Enemies Within: Informants And Misogyny On The Left
Posted by onehundredflowers on June 7, 2010
This was originally posted on truthout.org.
“Despite all that we say to the contrary, the fact is that radical social movements and organizations in the United States have refused to seriously address gender violence as a threat to the survival of our struggles. We’ve treated misogyny, homophobia, and heterosexism as lesser evils—secondary issues—that will eventually take care of themselves or fade into the background once the “real” issues—racism, the police, class inequality, U.S. wars of aggression—are resolved. … Misogyny and homophobia are central to the reproduction of violence in radical activist communities. Scratch a misogynist and you’ll find a homophobe. Scratch a little deeper and you might find the makings of a future informant (or someone who just destabilizes movements like informants do).
The state has already understood a fact that the Left has struggled to accept: misogynists make great informants.”
Why Misogynists Make Great Informants: How Gender Violence on the Left Enables State Violence in Radical Movements
by: Courtney Desiree Morris | make/shift
In January 2009, activists in Austin, Texas, learned that one of their own, a white activist named Brandon Darby, had infiltrated groups protesting the Republican National Convention (RNC) as an FBI informant. Darby later admitted to wearing recording devices at planning meetings and during the convention. He testified on behalf of the government in the February 2009 trial of two Texas activists who were arrested at the RNC on charges of making and possessing Molotov cocktails, after Darby encouraged them to do so. The two young men, David McKay and Bradley Crowder, each faced up to fifteen years in prison. Crowder accepted a plea bargain to serve three years in a federal prison; under pressure from federal prosecutors, McKay also pled guilty to being in possession of “unregistered Molotov cocktails” and was sentenced to four years in prison. Information gathered by Darby may also have contributed to the case against the RNC 8, activists from around the country charged with “conspiracy to riot and conspiracy to damage property in the furtherance of terrorism.” Austin activists were particularly stunned by the revelation that Darby had served as an informant because he had been a part of various leftist projects and was a leader at Common Ground Relief, a New Orleans–based organization committed to meeting the short-term needs of community members displaced by natural disasters in the Gulf Coast region and dedicated to rebuilding the region and ensuring Katrina evacuees’ right to return.
I was surprised but not shocked by this news. I had learned as an undergrad at the University of Texas that the campus police department routinely placed plainclothes police officers in the meetings of radical student groups—you know, just to keep an eye on them. That was in fall 2001. We saw the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, watched a cowboy president wage war on terror, and, in the middle of it all, tried to figure out what we could do to challenge the fascist state transformations taking place before our eyes. At the time, however, it seemed silly that there were cops in our meetings—we weren’t the Panthers or the Brown Berets or even some of the rowdier direct-action anti-globalization activists on campus (although we admired them all); we were just young people who didn’t believe war was the best response to the 9/11 attacks. But it wasn’t silly; the FBI does not dismiss political work. Any organization, be it large or small, can provoke the scrutiny of the state. Perhaps your organization poses a large threat, or maybe you’re small now but one day you’ll grow up and be too big to rein in. The state usually opts to kill the movement before it grows.
And informants and provocateurs are the state’s hired gunmen. Government agencies pick people that no one will notice. Often it’s impossible to prove that they’re informants because they appear to be completely dedicated to social justice. They establish intimate relationships with activists, becoming friends and lovers, often serving in leadership roles in organizations. A cursory reading of the literature on social movements and organizations in the 1960s and 1970s reveals this fact. The leadership of the American Indian Movement was rife with informants; it is suspected that informants were also largely responsible for the downfall of the Black Panther Party, and the same can be surmised about the antiwar movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Not surprisingly, these movements that were toppled by informants and provocateurs were also sites where women and queer activists often experienced intense gender violence, as the autobiographies of activists such as Assata Shakur, Elaine Brown, and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz demonstrate.
Maybe it isn’t that informants are difficult to spot but rather that we have collectively ignored the signs that give them away. To save our movements, we need to come to terms with the connections between gender violence, male privilege, and the strategies that informants (and people who just act like them) use to destabilize radical movements. Time and again heterosexual men in radical movements have been allowed to assert their privilege and subordinate others. Despite all that we say to the contrary, the fact is that radical social movements and organizations in the United States have refused to seriously address gender violence[1] as a threat to the survival of our struggles. We’ve treated misogyny, homophobia, and heterosexism as lesser evils—secondary issues—that will eventually take care of themselves or fade into the background once the “real” issues—racism, the police, class inequality, U.S. wars of aggression—are resolved. There are serious consequences for choosing ignorance. Misogyny and homophobia are central to the reproduction of violence in radical activist communities. Scratch a misogynist and you’ll find a homophobe. Scratch a little deeper and you might find the makings of a future informant (or someone who just destabilizes movements like informants do).
