Kate Smurthwaite’s show at Goldsmiths was rescheduled and then canceled at the last minute and rescheduled and canceled at the last minute again – and rescheduled again, for this evening. She was bracing for another last minute cancellation but it didn’t come so she did the show
Ok I really didn’t think people were actually such arseholes as this but: after being banned from performing at Goldsmith’s College, then after much discussion invited back, having the show cancelled twice due to rather suspicious problems identified by the SU, a LOT of hard work from Asher and Shaz and the organising group, tonight we finally did the show. We wanted to do it as a benefit for Refugee Action. We made the tickets free and asked people to donate at the door so the charity would get 100% of the money and no-one on a tight budget would miss out. We fully booked out overnight and I spent a lot of the last couple of days telling people I was sorry there was no more room but we couldn’t risk breaking the room’s fire capacity and giving the SU another excuse to chuck us out. Well it turned out that the tickets had been reserved in bulk by people using spurious email addresses to make a point by then not showing up. So a load of people who wanted to see my show were not able to and a vital charity doing life-saving work missed out on at least several hundred quid, maybe more. I hope you’re really proud you fucking shitbags.
How disgusting is that?
Updating to add: Kate has a fundraising page in case you want to help make up what the fucking shitbags blocked.
We believe in human rights. We believe in fairness and equality. We believe that no one seeking asylum in the UK should be left destitute. Together, we can create a society where people escaping armed conflict, torture and persecution are welcomed, supported and are able to build their own future
Some days Daniela Esquivel Asturias, 21, wakes up feeling feminine and puts on a dress or lipstick. But on others Asturias feels much more masculine and the thought of wearing a skirt induces an overwhelming sense of dysmorphia.
“I would be equally comfortable with a male or female body. My male personality is more outgoing than my female one. It’s like having both male and female energies and some days a mix of both,” Asturias says.
GASP
Oh my god have you ever heard anything so original and fascinating and new ever in your life before? Have you ever encountered a human being who had different moods before??
The student from Costa Rica is gender fluid, and doesn’t identify with one gender, instead fluctuating between feeling more male or female.
Unlike all the rest of us dull plodding not-young people who have always 100% “identified” with one “gender” our whole lives.
It’s hard to explain, Asturias says, before referring to the way society tends to define gender, on a spectrum. “At one end is being male and the other female, and you kind of move between the two, and usually remain in the middle.”
Next up, the Guardian will report on an astounding new trick you can do where you add yeast to flour and make something they’re calling “bread”…
Young people are increasingly challenging conventional gender stereotypes
Let me stop you right there. No they’re not. They may think they are, you may think they are, but they’re not. Much of the time what they’re actually doing is reifying conventional gender stereotypes so that they can boast about being outside them.
This idea that nobody challenged gender stereotypes and rules until a couple of weeks ago is so clueless it’s a scandal.
@LambdaLiterary has withdrawn @AliceDreger’s book from consideration for its nonfiction literary award. The (very strongly) implied message here is that you can’t simultaneously be an advocate for social justice and care about the principles of truth, accuracy, and fairness in argument. It was a message I heard loud and clear after my Zucker/GIC article, and one that will, in the long run, harm all of us greatly. @LambdaLiterary @AliceDreger
He’s right you know. It is absolutely not permitted to try to get at the truth on certain subjects – trans issues in particular, right now – by thinking and inquiring and reading and talking about them in your own way. The guardians of purity make that very explicit.
Singal included this email in his first tweet:
Dear Dr. Dreger,
Lambda Literary, a nonprofit corporation, was founded in 1989 with the express objective of promoting literature and art that increase knowledge, understanding, and acceptance of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. Fundamental to that objective is the belief that LGBTQ lives are affirmed when our stories are written, published, and read.
After reviewing Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science, the organization has concluded the book is inconsistent with its mission of affirming LGBTQ lives. As a result, the decision was made to rescind the nomination for a 2016 Lambda Literary Award in the LGBT Nonfiction category.
Lambda Literary extends its apologies for any inconvenience caused by withdrawal of the nomination and wishes you well in your career endeavors.
