Category Archives: Misogyny

abortion, activism, Anarchist, Autonomy, Capitalism, community, gender, General, Health, Misogyny, Sexism, Transcribed, United States, zine

The Battle for Abortion and Reproductive Autonomy with Bay Ostrach

The Battle for Abortion and Reproductive Autonomy with Bay Ostrach

A pregnant person in blue with a red womb, held up by red tinted small people, red tinted flowers growing behid them (by Marne Grahlman)
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This week on the show, we sat down with Bayla Ostrach, an activist, anarchist, longtime defender, provider of and researcher around issues of reproductive healthcare. We speak about experiences researching and working on the issue in Catalunya, the battle for abortion and reproductive autonomy in the so-called US, the challenges faced by independent clinics against the business model of clinic chains like Planned Parenthood, legal and material pressure and attacks by anti-abortion extremists as well as the cultural and political struggle to defend and expand the ability for people to get safe, affordable, full spectrum and stigma-free abortion and reproductive care more broadly.

Illustration by Marne Grahlman

** Content warning, because we are discussing a stigmatized series of medical procedures adjacent to sexual, social and political violence, listeners should be advised and we’ll put warnings in a few places during the episode. If you are hearing the radio version and want to hear a longer version of this show, and to listen at your own pace, check out our full podcast at our website, to be followed in about a week by a transcript for easy reading & a zine for printing. **

A list of people, works, and resources mentioned by our guest:

Good sites:

Citations for two shared documents co/authored by Bay:

Another document we can’t easily share:

  • Singer, E., (Elyse Ona), and Bayla Ostrach. “The End of Feminist Abortion Counseling? Examining Threats to Women’s Health.” In Transcending Borders, 255–70. Palgrave-MacMillan (Springer imprint), 2017. http://link.springer.com/.

Continue reading The Battle for Abortion and Reproductive Autonomy with Bay Ostrach →

abolition, activism, Anarchist, Antifa, community, Feminism, gender, Misogyny, Sexism, Transcribed, zine

Combating Movement Misogyny

Combating Movement Misogyny

Anti-Fascist Action flag logo shaped like a heart
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This week on the show, William and Scott are presenting an interview with Alice and Dolly, who are two people working toward Disability Justice and Mad Activism (among other things), about the prevalence of movement misogyny in antifascist currents, world building as antifascist and as community defense, ways to rethink harmful patterns in movements, and some things we can do to make each other safer. The show initially got in touch with these guests based on a Twitter thread that they co-authored about these issues. Check out our podcast at our website later today for a longer conversation.

You can follow Alice on Twitter @gothbotAlice, and to read Tema Okun’s work which Dolly was referencing on unmasking and addressing white supremacy culture you can follow the link in our show notes – or – search “White Supremacy Culture” on your search engine and follow the results to the pdf on the dismantlingracism.org page.

Further reading

  • Intentional Peer Support (alternative mental health support structure)
  • adrienne maree brown: http://adriennemareebrown.net/
    • also our recent interview with them: https://thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org/post/2021/02/14/adrienne-maree-brown-on-cancellation-abolition-and-healing/
  • Audre Lorde: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audre_Lorde
  • Tema Okun’s essay “White Supremacy Culture“: https://www.dismantlingracism.org/uploads/4/3/5/7/43579015/okun_-_white_sup_culture.pdf

Continue reading Combating Movement Misogyny →

Author, Colonialism, COVID-19, Feminism, gender, Health, Misogyny, Neurodiversity, Parenting, Prisons, Race, Racism, Sexism, Solitary Confinement

Reclaiming Our Power: Aishah Shahidah Simmons on her work and anthology, Love WITH Accountability

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This week I am very excited to present an interview done with Aishah Shahidah Simmons, who is a writer, community organizer, prison abolitionist, and cultural worker who has done just an immense amount of work over the years to help disrupt and end the patterns of sexual abuse and assault within marginalized communities. In this interview we talk about a lot of things, her background and how she came to be doing the work she’s doing right now, how better to think about concepts like ‘accountability’, what doing this work has been like for her as an out lesbian woman, and about her book “Love WITH Accountability, Digging Up the Roots of Childhood Sexual Abuse” which was published in 2019 from AK Press.

This interview feels very important for me right now, because we are in a time of overturn, tumult, stress, and uncertainty, and I think that in order for us to really be able to knuckle down and go in this for the long haul it’ll be imperative for our radical communities to take solid care of ourselves and of each other. I hope you get as much out of hearing Aishah’s words as I did conducting and editing this interview.

