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 ===== Women ===== ===== Women =====
  
 +==== How ====
  
- +=== City of Joy, by Jenny Greeman ===
-**HOW**  +
- +
-=== City of Joy, Jenny Greeman === +
  
 As environmental disasters continued to sweep the world, middle class Americans suddenly found themselves to be refugees. Survivors of Hurricanes Harvey and Maria, and the wild fires on California found themselves without homes, jobs, food, or health care weeks, months, even years after the events "​ended."​ As the Trump Administration'​s incompetence and indifference became clear, and frustration with local efforts grew, survivors looked to each other for progress. As environmental disasters continued to sweep the world, middle class Americans suddenly found themselves to be refugees. Survivors of Hurricanes Harvey and Maria, and the wild fires on California found themselves without homes, jobs, food, or health care weeks, months, even years after the events "​ended."​ As the Trump Administration'​s incompetence and indifference became clear, and frustration with local efforts grew, survivors looked to each other for progress.
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 Similarly, groups of refugees won the right to compete in the Olympic games under the Olympic banner, bringing international attention to the Trump Administration'​s - and capitalism'​s - inability to protect human life.  Similarly, groups of refugees won the right to compete in the Olympic games under the Olympic banner, bringing international attention to the Trump Administration'​s - and capitalism'​s - inability to protect human life. 
  
-More to come... https://​www.onebillionrising.org/​ +More to come... ​See also [[https://​www.onebillionrising.org/​]]
- +
- +
- +
-=== RG- "Out Your Pig'​===+
  
 +=== 'Out Your Pig' by Richard Greeman ===
  
 It is often difficult for today’s students – raised in societies where equality, and gender equality in particular, is the norm – to comprehend the oppressive ​ conditions under which women workers were forced to labor just a century ago. Twenty seventeen was the year things started to change when numbers of female employees in the media, business and government came foreward to accuse their bosses, prominent, powerful men, of perpetrating predatory sexualized violence on them; it was the year they were finally heard. ​ It is often difficult for today’s students – raised in societies where equality, and gender equality in particular, is the norm – to comprehend the oppressive ​ conditions under which women workers were forced to labor just a century ago. Twenty seventeen was the year things started to change when numbers of female employees in the media, business and government came foreward to accuse their bosses, prominent, powerful men, of perpetrating predatory sexualized violence on them; it was the year they were finally heard. ​
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 These images of working women in revolt soon spread around the globe. The pent-up indignation of super-exploited female workers in sweatshops from Central America to South-East Asia, long brutalized and sexually humiliated by their bosses, exploded into direct action. In Dakha, Bengladesh, scene of the disastrous 2012 garment factory fire, a sewing machine operator, trapped in the stockroom by her supervisor who expected her to submit to his advances instead called loudly for help. Her fellow workers came to her defense, swarmed over the supervisor, and, laughing, pulled down his pants to shame him! This predatory supervisor was never seen again, and his colleagues suddenly began acting more respectful. A video showing him trying to run away with his bottom bare and his pants around his ankles soon went viral. ​ These images of working women in revolt soon spread around the globe. The pent-up indignation of super-exploited female workers in sweatshops from Central America to South-East Asia, long brutalized and sexually humiliated by their bosses, exploded into direct action. In Dakha, Bengladesh, scene of the disastrous 2012 garment factory fire, a sewing machine operator, trapped in the stockroom by her supervisor who expected her to submit to his advances instead called loudly for help. Her fellow workers came to her defense, swarmed over the supervisor, and, laughing, pulled down his pants to shame him! This predatory supervisor was never seen again, and his colleagues suddenly began acting more respectful. A video showing him trying to run away with his bottom bare and his pants around his ankles soon went viral. ​
- 
- 
  
