Radical Brownies: girls of color push social justice, not cookies

boing
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Power structures are merely emergent phenomenon from people’s social interactions. This is how we each create and maintain societies. It might be fashionable to suppose that some people are more powerful than others, but a person or group can only be “better” within a specific domain, or “powered” towards a certain goal. There is really no reason to suppose that there is anything of any absolute applicability involved. It is worth recognizing when groups favor asymmetrical power balance, but it would be destructive to presuppose this to be generally true. How are such perspectives “de facto” if they are based upon nothing more factual than a groups belief in their self-aggrandizement? While it certainly happens, I think it would be irresponsible to indulge such notions.

If we do nothing more than point out power imbalances, while also refusing to accept the reality of egalitarian groups, then all we could do is perpetuate a negative process. To suppose that the problem societies are always somehow more real and more valid seems defeatist to me. When I put to people that power structures are what we all do, that there isn’t anything mystical or impossible about it, and encourage people to drop in as equals - to each other and to existing imbalanced power structures, it is typically professed leftists who are the most hostile to egalitarianism in practice. “But that’s not capitalistic!” “Nobody is doing this now.” “Authoritarians won’t like it!” The argument that many contemporary, exploitive systems have no place for militantly egalitarian living in practice sounds like the most backwards logic conceivable for discouraging people from doing it.

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You can tell yourself you’re outside the system all you want, but second order cybernetics includes the “observer” in the system and there is no “outside” place to stand. Sorry to disappoint you, but you are in the set of “all people.”

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Right. It sucked for you being a depressed trans kid, and it would have sucked MORE to be a depressed trans kid of color (who was poor, with a physical disability, etc.)

Privilege-deniers always seem to be looking UP. “I’m not privileged by virtue of my white maleness, because I’m also lower middle class, and rich white guys have it better!” No, dude, you need to swap out your GENDER and RACE, not your CLASS, to see how GENDER and RACE are functioning.

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Except a set is not a system. Sets are fairly arbitrary. The only set you can reasonably ascribe to me is “something which types in English language”. And not unlike how people can devise any number of sets - exclusive, inclusive, overlapping, whatever - this hardly implies a unified “the system”. If the idea that there can be more than one system is too difficult or contentious, I am not going to bother trying to convince you. Just because I exist within sets and systems does not entitle you unilaterally decide what they are.

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Gender and race are classes. And like most superficial bullshit people get hung up upon - they are arbitrary. By which I mean they are usually not relevant to whatever some people like to assume. The assumption that some people are are somehow more special than others is the problem - the rationalizations of why they assume they are more special don’t matter very much, because there is no factual basis behind it. It could be lemon people versus lime people, whatever. So long as you assume that “power” is something that other people do, you’re going to have problems.

Probably because privilege requires hierarchy, and people often describe hierarchy in such terms. So a person might ask themselves if they give or receive any privileges (yes, they can also be plural) within such a system. But leave it to some pushy ideologue to demand that you are under the thumb of a hierarchy, because they think it’s implicit. In the real world, there are no up or down in 3D, everything goes towards or away from a center when you’re in a gravity well. To require somebody to participate in a hierarchy (these are plural also) is to deny them both their agency and their subjectivity, which would make one an extremely unfortunate ally. I could just as well tell you that you are part of the Catholic Church if I decide it suits my ideology.

If you don’t want to be a bully, try asking people or negotiating with them, instead of telling them what groups they participate with. Then we don’t have these problems.

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Who’s going around saying, “I don’t want to be a bully”?

Surely this popobawa4u is on one big driving trollies mission here. Has anyone else noticed the nearly nonsensical nature of his/her comments, at least in this thread, and a constant refusal to engage in any actually meaningful way?

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IF! It’s a conditional statement. FFS…

I have been trying to engage here, since the topic is meaningful to me. Saying that my input is simply not meaningful seems quite casually dismissive. I wonder if many of the participants here are accustomed to only framing these issues from a certain perspective, or using only the concepts or vocabulary of a particular discipline. I am being sincere and I am mature enough to accept people not agreeing with my opinions. If you can’t make sense of my position, I’m sorry. I try to be as unambiguous as I am able, but I don’t intend to overload the thread with further explanation.

That said, I would prefer that people don’t start comparing their personal misgivings about me instead of replying to my posts. It seems horribly populist and informal.

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Good luck with that.

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All I need to know about the way you think, in one phrase. You think your opinion and your experience is worth more than mine.

