A-Infos (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #22-25 - Anarchism and Transfeminism (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Some documents presented at the Federation's last congress last January, 
and published on these pages, addressed the issues raised by the 
transfeminist and queer movements. With these notes, I would like to 
reflect on how anarchism addresses these movements and the theoretical 
and strategic issues they raise. As the Germinal Group of Trieste 
writes: "In recent years, the issues raised by the feminist, 
transfeminist, and queer movements have finally placed patriarchy at the 
center of political and social critique

and the movements' struggles. Patriarchy is one of the main instruments 
of power, oppression, and discipline of the social, political, and 
economic structure that is imposed on us as unique, natural, just, and 
inherent to human existence itself."

For its part, the Turin Anarchist Federation maintains: "Conceiving 
identity, every identity, as a social construction, a shifting boundary 
between inclusion and exclusion, is a theoretical approach that feeds on 
the rupture brought about by feminism and the LGBTQIA+ movements. The 
challenge is multifaceted: a challenge to the (ethical) state, to 
reactive patriarchy, and to capitalism. A challenge that is not mere 
abstraction or philosophical suggestion, but is realized through the 
convergence of struggles, perspectives, and imaginaries capable of 
giving rise to a new perspective. The accumulation of diverse identity 
ruptures, which often coincide with various forms of exclusion, allows 
for a permanent contestation of privilege vis-à-vis hierarchies of 
power." These are some excerpts from the documents presented.

We are faced with mass movements that anarchism cannot ignore, both 
because they aim to destroy social relations of domination that take the 
form of patriarchy and to critique the ideology that derives from it, 
and because these movements attempt to build relationships of solidarity 
and inclusion and to practice direct action and self-organization, 
despite many difficulties and contradictions. But we must obviously not 
assume that transfeminist and queer movements develop spontaneously in a 
libertarian direction, much less that they spontaneously challenge the 
institutions of political domination. As in any other movement, the 
conscious action of anarchist minorities is necessary, organized action 
aimed at giving these movements a revolutionary meaning.

In this regard, the Anarchist Program provides us with simple and clear 
guidelines: the task of libertarian minorities is to ensure that the 
popular masses, or sections of them, such as the movements in question, 
demand, impose, and take for themselves all the improvements and all the 
freedoms they desire; Furthermore, libertarian minorities must support 
all struggles for partial freedoms, convinced that through struggle one 
learns to fight, and that once one begins to savor a little freedom, one 
ends up wanting it all. Anarchism will always be with movements, and 
when we can't get them to demand much, we must at least try to get them 
to demand something: urging them to learn, however little or much they 
want, to want to achieve it themselves, and holding in hatred and 
contempt anyone who is or wants to govern by exploiting their problems 
and goals.

The Anarchist Program therefore provides the analytical and strategic 
tools appropriate for intervention within the movements that are shaking 
up the patriarchal structure of society. However, this Program suffers 
from having been drafted at the end of the 19th century and having 
received only marginal additions in subsequent years. From this 
perspective, the terms used, for example, suffer from the lack of 
contributions made by movements to the critique of language in 
subsequent years. To be clear: this isn't about subjecting our Program 
to pinkwashing, but rather taking a stand, as a Federation, against the 
disciplinary and conservative effects that language also exerts.

Regarding the issue of patriarchy as a structural element of the society 
of domination and the role of transfeminist and queer movements in the 
communist and libertarian transformation of society: neither of these 
topics are explicitly addressed in the Program; however, there are some 
elements that could stimulate further debate on these issues as well.

The Anarchist Program is alien to any assumption of economic determinism 
in the formation of current society. In the Anarchist Program's 
description of the evolution that led to today's society, two elements 
are fundamental: first, the surplus of human production over immediate 
needs, which allows part of society to live off the productive majority; 
the other is the relationship between winners and losers, that is, the 
relationship of domination. This is a basis for developing the 
reflections of today's anarchism, highlighting that the social divisions 
of labor-that is, between manual labor and material labor, between city 
and countryside, and gender-are all relationships of domination. The 
people at opposite ends of these relationships of domination constitute 
the classes, which capitalism gives form to value, but which 
nevertheless precede it. In other words, gender relations are also a 
form of relationships of domination, that is, class relations. Such a 
development, appropriately structured, would have the merit of 
highlighting, as stated in the opening lines of the Program, that poor 
social organization is the cause of most human suffering, of which 
gender issues are one aspect.