 This boss’ humiliation gave a new meaning to the expression “out your pig,” and from then on there was no way to stop the swarming and de-pantsing scenario from repeating itself all over the world. When the factory women informed the press that their company was making clothes for famous brands like Timmy Holfiger, women in the U.S. declared a boycott to pressure management to clean up their act.  This boss’ humiliation gave a new meaning to the expression “out your pig,” and from then on there was no way to stop the swarming and de-pantsing scenario from repeating itself all over the world. When the factory women informed the press that their company was making clothes for famous brands like Timmy Holfiger, women in the U.S. declared a boycott to pressure management to clean up their act. 
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 EDITORS’ NOTE: In further chapters, we will discuss how women spearheaded the popular mass revolts that provoked a split in the U.S. ruling classes when the Trump administration called upon Federal troops to brutally disperse their demonstrations and sentenced activists to long prison terms. We will also study the origins of the famous March 8 International Assembly of Working Women, which inaugurated the first global strikes against ​ multinational corporations which forced them to their knees through a bottle-neck strategy interrupting their global supply-lines. ​ EDITORS’ NOTE: In further chapters, we will discuss how women spearheaded the popular mass revolts that provoked a split in the U.S. ruling classes when the Trump administration called upon Federal troops to brutally disperse their demonstrations and sentenced activists to long prison terms. We will also study the origins of the famous March 8 International Assembly of Working Women, which inaugurated the first global strikes against ​ multinational corporations which forced them to their knees through a bottle-neck strategy interrupting their global supply-lines. ​
  
-== Topics For Further Discussion ​=+=== The Women’s Day Uprising, by Richard Greeman ​===
- +
-Faced with an entrenched social evil, the media concensus in 2017 America was to indict “human nature” (which of course could not be changed!) instead of indicting politically sanctioned workplace oppression and inequality. Thus, the NY Times which first broke the story published an essay a month later entitled “The Unexamined Brutality of the Male Libido ”. The author, one Steven Marche, apparently blind to the power and impunity of a self-protective male establishment,​ accused “the nature of men in general” and concluded that “the problem at the heart of all this [is] the often ugly and dangerous nature of the male libido.”  +
- +
-Thus the Times, considered the mouthpiece of U.S. liberalism was unwittingly spouting the same party line as the Saudi Arabian Wahhabist Immams, who also used that “dangerous male libido” as a pretext to lock up all Moslem women in the home and “protect” them by denying them civil rights and basic freedoms.  +
- +
-By now 22nd century are naturally asking: Was this about sex? Or about power? Young people today are growing up free to explore and express your individual sexuality at your own pace. You live in a world where cooperation has replaced domination, and you understand that sex is about caring and sharing, about pleasure, adventure and love. So you ask yourselves: what is is “sexy” about a powerful male dominating, humiliating and violating his helpless female subordonates?​ From your 22nd century viewpoint, it seems obvious that the male predation behavior of earlier historic times had more to do with power than with pleasure, with domination than with sex, with class society than with human nature.  +
- +
-Historically,​ male-dominated societies, priestly, royal or capitalist, had from earliest times proclaimed their rule to be ordained by the Gods, or more recently as “natural,​” but this was propaganda. Modern archeologists and anthropologists have supplied ample evidence of the existance of stable matriarchical and matrilineal societies both in ancient history and among groups that remained isolated from Western influence well into the 20th century. Indeed, it was Morgan’s 19th century study of the Iroquois that inspired Friedrich Engels to conclude in The Origins of Private Property, the Family and the State (1884) that the rise of male dominance within previously egalitarian clans and the transformation of cattle, women and children into the personal property of the dominant male was the basis of all future class societies. +
- +
-Under European feudalism, the lords of the manor gave themselves the “right” to compel the sexual services of the young women who worked and lived in their domains. In the U.S., whippings, beatings and the fear of having their children sold down the river, compelled enslaved African-American women to submit to their masters. The same oppression prevailed under capitalism, where bosses routinely expected female workers to submit to their lusts if they wanted to keep their jobs. In addition, despite legal “equality” under capitalism women were made to do most of the work, both as wage earners, as informal workers and as unpaid home-makers,​ cooks, child-care and elder-care providers.  +
-No wonder why the elite men who ran those primative societies united to keep women “in their place” and closed ranks against them. No wonder why many subordinate men, themselves exploited and humiliated in the workplace, were tempted to oppress and exploit the women this male culture placed under their power. And no wonder so many guilty men in those dark times unconsciously hated women, feared their power, and used violence to humiliate and subdue them. +
-Today in 2117 in our egalitarian society where women no longer fear male violence, where women are free to openly express their own libido and where social labor is cooperative and mostly voluntary, the question of “human nature” and the allegedly “uncontrollable” male libido” seem curiously antiquated.  +
- +
-==== RG- The Women’s Day Uprising ​====+
  