Twelve years ago the Lambda Literary Foundation (LLF), which awards prizes to the best in LGBT writing, fiction and non-fiction, nominated the most scurrilous work of pseudo-scientific transphobic trash ever printed, The Man Who Would be Queen, by Professor J. Michael Bailey. I’ve written extensively about this book, as have many of my trans colleagues. The publication of the volume by the Institute of Medicine created a backlash and led to the formation of a coalition of activists which managed to get its views known at a time when we were not being heard. Led by Professor Lynn Conway, this formidable group of advocates not only tarnished the book and its supporters, but also forced the removal of the book from consideration by the LLF and derailed the academic career of Dr. Bailey.
Boast boast boast.
Unfortunately, a form of dementia appeared to have settled on the LLF now in 2016. The current group of judges nominated a book that defends a book that its predecessors had decided was transphobic more than a decade ago.
Today the sycophant in question is Alice Dreger, author of Galileo’s Middle Finger. I critiqued this book when it was first published last spring, yet the judges of the LLF seems not to have read either my column or any of the others published in the same time frame.
The self-importance is almost as staggering as the malice. Why should the LLF have read Beyer’s column? But it gets worse. It gets stomach-turning.
Given the degree of progress made by the trans community in the past decade, this choice of the Dreger book seems all the more spiteful. Or, in the service of not ascribing malice when ignorance or laziness is just as likely, I will accuse the panel of laziness. It is, however, hard to believe that in the context of the Foundation’s recognition of the explosive growth in trans-related literature, that such a dubious text could get past their first line of defense.
It’s a brilliant book. It’s also responsible, sourced, carefully argued – it’s a book by an academic who knows how to write an intellectually respectable book. It’s not “dubious” just because Dana Beyer dislikes it.
However – and here is the good news – institutions, like people, can recognize their mistakes, and communities, like the trans community, can mobilize and persuadethose in error to rectify their mistakes. It can even be done behind the scenes in a professional manner.
Today, the board of Lambda Literary sent out an email to the coalition of trans advocates and allies who had united in opposition to the Dreger nomination:
After thoughtful, serious, and full consideration, Lambda Literary has rescinded the nomination of Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science from the LGBT Nonfiction category of the 2016 Lammys.
The nomination process did not include full vetting of all works to be certain that each work is consistent with the mission of affirming LGBTQ lives.
Lambda Literary will strive to improve the nomination process and work to maintain the highest standards in the awards nominations, recognizing literature that contributes to the preservation and affirmation of LGBTQ culture, and which honors LGBTQ lives.
That is completely disgusting. Beyer’s jeering is even more so:
There will, of course, be a backlash. Alice Dreger, with her long-time supporter at the LLF, Victoria Brownworth, and their allies in the trans-hating radical lesbian community (aka the TERFs), will explode. They’ve had a bad year, with reparative therapy being condemned by everyone from the White House to the Province of Ontario, home of the notorious gender clinic of Dr. Ken Zucker.
There is one important thing to note. While Dreger has every right to write what she wants, and to get it published by finding a publisher that provides no scientific oversight, she has no constitutional right to receive an award.
This isn’t “progressive” in any sense. This is a reactionary mafia, and it’s foul.
I have been, at various times in my life, a rape victim, a legal advocate for domestic violence victims, and a survivor of domestic violence. This “why did she stay” question crops up in virtually every discussion of any man-on-woman violence, and there is one fact sorely lacking from the conversation: “she” did not think like an abuser. It’s so simple, and it doesn’t stop within gender lines, and that’s probably why people don’t see it.
Anyone who has been abused will probably agree on one thing: the abuse doesn’t make sense. We know this is true from an objective standpoint too; abuse isn’t actually a reaction to the other person or their behavior, but is instead something that is internally-generated by the abuser. That’s why saying “It’s not your fault” is more than a nice platitude; it’s actually the reason that no amount of effort on the part of a victim to change will ever be enough to end the abuse: it wasn’t about her in the first place.
The reason abused women stay with their abusers is that they see their abusers as people who love them, and they expect that their abuser is pretty similar to other people in that category. When a person who loves you attacks you, it’s confusing. You don’t just move that person into the “monster” category and leave; you twist yourself in knots trying to figure out what the fuck happened, to pinpoint what exactly went wrong, to identify whatever element made things go so suddenly bad.
