Rev Left Radio - Marxist Feminism: The Struggle Against Capitalist Patriarchal Hegemony

Episode Date: August 28, 2017

Raechel Anne Jolie is an educator, an activist, a yogi, a Media Studies PhD, a vegan, a podcaster, and a writer. Her writing has been featured in Bitch Magazine, The Daily Dot, The Huffington Post, (and more), and she's been interviewed as an expert in her field for Rolling Stone, NPR, and the CBC. She also co-hosts the Feminist Killjoys, PhD podcast with Dr. Melody Hoffmann.    Raechel joins Brett to discuss the philosophy of Marxist Feminism.  Topics include: A brief summary of the history of feminism, the differences between Marxist Feminism and Liberal Feminism, Sex Work, Trans rights, connections between the LGBTQ struggle and the labor struggle, the importance of intersectional Solidarity, and much more!   Check out Raechel and Melody's podcast Feminist Killjoys PhD here: https://feministkilljoyspodcast.com/ Check out Raechels website here: https://www.raechelannejolie.com/ Follow Raechel on Twitter @reblgrrlraechel   Our Outro Song Of The Week: Blood and Guts by Bien Fang Find more of their *wonderful* music here: https://bienfang.bandcamp.com/releases   Here is a full list of all of Raechel's recommendations for further reading:   The Whorecast Sylvia Federici Kathi Weeks Grace Lee Boggs SALT: Xicana Marxist Thoughts (salt.xmt) Leslie Feinberg (Stone Butch Blues, Transgender Warriors, and Rainbow Solidarity in Defense of Cuba) Angela Davis - Are Prisons Obsolete Victoria Law INCITE! Invisible No More by Andrea Ritchie Queer Injustice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the US (Andrea Ritchie, Joey Mogul, and Kay Whitlock)  ---------------------- Please rate and review us on iTunes and support us on Patreon if you have some spare change laying around.   This podcast is officially affiliated with The Nebraska Left Coalition and the Omaha GDC.

Please support my daddy's show by donating a couple bucks to patreon.com forward slash rev left radio. Please follow us on Twitter at Rev. Left Radio. And don't forget to rate and review the Revolutionary Left Radio on iTunes to increase our reach. Workers of the world, unite! We were educated, we've been given a certain set of tools, but then we're throwing right back into the working class. Well, good luck with that, because more and more of us are waking the fuck up. So we have a tendency to what we have, we have earned, right? And what we don't have, we are going to earn.

We unintentionally, I think, oftentimes kind of frame our lives as though we are, you know, the predestined. That people want to be guilt-free. Like, I didn't do it. Like, this is not my fault. And I think that's part of the distancing from white people who don't want to admit that there's privilege. Because that's always how our imperial war machine justifies. itself. It's always under the context of liberating the Libyan people, liberating the Iraqi people. The U.S. Empire doesn't give a fuck about anybody except the U.S. Empire and its interests.

According to the legend, Sterner actually died due to a beastie. So the ultimate individualist was actually killed by the ultimate collectivist. Very weird. Both sides are responsible for the violence. What the fuck are you talking about, dude? Are you kidding me? There's one side in citing fascist violence. The other side's saying give us free health care. God, those communists are amazing. Hello everyone and welcome to Revolutionary Left Radio. I am your host and Comrade Brett O'Shea and today we have Rachel and Jolie from the Feminist Killjoy's PhD podcast on to talk about Marxist feminism. Rachel, would you like to introduce yourself and say a bit about

your background? Yeah, hi, thank you, Brett, again so much for having me. I have a PhD and communication studies and feminist and sexuality studies. And I've been contingent faculty for the past almost five years. And after being a grad student instructor, so I do teach. I'm also a writer and a yoga instructor trying to hustle to survive under capitalism and co-host of the podcast. As you said, Feminist Killjoys Ph.D., which everyone should check out. So that's me. Yeah, and we'll definitely link to that in the episode summary. And I highly encourage it. If you like our show, you will like their show, I promise you. All right, before we start, I do want to give a shout out really quick to a Patreon supporter by the name of Dan G. He gave us a really nice donation recently, so we wanted to make

sure to give him a shout out. And I also want to give a shout out to Estelle Kalo. She was a person that was very excited for this episode and helped come up with questions. And she's actually down on the Gulf Coast right now, weathering Hurricane Harvey. So, you know, our hearts go out to Estelle. Hopefully you stay safe. We're thinking about you. Let's go ahead and dive right in. So before we start. What was your political development, Rachel? What life experiences led you to both feminism and Marxism? So I grew up working class, was raised by a single mom. And so before I had anything close to the sort of theory and language to make sense of it, I understood the sort of violence of capitalism. And I think most importantly understood that hard work did not equal success in the

ways that were sort of taught by society that it will because I saw my mom work multiple jobs my whole life and she still continues to to this day and not benefit from it. So I really experienced that before I, like I said, before I like had the language to make sense of that. My actual sort of politicization happened during the Iraq War when I was in high school. From there sort of discovered like food not bombs and just anti-war protests and then went into college shortly after and was mostly left identified or anarchist identified in college. And I really learned about politics primarily through my activist comrades and mentors in the activist groups that I was in. I engaged with political theory sort of through those meetings. But my actual

schooling wasn't, I was a communication studies major and we would, you know, sort of dabble in sort of radical stuff occasionally depending on the professor. But really most of my education. came through my peers, and I always feel like I want to note that because of somebody who now holds a PhD, I really feel like so much of the valuable education I got happened through these conversations with people and my own sort of, you know, organic intellectual sort of experience as a member of the working class. So very briefly from there, I did end up going to grad school and had the quick realization that people who talked about anti-capitalism did so on a very theoretical level and weren't actually committed to sort of revolutionary anti-capitalist

struggle in the ways that I thought and hoped everybody would be. And so that really inspired me to get much more rigorous in political theory as a way to sort of argue with these folks who were saying all of all of these arguments in very smart ways but didn't seem to have the sort of more grounded analysis that that I had and so I wanted to be able to hold my footing in in sort of debates with them and and also that was just part for the course when you're in grad school obviously you're going to engage with theory more rigorously so that's that's sort of how that all worked out between life experiences schooling and activist work and I currently identify primarily as a Marxist and a feminist, but I'm admittedly not a purist. So if audience members

want to sort of catch me on not being, you know, a good, pure Marxist, I won't argue with you on that. Like, it's fine. So you'll probably hear that as we talk. Yeah. And for my part, I really tried to foster a sense of sort of this notion that it's not about sectarianism. It's not about, oh, I'm more peer of an anarchist or more peer of a Marxist than you. On this show, we really tried to just have a robust leftist discussion for everybody to pull what they find valuable out of it, regardless of what their individual tendency is. So, I mean, I hope that the audience that I've kind of built up over these last few months aren't the sort of people that are going to go through and try to pick out and pick people apart. You know, we're all here to learn

together. So that's really interesting. And I kind of had a similar political development in the fact that I did go to grad school and I was kind of disillusioned with academia and the sort of cloistered ivory tower environment that it fostered. And there's that famous Marxist quote. You know, the philosophers have only interpreted the world. The point us to change it. And I really took that to heart. So when I start off these conversations, I like to go 101 because I don't want to assume that the people listening have a robust understanding of the topic already. So let's just go ahead and give a little background. Can you give us a short history of feminism by maybe briefly summarizing the first, second, and third waves of feminism? Yeah, absolutely. Before even getting

into the first wave, I think it's really important to note that those waves are very sort of Western constructs. And when we think about first wave, it usually starts with the women's suffrage movement and the right to vote. But it's really important to also sort of at least pay homage and note that there was gender-based sort of organizing and work happening in indigenous communities prior to colonization of the U.S. and also in pre-colonial lands across the globe. So that is just a sort of caveat that I always think is really important to note that there was things happening. Women were doing important work, women and other gender nonconforming, gender non-binary folks in pre-colonial communities were doing work that we would likely identify

as feminists if people were, you know, if they were actually given sort of voices and spaces in these even feminist textbooks. So that's first caveat. Going into the first wave, as I said, that was sort of 19th and early 20th century, traditionally understood as women seeking the right to vote, which of course is a pretty whitewashed version of what was happening in that era. And some of the suffragettes were abolitionists and were devoted to the abolition of slavery. But there were plenty of others who were very much, we'll get to slavery after we get our right to vote, maybe. So really not great liberationists for all people in that regard. And of course, alongside of them were women of color and slave women who were doing really important

work not only around their identity or their rather position as slaves, but also their position as women. So that was happening in the first wave. The second wave is often understood as a period between the 1960s and the 1980s that a lot of people will sort of reduce to what is ultimately very sort of liberal feminism. And I think we'll probably talk about that a little bit more later. But it really regarded around reform issues and policy changes. So issues in the workplace, reproductive rights, domestic violence issues, custody and divorce laws, things like that. That is true. That was all happening. Gloria Steinem was, you know, having her moment. But again, that version of the second wave really erases the other work that was

happening by feminist women, including people like Angela Davis and all the women in the Black Power Movement and the Young Lords and all of these amazing women of color and other radical left revolutionary women that were organizing in that era that I also think is really important to bring into this discussion of these ways, these discussions of the waves. because it's really easy to be dismissive of sort of, oh, that's so second-wave feminist. A lot of, you know, people who in the third wave will say that sort of dismissively.

And I think it's important to note that it wasn't just a white lady's movement. Our understanding of history by centering those white women, that's the sort of racial erasure there is that understanding of history. So really amazing things happening that weren't simply liberal reform measures

in the second wave as well. The third wave that some would argue is what we are currently in. Others would say we are in the fourth or even probably creeping out of the fourth. But the third wave is often sort of understood as the moment in which in academia sort of feminist theory, people will talk about it as the sort of insertion of queer theory and also intersectionality on the ground that looks like centering more queer folks outside of the gender binary. So this shift away from women to sort of gender more broadly and also sort of intersections of gender and sexuality and of course intersections of race and class and everything else that intersectionality so importantly draws out for us. It's very much sort of credited outside of academia. Well, people talk about it in academia, but this is what's happening outside of the sort of ivory tower, as you noted, is the right. riot girl movement. So the sort of DIY punk feminist movement where bands like Bikini Kill

and Heavens to Betsy and Huggy Bear and all of these sort of riot girl bands were inserting themselves into these punk spaces and taking ownership of space and doing it in a way that was really sex positive. And so that's another big, uh, key element of the, of the third way feminist movement that differs from from some iterations of second way feminist, but not all, uh, that really celebrates sex and sexuality while also at the same time being really critical and aggressive against sexual violence and rape culture and things like that. Very briefly, some people again would say that we are now in a fourth wave, which I think a very shorthand, sort of too long didn't read version of this, is just think of like the third wave, but amplified, like

extreme sports version of the third wave, but on the internet. So fourth wave is really sort of noting the importance and the ways in which the internet and digital spaces transform the way that this looks. That's really interesting. And a lot of this, I'm learning as well. You know, I don't pretend to be an expert on all the topics that I cover. So I'm really interested to hear all that and to have this conversation because I think it's extremely important.

So let's go ahead and dive into Marxist feminism. What is Marxist feminism and how does it differ from, say, more traditional forms of liberal feminism? I'll start by sort of explaining liberal feminism then we can get, and we'll go for Marxism from there. So liberal feminism is very much interested in individualistic equality, and usually it's a phrase the sort of between men and women. So it will often assert the sort of gender binary, which I just noted there's pushback towards now, thankfully. And very much seeking that equality through political reform. So it's not invested in dismantling or even significantly challenging power systems.

something that always comes to mind when I teach this in classes sometimes I'll pull up this bumper sticker and I've seen it on bumper stickers and buttons and lots of things like in women's bookstores that that says my favorite position is CEO so it's supposed to be like a funny thing where a woman is you know trying to fight back against being a sex object so you know saying my favorite position doesn't have to do with sex it has to do with being the CEO of a company as though that is something that we should celebrate and that's like kind of peak liberal feminist. That's like a peak liberal feminist joke. Like, oh, you know, I should, you know, I'm a feminist because I'm empowered to not just be a sexual object, but it means that I want to like

oppress people in a corporation. So that is sort of, I think, a shorthand for liberal feminism. Marxist feminism, on the other hand, and also other kinds of feminism, including anarcho-feminism and abolitionist feminism generally, is rooted in an analysis of oppression via the economic system. So whereas some Marxists get critiqued for being class reductionist at the expense of identity, I think Marxist feminists allow us

to have a fundamental analysis of oppression as a product of capitalism, but that is also inherently invested in understanding the distinct means of oppression that women experience under it. So it understands white supremacy, sexism, and also I think if it's doing the right work, also heterosexism and cissexism, as related to capitalism, starting with slavery.

So that key difference is that its analysis is about the sort of social structure itself being the problem, not seeking equality within maintaining that social structure. And so with critiques of capitalism, I'm sure, also come critiques of imperialism and how that affects women in the, you know, other parts of the globe that are often victimized, you know, by U.S. imperialism or Western imperialism. Absolutely. Yeah, thank you for adding that. So in what ways does feminism complement Marxism and vice versa?

Why do they appeal for one another and how do they strengthen one another, in your opinion? I mean, I think very simply, Marxism is invested in analyzing or sort of having a rigorous analysis of capitalist exploitation and capitalist exploitation is something that disproportionately harms women and other non-people who are assigned male at birth disproportionately and also other non-sistgender men. And so when we bring gender into this, if we have this really deep analysis of the specific ways that capitalism harms individuals, we're going to see that it's important to think about women through that and other genders. That's, I think, a sort of simple answer of how that's really important to think about those two together.

And I was talking about this other day with, the other day with some comrades about tracing the feminist strain of Marxism all the way back to, it probably goes before this as far as as movements go, but to Jenny Marks, the wife of Karl Marx. She's often left out of these discussions of Marxism and even when people, well, it's not really just Marx, it was also Angles. You know, I wanted to add that there was also Jenny. You know, Jenny's labor as a mother, obviously, allowed for Marx to do his work. but even beyond that, she was, you know, a sounding board for his ideas.

She helped write and edit his work, and she was really adamant about bringing the oppressions that women face to Marx's attention. So I think this entire tradition can actually not be traced back to Marx himself so much, although certainly his methodology lends itself to a feminist critique. Right. But it actually can go to Jenny Marx herself, and I think more people should be aware of that. Absolutely. I think that's a really good point. So you've talked a lot about carcoral feminism,

and abolitionist feminism. I find this a really interesting topic. So what is carceral feminism and what is abolitionist feminism? So carceral feminism is feminism that relies on the state as a form of punishment and also increase policing as solutions to gender-based violence. Carceral feminism ignores the ways that things like race and class and gender and identity, gender identity, rather, and immigration status can leave certain women more vulnerable to violence and that this greater criminalization that they're often

rooting for by bolstering up prisons and bolstering up police as solutions, that they're actually putting these sort of marginalized people at greater risk through state violence. So that casting the solution, casting prisons and the police is the solution, rather, again, it bolsters those systems, those same systems that actually harm the same women that. they're purporting to help. So abolitionist feminism, on the other hand, is invested in exactly the opposite of that. They don't think that solutions will come through the state through increased prison and policing. They instead think that we need to shift focus, and I would include myself among this group, to think about the root causes. And as, you know, I think many of us know that

wonderful Angela Davis quotes that, quote, that radical means grasping at the root. So really looking at the root of this? What are the causes of gender-based violence? And what does it mean then to try to fix those problems through something like prison that we know doesn't actually solve these problems or police that we know actually exacerbate these problems? So thinking more, you know, community care and healing in domestic violence situations and all of these different things that are too long to get into for the point of this interview, but basically looking at healing the root causes of gender-based violence rather than bolstering a profit-driven armed wing of the state to swoop in and put seemingly a Band-Aid over it, which actually ends up never even

actually being a very good Band-Aid generally, and will often do more harm to those marginalized communities than good. That's a short of short version of that. Yeah, and I think it also speaks to this notion that I've really been harping on this podcast lately about the need for, I mean, insofar as you don't, as most of us do not believe that we're going to get socialism through the ballot box. And insofar as we realize that the material conditions are not ripe for armed revolution at this point, the only other option left to us, which speaks to this issue, is this sort of community-based building up of alternative structures and institutions inside the belly of the beast. So instead of needing to, let's say, call the police

to handle an issue of domestic violence, trying to create community-based grassroots organizations that can quickly be mobilized inside of a community to address those issues without having to rely on the state, I think is multi-pronged in that it's quicker than the police, because often the police just come after an incident, take notes, and they don't really give a fuck anyway. And it also builds up inside the heart of our communities, this almost like communal reliance on one another. So I think that speaks to this issue pretty well, and I think that could provide a way forward on some of these issues. Absolutely.

I totally agree. So getting down to feminist critiques of work, because I think this is extremely important, in what ways have women historically been exploited under capitalism? Maybe you can touch on, you know, reproductive labor and child care, which, you know, is the backbone of the capitalist economy, yet, you know, largely goes unpaid. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, women have historically been this very clear examples of the ways in which the sort of divide-and-conquer strategy that capitalism uses to maintain power sort of works.

So the division of labor between private and public meant that women became responsible for taking care of the home and children, but most women, because, you know, most people in the U.S. are not rich, you know, would also eventually have to get another job. But the problem is that it wasn't as a second job. It was viewed as a job when they were also responsible for all this. this entire other job, which was taking care of children and taking care of the home, et cetera. So right away, sort of at the roots of sort of industrialization and that division of public and private spheres, we see that happening. Sylvia Federici is sort of one of the most prominent

voice, Marxist's feminist voices on this. And, you know, she argues very bluntly that welfare is the first form of articulating housework and child care as wage labor and that because of that we need to stop identifying it as a charity and think of it as actual, you know, paying for actual work, which is what it is. And of course, then today, we still have unequal pay. We have feminized labor that is seen as less valuable, such as education, caretaking. One of the many shitty jobs that my mom has had to work was being a home health care worker, which basically means she's like a complete medical professional, even though you only have to have a GED to do that work. but it's um you get paid like absolute garbage and you have people's you know elderly people's lives in your hands and you're doing everything um and even nursing even even in an actual institution that that um nurses get shit on completely and and women of course are women and girls are pushed into those fields at an early age and so we we continue to sort of perpetuate this system of uh labor that is feminized and seen as less valuable having more uh women specifically in those industries and in those fields and just

Sometimes the conclusion of that, I think, is like, okay, we need to get more women in the STEM fields. And I would actually just want to say that that's not actually what I would personally argue for. I think that's great. More women in STEM is great. But I think the issue is that we don't value what is deemed socially constructed as feminine work. And that that's the problem, not that there aren't enough. Not that we need to have less women doing that work, but that we need to value that work. And even when they do enter, when women do enter careers or, you know, let's say that they're able to enter careers, there's always the issue of, you know, sexual harassment in the workplace. And on top of that, the fact that, you know, women have kids and have, are largely because of these socially constructed notions of what women's jobs are, you know, it's the mother in a situation that would have to largely go pick up their kids if they get sick from school. And that can be detrimental to their.

career advancement. Exactly. Yeah, completely. And so beyond that, there is this big issue that I know is hotly contested when we're talking about feminist critiques of work, and that is sex work. So what is sex work and what are the disagreements surrounding sex work in feminist thought? So sex work can refer to a whole host of things.

It's a variety of jobs that rely on sex or sex-related services for the exchange of money. So this can include prostitution, acting in production. doing cam work from your home, dancing at strip clubs, and so on. So even the term sex work is contested itself. Some feminists and other people who just are anti-sex work wouldn't even want to construct this as actual work. Many people would just talk about prostitution or which of course all kinds of other sex work or talk about sex trafficking as though those things were the same thing.

Those are not the same thing. So sex work is something that a person chooses to do, to take a job that, like any other job, is exploitative under capitalism. Every job under capitalism is going to be exploitative. You know, that's life under capitalism. But it isn't any more exploitative than selling your body to flip burgers or work in a coal mine. it is what is distinct that it is proportionately gendered it rely on a particular sexualization of largely women although of course there are men and trans folk and you know other gendered people doing sex work as as we know but of course there is this sort of disproportionate

impact on women and the sexualization of women in particular the the feminist argument comes as to whether or not that sort of distinction makes this, this egregious thing that shouldn't be a job at all. And so where the debates sort of rests now is a whole bunch of sex workers who talk about choosing this work and talk about their job like every, like anybody else talks about their job. Like some days it's great and they get pleasure from it and some days it fucking sucks and it's tiring and scary and whatever, which a lot of jobs are. But they want to decriminalize sex work so that they have more capability to organize, to get better conditions, and to be treated as human, and to not be afraid that they're going to end up in jail every other day. On the other

hand, there are people and sort of peak liberal feminists, like celebrity women among them, who are trying to conflate sex trafficking, and sex trafficking is not consensual a work. It's, you know, some people being who are forced and coerced into doing sex work, which should be abolished and not okay, but that this other group of women doesn't see a difference between choosing sex work and this becomes a debate about agency, which is really complicated for, I think,

Marxist feminist a lot, and which is a point that I think that maybe some folks would raise their eyebrows when I get a little bit of agency in this regard, versus, you know, not having agency. And that distinction feels really significant to me and it especially feels significant, And I think as people who are committed to liberation and self-determination, that when you have people who are the most impacted by it, in this case, sex workers, when you have those folks saying, hey, I'm going to speak for myself and talk about what I need in my work and I need it to be decriminalized so that I can feel safe and organize for better conditions, like we need to listen to them because they are the most impacted.