 How did the epochal Women’s Global Strike for Dignity begin? The idea was first broached at the huge All-Women’s Assembly organised at the World Social Forum the year before. The topic was “Women at Work,” and participating were organised networks of female workers and professionals in every field including agriculturists,​ market-women and garbage-pickers (from the million-member Indian Self-Employed Women'​s Union). Panelists of  specialists and women researchers documented what everyone already knew: women do most almost all the actually necessary work on the planet, both paid and unpaid. ​ How did the epochal Women’s Global Strike for Dignity begin? The idea was first broached at the huge All-Women’s Assembly organised at the World Social Forum the year before. The topic was “Women at Work,” and participating were organised networks of female workers and professionals in every field including agriculturists,​ market-women and garbage-pickers (from the million-member Indian Self-Employed Women'​s Union). Panelists of  specialists and women researchers documented what everyone already knew: women do most almost all the actually necessary work on the planet, both paid and unpaid. ​
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 A billion women were in the street, taking the measure of their common condition, common needs, and the power of their unity. No longer did their individual miseries appear to them as somehow inevitable and somehow their own fault. A new global superpower had been released, and this female Genie – unlike the vain and stupid male Genie of Scheherazade’s tale -- would never again let herself be put back in the bottle. A billion women were in the street, taking the measure of their common condition, common needs, and the power of their unity. No longer did their individual miseries appear to them as somehow inevitable and somehow their own fault. A new global superpower had been released, and this female Genie – unlike the vain and stupid male Genie of Scheherazade’s tale -- would never again let herself be put back in the bottle.
  
-[[dance-craze|The Dance Craze to Save the World]]+=== The Dance Craze to Save the World, by Richard Greeman ===
  
-===== RG- The Dance Craze to Save the World =====+//See also [[dance-craze|The Dance Craze to Save the World]] and [[planetary-strike|The First Planetary Strike]]//
  
 Joyful to celebrate their new-won unity and solidarity, multitudes of women everywhere began descending non-violently into the streets and dancing up such a storm that even the hired mercenaries of the capitalists had to put down their guns and join the joyful throng! The images of Billions of people dancing in the streets, flashed around the globe, became a paradigm of the potential of humanity’s radical Emergence. ‘The Dance Craze to Save the World’ amazed many orthodox revolutionaries. Instead of organizing a centralized World Revolutionary Party, the masses, in that age of planetary connectivity where fads, fashions and financial disasters were propagated literally at the speed of light, people began organizing a Dance Party for the Planet. Joyful to celebrate their new-won unity and solidarity, multitudes of women everywhere began descending non-violently into the streets and dancing up such a storm that even the hired mercenaries of the capitalists had to put down their guns and join the joyful throng! The images of Billions of people dancing in the streets, flashed around the globe, became a paradigm of the potential of humanity’s radical Emergence. ‘The Dance Craze to Save the World’ amazed many orthodox revolutionaries. Instead of organizing a centralized World Revolutionary Party, the masses, in that age of planetary connectivity where fads, fashions and financial disasters were propagated literally at the speed of light, people began organizing a Dance Party for the Planet.
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 The psychologists concluded that humans apparently crave this kind of creative interaction. Historians pointed out that ecstatic danced religion – still practiced in indigenous societies into the 21st Century – was humanity’s earliest expression of spirituality. On the other hand, down through the ages the established authorities of organized religion and the state uniformly tried to repress this tradition because of its revolutionary potential. As feminist-socialist Barbara Ehrenreich had pointed out years before, collective joy has been the enemy of power from Greek King Pentheus’ suppression of the worship of Dionysius to Puritanism’s suppression of Carnival and its replacement by spectacle and individual consumption under capitalism. Now the revolution of collective joy was visible everywhere: dancing in the streets! The psychologists concluded that humans apparently crave this kind of creative interaction. Historians pointed out that ecstatic danced religion – still practiced in indigenous societies into the 21st Century – was humanity’s earliest expression of spirituality. On the other hand, down through the ages the established authorities of organized religion and the state uniformly tried to repress this tradition because of its revolutionary potential. As feminist-socialist Barbara Ehrenreich had pointed out years before, collective joy has been the enemy of power from Greek King Pentheus’ suppression of the worship of Dionysius to Puritanism’s suppression of Carnival and its replacement by spectacle and individual consumption under capitalism. Now the revolution of collective joy was visible everywhere: dancing in the streets!
  