The Makings of an Informant: Brandon Darby and Common Ground
On Democracy Now! Malik Rahim, former Black Panther and cofounder of Common Ground in New Orleans, spoke about how devastated he was by Darby’s revelation that he was an FBI informant. Several times he stated that his heart had been broken. He especially lamented all of the “young ladies” who left Common Ground as a result of Darby’s domineering, aggressive style of organizing. And when those “young ladies” complained? Well, their concerns likely fell on sympathetic but ultimately unresponsive ears—everything may have been true, and after the fact everyone admits how disruptive Darby was, quick to suggest violent, ill-conceived direct-action schemes that endangered everyone he worked with. There were even claims of Darby sexually assaulting female organizers at Common Ground and in general being dismissive of women working in the organization.[2] Darby created conflict in all of the organizations he worked with, yet people were hesitant to hold him accountable because of his history and reputation as an organizer and his “dedication” to “the work.” People continued to defend him until he outed himself as an FBI informant. Even Rahim, for all of his guilt and angst, chose to leave Darby in charge of Common Ground although every time there was conflict in the organization it seemed to involve Darby.
Maybe if organizers made collective accountability around gender violence a central part of our practices we could neutralize people who are working on behalf of the state to undermine our struggles. I’m not talking about witch hunts; I’m talking about organizing in such a way that we nip a potential Brandon Darby in the bud before he can hurt more people. Informants are hard to spot, but my guess is that where there is smoke there is fire, and someone who creates chaos wherever he goes is either an informant or an irresponsible, unaccountable time bomb who can be unintentionally as effective at undermining social-justice organizing as an informant. Ultimately they both do the work of the state and need to be held accountable.
A Brief Historical Reflection on Gender Violence in Radical Movements
Reflecting on the radical organizations and social movements of the 1960s and 1970s provides an important historical context for this discussion. Memoirs by women who were actively involved in these struggles reveal the pervasiveness of tolerance (and in some cases advocacy) of gender violence. Angela Davis, Assata Shakur, and Elaine Brown, each at different points in their experiences organizing with the Black Panther Party (BPP), cited sexism and the exploitation of women (and their organizing labor) in the BPP as one of their primary reasons for either leaving the group (in the cases of Brown and Shakur) or refusing to ever formally join (in Davis’s case). Although women were often expected to make significant personal sacrifices to support the movement, when women found themselves victimized by male comrades there was no support for them or channels to seek redress. Whether it was BPP organizers ignoring the fact that Eldridge Cleaver beat his wife, noted activist Kathleen Cleaver, men coercing women into sex, or just men treating women organizers as subordinated sexual playthings, the BPP and similar organizations tended not to take seriously the corrosive effects of gender violence on liberation struggle. In many ways, Elaine Brown’s autobiography, A Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story, has gone the furthest in laying bare the ugly realities of misogyny in the movement and the various ways in which both men and women reproduced and reinforced male privilege and gender violence in these organizations. Her experience as the only woman to ever lead the BPP did not exempt her from the brutal misogyny of the organization. She recounts being assaulted by various male comrades (including Huey Newton) as well as being beaten and terrorized by Eldridge Cleaver, who threatened to “bury her in Algeria” during a delegation to China. Her biography demonstrates more explicitly than either Davis’s or Shakur’s how the masculinist posturing of the BPP (and by extension many radical organizations at the time) created a culture of violence and misogyny that ultimately proved to be the organization’s undoing.
These narratives demystify the legacy of gender violence of the very organizations that many of us look up to. They demonstrate how misogyny was normalized in these spaces, dismissed as “personal” or not as important as the more serious struggles against racism or class inequality. Gender violence has historically been deeply entrenched in the political practices of the Left and constituted one of the greatest (if largely unacknowledged) threats to the survival of these organizations. However, if we pay attention to the work of Davis, Shakur, Brown, and others, we can avoid the mistakes of the past and create different kinds of political community.
The Racial Politics of Gender Violence
Race further complicates the ways in which gender violence unfolds in our communities. In “Looking for Common Ground: Relief Work in Post-Katrina New Orleans as an American Parable of Race and Gender Violence,” Rachel Luft explores the disturbing pattern of sexual assault against white female volunteers by white male volunteers doing rebuilding work in the Upper Ninth Ward in 2006. She points out how Common Ground failed to address white men’s assaults on their co-organizers and instead shifted the blame to the surrounding Black community, warning white women activists that they needed to be careful because New Orleans was a dangerous place. Ultimately it proved easier to criminalize Black men from the neighborhood than to acknowledge that white women and transgender organizers were most likely to be assaulted by white men they worked with. In one case, a white male volunteer was turned over to the police only after he sexually assaulted at least three women in one week. The privilege that white men enjoyed in Common Ground, an organization ostensibly committed to racial justice, meant that they could be violent toward women and queer activists, enact destructive behaviors that undermined the organization’s work, and know that the movement would not hold them accountable in the same way that it did Black men in the community where they worked.