And so I think it doesn't even become a debate for me at that point when, if we think about listening to the sort of, well, I guess what Marx would call like the lump in proletariat and he had some not so great things to say about that class of people that we listen to the most impacted group of those people and allow them to sort of chart the course. I think that's really important for any liberatory project. I would ask, like, there's a parallel between that and the decriminalization, legalization, and regulation of, let's say, drugs in the same way that putting it on the black market, not having it sufficiently regulated, leaves it open to a lot of abuses, a lot of violence, a lot of unaccountability. And so within the context of capitalism, what are some of the reforms that, you know, we would like to see on that front that would, you know, start to systematically protect

sex workers in the appropriate ways while we try to, fight and struggle for a socialist society, which would no longer commodify them in that way? Well, I mean, and it sort of depends on what type of sex works. So by decriminalizing it, that would mean that so sex workers, you know, prostitutes who are sort of out on the street wouldn't be arrested. I mean, that's a reform measure that if it's decriminalized, they wouldn't have to spend time in the prison system, which would be really important. It could also look like organizing unions if in places such as, you know, strip clubs in there, that has existed. The first unionized strip club, the lusty lady in San Francisco, just got just closed down.

But they had, they organized with SEIU to form a union and they got it and it improved their working conditions. So another example are sort of pushing back against these seemingly good reform measures. For example, there was, in California, there was a proposition on the ballot in the fall that on paper looks really good. It said that all porn actors had to wear condoms. And so, you know, it's seemingly to protect people from diseases and SCIs. So what actually happened if you listened to actual sex workers, and I can include some really good sex work podcasts that people might be interested in if they're interested in this topic and readings, that what that measure would do.

So first of all, people in pornography are very good about testing. So they all get tested very regularly. there's been only one reported transmission of HIV on a pornography set in all of this, I think in all of the history of this particular, in California, I think, at least, according to these, to the activists that were pushing back against this. So there's that. So it was sort of a myth that this was actually a problem and also sort of further stigmatized sex workers as being these sort of diseased creatures.

And two, what this would actually enable is if any average person watching porn at home saw somebody without a condom in a porn, they would be able to sue the actors and get the actors information, including their real name and address, which would obviously put a lot of sex workers in danger. So, yeah, so things like that where really paying attention to the actual impact of these communities and determining. what is further stigmatizing them and what is actually going to keep them safe and thriving. So I think ultimately that comes down. That example just comes down to actually listening to the people who are most impacted like I was saying before because I wouldn't have known that if I hadn't been listening to the voices of sex workers say that. Yeah, and I think the big point is, as you said multiple times, is letting sex workers take the lead on these issues and really sitting back and listening to them.

Don't patronize and condescend to them and tell them what's best for them. let them talk for themselves. So before we go on to the next question, you mentioned that there are some good sex work podcast out there where we could do just that. Why don't you go ahead and use this time right now to plug that so people can go find those? Yeah, the one I listen to the most

is called The Horrorcast, like it sounds like, W-H-O-R-E cast. And it's hosted by somebody named Susie Q, and she was a really big activist during that time. So that's the one I listen to the most. I'm blanking on any other names, but I can certainly provide you some links to put in the show notes and things like that too. Yep, well, absolutely link to that. And on most of these podcast apps, once you go into one topic, the recommendations will pop up and

you'll see similar podcasts as well. All right, so let's go ahead and get into this next issue. Now, this issue is very contentious, and I myself, as I said earlier, am no expert. I do not want to, you know, offend anybody with my ignorance. But there is a big riff in the feminist movement between those who are referred to as radical feminists or more pejoratively, they call it a slur. Maybe you can address whether or not it is, but it's commonly known as a turf, a trans-exclusive radical feminist and people that are trans-inclusive in the feminist movement. So what are the disagreements surrounding this issue

of trans-inclusivity in the feminist movement? And what are your positions on it? So I would call them turfs, and I don't think it's a slur. I think they deserve that title. Trans-exclusionary radical feminists believe that gender is biological and that people born with penises are not and can never be women and thus should have no place in women-only spaces or in the feminist movement more generally. They often equate transness with mental illness to a much more sort of pejorative degree than the fact that it simply exists in the DSM. They're also terrifyingly organized in that they organized to troll and harass people who are not turfs. And I wouldn't be surprised if this gets some pushback. I think we already saw a little bit of that when you posted that this episode was happening. Certainly my podcast received the brunt of some of this.

That is not something I agree with. I do not agree that we need to rely on these sort of socially constructed categories of even biological sex. And this is something that I think is not really understood enough. So a lot of times people will talk about the difference between sex and gender. And sometimes people will, you know, feel like it's a really progressive thing to say, like, well, there's biological sex, which is just sort of the facts. But then there's gender expression, which, and, you know, depending on their opinion, means that people can play around with different kinds of gender performance or identify as different genders. But that's not that's not the same as their actual for real body. the problem with that is that biological sex is constructed people will dispute over whether it refers to chromosomes or hormones or genitalia and the thing about all of those things is that none of those look the same in any any group whether it's the people who are assigned male at birth or the people who are assigned female at birth chromosomes genitalia hormones those things vary across the spectrum

for everybody. So to suggest that there's something that is inherently male biologically or inherently female biologically is actually also a construct and erases intersex people also who have what doctors would say is, you know, a noteworthy distinction, but truly we all have distinctions in those regards. So the fact that turfs are so invested in really vagina, is a little bit ludicrous to organize politically around, in my opinion, and they're also really harmful in perpetuating violence against trans folks because they say really virulent things

about them and contribute to rhetoric that further marginalizes and thus sort of dehumanizes transgender people um in general i mean i i don't it's it's hard for me to even get super deep into this debate because it just feels so clear that they're transphobic and that that's a problem and that again any movement for liberation shouldn't shouldn't be transphobic uh or or erasing of any marginalized person who who is further stigmatized under capitalism and all of the other patriarchal and white supremacist power systems and you know trans trans folks are uh are certainly among those who are who are deeply oppressed and impacted by that so it feels like not even a debate i'm i'm a trans inclusive feminist my partner is

transgender so yeah what's not not not not about turfs yeah and i and i and that's the thing is as i was learning about this you know i have a lot of trans friends i have a lot of non-binary friends. And the radical feminist or the turfs would come on and they'd say, well, you know, we don't hate them. It's a lie. It's actually a misogynistic lie to assert that we're trying to deny them of any rights or deny them of any personhood. How do you respond to that sort of argument that it's actually a misrepresentation of their position that they actually exclude and don't like trans people or try to reduce trans people in negative ways? I have a lot of trouble with that when the loudest voices among them do exactly say blatantly transphobic things.

