Communitarian feminisms – Bodies/territories

Feminisms of our lands: community feminisms, territorial feminisms, popular feminisms and ecofeminisms of the south.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A FEMINIST?

Throughout the history of humanity, women have denounced different forms of discrimination, violence and injustice that we experience simply for being women. According to the author Diana Maffia, recognizing oneself as a feminist means agreeing with three statements:

1. In all societies, women (and people of diversity) are worse off than men. This would be a descriptive principle. That is, one can describe (by showing statistics, for example), the inequality between men and women, the ways in which women’s lives are unfairly affected.
2. This inequality is unfair. It is not fair that in all places in the world, in all societies, in all historical periods, women are worse off than men. This is a prescriptive principle. What does that mean? A prescriptive statement tells us what should be, that is, it values ​​what is right or wrong. That is to say, inequality between men and women is wrong, it is unjust.
3. Something must be done to stop reproducing this unjust order, and to try to change it. This would be a practical principle. A commitment to do something about it, to change the situation of inequality in which women live.

This is not the only definition of Feminism that exists, but it is the definition to which we adhere from the School. There are some who think that we can only talk about feminism when there is collective organization and fight for Human Rights. From the School we share with community feminists that in the territories where we live, women have historically fought for justice and equality before the word Human Rights and Modern States as we know them today were invented.

Thus, for example, Adriana Guzmán (a great figure in community feminism) states that feminism is “the struggle of any woman, anywhere in the world, at any time in history, who fights against the patriarchy that oppresses her” and defines patriarchy as the system that oppresses women, men and nature, which is extractive capitalist. She is part of a movement that recognizes itself as “anti-patriarchal community feminists”, betting on a community of communities, which does not believe in the State as a form of organization of peoples.

Another author, Francesca Gargallo, recovers the words of Julieta Paredes to define feminism: “Any action organized by indigenous women for the benefit of a good life for all women is translated into Spanish as feminism.” Francesca is going to say that speaking about the good life, justice, autonomy and recognition from the Abya Yala feminisms, implies making a critique of the idea of ​​liberation as access to the capitalist economy, and how women from cultures and worldviews different from the Western ones are heard.

BUT… WHERE DOES THE INEQUALITY BETWEEN THE FEMININE AND THE MASCULINE COME FROM? WHAT IS THE PATRIARCHY?

“When we began to find spaces with other female companions, we could recognize these oppressions together with them and from there think about how to transform them. It is a struggle that we do every day.”
(Workshop testimony 31/7)

The women who began to observe these differences and inequalities in relation to men, began to get together to talk, to tell their experiences, and they realized that what each one experienced as something individual, in reality happened to all of them. They realized that it was a collective experience. Some of them began to take note of these inequalities and write about them, and thus some theoretical categories emerged that accompany us and help us to see these inequalities, injustices and violence.

Thus, a French author (Simone de Beauvoir) wrote a book in 1949 called “The Second Sex” where she reflected on what it had meant for her to be a woman. And she had realized that in the world, everything, history, science, medicine, culture, religion, was thought of from the point of view of men. (This was given a name: androcentrism). Men were the point of reference from which reality was viewed: the male is the norm, the correct, the perfect, and women are seen as different, they are compared to men. This is why women would be “the second sex”, the other. In this book, the author describes how masculinity is valued and naturalized as a point of reference, inferiorizing everything associated with women, with the feminine.

Unfortunately, this is not a thing of history, but is still valid to this day. A recent example where we can see androcentrism present is in the studies on the effects of COVID vaccines. None of the studies developed investigated the effects of vaccines on the menstrual cycle. Many women began to notice that they had had changes after being vaccinated and it came to light that no study had asked about this. Or let’s think for example about public bathrooms. It is always the women’s bathrooms that have changing tables for babies. Do only women go out to public places with children and can change them? These facts demonstrate how the world is thought from the male world of view, and assigns roles to women and men, as if they were natural.

Bringing together all these experiences, looking at the biases in all areas of society, led feminists to see that these are not isolated things, but that everything is part of a large system, which was called: patriarchal system or patriarchy.

“We are always given household chores. But also, from the time we were little girls, the care of brothers of the same age. We are not allowed to study even if we want to. Priority is given to boys studying.”
(Workshop testimony 31/7)

Patriarchy is a historical system of sex-political relations that builds gender stereotypes and, on the one hand, hierarchizes everything associated with the masculine and, on the other, despises, minorizes and oppresses everything associated with the feminine. This means that, based on biological sex, society will assign certain values, roles and functions, which are transmitted in education and socialization, making them appear natural. That is, based on sex, it will determine a gender, which is social, but it is made to appear natural. Thus, two stereotypes are established, which appear as opposites. At the same time, they are opposites: if you are one thing, you cannot be the other.