-[[planetary-strike|The First Planetary Strike]] +==== How, part 2 ====
- +
-=== How ===+
  
 ANNA ANNA
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 Moreover, women no longer were imprisoned by their childcaring tasks. Those who did not want to abandon their intellectual or artistic or professional interests, and yet wanted to experience the joy of maternity, could rely on the community network of childcaring. On the other hand, those women who enjoyed being with kids could devote themselves full-time to raising of children. Similarly, old people never experienced lonliless as they could alwasy spend time in childcaring centers that were staffed by  volunteers or by parents and family members on a rotating basis. As the values continued to change, men started taking on more and more responsibilities in child caring and proved to have great fathering skills. Once the society stopped perpetuating the historically conditoned -but made to seem natural - division of labor, everyone could choose to engage with childcare to the degree they desire. ​ Moreover, women no longer were imprisoned by their childcaring tasks. Those who did not want to abandon their intellectual or artistic or professional interests, and yet wanted to experience the joy of maternity, could rely on the community network of childcaring. On the other hand, those women who enjoyed being with kids could devote themselves full-time to raising of children. Similarly, old people never experienced lonliless as they could alwasy spend time in childcaring centers that were staffed by  volunteers or by parents and family members on a rotating basis. As the values continued to change, men started taking on more and more responsibilities in child caring and proved to have great fathering skills. Once the society stopped perpetuating the historically conditoned -but made to seem natural - division of labor, everyone could choose to engage with childcare to the degree they desire. ​
  
