Greetings Troublemakers ...welcome to Trouble.
My name is not important.
In the wake of the recent scandals that have rocked Hollywood,
corporate media outlets, academia, amateur sports
and, of course, Washington DC
... the topic of sexual abuse has become a recurring feature
on the American news cycle.
But while it’s good to see a handful of powerful men
at least beginning to be held accountable
for their misogynistic behaviour
... the sexual harassment and assault of women
is obviously nothing new.
And these recent stories are only a microscopic representation
of a much more widespread and systemic issue.
If even famous celebrities aren’t safe from this type of abuse
... what does that say about the rest of us?
Sexual violence is the foundation of patriarchy,
one of the oldest and most insidious systems of domination
in human history.
This violence takes many forms
from rape and sexual exploitation,
to the imposition of misogynistic beauty standards
and gender norms,
to laws and social taboos that seek to control
women's sexuality, bodily autonomy
and reproductive health.
Patriarchy is intricately woven into the very fabric of society;
it is rooted in the nuclear family
and the ways in which children are raised differently
depending on the gender they're assigned at birth.
It is encoded into our language,
and amplified by religion and popular culture,
helping to shape our perceptions of the world,
and our place in it.
It plays out in countless everyday experiences and actions,
forming a self-perpetuating and self-reinforcing cycle
that is passed down through generations,
extending its influence into all spheres of
human activity and behaviour.
But far from accepting the role of eternal victim,
throughout history, women have consistently pushed back
against patriarchal systems of social, political
and economic control.
Today, we are at the forefront of revolutionary
anti-capitalist and anti-colonial movements around the world,
in addition to playing leading roles in resistance
against white supremacy and police terror,
for LGBTQ liberation,
and against ableism,
carceral psychology and the prison-industrial complex.
Over the next thirty minutes
we'll highlight some of the ongoing struggles
faced by women across the globe
and speak with a number of badass commentators
as they talk about confronting social taboos,
fighting back against sexism,
subverting systems of male domination
... and making a whole lot of trouble.
In a word, I would define patriarchy as conquest.
Beyond just sort of everyday prejudices,
it is a system of power that is institutionalized
in various facets of our everday life.
A social, economic, political system
that's rooted in gender oppression.
The system of racialized gender regulation
that socially and materially privileges manhood,
and men... and masculinity.
Trans, queer and non-binary folks,
and all the things, behaviours and attributes
that we would associate with the feminine,
or femininity is deemed to be inferior.
It's a social system that establishes,
codifies the supremacy,
the superiority of men in every sphere of social life
over women.
The struggles of women across the world
show that there's a lot of common issues,
such as their under-representation or marginalization
in cultural, economic and political spheres.
One of the unifying characteristics of patriarchy
that is seen around the world is the imposition of
a gender binary, with violence committed against
those who do not fit into the stereotypes
– into the expected representations
of what is masculine or what is feminine.
The patriarchal system, as a system of gender regulation,
revolves around transmisogyny
– which patriarchy understands as a punishment
of failed masculinity.
Because trans women are not understood as being real women
but rather as failed men.
And the violence against trans women serves a twofold purpose.
It allows cis men to reassert and re-establish
their own sense of masculinity by punishing trans women
for their own insecurity about their heterosexuality,
and their attraction to trans women, which calls
their whole manhood into question.
And then it also serves a warning to trans women.
The kind of uniform experience of patriarchy,
if there was to be one ... because of course
patriarchy is experienced differently by different genders
and many other identities that overlap with patriarchy
– but is particularly, the subjugation
especially if we look at subjugation and inequality
in intimate relationships,
and in the so-called 'domestic spheres.'
So that's one of the ways in which patriarchy
continues to be so dominant, and yet so invisible.
Patriarchal relations, the dominance of men over women,
it's a consequence usually
of a system that exploits human labour.
And therefore the control over women,
over their reproductive capacity, over their domestic work
– it's in fact a goal, at least of those who control society.