Of course, male privilege is not uniform—white men and men of color are unequal participants in and beneficiaries of patriarchy although they both can and do reproduce gender violence. This disparity in the distribution of patriarchy’s benefits is not lost on women and queer organizers when we attempt to confront men of color who enact gender violence in our communities. We often worry about reproducing particular kinds of racist violence that disproportionately target men of color. We are understandably loath to call the police, involve the state in any way, or place men of color at the mercy of a historically racist criminal (in)justice system; yet our communities (political and otherwise) often do not step up to demand justice on our behalf. We don’t feel comfortable talking to therapists who just reaffirm stereotypes about how fucked-up and exceptionally violent our home communities are. The Left often offers even less support. Our victimization is unfortunate, problematic, but ultimately less important to “the work” than the men of all races who reproduce gender violence in our communities.
Encountering Misogyny on the Left: A Personal Reflection
In the first community group I was actively involved in, I encountered a level of misogyny that I would never have imagined existed in what was supposed to be a radical-people-of-color organization. I was sexually/romantically involved with an older Chicano activist in the group. I was nineteen, an inexperienced young Black activist; he was thirty. He asked me to keep our relationship a secret, and I reluctantly agreed. Later, after he ended the relationship and I was reeling from depression, I discovered that he had been sleeping with at least two other women while we were together. One of them was a friend of mine, another young woman we organized with. Unaware of the nature of our relationship, which he had failed to disclose to her, she slept with him until he disappeared, refusing to answer her calls or explain the abrupt end of their relationship. She and I, after sharing our experiences, began to trade stories with other women who knew and had organized with this man.
We heard of the women who had left a Chicana/o student group and never came back after his lies and secrets blew up while the group was participating in a Zapatista action in Mexico City. The queer, radical, white organizer who left Austin to get away from his abuse. Another white woman, a social worker who thought they might get married only to come to his apartment one evening and find me there. And then there were the ones that came after me. I always wondered if they knew who he really was. The women he dated were amazing, beautiful, kick-ass, radical women that he used as shields to get himself into places he knew would never be open to such a misogynist. I mean, if that cool woman who worked in Chiapas, spoke Spanish, and worked with undocumented immigrants was dating him, he must be down, right? Wrong.
But his misogyny didn’t end there; it was also reflected in his style of organizing. In meetings he always spoke the loudest and longest, using academic jargon that made any discussion excruciatingly more complex than necessary. The academic-speak intimidated people less educated than him because he seemed to know more about radical politics than anyone else. He would talk down to other men in the group, especially those he perceived to be less intelligent than him, which was basically everybody. Then he’d switch gears, apologize for dominating the space, and acknowledge his need to check his male privilege. Ironically, when people did attempt to call him out on his shit, he would feign ignorance—what could they mean, saying that his behavior was masculinist and sexist? He’d complain of being infantilized, refusing to see how he infantilized people all the time. The fact that he was a man of color who could talk a good game about racism and racial-justice struggles masked his abusive behaviors in both radical organizations and his personal relationships. As one of his former partners shared with me, “His radical race analysis allowed people (mostly men but occasionally women as well) to forgive him for being dominating and abusive in his relationships. Womyn had to check their critique of his behavior at the door, lest we lose a man of color in the movement.” One of the reasons it is so difficult to hold men of color accountable for reproducing gender violence is that women of color and white activists continue to be invested in the idea that men of color have it harder than anyone else. How do you hold someone accountable when you believe he is target number one for the state?
Unfortunately he wasn’t the only man like this I encountered in radical spaces—just one of the smarter ones. Reviewing old e-mails, I am shocked at the number of e-mails from men I organized with that were abusive in tone and content, how easily they would talk down to others for minor mistakes. I am more surprised at my meek, diplomatic responses—like an abuse survivor—as I attempted to placate compañeros who saw nothing wrong with yelling at their partners, friends, and other organizers. There were men like this in various organizations I worked with. The one who called his girlfriend a bitch in front of a group of youth of color during a summer encuentro we were hosting. The one who sexually harassed a queer Chicana couple during a trip to México, trying to pressure them into a threesome. The guys who said they would complete a task, didn’t do it, brushed off their compañeras’ demands for accountability, let those women take over the task, and when it was finished took all the credit for someone else’s hard work. The graduate student who hit his partner—and everyone knew he’d done it, but whenever anyone asked, people would just look ashamed and embarrassed and mumble, “It’s complicated.” The ones who constantly demeaned queer folks, even people they organized with. Especially the one who thought it would be a revolutionary act to “kill all these faggots, these niggas on the down low, who are fucking up our children, fucking up our homes, fucking up our world, and fucking up our lives!” The one who would shout you down in a meeting or tell you that you couldn’t be a feminist because you were too pretty. Or the one who thought homosexuality was a disease from Europe.
