic conceptions of “liberal-democracy” and “authoritarianism” or “autocracy” with which we are familiar.

Instead, it should be understood that the Biden administration and its like-minded partners are now operating under a rather different ideological calculus about what “democracy” and “human rights” mean, even as, similar to the original Cold War, that calculus directly links domestic and international ideological foes.

In this worldview, in order for a democratic state to be a legitimate “Democracy,” it is not enough for it to have a popularly elected government chosen through free and fair elections – it also has to hold the correct progressive values. That is, it has to be Woke. Otherwise it is not a real Democracy, but something else. Here the term “populism” has become a useful one: even if a state is not yet authoritarian or “autocratic” in a traditional sense, it may be in the grip of “Populism,” an ill-defined concept vague enough to encompass the wide range of reactionary sentiments and tendencies that can characterize “resistance” to progress, as based on “traditional values,” etc. And ultimately, we are told, “Populism” is liable to lead to Autocracy – because if you aren’t progressing forward in sync with Democracy, you are sliding backwards along the binary spectrum toward Autocracy.

Moreover, as in the case of the struggle between Capitalist-Liberalism and Communist-Authoritarianism during the original Cold War, the insidious “forces” of Populism-Autocracy are present not only out in the undecided “Third World,” but even lurking inside Democracies in good standing – constantly threatening to tip them, like dominoes, into the opposite camp. Hence why Biden issues warnings like the one claiming that, “in so many places, including in Europe and the United States, democratic progress is under assault.” The fight against the perceived forces of Populism-Autocracy within the United States, or within the European Union, is not in this conception at all separate from the fight against the likes of China and Russia on the world stage; they are the same fight.

…

Exacerbating this sense of fear and division is the fact that a Democracy can’t just hold some of the correct values – it has to hold all of them, in toto. This is after all the prime conclusion of intersectional analysis: all injustice is interlinked, forming interlocking systems of oppression; therefore injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Intersectionality thus demands liberation in totality; there can be no pluralism – no one can simply be left alone or granted the slightest leniency, because no injustice in any place or of any degree can be suffered to exist, lest it pollute and threaten the entire system.

The conclusion is inevitable: the New Faith must be a missionary, evangelical faith. By its own internal logic, for its own survival, it must march abroad to convert the heathens even as it hunts heretics at home.

…

There are still plenty of countries out there – in fact, a vast majority of them – who think intersectional gender theory and other fruits of the New Faith are in essence stark raving mad, and are also rather attached to keeping their own cultures and traditions.

So even if you are a strong supporter of LGBT rights, feminism, or other liberal-progressive ideals (and yes, many countries around the world of course do treat LGBT people, women, and racial minorities terribly), it is still worth considering the practical consequences of Intersectional Imperialism. If the West makes ideological conformity an integral requirement for joining, receiving aid from, or even working with its Democracy bloc (as Blinken has implied), then many of these countries are liable to flee into the arms of China and other genuinely authoritarian but ideologically non-missionary states, despite the security concerns they may have.

…

At this time it was the Soviet bloc, including communist controlled Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Yugoslavia, who argued that freedom from discrimination should take precedence over the rights of freedom of expression and assembly.

And it was the Western liberal democracies, together with the Latin American states, that rose to (unsuccessfully) oppose this idea.

The “fundamental right of free speech” was, argued U.K. representative Lady Gaitskell, “the foundation-stone on which many of the other human rights were built,” and it was the U.K.’s position that, despite abhorring racism, “in an advanced democracy the expression of such views was a risk that had to be taken.” Hungary shot back that free speech and tolerance was pointless if “fascists” were tolerated anywhere.

When the U.S. delegation attempted to restrict the scope of speech defined in the law to that “resulting in or likely to cause acts of violence,” the move was blocked by the Soviet group, with Czechoslovakia countering that there could be no democracy if “movements directed towards hatred and discrimination were allowed to exist.”

…

Times have changed. As the European Union prepares to consider writing “hate speech” into the official list of EU crimes, tweeting “gender-critical” thoughts is already an arrestable offense in the United Kingdom, and the United States looks to enlighten the world about the dangers of oppressive microaggressions, one wonders if there is any country remaining, the world over, still willing to genuinely represent liberal values in these terms today.

Instead only the crusaders of the New Faith remain to march into battle against the Autocrats and their Populist allies, and you are either with them or against them. Welcome to the Woke Cold War.

#n.s. lyons #substack #left wing cultural imperialism #read the whole thing

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lame-and-corny-blog · 6 years

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Anti-Blackness in Asian-American Communities

In the wake of the nazi and white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, I have heard much talk about the need for solidarity among people of color. However, in order to eliminate white supremacy together, it is necessary for non-black people of color to confront the pervasive anti-Blackness in their communities. Anti-Blackness is not only perpetuated by white people - speaking from the non-Black Asian-American (specifically Japanese-American) perspective, we uphold this harmful ideology as well.

Anti-Blackness permeates Asian American communities in many ways. Whether we recognize it or not, it extends through both our American communities and Asian cultures. Many Asian Americans are taught from a young age to hate dark skin - by our parents urging us to use skin-lightening or bleaching creams and family members refusing to go out in the sun for fear of tanning (both common in many Asian countries, including India, China, Korea, Japan, Malaysia, and more). Light-skinned Asian models featured in fashion and makeup advertisements also reflect this beauty standard. K-Pop groups have been known to use Blackface and to profit off of Black culture by appropriating dreadlocks, cornrows, African-American Vernacular English (AAVE), and other forms of hip-hop culture. In the United States of America, anti-Blackness in Asian American communities is exemplified by incidents such as the shooting of unarmed black man Akai Gurley by Chinese police officer Peter Liang. In November of 2014 Liang was charged and convicted of manslaughter, leaving many Asian-Americans angry and claiming he had been used as a “scapegoat”. Their reasoning was that, if no white police officers had ever been convicted, why should he have been? Sadly, the severely misguided protests against his charges were apparently the largest public display of Asian-American activism in 20 years. The protests were anti-Black because Asian-Americans were attempting to secure a privilege (typically afforded to whites) for themselves, and callously disregarding a life that was unjustly taken to do so. What all Asian Americans really should have done was support Akai Gurley and protest his wrongful death, no matter the race of the offending police officer. Instead, these Asian American protestors failed the Black community at a time when, as the whole nation was watching, their speaking out might have helped to bridge communities and brought to light the common threat of white supremacy. Another area ripe with anti-Blackness is the concept of the “model minority,” typically used to describe East Asians and Indians in particular. This myth that “Asian-Americans” as a monolith are economically and academically successful, naturally smart, and the ideal that other races should aspire to be is harmful to all Asian-American communities, Black folks, and other people of color as well. The model minority myth was actually purposefully crafted around the 1950’s to 1960’s, when the media began primarily featuring Asian success stories, despite many stories of struggle in our diverse community. By 1987 when Time Magazine ran the cover story “Those Asian-American Whiz Kids,” this new stereotype was solidified. The model minority myth drove a wedge between communities of color, and is still perpetuated not only by white people, but, unfortunately, also by many Asians who are proud to be the “better minority.” It would probably pain these people to know that instead of Asians simply becoming more successful, what really happened was that American society changed its form of racism towards us in order to use us as propaganda, and to deny rights to Black folks. Jeff Guo from The Washington Post argues, “The image of the hard-working Asian became an extremely convenient way to deny the demands of African Americans. As [Ellen] Wu describes in her book [The Color of Success], both liberal and conservative politicians pumped up the image of Asian Americans as a way to shift the blame for black poverty.” The model minority myth is still used against other communities of color to suggest they are simply not working hard enough, when people say, “if Asians could make it, why can’t you?” Asian-Americans are still systematically oppressed in America, but the model minority stereotype was created to further a narrative that could be used to separate and contain communities of color. In this narrative, Asians are “too smart,” Black folks are “too unintelligent,” and conveniently, white people get the occupy the space of “just right”. This theory, known as "The Three Bears Effect" or the “Goldilocks Effect,” holds Black people as inherently inferior and Asians get to celebrate their perceived success, not recognizing how much it actually works against us. This system also erases mixed Black and Asian folks, who are expected to place themselves in a narrative that paints Black and Asian communities as completely separate, and that doesn’t account for their existence. The Model Minority Myth is rather cunning in its oppression. The stereotype that Asians are all “good at math, straight-A students, successful, and do not complain”, while seemingly positive, does not allow us any room to make mistakes. As a result, in part, suicide is the 8th leading cause of death among Asian-Americans, and we are also highly unlikely to mention symptoms of depression or seek treatment, for fear of being seen as weak and as failures. This myth also completely tends to erase Asian communities that are not succeeding economically, which is prevalent especially among communities of immigrants from poorer nations or with a large population of refugees. The restrictiveness of the Model Minority Myth also causes Asian-Americans to rebel against it - which is not inherently bad, except their method of doing so relies upon Black culture. A prime example of this is chef and author Eddie Huang, who once said, in response to a question about his affinity for hip-hop, “I feel like Asian men have been emasculated so much in America that we’re basically treated like Black women.” Huang then proceeded to appropriate AAVE and disrespect the Black women who called him out (a distinct form of intersectional violence called “misogynoir”). When Asian-Americans take Black culture as their own and do not respect the very people who created it, they are perpetuating anti-Blackness.I have been talking a great deal about the shared identity of “Asian-American,” but it is important to acknowledge that as a community, we are far from a monolith. East Asians (Japanese, Chinese, Korean) have unique light-skinned privileges and are treated differently than South, Southeast, and Central Asians. One of these privileges is that East Asians are often centered in dialogue concerning Asian issues and other Asian communities’ struggles are largely ignored. It is important to note that along with anti-Blackness, we must also eliminate the privileging of lighter skin over darker skin, known as colorism/shadeism, in our communities and work to center non-East Asians. These struggles, ultimately, are all interconnected through the broader goal of solidarity and the collapse of white supremacy.Black folks have been fighting for our collective rights, and the dismantling of white supremacy, for ages. They have extended gestures of solidarity in the past, only to largely get stepped on by Asian-Americans in our attempt to “get ahead”. Though there have been movements such as “Letters for Black Lives” and “Asians for Black Lives” recently, “Yellow Peril Supports Black Power” during the civil rights movement, and a number of individuals who have committed their lives to solidarity activism, we cannot expect Black folks to continue fighting for our rights, nor can we expect them to trust us, given our communities’ rampant anti-Blackness. Only when we eradicate anti-Blackness from our communities will solidarity be possible, and this is an imperative. As Mari Matsuda put perfectly in her speech to the Asian Law Caucus in 1990 titled “We Will Not Be Used”:“The role of the racial middle is a critical one. It can reinforce white supremacy if the middle deludes itself into thinking it can be just like white if it tries hard enough. Conversely, the middle can dismantle white supremacy if it refuses to be the middle, if it refuses to buy into racial hierarchy, and if it refuses to abandon communities of black and brown people, choosing instead to forge alliances with them.”And so we must decide: in the struggle against white supremacy, which side will we choose?