People frame this in a way that makes it sound like women are stupid or naive or unprepared, but that’s wrong. The victim is the one who is acting normally; what’s wrong is the situation that’s been created by someone who is sneakily operating on a totally different set of rules. It’s very easy to identify a “bad guy” after the fact and say, “Who would spend time around such a bad guy?” Somehow people forget at the same time that “bad guys” had to earn that reputation at some point, and usually get it by hurting somebody who had no way of knowing.
Now, the dialog around “transgender” issues is dense and confusing and emotional and often downright abusive. Transgender identity politickers cloud the issues on purpose, but feminists can also fail to express ourselves clearly when we are 1) grounded in decades of theory most people have not read and/or 2) feeling defensive due to the endless attempts of anti-feminists to vilify/silence us.
So, first some clarification on my part: for several decades now, feminist theorists have been using the word gender to refer to the social and psychological expectations thrust upon women and men, otherwise referred to as sex stereotypes or sex roles. However, feminists and pro-feminists outside of academic circles may use the word gender to mean “biological category of male or female” (in contrast with the act of sexual intercourse) – and that’s understandable because we need words for all these things. However, to add to the confusion, transgender identity politickers use the term gender or gender identity to mean an innate-but-undefinable inner feeling that overrides and in fact determines biological sex. When discussing gender, always stay alert to the multiple possible definitions of the term, and ask for clarification when needed.
Gender: a socially constructed, oppressive hierarchy
Sperm producer = male. Ova producer = female. This is simple biological classification.
Male = masculine/dominant. Female = feminine/submissive. This is gender, as the word is used by feminist theorists.
Based on the (sexist) notion that sex determines personality and thus should determine social role and status, gender is a social tool to naturalize women’s dependence on men, and thereby ensure men’s access to women’s emotional, sexual, domestic and reproductive labor. It’s about power, not individual expression.
This is why feminists find chatter about “gender identity” so grating and wrongheaded. It’s like talking about “slave identity” or “camp inmate identity.” Gender isn’t a party, it isn’t looking hot in that tiny little dress, it isn’t walking so that your bum is shown off to advantage.
If this isn’t clear from the above, gender is not a binary of equals, it is a hierarchy. For millennia women were the legal property of men. Globally, women are still subject to female genital mutilation, child marriage, bride burning and sex trafficking. Luckier women are merely subject to lifelong discrimination in the family, school, and workplace; sexist medical care; constant street harassment; online misogyny; daily reminders that males are people and females are other; a persistent wage gap; legislative attacks on bodily autonomy; physical intimidation and physical violence – all of which tend to worsen along lines of race/ethnicity and economic class – and all of which is meant to keep us in our (supposed) place.
Gender is a hierarchy, and talking about one’s “hierarchy identity” is fatuous.
Zoskia Beliski at the Globe and Mail talks about the way women’s training in being polite and agreeable can interfere with their ability to stand up for themselves.
I didn’t want to seem frosty and I didn’t want to seem mad.
That was complainant Lucy DeCoutere during her time on the stand last month at the sexual assault trial of former CBC host Jian Ghomeshi, who faces a verdict Thursday. Asked to account for why DeCoutere had stayed at Ghomeshi’s house for an hour after he allegedly slapped and choked her, she explained that she had been brought up to make the people around her happy and comfortable, to “foster kind thoughts” with a “pleasing personality.” She said she’d been raised to be polite to a host – even an allegedly violent one, apparently.
The bar for being acceptably polite is in a different place for women compared to where it is for men. It takes very little in the way of defiance or refusal for us to be called bitches or cunts.
It’s been documented time and again by psychologists and counsellors who work with assault survivors: in reaction to trauma, many women will do things they later regret because they felt somehow compelled to “be nice.” It’s a bit of social conditioning – be deferential, fix problems, avoid conflict at all costs – that keeps women uniquely vulnerable as they recriminate themselves for things that aren’t their fault. Even though no one but rapists are to blame for rape, many women carry their pacifist conditioning over into the aftermath of sexual assault, especially when they know the attacker: Maybe I’m overreacting? Maybe I misinterpreted? Maybe it was me?
And it comes as a surprise to women who react that way.
