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Title: Queer Social Anarchism Author: Elisha Moon Williams Language: en Topics: anarcho-communism, queer, Social Anarchism, Dual Power, Especifismo Source: https://medium.com/@elisha1542/queer-social-anarchism-ae609c000b9d
The current crises that are happening in the queer community within the
United States are absolutely astounding. It pains me to see such an
acceleration in terms of the threats that our community is facing. When
I published Queers With Guns,[1] I had no idea about the sheer amount of
reactionary violence and bills related to the trans community, but also
the queer community in general, that would happen in the months that
followed. It has also been painfully obvious that the current way that
the LGBT+ community has organized itself within the US empire is not
equipped in any capacity to deter the fascist threat that is on the
rise, something that I had written about in my first essay. Within the
essay itself, I had only given a broad idea as to what we can do outside
of the current liberal order to defend ourselves and our community. It
would be greatly recommended that Queers with Guns be read before
reading this essay, as the ideas that are expressed here are not as
accessible without the context of reading the previous essay. There is
clearly a hunger within our community for a well-defined political
framework from which the queer community can organize itself in a new
direction against the fascist threat, while also building the new world
we wish to create in the here and now. This is exactly what will be
explored further in this essay.
More specifically, I will be laying the groundwork for a Queer Social
Anarchism, as opposed to the more atomized and purely negative queer
anarchisms that have dominated queer anarchist organizing and radical
queer communities for at least 15 years from the time of this essay’s
writing. It is clear that the queer anarchist community needs a new
direction in terms of its theory and practice, and needs to regain what
especifist anarchists call the “social vector” of anarchism that made it
so famous and infamous in the first place. In other words, anarchists
need to get back with the public and the social fabric. In order for
anarchists to be popular again, we need to start building positive
programs and structures that can positively, as well as negatively
combat the current regime that occupies our communities.
I intend to help introduce this lost side of anarchist politics to
people within the queer anarchist community and queer radical spaces in
general with the writing of this essay. This essay’s purpose is not to
explain every minute detail of how a queer social anarchism or social
anarchisms in general work. Its purpose is simply to help juxtapose this
ideology against the previous iterations of queer anarchist
organizations and ideologies within the US, and help make clear a modern
construction of social anarchism that also intersects with the queer
community’s context and fulfills our collective needs at this time. I
will reference sources throughout this work, and at the end of this
essay, that talk more in depth about social anarchism that I highly
recommend looking into.
Before getting into any particular social anarchism, let us start by
very broadly going over the vast, complicated landscape of Queer
Anarchism. This is being done so that we can have a better idea as to
how a Queer Social Anarchism could fit within the broader Queer
Anarchist movement. Most would assume that there would be a subsequent
list of different tendencies within Queer Anarchism in a neat, ordered
list with clear and distinct explanations and definitions. The reality
of how different frameworks of theory and practice interact, intersect,
and contradict one another within the umbrella of Queer Anarchism is
sadly not that simple. The best description I can give is one that
involves broad categories. These broad categories are not necessarily
mutually exclusive, and often intersect in different ways depending on
which Queer Anarchist you read or talk to.
Just like Queer peoples’ lives, ideological beliefs within Queer
Anarchism are very often interconnected, messy, and confusing on the
surface to most people. One should take note that these broad categories
are not an exhaustive list within Queer Anarchist writings or
organizations. These categories are drawn for the sake of simplicity and
clarity for those who are not familiar of this landscape. They come from
the most popular and widespread tendencies within this umbrella as
interpreted by the author of this essay. One should be encouraged to
read the sources within Queer Anarchisms beyond the description laid out
below.
The first major category to be mentioned is Queer Insurrectionary
Anarchism. This is the most popular category within the queer anarchist
movement as a whole. Queer Anarchism would not be where it is today
without the involvement and development of insurrectionary anarchism
within the queer context in the late 2000s to early 2010s.
Insurrectionary Anarchism is an anarchist ideology that is oriented
around the joy of struggle within the present moment, and having
informal horizontal organizations called Affinity Groups independently
collaborating on attacking the current system. These affinity groups are
mostly focused on fostering quality over quantity when it comes to
organizing around certain actions or goals. One of the main reasons for
such affinity groups is that they are formations that do not seek to
perpetuate themselves. Insurrectionary Anarchists have a much greater
emphasis on organization based on goals achieved within the present.
