From theory, action.

lurid-fragment:

trigger warning: molestation, victim blaming, misogyny

I’ve been avoiding makiny this post for so long out of fear, but I’m done being silenced.

As some of you know, Derek (socialistscum) came to visit me over the summer. We had been “internet dating” up until that point, so we were expecting his trip to be incredible. Instead, it was a horrible failure. He ended his trip a week earlier than planned, bashed me on his blog for ruining his trip, and supposedly moved on, heroically not holding any grudges against me. The reality of the situation couldn’t be further from the truth.

While Derek was here, he was imposing, pushy, creepy, and manipulative. He touched me without my consent throughout the entire trip. I told him multiple times, including as soon as we saw each other for the first time, that I didn’t feel comfortable with him and that I didn’t think we could be sexual. In spite of this, he still touched me. I literally froze up when he did things to me, clenching my muscles and barely moving, but he didn’t stop. He touched me without my consent pretty much every day for the entire trip.

Derek maintained a controlling and threatening environment in order to continue molesting me without extreme resistance. He used “nice guy” rhetoric to try to guilt me into accepting his advances and to be even more sexual with him. He complained about how he came so far out to see me and got extremely grumpy and annoyed when I didn’t return his affections. He was overbearing, watching my computer screen, following me when I would just get up to get a glass of water, etc.

He also made my roommate extremely uncomfortable. After knowing her for all of two days, he talked to her about how horny he was and how annoyed he was that I wasn’t putting out for him. She was very upset and told me not to leave her alone again.

At the end of the first week, I was crippled with fear. I felt dirty, used, small, and scared. I couldn’t stand being around him, but I couldn’t leave him alone at my house with my roommate. I couldn’t handle it anymore, so I stupidly agreed to front the cash for him to get an early flight home, which he is now refusing to pay me back for.

Derek’s responses after he got home did as much, if not more, damage than his actions at my house. He blamed me entirely for what happened. He constructed some story about how our relationship didn’t work out because I didn’t try hard enough.

After I called him out on what he had done, he was initially apologetic. He called me, crying his eyes out, saying he never meant to hurt me, he felt so bad, etc. Once he discovered that I wasn’t going to crawl back to his arms, though, his already blatant misogyny came tearing through. He completely denied that he had done anything wrong, claiming that I should have somehow been more clear that I didn’t want him to touch me, which is typical rapist logic. (I’m not sure how “I’m not comfortable being with you romantically or sexually” and then flinching and tensing at contact doesn’t make that clear.) He admitted to some things but said I was at fault for them, then turned around and denied that he did them all together. He claimed I made it up because I loved being a victim (because every woman just dreams of being molested by someone they trust). I’m not sure what his story will be when he replies to his, but I am sure it will be completely different from all of the other stories he’s given me about what happened.

Although I know some will claim that this is out of character for Derek, it really is not. He has been misogynistic, creepy, overbearing, and all around a shitty ally many, many times in the past. I’m sure many of you have been contacted by him asking for naked pictures/videos (especially if you’re a sex worker), or being very affectionate and lovey-dovey despite barely knowing him, or just being very sexual without gauging your interest in hearing about his sex life. And even if he just did these things to me when we first started talking, that behavior isn’t excusable.

He has advocated for violence against women (link, analysis, analysis 2), he has used pictures of women as trophies of his masculinity, deflecting criticism with bro quips like “you’re just jealous girls this hot won’t hang out with you” (I tried looking for links to this, but it looks like he deleted those posts), he has called an Afghan woman a “drone” (link), and he threatens women who call him out (link). These are all very recent occurrences, too.

Derek is a creepy older man who manipulates people on the internet to give himself an ego boost. He fools people into thinking he’s a great anarchist comrade and feminist ally, throwing around academic language and buzz words to construct himself as a radical activist. In reality, he literally does nothing but sit around his parents’ house smoking weed and blogging. His only hiatus from that was to come to my house to molest me and creep out my roommate.