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loudlytransparenttrash · 6 years

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This Week Within Our Colleges: Part 18

Texas State University student, Rudy Martinez, is doubling down and defending his campus newspaper article ‘Your DNA is an abomination,’ which he argues “white death will be liberation for all,” and tells white people to “accept their death as the first step toward defining themselves as something other than the oppressor.” He goes on to write in his piece, “I hate you because you shouldn’t exist” and “there are only about a dozen white people” he would “consider decent.” He also claims white people have the luxury of always coming home safely and never being nervous when confronted by police officers, hence ‘white privilege.’ Although the article was condemned by the student body president, calling it “blatant racism,” Martinez sees it differently. Citing the left’s dumb, manipulated version of racism which “can only be from a position of power,’ Martinez claims he is proud of his stance against the bad white people.

SIT Graduate Institute have released a paper which encourages educators to promote “racial identity” among minority students to prevent “assimilation into the dominant culture.” The author, Hadiel Mohamed, says she “aims to answer how educators can incorporate ethnic/racial identity development in the classroom for youth of color who are driven to pursue whiteness.” “Our education system has been used as an oppressive tool for people of color.” Mohamed contends. “We see the preservation of whiteness through immigration laws. There has been a deliberate attempt at preserving the white race within the United States by racializing our borders.” She worries her fellow POC will “adapt, conform and assimilate to whiteness" and become just as complicit in all of this oppression. To avoid this, she encourages educators to help them become hyper aware of their own racial identity and develop a sense of ethnic pride early enough in the classroom before they can “conceptualize the ways expected to assimilate within white society.” How does she plan to teach these kids to be proud of their ethnicity and refuse whiteness? Lessons on the “injustices enacted upon people of color,” of course!

A University of Colorado, Denver administrator worries that white children may “forfeit their humanity” if they aren’t raised by sufficiently woke parents. She argues that parents should employ “critical race parenting” to prevent white children from committing “racial microaggressions” against their peers. She goes on to suggest that white people are “constantly wielding racial microaggressions,” and that over time these microaggressions can cause “racial battle fatigue,” noting that children of color are especially susceptible to this horror. White children, on the other hand, are especially prone to committing racial microaggressions because they “learn a complicated dance of whiteness” that teaches them not only to “maintain and defend whiteness,” but to do so while claiming to be “colorblind.” “When they learn to love their whiteness, their souls waste away as they are quietly tearing themselves from humanity and real love,” she writes. “Can we instead begin at the core with our white children and work to ward off white identity and whiteness before they succumb and forfeit their humanity in order to join the oppressor?”

University of Wisconsin-Madison is once again offering their charming course, ‘Problem of Whiteness.’ The African Cultural Studies course seeks to teach students to “understand how whiteness is constructed and experienced in order to dismantle white supremacy,” according to the online description. The professor teaching this course just so happens to be a white guy, and says it’s important to explore whiteness because “the problem of racism is the problem of whites being racist towards blacks.”

The same professor also chaired a panel discussion with the same name as his course, ‘Problem of Whiteness,’ which involved another white professor from the Florida Atlantic University, who encouraged the scholars in the audience to spend more time listening to their white, male conservative students. He goes on to argue the reason professors need to be more open-minded towards them isn’t because it’s the fair and right thing to do, but because if they don’t, it will lead these young white men to become anti-feminist and white nationalists which then leads to “the radical militarization of white men that we’ve seen time and time again, all too recently materialize in mass shootings.” The professor goes on to explain how discussions on whiteness “lets white students come to grips with their racist inheritance” and “allows students of color to talk about alternatives to a white supremacist society.”

University of Michigan held a two-day training session that aimed to encourage white employees to deal with their “whiteness” so they could become better equipped to fight for social justice causes. Participants who took part in the “Conversations on Whiteness” session were taught to “unpack their whiteness” in order for them to “recognize the difficulties they face when talking about social justice issues related to their white identity, explore this discomfort, and devise ways to work through it.”

Two New England professors have urged their colleagues to cultivate a “space free from microaggressions” by adopting a “social justice agenda” in class. Their first recommendation for professors involves requiring students to wear “name cards with gender pronouns” to avoid instant microaggressions on the first day. Their second brilliant idea is to quickly stop any conversation from turning into a debate as that allows “one student to be wrong and one to be right,” and that’s a microaggression. “Dialogue, not debate,” you see? To prevent conversation from turning into a debate, the professors suggest asking the individual pressing the other to “move out” of the discussion, which is a disabled-friendly way of saying “step out,” avoiding another microaggression, you see! They conclude by expressing hope that their recommendations will help to create an “anti-oppressive arena for learning,” declaring social justice essential to education.

University of Southern Indiana is the latest school to embrace the left’s tragically regressive push for us to go back in time and see nothing but a person’s skin color when we look at them. Students are being encouraged to “reject colorblindness,” as it’s today racist and microaggressive against racial minorities when white people say, “I don’t see color when I look at people.” A “good ally” instead identifies and “acknowledges the oppressed and disadvantaged group to which the person belongs,” and then behave accordingly around them in order to “reduce their own complicity or collusion in the oppression” of that group.

San Diego State University held a bizarre workshop which certain students were required to attend as part of their class. Organizers described the experience as “shocking” and “disturbing” but it’s all to help the students “step outside their comfort zone and into the shoes of those who are struggling with oppressive circumstances.” Students were walked through a darkened room where they were met by campus leaders acting out a series of horror scenarios non-white people supposedly find themselves in every day. The students were screamed at and told to face the wall before listing a bunch of minorities “they” have gone after. They were then confronted with “ICE agents” breaking into a home and stealing family members, while another scene acted out Nazis. The performance then showed a girl “having a problem” with her new roommate because she’s “a little too foreign.” The students were then taken into a room and debriefed by professors about how these totally realistic plays made them feel and what they should change about themselves to better combat this oppression. “It is our sincere hope that by exposing students to the oppressive systems in society they’ll take a look at how we all participate in these systems and hopefully commit to changing oppressive patterns and behaviors,” the professor says.

Reed College finance office was shut down for three days after a group of students from the ‘Reedies Against Racism’ group forced their way in and refused to leave, blocking the employees and harassing them with demands. They ordered the school to sever its ties with a bank whom they claim is funding the “mass incarceration of POC.” During planning for the protest, white members of the group were designated jobs listed on the ‘Whitey Tasks” which "did not require POC approval,” such as printing labels and carrying objects, while POC in charge dealt with the more serious stuff. The same group have also protested against the school’s Western Civilization course, demanding for it to be “reformed” and taught through the lens of oppression.

Two University of Northern Iowa professors have blasted the prevalence of "white civility" in college classrooms, saying that civil behavior reinforces "white racial power." This civility can reinforce white privilege, the professors argue, and it can even “reproduce white racial power.” To prove their point, they interviewed ten white students and asked them what civil behavior means to them. Those who mentioned “treating everyone equally" were accused of erasing the identity of POC and reinforcing whiteness. The students also became guilty of white privilege if they admitted they spoke to students of color nicely and politely when discussing race. To fight this, the professors suggest that college professors intervene, saying “it is important instructors ensure their classrooms are spaces that challenge, rather than perpetuate, whiteness and white civility.”

University of Rhode Island professors have come up with a way of helping the school’s non-white students deal with all the “racial microaggressions” they’re confronted with daily on campus. Professor Annemarie Vaccaro, the same person who came up with the term “invisibility microagressions” - which is when a ‘person of color’ “feels invisible” around white people - explains the only way these poor, victimized bastards can cope with all of this microaggression is to provide them with extensive therapy and counseling. Providing therapy to a bunch of people who have been misled into believing every slight and moment of discomfort is a coordinated attack against them? Instead of just reminding them they’re perfectly free and capable adults who are in control of their own damn lives? Sounds a lot like feminism.

University of Wisconsin-Madison social justice student group were outraged to discover the school’s football team and band spent a night in a Trump hotel during their Orange Bowl appearance. The group released a statement stating they are “disappointed” and “concerned” with this “massive violation.” “College football makes its profits off the work and talents of people of color. It is absolutely disgusting the very same people of color are being rewarded with a stay in accommodation owned by a man who is one of the biggest oppressors of people of color in this country.” They then go on to accuse Trump of more racism, “questionable working conditions” and “human rights violations” and demand the school to never stay at a Trump hotel EVER again. There’s only one problem - the retards didn’t realize Orange Bowl’s contract with the Trump hotel was set four years ago, and according to Orange Bowl vice president, the hotel not only meets their standards and requirements but exceeds them.

