Economic Aspects of "Love"

[American Dream]

Amiri Baraka "Somebody Blew Up America"



(I don't agree with the comment about the "4,000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers".)

[American Dream]

What would have happened if millions of American and British people, struggling with coupons and lines at the gas stations, had learned that in 1942 Standard Oil of New Jersey [part of the Rockefeller empire] managers shipped the enemy's fuel through neutral Switzerland and that the enemy was shipping Allied fuel? Suppose the public had discovered that the Chase Bank in Nazi-occupied Paris after Pearl Harbor was doing millions of dollars' worth of business with the enemy with the full knowledge of the head office in Manhattan [the Rockefeller family among others?] Or that Ford trucks were being built for the German occupation troops in France with authorization from Dearborn, Michigan? Or that Colonel Sosthenes Behn, the head of the international American telephone conglomerate ITT, flew from New York to Madrid to Berne during the war to help improve Hitler's communications systems and improve the robot bombs that devastated London? Or that ITT built the FockeWulfs that dropped bombs on British and American troops? Or that crucial balI bearings were shipped to Nazi-associated customers in Latin America with the collusion of the vice-chairman of the U.S. War Production Board in partnership with Goering's cousin in Philadelphia when American forces were desperately short of them? Or that such arrangements were known about in Washington and either sanctioned or deliberately ignored?'

—Charles Higham, researcher, about U.S.-Nazi collaboration during WWII

http://blog.historyisaweapon.com/

[American Dream]

http://www.wsm.ie/c/transgender-liberat ... -anarchism

Transgender liberation, class politics & anarchism
Date: Mon, 2012-03-19 18:28


“It is a tragedy, I feel, that people of a different sexual type are caught in a world which …. is so crassly indifferent to the various gradations and variations of gender and their great significance in life.”

Emma Goldman (prominent Lithuanian-American anarchist) 1916

Trans (or transgender) is a term for people whose gender identity and gender expression are different from the sex assigned to them at birth. Trans people have a history of receiving bigoted responses from some sections of the left, of the lesbian and gay community and some strands of feminism. One attack on transgender people has been based on the idea that trans people, by “changing gender”, reinforce existing rigid gender roles. Moving across borders of perceived gender does not reinforce existing gender-roles, any more than migration across borders of nation states reinforces the system of nation states. Many trans people are actively involved in fighting current, sexist gender stereotypes.

Anarchists believe that we will not achieve an equal society by ignoring issues such as racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia or by pretending that they will automatically be resolved by revolution. We do not tell minorities to wait until after the revolution for their demands to be met. We see class as the central and fundamental form of oppression, but we do not see it as the only form of unacceptable hierarchy and we do not see it as possible to separate class issues from those of gender, sexuality, race or sex. Trans liberation is a class issue. Wealthy trans people can, for example, afford private surgery, use private transport and choose where they live, thus avoiding potentially dangerous situations. We see means and ends as intrinsically linked, and so a revolutionary movement that does not actively oppose transphobia will merely end up replicating the same oppressions that exist under capitalism.

Anarchism is a form of socialism, which believes in individual freedom as well as collective organising. The right of each person to make decisions about what happens to their body and to express their gender in ways that are right for them as an individual are a fundamental part of that freedom. We support the right of oppressed groups of people to organise themselves autonomously for their own liberation and we believe that such groups have the right to ask for and receive solidarity from the rest of the working class. Transphobia, like homophobia, sexism and racism, serve the interests of the ruling class, by dividing us against each other.

Recently, trans people have made huge progress in fighting for their liberation, and almost all major lesbian and gay organisations have become lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) organisations. Trans people’s inclusion in those organisations has not been an easy battle though, despite the fact that transgender people (notably Sylvia Rivera) have been prominent in fighting for queer liberation, including in the Stonewall riots. One reason LGB organisations were reluctant to accept trans people was that they saw them as an obstacle to gaining respectability and becoming assimilated into mainstream capitalist society. Trans people are sometimes more visibly queer than lesbian and gay men, and in modern gay male culture, especially, there is an emphasis on gaining acceptance from straight people by being as traditionally masculine as possible.

Transgender people still face serious discrimination in jobs and housing. Trans people’s actual (chosen) gender is not recognised legally in Ireland, while 17 European countries demand forcible sterilisation of transgender people before granting legal recognition. Those trans people who do choose gender-realignment surgery are unable to access it in Ireland and have to travel to the UK. However not all trans people choose to undergo surgery and this does not make their gender identification any less legitimate. It is important to avoid reducing gender to a question of what genitals a person has. Persecution of minorities tends to increase in economic downturns and 539 trans people were murdered in Europe between 2008 and 2010. Transphobia must be fought wherever and in whatever form it appears. As anarchists, who do not practice electoralism, we are able to take a principled stand on unpopular issues, without worrying about it losing votes, and, as a result, we have a particular responsibility to take those stands.

[American Dream]

http://libcom.org/library/moving-toward ... urie-penny

Moving towards solidarity - Laurie Penny

Transphobic feminism makes no sense, argues Laurie Penny.

For decades, the feminist movement has been split over the status of trans people, and of trans women in particular. High-profile feminists such as Germaine Greer, Jan Raymond and Julie Bindel have spoken out against what Greer terms "people who think they are women, have women's names, and feminine clothes and lots of eyeshadow, who seem to us to be some kind of ghastly parody". Some prominent radical feminists have publicly declared that trans women are misogynist, "mutilated men"; trans people have responded to this harassment by vigorously defending themselves, demanding that anti-trans feminists are denied platforms to speak on other issues and, in some cases, by renouncing feminism altogether. The deep personal and ideological wounds suffered by women and men on both sides of the argument are reopened with vigour every time the mainstream press gives space to an anti-trans article by a cis feminist.

Many otherwise decent and sensible cis feminists have fallen prey to lazy transphobic thinking. In the vast majority of cases, cis feminist transphobia does not stem from deep, personal hatred of trans people, but from drastic, tragic misapprehension of the issues at stake. Recently, outspoken feminist Julie Bindel declared in an article for Standpoint magazine: "Recent legislation (the Gender Recognition Act, which allows people to change sex and be issued with a new birth certificate) will have a profoundly negative effect on the human rights of women and children." Her views are founded on the assumption that "transsexualism, by its nature, promotes the idea that it is 'natural' for boys to play with guns and girls to play with Barbie dolls... the idea that gender roles are biologically determined rather than socially constructed is the antithesis of feminism."

Bindel and others have, initially with the best of intentions, misunderstood not only the nature of transsexualism but also the radical possibilities for gender revolution that real, sisterly alliance between cis feminists and the trans movement could entail.

(This article focuses primarily on the experiences of trans women, as these experiences have been the main focus of controversy over the past three decades of feminist thought - the intention is not to erase the experiences of trans men and boys.)

Femininity is a social construct and Bindel is right to identify it as such. She is utterly wrong, however, to claim that transsexual men and women are any guiltier than cis men and women of re-enforcing damaging stereotypes. In fact, the misogyny and sexist stereotyping that Bindel identifies as associated with trans identities are entirely imposed on the trans community by external forces.

Sally Outen, a trans rights campaigner, explains: "It is only natural for a person who strongly wishes to be identified according to her or his felt gender to attempt to provide cues to make the process easy for those who interact with her or him. That person cannot be blamed for the stereotypical nature of the cues that society uses, or if they can be blamed, then every cisgendered person who uses such cues is equally to blame."

