#right collusion

Silencing Women's Speech from Max Dashu, feminist scholar and runner of the Suppressed Histories Archive

LIVE EVENT, Friday, September 15th 2023 at 12 PM PST (3 PM EST)

A Sumerian law called for crushing a woman's mouth with a brick, for "disrespecting" a man. Ancient and medieval conventions ordered women to keep silent. The European witch hunts targeted women; the accusation that a woman could magically harm others from afar, by her evil thoughts, and thus deserved to be hounded, beaten, tortured, killed, or shunned. Coercing speech in the torture trials. Scoring aboon the breath: cutting a woman's face "above the mouth," so drawing her blood would break her spells.

The Witch's bridle / Scold's bridle / branks: headcages with a metal gag, for public humiliation, and also Schandmasken: "shame masks." "Swimming the witch," "ducking the scold" (epithet for an outspoken woman). Women Possessed; exorcism as a rite of male domination. Witch accusations by possessed children in the Salem hunts.

Imprisoned women who wrote or embroidered appeals for justice. Testimony of abused women from mental prisons, workhouses, and enslavement. Acts of speech as madness; inquisitors are replaced by psychiatrists, with their own forms of torture: ice baths, immobilization, insulin shock, electroshock.

Gagging, bridling, or torturing a woman's tongue in the anti-suffragist backlash. Men's words in women's mouths: media elevating select women to voice patriarchal views. Male domination of public discussions. Attacks on female journalists, internet influencers, members of parliament. Physical attacks on women who say No. Chup raho: "Be quiet."

New Left attacks on women's speech, igniting an explosion of female protest in the 2nd Wave. Rightwing backlash gains ground: Limbaugh invents the "feminazi," followed 30 years later by self-styled antifascists calling feminists "Nazis." Resurgence of witch hunt memes: "Burn TERFs," "punch TERFs," along with rape and death threats, directed at female targets, with impunity.

jayne egerton has requested this piece critical of big name gender critical & radfem activists working with the right be shared. it's a follow-up to her first piece

Speaking specially about women who think we have to allying with conservatives “to protect women, girls and children”, I have news for you: right-wingers don't give a single damn about women, girls and children. Some will try to counter this statement with “b-but the left...” and let me say this: as a socialist black radical feminist, I have felt lost many times in left spaces due to the blatantly misogyny/homophobia and also the tokenization of racism that is often assumed as “racism is taken more seriously than misogyny/homophobia” which isn't true in slightest but I have never thought that the right was the solution. Not because right = essentially bad and left = essentially good, if it was true, the blatantly misogyny, homophobia and racism in leftist spaces wouldn't hit so hard as it does, however they have an essential difference: right-wingers want to perpetuate a world full of inequality across class, race, sex, sexuality, nation, etc because they benefit from this social structure. The leftist goal, however is dismantling all the exploitation and oppression.

They're radically different, even though in the practice we see people advocating against things that oppress them, while wanting to keep things that benefit them. This is why I get upset with how brocialists talk passionately about how cruel is to take advantage of the lack of choice of economic vulnerable people but supporting the whole sex trade with the stupidest neoliberal rhetoric, it's because their class analysis is filled with male supremacist lengths and we should defy that, not supporting people who are already powerful and are not only using you feeling lost and hopeless in a fake agreement in positions that aren't even the same. The case is: it isn't socialism that is incompatible with feminism, it's sexism/homophobia/racism that is incompatible with socialism.

The root of conservative opposition to queer, trans and non-binary is purely homophobia and misogyny. Homosexuality is a threat to the male supremacist capitalism, since this system exist to control women's presumed reproductive capacity in order to get more workers who will keep the current system alive to the next generation of the oppressors.

They see trans people and queers as freakers and this treatment is reserved to feminists(even the male-centric ones), lesbians, gay men and bi people too. Why do y'all think conservative men react to our complaining about the misogyny of TRAs with a total mockery “We told you it would happen. It's all because you feminists wanted to destroy the natural order”. The “natural order” means the misogyny and homophobia feminists have been standing against since day one because it's the reason why we oppose to queer theory in the first place. Not because of hatred, not because we're “exclusionary” but because queer theory and practice are antifeminist, since they ignore/dismiss and in some aspects even support the existence of female oppression and fighting it is the solely reason why feminism exist.

And in all this mess, what is often forgotten is how queer theory and the classic right-wing sexism have a lot of more in common than radical feminism will ever be. Radical feminism can also crashes with queer theory in some points (surprise girlies!!!) and it still doesn't mean we all are the same.

even andrea dworkin worked with conservatives. let's just keep infighting and spiral downward, as you wish.