Professors in New York have united to sign a letter calling for New York City to remove monuments of Theodore Roosevelt and Christopher Columbus, saying the statues of the historical figures represent “white supremacy.” “For too long, they have generated harm and offense as expressions of white supremacy,” the professors say in their petition to the mayor and city commissioners. “The monuments are a stark embodiment of white supremacy, and are an especial source of hurt to black and indigenous people among them.” They go on to call for a “bold statement” to be made in removing the statues, declaring such a move would show the world that “racism won’t be celebrated in New York City.”

Ohio State held an event named “Managing the Trauma of Race,” which aimed to teach black students strategies for “self care and activism” and how to “mitigate the trauma the African American community faces from individual, systemic and institutional racism.” The school’s Multicultural Center website states that black Americans are “bombarded” with racism and that it “leads individuals to experience trauma on a daily basis.” What’s traumatizing here is teaching young Americans everything in life is either racist or microaggressive and their lives are a predetermined dead-end designed by white people.

The University of Washington professor who invented the concept 'white fragility’ has quit her job to travel the country giving seminars on ‘white fragility.’ These seminars begin with Robin DiAngelo, who just so happens to be a white woman, telling the white people in the audience to stand and walk on stage. The white people are then required to read from a projection screen, each taking turns admitting their sins, such as “internalized superiority” and “racial privilege.” When they’re finished reading, DiAngelo tells the audience to “not clap” for the white people as they return to their seats. Question-and-answer sessions are also permitted from her seminars - I’m not surprised.

UC Santa Barbara is currently dealing with one helluva internal catfight. An employee popular with trans student activists was dismissed from her position in the school’s Sexual and Gender Diversity center. What was the response from the students? Angry protests and accusations of the Sexual and Gender Diversity center “perpetuating violence against queer, transgender people and marginalized communities” and “perpetuating the systems of white supremacy,” of course! The activist students listed a set of demands during their protests, which included a new building for the center, a doubling of the center’s program budget and extra funding for the school’s queer and trans health advocate. Along with a “trans taskforce advocacy coordinator” (whatever the hell that is) they also demanded for the employee to be reinstated while demanding the center’s director and assistant dean to resign. What was the administration’s response? Heartfelt apologies and total compliance to the demands, of course!

Cal State San Marcos held an event called “Whiteness Forum,” detailing the many different ways in which “whiteness” in America oppresses people of color and society. Guests were welcomed with a large banner reading the “Whiteness Forum is about reflecting on white privilege and racism.” Several anti-Trump displays were also set up around the room. The forum kicked off with some slam poetry performed by students in the “Communication of Whiteness” class who took the opportunity to express their frustration with whiteness. One of the performers, a black female student, called Africa “the greatest country in the world” and went on to claim, “On a daily basis I am seen as a threat, but you get a pass because you’re white.” Another student offered similar sentiments in their “poetry”: “Whiteness thrives on the hate of everyone. Every day is a day to challenge whiteness.” After the performances, the professor in charge of the event encouraged the crowd to interact with her students and learn about the “white supremacy” in all its forms embedded across the country.

Evergreen State College has a new section in its student newspaper dedicated strictly to non-white students in an effort to provide a “place where POC can be us without it being overshadowed by the dark cloud that is living under white supremacy.” They gave an inspiring introduction, encouraging only POC who are united by fear of Nazis and police to get on board with submissions, before footnoting the popular, “Dear white people“ routine, explaining how having a problem with the bizarre concept of white fragility is actually evidence of white fragility, and how embarrassing it is when white people say “we need to view people through a color-blind lens.”

University of Minnesota community members were handed a memo from their Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action to warn against creating a hostile environment for students who could be offended by the joy of Christmas - I think we all know who they’re talking about here. Items the document describes as “not appropriate,” include bows, bells, Santa Claus, Christmas trees, wrapped gifts, the star of Bethlehem, angels and doves. Also included were decorations in red and green or blue and white themed colors. State University of New York, Brockport issued similar guidances, banning “culturally sensitive holiday decorations.” Life University sponsored a decorating contest, but the decorations were ordered to be “inclusive to other cultures and religions.” University of California, Irvine encouraged everyone to celebrate the winter season rather than the Christmas holiday itself while. Many other institutions omitted the word “Christmas.” University of Alabama’s student newspaper accused Trump of being a Christian bigot for returning a nativity scene to the White House.

#college

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vixianna · 7 years

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But Where’s the Legislation?!

Is it just me, or are other PoC uncomfortable with the white discoursers obsession with legislation as the One True Form of Systematic Oppression? Not only is that not true, but expecting legislation in a 21st century western country to specifically mention a group completely misunderstands how oppression actually works.

Black people are still oppressed in America, and it’s not because there is specific legislation mentioning us to keep us from getting houses or marrying. That’s not what oppression looks like in America. (For the most part. Not even the bathroom bills that target transness specifically mention trans people.)

What you should look for in legislation, when you’re looking at legislation, is disproportionate impact. You are looking to see if how the law is crafted, regardless of if it was the crafter’s intent, disproportionately impacts one group over another.

The reason for marriage equality isn’t because it specifically targeted LGBT+ folks, but because it disproportionately affected(basically entirely affected) the community. The reason the voter ID laws are getting struck down right now isn’t because it specifically mentions PoCs, but because it disproportionately affects us.

And this is a specifically white problem and outlook. It’s the same as when white racists scream about how “Jim Crow is over and there’s no segregation and there’s no oppression now!” It’s the same with the white liberal obsession with legal rights, like marriage equality, meaning that LGBT+ oppression is over. It’s the same when exclusionists and inclusionists center their whole goddamn arguments about whether this or that legislation actually does fucking whatever to ace people. (Show me the country where it’s ILLEGAL to be ace?????!)

That’s a damn smoke screen. Oppression, systematic oppression, isn’t based around explicit marginalization from society. Marginalization in this case being the society in question is trying to force the group out of society itself. To be “marginalized” here isn’t the same as what most people in the discourse use the word to mean. Being kicked out of your home, denied housing, fired from your job, ect. are forms of marginalization. They seek not to exploit members of the class, but drive them from society itself.

The most basic forms of oppression involve economic exploitation. So, you’ll see members of this class concentrated in positions that allow their labor to be extracted from them without fair(or with no) compensation. This is why, one of the reasons why, LGBT+ people are disproportionately poor. (The same with PoC. There’s a longer, semi-related post, about how race was created and maintained to craft a social class of proles to be economically exploited for the norm’d classes benefit.)

There are other forms of (systematic) oppression of course, but marginalization is the most severe form of physical material oppression. When Marginalization takes place, the society has “decided” this crafted class is so “abhorrent” they aren’t even worth economically exploiting. (Think of the genocides of indigenous people’s around the world.)

Therefore, it’s possible, and in fact entirely probable that systematic oppression is taking place without Marginalization.(the final form of Marginalization is attempted or completed genocide btw.) By the time legislation comes into play that is specifically crafted to curtail the rights, movement, freedom, ect of a crafted class, you are in the beginning stages of Marginalization.

Most oppression these days(ableism is an exception), isn’t in a Marginalization stage. It’s in less extreme stages of oppression(this includes against PoC, including fellow black people.)

That being the case, how can we conclude systematic oppression is taking place before we get to the extremes of Marginalization?

I mentioned Economic Exploitation, and considering we’re living in a Capitalist fun house of death and suffering, that’s a good place to start. There’s also Systematic Violence. I consider all forms of oppression systematic violence, but in this cause I mean physical(and emotional) violence and abuse. Increased deaths, sexual assault, physical assaults, arson, defacing of property, ect. You’re looking at people burning down or bombing religious centers(or the attack on the LGBT center that happened recently). This will happen at the individual and larger levels of an identified group. So, disproportionately violent interactions accruing to a certain group is an example of systematic oppression.

For systematic oppression absent Marginalization, we would expect to see Economic Exploitation and Systematic Violence.

So discoursers, on both sides, should be asking:

- Are aces disproportionately targeted for physical violence? - Are aces disproportionately poor? - Are aces disproportionately homeless? - Are aces exposed to increased violence against their property?(i.e. someone torching your home for being ace)

Ect.

Another form of systematic oppression is “powerlessness” and this comes from the group in question being forced away from positions of power in society. This is open LGBT+ people being removed from office or not voted for. This is, in an internalized way, members of the group thinking they will never end their own oppression(I’ve seen discourers say this, all of them exclusionists, but this is a common sentiment among the oppressed). Radical liberation thinking involves the idea you can accrue power and dismantle the system oppressing you, and one of the more insidious ways that oppression works to keep the oppressed buying into the system itself is forcing them to believe their oppression is inevitable and unchangeable.

One of the biggest results of “powerlessness” on a personal level is psychological disorder. Feeling you have no control over your life or power to protect yourself/do things, causes psychological distress. For groups affected by oppression which takes the form of powerlessness(and powerlessness is a psychological campaign taken up by the norm’d group in power), you’d expect to see increased mental illness. You also expect feelings of brokenness, worthlessness, self-esteem problems, comparing themselves to the norm and hating that they deviate, ect.

So discoursers on both sides should be asking:

- Do aces experience higher than average rates of depression? - Do aces experience higher than average rates of anxiety? - Are they more likely to be suicidal or self harm? - Is this psychological distress used to signal that they are ‘unfit’ or inherently ‘sick’? - Are aces disproportionately barred from positions of power in society?