Even a casual assessment of the situation indicates that the problem lies not with transsexual people, but with our entire precarious construction of what is 'male' and what 'female', 'masculine' and 'feminine'. Bindel's description of trans women in "fuck-me-boots and birds-nest hair" are no different from today's bewildered 12-, 13- and 14-year-old cissexual girls struggling to make the transition from deeply felt, little-understood womanhood to socially dictated, artificial 'femininity'. Like teenage girls stuffing their bras with loo-roll and smearing on garish lipstick, the trans women for whom Bindel, Greer and their ilk reserve special disdain are simply craving what all growing girls crave: social acceptance.

Amy, a 41-year-old trans woman, says: "Transition in later life is a really weird experience, in that you're suddenly and unexpectedly plunged into being teenage, plus you have teenage levels of female hormones coursing through your veins. You haven't grown up through the sidling-toward-teenagerhood that girls get, the socialisation and the immersion in society's expectations and realities. Trans women get to learn those, just a quarter of a century late, in my case. The results tend to be a bit wild." Or, as one cis friend of mine put it: "If I'd had the income that some trans people do when I was a teenager, I'd have owned a cupboard full of fuck-me-boots."

Indeed, the fact that socially accepted female identity is something that must be purchased is something that trans women understand better than anyone else. For socialist feminists like myself, who locate patriarchal oppression within the mechanisms of global capitalism, the experience of trans women, who can find themselves pressured to spend large amounts of money in order to 'pass' as female, is a more urgent and distressing version of the experience of cis women under patriarchal capitalism. In our society here in the UK, where shopping for clothes and makeup is a key coming-of-age ritual for cis women, all people wishing to express a female identity must grapple with the brutal dictats of the beauty, diet, advertising and fashion industries in order to 'pass' as female.

Not a single person on this planet is born a woman. Becoming a woman, for those who willingly or unwillingly undertake the process, is torturous, magical, bewildering - and intensely political. In the essay 'Mama Cash: Buying and Selling Genders', trans author Charlie Anders explains: "Transgender people... understand more than anyone the high cost of gender, having adopted identities as adult neophytes. People often work harder than they think to maintain the boy/girl behaviours expected of them. You may have learned through painful trial-and-error not to use certain phrases, or to walk a certain way. After a while, learned gender behaviour becomes almost second nature, like trying to compensate for a weak eye. Again, transgender people are just experiencing what everyone goes through."

The concept and practice of sex reassignment surgery is the territory over which radical feminists and trans activists traditionally clash most painfully. Bindel, along with others, believes that the fact that SRS is carried out at all means "we've given up on the distress felt by people who identify as gender dysphoric, and turned to surgery instead of trying to find ways to make people feel good in the bodies they have."

Bindel makes the case that the SRS 'industry' is part of a social discourse in which homosexual and gender-non-conforming men and women are brought back into line by "nutty bloody psychiatrists who think that carving people's bodies up can somehow make them 'normal'". Were SRS an accepted way of policing the boundaries of gender non-conformity here, Bindel's equation of the surgery with 'mutilation' would be more than valid - it would be urgent. However, SRS is nothing of the sort.

In face, SRS is carried out only very rarely, and only on a small proportion of trans people, for whom the surgery is not a strategy for bringing their body in line with their gender performativity but a way of healing a distressing physical dissonance that Outen vividly describes as "a feeling like I was being raped by my own unwanted anatomy".

Surgery is normally a late stage of the transitioning process and falls within a spectrum of lifestyle choices - for those who opt for it at all. Trans activist Christine Burns points out: "Julie Bindel is quite right that we ought to be able to build a society where people can express the nuances of their gender far more freely, without feeling any compulsion to have to change their bodies more than they really want to.

"However, that is precisely what many trans people really do. Only one in five of the people who go to gender clinics have reassignment surgery - the other four in five find accommodations with what they've got. Bindel's thinking cannot admit that, far from emphasising the binary, 80% of trans people are doing far more to disrupt gender stereotypes than she imagines. With or without surgery, trans people are living examples of the fact that gender is variable and fluid."

Of course, like any other surgery, SRS has its risks and a minority of patients will regret the procedure. But for most of the trans people who decide to pursue SRS, the operation allows for potentially live-saving progression beyond the debilitating effects of gender dysphoria. Moreover, many post-operative trans people have found that the operation actually lessens their overall distress around binary gender identity. Amy explains: "'Being female is an important part of my identity, but it's not an all-consuming part any more. Until I transitioned and completed surgery, it was much more so. I woke up from surgery, and the burning dissonance, the feeling of everything being wrong, wasn't there any more. These days, I realise that I don't actually have that strong a sense of gender any more. Isn't that strange, given all I went through to get here?''

The radical gender fluidity within the trans movement is exactly what Bindel, when I spoke to her in the process of writing this article, emphasised above everything else: "Normality is horrific. Normality is what I, as a political activist, am trying to turn around. Gender bending, people living outside their prescribed gender roles, is fantastic - and I should know. I've never felt like a woman, or like a man for that matter - I don't know what that's supposed to mean. I live outside of my prescribed gender roles, I'm not skinny and presentable, I don't wear makeup, I'm bolshie, I don't behave like a 'real woman', and like anyone who lives outside their prescribed gender roles, I get stick for it."

What Bindel has failed to grasp is a truth that could re-unite the feminist movement - that trans people too, far from "seeking to become stereotypical", are often eager to live outside their prescribed gender roles and frustrated by the conformity that a misogynist society demands from those who wish to 'pass'. Marja Erwin told me that "gender identity and gender roles are not the same. I am trans, and I am not the hyperfeminine stereotype. I am a tweener dyke and more butch than femme. I know other trans womyn who are solidly butch, and others who are totally femme, and, of course, the equivalents among straight and bi womyn."

Much of the stereotyping imposed upon trans women is enforced by sexist medical establishments - a phenomenon which radical feminists and trans activists are unanimous in decrying. Bindel, like many trans feminists, objects to the fact that psychiatrists are "allowed to define the issue of gender deviance", giving medical professionals social and ideological influence beyond their professional remit. Clinics in the UK require trans people to fulfil a rigid set of box-ticking gender-performance criteria before they will offer treatment and SRS demands this conformity with special rigour. To receive SRS, trans women patients will normally be expected to have 'lived as a woman' for two years or more - but individual psychiatrists and doctors will get to decide what 'living as a woman' entails. A UK psychiatrist is known to have refused treatment because a trans woman patient turned up to an appointment wearing trousers, whilst Kasper, a trans man who was treated in Norway, was pressured to stop dating men by surgery gatekeepers.

"I had to answer a lot of invasive questions about my sexuality and my sex life, and one of the doctors I had to see lectured me about how transitioning physically might make me stop being attracted to boys," he says.

All this is a far cry from some feminists' fear that surgery is prescribed to 'transform' cissexual gay men and lesbians into transsexual heterosexuals.

The demand that trans people conform to gender stereotypes in order to be considered 'healthy' or 'a good treatment prospect' is something that cis women also experience in their dealings with the psychiatric profession. It is standard practice for women in some inpatient treatment facilities to be pressured to wear makeup and dresses as a sign of 'psychological improvement'. The institutional misogyny of the global psychiatric establishment is something that radical feminists and trans activists can usefully oppose together.

