from the INCITE! blog: Why Misogynists Make Great Informants

There was a really incredible article in make/shift magazine’s spring 2010 issue about male domination of social justice movements and how the replication of those patriarchal power structures have both directly and indirectly helped the state to topple some of the most influential organizations working toward a just world.  I discovered this article via the INCITE! blog and would love to share it with LOVE readers and collective members and, well, every activist on the planet.

The article can be accessed here: http://inciteblog.wordpress.com/2010/07/15/why-misogynists-make-great-informants-how-gender-violence-on-the-left-enables-state-violence-in-radical-movements/

I think the INCITE! blog and its commenters have dissected and discussed much of the same things I would choose to mention, but I just want to emphasize how incredibly relevant and important I find this analysis to be.  My time as an activist has been plagued with struggles against male domination and the oppression of female-identified activists, ostensibly from people who are billing themselves as allies: whether it’s an individual vegan activist who is abusive toward other female activists and partners or an entire organization that has allied itself with this culture’s hatred of women.

I do love this passage, though:

“Maybe if organizers made collective accountability around gender violence a central part of our practices we could neutralize people who are working on behalf of the state to undermine our struggles. I’m not talking about witch hunts; I’m talking about organizing in such a way that we nip a potential [informant] in the bud before he can hurt more people. Informants are hard to spot, but my guess is that where there is smoke there is fire, and someone who creates chaos wherever he goes is either an informant or an irresponsible, unaccountable time bomb who can be unintentionally as effective at undermining social-justice organizing as an informant. Ultimately they both do the work of the state and need to be held accountable.”

It seems so important to get activists and activist organizations to stop thinking of misogyny and abuse of women as something that will resolve itself once we solve the “real” problems.  And for as long as male activists are exploitative of female activists, they are just as bad as the animal abusers, racists, homophobes, and the state against which we are all struggling, together.