Rev Left Radio - Marxist Feminism and the Socialist Left

Episode Date: June 22, 2026

In this episode, Breht is joined by organizer, educator, and Marxist feminist scholar Comrade Gabi for a discussion on patriarchy, misogyny, and power within contemporary socialist and organizing spaces. Together they explore the relationship between capitalism and patriarchy, the contributions of Marxist feminism, the persistence of sexist attitudes and behaviors among those committed to liberation, the politics of the sex trade, and the challenges of building healthy cultures of accountability. Grounded in both theory and lived organizing experience, this conversation examines what it would take to cultivate a genuinely anti-patriarchal socialist movement capable of embodying the liberatory values it seeks to bring into the world. Check out more of Gabi's work here: https://medium.com/@comrade_gabi   ---------------------------------------------------- Check out our NEW REV LEFT MERCH collab with Goods For The People HERE Support Rev Left and get access to bonus episodes: www.patreon.com/revleftradio Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio Follow, Subscribe, & Learn more about Rev Left Radio https://revleftradio.com/

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. On today's episode we have on the show, my friend and comrade Gabby, to discuss a bunch of issues surrounding proletarian feminism, you know, patriarchy and misogyny in our culture, in our society, in class society writ large, as well as its manifestations within left wing organizing some of her personal experiences, some of my personal experiences with, you know, uncomfortable or inappropriate behavior in organizing context the way organizations can deal with issues when they inevitably come up, the importance of compassion and forgiveness, uplifting each other, transformative justice as opposed to punitive justice, and so much conversation surrounding feminism, the sex trade, patriarchy, the way it manifests in our own minds, in our own, in our own subcultures and our own organizing efforts and how we can all work together to do better, to create stronger, healthier organizations.

And, you know, in lieu of like recent events like the Caesar Chavez revelations that have come out recently, I thought it was a really important time to perhaps, you know, come back to this issue, address this issue, give people who are engaged or want to become engaged in organizing serious food for thought. And always point in the direction of, of uplifting ourselves and one another, building genuine solidarity that takes seriously our different, you know, lived experiences and forms of oppression that we face, working through some of the social conditioning that we're all immersed in and trying to be better people in

pursuit of building a better world. And we're all human, we're all flawed, we're all, you know, we all make mistakes, we all have foibles. And so there also has to be this level of forgiveness and understanding in an attempt to transform ourselves in the process of trying to transform the world. So Gabby is a perfect guest for this, and I'm really excited to share this conversation with you. I also wanted to point out that our friends over at Goods for the People, we've released that design, that Rev Left shirt design, that was really cool about, it was like spring, Army Green. They thought they buried us, but we are seeds.

It was a great collaboration with our comrades over, Goods for the People. They've ran out, I think, of some of the more common sizes. And they've also just released a new dialectical materialism collaborative design that I think is really cool that I wanted to let everybody know is out there. So if you're so inclined to go to goods for the people.com. You can check out that older spring design, older, it's like two months old, as well as the new dialectical materialist design. You can support our friends over at Goods for the People.

We don't make a dollar off of that. It's just about getting cool, creative, high-level art and fashion cuts to people that support the show while also supporting goods for the people. And really happy with the collaboration. And so people can check that out. I'll link to that in the show notes. So without further ado, here is my conversation with Gabby. enjoy. Hi everyone. My name is Gabi. I use she her pronouns. I am a Marxist feminist and academic. I am an

organizer. I have extensive experience with organizing, specifically labor organizing, community defense and housing work. And I'm excited to be here. I'm a longtime Brev Left fan. And this is so wild to me to even be on the show. So thank you for having me, Brett. Absolutely. It's as a genuine pleasure and honor and as we were saying before we started recording i really love having you know listeners reach out to me give me an idea for them wanting to come on and then having them on the show and you know as i as i was telling you like i don't chase big guests it's not important to me to get super popular people on the the podcast what i love more than anything is regular working class people being able to come on the show work through serious ideas critically think educate and learn

from one another. I think that's a great strength of ours in our movement. And, you know, you reached out to me and we started talking and we came up with the concept for, for this episode. So it's awesome to have you on. I'm deeply appreciative of your longstanding support of the show. And it's really cool to have somebody who hopefully has found the show useful, be able to come on and contribute directly to it. So welcome. Yeah. Thanks so much, Brett. And, you know, like I mentioned to you earlier before we started reporting, you know, I'm a first generation, college student. Most of my educational career, I've had very little sort of exposure to Marxist theory. I know everybody thinks, oh, no, they're turning all the college students into communists.

My experience has been exactly the opposite. So a lot of my educational experience in Marxism and Marxism and Marxist feminism has been outside of academia. And this show has been a huge influence on me and has helped me sort of broader my horizons and categories. So really appreciate that. Wonderful. Yeah, no, I think it's always amusing to actual Marxists who have experience in academia to hear that, you know, college campuses are like Marxist factories turning, you know, good little suburban kids into Marxists. It's like, no, dude, this is a neoliberal institution through and through. Yes. And that's my experience, too. Yeah, for sure. I'm actually, I'm reading Gabriel Rock Hills, who paid the fighters of Western Marxism right now. And everything in that book is. just hitting on my experiences, being one of the few people in the room that's usually like,

you know, having revolutionary ideas and everybody kind of looking at me like, yeah, I have a second head or something, you know. Exactly. So yes, that's definitely been my experience. Yeah, I obviously have a degree in philosophy and I flunked out of my PhD program or not flunk out. I dropped out for financial reasons, basically. Yeah. So I have some, some graduate experience in philosophy and I was sort of specializing in political philosophy. And so I'm in academia. I'm in philosophy. I'm in political philosophy.

And still, there's almost no, maybe Marx is mentioned. There's no angles, no Mao, no Lenin, no Rosa, no nothing else. Marx is only tangentially, if ever, referred to. And, yeah, I spent much more time reading like libertarian or liberal or anarcho-capitalist, Robert Nozik stuff than anything, anything even close to the Marxist tradition. So, and I was the only Marxist in college at all through my entire college experience is the only Marxist that I knew about. So, yeah, it is not, it is not what the reactionaries pretend it is, unfortunately. No, definitely not.

And say, you know, with feminist theory, a majority of my courses have been liberal feminist, maybe a touch of radical feminism here and there. But, you know, such a hyper focus on, you know, as we'll get into, the sort of, analysis of patriarchy and not, you know, how class and patriarchy work together. So, so for me, sitting Marxist feminism was like a huge deviation, but, but very much in a positive way. Yeah, absolutely. Well, before we get into the questions themselves, maybe just to help orient the listeners to what we're going to talk about, can you kind of briefly, perhaps discuss why you wanted to come on the show, what you reached out to me with your basic idea, and what the rest of this conversation is going to be centered around, and why you think it's important.

important. Yeah, totally. So I don't know. I, you know, obviously, I think it's actually been a couple months since the Cesar Chavez allegations came to light. And, you know, I had been thinking a lot about how, I don't know, broadly speaking in organizing spaces and leftist communities, online, in person, community spaces, whatever that might be. There seems to be this problem. And most certainly is this problem where there's been a lot of sort of predatory behavior on the part of men who are involved in these kind of spaces or involved in these organizations. There's definitely been a lot of experiences of sexism and misogyny that myself and a lot of organizers that I know have experienced and beyond just what's in the news. But this kind of came to me because I find this to be a serious

problem now just because you know and the victims that are on the receiving end of this are experiencing these harms but i think that there are a lot of leftist men out there who are perpetuating these harms and this obviously goes against a lot of leftist political ideal so i just i think this is something that needs to be addressed because you know as the episode that you did but tai lee pointed out this has been an ongoing problem and it seems like you know despite us making a lot of progress in a lot of ways where it's addressing gender inequality, these movements and these organizations still kind of perpetuate these problems. So I think that's been my main motivation as I've been studying Marxist theory, Marxist's feminist theory, thinking about how patriarchy works alongside capitalism

and creates these power dynamics. Now I'm just, you know, broadly in society, but even within these movements. So, yeah, that's been my main motivation in kind of bringing this up and and talking to you about this. Yeah, shout out to Ty, a great comrade. And yes, I think it's so important. And, you know, I'm thinking like, I always try to think, like, this is not a left-wing problem specifically. It's a human problem, a society problem. Angles in his, you know, famous text on the origin of the family, talks about the rise of patriarchy,

along with the rise of class society. These two things are profoundly intertwined. So this is a millennial line. problem. And when you look over to the reactionary right, they make a virtue out of it, right? Patriarchy to them is a good thing. Machismo, you know, the denigration of women, the denigration of LGBTQ people. It's fetishized over there. You have these sort of anecdotes of women, right-wing women who try to go on, you know, and become meaningful players in right-wing organizations or the right-wing online influencer ecosystems.