Feminists - even prominent ones with big platforms to shout from - do not get to be the gatekeepers of what is and is not female, what is and is not feminine, any more than patriarchal apologists do. Intrinsic to feminism is the notion that such gatekeeping is sexist, recalcitrant and damaging. If feminists like Greer, Bindel and Jan Raymond truly believe that having a vagina, breasts, curves, a uterus, being fertile or sporting several billion XX chromosomes is what makes a person a woman, it clearly sucks to be one of the significant proportion of women have none of these things.

There are cis women all over the world who lack breasts after mastectomy or a quirk of biology; women who are born without vaginas, or who are victims of FGM; women who are androgynously skinny, naturally or because of illness; women who are infertile or post-menopausal; or, significantly, the 0.2% of women who are intersex. Is the female identity of these cis women under question too? If it is, feminism has a long way to go.

Greer and her followers seem singularly uninterested in the science behind their binary thinking, which establishes that prescribed gender roles still fall largely into the binary categories of 'man' and 'woman', but human bodies do no such thing. The spectrum of human physicality belies gender essentialism - as must feminism, if it is ever to be the revolutionary movement our culture so desperately needs.

Trans activism is not merely a valid part of the feminist movement: it is a vital one. The notion that one's biological sex does not have to dictate anything about one's behaviour, appearance or the eventual layout of one's genitals and secondary sex organs, now that we live in a glittering future where such things are possible, is the radical heart of feminist thought. It is essential for cis as well as trans feminists to oppose transphobia and transmisogyny.

Conversely, at the very heart of sexist thought is the assumption that the bodies we are born with ought to dictate our character, our behaviour, our appearance, our choices, the nature of our relationships and the work of our lives. Feminism puts forward the still-radical notion that this is not the case. Feminism holds that gender identity, rather than being written in our genes, is an emotional, personal and sexual state of being that can be expressed in myriad different ways that encompass and extend beyond the binary categories of 'man' and 'woman'. Feminism holds that prescribed gender roles are a tyranny that no-one - whether trans, cis, male, female or intersex - should be forced to conform to in order to prove their identity, their validity or their human worth.

Feminism calls for gender revolution, and gender revolution needs the trans movement. We must put aside the hurts of the past and look towards a future of radical solidarity between all those who are troubled by gender in the modern world. Whatever our differences, until contemporary feminism fully and finally accepts trans people as ideological allies, it will never achieve what Germaine Greer, Julie Bindel, Christine Burns, Sally Outen and every feminist who has ever longed for a better world are all working towards: an end to the damaging and demeaning tyranny of gender stereotypes. Whatever our differences, only with trans people on side can feminism hope to work towards the type of equality our radical foremothers dared to dream of.


Taken from http://www.thefword.org.uk/features/200 ... eminists_s. This piece was completed in 2009 on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.It is offered in recognition of the ideological and (sometimes) physical violence that has been done to trans people by cis feminists, in the hope that all feminists can one day stand together to resist violence against women, and in memory of the hundreds of trans women who have been murdered at the hands of misogynists over the past decade, in particular the latest UK victims, Andrea Waddell and Destiny Lauren.

[American Dream]

http://libcom.org/library/poles-n-holes ... g-porn-biz

Poles 'n holes: Working in the porn biz



Pornography worker Chaz Bufe on work, sexuality and censorship in America.

I was broke. Dead busted. I needed a job—fast. And the first that came along was at the Back Door Theater, "Parking and Entrance in the Rear—for Your Privacy." My friend Russell was working there, and he got me a job after one of his fellow employees passed out on the pool table at the bar next to the theater during a shift. Calling the Back Door (BD) a "theater" was something of a misnomer. It consisted of a restroom, lobby, projection platform/cashier booth, and a seating area which the staff referred to as "the pit." It was all crammed into a 16 foot by 60 foot store-front.

My turf was the projection/cashier booth. It contained a couple of broken-down chairs, a cash register, two dilapidated 16mm projectors, "Little Roscoe" (a .38 caliber revolver so dirty it would probably have blown up had it been fired), and a TV set which was used heavily, as the entire staff— all three of us—found watching it less boring than watching the BD's films. The films were pretty crude. My first glimpse of them came the day I was hired. I stepped up to the projection platform, peered through the viewing port between projectors, and saw a "cum shot"—a man coming all over a woman's face. I was dumfounded. I couldn't believe that anyone would actually pay to see such things. But pay they did-five bucks a pop. The Back Door's patrons came in all shapes and sizes: young men, old men, chicano men, white men, black men, and above all, greasy white-shoed businessmen. Well over 90% of the Back Door's customers were male, and, of those, at least half were into the $13-haircut level of awareness.

The female customers were of two types. One consisted of denim-clad, leather-booted dykes and their ultra-femme girl friends; the other, more common, type consisted of bored housewives with hubbies in tow—people apparently willing to try anything to spice up humdrum sex lives. My friend Ralph the butcher (he was an actual butcher—he hadn't "served" in Vietnam) would drop by the theater from time to time, and when such couples walked in, he made it a point to sit behind them and listen to their conversations. Ralph reported that the most typical comment was: "He can last for ten minutes. How come you can't even last two?"

I couldn't see how the customers managed to last two minutes in the theater. It was a pit. The restroom was, arguably, the most disgusting portion of the premises. It was covered with gross, sexist graffiti such as; "Please don't jack off in this toilet, it's already had three abortions," and "The difference between toilets and women is that toilets don't follow you around after you've used them." On a couple of occasions some (literal) jerk jacked off against the wall, drew an arrow toward the gooey mess, and added the half-witticism, "Eat me." And on one occasion, my friend Joe Blues walked into the lobby and observed a crewcut, 300-pound redneck flogging his dolphin in the john blissfully unaware that the restroom door was wide open.

The lobby was another gem. Its floor was covered with cheap red shag carpet, its walls with red fake-velvet wallpaper, and its ceiling with black glitter paint. Its contents consisted of a coke machine, a cigarette machine, and a sand-filled toilet subtly labeled "asstray."

But the heart of the Back Door was the pit, the seating area. It was a 16 by 45 foot room with a screen made of two pieces of painted sheet rock at one end with seats extending from the other to about eight feet from the screen. The seats were described as "reclining airplane seats" in the theater's advertising. Sounds really comfy, doesn't it? Well, the seats probably were comfortable when they were new. By the time I started working at the Back Door they could well have been the breeding ground of black plague. They obviously hadn't been cleaned since the Back Door opened, and at least two-thirds of them had gaping holes in their upholstery. The ashtrays in their armrests were continually overflowing as we employees felt it beneath ourselves to clean them out. And the BD's customers found the cracks between the cushions and the holes in the upholstery convenient receptacles for their soggy kleenex and handkerchiefs. The floor of the pit made one's shoes go "shmuck, shluck, shlurp"; it was coated with a mixture composed of spilled coke, cigarette butts, the remnants of used kleenex, and god knows what else.

Shortly after I started working at the theater, I walked into the pit in the middle of a film. While there, I was surprised to hear a long hissssss...After closing up that night, I went back into the seating area and found the source. The owner of the Back Door had installed timing devices coupled to aerosol cans; the cans sprayed a combination deodorant/disinfectant over the seats for a few seconds every hour. It was a token gesture. True disinfection would have required use of a flamethrower.

