TOTW: anarchafeminism and gender abolition

Topic of the Week - Anarcha-feminism is a broad topic, since both anarchist thought and feminism hold multitudes--including mutually exclusive and contradictory ones. So for the purposes of this question, please read with your most generous interpretation of feminism, at least...

I, for one, continue to find some benefit in the idea that various identities, including women among many others, have lenses on the state of the world that are helpful. They can, of course, get entirely out of hand, but that's not what we're trying to talk about here and now. Here what we're talking about is the relationship people see between anything valuable about anarcha-feminism (AF) and the relationship of those ideas to gender abolition (GA) or gender negation. Does GA obviate AF? Is AF a gateway to GA or a distraction from it, or both? Can they co-exist in friendly ways, or are they inherently at odds, or both?

Have you read or written any good theory, or interesting ideas, on any of these topics that you'd like to share here?

There are 37 Comments

For some, gender is something they embrace and affirm early on. It becomes one of the important things that they use to define themselves in their narrative. For others, gender is mostly something that is done to them against their will. Some remember, retain, or perform it for official bureaucratic purposes, like memorizing the social security number, or observing some arbitrary consensus rule like which is the correct side of the road to drive on. There are some newer gender identities and presentations which, as appealing as they may be for those who come across them later in life, it's far easier to just fall back and perform the same low-effort act of whatever gender performance you learned to put on during your whole life.

"arbitrary consensus rule"

The new authoritarianism, that got even promoted by anarcho-liberals at some bookfair, I recall.

So yes, gender ID is one of those territorializations that get forced upon you, from birth, because of the "consensus du jour". Other categories include:

- social status
- national identity
- race
- family lineage
- ethnicity
- disabilities & other specific health conditions
- neurological fitness

These notions are working to divide people and make a few select privileged ones.

.A long while back you couldn't oppose some identity because "God" or "the King said". Now you got this new level called "the consensus". None of these define what a person, individually. and keeps making us dividuals (group-based impersonalities).

Consensus emerging from the intelligentsia (the cultural entrepreneurs, a.k.a. "social influencers") has made these spooks become total, so unavoidable. You are either Binary or not. You are either "Cis or "LGBTQ+". I get the situation in conservative Xian Deep Muhrika, but this is officially endorsed by state authorities. Like this one for instance: https://www.cdc.gov/lgbthealth/transgender.htm

The unique, the person.. on the other hand, is something the state won't recognize as it would mean its collapse. As the state needs politically and culturally-charged identities in the first place in order to sanction and represent for them. There cannot be a consensus about some individual unknown person.

I have memorized your term " arbitrary concensus rule " because it concisely sums up this whole identitarian state culture agenda.

and that doesn't conflict with gender abolition. any gender identity/lens only exists because gender is practiced. whereas abolition is the ultimate conclusion of the constructed nature of gender, the gender specific experiences of people living in a gender-practicing society will always keep identity relevant to experience...

I think for gender abolition feminism is a must. You commit abolish gender if mysogyny still exists as mysogyny requires forcing gender norms on people. And people having strong rigid genders.

For feminists it depends on what they want. Liberal girl boss feminism would not benefit from gender abolition as such a concept require rigid gender conformity. Tho I think gender abolition can provide a solid framework for more ideal feminism that I personally value and believe. And it's not even them, feminists often become rigidly stuck in gender. Hence why many have a feminism that is mildly incomparable to completely incomparable with queerness.

Challenging and routing out gender makes attacking patriarchy way easier. And on some level the category of woman is patriarchal in itself. It requires society to enforce norms of women and how they should act. And holding onto woman (a concept that is a product of a patriarchal society) will allways hold you back somewhat.

Feminism works best when it seems to abolish woman imo.

It ‘s interesting to consider the word abolition (refers to the act of putting an end to something by law) and how it implies destitution via institutions and possibly restitutions, similar to communism in how it’s a project that attempts to instate an order of things. The contrasting that with anarchy and nihilism, and what those differences would imply if one said “gender abolition”, “gender anarchy”, or “gender nihilism”.