As a final semi-related note, there is a difference between visibility, hypervisibility, and invisibility, that isn’t really talked about in discourse. Neither hypervisibility or invisibility is good or a privilege. Black people are hypervisible(and invisible), trans people(especially trans women) are hypervisible. NDN people’s and Asian peoples and Ace people are invisible. People who are hypervisible often see invisibility as a gift or proof of lack of oppression. It’s not. To be invisible is to be rendered not just unseen, but silenced. Your pain, suffering, oppression isn’t just ignored, it is denied. Both the “model minority” myth for Asians and “all NDNs are extinct” myth exist to deny, ignore, and (at the most extreme) silence the experiences and oppression of these two groups. Hypervisibility requires being surveilled but not seen. It means being viewed as an object, being fetishized, being treated as rhetorical device instead of human. It means being viewed as a threat, as an walking stereotype and example of a group instead of a person. It is depersonalization through means of obliterating personal identity.

That ace people are “unknown” isn’t invisibility on its own, however, enforcement of invisibility requires certain things. It requires the denial of examples of systematic ill-treatment. It requires the silencing of attempts of the group to organize, to create language to describe their own experiences, to accept their experiences as having happened or valid examples of prejudice against them. To enforce invisibility is ultimately about silencing. So examples of invisibility will mostly be focused around attempts to deny the reality of or redefine the reality of the groups in question. Truscum rhetoric is based around enforced invisibility as an example.

Proving that aces aren’t hypervisible isn’t proof on its own as a lack of oppression(as that’s not what oppression is/means). A lot of groups who are hypervisible define their experiences as the real oppression. And the same can be said of invisible groups. Every ace who has ever typed “well, at least people know what being gay is!” is mistaking hypervisibility for visibility.(visibility here being the state of being seen, acknowledged, understood, and listened to, the default state of the norm.) Most oppressed groups experience both forms of social oppression, but some experience only one or the other. (NBs for example suffer from being invisible, not hypervisible, and gay and lesbian people are for the most part rendered hypervisible not invisible.) But the fact one group is hypervisible and another is invisible does not mean that either group isn’t experiencing oppression.

You need to look at actual stats about the group in question.

This is aimed at everyone in the discourse, please please stop centering Systematic Oppression around legislation and legal rights. That’s not the only way oppression takes places. That’s not even the most common way oppression takes places in 21st century western countries. Branch out and actually talk about oppression and oppression dynamics rationally. Study the oppression of various groups outside of the LGBT+ family if you have to! The (basic) Dynamics of Oppression don’t change, just the target.

#ace discourse #racism #oppression dynamics

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rockofeye · 7 years

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Unmasking

I asked my mother what the spirits think of current events in the US. I asked her this in her kitchen, while she cooked and hovered over a variety of pans bubbling at full capacity on the stove. The act of creating and sustaining through every day process is part of her gifts in this life, and she lifts us up through this quiet, backstage work.

“I don’t know,” she says with a wooden spoon in her hand. “I haven’t asked them.”

I haven’t either, at least not directly. I have sat with them and asked ‘why’ over and over, though. Why are people like this? Why has this country prospered for so long on a foundation of genocide, enslavement, torture, and systemic inequality and racism? Why don’t they do something?

They are quiet in response, in the same way that they were quiet around the miscarriage of an election in November 2017. In the aftermath of the delivery of fascism to the highest seat in government, I took as big a step back from my utter rage and disappointment and asked the spirits why they were quiet. I spent a lot of time meditating on this and trying to see the larger picture for all the piles of stinking bullshit in the frame.

In the end, I think that this is not their problem to solve. It is not a situation that they have created--we are responsible for this in a myriad of ways and, while they grieve our suffering and the loss of lives associated with the addressing of a broken and unjust framework, we made this mess and we must clean it up. We bear responsibility and we must carry it. That is not to say that they are not with us in this--they are--but the solutions must come from our hands.

The history of vodou reflects this expectation of responsibility. It only takes a glance at Bwa Kayiman to see this particular truth. That rite and that beginning was not about the spirits swooping in to save their people, but was the people crying out that they could not take any more and that something had to change. It was only then that the spirits came to the table and offered a solution--do all these things and we will assure your success. An agreement was made and, after thirteen years (a not insignificant number) of bloody struggle, the people and the spirits were successful in liberating the island and ejecting the imperalist colonizers.

I don’t know that White America is at that point. Too many white people are surprised by the sudden exposure of the racist foundation of the United States and the systems that have both nurtured white supremacy, white nationalism, and fascism, and allowed those things to flourish in ways that white folks have refused to look at for a very long time. White folks have been comfortable with these systems and situations because we benefit from them each and every day, in every possible way. Even vodou reflects that--people finding out that I am involved in vodou will often be regarded as quaint or edgy or as me taking a walk on the wild side, whereas a Haitian or other person of color will be regarded as threatening or evil or not to be trusted.

As a priest, I can’t sit and ask my spirits what to do. That’s not what I was made for. Instead, I have to suit up and show up and know that they will have my back. That means a literal putting on of the boots and heading into the fray. When the Nazis arrive in my city this weekend for their masturbatory endeavor aimed at terrorizing people of color, Jewish folks, followers of Islam, LGBTQ+ folks, people with disabilities, women, and anyone who does not fit their perfect Aryan spankbank material, under the guise of ‘free speech’, I will be there as a visible reminder that this white person rejects any ideology that elevates whiteness by crushing and terrorizing others and that this systems of inequality in the US must be dismantled at any cost. I will support the immediate consequences to delivering hate messages and physical intimidation, and, if given the chance, I will punch a Nazi in the fucking face.

At the same time, I will pray protection on all those who show up to stand against fascism, white nationalism, and white supremacy, and especially for people of color who will be targeted above all. I will pray that the spirits of war, of revolution, of blood spilled, of a ravening thirst for destruction will deliver the righteous justice of the people upon the heads of those who seek to oppress, terrorize, and silence. I won’t pray for peace and will instead pray for a revolution that shakes the foundations of white supremacy until they crack and crumble to dust. I cannot do anything less.

In all of this, I continually return to my mother, a quiet and dignified woman who came to this country carrying the hope for a different life for her then-child and children to come. She left Haiti just after the Duvalier regime ended, having lived through state-sponsored terrorism and gaslighting. She immigrated at tremendous personal cause, leaving behind family and friends, some of whom will still not speak to her because of her departure. Once here, she began to work immediately and has not stopped since. She became fluent in her third language, earned three college degrees, raised three children on her own, and created the sort of community that draws people from all over the world to her door. She didn’t come here for any of this bullshit.

I have watched her instruct her natural daughter on how to behave if a Trump supporter should confront her. I have witnessed her tears after the election, and the fear of her daughter who has classmates who come to school in Make America Great Again hats. I have seen her worry about her son and what will happen to him out in a world where cops murder Black men and Nazis march in the streets. I love her, so how can I do anything but act?

I thank the spirits for the blessing of the unmasking of white supremacy in the United States in ways that cannot be ignored or dismissed by those who benefit from systems of inequality. I pray strength and protection upon the hands and heads of those who will not let white terrorism, supremacy, and nationalism go unanswered, and I pray as much safety as is possible for those who are targeted by these white terrorists, especially people of color. May your spirits and divinities feed you, nourish you, and hold you close as this war is fought, and may you find blessings of prosperity and hope among the bullshit and bloodshed.

Talk minus action equals zero. --D.O.A.

#vodou #haitian vodou #spiritual activism #religious activism #bwa kayiman #white nationalism #white supremacy #punch a nazi #priest things #off the couch #into the streets

