Why would I ever want to be one of them

"Manzanar Split Tree"by thereshegoesagain is licensed under CC BY 2.0

In anthropology, they teach you to recognize patterns of human behavior. Many like to believe that it’s the science of human beings. That with its tools, we can make sense of humans. All I found was that we are animals doing performance art. 

It’s also the science that helped Armchair Victorians answer the question: brown people, why? I didn’t see this you know, as a child. I didn’t see that anthropology was my way of chopping myself into pieces and turning the white piece to the brown piece to ask the same question. 

Why?

Last year around this time, I was on a road trip. It was eye-opening in many ways. We visited ghost towns, old mining towns that had either run dry or were barely hanging on. Places ravaged and plundered by the reckless pursuit of natural resources. I never really processed that people still lived in these places and willingly called them ghost towns. Descendants of settlers, miners, or people trying to buy cheap property to cash in on tourists like us. Like me. 

I don’t always feel brown, you see. Most of the time, I don’t even really allow myself to think about my own brownness. It’s never really been up to me. In the ghost towns of Nevada, I was brown. The stares told me so. 

But the stares weren’t all meant for me. I was traveling with two older women, people who I considered new friends at the time. One, a tall gravely-voiced woman who gave no shits. White. The other was a smaller, wiser woman who also gave no shits, in her way. Black. Police cars drove by repeatedly. Groups of children came out to wave…and stare. There was ‘no room’ in the fancier hotel. I felt the stares on my back constantly. It made me furious.

If you had asked me at the time why I was so angry, I wouldn’t have been able to say. It’s not as if I haven’t felt that gaze before. Remember: I don’t allow myself to think about my brownness. Later, speaking with the smaller friend, the one who bore that gaze every goddamned day of her life, she told me something I hadn’t considered: they probably thought I was her mixed-race kid.

I am a mixed kid, of a different mix. It’s been my bane and my greatest strength. In those towns, some still thought it was a crime[1].

On our way back from Nevada, we stopped at Manzanar[2]. This was the site of an American concentration camp during World War II, two hours from where I grew up. I can’t really explain to you what I felt there, but the suffering will poison that ground forever. You can see it in the trees.

"Orchard"by teofilo is licensed under CC BY 2.0

The taller one kept talking about how if we’re not careful, this country would put people in places like that again. I replied; this country has never stopped doing that[3].

I am back in that town that I grew up in, two hours from Manzanar. These days, Adelanto is only an hour away. Make no mistake, it’s a camp like any of the others. An ICE Processing Center they like to say. But I know what that means. Somewhere in your bones, you know it too. 

Abolish ICE rally outside of Adelanto

Why have I not allowed myself to think of myself as brown? Because somewhere in my bones, I know what happens to brown people. The question that haunts me now is why would I ever want to be one of them? The ones who decide who’s white, brown or otherwise. The ones with privilege. With power. With the perceived superiority over others by virtue of crushing them beneath their boots. 

I think I also tried to be an anthropologist to ask: Why do you do this to us? To my father? His people? My friend’s people? My neighbor’s people? 

I can finally answer that question without anthropology. Because you forgot you are one of us. There’s more genetic variation in every other creature on this earth than there is between human beings. 

We were all brown, once.

“I’m not interested in pursuing a society that uses analysis, research, and experimentation to concretize their vision of cruel destinies for those who are not bastards of the Pilgrims; a society with arrogance rising, moon in oppression, and sun in destruction.”

– Barbara Cameron “Gee, You Don’t Seem Like an Indian…” from This Bridge Called My Back

 [1]More on Miscegenation laws in the US https://www.thoughtco.com/interracial-marriage-laws-721611

[2]https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/07/us/manzanar-japanese-americans-internment-camp.html

[3]More on the relocation of Native Americans: https://www.thoughtco.com/the-trail-of-tears-1773597; On the prison industrial complex https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/us/new-jim-crow-book-ban-prison.html; On profiling and surveillance of Muslims https://ccrjustice.org/home/what-we-do/issues/muslim-profiling

A Woman's Place

Culture plays a very big role in how we understand public and private space. Where I come from, for the most part, private space is a myth. In Egypt, we find pride in our social nature. We love the fact that our homes are always open, our tables are always welcoming and our spirits are mostly high. In our culture, we celebrate coming together for feasts, for birthdays, for funerals. And for revolutions. However, this hospitality rarely extends to the public space – to the street. Culturally, and sadly, a man’s place is in the public space while the private space is the woman’s, to exist in but not to rule or control.

