I do not care so much about the concept of "hope" except in a more personal, perhaps even religious view, but I do care about what can be done, and what can be done is that ecosystems can be protected and restored.
Humanity has managed and mismanaged natural environments since the beginning of our existence. What is different now is that we have a scientific understanding of how ecology works and we can organize our society based on this.
It's not the first time I've been asked "how do you have hope for the future" and I kind of don't! I just know what has to be done and what is being done. I don't have any more "hope" than that. My personal feelings will not change much. Militancy will.
I do wonder if, specifically, the environmental doomerism isn't linked to the idea of pristineness, like it promotes an outlook where if something cannot be preserved or regained without loss or modification/"contamination" then it isn't worth preserving to begin with
There is a component of "0 or 100" to it, like for example many people I've talked to seem to think that if we hit 1.5 degrees of warming we are doomed to irreversible extinction. It doesn't work like that. 1.5 degrees is not good at all, we are ALREADY seeing the effects of global warming, but it's also better than 2 degrees of warming, and MUCH better than 4 degrees of warming, which are now according to most models something that will be avoided because of massive ongoing changes in energy production. Nobody expected renewable energy to be developed this fast.
Ecological systems are complex and there's not a point where you can say "this is completely ruined beyond recovery", especially when they HAVE shown to recover beyond expectations. Again, not many people know this, but forests can grow back.
And yes, this idea of pristine environments which is completely faulty has led to many people thinking that ANY human intervention is bad, even traditional stewardship or ecological restoration. It's about time the idea of humans being inherently harmful is challenged.
the anti-psych convo is so tough to me because there is no denying the damage that the system does, especially to folks with schizophrenia/psychopathy or who are diagnosed on the personality disorder spectrum (a whole mess in itself), but at the same time i see folks on here suffering horribly with the burdens of depression, anxiety, OCD every day and explicitly saying there’s no hope because they don’t trust any type of therapeutic method and man… those are treatable conditions with solid treatments available in many cases, but they won’t even seek a solution, and it makes me sad because i know what that suffering is like
i would be in such a horrible state at this point in my life if i’d never sought help or been recommended DBT treatment, but i also recognize the privilege and straight up luck I had in receiving help and getting better. idk i was glad to see your nuanced response on it because there are SO MANY anti-psych messages that boil down to cutting people off from resources that could help them, like free DBT workbooks or OCD treatment programs online, but none of that can be considered because it’s “brainwashing yourself into feeling better”. it’s like a fundamental misunderstanding of how our minds work and how much value we should be putting into the destructive thoughts many of us develop due to trauma and poor childhood environments
idk i have no solutions here, i just appreciated the nuance because i usually see nothing but hardline stances on either side. it’s not just one path to healing, and even an imperfect system can bear fruit, but we also can’t discount the horrific amount of power psych practitioners wield to hurt people
Thank you, I appreciate all that you've said here. People are not political abstractions; we need to take the personal steps that will help us to get by in our lives, and that frequently means engaging within an unjust system or paradigm and getting what use we can out of it. A lot of therapy is awful, system-justifying stuff, but it also helps people a lot to have a dedicated, private talk buddy. Psychiatric drugs are used to immobilize and passify people, and they also make a lot of people feel better. Sometimes even a pretty subpar psychological or psychiatric treatment is what a person prefers over having to kill themselves or not be able to hold down a job, and while that's not a situation of unconstrainted choice, it still is their right to make that decision, in my view.
I think a lot of people online can be very politically dogmatic and puritanical, and also that a lot of heavy internet users are traumatize and in hopeless-feeling situations and have become quite compulsive about projecting that hopelessness outward at others and at every potential way to get better, because if there is no point in trying then they get to just rest and allow themselves to feel badly. Sometimes that's where a person is at! Fine. Wallow. It preserves energy. But a lot of people eventually have to develop agency for their own sake, and learn that even a moderate reduction in suffering is actually worth working at, and can eventually snowball in a positive direction. I hate anti-depressants; I think they are dangerous, poorly supported by research and over-recommended, but if someone is suicidal and some anti-depressants keep them kicking around long enough to stay housed, get some additional help, and then make choices that more materially improve their lives, what's the issue with them using them? Hell if someone just happens to like how those meds feel, do I think we should take them away? Absolutely not. I don't think anyone should have the authority to take those things away. And that includes psychiatrists!
