Quotes from the named essay in Queering Anarchism:
Feminism has had an ongoing internal argument regarding minimizing or maximizing the meanings of the differences between men and women. Now we are seeing the influence on many anarchists and feminists of newer ideas about gender (e.g. queer theory) that question the idea of a concrete concept of “woman” and “man,” even “male” and “female.” Yet some radical or anarchist feminists and lesbians remain stubborn about questioning the usefulness of a category called “woman.”
The essay starts out this way, and I largely agree. I hesitate to say "anarchist feminists," but that is possibly because my own experience has largely been that they have been the most accepting of "gender transgressions" (along with the general trans community).
Yet, there is far too much reliance upon material of the past. We are constantly citing people who made these precise distinctions (because they were so prominent in their own history) and not reckoning with how that history impacts us today.
This is especially true in the general 'feminist movement'.
Meanwhile, identity politics have come under fire in anarchist circles, often characterizing identity-oriented projects as homogenous (represented only by each project’s most vocal proponents), and dismissing the importance of focusing on opposition to gender, sexuality, class, or racial oppressions. Yet that which is called identity politics often does involve essentialism, the idea that there are essential differences between two groups.
I have some questions here, but I'm not sure where to start. I don't inherently disagree (there have certainly been a lot of people "on the left" who've decried identity politics), but I've also been working in the past decade with people who understand identity-focused groups or spaces and the need for them. These people have traditionally been the people who were neglected by groups who "refused" to enable identity-focused groups or spaces and were forced to interact with a very white, very straight, very abled, or very cisgendered anarchist space.
In the case of feminism, those who most often get to speak for the “movement” are white with class privilege, and regularly marginalize the experiences of women of color and poor women, and exclude transgender/transsexual people when they organize around a universal concept of women. The standard radical feminist characterization of the way gender oppression (“patriarchy”) works legitimizes women’s exercise of domination (through capitalism or white supremacy, etc.), and makes men’s domination seem natural and inevitable.
This often happens, even when we start giving space to some elements of how oppressions work together (but simultaneously ignore or overlook others). As in, this happens even within marginalised communities, and it seems difficult to really expand upon that because some people tend to get too tied into wanting to discuss one element when we need to be recognising multiple.
For example, the "experience of women" will not ever be the same; this is something a lot of TERFs push, but it neglects that even women within the same "category" (however that's drawn) do in fact have different experiences of being women. It's strange that this isn't recognised because it would also make it even more clear that all women have different experiences, and we're only hearing from the smallest group of people who have the ability and privilege to take center stage. (Also something that wasn't really addressed in this piece: tokens.)
We’ve been made to believe that human subordination under the law is natural—that we need to be governed. The legitimacy of imposed government is also emphasized through the seemingly natural differences between people. The differences between people have been made significant so as to promote divisions based on domination and subordination. In doing so, those differences must be(come) clear-cut—a border must be drawn between the two, creating a dichotomy so there is no confusion about who is where in the hierarchy. This takes time, centuries even, to really harden our perception of human nature. It takes laws, but worse it takes discipline, primarily in the form of terror and violence, to pound a sense of hierarchy into us. > Despite the possibility that the state and capitalism may be able to function without these imposed borders, the borders must still be destroyed.
In reading this, I couldn't stop thinking about how this played out after Bacon's Rebellion, which cemented many of the race-focused laws in the US to further prevent white indentured servants (and other poor white folks) from empathising and fighting against the system with Black slaves.
To achieve liberation, we must reject the binary gender system, which divides us into two mutually exclusive categories. This gender system not only oppresses in the form of a hierarchy of categories, but also in terms of gender expression—holding up masculinity as superior and policing each person into their gender box. The significance of gender/sex differences must be exposed as a political construct, one which has been used to form a cross-class alliance among men, and to make heterosexuality and women’s roles and exploitation in (and outside) the home and family to seem natural.
Yes, but I also think this needs to extend in more ways. We need to reject binary systems and binary thought structures.
Much like I think this particular thought needs to extend to the children-adults dichotomy, especially as "women and children" tend to be the "protected" categories. We're seeing this how with absolutely horrifying surveillance tactics that are being put in place to supposedly do just that.
We can probably agree that gender stratum is an imposed social construct. We could take it further by questioning whether our concepts of the biological differences between female and male existed before hierarchy, and whether they at least have the same significance before Western culture interpreted the differences we understand today.
Statements like this require a lot more than the simple dichotomies given, even in terms of "Western culture." What we perceive today has not always been, and a lot of what has existed before (particularly in the 'classics' periods) was re-interpreted to fit the needs of people before us.
There's a lot of work to be done to unravel the harms that have been done in the name of using history as a means of control, and we need to understand that.
In discussing human nature, we need to be critical of the ways that certain concepts such as hierarchy, or a need for hierarchy, are made to seem natural.
Similar to the case of white people, when men participate in domination, they do themselves harm. While folks assigned male at birth who don’t comfortably fit into their assigned gender box are certainly affected by gender oppression, the ones who do conform (willingly or not) would also benefit from undermining the ways gender hierarchy has been naturalized through the socialization of boys and men. They can hardly be free, and the relationships they have with others cannot be fulfilling as long as emotions are suppressed, competitive masculinity has to be established, and inequality (if not abuse) must be maintained with women (and often children as well).
This essay is interesting but messy. But all of these points, yes.
In the sense that queer is unstable and destabilizing, it has much potential. Clearly the refusal to participate in privileging political relations would not be co-opted. We know that “LGBTQ” is co-opted just as feminism is, and therefore the potential lies in the ways in which queer is not co-optable. Where identity politics seeks inclusion for its respective group, it chooses participation in domination and reinforces binaries. Would a rejection of inclusion and participation be the antithesis of identity politics, even if it were a politics that focused on a specific group-based oppression?
Tangentially, one of the things that I feel is frustrating is how often people are willing to throw out the much more inclusive 'queer' in favour of a string of letters that all require people to figure out which letter they fit on (even though Q is queer).
And much of this is also partially a result of people saying that "queer is a slur" while simultaneously being okay with words like "lesbian" and "gay" (among others that have been reclaimed). In fact, I still see those thrown around far more often than 'queer'.