Then there is the political side. Recently, we’ve lost the ability to be so social. Even if we don’t count all the friends lost and relationships that broke over the political rupture we’ve gone through, it has become risky to exist in big groups in public. Demonstrating is illegal and in a legal system where everything is poorly defined anything can be deemed a demonstration. And ever since the crash of the Egyptian pound, private gatherings are simply unaffordable. This break in how we’re meant to live our life, how we understand our existence in the space we inhabit has broken us – well, dented us. My generation has already been battered and had their blood and bones splattered on the very streets we now have little access to. Demonstrating much other than our miserable individuality is highly frowned upon. We are a living manifestation of divide and ruthlessly conquer.

Public space is also, of course, gendered. For men, the public space is the street; for women – the public place is her life. Our (in)ability to walk down or stand on the street is a consequence of women being perceived as the object of observation. We are constantly under scrutiny for the specific purpose of judgment – by everyone - including, most heartbreakingly, other women. When does she leave her house? What time does she go home? How often is she out? Who does she go out with? Where are they likely to go? What is she wearing? Answers to these questions are to be known, by neighbours and the infamous bawab (doorman). Then, if you pass that impenetrable filter of respectability and honour, and are about to get married, how you inhabit your personal space is now next on the list. Can she cook? Can she clean? Does she take care of herself, or does she let herself go once nobody is looking? Is she a pretty-matching-PJs kind of girl or wretched hair-don’t care kind of girl? We live for the gaze, and practice existing for it, even in private.

A while ago, a girl was standing on the street, in suburban Cairo (not that this should be relevant), when a man approached her and invited her for a cup of coffee. He claimed to only want to relieve her of the harassment she’d get by simply standing there, and that he was “not bothering her”. Her response was that he was in fact bothering her. She then posted the 30 second video on Facebook and it blew up… in HER face.

Uploaded by happy new year 2019 on 2018-08-16.

Initially, most people were hung up on the man’s mispronunciation of the name of the café where he suggested they go, and completely disregarded the intention of the video. He’d just invaded her personal space and had used her own inhibitions against her. Yet, he became a public figure as a victim of unjustified shaming. She, on the other hand, was declared as deserving of his minor trespass - and the shaming that followed, given the way she was “probably” dressed. She wasn’t actually visible in the video, yet, reposting Facebook photos of her in short dresses claiming “She was asking for it” was seen as perfectly acceptable, deserved even. The argument about her clothing is that she “dresses like a European, so she should accept this supposedly European behaviour” of being asked for coffee by random men on the street; “it’s not like he verbally abused her - or worse”.  

The consequences of these 30 seconds were fame for the man and complete desecration and isolation of the girl who lost her job, her reputation and even some friends.  

There are no social rights for a woman in Cairo. There are only responsibilities. She is responsible for her own reputation, as well as the reputation of the men in her life. The way she behaves is instantly a reflection on the men that she is associated with - father, brother, husband and, very quickly, son. Hence, the rush everyone is in to shut down her ability to self-express. A girl, we’re told in school, is a direct expression of the morals of her entire family. She is also an expression of where the entire society falls on the moral spectrum.

In the debate against the girl, people attacked her for shaming him. Her morality was reduced to not caring about another human, despite her own position of vulnerability against him. There were also debates on whether she had a good reason to be standing on the street to begin with. She put herself in harms way; as if harm is inevitable – and sadly, in Cairo it is. That same argument was used against protestors killed and injured in police attacks – why were they there? It seems to be the way we perceive the world in Cairo: harm is inevitable and it is our responsibility to get out of its way – fighting it, eradicating it, is not an option.

Once her own images came to light, a miserable twist occurred; people blamed her for her own misery. While his reputation deserved saving, hers was everyone’s property to do with whatever they wanted. The way she dresses was seen as unacceptable – skinny jeans are an abomination, and hence, anyone is entitled to attack her. She was portrayed in long posts as this demon that is out to destroy the lives of innocent men just going about their days by being a walking sin. In fact, someone claimed she was lucky someone was nice enough to offer to get her out of harm’s way – or rather stop her from being harm to other people, by simply existing in that space.