So I feel like some of those arguments are, I just think it's not true. I just think it's dishonest to say that it's not transphobic to deny the personhood of a person who. who identifies as trans or non-binary or anything else and to invest their entire sort of political platform in trying to reject what, again, is self-determination and bodily autonomy. And again, it's just as a person who's invested in a politics that's all about liberation and autonomy, I don't buy that pushback. I think it's just blatantly transpobic. Absolutely. And there seems to be this. attempt to, as you say, exclude certain people from liberation to, to, to, you know,

denunciate them or to denigrate them or to reduce them to something. And it also kind of reinforces that would you, would you say maybe I'm off base here that it reinforces the, the harmful gender binary that exists in mainstream culture? Exactly. And it's, yeah, super harmful. I mean, we just talked about the sort of dividing conquer strategies and, and I think the thing about these identity divisions is that they they don't have to you know identity expression doesn't have to be about division it's it's the the powers that be that want that to be the case and I think that turf sort of uphold that not vice versa yeah and kind of in the same way that you know like white nationalist workers like you know like they divide and weaken the working class by trying

to exclude people from the upper echelons of it um I kind of see a parallel there with what's going on in that area. But you did your dissertation research on LGBT workers and the labor movement, and I found this very interesting. You know, in it you argued that, and this is something we've argued on the podcast as well, you've argued that identity can be acknowledged and centered without losing the importance of the class-based critiques inherent in Marxism. Can you summarize that argument for our listeners and show how identity and class can be

combined to provide a more robust analysis? Yeah, absolutely. So I was, I mean, this sort of started because I, you know, I was Marxist identified at the time, but I was also a queer person and I was also starting to, you know, feel sympathetic to sort of some post-structural queer theory. And I was just trying to sort of wrestle with all of this. And I was, this was also the same period that the marriage movement was sort of booming. And so the sort of mainstream narrative of gay people were these middle class white folks who wanted fancy weddings. And, you know, this was also around the same time that, like, Scott Walker was obliterating unions in Madison, Wisconsin. I was in the Midwest for my Ph.D.

So I was just sort of holding all of this. And that sort of image of union workers was, you know, just they became the sort of these, like, leeches of the system. And that was a little bit different than the sort of, like, old factory worker, blue collar union worker. but it was still just this, this narrative, these these juxtaposing narratives that felt so different from each other. And for me as a person who was queer and working class and, you know, knew that there were people in unions who were queer that weren't trying to get married, but also, you know, but also weren't these sort of old white men in factories. I was just wrestling with all of these different narratives. And so ultimately I was like, well, I want to talk about the queer people who are union members who are not trying to go have a fancy. wedding in Bermuda or whatever, and also, you know, that could both challenge the narrative

of who was queer and what queerness was and also challenged the narrative of who a union worker was and who the working class was more specifically. So what sort of ultimately that ended up looking at was some historical research of the ways in which unions have already, both have and have not done a good job about supporting those specific identity categories. And one of my favorite discoveries that I think listeners of this podcast would appreciate was the Marine Cooks and Stewards Union in the 40s was a communist run union that was the first union to be racially integrated and also the first union that was okay with people being openly gay and very supportive of it. And it was very much on the basis of the idea that an

to one is an injury at all, which of course is a very prominent slogan in the labor movement. And so that, the crux of that just, it just felt really like a simple backbone to all of my dissertation work. It was like, here is this union slogan that really explains how identity and thinking about identity is, you know, inherently this working class project that if there's an, you know, an injury to a gay person, then on the, on the on the factory floor, then it's an injury to all of the workers on the factory floor. And this history was Alan Baroubae, who I learned about the Marine Cooks and Seward's Union through and I can get that citation to you too. So that was really interesting.

And then of course there were also stories of when unions were not doing their best. You know, whether it was business unions or people within unions talking, you know, amongst each other when there were struggles. Other things that came up in that research

was just the idea that contracts could be more powerful than state's rights, for example. So looking back in, you know, even as far back as the 80s, when domestic partnership and other sort of same-sex partner benefit things were happening in union contracts, when that was, you know, so far away from happening at the state level and how contracts can also help with things like getting gender reassignment surgery covered in contracts when state insurance might not do that, things of that nature. And also just learning more about, or thinking more about, rather, the history of militant labor movement tactics and the history of militant gay liberation tactics that are both

sort of not so prevalent these days. There was this, you know, sort of shift. We had Stonewall literal riots. We had act up occupations of Wall Street and of the FDA to fight against pharmaceutical companies and the lack of governmental response to the AIDS crisis, really militant direct action tactics that were really amazing. And then, of course, the history of the labor movement was full of those. And then today we see, you know, a much less robust version of strikes of direct action of militants. and tactics in the labor movement and certainly not as many, not nearly as much of that in the gay

rights movement when actions included, you know, mock weddings on, you know, statehouse lawns, which is fine, like, that's fine, but that's not, that's not the kind of direct action that I was interested in. So I was also looking at some parallels there and how, how, what it might mean to think about our histories as, as queer people and working class people and turning back towards those those sort of militant tactics. So, yeah, it was fun research. I got to interview a lot of folks who are in unions. Like, there's a lot of really great words.