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psychicmedium14 · 7 years

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#AstroProTips Monday, July 31st Venus enters Cancer Wednesday, August 2nd Uranus stations retrograde at 28° of Aries Friday, August 4th Jupiter in Libra squares Pluto in Capricorn We all have ideals. Lofty goals. Dreams of peace and prosperity for all. Most of us want everyone to get along. Have a chance. Be happy and free. But ideas aren’t enough for the world. The world is dirty. Dangerous. Devious. In order for our ideals to stand a chance of becoming our lived experience they have to be structurally sturdy enough to meet the challenges that are sure to come their way. This week, Jupiter in Libra squares Pluto in Capricorn. These two have been squaring each other off and on since November 2016, and this will be their 3rd and final square. Jupiter in Libra is all about abundance, harmony and inspiration. Pluto in Capricorn is all about structural power and the deep psychological processes, struggle and effort that long-lasting change requires. These two have been testing our dedication to the justice we say we want. Revealing the nature of the beast we must slay if we are ever to have a hope in hell of creating it. Clarifying our need to deepen our knowledge as well as expand it. Jupiter is the thunder that lights up the sky. Pluto is the composting process of the earth. When these two meet we must balance the upper and lower realms of ourself, our life, and our world. This isn’t the only important astrological event of the week. On Monday, Venus moves into the family-oriented sign of Cancer. Venus will be transiting the emotionally astute waters of Cancer from July 31st – August 25th. Venus in Cancer promotes long-lasting connections. Care for our unions. Food for our loves. It reminds us that we need to come to our relationships with something to give to them as well as the willingness to receive something from them. Venus in Cancer reminds us that healing takes connection – both to soothe the injury left by isolation, and to be challenged to grow in ways we wouldn’t on our own. Venus in Cancer reminds us that we can always rebuild family structures that are better suited to support us, if those that we are blood related to can’t. Creating family is an ever-unfolding process. On Wednesday, Uranus in Aries stations retrograde, causing many a disruption. Upheaval. Uprising. Uranus is asking us to review innovative ways to use our creative energy. Uranus in Aries can be the radical individual that doesn’t give a damn about anyone or anything save its own “freedom”. Even if that means the oppression of others. We can’t fall for the theatrical tricks of Leo season. The wild fires this astrology can set in motion need to be contained. Heat causes dryness, cracks, separation. Use Venus in Cancer to help you find the love and cohesion needed. Let it soak into you, creating bonds instead of only breaks. Let it soothe the sunburns, cool the system and remind us that there is no going forward unless the whole family comes with us. *Horoscopes are meant to be read as inspiration. If you know both your rising sign and sun sign, please read both horoscopes. They both contain important information. You’ll know which resonates more for you from week to week. Take what works for you, leave the rest. If you find inspiration here we love and appreciate donations. If you want to share this work you must quote it and link it to this post and website. Thank you for your support and for spreading the work around, we really appreciate it and you! Aries & Aries Rising: We need channels for our anger. Energy. Excitement. We need channels for our ideas. Insights. Breakthroughs. We need channels for our irritability. Our itches. Our edginess. Otherwise the energy runs amok. Breaks things that we need. Sets fire to what keeps us covered. Deconstructs what deepens our relationship to life. Don’t let the irritability or excitement of this moment dismantle what you need to have in place. Don’t let Uranus’s retrograde trick you into thinking you have to start from scratch. Don’t let yourself be derailed by drama. But do what you need to refresh your system. Give yourself the gift of getting things off your chest. Give yourself permission to remake your space. Give yourself a place to come home to. As Venus enters Cancer this week, your home needs you just as much as you need it. Think of this as an important relationship to tend to over the coming weeks. Seek out sources of family. Folk that you feel related to. Those that relate to you. Foster versions of belonging that fit your needs. Remind yourself of the importance of cultivating family as an act of love and resistance. With Jupiter’s 3rd and final square to Pluto taking place in your 7th house of committed partnerships, reflect on the efforts that you and your partners have made to make your relationship an affirmation for you both. Those that didn’t have the space to grow with you have most likely been uprooted from your life. Till your soil. Use the space as breathing room. Use the space to imagine new possibilities for partners to come. Taurus & Taurus Rising: Connect to what is close. Build bonds of loving kindness through your daily life. Be present to the moments that move you. Pause when possible. So that you can soak up the season. So that you can benefit from the medicine of the moment. So that you can take care of yourself in ways that you are usually too rushed to. Venus’s transit through Cancer is making you more permeable, more sensitive, more in touch with your daily needs. It wants to help you in all of your communications. It wants to help you smooth out the wrinkles in your calendar. It wants to help you find pleasure in the everyday. This will be helpful as Uranus stations retrograde. As the planet of chaos rummages around in the back rooms of your 12th house, it is likely to uncover old memories, old feelings and old patterns of self-undoing. Uranus wants to help you liberate yourself from any unconscious shame that is hiding out. When held on to for too long, shame scams us. Robs us of our joy. Has us repeating old and painful cycles. Bumping into folks from your past, returning to scenes or scenarios, or finding a forgotten love letter might help to jostle you awake to what you need to heal. And to the growth that has already occurred within you. Trust what is leaving. What is being shaken up. What is being set free. What paths are being cleared within you. Setting up for success is as important as welcoming it in once it gets here. Jupiter’s last square to Pluto helps you to see the progress that you have made in regards to your work-life and your health. Cutting out what is toxic from your daily intake is imperative. Fill yourself up on inspiration but make sure that it includes in-depth explorations. Anything that emphasizes only light and love can’t have the depth and complexity that you need for optimal health or productivity. Deepen your relationship to your body. Deepen your relationship to those that help you get your jobs done. Deepen your respect for your labour and all it makes possible in your life. Gemini & Gemini Rising: Venus’s month-long transit through Cancer wants to teach you how to love your resources. Care for your unique kind of currency. Build a relationship to your talents. Venus wants to help you get into a financial flow. One that feels supportive. One that feels buoyant. One that feels like it can float your boat. Take advantage of this moment by learning how to be a better caretaker of your financial life. Consider ways in which you are healing the wounds of unworthiness. The wounds that get in the way of asking for fair compensation for your efforts. Compensation is an exchange of energy. Equally important for the giver and receiver. It teaches us how to be generous, fair and honoring of what we have to trade. Uranus’s station retrograde reveals social contracts that don’t necessarily sit well with you at this point in your life. It may ignite your impulse to buck a system. It may have you relaying messages that send shock waves through a friendship or group of folks. It might act like a lightening rod, illuminating the hopes and dreams you need to review. Helping you to redefine, in very important ways, the places that you need to be putting your energy into. Jupiter’s last square to Pluto has you playing with the possibilities of what your creativity is capable of. You can’t create everything at once, however. Deepen your relationship to the most important creative projects on your plate. The ones that have been consistently calling your attention towards them this year. Being specific, going in-depth, and being on purpose will garner you the most thoroughly satisfying results when it comes to your creative projects. Cancer & Cancer Rising: Keep yourself covered in the prayers and well-wishes of your loved ones. Put them on each morning alongside your outfit for the day. Put them in the forefront of your mind alongside all that you have to get done. Put them at the center of your days as an altar to return to when needed. Let no amount of love sent your way go to waste. Let none be forgotten. Let none be distorted. Every bit is a protection that you can call in at any time. At all times. Many times throughout the day. Venus moving through your sign for the next month wants to punctuate this message. It wants to help you to witness all the ways in which love comes to you. It wants you to remember the importance of letting others care for you. It wants you to experience the affirmation of having your needs witnessed. Let your loves love you. You might need some soothing as your career gets chaotic. This week’s Uranus station retrograde is bound to create some fireworks. Some unexpected opportunities. Some unpredictable creative energy. Some disruptive events that may momentarily derail you. Use this energy by entertaining new options and avenues for your energy to professionally express itself. Review your career path thus far to see what changes have helped your overall growth. Keep true to your calling and your way of going about living into it. Shock them with your authenticity. As the square between Jupiter and Pluto comes to a close, take note of the ways in which you have been able to heal your relationship to your past. We cannot change what has happened to us. We cannot make incapable family capable. We cannot waste our energy trying to get blood from a stone if we want to accomplish anything else in life. Lay down the disappointment of what wasn’t and pick up the beauty of what is currently in your life. Leo & Leo Rising: Venus’s month-long transit through your 12th house will help you to heal something from the inside out. Make peace with the parts of life that usually feel burdensome. Remind yourself that your entire life is an affirmation. Of all that you have struggled through. Of all that you have healed. Of all that you are working on healing. Uranus’s station retrograde has you reviewing the journey you’ve been on thus far. And the journey up ahead. Some revisions to your long-term strategy need to be made in order for you to get to where you want to go. Be brutally honest about what you’ll need to get there so you can have the right supplies for the journey. Jupiter’s square to Pluto reminds you of all the ways in which your schedule has grown. Exploded. Possibly overwhelmed your long-term goals. Help yourself by cutting out what you cannot do at the moment. Help yourself by refusing to overcommit. Help yourself by doing the things that will bring you joy in the midst of all the expansion. Remember that during eclipse season it’s important to slow down. Next week’s eclipse will focus heavily on relationship issues, so be mindful of what your partnerships need from you and what you need from them. Make sure that you are moving at a pace that places you within range of their messages so that you can receive the love and the love lessons that are sure to come your way. Virgo & Virgo Rising: Venus’s month-long transit through Cancer wants to help you experience some levity. It wants to help you experience more connectedness in your community. It wants to help you heal any fractures that may have separated you from the social spaces that you love to be in. Eclipse season is no joke. Especially for you. Next Monday’s eclipse is punctuating the importance of being timely with your work projects and demands. It’s asking you to make a mighty effort. It’s asking you to let go of any expectations that you might have around what your efforts might bring you. It’s asking you to show up, do the work to the best of your ability and trust that you’ve done what you could at the moment. Possibility comes to greet you when you do. As Jupiter makes its last square to Pluto, it helps to remind you of the financial benefits that befall you when you are able to focus your creative energy. Not every avenue is for you. Not every work opportunity will be right for you. Not every situation is a good match for your talents at this time. Knowing which are is part of the magical brew that can bring about success. We can’t be all things to all people, but we can be the right combination of authentic and accessible to those that we most want to support, grow alongside and create future possibilities with and for. Libra & Libra Rising: This week Venus begins a month long transit through the part of your chart that speaks of your career and reputation. This transit is trying to connect you to the sources of nourishment that you need in order to get the job done. It’s trying to connect you to the people that want to support your situation. It’s trying to remind you of the healing power of being in alignment with your purpose, passion and creative energy. Let your work in the world heal you. Let healing be your work in the world. Uranus’s station retrograde reminds you of your need to reinvent an aspect of your most important relationships. Or your need to review the ways in which you are going about relating to others. Living in paradigms that tell us that we need certain kinds of relationships and that we need to want certain types of commitments can be incredibly wearing. Pay attention to the ways in which your relationships want to be released from stifling norms so that they can reveal the unique beauty that they behold. Work on building the kind of relationship structures that can hold expansive possibilities for all parties involved. You are still expanding. The extensive growth that you have undergone this year is cause for a pause. As Jupiter squares Pluto this month, it’s asking you to focus on a specific aspect of your growth. To deepen an aspect of your relationship with yourself. Be careful of feeling like you have to attend to every opportunity that comes your way. The only thing that you absolutely have to do, is you. Take a moment to get still enough to hear your own voice so that you can follow its instructions and advice. Scorpio & Scorpio Rising: Venus’s month long transit through Cancer helps you to connect with what matters most to you. Take trips to the temples that help you connect to gratitude. Seek out the sources of healing that help keep you in the right frame of mind. Make a date with yourself to map out next steps. Be in relationship with the strategies that break down your big goals into manageable tasks. Working on the big picture while thinking in increments can be incredibly empowering. Seek out folks that expand your understanding of what it means to live well. Hang out with those that know how to care for and about life. Travel to those that remind you of the things that mean the most to you. Let your affections guide you. Move towards what you want more of. Feast on what fills you up without leaving you bloated, unanchored or without love. As Uranus stations retrograde, it will ask you to review some things about your work and health. Refill your prescriptions. Rearrange your to-do lists so that the ranking is on par with your priorities. Refurbish the tools that you have at your disposal. Learn how to use what you have access to in new and inventive ways. It will save you resources and energy. As Jupiter squares Pluto for the last time, it helps you to focus your energy on what is most important to your overall well-being. Refuel your tank. Remember to put in what you have given out. We can be of greater service to the world when our self care is balanced with our care for our community. Sagittarius & Sagittarius Rising: Venus’s month-long transit speaks to an important time for your collaborations. It offers you healing opportunities. Through understanding the value of what you bring to the table. Through working with those that care about the relationship that they are in with you. Through joining forces with those that are the best fit for your resources. This is an incredibly creative time for you. One that has you firing on all cylinders. Creatively. Energetically. Physically. As Uranus stations retrograde it wants you to review the ways in which you use the incredible force of creativity that is being channeled through you. Where does it get wasted? Where does it get too chaotic to be useful? Who has a problem with its power when you unleash it? Your creativity is revolutionary. It is wanting to break free from tradition. Break the rules. Be rowdy. Meanwhile, Jupiter square Pluto is asking you who you need to be more diplomatic with, whether they deserve it or not. How do you balance the desire to shake up the status quo with the desire to maintain the connections you have been establishing? Not every partnership is meant to last. Not every community can keep up with you. Not every balance can be held. Choose those partnerships, community endeavors and collaborations that feel capable of co-creating with you. Those that are sturdy enough to meet the challenges that are sure to show up in the process. Capricorn & Capricorn Rising: It’s too easy in this day and age to project every fear that we have onto others. Consuming someone’s online content is not the same as having a relationship with them. Reading in between the lines of our DM’s is no substitute for heart-to-heart connections. Making up stories about who others are based on the image they project is a disturbing side-effect of our virtual reality. In the flesh, things are always a lot more complicated. Give the people in your life the chance to be human. Spend quality time with those you can be vulnerable with. Make dates and don’t let anything get in the way of them. Venus’s month-long transit through Cancer is trying to convince you to be open to love in all its forms. Open to the pleasure that comes from in-person contact. These connections can help you to feel more at ease with the inner changes that are occurring. Uranus’s retrograde is asking you to review your understanding of family, foundation and the firm yet inventive ground you have been cultivating. We can’t always be with the ones that brought us here but we can work to build a sense of belonging in our lives. To the truth. To what and who respects us. To what and who helps us open up to a greater awareness of where to root. As Jupiter makes its last square to Pluto, you get to look back on a year of incredible career growth. Whether your business got a boost or your ideas and insights about future successes did, this moment is asking you to continue to refine your choices. What are the most important directions for your career to grow towards? Channel your energy there. Specifically. Purposefully. Decidedly. Aquarius & Aquarius Rising: With a lunar eclipse occurring in your sign on August 7th, this week might feel like an ever-increasing rise of the tide. Emotions build. Feelings swell. Situations come to a peak. Make sure that you are taking care of your physical needs. It’s harder to cope with our feelings when our systems aren’t able to function with finesse. Venus’s transit through Cancer wants to help you to feel more connected to those that you work with. And for. Venus is encouraging you to take greater care in your work. Greater care in regards to the relationships that help you to get things done. Greater care in fostering the connections between your physical health and the health of your work life. This transit might make you a little more sensitive while on the job, but it can also sensitize you to aspects of your work that need some extra love, nourishment and protection. As Uranus stations retrograde early in the week, it unearths the parts of your daily schedule that are making things harder than they need to be. What part of your day is chaotic? What part of your schedule needs an overhaul? What messages are you having a hard time getting across? This might be a time where there are disruptions to your days and weeks. This might also be a time where there are disruptive conversations that you need to have. Sentiments expressed that you can’t sweep under the rug. Truths unearthed that change the dynamics of your relationships. Messages that amount to breakthroughs. As Jupiter makes its last square to Pluto it reminds you of the larger picture of your life and how important it is to refine your plans, deepen your journey and make choices as to which paths forward are the most important at this juncture. It’s a moment to be grateful for the journey, but to also be deeply mindful of future prospects. Pisces & Pisces Rising: Venus’s swim through Cancer helps to soothe your senses. It reminds you of the importance of making time to experience the sweetness of life. The situations that help you to relax. Find joy. Venus wants to help you connect to all that fills you up and quieten what doesn’t. Sometimes we just need to lower the volume so that the static recedes. So that we remember who we are. So that we recall the healing that has occurred over the larger arcs of our life. Next week’s eclipse is going to help you reflect on all the healing that you have done, Venus wants to help you do that through having a little fun. Take her up on the offer. Uranus’s station retrograde will help you to review the resources that you have at your disposal. It’s encouraging you to think about other ways to work with what you’ve got. To think about how you might reinvent the way you do your work. To think about how you might upgrade your assets so that you learn what they are capable of creating. Jupiter’s final square to Pluto puts the finishing touches on your learning curve in regards to your collaborations. What have you learned about the boundaries necessary for growth? You are the kind of sign that leans towards giving everything away, but this transit has been asking you to deepen your understanding of what you have to give before you do. It has also been asking you to balance that by being able to receive from others. But deeply so. Notice what you do with what you receive. Do you let it in? Do you let it reach you? Do you let it land in your life somewhere. Work on this. Otherwise you’re in a constant state of trying to fill up a bottomless cup. Stop the leaks so you can balance your give and take with others.

