Episodes
Thursday Feb 20, 2020
Transcending the Transgender Debate
Thursday Feb 20, 2020
Thursday Feb 20, 2020
Here’s what the Corporatocracy is up to today, FEBRUARY 20, 2020.
Just days before the demcoratic primary in Iowa, Republicans were trying to push a bill through the Iowa state legislature. It was a bill to remove discrimination protections for transgender people. Transgender activists rallied to stop the bill, and on JAN 28th, the Republicans backed down and let the bill die in committee.
That same day, over in the state of Vermont, Trans activists were rallying to stop another action- this time it was an open public meeting to discuss -quote- “the unforeseen consequences of the transgender agenda.” It sounded like another hate-fest, like the one in Iowa, but then we saw the byline: -quote- “a public discussion about the subversion of Women's Rights by transgender people...” #WaitWut? ‘The subversion of Women's Rights by transgender people’? ...How..? Who was hosting this?! Surely, not the Republicans...
In a local article about the event, local critics claimed that it was just cleverly disguised “hate speech” aimed at transgender people. But one of the event organizers, Peggy Luhrs, said, -quote- “I'm a longtime, very out lesbian, and I have no problem with transgender people [but] this event is about protecting women's rights and lesbian rights. [And] the transgender agenda,” she said, “has had unforseen consequences...” -unquote-
Our core team at #WakingJustice includes some diversity on gender and sexuality, including lesbian, bisexual, straight female, and straight male persepctives. As a team, we try to explore issues like this together, ongoing, so we continue to build our team consensus on allyship...
It’s a three step-process for us, where first, we each reflect on our personal approach to allyship on a given issue. Then, second, we each present our personal views to the team; each person’s perspective is respected. It’s their personal truth relative to their own unique experience. Thus, we learn from each others’ unique perspectives and share feedback on what we’ve learned. Then third, we build a consensus perspective that represents our shared learning and agreements on the issue. It’s not always that simple, of course. But it’s always an enlightening and gratifying process. We all grow from the experience together– and we emerge stronger and more cohesive as a team.
So in our podcast today, we’re gonna summarizie our exploration of this debate among lesbians and transgender people. You might be surprised where it leads us… And like all allies should, we accept that we’re a work-in-progress. So we may get some stuff wrong here. But for those who may be grappling for understanding on this– as we are– we thought an earnest, transparent enquiry here might be helpful.
First– our take on true allyship is that it requires a critical set of skills. Especially for those who care about Global Justice... By definition, Global Justice is not just a collection of separate justice movements, but a global movement of coalescence across all sectors of global justice activism. No cause for justice is excluded. Whether your main emphasis is Social Justice, Democratic Justice, Environmental Justice and/or Animal Justice, we’re all fighting the same system. It’s a system wherein all structures of oppression are inter-connected. At its most fundamental level, it’s all based on a core human error: the idea that some lives matter more than others. We’re all born into it, and we all internalize it according to our various diversity.
So, true allyship begins with a deep internal reckoning; we have to deconstruct our own biases first. One useful method for this is called the practice of self-enquiry... It requires a deep yearning for truth and justice above all else. And it requires empathy, of course... But it also demands stamina and courage: the ongoing practice of self-enquiry is a constant questioning of our habits of thinking. For example: how have we come to believe in the things that we believe? What purposes of self-justification or self-comfort might they achieve? And are these purposes gained at the expense of others? Would we still believe the way we believe if we’d been born into others’ circumstances; if we’d been born in a different generation– or in a different race, class, culture, gender, or sexuality? Or even a different species? How might reversing our perspective inform our bias on certain issues, etc?
Does it sound like some heavy lifting? Indeed, sometimes it can be... But if you’re not continually exploring your own biases and confronting any hypocrisies you find– feeling the shame of it, sure, but then letting it go– and then applying what you learn with a willingness to make mistakes; not expecting forgiveness or pats on the back, but just to keep going and growing... If you’re not experiencing all that on a regular basis, then you might better check yourself. Chances are you’re just dicking around in some bubble of self-delusion. Again, no shame– it’s just human nature– and everyone needs some respite from it. When you’re ready, shake it off, get centered, and get back to work… ...
