#decolonial practices

[diaryofaphilosopher]

Subconciously, we see an attack on ourselves and our beliefs as a threat and we attempt to block with a counter-stance. But it is not enough to stand on the opposite riverbank, shouting questions, challenging patriarchal white conventions. A counter-stance locks one into a duel of oppressor and oppressed; locked in mortal combat, both are reduced to a common denominator of violence. The counter-stance refutes the dominant culture's views and beliefs, and for this, it is proudly defiant. All reaction is limited by, and dependent on, what it is reacting against. Because the counter-stance stems from a problem with authority - outer as well as inner - it's a step toward liberation from cultural domination. But it is not a way of life. At some point, on our way to a new consciousness, we will have to leave the opposite bank, the split between two mortal combatants somehow healed so that we are on both shores at once and, at once, see through serpent and eagle eyes. Or perhaps we will decide to disengage from the dominant culture, write it off altogether as a lost cause, and cross the border into a wholly new and separate territory. Or we might go another route. The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.

— Gloria Anzaldua, “La concencia de la mestiza”

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[rxvera]

I think some people would be a lot more reasonable if they could wrap their heads around the fact that something can be both colonial and decolonial at the same time

[dailyanarchistposts]

The institutionalized invention of transsexuality

For quite some time there has been a tendency in the Social Sciences to be driven by knowledge that does not accept alternative, popular and dissident concepts as legitimate; a tendency that aims to keep hegemonic knowledge in its place of hegemony and “subaltern” knowledge in “its place” of subalternity. It is a monoculture of knowledge (SANTOS, 2014), in the sense that the cultivation of certain beliefs and ideologies nullifies the possibility of other ways of thinking being validated. The monoculture of knowledge produces epistemicide, “the murder of knowledge” (SANTOS, 2014, p. 149). The academically legitimized studies on transsexuality are based on the same premise: the monoculture of knowledge, which offers certain [cisgender] figures institutional protection so that they can determine what it means to be trans.

In relation to transsexuality, its emergence as a sociological category occurred as a pathology, a disorder that could be diagnosed. The pathologization of trans individuals takes place through the eyes of cisgender physicians, holders of epistemic privilege (GROSFOGUEL, 2016), never considering the self-determination of the individuals referred to as “patients”. The antagonism of epistemic privilege is epistemic inferiority, epistemic racism/sexism. Grosfoguel (2016, p. 30) defines epistemic racism/sexism as “the inferiority of all knowledge coming from human beings classified as non-western, non-male or non-heterosexual”, and to this we add non-cisgender, dissenters from the cis and heterosexual norm. The “transsexual” category was formulated within North American and European universities, by the hands of “intellectuals” and whose scientific production did not encounter any barriers to being disseminated, as it was already embedded in the institutional apparatus responsible for legitimizing it as scientific. This invention was responsible not only for the current way in which physicians approach transsexuality, but furthermore for the way in which other institutions — legal, educational, academic etc. — exclude, historically erase and violate trans people. Therefore, in order to better understand this process and its consequences, a brief historical review of the institutionalized invention of transsexuality is in order.

Reiterating Grosfoguel’s assertion that the predominant knowledge in our global system, in our schools, universities, hospitals and clinics, derives from five countries — France, Germany, England, the United States and Italy -, the hegemonic understanding of transsexuality comes especially from the United States and Europe. The first mentions of “transsexuality” date back to the beginning of the 20th century: in 1919, the term “transsexualism” was used by the german physician Magnus Hirschfeld; in 1949, the american sexologist David O. Cauldwell used it again in the paper Psychopatia Transexuallis, in which he analyzed the life of a transfeminine person. But the earliest medical records concerning transsexuality — and which underpinned the way gender is currently diagnosed — emerged in the 1950s in the United States, based on the studies of endocrinologist Harry Benjamin (BENTO & PELÚCIO, 2012), one of the forerunners in the establishment of a cisgendered trans subjectivity. According to this logic, the only possible ‘treatment’ for ‘real transsexuals’ would be transgenital surgery. No therapy could reverse the transsexuality of a ‘true transsexual’.