MASCULINE	FEMININE
Objetive	Subjetive
Rational	Emotional
Public	Private
Mind	Body
Strength	Weakness
Active	Passive

Thus, everything that appears on the left side (this list could continue with many more examples) is valued, ranked, is “better” and what appears on the right side is despised, is minorized, is “worse”. Thus, when a person does not respond to that assigned gender stereotype, the patriarchal system will use violence to reinstall that order, so that that norm is respected again. For example, the supposed place of the woman is the private sphere where she takes care of supporting her husband and children; if she circulates for example in the public sphere, some men believe they have the right to use violence to teach her what her place is, the home. If she dares to challenge that established order, the woman must face the consequences of being taken as a “public woman”, by everyone. It is important to clarify that beyond the fact that violence is mostly exercised by men against women, violence is also exercised against men who do not fit the stereotype, and of course against all non-binary identities that do not adopt either one or the other. We often hear how men are mistreated for showing their emotions, or they are told not to cry, that it is for “girls” and they are abused when they do.

This patriarchal order shapes society, educates men mainly as the implementers of this violence to uphold the norm, but it is also present in all institutions, and many times women themselves support this patriarchal system without realizing it.

In this way, women and people of diversity were naming violence, discrimination, inequality, denouncing the patriarchal system, and they were organizing themselves in the various feminisms. And we say this in plural, because there is not just one, although there are common bases and shared ideas. But each movement has been focusing on different issues and developing its own ways of looking at the effects of patriarchy. We have decided for the school to re-recognize the feminisms of our lands, of Our America, the feminisms close to us, of which we are part.

“Since we were girls, as women, we were told that we should not do certain things. For example, express an opinion. We were always excluded from decision-making spaces, without being allowed to raise our voices.”
(Workshop testimony 31/7)

THE FEMINISMS OF OUR LANDS

Community Feminisms

Adriana Guzmán is one of the most recognized representatives of community feminism. We bring her own words to be able to describe it from its emergence: “Community feminism is an organization that we have been building in Bolivia since 2003, with women who met on the street, in the fight against a system that at that time represented the genocide against our people. There, in the street, we realized that not all bodies fight in the same way, nor do we suffer the same oppressions. It was our encounter with the patriarchy and the beginning of the need to recognize ourselves as feminists, because it was necessary as a political position to build a feminism from our bodies, that had this proposal: the community. We do not believe that it is the State that is going to end the system. We believe in self-organization and self-determination, in the ancestral memory of our peoples and bodies. In 2016 we had a break with community feminism due to political violence, as well as physical, psychological and sexual violence, experienced within the organization. A difficult break, a necessary act with consequences. Nothing justifies violence even if it comes from a lesbian companion who identifies herself as a feminist. Since 2016, our name is antipatriarchal community feminism, we fight against the patriarchy that is inside and the one that is outside.”

It was community feminisms that began to talk about body-territory. Of the need to see that the first territory where patriarchy exercises its violence is on our bodies. Therefore, it is impossible to separate them.

“Sometimes we suffer double discrimination. For being a woman, speaking another language, being from indigenous communities.”
(Workshop testimony 31/7)

Territorial feminisms

For many, territorial feminisms and community feminisms are part of the same thing. In this case, we are going to recover the words of Astrid Ulloa on the subject: “Territorial feminisms: I understand from this concept the environmental territorial struggles that are led by indigenous, Afro-descendant and peasant women, and that focus on the defense of the care of the territory, the body and nature, and on the criticism of development processes and extractivism. The proposals are based on a vision of the continuity of life articulated to their territories. They propose as a central axis the defense of life, starting from their practices and relationships between men and women and the relationships of the human with the non-human. In the same way, they propose the defense of daily subsistence activities, food autonomy and their ways of life.”