So having said all that, let’s explore this present debate in Vermont and see where it leads our enquiry... And upfront, we should first clarify our use of some key terms. In the following, when we refer here to transgender men, we’re referring to people who were born into a female body but whose gender expression is that of a man. They may be attracted to male and/or female bodies, but they self-identify as men and want to be recognized as men.
And when we refer to transgender women, we’re referring to people who were born into a male body, but whose gender expression is that of a woman. They may be attracted to male and/or female bodies, but they self-identify as women and want to be recognized as women. [There’s been much discussion of these terms in scientific literature over the past few decades, which we’ll summarize later on in the podcast.]
For now, maybe the easiest entry to this debate is to start with what most folks know as “the transgender bathroom issue”. As trans activist Jackson Bird has explained: “It's a huge point of discussion in trans communities about which bathroom to start using and when...[Trans people] don’t want to attract attention that could lead to violence against us...The truth is,” he says “we trans people are so much more scared of you than you are of us.” And he adds -quote- “Here's a fun fact about bathrooms: more US congressmen have been convicted of assaulting someone in a public bathroom than trans people have been. “ -unquote-
But Peggy Luhrs, the co-organizer of the Vermont event has said, -quote- “we're not out to make transgender people less safe…Transgender people are very oppressed…they have a lot of violence directed at them...[But]..this [debate] is about protecting women's rights and lesbian rights… The bathroom solution for trans women should not be at the expense of ‘women born women’ -unquote- [She’s referring here to lesbian and straight women whose birth sex was female and specifically excluding trans women].
She says, “...so when you [establish a law] that says anyone who identifies themselves as a woman can go into any private female spaces where women are vulnerable, such as public restrooms, public showers or locker rooms etc., it's an open invitation for someone who is a pervert to put on a skirt– or maybe not even bother and [just] go in and say ‘I'm female’ and get to be there. This is crazy,” she says.
Peggy explains that -quote- “Radical feminists” have been the main group that's brought up the bathroom issue...We are constantly told that the most oppressed people..who have the most violence against them are transgender women, but that is not true,” she says...
However, according to the Bureau of Justice, about “1 out of every 6 women in the US have been the victim of rape or attempted rape”; whereas over “1 out of every 5 transgender people have been sexually assaulted…” and about half “(46%!) of bisexual women report being raped in their lifetime.”
So Peggy Luhrs may be splitting hairs here about which group of women are most endangered. But these accounts of sexualized violence by men against lesbian, transgender, bisexual and cisgender women and transgender men are altogether wholly disturbing... In fact, the bathroom debate– while obviously very important for all stakeholders involved– seems to have become a proxy debate for a far deeper, much more insidious issue: that of sexualized male violence. It seems to be an exploding epidemic... So from here, we’ll redirect our enquiry to explore this broader issue of sexualized male violence in our society– what are its origins and impacts; why is it expanding at such staggering rates; and how can we all work together to reverse it, heal it, and end it…
Here are some further data we found on the issue [and we offer a trigger warning here that the following information includes some staggering facts about sexual and deadly assault...]. Check this shit out:
- Every 92 seconds, an American (age 12 or older) is raped or sexually assaulted.
- 90% of adult victims and 82% of all juvenile victims of rape are female.
- 94% of women who are raped experience symptoms of PTSD during the two weeks following the rape, and
- About one-third report PTSD 9 months after the rape.
- About one-third contemplate suicide...
- Every 9 minutes, Child Protective Services finds evidence of child sexual abuse.
- 99% of the rapists of women and children are men.
- 99.5% of all rapists never serve jail time for their offense...
Further, more than 38 million American women have been victims of other domestic violence by men. In fact, about 5 women are murdered every day in America by their male partners. In over 80% of those murders, the motive was that they were -quote- “having an argument”.