I had another surprise the first lime I walked into the pit during the noon rush and observed the midday crowd. There they sat, white shoes gleaming in the darkness, eyes riveted to the screen, hands riveted to their pants. 1 was expecting that. What I wasn't expecting was that they would all be sitting neatly, row upon row, an empty seat on either side of every one of them—viewer, empty seat, viewer, empty seat, etc.—totally absorbed in the spectacle on the screen. It was one of the loneliest, most pathetic scenes I've ever witnessed.

Another feature of customer behavior which initially surprised me was the frequent visit to the restroom before leaving the theater. After I figured that one out—it took me about two hours—I began to dread my nightly janitorial duties. (Judging from customer behavior at the Back Door, the slogan "Porn is the theory, rape is the practice" is dead wrong. A more realistic slogan would be "Porn is the theory, pocket pool is the practice.")

The films which provoked such behavior were sick jokes. They were low-budget, Los Angeles- based productions of the "pole'n'hole" variety with an occasional bit of lesbian action thrown in for diversity. The plots (when they existed at all), acting, direction, lighting, photography, sound, and editing were of a quality which made the average episode of The Dukes of Hazard look like Citizen Kane in comparison. As for violence, there was very little in the films shown by the Back Door; my guess is that no more than about one in twenty showed any explicit violence.(1)

An example of the Back Door's offerings was a film titled Aberrations (2) which contained a scene depicting a gorilla fucking a woman in a vacant lot. In the middle of the scene, someone's pet German Shepherd wandered into the field of view, approached the guy in the gorilla suit, sniffed him for several seconds, and exited as casually as he had entered the scene. While atypical, this film certainly seemed to degrade women. It's true, as critics of pornography delight in pointing out, that male dominance is a common feature in pornography. Where these critics err, however, is in ascribing male dominance to pornography. This is a clear reversal of cause and effect. Pornography is a fairly recent phenomenon, having become widely available only during the last quarter century, while male dominance has its roots in antiquity, as virtually any ancient history text will show. St. Paul displayed a typical attitude when he commanded, "Wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands, as unto the Lord."

Violence against women is nothing new either. In fact it was at its worst during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. During those periods hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of women were brutally tortured and murdered under the biblical injunction, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." As for the contention that pornography somehow causes violence against women, all the evidence points against it. After Denmark eliminated all restrictions on pornography 20 years ago, the number of reported sex crimes there dropped. The 1970 Presidential Commission on Pornography concluded that there was no link between pornography and sexual violence. And Henry Hudson, chairman of Reagan's stacked anti-pornography commission, has even admitted, "If we relied exclusively on scientific data for every one of our findings, I'm afraid all our work would be inconclusive.

Given the total lack of evidence linking pornography and violence against women, and the long history of misogynistic teaching and coercion and violence against women—most visible at present in the efforts of various religions to use the government to deprive women of their rights to birth control and abortion—one can only ask why "feminist" censorship advocates are focusing their attacks on pornography and not on misogynistic religious authoritarians.

A plausible answer to that question is that they quite understandably feel frustrated by sexism and violence against women—and they're seeking easy answers and easy targets upon which to vent their frustration. Freedom of speech, civil libertarians, and smut merchants provide much easier targets than religious figures. And those figures are only too eager to help "feminist" censors attack their scapegoat—pornography.

One also wonders why anti-porn feminists, in addition to ignoring or, at times, lending credibility to reactionary religionists, ignore depictions of violence against women in the mass media far more horrible than those occasionally encountered in pornography. For example, "splatter" flicks such as Friday the 13th and Halloween consist largely of horrifying, extremely brutal scenes of the killing of young women, and are routinely viewed by millions of young people. Yet anti-porn crusaders ignore these disgusting films and concentrate their fire on the run-of-the-mill poles'n'holes flicks shown to small audiences in porn theaters. (3)

"OBJECTIFICATION"

An interesting charge of the anti-pornography movement is that pornography "objectifies" women, that is, that it presents them as things to be "consumed" rather than as people. Neglecting the rather metaphysical, and thus vague, nature of this charge, one can only ask why "objectification" in sexually explicit materials is more objectionable than that, for example, in advertising. We live in a society where "objectification" is pervasive, where people are commonly referred to and thought of as "personnel," "human resources," and, even more grotesquely, "liveware." While the "bottom line" remains the fundamental value in society and people are considered first and foremost as productive and consumptive units, "objectification" will inevitably continue. (4)

It could easily be argued that women "objectify" men every bit as much, if not more, than men "objectify" women. If men look for appearance in women, women look for money in men. Another way of saying this is that if men regard women as "sex objects," women regard men as "money objects." Check it out. Look through the "personals" sections of tabloids such as The Village Voice or The Bay Guardian. What do women running ads want? More than anything else, money. (Their code words are "solvent," "secure, "successful," and "professional.")

The "objectification" of men by women brings up an interesting consideration: the class background of porn customers. If the customers of the Back Door were typical, as I believe they were, it's safe to say that men who consume pornography are predominantly working class men—blue collar workers, salesmen, and low-paid white collar workers. It's not difficult to figure out why. A man's ability to get laid in the present society is highly dependent upon his income. Middle and upper class men can afford to "entertain a woman in style" (vacations, weekends at country inns, etc.) or shell out $100 for a hooker if they get the urge. Working class men, on the other hand, can only afford to spend a few bucks occasionally for admission to a porn palace or for a copy of Hustler.

Even in "normal" romantic liaisons, things are bad. Most women seem drawn to money and power like buzzards are drawn to carrion. A great number—including many who bridle at the way men "objectify" women—won't even look at low-paid men because of class prejudice, because low-paid men are not desirable "money objects." Thus we have the grotesque spectacle of women complaining about a "man shortage" while they're surrounded by working class men they don't even see.

Working around such prejudiced women can be maddening for men in service industries or retail. You become a non-person. You simply don't exist. It makes you feel about as respected as a slave in the antebellum South. Such prejudice can be largely explained by the economic discrimination women face. But the prejudice persists even when its underlying cause vanishes. As an example, you'll seldom find female executives flirting with male secretaries, nor female physicians with male nurses or orderlies. Even though this class prejudice can be explained, that doesn't make it any easier to bear.

SEX FOR ITS OWN SAKE

Behind much criticism of pornography lurks the traditional judeochristian idea that there is something inherently wrong with sex, that it's somehow dirty and evil. That it's necessary "to excuse it" through marriage, or, more commonly nowadays, through "love." But I don't buy that. I don't believe that sex needs to be justified; I believe that sex is its own justification. Why? Because it feels good. Because it produces pleasure and human happiness. For me that's enough—I believe that sex is inherently a good thing simply because it leads to human pleasure and harms no one. I'd agree that sex is generally better when there is an emotional attachment between partners; but I've also had many very enjoyable sexual experiences with partners with whom I've had little or no emotional attachment. I prefer sex with love—but I'11 take sex without love over no sex at all any day.

Attitudes similar to mine seem to be much more common in men than in women, which helps to explain why the vast majority of pornography consumers are male. In American society men are conditioned to believe that attempting to satisfy their sexual needs is perfectly acceptable—even in so alienated a manner as paying to sit in a room with a bunch of strangers watching images of other strangers engaging in sex acts—while women are conditioned not even to express sexual needs. A second explanatory factor is that the male dominance and occasional violence in pornography are quite probably turnoffs for most women.

