#the personal is political

[typhlonectes]

[skyethel]

What does Judith Butler know about loading her son’s corpse in a cab? What does she know about the horror of turning a taxi into a hearse?

im so mad. i've been in mourning and a state of constant rage for palestine for the past few years, and these past weeks have been especially devastating. while im not palestinian myself, i have friends and family that are, and i cant help but be on edge about the things they cant afford to think about right now.

i read their 'thought piece'. its nothing new on that front, and thats why it makes me so mad. im really struggling to connect with the blind, white-american privilege of calling for non-violence in the face of a genocidal apartheid regime. the fucking gall of these so-called western intellectuals to preach how rampant anti-intellectualism has become just to turn around and buy into some colonial playbook of peace shit is hilarious. people i thought were with me on this, not only on palestinian liberation but on liberation full stop, have been a constant disappointment. i cut off so many ppl i called friends over the absolute lack of grace and empathy they handled this with. when are white western 'activists' going to stop treating us like timed bombs of irrationality?

this part in particular kept coming up and made me feel like i was going insane:

"When, however, the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee issues a statement claiming that ‘the apartheid regime is the only one to blame’ for the deadly attacks by Hamas on Israeli targets, it makes an error. It is wrong to apportion responsibility in that way, and nothing should exonerate Hamas from responsibility for the hideous killings they have perpetrated...The necessity of separating an understanding of the pervasive and relentless violence of the Israeli state from any justification of violence is crucial if we are to consider what other ways there are to throw off colonial rule"

literally nobody is asking anyone to 'exonerate' hamas. hamas is a military organization fighting the US-backed israeli occupation with smuggled weapons that is active in 365 km² at best. hamas is not even in the orbit when it comes to comparisons to israel.

israel said it with its own mouth that hamas is a product of israeli occupation. this isnt a matter of opinion, right? or am i too far left to think that a brutal occupation will radicalize its victims? and they gave them the means to become a 'terrorist organization'? how are you claiming to care about palestinians if you don't bother unsubscribing from the very schools of thought that constructed the occupation in the first place?

some of you 'leftists' have been lying about what you've been reading because where are the frantz fanon quotes you like to throw around, huh? where's the malcolm x, the angela davis? where are your insta posts with chomsky's books?

holy shit WHAT OTHER WAYS?

keep our communities out of your mouth. we are not some thought experiment you can exercise your conscience on. we're watching an ethnic cleansing unfold, and instead of supporting palestinians so many of you are playing out your own little fantasies of the 'progressive' solidarity you fail to show. sometimes, you need to fucking stop and listen instead of consulting the higher morality police on whether you need to 'contextualize' your incompetence.

[babe-con-el-poder]

In a far away land....that used to be ruled by empires and trade routes to places beyond the southern hemisphere, I was created by a young, beautiful, somewhat lost but well loved woman.

She worked hard to care for others' homes and children. She was friendly and sweet and so unassuming that noone realized she was pregnant until she was about to give birth. But sadly, she knew the baby she would bear would not be safe with her. She had no financial means or quiet home to take la niñita to so they may live a warm and happy life together. There was no welcoming of her new daughter by her family because she knew the unfair shame of being alone and pregnant. She was desperate. And heartbroken.

I was born only 5 lbs and came to the world very early. I stayed in my mother's arms only a week then was brought to my permanent new home. I was more than a lifetime removed from my mother's world. I was surrounded by English speaking white people in a very cold but beautiful countryside. There were gorgeous farms and lots of safe places to play outside. Nothing like the crowded city my mother and her family lived in. But she ached for me. Finally, as her heart began to somehow heal slowly, she had a chance to live closer to me. She was promised a chance to watch me grow and flourish in the English-speaking world.

But life is hell. And I learned this lesson before I could really understand what it fully meant. My mother died tragically in a fiery car accident in my first year of life. If I had not been sent away I would have also perished with her.

Her legacy is ME. She is my guiding light. Her voice has protected me in the darkest hours. I still wonder why me? Is there a why? Does it matter? How could I have survived this insanely tragic beginning to my story and continued on as normal?

