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Some thoughts on Anarcha-Feminism

Hukku Chepina | 20.10.2009 17:25 | Analysis | Gender

This article is a response to the No Pretence intervention at the Anarchist Movement conference earlier this year. It was first published in Shift Magazine ( http://shiftmag.co.uk/?p=319).

We have made it available online to inform the upcoming discussions at the Anarchist bookfair on the topic.

You might have heard the story. It was about 4pm on Sunday 7 June and the Anarchist Movement conference in London was drawing to a close. The 15 discussion groups had finally all had their turn at the mic in what had been a painstaking 2-hour final plenary. Perhaps more interesting than the much distilled feedback from each of the groups on 2 days of discussion among 15 near strangers was the fact that for the 200 odd people in the large hall, this was the first opportunity to get a sense of their fellow participants at the conference. Inspired by what seemed to have emerged somewhat more organically at the famed Bradford gathering of 1998, the conference organisers’ were determined that class-war anarchists should spend the weekend sat alongside climate campers in small discussion groups. Along with tube delays that prevented many from arriving for the opening plenary on Saturday morning this meant that until this point, the numbers and make-up of participants had been impossible to gauge.

The arrival of anarcha-feminist group No Pretence couldn’t have been better timed. Although I can only speak for myself, surveying the room, my doubts of the past 2 days seemed to be shared by others: just how much of an affinity did each of us feel with the people around us? And just how much did this room reflect the movement we had each felt we were part of?

Enter No Pretence, projector, screen and very own mic a-blazing.

As I say, the intervention was well timed. With the discomfort described above hanging over the room and the conference organisers about to facilitate the ominously-titled “What next?” part of the programme, the sight of eight masked, black-clad figures bursting onto the floor, hastily setting up their kit and launching an impassioned critique of the movement, as exemplified (for them) by the Anarchist Movement conference, certainly offered the possibility of seeing some of these doubts articulated. Five minutes later and No Pretence’s raw yet well-rehearsed attack on gender discrimination in our movement (and the absence of this issue from the conference programme) was over, and the group were bounding triumphantly out of the room. The statement they had read out claimed: “No matter how much we aspire to be ‘self-critical’ there is a clear lack of theorising and concrete action around sexism, homophobia and racism in the anarchist movement.” But what had the intervention achieved?

Lamentably, the intervention cannot claim to have shaken the conference out of its inertia and forced it to acknowledge not only the patent fragmentation of the movement it supposedly represented, but also that movement’s present weakness despite sharp new increases in class conflict and social unrest with established institutions. But that was never its intention, I suppose. It didn’t bode well either that the most the onlookers could muster in response to the intervention was polite applause; that the male conference organiser who resumed proceedings immediately after No Pretence’s exit didn’t even make the gesture of offering the mic to a female; or that the same guy’s misjudged comment about it “all being planned” was the only acknowledgement that the “interruption” had even happened.

Beyond the confines of that room, however, the intervention has certainly been able to provoke a reaction. If at first the intervention received applause from most, if not all, of the anarchist audience, since then the response seems to have fallen into two camps. Firstly, there are those individuals or representatives of various feminist and anarchist groups who have applauded the action as long overdue. They echoed the sentiment that women in the anarchist movement have not been spared sexist behaviour from men (and other women). The second camp, which we will examine in more detail later, is made up of those, including some of the conference organisers, who have predictably rejected the comparisons drawn between mainstream society and the anarchist movement.

Unfortunately, both sets of responses fail to distinguish between the No Pretence statement and the accompanying video. The latter, which has sadly proved the most enduring talking point since the conference, features a stark comparative look at male domination of political activity and the persistence of traditional gender roles in the photo albums of liberal democracy and the anarchist movement respectively. The sort of facile finger pointing at overt gender hierarchies in which the No Pretence video indulges is not without its place (after all, if it creates a space in which we can vent our frustrations with the gendered society we all experience daily, either within the movement or beyond, it can be considered a useful exercise in and of itself). This is especially true at a conference which did tend to give primacy to the issue of class struggle and thus tend (whether unintentionally or otherwise) to accept agency to lie with the male factory worker.