I see overlap between the mindset of an anarcha-feminism that seeks to abolish Patriarchy, and other forms of abolitionism, be it those that seek to abolish capitalism, prisons, or gender. Anarchy and nihilism exist despite, and against, enduring institutions, regardless of the shortcomings and limitations of projects that aspire to abolish them, and can be sympathetic or indifferent to these ambitious projects.

gender anarchy would imply a chaotic clusterfuck of genders (for and against), while gender nihilism would imply an erosive disbelief of gender (and everything around it and stemming from it and alluding to it) that leads it and everything to dissolve into nothing?

left the gender abolition reading group 4 baedan and never looked back

my local Baedan gender abolition group suddenly disappeared after a while, due to either or both "contracts /engagements elsewhere", students graduating, expensive tourism abroad, rent increases... Place got taken over by brodudes on trust funds. Dunno what happened with that. Anyways, what do you get with spooks from spooks?

Things get spooky.

*snare and cymbal*

thx for taking my smart ass/half-truth comment into something relevant. i never looked back bc of a ongoing rejection of the grad student adjacent scenes around so i left the reading group and kept on walking away from gender abolition. what i actually turned to was walking down an alley with some trans girls i had just met, finally finding those like me, and their rejection of gender was an argument against ever becoming legible to the state (re: 'legal name changes'). found baedan a feww years later and it felt like it had spirit as oppose to the what i've always intrepreted as way too much marx adjacent work of gender abolition. i think the reading group was reading LIES JOURNAL (vol 1 & 2). so i guess my bias is i associate gender abolition with materialist feminism.

in regards to totw i see it more like this anarchafeminism seems to be much more prevelant in so-called mx or chile and feels more legible in those contexts of machismo, different types settler-colonial states with different histories/struggles (also potentially not having english being yhe dominate language). janes revenge/bodily autonomy things of late feels more aligned w a anarchafeminist thing (although never seen a direct associstion btwn the two). feels more in like gender abolition or the whole baedan thing as too very different extensions of taking shit to the theoretical so no surprises there on the trust funds, 'contracts', tourism and all those other things people who gain social/economic capital off theory seem to always be doing...

i guess all i hope is in the baedan thing somewhere and amongst all those words in those beautifully bound books can give people something more to destroy the conditions that make all this shit possible. anarchafeminism feels more practical and able to be engaged with by people with out ever having to go to a reading group in the first place. always glad to see an attack on gender!

so the question remains: "what do you get with spooks from spooks?"

I'm not the anon you responded to, but what you say makes me think of some stuff. An analytical perspective is not the same as a movement. Feminism as a movement has achieved a lot of advances in quality of life worldwide, while feminist "theory" and refined philosophical perspectives may have achieved understanding, explanatory, argumentative and rhetorical power, nuance, coherence, rigor, social currency, tenure, etc. Anarchism as a movement, in contrast to feminism and marxism, has not shaped the world in its image to the same extent, and as a body of theory, its production of texts within academia is much less.

Feminism-in-general is less marginal in society as a whole than marxism and anarchism. Yet boring old anarchist communism is much more prevalent and common than a self-identified anarcha-feminism, despite it feeling more current and relevant than old ancom in many places and contexts. The much more hip queer and nihilist inflections of anarchism are rarer still around the world, despite their visibility, in part due to the attention given to them by normies who find them exotic and therefore noteworthy or worthy of discussion due to novelty and curiosity, or because they find it controversial.

wow, your group was reading baedan 4?! you sure got the inside scoop!

It is possible to directly and absolutely disprove the claim that there are only two genders: The existance of Intersex folks, and of those with the XXY and XYY chromosome combinations shows that neither genital configuration or even chromosomes are binary: At least four different sex chromosome combos give a living person (XX and XY pairs most common but XXY and XYY triplets also exist). Then there are an infinate variation of how intersex people can be born configured.

Transgender folks are those born with the brain (most complex part of the body and defining who you are) configured differently than the much simpler reproductive hardware. The former cannot be reconfigured and if it could be it would destroy the person in question and replace them with another. The latter can be, and all the ways trans folks handle transition are efforts to make the body match the person inside.

I got lucky and got a body matching who I am, some of my friends didn't, so attacks on trans folks are attacks on me as well. I also know very well that if my trans friends are defeated, as a Queer man myself I am next in line. No oppressor, imperialist, or colonizer ever stops with just one bite. If I have to leave my bones on the field of battle to defend my trans friends from genocide I am OK with that.

Anyone advocating a crackdown on trans folks is advocating gender-based oppression, same as the antiabortion bigots and often the same people behind both. People like DeSantis are enemies of us all.

"The existance of Intersex folks, and of those with the XXY and XYY chromosome combinations shows that neither genital configuration or even chromosomes are binary: "

Nope.

- First off, the fact a slim minority of people are naturally-assigned as intersex doesn't invalidate the existence of "male" and "female".

The notion of "assigned at birth" is vague -purposefully or not- as there are two very different ways by which people are assigned; the "natural" (or biological, which still can't be changed tho with neo-eugenics we're getting close to this capacity)

- Sex is not gender. This small school level of obvious. Sex is a set of biological features that usually correspond to each other and are related to what you end up with between your legs... but yes, it's not universal. In the vast majority of case when you're female you got a higher level of oestrogen than men, have a slightly different skeleton that tends to be thinner, smaller and lighter, and with a much larger pelvis You're given breasts and an entire reproductive system (the whole womb). Physical shape will be different, more curvy and supple than the roughness of males... but that also is the LEAST occurring divisive trait, as males and females are often found to have physical features from the opposite sex (which is why myself am fitting better in female pants than these awful straight-legged cut men's pants).

- Gender is the identity that socially-assigned accordingly to these natural sexual features. And this is where the whole controversy arises from... as the state's ways of recognizing gender is never doing justice to what's in the body, or how a person feels about themself. Fun fact: it never has, and never will, regardless how it officially recognizes "LGBTQ+" as an identity, that is also meangingless as this is just another wholesale, vague conflation of a bunch of not-too-related characters, cultures and sensibilities, that anyways got nothing to do with any individual person whatsoever. That's just more representation politics. Seen from a highway overpass, all these people -along with "Cis"- look the same...

I wish we would just encourage individuals to go on their individual journeys. Not all of us have an innate identity or gender. Outside forces group us in specific ways in order to make it easier to manage us. How do we as individuals practice self-determination?

Femicide, mass rape and violence against women is normal and many of the social practices and institutions anarchists reject rely on this misogyny, therefore unless those are addressed gender abolition remains a goal, but not that helpful of a practice by itself. It must include a more friendly prioritizing of the liberation of so called cis women and all children from these imposed categorizations.

Also, I’m finding the widespread reliance on the state to silence dissenting opinions on the topic or to enforce punishment and criminalization of certain behaviour to be problematic. Anarchists have come to rely on knee jerk liberalism and the state to push our critiques and desires into social practice.

In my vision the planet isn’t a uniform society, it is a multitude of autonomous individuals in autonomous groups, with some organic federative arrangements between some of them. I have no desire to help create a world in which everyone shares the same opinions, reads the same books ( or is even literate), lives the same way, follows the same ethics, believes the same tenets, etc.

In some ways anarcha-feminism is waning, but might never have been more important. Gender abolition sounds like a fancy way of saying let’s celebrate individuality. I self identified as trans for years. That morphed into gay femboy. As I grew older I slowly became more masculine and heterosexual. This is my gender journey so far. And im really relieved that I didn’t medicalize that journey. As I said earlier, outside forces group us together and treat us based on those boundaries. Anarchists would do well to be more sensitive to this reality.

I find it reasonable that self-identification combined with absolute inclusion enforced by the state scares people grouped into the ‘female’ category. I don’t yell at them that they are bigots, especially the older ones. I would call for a more gentle attitude. Horizontal hostility in society is healthy to a certain extent as we find accomplices and like minded people. But at one point it is harmful and self-absorbed.

That's true Ben, cultural labels and identities are just to make people feel wanted and contributing to the cultural milieu or herd, and the more they strive to become this label, the more they are withdrawing from and denying their real autonomous non-labelled inner being.
When I look in the mirror whilst fully naked, I see my sex, uh huh, so what, that doesn't alter a thing about my thinking and conscience. And when I see my girlfriend in front of the mirror naked, I see her sex, uh huh, so what?, she's still her own unique being, lady, woman, so what, and that's that, later when we are both lying on the bed, I don't say to myself, " Time to do what males are supposed to do to naked girlfriends" No, we love eachother for our minds and feelings, not for our sex, so what is the big deal, this insecurity that makes people want to declare their membership to some sex club huh?