In contrast to Benjamin, the north-american psychiatrist Robert Stoller, professor at the University of California, refuted the practice of surgery or any procedures that could be considered ‘social transitions’. For him, trans people should be convinced that in fact they needed psychiatric treatment (BENTO & PELÚCIO, 2012). Another important personality was the north-american physician John Money, from Johns Hopkins Hospital. For him, children would already have their sexual identity defined by the age of 3, which encouraged him to advocate transgender surgeries. In 1966, the Johns Hopkins Hospital opened the Gender Identity Clinic, one of the first to cater for transgender people.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Benjamin’s efforts influenced the performance of surgical procedures relating to the medical veracity of transsexuality. In 1973, John Money coined the term ‘gender dysphoria’ to designate a symptom determining transsexuality and, in 1977, the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association was founded, an institution responsible for publishing and updating the Standards of Care (SOC) and legitimized as a world reference for the care of trans people (BENTO, 2006). Along with the SOC, the International Code of Diseases (ICD) and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) constitute the main documents that pathologize transsexuality.

In 1980, transsexuality was included in the ICD. During this period, Leslie Lothstein, a professor at Yale University, contributed to structuring the diagnosis of transsexuality by carrying out a study with ten adult trans people. In 1994, the DSM-IV replaced the diagnosis of ‘Transsexualism’ with ‘Gender Identity Disorder’, breaking down the diagnoses by age and creating yet another category, ‘Gender Identity Disorder Not Otherwise Specified’, aimed at people who did not meet the requirements of the previous diagnoses.

There are constitutive differences regarding ‘trans identity’ in the three documents — SOC, ICD and DSM — and with each new edition the diagnostic definitions are reviewed. For example, the DSM-IV focuses on identifying the traits of the ‘disorder’ in childhood, briefly addressing the issue of surgery. In its fourth version, gender, sexuality and sex are used arbitrarily in the qualifications of the ‘disorder’. Sex and gender would be synonymous. In the tenth version of the ICD, transsexuality was included in the section entitled “Personality Disorders of Sexual Identity”, characterized by the “desire to live and be accepted as a person of the opposite sex”, and this ‘sexual identity’ could only be validated if the patient had presented it for at least two years. Although these concepts have been updated over the years and have differed from one another, SOC, DSM and ICD perpetuate the same pathologizing perspective in the academic and medical fields.

The ICD-11 no longer conceives of transsexuality as a “gender identity disorder”, as the ICD-10 had previously proposed, and places it in the “conditions related to sexual health”, as “a marked and persistent incongruence and persistent incongruence between the gender experienced by the individual and their assigned sex”. The DSM-V, in turn, defines gender dysphoria as a “marked incongruence between a person’s experienced/expressed gender and their assigned gender, lasting for at least six months”, and argues that the best diagnostic method is the observation of child behavior, the child’s preference for ‘boy’ or ‘girl’ toys, the desire of ‘boys’ to wear ‘feminine clothing’ and ‘girls’ to wear ‘masculine clothing’. It does not fail to mention the importance of identifying, as a diagnostic trait, a “strong dislike of one’s own sexual anatomy”.

The influence of Stoller on the DSM, with its psychoanalytic discourse, and that of Benjamin on the SOC, with its endocrinological and physiological roots, can be found. As endocrinology seeks to discover the biological origins of transsexuality and is responsible for delivering the final decision on transgenital surgery, the psychological sciences (psychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis) attempt to understand one’s desire to undergo the surgical procedure, as the demand for surgical interventions is perceived as an essential requirement for a ‘true transsexual’. The commonly asked questions by physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists and psychoanalysts take the trans person’s word almost as a lie: do you really want to do this? Are you sure you want to make such drastic changes? Will you not regret it? For someone to be ‘truly’ trans, they would have to prove that they are not compulsively lying. The decision is never made by the trans patient, but by the holders of epistemic privilege, of the power to legitimize or delegitimize the patient’s narrative. Despite the theoretical differences, both fields — endocrinology and psychiatry/psychoanalysis/psychology — fear the same situation: being deceived by ‘lying transsexuals’. Health services for trans people in Brazil, for instance, promote ‘gender asepsis’, a categorization of trans people into those who are ‘truly trans’ and those who are ‘untruthfully trans’ (BENTO, 2006).

The most significant feature of the aforementioned documents lies not in their differences, but in their similarities. Whether from the perspective of Benjamin or Stoller, Bento & Pelúcio understand that the elaboration of the concept of transsexuality by medicine occurred in such a way that trans people were “conceived as having a set of common indicators that position them as disordered, regardless of historical, cultural, social and economic variables” (BENTO & PELÚCIO, 2012, p. 572). The ‘truth’ of transsexuality is to be found in discourses about rejecting one’s own body, in dysphoric suffering, in necessarily conflicting family relationships, in a traumatic childhood. Any life experience that doesn’t fit in with these dictates immediately casts doubt on the legitimacy of the person’s own transsexuality and prevents them from accessing the health services they need. After reviewing the various pathologizing documents and movements regarding transsexuality, Bento (2011, p. 96) reveals her surprise at realizing that “so little so-called scientific knowledge has generated so much power”.

