round-up: 9/20

opportunities, quotations, tweets, etc.

Despy Boutris

Sep 20, 2022

Happy Tuesday, folks!

Here’s what I have for you today:

Housekeeping
Opportunities
What I’m reading
Quotations
Tweets

Housekeeping:

Look at these beautiful necklaces I’m selling. Pls buy one.

shop

Be careful out there:

James S.A. Corey @JamesSACorey

Guys Covid is the number three cause of death right now, behind heart attack and cancer. The big difference is if you're next to someone who has a heart attack or cancer they can't pass them on to you.

I wrote an essay

& it comes out with Copper Nickel this month.

Kealey Boyd @KealeyBoyd

Falling in love with this @coppernickel! Cover by artist #brookedidonato. Writing by @DorseyCraft @literari_ana @itsdbouts @niusteph @mollyebeckwith @MaxineScates @aliner and so many others (at the printers now) #literary #poetry #fiction #coppernickel #essays. .

Opportunities:

Opportunities Open to Submissions From Historically Underrepresented Voices This September

What I’m reading:

Human Resources, Ryann Stevenson (1/5 stars; very underwhelming so far; likely will not finish it)1

Quotations:

Our fear is that the British government's repeated reliance on legal technicality in response to allegations of torture of the worst kind will undermine Britain's reputation and authority as a champion for human rights.

-Desmond Tutu, Graça Machel, and Lakhdar Brahimi

Imagine yourself as a child
watching, says the yogi, which I never
want to remember—
everything I had to watch.

-Ryann Stevenson

I don’t want to say the words of what happened.

-Ryann Stevenson

Also:

I snagged a copy of Berkeley-Oakland Women’s Union’s Principles of Unity for 50 cents last weekend, and I appreciate just how forward-thinking these women were, even back in 1975, when the pamphlet was published.

Here are some quotations I underlined:

We feel that the issues of racism and imperialism are integrally connected to sexism, and try to make our struggle one in common with all oppressed people. We want to work in coalition with other organizations, now and in the future.

We want to develop programs that deal with the family as a part of the capitalist system and with housework and childcare as socially necessary labor.

Socialist feminism connects the frustration and alienation we feel in our personal lives with the exploitation we experience in our work.

Women have been degraded under capitalism; they have been isolated in the home, the “private” sphere, their work discredited, their sexuality bought and sold. Although almost half of the women in this country work outside the home, most often the work they do is service work, duplicating their role in the home—poorly paid, unorganized, and seen as “temporary” and unskilled. In addition, much of the oppression we experience as women under advanced capitalism is internalized in self-doubt and reinforced by the men on whom we are often financially and emotionally dependent.

The necessity of caring for others and being cared for emotionally as well as materially will and should continue to exist under socialism. Socialist feminism stresses restructuring society so that these tasks become social responsibilities of both men and women.

Although we see capitalism, not men, as our primary enemy, men undeniably benefit from our oppression, and the power relationships that exist between men and women will not be altered by men voluntarily agreeing to treat us as equals.

We do not believe that our liberation can ultimately occur separately from that of other oppressed groups, and we will resist all efforts of the capitalists to pit us against others.

By sexism we mean a system that takes a physical characteristic, sex, and builds on it divisions of labor, ability, responsibility, and power which are then called “natural.”

Sexism directly upholds the capitalist system and benefits individual men within it.

Over a century ago, women came together to fight their oppression. We can learn from both what they were able to accomplish and what they failed to do. Third World, immigrant, and working women had needs and priorities different from those of the predominantly upper-class and white feminists of the nineteenth century. Though their movement started with progressive social and political goals, these feminists, fighting for the one goal of suffrage, ended up pursuing their own interests in opposition to the interests of working and Third World women.

We recognize that our liberation and that of other oppressed groups cannot be achieved within the existing system. Therefore, our struggle against sexism necessarily involves us in the struggle against capitalism, racism, imperialism, and all other forms of oppression, and must be waged simultaneously with these struggles if we are to achieve our vision of socialism.

We stand united against the capitalist system, which is based on a division of labor that separates and alienates people, exploits their labor for the profit of a few, and creates false needs without meeting the real needs of the people.