July has been a busy, thought-thinking month.
Firstly, the long predicted starvation of children in Gaza is killing babies and toddlers (the pictures in this article are heart breaking), children just like mine, and the US is fully complicit in playing along with the State of Israel’s genocidal refusal to let international aid organizations save people’s lives. France has already recognized a Palestinian State, something that seemed impossible only 2 years ago, and even though I don’t think states do a good job of taking care of people, I do hope more states around the world recognize Palestine as one of them so that the stranglehold the State of Israel has over the people of Palestine can be broken forever. And also, fuck the world and every nation in it that pretends like what Israel is doing is in the interest of self-defense and is not mass death, murder, infanticide, and genocide. I have a lot more to say on this topic and might come back to it from specifically a critical perspective on patriarchal misogyny, but not tonight.
Secondly, I presented a lot of the research and writing I did over the last 2 months about the rise and fall of the Great Plains Anarchist Network, and realized how heavily themes of patriarchal misogyny and authoritarian attitudes and behaviors towards anarchist organizing infiltrated every other topic I thought I wanted to write about and share with younger folks carrying on the fight today. While the writing and presenting for that project came and went, the on-going research and reflection have stirred up feelings and ideas that are going to take a lot of time to process and write about, and I am going to try to upset folks I am just meeting who are sharing theoretical resources with me that make me concerned about how cyclical some of these problems have continued to be for over 20 years. Hearing about how we used to use vinegar-soaked bandanas to fend off tear gas and pepper spray did get a rise out of the kids that was worth a chuckle. I have a lot more to write about with this project that is going to overlap heavily with this project, including going public with somethings that are going to upset old friends and possibly new and I am being exceedingly cautious about how I approach this topic. I have more people I need to reach out to ask if they want to talk about any of this before I make the mistake of missing vital perspectives on something that was much bigger than me.
3rdly, July has been hot, and the days are long and the child wakes with dawn and sounds from the street and sometimes the smell of burning…things from the street that do not smell pleasant, but we have to keep the windows open, and so the stress and the lack of sleep and wasps and being social and like and such can really eat up the writing time when you pass out early and during his every nap, and the weekly Mutual Aid Social/Self Therapy thing that you were doing regularly for months hasn’t been happening as regularly as I was used to attending it, so I think I am sitting on a lot more heavier things without talking to people about them than I was a month ago, and that too builds up and makes it harder to write…
…Which is, in all of these excuses and revelations, to say that I needed to be reminded that I write best when I let myself be present in the things that I write and don’t try to pontificate from outside of myself about things that might look like they don’t affect me unless I make it very clear how they do. I think a Fat, Lazy and Good For Nothing (a reference to my old Zine that I might be in the process of trying to bring back) old dude like me can very easily appear to just be some lonely man writing on the internet about topics that don’t appear to have anything to do with me personally, and who has time to read boring shitty takes by people who don’t know what they are talking about?
So moving forward, in future posts, at least for a while, I think I am going to focus more on the personal perspective I have into a lot of this shit that might seem like cis-white bros like me can’t really be thinking about anyway, like how nations half a world a way murder children in my name to reproduce the patriarchal, colonial, genocidal bullshit of the country I live in, or how anyone in the US can think that they don’t know anyone who has ever been abused or have abused (or both) someone else domestically, sexually, or interpersonally within groups of friends, organizations, is probably ignoring very apparent clues, lying to themselves, or allowing themselves to be lied to about how blatantly manipulative and abusive patriarchal misogynistic culture is in the United States, especially in positions of authority and power, which include families, friends and work places, as well as all of the more obvious institutions of authority in our society. This might get awkward moving forward, as the blog might take on some “writing in my diary”-esque elements, but, only halfway through this project, I still have a ton more to write about this topic and why it still feels like I need to be talking a lot more with my friends, family and larger communities around me about recognizing the grasp patriarchal misogynistic thinking has on the way power exists in the world around us.