So the Lavender Caucus is SEIU's LGBT sort of umbrella group, Sleep with the Right People, is Unite Here's LGBT umbrella group. Pride at Work is the AFLCIO's sort of group for LGBT issues. So there's some really cool work happening and a lot of really awesome LGBT union folks out there. That's awesome. I really, I like hearing that. You know, this issue of identity politics is coming up more and more, and it comes up a lot even on the left,

and there's a lot of bickering about it. And I see a lot of one-dimensional approaches to identity politics, as if it's a black and white issue. You know, either it's identity politics is bad or identity politics is good. And this is an idea that some comrades have introduced to me and that I've been kind of pushing lately, and I just kind of wanted to get your feedback on it. But this notion that identity politics exists on a political spectrum.

So on the far right, you know, what is fascism, white supremacy, if not identity politics in a fascist context? It is the elevation of white identity as the center and base around which people can organize their political movement. It's the most toxic reactionary form of identity politics, but it isn't a form of it. And then in the center you have liberal identity politics, which is what you mentioned earlier about, you know, my favorite position is a female CEO, this notion that filling the ranks of the ruling class with different identities. identities is progress. Hillary Clinton becoming president in the liberal context of identity politics is viewed as a victory for women. But what about the women that her warish, hawkish imperialism murders in the Middle East, you know, or her corporate policies destroy the families of here

at home? This liberal identity politics seems to be an identity politics that totally lacks class analysis and doesn't critique capitalism and therefore is super limited. And you'll go into these liberal identity sort of groups and they're just basically clashing identities. There's no way forward. It's like running your tires in the mud. But then on the far left, I've come to this point where I think there is a very important leftist identity politics. It is an acknowledgement and understanding and a respect for identity and understanding about how there is identity-based oppressions that exist solely around identity. But there's also this injection of class analysis, which allows people across identities to unite through a class lens.

So it's more of an intersectional solidarity than a clashing of identities or this white supremacist bullshit on the far right. How do you think of, I mean, what are your initial thoughts on identity politics existing on a political spectrum like that? I like that thought. I like that. I mean, I think what you described is really accurate. And I, you know, when I would go beyond, okay, we have.

intersectionality. I like the idea of intersectional solidarity. Is that how you phrased it? Yeah, absolutely. I like that. I like that phrasing. But and even more broadly, you know, it's not just class plus identity because we could also talk about sort of class as identity, which, you know, is a whole

another conversation. But that, but I think it's, I really, and I've said this a lot during, as we've been talking, but it's also about self-determination. And, you know, and I think on the left we think about that in terms of nations and you know oppressed oppressed people you know rising up as as nations um but it can also be and i don't well this is going to sound really liberal to be like it can also be for each individual but but just more more but more broadly

than that thinking about self-determination as a practice that uh that we can extend to to all of the possibilities of gender and sexuality and all and all of these other things that, that create the kind of, I think, robust society of people who are thriving and being their best selves that enable them to be better, you know, foot soldiers for the revolution, I guess. Definitely. So, you know, why would we want to stifle that and have people feel harmed rather than feeling incapable of fighting for a better world. Yeah, and any leftists, you know, this, I never get tired of calling these fuckers out.

Any class reductionist, anybody on the left that tries to dismiss identity politics, you know, dismiss people's identity-based oppressions in favor of a purely class economic analysis, that's a reactionary move. That is a fucked up reactionary move. It divides and it weakens the working class and it's almost always white dudes that can be privileged enough to be like, oh, man, fuck identity politics, let's just focus on class. No, shut the fuck up and either get on board with real liberation for all people or get the fuck out of our movements, because there's no room for that shit here. Absolutely.

I got a little work out there. Yeah. Okay, so we're approaching an hour, so I'm going to ask one more question, and then we'll go into the conclusion section. But this is something I'm really interested in, something I know very little about. But what are some radical queer critiques of the institution of marriage? This is more personal. Maybe I'm a little indulgent for asking this question because I'm personally curious about it. But I just want to get your take on some of the critiques of the institution of marriage.

Well, I think the bigger issue that radical queer politics has is the sort of movement for marriage. So I'm going to start there, but then I can start in it. But this is also going to speak to the institution as well. So the marriage movement specifically took all of the – the resources, time, and money of LGBT organizations and put them into this marriage amendment and created this narrative that marriage would solve all of these problems, including things like health care

and helping couples where one person was an immigrant and one person was a citizen, and so they could have citizen status and financial tax breaks and all of these things that seems like really structural benefits, which technically is true, marriage does give us that, in the U.S., but this is ultimately a very reformist band-aid to these issues, like immigration issues and poverty and health care. So the fact that the institution of marriage is, and this will get more specifically to your

question, that marriage becomes a thing that is privileged in a way that gives access to things like health care and, you know, citizenship, and, you know, citizenship, and and financial benefits, that is the problem, particularly it should be for socialists and communists who are interested in taking down that kind of system that would provide those things for people regardless of their relationship to another individual person. So the fact that this movement was like, oh, marriage here, it'll solve these problems distracted from why aren't we putting our resources as an element. LGBT or not, we need to be fighting for, and this is why it's, you know, the sort of radical