If the reactions of the three complainants frustrated viewers of the Ghomeshi trial, they are also often a surprise to victims themselves: “As I say this now, it’s outrageous that I stayed and did not leave but that was my reaction,” DeCoutere told the packed Toronto courtroom in February.
“Many victims struggle to explain their own behaviour. We need to remember that until they were assaulted, they probably held all of the same myths about sexual violence as many other people,” says Nina Burrowes, a London-based psychologist who helps victims of sexual abuse.
“When you live your life assuming this will never happen to you or if it does happen, you’ll scream, fight and run away, it can be incredibly confusing when you experience the reality of abuse and find yourself reacting in a very different way.”
I can imagine that so easily – reacting like a wimp or a damn fool and then being confused as hell, since that’s hardly how I like to think of myself. In my head I’m a Woman of Steel but in the real world I’m not so metallic. I’m a great one for thinking “Well I wish I’d handled that differently.”
How to undo the conditioning that compels women to “be nice” at all costs? After all, minimizing doesn’t protect sexual assault survivors from experiencing long-term trauma.
One way? Feminism.
Bystander intervention, Jaclyn Friedman, author and podcaster, says: “We have to stick up for each other. When we see each other doing this kind of thing we need to say, ‘Hey, you know you don’t owe it to that person to be nice.’”
Psychologist Nina Burrowes, says we need to get better at hearing and responding to disclosures of abuse: “It can be massively empowering to help victims understand their own behaviour and their own reactions. Until they do they can think that they are weird, mad, or to blame.”
For Deborah Sinclair, a Toronto psychologist, the answer lies in feminism: “I try to raise my daughter differently and with all the women I come into contact with, I really encourage them to speak up and stand up for themselves. But they’re going against a lot of training. I was raised as a ‘nice Catholic girl,’ too.”
A series of deadly terrorist attacks struck Brussels on Tuesday, with two explosions at the city’s main international airport and a third in a subway station at the heart of the city, near the headquarters complex of the European Union.
At least 11 people were killed at the airport, according to news agencies, and the city’s transit agency said 15 were killed in the subway bombing. More than 130 others were reported wounded. At least one of the two airport explosions was touched off by a suicide bomber, officials said.
“We were fearing terrorist attacks, and that has now happened,” Prime Minister Charles Michel of Belgium said at a news conference, calling the attacks “blind, violent, cowardly.”
On Twitter, he issued an appeal to the population to “avoid all movement,” as the authorities braced for the possibility of additional violence.
Everyone submit, or else.
The attacks, a vivid illustration of the continued threat to Europe, occurred four days after the capture on Friday of Europe’s most wanted man, Salah Abdeslam. He is the sole survivor of the 10 men believed to have been directly involved in the attacks that killed 130 people in and around Paris on Nov. 13.
Allah is hungry. He wants more and more kaffirs to eat.
The attacks on Tuesday put the Belgian capital in a state of virtual lockdown, with the threat level raised to its highest possible level. Frédéric Van Leeuw, the Belgian federal prosecutor, said that border controls had been strengthened and extra police officers mobilized.
All flights to and from Brussels Airport were canceled for the day, and flights were diverted. Subway, tram and bus travel was shut down. Eurostar canceled its trains connecting Brussels with Paris and London. Thalys, which runs high-speed trains linking dozens of cities in Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands, suspended service.
Let’s be honest – Donald Trump is a loser. Count all his failed businesses. See how he kept his father’s empire afloat by cheating people with scams like Trump University and by using strategic corporate bankruptcy (excuse me, bankruptcies) to skip out on debt. Listen to the experts who’ve concluded he’s so bad at business that he might have more money today if he’d put his entire inheritance into an index fund and just left it alone.
Trump seems to know he’s a loser. His embarrassing insecurities are on parade: petty bullying, attacks on women, cheap racism, and flagrant narcissism. But just because Trump is a loser everywhere else doesn’t mean he’ll lose this election. People have been underestimating his campaign for nearly a year – and it’s time to wake up.
People talk about how “this is the most important election” in our lifetime every four years, and it gets stale. But consider what hangs in the balance. Affordable college. Accountability for Wall Street. Healthcare for millions of Americans. The Supreme Court. Big corporations and billionaires paying their fair share of taxes. Expanded Social Security. Investments in infrastructure and medical research and jobs right here in America. The chance to turn our back on the ugliness of hatred, sexism, racism and xenophobia. The chance to be a better people.