Before we get started, as a content notice: we will be talking about some difficult topics in this interview. I will do my best to repeat this notice at regular intervals, but please do take care and treat yourself kindly (however that looks).

If you are interested in seeing more work from Aishah, visit our blogpost or scroll down to the show notes! We will post all the links in those places.

If you are interested in reading her book, Love WITH Accountability, AK Press is doing a limited time sale on all their books on their website. Visit akpress.org for more info.

To help support community bookstores at this time of greater economic precarity for such places, consider visiting our affiliates Firestorm Books, who are currently doing online sales from their brick and mortar location. More about how to order at firestorm.coop!

To keep up with Aishah, for updates on future projects and more:

@lovewithaccountability Instagram

@afrolez on Twitter

Love WITH Accountability FaceBook page

Aishah Shahidah Simmons Cultural Worker FaceBook page

To support our guest, in a time where much if not all of her income is in peril:

PayPal: to Afro Lez Productions

Venmo: @afrolez

Some more ways you can see our guest’s past work:

NO! The Rape Documentary, streaming for $1 on her website

Queering Sexual Violence: Radical Voices from within the Anti-Violence Movement book that she is in.

No Name Book Club where Love WITH Accountability was picked as one of the books for March.

https://lovewithaccountability.com

And so many more links on her website!

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Music for this show by:

Philip Glass – Metamorphosis 1 (mixing by William)

Clutchy Hopkins – LAUGHING JOCKEY – Story Teller 2012

activism, Anarchist, Capitalism, Colonialism, Colonization, community, Disaster Relief, Environment, Feminism, gender, Gentrification, Indigenous, LGBTQ, Misogyny, Puerto Rico, Queer, Race, Racism

“We either organize or we die, our lives depend on this!” – Reflections on Anarchism in Borikén (Puerto Rico) after Hurricane Maria and #RickyRenuncia

Anarchist Perspectives in Puerto Rico

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This week we have the opportunity to share a talk by Coco (they/them pronouns), who is a queer, Black, Puerto Rican anarchist about the recent 17 days of direct action against no-longer-governor Ricardo Rosselló and organizing as an anarchist after Hurricane Maria.

They talk about some of the lead up to these revolts – about the fascist campaign and term of office of Ricardo Rosselló -, the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, decolonization and fighting US imperialism as it relates to PR, queer people and femmes on the front lines of the protests about Ricardo Rosselló, the active warping of this situation by media outlets, and many many more topics!

Coco originally presented this talk at the Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair 2019 on Saturday August 24th.

I wanna give voice to something that came up in the Q&A after the talk, which was not recorded, in which Coco made space for an open conversation about revolt in Puerto Rico. They asked of the audience what we thought when #RickyRenuncia was trending on Twitter, and people were saying stuff like “we need to look to PR and learn from people there in order to figure out what to do where we’re at”. And a really good conversation wound out about disaster/riot tourism that has always been a problematic current on the far left, especially where the struggles of non-white folks are concerned. It was located in that conversation that the support of people interfacing with struggle that isn’t theirs is very conditional and fragile, and it was stated by participants of the conversation that there needs to be another way of looking at struggle that doesn’t involve an attitude of entertainment style consumption but rather comes from a place of real solidarity and real support.

As Coco stated, the media has really been messing with the narrative of what has been going on in PR, painting it either as super pacifist or like people are “out of control hooligans” or other such nonesense. For better sources of information, you can visit our blog at thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org where we will post links to people and accounts you can follow who are on the ground or have a perspective that isn’t beholden to the larger capitalist media outlets.

Those links are:

https://twitter.com/_DESinformate

https://twitter.com/TodasPR

https://twitter.com/ClaridadPR

https://twitter.com/80grados

Here is an announcement on behalf of the upcoming Queer Conference at UNC Asheville:

“Communities? Will a rainbow flag on a police car protect queer folks from a culture built around (trans)misogyny / misogynoir and sexual assault?

We are constantly reminded that our culture is still built on anti-black, anti-queer violence by the all too frequent murders of black transwomen, the further criminalization of queer sex workers, and the erasure of rural LGBTQ+ identities experiencing the pains of addiction, joblessness, and lack of resources. Today, we are at another fork in the road, where there is nominal acceptance of certain gay and lesbian identities (namely white, educated, middle-class families), while a wide range of experiences of people under the LGBTQ+ umbrella get forgotten. As queerness becomes hip and queer subcultural styles are being bought and sold, we must ask how the culture, lives, and sexuality behind the looks can survive and thrive. With the rise of global fascism, the impending doom of large-scale environmental collapse, and the inevitable next crash of capitalism, can we still envision a queerness that seeks liberation rather than admission to the status quo and benefits of a vastly unequal US society? How can we balance these visions with protecting the precarious lives most threatened by the current sociopolitical landscape?

