Robin Morgan Talks About Feminism And Occupying Patriarchy On The First Episode Of Feminist Peace Network Radio

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Dec 062011
 

On the inaugural episode of Feminist Peace Network Radio, I had the pleasure of talking with feminist shero Robin Morgan about feminism and the role it plays in the Occupy movement and as Robin so aptly pointed out, the role Occupy should play in the feminist movement.

My great thanks to Allie McNeil of A World of Progress Radio (AWOP) for helping with the chat room and providing much needed support for my pre-first show jitters and to everyone who listened in.  For those of you who are wondering, yes there will be more shows after the first of the year, stay tuned!

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 Posted by Fempeace on December 6, 2011

Occupying Patriarchy

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Oct 252011
 

It has been almost ten years since I founded the Feminist Peace Network as a safe a supportive place to discuss how militarism, violence and misogyny impacts women’s lives.  While FPN has thrived and expanded, I am depressed beyond words to see  those very same issues of safety, sexism, misogynist power structures and lack of gendered analysis  within the growing Occupy movement.  Just as there was an urgent need for spaces such as FPN as a response to the military attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, it is now crucial to respond to issues of misogyny in the Occupy movement.

While occupying Wall Street is important, taking a step back, we are reminded that Wall Street is a manifestation and tool of the much larger problem of patriarchal control and power which has been plaguing us for thousands of years and which depends in large part on the exploitation, subjugation and control of women.  Put bluntly, the harms experienced by women as a result of global economic policies are, in aggregate, different and often far worse than those experienced by men.

The majority of people living in poverty are female, in this country women are lucky to make 77 cents on the male dollar (women of color often earn far less than that).  Women are forced to do the overwhelming majority of unpaid work such as child and elder care and housework.  In times of economic instability, women are more vulnerable to intimate violence while at the same time social services that could help them are cut.  We are still paying more for health care and our access to reproductive health services is under siege. And throughout the world women are more likely to go hungry and poverty forces women into sexual slavery.

If we truly want to change the economic paradigm, these issues must be integral to the agenda, yet they are being marginalized and all but invisible in the Occupy movement.  When women dare to bring them up, we are met with the very tired and patriarchy preserving saws about looking at the whole and not being divisive. In a blog post that is sadly reminiscent of Robin Morgan’s description in her book, Demon Lover of the same problem in the early days of second wave feminism,  Angie Becker Stevens writes about the phenomenon for Ms Magazine,

On the other side of the coin, though, the ‘Occupy’ movement needs to embrace feminism as part of its cause. The folks I know personally who have been working tirelessly for the movement in New York are committed to a platform opposing all forms of oppression. But those views are not necessarily a reflection of all who are “occupying” New York and elsewhere. In the short time I’ve been involved with the developing Occupy Detroit movement, I have already met with resistance from some people when trying to bring gender—as well as race and sexual orientation—into the dialogue. The arguments given are probably familiar to any feminist activist who has engaged in broader-based movements: that we will only dilute our message if we start talking about all these different issues at once; that we need to focus on this one big issue that affects all of us; that we’ll deal with all these “social issues” later.

Many—typically straight white men—claim that talking about gender and race will only divide us, when what we need is to be standing together and focusing on how we’re all the same. But the reality is that we do not all experience oppression in the same ways. There is value in uniting–the ‘Occupy’ movement’s slogan that “we are the 99%” is a powerful one–but our experiences still differ based on race, class, gender and sexual orientation. It is perhaps a well-intentioned notion to imagine that we can unite in a way that transcends these categories, but it’s a notion that has no basis in the reality of our society. Because these categories, however artificially constructed they might be, still play a huge role in how and to what degree we are exploited, it is impossible to fight oppressive forces without acknowledging the reality of how they function. We can stand in solidarity with one another without pretending that our experiences are identical. In fact, I would argue that the only true solidarity is one in which we fully recognize and respect both how our struggles are alike and how they differ.

Not surprisingly, there have also been blatant episodes of sexist, misogynistic objectivity such as Steven Greenstreet’s Hot Chicks of Wall Street video and blog which purports to attract guys to Occupy because there are “smart hot chicks” there.  Then there is this horrific tidbit from Peter J. Reilly at Forbes,

What better way is there to “neutralize” a dissenter than by having her and especially him sexually assaulted or even merely threatened.  The humiliation is unbearable.

“Especially him”?  The implication would seem to be that women are used to sexual assault so it is no big deal.

