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joannalannister · 4 years

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Anonymous asked:

Hey! It’s me again, your GOT secret Santa. Could you please elaborate on what aspects of the Tywin/Joanna ship you like? They’re not a ship I’ve ever written for, so I’d appreciate it if you could tell me why you like them so much. Anyways, I hope things are going great with you and that you’re getting ready for the holidays 😊

I love Tywin and Joanna because this ship is ASOIAF in its simplest form, stripped down to the bare bones, the meaning made plain.

In my opinion, ASOIAF is different from a lot of other fantasy I’ve read because it doesn’t focus on a magic system, and it doesn’t focus on a great war (we still barely even know anything about the Others).

ASOIAF is different; ASOIAF is about what makes us human. (Even GRRM’s term for the enemy, Other, comes back to this central theme of our humanity, because it suggests that humanity is fighting against something other than human beings, something un-human, something inhumane.)

Tywin is one of the most un-human human beings in the entire series. He’s also the villain that we get the most information about, and he still looms large over the text even in death. (Even in the brief glimpses of TWOW that he’s shared, GRRM keeps bringing him up.) GRRM has shown us all of these monstrous things about Tywin, but in doing so, he’s made the tiny glowing embers of Tywin’s humanity burn like the beacons of Minas Tirith.

It’s our joy and our love and our laughter that make us human. It’s our sorrow and our pain. But more than all that, our humanity is the connections we make to other people. It’s shared joy, shared love, shared laughter. Shared sorrow. Our compassion. To build a society is to connect people, to share with others. Tywin and Joanna is a society of two.

(That weirwood net of shared consciousness fascinates me - it’s an idea GRRM has written about before in his other works, and he keeps coming back to it.)

So those handful of smiles: for his wife, for the birth of his (first two) children, for his greatest accomplishments (gruesome as they are).

And the pain in this passage: “when Aerys II announced Ser Jaime's appointment from the Iron Throne, his lordship went to one knee and thanked the king for the great honor shown to his house. Then, pleading illness, Lord Tywin asked the king's leave to retire as Hand.”

And the utter and absolute pain in this one: “With her death, Grand Maester Pycelle observes, the joy went out of Tywin Lannister, yet still he persisted in his duty.”

It’s like a shot glass filled with sorrow. In AGOT through ADWD, the sorrow in those books is slow; it’s (mostly) meant to be sipped, and savored. But the way we experience Tywin’s pain, as GRRM writes it, it’s quick and it burns, and it burns out just as quickly as we move on to Tywin’s next atrocity.

So, for me at least, Tywin and Joanna are like a distilled version of ASOIAF. It’s the moments we share that make us human, and when Joanna died, Tywin’s humanity died with her.

That might not be the most helpful thing for writing a fanfic, so let me give you some other reasons:

My favorite short story is “The Last Rung on the Ladder”. I think I first read it ~20 years ago, and it still haunts me. It hurts. It’s about a brother and sister. It’s about taking things for granted, about the people we depend on, and about what happens when those people are no longer there.

“You're my big brother. I knew you'd take care of me.” “Oh, Kitty, you don't know how close it was.” [...] “No,” she said. “But I knew you were [...] there.”

Maybe this applies to Jaime and Cersei too, and Tywin/Joanna are just a different iteration, but it’s what keeps me coming back: what happens when the people you depend on ... the people you think are always going to be there ... what happens when those people -- those lifelines -- are gone?

Despite Tywin being (imo) a very social person, I think Tywin had very few real friends. In addition to being his wife, Joanna was Tywin’s friend, someone he could talk to, and confide in, and trust. Someone who made it all real. Someone who made it worth it.

And I think Tywin thought Joanna would always be there, the same way that everyone in AGOT-ASOS thought Tywin would always be there, “eternal as Casterly Rock”. I think Tywin always imagined that Joanna would outlive him, like it never occurred to him that she would die first, but instead she died when he was in his early 30s. That’s life-shattering to have the rug pulled out from under you like that.

Similarly, I think Joanna had this idea that she and Tywin would be together, but instead he was “often away”. We’re told that they were children together at Casterly Rock, but then at ~10 Tywin was sent away to be Aegon V’s cupbearer, and later he went away to war on the Stepstones, and then after her wedding Joanna had to be sent away because of Aerys, and we have Tywin sent to Lys at some point. What did it mean to her, that Tywin wasn’t there? For Joanna, I don’t necessarily think that Tywin not being there was entirely a bad thing, at least eventually, although I imagine it was painful at first. I think these forced separations from Tywin allowed her to grow, allowed her to eventually rule the Westerlands in Tywin’s name while he was away.