This brings us to the religion argument. Islam calls for modesty. A woman (and in fact a man) should always be modest in the way they present themselves to the world. Dress decently and – more relevantly humbly. A woman should not be a point of attraction. One argument against our fellow Egyptian woman was that she dresses attractively; hence she is inviting and should bear the consequences of her decision to draw eyes to her. These arguments dismiss the elements of that very religion that also demand, all of us, men and women, to cover our eyes from what we feel is too revealing. Again, the responsibility – of both man and woman – falls solely on the woman. Shortly after the incident, and another one involving the murder of a husband defending his wife against a harasser, Al-Azhar declared that harassment is haram (forbidden) in Islam, regardless of what the woman is wearing.

The main aspect of this situation with which I’m struggling the most is the amount of women that not only rushed to the rescue of the man’s reputation, but inhumanely and with painful certainty shattered the girl’s. From where I am sitting, seeing a video like this, all I can feel is admiration for her bravery at holding up a camera to a man approaching her on the street and not letting herself be paralysed by fear at what he could be capable of. She is not oblivious to the existence of plenty of people like him who would rush to his side and attack her; yet she proceeded to post the video online anyway. I would be terrified and I was and am for her. I still catch myself, after years of living abroad, scanning the area around me and making sure there is always safe distance between me and the next man on the street; that is after finally learning to walk with my back straight and pretend to be comfortable! Look straight as opposed to the ground and not speed up frantically when someone walks close to/behind me for some time.  

I have been wracking my brain, trying to understand or relate to how someone who walks the same streets I do, who witnesses the same things I have witnessed can completely break a fellow fighter-for-mere-existence like that. But then I remembered. When the declaration by Al-Azhar came out and after some discussions with friends about its possible value, it hit me. We have internalised this responsibility; it has gone so deep in some of us that they have managed to wear their adjustment to these conditions as a badge of honour. For those who are familiar with The Handmaid’s Tale, they’re the wives of Gilead, who are proud of their share in the oppression and use their place to abuse other women who practiced their freedoms.

An image from Azeri photographer Alexandra Kramer-Khomassouridze’s exhibition ‘Faces of Freedom’. She interviewed and photographed 50 women living in Baku, Azerbaijan about their opinions of freedom and the hijab.

I flash back to a time where I would cover up to leave the house, like it wasn’t about the street, like it was my decision, like my body cover is the way I should be, it is my invisibility cloak that will get me from point A to B without drama. I remember dismissing the incidents where it didn’t work. I remember seeing girls who dressed up and looked nice and simultaneously thinking they were making things harder for themselves while picturing what I would be wearing if it were up to me. And this is what I think it might all come down to – us thinking it is not up to us. It is up to society, to culture, to religion what we wear and how we exist – and society, culture and religion all tell us to exist in the way that makes life easier for men. Be ugly on the street and sexy at home. Be everything and nothing all at the same time. Saving our best for our husbands and choosing to follow the religious instructions because they are meant for us, to protect us and to make us worthy. Sound familiar?

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Something has always felt off about this logic but I could never quite put my finger on it. Until I attended a certain religious lecture where the teacher was talking about modesty and used her own daughter’s outfit as an example of what not to do. She then proceeded to warn us against all the ways men are horrible and how our protection falls on our own shoulders. She went on and on reciting instances where men have harassed women who fit the code of how to behave and left it for us to imagine what they would do if we did not even abide by that code. Religion was only there to protect us against those horrible creatures that are men.

I realised in this moment, that our practice as women, whether religious or social is entirely driven by fear – we exist on survival mode. Our beliefs are derived from an assumption of the inevitability of harm and the best we can do is follow whatever rules there are to keep it at a minimum. It was a counterproductive lecture, because her instructions were contradictory: cover up so men don’t justify their harassment, but know they will harass you anyways. Veiling up is not a religious practice to have a relationship with God, it’s a defensive act, one that comes from expecting the worst of others. This middle-aged woman does not know how to survive otherwise and there she was dooming us all to that same inhibiting mindset. And, sadly, I cannot blame her because this is the experience she has of life.

I believe that the girls who attack a victim of harassment are stuck. They have squeezed themselves into the role ascribed to them by a lifetime of instructions and threats and are hit every day by the uselessness of it and the possibility of an alternative. A slightly bitter theory would stipulate that they do not want that girl to “have her cake and eat it too” whatever the hell that means. They refuse to believe that a person should be able to do what she wants and get away with it, that’s just not how our society works. They attack her for trying. They have finally mastered walking the thin line society has set for them and see any alternative as discrediting their efforts, and challenging their place as the only group worthy of respect.