And they time and time again be like, oh, wow, I don't get respected at all. And I'm constantly being called horrific, misogynistic names all the time. And I'm being treated like shit. It's like, yeah, that's the right wing. Their whole thing is like hardcore misogyny and patriarchy is like a first principle in a lot of ways. But even though it's a society-wide problem on the left, we are trying to revolutionize society. We're trying to liberate humanity from all of these constraints, class society, patriarchy, colonialism, various forms of racism and oppression. And so not only is it an obvious issue that we're trying to dismantle, but it will get in the way of effective left-wing organizing in a way that is not the case for right-wing organizing or really for centrist, elite, two-party system organizing where these structures of patriarchy and stuff.

have pretty much always always been present. And liberal feminism, of course, is insufficient to address that in any meaningful way. Does that all sound right to you and why focusing on left-wing stuff in particular is not saying that the left is uniquely suffering from patriarchy, but that it is a uniquely a serious obstacle for those on the left who want to build a liberatory society? No, absolutely. I think that is a great way to characterize it. You know, I think, yes, most obviously we see, you know, very explicitly how patriarchal social systems are utilized and propagated in something like right-wing spaces or right-wing organizations or political agendas. But I think, you know, on the left, it is an issue, but it's the thing that that makes it sort of unique is it's more insidious and that it's something that's a little more covert. You don't see it more explicitly.

It happens in ways that are not using. identifiable. And so while it's obviously the harms that are perpetuated through sort of patriarchal and misogynist ideals are sort of amplified, let's say, in right-wing spaces, the way that they're perpetuated in left-wing spaces are, they're more covert. And I think that that makes them, you know, like sort of different in the way that we manage and kind of address them, right? Yeah, absolutely. So let's kind of talk about this. I want to get back to the Caesar Chavez thing in a second, but kind of moving, moving out of order a little bit. I'm interested in, you know, kind of more broadly and personally, like, what experiences either your own or people

that you've talked to and discussed have led you to conclude that misogyny and patriarchal, you know, behavior in the ways that we've been describing are significant problems within contemporary socialist or left-wing organizing spaces. And in particular, you mentioned these more covert forms. I'm wondering if you can illuminate the patterns that keep showing up that convinced you that this wasn't just a series of isolated incidences, but actually is something that we as an entire movement should clarify and have to work to address. Yeah, totally. So I think there's actually quite a few patterns that I can point out here. So first, I do follow obviously quite a few Marxist feminist theorists who are women online. And I see them post all the time about being harassed

by so-called leftist men. So this entails like them receiving explicit messages from men, stalkings or other different forms of harassment. There's always this kind of classic nice guy formula where the men reach out to them and, you know, they ask them out or shoot their shot or whatever, they get rejected, and then they become verbally abusive. So just like in the online sphere, I definitely see this quite a bit, but beyond sort of the online spaces, what you're hearing about in the news, I mean, obviously, Susar Chavez is one example, also Martine Montecca, which we discussed with Ty Lee. Being another example, I mean, I myself have kind of been on the receiving end of this kind of behavior in organizing experiences and beyond. I think part of this problem is that men

sometimes see organizing spaces as like potential dating people. It's not just men. I've seen women do this too. And this kind of behavior that pops up where these harms are being perpetuated, it doesn't usually occur at like meetings or like when you're around other organizers. I'm seeing it occurring at public events where organizers come together, let's say like fundraising events or something like that, people start drinking and meagling with one another. And also when you're kind of alone, like one-on-one with somebody. I have a couple of examples.

And I should say, like, my sort of experiences are pretty mild compared to what I've heard from other women and gender non-conforming people that I know. I remember a couple of years ago I was doing some organizing work around housing injustice in my area and I was doing some flyering with a fellow organizer. I didn't have a car, so I was in the car with him, and we were just kind of driving around. I remember it was like freezing cold. It was wintertime. We were hanging up wires around this apartment complex where we knew there was some slum lords that were taking care of them and the folks there. And so I was in the car with this guy and he just started kind of talking to me, getting closer to me, talking about

going out on a date with me, and then leaned it and tried to kiss. me and I was just like my mind was just completely blown in that moment just like I am in this situation with you in a car you in your car right you you know I can't just leave in the freezing cold you know I can't escape you I'm feeling very trapped I feel very you know it was a very bizarre situation um and it made me really uncomfortable um thankfully that guy ended up leaving the organization that I was with like shortly after it's just like sort of one example, right? I just was kind of like, you know, I don't know, like, why would you in that moment think that it was appropriate to kind of like assert yourself in that way, right? Like I, to me,

you know, you're a fellow organizer and in that moment, you were not viewing me in that way. You were viewing me as somebody that you could, you know, try to, I guess, get with, right? I also have had this experience where I kind of, you know, you kind of become friends with people that you organize with and you sometimes hang out with them outside of those contacts. but there was someone that I befriended, organizing with him for a while, and he had kind of a lot of plout and influence over this local organization that I was with. He was kind of acting a little bit creepy around me, kind of invading my physical space when we were kind of doing these fundraiser events.

We kind of had been putting together for the mutual ape work we were doing. And at one event, he got really drunk and he physically assaulted me. And, you know, he ended up reaching out to me and apologizing. And I remember talking about this behavior to other organizers that were in the org that we were with. And they ended up just kind of brushing it off like, oh, he's a good guy. He's not trying to be weird. You know, he just gets drunk and kind of acts out sometimes, you know, like the weight of the world is always on his shoulders. And he just kind of picked it out.

You know, and it just was like, man, like, you really. just enabling and allowing this behavior, right? Like I, I, I just, it made me so uncomfortable. And, and I also felt like, you know, like, how can I, like, find the space to organize and, you know, with this person who has so much influence, like, even if he's not in particular or he always is, like, has his hand in something. And it just made me so uncomfortable. It made me feel like I didn't have a safe place that I could, like, organize in, um, without, you know, having to be exposed to this person. I ended up traveling to a different city and I met up with this local rapid response

organization and I didn't really experience anything super explicit, but I just remember like, you know, like many leftist orbs that exist, like it was majority white men who were kind of running this organization and kind of taking the upper hand and controlling a lot of what was going on. And I remember just like being talked over so much by these men. And anytime I tried to like raise a question or kind of change topics in a conversation I was being talked over or talked down to. And I was like, okay, this is really weird. And then I saw it happening with other women in these spaces.

And I was just like, this is like, I don't know, this is such a pattern. It's certainly not the first time I've experienced this, but just, I don't know. You know, I think that sometimes men don't realize that they're doing some of these things, but that it kind of like it creates these spaces where, women don't feel comfortable kind of like speaking out or having a voice or like actively participating in the work that we're doing. And, you know, those are just, those are just a few of the experiences. I've had, I have known many women and gender not performing people who have had much worse experiences with men in organizing contexts. The men that kind of perpetuates behavior, once again, they tend to have really good reputations in their community. Survivors are often really afraid to come forward because, you know, they want to be able to be

plugged into the work that's going on, but because these people have so much influence, you know, it just feels like there's no way to plug in without kind of being under the heel of these people. And so I know a lot of women and trying to rise performing people that have been completely turned off to organizing because of these behaviors that are being perpetuated and also kind of propped up and allowed to occur, right? I think one thing that I can say is like, you know, as sort of a piece of advice, to men who are doing organizing work, like, stop using these spaces as dating. Like women most likely don't want to be approached by men in this way.

We're here to organize, right? We're not here. I mean, I'm not saying that none of that kind of, you know, those kind of kind of things can occur, right? I actually, you know, I did date somebody in an organization that I was with. They were not a man. And, you know, it was fine. But it ended up getting a little bit messy, you know, one person doesn't take on the

fast that they're supposed to take on in a working group, but then people come to you like, hey, how come your partner is it? So, like, I don't know, dating in, within these organizing spaces is messy, but, but also it's just, it, it, because these power dynamics exist, it just creates these uncomfortable situations for women and, and, you know, between, there's so kind of like the spectrum of like, well, women kind of feeling uncomfortable, right? And also just straight up assault. And I think also beyond left is organizing spaces. Like they're, I don't know, I was thinking recently about just like men figures that I have looked up to, even like as a teenager, that kind of have touted these leftist values. But then you find out that they're like these predatory abusers.

