The Middle Ages, a history darker than Monty Python

Two weeks of reading, a regular group session, and a study group session later, and I find it hard to start this because really it's all so overwhelming and takes a while to put all those floating thoughts together. But I will. But also know that a really awesome way to get more on this is listening to an hour long lecture by Silvia Federici, available here.

The grapefruit metaphor
So in the previous session, as our lovely Catalyst leaders were prepping us for the coming readings and session, lovely Clare went into this beautiful extended metaphor about how one of the pieces was so full of sweet and nourishing juicy fruit, but the skin on it was thick as a grapefruit, and we'd really need to sink our teeth in but keep our eye on the prize of that luscious fruit underneath. We all kind of marveled at the metaphor for a while, then someone raised their hand and said, "Do you mean it's inaccessible," and Clare said no, and talked more about the thick peel. We all marveled again for a minute. Someone else raised their hand and said, "Do you mean it's boring?" and Clare returned to the grapefruit story. Then another person rose their hand and said, "Is it Marxist?" and we all cracked up because just that day I had been airing my disconnection with Marxist theory. Clare refused to put any labels on it, told us we should read it and judge it for ourselves. Well, it was inaccessible and marxist, but I guess I can't really call it boring.

Transition from feudalism to capitalism
It was actually the most major piece of this week, and pretty groundbreaking. It was the coming together of feminist theory and anti-capitalist theory. A woman named Silvia Federici did some amazing historical research deep into the dank & dark Middle Ages of Europe, and essentially laid bare how the transition from feudalism to capitalism was predicated on totally destroying women's power. Not to say patriarchy began then (we tried to look up on wikipedia "when did patriarchy begin" and we got the date of 3 BC. wow!), but that our economic system was (and therefore) totally built on it, gives us more reason to fight capitalism! (like how in the US it was built on racist slavery & theft of native lands)

How did that happen? Well, read the damn book! Or at least the excerpts. Or listen to this lecture. The Book is called "Caliban & the Witch."

Transition to Wage Economy
But I'll share some of the points I came to understand. The most major illumination for me was around the idea of unpaid labor. I know feminists talk about women's unpaid labor all the time, and we try to enumerate it, but I've always had a bit of a hard time visualizing how that work would ever be paid. Mostly cause capitalism is all I know. But under feudalism, no one was paid wages - work was whatever people did to survive - men did some of those things and women did some of those things, and stuff had equal value in terms of survival. As capitalism was imposed, some people - namely, men - were chosen to receive money for their work, and then people's idea of value changed from "this helps me survive" to "this pays me money."
Things changed from a division of labor to a hierarchy of labor.

How did money even come into play? People had been used to surviving off the common forests and natural resources, and paying taxes (in the form of goods mainly), but the feudal lords decided to seal off the commons - via the Enclosures - and privatize them. So then people had to get "jobs" working for the Lords and get paid - and thus the transition to a wage economy. As the forests/lands were privatized, Silvia Federici says that women themselves became the "commons," the natural resources - places to extract what you needed: housework, children, sex - without having to pay for it.

Oh, and the women resisted. We learned a little about the movement of people and groups that were labeled heretics - (and whose visions and goals were strikingly similar to current social justice/anarchist/liberation movements!!! damn, now that's some history to the movements) that really put out an alternative vision to feudalism and certainly capitalism. And many of those movements were lead by women, who were really locked out of the new economy. And what happened to the heretics - burnt at the stake.

Bodies into Machines
Another course of events was the Black Death, which really decimated the population of Europe. As capitalism began, a new vision of a place's wealth developed - and it was calculated by the number laborers available. So as the population died out, there was a desperation by those with resources to find enough workers to exploit. This is when we see intensification of punishment for things like abortion, birth control, and midwifery - generally women's control of reproduction. The ruling/owning class needed women to be literally producing new workers. And a whole 'nother part about divorcing people from their bodies - that bodies needed to become laboring machines, able to give as much as possible, so religious ideologies spread that made people feel that bodies were disgusting and needed to be controlled. And the joys of the body - dancing, sex, etc - also needed to be judged and squashed - people needed to be working, not fucking all the time! There's a whole lot more to explain about this, but I'm finding it hard to recreate all of the theory and discussion - it really was so dense that article!

Witch Burnings
I'm trying to leading up to the significance of the massive genocide of women via the witchhunts. Take into consideration all the stuff above, then add in a bit about needing to break the solidarity of the new working class - and doing that by pitting the men against the women. The author talked about the rampancy of gang-rape of lower class women, and says that in some towns the rate was as high as half the men of the town having participated in some attack on the women. Then women who were poor, lived outside of the new order being established, or retained knowledge of human bodies (herbalism, etc) were viciously pursued and murdered as witches. I don't know a death toll, but it lays somewhere between 40,000 and 100,000 women killed for these reasons - and that doesn't include the execution of heretics as part of the Great Inquisition, which also targeted women living outside the new economic systems and the ideologies that supported them. That is huge. That is a notable genocide.

A painful thing to look at is that during the witchhunts, there was only one documented case of the men of the town acting together to prevent the wholesale murder of their women.

Precursor to White Supremacy
How does all this relate back to white supremacy?

The story of white supremacy we've been learning is that of capitalist motivation, the fabrication of divisions to keep people poor and exploitable, and the vicious and brutal violence to keep people oppressed. I have known about the unfathomable genocide of native peoples, I have known about the brutal violence against Africans through slavery and lynching, yet I never saw it put together so clearly how women too lived through a similar experience of fatal oppression. I have always approached patriarchy as something real, but not as powerful as racism. This week has helped me to see how it was just as integral to the development of economic injustice - in fact, even a precursor: the foundation of the system. For one thing, people had gotten used to the idea of a hierarchy of labor (as opposed to a division of labor) because of how women's work were devalued. Before Europeans were out robbing and devastating other lands and other peoples to gain their wealth - and in fact, in order to be able to do so - they accumulated wealth by violently stealing it from half of the population and testing out the the theories and methods that they would later use on peoples of other continents.