Genuinely asking, how can you be a Marxist and a trans woman? it doesn’t logically compute for me. If you believe misogyny is real, and you can adapt dialectical materialism to the feminist framework (as you know, misogyny as opression of women by men) then can’t you notice women are being oppressed on the basis of the material reality (their genitals)? And that you can’t identify out of the opression - identify as the opressor.
So on one hand my gut reaction to this deeply disrespectful and transmisogynist ask is to respond very shortly with reference to bathtubs and car batteries and what I personally think you should do with those two items, but on the other hand this kinda vulgar materialism is unfortunately Very Common amongst marxist circles here in the US, as is your idealist conceptions of the social categories of gender and sex and your chauvinism. Only difference is that usually people aren't as needlessly inflamitory as you are. Cuz of all that I'll respond seriously, if you are genuinely genuine in your genuineness maybe it'll be of some help in clarifying your understanding of the topic and will clear up misconceptions in others who read the post. Because I'm just so niceys :D.
So lets start with that definition of misogyny/patriarchy, that it's "oppression of women by men". This is a fantastic starting definition and I would not hesitate to use this phrasing were I explaining the topic for the first time to a child in the fourth grade. Unfortunately as marxists it's our duty to be a little more rigerous about this! It takes for granted that your definition of gender (man and woman)-- humans differentiated based on genetalia (and lets include all sexual dimorphism in this just to be generous), is a reflection of material reality in any way. In actuality it is deeply idealist, proposing that there are innate Man Particles within Penises and Woman Particles within Vaginas, and even were that the case then we have to contend with the fact that categorization is entirely a human-made social technology. This definition of gender as something innate makes your definition of misogyny/patriarchy as a mode of structural oppression deeply fraught!!! No wonder you cannot conceptialize the existance of trans people if you conceptualize forces of gendered oppression fighting those of liberation as a battle for supremacy between two subspecies of humans. Such a conflict is irreconsileable. We start to see why TERFism so easily fits in with other forms of reaction if we use your faulty definition as an example. Lets get a better one then shall we?
First thing I wanna do before I write up my definition is that I reject the common division of sex and gender as seperate categories of biology and social relations respectively, I think it runs into the exact problem I have criticized you for by just offloading the biological aspects onto the concept of "sex" as a false binary. So I will do none of that-- primary and secondary sex characteristics instead act as the *percieved* (extra extra extra emphasis on that word!!!) historical basis of my definition of gender.
Gender is a form of social division of labor that arose with the advent of class society from the material basis of percieved sex characteristics that has changed and adapted through the epochs as the economic mode of production has changed and adapted to the material conditions of any given society in any given time and is enforced through class domination via gendering violence. This explains a lot more about gender than any "man=penis woman=vagina", "woman=nuturing man=strong" nonsense! Suddenly the phenomenon of trans people and intersex people existing are things we can make sense of and analyze even if we dont fully understand the science of it all! Suddenly it makes sense why our entire social definitions of gender are entirely based on the division of domestic and external labor, because historically, these divisions were needed for development of class society!
This also means we have to redo your definition of misogyny/patriarchy not as simply men dominating women, but as the system of violent enfocement of this labor division to thereby uphold the functioning of the class society that has created the current itteration of the gender division. This is done both by the domination of the "subservient" gender, by the violent weeding out of those who reguardless of intention challenge the current order of power (trans people, gay people, intersex people, polyamorous people, etc.), or by incorperating those challengers into the heirarchy (gay marriage/general "inclusive" concepts of the family, trans MRAs, etc.).
Now to get to the actual interesting part! How can I as a trans woman be a marxist is what you asked, and I think I proved the how, but what about the why? Well, because marxists should all be gender and family abolotionists is the short answer, but I have other thoughts as well.
