I used to speak and write a lot about the grassroots, especially in the context of food system change. The power of the grassroots, the importance of the grassroots, the importance of keeping things grassroots, etc etc. I admit that sometimes I would pause and ask myself if I really believed what I was saying or if I was just going through the motions–all the more as I saw the obstacles faced by the grassroots.
This past Friday was a true testament to the power of grassroots activism, even when one faces a Goliath. Women have been fighting big money, tremendous bias, media that ignores us and social media giants that have repeatedly censored us. And yet we still managed to speak to each other and organize with each other. No wonder the Taliban don’t want women hearing women’s voices. It’s like the water that gets through and around the boulder.
When I met Chema in the early 2000s, he was an independent media activist. Where he was squatting was also an Indymedia center. To witness that and then to see how independent media was overtaken by mega corporations run by tech bros was depressing enough – to then also see, as soon as I got involved in feminism online, how quickly those tech giants silenced and shut women out was chilling. I am referring to Youtube, WordPress, Twitter, Google Play, Reddit, Medium, and I’m sure I’m missing some (I’m not going to link stuff now but feel free to contact me for articles on any of these).
To see then how women have nonetheless managed to speak, and connect, and be heard, and raise awareness, and find solidarity, and organize, and have an impact, is amazing. This past Friday, as Germany’s repressive, regressive, wholly misogynistic Self-ID law went into effect, women from East to West rose up and said NO. We went to German consulates and embassies, and those who couldn’t posted pictures online. Grassroots activism doesn’t have to be about getting hundreds or thousands into the streets; there are so many ways that one can build a powerful movement and that something relatively small or accessible, like posting a picture with a hashtag, can have a big impact. The importance of creativity in particular shouldn’t be overlooked.
I was at the SF protest, joining women across national borders and also ideological ones. Indeed, the SF protest was organized by Women Are Real and WOLF, which was founded by Lierre Keith, author of The Vegetarian Myth, and Lierre joined us in SF. I have a lot of respect for Lierre as a writer and organizer, however, outside of feminism, I don’t merely disagree with her views; she is an important part of a whole trend that I spent years critiquing and organizing against (mostly in the form of growing a movement for veganic farming). Those disagreements stand, but movements and actions need people and focus. November 1 was the day to come together and focus on women and the harms of Self-ID.
My aunt also came out in support of German women. On the topic of small things that make an impact: Over the years I had mentioned my objection to gender ideology to my aunt, and while she agreed it was all BS, I didn’t think she was keeping abreast beyond what regular media covered. Then the last time I saw her, I said something to the effect of gender ideology being about misogyny and she exclaimed “Of course it’s misogyny!” and went on about “all these men” who say they’re women. I was a bit surprised – where was this coming from? – but carried on. Then when I mentioned I was going to the WDI convention, she knew it was in Atlanta. Huh? It turns out that she’s been on the WDI mailing list since I forwarded one of their fundraising emails to some of my contacts years ago (I think it was the fundraiser I mentioned in Shabe Yalda, or why I paid $12 for Nancy Pelosi to read about women’s rights).
If you need some inspiration this week, check out the hashtags #WomenRise and #SelfIDHarms on X, and watch (and share!) this beautiful video.
It’s sad for me to hear about the violence that has overcome Chiapas. Already back in 2018, the last time I was there, my friend Pilar told me grisly stories about what women there – women that she personally knows – had experienced and witnessed. Now there are increasingly more articles about the cartel violence that has made its way to the land of the Zapatistas. I found this one informative. I have been thinking about this because of a recent article about the assassination, in San Cristobal, of a priest who was an advocate for indigenous rights.
I started this blog at the beginning of a 6-week stay in San Cristobal in 2016*, but that was not my first time there. I spent about 3 months in Chiapas in the early 2000s and also went back for a few days in 2018 for the first women’s encounter convened by Zapatista women.
