#feminisms — Public Fediverse posts

«Pink Patriarchy Pride Edition - The Perfect Survivor Problem»

https://www.swopbehindbars.org/post/pink-patriarchy-pride-edition-the-perfect-survivor-problem

— SWOP Behind Bars 🇺🇸

> Movements love survivors, at least certain kinds of survivors.

> The inspirational survivor. The grateful survivor.

> The survivor whose trauma can be packaged into a fundraising campaign.

> But the moment survivors become politically inconvenient support has a way of evaporating.

> It's the largely unspoken investment in what might be called the "perfect survivor." It shapes which voices get amplified, which stories get funded, which people get invited to speak.

> It determines who counts as credible, who counts as a liability, and who gets to define what harm looks like.

> The perfect survivor is sympathetic, compliant, non-threatening.

> The narrative confirms existing frameworks rather than challenging them, leaving the audience with the sense that the systems in place are fundamentally working.

> The problem is that real people almost never fit these narratives.

> Many survivors have complicated relationships with the systems that claim to be helping them.

> Some have criminal records accumulated while surviving. Some still engage in sex work by choice or necessity. Some return to underground economies because alternatives they were offered proved unstable.

> Some survivors simply refuse to organize their entire sense of self around victimhood - not because they are in denial, not because they have not processed what happened, but because their identity is larger than their trauma and they decline to perform otherwise for an audience.

> Movements that cannot tolerate complicated survivors will never build liberation for the people most exposed to violence in the first place.

> They build something that looks like liberation, uses the right language, and celebrates the right symbols, but quietly abandons the people who needed it most

> Liberation movements built on conditional acceptance do not dismantle hierarchies. They reproduce them with better branding. The logic of deserving and undeserving, of credible and incredible, of safe to platform and dangerous to elevate, persists.

#SWOPBehindBars #RescueIndustry #Victimhood #Feminisms #AntiTrafficking #Survivors

'Lewis takes up a debate with several Black feminists who have, at various times, questioned the idea of family abolition, whose central argument has been that, very often, Black families have been sites of resistance against racism. Similarly, we could point to many experiences of class struggle in which sectors of working families have played a key role against the attacks of capital: supporting strikes, establishing relations of solidarity between factories and neighborhoods, staging rent strikes, maintaining soup kitchens, creating movements in defense of public services, and many other forms of resistance. The tradition of “women’s commissions” in strikes, for example, has allowed the working class to articulate fighting forces far beyond the workplace.

'To this criticism Lewis responds that, even so, we should not cease working for the abolition of the family, since we would not need its “protective shield” if we managed to build a society without racism. The argument contains a grain of truth, but it stops halfway. It fails to contemplate the role that the family relations within sectors of the working class and oppressed can play in moments of heightened class struggle. On another level, it doesn’t account for the fact that capitalism, while it needs such a “social cell” for its own reproduction, constantly undermines working families’ very conditions of existence. Marx and Engels remarked on this in the mid-19th century, pointing to the length of the working day, the lack of decent housing, and the general precariousness of working class life.'

Josefina L. Martínez : https://www.leftvoice.org/love-and-care-beyond-capitalism/

#property #gender #subordination #dependence #family #debates #debate #abolition #antiCapitalism #Fourier #Lewis #sociology #anthropology #communities #feminism #feminisms #chores #care #queer #rainbowMafia #historyOfIdeas #Marxism #relationships #abolitionism #culturalism #radicalFeminism #materialism #classes #revolution #domesticWork #classStruggle #careWork #historyOfFeminism

«Decriminalise Our Lives!»

International Women's Day: Shared Vision for Feminism.

Statement by ESWA, EuroNPUD, S.A.F.E. and Equinox Initiative.

[I cannot agree more with it. ❤️‍🔥😍 💯]

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‣ Criminalisation should NEVER be the first response to social and healthcare issues!

3 years ago, the 8 March Principles were launched - to provide a new model on how we see justice.

This International Women's Day, we're calling for care over carceralism, on issues including sex work, abortion, harm reduction, racial justice and poverty.

We advocate for a feminism that is rights-based, not punitive.

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‣ Rights not rescue: sex work is work!

Criminalisation, including the criminalisation of clients, is a massive driver of violence against sex workers.

It drives sex work underground, into more danger and stigma, creates barriers to healthcare, housing, and justice.

The 8 March Principles emphasise that consensual sexual activity between adults should never be a matter for the criminal legal system.

Decriminalisation of sex work prioritises the safety, human and labour rights of sex workers.

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‣ Criminalisation has never stopped abortions from happening. It only makes them less safe.

Under the 8 March Principles, reproductive and bodily autonomy are recognised as fundamental human rights.

We demand the removal of all punitive barriers to healthcare. When we treat abortion as a crime, we violate the right to health, privacy, and bodily autonomy. It is time for a legal system that trusts individuals to make decisions about their own bodies without the threat of a prison cell.

