Grumpen Proletariat

My grumpen proletarian take on the world

[thebigblackwolfe]

TRIGGER WARNING FOR CSA

I’M SCREAMING I SEE WHAT YOU WERE TRYING TO DO I GUESS IF I SQUINT HENNY BUT BIH WHY WOULD YOU WRITE THIS

Text description:

[The US routinely searches for new legal scapegoats to deposit its fears and anxieties around gender/sexual deviance. In the past, this has included the Witch Trials, sodomy laws, hyper-criminalization of suspected gay pedophilia in the late 20th century, and most recently dozens of state and local anti-trans bills across the country. While the face/identity of the alleged perpetrators have changed, the supposed purity of the “victims” has remained quite stagnant. These days the narrative is that freaky transgender people (or as they say “crossdressers”) will come into your bathrooms and abuse innocent little girls.

This type of legal/carceral culture relies on is two things: the construction of morally abhorrent perpetrators/scapegoats AND the production of pure, innocent victims. In this case, as in so many cases in the past, those victims are archetypical (white) (cis) innocent little girls. We totally need to challenge the white Christian supremacist, right-wing rhetoric around trans bodies, absolutely. But we also need to seriously overhaul the idea that there is a perfect victim anywhere.

I believe in the radical notion that little girls, like the rest of us, are complicated people. There are no fairy tales and no princesses here. Little girls are also queer, trans, kinky, deviant, kind, mean, beautiful, ugly, tremendous, and peculiar. Your kids aren’t as straight and narrow as you think they are. Like everybody else. I’ve been a cute little girl. And a gender nonconforming young adult. Let me tell you, everywhere along that spectrum, I’ve been complicated and strange.

The 1973 horror flick “The Exorcist” is my favorite snapshot of the cultural place of (white) (cis) little girls. In the film, a little girl (with a single mother) is possessed by the devil. From another perspective, the little girl is actually exploring her sexuality (masturbation and so on) and her own demons/meanness. Obviously, (white) men from the church have to be brought in to save her since her single mom can’t do it alone.

What if instead of moving from the “Exorcist” model of little girlhood, we moved from a place that acknowledged that no one is a perfect pure flower that can be corrupted. That everyone is at once capable of receiving and enacting violence, including little girls. That we all give and receive violence to varying degrees, but that this is not a fairy tale. No one is purely good or evil. Look around: there are no princesses.]

[grumpenproletariat]

#rallyagainstracism Melbourne fuck off fascists.

[grumpenproletariat]

Ready to start distribution at Caulfield #unaustralian #debtsentence

[swpoffcampus]

Dear all,

This is an open letter to all those on the left who are planning on visiting, participating in or speaking at the Marxism 2014 conference from the 10th to the 14th of July this year. It comes from a collective of other left activists, students and workers – we hope that you’ll...

[plannedparenthood]

source

[transitiontransmission]

Intersex Woman Pens Courageous Letter to Fox News Bullies

This letter was written by Elena H. of the intersex youth leadership organization Inter/Act. For privacy reasons, the author’s full name is being withheld.

Let me talk about shame. We’ve all experienced it to some extent, but for those rare few who haven’t, I define shame as a feeling of complete and utter worthlessness. The sense that there could not possibly be a place for you in the world, that you are utterly alone, unknowable and frankly not worth knowing. Shame can be associated with abuse, neglect or ignorance and often leads to hostility, isolation and unhappiness.

As someone who has experienced this kind of deep, overwhelming shame, I don’t understand why anyone would want to make others feel this way.

I have Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (CAIS). This means that I was born with female external anatomy, internal non-functioning testes and XY chromosomes. I was that weird phenomena that happens when our XX/XY chromosomal system breaks down and creates something that’s a little bit of both and none of either. When I first got my full diagnosis at 17 years old, I was consumed with shame. My parents told me to keep it secret (I wasn’t even allowed to tell my sister) and my doctors treated me like some prized freak. I had no idea what to think because no one would talk about it with me and I had never heard about it before. So I assumed the worst — that I was an unloveable oddity bound to live alone on the fringes of society forever.