Patriarchy is, at least in my view,
connected with a class system.
With a system of exploitation that goes beyond the relations
between men and women.
Economically, the subordination of women and femmes
plays out in pay gaps and in the way that
women's labour is undervalued, regardless of what it is.
And whether it's in more traditional ways
... if it's curanderas, or medicine people,
it's typically more women.
When we talk about the ancestral knowledge
that's passed down from grandmothers
through matrilineal connections - that kind of knowledge
is dismissed more often.
There is an appropriation of the genius of women.
Of the work of women that men take credit for.
All those clichés about there always being, y'know,
'behind every great man there's a woman.'
Like, behind every great woman there's ten more women
that are badass and that have worked to uplift each other
and to encourage each other to find their power
and to find their voices.
Patriarchy ignores all that.
Patriarchy erases the genius of women throughout history.
It erases the efforts that we put in
to help our communities be thriving.
To help our children be thriving.
I've spoken of 'the patriarchy of the wage' to define,
y'know, the way in which capitalism maintains
gender-based hierarchies.
The patriarchy of the wage says that,
or implies, the wage relation.
And the fact that capitalism organizes much of
women's work on an unpaid basis as being
a fundamental material condition for the creation
of patriarchal control.
We saw very recently with the #MeToo movement,
how the issue of harassment or abuse against women
is something that really transcends
all class lines and all culture lines.
It's also important to state that patriarchy
does not imply that all men have power over all women.
Take the case of the United States, for instance.
It's clear that the race relation has a profound effect
in the definition also
of whose men have power over whose women.
I think about patriarchy, not only in the way
that it affects women, but in the way
that it affects men in our communities.
It stunts their growth.
It stunts their capacity for accountability,
their emotional depth.
Their willingness to grow and to understand
that they can become better human beings,
more connected to their spirituality.
More connected to their purpose in this life.
Especially in – when folks talk about,
y'know, a revolutionary sense, there's this stereotype
of having to be hard and super militant.
And we absolutely need that.
We absolutely need to defend our communities.
But we also need to be able to communicate with each other.
And to be reasonable, and to not default to anger.
In the Book of Genesis,
which just so happens to be the main creation story
for the world's combined 4.2 billion adherents
of Judaism, Christianity and Islam
... it's a bit of an understatement to say that
women don't exactly come out looking so great.
And if the no-doubt male authors of this text
are to be believed ... it's all Eve's fault.
Because even after being granted an earthly paradise
to frolic around in,
this ungrateful harlot did the one thing
that her benevolent male God had told her not to do.
And worse than that, she roped her husband
into taking the blame with her ... even after he gave up
one of his ribs so that she could be created.
By eating the forbidden apple from the Tree of Knowledge,
Eve was responsible for original sin
... and ultimately the downfall of humanity.
Pretty heavy.
And for thousands of years,
the chief institutions of organized religion
have done everything that they could to ensure
that nobody forgot the awful truth
wrapped up in this vicious lie.
The Catholic Church has played a major major role
in terms of fostering a misogynist conception of women.
The Church had a tremendous role,
in particular, in defining women's sexuality
as something sinful.
As something that has to be controlled.
So the woman is the great sinner.
The woman is the one who has to cover herself,
because she is a continuous temptation for men.
Sexuality is a very intense, potentially subversive force.
Y'know, but here I would add immediately
that the concerns of the Church were also shared
by the political and legal authorities.
Because particularly in the developing capitalist system
at the end of the Middle Ages,
y'know, the question of the control of sexuality,
the control of procreation, became a strategic issue.
Became a strategic objective.
Those same techniques,
values that were permeated by a devaluation of women
... were exported.
Throughout colonization, Christianity used the bible
and its stories to prove that patriarchy
was the will of God.
The Christian, Catholic religions
that have been imposed here deify men.
And deify God as a man.