The thing that I always think of when I think about Tywin and Joanna is this poem, “Mrs. Beast” by Carol Ann Duffy, and I always think of this line, “Bring me the Beast for the night. Bring me the wine-cellar key. Let the less-loving one be me.” The more loving one is Tywin in my mind, no doubt about it. (I played with this poem for Tywin/Joanna here.)

There’s this scene I imagine in my own fanfiction, about a year before Joanna’s death, where there’s these silent tears, this despair on Joanna’s face, and Jaime asks his mother why she’s crying, and she says, “Because your lord father is home.”

I think Joanna always loved Tywin, to the very end, but Tywin is a difficult person to live with. I think his homecomings eventually became bittersweet. On the one hand, the love of her life has come home to her across hundreds of miles through snow, through bandits etc, but on the other hand, whenever Tywin comes home, Joanna has to take a back seat. Tywin sucks all of the oxygen out of the room. Everyone has to take a back seat to Tywin: “It has been hard for Kevan, living all his life in Tywin's shadow. It was hard for all my brothers. That shadow Tywin cast was long and black, and each of them had to struggle to find a little sun.“

This is all kind of leading into another reason I like Tywin/Joanna in that it’s an exploration of gender roles, and the ... the limits that women are under in Westeros, even under the very best circumstances. With Joanna, she’s white, she’s filthy rich, she’s a top-tier noblewoman, she’s beautiful. Contrasted against Rhaella, Joanna has a husband who loves her so much that we get lines about Joanna ruling Tywin and how this man who never ever smiles smiled for her. But there are still limits. We’re told that Tywin was ruled at home by his lady wife. Joanna’s influence is restricted, it’s dependent on what power Tywin gives her. While Rhaella physically was confined to Maegor’s Holdfast, Joanna’s influence is confined to the domestic sphere.

Westeros is a broken place, one that’s always been broken into little pieces (Seven Kingdoms, not one). Westeros breaks people. Like Mrs. Beast in the poem, I think Joanna was able to forget, for a time, about the world’s abused women. She was able to forget that Westeros breaks people, and that it especially breaks women. I think Joanna thought she was the exception, that she would have more, achieve more, do more ... and eventually I think she hits a wall, realizing that Tywin is her limiting factor, even as he lifts her up and grants her the power to do.

It’s these limits that fascinate me about House Lannister as a whole. Like, the Lannisters are introduced to us as infinite. (Thinkin about this a lot lately.) Bottomless wealth, eternal life, unfathomable beauty, all I do is win win win. But over the course of the books GRRM knocks all of this down and shows us that there is a finite quality to House Lannister. Tywin dies. With Jaime, I think GRRM is exploring the limits of redemption imo. Cersei is going to hit a wall. It’s that the culture of House Lannister, their fundamental values -- they don’t work.

Tywin is the poster boy of Westeros - he is the feudal system, he’s the face of its misogyny, he’s the walking embodiment of classism and income inequality and privilege and everything horrible about Westeros.

I don’t think it was ever possible for Joanna to be dealt a winning hand with Tywin, The system is rigged against women, and a woman would have to break the system entirely to win. But Tywin is the system, so it just doesn’t work.

I think of Joanna as a tragedy.

um.

idunno if any of that is helpful, but i sure wrote a lot. Also, I really like power couples and courtly intrigue and stuff like the Borgias. Hopefully that helps a little bit, I’m so sorry.

If you want to read other stuff I wrote, I collect my Tywin x Joanna writings under this tag:

#tjmeta

And these tags might also be useful: #joanna meta and #tywin meta

I’m so sorry, please know that I will absolutely love whatever you write! There are so few fics of Tywin/Joanna that I am excited for anything.

(Also I hate Aerys and he can go fuck himself. I think that Tywin tried to see Joanna as a person, as much as a man in such a deeply misogynistic society can see a woman as a person. I think Aerys saw Joanna as a battlefield. Also I really hate the theory that Tyrion is Aerys’s. Really hate that.)

Ok, im sorry, ILU SANTA! I HOPE YOU ARE ENJOYING BEING DONE WITH YOUR FINALS AND HAVING A BREAK!!!

#tywin lannister #joanna lannister #tywin x joanna #joanna meta #tywin meta #tjmeta #lannister thoughts #secret santa #secret santa 2019 #got secret santa #the meaning of asoiaf

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 Episode 4 Review: Forget Me Not

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This Star Trek: Discovery review contains spoilers.

Star Trek: Discovery Season 3, Episode 4

In some ways, “Forget Me Not” is Star Trek: Discovery‘s most ambitious episode yet. It may not include epic space battles or a trip to the Mirror Universe or a jump 930 years into the future, but it does attempt to address the cumulative collective trauma of an entire starship crew that has gone through all of the aforementioned—a narrative endeavor that has much less precedent than bearded Vulcans.

Fittingly, the episode begins with a log (supplementary) from Discovery’s doctor, Hugh, who is in the midst of compiling a comprehensive report on the crew’s health. The opening voiceover, though presumably written well before coronavirus, is startlingly relevant: “It’s starting to hit everyone… just how little we have to hold onto. The personal moments we use to define ourselves—birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, funerals—we’ve jumped past all of them.” Um, relatable. Perhaps it’s particularly easy to find catharsis in this depiction of Discovery’s mental health struggles because of what’s going on in the real world now. Either way, this addressing of the crew’s mental health is long overdue for a show that encourages us to accept that Starfleet is some form of utopian institution.

Of course, just because Hugh is asking the right questions, doesn’t mean he’s getting the honest answers. “First they have to accept help,” muses Hugh in his log. “For a crew of overachievers, that kind of vulnerability can be hard to hold.” When he presents the report to Captain Saru, he diagnoses the crew with heightened stress levels pretty much across the board, but he doesn’t have an easy fix. Out here in the darkness of the future, there’s only the mission of finding the Federation to hold onto and, for some, that’s understandably not enough. In many ways, the easy past was jumping through that wormhole. (Though Detmer and Stamets may not agree.) The hardest parts have come after: in surviving through what they’ve found on the other side, in learning how to live in the in-between times without the rites and rituals they took for granted in their home time.

Saru is on it. He is a holistic captain and he’s taking the relative lull between crisis situations to address some of these lingering and complex issues. He asks Stamets and Tilly to find a way to use the spore drive should Stamets become incapacitated or worse, and he takes his crew’s mental health struggles seriously, getting some helpful advice from an unexpected source: Zora. Well, no one on Discovery knows her as Zora yet, but we do—we were introduced to the character who evolved from the Discovery’s computer in the Short Treks episode “Calypso” (written by Picard showrunner Michael Chabon). There, she was the lonely artificial intelligence of the Discovery computer, long ago abandoned by her captain and crew. Here, she’s seemingly new, an evolution of the computer as influenced by the sphere data, and she’s got movie recommendations! As Saru later theorizes to Hugh, she’s protecting the crew in the same way the crew protects her. It’s a heavy-handed, but not unappreciated metaphor for the Trill host-symbiont relationship that makes up the focus point of the episode’s other major plotline…

Though we met Adira as the genius teen engineer in last week’s episode, this week, we really get to delve further into their character—and, you know, so does Adira. They don’t remember anything before getting picked up in an escape pod not so long ago and, frankly, they are an impressively functional human being given that backstory. But the time for mysteries is (thankfully) over. Adira is the host to a Trill symbiont that includes Admiral Senna Tal, and Discovery needs access to his memories in order to find the Federation. Luckily, Adira would also like to know what the heck is going on with their past(s), and accepts Discovery’s offer of a ride and escort to the Trill homeworld. That escort ends up being Michael.

There were many fascinating character dynamics at play in “Forget Me Not.” Tilly and Stamets. Hugh and Saru. Stamets and Detmer. Detmer and Hugh. Saru and the Computer. You name it, this episode probably had it—but the one that had the most work to do was the dynamic between Adira and Michael. All those other relationships have seasons of history to build off of, but Adira and Michael just met one another. It says a lot about the power of both Sonequa Martin-Green and Blu del Barrio’s performances and the chemistry between the them that the emotional journey of their storyline works so damn well. By the time these two are boarding a shuttle to head down to the Trill homeworld, I am already invested in their easy banter and earnest vulnerability and that investment is crucial as the stakes both raise and become more, well, mindscape-y.

As anyone who has watched an episode of dramatic television may have suspected, Adira’s visit to the Trill homeworld isn’t conflict-free. While the Trill are initially overjoyed to hear that one of their own is returning to them, after having lost so many in The Burn, their reception soon turns sour when they realize Adira is a human host and the rejection is honestly difficult to watch. They deny Adira access to the Caves of Mak’ala, and ask that they immediately leave the planet. But this isn’t Michael’s first rodeo. When some hostile Trill show up looking to forcibly separate Adira from their Trill symbiont, Michael takes them out and, with the help of a more radical Trill, brings Adira to the caves.

Once there, Adira is able to use the milky pools to communicate with their symbiont and, with Michael’s encouragement, unlock the secrets of their past. Adira grew up as an orphan on a generation ship, but they had family: Grey, their boyfriend who was Trill. The two were in love and it was adorable, then tragedy struck. Not long after Grey became a host to a symbiont named Tal, their ship was damaged and Grey died, but not before Adira became Tal’s new host. Adira’s memory loss came as a result of their inability to fully connect with Tal (and also, probably, because of their trauma). After spending time in the caves, Adira is able to meet the many hosts who live on in and with Tal, including Grey, and is accepted by them and by the other Trill.

“Forget Me Not” was all about relationships: the ones we have with others and the ones we have with ourselves, and the ways in which those two categories are inexplicably intertwined. Relationships of all kinds can be highlighted, challenged, and changed by trauma and its aftermath. For Adira, the trauma of losing Grey and unexpectedly becoming the host to an alien fractured one of the most fundamental structures of their personhood: their memory. For the crew of Discovery, abruptly losing their homes and families without properly mourning that loss was eating away at the bonds between this starship family. Both Adira and the crew of the Discovery couldn’t hope to start healing, without pausing to make space for the pain they all felt. It’s pretty badass that Discovery devoted an entire episode to this theme, and that they managed to tie two relatively disparate storylines so tightly together with it.

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Additional thoughts.

I kind of hate that Grey, one of Discovery‘s first two trans characters, is tragically killed in the same episode we meet him. Yes, it’s complicated by the fact that he lives on in Tal and that there is something funky going on in that Adira can see and interact with him, but it still sucks. That being said, it is pretty amazing to have two trans characters (in non-binary Adira and trans Grey) on Star Trek—I love them both.

Hanelle Culpepper, who directed the first three episodes of Picard, was behind the camera for this one and did an amazing job in an episode that asks for both domestic squabbles and alien mindscapes. Some moments when I especially appreciated her style: Those close-ups of Adira as the Trill discussed whether they would help them. The shots of Detmer’s hands clenching around the table before she brainstorms her haiku of death. The way Detmer is standing in foregrounded shadow before admitting to Hugh that she is not OK. Honestly, just like all of the shots of Detmer and how they visually communicated her not-OK-ness.

“You wanna fly this monster?”

Can we talk about the Trill costuming? Honestly, these shapeless, flowing tunics would make great home quarantine wear, especially if you’ve been working on your triceps.

Ronnie!

I love that the introduction to the Michael/Adira dynamic comes from Hugh. He points out that Adira and Michael have a lot in common, as two people who are attempting to live past their trauma. Additionally, from Michael’s point of view, Adira is so much easier that every other relationship she’s got going on right now. Adira might expect things of Michael, but they don’t expect Michael to be the person they were a year ago, when Discovery jumped through the wormhole, because Adira didn’t know that person. Adira can offer Michael something that no one else on the Discovery can right now: a fresh start. And Michael, well Michael can offer Adira her skills as an empathetic badass, which immediately come in handy during their mission.

“Adira’s life takes precedent.” Michael is not here for your fucked up priorities.

Hugh totally nails his analysis of Michael as a “responsibility hoarder,” and he does it in such a loving way.

Riker Googling: “does petsmart sell flying trill fish?”

Yoga. Interstellar shopping. Limiting dairy. It is worth noting that, in that long (and hilarious) list of suggested therapies for the crew’s stress problem, Zora never mentioned, you know, therapy. Though perhaps we can assume that is what Hugh is offering to Detmer when she comes to him at the end of the episode.

“Get in there before someone shoots us.” Someone put this on a cat poster!

Joann and Keyla: friends or friends?

If anyone else is confused about other characters’ use of “she/her” pronouns for Adira, who identifies as non-binary, actor Blu del Barrio explained how their character’s journey will mirror their own in an interview with Syfy Wire, saying: “Even when people are using she/they pronouns, for Adira, because they have not shared their identity with the Discovery crew … And this was basically the case because I still wasn’t really out to my family and I didn’t want to be out on screen as a character who was out until I was … I wanted to wait until I had told my family and my friends. So I kind of came out alongside them.” Adira’s pronouns are “they/them,” as are del Barrio’s. (Also, that Syfy Wire interview by Riley Silverman is worth a read in its entirety.)

I love that Saru’s dinner party small talk is all about kelp crop harvesting. We are not worthy.

It is so believably nerdy that the Discovery bridge crew/officers would have a haiku-off at family dinner.

OK, but are Linus and Emperor Georgiou like actually friends?

“Well, at least the wine was good.” I love that Georgiou was invited to this party.

I can only imagine that one of the proposed titles for this episode was “Dr. Hugh Culber: Stealth Therapist.”

The Discovery now has the coordinates to find Federation headquarters, whatever that means…

Bless the patron saint of Starfleet therapists: Dr. Deanna Troi. Eat some chocolate in her honor.

The post Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 Episode 4 Review: Forget Me Not appeared first on Den of Geek.

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theresgloryforyou · 7 years

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*Rubs hands together*

*this is gonna be a nice long post, ladies*

For many socialist feminists, critiquing liberal feminism is easy. Many of us came to socialism from liberalism and have a clear understanding of its limits and flaws.

However, the history and substance of radical feminism is less well known. While the “radical” in radical feminism seems to suggest a politics that socialists would embrace, a closer look reveals an ideology that’s incompatible with socialist feminism. Plagued by a narrow understanding of gendered oppression and a misguided strategy for change, radical feminism ultimately fails to offer women a clear path to liberation.

It’s very clear from the rest of this mess that the author didn’t take a closer look at radical feminism, at all. Also “plagued by a narrow understanding of gendered oppression” grows genuinely funny later in the piece, as it becomes clear the author’s view of gendered oppression is so narrow as to be non-existant.

Radical feminism arose out of second-wave feminism in the 1970s, alongside, but mutually exclusive from, socialist and Marxist feminism. Nonetheless, they share some commonalities. Like socialist feminists, radical feminists take issue with the individualism of liberalism and argue that personal choices and individual achievement are not enough to transform society. And they locate women’s oppression in a broader, societal context.

From the beginning, radical feminists have been especially concerned with sexual and domestic violence, seeing it as fundamental to women’s oppression. Andrea Dworkin, one of the most prominent radical feminists of the 1980s, distinguished herself with her crusade against sexual violence. In one of her most famous speeches, “I Want a 24 Hour Truce During Which There is No Rape,” Dworkin implored men in the audience to try to understand the profound fear of sexual violence that women live with every day.

This commitment to combatting sexual violence — a scourge that hinders all aspects of women’s lives — is admirable. So too is radical feminists’ emphasis on large-scale reform rather than small-scale tweaks.

But the way that radical feminists have gone about enacting change is both troubling and symptomatic of deeper flaws in their ideology.

Their anti-pornography work is emblematic of this. In the 1980s, many radical feminists worked to ban porn, viewing it as inherently misogynistic and violent. Some, like Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon — a radical feminist academic, lawyer, and professor — went to even greater lengths. Joining hands with Christian right-wingers like Edwin Meese, they pushed for a number of local ordinances to stamp out pornography. “Among the many legislators with whom we have worked on the ordinance,” MacKinnon enthused in a 1990 New York Times op-ed, “one is a political conservative. We were honored to work with her.”

Some aspects of pornography are undoubtedly despicable, racist, and violent. But outlawing pornography would do little to address the immediate, material concerns of women involved in the industry. And it makes no sense to work with conservatives to fight women’s oppression. These are the same people who want to restrict women’s access to reproductive health and roll back the already-meager welfare state.

Radical feminists’ anti-porn work throws into sharp relief the dangers of misidentifying the roots of women’s oppression. Relying on the state for censorship, emboldening the carceral apparatus, making alliances with opponents of progressive change — this is where radical feminism’s analysis leads us.

If you want to discredit radical feminism, it helps to lead with a strawman. First, make sure everyone believes all radical feminists love leaping into political bed with neocons who hate women. This is why no one will cover the huge uproar among us radfems about WoLF deciding to do this exact same bullshit-- if you can attack us as misguided baby deers and then shake your head patronisingly and sigh and say “see, this is where the analysis leads!” you can avoid mentioning a majority of us see creating alliances with the Heritage Foundation and Edwin Meese as exactly anithetical to a radical feminist analysis. (This is also the exact reason why some of us yelled our heads off about WoLF and were criticized for not accepting political pragmatism as a good decision making strategy. Also I’m positive socialists generally and Jacobin particularly have never compromised pragmatically, to back up a certain political candidate, say, or in any other arena-- rest assured, us girlybrained radfems could only dream of being as upright and principled as you.)

Given this is Jacobin it is surprising, this article fails to note that socialists SHOULD be cool with destroying a 96 billion dollar a year industry that exploits primarily women, sexually and economically, and you’d think socialists would not be okay with defending that same industry with “but the workers! think of the workers! where would they go to work?” But that’s what happens to leftists who fail to include an analysis of patriarchal values in their writing.

Onward!

At the core of radical feminism’s theoretical blunders is its conception of class.

For radical feminists, the two main classes in society are not the working class (who sell their labor power) and capitalists (who exploit them), but men (the oppressors) and women (the oppressed). They call this patriarchy theory.