The first time around I spent about a month in a small Zapatista community – it was so different from what I saw in 2018! We had no electricity or running water. I would cook beans after making a fire with leña. I would use the onion and garlic we had brought from San Cristobal, but I would feel a pang of guilt when I’d share my beans with the villagers (all hermanos and hermanas) who always stopped by our place, as they would say things like “muy sabrosa su comida”… because they didn’t have much access to onions, garlic or anything else. I’d also use chili peppers but learned to tone it down as the people in that community did not eat spicy food and I didn’t want my beans to be too spicy to share.
On the subject of leña, my friend Patrick and I would always admire the muscular arms of the hermanas, because every day they chopped leña. Their arms were like tree trunks. I had met Patrick back in Switzerland during our preparatory workshops to go to Chiapas as human rights observers, and we ended up getting sent to this particular village together. Patrick’s Spanish was better than mine at the time, and he was much better read on Zapatismo and everything else, so he would spend a lot of time talking with people, including one of the two pairs of unmarried sisters of the village. He got some indication that marriage was of interest to one of them and he would muse about staying in Mexico and growing a little milpa. As a Swiss, he was seen as less macho and potentially a better husband than the local men. Those two sisters were feminists and unmarried, but Patrick was maybe the kind of man with whom marriage could be possible.
Indeed, the Zapatistas might have embraced feminism but that doesn’t mean that attitudes completely changed overnight. I was also the object of some interest: some of the young men asked Patrick if I was a virgin, presumably to see if I was marriage material. Patrick told them that he didn’t know and they should ask me directly. They never did, thankfully!
There was another pair of older unmarried sisters who grew tobacco and rolled puros. They’d come give us a taste, “like any good dealer” as Patrick would joke, and we spent a lot of our time sitting around and smoking those homegrown puros. I might still have some in my old boxes. We also rolled our own but mine were pretty bad and I kept having to relight them, so I was happy to purchase theirs. My theory was these two were also shamans or some sort of healers, but I would not have been privy to that. I do know however that shamanism was part of the local social fabric. One of the women who led the workshops we attended before going to Chiapas was an anthropologist by training, and she initially went to Mexico in that capacity. She shared how her sister had suffered severe, debilitating depression and had been cured of it by a shaman in Chiapas. She warned us however against prying.
For bathing, we had to walk a ways to get to the river. There was a different spot for men and women, and self-conscious as I am, I just had to deal with it and take my shirt off in front of the other women. One time an hermana pinched my boob and said “que hueros tus chichis!” Getting to and from the bathing spot always made me anxious because there were cows grazing and they were very aggressive, they would sometimes run after you and stare you down. The villagers would say to be careful of the vaca loca. I would skirt around the field as much as I could, and luckily, nothing ever happened (aside from being scared out of my mind). To this day I am still afraid when I pass cows and especially bulls while hiking.
The annoyances are fond memories now, because I am glad I got to know a little bit of that world. Like the last night I spent in our shack, lying there worried that scorpions would fall on me. Our walls were just wooden planks with gaps between them. There was a strong storm so the wind was blowing inside, and we had given up on trying to light candles. Scorpions and tarantulas were common in that area, and I had seen a couple scorpions that evening on our walls or ceiling. I lay there worried that as the whole structure shook, any scorpions that might be above me would be shaken loose. Thank the Goddess, that was not so, and the next day we made our way back to San Cristobal unscathed, wading through deep mud.
My trip in 2018 was shorter but powerful. Zapatista women convened a women’s encounter – for “mujeres que luchan” – and while they expected about 1500 women, about 6000 showed up. We absolutely made do. We had enough food, the bathrooms weren’t great but we survived, we made connections and we got to be in a wonderful male-free environment for several days, with Zapatista women patrolling with their uniforms and weapons to make sure there were no men (they are soldiers after all). There were talks, activities and art and photography exhibitions (many of which would have been deemed “white feminism” by wokesters in the US). I attended a talk that featured a recorded message to our gathering from a Kurdish fighter in Rojava, during which she stressed that women’s oppression is the first colonization. A good message, and one that American wokesters would again dismiss as white feminism if they heard it from a “white” woman.**
The ignorance and mind-addling ID politics of Americans are what they are–at least some American women got to hear these ideas and experience this sort of space in a way that they could actually hear and experience them (if not entirely accept them). It didn’t escape me that this was just a few years after Mitchfest shut down. As someone both of American and Iranian origin, I can say in no uncertain terms that just as whitewashing is a thing, brownwashing is also a thing. But again, it is what it is. While some will have the need to see this space as something that only indigenous women have ever built, it does not take away from the fact that the space and experience were truly very special.
