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The struggle against fascism begins with the struggle against toxic masculinity

Have you ever wondered how to talk dirty without reinforcing the patriarchy? Or what all the fuss is about polyamory? These are just two of the many topics tackled by the Anarcho Agony Aunts (AAA), an anarcha-feminist duo offering anonymous sex and relationship advice via their YouTube channel. The pair see what they’re doing as having a dual-pronged strategy: helping to tackle issues with dating on the left while also reaching out to young men who are preyed on by men’s rights activists and the alt-right.

“There's two different strands we want to address in AAA”, co-host Rowan tells me as we sit in the back room of the semi-detached east London house the duo share. “There is a tendency among left-wing men who have a desire to be a 'good feminist' but also to be sexy and date. That's caused a lot of left-wing men a lot of anxiety, understandably, because the feminist scene can be quite a hostile scene. Because of things such as rape and assault and men generally being scum. There's not that much sympathy with men on the feminist scene. A lot of men have kind of withdrawn and not been forward in dating.”

The other host, Marijam adds: “It seems like a lot of the weight on the dating scene has been very much held on women in the past couple of years. We just want to give a bit of encouragement to men that there is a correct way of doing flirting which doesn't imply misogyny.” She continues: “It came down to us having pub chats where we realised we have a lot of friends that are single men and they're awesome. A lot of them told us that they don't feel comfortable to be dating because they're worried they're going to be perceived as creeps or something.”

The other aspect of the project is attempting to pull people away from the far-right. When Gamergate happened it brought together a number of different groups, including pick up artists, men’s rights activists and incels (involuntary celibates), all motivated by a vile misogyny to harass young women working in or writing about the video games industry. It was this misogynist coalition mixing with white nationalists and neo-Nazis which spawned the alt-right and rampant misogyny has underpinned the alt-right ever since.

“We want to look at incels, the alt-right and people who are drawn towards those politics because of a different model of masculinity based around the nuclear family and long term girlfriends, 'all wives only' as the Proud Boys website says. Also incels who have sworn off women altogether as thots and sluts and not worthy of their time, and we want to look into why that came to be. What the process was where you come from someone who maybe feels sad and rejected and unable to get a date, to full on misogyny?”

One of the reasons the alt-right exists is because of a sense of masculinity in crisis; after existing for centuries the patriarchal system is now being robustly challenged. Growing up as a young man can be difficult today, as they begin to balance an increasing awareness of gender oppression and inequality with a continued socialisation into oppressive gender roles which were always impossible to fulfil.

Predominantly, this crisis is being driven by the decline in living standards in the Western world as neo-liberalism completely guts the post-war settlements, well paying manufacturing jobs are taken by robots or moved overseas and benefits systems are dismantled. This crisis in masculinity comes at the same time as movements against forms of oppression based on gender, race and sexuality are making substantial progress.

The alt-right has been fairly successful in framing this crisis as being caused by struggles against oppression. From Jordan Peterson to the Daily Stormer, they claim the ‘social justice warrior’ is to blame for the ills young men face. Peterson aims to sell glorified self-help books, while the more extreme sections of the alt-right want to turn their followers into killers. This makes what AAA is doing is an integral part of the anti-fascist struggle. Something which they’re worried isn’t being recognised enough by anti-fascists.

When I ask if any other agony aunts have inspired their approach, the pair laugh. Marijam tells me she hadn’t even heard of the term before Rowan had said it to her. Rowan says that the only agony aunt she’d read before was Dear Mariella, The Observer’s agony aunt, and that she certainly hadn’t been an inspiration. “I would say in terms of our approach, ContraPoints, because she approaches the alt-right with a curious and empathetic gaze which I think is really legit and awesome”, Rowan explains. ContraPoints has built an audience of hundreds of thousands by engaging with and dismantling alt-right ideas.

Initially the project was a live streamed from a camera phone and called ‘NHS 4 lefties’. It was described as a “3-week project designed to help YOU lefty men (and women) in need of advice on love, lust, masculinity etc.” but after a surprising level of interest has continued for much more than three weeks and morphed into AAA. Marijam tells me: “We got 1,000 views in our first 24 hours and a bunch of questions and we were like ‘fuck we've really hit a fucking nerve here’”. Since that initial stream, the pair haven’t looked back.

