In lots of ways families are natural groups that people form to care and support each other. But there’s another, more sinister dimension to “The Family” that oppresses people (especially when those people are women, queer or children).

The Family isn’t just a natural social unit based on caring anymore. It is a rigid economic grouping of people into cramped lodgings and restrictive economic relationships. The Family ceases to be natural the moment that it becomes economically necessary.

The Family subverts the individual. Women are devalued in by an economic system that doesn’t pay them for any housework or child raising labour. Children are totally dependent on their parents for housing and food, and they are totally subject to their parents’ will. The most authoritarian relationship within society is that between parent and child. Some parents invert this relationship and become servants of their children, but they have the quick-release of adulthood – at any time they can regain their authoritative power. When you can no longer choose an alternative, then your individuality is no longer valued. You become “a wife” and “a mother”, and no longer have a name but “honey” or “mum!”.

Individuals who don’t fit within The Family structure find themselves: suffering under the dictatorial yoke of parents and patriarchs; cast into reactive youth cultures; or stoically struggling to maintain a single-parent family on the dole. The Family is the basis of society and to not fit in the family is to be different.

The Family benefits big capital because when individual workers group together, pooling their resources to survive. Wages only need to increase in line with the cost of providing a survival allowance to groups, not in line with the cost of supporting individuals in society. Only 80 years ago, the controllers of wages in Australia would calculate what a woman’s wage was worth by assuming that she lived with a husband and child who would each work – a woman’s wage was 70% of a man’s; a child’s wage about 60%. The Family in Australia has its roots in an economic unit where each party was bound to group together by the need to pool their wages to provide food and shelter for themselves as a group. The man, woman and child were all stuck - but women and children more so.

The Family takes on the cost of child raising and education. Choosing which school your kids goes to is an economic choice – what can you afford? If you sacrifice now, will your child become Prime Minister some day?

Today, little changes. The nature of family is still gendered.

This is a rough derief from the Subplot convergence

Look at what subplot tells us about the scene at large, and the scene’s hostile attitude to feminism
approach to activisim very vague
approach to theory and practice very vague and apolitical
approach to activism that emphasises “what’s happening out there”, not what’s actually affecting us
approach to activism that de-emphasises the struggle of everyday life (is this because its student-dominated and they don’t yet need to struggle with the imposition of everyday life??)
should be engage with the politics of DIY and try to embellish / respond to those politics?

• There was a general DIY feeling
• very low level of politics - especially feminist politics
• people wanted us to wrap and deliver the politics to them on a platter
• lots of informal networks created, it was good for forbes organising, maybe not for awol
• the structure(lessness) of subplot lead to it being very fluffy, and studenty - this wasn’t really shaped to “what we as awol wanted”
• we felt we provided the token womens group, and this was a product of the structurelessness of subplot - womens politics needs to be consciously taken up, and structurelessness doesn’t allow this
• there were criticisms of our workshop being a womens only space. there’s a general feeling that women should be equal with men, give men a chance, or educate men about feminism. one guy did want to come, and he seemed nice, so it was a bit hard to tell him to leave (thanks Rox for doing it)
• Cotton (from queeruption) made a comment to Amy that she enjoyed it being a fem-only space, and that the conference was a bit intimidating for women
• the attendees weren’t new to organising, but seemed passive. They were politically passive. we see this as a movement away from politics in general (and toward organising / campaigning). we see this as symptomatic of DIY ideology in general.
• We didn’t really get to the practical side of our organising / struggle for autonomy
• This raises the questions: are we about action, or theory, or both? were these actions (subplot and the last weekend) contrary to our own aims and analyses?
• we feel we just filled a void for fem-politics at subplot
• the openness of subplot simply rewards privilege by creating spaces where educated white males can dominate (which they did)
• On the monday, women were speaking about the lack of facilitation and how they weren’t feeling very comfortable in workshops
• The zine was good - lots of good comments about it
• Interesting question: what is the role of men in womens struggle?
  
  • Men should hold pro-feminist discussion groups where they come to terms with their privilege as men in a patriarchy
  • they should invite women to tell them how it is, and treat us like honoured guests
  • At the next conference, we should schedule a workshop called “Educated White Heterosexual Males Anarchists With Decent Incomes Deal With Their Privilege”, see who turns up and lock the door on them. ha ha ha.
• Did we touch a nerve with saying it was a womens only space? why do men not give a fuck when we organise openly, but want to come in as soon as we declare an autonomous space??
• Transexualism (can men in skirts enter a women-only space?)
  