The last night we got treated to a party and a show, with theater (one skit on the harms of prostitution coming to indigenous communities) and music (ski-masked Zapatista women with electric guitars felt like a world away from my little Tojolabal village of yore, where to have a party meant that we danced some sort of awkward two-step to a rythmless marimba). At the end of the program, everything went completely dark. We stood there waiting. Then, hundreds of candles were lit, held by the Zapatista women who were standing around us. They gave a powerful and moving speech that stayed with me for days.
Well, I don’t know exactly what it is that stayed with me; it could have been the words that were spoken, it could have been the impressive spectacle effect, maybe some sort of ritual power had been raised, or maybe it was the whole experience of my days spent there… I don’t know. What I can say is that for days afterwards, I felt an opening in my chest, unlike anything I had experienced before or since. I believe something happened to my heart chakra, an opening, a healing, something. While I don’t know exactly what I was feeling and what caused it, I believe that healing and accessing other experiences can happen when women take time to be away from men.
Holding their candles, the Zapatista women asked that as we go back into the world, we always carry the light that they were giving us, that we remember that we are not alone but in sisterhood, that we continue our lucha.
I have been wondering whether I should restart Seed the Commons, and how best to go about it. I think that the decolonial perspective that Chema and I brought to the table can still be useful. I’ve been a bit taken aback recently by the lack of sensitivity (and integrity) around racism, sexism and colonization from the white Canadians I’ve come in contact with. (I apologize for being so specific, but this is the truth.) It think it is showing me possible directions for future projects. I will see.
I still carry the lucecita you gave me, hermanas.
* So many belated thanks to Pilar for helping me access indigenous communities for my research and for taking me on hiking outings! You helped make my trip a success.
** I use quotes sometimes when using these words not to imply criticism but to indicate that I am referring to the way Americans use these words, which might not be my own default way of using them or the default way of other people. The way Americans use terms like white, brown, black, POC… tends to be US-centric (and tautological), which is fine, but not universal (this is not evident for Americans as US-centrism leads them to take as given that their language, premises and ways of categorizing the world are universal).
It’s that time of the year again. Shabe Yalda is the Persian celebration for winter solstice, when families gather and stay up through the longest night of the year eating fruit and reading poetry. In its Zoroastrian roots, Shabe Yalda is about celebrating the return of the light, the victory of light over darkness. Like many Iranians, I only grew up celebrating the spring equinox (Norooz or Persian New Year), but Shabe Yalda has been somewhat rediscovered recently. I, too, have been putting together small celebrations or rituals to mark the return of the light for some years now.
A couple years ago, I was given the opportunity for a perfect ritual and real-world action. In November 2021, I received an email from Women’s Declaration International USA (WDI USA) titled Deck the Halls of Congress with Feminism. They aimed to raise enough money to mail a copy of the book, The Abolition of Sex: How the “Transgender” Agenda Harms Women and Girls, to each US Senator and Representative. They asked that people sponsor their respective representatives with a twelve-dollar gift that covered the purchase, packing and postage of one book. From their email:
‘Dear U.S. Signatories, As the winter solstice approaches, many cultures celebrate the return of the light after the darkest season. For feminists, the last several years have felt bleak indeed, as most of the media has pursued a blackout policy on covering our objections to “gender identity” in law and society. As a result, many legislators remain entirely unaware of the depth, breadth, and strength of our commitment to the rights of women and girls as a sex class. WHRC USA thinks it’s time to shed some light!
