I know I've advocated a lot for leftists to own firearms for self defense, and I can't overstate the importance of that in the age of rising fascist violence. But I do think it's important to talk about how the mythos of violent revolution is inherently patriarchal...
I'm going to say a lot of things, and I'm mostly saying them to the folks who most need to hear them: cis het men who identify as leftists. Socialization and gender are complex. This might resonate with anyone. If you identify with "we" when I say it then you're my audience too..
The symbol of a Molotov thrown at a cop, or a revolutionary with an AK resonates with a lot of folks. For a long time I listed to @RATM , and dreamed of a future where I could fight back instead of just be stepped on for the rest of my life...
I wanted to be a revolutionary hero. A lot of young men do. The problem is that the hero mythos erases a lot of the really hard (generally feminized) work needed to carry a revolution *through* a conflict in to a new world. Hero stories are easy to tell, but collective ones: no..
Even worse, hero stories often center around men. These stories are told not just because they're easy, but because they fulfill the pattern we expect from being raised in a patriarchal society. When we identify with and enact these patterns, we replicate the dominate society...
There is no true revolution that doesn't abolish patriarchy. If we replicate the patterns of the dominant society, we replicate it's structure. We create new ways to enact the same old oppression. We reproduce the system we set out to destroy..
The fantasy of violent revolution devalues human life. It makes people expendable. If you've ever watched a birth or been a parent, you understand just how much work goes in to keeping a kid alive for even the first 6 weeks...
I'm not saying violence isn't sometimes necessary within a revolutionary context. I'm saying that avoiding violence should be a goal, and if you're using violence it's because you failed. Violence not glorious; it's a fuck up. It's OK to fuck up, but not optimal...
If a conflict has reached the point where it seems like the only appropriate resolution is "kill them," it better be (1) unavoidable community defense or (2) that there's been at least as much work to avoid that conclusion as there was to bring that life in to the world...
If you aren't putting in work trying to figure out how to avoid conflicts where people get hurt or killed then you are devaluing the reproductive labor of bringing life in to the world and the value of often feminized healing work. You are replicating patriarchy...
I'm not saying something stupid like "don't defend people." Absolutely fight fascists in the streets. Absolutely punch fascists in the face when appropriate (and, actually, when inappropriate, if funny). But, like... babysitting is actually really radical...
And also that maybe "up against the wall motherfucker" and guillotines are actually not constructive or helpful. Maybe the billionaires aren't really that big of a threat when their money is meaningless. Maybe the bigger punishment for their greed is to survive... maybe...
If we want everything to be different, then *we* have to be different. We have to do hard work. Getting shot is easier than you might think. Organizing a meal train for someone is hard. Getting arrested is easy and glorious. Organizing a local book-fair is the opposite...
Speaking of which, @seattlebookfair: you're awesome. You know who you are. Every organizer, from every year: You are loved and appreciated for doing hard work. :)
That's all...
That's all...
The work of the revolution isn't in the battles we could fight, but in the things we build when no one is looking. It's in the invisible. That's the beauty of our revolution. Patriarchy looks for heroes to kill, so we can do our most radical work without even being noticed...
Police infiltrate leftist groups all the time to try and undermine their activities. Some of the most radical thing we can possibly do are so mundane that infiltrators will just quit because they can't see that anything is even happening (the same reason many of us quit)...
We don't need to all become revolutionary heroes with guns to change the world. We need to start doing feminized labor like organizing events and gatherings, doing healing work, cooking for each other, thinking about how to support and raise kids (not necessarily our own), etc.
In the Art of War, Sun Tzu (yup, I'm doing this) talked about how for every soldier in the field there were seven (IIRC, been a while since I read it) at home providing the support: farming, blacksmithing, etc. Wars can't be fought with soldiers alone. Invisible work is essential
It is specifically the fact that feminized labor is invisible that actually makes that work the most interesting from a revolutionary perspective. If feminized labor is made invisible by the system, then it doesn't exist to the actors enforcing the system's will from within...
Anything that doesn't exist can't be a threat. Anything that's not a threat, won't be stopped. There exists quite a lot of invisible labor that is *extremely* dangerous to the system. Free Breakfast for Children was one of the most radical projects ever...
The sooner we learn to abolish the value system of patriarchy, the sooner we become animated by feminist instead of patriarchal models, the sooner we destroy this system that is destroying us all.
This is basically what I'm trying to say, but said in a much better way:
