Asma Jahangir: saying Farewell to a Pakistani Feminist .. Who will Defend Us Now?

Pakistani civil society activists light candles to pay tribute to late human rights activist Asma Jahangir in Karachi on February 12, 2018.

by Rabia Mehmood        The funeral of Pakistan’s celebrated human rights defender Asma Jahangir was a poignant display of women’s resistance, writes Mehmood [Rabia Mehmood]

People don’t usually break societal barriers and disrupt the patriarchal order at funerals anywhere in the world, let alone in Pakistan. But on February 13, many women in Lahore, including myself, did just that by actively participating in a janaza, a Muslim funeral ritual, for the first time.

On that day, contrary to orthodox funeral traditions observed in Pakistan, we not only stood alongside men, we actually stood in front of them. Also, there were hardly any frowns directed at women who chose not to cover their heads.

Fuck Abuse, Kill Power: Cutting the Roots of Sexual Attacks

By     CrimethInc. Ex-Workers Collective

Fuck Abuse, Kill Power: Against the Root Causes of Sexual Harassment and Assault

The past year has seen a wave of revelations about powerful people—nearly all men—perpetrating sexual violence against those beneath them. The #MeToo moment has provided a platform for countless courageous survivors.

Yet although some men have been made to face consequences for the harm they have done, we are far from being able to solve the problem of male sexual violence. Focusing on the wrongdoings of specific men tends to exceptionalize them, as if their actions took place in a vacuum.

This is consistent with the mechanisms of a criminal justice system focused on individual guilt and a reformist politics premised on the idea that the existing government and market economy would serve us perfectly if only the right people were in power.

But with the bad behavior of so many men coming to light, we have to consider the possibility that these are not exceptions at all—that these attacks are the inevitable, systemic result of this social order. Is there a way to treat the cause as well as the symptoms?

Trigger warning for descriptions of sexual violence.

Virtually all recent mainstream coverage has treated sexual harassment and assault as an issue distinct from capitalism and hierarchy. When writers admit that capitalism and hierarchy play some role, they imply that what is harmful about these systems can be fixed through reform.

Anarcha-Feminism.. by Flick Ruby..’real anarchists are always feminist’

by   MARIGREENDOG       For too long anarcha feminists have been labeled as the ladies auxiliary of male bomb throwers. The misconception and manipulation of both feminists and anarchist principles and practice have resulted in the use of sensationalist and ridiculing tactics by the state and its spokespeople.

This has not only polarised the general populace from potentially liberation concepts but has also polarised anarchist from feminists. In the past and more so recently there has been a uniting of these beliefs and Peggy Kornegger’s book; ‘Anarchism; the Feminist Connection’ goes so far as to say that the two genres of thought are inextricably tied although the connection has not been consciously articulated by feminists very often.

Read Download click  here..  Anarchism: The Feminist Connection. by Peggy Kornegger  

Kornegger argues that feminism “emphasis on the small group as a basic organisational unit, on the personal and political, on anti- authoritarianism and on spontaneous direct action was essentially anarchism.

I believe that this puts women in a unique position of being the bearers of a subsurface anarchist consciousness which if articulated and concretised can take us further than any previous group toward the achievement of total revolution.

While anarchism has provided a framework for the transformation required, for far too long even this revolutionary ideology has been largely male identified; male articulated, male targeted and male exclusive in both its language and participation.It has therefore been unfortunately lacking in vital analysis especially with regard to the psychological and physical realities of oppression experienced by the majority of the human population: women.

Emma Goldman’s ‘Living My Life’..read and download here

Emma Goldman’s amazing autobiography ‘Living my Life’ has just been uploaded to The Anarchist Library for all of us to read and copy!

Title: Living My Life     Author: Emma Goldman

Date: 1931   Topics: autobiographical, Russian Revolution

. Read and download HERE ..http://theanarchistlibrary.org…

In appreciation..  by Emma Goldman

”Suggestions that I write my memoirs came to me when I had barely begun to live, and continued all through the years. But I never paid heed to the proposal. I was living my life intensely — what need to write about it?

Another reason for my reluctance was the conviction I entertained that one should write about one’s life only when one had ceased to stand in the very torrent of it. “When one has reached a good philosophic age,” I used to tell my friends, “capable of viewing the tragedies and comedies of life impersonally and detachedly — particularly one’s own life — one is likely to create an autobiography worth while.”

Still feeling adolescently young in spite of advancing years, I did not consider myself competent to undertake such a task. Moreover, I always lacked the necessary leisure for concentrated writing.

My enforced European inactivity left me enough time to read a great deal, including biographies and autobiographies. I discovered, much to my discomfiture, that old age, far from ripening wisdom and mellowness, is too often fraught with senility, narrowness, and petty rancour. I would not risk such a calamity, and I began to think seriously about writing my life.

How Wonder Woman turned from a Hero to a War Crimes Supporter.

The wonder of imperial feminism

Susan Abulhawa is a Palestinian writer and the author of the international bestselling novel, Mornings in Jenin (Bloomsbury 2010). She is also the founder of Playgrounds for Palestine, an NGO for children.

by Susan Abulhawa  from Al Jazeera with thanks         When I was a little girl, like many women of my generation who grew up watching American television shows (even if they were dubbed in Arabic), I used to twirl and twirl, trying to attain super powers like Wonder Woman. I would twitch my nose to magically transform my surroundings, like Samantha from Bewitched.

These female characters were exceptions among the docile housewives, the efficient secretaries, and damsels in distress that pervaded the popular media of my time. Wonder Woman and Samantha had the power to change their lives, even if that power had to remain hidden, forever a secret.

Who are these Anarchists? and What the Hell do they Want?

 

WHO ARE THE ANARCHISTS AND WHAT IS ANARCHISM?

  By      Thomas Giovanni   at   Black Rose Anarchist Federation: …………..   In the wake of the use of militant street tactics at the Trump inauguration protests, the controversial shut down of two prominent right-wing speakers at the University of California, Berkeley, and a variety of high profile actions against the far right, anarchists have received increased media attention in the USA and sparked widespread debate, particularly around anti-fascist struggles.see also> Murray Bookchin: anarchist heretic who Inspired spreading Revolution in Middle East

But many people are still confused about anarchism, associating it with indiscriminate violence, chaos, and disorder. This distorted image runs counter to more than a century of anarchist activity in and outside the United States.

So if not chaos or disorder, what does anarchism stand for? What do anarchists believe in?

Core Anarchist Values

At the most basic level, anarchists believe in the equal value of all human beings. Anarchists also believe that hierarchical power relations are not only unjust, but corrupt those who have power and dehumanize those who don’t.

Why you Can’t be a Feminist if you’re Not an Anarchist

~ from  VIOLETREVA  shared with thanks

Is every feminist secretly an anarchist?

Feminism is not feminism if it is not antisexist, but also must be:

• Antiracist (for wimmin of color)
• Anticapitalist (for working class wimmin)
• Female+Female love-positive (for lesbians and bisexual wimmin)
• Anti-state (against the state control of wimmin’s autonomy, rejecting patriarchal protection rackets)
• Anti-hierarchy (against wimmin exploiting other wimmin)

I can’t tell you how many wimmin have been turned away from anarchism — the politics of opposing all hierarchy — due to male violence, male abuse, male threats, male testerics. And that is an awful shame, because wimmin have the greatest chance for achieving anarchy.It’s pretty simple… Forget all your preconceptions about what anarchism is. Forget malestream anarchism with its male fantasies of “let’s kill all the bad people and we will win” because that’s just naive. Men are pretty dumb, let’s be honest. They expect everything to be cleaned up after them.