The common assertion of axiological neutrality, which psychiatry uses to justify its diagnoses, aims to annul its social position, to neutralize the perspective of the subject who produces knowledge, as if it were possible to assume a position of total neutrality. Neutrality becomes a farce when we consider precisely which beings hold and have held the places where knowledge is produced and which have never been able to enter a university as students or professors. Not only does it apply to a gender perspective, but also to race and class. The holders of epistemic privilege, who devised the diagnostic category of “transsexuality”, relied on a cisheteronormative perspective to list, name, categorize, subordinate and humiliate the trans people who came to them in search of assistance, but who found — and still find — an environment of control, tutelage and humiliation: if one wishes to access health devices, from routine care to surgical procedures, one must be evaluated according to the symptoms set out in the ICD, DSM or SOC. These documents, drawn up by North American and European institutions, are considered valid regardless of where they are operated on. A cisnormative and eurocentric scientific paradigm is imposed, one that does not dialogue with the self-determination of trans subjectivities or with gender identities from non-Westernized cultures — which, by the standards of this science, are furthermore considered pathologies.

The pathologization of trans identities is far from granting access to health institutions, on the contrary. Jaqueline Gomes de Jesus (2016, p. 198) perceives a generalization of the medical care given to trans people by health professionals, who end up “disregarding their particularities, or considering, ubiquitously, that all their health demands are restricted to the process”. Only if we replicate medical discourses about what it means to be trans, if we report suffering from dysphoria since childhood, and express our anguish over being born in the ‘wrong body’, are we legitimized as ‘real’ trans people, and especially if we urgently expose our repulsion towards our genitals and the need to have transgenital surgery.

As trans people’s autonomy over their own identities is scrutinized; as bureaucracies are created so that we can access trans clinics, hormonization processes and surgeries, the situation for intersex people is, in a way, the opposite. Surgeries on their bodies are encouraged, even if against their will. Investigating the records from 1990 to 2003 of a brazilian pediatric surgery clinic for intersex children, Machado (2005, p. 62) noted the repetition of “expressions such as “genitalia with a good aesthetic or cosmetic aspect””. The doctor’s “gaze” would be decisive in judging the “good aspect” of a genitalia, which would decide whether the child should undergo genital modification surgery, according to the sex assigned to them by the medical team. Heteronorm is present even in the details of surgical procedures.

This contradiction between how trans and intersex people are treated in medicine conveys a message: what matters to the “health” institution is not really the well-being of those people, but the reproduction of a norm that must be kept operative. Why are trans people systematically denied hormone therapies, surgeries, cosmetic procedures, civil registration changes, access to public restrooms, schools and spaces of empowerment? For what ends there are, for intersex people, pediatric surgery clinics — that is, surgeries on children — that encourage physical genital changes in infants, without them even being able to decide for themselves about their own identity? Why are physicians responsible for determining the sex of the child, and why are the surgeries performed with a heterosexual and cisgender bias?

Trans people are constantly put to the test. Our behavior, the way we speak and the way we dress are analyzed and questioned: in the case of a transmasculine person, for example, sitting cross-legged can lead to doubts on the part of the medical team: “Are you really trans? If you wanted to be a man, you’d act like a man”. These conflicts are referred to by Bento as an ‘invisible protocol’, present in the strange looks from the medical team, the insults, the whispers and all the attitudes that remind the trans person of their deviant place. The relationship between the medical team and the patients continues through the “essentialization of relations of power [...] by which the medical know-how doesn’t leave alternatives to the patients” (BENTO, 2006, p. 61).

This essentialization is not limited to relations of power, but extends to the standardization of a trans identity through the correlation of certain symptoms, in order to diagnose gender dysphoria, gender identity disorder, gender nonconformity or any other term that points to one’s incompatibility with cisgender norms. As anarchism includes in its fundamentals the defense of self-determination, then the control regime over trans people, erected by pathologization, is contrary to any and all principle that follows the anarchist logic of emancipation, because in pathologization there is no possibility of self-determination. By annulling the self-determination of trans people, the colonialist and institutional way of annihilating non-normative cultures and subjectivities is reproduced. Decolonial and anarchist ideas take a stand against this process.