And they don't have any room for the sacred feminine.
Colonization needed to divide and destroy communities
in order to gain access to land.
And upon arrival, settlers noticed very quickly
that Indigenous women often held positions
of power in their communities,
and in their own governance systems.
And so while there were generalized attacks
on Indigenous communities,
there were very specific attacks
aimed directly at Indigenous women.
Looking back at history,
looking back at resource extraction
... the ways that all of our non-human relatives have
been treated and commodified and stolen and sold
... it seems to me that people from those religions
don't hold much sacred.
One of the first things they did was convince the men
in those communities that their equality to women
was a sign of inferiority.
And this was done through religion
and a variety of different ways,
and actually got them to aid in the process
of removing women from those positions of power.
The way that colonizers invaded,
and continue to invade and destroy
and disrespect the land that gives us life
... is an extreme parallel to the ways that colonizers
also inflict abuse on Native women in particular.
The MMIW movement in Canada
has been an Indigenous-led response to the crisis of
over-representation of Inuit, Métis and First Nations women
in missing persons and homicide cases.
Indigenous women make up 4% of the population,
but 16% of the homicide rates in Canada.
Deaths and disappearances of Indigenous women
are often ignored or mishandled by the police.
The Tina Fontaine verdict
... the recent not-guilty verdict in that case,
which was pretty devastating
– you see this kind of thing play out.
And so you see things like,
just before the verdict being announced, The Globe and Mail
doing an entire front-page article talking about how
she had drugs and alcohol in her system
when she was found.
As if that somehow justifies her being murdered
and thrown into the river in a sleeping bag.
The European systems of religion,
of social structures are all based on hierarchy.
The hierarchies that are in place now place women
– women of colour – at the very bottom.
The Jezebel is one of the controlling images
of Black womanhood that's grounded in this idea
that Black women are uniquely sexually aggressive
and uncontrollably promiscuous,
and hyper-sexual and animalistic.
And it relates to chattel slavery in the United States
in that enslaved Black women were subjected
to sexual violence by their masters.
Because they were seen solely as bodies that existed
for sexual consumption and sexual domination by white men.
This has fed into a contemporary idea
that Black women are 'un-rapeable'.
That we are purely sexual beings that always want sex.
And so when we are victimized sexually,
we're not understood as being legitimate victims
the way that white women are.
In Syria you have the rise
of a number of authoritarian Islamist groups,
which to varying degrees have placed restrictions on women
in terms of their participation,
or restrictions on movement or on dress.
But with Daesh, we saw these extremes of horror
being committed against women.
The reintroduction of sexual slavery,
also the policing of women in the social space
– which was completely alien to Syrian society.
But I think it's also important to recognize
that women have been at the forefront
of countering extremism.
Of course, in the Kurdish areas
the female fighters of the YPJ have really captured
the world's imagination for the courage they've shown
in fighting against Daesh.
In Raqqa you had an amazing woman, Suad Nofal,
who became an icon for Syrian revolutionaries
because she carried out these one-woman
demonstrations against Daesh for two months.
Every day she was there protesting against them
and calling on them to leave.
And in Idlib, you've seen women at the forefront
of protests against Nusra.
I think it's important to recognize
that many of these women are religious, hijab-wearing,
Muslim women.
But what they're saying is that they refuse to submit
to the regime's tyranny, and they refuse any
other tyranny that tries to replace it.
And they refuse anyone who's trying to impose
an authoritarian agenda on them,
or dictate to them what they should wear
or what their social role should be.
According to the UN High Commission on Refugees,
in 2017 there was a record 258 million migrants
living in countries around the world.
This figure includes almost 26 million people
who are officially registered as refugees.
And over the past several years,
for the first time in recorded history,
a majority of those forced to make these journeys
have been women and children.
The decision to leave your home,
and the entire life that you've made for yourself,
is one that nobody takes lightly.