-Comments:+==== Then ==== 
 + 
 +Faced with an entrenched social evil, the media consensus in 2017 America was to indict “human nature” (which of course could not be changed!) instead of indicting politically sanctioned workplace oppression and inequality. Thus, the NY Times which first broke the story published an essay a month later entitled “The Unexamined Brutality of the Male Libido ”. The author, one Steven Marche, apparently blind to the power and impunity of a self-protective male establishment,​ accused “the nature of men in general” and concluded that “the problem at the heart of all this [is] the often ugly and dangerous nature of the male libido.”  
 + 
 +Thus the Times, considered the mouthpiece of U.S. liberalism was unwittingly spouting the same party line as the Saudi Arabian Wahhabist Immams, who also used that “dangerous male libido” as a pretext to lock up all Moslem women in the home and “protect” them by denying them civil rights and basic freedoms.  
 + 
 +=== Resistance to feminism, by Lola Girerd === 
 + 
 +For successful societal change, for the improvement of the conditions of living of a disadvantaged group, throughout history, one could not wait for the sudden good heart of the oligarchs. Rights had to be taken. One individual alone could hardly achieve this goal, people had to get together, not to beg, but to take their due.  
 + 
 +The same goes for the rights of women. For a long time, women couldn’t vote, they were dependent on their husbands on many aspects of their lives. Feminist movements fought and won the vote, the financial independence in Western countries.  
 + 
 +Yet, gender equality wasn’t the norm in the early 21st century. Sexism hadn’t been eradicated. Paradoxically,​ many women in the Western world hold feminist attitudes, but few engaged in collective action in the name of women. Why that paradox, you may be wondering. 
 + 
 +It’s important to note that women need to identify as feminists in order to actively engage in collective action for other women. Sadly, that was difficult for many. Why? We can distinguish two main reasons inherent at that time. First, because the feminist identity was broadly stigmatized,​ which lead some women to avoid it simply because they didn’t want to be associated with the negative stereotypes associated with it.  
 + 
 +The weight of neoliberalism helps to explain another barrier to this identification. The ideologies associated with neoliberalism,​ such as meritocracy,​ free choice and personal responsibility lead women to hold feminist attitudes, such the belief in the need for equality in pay between men and women, while rejecting the perception of systematic bias in society. Believing in those ideologies is believing that collectivism hinders self-determination and that everyone is personally responsible for their successes or failures. It is putting individual interests before the interest of women in general. Those women didn’t engage in collective action because it would have meant challenging the status quo, in which they believed.  
 +For those reasons and some others, collective action in the name of women’s rights was not only seen as unnecessary,​ but even as a threat. This rendered progress difficult. 
 + 
 +==== Now ==== 
 + 
 +By now 22nd century are naturally askingWas this about sex? Or about power? Young people today are growing up free to explore and express your individual sexuality at your own pace. You live in a world where cooperation has replaced domination, and you understand that sex is about caring and sharing, about pleasure, adventure and love. So you ask yourselves: what is is “sexy” about a powerful male dominating, humiliating and violating his helpless female subordonates?​ From your 22nd century viewpoint, it seems obvious that the male predation behavior of earlier historic times had more to do with power than with pleasure, with domination than with sex, with class society than with human nature.  
 + 
 +Historically,​ male-dominated societies, priestly, royal or capitalist, had from earliest times proclaimed their rule to be ordained by the Gods, or more recently as “natural,​” but this was propaganda. Modern archeologists and anthropologists have supplied ample evidence of the existance of stable matriarchical and matrilineal societies both in ancient history and among groups that remained isolated from Western influence well into the 20th century. Indeed, it was Morgan’s 19th century study of the Iroquois that inspired Friedrich Engels to conclude in The Origins of Private Property, the Family and the State (1884) that the rise of male dominance within previously egalitarian clans and the transformation of cattle, women and children into the personal property of the dominant male was the basis of all future class societies. 
 + 
 +Under European feudalism, the lords of the manor gave themselves the “right” to compel the sexual services of the young women who worked and lived in their domains. In the U.S., whippings, beatings and the fear of having their children sold down the river, compelled enslaved African-American women to submit to their masters. The same oppression prevailed under capitalism, where bosses routinely expected female workers to submit to their lusts if they wanted to keep their jobs. In addition, despite legal “equality” under capitalism women were made to do most of the work, both as wage earners, as informal workers and as unpaid home-makers,​ cooks, child-care and elder-care providers.  
 + 
 +No wonder why the elite men who ran those primative societies united to keep women “in their place” and closed ranks against them. No wonder why many subordinate men, themselves exploited and humiliated in the workplace, were tempted to oppress and exploit the women this male culture placed under their power. And no wonder so many guilty men in those dark times unconsciously hated women, feared their power, and used violence to humiliate and subdue them. 
 +Today in 2117 in our egalitarian society where women no longer fear male violence, where women are free to openly express their own libido and where social labor is cooperative and mostly voluntary, the question of “human nature” and the allegedly “uncontrollable” male libido” seem curiously antiquated.  
 + 
 +==== Comments ====
  