"In some ways anarcha-feminism is waning, but might never have been more important."

Yes. As this is the context where you got Trans people starting to have a platform into the most male-dominated sectors of society (finance and big tech), while the actually entry of women hasn't increased, but perhaps even decreased. But then again... are conservative business women with elitist feminist views make things any better for anarcha-feminism? Not quite.

Same for women in the police... while their denouncing of abusive behavior by male pigs within the service is respectable, it's still the fucking police. But then how would trans cops be any better?

Liberal ID pols are just that... a social facelift in support of the same-old reactionary institutions and their hierarchies.

Feminism is a social, political, and cultural movement that seeks to achieve gender equality and challenge systems of patriarchy. Gender abolition, also known as gender abolitionism or gender critical feminism, is a feminist theory that argues for the abolition of gender as a social construct.

Advocates of gender abolition argue that the idea of gender is a harmful social construct that reinforces oppressive societal norms and reinforces patriarchal power structures. They argue that society should move beyond the binary gender system of male and female and instead focus on individuals as individuals, without reference to their perceived gender.

Feminism and gender abolition share some common goals, such as challenging patriarchal systems and achieving gender equality. However, the two approaches differ in their views on gender. Feminism primarily focuses on challenging the ways in which gender is used to oppress women and other marginalized groups, while gender abolitionism calls for the elimination of gender as a social construct altogether.

Some feminists argue that gender abolition is a form of trans-exclusionary feminism, as it could be understood as denying the existence and experiences of transgender people. They argue that gender abolitionism fails to recognize the ways in which gender identity can be a source of oppression and marginalization for trans people.

It's important to recognize that different feminists and different feminist movements have different approaches and perspectives on issues related to gender and gender abolitionism. It's important to be respectful of different perspectives and approach the issue with an open mind.

feminism is not just for marginalized groups; at any rate, plenty of feminists i respect argue that men suffer under patriarchy too. so this ai takes the most boring definition of feminism and we have enough boring people who already do that.

speaking of boring definitions, what’s a FUN definition of feminism?

jargon and aesthetics to obfuscate it’s just neo-liberal feminism

From that manifesto:

“0x0E

Xenofeminism is gender-abolitionist. 'Gender abolitionism' is not code for the eradication of what are currently considered 'gendered' traits from the human population. Under patriarchy, such a project could only spell disaster – the notion of what is 'gendered' sticks disproportionately to the feminine. But even if this balance were redressed, we have no interest in seeing the sexuate diversity of the world reduced. Let a hundred sexes bloom! 'Gender abolitionism' is shorthand for the ambition to construct a society where traits currently assembled under the rubric of gender, no longer furnish a grid for the asymmetric operation of power. 'Race abolitionism' expands into a similar formula -- that the struggle must continue until currently racialized characteristics are no more a basis of discrimination than than the color of one's eyes. Ultimately, every emancipatory abolitionism must incline towards the horizon of class abolitionism, since it is in capitalism where we encounter oppression in its transparent, denaturalized form: you're not exploited or oppressed because you are a wage labourer or poor; you are a labourer or poor because you are exploited.

0x0F

Xenofeminism understands that the viability of emancipatory abolitionist projects -- the abolition of class, gender, and race -- hinges on a profound reworking of the universal. The universal must be grasped as generic, which is to say, intersectional. Intersectionality is not the morcellation of collectives into a static fuzz of cross-referenced identities, but a political orientation that slices through every particular, refusing the crass pigeonholing of bodies. This is not a universal that can be imposed from above, but built from the bottom up -- or, better, laterally, opening new lines of transit across an uneven landscape. This non-absolute, generic universality must guard against the facile tendency of conflation with bloated, unmarked particulars – namely Eurocentric universalism -- whereby the male is mistaken for the sexless, the white for raceless, the cis for the real, and so on. Absent such a universal, the abolition of class will remain a bourgeois fantasy, the abolition of race will remain a tacit white-supremacism, and the abolition of gender will remain a thinly veiled misogyny, even -- especially -- when prosecuted by avowed feminists themselves. (The absurd and reckless spectacle of so many self-proclaimed 'gender abolitionists'' campaign against trans women is proof enough of this.)”

