Stop Patriarchy

These two young women living in Bayview/Hunter’s Point in San Francisco, through their involvement with Stop Patriarchy!, decided to take a stand against porn and rape culture:



One of them said, “I’m not gonna lie, I’ve watched porn.  And I’m always like, ‘Why does the woman look like she’s dying’??”  After having engaged with Sunsara Taylor’s talk, “From the Expanding Porn Industry to the Aggressive Religious Patriarchs: Stop the War on Women!”, and with a good sense of the relationship between porn as an industry that enslaves women, and the objectifying and dehumanizing impact it has on broader society, they went out after school to spread it around!  Here’s some of what that looked like:









These youth in Hunter’s Point are surrounded at every turn by porn culture that celebrates pimping and has turned the more-accessible-than-ever internet into an avalanche of sexualized torture, the “dog-eat-dog” poison of individualism, and the aggressive campaigns of the anti-abortion movement.  Many of them, upon engaging with Stop Patriarchy!, are acting out against all that in different ways, and some of them will join us this summer on Stop Patriarchy’s Abortion Rights Freedom Ride.  

In this moment, when the system is doing everything it can to make sure this generation thinks that they should just be grateful for what they do have — and that real, radical change is either unnecessary or impossible — there is a real basis for this message of liberation and open condemnation of patriarchy and this whole capitalist system, to puncture the stifling atmosphere of acceptance, and give young people who have a hunch that the way things are right now is UNACCEPTABLE, a vehicle through which to ACT and CHANGE the world!

To find out more about building the Liberation Generation, a new generation of youth ready and willing to STAND UP to END PATRIARCHY, the enslavement and degradation of women, contact: karlee.tiller@gmail.com

“Abortion is an issue that divides this country. This is no accident. How one thinks and feels about abortion flows fundamentally from how one views women.”

CLICK HERE to…

• Read the full statement for Abortion On Demand & Without Apology and sign on!
• Find out more about Stop Patriarchy’s Abortion Rights Freedom Ride across the country to the states where abortion is the most restricted!
• Make a donation to this raucous & righteous summer!
• JOIN US in turning the tide on the state-by-state stranglehold on abortion rights, and this whole war on women!

Forced Motherhood is Female Enslavement.

Fetuses are NOT babies.  Women are NOT incubators.  Abortion is NOT murder.

Abortion on Demand & Without Apology!  For EVERY woman in EVERY state, the reversal of abortion and birth control rights must stop NOW.

Add your voice to oppose suppression at:

OPPOSE SUPPRESSION!

Read more at: 

Criminalization of Anti-Porn Position at “Social Justice” Conference

Stop Patriarchy! went to the 27th annual conference at Hampshire College, hosted by CLPP (Civil Liberties and Public Policy): “From Abortion Rights to Social Justice: Building the Movement for Reproductive Freedom” and on the second day, we were escorted out by police.

How did this happen??

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Hampshire College, Amherst, MA: At CLPP* Conference: 

From Abortion Rights to Social Justice; Building the Movement for Reproductive Freedom

CLPP Called on Police to escort StopPatriarchy.org 

organizers out of conference under threat of arrest.

THIS DECISION MUST BE REVERSED AND REPUDIATED!

On the evening of Saturday, April 13 at the CLPP (Civil Liberties & Public Policy ) conference, several conference attendees approached the StopPatriarchy.org table with our Call to Action in hand to argue against our condemnation of the sex industry and pornography.  We welcomed this argument and got into a lively debate.  However, instead of engaging our critique of the social harm caused by pornography and the selling of women’s bodies for sex (how reducing women to sex objects through porn is the “mirror opposite” of reducing women to breeders through denying abortion), these people took offense to the fact that we dared to make this analysis.  

If they didn’t want to hear this critique, they were free to leave our table.  They chose not to simply do this.  Instead, they went to the CLPP organizers and complained that they felt the conference was no longer a “safe space” for them – merely because a table existed putting forward (and advocating to those who visited it), the position that the sex industry and pornography are horrifically harmful to women and humanity as a whole.