Unfortunately though, this finger-pointing is not without its pitfalls either. The preoccupation with obvious sexisms draws attention away from the crucial point: that is, the relationship between sexism and social domination in a capitalist society. It is this relationship that should be scrutinised if we are to understand the truly incipient forms of sexism embedded in our social relations. A case in point: No Pretence far too easily cried “Oppression” when they misheard a heckler from the audience: “Are you going to dance, sexy?” It has since been revealed (and I can confirm first hand), that the line was actually “Are you a dance act? Diversity!”; a remark not on the gender of those storming the stage, but a reference to the winning act of Britain’s Got Talent, who chose a similarly black-hood/concealed-face outfit for their popular audition. While occurrences of overt sexism are not unthinkable also in anarchist circles, real oppression will come much more subtly than that.

If anarcha-feminists are trying to tackle a feudal form of sexism, where women are actively prevented from participating in political society by a ruling class of men, they are attacking a straw man. The particular form that capitalist patriarchy, or patriarchal capitalism, takes is of a more structural, indirect kind. Capitalism, ironically, is based on the (liberal) principles of freedom and equality. Only when we are free and equal can we sell our labour power for survival – it is the basis of a class society. Capitalist patriarchy is not shaped by direct exploitation of women, obvious discrimination and domination. It is more subtle, and therefore more persistent, than that. We should not ask of society, and its representation in the anarchist movement, a liberal awareness of feminist issues, gender inequality and positive discrimination. I’d much rather hear the speeches of feminist men than sexist women.

To be fair to No Pretence, they have recognised this themselves, when they write that “hierarchical social relations cannot be reduced to personal insults or behaviour. Sexism thrives upon subtle and intangible processes which make gender domination and exploitation endemic.” But the vocabulary of gender “exploitation” nonetheless tends towards outdated understandings of sexism (under capitalism) as analogous to similarly misled concepts of class as a crude slave vs. master relationship.

Earlier waves of radical feminism adopted an anti-capitalist position based on the asymmetrical way in which capitalist economics impose value on traditionally gendered social roles and divisions of labour. Today, the work of Gloria Anzaldúa, one of the more contemporary radical feminists to which the No Pretence statement proudly alludes, has paved the way for just one of the many more sophisticated lines of analysis that have been developed in more recent years in response to the onset of the advanced global capitalism we know today. The body of radical research that emerged from Anzaldúa’s Borderlands, for example, based as it is around the physical and psychological violence inflicted by the new digital industries of the unregulated US-Mexican border zone upon their increasingly feminised labour force, is a stark reminder that more sophisticated critiques of the interstices between class, gender and production – traditional understandings of which are now blurred – are required if we are to unearth the indirect structures that underlie to sexism in society.

Likewise, today we are faced with much more complicated forms of social control, with liberal society adopting women quotas for representation in public life, positive discrimination embedded in employment legislation and formal equality of opportunity. Does this make modern capitalist society anti-sexist? No! But at the heart of an anarchist feminism must be the understanding that capitalist exploitation is structured in a more complex manner. If future No Pretence actions are to be taken seriously they should refrain from seeking a liberal response by insinuating that more female participation in anarchist platforms would in any way constitute a rejection of capitalist patriarchal forms of domination.

But there is perhaps an even more compelling lesson to be learnt from No Pretence’s use of sensationalist visual material which, as I have demonstrated, might have detracted from, rather than reinforced, their more astute accompanying statement. It seems to me that the use of such a montage betrays a certain naivety as to the response of a movement that, outside of radical feminist spheres, is largely indifferent to and comparatively unsophisticated in its analysis of gender politics (when compared to other Western European countries, for example). Indeed, it has been all too easy for those who are reluctant to engage with No Pretence’s proposition, for whatever motive, to dismiss the intervention based on the (fair?) assertion that the examples used by No Pretence to illustrate sexist behaviour in anarchist circles were selective and misleading. The fact that the intervention has given way to this sort of refutation is disappointing, but not particularly dangerous in itself. Conversely, that criticisms on these grounds have proven to be so easily and widely accepted/acceptable has in turn allowed far more sinister comments to creep into the debate relatively unnoticed, under the guise of springing from objections similar to those that dismissed the video as unrepresentative.