Having feminists make you do the UNFUN things like wearing a condom, asking for consent or not behaving like you should be in charge coz you're the Man.

So as usual, "FUN" is always relative to the person having it, yeeees?

i’m aware “gender critical” has been used as a euphemism by some TERF groups in UK, which is not the same as to say being critical of gender. you can’t spell TERF without “feminism”, but you can spell “queer nihilism” without it

If one looks behind the patriarchal hetero Western relationship there actually exists a powerful buddy/mate/chum subliminal latent gay thing going on, and maybe, despite this whole gender/race narrative the question of reconciling physio-emotional-psycho (cult)ural narrative.

Its like 'gay' is a force of nature, and cultures impose gender terminology, but underneath, its an organic emotional universal that permeates all life!

Hands down. No one can't disagree on this.

The part where hetero dudes get-together serves as a way to cover for underlying gay patterns and dynamics, this is stuff that was already analyzed in psychodynamics, despite Freud being a little too focused on the bourgeois housewives he was into...

Forget the what the self-serving gay cultural promoters... gay or hetero are not natural by themselves. It's just part of an individual's nature, and this is where you LGBTQ+ fanatics are failing. Some dudes also just like to have company without having to think about sex... and that's the more simple reason why there's "underlying gay patterns" going on, that may not be going on outside your gay-obsessed brain.

Xenofeminism is a rationalism against nature. Alianation is the labor of freedom. Freedom is crafted in artifice. If nature is unjust, it must be changed!

Marx expressed subliminally latent gay references like comrade, worker's clubs and that distinct warrior brotherhood to death type sentiment. Even martyrdom is gay. It's all so unfun and serious, like the gayness has been squeezed out of it and it's been compartmentalized

I find the whole concept of sharing an ideology and living in a toxic macho gay tribal communion as oppressive, a bit like the Spartan childhood, or lack of fun, just kill, kill, kill, in the mood of gay comraderie, very disturbing and intolerable. True individualists don't let gender and race into their consciousness!

This is not to say that it isn't on to some things(work slavery etc) but it's proceduralism is down right awful. They have a history of temperance among other things and just aren't good at having fun in life.

In terms of gender, that's not something you abolish(lol) it's something you dissociate from as a personalistic individualism. Gender and norms will probably continue to have an indefinite existence so long as it remains a purposeful construction. This doesn't mean that you or your sphere of influence have to prop it up.

That gender abolition is on the to-do list of many a leftist transhumanist technocrat(people like Ian 'Vaush' Kochinski for instance). Just something to consider.

There used to be an online library for anarchafeminist writings and I used to have an essay in it. Not sure what happened to that resource, but my views on gender haven’t changed much. Mostly, I think there is a direct connection between anarchist thought and gender. That connection being that for the most part, masculinity is constructed from the traits and behaviors that were conducive to war and anarchism is mostly against war, militarism, and conquest. This has always been very obvious to me because I come from a culture with a version of masculinity that was instead based on scholarship, that is… being a mensch. Dealing with the antisemitic attack against Jewish men for being effeminate was formative for my understanding of gender at an early age. This made something like gender abolition an intuitive angle for me on questions of gender. However, such intuitions were then enriched through study, and especially from works like The Second Sex.

Anyway, it all seems very directly connected to me and the take away for me has mostly been to think first about what traits and behaviors are conducive to the sort of culture or society I want, then worry about what gender people assume those traits and behaviors belong to later.

I think this history of Jewish gender should be taken far more seriously than it is in most gender studies works I am familiar with. This history is such a clear example of how gender is constructed and for what reasons. There are examples from other cultures, but this history of muscular Judaism is directly connected with the Zionist, state-building project. Muscular Christianity is also good to learn about, especially with shit like the YMCA. But anyway:

Muscular Judaism in general: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscular_Judaism

The Muscle Jew (Sabra):
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabra_(person)

A nice, short essay with contemporary cultural references:
https://maddieneiman.medium.com/the-nebbish-and-the-muscle-jew-8fcbb3865764

A book about Masculinity and War more generally:
https://www.warandgender.com/

Add new comment