It is critical that we not let such statements pass unnoticed for the supposed greater good of the cause and it is also crucial that we insist that the needs of the 99% not be reduced to a homogenous white male centric vision of what is needed. Real change on Wall Street will only come from addressing the root problem of patriarchy.

Towards this end, the Feminist Peace Network has started a new project called Occupy Patriarchy which will work towards bringing together those of us who are confronting and addressing the issue of patriarchy within the Occupy movement.  The project was conceived of in partnership with feminist scholar and activist Kathy Miriam who was one of first people to begin to articulate what has been happening and whose work has been a catalyst in my own thinking.  We have set up both a website and a Facebook page where we will be posting links to work being done throughout the country and the world as well as commentary and guest posts from other activists.  We invite you to become part of this effort.

 

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 Posted by Fempeace on October 25, 2011

Reclaiming Her-Story–FPN Letter To Other Women’s Organizations Regarding The Needs Of Iraqi Women (2007?)

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Mar 282011
 

In our ongoing look at the Feminist Peace Network‘s story as part of Women’s History Month, this letter (undated, but probably sent in 2007) went to representatives of several other women’s groups, including WILPF, NOW, Code Pink, Global Women’s Strike, Nobel Women’s Initiative and VDay.  Unfortunately, nothing substantive resulted from it, and the letter could just as easily be sent today apropos of numerous conflict-afflicted areas in the world.

Gentlewomen,

As I think you all know, the already dire situation for Iraqi women and children has become horrendously worse during the last  few months, both for those still in Iraq and for those who are now refugees.  Yet this crisis is all but invisible to the U.S. peace/anti-war movement which seems to be centering its message on ending the war but supporting the troops, a message that while expedient in terms of building a broad coalition against the war, only addresses part of the problem.

As women’s organizations and feminists, we  need to demand that the specific harms to women as a result of this conflict be addressed as part of the anti-war movement’s agenda.  Harms such as:

–Lack of maternal healthcare.

–The difficulties facing women trying to get passports (you have to travel to Baghdad and have a male relative’s permission) in order to flee the country.

–The women who have been sexually trafficked and forced into prostitution to feed themselves and their children.  The Independent (UK) has suggested that 50,000 women refugees may  be prostituting themselves which sounds like a huge number but if you consider that there are some 4 million refugees now, many of whom are women without male relatives and who are not able to legally obtain work, the number does not seem unreasonable.  As horrific as this is, it is a crisis that is all but invisible to the American public.

All of our organizations want this war to end, but bringing our soldiers home, while necessary, is not sufficient, we need to end this war for the Iraqi people too and work to help them restore their lives.  The first place that needs to start is immediately addressing the refugee crisis and setting up ways to enable women as part of this process.  We also need to demand that U.S. troops do not continue the wholesale slaughter of women and children.

To raise our voices loudly enough to be heard, we truly need to do so together.  I don’t have a specific plan of action in mind, at this point I am simply asking if you are willing to work together and to ask that you share your ideas.

In peaceful sisterhood,

Lucinda Marshall

Feminist Peace Network

 

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 Posted by Fempeace on March 28, 2011

Reclaiming Her-Story–Time Out! Women Call Pre-Emptive Strike For Peace

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Mar 232011
 

In our continuing look at the Feminist Peace Network’s story as part of Women’ History Month, we were a signatory to this letter in 2003.  In retrospect one wonders if this should be an annual call.  Imagine if we took this path instead of using embargoes and no-fly zones.

TIME OUT! WOMEN CALL PREEMPTIVE STRIKE FOR PEACE

Open letter to the United Nations Security Council

Women call a Preemptive Strike for Peace as the clearest expression of our informed, collective self-interest. Peace best enables our lives and the lives of our offspring, our brothers, fathers, spouses and partners, families, friends, neighbors and fellow human beings, wherever they live.  Peace among humans is the necessary condition to rescue our beleaguered planet and it may well be the imperative for species survival.

According to the Global Action To Prevent War: “The past century was the most lethal in human history. There were 250 wars, including two worldwide wars and a cold war, with more dead than in all previous wars of the past two thousand years. Over six million more have died even after the cold war ended, when things should have changed for the better.

This situation must not continue into this new century and it does not have to.”