I'm going to bring up an example that just, I think if I had known as a teenager, it would have completely destroyed me. But now I'm just like, oh, why? So I used to be a really big fan of the band Anti-Flag. And they were like, honestly, such a huge, I don't know, catalyst for me developing any sort of leftist political awareness. And I found out a couple of years ago that the lead seer, who was like my idol, was a total predator. He was going around and abusing underage girls. and there's just, there's a lengthy list of allegations against him. And like, you know, the punk scene, you know, like oftentimes, you know,

these sort of leftist political ideals are touted, not always, but, you know, I don't know, like in these punk scenes, I remember being at a U.S. bombs show as a teenager and being sexually assaulted by men when I was trying to crowd surf. And I don't know, just like, this is just like another example outside of, organizing spaces, but, but another space where, like, sort of these, these political values are supposed to be, you know, grounded in, like, you know, equality, justice, you know, sort of maybe even explicitly feminist ideals, but, but all of this behavior is just being perpetuated in a way that's making women and gender not perform people feel unsafe.

So there's, like, a long list of all of these things going on, both in the news and both sort of on a personal in a personal way. But I think it's just the issue is that it's so ongoing. It's so insidious. And it happens in ways that people don't expect, you know. Yeah. No, there's so much to be said there. I have a couple points I want to make.

One is, you know, you mentioned this case in which, you know, a person with some social capital in an organizing context, you know, crossed the line. You brought it up with everybody else and everybody else made excuses for that. First and foremost, there is immediately an organization. organizational issue. Organizations should be constructed in such a way that there are already existing procedures that are followed when anything like this happens where the organization is not just, oh, we're just kind of flippantly dealing with it or we're just hearing about this and we're kind of waving it away. But like, oh, here's a concern. Now we have to implement this preexisting protocol. And the best organizations I've been in before anything happened, there was already written,

democratically voted on and confirmed mechanisms by which, if anything like this or anything related to it, were to happen that there were protocol in place. It's not a mistake that that organization in particular was dominated by women. It was women led and, you know, they were kind of like a lot of the co-founders were women. And so it's not a mistake that that organization from the ground up had already implemented procedures for that. That's good organization, preemptively anticipating the possibility of a problem and having things already in place to deal with it. Because when you don't have that, then it just is down to the vibes and the way that people interact socially and who's his friend and who's their friend and what do they have to lose by

calling that person out, et cetera. It gets really messy and it's incoherent and there's no clear a path to actually addressing it. And that does destroy organizations. Oh, yeah. Secondly, with your point in organizing or in subcultures like the punk scene, or you can talk about spiritual communities, any community at all, when there are, there is, or there are men in particular with social capital,

time and time and time again, you see that that social capital is often leveraged for romantic or sexual desires of the person in question. And this is a human issue, but it's particularly toxic and unacceptable. acceptable when it is in ostensibly, you know, left-wing, liberatory, emancipatory spaces where we're actually trying to work in our own tiny, humble way, at building a better world. And yet you are bringing in this noxious thing that now either I have to deal with individually or organizationally we get bogged down having to deal with this. And so people need to come into these spaces.

Men in particular need to come into these spaces. understanding these dynamics exist, being hyper conscious and aware of their own behavior, their own intentions. Why are you in here in the first place? Is this just an opportunity to date and meet women or romantic partners or sexual partners? No, this is an organizing space where we are comrades working to solve community issues and work towards the construction of a better world. And that has to be first and foremost.

And I personally, in a weird way, I know I'm a, I'm a, straight cis man and so my experiences are very different and the dynamics involved are incredibly different but when I was very young way before Rev left just getting into organizing spaces there was an older male figure who you know happened to be happened to be gay was very well respected I was learning a lot from and was actually kind of being mentored by this person who you know genuinely had really important connections and you know really good grasp on political theory and correct a lot of my youthful errors and stuff like that, but would always make these overt sexual come-ons to me in the DMs and even on text,

despite the fact that they knew I was straight and I was in a relationship. And eventually that person, no surprise here, was called out and sort of completely isolated and sideline from organizing. This is years and years and years ago. Sideline from organizing because it wasn't an isolated. incident with me. He was clearly using his social capital in that space to, if you wanted to call it grooming at that time, since I was particularly young, but just as a way to fulfill his own sexual desires. And I try to navigate it with humor and just being like, oh, you know, it's kind of a

compliment that this guy is like hitting on me even though, you know, I'm straight and I'm not particularly interested. It was still awkward and it was still obviously not good. And in another instance, much more recently, there have just been, you know, attempts, even though it's very clear that I am married in a monogamous relationship, not at all interested in any of that, where people have made still overt attempts to try to, you know, create something romantic or sexual that I find incredibly inappropriate and off-putting. And I have to set very firm boundaries and back away from that relationship altogether. Again, the dynamics are different. You know, I am straight. I'm cis. I'm a man. I do, I guess, have some social capital through the show in general.

There's not that type of power play in place. But if even I've experienced it a few times, you can't imagine what women or non-gender conforming people in particular have had to face in their organizing experiences, particularly when they might not have the social capital that somebody else does or that a man has. So these are very real issues. We have to deal with them. My question back to you as a follow-up, you mentioned the fact that, and this is kind of of where it gets weird to navigate is like we are human we find ourselves in the midst of like-minded

people that share our deepest values right it's not crazy to think that genuine authentic um feelings could emerge flirtation occurs people will maybe even in some instances have found lifelong partners in organizing spaces so we we kind of don't want to say that that that there's never that possibility or that that possibility should be shut down from the beginning. But at the same time, we want to advance some standards of behavior that don't let it get out of control, make people feel awkward, result in any form of abuse, obviously, in the extreme cases. How do we navigate that? And how do you think about striking that balance between being human and having those things naturally emerge

while also trying to, you know, keep the integrity of the movement and the organization intact in the face of it. Yeah, no, totally. Yeah. You know, I think my general sort of comment of like, you know, don't go in and try to start dating people at all view this is a date. I mean, that's just kind of like the standard of like, you know, if you're going in and you're trying to, you know, do organizing work, don't like, you know, don't do it because you're seeking to date people, right? that doesn't mean there is absolutely no room for, you know, oh, you meet somebody and you connect with them really well. You know, there's certainly better and worse ways of going about trying to connect with people on whatever sort of level, right, whether it's friendship, romantic, anything like that. But I think that, you know, there's definitely a fine line

behind, you know, trying to like connect with somebody on, let's say, a romantic level or whatever. and like asserting yourself in a way that makes them feel uncomfortable and being unaware of the ways which power dynamics are shaping those interactions, right? And I think that like, I think that it's hard. I think that a lot, I know that a lot of men feel really sort of, I don't know, they're kind of stuck. You know, I've had a lot of men in my life that kind of like hold these political values come to me and say, like, how do I sort of like, like flirt or engage with people that I'm interested in, that, you know, in a way that is not sort of creepy or is not sort of, you know, making them uncomfortable or whatever. And I think it's like,

it's not an easy question to answer, right? I think that the organizing context is a very particular one, wherein these power dynamics kind of can be heightened, where somebody, for example, you mentioned earlier, just a second ago about kind of like this person that kind of took you under their wing and it was kind of mentoring you, right? Like, I feel like I've definitely been in that situation too. There was an organization that I joined,

but actually the first org that I joined where, you know, this guy kind of like clearly was kind of favoring me taking me under his wing, you know, taking me under his wing, you know, so much so that, like, people kind of were commenting on it to me. And, you know, I was kind of like, whatever, that's not a big deal. You know, he just, you know, he's just a nice guy. And then, you know, just like these other instances that I described, there was, there was a situation outside of the organizing context where people were drinking, party, having a good time. And he started to get a little weight, you know. And so I think in that situation, where you have,

somebody who kind of he held a very specific sort of higher role, higher status within this organization, where maybe that's not a scenario where you want to sort of start hitting on people, right, because of that very explicit power dynamic. But if you have a follow organizer that you, you know, maybe connect with in some way and you want to hang out with them and gets know them more, maybe that's a better context to kind of, you know, engage in that kind of like conversation or connection that you're trying to make with somebody, right? So definitely not in a situation where you're organizing with them or you're doing organizing work because that can make somebody feel really uncomfortable. I think, yeah, I think just first and foremost, outside of the

organization, outside of the organizing context. And I also think that like, you know, more often than not, being communicative is always going to be the best way, like almost overly communicative, right? Like, hey, I like you. I think cute, you know, like I would like to hang out with you. But also, I recognize that we're organizers and we're involved in this other sort of thing together. And I don't want to make that an uncomfortable experience. So putting yourself out there in a way that's not like, oh, I'm, you know, I'm just going to hopefully go out with this person and we're both going to get drunk and, you know, maybe like something will happen or something like. like that, you know? So yeah, I think there are better and worse ways of like engaging in that kind of thing. I don't want to say, no, you can't ever date somebody that you organize with,

but I think you should be really just very careful about you how you go about it. And you should also just be aware of those power dynamics and what kind of position you hold within these organizations. And I do think that there are times like the instance that I mentioned where if you do have sort of this higher position of power that you maybe shouldn't be that kind of stuff. And if you are, maybe it's a situation where somebody has already left the organization or something like that. Because otherwise, I think it just creates these dynamics that are really, it's not good for the organization, broadly speaking. Absolutely. Yeah, you always have to put the work in the organization, the integrity of the organization first. Your intention

coming into organizing spaces, you know, even if some things do happen naturally, your intention should never be. I'm going into this organizing space because I think there's a good chance that I'll meet somebody that's like-minded that I could hit on or that I could possibly date. You should go in with the right intentions if something happens naturally or emerges naturally. It's not unlike a job situation, if you're navigating that correctly, where you're working with somebody, you're in a professional context. You're not trying to hit on people or date people, but you know, natural flirtation occurs. And relationships do emerge. I met my wife at a working together, right? She was a server and I was a line cook. And that's how we, you know, our little fairy tale

started. So it's not crazy, but there's a certain level of professionalism in general that is that is approach there. And then I think you hit the nail on the head is that if and when these things are going to happen, the first thing that you must assess is what is my position within this organization? If I am in a leadership position, it probably is just not the time, place or context for me to even, you know, have a vulnerable open communication with somebody about how I want to start a relationship. My responsibility as a leader in this organization is to this organization. And because I've taken that responsibility, I've set aside the possibility for now that I'm going to, in any way, shape, or form try to approach this as a dating opportunity or even seek that out. And lesson in sell, it is completely outside the context of this organizing.

Now, if you're rank and file, I think you hit the nail on the head when you said, open, honest, vulnerable communication that also conveys the fact. that you understand that this is fraught, you know, that me expressing my romantic interest in you is fraught, that you don't want to make that person feel uncomfortable. If they're not interested, that's totally fine. Take it as a compliment. We can move forward as comrades. But it's actually always when somebody is unable to openly, vulnerably, and honestly communicate with somebody in a meaningful and mature way, that the other stuff happens.

So if you don't do that, then you all of a sudden you're sitting there being like, we're going out, we're drinking, I'm starting to feel it. You know, maybe I can make that move. Maybe I can reach, no, that's completely inappropriate. So I think that open and honest and vulnerable conversation that also gives that person a way to say no comfortably. Like put that into the thing itself is like, if you're not interested, I totally understand. Like, you know, this is, it's a little awkward and just please take it as a compliment

and I'll never bring it up again. You know, always give them a way to comfortably. say no and make that very clear. But again, these are kind of marginal issues. Overwhelmingly, you should not treat this as a dating pool. You should be focused on the work. And these things should be marginal occurrences, not the main thrust by any means of why you're involved in any of this to begin with. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, you know, I think it's, I think a lot of men, generally speaking, especially on the left, feel this sort of tension of, you know, like, I want to, you know, I want to make this connection with somebody, but I'm, I'm also aware that

this could make them uncomfortable or whatever. And it's really hard to put yourself out there. It's really, it sucks. I mean, like, you know, you're putting yourself out there in a vulnerable way. And I think, you know, the fear is always, oh, well, rejection. And also if they say, no, this is going to make it weird when I'm, you know, in these organizing spaces with them. But, you know, once again, there are better and worse ways we're going about it. And I think that, you know, we should be able to be vulnerable with one another in a way that, you know, might mean that it doesn't work out. And maybe it is a little weird for a minute. But, but I think also this relates to, you know, the fear of rejection that men have, you know, broadly speaking, right? These sort of like these social expectations

that stem from patriarchy that say that like men are supposed to be you know like you know they're supposed to have any access to women in any capacity that they want at any time and if a woman says no then this kind of like sort of it's like a blow to their masculine right so even if leftist men sort of don't explicitly like hold those values there's always this kind of like social conditioning that kind of shapes those interactions, I think. So just being aware of that and also taking the time to understand that is like so important. Absolutely. Absolutely. And in fact, it's your responsibility. If you're going to be involved in these sorts of movements, it is your responsibility to become aware of that, to think deeply about that, to hold yourself

to high ethical standards, to put others ahead of your own petty desires, and to deconstruct the sort of ego that would be so pathological. logically wounded by rejection. Exactly. Totally. Yeah, it's not healthy. So kind of moving on, we're going to touch on this and we're going to also broaden out the conversation as well.

But you wrote to me that many men on the socialist left, they seem perfectly capable of understanding capitalism and imperialism structurally, but suddenly become hyper individualist when questions of sexism or sexuality begin to emerge. Can you kind of tell me what you mean by that and why you think that? that particular a contradiction exists. A lot of things come to my mind when I think about that, but I'm curious as to how you make sense of that. Yeah, so a couple things.

So I think first part of this issue kind of stems from, I don't know, sort of dogmatism when it comes to Marxist political theory. I think sometimes Marxists in particular, they see things like patriarchy or white supremacy as being sort of second. secondary to class antagonism. And there's also kind of this idea that like gender issues or racial issues, inequalities are they're kind of subsumed underclass struggle. So there's kind of like this sort of like class, right, comes first and sort of all these other sort of intersections of oppression are kind of second, right? I think another thing that comes up is that left, some left,

have a kind of dismissive attitude towards feminism or feminist theory. So on the one hand, many Marxists in particular view feminism and feminist theory as being bourgeois, you know, you've heard the term bourgeois feminism or as being reformist in nature. And I, you know, as we kind of mentioned earlier, like, it is absolutely true that there are feminist movements and theoretical approaches that have historically been steeped in liberalism, imperialism, you know, reformism, individualism, racism. You know, you can look at Sophie Lewis's book, I always have a hard time to say,

enemy feminism. It is such a hard title to get out. But her book, she recently released this book, and she talks about sort of the broad history as like really sort of problematic feminist that have existed throughout history. And that is true. Like feminism has,

have these characteristics. But I think that there are feminist approaches that aligns quite well with Marxist theory. And I'll probably get into what that looks like in a little bit here. But not all sort of feminist approaches are kind of aligned with this very liberal reformist view. And I think sort of a third reason why these questions of sexism or patriarchy are kind of dismissed is there's also kind of like this really strong fear of radical feminism radical feminist analysis and works as feminists do tend to borrow from radical feminist theory quite a bit when kind of talking about patriarchal social relations I think part of this fear or

sort of dismissive attitude is because there's definitely some really shitty radical feminists out there I think everybody knows this there there's a a lot of turfs that have, you know, whose work has been utilized in very problematic ways. So, like, I understand that. There's definitely, you know, there are some bad camps within radical feminism. But I don't know, like, to me, being completely dismissive of, you know, a sort of theoretical approach just because there are some bad actors within it, I don't think is the way that we should go about sort of, like, I don't know, like studying theory and conceptualizing social, systems, right? Like, there are good and bad things about every sort of political theorist camp

out there, right? And so, yeah, I think that, you know, just because there are some theorists who have some problematic views, it doesn't mean that we have to dismiss all of that theory. I think another part of this sort of bit on radical feminism is that there's always been this kind of misunderstanding about radical feminist analyses of sexual power relations. And, and there's always this kind of idea that like, you know, we look at like McKinnon and Dwarcan, and I know that this has been brought up in prior episodes, this sort of misunderstanding that exists, that these, that these sort of analyses that they have of sexual power relations are inherently sort of repressive or oppressive, right? You know, this whole thing that like all heterose sex is rape.

And so there's been a lot of sort of misunderstandings about the way those kind of theories operate. and there's also kind of this outright dismissal of these ideas. So I think that like broadly speaking, there's just, you know, on the left, there's just this kind of idea that like either like patriarchy, patriarchal social relations are not worthy of investigation or they're kind of come secondary to class or that they like don't have any real sort of political contributions to conceptualizing capitalism or social relations broadly. Yeah, no, absolutely.

And just kind of adding on to what you're saying there, there's a couple other layers of perhaps analysis that could help make sense of some of this, particularly in the American left tradition. One is the sort of heritage of the left. There's this like this libertarian, talking about the hyper-individualist aspect of it, this libertarian strain that kind of emerged

with the new left. in the countercultural hippie movement in the in the 60s you know free love do drugs drop out um this and in those those sort of like hyper individualist boomers and that were hippies and counterculturalist in the 60s became hyper individualist yuppies and Reagan's 80s you know um so that strain kind of goes from the left to the right but it's this fundamental american libertarian uh social libertarian strain that manifest in hippie culture, manifest in counterculture, subcultures on the broadly conceived left that I think can kind of set certain issues off the structural stage when it comes to how you live your personal life. There can be a libertarian strain that can blind certain

people to the structural analysis of the issues surrounding that. And then more recently, I think there's been a reaction to what was you know, disgustingly called wokeism over the last 10 or so years, PC culture, etc. Where in part there's a legitimate critique where figures like Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris, this girl boss, bourgeois feminism, not only articulated a liberal feminism, but also used it and weaponized it against class politics and anti-imperialist politics, which put a really, you know, bad taste in people's mouths when it comes to feminism broadly. and there's like, you know, a weaponization of identity in that sense that turned a lot of people off.

And then in the Biden era, there's sort of this right-wing cultural backlash to what they called wokeism or PC culture, where there was a sort of a pendulum swinging hard in the other direction. It was like, no, we're saying these slurs again. We're talking shit again. We're not doing the identity politics stuff again. And that was a big part of the cultural podcast. support for the Trump administration, right? Like the Rogan sphere and all of them are, in a lot of ways, they're reacting to that moment

in our political culture, the kind of the, you know, tumbler to girl boss feminism stuff that came out and all the identity reductionism that kind of flowed out of it. That was weaponized, though the left would respond to its weaponization against class and anti-imperialist politics, but the cultural right just responds to what they feel as like an attack on them as white men or whatever the fuck and they went hard in the opposite direction. And some factions of the left emerged in that era. I'm sure many of us know kind of the part of the left that we're talking about in the U.S. That basically said we're doing class Marxism and all this other shit about LGBTQ people and feminism and, you know, anti-racism and stuff.

that's all stupid distractions. And if you want to connect to and you want to really relate to the average working class person, aka the working class white guy in a hard hat, you got to get rid of all that bullshit and just talk class. So I think there was a reaction there that the left broadly conceived is kind of working itself out of, I think, in a healthy way currently, but was certainly a definitive of the last five or ten years. Does that sound right to you?

Absolutely. Yes, definitely. And I've definitely seen a lot of this, you know, unsurprisingly, and left this online discourse. You know, I think I'd mentioned in my original email to you, when the Cesar Sávez allegations came out, there's just Marxist feminists that I follow. And she kind of, she made a post that was not a direct reaction to the allegations, but kind of was some, it was actually an old post that she had made about how there are some Marxist men. who like, you know, whenever feminism comes up or patriarchy or whatever it might be, they kind of just like crumble and and kind of freak out and, you know, become sort of this class reductionist or become this sort of like, oh, this is just bourgeois reformism or, you know, it was kind of like making fun of this kind of tendency that occurs sometimes. And, you know, people in the comments, these men in particular were just calling her a sciop. They were calling her, you know, you know, obsessed with identity politics and all of this stuff. And it was just like, you really have no sensitivity at all whatsoever to the reality of these issues that exist.

Right. And you're so hyper-fixated on this very sort of dogmatic understanding of political theory that you are blinding yourself to the ways of which all these other power structures kind of function both within and alongside that. And so, yeah, I definitely have seen that kind of dependency. I've also, like, to a point you brought up earlier, and I think it definitely connects to this question of, like, why is, like, feminism, feminist theory, you know, not really take it seriously. I think, I think also part of that question has to do with, like, sex and sexuality, like, how we understand these things. you brought up sort of this like free love movement, you know, in the 60s and 70s that cropped up that a lot of like, I mean, a lot of activists kind of took up even like sort of leftists during that time. And that's definitely extended into now, this sort of a, and I think

this concept of free love is just like, you know, we want to be able to like, you know, be sexually liberated and engaged in sexual relations, you know, without being repressed or oppressed by people, by sort of reactionaries or conservatives, or by even these radical feminists who, you know, are calling all sex rape, you know, this is, this is like, you know, sort of making it seem like sex is a bad thing. But I think that like, I don't know, like, as Marxists, like, you know, I think that we see, like, all of our sort of preferences and desires are shaped by our social, material and political conditions, right? And that also, also includes sex and sexuality. I think sex and sexuality on the left, even now, it's viewed as these very individualized processes, highly individualized. So it's this idea that, like,

people have sexual desires and preferences, and sexual freedom means having an ability to fulfill these desires, right? Any critical examination of sexuality or sexual activities broadly is seen as repressive. So you see things like, don't keep shame, right? Don't kink shame people. you know but i mean right like once again like as marxist i think that we see that all of these things are being shaped by these social material forces um and so what do we see under patriarchal capitalism

well sexuality has been shaped to kind of um take on patriarchal ideals about women's bodies existing for male sexual gratification um uh capitalism has also commodifies sexuality with sex trade right so i think that Like, I don't know, we can't, we can't ignore the ways in which social forces are shaping sex sexuality. It's like, it's when people talk about it, you know, sex sexuality on the left, they assume that it's this kind of very individualized thing that is above all of these forces. But in reality, just like all of our preferences and desires, these things are also being shaped in these ways. And so we have to pay attention to this and be aware of how these power dynamics exist within these sexual contexts. Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, looking back at like the 60s, for example, like I, you know, studied a lot of the SDS and the weather underground.

You know, actually, Marxist, you know, hard left organizations in many instances, and they themselves are experimenting in free love as this sexual emancipatory thing where the, you know, the people organizing cadre in the SDS or even the weather underground would, and they talked about this on documentary since then, have orgies with one another, experiment. everybody in the cadre is having sex with everybody else in the cadre. And for me, that sounds incredibly fucking messy and like not healthy. For them, they are in that time, of course, reacting to a sort of stultifying 50s,

40s, 30s American culture that they're kind of breaking out of, where that is seen as one aspect that has been so repressed, you know, in tandem with a lot of the new left work of combining psychoanalysis, stemming from, you know, Freud, which has a bunch of sexual repression at the center of it, and did some interesting theoretical work there, but you can see why that would be a countercultural move. What's happened since then, though, is as you're kind of alluding to, corporate capitalism

has totally absorbed that sexual liberation, and they've just turned it into objectification, they've turned it into the porn economy, they've turned it into only fans and the sex trade and further objectification, particularly of women, and, you know, impossible to achieve beauty standards imposed on young girls and young women in particular, and young men to a large extent as well. So you see what was once experienced, perhaps, as a liberation from previous repressive confines, gets immediately structurally co-opted to become this brutally patriarchal, very misogynistic, exploitative, a fucking thing that goes on to define.

the next several generations of American life. So I think that's, I mean, that's important to note. And then one more point is you can see why to a young male that has spent way too much time online. And for one reason or another gravitated to left-wing ideology instead of right-wing ideology, why it would be very convenient. You were talking about all those comments, you know, to that woman talking. It's very convenient to get to jettison all of that, to say, I personally and we collectively don't have to deal with patriarchy or racism or bigotry at all.

We can just focus on class. And in fact, if you're not doing that, if you're bringing up these other things, you're a sciop, you're part of the problem, you're bourgeois, you're liberal, you can see why that would be very fucking convenient for, you know, a young man coming up in that cultural context to not have to deal with all of that but still be able to ostensibly retain, you know, a left-wing radical image of himself in his politics, right? Oh, absolutely, yeah. And, and, you know, I think, I think that, I think that this whole sort of like, you know,

we're not going to critique sexuality and sex, and we're going to try to just, like, just have as much sex as you can and be, you know, do weird sex stuff. And because, you know, the, you know, the man doesn't watch us do that or whatever. You know, like, I think that, like, you know, I think that, you know, I think that, you know, it's understandable to kind of like, you know, desire to sort of like strive towards like sexual freedom or or sexual liberation, especially for women and queer people, right, whose sexualities have been historically restrained, controlled, you know, shaped by patriarchal forces.

I completely understand that sort of side of it. And I think that that has been part of sort of the ways in which, you know, the left has kind of understood how sex is. sexuality exists now, but I think also, like, there is just like there's sort of this abstraction still, right? Like, yes, and, right? Yes, there have been sexually repressive forces that have existed that have been oppressive towards women and queer people, but also there are these other forces that play under patriarchy, under capitalism, that are also affecting all of these relationships and beyond just sex, relationship, romantic relationships, too, right? And so, I don't know, It's so strange how all of that gets distracted from all of the other sort of critique as if it's this kind of very highly individualized thing.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So kind of moving forward, and we've talked about the sex trade a little bit, and your dissertation, as far as I understand, focuses on the abolition of sexual commerce. And I think this is actually, it was several years ago, even when we did our episode on this, our famous sort of episode with Esperanza and I believe Ty Lee on this particular issue about. the Marxist opposition to the global sex trade and the anti-imperialist and anti-colonial perspective on it. At that time, it was hotly contested. That was a hyper-controversial episode. I lost, you know, a significant amount of fans, at least, or listeners based on that. There was lots of backlash we took online.

Red Nation. The comrades over at Red Nation did a similar episode from a similar perspective. They were doxed. They were harassed. Their work was called. It was a crazy time. I think since then on the Marxist left in particular, the conversation has shifted dramatically. I think now the dominant position on the Marxist left is our shared position, a genuinely critical analysis, not of people who are in sex work, but of the global sex trade, who benefits, who's exploited, how it actually operates in a very capitalistic and imperialistic faction and why we have to stand against it on principle if we believe in liberatory politics.

there has been a genuine shift on the Marxist left. And, of course, that's a niche political formation in the United States. But many people on the broader left, you know, still, I think, and certainly at that time, we're very adamant about this, are adopting a pro-sex work position that views criticism of the sex trade as reactionary or anti-worker. I know you're planning a trip to New Zealand that really touches the intersection of a lot of these issues and broadly your dissertation is focusing on this issue. So I just kind of want to open up the space and give you as much leeway to kind of talk about your dissertation, your, the Marxist

position on these issues and your personal experience going on this trip and navigating these issues and what you make of that. Yeah, totally. So I just, yeah, just in, you know, when it comes to that episode, and it was with Esperanza and I believe Bridget. That's right. That's right. Yeah, but I know you and Ty also talked about the sex trade a little bit. I think I mentioned in my ears, we'll email to you. That episode with Bridget and Esperanza actually like really spurred my interest in this topic. And I was a part of an online Marxist feminist reading group where we talked quite a bit. We studied a bunch of Marxist feminist materials and we talked quite a bit about the sex trade.

It was with a lot of current and former sex workers. around the world, actually. And I just really, I think, you know, when this discussion has ever come up in my personal circles and also just broader leftist discourse online, you know, it's always been so highly contested and it doesn't surprise me that that episode

really spurred that kind of reaction. But for me, it seems like an obvious thing, and I think the reason why I became so interested in it is because I find it perplexed, that so many people on the left still kind of take up this this sort of pro-sex work position. And I think that a lot of the rhetoric that is used to support this or to sort of like move against abolitionists is really just very confused and filled with a lot of assumptions and ideas that are just, I don't know, just very, very perplexing to me. I, you know, so the position that I take is, yes, I, from a theoretical perspective, I'm a sex trade abolitionist. But I also, the way I kind of describe it to other people in conversation is like, I am pro-sex worker anti-sex trade, right?

So there's a lot of nuance behind what that position entails. So I, you know, on a theoretical, you know, using a Marxist feminist framework, theoretically speaking, I view the sex trade as something that we should. seek to abolish within society, right? But on the other hand, you know, and so there are lots of ways to kind of, I guess, like, contend with that theoretical position. There are some people, for example, who would advocate for certain legal policies in order to, you know, strive for the abolition of the sex trade. For a while, I really was on the Nordic model train. And I still think the Nordic model could be something to strive for maybe in a socialist society. But, you know, I read this book, Revolting Constitutes by, I think it's Molly Smith and Juno Mac, came out a couple of years ago.

And I ended up kind of shifting my sort of position on the, and I don't really talk too much about the legal stuff in my dissertation because I'm more focused on the theoretical and the sort of elements and then also how to we organize. What does it mean to organize, you know, to support sex workers to build solid areas with sex workers as abolitionists? what does that look like? That's what I kind of take up my final chapter. But yeah, this book, you know, it kind of alerted me to the fact that, you know,

these legal models that include some kind of criminalization, whether it's of the buyer or a worker, they end up kind of, even if it's just criminalizing the buyer, they end up kind of having some really negative effects on workers.

They get exposed to police presence, violence, sort of regardless of the sort of their work being, you know, sort of decriminalized. They get exposed to a lot of state violence, broadly speaking. And so I kind of shifted my legal perspective based on this book, which was very convincing, I think, as to why even abolitionists should support the criminalization of the sex trade. And so that's where I'm at now.

And I am going to New Zealand for an internship that I got to university. I'm going to be working with the New Zealand's sex workers collective there. And New Zealand is the first country to fully decriminalize the sex trade. And I'm looking forward to going there and learning more about how this legal policy has affected conditions for sex workers. And I'm sure that I'm going to learn a lot. I'm going to be there for two months. But to kind of go back to something that you brought up about this position that a lot of people take up on the left, even now, even if a lot of Marxists have kind of shifted, which I think is really in thanks to

this episode that you did in this conversation that you started. I think that the impetus behind this like so-called pro-sex work movement, I think it's like extremely reasonable. I think that like people on the left, like they see sex workers as a vulnerable population. They obviously, you know, face a lot of stigma and violence from both the state and from sex buyers. So, yes, socialists or leftists, I think, are right to want to protect sex workers. But there's this idea, and Esperanza talks about it in her work, and I think she's talking about it in this episode that she did with y'all. There's this idea that particular in the industry, any industry entails patiquing the worker. But I think as Esperanza, I kind of know, it's like leftists, socialists throughout history have critiqued, like many industries with the goal of building solidarity with the workers of said industries.

coal mining, the service industry, coal tan mining, the oil companies, right? Like, we can critique a trade, right, or an industry while still supporting the workers and building solidarity to them. So there's like, I don't know, there's a strange sort of like flattening, I guess, that goes on. If you're critique in the industry, you must be critiquing the worker. And I also think that, like, there's this idea that, like, any critique of the sex trade is going to be grounded in this sort of reactionary view of sex and sex. which I've already kind of mentioned earlier like you know sex does have moral and political weight to it and especially when we're looking at something like the sex trade when we see that

the overwhelming majority of sellers are women the overwhelming majority of buyers are men there there is clearly a a gendered dynamic going on and because I think a lot of left is still kind of use sex and sexuality in these very sort of individualized terms they don't see that like these dynamics both like from patriarchy or from racism from from capitalism all of these dynamics from colonialism right um exists uh within the sex trade and they put it sex trade praise on people's vulnerabilities um so i think that like i don't know i mean it's Esperanza this a really good job of pointing out how the sex trade has been used as a tool of imperial and and colonial regimes and imperial domination.

And this is obviously why we see an explosion of sexual commerce and colonized nations and near U.S. military bases. And, you know, another book that I know has been recommended many times here on the podcast is Girda Lerner's Creation of Patriarchy. But she also does an essay about the origins of prostitution in ancient Mesopotamia, which looks at the roots of the sex trade. it came to be, you know, and she points out that the sex trade actually stems from military domination, and also

it was used as like this sort of status symbol of the ruling classes back of the day. And like both of those things bring for today. And you know, it goes against this whole idea that like the sex trade or prostitution was sort of this, what

do they say, the world's oldest profession. That's actually just blatantly not true. And these analyses, these historical analyses show us, like, where these things come from, where it kind of grounds us in the material conditions that produce these types of institutions, like

the sex trade, and also how they function today. So I think that, like, yeah, I don't know, I'm, I'm just on my first chapter of my dissertation. I've just kind of laid the sort of theoretical groundwork through a Marxist feminist analysis. And now I'm kind of shifting over to these next

few chapters, like, you know, what people say, especially people on the left, when it comes to this pro-sex work position, and a lot of it kind of boils down to this idea that, you know, well, the sex trade is exploitative, but all forms of work are exploitative. And so, you know, we can't just single out this. And I think that that's round too. I did that flattening all forms of work as being equally exploited. There was not in line with how socialist theorists have understood labor and work. throughout history. I think that there are particular forms of work that are particularly harmful and exploitative and that thrive on inequalities beyond just class inequalities. And I think

ignoring that or pushing it aside as sort of this method for I don't know, harm reduction is not in line with Marxist, leftist, anti-imperialist,

anti-colonial feminist values. is. I think it goes against all of those values. Totally. Totally. And I'm always kind of surprised by the controversy around it because it seems so obvious from a Marxist perspective that one, there is no ill will, resentment, anger, hatred,

rage aimed at the sex workers themselves. They are human beings trying to survive under an impossible economic situation are often very, exploited. There are comrades. They're our fellow human beings on this planet. We stand with them 100%. It's the industry itself in the same way as I always say like if we're critiquing Jeff Bezos and Amazon