“We destroy Mother Nature for the economy, but we are affecting everything. The cities have grown in a disorganized way, the rivers are contaminated and that is sad”
(Workshop testimony 10/7)

Ecofeminism of the South

Ecofeminism is a school of thought and a social movement that explores the encounters and possible synergies between environmentalism and feminism. From this dialogue, it aims to share and enhance the conceptual and political richness of both movements, so that the analysis of the problems that each of the movements faces separately gains in depth, complexity and clarity (Puleo, 2011). It is a philosophy and a practice that defends that the Western economic and cultural model has developed in disregard of the material and relational bases that sustain life and that “it was constituted, has been constituted and is maintained through the colonization of women, of “foreign” peoples and their lands, and of nature” (Shiva and Mies, 1997:128). Simplifying the variety of ecofeminist proposals, we could speak of two currents: essentialist ecofeminisms and constructivist ecofeminisms. Essentialist ecofeminisms, also known as classical ecofeminisms, understand that women, due to their ability to give birth, are closer to nature and tend to preserve it. This trend has a gynecocentric and essentialist approach that was strongly rejected by equality feminism, which denied the natural link that had served to legitimize the subordination of women to men. Classical ecofeminists give a higher value to women and the feminine and claim a “wild femininity.” They consider men as culture (understanding culture as the degradation of the noble savage) and women as nature. This ecofeminism presents a strong concern for spirituality and mysticism and defends the idea of ​​recovering primitive matriarchy.

Critical of the essentialism of classical ecofeminism, constructivist ecofeminism emerges. From this approach, it is argued that the close relationship between women and nature is based on a social construction. It is the assignment of roles and functions that originate the sexual division of labor, the distribution of power and property in patriarchal societies, which awaken this special ecological awareness of women. This ecofeminism denounces the subordination of ecology and relationships between people to the economy and its obsession with growth.

“Climate Change affects women a lot. I am an indigenous spiritual healer. The earth is getting tired.”
(Workshop testimony 10/7)

Popular Feminisms

When we talk about popular feminisms, we immediately situate ourselves in Latin America, a region in which daily dialogues are held between social organizations that intersect feminisms, Marxism and criticisms of colonialism to understand and transform certain societies, acute class conflicts, racist subordination and patriarchal domination.

In Argentina, Claudia Korol, a popular feminist educator, is one of the leading voices within the social movement of popular feminisms. She argues that when we talk about popular feminisms we are referring to groups that are multiplying among women and sexual dissidents, who assume feminism as a way of challenging the multiple oppressions produced by colonial and patriarchal capitalism: feminisms born in popular struggles, indigenous feminisms, peasant feminisms, among others.

These popular feminisms develop in daily practice and their theory arises from these same practices and collective learning, sometimes coming into tension with academic feminisms and institutional feminisms (NGOs, foundations, among others). In any case, although popular feminisms have as a characteristic the rooting to the soils in which they develop, Korol highlights that they often march in the same direction as other currents of feminism: “our feminism does not recognize the colonial borders that separate our peoples or our bodies. Identifying the territory in which we grow as rebellious collectives does not imply ignoring the many efforts to change the world that are born in other spaces and territories.”

One of the characteristics of popular feminisms is that, as they are rooted in other social movements that may even reject the idea of ​​feminism, they carry out their own internal struggle to question and transform the relations of oppression within social movements.

PATRIARCHY, CAPITALISM, COLONIALISM AND RACISM: THE BASES OF THE CONFIGURATION OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT TODAY.

“There is patriarchy in many stories of mestizaje, abuse of power. Children are conceived through rape.”
(Testimony workshop 31/7)

The comrades of indigenous and community feminism have denounced that patriarchy existed in our lands, but that it was exacerbated after the conquest of Our America. The arrival of the European conquerors (and the annihilation of our native peoples) came at the same time that capitalism was being established as a way of organizing the entire world. Hand in hand with capitalism came colonialism, racism and the intensification of the original patriarchy. This is what community feminism calls “double patriarchal connection”, or they also distinguish between low-impact original patriarchy and modern patriarchy.

Returning to capitalism, feminisms have pointed out how it needed the patriarchal order from its emergence and for its permanent reproduction. Silvia Federici in her book “Caliban and the Witch” (2015) explains how in Europe the transition from feudalism (with an organization of life more linked to the community and the collective) to extractivist capitalism, needed to exterminate a large number of women, due to their central role as producers and defenders of communal life. The installation of the logic of capital needed to destroy the community, giving rise to uprooted individuals willing to work in exchange for a salary. Of course, none of this happened without violence, death and bloodshed. In order to install the capitalist way of organizing the world, they had to expropriate the powers that communities had to reproduce life, to heal, to live autonomously without depending on a boss/money, etc. The annihilation of women called “witches” (healers, midwives, sorceresses) was then a pedagogical, instructive and disciplinary act for women in particular, but for the entire community in general. It brought with it the destruction of community life, which led to the organization of nuclear families, producing a separation of the public world (politics, employment, money) and the private world (home, production of life, family), with the consequent sexual division of labor. The sexual division of labor meant consolidating the gender stereotypes we have been talking about. Saying that since women are “sensitive and emotional” they naturally have gifts for raising children and dedicating themselves to care and household tasks; while men, being “mental, objective and rational,” perform better in the world of work. Feminist economics has also made visible how the reproduction of capital is carried out at the expense of women, because it ensures that the domestic work that guarantees the life of the worker is carried out by the woman without the employer/capitalist having to pay for it.