Yeah, that guy.
Most of those guys probably weren’t informants. Which is a pity because it means they are not getting paid a dime for all the destructive work they do. We might think of these misogynists as inadvertent agents of the state. Regardless of whether they are actually informants or not, the work that they do supports the state’s ongoing campaign of terror against social movements and the people who create them. When queer organizers are humiliated and their political struggles sidelined, that is part of an ongoing state project of violence against radicals. When women are knowingly given STIs, physically abused, dismissed in meetings, pushed aside, and forced out of radical organizing spaces while our allies defend known misogynists, organizers collude in the state’s efforts to destroy us.
The state has already understood a fact that the Left has struggled to accept: misogynists make great informants. Before or regardless of whether they are ever recruited by the state to disrupt a movement or destabilize an organization, they’ve likely become well versed in practices of disruptive behavior. They require almost no training and can start the work immediately. What’s more paralyzing to our work than when women and/or queer folks leave our movements because they have been repeatedly lied to, humiliated, physically/verbally/emotionally/sexually abused? Or when you have to postpone conversations about the work so that you can devote group meetings to addressing an individual member’s most recent offense? Or when that person spreads misinformation, creating confusion and friction among radical groups? Nothing slows down movement building like a misogynist.
What the FBI gets is that when there are people in activist spaces who are committed to taking power and who understand power as domination, our movements will never realize their potential to remake this world. If our energies are absorbed recuperating from the messes that informants (and people who just act like them) create, we will never be able to focus on the real work of getting free and building the kinds of life-affirming, people-centered communities that we want to live in. To paraphrase bell hooks, where there is a will to dominate there can be no justice, because we will inevitably continue reproducing the same kinds of injustice we claim to be struggling against. It is time for our movements to undergo a radical change from the inside out.
Looking Forward: Creating Gender Justice in our Movements
Radical movements cannot afford the destruction that gender violence creates. If we underestimate the political implications of patriarchal behaviors in our communities, the work will not survive.
Lately I’ve been turning to the work of queers/feminists of color to think through how to challenge these behaviors in our movements. I’ve been reading the autobiographies of women who lived through the chaos of social movements debilitated by machismo. I’m revisiting the work of bell hooks, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Toni Cade Bambara, Alice Walker, Audre Lorde, Gioconda Belli, Margaret Randall, Elaine Brown, Pearl Cleage, Ntozake Shange, and Gloria Anzaldúa to see how other women negotiated gender violence in these spaces and to problematize neat or easy answers about how violence is reproduced in our communities. Newer work by radical feminists of color has also been incredibly helpful, especially the zine Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Partner Abuse in Activist Communities, edited by Ching-In Chen, Dulani, and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha.
But there are many resources for confronting this dilemma beyond books. The simple act of speaking and sharing our truths is one of the most powerful tools we have. I’ve been speaking to my elders, older women of color in struggle who have experienced the things I’m struggling against, and swapping survival stories with other women. In summer 2008 I began doing workshops on ending misogyny and building collective forms of accountability with Cristina Tzintzún, an Austin-based labor organizer and author of the essay “Killing Misogyny: A Personal Story of Love, Violence, and Strategies for Survival.” We have also begun the even more liberating practice of naming our experiences publicly and calling on our communities to address what we and so many others have experienced.
Dismantling misogyny cannot be work that only women do. We all must do the work because the survival of our movements depends on it. Until we make radical feminist and queer political ethics that directly challenge heteropatriarchal forms of organizing central to our political practice, radical movements will continue to be devastated by the antics of Brandon Darbys (and folks who aren’t informants but just act like them). A queer, radical, feminist ethic of accountability would challenge us to recognize how gender violence is reproduced in our communities, relationships, and organizing practices. Although there are many ways to do this, I want to suggest that there are three key steps that we can take to begin. First, we must support women and queer people in our movements who have experienced interpersonal violence and engage in a collective process of healing. Second, we must initiate a collective dialogue about how we want our communities to look and how to make them safe for everyone. Third, we must develop a model for collective accountability that truly treats the personal as political and helps us to begin practicing justice in our communities. When we allow women/queer organizers to leave activist spaces and protect people whose violence provoked their departure, we are saying we value these de facto state agents who disrupt the work more than we value people whose labor builds and sustains movements.
