The Anarcho-Feminist

Imperial Gaze & Male Gaze

E. Ann Kaplan has introduced the post-colonial concept of the imperial gaze, in which the observed find themselves defined in terms of the privileged observer’s own set of value-preferences. From the perspective of the colonised, the imperial gaze infantilizes and trivializes what it falls upon, asserting its command and ordering function as it does so.

Kaplan comments: “The imperial gaze reflects the assumption that the white western subject is central much as the male gaze assumes the centrality of the male subject”.

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Mulvey stated that women were objectified in film because heterosexual men were in control of the camera. Hollywood films played to the models of voyeurism and scopophilia.

(Wikipedia)

Reblogged from Cee Jay.

Tags: text male gaze imperial gaze imperialism colonialism sexism politics sociology

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Advice for young feminists? Do something else besides feminism. I’m serious. The feminist blogosphere is oversaturated in my opinion. Please, find something else you love and take feminist theory there. It gets lonely over here in tech and video games – I have a great crew of other feminists but we are a little island in a vast sea. We need more feminist minded business bloggers, feminist theory wielding finance bloggers. Labor organizers with a feminist lens blogging. Can you imagine what Deadspin (the sports blog) would look like with a feminist on staff? Restructure writes about science, tech and feminism – join her! Publish a blog doing literary criticism with a feminist lens! Take on the NYT! Talk about class issues and feminism. Whatever it is, apply your feminism in a different space.

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Latoya Peterson (Source) (via andcouldheplayblog)

this is the quote I mentioned in my earlier work-thoughts dump. at least i think it is.

(via nom-chompsky)

apply your feminism in a different space

rinse & repeat

(via brazenbitch)

!! I’ve been hollering about this for aaaages

(via julesliketheverne)

Reblogged from Never Have Just One Serving...

Tags: quote feminism politics blog

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A friend of mine asked me recently, was I gonna go see the new Batman movie with him. But I don’t respect the concept of Batman because of what I understand about politics now. I’mma lay it out for you: rich dude owns a corporation with state of the art equipment, and he uses this to beat up on street level crime. He doesn’t mess with the industrialists, or the super capitalists, or the Murdochs, or the Trumps. He really just fucks with the person that’s on the corner. Batman is a conservative’s wet dream. Fuck Batman.

— Reginald D. Hunter (via crashbangtrollop)

Reblogged from Fancy as Fuck

Tags: quote batman politics

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Racism in America’s police force is linked to their role as keepers of the status quo in an unequal society. They enforce laws written by politicians on behalf of the wealthy — laws that end up trapping poor and working-class people in desperate lives. Racial and sexual minorities, legal and illegal immigrants are seen as threats to the social order. When we protest the law and “occupy” a space we are beaten and arrested. When we commit a crime to “get some” we are beaten and arrested. And when we do neither but simply live we’re busted to make a cop’s stop-and-frisk quota.

— ‘They Think We Are Animals’: How America’s Police State Controls Black People | Nick Powers - Alternet (via newwavefeminism)

Reblogged from new wave feminism

Tags: quote politics police racism law

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An even bigger issue is that if people think social justice is about niceness, it means they have fundamentally misunderstood privilege. Privilege does not mean you live in a world where people are nice to you and never insult you. It means you live in a world in which you, and people like you, are given systematic advantages over other people. Being marginalised does not mean people are always nasty to you, it means you live in a world in which many aspects of the cultural, social and economic systems are stacked against people like you. Some very privileged people have had awful experiences in life, but it does not erase their privilege.

— The Revolution Will Not Be Polite (via hiphopcheerleader)

Reblogged from Chauvinist Sushi

Tags: quote privilege politics

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Those who subvert social norms are, ostensibly, people who have forgotten that they can be seen, publicly, at any time. Therefore, when they transgress social norms—by expressing physical affection for a person not visibly coded as the opposite sex, for example, or by being fat and rejecting social and bodily invisibility—they need to be reminded of this omniscient social gaze, and in the absence of institutional discipline, must be punished so they do not transgress again. This is the mechanism by which a dude who sees me in a vividly-colored dress, walking alone as though I either don’t know or don’t care that I am defying bodily norms, feels compelled to scream “UGLY FAT BITCH” at me. He is applying social discipline and teaching me a lesson: Everyone can see you, and your body and/or behavior are unacceptable.

— So Michel Foucault and Jeremy Bentham walk into an elementary school cafeteria* via the Two Whole Cakes blog by Lesley Kinzel (via transformfeminism)

Reblogged from The Fist of Artemis

Tags: quote politics norms normativity society body

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What are we trying to stop anyway, and why? The American judge, Potter Stewart, famously remarked of porn, “I know it when I see it.” Fair enough, but do children know when they see it? The Daily Mail might reasonably argue that the topless shots of Madonna they published are art rather than pornography, but does that make any difference to a child? Do the boobs do the damage, or are children more or less affected by boobs in certain contexts?