This winter, we will deck the halls of Congress with a feminist critique of “gender identity.” Our volunteers will send one copy of Board President Kara Dansky’s important new book, The Abolition of Sex: How the “Transgender” Agenda Harms Women and Girls, to each United States Senator and Representative, along with a personalized cover letter quoting their constituents and other supporters who understand that recognition and protection of biological sex in law is crucial.’
I liked that they linked their campaign to the winter solstice and to the idea of bringing light into darkness, because the majority of Americans have been completely in the dark as to what’s going on. Even those who are staunch supporters of “trans rights” – maybe especially those who are staunch supporters – very often have no idea of what they’re supporting. So I donated, and I threw in an extra $24 to get copies to Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla as well. To Pelosi, Feinstein and Padilla, I wrote:
“By replacing sex with gender identity in law and policy, California is stripping away the human rights of its most vulnerable women, like those who are homeless or in prison. In San Francisco, our public library hosted an exposition calling for violence against feminists and lesbians, the tech companies we host are censuring feminists worldwide, and I can no longer enjoy an evening out and expect that my local restaurants will have a female-only bathroom I can use. As a woman, California native and San Francisco resident, it greatly saddens me to see the erosion of women’s rights and the increased normalization of misogyny and lesbophobia in a city that was once a global leader in progressive causes. It is time for California political leaders to put women’s rights above woke points.”
WDI USA reached their funding goal, and most of the donations came from first-time donors. Women are sick of the erosion of our rights, the sidelining and censorship of our voices, the vilification of anyone who states basic facts and wants to protect the rights that were won these past decades. People in power have made it clear that they don’t care about women, but it helps to show that some of the public does care and is watching.
We certainly haven’t won yet. Notably of course, in the past two years Roe v. Wade was overturned (which, in my opinion, was not the sole doing of the right). But feminists have been pushing forward. Our concerns and our arguments are making their way into public consciousness. We don’t have a fraction of the funding of the astroturfed gender identity movement, but we are showing that grassroots activism is still possible, that in the face of heavy propaganda, censorship and deeply ingrained bias, speaking the truth can still make a difference.
While I am not personally very active, my inbox is full of calls to action, meet-ups, and local and global news of campaigns, lawsuits and even some wins (I did participate in an action for incarcerated women – and against Scott Wiener’s SB 132 – that I wrote about here). Since my little ritual in 2021, Kara Dansky has written a new book, and WDI USA has held two annual conventions: Reigniting the Women’s Liberation Movement and Accelerating the Women’s Liberation Movement, the latter in San Francisco.
San Francisco has been coasting on its gay-friendly reputation, but the only gays to which it is friendly now are of the male variety. A few years ago, a group of actual lesbians (i.e., of the female and exclusively same-sex attracted variety) was gay-bashed at the San Francisco Dyke March by other marchers. At some point in the 2010s, SF stopped being the city it is reputed to be.
But activism is still in our DNA, and to bring a convention aimed at reviving the women’s liberation movement to a city once progressive and now so captured, is powerful. I couldn’t attend, but it seems to have gone… very well? As expected, the convention drew protests from the anti-feminist pink and blue crew (one delightful protester calling for mass femicide). But unlike other venues reserved by feminists in the past, the hotel did not bow to pressure to cancel the event, and it seems that more than anything, the protesters helped bring visibility to the true nature of our conflict with them (watch Kara Dansky’s account). The women concluded the weekend in front of San Francisco City Hall with a non-violent action for lesbian rights. The same crew arrived to hurl insults at them. We keep ending up back at square 1, having to fight the same fights, but women will simply show up as long as necessary.
It’s going to take a while for the liberals and leftists who are self-righteously entrenched in gender ideology to recognize that theirs is a regressive position, and many will never take personal responsibility. But most of the public – even those who go along with pronouns and mixed-sex bathrooms without a complaint – is not entrenched at all. If we continue to speak up on the harms of gender ideology, and continue to show that there is a resistance, including one that is not rooted in conservatism, and we continue to provide opportunities to transactivists to bring public awareness to their politics and misogyny, we will get through.