Contemporizing
The parallels to contemporary situations were astounding - it's crazy that centuries later the game plan is so similar. A huge one for me being the story of Mexico. Think of NAFTA as the modern "Enclosures" - the privatization of communal lands. People being forced into a wage economy - and often into cities. Women becoming the target of violence. A few people talked about their personal connections to Cuidad Juarez - where femicide is rampant and hundreds/thousands of women are subjected to rape/murder - the intraclass violence imposed by capitalism.

As a group, we really listed out a lot of ways we could see this information relating to our modern lives. When I get the notes I'm gonna post that up here, as a separate post.

Challenging Male Supremacy

This weekend, after a weekend of skipped session, I got to not only fight white supremacy (at least in my mind), but fight MALE supremacy (again, in my mind.) Catalyst organized a special workshop designed for the male socialized men in the group, but open to all genders, including li'l ol' me.

The analysis of male supremacy went along the lines of the increasingly clear analysis of white supremacy: male supremacy was invented and enforced as a capitalist strategy - to break apart the solidarity of the working class and consolidate power in fewer hands. I won't get too much into this as we are also studying Patriarchy & Capitalism for next session. These histories were just briefly mentioned in the workshop, article, and radio program (click to access.

The crux of the work on Saturday was helping men to clarify the socialization they have received
recognize the pain inherent in that socialization and primarily the privileges and ways they reproduce that form of oppression. Basic huh?

Male Socialization
Paul Kivel, our fab facilitator who makes a lot of his resources available freely online, started out by doing a dad-son role play which led us to develop "the box." First we looked at all the feelings that any human, including boys, have in certain situations, like being yelled at by your dad - anxiety, frustration, fear, sadness, anger, confusion. Then the next layer of what you're told to be as a "man" - emotionless, physically strong, disconnected and degrading to women, able to do anything, etc - all those things disguising the emotion inside. Then the walls of the box (sexism, homophobia, etc) being what holds together that identity of a man. That stepping outside of those expectations, that box, leads someone to be called a homo or sissy or cunt or anything associated with femininity (and therefore negative). And all the threats of violence which encourage people to stay inside the box.



The Price of Oppressor Status
The next exercise was a series of statements that men were asked to stand if they had experienced. Statements like "I have engaged in exercise because I felt like my body wasn't manly enough," "I have felt that I was unfit to care for children even though I wanted to." "I have not connected with other men because I didn't want to be seen as gay" "I have wanted to blow myself away." It was certainly momentous that almost every man stood up for almost every statement.

I, and the few other women in the session, were struck with grief at watching so many people admit to so many painful, formative experiences in their life. That is the hard part - recognizing at how all these strategies (usually attributable to capitalism) - in their basest form sought to dehumanize EVERYONE - not just the oppressed so they could be made into (wage) slaves, but even the oppressors, so they could carry out the oppression. These systems rely on everyone being indoctrinated out of their humanity, their natural love of others, their natural belief in common good, their natural desire to connect with other people.

Paycheck of Oppressor Status
Paul continued with a similar stand-up-if-this-applies exercise, this time looking at the privileges that men gained by this situation, and how they perpetuate disadvantage or outright violence onto others. Things like "I have hit someone younger than me," "I have gotten jobs because of my connections with other men" (i.e. the good old boys club), "In my family women do more of the housecleaning, cooking, childcare, washing or other caretaking than me or other men do." "I know where Ivcan have access to sex from women for money in the city or region where I live.


People talked a bunch about how the constant social message that were leaders, more intelligent, better equipped, and generally superior, starts to make them believe that.

From there people discussed, and did role plays, on how to be better allies to women (lessons which are applicable to be better allies to anyone in an oppressed group). I don't remember too many notable things from this section, mainly I think because I was really drowsy that day. Or maybe because they were things similar to what I've learned before.

Emotional Spewing onto Women
I thought back upon thoughts on how men's socialization to never show emotions or have deep connections with other men leads the heterosexual ones to believe that they can only open up with women, and thus they confuse emotional healing with romance and sex. Like the phenomenon of men kind of non consensually blabbing out all their pain, loneliness, and confusion on any female friend they get close with - and then often trying to manipulate that into a sexual relationship. It is a despicable sexual strategy. Even when it doesn't go the sexual route it's still another form of unpaid caretaking labor that unfairly falls on women's shoulders.

I very specifically remember coming to this analysis when I was 20 and trying to volunteer in an orphanage in Guatemala. As night would fall, this one guy (not an orphan, a worker there) would come find me and then pretty instantly start spewing all his emotional baggage. It was so clear the way he was trying to draw me into him with his tales of woe and loneliness so that i would make out and presumably have sex with him. It feels pretty annoying in the moment, but it's also angering that the system of patriarchy forms men to feel emotionally isolated and think they need a woman to be able to address their emotions.

Reconnecting with One's Own Humanity
We spoke about that, if we reject the current social paradigm of maleness and gender, what is a better model? Someone shared their dislike of the attempts to simply come up with a better image of maleness - i.e. a REAL man is sensitive, kind, etc... That that only creates a new box that people have to fit in. Paul Kivel laid out a beautiful alternative - that what we're striving for is for men, and all people, including oppressors and oppressed, to be reconnected with their humanity. A humanity that comes before gender, sexuality, race, religion, physical ability, etc. This to me was one of those light bulb popping moments - yeah!

A couple other questions/notes:

• It is endearing to be a daddy's girl, but insulting to be a mama's boy
• Is some amount of violence normal/required in human society?