As author Margaret Atwood has said,”a man’s greatest fear is that a woman will laugh at him... A woman’s greatest fear is that a man will kill her.” … ...
“Violence against women [by men in the US] is so ubiquitous that it’s invisible,” says Dawn Wilcox. She’s a school nurse in Plano, TX who in her spare time runs a website called Women Count USA. It’s a project that honors victims of what she says is the unseen epidemic of femicide in America... Have y’all heard of this term? It was the first time we’d heard it...
The technical definition of “femicide” is -quote: “a gender-based hate crime, broadly defined as the intentional killing of gendered women or girls by men.” Or more succinctly, it’s “the misogynistic killing of women by men.”
Misogyny is uniquely attributed to men, but what is misogyny exactly? Our take is that it’s a belief system much like racism. Like racism, misogyny taps into the corruptive human faculties of hate, violence, and power. Of course, misogyny combines those further with the potency of sexuality. But like racism, misogyny is ultimately about power... Remember: in over 80% of murders committed by men against their female partners, the motive was that they were -quote- “having an argument”.
As Cornell philosophy professor Kate Manne argues “misogyny is about controlling and punishing women who challenge male dominance.” Professor Manne differentiates misogyny from sexism. Sexism is a gender ideology that variously stereotypes women as weak and needing protection; as nurturing caregivers; as objects of beauty and sexual purity; or conversely, as objects for sexual gratification. Professor Manne says,“such sexist ideology supports our [social system of Patriarchy], but it’s misogyny that enforces it when there’s a threat of that system...”
Patriarchy is “the social order that systematically gives power to men and disempowers women.” So, misogyny, she says, should not be understood just in terms of the hatred or hostility that some men feel toward women. Rather, [it's primarily about power.] It’s about controlling and punishing the "bad" women who challenge systems of Patriarchy. And it’s about rewarding "the good ones" who uphold systems of Patriarchy. But those divides are not always so straightforward.
An instructive example of this is former presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. There’s no doubt that candidate Clinton endured an onslaught of misogyny from men and even women who perceived her negatively as a feminist rejecting traditional gender roles and challenging male authority. However, many feminists actually saw Clinton’s candidacy as a betrayal of feminism and an endorsement of patriarchy. As renown feminist writer and activist bell hooks explained, -quote- “I can no longer be a Hillary Clinton supporter in the name of feminism.” Hillary, she said, is “a militarist, imperialist, and white supremacist.”
Of course, bell hooks wasn’t wrong about Clinton in those aspects. It’s widely known that Clinton was heavily favored by WallStreet and the Defense Industry. And Clinton was directly involved in “the largest increase of America’s prison system in US history” which disproportionately targeted Black people.” Hillary is considered a “corporate feminist” and those industries rewarded her as one of "the good ones" – a “corporate feminist” upholds the systems of Patriarchy. Corporate feminism is a perversion of feminism. And bell hooks understood this.
Corporatism and neoliberal globalization are ultimate expressions of misogyny. They are the super structures that enforce and reinforce the expansion of what bell hooks calls: white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy. Of course, Patriarchy and male domination have been around for centuries and dominate modern human society. And male-dominant patriarchy is common in other species as well. But what most folks don’t know is that most alpha species– those species that have evolved to the top of the food chain– are not patriarchal. In fact, alpha species are typically female-dominated:
For example, Orcas, or killer whales, live in a matriarchal society. Their offspring stay with their mothers for life – even after having offspring of their own. A pod of killer whales is made of multiple families, known as matrilines, which tend to travel together. Wolves are typically matriarchal as well. They have a dominance hierarchy that is separate by gender. The alpha male and alpha female work out pack leadership together. But leadership among wolves is typically matrilineal, reverting to the female. Similar to Wolves and Killer Whales, Lions live in large groups called prides. A pride consists of multiple related females and their dependent offspring along with two or three unrelated males. Female lions do the hunting (usually in groups) while male lions stay home and watch over the pride.
