The forces of capitalism and the state work hard to keep us complacent and in our place in the status quo. This is especially true for issues of gender. Our resistance is not only in how we live our lives, but in how we live in our bodies and identify. We at SOAR have many different visions of the world we want, but agree that issues surrounding Gender Justice must be paramount in any struggle.
The capitalist and statist mega-institutions of our society are built to maintain oppression, domination and hierarchy in the name of social control. This includes the policing and domination of our bodies in order to reinforce power structures with medical doctors deciding when a transman or transwomen qualify for hormones, and turning our bodies into different parts for scrutinizing and evaluating. Currently the resurfacing of the debate surrounding abortion characterizes this domination, as reproductive choice is taken out of the hands of women and transpeople and into the hands of bureaucratic officials. The rights of women, queer, and transpeople are actively under attack by the state. The message is clear: we do not have control over what happens to our bodies.
Modern ‘western’ society is predicated on a patriarchal, white supremacist logic promoting the upward mobility of stereotypical white males to the exclusion of women, queer and transpeople. A challenge to these patriarchal currents is a challenge to capitalist society. However, all too often, the aim of this struggle has been bringing women into the workplace and into politics with the suffrage movement's fight for ‘a vote for women’ meaning only “a vote for white able-bodied upper class women.” The movements of the past were too quick to leave certain people behind, and so their limited demands became based upon the oppression of others. The idea that women’s liberation has already occurred is a myth. None are free until we all are free, and freedom does not constitute wage slavery.
To reject the rigid frameworks that seek to construct and dominate gender, sexuality, different lifestyles and sexual orientations is to not only actively understand how these ideas play out in our minds and bodies, but also rise up against the state and capitalism.
Fuck Gender Binaries! Let everyone have the control over their bodies, and be however they want to be! We must rise up against the liberal notions of ‘equality’ that are eclipsed by the everyday reality of workplace hierarchy and harassment. Against consumer-driven capitalism dictating how we should dress and what our genders should look like! Against the culture of rape that permeates society, reclaiming our bodies from the battlegrounds of violence and colonization, so that one day we may be able to walk alone at night without fear. Against the medicalization of gender, so that all transpeople may be able to freely access the hormones they need. We must rise up against patriarchy, and against all of the other systems of oppression that it is a part of, so that we may have a world with strong communities as well as strong individuals. To rise up is to risk a fall, but to submit is certain death in servitude of capital and the state.
We’ve got a world to win. We’ve got a world to create.
We’ve got systems of the state, capitalism and patriarchy to destroy.
No one is free when others are oppressed.
Southern Ontario Anarchist Resistance
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