queer politics coming out. It's like, yeah, we're queer people, but we're also poor people, and we need to be fighting for universal health care, things that will challenge capitalism to eradicate poverty, et cetera, et cetera, and, you know, amnesty for immigrants, et cetera. So in addition to that, it also sort of creates a sort of good gay, bad gay kind of dichotomy where, you know, the good gays are the ones who are getting monogamous and, you know, being normal, just like everybody else, they just happen to be gay and they're going to have their wedding that they spend a bunch of money on and have 2.5 kids and a picket fence and all of the things versus the sort of polyamorous sex worker, slutty, queer person who has no interest in that, but, you know, but should still be treated as like a valuable person in society. just even though they don't want to, you know, participate in this institution that is, is, you know, normative and has a, has a, you know, a long history of, um, of, of, of, of, of women as property. And, and, you know, that becomes interesting when we're thinking about same-sex couples and in different ways. But, yeah, so does that, do some of those things make sense? Yeah, definitely.

As to how, why, why there was a little pushback. Yeah, yeah, you said earlier, you know, this notion of radical meaning getting to the. root causes of things. And when we look at, you know, the root causes of, you know, capitalism sprang up out of the genocide of Native Americans and the enslavement of Africans. And when you look at marriage, it was really, it really stemmed out of this patriarchal, propertarian notion of women as property as bartering tools for men. And, you know, when an institution lasts long, it can change, but its roots are fundamentally rotten in the same way that capitalism's roots are fundamentally rotten marriages and this sort of economic coercion and the heteronormitivity that are implicit inside of the concept of marriage are rotten. And so I like this notion of just trying

to buck off the entire system as opposed to trying to fight to be absorbed in it. That's also not to say that, you know, legalizing gay marriage was not worth it. I mean, it certainly was. Right. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Go ahead and touch on me. No, yeah. I just, yeah, I don't disagree with that. And I was not, you know, going to spend my time, like, counter-protesting marriage, marriage marriages or anything else. That's not. And I don't think anybody on the sort of radical queer political spectrum of things would say that either. So, yeah, that doesn't, that's not begrudging. I have plenty of queer friends who are married and they're, you know, this is not remotely a slam to anybody who's married at all, queer or not.

It was a small step in the right direction. Yeah, yeah. exactly. I'm going to listen to more and more of your podcast because I have a lot of ignorance on these subjects and I can't wait for you and others to educate me on them. But before we end, can you please let my listeners know where they can find your work and then give some recommendations that you would offer anyone who wants to learn more about anything we've discussed in this episode. Yeah, and before I do that, I just want to thank you again because this was, it was really great. And like I said, I just, I truly love that you get people to have really deep conversations about these topics and provide it to them. masses, regardless of education or ability to get to activist meetings or anything else. So, thank you. So where you can find me? So as I mentioned, my podcast is called Feminist Killjoys Ph.D.

You can find it on iTunes or anywhere else you get your podcasts. And I co-host that with my dear friend and colleague, Dr. Melody Hoffman. You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram at Rebel Girl Rachel, and that is Girl with two R's and No I and Rachel, R-A-E-C-H-E-L. You can follow my podcast on Twitter or Instagram at FKJ underscore Ph.D. You can find me on Facebook at Rachel Anjolee. And you can go to my website, which is Rachelangioly.com. And a side note, I publish academically under a different name, but that is linked on my website.

So it's Rachel Tiffy is what I write under academically. So that's where my academic work is named under. And for alternate other resources, you asked me to prepare that question. and I was just like, oh, my God, this is a huge list. So I'm just going to name a few. And then if you want to get these in writing, I can have that for the listeners. One person I want to highlight first, because I think it ties into a lot of what we talked, especially near the end, is Leslie Feinberg, who is one of my favorite humans, who has passed now. And Leslie is a writer and a communist and wrote Stonebitch Blues, which is a beautiful book about being a gender nonconforming and then transgender.

person and also a working class person and really grapples with some of the very same questions we talked about. Leslie also wrote something called Rainbow Solidarity in Defense of Cuba, which is a really wonderful view, queer view of Cuba, which a lot of people, I think that's where a lot of folks who want to support some of what Castro did, but then get hungry. up on the on the LGBT stuff leslie's uh the rainbow solidarity is is an amazing um resource i think for that uh leslie feinberg also a transgender warrior so really check out leslie feinberg amazing communist and queer uh person um sylvia frederici i mentioned kathy weeks gracely boggs uh these

are some good marxist folks uh gracely boggs is a little bit not again not a purist but i adore adore her work so that would be great um there's a marxist feminist platform called Salt. It's Chicana Marxist Thoughts. You can find them at salt.xmt on Instagram. It's a multimedia platform, and they are wonderful humans. We had them on our podcast a while ago. They're doing amazing work at the intersection of race and gender and class, and it's good stuff. Prison Abolition, Angela Davis, of course, our prison's obsolete. Victoria Law is a great writer. Insight, the organization. Invisible No More by Andrea Ritchie just came out. and I could keep going but I'm going to stop

because I think I just overloaded already so there's a lot of amazing stuff out there Absolutely Rachel you're fucking I'll give you more of a list Yeah you're fucking awesome Thank you so much for coming on You Thank you Brad

I urge people to go check out your podcast again It's feminist Killjoys PhD And you have a comrade here in Nebraska Anytime you need anything We have your back and you have a platform here anytime Awesome thanks so much Absolutely solidarity solidarity

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until you're saying Don't take the holy and humor solitary place Don't take me lastly and humor to a dying thing Don't take me holy You're not found a very face Once you can't

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wings right And God Red and God Red and God Right and God Run and God Run and God Thank you.