People act individual to individual usually, not group to group or any other permutation thereof. If you disregard an individual person’s experience based on who they are, or say an individual person’s experience is not worth as much as yours, you completely lose any weight others might otherwise give your opinion.

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Indeed, it’s not women. It’s women and men, upholding this old system by voting for it.
I don’t care whether you call it “reverse” or not, I just objected to the implied statement that men can never be victims of gender-based discrimination that is entrenched in the system.

So much for my original side note.

My original scepticism about the membership policy of the radical brownies stems from rather different motives.

First, I don’t like consciously defining the membership of a youth group by race or gender (or religion, for that matter). A youth group is always about “more” than the subjects it officially deals with, it’s always a space for friendships to form and to be continued. So if a child wants to bring “a friend” along, I would never want to stand in the way. Sure, pick your target audience. Advertise only to girls of color. But if you tell one of the girls, “no, your friend can’t come along because she’s white / he’s a boy”, then something is wrong.

Okay, but what if we need a safe space? Does that justify excluding based on race or gender? It might. Only I don’t think it’s necessary, and if it’s not necessary, then I’m against discriminating.
If a white boy comes to a meeting and claims that he deserves to be the master of the house, well, tell him he’s wrong. If you’re going to lead a youth group, you’ll probably know how to deal with a nine-year-old boy. In a youth group with kids that age, the authority figures in charge pretty much get to define the social norm. And they define the social norm to be Black Panthers, Brown Berets, Feminism, etc. That is your safe space for girls of color right there. No need for excluding anyone.

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This, absolutely. I reckon that’s why bringing up the Patriarchy sets off arguments. I recognise that a System with those effects exists, but rankle at the name because my lived experience growing up was that it is at least as much a Matriarchy that forces nerdy, studious, “effeminate” boys to conform to the stereotypical masculine role —or in the example I gave above sends its boys to die in its wars— as it is a Patriarchy.

Now there’s likely to be a howl of dismay at that characterisation, because #notallwomen … So maybe instead there is a gender neutral way of expressing the concept?

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By who?

I think you are committing the error of assuming that everyone’s experiences are similar to your own. But seeing how white people are only about 15-20% of the world population* it cannot be that the other 80-85% think that white men are the ‘default form of humanity’.

Check your privilege.

* and by definition, a minority. where is your god now?

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Dude, your imputation of implication is invalid. The discussion was about whether racism can be directed against white people in a white supremacist society and whether sexism can be directed against men in a patriarchal society. If you want to call it “gender-based discrimination” when men suffer from patriarchy (and most feminists would agree that in various ways, sexist patriarchy is bad for men too, even though overall, it benefits them), instead of “sexism,” then we’re on the same side.

Of course it’s not “necessary,” but what if it’s “beneficial”? You seem to know what “safe space” means in such situations. Do you not see the value of such spaces for those who are marginalized?

There’s a lot out there on the value of safe spaces; please read up more on the topic. For example:

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Those would be women encouraging patriarchal norms within a patriarchy. And yes, of course that often happens.

A patriarchy or a matriarchy is a system, a social order. It’s not an individual.

A matriarchy would be a social order run largely by women that provides privileges for women that would not be provided to men (that’s why they’re called privileges). The opposite happens in U.S. and/or Western society, which is why the term patriarchy applies, and matriarchy doesn’t. That’s also why some sort of “gender neutral way of expressing the concept doesn’t work”; that would neuter feminist critique and struggle.

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You, and others, have since elaborated, so, having now understood how you define the terms, I agree with your statements, with one small caveat:
I reserve the right to use different definitions for the various words when I am in a different discussion with different people, depending on the situation. I have different opinions on what terms and definitions are most appropriate for communicating the ideas to people who aren’t yet feminists. And of course, when that other discussion takes place in Austria, I’ll use the German language terms which may or may not be related to the English ones.

And, we’re back on topic:

Thanks, that’s a good summary of arguments I’ve already heard. I like how they contrast “spaces for healing” with “spaces for discussion”.
However, I expect the Radical Brownies to be neither. It’s not a pure discussion space, they are being taught some things. And it’s not a space for healing; those girls (hopefully!) aren’t rape victims. They’ll have experienced sexism and racism, but not to the point of being traumatized by it. Rather, I think it’s about raising awareness (lest they become female “allies” of the patriarchy), and empowering them to fight back, encouraging them to stand up for what’s right.
This does not negate the need for safe spaces, it just lowers the stakes.