The project was born from pub chats between Marijam, 28, from Lithuania and Rowan, 25, from London. The pair first met on a holiday in Croatia and then ended up living together for six months, before Rowan left to spend a couple of years in Europe, where she ended up becoming part of a queer feminist stand up comedy duo. Marijam has built up small but established social media following through her show ‘Left Left Up’, where she discusses the latest news in tech and gaming, helping video games workers to unionise and writing about gaming and politics for some well known outlets (which has also repeatedly bought her to the attention of the KotakuInAction sub-reddit which spawned Gamergate).

One anti-fascist to endorse what AAA is doing is legendary Scottish anarchist Stuart Christie. A couple of months ago Christie shared an AAA video on his Facebook profile, much to AAA’s delight, telling them “it’s a pity the pair of you weren't around when I was growing up”. When I discussed this with them they didn't know what his gender politics were like when he was younger, but they couldn’t see how someone who had tried to blow up General Franco would ever have struggled to get laid.

Want some sex and dating advice? Ask AAA an anonymous question via their Curious Cat account. Watch Anarcho Agony Aunts being filmed LIVE with hosts Rowan and Marijam at the London Action Resource Centre on Friday 31st May, 6pm-9:30pm as part of the Anarchist Festival.

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There are 25 Comments

The real struggle for non-violent (but non-feminized) men is against the tyranny of toxic feminism. Consent and all that BS. I never hurt anyone in my life and yet I am immediately suspect because I am male (hispanic/indigenous and white). Poor me. Fascism works both ways, doesn't it?

Lol you're fucking suspect because you say shit like "feminized".

feminism sound like a disease. Unfortunately men are so problematic they're almost not worth having around. You NEED to get feminised. Think of it as the other half of the yin yang symbol, different aspects of an integrated whole.

includes everything so who cares? The point is you already have some feminine characteristics like commenting on this website which isn't exactly macho. In the days before consumer internet computers were for nerds. Then men started carrying pagers, mobile phones, desktop PCs became mainstream and the first consumer ISPs went online. Now everyone is a computer nerd to some extent and its mainstream. So there has been a feminizing tendency in society and to reject the feminine is to cut yourself off from the richness of life. Men are even wearing skirts again as you can see in this recent fashion show:

BURBERRY London fashion week fall/winter 2018/2019
https://youtu.be/Rwar-hz4Ylg

What I meant was the paradox, women lumberjacks are still never axe wielding Scotsmen in kilts. Its just never gonna happen, men have dilks and women have cults, if its not broken, don't fix it. Agression and machismo are ideological, not physiological. Testosterone makes for great ballet dancers!

exactly, force feminize all anarchist men.

That's already happening, look at the rates of anarchist men transitioning into anarchist women. It's all going exactly as (((They))) planned. Keep drinking those starbucks soy lattes!

Lol @ the starbs soy latte remark

But in all seriousness it's interesting to note the overwhelming preponderance of anarchist men transitioning into anarchist women over the opposite being the case. The only anarchist women I know who've transitioned into anything other then their gender assigned at birth has been into genderlessness, using "they" pronouns. Probably due to the low subcultural standing of the male category in general within the anarchist hierarchy, the influence of the feminist movement on anarchism, and the proclivity of people in general to want to fit in, belong and feel loved by their peers, sometimes by whatever means necessary.

I remember back when I was socially struggling in my local @ space. I had a gay friend who I appreciated for their no-bullshit assessments of anarchist subcultural social mores and dynamics. People with his type of honesty were exceedingly rare. His advice to me at the time was to attend the book fair weekend wearing a floral pattern dress because he knew gender bending would raise my social stock price, so to speak. I didn't do it, but a few years later I attended a queer dance party wearing a blouse and some makeup and I could instantly feel my social situation improving considerably lol.

Anyways, tldr: social outcast anarchist men going trans or otherwise doing gender bendy things to raise their social capital. It's a thing.