This perspective, sometimes translates into moral superiority. Once one follows the rules of how to be the best example of an Egyptian woman, they welcome the holier-than-thou entitlement. If someone is following rules that strain them, that make them uncomfortable they will constantly need to give themselves some motivation to keep going. They need this view from their high horses; they need to constantly reclaim this spot, through reminding everyone else that they are down below in the mud. A person who is satisfied with where they are, who is being themselves does not care where other people are in the field, in fact they hardly notice. They are content in themselves. 

And I say this from experience. I am someone who has struggled with the rules; I tried to internalise them, to fit in, to make it work. I wondered why I followed these rules and found it so hard while other people found it easy, and another group found it easy to not be concerned with the rules at all. I have envied both groups equally and for the longest time dreaded attempting to abandon the struggle because I didn’t know who I’d be if not a rule follower. Self-reflection is difficult, it requires venturing into the unknown, and starting on a path we’re not always sure about where it leads. But the one thing it leads to is a lack of attention to and concern with how other people handle their personal lives. But when our moral code forces us to live a life of proving to others that we are rule followers, a good following allows us to also meddle and judge other people’s choices. It would lead a woman to feel entitled enough to yell at me to “cover my hair” in the middle of the street. And sadly enough, the same applies for “liberated” women who attack those who find themselves in the social or religious code. Because believe it or not, veiled women get harassed and discriminated against too, accused of backwardness and assumed to lack agency and choice. The latest case in point, this Bar Rafaeli ad; not to mention their exclusion from spaces within their own communities.

Hoodies Winter 18-19

The debate on women’s rights in the world is on-going. It’s true that it is one of very slow evolution, but – well, it exists. We have women and more recently men (thank God – finally!!) all over the world, advocating and raising awareness about the recent discovery that women are fully human and they need to be treated as such…you know, be allowed to work and have equal pay and not have their bodies invaded.

In Egypt, we’re still discussing the right of a woman to safely walk down the street – to simply stand on the street. We are setting conditions for that; her safety supposedly depends on where she’s standing, how she’s standing, what she’s wearing and – pretty much her very existence. It is not true that how you dress protects you. You get harassed anyways; and it is baffling for those of us on this side of the fight to realise that there are women who do not see this problem. Who blame other women for their own assaults! And the sides are not guided by the way we dress, or how we choose to inhabit space. They are guided by our belief that women should be able to practice their personal freedom over their bodies and their life choices, and defend their rights regardless of those choices. But unfortunately, until a significant portion of us engage in self-reflection and practice mercy on ourselves and others, we’re not likely to go anywhere.

The Era of the Witch

I could not quite say what it was about 2017 that brought witches to mind. Pop culture references might have triggered it (looking at you Samantha Bee and Broad City). There was also that horror/not horror/scarily accurate movie The Witch.

Now, now, hold it right there. Yes, you, panicking about another damn feminist polemic. While I wear the feminist badge proudly, this is not a feminist piece. It might ring more true for those on the feminine spectrum, yes. Still, I would suggest the amount of fear you feel reading these opening paragraphs is about how much you need to read them. It will go a long way to help us both understand the rage of many of the people in our lives. Perhaps it will even explain your own rage. All I know is that something must change about the way we use the word ‘witch’.

I take it back; perhaps this all started with a book I read. Most things do. It was Witches, Sluts, Feminists by Kristen J. Sollee. While it focused on the history of witchcraft in Europe and North America, Sollee’s main argument was that ‘slut’ is the new ‘witch’. There was always something sexually charged about calling a woman a ‘witch’, a threat to wholesome society. These days, ‘slut’ takes on that particular role. Both words have been used to police the out-spoken, the empowered and the sex-positive. Many have swung from a rope or have burned at a stake for little less than being different over the centuries. It was uplifting to read the stories of folks reclaiming ‘witch’ and ‘slut’ as their own.