A third is that it's easier in some ways for women to satisfy their sexual needs under present circumstances than it is for most men. Virtually any "decent-looking" woman, if she wants to, can go out and get laid within a few hours, any time, anywhere. The fact that relatively few women take advantage of that opportunity because of their repressive conditioning, the risks of pregnancy and VD, and the chauvinist attitudes and obnoxious behavior of many men, does not alter the fact that they do have the opportunity. The retail porn industry, as I experienced it, is a sleazy and grotesque (5), but highly profitable, business. (6) But that's all it is—a money-making monument to sexual repression. Only by the wildest stretch of the imagination could one imagine roomfuls of pathetic geeks pounding their puds while watching fuck flicks as a threat to women. It's equally farfetched to consider that a form of sexual liberation. (I find it difficult to imagine anyone with a satisfactory sex life plunking down five bucks for the privilege of jacking off in a disease pit like the Back Door.)

A further consideration, however, is the quality of that opportunity. Several women who read an earlier draft of this piece told me that most men are inconsiderate and, at best, mediocre lovers; and a woman's chances of getting off well, or really enjoying herself, in a sexual encounter, especially a one-night stand, are fairly low. If that's the case, the sexual prospects of most women are as bleak as they are for most men. It's a paradoxical situation in which both parties come out losers: women can, but generally don't want to, while men generally want to, but can't. So, you end up with millions of frustrated women sitting at home, and millions of frustrated men sitting in porn theaters.

On the other hand, lonely guys, such as I encountered at the Back Door, are not the only adults who use pornography. I recently worked at a large record store with a video counter, and at least half of the customers renting X-rated films were either women or couples, persons obviously not using pornography as a substitute for sex, but as an addition to it. That being the case, one is inescapably led to the conclusion that, at least in some instances, pornography is a good thing because it harms no one and increases human pleasure. At worst, pornography functions as a harmless, and perhaps necessary, escape valve for the sexually frustrated. At best, it serves as a means for many people to increase the pleasures of their sex lives.

Censorship of pornography would only increase the power and serve the ends of the misogynistic puritans who hate all forms of sexual expression. It must be opposed. And sex must be proposed. A hard-driving pro-sex position is an absolute necessity. It's our best and most persuasive means of protecting the freedoms we now have and of erecting others.

—by Chaz Bufe


(1) Even the militant pro-censorship group Women Against Pornography estimates that only 10-15% of pornography contains violence.

(2) Titles didn't matter much at the BD. Quite often we'd cut the titles from a film, invent a new name for it, and then advertise and rerun it under the new name a couple of weeks later.

(3) I am NOT suggesting that "splatter" films be censored. I consider the dangers of censorship far greater than any—thus far undemonstrated-dangers these films might pose.

(4) A bizarre illustration of this recently occurred at my last place of work. Two of the barracudas— female managerial variety—were inspecting a cute baby in a stroller. One turned to the other and cooed: "Oh look! A future customer!!"

(5) At times, the sleazyness or the porn bit borders on the surreal. I vividly recall a visit I made one evening around Thanksgiving to my pal Russell. who was then working at Zorba's Adult Bookstore. When I walked through the door I was floored. The dildos, autosucks, and fist fucking magazines were still in their racks and the inflatable "love" dolls were still hanging from the ceiling—but there was a difference: the entire place was covered with christmas decorations. The crowning touch was a red ornament dangling from the tip of 'The Destroyer," a two-foot-long, two-inch-thick dildo.

(6) The blimped-out, cigar-sucking, white-shoed grossero who owned the Back Door was netting at least $1000 a week from it.

[American Dream]

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/10/ ... of-empire/

Big Labor’s Tool of Empire
by ALBERTO C. RUIZ

Just before the April 14 Presidential elections in Venezuela, RT News reported on a Wikileaks Cable from 2006 in which, in the words of RT, then “ambassador to Venezuela, William Brownfield, outlines a comprehensive plan to infiltrate and destabilize former President Hugo Chavez’ government,” including through programs of the USAID and its Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI). On May Day, Bolivian President Evo Morales informed the U.S. Embassy in Bolivia that he wanted USAID to leave Bolivia because he (quite reasonably) suspected USAID of trying to subvert his own government as well.

The 2006 Wikileaks cable makes for fascinating reading. (1) In the cable, Ambassador Brownfield explains that, among its many goals, the destabilization “program fosters confusion within the Bolivarian ranks . . . .” And, he describes a key component of this program as follows:

OTI supports local NGOs who work in Chavista strongholds and with Chavista leaders, using those spaces to counter this [Chavista] rhetoric and promote alliances through working together on issues of importance to the entire community. OTI has directly reached approximately 238,000 adults through over 3000 forums, workshops and training sessions delivering alternative values and providing opportunities for opposition activists to interact with hard-core Chavistas, with the desired effect of pulling them slowly away from Chavismo. We have supported this initiative with 50 grants totaling over $1.1 million.

Brownfield concludes the cable by stating: “Through carrying out positive activities, working in a non-partisan way across the ideological landscape, OTI has been able to achieve levels of success in carrying out the country team strategy in Venezuela. These successes have come with increasing opposition by different sectors of Venezuelan society and the Venezuelan government.”

One of the major recipients of USAID monies in the Andean Region, which includes Venezuela, is the AFL-CIO’s international wing, the Solidarity Center. The Solidarity Center was quite embarrassed in 2002 when the union it was working with and funding in Venezuela — the anti-Chavez CTV — actively participated in the coup against President Hugo Chavez. However, the Solidarity Center was not embarrassed enough to relent from continuing to support the CTV and to even support the management-led strike against the Venezuelan oil company (PDVSA) which greatly damaged the Venezuelan economy.

And, the Solidarity Center is still working in Venezuela, thanks to a recent grant of $3 million from the USAID for its work in both Venezuela and Colombia. While seemingly innocuous in isolation, the Solidarity Center’s own description of its work in Venezuela, when read in light of the above-described Wikileaks cable, is revealing of the Solidarity Center’s imperial role.

Thus, the current description of this work on the Solidarity Center website is as follows:

Over the past 13 years, the Solidarity Center has worked with a broad range of national labor centers and unaffiliated worker organizations in Venezuela. . . . Given the political fragmentation and divisions between unions in Venezuela, Solidarity Center activities work to help unions from all political tendencies overcome their divisions in order to jointly advocate for and defend policies for increased protection of fundamental rights at the workplace and industry levels. The Solidarity Center currently supports efforts to unite unions from diverse political orientations (including chavista and non-chavista, left and center) to promote fundamental labor rights in the face of anti-labor actions that threaten both pro-government unions and traditionally independent unions. This emphasis on core union rights such as freedom of association and collective bargaining helps unions transcend their political fissures to address the basic needs of working people in Venezuela. (2)

Sound familiar? The program of the Solidarity Center in Venezuela is exactly that of the U.S. State Department and USAID; that is, to bring Chavistas together with non-Chavistas into alliance over a common cause — a process which the U.S. hopes will dilute Chavismo, or, in the words of former Ambassador Brownfield, to have “the desired effect of pulling them [the Chavistas] slowly away from Chavismo.”

That the Solidarity Center is following the State Department and USAID program exactly should not be surprising given that the Solidarity Center receives nearly all its funding from the USAID and other funders directly linked to the State Department and U.S. foreign policy interests (e.g., the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)).

In response to this assertion of mine, the folks of the Solidarity Center will undoubtedly engage in collective eye-rolling followed by passionate denials of the claim that they continue to serve as a tool of U.S. foreign policy in countries like Venezuela. The fact that they happen to receive funding from the USAID and the fact that their program matches perfectly with the USAID program to destabilize the Chavista government and movement in Venezuela are mere coincidences, they will claim.