Forced migration is a terrifying flight
into uncertainty and precarity
... and this is especially true for female refugees
and migrant workers,
who face a specific set of risks and dangers,
on top of the many challenges shared
by their male counterparts.
As war, territorial dispossession,
extreme economic inequality and climate change continue
to destabilize our world, humanity sits poised
on the threshold of an era of even greater levels
of dislocation and displacement.
And as this process accelerates,
women will continue to bear the heaviest burden.
The feminization of migration is basically the reality
that women continue to be the most impacted by wars,
by occupations, by militarism, by climate change,
by forced poverty as a result of colonialism and neoliberalism.
And that women are the ones that are primarily on the move.
In the Global South
– in much of Africa, Latin America, parts of Asia –
what you have has been a massive level
of impoverishment.
Starting with the debt crisis in the late 1970s
and then the application of programs
of structural adjustment,
which are brutal austerity programs.
Y'know, what you have across the continents
is a massive pauperization,
which then has triggered big migratory flows.
One of the biggest myths is this idea that
the so-called 'west' and the Global North
is so accepting towards refugees.
The number of people that even make it
to the Global North is a fraction.
Most people who are displaced are displaced, y'know,
within their countries of origin,
or to neighbouring countries.
The living conditions of displacement,
the poverty, the hardship
... these things have increased domestic violence
for women often living in camps.
Because men will take out their frustration on
the women in their families.
I've spent a lot of time with refugees in Lebanon,
in Jordan and in Iraq.
And in all of those places I've met women that were
organizing around issues of domestic violence
or early marriage.
The kinds of racism, and the anti-migrant backlash
that we're dealing with all around the world
– we're seeing this in Europe,
we're seeing this with Rohingya refugees,
we're seeing this in the Mediterranean,
we're seeing this in New Zealand and Manus Island,
in the United States and Canada
... really all over.
Women actually make up more than half
of the world's migrants and so women are dealing with that.
And women are also dealing with
the particular vulnerabilities of being women on the move,
and facing fortified borders.
So that means that, y'know, women are really vulnerable
to rape and sexual violence.
60% of women who are crossing the southern US border
reported sexual violence at the border.
It's just another level of something
to be used against you.
Undocumented women who are in domestic abuse situations,
or who have been sexually assaulted,
have little to no recourse.
The fear of being deported,
the fear of being separated from your children,
the aggressive deportation tactics that are being used
... leaves women so much more unprotected.
They have to face years of isolation,
exclusion, including violence.
Because many times when they arrive
they don't have all the proper documents,
or their documents are taken away from them.
And they become exposed
to very brutal forms of exploitation.
So people are unwilling to speak out.
People are unwilling to speak out against
unfair working conditions,
or sexual harassment by their employers.
Always and forever again, y'know,
in the interests of their children.
Of survival. Of being able to make a life
after being forced out of your homeland.
Women migrants are also, again as often being
the primary caregivers to their children,
are often the ones who are responsible for
the well-being of their kids while they're on the move.
Or are dealing with family separations.
So are separated from their kids
... sometimes for decades.
And so these are completely related to patriarchy
in terms of the burden that women face,
of reproductive labour and domestic labour
within the home.
If we look at communities that are still land-based
– so Indigenous communities, peasant-based communities,
farming communities,
in the vast majority of the Global South –
we know that women are on the front lines
of tending to their homes.
To their subsistence-based economies in their communities
and their villages.
And so when we are faced with, for example, climate change
– whether it's drought or flooding,
it's women who are forced to leave.
Because women are actually often the primary breadwinners
in communities where people still are
rooted in the land.
When your entire identity, and your entire livelihood,
and your spiritual practices are all land-based,
and you're forced to leave the land.
When you can no longer go to your sacred places.
Where your stories of origin sprout from.
Where your people came from.
The cultural genocide that happens is immeasurable.
The use of women to support colonial
or imperialist intervention is nothing new.
