ANews Podcast 297 – 1.13.23

ANews Podcast 297 – 1.13.23

From ANews Podcast

Welcome to this week’s podcast. This podcast is on anarchist activity, ideas, and comments from the previous week on anarchistnews.org.

Notes:

What’s New

Written by chisel, read by chisel & chumple-umfoulous

A reading from theanarchistlibrary:

Rebellious, I – “Anti-Gender Monstrocity”

Read & sound edited by Max Res

TOTW: anarchafeminism and gender abolition

w/ special guest Ariel!, & Max Res 

sound editing by octox

Samples & Music:

Cyndi Lauper – Girls Just Want To Have Fun [†RVSTY TEVSPOON† /\|《GirLs Jvst ₩anna |-|ave Fvn /\| Death Or Life? (Rusted & Dragged) |Witch House Music Edit]

City Morgue – 66SLAVS

♥ Ms Nina ♥ – Tu Sicaria

♥ Sailor pünk – Sailor perrⒶs ★

Sailor Pünk – anarkomacho

Sailor Pünk – YUTA MORADA

Sailor Pünk – Tumba la Tienda Mami

Sailor Pünk – Vamos a kemar un policia

Madonna – Material Girl [MATERIEL GRRL /// MATERIEL WRLD /// WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY/// Drag Edit]

There are 37 Comments

More Ariel!

haven't quite fininshed listening yet, just gonna say (in regards to ~50 min. in) the child will let you know their gender. what a parent thinks / believes is the least of it. (later) ok, you got there..

(another thing for me is the language of "born in the wrong body",, yuck! i wasn't born in the wrong body, society is stuck in assigning certain behaviors, expectations to the body i am and i am more + less than that. meaning - i only think i 'need' to change my body because changing society seems impossible.)(ymmv)

and, yes, more Ariel! good conversation all around.

Ariel made a comment that struck me about the post-second wave folks thinking about gender being outside of the body, or less so connected to the body. I appreciate what I think to be the intention of this (to questionand encourage binary restrictions) but I do also wonder if and how are folks applying this to other constructs such as race? Would the post-second wave folk be as forgiving for a 'white-bodied' person to 'feel black' and live life as a black person? The martial arts space story Ariel mentioned was an excellent real world example. If the group had a space for black people and a race-abolitionist or race-nihilist felt black should they be welcomed similarly to how the 'non-female bodied' woman was welcomed into the womans martial arts space?

I realize I don't have the language for this but I am being sincere and hope the question is clear enough for a discussion on other constructed ideas other than gender and how anarchist might want to approach these constructs too.

race and gender are so different theres really no value in making this comparison.

Both race and gender are spooks for we anarchs to abolish

Skin color is not a spook but a fact of biology. You can't pretend being Black when being a fair-skinned caucasian and at the same time expect not being taken for a total racist fraud. At least not IRL, since you appear t have enjoyed these games from the safety of the internet...

Read Fred Moten.

Perhaps avoid erasing black people whose skin pigmentation doesn't fit your racist idea of what black people should look like,,,,,,,from the safety of the internet.

Oh shut up, Calvin/Leway,,, you haven't read Fred Moten. It's not about solely about pigmentation, traits, phenotypes, and blood quantum; it's about lived cultures, ehtnicities and kinships, about class and privilege. There are white passing people born in black households that may undergo less harsh racial profiling than their darker siblings, but if they were born in the projects, it's different if they were born in a mansion. This in no way implies that a white person from a white family born in a mansion can claim to "feel black" and suddenly be treated as an african american in society. What can happen and does happen is that people of different races (a construct, but it exists a social reality), ethnicities and culture marry and intermingle, and can adopt each other's costumes and influence each other. If a white person grows up in the projects and marries a black person, or if a black person marries a white person and moves to the suburbs, the resulting experiences of acceptance and conflict, of incorporation, assimilation, and affirmation of own heritage, culture, traditions and identities, as well as miscegenation, syncretism, and hybridism, is the closest thing you will get to your contorted notion of "trans-racial". The experience of border living, of diasporas, of migration, of colonized peoples. The concept of abolition is mobilized against slavery, the plantation, the state, and prisons (which for some imply reparations, as for some decolonization implies Land Back). Some go further and aim it at humanism, some are pessimistic of the inclusion of black bodies within the concept of humanity and are called afro-pessimists. In this context, some use the terms "transindividual" and "self-abolition" in a very different way, as can be seen in this text https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/k-aarons-no-selves-to-abolish-af...,
not anywhere near the "trans-racial" meme you propose.