I know so much from living this story. I know that we take every moment for granted. I am a transracial, transnational adoptee. I sit in my power having learned from grief and loss as my very first life experience. And I'm here to share and learn.

[theloosepage]

Flyer by Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill

photo: Fales Library NYU / Feminist Press

[riddlemefuckingthis]

You do not need to achieve anything to be considered a person. It’s a common misconception that to be a person, to be considered a fucking being, that you have to achieve something special.

All you have to do to be a person is exist. You can sit in your room all day, hibernate and just do nothing but you’re still a person. As citizens of a capitalist country, we are exhausted. We want nothing more than to rest, yet we constantly avoid it because we think that to be, we have to achieve something. When I was younger, I told myself that I would not buy any clothes until I was skinnier. I wanted to be ideal for others, but in doing so, I achieved something that I have to fight against every time I go and get clothes.

The other day I was at a thrift store looking for shirts and jeans and the whole time I was repeating to myself that I deserve nice things even if I’m not in the “ideal” body. My body is not what my younger self would be happy about. They wanted so much to be skinny, not knowing that at that time, they were a perfectly functional person with a body that did everything it needed to do to survive.

You don’t need to achieve anything to be a person. You can read all day, watch movies all day, eat food and lounge around your house all day, because your a person that needs love and attention, empathy, and respect. You don’t need to achieve anything!!!!

I reminds me of when I see children “misbehaving” and their parents immediately turn something off in their brain where they view their kids as beings. They drag their kid around, they don’t respect their boundaries and in doing so, the kid is now not a person to them for a few hours until they achieve something.

It just makes me angry. You have the right to exist even when you don’t think so. You are a person!!!

[hexonthepeach]

truly posting tonight, just very very late. thanks everyone for being so understanding. i had some complicated threads to tie in and mentally have been reeling from irl including a mild virus, pmdd, and unfortunately watching my country and others enable fascism in a way that brings back to mind what i experienced personally post-9/11 (i know, i'm old) witnessing warmongering and state gaslighting in real time

while i don't use either of my tumblr accounts to post about anything topical or political (i have a main out there with much broader reach) i'm sure those who've read any of my silly little work would understand that the ongoing imperialist aggression and genocide in gaza are devastating and my heart is broken for those who have died and who are currently suffering. i encourage anyone who can to support those in need through whatever means available to them. a ceasefire and humanitarian aid and a free Palestine are the only way to mitigate harm, there is no violence which begets or justifies violence, and no one with the privilege to should ever turn a blind eye to recognizable horror

thanks again for reading my work but thank you more for any willingness to engage with the world in a way that chooses peace and loving-kindness at all turns. i hope you understand i am not sorry for letting it affect me or delay a post

[bitchesgetriches]

The Biggest Threat to Black Wealth Is White Racist Terrorism

My thesis is that white racist terrorism destroys black wealth. So let’s talk more about that.

We already wrote an article a while back documenting a few of the many ways that it is easier to build wealth when you’re white. We touch on topics like educational opportunities, red-lining, political representation, racism in medicine, implicit bias in hiring, and many other topics. It’s a long list, but it ain’t anywhere close to comprehensive. Here’s one addition that directly relates to the Tulsa Massacre.

Economists traditionally identify two ways for an economy to grow: capital and labor. Factories and workers to staff the factories. Which ultimately means that material reality constrains economic growth. Ya can’t build infinity factories or tap into a pool of infinity workers!

Economist Paul Romer won a Nobel Prize in Economics for proposing that actually, there’s a third investment opportunity: innovation. If you put money into education, keep your marketplace a fair place with lots of healthy competition, and defend strong patent laws that respect the origin of valuable ideas, you can create wealth that way—and that’s an opportunity that isn’t constrained by those material realities.

Here’s where Dr. Lisa D. Cook comes in. This inspiring genius and professor of Economics at Michigan Sate University pioneered an expansion of Romer’s theory. Innovation requires more than just investments and legal protections—innovation requires social safety and equality.