And so for me the point or takeaway of the story lies in the tyranny of aesthetic. The scene, like the broader culture at large, is a society of the spectacle in function where it's not what you are, or what you do, or what you say or even what you have, but how you appear.

This advice is lost on anarchists, who are mostly incels.

I consider the Apollonian hemisphere as improving the quality and aesthetics in relationships, and a bonus would maybe include a reduced population and more sustainable and creative potentialities realized.
Its definitely a move away from the rats in a box orgy of rape and destruction.

Their advice isn't that great tbh. They are funny, tho.

Meh... Fuck it, I'll just keep dating outside the scene.

"We just want to give a bit of encouragement to men that there is a correct way of doing flirting which doesn't imply misogyny."

Not really, there are ways to avoid giving off the air of being a scumbag, but sometimes women will appreciate semi-scummy comments, it's all about the way to phrase it, and the person that you're hitting on. The thing I always have trouble with is that there aren't really appropriate ways to get to know somebody.

Part of the problem i see with feminism is that "misogyny" implies some giant, ugly spook that smells like shit and never brushes their teeth and hates to wear condemns.

What's wrong with evolutionary biology and why would it be "inconvenient" for idpol?

The word is that it cannot be trusted, as it was conjured into existence primarily by white hetero-normative males of privilege. It is thus thoroughly tainted by historical structures of systemic oppression, and serves the primary agenda of ensuring that said structures remain intact and in place, so that the oppressors may retain their positions of authority and privilege. It must therefore be upended and replaced by sound theories of social justice and intersectionality.

But here's the deal:

Humans are animals. All animals exhibit patterns of behavior.

I don't understand why we can acknowledge the predictable patterns of behavior among dogs and cats, but not men and women? Sure, humans may be more complex than cats and dogs, but there's ultimately continuity, not dis-continuity, between us and the animal kingdom, going all the way down to forms of life as primitive as the flatworm.

As above, so below, as they say.

I completely agree with you. My apologies, I was being sarcastic and it apparently did not come through well enough. I was pointing to the growing discontinuity between the biological sciences and social theory. The former being a natural science bound by the scientific method, to a greater or lesser extent, whereas the later is a soft science at best, and a platform for serving political agendas at worst, with methodologies growing more notorious by the day for their characteristic lack in methodological rigor.

Because social justice relies mainly on narratives that are humanistic and, well, socially oriented, the biological sciences have a tenancy to emerge as obstacles in their garnering acceptance as valid theories. In other words biological theory, even when well-established, tends to run contrary to the politics of intersectionality. Thus, the two fields are increasingly at odds with one another, and when the biology proves counter to the idpol narrative, it must be discounted or depreciated in order that the social agenda may gain supremacy. In a perfect world there would be room for both disciplines at the top of the hill, but this would require that our favorite human games, which are always and invariably sociopolitical, cede territory to the hard sciences when contradictions arise, but this is a humility increasingly lacking in today's climate. Thus, a growing discontinuity (to my eye anyway).

But insofar as humans and animals are concerned, I see no discontinuity at all. We are no less a product of biology, nor our behavior any less subject to evolutionary programming, than any other species. Where we do differ is in our capacity to pretend that we are above and apart from the animal kingdom. So far as I am aware, no other species holds such fantastical notions.

*in place of

I notice your earlier comment was removed for seemingly no reason lol yikes!

I'm a hard biological determinist. To me, humans, like all animals, are essentially soulless organic sock puppets with the hand of evolution guiding the entire production. We like to think we have Free Will (TM) when in fact, we go on, with sex and survival being the deep down drives for basically everything we do.

Leftists don't like this because they want to believe they are rational actors making concious choices vis a vis their mating patterns based on good post-christian PC politics and so on. But in reality, their choices are overwhelmingly subconscious and instinctual and primal and by far and away politically incorrect and a million miles removed from the overcivilized garbage promoted on this YouTube channel and other places in the mainstream.

Never has there ever been any ideology more anti-natural and opposed to basic evolutionary biology than modern Leftism, upholder of civilization's most basic values (humanism, progress, rationalism, etc.)

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