It is also very important to highlight how gender issues can only be 
aggravated by any government policy. What distinguishes anarchism from 
other reformist and revolutionary political tendencies is the belief 
that "privilege can only be abolished and freedom and social equality 
firmly and definitively established except by abolishing government-not 
this or that government, but the institution of government itself." This 
concept must be affirmed, but it must also be demonstrated with respect 
to every issue raised by mass movements, and therefore also with respect 
to transfeminist and queer movements, to prevent it from being exploited 
by those forces that seek to govern. This issue obviously must be 
addressed in practice within the context of ongoing engagement with 
social reality; however, I believe that a general reflection on the 
anarchist movement is more than timely.

Regarding the role of transfeminist and queer movements in social 
transformation, I believe anarchism must reiterate the impossibility of 
liberating subjectivities within the society of domination. This is not 
a given, but a result of the anarchist critique of society, a concept 
that anarchism has the task of disseminating, a task that only anarchism 
can fulfill. As much as authoritarian societies seek to expand the scope 
of personal rights, this expansion is only temporary. Sooner or later, 
the push for greater freedom and social justice for the masses-whether 
in terms of subjectivities, income, the environment, or war-clash with 
the desire of governments and the privileged classes to expand their own 
dominion and privileges. In this conflict, governments increasingly 
resort to violence, both against the popular masses and against each 
other for reasons of international supremacy. This recourse to violence 
has an immediate, practical effect, but it also has an ideological one, 
revitalizing all those supremacist, macho, and elitist ideologies that 
have accompanied the use of violence.

Any expansion of space for free subjectivity in today's society is 
therefore transitory unless the relationship of domination is eliminated 
at its root, unless the government that guarantees this relationship of 
domination, holding a monopoly on social violence, is abolished. "Not 
this or that government, but the very idea of government."

The forms taken by the exploited classes in the last century to overcome 
capitalism have all failed, either because those attempts were bloodily 
stifled by international reaction, as happened with the Spanish 
Revolution, or because they degenerated and gradually returned to the 
fold of capitalism, as happened in Russia, China, and Cuba.

Anarchism had long foreseen the danger posed by "revolutionary" 
governments, which would ultimately stifle the revolution. But an 
interesting element for our reflection is the essentially economic 
nature of these revolutions, which entrusted the overcoming of 
interpersonal relations of domination to a "higher form." Rigidly 
applying Karl Marx's formula, these governments shared the conviction 
that only the rapid development of productive forces would lead to the 
destruction of bourgeois relations of production and the resulting 
social and cultural superstructure. From this perspective, even the 
resolution of the rudimentary form taken by gender issues in the first 
half of the twentieth century was postponed to the later phase of 
communism; after all, the development of productive forces entails an 
increase in the means of production, but also a growth in the working 
class. Questioning the binarism of gender relations poses a threat to 
the development of productive forces. Thus, reproductive labor, left in 
the back room of "Capital," takes on fundamental importance, and the 
disciplining of bodies and subjectivities, from this perspective, 
represents an essential aspect of social transformation as conceived by 
authoritarian tendencies. In this way, a process begun for collective 
liberation transforms into a new oppression, a new slavery, albeit in 
the name of the New Man. Man, indeed.

I believe that anarchism can make a fundamental contribution to the 
revolutionary maturation of movements. As already mentioned, it's not 
about updating the Anarchist Program, but rather integrating it with 
reflection and practical action that articulates its demands in light of 
the new demands of anarchists' intervention in social struggles.

Tiziano Antonelli

https://umanitanova.org/anarchismo-e-transfemminismo/
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