#astrology #eclipse #horoscope

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glassceilingbreakers · 7 years

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What We Actually Gained From Hillary's Loss: Women’s rights are being decimated by the GOP and Trump administration. But a new women’s movement has begun and it shows no sign of slowing down

I will forever be haunted by what was lost on November 8th. Because from my vantage point, Hillary Clinton will always be the history maker that never was.

I cast my first presidential ballot somewhat unenthusiastically for Clinton in 2008, back when I was a sophomore at the University of California, Berkeley. I regarded her as the most qualified to be president, but I didn't feel much of an emotional connection to her. I had benefitted from generations of feminist progress—not to mention, a significant serving of white privilege—and I could not personally relate to the slog of her against-all-odds ascension. The world in which I came of age in did not resoundingly tell me “NO” as a (white, middle-class) girl; I played sports, took advanced classes, and actively pursued a career after graduating from college.

In these past eight years, however, I've grown up. I've seen for myself just how harsh and cruel the world can be toward ambitious women—and nowhere was that more spectacularly apparent than during the 2016 presidential campaign. I remember sitting in front of the TV at my friend’s apartment on Election Night, staring catatonically at MSNBC as the results trickled in and feeling like I was watching a real-life horror movie in slow motion (which, looking back now, feels incredibly ignorant). When the network officially declared Donald Trump the winner of the Electoral College, I went completely numb. The happy tears that I was saving for this moment—replaced instead with immense fear—stayed bottled up, stored away for perhaps another day.

At age 20, the nation’s first female Commander-in-Chief felt inevitable. At 29, I know better. The harassment, the disrespect, and the neverending double standards that women face daily, that I watched as Hillary Clinton trudged through her hard-fought campaign—it felt personal. To see an eminently qualified and liberal woman at the doorstep of the presidency for the first time, only for that dream to abruptly end — I’ll never forget that soul-crushing feeling. As writer Melissa McEwan articulated:

“’Get over it’ is a phrase I hear a lot lately—virtually any time I mention Hillary Clinton…I won't get over it because the 2016 election was a referendum on how America values women, and that makes it personal to me. My country chose an explicitly misogynist serial sexual abuser over an explicitly feminist candidate who has spent her career advocating for women and children, and who is the most qualified person ever to seek the office of the presidency. I am not inclined, nor should I be expected, to ‘get over’ that.”

Of course I wasn’t so naïve to think that a woman shattering that highest and hardest glass ceiling would solve every feminist problem overnight—or even in my lifetime. There are also arguments to be made that Clinton’s presidential platform did not go far enough for those who are most marginalized. As @BrookieB_ told Ebony, “I recognize significance and symbolism in [Clinton’s nomination] but it is not a meaningful step for most issues for me… there's a large chance she will enact policies that do harm to poor [women of color] in the US and call it ‘compromise.’” Additionally, Congress is still only 19 percent women—and for women of color, the percentage is even more abysmal. And by all indications, if Clinton had been elected, Republicans were preparing to hold more email investigations and obstruct Supreme Court picks. It is also not outside the realm of possibility that the GOP would have driven our first female president to impeachment faster than you could say “Donald Trump is a Putin puppet.” Yet, this void that so many of us expected Clinton to fill is still a painful reminder of what could have been.

But, oddly enough, there is an upside: Clinton’s not being in the White House, and the gruesome events that led up to November 8th, has lit a fire under women to become more proactive and fill the political power vacuums themselves. One of the clearest signs of this is that, since the election, over 13,000 women — an unprecedented number — have signaled that they will run for office. The rage that comes with witnessing an extremely unfit, incompetent, and bigoted man defeat a heavily credentialed woman turns out to be the very thing to inspire droves of women across the country to remove the self-doubt that preemptively took them out of contention. Indeed, one of the biggest hurdles to parity at all levels of government is convincing women to run in the first place. In describing this post-election groundswell, EMILY’s List president Stephanie Schriock told New York Magazine, “We spend a lot of time recruiting. [Now] we’re seeing women calling us.” In fact, female candidates are elected and reelected around the same rates as their male counterparts—and once in office, these women pass more bills and secure more funding for their constituents than their male peers. Additionally, many of the grassroots resistance groups (i.e. “Indivisible” chapters) that have organically emerged from the aftermath of Trump’s rise are female-fronted. Schriock observed, “I see this as a new beginning. I think you’re going to see a new generation of women leaders rise up and change this country.”