“We talk about the strong exclusion that women feel in the workplace: men are always prioritized.”
“We experience oppression in the educational and work spaces, we are discriminated against and we do not receive the same rights as our colleagues.”
(Workshop testimonies 31/7)

The subordination of the logic of life to the logic of (capitalist) accumulation implies the submission of women, nature and everything associated with the feminine to a patriarchal order. This premise has been pointed out by the different currents within eco-feminism, insisting that it is impossible to separate these two aspects. Even so, many contemporary studies that carry out analyses of the effects of extractive regimes and the exploitation of nature, omit the reading of the gender inequalities that these entail. Capitalism needed to appropriate the lands and natural resources that previously belonged to peasant and indigenous communities, exploiting nature for economic benefits, regardless of the environmental consequences. But all this could not have been done without the burning of witches. Capitalism could not have been consolidated without eliminating those who represented the power of the collective, the community, the power to control sexuality and birth, the power of life, pleasure and enjoyment. From Feminist School for Climate Action, we believe that patriarchy, extractive capitalism, racism and colonialism are impossible to separate. They form a matrix of permanent oppression that affects our ways of life and our historical projects as peoples, which subordinate the logic of life to that of accumulation.

Feminist concepts to combat violence against our bodies and our territories. Configuration of capitalism based on the annihilation of women; the expropriation of their ancestral knowledge, land grabbing and colonization; gender violence (in its instrumental and expressive dimensions) circle of violence; extractivism as a constitutive element of capitalism; body-territory (binary man/woman culture/nature).

WE ARE ECO-DEPENDENT AND INTER-DEPENDENT

“A mark of patriarchy on our bodies is that it prevents us from grieving. From crying about our own reality, and that of others.”
(Testimony workshop 31/7)

(Textual section by author Yayo Herrero, from the text: “The challenges of the environmental movement in the face of the global crisis”)

Human beings are one of the many species that inhabit this planet and, like all of them, we obtain what we need to be alive from nature: food, water, shelter, energy, minerals… For this reason, we say that we are radically eco-dependent beings. In reality we are nature. However, Western societies are practically the only ones that establish a radical break between nature and culture; they are the only ones that raise a wall between people and the rest of the living world (Riechmann, 2009). Conceiving the human as opposed to and superior to nature prevents us from understanding the relationships of dependence and leads to destroying or significantly altering the dynamics that regulate and regenerate the living, in an absolutely suicidal tendency. The denunciation of this anthropocentric vision is one of the constituent elements of the environmental movement. The collective imagination is deeply permeated by the logic of domination over nature. Immersed in a worrying ecological illiteracy, a good part of society and many of its institutions continue to ignore the complexity and self-organization of living systems. Most citizens do not feel eco-dependent and believe that science and technology will be able to resolve all the deterioration that they themselves create. The majority profess a technological optimism that makes us believe, uncritically, that something will be invented to replace the materials and energy resources that are rapidly degraded in the economic metabolism, or to reestablish the biocapacity of the planet, which is currently already exceeded. But in addition, we are deeply interdependent beings. From birth to death, people depend physically and emotionally on the time that other people give us. We are beings embodied in bodies that get sick and age. Throughout our lives, but especially at certain moments in the life cycle, people could not survive if it were not for the fact that others – mostly women due to the sexual division of labour imposed by the patriarchy – devote time and energy to caring for our bodies. The invisibility of interdependence, the devaluation of the anthropological centrality of the links and relationships between people and the subordination of emotions to reason are essential features of patriarchal societies (Hernando 2012). And if we do not look at old age, illness or death, we cannot see the centrality of the work of those who take care of the maintenance and care of vulnerable bodies. And if we do not see it, we will continue to bet on societies in which it is increasingly difficult to reproduce and maintain human life, because the well-being of people with their bodies is not the priority (Carrasco, 2009).

—

Accepting that we are eco-dependent and interdependent means understanding that the logic of life, the historical project of links, must be our priority as peoples, that economic growth must have a limit, that capitalism is not a viable way of organizing the world.

Women, LGBTTTIQ+, representation and political participation. Political violence. The dispute of environmental movements for power and the State.