The entire project of colonization,
of the civilizing mission that dates back 500 years,
has often used a feminist logic.
And these kinds of narratives are possible because,
of course, one of the ways which imperialism works
is to exclude native voices.
And this is something that Gayatri Spivak calls
“the very old civilizing logic of white men and white women
saving brown women from brown men.”
Women's bodies being used as a tool in the
regurgitation of these orientalist
and islamophobic tropes come not just from states,
but sadly also from many western leftists
or western feminists.
People go to Syria on regime-sponsored trips,
and then they come back and they write articles about
how they saw women in bikinis on the beach,
or women drinking alcohol in night clubs.
And the message that that sends is:
“OK... genocide's okay, as long as the social and
liberated elite of Damascus can party in bikinis.”
And it's obviously absurd.
The thing about feminism is that
it can take on so many different forms.
And so it is not uncommon for the state,
and particularly Empire, to take on feminism
as a putatively progressive logic.
And we also see it similarly in
the Prison-Industrial-Complex,
where we're told that we need more prisons
and we need more cops.
Because we need to protect women.
I think that it's important to highlight how Black women
are affected by carcerality and by state violence.
Black women are incarcerated at something like four times
the rate of white women.
The criminalization of Black women
is also indicative of this idea of a public,
and public safety that revolves around the threats
to white women.
Which includes all Black and Brown people.
And so the police and prisons
and military are part of an imperial logic.
A part of the carceral state that uses, often, a feminist
logic to advance white supremacy,
to advance social control.
It is often said that revolutionary theory
is the domain of bearded old white men.
Not only does this myth invisibilize the countless
theoretical contributions made by female revolutionaries
over the years,
from Rosa Luxembourg to Comandanta Ramona,
it also ignores the fact that during the long period
when men enjoyed the near exclusive right to have
their ideas published and debated, women were
busy putting revolutionary theory into practice.
From Louise Michel, who held down the barricades
of the Paris Commune while tending to wounded comrades,
to Lucy Parsons,
co-founder of the Industrial Workers of the World
and a woman the Chicago Police once described as
“more dangerous than a thousand rioters”.
From Emma Goldman,
who once beat Johann Most on stage with a horsewhip
for talking shit,
to Maria Nikiforova,
the feared Ukrainian anarchist military commander
and executioner of White Guards and Bolsheviks alike.
From Kanno Sugako,
who was hanged at the age of 29 for her failed attempt
to assassinate the Emperor of Japan,
to Assata Shakur,
who managed to escape the bowels of the US gulag system
and has now been on the FBI's Most Wanted List
for nearly four decades.
Not to mention the countless other women
who've carried out propaganda of the deed,
rioted, led peasant revolts, and fought on the front lines
of revolutions around the world.
And to this day, women are still holding it down,
taking the lead in countless struggles around the world,
whether they're those waged against resource extraction
and the ongoing theft of Indigenous lands,
the liberation of Syrian territories from Daesh
and the fight against Turkish aggression in Rojava,
or the struggle against racist policing
in the so-called United States.
I think that any organizing should be feminist organizing.
I think that if there is something that's affecting
your community that you want to address,
it should be with an anti-colonial,
women-centered, matriarchal focus.
And so for me the kind of feminism that
I'm interested in talking about is not a kind of feminism
that is interested in social control.
Is not a feminism that is interested in
who the fuck a CEO is, or who the next president
is going to be, of Empire.
But it's a kind of feminism that's based
on liberation, right?
That is anti-capitalist, that is anti-racist,
and more and more and more.
And that seeks freedom.
Any kinds of feminism
– imperial feminisms and otherwise –
that seek more control, that seek more domination,
are the antithesis of what feminism is about
if we understand feminism to be a lens of liberation.
I hope that the new emerging feminist movement
is learning the lessons of the past.
You cannot imagine to change the condition of women
simply by shifting forms of exploitation.