"This in no way implies that a white person from a white family born in a mansion can claim to "feel black""
"If a white person grows up in the projects"

What 11:10 is saying is: a quality of blackness is that all black people.

If you had read Fred Moten you would understand your errors.

Check yourself,,,,,,,,,,,you Calvin.

does anyone else remember Johnny Otis?

did you type up this whole paragraph just to use the term "hybridism" in reference to interracial couples, refer to black people as "bodies" instead of as people, and imply that poverty is an intrinsic part of being black? i have no words.

There’s a limit to what I can convey in an impromptu comment. I am not a professor. These are all terms that have specific usage and discussion within academia in Black Studies and Post-colonial studies. There is nothing intrinsic or essentialist, but there is a history and a social context. I could copy-paste an entire curriculum and you’d still come back with easy gotchas taking single words out of context. You’re a lost case and your proposition is a joke that laughs at itself.

what you wrote was still pretty insensitive and that has nothing to do with you supposedly "being unable to convey everything in an impromptu comment". it has everything to do with the subtly (or not so subtly) othering way you choose to talk about black people - and you have to go out of your way to do that, unless it just comes that naturally to you. and to be frank, how much postcolonial theory you've read and whether such terms were used within it or not changes nothing about that. there are plenty more "select" terms used for black people to be found in postcolonial literature, but anyone with a shred of decency would refrain from repeating them. you could definitely have spoken about the history and social context of racial identity without:

a) likening interracial relationships to the crossing of different species/genera by using the term "hybridism"
+ using the outdated racist term "miscegenation" on top of that
b) using objectifying language to refer to black people (in an instance reducing them to "bodies")
c) assuming "being born in the projects" is a core part of black identity
(apparently a black person needs to marry a white person to then MOVE to the suburbs, not even a hint of consideration they may have been born there, and zero self awareness)

an edo prince who grows up in his father's palace being catered to and able to indulge in his every interest is not black according to your logic, because he doesn't fit with your idea of what the default social standing of a black person should be. please reflect on what the fuck you're actually saying, because you're starting to sound a lot like a right-wing troll.

"Skin color is not a spook but a fact of biology. You can't pretend being Black when being a fair-skinned caucasian ..."

This, dear anews readers, is the exact same fashy argumentation that TERFs use. Behold:

'Sex is not a spook but a fact of biology. You can't pretend being a woman when having male genitalia ...'

Fuck off, racist TERF scum.

"This, dear anews readers, is the exact same fashy argumentation that TERFs use."

Explain that "fashy argumentation" that TERFs use. As you totally appear to be conflating skin tone and race, with sex and gender.

Not only that... but in your macho dickhead behavior, you are making others say things they didn't fucking write. Aaand you are doing so, with the aims of defending White people calling themselves "Black", just because they decided they're Black.

Literal fucking "black-faced" racist right there!

Nice try making me look like the fascist here, you "fashy" scumlord.

WoooooOooow! This may not be the best way to get that anon to explain themself!!! Just sayin'!

Are you that same racist anon that thinks black people have to have dark skin and be "born in the projects" to really be black? If so I don't think anyone wants to talk to you, mkay?

Since when is this a surprise that Black people be dark-skinned? lol

You're the only one being butthurt by this assumption, Mr. Black-Faced Whiteboi. Pretty sure Antifa also are the real fascists, to you as well, riiiite?

Take your medicine, racist anon. Also put down your acceptable color chart. Your racist perspective does not get to determine what is black enough. This is an anarchist website.

are you joking? many black people have light skin. some black people are so pale they can't stay out in the sun for longer than 15min without burning. your narrow definition of who a black person is, is based on nothing but stereotypes and excludes literal millions of black people. it's like every post you make is even more racist than the previous one. incredible

I'm a white black-person. I went through the tribal initiation rites of a black tribe and have earned my cultural racial status!

oh shut up. natural variation makes it so that people of african descent come in diverse colors, as some people are born lighter than others, or tend to stay indoors more. some people can’t produce any melanin at all. this doesn’t mean you get to decide they are not black. your constant reliance on racist stereotypes (“hurr durr black people live in the projects”, “hurr durr black people live in tribes”) is fucking revolting.

"so that people of african descent come in diverse colors, as some people are born lighter than others"

And how many of those non-Black Africans came to Muh-muh-muhrica as plantation slaves to White capitalist land owners?

Yes indeed, you suck.

congratulations on once again erasing millions of black people, including those whose ancestors were enslaved in the americas, based on nothing but their skin tone. to reiterate, it’s natural for some black people to have light skin or albinism, just as it is for individuals of literally any other race. black people do not all look the same or live the same lives despite your insistence that they must. wait till you find out about the lived experiences of activists like walter white, it will blow your tiny racist mind apart.