Matriarchy has also existed in human society as well. Human history and mythology tend to recognize matriarchal civilizations as more advanced and stable cultures. For example, the Iroquois of North America were among the most advanced indigenous societies, controlling pretty much all the eastern seaboard of North America and several hundred miles inland. And Iroquois society was matrilineal, meaning descent was traced through the mother’s lineage rather than the father. No child was born a "bastard" – the concept didn't exist. Iroquois husbands lived with the wife’s family. And if a husband was deemed unfit by the wife, his belongings would simply be placed outside the home, and he knew to move on.
Iroquois women were responsible for defining the political, social, spiritual, and economic norms of the tribe. Iroquois chiefs were men, but the chiefs were nominated by the women. And it was the women who made sure the Chiefs fulfilled their responsibilities. If a chief was deemed unfit to lead, the women would demote him and nominate a new chief.
The Iroquois Nation was a confederacy of six tribes that had established peace among themselves before Europeans came to America. The constitution of the Iroquois confederacy is known as -quote- The Great Law of Peace. It was the model for "the confederation of the original 13 European colonies, and informed many of the democratic principles that were eventually built into the US Constitution.”
The Iroquois women also inspired the feminist movement among colonial women, called the suffragette movement. Among the Iroquois, sexual assault was forbidden. Their men did not rape their women. But in white colonial America, a husband had the legal right to batter his wife. Marital rape was commonplace. It was allowed by both church and state. The courts would not accept cases of domestic assault or maital rape. The courts upheld that -quote- “to interfere would upset the domestic tranquility of the home". -unquote- Women fleeing from an abusive husband could be returned to him by the police, as runaway slaves were returned to their master. It wasn't simply that colonial women had no rights; once they married they had no legal existence. As the Church preached: In marriage, -quote- “the two shall become one and the one is the man".
The church was a major influence in colonial America, so early suffragettes mainly focused on a biblical basis for women’s rights and protections. Many risked their safety to openly debate the male leaders of the church about their rights as women. Lucretia Mott was one who argued that It wasn’t Christianity, but the male leaders of the church that subjugated women to control them. She said, “The Church and State have been united [by men] and it is well for us to [expose it]”. That was a brave and very bold indictment of church-and-state-sponsored Patriarchy by Lucretia Mott.
She and other early suffragettes including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage were openly critical of the use of biblical text to subvert women’s legal rights. They found the biblical story of Adam and Eve especially troubling. The story of Adam and Eve, of course, is the Judeo-Christian Creation story about how God made the world and the first humans. As the story goes, God made the heavens and the Earth and the animals and all of nature. And then God made Adam, the first man, and placed him in the Garden of Eden. When God saw that Adam was alone, he made Eve, the first woman as -quote- “a helper” for Adam.
They would live in the Garden of Eden together to care for the animals. God told them, -quote- "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They shall be yours for food...But you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” God warned them. That was forbidden. But eventually, Eve gave in to temptation and ate the forbidden fruit, and then she tempted Adam and he ate it too. When God found out, He cast them out of paradise for their sin of disobedience. And as further punishment, God cursed Man to work the fields for their food. And God commanded Woman to be subservient to man, and He cursed her with -quote-” the pains of childbirth...”
And that’s pretty much the Judeo-Christian version of the Creation story. Joseph Campbell, the renowned scholar of comparative mythology explains that there are many versions of such creation mythology in prehistory. The Judeo-Christian version was derived from other previous traditions in the Middle East; it uses some common themes but omits others.
Campbell says that creation myths are principally allegories for explaining the human psyche. Or at least the human psyche for the particular group of humans who invent them. For example, the Judeo-Christian version is an allegory for explaining the psyche of male patriarchy. Here’s what he means: In the Judeo-Chirstian Creation story, it is the man who is made in the image of God the father. Then God uses a rib from Man to create a woman for him. She is made to be Man’s helper. So, the woman is derivative and subordinate. And there’s no Goddess mother in this Creation story. Only God the father, and he is the sole creator. Nature and Eve are the only femine principles: nature is the maternal and nurturing femine principle. And Eve is man’s helper, but to both God and man’s great disappointment, Eve succumbs to evil and becomes man’s temptress; Woman is the cause of Man’s downfall.