WE cannot allow it. We Must Act Now. Our approach is not idealistic. It is a pragmatic, relevant, achievable response to war. Everywhere (and historically) non-combatant women, adolescent girls and children are the most brutalized victims of war. Violence against this population is the most relentlessly cruel and widespread violence of war. All conditions that produce and reproduce such violence should be intolerable to every woman and man and to every institution designed to organize human life.

What We Want

We request the UN Security Council

  1. To join us in calling TIME OUT on war. To help mobilize every UN Agency, especially all those mandated with the protection and well being of women and children, to invoke the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Beijing Platform on Women, to declare the impending war on Iraq (and by default in the whole region), illegal, irresponsible, immoral, unnecessary and untenable showing a blatant disregard for the lives of women, adolescent girls and children. If anyone claims we can fight a war and protect the human rights of this population, we ask the question, what of the human rights of every human being to whom every human woman’s life is attached, and what of the universal nature of human rights?
  2. To request the Secretary General to submit information for consideration –in step with the weapons inspection and disarmament of Iraq–on the condition of women in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Caspian Basin the USA and Britain as their lives embroil in the stresses of war in its every phase…impending (USA, Britain, Caspian Basin); escalating (Iraq); under foreign military occupation (Afghanistan).  
  3. To hold the line on war, enforcing the weapons inspection and disarmament project in Iraq unhindered and un-pressed for time by all parties.
  4. To call for unhindered, immediate and ongoing restoration of the critical life-support infrastructure in Afghanistan and Iraq and clean up of the depleted uranium contamination in both countries
  5. To mobilize with the NGO’s Global Action Plan To Prevent War and The Hague Appeal For Peace for implementation of their programs of action moving towards the Abolition of War. The time to act is now, before the military machine roars into full gear and runs amok.
  6. To recognize that the UNSC Iraq weapons inspections and disarmament project has laid the groundwork and precedent for universal weapons inspections and disarmament and to push and call for it in every forum.
  7. To call an emergency global conference on The Root Cause of Conflict and The Culture of Peace. The conference will deliberate upon the problems and prospects of the Oil Industry and the International Weapons Industry and articulate action plans and timelines for their conversion to socially useful and sustainable industries. We propose that the conference be held in Baghdad as soon as possible, drawing ‘stakeholder’ participation from NGO’s and labor unions, government and industry.
  8. To mobilize UNESCO to hold a Middle East Cultural Festival in Iraq by early fall. The festival should include scholarly forums/ conferences on religion and peace, for example, Islam, Judaism, Christianity and World Peace, Mapping Peaceful Paths for our Children’s Children’s Children; health and healing, ecology and human culture, youth culture. We envision a great surge in International travel on missions of goodwill to replace the cold and cruel insanity of the war fever.

On October 28th. 2002, in the Secretary-General’s Statement To Security Council on Women, Peace and Security, Mr. Kofi Annan reported, …“patterns of discrimination against women and girls tend to be exacerbated in armed conflict…. But if women suffer the impact of conflict disproportionately, they are also key to the solution of conflict…However, with a few exceptions, women are not present at the formal negotiating tables and at formal peace negotiations. The report calls for greater representation of women in formal peace negotiations… The world can no longer afford to neglect the abuses to which women and girls are subjected in armed conflict and its aftermath, or to ignore the contributions that women make to the search for peace”.

Mr. Kofi Annan’s report was based on a 179 page study undertaken by his office in response to UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. This historic resolution was unanimously adopted following an open discussion on October 24 & 25, 2000 when for the first time since its establishment in 1947, the UN Security Council  (UNSC) considered war from women’s perspective.  Better late than never.

UNSC Resolution 1325 reiterates the importance of bringing gender perspectives to the center of attention in all UN peace-making, peace-building, peacekeeping, rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts. The resolution provides a number of important operational mandates. They include:

  • Increase representation of women in decision-making for the prevention, management and resolution of conflict and peace processes (paras 1 and 2);
  • Increase appointment of women as special representatives and envoys (para 3);
  • … support local women’s peace initiatives; and ensure protection and respect for the human rights of women and girls (para 8);
  • Ensure respect for international law applicable to the rights and protection of women and girls (para 9);
  • Adopt special measures to protect women and girls from gender-based violence (para 10);
  • Ensure that Security Council missions take gender considerations and rights of women into account, including through consultation with local and international women’s groups (para 15);
  • The Secretary General to carry out a study on the impact of armed conflict on women and girls, the role of women in peace-building and the gender dimensions of peace processes and conflict resolution and submit a report to the Security Council (para 16);
  • The Secretary General to include in his reporting to the Security Council progress on gender mainstreaming throughout peacekeeping missions (para 17)