As angry as gender violence on the Left makes me, I am hopeful. I believe we have the capacity to change and create more justice in our movements. We don’t have to start witch hunts to reveal misogynists and informants. They out themselves every time they refuse to apologize, take ownership of their actions, start conflicts and refuse to work them out through consensus, mistreat their compañer@s. We don’t have to look for them, but when we are presented with their destructive behaviors we have to hold them accountable. Our strategies don’t have to be punitive; people are entitled to their mistakes. But we should expect that people will own those actions and not allow them to become a pattern.
We have a right to be angry when the communities we build that are supposed to be the model for a better, more just world harbor the same kinds of antiqueer, antiwoman, racist violence that pervades society. As radical organizers we must hold each other accountable and not enable misogynists to assert so much power in these spaces. Not allow them to be the faces, voices, and leaders of these movements. Not allow them to rape a compañera and then be on the fucking five o’ clock news. In Brandon Darby’s case, even if no one suspected he was an informant, his domineering and macho behavior should have been all that was needed to call his leadership into question. By not allowing misogyny to take root in our communities and movements, we not only protect ourselves from the efforts of the state to destroy our work but also create stronger movements that cannot be destroyed from within.
[1] I use the term gender violence to refer to the ways in which homophobia and misogyny are rooted in heteronormative understandings of gender identity and gender roles. Heterosexism not only polices non-normative sexualities but also reproduces normative gender roles and identities that reinforce the logic of patriarchy and male privilege.
[2] I learned this from informal conversations with women who had organized with Darby in Austin and New Orleans while participating in the Austin Informants Working Group, which was formed by people who had worked with Darby and were stunned by his revelation that he was an FBI informant.
b_y said
i think this article and INCITE!’s zine ‘revolution starts at home: confronting partner abuse in activist communities’, linked above, provide an important basis to re-examine not only our intimate relationships. but also how we build our organizations and movements, how justice and accountability are re-imagined and defined as terms, and what kinds of capacities are being developed or silenced and repressed in that process.
i would hope that this post would be given just as much attention as any earlier ones on the situation in nepal or the limitations of anarchism.
Miles Ahead said
Read this post with great interest as I think it has the potential for further opening Pandora’s Box, or at least addressing the 800 lb. gorilla in the room, which room in this case is a lot (not all) of the Left’s underlying attitudes toward both women and homosexuality.
(Am forever agreeing with Andrea Dworkin on this point—i.e., the correlation between the oppression of women and homophobia. Dworkin’s Right Wing Women and her “Letters from the War Zone,” make the case very adequately.)
There seems to be a lot of hypocrisy to unveil, call out, and struggle against within the radical/revolutionary Left, even if those more astute, both among males and also females, are engaged in politically correct-speak and verdicts.
IMO, misogyny, whether blatant or not, is a reflection of the patriarchal society as a whole, and none of us should rest on some false laurels, as if we we’re somehow exempt, even if we say we’re about “breaking the chains,” “in touch with our feminine side,” “women hold up half the sky,” et al., or even if some women are “elevated” in the hierarchy of various organizations.
We need to strive within our own ranks for breaking with old ideas, no matter how entrenched or subconscious they may be, and that breakage needs to be a conscious effort on our parts, starting now, and yesterday.
I am not sure I agree that “the work will not survive,” but do think it will survive with the same ol’ same ol’.
And there is gender violence—both physical and psychological, and both are destructive and damaging. Just like in some domestic violent situation, sometimes the psychological and emotional violence is longer lasting, and even more harmful.
But over many years, what I have experienced more often than not, even from more conscious and revolutionary (sounding) men is–If I try to call out certain macho behavior, even the more subtle forms, am summed up as someone who has fallen into the trap of identity politics, and pretty much dismissed. I do not ascribe to identity politics per se but do ascribe to revolutionaries and radicals understanding and struggling against all forms of oppression and exploitation, and how each particular affects the whole—and how we can get closer, even now, to the new and more liberating society we envision, which we talk volumes about.
Like many women, I have been subjected to the pedantry of the dominant male-voice in “the movement.” But not that long ago, was having a “conversation” with a male rev. I respect overall, but certainly don’t always agree with. His style can sometimes be overbearing. I was disagreeing with some point he was wed to, and he ended the conversation by saying something like: “I like talking with feisty women like you. Helps keep ME on MY toes.” Gee thanks. I would bet that this person thought he was giving me a (“left-handed”) compliment, but I interpreted his remark as patronizing, and in the end, he continued with his line of thinking, thus, how much of my feistiness affected any kind of real discourse, is debatable.
As far as some personal relationships go (with rev./communist partners), ¡ay caray! And while I am not going to get into that specifically, could relate to a lot of what Ms. Morris was saying.
But what I will say is, I think a lot of women, myself included, have helped contribute to (but don’t necessarily initiate) the bad politics and relations, probably because many of us at various times have bought into the inequality that exists, both intellectually and emotionally. Thus sometimes inadvertently even some more astute women help perpetuate the retrograde and ultimately reactionary view of and struggle against, women’s oppression.