Personally, I’ve noticed a shift among those around me, seeing a lot more people being forceful in pushing back against acts of bigotry whether it’s expressed overtly or covertly, by people who do so consciously or unconsciously. Whereas before we may have been all too patient and forgiving toward those folks, dedicating countless hours to coaxing them to respect our viewpoints, now we waste no time cutting to the chase. With a bigoted, unqualified, and crass (at best) man in the Oval Office, why bother being polite at all costs? As Madeleine Davies argued in Jezebel:

“Women, though not always ‘good,’ have always been nice. And look where it’s gotten us. Stripped of our rights, degraded, and still under the thumb of men. At no point in history has humanity as a whole been nice, so why should I? There’s no longer a place for pleasantness, not publicly anyway. Now is a time for fury and force—a time for guarding the few things we do have (our perseverance, our bodies, each other) because they’re so at risk and so, so precious.”

Kara Brown, Davies’s Jezebel colleague, touched on similar points in her piece “Love Is Not the Answer,” writing: “Racism and bigotry are not the result of unfriendliness nor will they be undone by the opposite.” In essence, sweetness in and of itself is not going to meaningfully change policy or dismantle oppressive systems. And perhaps that’s part of why so many women embraced the “Nasty Woman” moniker that Trump bestowed on Clinton. That familiarity with being punished for fierce self-advocacy made it so that “nasty” felt delicious to subversively own. But even leaning into this assertiveness is problematic on a few different levels. For one, writer and activist Feminista Jones remarked on the hypocrisy of privileged women claiming “nasty,” saying: “You know that when certain women have asserted their ‘nastiness,’ you mainstream whiners have long-denied them the agency to do so.”

Additionally, women have historically had to precariously balance speaking up for ourselves with staying safe. Proactively taking up more space will always be an uphill battle, as long as our very humanity is still up for debate. And yet, there’s something strangely clarifying about watching the most qualified and elite woman fall short after playing by the rules of the game. It almost gives us tacit permission to be bolder in our own quests toward a more free and equal society. As California 34th congressional candidate Alejandro Campoverdi wrote in Cosmopolitan, “It’s urgent we send a message to these women that they will not be kept out of the political process by the mere fact of being human, of being their wonderfully nuanced, complicated, sometimes contradictory selves.”

And despite her painful loss, Clinton herself shows no signs of slowing down. On Tuesday, after defending journalist April Ryan and Rep. Maxine Waters, Clinton declared, “I will never stop speaking out.” This woman’s utter resilience in the face of decades-long obstacles never ceases to inspire me. And that’s what makes this moment so bittersweet; it will always be absolutely gutting to think about how different our collective trajectories could be with Clinton as Commander-in-Chief. Even if her potential presidency were marred by faux scandals and an eventual ousting, there’s no doubt that the opportunity to build upon Barack Obama’s progress and to be a possibility model for girls around the country would have made it all worth it.

But here we are; there’s no turning back the clocks now. We can only keep moving forward every day, something that women have always done since the dawn of time.

So, on the last day of Women’s History Month in the first year of Trump’s term, I’m thinking of Lauren Hayes’s eloquent words from November: “The knot in my stomach has turned to fire.”

— Sarah Lerner

#2008 was also the first time i could vote and i caucused for hillary. i was very enthusiastic about her back then too though.#2008 was kind of great though b/c i knew i'd be happy with either frontrunner and interned for the obama campaign that summer through fall #hillary clinton #women's history month #i'm with her #imwithher #i'm still with her #long post

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nofomoartworld · 7 years

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Hyperallergic: An Artists’ Guide to Not Being Complicit with Gentrification

East Side Local Chapter of LA Tenants Union and Union de Vecinos Action in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, 2016 (Photo by Timo Saarelma, and used with permission)

LOS ANGELES — We are Betty Marín, Heather M. O’Brien, and Christina Sanchez Juarez, and we met through organizing work in Los Angeles. Our conversations began in a group called School of Echoes, which operates as an open listening process of community-based research, popular education, and organizing to generate experiments in political action. Beginning in late 2012, the group has brought together organizers, educators, and cultural workers living and working in various communities throughout Los Angeles. School of Echoes is a space for critical reflection on the conditions in working class and poor communities, including (but not limited to) struggles against gentrification and for the human right to housing. In 2015, the group joined with other tenants in struggle to form the Los Angeles Tenants Union / Sindicato de Inquilinos de Los Ángeles. LATU/SILA is a membership-based, tenant-centered movement fighting for the human right to housing for all. LATU/SILA demands truly affordable and safe housing and opposes the dismantling of rent-stabilized apartments. The union organizes against harassment by landlords, mass evictions, and displacement of people from their neighborhoods due to mass rent increases, as well as the repeal of the Ellis Act and Costa-Hawkins Act. LATU/SILA’s mission is to strengthen tenants’ political power through education, advocacy, and direct action.

LA Tenants Union “Days of Rage” action in Boyle Heights, 2016 (photo by Timo Saarelma)

We write in hopes that more artists will finally break with their sense of exceptionalism and consider their roles in gentrification. We recognize that art is an industry with a structural reality that must be acknowledged in order for artists to challenge their complicity in the displacement of long term residents in low-income and working class neighborhoods and fight against this. It’s important that people see the devastating impacts of securing housing in working class and poor neighborhoods, and setting up investment properties posing as art spaces. How can this loyalty to the notion of art as a pure form of positive change be reconsidered, particularly when such sentiment encourages the destructive endeavors of parasitic developers and landlords?

As far as how we see our own position in these debates and struggles, we constantly reckon with and interrogate our personal culpability and contradictions as people who participate in exhibitions and have jobs in the arts, be it in nonprofit educational institutions or otherwise. We hold ourselves accountable by organizing with our neighbors for the human right to housing.

LA Tenants Union sticker

We are in a moment where the connection between art, real estate, and the displacement of longtime residents is undeniable. How might artists take responsibility for how we alter people’s lives, in terms of the impacts of real estate speculation and gentrification? How do we refuse co-optation and engage locally with our neighbors? How are artists, curators, galleries, and museums complicit with the same finance capital that gentrifies neighborhoods across the globe? We ask all of this as we involve ourselves deeply with tenant rights groups, to listen and learn from political and social urgencies. We refuse to accept that pointing at problems is enough. Rather, we look to create a collective analysis, to “act our way into thinking ” — a phrase borrowed from fellow organizer Leonardo Vilchis of Unión de Vecinos — which we’ve come to understand as the learning process that comes out of collective action, as opposed to relying on and residing only in theory. In this spirit, we share some of the lessons we’ve learned through our organizing and pedagogical work.

1. Becoming involved in housing struggles — especially if we are part of a more “desirable” gentrifying class — is crucial. While deciding to commit to that work is not necessarily easy, a first step can be to understand the history and context you are moving into. If we move to a new block it’s essential to go beyond learning about who already lives there. We have to choose to stand with neighbors who have different needs. While we realize that as artists we contribute to the first wave of gentrification, we can choose to support our neighbors by joining them in demanding housing justice, by protesting unfair rent hikes, lacking repairs, or businesses that don’t serve the needs of long-term residents.

2. As artists, we have to educate ourselves, especially considering that we might have racial, educational, or class privilege compared to our neighbors. We become part of the problem, another domino in the gentrification process, if we as renters don’t know our renters’ rights, or don’t take time to learn our rights and the reality of local conflicts. Abusive landlords operate on the notion that tenants do not know their rights. Learning our rights is the first step to building collective power.

3. It is imperative to understand the need to find other ways of dealing with conflict or safety issues besides calling the police, given who the police serve and who the police jail and kill with impunity. We all have a stake in how our neighborhoods are made safe for everyone, and can choose to do this work without criminalizing the poor and people of color. Most galleries represent a white supremacist capitalist system that is protected by the police. For instance, in the community of Boyle Heights, each time those fighting to hold the galleries accountable for their impact on displacement and gentrification in their neighborhood stage a demonstration, the galleries have called the police, and have even accused the protesters of hate crimes. These accusations paint the galleries as victims while disguising the fact that they are protected by the state.

School of Echoes meeting in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, 2014 (photo courtesy School of Echoes)

4. As artists who participate in and support exhibitions, we must interrogate the spaces we choose to enter and work with. We must challenge what we do with our resources and privilege, on both a personal and a socio-political level. Consider for instance, if the spaces we support fail to ask questions about their structural impacts in a particular neighborhood — particularly if they are media-driven, contemporary art spaces. Regardless of their intentions (community engagement, bringing cultural programming to “underserved” populations, etc.) many art spaces ultimately serve as investment projects and property value boosterism for landlords, developers, and realtors. Is it worth supporting an art space when we know that it is currently contributing to or will contribute to someone losing their home?