  • Part of drag is enforcing patriarchy. A man’s right to ‘change gender’; a man’s take on ‘what a woman should be’; a man’s impression that ‘a woman is her purse and lipstick’. Maybe this is more about transvestism than about transexualism.
  • Is a woman in drag more confronting? probably. she challenges the patriarchal notion that a woman can’t control her self/image/gender and must be constructed from without
  • Some transgender people are genuine about being female / woman. Should be wary of making generalisations.
  • Men who identify as women have an obligation to be pro-feminist, or at least not to be anti-feminist

Going places that scare me: Challenging Male Supremacy

I came across this article on Autonomy and Solidarity. Its interesting because it is written by a male who seems to be genuinely struggling with his sexism and privilege. He can’t be said to have “succeded” at unprivileging himself, but he does highlight different techniques that were used to confront him about his sexism. The most interesting point was that after refraining from speaking in meetings, waiting for women to speak, trying to listen to women, he has a moment of realisation: even the actions he took to redress his privilege were actions of power. For a man to just say “I recognise gender privilege and sexism” is an action that privileges him as an “enlightened man”.

This article might form a good basis for sistas who did want to confront their male friends about sexism.

I struggle everyday to really listen to voices I identify as women’s. I know my mind wanders quicker. I know that my instant reaction is take men’s opinions more seriously. I know that when I walk into rooms full of activists I instantly scan the room and divide people into hierarchies of status (how long they’ve been active, what groups they’ve been part of, what they’ve written and where it’s been published, who are their friends). I position myself against them and feel the most competitive with men. With those I identify as women, the same status hierarchies are tallied, but sexual desirabilty enters my hetero mindset. What is healthy sexual attraction and desire and how does it relate to and survive my training to systematically sexualize women around me? This gets amplified by the day-to-day reality that this society presents women as voiceless bodies to serve hetero-male desire, we know that. But what does it mean for how I communicate with my partners who are women and who I organize with? How does it translate into how I make love, want love, express love, conceptualize love? I’m not talking about whether or not I go down on my partner or say I love you, I’m talking about whether or not I truly value equality in our relationships over getting off on a regular basis.

One of the shining lights in the working womens movement today is the Global Womens Strike. AWOL totally support and encourage women to take strike action to unravel the yoke that binds us to capitalism and patriarchy.

This is a statment explaining the GWS from their website.

Demands of the Global Womens Strike

The Strike and its demands give a unique framework for grassroots women and girls to express our needs whatever our situation, race, nationality, age, income, occupation, dis/ability, sexual preference . . . in towns and cities but also in villages, where most of us live. We hope that whatever demands you highlight or add, you will list them ALL. The demands unite everyone taking part in the Strike, and to each local action they bring international power.

The anti-globalisation, anti-war movement, to which women are contributing so much hard work and energy, is just beginning to recognise that Invest in Caring not Killing is a perspective for winning.

That is why the central demand of the Strike is:

• Payment for all caring work — in wages, pensions, land and other resources. What is more valuable than raising children and caring for others? Invest in life and welfare, not military budgets and prisons.
• This establishes women’s entitlement – though we do the basic work in every society, our contribution is uncounted. The other demands are about specific needs, showing the ways that this first basic demand would change the world.
• There has never been so much wealth in the world and there have never been so many of us, starting with women and children, who have nothing. At this crucial moment, we women must make our voices heard and our collective power felt.

Demands:

• Payment for all caring work - in wages, pensions, land & other resources. What is more valuable than raising children & caring for others? Invest in life & welfare, not military budgets or prisons
• Pay equity for all, women & men, in the global market.
• Food security for breastfeeding mothers, paid maternity leave and maternity breaks. Stop penalizing us for being women.
• Don’t pay ‘Third World debt’. We owe nothing, they owe us.
• Accessible clean water, healthcare, housing, transport, literacy.
• Non-polluting energy & technology which shortens the hours we work. We all need cookers, fridges, washing machines, computers, & time off!
• Protection & asylum from all violence & persecution, including by family members & people in positions of authority.
• Freedom of movement. Capital travels freely, why not people?

Why go on strike?