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‣ Support, don't punish! Harm reduction saves lives. Criminalisation destroys them.

The “War on Drugs” is a war on all humans. In practice, it disproportionately impacts women, caregivers and communities already marginalised.

The 8 March Principles advocate for a shift from criminalisation to harm reduction. Drug use is a public health issue, not a criminal one. By redirecting resources from policing to community-supported healthcare and safe consumption services, we can transform our societies for the better.

Lived experience is knowledge.

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‣ Carceralism vs. Racial Justice.

The legal system isn't “neutral”.
It disproportionately targets and penalises Black, Brown and racialised communities.

The 8 March Principles remind us that justice cannot be achieved through a system built on systemic bias. We must dismantle the structures of over-policing and invest in safety measures that are led by and for the communities most affected by state violence.

Anti-carceral feminism is essential to realising racial justice.

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‣ The Shared Vision - Our Demands:

• Decriminalise abortion, sex work, drug use, and activities associated with poverty.

• Redirect resources from the carceral state to community-led safety, health, and housing.

• Adopt the 8 March Principles globally to ensure that human rights, not moral policing, guide our legal systems.

• Center lived experience as expertise: policies are stronger when shaped by the people most affected. Amplify community voices, recognise peer support, and treat people with dignity and autonomy.

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‣ Poverty is not a crime!

In many places, being poor or homeless is effectively treated as a criminal offense.
Laws targeting activities like loitering or sleeping in public punish people for simply existing.

The 8 March Principles state that the criminal law should never be used to address social and economic exclusion.
We cannot jail our way out of poverty, and should never criminalise the means by which the poorest survive.

Resources belong in housing and healthcare, not policing and prisons.

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‣ Further reading:

🌐 S.A.F.E. https://supportingabortions.eu

🌐 EuroNPUD: https://euronpud.net
➕ SisterWUD: https://euronpud.net/project/mobilising-women-who-use-drugs-and-combating-gender-based-violence-gbv/

🌐 European Sex Workers' Rights Alliance: https://www.eswalliance.org

🌐 Equinox Initiative for Racial Justice: https://equinox-eu.com

🗄📄 8 March Principles: https://web.archive.org/web/20230311063011/https://icj2.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/8-MARCH-Principles-FINAL-printer-version-1-MARCH-2023.pdf

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A safer world is possible when we stop using the law to punish and start using it to protect.

When we remove the threat of criminalisation, we create space for autonomy, safety, and dignity for all.
It also makes space for well-being and pleasure: safer choices, informed decisions, and self-determination.

‣ LET'S BUILD A FEMINISM THAT LIBERATES EVERYONE, SPECIALLY THE MOST MARGINALISED.

#8M #M8 #IWD #InternationalWomensDay #Europe #ESWA #SAFE #EuroNPUD #EquinoxInitiative #SexWork #HarmReduction #SRHR #Abortion #DrugUse #Decrim #DecrimNow #Decriminalization #Feminisms

«Feminist self-defense workshop» (March advance ^~) 🗓️ Tuesday 3 #March2026 🕡 18:30–21:30 CET 🇧🇪 #Belgium 🏙️ #Schaerbeek 📍 Rue d'Aerschot 208 👥 FEROS 🎯 Reserved for SWers #Event #Workshop #SexWork #SelfDefense #Feminisms #UTSOPI #FEROS

'What distinguishes Wittig's theoretical, political and literary project, and makes it an unavoidable pole of intellectual attraction today, is its radical anti-essentialism. It's the radical anti-essentialism that Wittig applies to the most credible of beliefs, because of the strength of its naturalization: the idea that men and women are naturally complementary "natural groups".'

Sara Garbagnoli explained in 2023: https://www.moniquewittig.com/wp-content/uploads/Sara-in-AOC-english.pdf 🧶

#revolution #reciprocity #radicality #reversibility #materialistFeminism #materialism #beliefs #subjugation #naturalism #essentialism #sexism #heteroSexism #heteroNormativity #feminisms #MoniqueWittig #Wittig #literature #homosexuality #lesbianism #feminism #internationalism #patriarchy #minorityStudies #queer #nonBinary #culturalHistory #lesbians #otherness #linguistics

Heterosexuality is a regime of political oppression 🧶

"Just as racism produces race and not the other way round, sexism produces sex through the relationship of domination that reduces the dominated to things or natural objects."
… said Natacha Chetcuti-Osorovitz summarizing Monique Wittig

#materialism #beliefs #subjugation #radicality #EstelleSays #materialistFeminism #naturalism #appropriation #sexism #heteroSexuality #saphism #heteroNormativity #feminisms #history #MoniqueWittig #Wittig #literature #homosexuality #lesbianism #feminism #internationalism #patriarchy #linguistics #writing #minorityStudies #universalism #queer #constructivism #antagonism #culturalHistory #lesbians