Wednesday, February 8, 2017

Sexism Inside the Anarchist Black Bloc

The horror.

For the record:
With regards to sexism, many critics of black blocs argue that militant direct action “partakes of a macho mystique and does not encourage women to join in” and that expressing one's anger through destruction “simply [confirms] and [amplifies] aggressive masculinity.” Furthermore, the sexual division of labor is often reproduced, with a woman who took part in a number of black blocs in the 2012 Quebec student strike saying that it was women who often did the shopping “when fabric was needed to make flags and banners.”

[Author Francis]Dupuis-Déri noted that the situation hadn't changed, writing that “more than a decade earlier, during a meeting to prepare a black bloc in Montreal, the men ended up in the backyard of an apartment honing their slingshot skills while the women were in the kitchen making Molotov cocktails.” Thus, masculinity is not only reproduced in many black bloc circles, but also creates a space that rejects the participation of women and devalues their labor and thus their importance to the movement.
Should someone protest for gender equality inside the lefty black bloc? But who?

4 comments:

  1. Lol. Is the labor of making molotov cocktails actually devalued by black bloc, though? Why? Because they're in the kitchen?
    If men and women do different tasks in black bloc why is one task automatically "devalued labor"? Because women? Can't they call it specialization of labor?
    SMH

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  2. What will happen when most of these tasks are taken over by robots?

    Anyway, I'm trying to find that all-girl jackhammer and monster tree service so I can save 21%.

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  3. Hilarious! The downfall of SJWs is that they viciously eat their own. So let's keep these cog-dis stories coming and divide them into nothing!

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  4. The making of Molotov cocktails sounds to me like skilled and dangerous work, worthy of high respect. It appears that the denegration of this job is coming from the women themselves. What that means about their psyches I'm not sure.

    As for fabric shopping, I'm sure the men would have been happy to go, but like as not the women would have complained bitterly about the men's color choices.

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