#right collusion

[kittyit]

ARE YOU ASKING WHY collective, July 2023, printable trifold brochure

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Silencing Women's Speech from Max Dashu, feminist scholar and runner of the Suppressed Histories Archive

LIVE EVENT, Friday, September 15th 2023 at 12 PM PST (3 PM EST)

A Sumerian law called for crushing a woman's mouth with a brick, for "disrespecting" a man. Ancient and medieval conventions ordered women to keep silent. The European witch hunts targeted women; the accusation that a woman could magically harm others from afar, by her evil thoughts, and thus deserved to be hounded, beaten, tortured, killed, or shunned. Coercing speech in the torture trials. Scoring aboon the breath: cutting a woman's face "above the mouth," so drawing her blood would break her spells.

The Witch's bridle / Scold's bridle / branks: headcages with a metal gag, for public humiliation, and also Schandmasken: "shame masks." "Swimming the witch," "ducking the scold" (epithet for an outspoken woman). Women Possessed; exorcism as a rite of male domination. Witch accusations by possessed children in the Salem hunts.

Imprisoned women who wrote or embroidered appeals for justice. Testimony of abused women from mental prisons, workhouses, and enslavement. Acts of speech as madness; inquisitors are replaced by psychiatrists, with their own forms of torture: ice baths, immobilization, insulin shock, electroshock.

Gagging, bridling, or torturing a woman's tongue in the anti-suffragist backlash. Men's words in women's mouths: media elevating select women to voice patriarchal views. Male domination of public discussions. Attacks on female journalists, internet influencers, members of parliament. Physical attacks on women who say No. Chup raho: "Be quiet."

New Left attacks on women's speech, igniting an explosion of female protest in the 2nd Wave. Rightwing backlash gains ground: Limbaugh invents the "feminazi," followed 30 years later by self-styled antifascists calling feminists "Nazis." Resurgence of witch hunt memes: "Burn TERFs," "punch TERFs," along with rape and death threats, directed at female targets, with impunity.

Threat from the far right and christian nationalists, who want women barefoot and pregnant, and back in the home, but are trying to turn feminist concerns into a wedge issue. Their long game leads to a fascist Gilead.

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On Right Wing Militias & Working with the Radical Right: Jayne Egerton responds to Kara Dansky

Jayne Egerton responds to the discussion of right wing militias in Dansky’s latest blog, and to WDI USA’s response to her 2021 essay about f

jayne egerton has requested this piece critical of big name gender critical & radfem activists working with the right be shared. it's a follow-up to her first piece

Women and the Religious Right in the USA: Jayne Egerton - Woman's Place UK

Jayne Egerton writes about women and the religious right in the USA in an article which first appeared in the Radical Notion.

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Most online left x right debate are so devoid of nuances, to the point of being boring. Unfortunately, messing up the reality of what both ideologies support is very dangerous, it has real life consequences.

Speaking specially about women who think we have to allying with conservatives “to protect women, girls and children”, I have news for you: right-wingers don't give a single damn about women, girls and children. Some will try to counter this statement with “b-but the left...” and let me say this: as a socialist black radical feminist, I have felt lost many times in left spaces due to the blatantly misogyny/homophobia and also the tokenization of racism that is often assumed as “racism is taken more seriously than misogyny/homophobia” which isn't true in slightest but I have never thought that the right was the solution. Not because right = essentially bad and left = essentially good, if it was true, the blatantly misogyny, homophobia and racism in leftist spaces wouldn't hit so hard as it does, however they have an essential difference: right-wingers want to perpetuate a world full of inequality across class, race, sex, sexuality, nation, etc because they benefit from this social structure. The leftist goal, however is dismantling all the exploitation and oppression.

They're radically different, even though in the practice we see people advocating against things that oppress them, while wanting to keep things that benefit them. This is why I get upset with how brocialists talk passionately about how cruel is to take advantage of the lack of choice of economic vulnerable people but supporting the whole sex trade with the stupidest neoliberal rhetoric, it's because their class analysis is filled with male supremacist lengths and we should defy that, not supporting people who are already powerful and are not only using you feeling lost and hopeless in a fake agreement in positions that aren't even the same. The case is: it isn't socialism that is incompatible with feminism, it's sexism/homophobia/racism that is incompatible with socialism.

The root of conservative opposition to queer, trans and non-binary is purely homophobia and misogyny. Homosexuality is a threat to the male supremacist capitalism, since this system exist to control women's presumed reproductive capacity in order to get more workers who will keep the current system alive to the next generation of the oppressors.

They see trans people and queers as freakers and this treatment is reserved to feminists(even the male-centric ones), lesbians, gay men and bi people too. Why do y'all think conservative men react to our complaining about the misogyny of TRAs with a total mockery “We told you it would happen. It's all because you feminists wanted to destroy the natural order”. The “natural order” means the misogyny and homophobia feminists have been standing against since day one because it's the reason why we oppose to queer theory in the first place. Not because of hatred, not because we're “exclusionary” but because queer theory and practice are antifeminist, since they ignore/dismiss and in some aspects even support the existence of female oppression and fighting it is the solely reason why feminism exist.

And in all this mess, what is often forgotten is how queer theory and the classic right-wing sexism have a lot of more in common than radical feminism will ever be. Radical feminism can also crashes with queer theory in some points (surprise girlies!!!) and it still doesn't mean we all are the same.

i hope you'll make a blog and write some essays like this :)

[kittyit]

Man, whenever people are like "but Dworkin/McKinnon/whoever worked with conservatives!!!" it's like .... yeah, and it didn't work. Like, apart from my ideological issues with it, that is a strategy we've seen tried, multiple times, and it just doesn't fucking work. When I bring this up, people act like I'm some pie in the sky, perfect is the enemy of good, selfish idealist who cares more about being flawless than getting anything done ........ but a huge part of the reason I oppose collusion with the right is that I'm a pretty intense pragmatist, and I'm not interested in failure. Anyway. Love the brochure, gonna print it out and stick it in little free libraries of the Boston area! <3

omg WE LOVE TO HEAR IT!! i love so much the idea of putting it in little free libraries!!! i totally am a perfect is the enemy of good proponent in so many areas of life but this isn't one of them. and women who feel like this need to know we're not alone!

[kittyit]

the constant hammering and denegration of women who are trying to make a difference is what tells me you don't actually give a shit about what happens.

even andrea dworkin worked with conservatives. let's just keep infighting and spiral downward, as you wish.

my love, we are in a palliative care stage for humanity. the spiral has already spiraled. dworkin & mackinnon's work with conservatives failed and morally compromised radical feminism in a way that is still echoing today. a brochure isn't infighting. you sending me an anon isn't even infighting. it's just words on a screen. if you want to infight, come find me on land and we can have an argument and then go swimming together, ok?

[kittyit]

i've seen little to no discussion regarding trans healthcare "whistleblower" jamie reed being repped by conservative adf affiliated lawyers. vernadette r. broyles, one of her lawyers who is a conservative parental rights advocate, advised ron desantis on the don't say gay bill. it seems like most of these lawsuits/"whistleblowers" in a united states context are associated with the adf in some way.

i did see that in her article and it was extremely dismaying :( i just assume that basically anyone in mainstream media or doing big legal movements is allied with the right tbh. it's a bad scene out there