To submit a proposal, follow the link at https://queercon.wp.unca.edu/

For any questions you can email qsconf@unca.edu”

. … . ..

Music by:

Princess Nokia – Brujas (instrumental loop by William)

Ruby Ibarra – Us off of Circa 91

Calle 13 – Afilando los Cuchillos, or Sharpening the Knives, which is all about the revolts against Ricardo Rosselló.

AK Press, Author, community, Conflict, Environment, gender, harm reduction, Health, Misogyny, Race, Racism, Sexism, Transcribed, zine

On Nurturance Culture w Nora Samaran

On Nurturance Culture w Nora Samaran

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This week, Bursts spoke with Nora Samaran, author of the essay “The Opposite Of Rape Culture Is Nurturance Culture”, which became the seed of her book “Turn This World Inside Out: The Emergence of Nurturance Culture.” This book is recently out from AK Press.

We talk about harm, entitlement as relates to positions of power like masculinity or whiteness in our cultures, the need for connection engrained into our biology and sociality, accountability and healing among other topics.

You can find further reading up at norasamaran.com. You can find a list of suggested further reading by searching “How To Not Re-Injure Survivors.”

Announcements

ACAB/PansyFest Reminder

Next weekend is the Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair (or ACAB) happening in Asheville, NC. Events start on Friday with a welcome table at Firestorm from 1-7pm. Simultaneously, there’ll be presentations on Veganism and non-violent direct action, trans-national and indigenous poetry, anti-racism in Appalacha, Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement and anarchism in Puerto Rico. That night, Pansy Fest begins with a show at Sly Grog Lounge at 7pm. This sparks a weekend of activities from 11am til 2am around the city. If you want to learn more about either event, check out acab2019.noblogs.org and pansycollective.org or give a re-listen to our August 4th episode of The Final Straw. And please come visit our table if you’re in town on Saturday or Sunday and say hi.

Sean Swain’s 50th Bday

We’re lucky enough to include Sean Swain in this week’s broadcast. If you’ve been missing him on your radio emissions, you can find a link to his audio essays up at our website, he produces one every week, find updates on him at Sean Swain.org or now follow him on twitter at @SwainRocks. Please be aware that his 50th birthday is coming up on September 12th, so send him some loving kindness. Also, if you’re in town for ACAB, swing by The Final Straw table on Saturday, August 24th before noon to participate in a birthday surprise for Sean. Shhh, don’t tell him.

Other Notes

There are some updates on the case of anarchist prisoner, Eric King up at his support site, supportericking.org. And stay tuned to our website and podcast stream for some special audios about him. Also, keep an ear out for the August 2019 episode of BADNews in the same places.

Continue reading On Nurturance Culture w Nora Samaran →

Colonialism, community, Feminism, gender, General, LGBTQ, Misogyny, Police, Queer, Race, Racism

Carolina Abortion Fund, Reproductive Justice and Autonomy

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This week we had the opportunity to connect with Ash Williams, who is the Volunteer Coordinator for the Carolina Abortion Fund, and is also one of the architects of the Charlotte Uprising which they’ve been on the show before to talk about. I felt very lucky to get to talk with them again about the work they’ve been doing with Carolina Abortion Fund, but also about abortion in general and about expanding the meaning of reproductive justice work to encompass de-colonial views on care and healthcare work, environmental racism such as is going on in Flint Michigan, climate catastrophe, how this topic fits into a broader scope of reproductive capabilities being stolen from people, and many other aspects.

They also spoke on how we talk about abortion from their own perspective as a Black trans person, and how transmisogyny, the erasure of transfeminine experience, and transphobia can play into how this issue is thought of. They also give suggestions for folks already doing reproductive justice work moving forward to create intentional access for all who need or want that.

To help support this fund, to learn more about them and to donate if you can, you can visit their website https://www.carolinaabortionfund.org/

Shout Your Abortion, this is a consciousness raising project which has a new book out which you can see at their website.

We Testify which is in collaboration with the National Network of Abortion Funds is a project that seeks to normalize abortions by helping folks tell their stories, can be found at we testify dot org

National Network of Abortion Funds, a list of all independent and local abortion funds.

Here is an article on Marshae Jones, who is a woman in Alabama facing felonies for the termination by gunshot wound of her pregnancy. The shooter is not being charged with anything as of the writing of this post. Yellowhammer Fund is doing bail support for Marshae!

For a radio clean version of this show of 58 minutes in length, you can visit our collection on archive.org!

. … . ..

Playlist includes:

Ni Una Menos by Rebeca Lane

Georgina by Chumbawamba

Misogyny, Racism, Self-Defense, Sexism

Black Women’s Defense League on Feminism, Anti-Blackness, and Sexism

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Black Women’s Defense League

This week I spoke with Niecee X of the Dallas Texas based group Black Women’s Defense League, which has been in existence for a bit over 2 years. In this interview we speak about BWDL and the circumstances around its formation, the work it engages in, and the political climate it exists within. We also speak about feminism and misogyny within this context, as well about the status of and tools for addressing anti blackness and sexism in anarchist scenes.

The interview you are about to listen to has been edited down for broadcast, and we will release the longer version for on the podcast feed. On top of that, this is the second of two interviews that we recorded, and in the coming months I am planning to synthesize the two conversations into one long podcast version, which we’ll announce once it is ready for listening.

If you would like to get in touch with Black Women’s Defense league, you can go to http://blackwomensdefenseleague.com, hit them up on Instagram or Facebook by searching their name, or email them at blackwomensdefenseleague@gmail.com

Announcements

For folks in the Pacific Northwest:
The Tilted Scales Collective will be holding workshops called “Fighting Charges, Strengthening Movements.” On Monday, April 10th in Olympia there’ll be 2 workshops, the first at 3:30pm at Evergreen College in Lecture Hall 6 and the second at 6pm at Last Words Books.

In Seattle on Wednesday April 12th at 7pm in the Bannon Science Building at Seattle University, check it out in rm 102.

On the 15th Tilted Scales will be in Eugene, on the 16th in Portland and ending up at the Humboldt Anarchist Bookfaire on Saturday, April 29th in Arcata, CA.

To get the details on these events, check out:

Tilted Scales Collective Launches ‘Fighting Charges, Building Movements’ Tour

For folks in the South and South East of Turtle Island:
Tomorrow, Monday the 10th in Durham, NC, there will be a “No War With Syria Rally” at CCB Plaza, 201 N. Corcoran St at 6pm. Word is that this event is being planned by the World Workers Party, a Stalinist and Russian-apologetic organization that has a knee-jerk reaction to support anyone the U.S. is in tension with as anti-imperialist. So, make up some nice anti-Assad, Anti-US, Anti-Russian, Anti-Nation-state slogans for your signs and engage the organizers. Anti-war should mean ALL warmongering governments and groups, not the populations that suffer the bombs and torture https://www.facebook.com/events/578045858910409/

Friday, April 14th at 9pm in Asheville, the HEX 1 dance party benefit for OurVoice will be taking place at The Mothlight at 701 Haywood Rd in West Asheville. The event will be DJ’d by DJ Lil Meow Meow, DJ Malinalli & DJ Abu Disarray. The beneficiary, OurVoice, is a non-profit rape crisis center in Asheville that offers counselling services, offers many educational workshops around consent and other topics, does outreach to bars around decreasing drug-assisted sexual assaults and does a lot more. More info on the project can be found at http://www.ourvoicenc.org Keep an eye out for future HEX Asheville benefits. https://www.facebook.com/events/172150079956978/

In Louisville, Kentucky, on Friday, April 14th at 10pm there’ll be a benefit for Louisville Anti Racist Action. The show will be held at The Cure, 1481 Shelby St, in Louisville. The bands include Blind Scryer, Boneclaw (Evansville), Satellite Twin & Black Kaspar. Louisville ARA self-describes as “here to help build, defend, educate and create an effective cultural resistance against fascism.” https://www.facebook.com/events/948681725268377/

Saturday, April 15th in Asheville from 1-7pm, local rads will be hosting the Anarchist Field Day community event in the West Asheville Park at 198 Vermont Ave. It’s an all-ages, potluck event that brags kick-ball, face painting, grilling with vegan and gluten-free grill space and food, friend-making and May Day banner-making. You can find them near the baseball diamond in the park and if rain chases folks away, there’s a reschedule date for a week later on April 22nd at the same place and during the same hours.
https://www.facebook.com/events/1860190510916621/

Playlist: http://www.ashevillefm.org/node/19744