Naturally, it didn’t take long for the shame to sink in. It ate at me, made me untrusting, sad and small. For years, it was all I could feel. I didn’t trust that anyone could love me with the knowledge of my “condition." I kept asking myself questions like, "Am I supposed to like girls? Boys?" or "Who am I? Is it worth even trying with people because they’ll never understand." The girl who used to chatter incessantly became stuttering, silent, angry — unable to trust her own thoughts. Shame made me into a cold, selfish person I didn’t recognize. 

It’s taken me years to rid myself of shame, and even more years to start to appreciate my intellect, recognize my strengths and begin to speak out for myself and my community. But without the example of people who inspired me to be fearless and open about myself and a group of wonderful friends, I might still be in that black box of shame with room to breathe but no room to grow. 

Last week, however, Fox News made me feel that shame again. Some of their commentators made me, and my community, a punchline to their joke. Instead of celebrating a move Facebook made to give its users a chance to fully express their gender or sexual identity, Fox News correspondents decided to mock it. Unable to realize their own ignorance, they snickered at the thought that anyone could identify as intersex, even asking the question, “What if you want to identify as a pinecone?”

continued…

[venusthevegan]

Legitimate question and I'm not just trying to be an ass, but what proof is there that Jared is a rapist and racist? Those are pretty harsh accusations that I've honestly never heard before.

There’s plenty of victim accounts of him raping fans, which is all that’s needed.http://shittythingscelebshavesaid.tumblr.com/post/74026099724/sorry-but-what-was-the-thing-with-jared-letoThe fact he sleeps with underage fans at all is statutory rape.There’s less information around about racism, but at Australian shows he wore a headdress on stage and in 2006 wore an outfit uncomfortably close to a KKK outfit.

[my-weight-loss-diary40]

Statuatory rape is not rape if the minor consents.  If a child is sexually ignorant an argument for rape can be made, but 14, 15, 16, and 17 year olds are often consenting unless they’ve stated otherwise. There’s no proof Jared Leto is a rapist. Tumblr gets wayyyy too fucking angry.

[venusthevegan]

An adult has absolutely NO business having sex with a child. A 42 year old man has every obligation to say no to a minor, no matter what. He is FAMOUS and over twice some of these peoples age, there is a MASSIVE power difference between them. Tumblr will get angry about fucking rapists it’s completely gross as fuck not to.

[grumpenproletariat]

Statutory rape is rape as people under the age of consent can't legally give consent. If your argument against the suggestion that Leto is a rapist is to deny that statutory rape is rape that is both a really weak argument but also makes you a real creep.

[heartbreakhangover-blog]

Why do we need International Women’s Day? Here’s 50 reasons why.

[finemarble]

Say no to the new abortion law in Spain

[grumpenproletariat]

#lightthedark #freetherefugees

[grumpenproletariat]

What’s being faked to be going on in Venezuela in a nutshell

Please stop sharing that manipulative “What’s going on in Venezuela in a nutshell” Youtube video, that seems to have been going viral the last couple of days. A lot of it that is being said in the video is false, misdirected, exaggerated and overdramatized. Combined with photos that are for a part not even related to these opposition protests, it is an utterly misleading take on what is really happening in Venezuela. Just like in 2012 with the whole Kony campaign, you sharing that video doesn’t make you more involved in making this world a better place, it only makes you look gullible, uninformed and falsely sentimental. Even worse in this case, it makes you complicit in a media campaign orchestrated by (extreme) right-wing political interests funded by the U.S. in an effort to destabilize and ultimately depose of a democratically elected government that is supported by a mass movement trying to better the lot of the majority  of the people.

The right-wing opposition’s protests are not about progressive social change, they are about social reaction trying to halt one of the most progressive social processes going on in the world right now. There is nothing progressive about truth distortion and what it is used for here even less so.

Here a proper dissection of how reality is being manipulated through social and mass media (via drdawgsblawg and venezuelasolidarity):

The polarized politics of Venezuela are again in the news as demonstrations by pro- (see above) and anti-government forces are taking place, with, at this point, four deaths: a government supporter; an opposition demonstrator; a police officer; and one of uncertain provenance. But the foreign press is portraying these as evidence of bloody government repression.