Some anarchists have suggested, for example, that the group should have brought feminism to the discussion table during the conference group sessions, rather than set their own. Comments such as this prove that while the video was perhaps a mistake for the group, covering up was certainly the right thing to do. It does not matter whether No Pretence are men or women, masking up was an adequate way to anticipate the response from the conference organisers: that the anarcha-feminists should have brought their opinions to the available structures of the conference. This to me was the truly sexist response: the suggestion that a feminist critique of patriarchal hierarchy could be adequately addressed – and thereby recuperated – within the constraints of facilitated discussion on anarchism, movement, and class.

Summing up, it seemed to me that the anarcha-feminist intervention was held back by a pseudo-radical proposition: that anarchism is opposition to hierarchy in its amalgamated multiplicity; i.e. anti-capitalism + anti-racism + anti-sexism + anti-homophobia + etc = anarchism. The intervention seemed to say that ‘you can’t be an anarchist without being a feminist’. Maybe they had it the wrong way round: ‘you can’t be a feminist without being an anarchist’ would be a radical slogan based on the recognition of capitalist patriarchy. Sexual liberation can only be achieved in freedom!

Hukku Chepina
- Homepage: http://www.shiftmag.co.uk

Comments

Hide the following 8 comments

more thoughts

21.10.2009 14:19

hi hukku, interesting reading your thoughts on the stance of No Pretence. How would you have done it? It most certainly needed doing and was well overdue. The action brought up the issues that have been bubbling up for a long time, Do you recognise the large amount of women and some men who have left the movement due to sexism. Look around at this years bookfair and you'll see the action was necessary, to the point, perfectly timed, well planned and very uplifting and inspirational to many anarchists. In my opinion your 'summing up' is alittle off. Could you explain how one can be an anarchist without being a feminist. I think the use of the phrase 'psuedo-radical proposition' is a groundless inflametary device. There was/is nothing 'psuedo' about NP and from those involved whom I have met, they come across with solid conviction. The NP in my opinion want debate and action, not a stone throwing competition. Everytime we recognise true sexist behaviour and act,we grow, everytime time we don't, we kow-tow to patriarchy.Apologies if I have mis understood your post.

flipflop


Am i confused or is it you?