If one keeps in mind that the north of these discussions is liberation, and the context is anarchism, then this proposition is nonsense. These are not language games in a void, these conversations take place in movements fighting against oppression. There is not a history of structural oppression of "white-bodied" people that "feel black", being excluded and marginalized in society at large as a "black only space". Whites supremacy imposed segregation is USA, and the civil rights movement, in which people of all races participated, fought against that. Your prompt is just a facile whataboutism commonly expressed by bigots who first stumble upon these topics. Not dissimilar from that South Park episode (old news) when a character "identifies as a dolphin" and gets surgery to become one. The logic of these remarks is that of loophole-finding by a transphobic and racist privileged person, not any genuine concern. The same logic privileged white people use to gain cookie points in identity politics / oppression olympics. You're thinking of how to weasel yourself into places you're not invited, because everywhere you go you're rejected, you creep. There's not any real group claiming to be "race-abolitionist or race-nihilist".

If Ariel used antiquated language (male bodied, instead of Assigned Male at Birth, etc.), it's not to give foot to a retrograde reaction hijacking the discussion, but to illustrate a point in time in which ignorance about a topic was not an excuse for furthering oppression, but instead there was inclusion, solidarity, learning, and growth.

So hostile and assumptive, 00:10! I thought their question seemed sincere. They asked a question and you immediately assumed they are racist, transphibic, and hijacking the discussion. There was no discussion. Anarchists should question everything.

To 13:25, search Lisa Marie Rollins and "transracial"

the thing about the language around trans everything is that we are constantly reassessing and re-theorizing it. if someone is coming from a place of sincerity the language they use is less of an issue for me. saying this because amab afab are terms i see questioned now.
still, great comment 00:10, thx.

"There is not a history of structural oppression of "white-bodied" people that "feel black", being excluded and marginalized in society at large as a "black only space".

Well apparently for the 1-2 racist troll up this comment section, there is... but this history is about the "aNtiFa fAsCist oPpreSSive tehCollEctIvE" removing their precious, very thoughtful troll comments for years. SAD!

>If Ariel used antiquated language

you know it is kinda antiquated but theres people who know all the right words to say and still manage to come across as patronizing or not having genuine care. much prefer one antiquated term from someone who can string some supportive thoughts together.

I feel I'm replying to a GPT bot, but bot... "male-bodied" isn't antiquated for anyone else than zoomer college kids with quite abysmal semantics and notion of historical precendents.

The designation "Assigned Male at Birth" deserves much examination as it sounds like there's this vague authority (nature? God?) that's bureaucratically assigning sex to people when they're born. Equally saying "Assigned Deaf/Mute/Blind at Birth" would be a rather cringe designation. That's... not how random genetic combinations work. Nature is just "how things happen"... out of a rich combination of diverse factors and conditions. There's visibly no manager pulling the strings anywhere, as far as we can prove.

Why using such grossly bureaucratic term then? Coz the college kids using these terms are devout theists? Nope. It's gotta do with their projection of a managerial need to genetically control bodies... as they're seeking to develop a eugenistic management of sex... they literally want to make sex ATTRIBUTABLE by such management system. And it's been happening already.

Every agenda carries its rhetoric.

probably,
but the assigner in this case is the doctor and/or society, who/which do in fact manage (or attempt to) bodies.

The doctor and/or society do not assign the sex, they assign the gender. Complex biological dynamics are what ass-signs the sex. This is why in pre-zoomer days you already had the controversy with sex vs gender, as a minority of people do get two X chromosomes and in rare occasions two genital organs at birth. The whole matter is just about the state having disregarded a sexual minority and enforcing a purist, absolute binary upon 100% of people. Male and female ARE a thing... it's just that there are other things. They're all proven by science. But it's not "science" that amalgamated male/female with the men/women gender binary.

This begs the question of how democracy, in its majority rule principle, becomes inherently dismissive of individuals possessing minority attributes... of ANY kind. But such analysis doesn't sell to well in neolib academia or social media that's all about the supremacy of who gets the biggest numbers.

Some-body is filled with ressentiment that they're old and didn't get into college. Wah it's not me who's out of touch it's the dang college kids!

To the point of word choice, whatever happened to people questioning the term feMALE as a term of subjugation (much like woMAN)?

No thanks, too coke music for me... I'm more into weed/LSD/psilo-friendly music.

But this can make for a pretty funny alarm ringtone.

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