Shutting down Patriarchy

It's become more and more obvious that fighting patriarchy absolutely must be a primary emergency for anyone who desires for civilization to be brought down.

This idea that males are inherently aggressive is, to be sure, incredibly harmful and silly. But this does not change that this male-dominated culture has waged war against women: their bodies, souls, and minds. Those males who reject this notion of entitlement and actually resist patriarchy are just too few and far between.


The notion that females are inherently nurturing is, in my opinion, more accurate, but I believe that all human beings, regardless of gender, are nurturing outside of this wretched system and both females and males can be aggressive when appropriate, nurturing when appropriate, and everything else when appropriate. Obviously.

That said, everywhere I look in this culture i see aggression winning over nurturing. I see women being shut up. I see men doing the talking, doing the action, and taking control. I see rape and gendered violence. I see an economy being run on the devouring of others, the destruction of the natural world, the penetration of the sacred. This economy is run by men and by women who have internalized these messages of domination over relationship. I see women being beat, raped, and murdered. I see men waging this war against women and against life.

If we want to stop this culture, we can start with patriarchy. If you are a male, look around and see the privileges you have. Look around and see the ways you participate in patriarchy, in the silencing and destruction of women and life and all of the relationships they entail. If you are a male, shut up and let her talk, because she has been told to shut up while being oppressed for too fucking long. If you are a male, find ways to support her before and especially during or after she has been in an abusive situation. Better yet, stop the culture that would allow this abuse to happen. Stop this abusive culture.

We all need to start confronting this wherever we see it. As long as women are silenced and destroyed, the battle against civilization rages on.

Resources:

Philly's Pissed. Wonderful downloadable readings on supporting survivors of sexual assault, community responses, and combating sexism.

The Witch Burnings. A video on women's spirituality and genocide.

Healing the Earth Radio. A great, two-part interview with survivor-support activists.

Male Ally. A resource for men combating patriarchy, which i started.

Call for submissions: Civilization and Mental Health zine

Calling all earth-warriors with mad gifts!

I am in the process of compiling writings for a new zine about civilization and mental health. This zine will be put out both in print form and as a downloadable file on the internet. I am trying to put it out by sometime in January.

Here's some basic info.

Project: A new print- and e-zine about civilization and mental health. How civilization effects mental health and how to have the mental health we need to resist civilization. Hoping to provide some clear analysis as well as some mental health tips.

Submissions: I am willing to take anything! It could be poetry, essays, illustrations, pictures, stories, etc. Anything pertaining to the subject.

Deadline: January 7th, 2011

Inspiration:
The Icarus Project
Derrick Jensen
Code Green

Please send all submissions to: kidcutbank [at] riseup [dot] net

The Politics of Experience

I'm reading a wonderful, wonderful book called, The Politics of Experience by R.D. Laing. One of the central points of the book is that we as a culture have been driven out of our experience. That is, our experience isn't really our own, but rather a pseudo-experience; one detatched from the real world and from our own bodies: mind, heart, and soul. (My writing not in italics.)

As i'm reading, i'm weaving in my own experience of my experience to Laing's theses:

As adults, we have forgotten most of our childhood, not only its contents but its flavor; as men of the world, we hardly know the of the existence of the inner world: we barely remember our dreams, and make little sense of them when we do; as for our bodies, we retain just sufficient proprioceptive sensations to coordinate our movements and to ensure the minimal requirements for biosocial survival——to register fatigue, signals for food, sex, defecation, sleep; beyond that little or nothing. Our capacity to think, except in the service of what we are dangerously deluded into supposing is our self-interest and in conformity with common sense, is pitifully limited: our capacity even to see, hear, touch, taste and smell is so shrouded in veils of mystification than an intensive discipline of unlearning is necessary for anyone before one can begin to experience the world afresh, with innocence, love and truth

I just want to keep the fire, magic, and love in my heart. I want to know and feel what i love and what i hate at all times. I want to make my life a weapon against oppression, against this culture and be effective. I want to be honest and vulnerable and strong. I want to trust myself and resist confusion, denial, apathy, and subservience. I want to speak for the trees, sky, clouds. I want to speak to them and hear them speak to me. I want to resist seduction and embrace education.I want others to feel empowered by me, to feel loved by me and inspired by me. I want them to feel these things with me. I want to let go of control. I want to live in my body. I want to re-join life and re-learn the lessons that have been killed from me. I want my experience back. I will do what it takes to make all of this a reality.

What we call "normal" is a product of repression, denial, splitting, projection, introjection and other forms of destructive action on experience. It is radically estranged from the structure of being.

My experience has been trampled on. My experience has been twisted. My experience has been stolen from me and i haven't even been able to face this. My experience has been replaced with images of cruelty, mutilation, emptiness, apathy, and alienation. My experience is "normal". My experience is like my peers' experience, like the drivers on main st.'s experience, like the minimum-wage dishwasher's experience. My experience has been wounded, but it is not obliterated: it can heal and it can live.

Society highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal.

Unless this culture is stopped, insanity will prevail. Unless we find our experiences again, we will submit to destructive myths that are not our own, continue to be alienated and un-whole. Unless we stand up and assume the responsibilities of human beings, those in power will wreck us all, individually and collectively. Unless we realize reciprocity, the planet will be destroyed and the alienation will be complete.