To prove this, Cook researched the total number of patent applications by black inventors between 1870 and 1940. She then charted it against spikes in racial violence and the passage of new segregation laws.

And she was right. During times of racist terrorism and disenfranchisement, the number of patents from black inventors dropped like stones.

1921 stood out so starkly that Cook initially thought it was some kind of calculation error. But no: it was the measurable psychological impact of the Tulsa Massacre, felt across the entire Black population of America.

White people outside of Oklahoma may not have known about Black Wall Street. But black folks everywhere knew about Greenwood, just as queer people in the 1970s knew about San Francisco. Such an impressive gathering of black innovators was an inspiration to black folks everywhere.

When they were killed, an incalculable wealth of incredible ideas, cleverness, determination, and acquired physical capital died with them. But the most economically valuable loss was the loss of such a powerful symbol. Cook describes it this way…

“Tulsa demonstrated that no one would help them. No one. The local government failed. The state government failed. The U.S. government failed. At every single level, nobody had their backs. They were all afraid.

“It’s a sense of personal security. You don’t feel safe anywhere. [Your] livelihood might be in jeopardy. So if I’m a black inventor in another city, why would I ever invent anything if I thought the intellectual property was never going to be defended? If the Black Wall Street that everybody knew about [wasn’t] protected, why would I be protected?”

- Planet Money, Patent Racism

- The Biggest Threat to Black Wealth Is White Racist Terrorism

[an-sceal]

I got a haircut the other day, which was awesome. I've spent the past 48 hours looking at a stranger in the mirror when I pass one. I don't ever have a firm picture or solid understanding of "that is me in my body" when I look at myself anyway, just a vaguely recognized set of individual features (my ear with the elf point, my nose that is either too big or okay depending on the day, but is always the same shape, my eyebrows that are psychotic, my tattoo that is art.) Now my hair is short but still too long, which I will fix when I get home.

Before the haircut I was having a third or fourth day of feeling like nothing I was doing with or for my body was sitting correctly. Nausea from meds that are supposed to help my autoimmune disease, and bloating from meds that are supposed to help my stomach deal with the meds that help the arthritis, and fatigue from... everything? Anything? Breathing? (Possibly breathing, because allergens, and thus inflammation triggers, are high.) Clothes and hair and posture and voice were all clashing in this thing that contains me but doesn't fit. And I have had this body for many decades now, minus a part here or there, so I am very used to not feeling at home in it. Not feeling like my body is any sort of representation of who I am, or even a reliably identifiable placeholder for the spaces marked "ME".

It took me over 40 years to figure out that I wasn't a failure as a girl, as a woman, as a "female", even after I knew there were options well beyond the two I'd been given, or the notion of others thought I understood. Part of that was down to assuming I wasn't *____* enough to count. I didn't know what, but I knew I didn't hate my body, so I couldn't be trans, or even not-a-woman in some other way. Sometimes I clung to that as a defense, firm in reminding myself that I didn't, so I wasn't. Sometimes it just was, existing, a fact like my body, which is obvious to everyone else but a mystery to me at the best of times. In my mind, even though I've rarely felt at peace or in sync with "woman", I'd never had a moment where I explicitly felt that I wasn't a woman, much less one where I hated the idea. How would I have hated something that people told me I was, when I literally need to rely on the vague shape of myself and the labels people I trust have given me just to find myself in a mirror?

I was pretty clear for a long time on how I'd never felt any sort of gender dysphoria. Quite the opposite-- the things I held on to, got familiar with like the extra bump of my ear or the round tip of my nose, were all times I'd felt the MOST grounded and at home in this alien ecosystem I keep my consciousness in. Times I felt GOOD about how my hair fell or my clothes sat or my insides settled into my outsides. No dysphoria for me, no, no! Euphoria!