If the legitimization of our identities by government institutions depends on the deepest submission to cisgender normativities, from the detailed elaboration of our narratives to the affirmation of our desires, then, in this and other contexts, the State constitutes itself as the ultimate denial of the freedom of its governed. This denial worsens as the individual distances themself from the colonial epistemological standard. For this reason, from an anarchist perspective, we defend the impossibility of any State to perform a favorable role for trans people, as well as for black, indigenous and insubmissive beings. Anarchist political theory is not static; it undergoes changes and adaptations according to the context in which it is inserted (WOODCOCK, 1998), but anarchist principles should not be abandoned, as they advocate the need for constant change.

In its transformations, anarchist philosophy consistently rejects any kind of authority, which means, politically, denying any form of government and, economically, denying any form of exploitation; and we can infer, in a medical sense and, more broadly, in any institutional sense, the denial of any authority figure that has the power to control a body, to impose rules upon it, to subject it to humiliation and behavioral protocols, to regulate its desire and its identity.

Thinking of “transsexuality” as a category created in a place of power, immersed in the concept — still not widely accepted by cisgender academics — of cisnormativity, we can see how, from Harry Benjamin’s studies to the present day, the defense of self-determination is something poignant among trans movements and remains necessary in the defense of every marginalized group. In general terms, even if we say we are trans and elaborate a narrative of self-hate, of ‘I was born in the wrong body’, the truth about who we are will be in the hands of a medical authority. Even if we remain in a transsexualization program for two years, with psychiatric and endocrinological monitoring, the medical team’s opinion may be negative. In other words, they may decide that we are not trans and that we cannot undergo physical modifications in relation to gender self-affirmation. The truth of gender and sex is in institutionalized hands.

[scamallach-1]

I’m re-reading: Frantz Fanon’s “Wretched of the Earth”, “Little Women” Louisa May Alcott, and “The Phantom of the Opera” Gaston Leroux

First-time reading: Klee Benally’s “No Spiritual Surrender”, a compilation of mythology about the Tuatha Dé Danann, and compilation of Manx mythology

Bonus To-Read: works by Peig Sayers, Gerald Horne’s “Apocalypse” series, “The String of Pearls: a Romance” (Penny dreadful original, Sweeney Todd)

If you see this you’re legally obligated to reblog and tag with the book you’re currently reading

[andthenlightningstrikes]

are all presences at night beating in one rhythm?

where does the secret i whisper to the tropics go?

[fairuzfan]

AMAZING article about what it means to participate in anti-Zionism work both online and in person.

If your anti-zionism does not in any way acknowledge that it is a way of thought and practice led by and for Palestinians, then you need to reevaluate your "anti-zionism" label.

Some passages that felt especially relevant to tumblr:

If we accept, as those with even the most rudimentary understanding of history do, that zionism is an ongoing process of settler-colonialism, then the undoing of zionism requires anti-zionism, which should be understood as a process of decolonisation. Anti-zionism as a decolonial ideology then becomes rightly situated as an indigenous liberation movement. The resulting implication is two-fold. First, decolonial organising requires that we extract ourselves from the limitations of existing structures of power and knowledge and imagine a new, just world. Second, this understanding clarifies that the caretakers of anti-zionist thought are indigenous communities resisting colonial erasure, and it is from this analysis that the strategies, modes, and goals of decolonial praxis should flow. In simpler terms: Palestinians committed to decolonisation, not Western-based NGOs, are the primary authors of anti-zionist thought. We write this as a Palestinian and a Palestinian-American who live and work in Palestine, and have seen the impact of so-called ‘Western values’ and how the centring of the ‘human rights’ paradigm disrupts real decolonial efforts in Palestine and abroad. This is carried out in favour of maintaining the status quo and gaining proximity to power, using our slogans emptied of Palestinian historical analysis.

Anti-zionist organising is not a new notion, but until now the use of the term in organising circles has been mired with misunderstandings, vague definitions, or minimised outright. Some have incorrectly described anti-zionism as amounting to activities or thought limited to critiques of the present Israeli government – this is a dangerous misrepresentation. Understanding anti-zionism as decolonisation requires the articulation of a political movement with material, articulated goals: the restitution of ancestral territories and upholding the inviolable principle of indigenous repatriation and through the right of return, coupled with the deconstruction of zionist structures and the reconstitution of governing frameworks that are conceived, directed, and implemented by Palestinians.  Anti-zionism illuminates the necessity to return power to the indigenous community and the need for frameworks of justice and accountability for the settler communities that have waged a bloody, unrelenting hundred-year war on the people of Palestine. It means that anti-zionism is much more than a slogan. 