More than anyone we’ve seen before come within reach of the presidency, Donald Trump stands ready to tear apart an America that was built on values like decency, community, and concern for our neighbors. Many of history’s worst authoritarians started out as losers – and Trump is a serious threat. The way I see it, it’s our job to make sure he ends this campaign every bit the loser that he started it.
After the primaries last Tuesday a cable news guy tweeted at Hillary Clinton: “Smile. You just had a big night.”
Suffice to say, women – were not amused.
“Said no one to a man, ever” tweeted one.
Another offered: “Women LOVE it when you say this.”
And on it went, until comedian Samantha Bee was prompted to launch the hashtag “Smile for Joe,” thereby prompting a slew of women to post selfies as they make like Grumpy Cat: frowning, grimacing, and scowling.
The cable news guy said predictable “lighten up ladies!” type of thing – so why is this so annoying?
Because even women who don’t happen to be running for the highest office in the land are all too familiar with men telling them — not asking them, telling them — to smile.
Maybe it starts with well-intentioned grandparents when you’re a kid. And then graduates to not-so well-intentioned, unsolicited sidewalk advice when you’re older.
And to vitally necessary phrases like “bitchy resting face” because we all know women’s faces are public property at all times.
This kerfuffle over women and smiling? it’s not new territory, though it IS new for a presidential campaign. Back in 1970, the feminist writer Shulamith Firestone proposed her “dream action” for the women’s liberation movement: she called for “a smile boycott” in which, she wrote, “all women would instantly abandon their ‘pleasing’ smiles — henceforth smiling only when something pleased THEM.”
But it didn’t work, and the orders to smile have not stopped. Global warming will have wiped out all mammalian life before that happens.
So @nonajasmine, why did you delete ur tweet attacking Muslim women challenging gender segregation as “unfeminist”?
It is unfeminist to lecture other women on what they should do and think & I include Muslim women in that
No. Feminism is not endorsing everything any woman says or does or thinks. It never has been. Feminism is all about saying X is better than Y, and that of course includes saying it to women.
A new short film has highlighted how children as young as five years old have already learnt common gender stereotypes and think of certain career opportunities as being more likely to be filled by men.
Kids in a school were asked to draw people in job roles, including firefighters, surgeons and pilots.
“Have a think in your head what this person looks like to you,” one of the teachers asked them.
Out of the 66 pictures drawn by the children, 61 pictures were of men and only five were of women.
Well the women are busy empowering themselves by dancing.
So the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) asked the internet for suggestions for the name of their new ship. Currently in the lead, whupping Endeavour, Henry Worsley, David Attenborough, Falcon, and similar grown-up names, is Boaty McBoatface. I think that would be a fabulous name for a boat – although Hotty McHotterson would also be nice.
The £200 million polar research vessel, which will be operational in 2019, is set to sail the waters of Antarctica and the Arctic carrying a team of 90 scientists and support staff.
In a statement NERC said: “Tonne-for-tonne, the ship – together with NERC’s existing two blue water research ships – will provide the UK with the most advanced floating research fleet in the world and will help put the UK at the forefront of ocean research for years to come.”
NERC was looking for a name to reflect the ship’s prowess in the oceans, symbolising the pioneering work they will undertake.
When thinking of submissions, they advised: “We’re looking for an inspirational name that exemplifies the work it will do.
“The ship could be named after a local historical figure, movement, or landmark – or a famous polar explorer or scientist.”
Ah well if they stipulated then they probably won’t go with Boaty McBoatface, but it was a nice idea.
5. Misogyny, transphobia, racism and biphobia are often present in LGBT+ societies. This is unfortunately more likely to occur when the society is dominated by white cis gay men.
6. The reps system exists to ensure that societies committees can always have a reserved place for groups which disproportionately face oppression within the LGBT+ community.
7. Gay men do not face oppression as gay men within the LGBT+ community and do not need a reserved place on society committees.
Conference Resolves
1. To work with other liberation campaigns to create an intersectional working group on building and maintaining safe(r) spaces, specifically liaising with liberation committees in CMs to provide advice on how safe(r) spaces can be maintained.