Something very interesting has happened in the last century as we sit stewing in the epoch of the end of capitalism/rise of socialism that I believe is one of the reasons us as trans people have become more and more prevelant of an issue within society as threats to bourgeois society. Angela Davis wrote a very interesting article on it in the 80s called (EDIT this is actually part of her book "Women Race and Class" I just remembered I totally forgot) "The Approaching Obsolecense of Housework" which I highly reccomend reading, which highlights that the need for the division of domestic and external labor divisions is withering with the advent of new household technology and the subsuming of domestic tasks into the wider external economy (cleaning services, industrial production of clothing and furniture, industrialization of food preperation, infantcare, full day education of children, etc.). This combined with the proletarianization of women under capitalism has created a major contradiction within capitalist society: the need for the existance of the family and gender systems to uphold bourgeois rule and reproduce bourgeois society on one side and the slow withering of domestic labor divisions on the other. One of the many results, I personally believe, is the rise in societal acceptence of trans and queer identites- a glimpse of the next epoch after we collectively do away with bourgeois property relations and the need to define gender through labor division fully disappates. I fully predict that, like Cuba now, we will see existing socialist and dotp nations go through these changes significantly faster and make leaps and bounds into the future as beacons of queer rights. This is also why bourgeois society and the forces of reaction and fascism as a movement see trans people as a threat just one level down to that of communists! This is also why I fully reject any attempts to incorperate queerness into bourgeois society (that arent historically progressive of course!) and always call for a uniting of queer politics under marxism.
So yes, I am a transfem and a marxist, I was one before the other for some reason I cant really fully understand, but over time I came to realize I cannot fully be one without the other.
Published in coloration with Transfighters/Traction Project, A Self-Defense Study Guide for Trans Women and Gender Non-Conforming / Nonbinar
Transfem self defense zine above
They’ve been at the forefront of multiple movements for equality. But Black trans women remain one of the most marginalized, at-risk communi
Build the shittiest thing possible. Build out of trash because all i have is trash. Trash materials, trash bodies, trash brain syndrome. Bui
Good articles on transmisogyny and transmisogynoir for a more comprehensive and intersectional look at things. You can follow the author of the final one of these three (Position of Guilt: Black Hot Allostatic Load) on tumblr at @/storyweavingspider, who also offered the following interpretation & breakdown of a 2015 survey on the queer community in DC broken down by race and gender that is a quite stark statistical look at the effects of transmisogyny and transmisogynoir.
💬 0 🔁 29 ❤️ 20 · IF YOURE TRANS READ/SHARE THIS POST · So I recently found a detailed study called Access Denied from 2015, a couple years
PDF download link for an essay on transmisogynoir.
Transfeminine Science is a site for information on hormone therapy for transfeminine people.
An actually good resource on transfem healthcare and HRT
Part 1: actually defining the problem
The thing about "terf ideology and rhetoric" is that it is actually an extremely widespread problem
A very detailed breakdown of terf rhetoric in queer spaces
“The Gender Binary” is a misnomer; gender has always been a hierarchy.
A good essay on the orientalism and transmisogyny in "decolonial" academia surrounding the hijra.
Ungarns Regierungspartei Fidesz legt ein Gesetz vor, das Kritiker des Orban-Systems mit weit auslegbaren Regelungen mundtot machen kann. Opp
die dramatische Lage für Organisationen, die Kritik üben, und die Aushebelung von Freiheitsrechten. sehr lesenswert! Orban ist mit dieser Strategie nicht allein.
mitten in der "demokratischen" EU: warum verbietet ungarn die pride? wie lgbtq-menschen zum spielball von machtpolitik und abbau von demokratie werden, erklärt (auch) arte.
how do you maintain hope when climate change is probably going to kill everyone anyway
that's not true! climate change is not going to 'kill everyone'. it is going to kill many people, yes, and turn many more into refugees, and cause economic disasters that will cause widespread suffering. which is why it is so vital for socialists to do the work to mobilize and build systems and organizations capable of fighting back against the inevitable fascist response to increased poverty and waves of refugees. so, y'know, assuming that by 'maintain hope' you mean, like, 'work for the sake of a positive political project' and 'envision the future', it is because i do not think anyone can afford not to.