Reading Sollee’s book resonated with me as I spent time with my own family in the Old Country. I was in that precarious space of unmarried and 30. So my family talked to me and about me differently. I am a mixed kid who has had the privilege of travel so I know that an unmarried woman above a certain age is always viewed as some kind of threat. As I adjusted to this new way of being seen, I started to notice a theme in the stories about my non-male relatives. I had always accepted as fact that grandma was ‘mean’ and grandpa was ‘gentle’. My father’s family is a matriarchy since the person with the highest authority is a nun. But only technically, since a nun sacrifices gender and sex for eternal service to the Big G in the Sky. My family accepts the nun as powerful because she is not a woman anymore. Grandma, well, she was mean. The most I could learn about Grandma was that she was into ‘spiritism’. This immediately made me interested. I found instead that my family wanted me to understand that ‘mean’ women mess with the spirits, and vice versa. Beyond that, mouths clamped shut.

Allow me to keep track of the words: Witch. Slut. Spiritist.

To my family’s dismay, I started to take city buses. I cannot resist public transportation, no matter how dangerous. Who does not want to go upwards of 20 miles for cents on the dollar? It also gave me time with another book on this journey: Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution by Mona Eltahawy. Eltahawy is a polarizing figure in the Middle East. Since her incendiary article in Foreign Policy, critics have called her many things. Many of the critiques of her article are fair. Misogyny is not inherent in Islam, a point she is careful to make in Headscarves and Hymens. So let me be clear here as well: no one’s country or religion makes them a terrible human being. If someone does not treat people well, it is likely due to a history of abuse, ignorance or patriarchy.

Eltahawy takes issue with certain interpretations of Islamic law and those clerics who use it to oppress others. She has never stopped being a Muslim woman and continues to practice her faith while still identifying as a feminist. She was all anyone could talk about for a solid part of 2012. She sparked an important conversation, nonetheless. Respect must be shown to the ‘mad’ woman who calls out injustice, even if she is on her own. After all, don’t we all go a bit mad when we aren’t listened to?

Witch. Slut. Spiritist. Mad.

On those brand new buses into the city, I cried reading Eltahawy’s words. She has always been unafraid to call the discriminatory personal status laws in the Middle East and North Africa hatred. These are laws that cover family issues such as marriage, divorce, child custody, and inheritance. What concerns Eltahawy and many other human rights critics is that these laws are biased against women, queer folx and free speech. They vary between region, country and cleric. In severe cases, women are required to marry their rapists. Generally, they are wards of their fathers or husbands. Sex outside of marriage is illegal across the region, particularly if it is queer. Consequences for free speech and political dissent have, of course, grown stronger since 2011.

Do not be mistaken, I was not crying because I was reading about gender discrimination on a bus in the Sahara. And believe me, there are an overwhelming number of incidents of sexual harassment on buses and train cars like it. I cried because I had lived that discrimination, even as a first-generation American. Hate may be legal in the cities of North Africa but it lived in the White Baptist halls of the schools I went to in the United States of America. I cried from bearing the weight of that hateful gaze no matter where I was.

Since I have been back in these United States, it has become harder and harder to deny how heavy that weight is. The Supreme Court confirmation hearings, for example, have been pure spectacle. Citizens have a right to judge all public servants based on their treatment of those more vulnerable than they are. We rarely do that, though. Private conversations in kitchens and coffee shops do not count. I mean actually holding our representatives, our colleagues, our bosses, our friends to account for how they treat others. Yes, #MeToo and all that but, have you noticed how hard it is to make the accused face actual consequences?

It is difficult to make someone face their mistakes. The more public, the more like a circus it becomes. I will be a tad bit more US-centric here: it has been difficult to charge anyone in the Trump administration with anything. By anything, I mean the full spectrum of tax evasion to rape. I mention this because of how many times I have heard someone in that circus say the word ‘witch-hunt’. I had trouble understanding who exactly the witches were: were they the ones who accuse or were they the ones being accused? It was a special kind of twisted to hear wealthy, prominent white men compare their public scrutiny to a hate crime. That is what witch-hunts are folks:hate crimes. Guess what? The numbers do not support the idea that prominent white men are being hunted.

This graph was originally printed in The Economist but don’t let the article fool you. Take a look at how hate crime rates have grown since 2015.

I am left with the same question: who were the witches? The numbers in the graph above would suggest they weren’t white men in 2015, especially in the United States.

A portion of the infographic published by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR).

If we take a more global look, the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights shows that the most hunted were not women in 2016. Many identified as women, many did not, most were queer, and a great deal were brown or black. Humanity has so much fear and hate for more than just women who are different. What was it exactly that they had for us to be afraid of?