And that’s true! I have felt gender euphoria, lots of it, and bodily euphoria as I have moments where I'm seated and perfect inside my little squishy home. It never occurred to me that those opposite times, when I would have given ANYTHING to step outside my horrible hovel of a skin prison, might be... not how everyone feels. I'm not talking about self-harm or suicidal ideation-- the escape only counts if the me I know and am is intact when I emerge. I'm talking days where every part of me I recognized felt so disconnected and WRONG in relation to who I believed my body made me that I couldn't find any response but intense anxiety and eventual dissociation to cope with it.

I am not drift-compatible with my own body.

[kuribayashisachi]

拙勉強メモ

野口良平『幕末的思考』第３部 第1章　③に著者様からお返事頂いてしまいました！

野口良平『幕末的思考』みすず書房 第3部「公私」 第１章　再び見いだされた感覚──第三のミッシングリンク1～4　③

の、福沢諭吉『痩我慢の説』のところ。

誰もが住みよい世の中をつくるのには、法（ルール）が必要。 なのだけど、「強い人たちも弱い者を搾取する自由を手放し、従いなさい！」という理屈の根本は何か。 ルソーと中江兆民は、それは強者だけが自由を謳歌する、「自然状態」がまずいからだ。と位置づけたのだけど、 福沢は「痩我慢の説」でこういっているそうだ。「公をつくるのは私情だ」と。

このあたりが、私はちょっとわからず、「自然現象がまずいから」という考えでは不正解なのか……。と疑問だったのです。

すごく貴重なお返事を頂いてしまって、自分一人で見るにはもったいないので、ご許可を頂いて、ここにアップいたします。

◆　野口良平様からのお返事

・・・・・・・・（略）

自然状態のままだと弱肉強食が野放しにされてヤバいので社会契約を結ぶ。これが、ルソーと中江兆民が考えたことです。でもそのとき、すべての人がそれを「ヤバい」と気づけるわけではないのではと、二人は考えたわけです。

ルソーは、「立法者」と「市民宗教」を考えることで、その難問をクリアしようとして失敗しました。兆民は、その失敗に気づくことはできたのですが、その失敗を克服する明確な根拠を見出すことはできませんでした。

意外なことかもしれませんが、その根拠を見出したのが福沢だったのではないかというのが、私が出してみたた考えです。福沢は、弱肉強食は「ヤバい」と感じるものが、一個の「私」「私情」でしかないことに注目します。

ルソーは、「私」の大切さを痛いほど知っていましたが、私情というものが「公」をつくるだけの力をもつものだとまでは考えることができませんでした。言い換えれば、「私」というもののとらえかたがまだ浅く、「私」というものが経験のなかで広く、深いものに成長しうるものだとまでは考えることができなかったわけです。

「私」には公をつくる力がある。と同時に、どのような公にも回収しきれない固有の価値をもつ。こういうダイナミックな把握をなしえたのは、兆民よりも福沢だったのではないか。

一方、ひるがえってみれば、兆民自身、自分の思想にどこか足りないものがあるということに気づいていたふしもあります。国会議員をやめて再び野にくだったのち、いろいろな商売に手を出しては失敗し、辛酸をなめたのも、「公をつくるものとしての私」という考え方を試してみたかったのだ、と考えることも可能だと思われるのです。

今だったら、こういう説明も加えてみるかもしれませんね。そもそも、人間に私情というものがあるからこそ自然状態が生じた。と同時に、その自然状態を終わらせたいと思うのも、私情にほかならないのだと。「私情」には、それだけのふり幅が備わっているのではないか。

「私」には「公」をつくり、しかもその「公」のありようをチェックする力がそなわっている。福沢のこの考え方がなかったら、文学というものそれ自体の存在理由がなくなってしまうように、私には思えたのです。

＊＊＊

福沢に対しては、さまざまな批判が寄せられていることは承知しています。どんな言論にも、可食部と不可食部というものはあるでしょう。福沢の考え方についても、どこまでが可食部で、どこからが不可食なのかということが、過不足なく見極められる必要があるのではないでしょうか。