Outrageously, CLPP organizers did not investigate or ask a single organizer from StopPatriarchy.org – or others who had witnessed the debate – about what had happened.  Nor did they attempt to facilitate principled participation and dialogue between people with divergent viewpoints.  Instead, they showed up within minutes with campus police and insisted that StopPatriarchy.org immediately leave the campus under threat of arrest.

In any serious movement against oppression, it is essential that there be the broadest unity among people from different understandings, backgrounds and perspectives.  This requires space for principled and substantive debate over the source of the problems and the necessary solutions.

As a basic and bedrock principle: IT IS ALWAYS WRONG FOR PEOPLE WHO CLAIM TO BE FIGHTERS AGAINST OPPRESSION TO RELY ON THE POLICE AND OTHER FORCES OF THE STATE TO REPRESS AND PHYSICALLY THREATEN OTHERS WHO ARE FIGHTING FOR LIBERATION.

This decision by CLPP organizers must be broadly and widely condemned by conference-goers and others, and it must be reversed by conference organizers.  (Contact us at email below.)  It is an unacceptable precedent for a conference which is looked to as – and which claims to be – a space of inclusivity in the fight against oppression and injustice to render a critique of the sex industry “beyond the pale” and to utilize the repressive organs of the state to enforce this policing. 

Any movement that is serious about ending the enslavement and degradation of women must confront – or at minimum engage and include a critique of – the horrifically violent, degrading, enslaving and oppressive institutions of pornography and the sex industry and their devastating effects on women.  Every person who takes seriously both the liberation of women and the maintaining of basic standards in movements of opposition must take the time to read for themselves the Call to Action from StopPatriarchy.org which CLPP has officially censored.  It is attached. 

StopPatriarchy@gmail.com

StopPatriarchy.org

http://revcom.us/a/298/arkansas-law-biggest-assault-on-right-to-abortion-en.html

Cienna Madrid from The Stranger doesn’t like Stop Patriarchy’s call to protest both a Christian fascist church and a porn shop/strip club on International Women’s Day because she doesn’t get that both are expressions of patriarchy and manifestations of the war on women. She blogged about it here.

 What follows is Stop Patriarchy Seattle’s response:

“It feels like the instigators chose popular targets for controversy and then manufactured their rage, rather than launching a protest with the goal of a specific change.”  

From the instigators of Stop Patriarchy: 

 We’ve been on the streets in Seattle talking to hundreds of women in the past few weeks who not only get what we’re saying, but start pouring out their stories of abuse by repressive religious institutions, by the global sex industry, and by men growing up in a pornified culture. When we say the institutions of Mars Hill and Deja Vu/Showgirls both want women on their knees, just in different ways, it resonates with them. They’ve been waiting for a vehicle that calls it all out and makes the connections and they understand our specific goal: To END the enslavement and degradation of women in all its forms.

We didn’t “manufacture” the fact that Deja Vu/Showgirls sells women and that their shop’s videos sexualize violence against women and treat women’s bodies as things to be used for the sexual pleasure of men. We didn’t manufacture that pornography has become increasingly violent and degrading towards women with popular themes such as gang rape, racist bigotry, and incest (such as “Chester Molest Her” - a film sold at this porn shop) We didn’t manufacture the fact that this is all intertwined with and fuels sex trafficking and a global epidemic of rape. So we ask you, where is YOUR rage? This shit isn’t society becoming more comfortable with sex. This is society becoming saturated with the sexualized degradation of women. As our surprisingly popular sticker says, “If You Can’t Imagine Sex Without Porn, You’re Fucked.”

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—- from President Obama’s inaugural address, January 21, 2013

And finally: how the hell does the “little girl born into the bleakest poverty” only apply to those who are American?  The women of the Tazreen factory fire in Bangladesh don’t count?  The women who make our iphones don’t count?  The women sold into brothels and sex slavery world-wide – a great many of them “servicing” the men of the U.S. military – don’t count?  The millions of girls who make up a huge portion of the ten million children in the Third World who die unnecessarily each year of preventable disease and malnutrition don’t count?

