A-Infos (en) Anarchy or patriarchy

[Léo Vidal <lthiers@hol.fr>]

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Anarchy or patriarchy?

Between May 8-10 1998, La Gryffe, an anarchist book shop in Lyon
(France),
organized a series of anarchist days. These three days were meant as an
opportunity " to take stock of the social movement, the forms of
struggle,
the anarchist movement since May '68 and to think about future means to
act
upon the world."

These three days have illuminated a paradox of the anarchist movement.
The
questioning of society in its entirety remains in reality limited to the
questioning of the 'public' sphere, the only one to be considered as
political. It unfortunately avoids doing this via the questioning of
what
happens in the 'private', 'personal' sphere (as well inside militant
groups
as in individual households), one which remains considered
non-political,
and even non -social... As if, on the one side, there were individuals
whose psychology, behavior and relations were determined separately from
society and social relationships, through 'free will' and, on the other
side, social relations, apparently assimilated to abstractions, empty of
all meaning since they are emptied of individuals... .

Despite a stated desire for openness to the struggle against patriarchy
from the organizers of these three days of discussion, we have
nonetheless
experienced a denial of the oppression of women and a stigmatization of
the
non-mixed feminist movement that denounces that oppression. This was the
motivation for the feminist challenge expressed during the plenary
meeting
of Sunday afternoon.

How did this come about?

Did you say... institutional violence?!

During the debate on 'institutional violence in the activist community',
Friday, the question of male power was addressed very superficially. In
response, several interventions by women tended to demonstrate that the
'militant leadership' is almost systematically exercised by men. This
problem of male power was both overtly denied (certain persons saying
that
the women who spoke up were 'changing the subject') and shored up with
attempted justifications, such as the following recurring arguments:

- The necessity of transmitting and/or sharing militant and political
knowledge, implicitly conceptualized as detained, of course, by the
'trained' or 'experienced' activists, hence by the present leaders. As
these leaders are 99.9% men, this argument implies that knowledge would
be
exclusively detained by men, while women would be 'more practical'
(sic).
But how come there never are 'trained' or 'experienced' female
activists?

The concept of voluntary servitude, one that absolves dominants (men,
whites, straights...) of their responsibility and shifts it on the
dominated. In this way, oppression becomes a personal, psychological
thus
non-social problem.

We can thus observe how, on the issue of women's oppression, several
anarchists claim that each individual is able to STRUCTURE HIM/HERSELF
outside of social gender relations. Nevertheless, they do not deny that
other social relations define individuals in relationship to each other.

" I'm anarchist, thus I'm antisexist ". But what form does this
antisexist
struggle take? What demands are voiced to the outside world? What
vigilance
do we show toward oppressive patterns inside our groups? And which
personal
questioning do allow? The minute number of actions that can be organized
are mainly reflective of the public sphere and are never interrelated;
they
do not integrate the forms of oppression prevalent in the private sphere
and that also benefit anarchist men...  This leads to the exclusion of
the
all-important feminist concept 'the private is political'.

The notions of sexism and of antisexist struggle as they are used in the
anarchist movement, absolutely do not account for the existence of
patriarchy, i.e. a social relationship of dominance (and thus
oppression)
exerted by the male gender against the female gender. This view of
sexism
seems limited to discrimination based upon gender, nothing more : yet,
in
society, there isn't only gender-based discrimination, but also an
asymmetric social position  based upon gender. We women and men are not
assigned to the same hierarchical place in society. The current form of
anarchist antisexism isn't enough because it only takes into
consideration
a part of the problem, and often serves to mask its very foundation.
This
form of antisexism de facto refuses to acknowledge - contrary to
feminism -
a specific oppression of women by men, an oppression that differs if
women
are lesbians, bi- or heterosexuals. This antisexism reduces oppression
to
alienation, one that would 'equally' apply to men and women.

Non-mixed female organizing on trial !

Friday evening, we had to endure hostile responses to non-mixity during
the
projection of the video 'Feminist chronicles' in a non-mixed female
setting. These discussions continued on the following day after during
the
non-mixed female debate on anarchafeminism.

During this debate, WHO WAS WRITING HISTORY ?

" 1968 and after, thirty years of social movements " – This discussion
offered us 3 or 4 'historical
leaders', but no single person to express the experience of one of the
most
important social movements of that period : the women's liberation
movement. We may think that, even if it wasn't intentional, there
occurred
a reproduction of the marginalisation of women's struggles in this
programming.

But, it's during the debate on patriarchal order, Saturday afternoon,
that
the antifeminist reactions have been the most violent and provoked our
response : from our feminist point of view, it was impossible to ignore
such a backlash. What we witnessed was indeed a TRIAL rather than a
debate.
Its very form made this debate an act of aggression and a condemnation
of
our struggle practices, viz. :

- the use of anecdotal examples to generally question feminist and
lesbian
feminist struggles;
- men using the words of women opposed to non-mixity in order to divide
us
once more, and in order to condone their anti-feminism while setting
themselves up in a position of arbitrator.