Not to go over old ground, at least too much, but this manufactured crisis is a re-run. Anyone remember the massive demo/counter-demo at the Miraflores palace in 2002, the lead-up to a short-lived coup against Hugo Chávez?

That was all blamed on Chávez at the time, by the opposition and by much of the international press. Supposedly he ordered the military, and unidentified pro-Chávez thugs, to fire into the crowds of opposition demonstrators. As with the current unrest, it seems that the government side had remarkably poor aim.

The architects of these demonstrations are the leader of the party Voluntad popular (Popular Will), Leopoldo López, known in Venezuela for his links to the violence of the Venezuelan right, every time it does not achieve it’s objectives through elections. This time he blamed the government for the violence, even against all the evidence of small groups from the opposition causing chaos in Venezuela, through the obstruction of the streets, the damage to public buildings and killing people.

Congresswoman Maria Corina Machado and Metropolitan Mayor Antonio Ledezma are also part of the most visible face of recent events in Venezuela. They are currently trying to set fire to the country through a destabilization operation that they’ve called “La salida” (the exit), which seeks not to leave the streets until they achieve the fall of the government legitimately constituted of Nicolas Maduro, as expressed in their public statements.

There is no flabby pretense of “objectivity” on the part of the international media when it comes to Venezuela. That country poses a stark threat to the hegemonic order, characterized these days by tame Latin American states, emerging from US-backed military dictatorships, now gamely accepting neoliberal economic policies like good little boys and girls. Having enough oil wealth to say No to all that, Venezuela created its own counter-hegemonic partnership, ALBA-TCP. And domestically, while all we hear about is toilet-paper shortages and inflation, there has been substantial progress on a number of fronts for years now—a sharp reduction of dire poverty, major advances in education, reduced child mortality, and rapid steps taken towards gender equality, maternal health, and environmental protection.

You won’t read much about that in the mainstream foreign media.

Instead, we’ll hear about opposition grievances of all kinds, and we’ll get photographs, too, circulated on Twitter and sometimes picked up by big news outlets like CNN.

Here are some brutal cops, with nice woolly caps and fur collars to guard against the 24°C Caracas weather, I assume:

And visiting police officers from Bulgaria:

Here a picture of a pro-Chavez demonstrator, taken last year, and now turned into a member of the opposition still wearing the same bandages:

Here’s a re-purposed photo actually taken in Argentina:

And here’s a photo from Chile:

Here another Chilean student protester that got lost in Venezuela:

Here a Brazilian protester that came all the way to Venezuela to confront the police:

Here’s an unfortunate fellow, shot in April and then again in the exact-same way during the current protests:

Here is the famous riot dog Loukanikos from Greece being kicked in Venezuela this time:

And here’s an absolutely shameless steal from Egypt. A photo that became known world-wide during the Arab Spring:

Here’s a heart-wrenching picture of babies in laundry-baskets, with the question: “What kind of revolution is this?” The photo is from Honduras:

Here’s my personal fave: a religious procession, reincarnated as an anti-government protest:

Denouncing “repression” using a picture of a jail mutiny last year:

Here is a delinquent that was killed in 2012 that was transformed into a student protester in 2014:

And to top it off, here a picture from a porn flick that turned into a picture of an abused opposition protester:

The social media that make this stuff go viral, and even attract mainstream media like CNN, are also the means by which fakers are quickly unmasked. Readers are invited to contribute more links to this international cavalcade of anti-government protest and government brutality in the make-believe land called “Venezuela.”

[pompeii--for--elephants]

In The Princess Bride, Inigo’s quest for his father’s killer is one of the most successful subplots in film history. Watching his performance, it’s such an emotional scene. I was looking up little known facts about the movie and found out that the reason this scene is so moving is because just after Mandy Patinkin took this role, his father died of cancer. In this fight he imagined that this was his chance to beat cancer, to come to terms with his father’s death by getting revenge on cancer (The Six-Fingered Man). Pretty sure I’ve cried whenever I see that scene ever since.