Jan 26^th, 2013 was a great day in San Francisco for Stop Patriarchy and for the fight to win women’s liberation! We started out the day at a celebration of Roe v. Wade, and went there to let people know about the protest against the “Walk for Life.” We also went to convince those who already knew about it, but weren’t going to come out to protest, that it would make a difference if they were part of directly confronting the anti-woman, anti-abortion movement and send the message to them and to the world that Fetuses are Not Babies, Women are Not Incubators, and ABORTION IS NOT MURDER. That they should not go home, they should not settle for celebration, that they should not be deceived into thinking that abortion rights are safe, and that there is no need to turn the tide on the trajectory that we are on towards abortion being more inaccessible, more restricted than it is already, and/or outright illegal.

Outrageously, when we asked to announce this protest from the stage, the organizers for this event denied us the chance to speak, and many that were in attendance at the celebration didn’t even know about the “Walk for Life.” REALLY?! There are 10’s of thousands of woman-hating christian fascists that want to force women into motherhood by denying them the right to abortion and birth control that are descending in their droves into San Francisco….and you don’t TELL people about it?

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from Alex

Stop Patriarchy! Bay Area started our day on Saturday, January 26, at the Trust Women / Silver Ribbon Campaign’s ”Celebration of Women, Life, and Liberty,” a decisively non-confrontational commemoration of the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

Our purpose was to call on every single person at that celebration to join us in directly CONFRONTING and RESISTING the thousands of anti-abortion activists — not even two miles away — who were mobilizing at that very moment to A) march against the basic right of women to have abortions, and B) rally people together under their patriarchal political agenda to overturn Roe v Wade.  

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We’ve been out on the street as much as the weather will allow – fingers and toes become painful and then numb within half an hour in this subfreezing weather, even with those amazing toe and hand warmers.

Yesterday, after our crew had counter-protested the anti-abortion fanatics at the local Planned Parenthood (shamefully, Planned Parenthood staff came out and insisted that our side stay away – a request we ignored because of how unconscionable it is to allow the Christian fascists to stand unopposed!), we went out to a college campus. We were decked out in bright stickers and signs sticking out of our backpacks which read, “Abortion on Demand and Without Apology!”

The response from the students was mixed but overall very positive. A handful of students were vehemently anti-abortion and refused to stop. But a good number of those who began by saying they were against abortion were quick to add that they understood there are sometimes circumstances that makes it necessary. We never found this satisfactory and we never left things at this. “Do you realize that right now it is very difficult for millions of women to get an abortion? 97% of rural counties in this country do not have an abortion provider. Doctors have been killed and women are being shamed. The truth is women who cannot decide for themselves when and whether to have a child have no more freedom than slaves.” This would usually get people really tuned in – most people don’t know any of this. People have the misconception that abortion is somehow widely available and over-used.

After jolting people as to what the reality is, we would go further still. “Fetuses are not babies. They are a subordinate part of a woman’s body. Because of this, abortion is not murder and there is nothing wrong with it. It is a perfectly moral and responsible decision to get an abortion if a woman wants one.” This would open up discussion in a very deep way. No one we have talked to has yet heard anything like this. People asked a lot of questions and we would provide answers. The truth is, not everyone who began inclined against abortion got won over in the course of these conversations, but a lot did! Especially among young people, young men as well as young women.

There were also a great number of people who were incredibly supportive and happy to see us out. They thanked us as they walked by, saying things like, “I am with you!” The notion that is being widely promoted by the anti-abortion forces this week, the notion that this new generation is the “Pro-Life Generation” is a fucking lie. This is one thing we are seeing face to face and close up in every outing we have. But, it is also the case that the anti-abortion elements of this generation are far more mobilized and energized than the greater portion that supports the right to abortion. And, it is clearly the case that – owing not only to the vigorous fight that has been waged by Christian fascists to demonize and restrict abortion over decades, but also to the craven capitulation to this fight and its terms by the official “pro-choice” movement – most people who support the right to abortion still think of it as something that ought to be avoided because on some level it is wrong.

This is why we would spend so much time arguing with people – even those who agreed in the main. And then there was the ongoing challenge of fighting for people to see the need to ACT. To join in a movement that is fighting to end all forms of enslavement and degradation of women. It really is not enough to support the right to abortion, in a society where that right is being taken away if you are not fighting to defend and expand access and to destigmatize abortion and to defend providers, you are allowing this right to disappear.

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