God is not pleased with Man for succumbing to Woman’s weakness, but God is especially displeased with Woman. They are both banished from paradise, but Woman is singled out: she is -quote- “cursed with the pains of childbirth”, and she is put under the rule of man from that time forward...
Prior traditions from which the Judeo-Chirstian story was derived present God and Goddess as co-creators. In the prior traditions, Adam and Eve were equals. And the femine principle was revered as nature and nurturing; Woman represented wisdom and the regenerative power of fertility.
The Judeo-Christian version subverts the feminine principle. It eliminates the Goddess from the Godhead. The feminine principle of wisdom is recast as evil. And the regenerative power of fertility is stripped of its awe and mystery; childbirth is recast as a punishment for Woman’s sin.
So in the western psyche, the Judeo-Christian creation story becomes not the “Fall of Man” as it’s commonly referred to, but really the Fall of Woman... Patriarchy becomes the Divine order. Sexism against women is sanctioned and indoctrinated by the Church. And as suffragette Lucretia Mott observed, with “the union of Church and state”, structural sexism is variously institutionalized. Misogyny is enculturated... Indeed, it would be hard to overestimate the impact that this story of Adam and Eve has had on women in Western culture...
In the modern era, the power of the Church is much diminished. The state has fallen to corporate control. Representative democracy has been usurped by corporate plutocracy. But misogyny is retained to maintain social order and reinforce corporate rule. Misogyny has become corporatized, commodified, and mass produced. In this era of the corporate state, misogyny has become a profit center, expanded exponentially, and with obsessional efficiency.
One striking example of this is what’s called the pornification of western culture. Erotic art has existed in various forms throughout all human history. Carvings of figurines with exaggerated vulva or phallus have been carbon-dated back tens of thousands of years. Cave paintings of copulating couples and orgies with graphic depictions of sexual variety have been found as well. Ancient Middle East cultures carved similar scenes on clay tablets dating back to 4,000 BCE. And in Roman cities at the dawn of the common era, around the time of Christ, paintings and sculpture depicting diverse sexual acts were openly displayed in the homes of early Romans as well as in open public spaces.
As Church and State merged in the early common era, the early Church associated erotic arts with human degeneracy. Church fathers believed that sexuality transmitted original sin. So for nearly 1,500 years, erotic art was effectively banished from public spaces in western culture. It was not until the Renaissance period (16C) through the Enlightenment (18C), that erotic art re-emerged. And interestingly, it emerged in large part as a challenge to Church authority. With the invention of the printing press, erotic literature and imagery would gradually find its way to the masses. But it was still forbidden by law to circulate erotic art and literature.
By the 20th century, with the advent of motion film and print magazines, an underground industry of pornography was growing internationally. And just after mid century, in the late 1960s, western nations began legalizing pornography. Now, a half century later, with the advent of the internet, the porn industry has become "radically decentralized." Internet porn is among the most popular web content. Porn sites now get more visitors each month than Netflix, Amazon, and Twitter combined. And recent research has found that young boys are increasingly exposed to porn through social media sites like SnapChat and Instagram, which are becoming gateways for hardcore porn. As scholar and author Robert Jensen writes, pornography has become -quote- “the default for sex education..for boys and young men.”
What most folks may not know is that the most popular porn on the web promotes sexualized violence against women. In fact, aggressive acts against women in pornography occur in roughly 87% of the scenes, and 95% of the time when these acts are committed, the women actors respond with expressions of pleasure or neutrality.
