042: Strike Feminism

The Future Is A Mixtape

What would it mean if our society prioritized social reproduction above production for profit? Our racist, cis-heteropatriarchal, capitalist dystopia is a world turned upside-down—where the essential work that creates & sustains life is assigned to women and subordinated to the making of profit. Instead of aiming to undue this perversion, mainstream feminism of the past decade has prioritized a “Lean In” strategy, advocating “equal opportunity domination” as the ultimate horizon of gender equality. According to this liberal-feminist doctrine, what the world needs is not the abolition of social hierarchy, but simply a more diverse representation to maintain seats of power that already enshrine and expand inequality. Thankfully, this bankrupt approach has been counter-punched by a new wave of feminist strikes emerging in recent years, including ones in Spain, Poland and the #RedForEd strikes in the U.S. that swept across the country in the months after Trump’s election. In the powerful and accessible book Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto, Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, and Nancy Fraser articulate an urgent anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-imperialist, and eco-socialist vision of a feminism informed by the International Women’s Strike Movement. So in this episode, Matt & Jesse celebrate this new, more radical, more intersectional feminist vision for the 21st century—by exploring this indispensable text that is a brief, focused clarification of key issues in our shared emancipatory struggle. While it may seem like an outdated term, “the personal is the political”—a key rallying cry of 60’s Student Movements and Second-Wave Feminists—is a zeitgeist phrase that is ever worthy of being rescued in our Age of Climate Despair. The essential truth of this maxim is increasingly evidenced in women’s lives, and especially for single mothers and women of color who represent the majority of Americans who are laboring for starvation wages, risking their lives during a global pandemic to keep the world working for everyone else that doesn’t look like them. And though the voices and perspectives of women are so often silenced, shunted and brayed by Boyland Domination, we must recognize that the path towards justice and human liberation requires a robust feminist analysis. Because, on the Periodic Table of Injustice, the subjugation of women is the most common element found in the world. Misogyny is everywhere and it damages all of our lives, devaluing and dehumanizg women, trans, and non-binary folks, while unjustly exalting masculinity in a violently enforced tyranny of suffocating gender constructs. We live in a world designed by, and for, the interests of patriarchy, one of the very oldest forms of social hierarchy—an ancient institutional structure whose abolition must first start with the building of The Golden Square. So indeed, this rousing document, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto, offers a forthright proclamation of values, and in so doing, properly identifies all those paper clips stuck to that sick magnet called capitalism. One-by-one, fingers to palm, the authors help us pry off those paper clips, so we can put them back in the bowl of new beginnings.

Comprehensive Show Notes Can Be Found at thefutureisamixtape.com

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