Excerpt from The Trouble With White Women: An Interview with Kyla Schuller Author of The Biopolitics of Feeling: Race, Sex, and Science in the Nineteenth Century
[“NA: One of the fiercest arguments you make in the book is that womanhood is a very recent fiction created for very specific purposes. You write, “Woman’ represents a tactic of risk management”— can you explain what you mean by that?
KS: I’m building on arguments that black feminist theorists made in the 1980s that gender is a racial structure. Womanhood is not a universal category, but instead is an aspect of whiteness that was positioned by definition as unobtainable for nonwhite women, specifically black women. I looked at the scientists who were inventing and codifying the idea of sex difference in the 19th century— not just the cultural role of gender, but the idea of physiological and anatomical sex difference, the binary of a male and female body. Those folks argued that full sex differentiation was only achieved by whites. No other races have achieved the level of evolutionary specification where they were able to differentiate between the distinct roles of men and women.
This is super-surprising, because we assume that the idea of male and female as two opposing categories is universal— at least in Western thought. But before the 19th century, male and female bodies were described as more alike than different. For example, in the 18th century, the vagina was often described in medical textbooks as an internal penis. It’s not arguing that bodies are identical, but it’s arguing a fundamental similarity.
In the 19th century, one of the things that emerged was the idea that male and female were fully different capacities and bodies at every level. It’s helpful to imagine the idea of “male” and “female” as racial categories— not just as gendered roles but as actual physical, anatomical, physiological difference. This suddenly makes projects like white feminism in the 19th century extra-suspect, because many white women were only arguing for the rights of white women— “woman,” in that sense, is part of an overdetermined category of whiteness. Of course, there were white feminists who were arguing against that, and black feminists were trying to expand the category of womanhood itself, but it helps explain some of the reasons why liberal feminism still does such a terrible job accounting for race, because to some degree their idea of woman itself has always been elaborated as a quality of whiteness, not a universal quality of people.“]
Die Idee der Vorbereitung hat in der Linken immer eine Rolle gespielt – nun wird das Prepping für die Katastrophe entdeckt
Das Versprechen, dass es für alle bergauf geht, hat sich erledigt. Zugleich haben 150 Jahre industrieller Kapitalismus die Umweltbedingungen derart verändert, dass ganze Erdregionen bald kaum noch bewohnbar sein werden. Entsprechend stellen die aktuellen Prepping-Diskurse nicht den Aufbau einer utopischen Gesellschaft, sondern die Vorbereitung auf die Katastrophe in den Mittelpunkt – in der Hoffnung, dabei Dinge zu lernen, die auch in einer nachkapitalistischen Welt der Knappheit hilfreich sein können.
Raus aus der Fabrik, rein in die Szene
Vieles am neuen Prepping-Diskurs erinnert an einen anderen Wendepunkt vor 50 Jahren. In der Gegenkultur, die sich im Anschluss an die Bewegungen von 1968 in den Gesellschaften des kapitalistischen Westens herausbildete, entstand eine ausgedehnte Alternativszene, die von Landkommunen über Buchläden und Bäckereien bis zu Taxikollektiven reichte. [...] Statt die Hoffnungen auf die Arbeiter*innen zu setzen, »die vom System am besten, d.h. effektivsten erpresste und zurechtgestutzte Schicht«, wie es 1976 in der Zeitschrift Autonomie heißt, liege im Aufbau von Alternativprojekten der Schlüssel für eine rebellische Politik, die dem Stand der gesellschaftlichen Kämpfe gerecht werde.
Diese Alternativszene differenzierte sich schnell aus: Je erfolgreicher sie wurden, desto mehr Alternativbetriebe warfen ihren gegenkulturellen Anspruch über Bord und verwandelten sich in kleine oder mittlere Unternehmen. Statt den Sozialismus näher zu bringen, trugen sie dazu bei, Managementmethoden zu modernisieren, ein neues bürgerliches Klassenbewusstsein zu formen (und deren Partei: die Grünen), teilweise prägten sie ganze Wirtschaftszweige, wie im Silicon Valley.