As radical feminist, scholar, and ant-porn activist Gail Dines, explains: when the average 12-year-old boy enters "porn" into Google, within seconds he’s exposed to an array of free videos which depict hardcore sexualized violence to women.” [...and we offer a trigger warning here on the following graphic detail from Gail about how online porn has become hyper-sexualized violence...We believe her assessment is essential to understanding how pornography helps normalize misogyny, especially among young people these days...]
Gail says, “One of the first things this boy will see when he searches for porn via google is the main action on virtually all pornsites– it’s called gagging. It’s where the man puts the penis so far down her throat that she gags almost to the point of vomiting. They put a lot of mascara on her face, so that as she is tearing, you can see the rivulets of mascara running down her cheeks...he grabs her head, pulls it towards him, and tells her, "Look at me!" And she is choking!...Of course, the scene ends with what the industry calls -quote- ‘the money shot to the face’. This is a kind of sexual psychopathy,” Gail says.
Here’s Gail giving a sample of what this young boy will read when looking through regular “mainstream” porn sites on the web. [And again, we offer a trigger warning here regarding the graphic subject matter]. You can click here to hear Gail’s audio starting at 10:48 through 11:24. Or here’s a transcript of that clip from Gail [again, trigger warning re: graphic subject matter]:
“Here is the ad copy for the movie called "Anally Ripped Whores". It says, "We at Pure Filth know exactly what you want: chicks being ass-fucked till their sphincters are pink, puffy, and totally blown out. Adult diapers just might be in store for these whores when their work is done." This is the promotional copy. You don't need a PhD in media studies to understand the violence, and I want to make this clear: this is mainstream porn, this is what the 12-year-old boy gets to within 15 seconds…”
Again that was anti-porn activist Gail Dines… And understand: she’s talking about mainstream pornography... It’s ubiquitous across the internet today and begs the question: how is it impacting misogynistic attitudes among young men? Well here’s one hint: “a study by Princeton psychologists showed a group of men pictures of males and females, some barely clothed and some fully dressed. During the study, psychologists monitored the part of their brain that’s involved in recognizing human faces and distinguishing one person from another. When the participants viewed pictures of sexualized women, that part of the brain was not activated. Basically, the reaction suggests that men didn’t perceive sexulized women as distinct human beings, but more as objects or non-human animals.”
In another study, researchers found that U.S. college men who had watched porn in the previous 12 months were more likely to say that -quote- “they would commit rape or sexual assault if they knew they wouldn’t be caught” than men who hadn’t seen porn in the past 12 months.” That is a stunning, heart-breaking statistic…
Sexualized violence is part of a continuum of hyper-sexualized imagery across pretty much all mainstream media in western society. The net effect is that it reduces women and girls to sexual objects. More than two decades of research shows that exposure to sexualized images in mass media contributes to girls’ having an increased tendency to develop eating disorders and engage in self-harm. Today, about 1 out of 4 girls are self-harming – nearly four times as many girls as boys, and it’s on the rise. As Gail Dines says, mass corporate media is telling young girls, “you have two options, you can either look fuckable or be invisible, so which option do you think most teenage girls would choose?”
“In 2002, the lobbying arm of the porn industry won the legal right to use female actors who look under legal age; i.e. porn stars who could pass as young girls. And seemingly overnight, the porn industry began popularizing such titles as: -quote- “First time with Daddy”; -quote- “Daddy's Little Whore”; and -quote- “t's OK, She's My Stepdaughter”... How must young girls perceive self worth in a society that protects and rewards such pedophilia?
There is evidence that “for some adolescent girls, exposure to sexualized media is associated with an increased tolerance for sexual violence. Exposure to sexualized media has also led to a measured decrease in empathy for rape survivors.” ....What it all means is that the pornification of mass media culture is cultivating sexual predators among boys and men; and it’s turning girls and women against themselves and each other– Including lesbian, transgender, bisexual and cisgender girls and women....