It is strange, but the word that comes to mind is power. Humans are tribal and more often than not, we kill or maim what we are afraid of. Sometimes, for brief beautiful moments in time, we rally together and rage against hate crimes and turn the world upside down. Sometimes, we stop hunting witches and we become them.

I would like to add another word to that list I was keeping track of: Witch. Slut. Spiritist. Mad. Revolutionary. That is what I ask those of you who feel rage and dismay to become. If you are feared for being different, for simply being what you know in your soul you are, you are a witch. You are a revolutionary. You have the power to protect one another. You have the power to create community. You have the power to reject courts and systems that do not serve you. You and I are the ones who grant them authority. Let us not do that anymore, shall we? Our time will be much better spent creating.

The Cause

Here at The Turn Left, we’ve thought a lot about causes. Name one and we’ve mulled over it, gotten involved in it, attended conferences on it, or penned scholarly papers about it. No matter what it is, it’s in a long line and someone from the cause in front likely said, “Wait your turn”. You know the activists I mean: the environmentalists who don’t think it’s the right moment for LGBTQ+ rights or LGBTQ+ activists who refuse to acknowledge misogynoir.

So, we decided to have a 'chat' about causes. Are they really mutually exclusive?

Myriam: The more time I spend in cause-based life, the more I find that whatever rifts come between activists have only somewhat to do with The Cause. We recreate the idea that there is so little space, money, time, or resources that it is impossible to truly share equally. This is the lie our institutions tell us and precisely the lie we fight when we ask for equal rights or safety for minorities.

Inevitably, when passionate people come together, they disagree. In activist communities those disagreements become huge debates over white privilege or misogyny—both of which do play huge roles in how we speak to each other and decide what actions to take. I find that we hide personal spats behind the big ideas. Sometimes, it really is a simple failure of humanity between colleagues that no one apologizes for. Sometimes, it’s a betrayal of one cause for another. More often, it’s both.

Every time, however, it’s almost impossible to tell the difference. I always find myself relieved to be in an activist space in the beginning. The political correctness eventually does start to flake off after long hours painting signs. Each time I find myself asking: Why do we still believe the lie?

Sandra: I see what you mean about this idea that resources are perceived as limited. This could be a holdover from the 'spaceship Earth' idea touted by Buckminster Fuller (see Adam Curtis’ documentary All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace), but I think it also makes us realise that HOW terms and concepts come about is also problematic. For example people have to identify under the term 'minority' for their grievances to be legitimised in the eyes of large bodies such as the government (see the work of Saba Mahmood).

Buckminster Fuller had to convince people to think of Earth as a self-contained ship in space just so that people would start being more environmentally conscious (or so Adam Curtis tells us in All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace). I think activists don't always educate themselves outside their given cause, adding to your point and making it easier to keep things personal. There's nothing wrong with being personally attached to the cause you are pursuing; I prefer that to people who are just 'there', but it is super important to do the background reading. That enables you to see how things are interconnected and maybe avoid this hiding of personal spats behind big ideas. 

At the same time I think the latter point may involve an element of selflessness people do not always possess. We are living in an age where people have the freedom to express themselves in new and different ways (and reap the sometimes horrifying consequences), but what I find myself wondering often is how to translate that expression into action that those in power will actually respond to. We get very bogged down in the details of what and how we want things to change for our given cause, and in so doing fail to see the commonalities with other causes. So maybe the problem is that there is so much information out there that people do not always realise the ways in which resources are not limited? Maybe it is also the argument made about people becoming trapped in their own bubbles and not actively seeking people who have different ideas? 

Myriam: I agree, there’s a lot of history and theory that goes alongside movements. I am worried here, though, about the division between those who read and those who do not read. Movements often prize those with education over others and it doesn’t always protect the movement from division. Those leaders should be careful what knowledge is treasured and not allow their movements to be divided along lines of privilege. 

To be clear, I’m not looking down my nose at reading. I don’t know where I’d be without the books I’ve had access to. I just want to keep in mind that book-learnin' is yet another way we divide our efforts. There are many different ways to learn and we should use them all. Chief among those is empathy. How many training manuals are there out there for empathy? I know the works of Paolo Freire and bell hooks aren’t chiefly concerned with empathy but there must be others like them whose work has been translated into dozens of languages.