Ein anderer Teil hielt am oppositionellen Anspruch fest, aber zog sich zunehmend in die Nische zurück: Subkultur und Szene statt Politik und Partei. Besetzte Häuser, Infoläden, Kneipen, Fahrradwerkstätten, Druckereien boten die Infrastruktur für die autonome Bewegung Westdeutschlands. Möglich war das auch, weil dank eines gut ausgebauten Sozialstaats umfangreiche Querfinanzierung in Anspruch genommen werden konnte: Arbeitslosengeld, hin und wieder Jobben, Langzeitstudium, niedrige Mieten, das war, zusammen mit der Alternativökonomie, die materielle Basis der autonomen Szene. In dieser Szene kursierten Tipps für alles Mögliche, was man zum Leben ohne bzw. gegen den Staat gebrauchen kann. Anleitungen zum Bombenbasteln, Handreichungen zum Versicherungsbetrug oder zur eleganten Krankschreibung, Autoknackermanuals, Arbeitslosenberatung und ähnliches füllten die Szenezeitschriften der 1980er Jahre.
Prepping ohne Perspektive?
Und heute? Dass Prepping einen neuen kapitalistischen Modernisierungsschub einleitet, steht wohl nicht zu befürchten, das Einigeln in der Defensive könnte schon eher zur Gefahr werden. Dass die fortschreitende Erderwärmung neue Strategien erfordert, ist kaum von der Hand zu weisen. Netzwerke aufzubauen, die solidarisches Handeln in kommenden Katastrophen ermöglichen – das ist erstmal eine gute Idee.
Das Problem ist, dass die Vorschläge den Bezug auf Klassenkämpfe aufgegeben haben – und damit auch die Perspektive, diejenigen zu gewinnen, die der Klimakollaps besonders hart treffen wird und die sich am schlechtesten dafür rüsten können. Im schlimmsten Fall kreist die ohnehin akademisch geprägte Klimabewegung fortan vor allem um sich selbst.
Dabei war eine interessantere Diskussion der letzten Jahre die Frage, wie die Klimakrise als Klassenfrage begriffen werden kann. »Man muss die Überlegungen, wie man aus der Klimakatastrophe rauskommt, vom Kopf auf die Füße stellen und sie von der Produktion her denken«, sagt die labournet.tv-Filmemacherin Johanna Schellhagen – weil Menschen bei Kämpfen am Arbeitsplatz erleben können, dass sie mächtig sind. Um die Ohnmacht zu überwinden, so Schellhagen in ihrem Film »Der laute Frühling«, könnten Klimaaktive zum Beispiel »strategisch arbeiten« gehen (in für die gesellschaftliche Versorgung wichtigen Bereichen), dort Kenntnisse erwerben und sich politisch organisieren.
In so einer Perspektive können Vorschläge solidarischer Katastrophenpolitik aka linkes Prepping einen anderen Sinn gewinnen. Nicht politisches Überwintern und der Rückzug in die eigene Nische stünden dann auf der Tagesordnung, sondern die Frage, wie der Zukunftspessimismus überwunden, der Faschismus gestoppt und das Leben besser werden kann.
Der Kampf gegen die Klimakrise ist selbst in der Krise. Und jetzt? In der Linken werden derzeit zwei gegensätzliche Lösungen diskutiert.
Was tun, wenn’s brennt, aber alle weiter kokeln?
[Es] bilden sich zwei Richtungen [innerhalb der Linken] heraus: Die eine will den Klassenaspekt der Klimakrise hervorheben und sie so wieder politisieren. Die andere will die Unabwendbarkeit der Katastrophe akzeptieren und daraus neue Kraft ziehen.
[...]
Linker Klimapopulismus soll die Verteilungsfragen der Klimakrise offensiv formulieren: Der Hälfte der Gesellschaft, die notgedrungen schon heute innerhalb der Grenzen lebt, die der Planet noch verkraften kann, muss er ein besseres, günstigeres Leben ermöglichen, statt abstrakt die Zukunft der Menschheit anzurufen. Auf der anderen Seite sollen die Profiteure der Krise an den Pranger: fossile Unternehmen, die mit hohen Strom- und Gaspreisen Milliarden Gewinne machen.