Women do the work of giving birth to, feeding and caring for the whole world. Those in whom we have invested our lives are slaughtered as ‘collateral damage’ or turned into killing machines. And so we have been central to every anti-war movement. It is a disaster that only half the human race is trained to care and the other half told it has ‘more important things to do’.

As corporate power and its wars threaten every corner of all our lives, people everywhere have formed massive movements – to reclaim our land and our planet, and to stop the theft (via privatisation) of water, seeds, genes . . . The Global Women’s Strike, women’s independent voice in this great movement, reclaims military spending for caring, feeding, healing, learning.

Strike for:

• A world which values all women’s work and all women’s lives.

Strike against:

• “America’s new war” and all wars - women & children are most of those killed & wounded, and 80% of refugees.
• Globalisation - an end to no pay, low pay and too much work.

Can anyone deny that production should be at the service of caring, not killing and profit? Yet $800+ billion is spent on arms each year – and more money has been committed to bombing countries like Afghanistan where people are starving, and persecuting or imprisoning anyone anywhere who dares to oppose.

A strike is the strongest weapon that workers have, and women, who do 2/3 of the world’s work, are the hardest workers. When we stop, everything is disrupted.

Women and girls in over 60 countries made the first two Strikes a success by taking at least some time off from their work, waged as well as unwaged.

Of the world’s 100 largest economic entities, 51 are corporations and 49 are countries.

People everywhere see that governments are promoting corporate greed against us while lining their own pockets. They impose structural adjustment programmes and cuts in services and welfare benefits, impoverishing us and imposing killing overwork.

The gap between women’s wages and men’s is 25%-50% and growing, lowering our pensions and our social power at every age.

Together the Strike and its demands give a unique framework for grassroots women and girls to express our needs whatever our situation, race, nationality, age, income, occupation, dis/ability, sexual preference . . . in towns and cities but also in villages, where most of us live.

The demands unite everyone taking part in the Strike, and to each local action they bring international power.

(Yes, this contains all my typoes, please correct them! - Except perhaps ‘emotional cement’)

Let’s go AWOL

Anti-capitalist
Autonomous
Anti-authoritarian
WOmens
Liberation

Priorities which shape an AWOL perspective:

Opposining Sexual Violence

• Our direct / indierct experience of it
• strategies for dealing with it as it arises in everday life in our “sub-cultures”
• sexual violence as all-pervasive “culture”, permeating all dominant sexual imagery and our own sexual conditioning
• Reproductive freedom
• Abortion and the current reactionary offensive
• reproductive autonomy in general: the right to knowledge and control over our own bodies; the deliberate lack of access to information about contraception, sexuality, motherhood and relationship choices, and menstruation, especially for young and not-so-young women

Unpaid Labour

• Broad understnaging that womens’ labour in the home (and beyond) is central to the functioning of the capitalist system participation and support for the Global Womens’ Strike, which takes place on IWD and highlights the need to divert funding ffrom military spending, over to paying for ‘caring work’, largely unpaid (or grossly underpaid) – came out of the Wages for Housework Campaign, has taken off in many places around the world, including Venezuela.

Outworkers and fashion fascism

• Women are explited at both ends of the production equation within the “fashion” industries: as producers of garments, and as consumers bullied into spending big on clothes made by sweated labour
• narrow, manipulative, and inherently violent notions of beauty imposed on us at every turn (ties in with the sexual violence angle)
• Shedding the layers of conditioning which represses our Autonomy
• The dead weight of our rigourous training to repress our Autonomy:and into our sexual roles as – sex object (or aspiring sex object), obedient worker, dutiful housewife and childbearer/childrearer, discinpliner of the “next wave of labour” (i.e. Children), and all-round dispenser of emotional support and effection to males the world over – forever projecting permanent sexual availability, and existing in a prision/factory of domesticity.
• The role of the church, family and spectacle (perpetrated by the media) in cementing this
• strategies for reversing this process
  
  • emotional cement for autonomy
  • excercising our capacity to live out other, more preferable roles

Queerness and Sexual Autonomy

• Naming our sexuality for ourselves
• living out a sexuality that is autonomous, that is, not necessarily revolving around or even wanting men in the picture
• living out a sexuality that is entirely at odds with the socially-restricted role cut out for us by capitalist patriarchy (as outlined above)

*Lastly, an AWOL persepctive is relevant to ALL other forms and areas of organising,and/or creation of social spaces. *

by A