5. We must choose between prioritizing our own individualistic artistic careers or prioritizing the dismantling of oppressive structures. There are no places without contradiction, nor places where we can be absolved of reinforcing oppressive structures. Instead, we must reorient our priorities so that we can be honest about what we are actually working towards. It takes time to learn how to point at a problem, yet too often we feel the work ends there. When it comes to art, there’s a certain cultural capital gained by criticizing capitalism, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that we are putting anything on the line to dismantle it. In far too many instances, the violence of the status quo is actually protected, guarded, and upheld in smug, self-assured condescension by artists with careers to protect when those who seek to rattle the cage more vigorously violate liberal taboos like “tone” and “unity.” If we get involved in anti-oppression struggles, listen, and are aware of privilege and the differing crises that surround us, it’s difficult to see an individual art career as something worthwhile. We’ve seen many artists with visibility (i.e. artists with gallery representation or those who have received major recognition of their work through awards or grants) who dismiss and criticize the artists and local organizers who choose to stand with the local neighbors of Boyle Heights in the form of social media rants and public media outlets (calling them misguided and naive). How might we tune our listening away from those with powerful art world platforms to those most impacted by gentrification?

6. We must ask about the power of art spaces to decide who is included in the first place. This is a moment of extreme tokenism, one in which exhibition spaces co-opt political movements or artistic identities and pat themselves on the back for their diversification, for their “radical” inclusion. We see this in museums, where curators invite grassroots organizers to do educational outreach work. Doling out temporary visibility does not decentralize the white ruling class that presides over the art world, in the form of, let’s say, Wall Street bankers sitting on the board of a contemporary art museum. What is an art institution’s intent when they only temporarily feature a social movement in their space?

Vermont & Beverly Local, LA Tenants Union Anti Landlord Harassment Action, 2016, (photo by Timo Saarelma)

The struggles against the galleries in Boyle Heights have taught us valuable lessons and we have learned about housing struggles through local organizing with fellow tenants. To us, this work is about building spaces of “intimate solidarity,” a term borrowed from fellow artist in struggle Patricia Vazquez. We’ve come to understand this term as political action that is centered in relationships, love, and care. We realize that the mainstream media has chosen to erase the voices of long-term residents who explicitly and articulately describe the historical and structural analysis behind their resistance. We stand with the long-term residents of Pico Gardens and Aliso Village in Boyle Heights who have made it clear they do not want art galleries in their neighborhood. However this stance is not a refusal of all art. We see art as part of how people struggle and resist in life. Art becomes alienating when entities and individuals refuse to acknowledge their personal and structural impacts that contribute to gentrification. The critical voice of the artist is lost when it’s instrumentalized in processes of displacement.

The debates around these issues have certainly become intense, but they’re nothing compared to the trauma of being evicted from your home of over thirty years. How might we encourage popular education and empowerment without permitting artists and galleries to ride the wave of gentrification, as if absolved from questions of property speculation and skyrocketing rents? What if we see our role as artists as being deeply tied to the health of our neighborhoods?

The post An Artists’ Guide to Not Being Complicit with Gentrification appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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divyawrites · 7 years

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A Brief Take on various Feminist theories...

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In the introduction of “Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples”, Linda Tuhiwai Smith critically analyzes Western research’s effect on indigenous people. She seeks to relay “the history of Western research through the eyes of the colonized” (18) which relieves the effects of “taking indigenous knowledge” (18). Deconstruction of colonizing theories are important in her descriptions of theorizing for social justice. Since “indigenous peoples represent the unfinished business of decolonization”, situating research in a sociohistorical context will prove more beneficial to colonized groups. The concept of privilege is subtly brought up when she mentions how the colonizers have not struggled for survival in the same way that indigenous peoples have, and because their “cultural loyalty” (23) lies elsewhere, they will never be able to conduct research that ties together a unified experience under colonialism. The perceived post-colonial world, she relays, “is viewed as the convenient invention of Western intellectuals which reinscribes their power to define the world” (30). The form of investigative research that is conducted by Western scholars disregards the interests, scope, and differential experiences that are a crucial aspect of indigenous peoples’ lives and history. In Chapter 1 of the book, Smith writes on the “struggle to assert and claim humanity” (42). In employing the use of the “universal human subject” (42) in research methods and analyses, Western researchers are once again taking away indigenous peoples’ humanity. They are subtly reinforcing what it means to be “savage” and not “civilized”. In pushing research forward that assumes so, colonizers treat indigenous lives and bodies as commodities for labour power, namely power that results from doing research. Therefore, research that should be conducted in the incorporation and interest of indigenous lives does just the opposite by fragmenting indigenous voices. Lastly, the author delves into the categories of analysis that Western thought has attributed to history. These arguments remain effective today. For instance, the concept of a "universal history" (46) for example, strives to make human subject and societies the same across the board. Smith argues that the making of universal qualities are of "historical interest" (46). Society still functions, capitalist or not, as self-serving in its historical interests. America as a whole functions as a system that exploits to benefit itself. Our institutions are still built upon lands that were seized not so long ago. Recent events like "Standing Rock" prove how capitalist production and progression are valued over the lives of indigenous peoples. In addition, the concept of making indigenous peoples "not civilized" stems from the Western conception of history as a list of chronological events, often documented in modern textbooks. This kind of thinking that is supposedly post-colonial is reproduced by all too familiar ways of thinking that continually urge the right implementation of theory for social justice issues.

Chandra Talpade Mohanty in “Under Western Eyes” premises her points of contention around deconstructing the Western world’s ethnocentrism when utilizing feminist thought as a means for liberation and social justice. She explains how “imperialism in the eyes of particular third world women” are a consequence of “dominant ‘representations’ of Western feminism” (161) and relates universalism to the issue of assuming female homogeneity prior to the application of cross-cultural analytic methods. Such a presumption, she argues, renders women “powerless (163) and does not allow for agency and intersectional inquiry. The author delves into “Woman And Familial Systems” as a category of analysis that involves cultural implications when universalizing a woman’s identity. She calls for a study of the “political nature of kinship systems” (167) that addresses how women are differentially located but defined within their familial systems. She engages with the work of Juliette Minces who describes "the patriarchal family" (167) as a starting point for analyzing the oppression of women under hegemonic patriarchal systems. Mohanty counteracts such thought by criticizing a lack of "discussion of the specific practices within the family that constitute women as mothers, wives, sisters, etc" (167). In addition, she scrutinizes the tendency in Western feminist analyses to assume a “cross-cultural operation of male dominance and female exploitation” (171) as a “descriptive generalization” (172). In other words, the oppression of Muslim women is defined by an “arithmetic method” (171) that correlates almost directly the number of veiled women to the amount of patriarchal oppression faced by them. Such correlations are based on cross-cultural assumptions of what is means to be oppressed without regard for cultural and sociohistorical context. For instance, purdah is practiced by many women as an "oppositional and revolutionary" (347) move but is only studied critically in the realm of institutionalized sexism. Such theories, Mohanty argues, imagines Western ideals as the the universal norm thereby further victimizing Third World Women and ultimately rendering them invisible.

Audre Lorde, in “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” expresses her concern with only being asked, at an NYU Humanities Conference, about Black women’s issues. The phone call “consultation” she received depicted assumptions of universality and a lack of intersectional studies because it does not concern itself with different combinations of knowledge based on experience. Lorde refers to the “vision of the conference”, in its practices, as assuming “that lesbian and Black women have nothing to say about existentialism, the erotic, women's culture and silence, developing feminist theory, or heterosexuality and power” (1). The “vision of the conference” that she refers to is almost a microcosm of the way hegemony is constantly instilled into Western societal practices: by making invisible the very voices feminism seeks to make heard. In fact, Lorde states that “it is this real connection which is so feared by the patriarchal world” (1) in reference to the sharing of knowledge between different women. The identity and experiences of Black, lesbian women are multi faceted, she suggests, and does not allow for the universalization of “woman” as a category.

According to Louis Althusser, ideological state apparatuses produce subjects through ruling ideologies that ensure that hegemony continue to be established in systems of dominance. The author provides the metaphor of an edifice, where the fate of the upper floors relies on the base. In other words, the livelihood of the ruling class in society is perceived to be maintained by the continual ideological dominance over the base class. Althusser defends this point of contention by asking the question “how is the reproduction of the relations of production secured?” (109). Such an inquiry exposes the intricacies of how the dominance over the base is established. Relations of production are reproduced in schools, where ideology of the dominant class reigns supreme. Schools teach “know-how” (113) that ultimately contributes to “capitalist social formation” (113). The apparatus’ tools are concealed from the students being made into labour producers, by offering them “the path to the freedom, morality and responsibility of adults" (113) but actually functioning in ways that reproduce capitalist control. Therefore, the "relations of production" between ideological state apparatuses like the School and to-be labour workers result in reproducing those same relations. Althusser also describes how “interpellation” or hailing someone makes them into subjects. When called to on the street, people will turn around and in doing so, situate themselves as “the subject”. The author tells how this realization comes from “believing/suspecting/knowing that [the hailing] is for him” (122). Althusser suggests not only how power is operative in the production and distribution of ideology, but also how the sense of self is constituted in the ideological state apparatus. Subjects are interpellated into the legal apparatus as well as in the School through disciplinary practices veiled as liberatory free education, ultimately being subordinated to power. The Marxist notion of the state apparatus is similar to Althusser’s views in that it describes the individual as a subject constructed by social ideology that in a structure with many levels, similar to the edifice analogy provided by Althusser. In other words, individuals are made up of society instead of society being made up of individuals. In the same way that Althusser relates the economic base to the “upper levels” of the ideological state apparatus, classical Marxism provides a social model that relates the economic base to a superstructure. According to Marx, economic factors do not necessarily shape the relationship given in the model, but rather an interdependency that continually reproduces the model. Lastly, Foucalt believes that power produces subject positions and that analyzing subject positions can provide rules on what is “normal” in a situation. He describes how race has historically been biological rather than militaristic, in terms of striving to eradicate races. It is the very theory that eliminating racial or biological threats allows for survival of the dominant one that is perpetuated by ideology and technologies of power.

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Course: Feminist Theories (FMST 100)

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