21.10.2009 18:35

"Capitalist patriarchy is not shaped by direct exploitation of women, obvious discrimination and domination. It is more subtle, and therefore more persistent, than that".
This is not true, capitalist patriarchy is shaped by the direct exploitation of women, obvious discrimination and domination. Working class women, like all working class people, are oppressed and exploited as wage workers in paid jobs, but women are also exploited on the basis of the vast amount of unpaid domestic work and childrearing that we do which contributes directly to the bosses' profits.
"Women do two thirds of the worlds work for 5% of the worlds income. Most of this work is unpaid, unvalued, unrecognised work without guaranteed benefits, health and safety regulations or organised hours. It is the work of rearing children, breast feeding, caring for the elderly, cooking, cleaning and growing food: housework. The work that women do in the daily grind of housework is not only central to the existence of humanity; it is the work that underpins economics and the work upon which capital bases its profits. The work that women do in housework is the production of the human race and that means overwhelmingly the human workforce, the basic ingredient of all industry, all agriculture, all services, all profits and all wars. Women’s unpaid domestic work is the production of the commodity that is sold for wages, labour power".(Thinking about Anarchism:capitalism and the exploitation of women, Eve Campbell,  http://www.wsm.ie/story/4536)
As women living under capitalism we are directly exploited and suffer obvious discrimination and domination as well as having to suffer the more subtle and persistent effects of patriarchal capitalism. We earn less than men, and the jobs that we have traditionally found ourselves in are undervalued and underpaid. This discrimination and exploitation greatly benefits the capitalist classes and directly shapes the nature of capitalism.
"The particular form that capitalist patriarchy, or patriarchal capitalism, takes is of a more structural, indirect kind".
If something is structural it cannot be indirect, can it?
" We should not ask of society, and its representation in the anarchist movement, a liberal awareness of feminist issues, gender inequality and positive discrimination. I’d much rather hear the speeches of feminist men than sexist women."
I dont understand what you are saying here. I dont think no pretence are asking for positive discrimination in the anarchist movement and i dont think an awareness of feminist issues and gender inequality is exclusively liberal. Whenever anarchafeminists bring up issues around sexism, sexist exploitation, the term liberal gets bandied about, and no pretence specifically challenged this in their film. I too would rather hear the speeches of feminist men than sexist women, I would rather hear the speeches of feminists rather than sexists, regardless of their gender, that is the point, right? are you suggesting that in challenging sexism in the movement or asking why more women arent visible in the anarchist movement, that no pretence are in fact sexist women?
"If future No Pretence actions are to be taken seriously they should refrain from seeking a liberal response by insinuating that more female participation in anarchist platforms would in any way constitute a rejection of capitalist patriarchal forms of domination". That this is what no pretence wants or insinuated is your opinion, and one i believe to be false. I do not believe for a second that no pretence believe that more women participating in anarchist organising constitutes a rejection of of patriarchal domination, but merely use the fact that there are much less women visible in anarchism than men, to provoke people into thinking about why this might be.
"Summing up, it seemed to me that the anarcha-feminist intervention was held back by a pseudo-radical proposition: that anarchism is opposition to hierarchy in its amalgamated multiplicity"
Anarchism is about opposition to hierarchy, and seeks to challenge and dismantle all systems of oppression and hierarchical control, i dont think thats a pseudo-radical proposition, that is my understanding of anarchism. are you saying that anarchism isnt about opposition to hierarchy in its amalgamated multiplicity?
Maybe i've got you completely wrong, or maybe i'm just not really understanding what your saying.
Personally i fully support the no pretence action. there are a lot of criticism of the action, some of which i agree with but i really dont find your critique or analysis clear.
This seems to me to be a pseudo-intellectual attack on no pretence and anarchafeminists.


anarchafeminist


@anarchafeminist

22.10.2009 10:15

I think you misunderstood the use of the distinction between direct and indirect discrimination. Yuo say discrimination of women is direct because they are exploited as workers with lower wages than men. But this exploitation is INDIRECT. There are no laws that say women should be exploited, women are equal before the law, there is no direct relationship with men where men have the right to oppress. Oppression is mediated through the capitalist system, through the idea of wage labour, and hence indirect.

The article says that No Pretence do well recognising this at times, but at other times slip back into liberal analysis that only looks at the excesses of the capitalist system but not at its very function. That's why it came across at pseudo-radical when No Pretence accuse the anarchist movement of not having enough female speakers at their rallies. It's not like anarchist men DIRECTLY prevent women from participation, but there is a structural (and therefore indirect) logic of exclusion in place.

So the article's statement that yuo can only be feminist if anarchist sounds to me like a worthwhile criticism of liberal feminism, not a rejection of feminist politics in the anarchist movement.

hukku's friend


response to hukkus friend

22.10.2009 13:33

With all due respect Hukku's friend I get that there is a difference between direct and indirect discrimination in terms of the law. However in reality legislation has no bearing on whether people are discriminated against, (ie treated differently, usually negatively), beause of their gender under capitalism.
Hukku asserts that capitalism is not shaped by the direct expoitation of women, and as i said before it is. There may be laws in this country to say that we are all equal but the exploitation (direct or indirect) of women very much determines the nature of capitalism.
What is apparently pseudoradical according to Hukku is no pretences assertion that anarchism is opposition to hierarchy in all its amalgamated multiplicity. What is pseudoradical about that?
I think we all know, no matter how naive we are, that anarchist men dont directly prevent us from participating, however that is not to say that the way we organise as anarchists isnt exclusionary to women, black people, disabled people, lgbt people, older people, children, etc.
Hukku seems to be proposing that we do nothing about this, except seek to further analyse and intellectualise our relationship to capitalism.

direct or indirect discrimination - it doesnt matter


Please do discriminate against children

22.10.2009 16:12

Untidy title but better far better than my first one, 'Fuck children'.