・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・

なるほどです。

なんとももったいなきご返信、ありがとうございます。

ルソーは、「私」の大切さはイヤと言うほど知っていたけど、「私」にそんな力があるとは気づいていなかった……。

そっかー。もしかしたらルソーは自分がすごい変人と知っていたので、そこまで「私」を大事にする自信がなかったのかなあ。

なんて、そんな奥ゆかしい人じゃないか。

そして、《どんな言論にも、可食部と不可食部というものはあるでしょう。福沢の考え方についても、どこまでが可食部で、どこからが不可食なのかということが、過不足なく見極められる必要が……》とのお話。 可食部と不可食部という言葉が、とても効き目があるなあ！ などとヨロコンデいたのですが、考えてみると、これは、もう少し強い「たしなめ」のお言葉ですね。

福沢のたくさんの言説の中から「醜業婦」発言に真っ先に注目して、福沢全体を否定してしまうのは、 りんごをもらってヘ��に噛みつき「ぺっ、ぺっ、これ食べれない～」というのと同じじゃないですか、と。

◆　ウーマンリブの合い言葉「個人的なことは社会的なこと」について

頂いたお返事は、

（追記）「公をつくるものとしての私」という考え方は、The personal is political.という考え方を含みうるものだと、私は思います。ただ、ギリギリのところで、「私」には政治的な要素には還元できない性質が残されるように感じられます。福沢の「瘠我慢」は、The personal is both political and non-political.という考え方に近いのではなかという気がしますね。

「個人的なことは社会的なこと」というより「個人的なことは政治的なこと」ですね。

The personal is political.は、60年代にアメリカを席巻したフェミニズム第２波と反戦運動の合い言葉だったのですね。

私はそれを認識してないで、ウーマンリブのお姉さんたちが、世間から馬鹿にされながら「がんばろうね」「私たち自分勝手なわけじゃないよね。この苦しさは社会の問題だよね」と励まし合った、という感じの言葉だと思っていました。

どこかで耳に挟んでじーんとしたのです。

《「私」には政治的な要素には還元できない性質が残されるように感じられます。》

なるほど。

といって、野口さんのおしゃることが、自分にわかったのかどうか……そのうち、「あ」とおもうかもしれません。

野口さん、もったいなきお返事を、まことにまことにありがとうございます。

ｍ－－ｍ

[omg-whathaveidone]

Hey corporate USA.

No. I don't care about managing my day better for wellness programs when I NEED TIME AND MONEY for my BABY!!!!!!!! I'm a caretaker fulltime....not your minion...you are NOT A PRIORITY.

Do you want to keep me here for your antiquated rules doing your daily tasks? PAY ME. Help me provide for my BABY. Is this too much to ask???

Baby's some day grow up to work for you so maybe help their mom and family become stronger...

[lesbian-archives]

Revolutionary & Radical Feminist Newsletter #08, 1981

[branch-and-root]

Well done, MI

Fuckin’ A, we did it, good job Michigan! Abortion protection legislation, voter protection legislation, straight Blue state-level government, and a significant gain in the state congress.

Also, well done, UM, the final voter was a UM grad student at 2am in the morning, having waited out the hours in line. (Don’t worry, babies, we’re about to have absentee ballots for all.)

I’m proud of you, SE Michigan. You got out there and did it. 

Go fucking Blue, fuckers.

[lucrezia-thoughts]

Every time I think I've reached the maximum level of disgust with my country...

[cygneeclectique]

Barbara Kruger

New York Times

May 13, 2022

[harpersplay]

Fellow citizens of the USA, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE check your voter registration. Also check any new rules that Republican state governments have put into place (because voting matters, that's why they fuck with it) and be prepared for what you may encounter when you go the the polls.

Then VOTE. Get your family, friends, neighbors to vote. We got this!!!

[an-sceal]

Sleep helped a little. Meeting my new doctor, who asked about dysphoria and actually swapped pronouns interchangeably while we spoke helped. Having him tell me my anxiety and anger and fear were justified helped. Being able to just talk to a medical professional about my body without having to EXPLAIN was... amazing.

And now coffee. Coffee will help.