Bob H said
Speaking as a largely unreconstructed “heteropatriarch”, I find statements like this untenable:
Until we make radical feminist and queer political ethics that directly challenge heteropatriarchal forms of organizing central to our political practice, radical movements will continue to be devastated by the antics of Brandon Darbys (and folks who aren’t informants but just act like them).
The reason I don’t take this seriously is simple: if you look back at the history of class struggle in the U.S., at times when racist, sexist and homophobic attitudes were far more prevalent and far less questioned, we can clearly see people leading struggles and building movements far more radical and effective than any today. Or we can look around at the world today and see countries where sexism and homophobia are far more entrenched than in the U.S. in which class struggles are far more advanced than anything we can conceive of here. If heteropatriarchic forms are the central problem to advancing organizations, then by this logic activists in the U.S. today should be leading the most advanced struggles with the most advanced form, since we spend the most time agonizing and guilt-tripping over our own inadequate non-oppressive behavior.
b_y said
bob,
it may be precisely that these critiques are allegedly more entrenched or visible, and the responding chauvinism that resists centering these critiques as immanent within their practice, that undermines the possibility of building ‘effective’ and ‘more radical’, not to mention larger and more participatory, movements for class struggle in the u.s.
the fact that one centers feelings of agony and guilt in response to oppressive behavior over imagining more productive processes and frameworks of accountability and empowerment is a critical part of that problem. but as i said before, i suggest that everyone make the time to read the INCITE! zine.
Miles Ahead said
B_y…do you have a link for incite! zine or did i miss something?
b_y said
The Revolution Starts At Home: Confronting Partner Abuse In Activist Communities
http://www.incite-national.org/media/docs/0985_revolution-starts-at-home.pdf
zerohour said
“racist, sexist and homophobic attitudes were far more prevalent and far less questioned, we can clearly see people leading struggles and building movements far more radical and effective than any today.”
What do you mean far more radical and effective? You mean in terms of size? If radicals today were to disregard racism, misogyny and homophobia, we may have a larger audience than we presently have. Aren’t the Tea Party “more effective” by that standard? Doesn’t Glenn Beck have a larger mass following than anyone on the left? It’s because our politics leads us to oppose the oppressions that people consider normal that we are marginalized. That’s to be expected in our present context. If we are to overcome our marginalization, it must be by winning people over on the most radical terms, not by catering to their backward tendencies.
“we spend the most time agonizing and guilt-tripping over our own inadequate non-oppressive behavior.”
Actually, we don’t spend enough time working to overcome our oppressive behaviors, that’s the point of the piece. Guilt-tripping is useless, but avoiding responsibility is just repeating the errors of the past, where all kinds of egregious behavior are justified because one day we’ll all be redeemed by “The Revolution” [substitute "God" for the latter term and you can see the affinities in this kind of thinking]. I’ve seen much personal cruelty and hypocrisy on the left and the failure to see how this becomes an unspoken part of our politics is not something I think is worth perpetuating. There are better ways to deal with things than wringing our hands and hanging our heads. How about some self-critical honesty, open discussion and actually changing our behavior when it’s warranted?
At the same time, I have to wonder if the article’s claims would be “untenable” if the matter were race rather then gender? If so, doesn’t that confirm it’s point?
This piece is a valuable contribution that highlights long-standing practices that we all know about and have not adequately challenged. I encourage people to discuss it broadly.
TOR said
I actually can’t believe that people would allow explicitly homophobic remarks or misogynist practices to go on in revolutionary organizations. While it is fine to debate the importance of a revolutionary organization organizing around or writing articles on issues like gay rights at a particular time and exactly how to go about doing this, or even the importance of this issue in the grand scheme of things, I can’t imagine people being allowed to say that gays are ruining our society or nonsense like that without some kind of struggle over the issue happening right then and there. This kind of stuff has to be shut down and dealt with immediately. Any revolutionary organization that fails to do this is essentially putting its entire work in jeopardy, which is a point made in this article that I completely agree with.
As to whether or not misogynists and homophobes are more likely to be informants, I really don’t know, though I definitely agree that they sometimes can be objectively doing the work of the state by serving to create unnecessary divisions and exclusions in revolutionary organizations that have the effect of weakening these organizations both qualitatively and quantitatively.
For me, this isn’t an issue of dislodging male privilege, but is an issue of the health of revolutionary organizations in terms of basic democratic rights of members and upholding of genuinely democratic democratic centralist traditions in organizations formed along Leninist lines. If someone unnecessarily dominates discussions while purposely talking over people’s heads and putting others down, it is a problem regardless of their gender, race or class.
b_y said
it’s not enough to critically examine or alter one’s behavior, or rely on the good will of comrades to accept personal accountability against a common sense that silences critique. patriarchy and heteronormativity, like white supremacy, are structural and systemic, and require organized frameworks of accountability. so, yes, it is a matter of dislodging male privilege as well and building organizations and movements that deliberately develop the capacities and leadership of women and queers alongside their cismale comrades instead of treating these questions as obstacles.