I am one of the women who protested against SB 132 at the Golden Gate Bridge in early February.
My time got monopolized by two idiotic and antagonistic men.
I’m not going to make a list of every non-sequitur, strawman and ignorant take, but I’ll note a few things:
– These guys wanted to talk AT us. They had no interest in listening to our responses, even when they asked us questions.
– One of them has a TIF (trans-identified female, or “transman”) daughter, yet he thinks that there is no problem with men in women’s spaces, and that TIFs should be in men’s spaces. It is scary how little men acknowledge male violence against women. (Of course, if the notion of male violence is ridiculous pearl-clutching, why are they clutching their pearls about violence against TIMs, or transwomen? From what are TIMs escaping by using female prisons, bathrooms and other spaces?)
– To that point, the other dude said that he owns a homeless shelter in SF(!!!). And yet he compared us – women defending what tiny amount of protection and dignity female inmates have – to people 50 years ago “fighting against people dancing” and said that the world “would advance regardless”. I feel terrible for the homeless women who end up in his shelter. Homeless women are horribly vulnerable and have a dire need for their own spaces.
Of course, the world doesn’t just “advance”, all linear and effortless. I wish it did. The reason that women stood out in the cold that day, some of them risking their incomes, to re-demand the sex-based rights and protections that were fought for by feminists before us, is because progress and liberation, especially women’s, are usually met with a conservative backlash. Scott Wiener, California senator and author of SB 132, is that backlash.
These men at Golden Gate Bridge, ranting and sneering at women speaking up for the women being assaulted and raped in prison, shouting at an elderly woman that she has no compassion, telling me that I am the reason trans youth are killing themselves…. are no different than the men who intimidated, mocked and called manhaters the previous generations of protesting feminists. Because while those women made incredible strides, not enough awareness was raised and maintained in broader society about the extent of the sexism we face every day. Likewise, little has changed in the attitudes of men towards women. And so, as I’ve said before, we are back at square 1, having to argue for our rights all over again. It’s sad, it’s scary, it’s depressing.
– In discussing the hypothetical situation of a transwoman being housed in a female prison, the father of the TIF twice used the pronoun “he”. I had to remind him that he should be using the pronoun “she” if he believes that this person is a woman. One of them also commented that it “wasn’t fair” to punish all transwomen for the doings of a few, in the sense that if a few of them raped female inmates after being transferred, the others should not be “punished” by being excluded from female prisons. The assumption is that, by default, men have a right to women’s spaces. That only the proven rapist can, perhaps, justifiably be excluded. In other words, the assumption is that women do not have an inherent right to our own spaces. A space in which we don’t have to shower, sleep, or use the toilet in front of any man. If I am forced to shower in front of a man, nothing more needs to happen for it to be a violation.
My exchanges with these white knights highlighted what has been made obvious these past years: This was always about men’s rights–or rather, men’s privileges. They can say “transwomen are women” until they’re blue, but there is not a single category of woman for whom they agitate this much and in this way.
In the past three years, every time that I have read about a woman in prison being raped, assaulted or harassed by a male inmate, and every time that I have read about a convicted rapist or other violent male being housed in a woman’s prison, I have thought about Hope, the editor who dropped me from her book at the request of her publisher because of my gender critical writing. Hope didn’t care about female inmates and others harmed by gender ideology; she only cared about doing what was convenient for her.
When Hope questioned me about my views, she scoffed and laughed, acted incredulous and as though I were ridiculously uninformed. This was in 2020. I had been following the “gender wars” for about 4 years, but Hope was convinced that she knew more than I did, and she would not give me even the benefit of doubt. Hope is a California resident who did not believe that Self ID (which is the basis of SB 132, introduced a year earlier, and a number of local policies) is real. She was “sure” that there were “protocols” to determine who is trans. Feminists have spent years writing and talking about Self ID, yet most people still believe that “transwomen” are all men who have had surgery and take hormones. Our claims can be verified with minimal research, but instead we get dismissed as crackpots.