Radical feminists don’t always acknowledge capitalism, but even when they do, they regard it as a completely separate sphere, siloed off from female oppression. Their ultimate goal is to abolish gender, which they see as inherently hierarchal and oppressive toward women.

Stopping here for a sec: radical feminism is a leftist movement that, in theory, should be consistent in acknowledging capitalism-- but as tumblr often proves, many radfems don’t seem to understand this is part and parcel with the movement. Also, radical feminist theory does not consider capitalism a sphere siloed off from female oppression-- it specifically names capitalism as a working feature of the patriarchy. The core of socialism’s theoretical blunders in its conception of sexism is that merely getting rid of capitalism will fix patriarchy.

While Marxists share this antipathy toward patriarchy, [HA HA HA HA HA SURE YA DO! Oh, sorry, carry on] we have a different conception of both class and the roots of women’s oppression. We define class not in gender but in economic terms: a person’s class is determined by their relationship to the means of production and the state. Hillary Clinton and Sheryl Sandberg, for example, reside in much a different class than the female graduate student fighting for unionization or the mother of four working at a fast-food restaurant for minimum wage.

Socialists oppose any and all sexist comments hurled at Clinton, Sandberg, and other elite women. But the fact remains that their interests as capitalists and well-heeled politicians are fundamentally at odds with the interests of the vast majority of society.

Take a recent example: when female hotel workers attempted to unionize a Double Tree Hilton in Cambridge, Massachusetts a couple years ago, they explicitly asked for Sandberg’s support, stating that they were taking her advice to “lean in.” Sandberg refused to back them. And it’s no wonder. Universal “sisterhood” ran up against the concrete interests of capital. Sandberg’s true allegiances came through, loud and clear.

A radical feminist analysis of this would point out, Hillary Clinton and Sheryl Sandberg only have any power at all because males have conferred that power upon them. This is true of any powerful woman under patriarchy. And, as is true of all women as individuals-- the woman who wrote the Jacobin piece, for example, attempting to throw an entire feminist political philosophy under the bus-- you absolutely cannot count on every single woman to stand by other women when her interests, under patriarchy, might outweigh her solidarity with others. That’s the shared nature of both capitalism and patriarchy-- they are best served by turning those with common interests against each other. But the point is, like all women, no matter how privileged, connected, white, hetero she might be, she’s always dependent upon males for her influence and power. Sandberg’s true allegiance is to Sandberg-- and under patriarchy she’d be a fool to not know which side her bread is buttered on.

As Marxists, we know the enemy is not men, but the capitalist class — which itself is multi-gendered and multiracial — and that our strategy must reflect this. Women’s oppression is not innate in humans but instead arose at a particular historical and political moment, alongside the development of class society and the nuclear family.

Women’s oppression persists not simply because men hate us, but because of the role we’ve played historically in the nuclear family. While men headed off to work each morning to engage in capitalist production — making cars at the factory, writing legal briefs at the office — women typically engaged in what is known as social reproduction: the biological reproduction of new workers (i.e. having children) and the day-to-day reproduction of workers — doing laundry, feeding the family, getting children ready for school, and so on.

Even in recent decades, as women have entered the paid workforce en masse, they’ve still tended to be saddled with the “second shift,” carrying out social reproduction at home after they return from work.

These tasks are all vital to capitalism. Workers must be fed, clothed, and prepared every day for capitalism to function. But it is in capitalism’s interest for this work to be done for free and in the private sphere.

It is in capitalism’s best interest for women to do all of this for free, but tell me something, um, given your admiration for radical feminist analysis of “domestic violence” and rape culture, are the mass murders of women and their families by their male significant others happening because of capitalism? Isn’t that kind of a dodge, telling women and men the only reason specifically women are beaten and raped and murdered by specifically men who they usually specifically know is because of ... what, class? The ruling classes are doing this? Are causing this? Or is it not in the best interest of the male proletariat to have his unpaid sex slave at home, or better yet, working too and THEN being there to do all the things she’s supposed to do for him, and have “his” children that he can take from her whenever he wants? I mean, isn’t it possible a class analysis doesn’t quite cut it when you consider the daily oppression of women, of all classes, by men, of all classes?

And not only was all of this in capitalism’s best interest, and in the male’s best interest, but it was in the best interest of feudal lords, and the church, and it remains in the best interest among leftist organizers, who seem to have a great way of dodging their responsibility built into arguments like this one. Rape and sexual assault and sexual harassment and sex-based discrimination take place in leftist organizations and movements every single day-- did capitalism cause this? See, in the end, the reason radical feminism is NECESSARY to being a solid leftist with a holistic praxis is not because it is “limiting” and “blundering” and irrational, but because it makes everything make MORE sense.