2. To loudly and vociferously defend the concept of the safe(r) space and no platforming.
3. To actively support SUs in implementing safe(r) spaces and no platforming policies.
4. To encourage LGBT+ Societies that have a gay men’s rep to drop the position.
Here’s Rebecca Reilly-Cooper at Coventry Skeptics in the Pub last Monday. I’m told it was the best-attended event they’d had in ages, and very well received.
She’s doing a talk at Conway Hall in May but that sold out on the first day.
Surprise! Gaming is a sexist industry that pornifies women. Through a particularly hypocritical post, even for Jezebel, it has come to light that Microsoft hired women in sexualized Catholic schoolgirl outfits to dance at an afterparty hosted by Xbox in San Francisco during last week’s Game Developer Conference.
Welcome to the industry, laydeez.
One woman who attended the party, named Kamina Vincent, a producer at an Australian games studio, told Jezebel that she spoke to one of the “dancers,” who told her “they had been hired to speak with attendees and encourage them to the dance floor.” Vincent correctly pointed out, “Decisions like these reinforce that women are decoration instead of a part of the industry.” You know, just like the video games themselves do, and just like pornography itself does: position women as decorative things for men to look at, use, and abuse, but never to view as full, equal human beings.
Brianna Wu, a video game developer who has been subjected to ongoing harassment by the man-children of Gamergate, told Jezebel:
“The problem is not the women. I am a sex-positive feminist and so are most women in the game industry… They are just trying to make a living. The issue is, this is wildly inappropriate at a professional networking event.”
Indeed. And so with that, we are left to wonder what, exactly, is an appropriate space for women to be paid to sexualize teen girls for the titillation of men? Both Wu and Jezebel, as a whole, are supporters of the sex industry — they advocate to legalize prostitution and treat pornography as something empowered women “choose.”
So they’re trying to have it both ways, are they? Saying it’s cool in general to position women as decorative things for men to look at and fuck but not cool to do that at a tech afterparty? If it’s cool in general why isn’t it cool at a tech afterparty?
Murphy shares some tweets by Brianna Wu saying how great sex work and Playboy are, and how sex-positive and pro-sex work and pro sexual empowerment she is.
The analysis doesn’t fly. As I wrote earlier this month, you can’t have both objectification and liberation. You can’t say that turning women into sexualized objects for male pleasure contributes to inequality and excludes women from participation in traditionally male-dominated spaces (i.e. life) but then say it’s totally acceptable in other spaces and, more generally, in society-at-large. Where is the invisible line drawn?
As Wu’s colleague, Anita Sarkeesian, points out, objectification dehumanizes women — not just some women, but all women. Treating women as things that exist for men normalizes male entitlement, which, in turn, creates rape culture and, more generally, a misogynist society.
That day in the forest was traumatic for Reserve Police Battalion 101. They didn’t like shooting people in the head all day. A few of them asked for and got transfers.
The problem that faced Trapp and his superiors in Lublin,
therefore, was not the ethically and politically grounded oppo-
sition of a few but the broad demoralization shared both by those
who shot to the end and those who had not been able to
continue. It was above all a reaction to the sheer horror of the
killing process itself. If Reserve Police Battalion 101 was to
continue to provide vital manpower for the implementation of
the Final Solution in the Lublin district, the psychological
burden on the men had to be taken into account and alleviated.
In subsequent actions two vital changes were introduced and
henceforth — with some notable exceptions — adhered to. First,
most of the future operations of Reserve Police Battalion 101
involved ghetto clearing and deportation, not outright massacre
on the spot. The policemen were thus relieved of the immediate
horror of the killing process, which (for deportees from the
northern Lublin district) was carried out in the extermination
camp at Treblinka. Second, while deportation was a horrifying
procedure characterized by the terrible coercive violence
needed to drive people onto the death trains as well as the
systematic killing of those who could not be marched to the
trains, these actions were generally undertaken jointly by units
of Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Trawnikis, SS-trained
auxiliaries from Soviet territories, recruited from the POW
camps and usually assigned the very worst parts of the ghetto
clearing and deportation.
Problem solved. The police had to round up the Jews for transport, but they didn’t have to do (all) the killing. They had help with the rounding up.