It's very important instead to understand, y'know,
what are the structural mechanisms
that allow for that exploitation?
And this is where we have to organize.
Feminist projects that are really exciting right now
are feminisms that understand the different connections
between all the different systems that we're living in.
Working-class feminisms, for example.
Feminisms that center the experiences of sex workers.
Transfeminisms, Indigenous feminisms,
Black feminisms, migrant feminisms,
all of these things that understand
that these systems are connected,
and that feminism is not simply
the advancement of some women at the expense of others.
I'm also most interested in feminism that is aiming
to visibilize all the different kinds of labour
that exists in our society.
We need to learn from their experiences.
We need to promote their voices.
And in that way, we can address some of this
current imbalance and ensure that Syrian women
are able to speak for and represent themselves.
Just make a girl gang, you know?
Everyone should just have
their own girl gang in their neighbourhoods,
and in their communities.
Our movements will never be effective
if we don't feel safe in them.
Both anarchism and Black feminism
are theorizing about the violence of racial capitalism.
They're theorizing about the violence
of the American state.
To synthesize the two
into a Black feminist anarchism, for example,
would be to make more efficient the racial
and gender critiques of the state.
And to also racialize the anti-state
politic of anarchism.
I encourage women and femme folks
to get involved in male-dominated spaces
... but go in and have each others' backs.
And change those spaces into something
that's more welcoming and more inclusive
of people of all genders.
And that doesn't necessarily mean making it less radical,
or taking less confrontational action.
And it doesn't mean shifting priorities to
try to prioritize care work over revolutionary struggle,
or aggressive or confrontational work.
It means to re-contextualize those kinds of things
as not in the realm of machismo,
but as something that people of all genders engage in.
I don't know that violence is always the answer,
but I think in some situations it can be an answer.
And if you're talking about femicide, rape culture,
sexual violence, the rise of the misogynist right
... I think that's a situation in which everything
should be on the table to at least discuss.
You don't wanna give up your ability to engage in that way.
That makes you very vulnerable.
I don't believe in silver bullets
... or I think there's a lot of important
and meaningful work to be done.
That's less about the specific issue
or area that you're focusing on,
but more about how you're engaging with it.
Are you looking at things beyond just individual actions?
Trying to look at it in terms of collective responses
... material responses?
Are you looking at trying to build autonomy
outside of the state?
Are you looking at trying to build a feminist politics
that isn't just about petitioning to representatives
or trying to get more institutional representation?
I think the world is generally shit.
But I think because it's generally shit,
the only worthwhile thing to do is struggle.
And I feel like there's a lot of really inspiring history
and a lot of really amazing people
who have fought back and struggled
in a lot of different ways.
And it's useful to sort of look at some of
the different things that they did.
Although there's still a long way to go
to the abolition of gender-based inequality,
the past few decades have seen major advancements
for women around the world.
Each step forward has been a struggle,
as men of all stripes have sought to retain
the various manifestations of power and control
afforded them under patriarchy.
But today, even many of these hard-fought victories
are under threat of being clawed back
by resurgent movements of male reaction,
authoritarian nationalism and religious fundamentalism.
From MRAs, who blame feminists
for the many hardships that men face under capitalism
to the violent misogyny that has embedded itself
at the heart of the alt-right,
to the religious fanaticism of Mike Pence
and the Islamic State.
This is no time for us to rest on the laurels
of our past achievements
... it is crucial that we continue to deepen and extend
the struggle against patriarchy on all fronts,
and that we prepare ourselves for the battles to come.
So at this point, we’d like to remind you
that Trouble is intended to be watched in groups,
and to be used as a resource to promote discussion
and collective organizing.
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or helping to better incorporate feminist analysis
into your established organizing projects?
Consider getting together with some comrades,
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This episode would not have been possible
without the generous support of
Carla, John, Devin and Nikos Pelasgos.
Now get out there, and make some trouble!