Any resolution is only as good as its full implementation. While the UN Secretary General’s study was underway, UNIFEM (United Nations Development Fund For Women) commissioned a simultaneous, independent study reporting similar conclusions. Each of these studies and both should have certainly mobilized the UN system to call the UN’s overarching mandate into full operation. The Preamble to the Charter establishing the United Nations says:

WE THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED

  • to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.
  • to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small
  • to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and
  • to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom

AND FOR THESE ENDS

  • to practice tolerance…in peace with one another as good neighbors
  • to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security
  • to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest…

HAVE RESOLVED TO COMBINE OUR EFFORTS TO ACCOMPLISH THESE AIMS

Clearly, war is not a “condition under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained”.

Yet here we are, sliding precipitously into the Bush administrations WAR ON TERROR in terrifying and unconscionable disregard of the findings of two exhaustive reports and in direct contravention of our collective obligation under UNSC Resolution 1325 and a host of other treaties including the UN Charter and the UN Universal Declaration Of Human Rights.

Women and men of good conscience must not allow this outrage. We are resolved to mobilize all resources in our power for peace. We urge every United Nations agency all National missions to the UN (signatories to the UN Charter) and all NGO’s to do the same.

We believe that the only appropriate follow up to UNSC Resolution 1325, is to implement the Hague Appeal For Peace: Replacing the law of force with the force of fair and just law. Ours is a human rights response. We assert our inalienable, common human right to Live Free of tyranny.

We have come through the bloodiest century in human history, with multiple, unprecedented, global attempts to chart a course for peaceful conflict resolution between and within nations. We have delineated in binding treaties, much of the international legal framework for peace. We have expressed our vision and intent in words. Now we must implement our common human will in action.

In the USA, Medea Benjamin of Global Exchange and other leading women activists are mobilizing against the escalating war on Iraq under a Code Pink Alert. Starhawk, one of the leaders explains: “a Code Pink alert: signifying extreme danger to all the values of nurturing, caring, and compassion that women and loving men have held. We choose pink, the color of roses, the beauty that like bread is food for life; the color of the dawn of a new era when cooperation and negotiation prevail over force”.

Kathy Kelly of Voices in the Wilderness has helped to maintain a steady flow of Peace Teams into Iraq since the first Gulf War. Across the globe, organizations like Women In Black, Global Women Strike, have sent women into strife ravaged areas to be peacemakers. The Women’s International League For Peace and Freedom was founded on such actions.

In September, UNIFEM helped form a coalition of women in Azerbaijan to do peace work in the region. These are just a few of the many actions of Peace Women. Women of extraordinary courage and will are putting their lives on the line alongside men of conscience and humanity to prevent war. And this is not accounting for all the hundreds of thousands of courageous men organizing worldwide to avert war and work to bring us the sustainable world we envision.

Like the newly formed coalition in Azerbaijan, invoking the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Beijing Declaration and Action Platform, the final documents of the Special Session of the UN General Assembly on Women in Development: Equality Development and Peace Between Men and Women in the 21st. Century, the UNSC Resolution 1325, and CEDAW we invite all Women, all peace-loving institutions and all peaceful people of the world to join our call.

TIME OUT! WOMEN CALL PREMPTIVE STRIKE FOR PEACE.

ENDORSING ORGANIZATIONS AND INDIVIDUALS

Women’s International League For Peace And Freedom, NY Metro

Evelyn Mauss (board Member Physicians For Social Responsibility, Consultant National Resources Defense Council -for identification only)

MADRE

Deborah Gorham, Prof. Emerita, Dept.of History/Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada

Professor Harriet Alonso City College NY, Women’s Peace Historian, Author

Feminist Peace Network

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 Posted by Fempeace on March 23, 2011

Beware Of Men Bearing False Gifts

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Jan 022011
 

Okay, okay, I know–holiday season over, moving on.  But remember that ad that ran on television before Christmas with two shoppers and one holds up something and says that it is just like the one the other person asked for and the second person sadly says that it isn’t?  That is an apt analogy for Michael Moore’s self-serving apology to Sady Doyle a few days before Christmas for not responding to her sooner regarding the #MooreandMe campaign that she began to call out his grossly inappropriate remarks to Keith Olbermann regarding the Assange rape charges (see here for a lot more about that).