Miles Ahead said
Zerohour:
I was wondering the same thing.
As far as guilt tripping goes…we can leave that to the bleeding-heart liberals. This is not about guilt tripping, or even one radical/revolutionary individual overcoming their own bad behavior or thoughts, in the main.
This is a battle in the ideological sphere, and one that speaks to the core of our supposed shared beliefs and ideals. We’re not talking about the ERA here.To reduce things to the level of guilt-tripping, or even some denial about self (or systemic and societal) criticism is ultimately to dismiss and deny the importance and existence of the “problem” and relegate it to some inferior “issue.”
Let’s face it, all of us are carrying around some old baggage—understandable but not okay, because we are subject to the pulls and ideology of the society and system we live in and under.
We are shocked and appalled when we read about the genital mutilation of women–a common practice in other parts of the world—but are more tolerant of someone (particularly on the Left) who may engage in other forms of misogyny (or homophobia) that are more subtle, because that person can quote Lenin line and verse, but on the question of gay or women’s liberation, they speak (or in actual practice) out of both sides of their boca.
And I don’t think we would even be having this discussion had it not been for the women’s and gay liberation movements.
Seems to me, the difference between those particular movements, and “us” as revolutionary-minded activists is, we’re about liberating the whole society and ultimately humankind. And we’re about opposing any oppression or discrimination in its myriad of forms.
We need to be liberated as well.
Obviously there are the contradictions among the people that need to be addressed, but if we don’t thoroughly examine and break with our own old or even subliminal ideas, while posing as supposedly the most “conscious” forces, what and whom are we talking about and to?
Frankly I’m not much interested in women simply having a bigger piece of the pie, and in turn emulating some basic social relations in a male-dominated patriarchal society; IMO that is not a radical rupture or departure, nor is it in line with making a real and more thoroughgoing revolution.
Sorry to use the rcp as example, but what besides the overt homophobia in their party program and line had people so upset and disgusted with their line (and practice) on homosexuality? It was their gross hypocrisy. While posing as the party that was going to lead the revolution in the U.S., and liberate the people en masse, the LGBT “community” was to be excluded, come under scrutiny, and probably worse, “re-educated” in their fantasy world version of after the revolution.
Over years(!), and after great outcry, , the rcp was forced to tone down some of their shit, but if you read their last “new constitution” and/or “manifesto,” you will see for yourself that their “self-criticism” had a lot of window-dressing and was not much of a criticism at all. I suppose they were trying to appease their critics wanting to win them back over to the rcp. But, ultimately they still maintain that any sexual preference other than heterosexuality, is deviant behaviour.
We seem to be pretty adept at calling out the hypocrisy of the imperialists (and the Right surely gives us tons of fodder in the hypocrisy dept.), but I think we have to be more adept at struggling against and unveiling shades of our own hypocrisy as well. This should not be viewed as an “obstacle”–it is part of the rev. struggle and process.
Green Red said
i wasn’t sure to put this piece of news that outraged me about a simple journalist here or, on the piece that talks about women being hurt one way or, somewhere talking about Gaza bound small fleet… It was about a woman and, this is another way of hurting a woman for her saying one thing right, more right than ever i presume and i may be wrong though, in her life. If you wanted, post it somewhere else….
Anyhow, it also reminded me of a thing about the US democracy…
They talk about absolute freedom but, one of the questions for foreigners coming in that is bold, sharp and clear is that if the alien have had any sort of affiliation with a communist party.
They’re not asking about Satan Worshipers or Cannibal Cults. They’re not talking about the guy had ever molested somebody in the past. They don’t ask if the person belonging to a born again Christian weirdo whose past actions in other countries makes a pro choice doctor a possible target. They’re only asking if you are a communist.
So much for aliens. But what about freedom of speech for journalists?
I’d never heard of Helen Thomas before. But as of this moment, she is counted as a potential sister who is invited to come and work for Kasama from now on (unless you oppose!(
According to the Associated Press from Washington DC,
Helen Thomas ends White House career amid uproar
By JIM KUHNHENN and DAVID BAUDER, Associated Press Writers – Mon Jun 7, 7:37 pm ET
WASHINGTON – Helen Thomas, the opinionated White House correspondent who used her seat in the front row of history to grill 10 presidents and often exasperate them, lost her storied perch Monday in a flap over calling on Israelis to get “out of Palestine.”
