Tag: donald trump

Trans: Treading Upon Dangerous Ground

On By CantelonIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Trans-women are women. Trans-men are men. I believe this.

There are those who don’t. There are the usual suspects – hyper-conservatives who describe religious or faith reasons for not accepting this.

Then there are TERFs – Trans-exclusionary radical feminists. Most visible TERFs came up through the second wave of feminism between the 1960s to the 1980s (J.K. Rowling is the most obvious example here).

It is important to understand that a large portion of second wave feminism rooted patriarchy in biological sex. Themes include reproduction as a means of control; male biological violence as a means of control; and the sex/class framework that defined women as biologically women and men as biologically men in order to describe and root women’s oppression as primarily related to biological men.

Given the foundational thinking of second wave feminists we can see their challenge to understand and accept that gender is a concept and not simply biological.

Within this framework men are men and women are women – this is the foundational reason for all of women’s oppression. To allow for an understanding that states that some cisgender men are in fact conceptually women is to allow the patriarchy one more avenue to exploit for female oppression.

Now it is important to note that not all second wave feminism is rooted in biology as the key differentiator and theme. There were many perspectives including one which today’s Trans-inclusionary feminists would follow rooted in Simone de Beauvoir’s thought that “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” from her 1949 work The Second Sex.

For TERFs the reality that the patriarchy is an oppressive system relying heavily on biological differences posits that a reaction has occurred and is required that is also rooted in biology…which simply excludes trans-women (and trans-men but not to the same degree as they may represent more of an infiltration into the patriarchy the way they see trans-women as an infiltration of the patriarchy into the matriarchy).

Of course what the TERF perspective fails to recognize or simply ignores is that trans-women face all of the same oppressive actions of the patriarchy, perhaps even magnified due to the patriarchy’s strong negative reaction and response to trans-women who face enormous pressures from violence and exclusion.

While generally speaking the idea of gender as a construct is picking up steam in academia, youth, and socially, the biological emphasis continues to be reinforced through legal decisions in the United States and the United Kingdom.

It is also worth noting that some consider the term TERF a slur, particularly when applied to themselves, and prefer the term Gender-critical Feminist.

Interestingly the men who most echo a similar philosophy (although would not call themselves feminists) include: Matt Walsh, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, and Donald Trump. It is important to note that while these two groups come to the same conclusion the path they take is very different from one-another but imagine being a feminist and sharing the same perspective as this group of men who largely represent the patriarchy’s most oppressive ideals.

Ultimately I believe we are in the midst of massive change culturally and the issues related to gender are part of something broader and more significant that includes politics, faith and more. In this realm I believe we are moving toward acceptance of gender as a construct and eventually categories, which are necessary now to support the transition, will eventually fade until we have a society that simply sees people regardless of biological gender or sexual preference. People who differ in all kinds of ways that simply do not matter socially or culturally.

At least I hope we are.

Power

On By CantelonIn philosophy, politicsLeave a comment

I am convinced that there is nothing that could be released in the Epstein files that would lead to Donald Trump being charged with any crime, let alone successfully impeached.

I mean on January 23, 2016, Donald Trump said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.”

I believe he is absolutely correct. I don’t believe this is hyperbole or metaphorical. This is what power can do. There are enough people in the United States convinced that every negative thing said about Trump is a lie, combined with a whole host of other people in power who are simply terrified to make a move against this president to ensure his near invulnerability.

The consequences of this persistent demonstration of what power can do in the modern world are far reaching. People are watching. One imagines that Trump and his loyal followers in the Republican Party are working hard on strategies that would allow for a third Trump term (or at least a guaranteed continuation of a Republican presidency).

There are others waiting in the wings to fill the power gap in like fashion as well. Technogarchs whose wealth and control of public opinion through social media algorithms can literally shape the outcome of elections worldwide stand ready to support anyone whose efforts will strengthen their corporate grip on revenue and personal power.

How does one fight such evil?

The great Italian socialist leader Antonio Gramsci understood what was going on as fascism continued to tighten its grip on Italy despite every effort of the anti-fascist resistance. He knew that those in power were using more than just force to keep people in line. They manipulated media and discourse to gain the broad assent of most people…they developed and maintained what he called a cultural hegemony…that is solid and broad control of people’s opinions, wants and decisions through cultural means.

To tear down a hegemony is difficult work. Gramsci wrote in his prison letters “I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.” By which he meant that he could not see a rational socialist way to tear down the fascist hegemony, but he could not do anything but continue to try because of his sense of justice. This is a bleak place to be…like Sisyphus…the socialist anti-fascist efforts to destroy fascism were/are like pushing that boulder up a hill only to have it roll back over you before you reached the top and having to start all over again repeatedly without end.

I find there is much in Gramsci to inform our own age however what I do not find is hope. Ultimately fascism around the world was defeated in WW2 but not so much through the efforts of anti-fascist socialists as through the power of capitalist countries and leaders who saw an erosion of their own hegemony if Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, Japan and others were allowed to continue on their path of conquest.

Now there is a different form of fascism to fight – capitalist fascism. Who comes to the rescue of the masses in this circumstance? Certainly not other capitalist power brokers who stand only to gain. Whose power and hegemony will be eroded by this new fascist uprising?

Of course, since fascism grows stronger as class inequality grows it becomes a perpetual motion machine over time. Ultimately this is why anti-fascist struggles have been so largely fruitless. What do you do when the most powerful nation on earth finds itself lurching into fascism? Unlike WW2 you cannot rely on them to come to the rescue. Only through its own inner conflicts and potential resolutions can there be hope.

The next presidential election is only two years away…there is no sense of a strong Democrat capable of facing the machine that Trump and his fascist Republican government has built.

Gramsci wrote that “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” He wrote this nearly 100 years ago and yet it remains as the primary truth of our era. The world is increasing ruled by monsters…monsters who recognize one-another and prop one-another up.

So, what do we do in the face of what feels insurmountable? Do we do nothing? Do we remain indifferent, or simply remain privately outraged and publicly silent (which has the same effect as indifference? I look to Gramsci here as well:

“I hate the indifferent. I believe that living means taking sides. Those who really live cannot help being a citizen and a partisan. Indifference and apathy are parasitism, perversion, not life. That is why I hate the indifferent.

The indifference is the deadweight of history. The indifference operates with great power on history. The indifference operates passively, but it operates. It is fate, that which cannot be counted on. It twists programs and ruins the best-conceived plans. It is the raw material that ruins intelligence. That what happens, the evil that weighs upon all, happens because the human mass abdicates to their will; allows laws to be promulgated that only the revolt could nullify, and leaves men that only a mutiny will be able to overthrow to achieve the power. The mass ignores because it is careless and then it seems like it is the product of fate that runs over everything and everyone: the one who consents as well as the one who dissents; the one who knew as well as the one who didn’t know; the active as well as the indifferent. Some whimper piously, others curse obscenely, but nobody, or very few ask themselves: If I had tried to impose my will, would this have happened?

I also hate the indifferent because of that: because their whimpering of eternally innocent ones annoys me. I make each one liable: how they have tackled with the task that life has given and gives them every day, what have they done, and especially, what they have not done. And I feel I have the right to be inexorable and not squander my compassion, of not sharing my tears with them.

I am a partisan, I am alive, I feel the pulse of the activity of the future city that those on my side are building is alive in their conscience. And in it, the social chain does not rest on a few; nothing of what happens in it is a matter of luck, nor the product of fate, but the intelligent work of the citizens. Nobody in it is looking from the window of the sacrifice and the drain of a few. Alive, I am a partisan. That is why I hate the ones that don’t take sides, I hate the indifferent.”