[...]

While our collective imaginations have not fully articulated what a liberated and decolonised Palestine looks like, the rough contours have been laid out repeatedly. Ask any Palestinian refugee displaced from Haifa, the lands of Sheikh Muwannis, or Deir Yassin – they will tell that a decolonised Palestine is, at a minimum, the right of Palestinians’ return to an autonomous political unit from the river to the sea. When self-proclaimed ‘anti-zionists’ use rhetoric like ‘Israel-Palestine’ – or worse, ‘Palestine-Israel’ – we wonder: where do you think ‘Israel’ exists? On which land does it lay, if not Palestine? This is nothing more than an attempt to legitimise a colonial state; the name you are looking for is Palestine – no hyphen required. At a minimum, anti-zionist formations should cut out language that forces upon Palestinians and non-Palestinian allies the violence of colonial theft. 

[...]

The common choice to centre the Oslo Accords, international humanitarian law, and the human rights paradigm over socio-historical Palestinian realities not only limits our analysis and political interventions; it restricts our imagination of what kind of future Palestinians deserve, sidelining questions of decolonization to convince us that it is the new, bad settlers in the West Bank who are the source of violence. Legitimate settlers, who reside within the bounds of Palestinian geographies stolen in 1948 like Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem, are different within this narrative. Like Breaking the Silence, they can be enlightened by learning the error of colonial violence carried out in service of the bad settlers. They can supposedly even be our solidarity partners – all without having to sacrifice a crumb of colonial privilege or denounce pre-1967 zionist violence in any of its cruel manifestations. As a result of this course of thought, solidarity organisations often showcase particular Israelis – those who renounce state violence in service of the bad settlers and their ongoing colonisation of the West Bank – in roles as professionals and peacemakers, positioning them on an equal intellectual, moral, or class footing with Palestinians. There is no recognition of the inherent imbalance of power between these Israelis and the Palestinians they purport to be in solidarity with – stripping away their settler status. The settler is taken out of the historical-political context which afforded them privileged status on stolen land, and is given the power to delineate the Palestinian experience. This is part of the historical occlusion of the zionist narrative, overlooking the context of settler-colonialism to read the settler as an individual, and omitting their class status as a settler. 

It is essential to note that Palestinians have never rejected Jewish indigeneity in Palestine. However, the liberation movement has differentiated between zionist settlers and Jewish natives. Palestinians have established a clear and rational framework for this distinction, like in the Thawabet, the National Charter of Palestine from 1968. Article 6 states, ‘The Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion will be considered Palestinians.’ When individuals misread ‘decolonisation’ as ‘the mass killing or expulsion of Jews,’ it is often a reflection of their own entanglement in colonialism or a result of zionist propaganda. Perpetuating this rhetoric is a deliberate misinterpretation of Palestinian thought, which has maintained this position over a century of indigenous organising.  Even after 100 years of enduring ethnic cleansing, whole communities bombed and entire family lines erased, Palestinians have never, as a collective, called for the mass killing of Jews or Israelis. Anti-zionism cannot shy away from employing the historical-political definitions of ‘settler’ and ‘indigenous’ in their discourse to confront ahistorical readings of Palestinian decolonial thought and zionist propaganda. 

[...]

In the context of the United States, the most threatening zionist institutions are the entrenched political parties which function to maintain the status quo of the American empire, not Hillel groups on university campuses or even Christian zionist churches. While the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) engage in forms of violence that suppress Palestinian liberation and must not be minimised, it is crucial to recognise that the most consequential institutions in the context of settler-colonialism are not exclusively Jewish in their orientation or representation: the Republican and Democratic Party in the United States do arguably more to manufacture public consent for the slaughtering of Palestinians than the ADL and AIPAC combined. Even the Progressive Caucus and the majority of ‘The Squad’ are guilty of this.

Leila Shomali and Lara Kilani

[ladychlo]

Since it is Pride Month, keep an eye on Gaza and Palestine, and keep educating yourselves on the intersectional struggle. Queer liberation is a decolonial process. Queer liberation is an essential part of Palestine's liberation!

[damnesdelamer]

DECOLONIAL ACTION READING

I recently compiled these to add to a comrade’s post about Land Back, but actually I think they deserve their own post as well.