What about vaginas, or penises? Teenage children have these things so presumably aren’t particularly traumatized by just seeing them. Is it the insertion of the penis into the vagina that causes the harm, or is it the love and care with which the insertion occurs? What about sexualization in wider society - are children harmed by an image of a glamour model showing her cleavage, or are they harmed by the lack of diversity of images, in a mainstream media which relentlessly bombards young girls with a particular idea of what a woman should grow up to be?

— Porn panic! | Martin Robbins | The Lay Scientist | Science | guardian.co.uk (via sexisnottheenemy)

Reblogged from sex is not the enemy

Tags: quote porn sex children kids politics media sexism feminism anarcha-feminism

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…[A]t heart, nationalism is an ideology of class collaboration. It functions to create an imagined community of shared interests and in doing so to hide the real, material interests of the classes which comprise the population. The ‘national interest’ is a weapon against the working class, and an attempt to rally the ruled behind the interests of their rulers.

— Anarchist Federation, Against Nationalism (via authenticiouslycounterfeit)

Reblogged from Ideas and Opinions.

Tags: quote anarchism nationalism politics

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Imagine living in a world where there is no domination, where females and males are not alike or even always equal, but where a vision of mutuality is the ethos shaping our interaction. Imagine living in a world where we can all be who we are, a world of peace and possibility. Feminist revolution alone will not create such a world; we need to end racism, class elitism, imperialism. But it will make it possible for us to be fully self-actualized females and males able to create beloved community, to live together, realizing our dreams of freedom and justice, living the truth that we are all “created equal.” Come closer. See how feminism can touch and change your life and all our lives. Come closer and know firsthand what feminist movement is all about. Come closer and you will see: feminism is for everybody.

— bell hooks, Feminism is for Everybody (via interfucksectionals)

Reblogged from Social Uprooting

Tags: quote anarcha-feminism feminism racism politics intersectionality

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There has always been racism. But it developed as a leading principle of thought and perception in the context of colonialism. That’s understandable. When you have your boot on someone’s neck, you have to justify it. The justification has to be their depravity. It’s very striking to see this in the case of people who aren’t very different from one another.

Take a look at the British conquest of Ireland, the earliest of the Western colonial conquests. It was described in the same terms as the conquest of Africa. The Irish were a different race. They weren’t human. They weren’t like us. We had to crush and destroy them. No. It has to do with conquest, with oppression. If you’re robbing somebody, oppressing them, dictating their lives, it’s a very rare person who can say: “Look, I’m a monster. I’m doing this for my own good.” Even Himmler didn’t say that.

A standard technique of belief formation goes along with oppression, whether it’s throwing them in gas chambers or charging them too much at a corner store, or anything in between. The standard reaction is to say: ‘It’s their depravity. That’s why I’m doing it. Maybe I’m even doing them good.’ If it’s their depravity, there’s got to be something about them that makes them different from me. What’s different about them will be whatever you can find.

— Noam Chomsky (via noam-chomsky)

Reblogged from Social Uprooting

Tags: quote racism chomsky colonialism politics history

mohandasgandhi:

inothernews:

think-progress:

MASS RIOTS in Athens, Greece.

At least 10 buildings went up in flames in mass protests today.

More here. One in five Greeks are unemployed and the Parliament just approved the austerity package.

I wonder when these governments will finally realize that austerity hasn’t been working for them because it largely doesn’t work. How successful has the “Age of Austerity” been? We’ve driven ourselves deeper and deeper into a black hole.

Bless the Greek people.

Reblogged from Ideas and Opinions.

Tags: photos greece riot politics

A video performance on women’s rights by Spanish feminist revolutionaries.

Tags: video spain feminism body sex naked women politics performance

“Being a leftist is a calling, not a career; it’s a vocation, not a profession. It means you are concerned about structural violence, you are concerned about exploitation at the work place, you are concerned about institutionalized contempt against gay brothers and lesbian sisters, hatred against peoples of color, and the subordination of women. It means that you are willing to fight against, and to try to understand the sources of social misery at the structural and institutional levels, as well as at the existential and personal levels. That’s what it means to be a leftist; that’s why we choose to be certain kinds of human beings.”
- Cornel West

“Being a leftist is a calling, not a career; it’s a vocation, not a profession. It means you are concerned about structural violence, you are concerned about exploitation at the work place, you are concerned about institutionalized contempt against gay brothers and lesbian sisters, hatred against peoples of color, and the subordination of women. It means that you are willing to fight against, and to try to understand the sources of social misery at the structural and institutional levels, as well as at the existential and personal levels. That’s what it means to be a leftist; that’s why we choose to be certain kinds of human beings.”

- Cornel West

Reblogged from Sugar Yum Yum

Tags: cornel west quote anarcha-feminism racism sexism homophobia leftist politics left wing life work

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Historically, [the US] government, whether in the hands of Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals, has failed its responsibilities, until forced to by direct action: sit-ins and Freedom Rides for the rights of black people, strikes and boycotts for the rights of workers, mutinies and desertions of soldiers in order to stop a war. Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens.

— Howard Zinn (via americandissident)

Reblogged from The Pen is Mightier than the Molotov

Tags: democracy quote politics direct action vote USA

Another one of those discussion on the facebook page that I thought some of you might enjoy. And feel free to contribute aswell!