This debate served to deny our commitment and the legitimacy of our
analysis; a will to shut us up was clearly expressed.

Denouncing and attacking female non-mixity, as was done there, is also a
way of suggesting  that a real mixity exists. Yet, we believe that
mixity
is an illusion: either it is almost non-existing (in the workplace, at
school from the very first orientation choices, in political
organizations,
in unions...), or, on those rare occasions where it occurs, it is
inequalitarian i.e. a minority of men is occupy the center, while women
are
kept at the periphery, reduced to a role of spectators, a second-class
role, bound to the norms defined by these men and to the male power of
which they are depositaries. This uncritical primacy granted to mixity
also
denies the necessity for the oppressed to organize by themselves against
their oppression and their oppressors...  That the oppressed should
become
the SUBJECTS of their struggles is nevertheless an anarchist principle;
many of us thus found it impossible and useless to speak up and attempt
to
justify something that shouldn't call for justification: the way in
which
this debate has taken place well illustrates the power relations created
in
a mixed setting, doing so even better than whatever argumentation.

Men complain to feel excluded  by female non-mixity, yet, when given an
opportunity to deal with the issue of mixity under the theme 'the
patriarchal order', they divert the debate by steering and limiting it
to
accusations leveled at on-mixity... . This well demonstrates the
necessity
of female non-mixed
gatherings to REALLY work AGAINST the patriarchal order!

Consequently, we decided on a collective process to prepare an
intervention
during the last debate on Sunday concerning 'the future of the anarchist
movement'. For us it was the opportunity to challenge the powers in
place:
those of men, those of leaders...

What anarchist future for the anarchist movement?

Male speakers were following one another at the podium, formulating
official versions of history, politics and the strategy of their
organizations... no single woman, no single lesbian on the horizon of
HIStory...

Our first action were placards reading  'SEXIST VIOLENCE' and a banner
asking 'IS THIS A NON-MIXED MEETING?' together with more placards of a
caustic but realistic humor. We wanted to illustrate, in a simplified
way
for material reasons, a simultaneous decoding of the pertinent dominant
discourses and how they were functioning' there. Another placard  'WITH
YOU, WITH US' was addressed to the
women critical of non-mixity.

Despite some remarks provoked by our presence (an eloquent one although
we
remained silent), the debate went on as if we didn't exist. WE
EXPERIENCED
BEING RENDERED INVISIBLE AS IS THE SITUATION OF WOMEN, LESBIANS AND
THEIR
STRUGGLE.

Our second action: our move from the periphery to the center of the
room.
WE WANTED TO TAKE OUR PLACE IN THE CENTRE OF THE PUBLIC SPACE IN AN
OFFENSIVE AND CHOS      EN MANNER. We are joined in our initiative by
other
women present
in the room. If we talked amongst each other, it was meant to render
visible the fact that in 'general', men speak amongst each other.
Tension
grew and one man shouted at us: 'sectarians', 'fascists', 'stupid
bitches'
(pauv'connes), 'lesbians'...  Worse, we found ourselves being accused of
manipulation by women inside our group, for so-called refusal to
communicate and sectarianism. These are traditional instruments of
power,
used by the dominants to maintain and reaffirm their domination: they
simply use against ourselves the critique we addressed to them. Most of
the
anarchist men refuse to include themselves in the group of the
oppressors,
even though some readily admit that this reality is the only point of
departure that could permit a questioning of this role and of their
participation in the maintenance of patriarchy.

Finally, certain persons stigmatized our so-called 'will to sabotage the
debate' , claiming to regret that the debate on the future of the
anarchist
movement couldn't take place 'normally'... . It's self-evident that we
regret that certain other debates (notably the one on patriarchy)
couldn't
take place 'normally' either... And our intention was, notably, to raise
awareness, in this debate, about of the place of feminist struggles
in the future of the anarchist movement. Thus our intervention was
totally
relevant to the issues in debate.

A profoundly anarchist action.

This action was based on a common motivation, but it's development was
completely spontaneous, as well as the choice of the women who joined
us,
and was entirely dependant of the reactions of the public. It could have
turned out completely different...

Our feminist action allowed us to raise several questions regarding
anarchist commitment and practices :

- Isn't analysis of male dominance, of women's oppression and of
lesbophobia a individual and collective work of all men and women ? And
what is the significance of the explanations or justifications being
systematically demanded from feminists ?

- How can we reflect on the articulation of the different struggles when
none of them is perceived as a 'specific' question ? Not only do we
refuse
the notion of a hierarchy of struggles but we also deem essential a
transversal vision of social and political reality.

- How do we perceive the relationship between individual/social
relations ?
What links do we acknowledge between he personal and the political ? How
are collective relations produced/reproduced in the private or personal
space ? How can an individual, an individual subject make political
choices
in a society that is constructed in unequal categories and classes ?

And always, Feminists as long as will be necessary !

Collective of the women, feminists  and lesbians
involved in the feminist action organized during the anarchist days of
May
8-10 in Lyon (France).


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