Post left green anti civ anarchism space

 Anarchy newspaper (and other GA endeavors) not too long ago made an effort to integrate what could be called an "anarcha-feminist" or anti-patriarchy critique into the overarching anti-civilization perspective. 

This is a good because even giving lip service to patriarchy as a evil pillar of civilization actually goes a long way to opening up the anti-civ perspective 

This makes it feel more inclusive of the experiences and perceptions of women who are living in and resisting the patriarchal control

This integration is an real attempt to address what some feminists (anarchist feminists etc) have defined as a "male dominated" and an "irrelevant to women" green anarchist movement, in a way that does not compromise an anti-civ analysis. 

If we take this to another level, an anti-patriarchy critique is as relevant to men as to women (and relevant to all persons who identify as in between, like a lot of people have done throughout pre-history). 

I touch on this below in my Men’s Liberation part but Anti-patriarchy is not a woman’s issue. Women are not the only ones who suffer under the heavy hand of enforced sex roles, division of labor, emasculation of violence, etc. 

Conversely, the devaluation of the feminine archetype could be seen as a parallel to the mind/body split that have enabled so much of humanity to take a drastic turn in evolution toward domestication and civilization. This "totality" affects women and men in different ways. 

However they could not be compared in terms of quantity. 

Liberal feminism seeks to empower itself at the expense of men which is relate-able to me,  but has drawn criticism from some postfeminists (and I touch on this elsewhere). So nuance is always a good gauge (also see this post)

Feminism has to go beyond things like coercing men into deferring to women at all times, as reparations for thousands of years of patriarchal rule 

In Anarchism, idpol praxis gradually seem more and more simplistic and single-issue, and so Liberal feminism tactics start to feel authoritarian.

It is ok to still be pod about male behaviors that revealed a lifetime of male patriarchy and major advantages but you can eventually decide to interact with sexism in an entirely different way. 

I understand where the rage of some of the radical women in our feminist movements comes from, and I see it as potentially a step toward truer liberation for them. 

As for the male dominance of the Green Anarchism "movement", no doubt there is a dominance in pure numbers of men over women involved actively as self-defined green anarchists. 

This certainly doesn’t mean that the ideas behind a lot of Green Anarchist activity are not shared by many anarchist/radical women, in the same way that those ideas are shared by many people outside the militant anarchist sphere. 

Just like with issues of biotechnology and agriculture's threat to food security, when I write about issues of particular interest to women, like the loss of control over their health, childbirth, sexuality, body image, etc., I do that from an anti-industrial/anti-civ perspective, and I find that people truly agree with that perspective. 

It is good to identify with green anarchy, so that women etc could consider the relevance of anti-civ ideas. Green Anarchism speaks about the "totality" of civilization with a specifically woman's voice. 

Eco-feminism ideas are good at first glance because those ideas most closely resemble the anti- patriarchal, anti-civilization critique. However a lot of that critique is absolutely not compatible with anarchy. (I do support some aspects of Eco-feminism within a Degrowth model as I mention here)

Glorification of Goddess-worshipping cultures as an indication that a matriarchal society is somehow more preferable to patriarchy, is a bit too much. 

This isn't much different from the pro-statist liberal feminist idea that a woman president would ‘save the world’. Some of that is even colonialist (in its co-optation of indigenous wisdom), or "essentialist" in the way that it defines womens' power in terms of their reproductive capacity. 

As an anarchist I would feel alienated from much of ecofeminism, but attracted to some of it also. 

Most self-identified male Green Anarchists don’t dismiss the institution of patriarchy as irrelevant to anarchism or primitivism. 

There has an opening of such an analysis, but that's actually not the same thing. The absence of such an analysis has in actuality been a product of living in a patriarchal world, as are so many things in all our movements, and I believe that many Green Anarchist men have come to recognize this .

This recognition has seemed to happen partly in response to the insistence of radical women, and while I don’t care for a lot of their tactics, 

I am actually really pleased to see that those on the receiving end (which is not all males, by the way) have not turned away from what I believe to be the issue at hand: the lack of an anti-patriarchy perspective. One of my concerns was that the questionable but rationalized, left wing authoritarian, Liberal 2.0 tactics of some women would cause a backlash against feminist critiques, and obscure the inherent feminism in anarchy. 

Some liberal feminists, rightfully or wrongfully don’t care about effects of their justifiable feminist rage, and when it's aimed at certain sectors of the population, some of them still don't. 

But when that feminist rage is targeted at people striving for total liberation, however reactionary they may seem when confronted on their major advantages (aren't most of us?), 

I am pretty sure at this point that if we are serious about what we mean we are trying to break down and recreate, in terms of fighting patriarchy we should do so together. 

This is not to say that "seperatism" as a method of unlearning patriarchy can’t be useful for both men and women. I am a staunch believer in "men against sexism" type groups, and "women's safe spaces". I like the idea of women's' solidarity and "sisterhood" (although there is some power tripping there), and although the notion of "brotherhood" gives me pause , I am not closed to the potential for liberation there. 

Also, I am not talking here about confronting sexist violence, misogyny, or homophobia ~ as these were never issues of contention in terms of having tolerance for such behaviors. I'm virtually zero-compromise when it comes to that. 

As a negative pillar of civilization, the effects of patriarchy likely/probably won’t be dismantled or eradicated from our societies anytime soon. 

As with the lingering effects of domestication, some aspects of religion  agriculture, linear time, and symbolic thought, we are facing a big challenge in identifying, let alone unlearning the ways that patriarchy has alienated women from nature, each other, and their own internal wildness. 

Much has been written and said about the effects of patriarchal rule on women today, and I hope to see that discourse continue. Maybe we are ready to hear about that from men and talk about it with them. It's one thing for men to mention patriarchy in the list of institutions that comprise civilization. 

It's a whole other thing to define what effects that the patriarchy has had on the autonomy and social evolution of men in civilized societies, and to debate how we (men and women) can overcome it together, through our daily interactions, in addition to the ways that we fight the against the state, support one another when the state fights back, and develop collective projects that subvert the institutions that control women

Anti-patriarchy is not an "issue"to take up but instead is a consciousness that should really underline lives in the struggle against the forces of civilization to revive ancient ways, while realizing an entirely new way of being in a post-domesticated world. This photo is an example of patriarchy in action