Continue!

As a result, socialist feminists argue that the only way we can liberate women is to end class society, once and for all.

Along the way, there are reforms we can and should fight for, like raising the minimum wage, introducing paid maternity leave, and implementing universal child care. Socialist feminists like Sylvia Federici have also advocated “wages for housework,” in order to provide women financial independence and recognize their work in the domestic sphere as labor. Others, like Angela Davis, have proposed socializing these domestic tasks to remove the uneven and gendered burden from women.

But none of these reforms — much less the overthrow of capitalism — will be won without massive and united social movements. And that’s where the working class comes in. Because of its position in society, the working class as a whole — in all its multi-gendered, multiracial, multigenerational glory — is the societal agent that can fight to radically reform, and ultimately go beyond, capitalism.

Does this end goal include the abolition of gender? Probably! To quote Engels:

That will be answered when a new generation has grown up: a generation of men who never in their lives have known what it is to buy a woman’s surrender with money or any other social instrument of power; a generation of women who have never known what it is to give themselves to a man from any other considerations than real love or to refuse to give themselves to their lover from fear of the economic consequences. When these people are in the world, they will care precious little what anybody today thinks they ought to do; they will make their own practice and their corresponding public opinion about the practice of each individual — and that will be the end of it.

PROBABLY? Um, okay, who has the limited philosophy now?

Okay, deep breath everyone, you know this was coming:

In recent years, many people’s understanding of radical feminism has been colored by their opinions of TERFs, or trans-exclusionary radical feminists. Not all radical feminists are TERFs. MacKinnon has been an outspoken supporter of trans rights for decades, and has criticized TERFs for their bigotry. “Anybody who identifies as a woman, wants to be a woman, is going around being a woman, as far as I’m concerned, is a woman,” she said in a 2015 interview.

But while not synonymous, radical feminism contains many TERFs in its ranks, and its core ideas lend themselves to an exclusion of trans people, especially trans women.

For many radical feminists, it doesn’t matter what gender someone identifies and presents as — it only matters what gender they were assigned at birth. If men are the oppressors and the source of women’s oppression, it follows that those men maintain that oppressive power, even after they transition. Their socialization as men, no matter how short-lived or plagued by gender dysphoria and violence, renders them agents of female oppression. Thus, many radical feminists ban trans people, and particularly trans women, from their politics and organizing spaces.

This exclusion isn’t just bigoted — it’s hypocritical: while radical feminists campaign vigorously against sexual violence, it’s trans women who suffer from disproportionately high rates of sexual and physical violence (particularly trans women of color).

Statistically, only trans women of color-- the majority of trans women are white, and do not experience the same rates of violence or exclusion at all compared to trans women of color. Many trans women of color are sex workers, which greatly enhances the risks of violence-- which female victims of sex work also suffer, at the same or higher rates. There is some noise in the statistics, probably because violence against prostituted people is underreported overall, and you have the fact there are many more women than trans women involved at any given point in time, but it appears that sex work is a common denominator for violence against trans women-- not being trans.

Also there is nothing exclusionary about organizing women for women. That’s just common sense. Trans women are welcome in many spaces, and don’t need to be in every single one. That’s not hypocritical-- that’s how leftists organize, unless you are going to pretend you’re against, say, Black activists deciding they only want to organize with other Black folk. If trans women felt the need to organize together without the people they call “cis” around, would that be a problem?

TERFs may argue that trans women do not share a reproductive system with cis women, and thus can’t understand women’s struggles for birth control and against forced sterilization. But then what do they say of solidarity with lesbian women, or cis women who cannot or choose not to have children? The arguments that TERFs put forth are both weak and prejudiced.

Oh look, another strawman. That’s not what “terfs” claim at all. It isn’t about sharing a reproductive system or the ability or desire to give birth or to have abortions, though it’s a valid question as to what trans women might bring to the table on those issues. No, it’s about sharing a lived experience based on being TREATED LIKE A FEMALE your entire life, based on your perceived reproductive capablities. Lesbians and child free women and women who can’t have chldren all have the experience of female oppression. Males, no matter how dysphoric they are, get treated like males. That’s the argument, if you’re going to try to debunk it at least get it right.

(Also note how effortlessly she slid into using TERF!)

Radical feminism is also noticeably silent on the question of racism, and is burdened by a politically suspect strategy for fighting it.

Men of color perpetuate sexism just like white men. But their experience of racism also binds them together with the women of color in their communities. As Sharon Smith writes, “the need to fight alongside men in the fight against racism or in the class struggle [has] made separatist ideas unappealing” for women of color.