A week after Countdown host Keith Olbermann and guest Michael Moore sparked a Twitter protest over their dismissive treatment of rape allegations against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, Moore made an appearance on The Rachel Maddow Show in which he failed to address the protest directly, but made their imprint obvious in his transformed rhetoric on rape accusations. In a crowning irony, the man whose zeal for transparency-God Julian Assange started this protest finally made direct acknowledgement of it…in a private Twitter message to #MooreAndMe creator Sady Doyle.

Keeping with the seasonal theme, let’s unpackage that.  Nice that he apologized for not getting back to her sooner.  And at least he didn’t stoop as low as Olbermann who attacked his detractors while pompously declaring he was a major feminist ally.

But Moore is seriously naughty for not apologizing for what he said that she rightly called out in the first place and the  major arrogance of the notion that he needed airtime to re-state his remarks without ever acknowledging those that called him out in the first place or apologizing to them while on the air or heaven forbid, giving the microphone to Doyle instead.  But since he didn’t, here is the take-away that Doyle offers on her blog,

We fought for basic human decency for over a week. We fought, tirelessly, at great risk and expense, to make a mountain move. The mountain moved, like, three inches to the left. If you weren’t looking closely, you wouldn’t notice that it had moved at all. You definitely wouldn’t think to thank or acknowledge the incredibly hard work of the people who moved it. But we moved a mountain. We did the impossible. We went from just a random bunch of frustrated feminists, a random bunch of people on Twitter, to a force capable of changing the rape apologism in the narrative of one of the world’s biggest news stories.The mountain moved. The man came down from the tower. And we still live in a rape culture; we’re still not done fighting it; the narrative around Assange, in particular, is still hugely misogynist and hugely dangerous for those two women and will still encourage rape survivors not to report. We didn’t get a full apology and correction from Michael Moore; we didn’t get a full apology and correction from Keith Olbermann; neither of them have donated to the many rape crisis and anti-rape organizations to which we’ve provided links; heck, we didn’t even get credit on air. But we know what we’re capable of now. And that is immensely important.

Another point that bears emphasis–the women bringing the rape charges are not the only ones being disparaged–feminists are also being hauled out to the woodshed.  When calling his accusers honeypots didn’t get him enough traction, Julian Assange offered this analysis:

Sweden is the Saudi Arabia of feminism,” he said. “I fell into a hornets’ nest of revolutionary feminism.

I’m not even sure I understand what that means, but the blame it on the feminists mantra comes through loud and clear.  And here is another one of that genre from the World Socialist Website,

Feminist opinion—as the Assange case and the Polanski affair before it have demonstrated—has become one of the means of legitimizing the suppression of nonconformists and political dissidents, and of changing the subject from the great social issues, above all, class oppression and social inequality, to stale and self-pitying concerns.

Translation:  Feminists don’t understand the big picture and therefore are damaging and shouldn’t be taken seriously.

Rape and sexual assault are “stale and self-pitying concerns”?  In a word, well actually two, up yours.

In her Winter Solstice message, visionary pagan Starhawk wrote,

…take a good look at what you want to shed. What are the behaviors, the beliefs, the patterns that no longer serve? Let them go. Make the commitment to change.

…envision the future you want to create. What world do we want to see? How will we step up to face the huge challenges of healing our communities, our economies, our climate and our environment? What risks will we need to take? What will we need to let go of, and what will we need to embrace?

Well I for one am well and ready to let go of the patriarchal left.  Yes we should be on the same side, but we aren’t  when men like Moore and Olbermann use their positions of privilege to trivialize and dismiss violence against women as well as those of us who stand up to tell them that they are wrong and damaging. When that happens, then I am done listening.

And yes I know, this is only the latest in a long, long history of left-wing misogyny.  But for me it is a break point.  I am tired.  Bone and soul weary tired of having to address this kind of damaging spew. So in answer to Starhawk’s challenge, that is what I need to let go of. I’m not going to listen to assurances that we are really on the same side or that you care about what I care about when the evidence says otherwise.  It is a toxic waste of time and energy.

As for what I’m embracing, it is that awesome wonderful capability that Doyle writes about.  That is what sustains me and lets me believe that we absolutely can and will move beyond the absurd notion that  leftwing misogyny is acceptable collateral damage for the greater good.

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 Posted by Fempeace on January 2, 2011
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