Hope and I were both active in the animal rights movement, and long before our conversation on gender identity, I had mused that she had the sort of overconfidence and entitlement that, in the US, is associated with white men. And now, attending my very first feminist protest, I ended up the captive audience of two such men.
To be a woman in the world is to suffer fools, to be a female activist is to suffer them doubly.
White guy #1, father of the TIF, kept snickering, walking away, and coming back when he thought he had a good “gotcha”. He said he was an “expert” in “sexual orientation”. I asked him what sexual orientation had to do with it, since trans identity is about gender identity, and trans people can be of any orientation. He didn’t answer. He asked us with a smirk ‘so you think that a transman in a men’s prison would be in “mortal danger?”’ Silly women, thinking men are dangerous! But somehow it’s not silly to pass a bill based on that very premise (Scott Wiener has repeatedly framed it as protecting transwomen from rape) if the bill is about protecting males from male violence. (Of course, the same hypothetical male inmate who would rape transwomen can now also identify his way into a female prison…)
The vast majority of the public does not want this. If women were not systematically ignored, silenced and dismissed, we would not be where we are today.
Women’s concerns about male violence have long been dismissed as hysteria, bigotry, or prudishness, and proponents of Self ID laws and policies followed the playbook from day 1. SB 132 grants inmates the right to be recognized as the “gender” that they identify as at that point in time (indeed, they can identify differently later), which entails being referred to with the pronouns of their choice and being searched by a prison guard of their “same gender” (the rights of female prison guards are of course completely overlooked, and they can now be forced to perform these procedures on male inmates). In regards to where they are to be housed, trans-identified inmates can choose men’s or women’s facilities based on where they feel “safest”.
After SB 132 was passed in the California Senate in May 2019, the co-sponsors “converted it to a two-year bill so that the co-sponsors and Senator Wiener could meaningfully integrate feedback collected from a survey of the ~1,200 trans, gender-nonconforming and intersex people currently in CDCR custody.”
Not only did Wiener not consult with incarcerated women, WOLF reported that during a virtual town hall, “in his four-and-half minute response on SB 132, Wiener did not once address the concerns of these women. Instead, the state senator resorted to smearing the women bravely speaking up on this issue.” He handwaved women’s concerns with vague and lazy misrepresentations: “Unfortunately there’s been a right-wing backlash against this law and we have right-wing publications that are publishing a lot of just inaccurate information, frankly fake news, about this law and trying to demonize and scapegoat trans people including, unfortunately, there’s a term called ‘TERF,’ trans-exclusive radical feminist people who believe that trans women are not actually women and advocate in that way.” “These are the same arguments we heard in North Carolina restroom law, that trans women are just trying to scam their way into a women’s restroom to victimize cisgender women.”
In other words, and I am going to use words to which we can all agree, when a person who was born with a penis says that they are in danger, they are to be believed, no questions asked, and they are to decide which facilities they will live in, no questions asked. But when a person who was born with a vagina says that they are in danger, they are to be dismissed as bigots, liars and connivers.
Amie Ichikawa, ED of Woman II Woman, said “The terror, abuse, and cruelty incarcerated women are experiencing because of Scott Wiener’s bill is not ‘fake news.’ I speak to these women every single day. They are devastated. They don’t understand how their elected officials, especially those who claim to care about justice reform and protecting women of color, could turn a blind eye to what is happening here.” Amie and others also point out, in this discussion about a trans-identified female inmate who was retaliated against for speaking out against sexual harrassment committed by a male inmate, that those behind SB 132 have zero concern for trans-identified females; their efforts are solely for the benefit of trans-identified males.
This is basic, age-old sexism. And it’s infuriating.
But– Amie sent photos of our protest to incarcerated women who were “shocked” and “very moved that anyone would do this for them”. They asked, “Who are these women? Why would they stand up for us?” And Amie replied, “They are women who give a shit and are doing something about it.”