Does that mean that we're shitting on the warehouse workers? Exactly the opposite. We're shitting on Jeff Bezos and Amazon because of the way they treat their warehouse workers and and ultimately Communists believe in a world beyond class society where human beings are no longer commodified And so in that context sex would be utterly liberated from commodification and from the need for economic stability or to afford your life or to whatever reasons people go into it, sex would be so decommodified that you would be able to do sex without the economic exploitation on top of it. That's just an obvious point. And it's always surprising to me how controversial that is, although, as you said,

and I think, I don't know if it's our episode or many episodes on this or just the Marxist left in the U.S. growing and maturing. But it certainly shifted hard in this discourse. Now, if you are on the Marxist left and you come out in support of the sex trade, the global sex trade in any way, shape, or form, I think that will be a very minoritarian and unpopular position, whereas even seven, ten years ago, even when we did our episode, six years ago, seven years ago, it was highly, hotly contested and controversial and sparked online debates for quite some time. But morally speaking, I think it also goes without saying that,

those of us on the Marxist left should in no way, shape, or form engage as consumers in the sex trade. Like, that is an obvious, obvious thing. We stand in solidarity with sex workers. We oppose the sex trade. We want to liberate all exploited working people from being commodified, from having to turn over their time on this planet, their bodies, their effort, their labor for somebody else's profit and gain. We want to dismantle class society and the patriarchal structures that co-constitute it and these these things seem obvious and we have our own ethical standards. I would never engage in the sex trade as a consumer whatsoever and I don't think any self-respecting Marxist or any Marxist at all ever should.

But again, as you said, critiquing the sex trade, critiquing the industry is never the same as critiquing the people exploited by it. It's always blown my mind that those two things are so seemingly easily conflated. no i agree and and just one final point on that too you know i i think any sort of like remnants of the left that's still kind of supporting this position i think it's still rooted especially now given the political climate that we're in i think it's still kind of rooted in this sort of like idea of sexual freedom right like by critiquing you know people you know apparently critiquing the people who are selling sex which is now we're doing we are you know we're grounding these critiques in

in a critique of selling sex, right? And I think that the problem is, is that, like, I don't know, we need to think more about, like, what sexual freedom really entails. Because I think, like, you know, being someone who, I guess, like, has to, like, sell their sexual labor for material survival, and essentially shrinking or, I guess, shaping your sexual preferences and activities to match that of a buyer, is that sexual freedom? Is that empowerment?

I mean, like, to me, that's, like, restraining or constraining yourself in your activities to meet the demand of the buyer. And I think that, like, sexual freedom, what that can really mean, what we should really be striving for, I mean, unsurprisingly, you won't be surprised to hear this. Alexander Colatai is somebody that I. absolutely borrow from in my dissertation, absolutely somebody I use that I'm discussing these things, but her work, I mean,

she talks about sexual freedom as sort of relationships that are built on respect, care, or mutual exchange, so being concerned about what your partner desires, what they, you know, what, what sort of fulfillment they can get out of sort of sexual exchanges or romantic relationships, and rather than something that is

transactional or one-sided, because that's not what to me sexual freedom is. We need to have sort of this mutual respect for one another if we're actually going to succeed in having this sort of freedom that you talk about when it comes to sexuality. Yeah, incredibly well said. And genuine, like overall human freedom

in every sense of that word requires the liberation from economic exploitation, economic necessity to be a truly free person. This is something liberals never contend with. Freedom requires that people are no longer constrained in their choices by economic necessity, particularly while others profit off it and live lives of luxury and opulence off the exploitation of other people's economic necessity. And so this is a core communist vision for the future of a liberated human species where we are no longer confined by that class setup and the economic exploitation that is inherent in it. And beyond any given single trade or industry or whatever, the whole class structure is what we seek to overturn.

And certainly when we overturn that, people will no longer be having to engage in sex work to meet their material needs. People will no longer be exploited in any field of work so somebody else can profit from that labor and that we can finally join the ranks of the cosmic forms of intelligent life by having a human civilization rooted in egalitarian. in cooperation for the benefit of all living beings on this planet. That seems to some as idealist utopian world, but I believe that humanity has matured over time, and I think it has the capacity to continue to mature. And I think that ultimately the communist vision is the vision of the entire human species and, in fact, the entire biosphere being liberated from all forms of economic coercion and exploitation.

and that seems totally in line with everything we're saying here about the sex trade in particular. Oh, absolutely. And, you know, it's no coincidence that every, pretty much all of the major figures in Marxism and Marxist feminism throughout history have supported this exact position. It's no coincidence with that fact, whether or not they've fleshed out sort of, you know, a clear analysis of patriarchal social relations alongside capitalism is another thing. But, you know, every single figure that you can think of, Marx, Ingalls, Mao, Lenin, obviously, Colentai, all of these figures, even, even Emma Goldman, who's anarchists, they have all recognized sort of the harms and the oppression that are inherent within the sex trade. And I think that if we look to history and we look to all of these thinkers that we already sort of look up to, we will see what the clear answer is. on this. Yeah, absolutely. So kind of, you know, landing this plane going towards the close here, I wanted to circle back to what we started the conversation off with. And, you know, I think we

established the importance of so much of this and healthy organizing and the personal responsibility we all have when we're organizing. And there's obviously always going to be a serious need for accountability around harmful behavior. But there are also on the other side genuine concerns about rumors, social media pileons, you know, weaponizing identity in various ways, which I've seen in organizing spaces, dressing up interpersonal conflict as principled political conflict and not interpersonal conflict at all, et cetera. All these questions are on the table and all of them contribute to kind of weakening or limiting what our organizations have been able to do and can continue to do. So how can, with all that in mind, movements develop

accountability processes that are principled, that are fair, that seek the actual truth of the matter, and that can be genuinely transformative, not merely punitive, isolating, or otherwise a harmful, replicating harmful approaches to justice. Yeah, absolutely. I've been spending a lot of time thinking about this lately, and I know there have been lots of, you know, Marxist, feminist, leftists, who have kind of touched on this in some of the online discourse recently, especially in light of some of the allegations that have come forward about some of these sort of major figures in Leftist organizing recently.

But I, you know, first, I want to say that, like, I've heard some people kind of suggest that, like, okay, women and clear people just need to, you know, get out of these organizations to get away from these men and have our own sort of separate organization. And I think that's the wrong sort of method. It's not that I don't think, like, we couldn't have separate organizations that kind of focus on women and queer people's issues. It's not that I don't think that. It's that I think that, like, realistically, as leftists, we know that we have to build a movement together with all working class people. And so we do need to work, like, alongside Ben.

I think the one way that we can kind of like start kind of setting up structures within these organizations are to have committees and like clear accountability processes. You mentioned earlier that you were with an organization where there were sort of these processes that were already set up or sort of standards that were already set. I had to say in the six years that I'm organizing, I have not seen that in. in any organization that I've been a part of. And maybe part of that is that, you know, most of the folks that are in these organizations are men. But I think that that is kind of like number one is we need to, I think, have committees set up of mostly women and queer people,

not just kind of like separate offices where we do our own thing or maybe bring our work back to the group or something like that. I think that there needs to be clear, standards that need to be set so that people feel like they can feel safe when they come forward with something with sort of a use of a predatory behavior that occurs. So I think that's kind of number one. I think this should be the standard across the board across all organizations. I know that that might shift depending on who's in the organization, but like that needs to be something up front that we need to have because I never felt like I had somebody that I could turn to. I never felt

like there was something put in place that I could look at and refer to in any of these instances, right? And I know that a lot of women and clear people have felt the same way that I have talked about these things with. So I also think another sort of thing that I mentioned to you is, you know, in all of the groups that I've been a part of, there's always like sort of this study element, right? We all kind of discuss materials together, you know, oftentimes it's. just, you know, political theory broadly. We'll take a look at, you know, different sort of aspects of political leftist thought. But really, I don't ever see discussion of feminist theory or feminist issues within the or works that I've been a part of. I know that it goes on certainly in lots of works.

But to be honest with you, I mean, I just, I don't know a lot of organizations, at least that I've been a part of, that have actually taken these issues seriously. have actually had study groups specifically on feminist theory. And I think that's another problem that we need to address. I think that, you know, as we were talking about kind of getting at this conversation, like a lot of men, you know, leftist men included, like don't have like a strong sense of awareness of gendered power dynamics and how to, I guess, engage with women or connect with women in a way that is not, you know, that isn't creepy or. isn't sort of like utilizing power dynamics to get their way or whatever.