Their defense will be that they do not possess the intent of subversion and regime change of their financial backers, and that they are not the same organization they once were which intentionally helped the CIA overthrow progressive governments abroad, such as that of President Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 and President Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973.

The best analysis I have seen to rebut such Solidarity Center denials – if much rebutting is needed — is that set forth in the doctorate dissertation of George Bass which is making the rounds within the labor left in the U.S. (3) Bass’s thesis, and it is well-supported, is that, regardless of the Solidarity Center’s intentions, it continues to objectively serve the U.S. foreign policy interests which continue to fund its activities abroad. In a nutshell, Bass explains:

the evidence indicates continuity with past AFL-CIO foreign policy practices whereby the Solidarity Center follows the lead of the U.S. state.

It has been found that the patterns of NED funding indicate that the Solidarity Center closely tailors its operations abroad in areas of importance to the U.S. state, that it is heavily reliant on state funding via the NED for its operations, and that the Solidarity Center works closely with U.S. allies and coalitions in these regions.

In the case of Venezuela, which he analyses in detail, Bass explains that the Solidarity Center’s foray into Venezuela corresponded with the election of Hugo Chavez to the Presidency and to the effort thereafter of the U.S. State Department and NED to destabilize Chavez.

Of course, according to the Solidarity Center’s own website, it has been working in Venezuela for the past 13 years – or, just after Chavez took office for the first time in 1999. And, it has been working there with NED funding – funding which, as Bass explains, ballooned for both the Solidarity Center, as well as other groups like the International Republic Institute, after Chavez was first elected — and with USAID funding. Moreover, the Solidarity Center has been partnering with unions, especially the CTV, which are openly anti-Chavez and which ultimately participated in the coup which briefly ousted Chavez from power.

As Bass astutely opines, whether or not the Solidarity Center (aka, “ACILS”) has actually possessed the intention to overthrow the Chavista government in Venezuela, the Solidarity Center has and continues to carry out activities which objectively serve the destabilization goals of the U.S. foreign policy interests which fund those activities. As Bass concludes, “it is clear that the ACILS activity in Venezuela was largely a product of the U.S. state, if not simply because of the sudden and drastic shift in funding flows, then by the choice of partnering with the CTV at the exclusion of other labor organizations even after the CTV leadership had clearly aligned with FEDECAMARAS [the business association] and engaged in strikes and lockouts aimed at destabilizing the Chavez regime.” The very same can be said of the Solidarity Center’s current program which aligns so perfectly with that of the State Department and USAID.

All of this is truly disturbing, and indeed, reprehensible.

The Venezuelan people, with the significant help of organized labor in Venezuela, have just elected a former union bus driver to the Presidency. The U.S. labor movement should be supporting this new President, and indeed rejoicing in his election. Instead, the foreign policy wing of U.S. labor is engaged in conduct which is objectively undermining that President and the movement which brought him to power. This conduct must end.

The only redemption for the AFL-CIO, and its Solidarity Center, is to cease all activities in Venezuela immediately and refuse all funding for any of its program from U.S. foreign policy concerns. In addition, the Solidarity Center must make a public accounting of all of its crimes against Third World liberation movements and governments, as well as that of its predecessor AIFLD; apologize for those crimes; and make amends, through monetary compensation, to the literally hundreds of thousands of people in the Global South it has injured, and even killed, through its complicity with U.S. imperialism. This is the only way the AFL-CIO can hope to save its own soul.

Alberto C. Ruiz is a long-time labor activist and anti-imperialist.


Notes.

(1) http://www.cablegatesearch.net/cable.ph ... 1314919461

(2) http://www.solidaritycenter.org/content ... entid=1487

(3) Bass, George Nelson III. 2012. “Organized Labor and US Foreign Policy: The Solidarity Center in Historical Context.” Department of Political Science, Florida International University. On-line (and free) at http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/752

[American Dream]

Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies and the CIA in Central America
1998

Chapter 5: The International Cali Connection and the United States.

[American Dream]

THE CIA IN GUATEMALA: THE LESSER KNOWN HOLOCAUST

by wakeupmag.co.uk


"We have no scorched earth policy. We have a scorched Communist policy."
Guatemalan President RIOS MONTT


"The military guys who do this are like serial killers. If Jeffrey Dahmer
had been in Guatemala, he would be a general by now."
- CLYDE SNOW, forensic anthropologist

Compared to the struggles against state tyranny in other Central American countries, very little is heard of Guatemala in the Western media. This is because the level of repression is extremely high; Guatemala has suffered the worst record of human rights abuses in Latin America. During three decades, hundreds of thousands of people have been massacred during their struggle against a government that has been armed and trained by the U.S.

After years of interference in Guatemalan politics, the level of American involvement increased dramatically in 1954 with a coup (organised by the CIA) against the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz, whose agrarian reform policies threatened the interests of both the wealthy elite in Guatemala and U.S. corporations such as the United Fruit Company. The coup restored these groups' stranglehold on the economy with the installation of a military dictatorship led by Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas.

Hand-picked by the CIA for his malleability, Armas flew into the capital on July 3rd 1954, aboard the private aircraft of the U.S. ambassador John Peurifoy. Peurifoy immediately furnished lists of radical opponents to be eliminated, as he had done on his previous posting to Greece. A massive bloodletting began, with strong racial as well as ideological overtones (around half the population of Guatemala is indigenous). Land reform activists were repressed and in the battles that followed, indigenous communities were savagely attacked.

The successive regime of President Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes permitted the CIA to use the country for its training camps for Cuban exiles during the 1960s. When a rebellion broke out in November 1960, the CIA came to the aid of Fuentes, sending in B-26 bombers against the rebels; the insurgency was crushed and Fuentes remained in power. Despite evidence of widespread human rights abuses by the dictatorship, the U.S. continued to pour money, training and equipment into the Guatemalan military.

However, Ydigoras planned to step down from power in 1964, leaving the door open to an election. This alarmed the U.S., who believed that a free election in Guatemala would reinstate a left wing government bent upon land reform and an independent foreign policy. Thus, in 1963 after a secret meeting, President Kennedy backed an army coup, which further consolidated the power of military control over the country.

The tone of the new government, headed by Colonel Enrique Peralta Azurdia, was set with one his first acts - the murder of eight political and trade union leaders by driving over them with rock-laden trucks. When Peralta wanted to deal with a left wing rebellion in late 1965, he declared, "If I have to turn the country into a graveyard to pacify it, I will do so."

Peralta was assisted in this by CIA counter insurgency specialists such as John Logan, who instructed the Guatemalan military, police and secret service in developing an "anti-terrorist" plan of action. Firstly, a clandestine cell within the presidential palace was set up to co-ordinate all anti-Communist activity. This became known as the Casa Negra, the dreaded "black room". Secondly, raids were launched all over Guatemala City to "force the Communists out of their hiding places". Thirdly, areas of the country were "frozen" - taken over and controlled by the military.

Peralta secretly offered John Logan cash rewards for any Communist leader arrested or killed; Logan immediately requested other U.S. agents to be sent to the country to "influence police operations" and secret mass killings began. In March 1966, the head of CIA operations in Guatemala reported to Agency headquartersin Langley, Virginia: "The following Communists and terrorists were secretly executed by the Guatemalan authorities on the night of March 6: [a list of names]. The executions will not be announced and the Guatemalan government will deny that they ever took place."