 Barry: non traditional family - made me think tht multi national corporations,​ global capitalism is fine with non traditional families, it seems. i was thinking about curious ways that revolution and status quo interact with each other depending on which facet of each you look at. Barry: non traditional family - made me think tht multi national corporations,​ global capitalism is fine with non traditional families, it seems. i was thinking about curious ways that revolution and status quo interact with each other depending on which facet of each you look at.
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 R: in my piece Out Your Pig is basically a movement of labor, that takes place mainly in workplace. As Lola pointed out, in France most women would absolutely refuse to identify themselves as feminists. Macron is tightening restrictions to prevent women to fight against harassment in jobs. instead of individual women bringing lawsuits, they should organize collectively. ​ R: in my piece Out Your Pig is basically a movement of labor, that takes place mainly in workplace. As Lola pointed out, in France most women would absolutely refuse to identify themselves as feminists. Macron is tightening restrictions to prevent women to fight against harassment in jobs. instead of individual women bringing lawsuits, they should organize collectively. ​
- 
-=== THEN === 
- 
- 
-=== Resistance to feminism (Lola) === 
-THEN 
-For successful societal change, for the improvement of the conditions of living of a disadvantaged group, throughout history, one could not wait for the sudden good heart of the oligarchs. Rights had to be taken. One individual alone could hardly achieve this goal, people had to get together, not to beg, but to take their due.  
- 
-The same goes for the rights of women. For a long time, women couldn’t vote, they were dependent on their husbands on many aspects of their lives. Feminist movements fought and won the vote, the financial independence in Western countries. ​ 
- 
-Yet, gender equality wasn’t the norm in the early 21st century. Sexism hadn’t been eradicated. Paradoxically,​ many women in the Western world hold feminist attitudes, but few engaged in collective action in the name of women. Why that paradox, you may be wondering. 
- 
-It’s important to note that women need to identify as feminists in order to actively engage in collective action for other women. Sadly, that was difficult for many. Why? We can distinguish two main reasons inherent at that time. First, because the feminist identity was broadly stigmatized,​ which lead some women to avoid it simply because they didn’t want to be associated with the negative stereotypes associated with it.  
- 
-The weight of neoliberalism helps to explain another barrier to this identification. The ideologies associated with neoliberalism,​ such as meritocracy,​ free choice and personal responsibility lead women to hold feminist attitudes, such the belief in the need for equality in pay between men and women, while rejecting the perception of systematic bias in society. Believing in those ideologies is believing that collectivism hinders self-determination and that everyone is personally responsible for their successes or failures. It is putting individual interests before the interest of women in general. Those women didn’t engage in collective action because it would have meant challenging the status quo, in which they believed. ​ 
-For those reasons and some others, collective action in the name of women’s rights was not only seen as unnecessary,​ but even as a threat. This rendered progress difficult. 
- 
- 
- 
-**NOW** 
  
 Lola: obviously, equality of wages, division of labor/​roles,​ representation. Indirect equalities: human relationships. How we think of "​men"​ and "​women"​ and their qualities. We now see them as human qualities that anyone can have.  Lola: obviously, equality of wages, division of labor/​roles,​ representation. Indirect equalities: human relationships. How we think of "​men"​ and "​women"​ and their qualities. We now see them as human qualities that anyone can have. 
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 Alexei: among these sources one by Meryl ???? why the armed Kurdish women fighting ISIS where women are bearers of civilization against barbarism, dispelling myths about womens'​ '​backwardness'​ fighting not for '​western'​ values but HUMAN values; building democratic society as SUBJECTS of liberation not formal liberation as in USSR.Would like someone to report on this here.  ​ Alexei: among these sources one by Meryl ???? why the armed Kurdish women fighting ISIS where women are bearers of civilization against barbarism, dispelling myths about womens'​ '​backwardness'​ fighting not for '​western'​ values but HUMAN values; building democratic society as SUBJECTS of liberation not formal liberation as in USSR.Would like someone to report on this here.  ​
  
-David knows someone. Anna is studying this. +David knows someone. Anna is studying this.
  
-FRED: Nextweek: violence, non-violence,​ and self-defense (Kurdish women) ​ 
women.1520634737.txt.gz · Last modified: 2018/03/09 17:32 by admin