Indeed, for many women, the struggle against racism is inextricably linked to the struggle against sexist oppression (both of which are ingrained in capitalism).

The Combahee River Collective, a legendary group of black feminist socialists, embodied this understanding, writing in their 1979 statement: “We need to articulate the real class situation of persons who are not merely raceless, sexless workers, but for whom racial and sexual oppression are significant determinants in their working/economic lives.”

YAWN! You do realize radical feminism has a shit ton of writing on race, given how many of us are not white, right? Is this your “white feminism” accusation? Cuz no, honey, you are wrong. Just because you haven’t read it /couldn’t be bothered to look it up doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Also, you do know there were (and are) Black Lesbian separatists, right? No? I didn’t think so.

Women cannot reduce their experiences of oppression merely to their gender. Most of us are workers. Many of us are mothers, people of color, members of the LGBTQ community, and more. We need to understand how all of these things are tied together in order to fight domination in all spheres — and in order to win.

Congratulations, you described intersectional feminism, which is exactly what radical feminism is. Radical feminists are mostly workers, many are mothers, a good majority I know are women of color, a large percentage of us are LGB, and some of us are even T (shocking!). You clearly haven’t met any radical feminists is what I’m getting from this article. If you had, you’d know this, but okay, onward!

While radical feminists posit separatism as a political strategy — and for some, the goal — socialist feminists understand that our power lies in our numbers. The division between working-class men and women, between cisgender people and transgender people — these fissures are detrimental to our overall aims. They only make us weaker and our fight against capitalism that much harder.

Radical feminists are pretty divided on the issue of separatism. It’s hardly a bedrock strategy for the majority of us, any more than it remains a bedrock strategy for most Black people organizing today-- it was a popular strategy for a lot of groups, at one time. All of us have moved on, except liberal and socialist feminists looking to discredit radical feminism on dated technicalities. But it’s true, this is an area in which socialists and some radfems clearly, strongly disagree. There is overlap, but of course there are differences or I wouldn’t feel the need, as a Marxist, to out myself clearly as a Radical Feminist as well, and to prioritize it.

But the paragraphs below are the actual point of Jacobin deciding to publish this really badly written critique of someone’s IDEA of what she THINKS radical feminism is, based on, I guess, social media? I don’t know know. Anyway, here it is:

Socialist feminists’ goal is to build solidarity across the entire working class. Our fates are tied together, and the struggle against gendered oppression is inseparable from the struggle against transphobia, racism, and capitalism more broadly. Any movement or theory of feminism that either explicitly or implicitly excludes trans people, intentionally misgenders them, or perpetuates transphobia has no business being on the Left.

Recently, Left Forum came under fire for including a panel that questioned the legitimacy of transgender people and their need for health care. After much controversy, it was ultimately cancelled — and rightly so. As the movement for transgender rights gains steam, the Left must be forthright in our solidarity with transgender and gender non-conforming people.

(For the sake of accuracy one of us should mention that Left Forum knew full well they were a radical feminist group, because at one time Left Forum, and all leftists, had no problem with radical feminists. The panel did not question the legitimacy of trans people and their need for healthcare-- this is what trans activists at Left Forum accused them of to preemptively shut them down.)

While there are things we can find inspiring within radical feminism, such as the emphasis on sexual violence, its analysis of the roots of women’s oppression and resulting ideas about how we should organize politically fall flat.

For example, we absolutely must prop up gender as a construct and never question the concept of hierarchy in that one aspect of human life, because if we did we’d get somewhere close to the actual roots of women’s oppression, and have to call men out on their shit, and that would be HARD. We don’t really believe it can or should be done. We don’t want to make waves. MY boyfriend isn’t like that! And what if we abolished gender as a hierarchy-- then we’d have to acknowledge biology is real, and trans people are experiencing a mental issue that they need every help and sympathy with but no we do not need to reorganize the world around them, and then how ever will Jacobin virtue signal so fucking hard???

Rather than seeing men as the core source of women’s oppression, we must identify class society as the culprit. Fighting capitalism remains the only path toward women’s full liberation.

Okay.

When the revolution comes, and socialist women find out men are no different, no nicer, no less violent and entitled, not at all changed, then I guess it will be time for them to figure out the patriarchy transcends capitalism. It was there before capitalism, and unless we destroy it, it will be here after capitalism. Of course, I don’t think there will be a revolution without radical feminists, at least not one worth fighting for.

Good luck, comrades.

#jacobin #and here's why we started this side blog #maybe for kicks we should post this to our main someday

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