So, the action was very much worth it, but we need to find ways to reach larger audiences with more effective messaging. We should try to ask questions of those who think they are on the other side: Let the Socratic method reveal to them how little they know and how illogical and sexist their thought process is. In our communications overall, it’s important to undo the notion that removing women’s spaces is in any way a progressive development. Women’s human rights are being violated. It is not more complicated than that. We, as women and as advocates, have been harmed by the narrative pushed by both transactivists and the traditional conservatives (I explained here how these are simply two flavors of conservative) that the only people opposing this are conservatives. They both benefit from this framing and from distorting or making invisible the work and arguments of feminists.
It is noteworthy that most of the people who expressed support for us that day were women, but they didn’t engage much, and the very first people to approach us were an enthusiastic family visiting from the UK – or “Terf Island” as they said. These actions build community and give people comfort and strength in knowing they are not alone. There need to be more.
It’s ironic that white guy #2 compared us to the stuffy adults in Footloose, because I am partly from a country that imprisons people for dancing–now, in 2023. It is precisely this fact, and the killing of women who refuse to cover their hair, and the killing of youth who protest the tyranny, that strengthens my resolve to face my minor discomforts and put myself out there. Defending the human rights of female prisoners in California is part of the struggle for women everywhere. Here like in Iran, women are oppressed on the basis of being born in a female body. The woke love to masquerade as allies to “women of color”, but by denying the reality of sex-based oppression, and by systematically opposing women’s efforts to have a social movement focused on the dismantlement of that oppression, they support societal and institutional sexism everywhere.
For women who aren’t incarcerated, who aren’t homeless, who aren’t lesbian, who aren’t hedging our careers on a female-only scholarship, it’s easy to ignore the whole thing (while secretly trusting that other women will – as always – do the thankless work of defending the rights you enjoy) so that you can keep your good standing. If solidarity is too much to ask for, at least know that at some point, it will cost you too.
It’s time for more courage, and a lot more protests.
Woke culture has overtaken the vegan and animal rights movements and the effects have been as harmful as elsewhere. I’ve spoken before about how, ironically, this has gone hand in hand with the sidelining of vegan radicals and the trend towards corporatization and pro-neoliberal discourse and activism. Indeed, “intersectional veganism” and the pro-corporate vegan movement are two sides of the same coin.(1)
What I’ve not yet spoken about is the specific issue of sexism and anti-feminism in the AR movement–a topic that would have already been worthy of discussion before the adoption of gender ideology by much of the movement. I don’t know if animal rights/vegan circles and organizations are particularly bad for women in relation to other social movements (it’s not like non-vegan leftist men have a good track record either, and veganism also holds appeal for those who lean right) but I do know that in absolute terms, it’s pretty bad. Now it has gotten even worse. Woke culture has veered the AR movement in an anti-feminist direction, and in some ways this movement is more susceptible than others to the unquestioning acquiescence to the edicts of SJW thought leaders.
With gender ideology, we’ve gotten to a place in the AR movement where women are branded as TERFs; driven out of their organizations; denied platforms and funding due to their feminism; in my case have their work plagiarized (so that I don’t get credit and visibility from it); blacklisted and excluded from events; and the women who avoid these consequences do so at the cost of never publicly voicing their feminist views. Either that, or they just leave the movement.
I wanted to share a dispatch from the closet that many feminist animal rights activists have been shoved into. It’s an email that was sent to me by a female acquaintance after I wrote my post last year on being dropped as an author from an animal rights anthology. I’m sharing it with her permission and I edited it very slightly to keep it anonymous.
Hi Nassim,
Ugh, I don’t know where to begin…
Your early FB posts on this, and Mary Kate’s writings prompted me to pay closer attention.(2) And then I heard that MK got *fired* from her job because of something she’d written -wtf?
A lot of the verbiage had been troubling me but it wasn’t until I read of Meghan Murphy’s talk (in a Canadian library) being hounded and shut down that, with horror and disbelief, I started reading about what had been developing in the past several years, especially in the UK.
