Daring to Dream Something Different

Angela Davis, Assata Shakur, and Elaine Brown, each at different points in their experiences organizing with the Black Panther Party (BPP), cited sexism and the exploitation of women (and their organizing labor) in the BPP as one of their primary reasons for either leaving the group (in the cases of Brown and Shakur) or refusing to ever formally join (in Davis’s case). Although women were often expected to make significant personal sacrifices to support the movement, when women found themselves victimized by male comrades there was no support for them or channels to seek redress. Whether it was BPP organizers ignoring the fact that Eldridge Cleaver beat his wife, noted activist Kathleen Cleaver, men coercing women into sex, or just men treating women organizers as subordinated sexual playthings, the BPP and similar organizations tended not to take seriously the corrosive effects of gender violence on liberation struggle. In many ways, Elaine Brown’s autobiography, A Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story, has gone the furthest in laying bare the ugly realities of misogyny in the movement and the various ways in which both men and women reproduced and reinforced male privilege and gender violence in these organizations. Her experience as the only woman to ever lead the BPP did not exempt her from the brutal misogyny of the organization. She recounts being assaulted by various male comrades (including Huey Newton) as well as being beaten and terrorized by Eldridge Cleaver, who threatened to “bury her in Algeria” during a delegation to China. Her biography demonstrates more explicitly than either Davis’s or Shakur’s how the masculinist posturing of the BPP (and by extension many radical organizations at the time) created a culture of violence and misogyny that ultimately proved to be the organization’s undoing.

Why Misogynists Make Great Informants: How Gender Violence on the Left Enables State Violence in Radical Movements « INCITE! Blog (via shoulders)

(via sophiologist)

observe how the men involved in the civil rights movement cared ALL about their racial oppression, but dished out their own mysoginist bullshit at the same time w no qualms. what has changed?

(via baddominicana)

same shit still happens today! except this time it’s more subtle. They would recite feminism theories they learned in the text books or some class, or mention gender here and there as a token of how “conscious” they are as men of color. But when it comes to putting such theories into practice and have some self-reflection and checking their male privilege, both on the organizational and the interpersonal level, they failed to do that. And when they get called out by a womyn of color.

they say shit like “oh! if you know me, you would know i wouldn’t speak about feminism in such a form, so i’m so disappointed that you would attack me!! i value our friendship, so i’m gonna give you an ultimatum instead of trying cast aside my (male) ego and understand you in anyway! oh, btw, a bunch of things and people have been bothering me, so i’m gonna dump all my frustration and use you as an emotional dumping ground, and refuse to use all that feminist theories i supposedly learned in a textbook to understand where you are coming from as a womyn, and how your emotional needs and safety has always been undermined. Because feminism is only useful to make my ‘activist’ resume look good.” (this is based on a real scenario)

GAH! fuck that shit. and what worst is that womyn, like me, have to suffer such emotional abuse to the point where it gets in the way of what i need to do. And it frustrating. it’s exhausting. and i know so many womyn who are exhausted. and it is happening for way too many time. and in the end, it always US who have to be understanding to them, and be emotionally available to them, we’re the one who have to be patient. FUCK THAT SHIT! FUCK THAT SHIT! AND IN THE END, IT’S US YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR THE SHIT THEY NEED TO WORK ON WITH OUR BODY, OUR MIND, OUR WELL-BEING!! FUCK THAT SHIT!!!!

via jhameia 3 months ago link 647 notes