Thomas, 89, who made her name as a bulldog for United Press International and was a pioneer for women in journalism, abruptly retired as a columnist for Hearst News Service. The announcement, in a terse statement by Hearst, came after videotaped remarks she made to an independent filmmaker spread virally through the Internet.
She apologized, but White House spokesman Robert Gibbs denounced her comments as “offensive and reprehensible.” Her press corps colleagues with the White House Correspondents Association issued a rare admonishment calling them “indefensible.”
Thomas joined UPI in 1943 and began covering the White House for the wire service in 1960. Fiercely competitive, she became the first female White House bureau chief for a wire service when UPI named her to the position in 1974. She was also the first female officer at the National Press Club, where women had once been barred as members.
“Helen was just a vacuum cleaner about information,” said author Kay Mills, who took dictation from Thomas as a young UPI staffer and wrote “A Place in the News: From the Women’s Pages to the Front Page.”
“She made sure she had everything,” Mills said. “She may have been covering Jackie Kennedy and a birthday party for one of the children, but I’ll tell you, the desk had every bit of information it ever needed.”
When the Watergate scandal began consuming Nixon’s presidency, Martha Mitchell, the notoriously unguarded wife of the attorney general, would call Thomas late at night to unload her frustrations at what she saw as the betrayal of her husband, John, by the president’s men.
She retained her place on the front row of the White House briefing room after joining Hearst in 2000 and remained persistent to the point of badgering.
A daughter of Lebanese immigrants, she did little to hide her pro-Arab views. During George W. Bush’s presidency, her questions to both the president and his press secretaries were almost exclusively about the war in Iraq.
She sharply questioned President Barack Obama two weeks ago.
“Mr. President, when are you going to get out of Afghanistan? Why are you continuing to kill and die there? What is the real excuse? And don’t give us this Bushism, ‘If we don’t go there, they’ll all come here,’” she said.
Former Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer said journalists had privately expressed discomfort over Thomas’ role with what they perceived as her advocacy from a plum spot in the White House press room.
“Helen had a special stature that she earned,” he said. “That’s what’s so sad, in that she diminished what she earned.”
Her retirement was set in motion by a website, rabbilive.com, that relaunched only last week after having previously existed to beam religious services to military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Rabbi David Nesenoff, an independent filmmaker from Long Island who runs the website, said he approached Thomas outside the White House after being there for Jewish Heritage Day on May 27. He said he was there with his teenage son and a friend, who were both wearing yarmulkes, and approached Thomas to talk.
He asked whether she had any comments on Israel. “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine,” she replied.
“Remember, these people are occupied and it’s their land. It’s not Germany, it’s not Poland,” she continued. Asked where they should go, she answered, “They should go home.”
“Where’s home?” Nesenoff asked.
“Poland, Germany and America and everywhere else,” Thomas replied.
Thomas had been scheduled to speak at the June 14 graduation of Walt Whitman High School in the Washington suburb of Bethesda, Md., but Principal Alan Goodwin wrote in a Sunday e-mail to students and parents that she was being replaced.
“Graduation celebrations are not the venue for divisiveness,” Goodwin wrote.
Writing on her website Monday, Thomas said, “I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians.”
She added: “They do not reflect my heartfelt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance. May that day come soon.”
In an interview, Nesenoff said his website has received more than 1 million hits since the interview was posted last week.
“It wasn’t angrily said. It was just said. It was insulting and hurtful,” he said of Thomas’ comments.
He said he has another excerpt that will probably be posted soon, although he would not reveal what was said.
A statement signed by officers of the White House Correspondents Association said: “Many in our profession who have known Helen for years were saddened by the comments, which were especially unfortunate in light of her role as a trail blazer on the White House beat.”
Time and again, Thomas issued a caveat about her work: “In my career you’re only as good as your last story.”
In her case, that last story turned out to be about her.
___
Bauder reported from New York. Associated Press writer Calvin Woodward in Washington contributed to this report.
Nick R said
I don’t know if ‘macho’ behaviors are really more likely amongst police infiltrators, but I think they can be very disruptive in more insidious and profound ways than simply the obvious misogyny and homophobia. There are a lot of components to this ‘macho’ attitude, but at least two I can identify which are harmful.
For one thing it means developing a sort of stoic attitude, denying many different kinds of emotions, which will make developing any sort of sympathy or empathy with other people difficult. The second thing it involves is this sort of obsession with your own individual power and status. This can go to the extent of needing to show some sort of power or position over others. These will lead to dangerous levels of competition and a lack of true solidarity.
I can see how a ‘macho’ attitude can be destructive of any movement, not just revolutionary ones, even if it doesn’t lead to oppressive behavior towards women. What is really at fault here is the construction of the male gender role in a capitalist-patriarchy, and the ways revolutionaries have failed to critique both gender roles in the past.