Part of my fear of posting this is that Derek is very good at manipulation. He fooled me into thinking he was some awesome anarcho feminist for seven months. He’s able to deflect very serious call outs of his misogyny by lying about what he did, joking around, making up a new story, threatening his accusers into silence, or just deleting his posts. There also seems to be a group of “famous” bloggers that Derek is a part of that defend each other without question, as well. I didn’t want to make a post, have him deflect it, and then have even more victim blaming shit thrown on me. I wasn’t sure I could handle it.

But you know what? I’m sick of seeing my sisters drool over men who secretly have their boots to their faces. I’m sick of sitting quietly horrified, replaying traumatic experiences in my head, while my abusers get to live their lives carefree. I’m sick of being bashed for being a victim by the very people who claim to fight against victim blaming. I’m sick of watching molesters and misogynists get praised for feminist commentary that they stole from less popular women bloggers. I’m sick of getting fucked over worse by “feminist” men than by overtly sexist men. And most of all, I’m fucking sick of being treated like an object for radical and non-radical men alike to play with when they’re bored.

Derek molested me. He engaged in victim blaming in order to ease his guilt and silence me. He threatens women, he objectifies them, he is overbearing with sexual advances, and he is just all around a piece of shit. He deserves what any misogynistic abuser, molester, or rapist deserves. There are plenty more of him hiding in our midst, both in real life and on tumblr, and I don’t want to be afraid of them anymore.

rawlsianism-with-a-human-face:

One hears, quite often, that sure, there are radical elements within Christianity, but they’re so vague, and so circumscribed by conservative tendencies which negate them, that one can get little further than, say, radical union support, liberal democracy, at the most extreme distributionism or some moderate democratic socialism. So I’d like to take this chance to show just one example of, from even a purely textual standpoint, the openness for radicalism within Christianity, particularly Catholicism (with its focus on the Apostolic tradition, among other things), with a passage from the Bible itself.

Beginning around Acts 4:32 we get a description of the essentially communistic society of the early Christians. We are told that they (viz. “the multitude of them that believed”) held “all things in common” (Acts 4:32). We are told that there were none among them who “ lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, / And laid them down at the apostles’ feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.” (Acts 4:34 - 35) (None of which, of course, has any parallels with a certain well known passage from The Critique of the Gotha Program). We’re even given a specific account of a Levite named Joses who joins the community (and is consequently surnamed Barnabas) who sold his land, “brought the money, and laid it at the apostles’ feet.” (Acts 4:37). Thus Acts 4 ends with an image of the society of the very people who bore Christ’s direct message and we’re divinely guided by the Holy Spirit forming an unequivocally collectivist society, primitive, yes, no model for a real future communism, but communist nonetheless. However radical this may seem vis-a-vis the degenerate bulwark of bourgeoisie society many have attempted to erect Christianity as today, it’s surely dwarfed by the following passage.

In Acts 5, we’re introduced to two members of the community, Ananias and Sapphira, who sold their own possession, but laid only part of it at the Apostles’ feet, keeping the rest to themselves. When Peter questions him about it, asking “Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land? / Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart?” (Acts 5:3-4) What happens next? Does Ananias give a rousing defense of private property and how it’s the cornerstone of a good Christian Family? Does he appeal to human nature or the need to define and protect the individual and his genius? Whatever Ananias may have liked to say, we’ll never know; God immediately strikes him dead. Acts 5 states explicitly that “Ananias hearing these words fell down, and gave up the ghost: and great fear came on all them that heard these things.” (For those who might suggest the phrase “gave up the ghost” may be ambiguous or metaphorical, this is followed by an account of his burial). 

Now, surely God knew the whole time Ananias had retained this bit of property, so why does he wait until he can be confronted about it in public before dealing justice to him? Could the answer be anything but for the very same motivation behind a public guillotine? Is God not, in this passage, cementing the new order, enacting a red terror to make absolutely clear that those who greedily cling to old individualist habits and compromise the collective good are the greatest enemy of the community? And it doesn’t end here. About three hours later, having no knowledge of what occurred, Sapphira arrives, and when Peter questions her about the property, she lies, with Peter answering “ How is it that ye have agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord? behold, the feet of them which have buried thy husband are at the door, and shall carry thee out” (Acts 5:9). Sapphira immediately falls dead and is soon buried with her husband, “And great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these things.” (Acts 5:11)

And just to be utterly clear, this is not the ‘God of the Old Testament,’ about whom’s blood-lust we hear ad infinitum. This is the God of the New Testament, the God of forgiveness, The God who ‘so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life,’ The God who did not strike dead Saul of Tarsus, the vicious hunter of Christians, but redeemed him as St.Paul, the greatest Christian missionary. And yet this just, forgiving God felt it utterly necessary to execute, in public, the two who dared maintain a drop of private property, in order to create a “great fear,” or, may we say, a Red Terror?