Die Autoren sehen hier großes Potenzial. Sie zitieren eine französische Studie, die zeigte, dass die Zustimmung zu einem Tempolimit von 110 km/h deutlich steigt, wenn sie mit einem Verbot von Privatjets verbunden wird.
[...]
Doch wenn Populismus nicht fruchtet, wenn die Klimakrise eben längst da ist, was dann? Hier kommt der zweite Ansatz ins Spiel. Dem zufolge ist das Scheitern der Klimapolitik kein handwerkliches Problem, sondern strukturell. Die „Arschlochgesellschaft“, so bezeichnet es der Aktivist Tadzio Müller, ist demnach so gut im Verdrängen, weil in Deutschland selbst Arbeiter und eben nicht nur die Reichen Profiteure des fossilen Lebensstils sind. Diese Komplizenschaft überdecke den Klassencharakter der Krise.
In der Linken sprechen sich einige Stimmen deshalb dafür aus, die Unabwendbarkeit der Krise zu akzeptieren und die begrenzte Kraft darauf zu verwenden, sich solidarisch auf die kommenden Katastrophen vorzubereiten.
[...]
Wie genau das aussehen könnte, lässt Hinrichs im Interview offen. In ihrem einzigen konkreten Beispiel klingt wenig politische Sprengkraft an: Bei 40 Grad nach der Oma nebenan zu schauen, ob diese vielleicht Hilfe brauche. Doch auch andere Gruppen setzen auf die gegenseitige Unterstützung in der Nachbarschaft, ob gegen den Stromausfall nach einem Sturm oder bei Wohnungsnot nach einem Hausbrand.
Steckt in diesem Fokus auf die lokale Gemeinschaft ein subversives Potenzial oder ist es ein Rückzug ins Halbprivate, bei dem AktivistInnen Aufgaben übernehmen, die ein kollabierender Sozialstaat nicht mehr stemmen kann?
Dieser Widerspruch ist nicht neu. Jan Ole Arps erinnert in der analyse+kritik kürzlich daran, dass sich die Linke nicht das erste Mal nach einem Scheitern „nach innen“ wendet.
[...]
Oft waren sie damit erfolgreich, veränderten die Pädagogik und die Kultur am Arbeitsplatz. Doch ihre besten Ideen konnten umso leichter vom dynamischen Kapitalismus vereinnahmt werden, wie die Unternehmer des Silicon Valley zeigen, die einst ein Produkt der Gegenkultur waren und sich nun Donald Trump unterwerfen.
Was hilft gegen die Klimakrise: Populismus oder Preppen? Es wird wohl beide Ansätze brauchen. Und es ist gut, dass die Linke nach einigen Jahren der Ratlosigkeit in dieser Frage in Bewegung ist. Denn auf die Grünen sollte man sich besser nicht verlassen.
The Psychology of Neoliberalism and the Neoliberalism of Psychology
In this article, we approach the relationship between neoliberalism and psychological science from the theoretical perspective of cultural psychology. In the first section, we trace how engagement with neoliberal systems results in characteristic tendencies—including a radical abstraction of self from social and material context, an entrepreneurial understanding of self as an ongoing development project, an imperative for personal growth and fulfillment, and an emphasis on affect management for self-regulation—that increasingly constitute the knowledge base of mainstream psychological science. However, as we consider in the second section, psychological science is not just an observer of neoliberalism and its impact on psychological experience. Instead, by studying psychological processes independent of cultural–ecological or historical context and by championing individual growth and affective regulation as the key to optimal well-being, psychological scientists reproduce and reinforce the influence and authority of neoliberal systems. Rather than a disinterested bystander, hegemonic forms of psychological science are thoroughly implicated in the neoliberal project.
I am increasingly convinced that the decision to encourage Americans to use their homes as their primary store of wealth was not only a catastrophic mistake but actually the ur-mistake from which most of our contemporary dysfunction flows. It basically makes intergenerational warfare required, and proper urbanist and pro-natalist policies politically impossible.