I do see the value, but I’m trying to balance two opposing values here (exclusion = bad, safe space = good).
I think my argument boils down to the idea that the “safe” nature of a safe space does not stem from the absence of the privileged; a safe space is safe for a marginalized group when the members of the marginalized group are in power within the safe space. (After alll, you can create an online safe space either by limiting the audience a priori, or by “brutally” moderating the discussion so that a certain range of opinions remains safe and “in power”).
And my experience is that, if you lead a youth group, you are “in power”. You get to define which range of opinions is acceptable. You get to define the identity of the group. And therefore, you can define the otherwise marginalized group as the “safe”, in-power group.
So I came to the conclusion that we can have a safe space without practicing explicit exclusion (though the proud male firstborn heir of a white supremacist patriarch will either learn quickly or be unhappy in the group).

And on the other side of the equation, I think that exclusion is much more undesirable in a youth group than in an online forum. Maybe it’s because I was taught from an early age that “everybody can be a scout” (that’s in Austria. Fuck the BSA), and that’s what I expect from every youth group. The main reason is that I think every youth group, even an expressly political youth group, should be about young people spending time with friends first and about politics second. And I don’t think anyone should be picking their friends according to race and gender.

So I came to the conclusion that we could actually have our cake (safe space) and eat it (non-exclusionary youth group), too.

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I’d argue that racism generally means that a society is structure to give benefits to one race over others - it also defines what we mean when we say race, as it’s not self-evident. We can understand that better by seeing how the notion of race is not stable historically. Who is white is especially a moving target in the US. In order to accrue social, and eventually political capital, groups of immigrants made cases for their inclusion into the category of white and based their claims to be included in the power structure on that. It also helps us to understand how African Americans historically have been left out, because they were seen as being unable to make a claim to whiteness. Prejudice tends to be more individualistic, based on preconceived notions of an individual, based on who they are or seem to be. Because racism helps to structure the power system, it’s prejudice + power.

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This seems to be a problem with leadership in general, which is why I think creating groups without it tends to work better. People working together to create their own safe spaces seems like a better strategy than hoping that someone will be in an advantaged position to make it happen.

It’s not unlike the difference between “power” as a verifiable concept of self-actualization, versus “power” as a belief in controlling other people.

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Doesn’t mean they don’t have very real consequences. Magical thinking is not going to end structural racism. Only an acknowledgement and engagement with the problem will do that. A discussion of the theory and ideology that underpins our social structures will help us to more effectively do that. Saying it’s not my problem doesn’t help. Neutrality only benefits the oppressors.

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We’re talking about kids here. Sometimes, you have to teach them things so that they can use them later in life.

As I said, I co-lead a scout troop myself, and I sincerely believe that we add value by leadership. Sometimes that leadership takes the form of just creating the right conditions for the kids to organize themselves. Sometimes we have to supply ideas, and sometimes we have to set rules and limits, and sometimes we have to tell them what to do.
There would definitely be more bullying and more frequent use of the word “gay” as a catch-all derogative term if we always left them to their own devices. The kids are policing each other on many of those things now, but guess where they got the idea.

But, Leadership comes with responsibility. We often consciously step back and leave the kids to make up their own minds.
And the potential for abusing the power of a youth leader is why I so categorically stated that even political youth groups must not be about the politics first.

(Godwin argument: Even the Hitler Youth spent most of its time singing innocent campfire songs and only a small part of their time on pushing their political agenda, according to my grandparents).

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My point is that racism IS magical thinking in the first place, since it works this way, it helps to recognize it as such.

Agreed!

This is where I have issue with what you are saying. How you decide what “our”, or even “your” social structures are. This seems to exclusively involve description of systems devised by others, rather than specifying our own implementations. If you assume from the outset that you and others are automatically subjects of whoever/whatever system seems like a form of political self-censorship. What incentive or practicality is there in assuming membership within a system which requires our political disenfranchisement? And why even complain if one isn’t willing to do anything differently?

Rather than being implicated in any readymade systems, wouldn’t it be more fair, and just, and practical to actually communicate with people in daily life - to ask and or negotiate with them directly what their political affiliations may be?

Not what I was saying at all. Choosing what your problems are does help. Choosing who you ally yourself with. Being willing to define goals which were not prescribed to you by others. This process is anything but neutral!