Amílcar Cabral - Return To The Source

Frantz Fanon - The Wretched Of The Earth

Hô Chí Minh - archive via Marxists.org

Thomas King - The Inconvenient Indian

Abdullah Öcalan - Women’s Revolution & Democratic Confederalism

Edward Said - The Question Of Palestine

Thomas Sankara - archive via Marxists.org

Eve Tuck & K. Wayne Yang - Decolonization Is Not A Metaphor

Other key names in postcolonial theory and its practical application include:

Sara Ahmed

Homi K. Bhabha

Aimé Césaire

Albert Memmi

Jean-Paul Sartre

Léopold Séder Senghor

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

All of these will help you interpret and confront the realities of colonisation, and ideally help us understand and extend solidarity to comrades around the globe. Decolonise your mind, and don't stop there!

[clementine-kesh]

one of my other big problems with tng is that if you’ve read any sort of decolonial lit focusing on stuff like scientific fieldwork or international development you’ll find many parallels between the practices being critiqued there and the behaviour of the tng crew, top-down interventionism and extractivist knowledge production which in the long run create more problems then they solve. of course you can argue that it’s scifi so whatever problems going on with the aliens of the week are mostly about generating thought experiments, but it’s still an inherently colonialist framing and the fact that show has no self-awareness of that in its supposedly utopian society is both frustrating and begs the question of whose utopia is it exactly

[diaryofaphilosopher]

I write to record what others erase when I speak, to rewrite the stories others have miswritten about me, about you.

— Gloria Anzaldúa, “Speaking In Tongues: A Letter To 3rd World Women Writers."

Follow Diary of a Philosopher for more quotes!

[balrogballs]

✨ actually if ur a faramir fan I would adore a concept beta (aka someone who looks at my unnecessarily expansive handwritten story mindmap and tells me whether or not it sounds insane) so hmu if you're Keen bc I haven't written him before and would like to do him justice, themes and warnings in tags though, so have a look first ✨

obviously happy to return the favour any time

faramir fans ur gonna love the next balrogballs fic drop

[dailyanarchistposts]

Conclusion

Medical institutions are a reflection of the cisnorm — and not only because ambulatory clinics demand that our performances conform to cisgender molds, but also because all spaces that are not specifically designated for trans people are veiled as being designated for cis people, with racial, class and various bodily segregations. Trans clinics are not exempt from this. The people who apply for the transsexualization processes and usually undergo the various stages of evaluation, as Bento has shown, are those who, to some extent, fit into a cisgender social reading, or — truthfully or not — claim to desire it. Medical authorities do not give up their place as authorities. The institutional walls continue to protect the determinations of what is or is not ‘being trans’, of how we should or should not be treated, of what access we can or cannot have. The annihilation of trans subjectivities falls under the concept of epistemicide, insofar as any possibility of self-determination and knowledge production about transsexuality by trans people is annulled.

Since the early 2000s, with the insurgence of trans social movements in Brazil — such as the National Association of Travestis and Transsexuals (ANTRA) or the Brazilian Institute of Transmasculinities (IBRAT) -, popular pressure on pathologization has been strong, but only achieved results by the end of the first decade. The ICD-11 and DSM-V have modified its sections on transsexuality. However, they continue to catalog trans identities as something-not-quite-right, whereas cisgenderity remains unnamed. We still depend on medical approval to access surgery and hormone therapy. The authority of “scientific opinion” remains, even after changes to the ICD and DSM. This shows us how institutions operate: not without authority, not without hierarchy, not without a clear dynamic of subjection.

The government-regulated trans clinics express the materialization of cisgender norm. The means by which we can access health care are the same ones that force us into a violent normativity. And these are the same forces that compel us to introject cisnormative trans subjectivities, based on the dynamics of culpability and segregation (GUATTARI; ROLNIK, 1996). In general terms, there is no possibility of social emancipation that passes through institutional hands, whether it be the government’s so-called ‘assistance’ of dissident people, affirmative policies aimed at marginalized groups, or the provision of minimal services that seek to protect trans people from violence. The monoculture of knowledge (SANTOS, 2014) is a constant that underpins different institutionalized spaces. Even though these ambulatory policies and institutional initiatives of “care” can be fruitful, it cannot be denied that every institutional apparatus, once it represents the arms of the State, operates to maintain segregation. The “care” provided by trans clinics translates into epistemic violence, the erasure of subjectivities and the imposition of the cisnorm. The name change protocols offered by registry offices and the judicial system cause embarrassment, inaccessibility and vexatious situations.