[constant-instigator]

O_O

[waskgr]

[mylittlerewolution]

[alauray]

‘Shy’ male sues Women’s Studies teacher for failing him after he refused to attend class | The Raw Story

“I didn’t expect it would be all women and it was a small classroom and about 40 women were sort of sitting in a semicircle and the thought of spending two hours every week sitting there for the next four months was overwhelming.”

Male expects special accommodation because he doesn’t want to be around women, and then sues for discrimination. Amazing.

[theconcealedweapon]

1. If you’re only shy around women, there’s a good chance that it’s caused by having sexist attitudes about women.

2. If you’re too shy to go to a class with all women, wouldn’t you also be too shy to go to court?

[amyleona-blog]

3. Drop the class if you can’t deal with its structure.

[khakhov-deactivated20151129]

Wtf

[dytabytes]

So you can study them, but not interact with them in real life situations? Sounds like how a scientist might talk about rats. Also: this argument is super weak. Just talk to women in the sciences, especially the “hard” ones, like math or engineering. It’s /regularly/ one girl in a class of god knows how many boys, and they don’t get to whine about the gender ratios :\

[commune-or-nothing]

Students BANNED From Researching Malcolm X For Black History Month

[grumpenproletariat]

Students at a Queens, New York school have been banned from researching or writing about Malcolm X. The teacher’s decision to disallow student reports on Malcolm X for Black History Month was rationalized with the explanation that the civil rights leader was “violent.”

Parents of the Kew Gardens Hills students were outraged.

“My son came home and said, ‘Guess what dad, the teacher said we can’t write about Malcolm X because he was quote unquote bad,’” Frank Brown said.

While Malcolm X said that African Americans should use “any means necessary” to fight for liberation, he always specified that this only referred to the legitimacy of self-defense, never aggression.

The teacher at the school admits to polemically describing Malcolm X as “bad” and “violent”.

“My son came home with that negative stain on his brain that Malcolm X was a bad, violent man,” Angel Minor said of her child’s experience.

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

Killing Lenin again: Toxic trolling against left security culture

By Mike Ely

A blogger published (wholesale) 19 internal discussion documents of International Socialist Organization. And an important debate has ensued.

A central argument is starting to openly emerge, and I think it needs to be highlighted:

It is that the very idea of an internal political life is offensively anti-democratic, and that everyone should celebrate disruption of private, collective decision-making. This is done in the name of mopping the influence of Leninism. …

The argument is that it is “fundamentally undemocratic” for revolutionaries to meet in private, discuss common policies and plans, and to keep their deliberations secret from everyone else (including from the state). …

Let me say this bluntly: This is an attempt to argue that communist organizations (despite their best efforts) should have their internal lives laid bare to the state by other leftists. 

[grumpenproletariat]

I was in a far-left organisation for more than ten years - we had an internal discussion bulletin which was supposed to be secret. For most of the time I was a member, I would have defended the idea of a "secret" internal bulletin as a "norm", however towards the end of my membership and I don't think this anymore and most circumstances now I would say they are unhelpful. On the question of these bulletins being secret and everyone having the responsibility to keep them so some of the rational is essentially false on a number of levels. In my experience most left organisations are more than happy to publish other people's internal documents and circulate them to their own membership - so they are happy to break the secrecy at least to include their own members. Secondly given the history of state infiltration of left organisations, and the state's surveillance powers that having "secret" bulletins simply allows people to have a "secret" discussion separate from the rest of the left and activist community. More broadly I think the idea of keeping things"secret" is both narcissitic and problematic more broadly. Firstly it assumes that your internal discussions are so important and vital that for others to see them would be damaging, when in reality most of the things that are discussed are banal at best. However what the "secrecy" can do is create a situation in which members of the organisation can feel free to talk in ways that they never would never would in public. While many defender of "secrecy" would argue that this can create an atmosphere for "free discussion" in my experience it cultivates a situation where members feel free to debate in obnoxious, patronising and arrogant ways, that they would be embarrassed by if they were made public. My advice to anyone who is worried about the consequence of people outside your organisation reading what you've written in your discussion bulletin, is that you shouldn't write anything in a bulletin, or an email, that you wouldn't be comfortable someone other than your intended audience reading it.