Fuckin-A.

(Source: konkretpolitik)

choongcommunist:

Sisters in the struggle also include Black women who have embraced socialism, the struggle for self-determination, the struggle for a better world for all, for change.

Lucy Parsons, Mabel Byrd, capitola tasker, Lulia Jackson, Louise Thompson, claudia Jones, Louise Thompson and Angela Davis are just a few.

Lucy Parsons, born in 1853, joined the Socialist Labor Party and fought for the rights of labor, Blacks and women until her death in 1942. She started as an anarchist demanding the abolition of all forms of political authority. in the early 1900s she worked in the radical chicago Working Women’s Union and the Socialist Labor Party, and she was one of the first women to join the industrial Workers of the World (iWW). at the founding convention of the iWW, Parsons dealt with the subjugation of women by noting, “Wherever wages are to be reduced, the capitalist class uses women to reduce them.” in 1939 Lucy joined the communist Party (cPUSa) and spent the last years of her life building that party during its militant days.

In 1934 three Black women joined the U.S. delegation that traveled to Paris for the international Women’s conference. Mabel Byrd was elected one of the conference secretaries. Capitola tasker and Lulia Jackson stunned the conference with their eloquent testimonies about afro-american struggles for human dignity. When delegates at the convention called for a “peace” resolution, Lulia thundered,

“Ladies, it has just been said that we must not fight, that we must be gentle and kind to our enemies, to those who are for war. i can’t agree with that. everyone knows the cause of war, it is capitalism. We can’t just give those bad capitalists their supper and put them to bed the way we do with our children. We must fight them.”

Lulia Jackson was active in the bitter Pennsylvania miner strikes and was familiar with the violence perpetrated by the owners.

Louise Thompson studied Karl Marx and V.i. Lenin and emerged as a leader in the Harlem Branch of the cPUSa. in the 1930s her apartment became a forum where black intellectuals and activists discussed the Bolshevik Revolution and the party’s position on African americans in the South. in 1932 she went to the Soviet Union with a group of Black writers and actors. Louise was known throughout Harlem as “Madame Moscow” for her support of Russia. She formed the Friends of the Soviet Union. She also worked with party leaders in ending job discrimination and demanding unemployment relief during Harlem’s Depression years.

Claudia Jones was born in trinidad and became one of the most respected members of the cPUSa. Jones joined after working with them in the defense of the Scottsboro Brothers. She was a firm believer in the cPUSa’s political theory during that period that Blacks in the South constituted an oppressed nation, not just a discriminated race, and consequently they had the right to self-determination. She worked with cPUSa’s Women’s commission and led Harlem’s council of Unemployed. an uncompromising fighter for black liberation, Claudia Jones’s life was consumed with struggle. When corporate america exploited Black workers, she fought them. She was a militant defender of sharecroppers, domestics and laborers. She was declared a criminal during the frenzy of the 1950s. She was indicted under the fascist Smith act and sentenced to prison in new York State. after 10 months in jail, she was released and deported to england as an “undesirable alien.” Soon after arriving in england, she fell ill and died. Her imprisonment, deportation and early death demonstrated the lengths to which america would go in silencing radical Black women.

Angela Davis’s commitment to the struggle of Black people intensified on Sept. 9, 1963, when four Black girls were murdered in the racist bombing in a Baptist church in Birmingham. Denise Mcnair, addie Mae collins, cynthia Wesley and carole Robertson were playmates of angela’s sister, Fania. as part of her militant activism, Angela Davis organized rallies and demonstrations defending the political prisoners known as the Soledad Brothers and she herself became a political prisoner.

(Source: workers.org)