There are a lot of bubbles and echo chambers. We should have more exposure to different models of governance and organization…and find ways to build consensus properly. We are socialized to seek hierarchy, to reproduce hierarchy. Or even that the best will naturally rise to the top, to trust in the meritocracy. We dive deep into our causes because we have seen that this is not true: we don’t all start life with equal chances at success so how can we really tell who is the best?

We need to train ourselves to think differently, to plan differently. It scares me how difficult it is for me to break those simple patterns in my own work. Who can we learn from?

Sandra: This can be dangerous territory as this is how some people see the divide between left and right extremes in the US—those that read and those that don’t. I am not saying that this is what you are talking about, but I just wanted to be clear for our readers’ sakes. I wonder though—if everyone read to atleast a certain minimum, would we still call it a hierarchy or try to pursue one? What if we ensured that everyone read the same things or atleast the same variety of things?

Absolutely reading is not the only way to learn—knod at Tim Ingold and embodied learning (see his book The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill)—but sometimes when people have different experiences based on, for example, skin colour it may be a medium that has to be relied on. There are still some experiences people cannot have, and that is where both reading and talking to people can be helpful. In that sense, what if we all knew how to build/make things? What if we engaged in more projects that involved learning through doing/experiencing alongside people who were different to us in some way?  

I agree entirely that there should not be a division between those who read and those who do not, and there may be a bit of ego that needs to be overcome there. There is an assumption that people cannot communicate or that if they can they can do so only to certain point. So how do we overcome this? And what about how people divide themselves over causes? I admit I have my moments of preferring animals and environmental work over working with humans, but that has yet to stop me from working with humans. How do we get to a point where the majority of people can see the overlaps between the environment, the feminist struggle, struggles of peoples of colour and so on until the end of the list?

Because it is all bound up in the personal, what people have read, and what they believe the world to be. It may also boil down to what some are willing to do in the realm of acceptability. There is what people do so others see them doing it, and what people do and think for themselves...aand suddenly we find ourselves in the territory of morals and values which is a whole other conversation.

Myriam: Practically, I think we have to start making cooperative spaces. We have to train ourselves to think differently. That may mean expanding our realm of experience with other people’s stories, written or otherwise. That may mean actually taking or crafting courses that focus on building consensus and facilitation. Learn from the moments in history where goals and leadership were shared rather than the moments they all fell apart. 

Personally, I’ve wanted to learn more about federations of the First Nations such as the Iroquois and other systems of governance. There is more to history than what happened in Ancient Greece and Rome. Not to discredit the classics, mind you, we just need to create more space for the actual history of the WORLD. 

Everyone I’ve ever met in politics or activism is tired of the way things are but so few take the extra step to make actual changes. In some ways, we need a complete system overhaul: decentralized leadership, mentorship, consensus building, and ALL the trainings. We have to learn what the new world can look like if we’re trying to build it. Boldly going blindly with only the status quo behind us is too slow going. For the poor, the marginalized, the economically vulnerable, we have no more time to waste.

Sandra: You know what? I think WE are the solution to this! In a serious vein though, what specifically would training ourselves to think differently look like? I think looking outside the histories taught in schools is crucial, especially as it enables us to think about the different ways we have come to be where we are socially and politically, and it reminds us that we are dealing with issues and modes of being that are not linear but hypercomplicated.

To push your points further, Greek and Roman history and philosophy have varying influences on global historical trajectories, and overshadow the impact of Indian, Arab, African (plural) and East Asian histories to name a few. Also, this ties back into your earlier points about empathy and destabilising hierarchy, which then ties into ongoing attempts to decolonize different institutions alongside decolonial projects. Moving towards existing groups and organizations, maybe it would be helpful for groups who target multiple ‘causes’ to re-stress the overlaps between all causes, to coax people out of their specific corners? To teach across and around rather than top down? Everyone IS tired, but in addition to not acting people often do not know how to act, or think their actions won’t make a difference anyway (another issue touched upon in an Adam Curtis documentary). 

I sometimes think of it like a post-apocalyptic world: everything has been supposedly destroyed and torn down, but people still carry the structures and institutions of the ‘old’ world with them. They cling to them for a sense of stability and comfort. When I was a child I was asked to design my own country and government. So, how would we, as a plural, hybrid, hyper complicated people, design our own country? A system overhaul means stepping into the unknown and the potentially unknowable, but we can’t know where that boundary lies if we do not try to step across it. 