Among those murdered was the figurehead of popular resistance, Victor Gutierez Garbin, leader of the Popular Socialist Party. A few days after his death, the CIA chief in Guatemala described Gutierez as "a cultured man, honest and brave, which made him one of the most influential leaders among the workers" - attributes that were not held up for praise but as justification for his assassination.

By 1967 the Casa Negra was orchestrating a full-scale reign of terror. In the period from October 1966 to March 1968, an estimated 3,000 to 8,000 Guatemalans were killed by the police, the military and "death squads" (who were often the police or military in civilian clothes, carrying out atrocities too bloody for the government to claim credit for.) By 1972 the number of their victims was estimated at 13,000 and four years later the count exceeded 20,000. The head of intelligence at the State Department wrote: "At the heart of the secret anti-Communist force is a special unit of the army which kidnaps, kills in the street, plants bombs and executes real or supposed Communists. It occasionally acts against ill-defined 'enemies of the government'". Rather than voicing disquiet about the abuses of human rights, the report noted a concern that "the Communists could benefit politically" from the indiscriminate terror.

Anyone attempting to organise a union or simply suspected of being in support of the resistance was a target. Armed men broke into their homes and dragged them away. The abducted were tortured, mutilated or burned; their bodies were found buried in mass graves or floating in plastic bags in lakes or rivers, or lying beside the road. Bodies were dropped into the Pacific from airplanes. In the Gualan area, it was said, no one fished any more because too many corpses were caught in the nets. In Guatemala City, right wing terrorists machine-gunned people and houses in daylight. Journalists, lawyers, students, teachers, trade unionists, members of opposition parties, anyone who helped or expressed sympathy for the rebel cause, anyone with a vaguely leftist political association or a moderate criticism of government policy and relatives of the victims were all targets for attack.

"It is hard to find the words to express the state of putrefaction that exists in
Guatemala, and the permanent terror in which the inhabitants live. Every day
bodies are pulled out of the Motagua River, riddled with bullets and partially
eaten by fish. Every day men are kidnapped right in the street by unidentified
people in cars, armed to the teeth, with no intervention by the police patrols."

- from the notebook of MICHELE KIRK, a young French woman who shot
herself in Guatemala City as the police came to her room to make "inquiries."

The U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) contributed to a programme to greatly expand the size of Guatemala's national police force and to develop it into a professional body skilled at counteracting urban disorder. Additionally, the police force was completely supplied with radio patrol cars and a radio communications network and funds to build a national police academy and pay for salaries, uniforms, weapons and equipment.

Senior police officers and technicians were sent for training at the Inter-American Police Academy in Panama (replaced in 1964 by the International Police Academy in Washington) and at a Federal School in Los Fresnos, Texas (where they were taught how to construct and use a variety of explosive devices). Their instructors were often CIA officers operating under AID cover.
John Gilligan, Director of AID during the Carter administration, disclosed, "At one time, many AID field offices were infiltrated from top to bottom with CIA people. The idea was to plant operatives in every kind of activity we had overseas - government, volunteer, religious, every kind."

CIA officers and Green Berets accompanied the Guatemalan soldiers into battle areas and taught their trainees various methods of interrogation, including electric shock techniques. One method of torture consisted of putting a hood filled with insecticide over the head of the victim.

The slogan of the New Anticommunist Organisation was "See a Communist, kill a Communist. Another of the death squads, Mano Blanca (White Hand) distributed leaflets in residential areas suggesting that doors of left-wingers be marked with a black cross." Bodies were found decapitated or castrated, or with pins stuck in the eyes. Men were found dead with their eyes gouged out, their testicles in their mouths, without hands or tongues and women with their breasts cut off. Entire villages where there were people suspected of supporting the guerrillas were rounded up and massacred and the village bulldozed over to cover the traces.

At the same time as these atrocities were taking place, the American ambassador, John Gordon Mein, presented the Guatemalan military with new armoured vehicles, grenade launchers, training and radio equipment and several HU-1B jet-powered attack helicopters. Mein publicly stated: "Liberty must be defended and that liberty is now being threatened in Guatemala."


As public concern began to grow worldwide about the violence, the Guatemalan president appointed a new defence minister and sent a few officers abroad, to minimise bad publicity. However, the massacres continued, with the full knowledge and consent of Washington. One CIA report written in 1971 stated: "The army and police are secretly eliminating a great number of terrorists."

Following the discovery of large deposits of petroleum and minerals such as copper and nickel in the 1970s, large landowners and foreign corporations began expropriating communal lands. There were mass expulsions of indigenous peasants from their homes. However, despite the constant danger, indigenous groups continued to campaign for land reform. When President Lucas Garcia began his reign of terror in 1978, he set out to eliminate all the new popular leaders. Death squads roamed the land and murdered at will, and moves to obtain land were brutally crushed. Between March and September 1982, more than 4,000 people were killed and thousands more were tortured; the reform movement withered.


International concern over the Guatemalan government's excesses led to a Congressional curtailment of U.S. military aid to the dictatorship under the Jimmy Carter administration in 1977. However, the Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan then began a courtship of the Guatemalan far right. In December 1979 a delegation from the American Security Council (an ultra-right military lobby) visited Guatemala on behalf of Reagan. One of the ASC consultants was John C.Trotter, the manager of Guatemala City's Coca-Cola bottling plant franchise. Trotter was implicated in the death squad murders of a number of workers and union leaders at the bottling plant and was removed from management by Coca-Cola headquarters after an international union and church-led protest and boycott of Coke.


Continues at: http://www.american-buddha.com/cia.guatemala.htm

[American Dream]

Sociologists have frequently observed that governments use punishment primarily as a tool of social control, and thus the extent or severity of punishment is often unrelated to actual crime patterns.

--Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow (2011)

[American Dream]

Accounting for Ourselves:

Breaking the Impasse Around Assault and Abuse in Anarchist Scenes



Sexual assault and abuse continue to plague anarchist circles and spaces. In response, we’ve developed processes to hold each other accountable outside of the state. But why can’t we seem to get them right? This essay examines the context in which these community accountability models emerged and analyzes the pitfalls we’ve encountered in trying to apply them. To move beyond the impasse around sexual violence within our scenes, we need to challenge the idea of community itself and take our resistance in new directions.

http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/recentf ... unting.php

[American Dream]

“Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere.”

- Emma Goldman

[American Dream]

TRIGGER WARNING

Dear beloved Queer Community, and Paul Soileau,

Recently, here in the Austin queer community, there has been a lot debate and discussion and controversy around the phenomenon of shock drag. Emotions are high, and I really wish for us all to be able to sit down and truly listen to one another because, on all sides we all have so much to learn, myself included. I want us to emerge from this conversation as a whole community that knows how to laugh and push boundaries for the greater good, create amazing art, all while being inclusive and supportive of all our members.

I am writing, because I want to dialogue specifically about the character, Christeene. To do so, I have to write anonymously. I wish the world were a different place and that I could be open with my identity and story. Unfortunately, sharing my story could cost me many things, including my job. However, I wish to share with you on a personal level, because I think it is important to creating understanding. I also want you to know that someone like me, with my story, is a part of this community.

Also, many of you know me, and may recognize bits of my story. You may be able to identify the anonymous person writing this letter. If you do, I am asking that you please ALWAYS respect my confidentiality, and do not share my identity.