If you’ve made it this far in the podcast, we think you’ll agree- this is some heartbreaking, gut wrenching information: at one level- the sexualized violence of the porn industry is destroying lives - directly and indirectly. At another level, the sexualized violence of porn serves as an adjunct to the broader, hypersexualized mainstream media in global society. It’s what Gail Dines refers to as the pornifcation of mainstream society. Ultimately though, the porn industry is a for-profit form of structural sexism. Much like the for-profit prison industry has become a for-profit form of structural racism. Both industries are part of what radical feminist bell hooks refers to as “white- supremacist- capitalist- patriacrhy”.
Though, respectfully, we would modify bell hooks’ term slightly to “white- supremacist- corporatist- patriarchy”. Replacing “capitalist” with “corporatist” seems more instructive to the current state of our supposed “representative democracy”. As Pulitzer Prize winning Journalist Chris Hedges has said, corporations now control all levers of democratic reform in America. Both political parties, our election system, the courts, and the mainstream media are all near fully controlled by corporate elites now. A recent Princeton University study put it clearly: -quote- ”over the past 40 years, working class voters have had a near-zero, statistically non-significant impact on public policy...But corporate elites have had a near ideal impact on public policy...And when corporate elites want to stop a new policy, there is a 100% chance they’ll get their way.”
So, the US is no longer a representative democracy; it’s a corporate plutocracy- or a “Corporatocracy” as some call it. We mention all this to say that if we truly want to end sexualized violence against women and girls, we must first accept the fact that voting and protest marches are not sufficent political leverage against this Corproatocracy. It is beyond delusional to think that we could ever “vote” such entrenched and moneyed elites out of power. But we’re not saying to don’t vote and protest. We’re saying that we must combine our voting with real political leverage. And the only real leverage that the working class has in a corporate plutocracy is mass organized boycott (MOB).
Here’s what we mean: as a recent swiss study has shown, the great strength of the Corporatocracy is that the top companies across all major industries are all variously invested in each others success. They invest in each others’ stock and appoint their people to each others’ boards of directors. But their greatest strength is also their greatest weakness. If one industry suffers, they all buckle and they all know it. It’s why a targeted, sustained mass organized boycott is the most effective means to force this Corporatocracy to the People’s bargaining table. [To negotiate a sustained path toward re-democratizing our society.]
Indeed, M.O.B. is the only political will that has ever effectively challenged such entrenched and moneyed power. It was Gandhi’s Salt and Textile Boycotts at the turn of the century that won India their independence from Great Britain. It was the mass picket lines and sit-down strikes by workers in the 1930s that finally won us the 40 hour work week, sick-pay and overtime pay. It was the mass bus boycotts and restaurant sit-ins that finally won Black Americans civil rights reforms in the 1960s. It was the Grape Boycotts and Salad Boycotts of the 1960s and 70s that won migrant farm workers important safety reforms and a fair living wage. And it was the divestment boycotts on college campuses in the 1980s that finally helped end Apartheid in South Africa.
Combining voting and protest with mass organized boycott would give Global Justice activists the political leverage needed to regulate corporate mass media and restrict hypersexualized content. We would have the leverage to force zoning on the internet as Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig has advised: access to pornography could be restricted to certain zoning on the web, just like cities restrict such businesses to certain areas of the community by creating zoning laws. We would also have the leverage needed to establish federal funding and tax incentives to build single stall, gender-neutral bathrooms in all public places, as trans activist Ivan Coyote suggests.
The Old Boys’ club of Patriarchy now rules as a Corporatocracy. It’s interlocking systems of structural sexism, structural racism, structural classism, and structural speciesism have pushed our planet to the brink of social and ecological collapse. If we truly want to build a just and sustainable world, we must dismantle Patriarchy once and for all. And to do so, we must first organize our collective power. As Gail Dines says, “the oppressor class works as a collective, so we must also...We must get back to our roots of collective action.”
If you want to learn more about how all of us in the work of Global Justice can join together in strategic boycott and force the US corporatocracy to the people’s bargaining table– to end all this injustice and corruption, and to help save our planet– please check out our ABOUT Page and listen to our first podcast.
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We’re running out of time, y’all... Join us... Peace.
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