Resourceful

I appreciated many things about Egyptian mythology. What I loved most was that the Earth wasn’t a woman. No need to cringe over the treatment of the great mother, raping her of resources, or the fracking of her crust. Geb, Father Earth, completed the cosmos where he met the sky.

To be clear, I appreciate the beauty of a benevolent Earth mother, a resplendent Gaia in pagan Spring. Humanity tends to feminize all things with a womb and use it without regard for consequences. The problem here is not metaphor, it’s that what we own, use and inhabit is somehow automatically feminine. What we use or own is often, also, abused.

Once land and people started to hold monetary value they often became resources. Wealth, class and race divided people into workforce and landowners. In The Ascent of Woman Dr. Amanda Foreman notes the Code of Hammurabi was the first time that humanity defined women's limitations. Empires and households traded women for being able to produce more human capital. The only advantage to being a wealthy womb was a life of leisure as you despaired over the production of a male heir. The poor wombs not only had to produce enough humans to work the land, but also labor of their own to worry over. In either case, society tied women’s value to domesticity, birth or sex.

There’s a twisted symmetry to it. Outside of their ability to produce, resources have little value. Consequences to the resources themselves are only considered when they affect others. Consider how de/regulation follows a high death toll or the halt of a production line. It matters little if resources are sickly, as long as they can still make more. Endanger that and owners will make changes. Human greed or neglect is rarely to blame for dwindling resources. In fact, scarcity often leads to a greater control over any given resource. If there is only so much crude oil left, might as well make the most profit from what remains. It’s so much more valuable when it’s rare, after all.

A resource doesn’t have the ability to offer consent. Women themselves choosing when not to give birth is a political hotbed in every country. Women become lobbyists, activists or politicians and raise their voices. Yet congresses and parliaments ignore them as if they had no voice. Women and the Earth are useful in their bounty and wasteful unless they produce value.

It’s disturbing how humanity resorts to exploitation, and not only of the women of the Earth. All is insubstantial to the power of profit and woe to those who are essentially, valuable. Money can raise lobbies, think tanks, campaigns, and court rulings to protect profit. It is lawful for the Earth, women, LGBTIQ persons, people of color, the poor, and others to be resources. Global climate, economic and human rights agreements are attempts to curb centuries of abuse. A global wealthy white minority continues to reinforce and support these practices.

Harassment is on the international stage these days. It’s the everyday act of exerting power over someone who is vulnerable. They are not always women, but it is the women that humanity somehow finds the most difficult to believe. There are many countries where a woman's word is suspect, but the idea alone is devastating. How often is one accusation of harassment or rape enough? How many wealthy celebrities did it take to take down a Weinstein? Wealth, once again, does not protect those who have wombs. It was Alianza Nacional de Campesinas who sounded the weariest support. Farmworkers are no stranger to exploitation and harassment:

“We do not work under bright stage lights or on the big screen. We work in the shadows of society in isolated fields and packinghouses that are out of sight and out of mind for most people in this country. Your job feeds souls, fills hearts and spreads joy. Our job nourishes the nation with the fruits, vegetables and other crops that we plant, pick and pack.

The kind of thinking that leads to exploitation has consequences. Where and to whom we assign profit and value is racist and gendered. Worst of all, those who suffer from scarcity and abuse often disappear. Disaster favors the prepared and very few of us have the wealth or the insurance to recover from it. We dismiss those we lose to starvation and death in Appalachia, Sudan or Yemen. It’s always the strong that survive, isn’t it?

Reckless development as misogyny is more pernicious. The Earth is lying there, daring to be plentiful and lush. Drill baby, drill. Rape analogies for the Earth should make corporate development horrifying, but they don't. Horrifying because rape is horrifying. Horrifying because it drives people from their homes. Horrifying because it floods land and sea in toxic crude oil. Horrifying because it affects us all, gendered or not.

The earth is a celestial body. It possesses no gender, has no need to perform a societal role. It simply is. Humans still can’t seem to move beyond societal roles even if they shift over time. It has not benefitted more than half of humanity to be only as valuable as what they produce between their legs. It has not benefitted the earth to be only as valuable as its ability to sustain humanity. Identity and how we treat one another should no longer depend on biology or gender. There are ancient, systemic problems with how we value gender and production. We cannot solve equality or poverty overnight. So, I have a simple request to start the process: reconsider how you decide what or who is valuable. We can’t ask the earth how it would prefer we see it, but we can certainly ask one another.