WOMEN AND HUMAN RIGHTS

“There is a lot of taboo in the countryside. Rights are not known, that is not possible. We have to learn our rights, in order to do what we do better”
(Workshop testimony 10/7)

The international and national laws that protect women’s rights today are the product of struggles that have taken a long time and many lives. In 1789, at the time of the French Revolution, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen was drafted. This document is the first to lay the foundations for a universal conception of Human Rights. Three years later, Olympia de Gouges drafted a “Declaration of the Rights of Women and the Citizen.” It must be remembered that at that time, women did not have the right to vote, therefore, they were not citizens. Olympia de Gouges dared to challenge this social order, saying that women also deserved human rights. Her audacity led her to the guillotine, “for the crime of having forgotten the virtues of her sex to meddle in the affairs of the republic.” That is to say: women in the home, in private, and men taking charge of the country, in public. It took French women a struggle of more than 150 years to win the right to vote, to be considered citizens.

Human Rights, as we see, were born with a gender bias. This universal conception of Human Rights included only white men, landowners and fathers of families. Women, slaves, children and poor men were left out of citizenship. Only in 1993, at the “Vienna Conference” did it become clear that women’s rights are also Human Rights.

As we have seen, women began many years ago to denounce these structures of inequality. Societies have not accepted women in the public sphere so easily, and without a doubt, men have had little desire to take charge of the private sphere. And if women do not have access to the public sphere, who fights for our rights? It was not until women participated in politics that some issues came to public debate. But here we are, knowing our rights, to be able to exercise them and continue changing the course of history.

It is important to think that fighting for political participation within the State is one of the possible ways. But we also know that the Modern State is born from the hand of patriarchal, racist and colonial extractive capitalism. So it is also important to know that this State has a limit. In any case, it also happens that it is within the State where recognition of rights and respect for our lives are disputed. So? As Rita Segato says, perhaps one option is to inhabit the world in an “amphibian” way. Demanding that the State respect and guarantee our rights, while we bet on the way of life in which we believe: the community. To invest in the historic project of ties, of peoples, of community life; fighting against the historic project of capital, which annihilates and destroys all forms of life, fundamentally the life of women and nature.

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The cycle of gender violence – Phases

It is generally difficult to understand situations of gender violence and the person who experiences this situation is blamed. Some people wonder: Why doesn’t the abused woman leave the aggressor? Why doesn’t she report it? Why does she withdraw the complaint after reporting it (in most cases)? Gender violence occurs in different phases, which make up the “cycle of violence.” Knowing the cycle allows us to understand what happens in these situations and how we can provide support. Identifying early the different ways in which violence is expressed in relationships is very important because subtle forms of violence generally continue to escalate towards more visible and extreme forms, such as femicide.

(Cycle of violence according to Leonora Walker)

1. TENSION FORMATION PHASE: It is characterized by the progressive increase in tension, conflicts and violent acts. The aggressor displays verbal violence, sudden mood swings, complaints and irritability. The aggressor holds the victim responsible for his changes in behaviour and loss of control. The victim usually tries to justify these acts, and is careful not to do things that make him angry, believing that this way he can avoid conflicts.
2. AGGRESSION PHASE: This is the phase in which violence (physical, psychological, sexual) breaks out, a stage in which it becomes explicit. At this time the victim can recognise the situation, talk about what is happening to him and ask for help. This is the ideal time to accompany
   someone to file a complaint, or start talking about it. It should not surprise us that after the honeymoon stage, the victim regrets it and wants to withdraw the complaint.
3. HONEYMOON OR RECONCILIATION PHASE: At this time, after the episodes of violence, the aggressor usually apologizes. He appears repentant, kind and affectionate, and says that he has become nervous about other things and that is why he has exploded. He promises that it will not happen again. He expresses deep love for the victim, asks for new opportunities and a vote of confidence, because he can change thanks to her. The victim, who longs for change, trusts in this, minimizes the event, and even takes the blame for having upset him.

Below are simple questions about notions of Community Feminism:

1. Community Feminism is “the struggle and political proposal for life of any woman anywhere in the world, at any stage in history who has rebelled against the patriarchy that oppresses her.”
2. From this conception, the objective of community feminism is to seek an alternative to traditional feminism, that is, part of what is called counter-hegemonic feminism, which questions the representation of the feminist subject within feminist theories and praxis within the stereotypes of white, middle-class, heterosexual women.
3. Community feminism seeks to create a feminism that starts from the reality in which the women of Abya Yala live.