In fact they still had to do a lot of killing, because anyone who couldn’t march to the train station was shot immediately. But apparently it was enough less to make the difference.
In short, the psychological alleviation
necessary to integrate Reserve Police Battalion 101 into the
killing process was to be achieved through a twofold division of
labor. The bulk of the killing was to be removed to the
extermination camp, and the worst of the on-the-spot "dirty
work" was to be assigned to the Trawnikis. This change would
prove sufficient to allow the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101
to become accustomed to their participation in the Final Solu-
tion. When the time came to kill again, the policemen did not
"go crazy." Instead they became increasingly efficient and
calloused executioners.
Which is pretty horrifying when you think about it. It means if the horrors are at a distance, we don’t care about them. Even if we know all about them, we don’t care about them unless the blood is actually spattering into our faces.
Lifton writes that the doctors in the extermination camps were concerned about one thing: how to dispose of the corpses. There was a huge consignment from Hungary at one point and the crematoria were completely overwhelmed, so the corpses had to be incinerated in trenches outside. How do you do that? It’s a technical problem. That’s what the doctors talked about. They criticized each other for coming up with bad solutions.
Lunch at Zendik is, like much else at the commune, more than it appears to be. Long before the farmers finish scraping their bowls, the group-therapy session starts up. A thin, blond woman in her mid-20s garners attention with an “Ahem, everybody” and tells the table that Helen has something to share. Helen’s a short, stout woman who “realized everything was bullshit,” dropped out of Harvard, and moved to Zendik. (She has since left the commune.)
Helen shares that she has “a date” with a guy at the table named Talon. She plans to get pregnant. Talon drops his fork, then goes back to eating lunch.
Helen’s declaration of intent to get knocked up leads to a drawn-out group analysis of her personality. Is she using pregnancy as an excuse to act out her natural desire to hump random men, which has been repressed by her strict Catholic upbringing? Does she want a child because she’s ready to be a mother, or because she has other emotional needs to fill, such as a feeling that she is not accepted by the group or that she hasn’t found someone to love? After a bowlful of tears, she decides that it’s not time to get pregnant, though the random sex will continue. Talon looks relieved, and the group moves on to the next farmer.
Another session on another day:
“I don’t know,” said a guy near the center of the table. “I think it’s his attitude. His attitude’s just got to change. He brings me down, man.”
I found an empty chair against the wall and pulled it in toward the table, where a friendly-looking Laotian-American guy, Vong, slid over to make room.
I eventually gathered that they were in the middle of the all-too-familiar scene that ends many reality-show episodes. The group was discussing dumping one of its members. The bad vibes didn’t last for long, though; someone demanded a change of subject.
Are you twitching yet? Or is that just me? I have a terrible attitude.
A new woman started to join the commune, one with a long-term girlfriend.
The gentlemen on the farm, when her arrival was discussed, tended to focus on her sexuality. They doubted that she was a “real” lesbian and were convinced they could overcome what they saw as a minor barrier.
She told me how excited she was to be in a place where she could focus on her art. I had been there long enough by then to know that she was in for a rude awakening. Very few of the members do any actual art—there’s no time; everyone’s working—unless you count work as art. The Zendik philosophy, as articulated on its Web site, refers to “Life Artistry,” which “takes the rigors of Art—the workmanship, the daring, the objectivity and intensity of focus—and applies them directly to the problems of Life itself, providing a framework of critique and self-awareness that is woefully absent from our common day-to-day reality.…In this way, Life itself becomes the Art, an object of endless fascination, where there are no limits on the potential of imagination and creativity.”
Three months after my first visit to the farm, I got a call from Welsh in Milwaukee. “They kept telling me that I was only a lesbian because of the influence of the Death Culture, and now that I was in a loving family I should embrace my hetero side,” she said. The line didn’t work.
Though she was disturbed by the incessant advances, she said, the real reason she left had more to do with the lack of revolutionary zeal on the farm. “They advertise themselves as revolutionaries, but they’re nothing but a bunch of dropouts…who couldn’t hack it in the real world. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with that, and I wish them the best, but they shouldn’t try to recruit people who are actually interested in making the world a better place.”
And they probably shouldn’t try to push lesbians to turn straight, either.