>however that is not to say that the way we organise as anarchists isnt exclusionary to women, black people, disabled people, lgbt people, older people, children, etc.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no.

You went too far there by mentioning children, for me at least. I have nothing against children organising and rebelling, but I don't want them around me when I'm rebelling, partly because I can be arrested for speaking my mind in front of them but more importantly because the people who do take an interest in encourging young rebels tend to be mostly male, mostly much older child-lovers who tend to have hands like an octopus. In greek, paedophiles.

So what is a child? What is an appropriate age of consent? What is an appropriate age for fucking, soldiering, voting and rebelling with old folk? I'd say 17. The law says 16-18. Arbitary rules but not fucking guidelines to be ignored. I can't see anything wrong with a 16 year old and a 15 year old being autonomous and down and dirty, but I do have a problem with the 30-40ish hippies I've observed preying on kids.

To any under 17's reading this. Feel free to fuck, fight, and rebel amongst your own age group, but please fuck off. Know that most of the encouraging older folk you know are people you will one day learn to despise unless they fuck you up first. Every adult poster here should be treated with constant contempt by any true child rebel, and that is safety advice rather than dogma. In return, I hope you don't mind that I call for your exclusion here since if you are so fucking capable then you should easily be able to setup a 'kids indymedia' that excludes the various predators who lurk on every adult or unregulated website.

Danny


@ it doesn't matter

22.10.2009 16:44

why this anti-intellectual sentiment? it's not like all action is neccessarily radical. also feminists need to think about what they're doing and why.

in fact, hukku's analysis suggests very clear consequences for feminist organising. it defends the No Pretence action and its practice of talking about gender in the movement on their own terms - without asking permission and facilitation by the movement 'leaders'.

and it suggests that the conference organisers where being sexist when they asserted that No Pretence should have used the 'proper channels' of the conference - not when they did not include gender as a discussion item on the agenda. that's a fundamental difference again between direct and indirect discrimination of women.

let's no make it too easy for ourselves as feminists.

but also let's not make it too easy for ourselves as anarchists. you seem to subscribe to the position that anarchism is just opposition to all forms of discrimination. that's too simple. different forms of discrimination stand in a relationship to each and we shouldn't neglect this.

it does matter


@it does matter

22.10.2009 17:32

to be clear i never said that anarchism is just opposition to all forms of discrimination, what i am challenging is Hukkus statement that "the anarcha-feminist intervention was held back by a pseudo-radical proposition: that anarchism is opposition to hierarchy in its amalgamated multiplicity". Anarchism clearly is opposition to hierarchy, and hierarchical domination, exploitation and oppression.
I am also not anti-intellectual, but what i would prefer is action around the issue of sexism in the movement.
@danny - i find your statement about excluding children extremely worrying. Anarchism to me isnt just about rebeling, its also about creating workable radical anarchist alternatives to the current way of doing things, such as coops, free schools, etc. If children arent safe at our meetings, events etc then the anarchist movement has more severe problems to deal with beyond sexism in the movement.
what would you be saying in front of children that could result in you being arrested?

previously anarchafeminist, also direct or indirect..


Anticipate 'severe problems'

23.10.2009 23:15

>If children arent safe at our meetings, events etc then the anarchist movement has more severe problems to deal with beyond sexism in the movement.

Yes, we do have severe problems beyond sexism, and we are no different from any other political or social movement in that regard. I've known three activists who I know are a danger to kids. I've nothing against families or supervised kids joining mixed age events, or kids operating on their own in similarly aged groups, but there are paedophiles who prey on anarchist kids under false pretences. In my experience they are given way too much access simply by pretending to be loving, caring and active. It is identical behaviour to the adults who are attracted to causes primarily to bed other adults.

'cause someone you don't know
is someone you don't know
get a firm grip, girl
before you let go
for every hand extended
another lies in wait
keep your eye on that one
anticipate

Danny


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