I wanted to write to you, especially when you posted your last piece on FB re being dismissed from the book, but, coward that I am, was ashamed to be another of the many women who tell you of their admiration and support, but will not also speak up.
I’ve been following a number of sources and barely have the emotional strength to read about it let alone act.
Not only am I struggling to make a living, but the wildly dystopian and incomprehensible nature of what has manifested out of the whole shift from what I thought was settled years ago— that “gender” is a set of artificial “norms“ imposed, especially on women, not a fixed set of behaviors that one can escape or adopt by “identifying” or surgically altering one’s body—is deeply troubling and frightening…
When I was last with a group of friends, one said,
“Well, I don’t think I’d go as far as to agree with Mary Kate, but…”
What?, but hers is just basic feminism…
I’ve tried writing about it but the fury leaves me unable to focus on anything else.
The lock-step anti-“TERF“ comments I see on FB, by people who consider themselves deep-thinking progressives … is dumbfounding.
At the Conscious Eating Conference at the end of Feb, just before the lockdown, Pax, acting as conference host and moderator, stood at the podium to introduce Carol J. Adams, and found it relevant to loudly assert that “Trans women *ARE* women”.. and the room erupted in wild applause. (3)
Enough for now…
.
Notes:
(1) While I have long opposed “intersectionality” as understood in the animal rights/vegan movements, this does not at all reflect an opposition actual intersectionality, as formulated by Kimberlé Crenshaw.
(2) She is referring to Mary Kate Fain, who was kicked out of an animal rights organization she had founded (not only kicked out, but accosted by AR activists who hurled abuse at her on the street). After losing her job she went on to found the feminist website 4W, that in a short amount of time has become one of the most important resources for the feminist movement and that hosts the writings of dozens of women from around the world (and pays them too!); she co-created Spinster, an alternative platform to Twitter which has the habit of booting off uppity women; she is a prolific writer who also recently started a podcast, and on top of that got a job with a radical feminist organization. Basically Mary Kate is some sort of Wonder Woman who could have put her talents towards animal liberation, but the movement preferred to hound her out.
(Read Mary Kate’s story of losing her job in her article Fired For Feminism.)
(3) The Conscious Eating conference is organized by Hope Bohanec, the editor who dropped me from her book because of my feminism. From my interactions with her, it became clear that she has little experience with and interest in human-related issues but strives to tick the requisite boxes of diversity so as to avoid criticism. Being of relative privilege and disconnected from much of the oppression that women experience in this world, she thinks that “transwomen are the most oppressed of women”. This conference took place shortly after Hope dropped me from her book. The focus that year was “to explore overlapping oppressions”; a panel on the history of the animal rights movement with prominent female activists was titled Animal Rights Herstory Panel.
By Pax she is referring to Pax Ahimsa, a trans-identified female who started “educating” the AR movement on gender ideology, “inclusivity” etc etc years ago. Pax’s blog reveals a person who has no grasp of basic feminist analysis and whose ideas are in complete opposition to it.
Carol J. Adams is a renowned vegan second wave feminist who, interestingly, has been attacked by trans activists for various reasons in the past, but is now seemingly on board with gender ideology and has become mealy-mouthed on sex and gender, presumably to gain the approval of the “intersectional vegan” crowd. Maybe this is the sad result of having built an audience composed more of vegans than of feminists.
To see then how women have nonetheless managed to speak, and connect, and be heard, and raise awareness, and find solidarity, and organize, and have an impact, is amazing. This past Friday, as Germany’s repressive, regressive, wholly misogynistic Self-ID law went into effect, women from East to West rose up and said NO. We went to German consulates and embassies, and those who couldn’t posted pictures online. Grassroots activism doesn’t have to be about getting hundreds or thousands into the streets; there are so many ways that one can build a powerful movement and that something relatively small or accessible, like posting a picture with a hashtag, can have a big impact. The importance of creativity in particular shouldn’t be overlooked.