Over 12 years ago, I was pursuing my dream: I was studying theater at a pretty fancy school that I could not actually afford to attend. I was getting some help from my family, and some financial aid, but mostly I was taking out a great deal of money in loans, not really knowing how I was going to pay them back. At the time, I did not care, because I wanted this so badly. I also thought this school was the ticket to realizing my creative dreams. I wanted to act, direct, write, and create art that would change the world.

My second year of college, there was a mix-up with my FAFSA, and suddenly I had no financial aid. Meanwhile, my parents had disowned me and I was heartbroken on so many levels. In order to stay in school, I started doing sex work. And it is still a part of my life today.

My relationship to sex work is complicated. There are certain privileges I have in this industry, as a white, cis- passing, college educated person with a body type that fits mainstream standards of beauty. These privileges absolutely inform my experience of sex work.

Sometimes, I feel extremely empowered in doing sex work. I refuse to accept that ‘victim’ label that people would like to give to me. But like any job, it is not always easy or fun, and sometimes I hate it. Sometimes it is really gross – disgusting and hurtful to my spirit. At times, I have felt trapped, like I would never do anything else. However, having sex work as an option has served me.

Over the years, I met a lot of sex workers who did not share the same privilege in the industry that I did. I would like to share a little bit about some of my friends in San Francisco (and for this story I am changing their names to protect their identities.)

First, there is Sara. She was strikingly beautiful – heads turned in admiration when she entered a space. Her hair was always pinned back with a bright flower, and was always smiling, even though her pain was apparent. Sara was brown, trans, and an immigrant to the U.S. from Central America, in order to escape hate violence back home. However, her life wasn’t much easier in San Francisco. She was marginally housed, which meant usually in an SRO (single room occupancy hotel) and sometimes homeless. Job discrimination meant that it was hard for her to get work, so she did street-based sex work so that she could save up for money for surgery. Her daily life was hard, and her visibility left her vulnerable to a lot of hatred, and in order to deal with this, she self-medicated with drugs.

Despite her hardship, she was always pleasant to others. It takes a special type of strength to continually face the world with that kind of grace, even when the world gave her hardship that most people will never have to face. When I saw her after a rough day, she would just smile and tell of her dream of finding a man and settling down.

Sara’s best friend was Karly, who was white, transgender, and from a small town in the south. Karly would often try (successfully) to make to me laugh, and she was pretty good at brightening my day. She would also tell me heart-breaking stories about her life, such as the one about watching her lover from her hometown getting dragged through the streets for being gay. She also self-medicated.

Karly would sometimes get angry and fight, which is one of the many beautiful things about her, but her fighting spirit also got her kicked out of community spaces and made it difficult for her to even get a room in an SRO, so she was usually homeless. I remember when a community organization helped her finally score a room in an SRO and it was such a joyful success.

One day, we got the news that a brown, transgender woman had been found dead, while another brown transgender woman was found alive, but severely hurt in the dogpatch neighborhood of SF. The word on the street was that the perpetrator had been a client. At that point, they had not identified the woman who was killed, but there were rumors that it was Sara, who had not been seen for weeks.

When I heard this, I lost my shit. Even when she was identified as Ruby Rodriguez, who was someone I did not even know, I continued to cry. When I went to the candlelight vigil for Ruby, I could not stop crying. Sara was not at the vigil, but Karly was, and Karly refused to leave my side when she saw that I couldn’t stop crying.

But then, only weeks after Ruby’s memorial, Sara was found dead in Golden Gate Park. We did not know if it was overdose or if she had been killed, but most of us suspected that it was the same bad client. There were in fact 12 deaths of transwomen who were street-based sex workers in the past 4 years in SF that were rumored to be all one guy. There was no investigation. You see, police don’t tend to prioritize investigating violence against sex workers, especially if they are brown, especially if they are transgender, especially if they are homeless.

Karly was so heartbroken. I wish I could have cheered her up even half as much she always cheered me up. She had been doing so well, but this was too much for her. The last time I saw Karly, she was so high that she did not recognize me, and she was pushing a shopping cart full of her belongings, because she had lost her SRO room.

That was a hard year for the entire sex worker community. We all suffered from this violence. And dealing with that pain meant that some of us relapsed into various coping mechanisms. That year, I lost several other dear friends to overdose and suicide.

It hurts so much to tell these stories. There are way too many stories like this. But I want you to understand that when I see Christeene, in her sex-worker boots, wearing almost nothing – when I see her dressed like that with smeared make-up and bruises – I see a loved one who has just come out of a violent situation, maybe with an abusive client, or a police officer, or a hateful stranger. You might not see this because we have different experiences of the world. But I am telling you so that we can be aware that these are real stories and real traumas that are present in our queer community.

Dear Paul, I really respect you as a performer and community member. The first time I saw you perform, was as Rebecca Havemayer, and I really enjoyed watching your physical specificity and clear character work. You are extremely talented, and I admire the work and commitment you put into your art. I also respect you as a community member. I see that you sometimes are vocal about community issues and causes, encouraging your audience to support these things. I also see that you put a lot of time and energy into community events that are so beloved by the Austin queer community.

However, back at Gaybigaygay 2011, I heard Rebecca Havemayer on stage, making a joke about the dirty trick that Christeene was turning out by the portapotties. At that point, I had not yet seen Christeene in action but this comment, alone, hurt.

And, dear queer community, it also hurt me when the joke was made, because I saw you, my friends, laughing. I had just moved to Austin, and that was my first Gaybi. I had enjoyed a magical day, but in this moment I suddenly felt alienated and alone. And I felt betrayed. I expect to see the hatred and the jokes in the straight world, but it hurts so much worse when I see it coming from within my own community. I have watched Christeene – to see if there was something I am not understanding. Since then, I have seen all of the videos, and read many interviews, looking for answers.

I can see that Christeene has evolved over the years. In fact, it seems like Paul, has heard criticism and really tried to address it. But have the issues successfully been addressed? By changing a character is the history erased?

I don’t want to believe the intent is to hurt – I don’t want to believe that anyone who is laughing is laughing at sex workers or transgender women. But what sort of message is being perpetuated? Who might it be harming? Is it possible that this phenomenon is giving people permission to make fun of and hate people who are part of our community? How can we, as a community, address our traumas in a way that is productive? How can we make art that pushes social boundaries towards justice? How can we make art and hold events that are inclusive ALL the queers, especially those who face even more marginalization than those who are on the stage?

Thank you all for your time.

With deep love and respect,

Anonymous Austin Queer

A Trip to the Morg: Community Letter #1

[American Dream]

David Harvey on Class and Class Struggle

[American Dream]

Race: The Power of an Illusion

An eye-opening three-part series confronting our myths and misconceptions about race through the distinct lenses of science, history and social institutions.

[American Dream]

Dean Spade: Why The Law is Not Enough (2 min)

Dean Spade—founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project and author of the new book, “Normal Life”—explains why we need to rethink the criminalization of large parts of the population. This is an excerpt of an exclusive two-part interview with Spade.




Dean Spade: Grassroots Social Justice

Dean Spade—founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project and author of the new book, “Normal Life”—explains why our social justice efforts have to move from the grassroots up.




Dean Spade: Trickle-Up Social Justice

An excerpt from the lecture “Trans Politics on a Neoliberal Landscape,” delivered on February 9, 2009 at Barnard College.