One cannot fight for freedom except from it and using it as the main instrument (BAKUNIN, 2021); one cannot defend the emancipation of dissident bodies through institutions, as this would be the same as striving for freedom by means of the very same instruments that produce imprisonment. Only through libertarian means — that stand against the authoritarianism of institutionalized scientific knowledge — can we glimpse emancipation.

[mesetacadre]

how come the last time the fascists started being popular the commies were too, but now the fascists are rampant whilst the commies aren't (specifically talking about germany rn)

Let's all first be at the same page when it comes to Europe's context at the moment. GDP growth has been stagnating for a few years, save for the momentaneous rebound after most pandemic restrictions were lifted. Regardless of how aware capitalists and economists are, capitalism is facing down another crisis. The EU specifically is beginning to show the first countermeasures in the form of militarism and the beginnings of cuts in the budget. If I recall correctly, the Next Generation fund is drying up, which is a pretty wide-reaching fund. But what's more relevant is the turn towards a war economy, I detailed more on this here and here.

Both the war economy that the EU and NATO are pushing and the pre-existing downturn push people to find answers as to why the European welfare state is showing cracks, despite professional economists insisting the economy is doing well, and despite the economy supposedly recovering from the pandemic restrictions. Now, this might come as a shocker to some, but most Europeans are still pretty fucking racist despite how sorry they say they feel about (past) colonialism and despite how much the word "decolonial" is appended to higher education. So this, mixed with the petty-bourgeois aspirations hammered into everyone since you learn to read, make it extremely easy to feel as if this situation is the fault of migrants. Many of the modern fascist or fascist-adjacent groups haven't really continued with the centrality of antisemitism, substituting it with xenophobia in general, and more specifically against arabs or muslims (they don't see a difference between those groups). Fascism reflects the already-present bigotry in society, it does not invent new types of bigotry.

Having laid this out, I would argue against you when it comes to evaluating forces. Fascism, by virtue of its own nature, is always loud and seeks to create conflicts. It's how they grow. Communist practice, on the other hand, tends to go more unnoticed. Both because serious communists don't actively seek loud conflicts as a structuring tactic, but also because bourgeois press don't have any good reason to publicize, say, a victory achieved by a group of workers organized by the communist party. Each year, marxism-leninism is growing in Europe, especially in the south. You don't hear about it unless you know where to look and who to ask by design. I don't think there is that dramatic an imbalance (if you treat the very conservative parties sweeping recent elections distinct from the organized fascist groups equivalent to those rising in the 1920s, which I do), but regardless, I do think there is being a considerable preemptiveness in this rise in popularity. It's no accident every one of these groups has a money trail leading to the most reactionary factions of the bourgeoisie and their corresponding parties. The eurocommunist parties are also fulfilling their role as the left-wing of social-democracy, and acting as a sponge that absorbs a considerable number of would-be communists with a will to organize.

[spiderbitesandvampirevenom]

sorry if you've already answered this (i searched ur blog) but if it's okay to ask, do you have any recommended readings for modern marxism (with a racism or colonialism lense)?

ok so prefacing this real quick I am high as hell. and also before i say anything id like to make it clear that i am not an authority on marxist communist theory, honestly i barely consider myself familiar with it. i went to school to study history so i interacted with marxist thought primarily in a historical/historiographical context, and generally in the context of colonial and postcolonial history. even then i studied mostly pre/early colonial american (in the broad sense not the USAmerican sense) & medieval islamic history. my knowledge of modern marxist theory is far from comprehensive.

with that said, I can certainly offer some suggestions, though some of them aren't necessarily marxist theory. but what the hell, lets get intersectional. for funsies. heres a few contributors to colonial/post-colonial/marxist thought that worked a little more recently than the 1800s

Fanon - Frantz Fanon was a french afro-caribbean marxist who, along with his wife Josie (who was the actual one writing, he dictated most of his works to her), wrote Black Skin, White Masks, A Dying Colonialism, and The Wretched of the Earth. From the portions I read while in school I would heartily reccomend all three. The Fanons were masters of decolonial theory and their commentary on whiteness, primitivism, anti-colonial historiography, and colonial class violence (among a billion other things, they were really prolific theorists) is the first place i would recommend people go if they want to start decolonizing their marxism.