I think that like looking at feminist theory and queer theory, studying these materials together within these organizations is also really important alongside kind of having these established accountability processes and these sort of conferences or committees with women and queer people. I also think like people with color should have their own committees including women and queer people of color, I think it's important. I don't know. I personally find it, you know, pretty intimidating or disappointing when I see an org that I'm really excited about, excited about, and it's just all white deeds. I mean, like, I know so many people have had this experience, and, and I know there's always this sort of discussion, at least where I'm from, where people are, you know, the most,

the majority of people in these leftist orgs are, are white and almost exclusively men, and And it's always like, how do we get, you know, how do we like build more diverse ranks of people? Well, I think what we need to, I think that we need to really start thinking about like what it might mean to have inclusive and, and I guess, welcoming and safe spaces for people who belong to different social identities and social backgrounds. And I think developing use accountability processes and standards for dealing with. anything that might come up is a big part of that. Yeah. Absolutely. And I think, you know, I always say, how do you bridge the gap between the class analysis and identity, genuine identity issues? And it's always about working towards solidarity, right? The dismissing of these identity issues is not how you build solidarity. It's

how you destroy it because you're coming from a position where you're like, I don't care about your particular struggles, the life experiences you've had, the way that that's shaped you and your politics. I don't care. We're just all talking about this. That, undermine solidarity. How do you actually build solidarity? You respect and understand and do the work yourself to come to deeper and deeper forms of clarification through struggle with your comrades to understand these issues so that you can address them meaningfully so that solidarity becomes possible. What liberal identity reductionism does is it takes off the table class being able to unify across identities. And so you have a sort of endless war of identities. We've

all seen this play out in particularly liberal organizations where identities hyper-weaponized against other identities. And it's like an inverted form of the old reactionary thing of stoking racial, ethnic divisions in order to undermine class solidarity. It's an inverted form of that where you're glorifying these marginalized identities, but you're disallowing the possibility that our shared class interests could unify us despite our differences. So Marxism takes the dialectic seriously. So Marxism takes the dialectic seriously. The identity issues are serious. You know, patriarchy is a serious issue. Bigotry is a serious issue. Racism shapes the experiences of marginalized communities. Colonialism shapes the experience

of indigenous communities. And if you want to build solidarity with those communities, you have to listen and learn and understand how those experiences shape their life and their outlook and their worldview. And then you have the genuine grounds for solidarity. One of the more concerning trends lately is like on the right you have like feminism is the problem, you know, women are the problem. They need to be stripped of the vote. They need to know their place. They need to be quiet. Let men lead.

Obviously, that's toxic, reactionary bullshit. And on the liberal progressive side, you sometimes do hear like this, especially like 10 years ago, you heard this a lot, like this fuck all men mentality. Like, all men are trash. All men are shit. And of course, that is often, like, exaggerated for effect. And people are not actually meaning that every single man is a piece of shit. They're giving voice to their frustration with patriarchal behavior patterns among men. But as Marxist, we are all ultimately human beings fighting for liberation of all of us.

And so not coming together, not having solidarity, not struggling toward unity is not an option. Like, we are stuck with each other as human beings on this planet. And if we want to pursue our political project, that requires coming together. And that requires a lot of work from us, especially those of us who are in the dominant, you know, identity positions. So if you're a white man in the United States, yes, you're going to have to confront some shit. You're going to have to have uncomfortable conversations. You're going to have to read theoretical material that challenges some deeply inbuilt assumptions you have about yourself and your own life. And that's okay.

And if you're willing to do that, then you actually make yourself much more of a comrade than you otherwise would. And I want to say a lot of people do do that. You know, for all the bad experiences that people have had, in my experience, the most thoughtful, loving, kind, respectful men that I've ever encountered have been in left-wing spaces. Obviously, it filters for those for those sort of men. So I think a lot of guys are willing, I think, to do that work. And they need to hear conversations like this. They need to investigate. They need to set aside their egos and challenge themselves deeply and be willing to be uncomfortable in order to help build the solidarity that we so desperately need. Does that sound right to you? Absolutely.

Yeah. And I think firmly to that, too, it's like, I don't know, we need to be okay with people messing up. You know what I mean? like, you know, like, it's not to say, oh, we need to dismiss, you know, some really fucked up behavior that somebody engages in or something like that. But I mean, like, if, you know, if somebody says something or, you know, that maybe was like, oh, man, like, that was maybe not the right time or the right way to say that or maybe, maybe you should have approached this person in a different way or something like that. You know, it's okay to mess up. Like, I don't know, there's, there's, there's a lot of fear, I think, that people have. And I think, like, on the one hand, like, you know, that fear comes from maybe this sort of egotistical thing of like, I don't want to be, you know, I don't want to be rejected or I don't want to be judged or I don't want to be, you know, put on the spotlight or something like that.

And I also think the organizations that we're a part of need to make it. And if people belong to those organizations, need to make it so that people can feel safe messing up, right? Like, that we're not just straight up canceling somebody or dragging them, you know, or gossiping them out of them or whatever it might be. like we need to be able to make space for people to make mistakes. And we also need to set a standard and develop processes to deal with those kinds of mistakes in a way that doesn't just oust somebody from an organization. I think there are very specific situations that is just viable. But we need to be able to work within sort of the confines of kind of all this, this whole sort of social process that we're a part of, right?

We're all trying to figure out what it means to be a good person. Ben, women, gender and non-conforming people, we're all trying to figure this out. And relationships and sexuality and all of these things are made so complicated by all of these power structures that we're under. But I think that, you know, if you are somebody who is a leftist or a Marxist or you're somebody who is actively trying to change the world for the better, you really have to look inward and you really have to be part of a community in a way that makes it safe for people to make mistakes and to chair for the better, you know? Absolutely. Absolutely beautifully said. And that's that's the, that's the human condition, right? We're all flawed. We're all trying our best. We're all fucked up in our various ways. And like,

we got to fucking have some love and compassion and understanding for one another while also setting, you know, genuinely, you know, high standards of interpersonal behavior and virtue. Because if we want to build a better world, we have to become better people in the process. Yeah. And, you know, community is messy. I understand the attraction of hyper individualism, a recoiling, a retreat from community, from the collective because to immerse yourself in the community in the collective means having to navigate all these all too human issues and problems.

But that is our task. And we have to embrace it, not run from it or not pretend it doesn't exist, not ignore it, not sweep it under the rug, but face it with love, with compassion. and with humility because we're all flawed in our own ways. And, yeah, and ultimately, you know, in most cases, I think with, as you said, a willingness to forgive and to move on together as we kind of help uplift one another along the process instead of excommunicating one another for, you know, our foibles and our flaws and our errors and our mistakes.

Absolutely. Gabby, it's been absolutely a pleasure to have you on the show. I really appreciate this conversation. It's one that I think is incredibly important. And people listening to this, most people listening will be engaged or thinking about getting engaged in organizing spaces. And I think having this stuff in mind from whatever lived experience you come from, thinking about it as you contribute and build organizations.

And particularly if you're a man entering organizing spaces, these are things that I think we all really need to wrestle with and think critically about and walk in with the right intentions, hold ourselves to high standards. And I think you've helped us do that with this insightful conversation. So thank you so much for reaching out and being so generous with your time. Before I let you go, is there any place that people can find you and your work online? Yeah, totally. Thank you so much, Brett. This is like, honestly, one of the highest honors to be able to come on this show and speak as somebody who has been listening for so long. And it's really helping me think about my own work and my own organizing. So I'm just, I'm so great.

grateful for that. And yeah, I was just telling Brett before we started reporting, I'm not super present online, but I did just start a Medium account. My name on Medium is Comrade Gabby, G-A-D-I, so I use spelled my name. And I'm going to be posting the sort of original essay that I sent Brett about this episode. And I'm going to kind of tweak it a little bit and add a little bit more flesh it out. And I'm also going to try to post some of the work that I've been doing for my dissertation on there as well. So feel free to give me a follow on medium. And I'd love to hear y'all's thoughts and comments on what I've been cooking up lately. Wonderful. Yeah, I'll make sure to link to that in the show notes. And of course, my friend, open an invite to come back

on any time after your trip. If you want to come on and give us a breakdown of how that went, I'd love to have you back on and have more conversations with you going forward. Yeah, I would love that. That would be amazing. Thank you.