Che Guevara - I really hope I don't need to explain who Che Guevara is. Anyways read Guerrilla Warfare and his motorcycle diaries. Oh and while I haven't read any of his work personally, I would imagine Fidel Castro would also be a good one to read for 20th century anti-colonial marxism.

Subcomandante Galeano - Previously known as Subcomandante Marcos, this guy was the figurehead/spokesperson for the EZLN until pretty recently. Our Word is Our Weapon is a collection of some of his writings translated into English.

Eduardo Galeano - Eduardo Galeano was an Uruguayan Journalist and his book The Open Veins of Latin America is a cornerstone of 20th century colonial theory even if it might not strictly be marxist thought.

Edward Said - Said was a palestinian academic and journalist whose book Orientalism is required reading for any colonial historian and should be for any self-proclaimed communist as well. It's perhaps marxist in the broadest sense but it is first and foremost a book about peeling the white supremacy goggles off of your face when studying the history of SWANA, which is a practice you should then apply to every intellectual endeavor you undertake for the rest of your life forever including your marxism.

anyway thats hopefully a good list to get you started. I know a few of my mutuals can probably add recommendations and provide a more educated communist perspective. Like I said before I'm a marxist historian more than I am a marxist in a communist sense.

[spiralhouseshop]

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[ecoterrorist-katara]

you act like your fandom isn't responsible for shitty racist behavior towards irls liiiike dont be a hypocrite pointing fingers at everyone except your own ilk lmfao

I was initially going to write a snarky response, but upon reflection you sound pretty young and I don't want to get into a pissing contest with someone who is likely a minor. Instead, I'm going to share my philosophy on how I engage with fandom and explain why it doesn't make sense for you to come to my ask box and demand that I answer for people who I don't even know.

My approach to fandom is entirely hedonistic. 1) Fandom is not, and never will be, my personal milieu for activism, and 2) I'm not responsible for the behaviour of people who happen to share my preference in a ship; I can only control what I do.

On 1), I come to fandom for escapism and indulgence, and these two qualities of fandom are completely incompatible with my approach to activism. Activism must be rooted in the real world and often demands doing things you don't want to do. That's like...the polar opposite of what I want to do on Tumblr.com.

Sometimes I incorporate analysis of oppression and justice in my fandom discussions because I find them interesting, but that's still about me and my enjoyment, not about oppression and injustice in general. A lot of my life has been dedicated to structural injustices, whether as topics of study or as systemic forces to organize against (more accurately, I spent most of my adult years striving to combine the academic and the practical facets), so obviously they crop up in my discussions, but my engagement in fandom has never been about activism and I've been quite clear about that. For example, I may talk about decolonization in the context of ATLA, but I harbour no delusions that my salty complaints about Bryke are, in any way, relevant to furthering the decolonial project.

On 2), notice that in my response to your last ask, I never claimed the entire Zutara fandom only consists of people who never did anything wrong. I only claimed that I, personally, strive to behave like a reasonably decent person in my fandom interactions. Fandoms consist of literally thousands of people, if not tens of thousands, so of course people in my (and yours, and everyone's) fandom are capable of shitty behaviour -- but like I said before, I'm not the fandom police. It's not a role I'm interested in taking on, nor one I'm arrogant enough to think I should. I don't try to be a role model at the club or at the grocery store; in a similar vein, I'm not facilitating or curating or shepherding the Zutara fandom. I just hang out here, same as everyone else, and I'm not going to insult my followers & my peers' intelligence by saying "PSA: did you know it's not okay to say shitty and racist things to people?"

My responsibilities in fandom extend to following basic fandom etiquette and interacting with posts and people that don't contradict my values. I sometimes repost salty things about specific ships, or occasionally I'll interact with Zutara antis who come to me, because salt can be fun in moderate doses plus I have post-COVID POTS so I need a lot of salt anyway. Every time I have interacted with a hostile Ka/taang shipper, it has been because they came to my post, my blog, or my tags to stir up shit. Even so, I'd never go to a Ka/taang blogger and expect them to do something. I have, btw, received messages asking me to highlight/expose certain Ka/taang shippers for their politics or things they've said, and I don't publish those either, so there's not a whole lot of fingerpointing going on here in general.

I'm going to stop responding to your asks, but I hope you can reflect on what exactly you are trying to get out of fandom, and what kind of behaviour you think is productive and generative for you. I'm not saying everyone should follow my personal fandom engagement philosophy, but I am saying you can't impose your philosophy onto me.