They tend to focus on direct attack against the systems of capitalism
and the state as their primary course of action, seeing this as more
effective than building social organizations, which they think focus too
much on creating popular support for anarchist ideas and projects. As
stated in the essay “Archipelago:”
“We think that archipelagos of affinity groups, independent one from the
other, that can associate according to their shared perspectives and
concrete projects of struggle, constitute the best way to directly pass
to the offensive. This conception offers the biggest autonomy and the
widest field of action possible. In the sphere of insurrectional
projects it is necessary and possible to find ways of informally
organizing that allow the encounter between anarchists and other rebels,
forms of organization not intended to perpetuate themselves, but geared
towards a specific and insurrectional purpose.”[2]
Another major category that is very influential within this network is
Queer Nihilist Anarchism. Nihilist Anarchism is often interconnected
with insurrectionary anarchisms because a lot of their conclusions come
from the same philosophical foundations. Many insurrectionary anarchists
also consider themselves nihilist anarchists, and vice versa. Not all
insurrectionary anarchists are nihilist anarchists, and not all nihilist
anarchists are insurrectionary anarchists. Nihilist anarchism as a
category takes what insurrectionary anarchists promote — organizing
within the present, building organizations that don’t seek to perpetuate
themselves, attacking/negating the current system as the primary goal —
and takes them to their furthest extent. Nihilist anarchists believe
that anything outside of pure negation with the express goal of
destroying the current structure is not enough to truly uproot it. They
believe that any attempt to try and anticipate or prefigure the new
structure would inevitably be influenced by the current structure and
therefore turn into another form of that structure’s oppression.
Social Anarchism is a category of anarchism that is not broadly
understood within the queer context. Social Anarchism as an ideology has
these three words as their foundation – Freedom, Equality and
Solidarity. None of these words are given individual priority over the
others, and are all emphasized together. Social anarchists are not
trying to extend freedom to the greatest extent for the sake of
expanding it. Neither do social anarchists want to extend equality nor
solidarity to the fullest extent for their own sake. Rather, social
anarchists seek to emphasize all three values to their furthest extent
at the same time and build organizations and a future society that
reflects that.
Before undertaking the task of trying to connect social anarchist ideas
to the needs and context of the queer community, we must start with at
least a basic understanding of the kind of anarchism that’s being
discussed. This will outline a very broad overview of what especifist
anarchism is, where it came from, and how it works. This is not an
exhaustive layout by any means, and more clear details can be found
within the sources cited throughout and at the end of this essay.
The basic ideas surrounding what is called “especifismo” (translated to
“specifism” in English) comes from Brazil and Uruguay around the turn of
the 20^(th) century. It is an ideology that places emphasis on what is
called the Specific Anarchist Organization (SAO) and the Popular
Organization. These two concepts work in tandem with each other, taking
the concept of the SAO that has been implemented by social anarchists
for decades and seeks to help integrate them back into the fabric of
social movements, something that previous social anarchists (platformist
anarchists in particular) have been criticized for losing touch of in
the past with their SAOs.
The SAO, to put it simply, is a political body that upholds, shares and
believes in a clear set of anarchist principles laid out within a
charter and in points of agreement as well as having a unity in strategy
and tactics. This is not unique to especifist anarchism by any means,
but what makes this formation different is how this organization is
structured in a reciprocal relationship between the minority anarchist
organization and the broader social movements. The main structure of an
SAO consists of different levels of committed militants and supporters
who participate in actions done by the anarchist organization.
There are three groups that are considered when talking about the SAO:
Committed Militant, Militant, and The Social Movement. An especifist
group in Tulsa, Oklahoma called Scissortail Anarchist Organization uses
the terms: Radical, Adherent, and Collaborator. The Collaborator is the
most outward of the categories laid out here. These folks aren’t
considered members of the organization, but they have shown interest in
the group’s principles and social work and participate in the
organization’s public events. Because they are not members of the SAO,
they do not have voting power within it, but they can seek to enter the
organization after showing interest by whatever metric the organization
deems fit for membership.
The next level that an SAO may have is Adherent. These are newly
inducted members of the organization who would likely start the process
of entering via interview with Radicals within the org, as well as a
full recognition of the points of agreement. In some organizations, it
might not require full commitment to the points of agreement to become
an Adherent, but with disagreement an explanation of their differing or
critical points can come forth and the existing Radicals can decide
whether or not that perspective falls in line with the goals and
strategies of that organization.
The innermost level within the organization is the Radicals. They are
considered the most committed members of the organization who are the
most able to effectively understand and promote the ideas and principles
of the SAO. They are expected to help interview prospective Adherents
who are interested, as well as mentor new Adherents. The aspect of who
has voting power in what bodies and where pertinent decisions should be
made is something on which different especifist groups can differ. This
is an area of experimentation at the current moment. I advocate that the
role of Radical should have equal voting power within the organization,
it should entirely be a category of delegation and commitment. This role
would most likely be fulfilled by people who voluntarily commit to more
participation within meetings or events, people with more experience in
those matters in both theory and practice alongside regular commitments
that Adherents make, or people with both a higher commitment alongside a
more clear understanding of the organization’s goals and ideology.
This clear choice to make Radicals and Adherents have equal individual
voting power within the organization reduces the risk of such an inner
group of Radicals becoming a top-down power in its own right. This is
something that can be seen within other organizational models like a
party cadre, for example. Anarchists should not seek to create another
cadre or vanguard structure, even if it is done inadvertently or
accidentally. I believe there is flexibility in how organizations can be
run in regards to anarchist practice. This general model is
intentionally very loose in how things can be done from place to place
and time to time, but that cannot mean that anarchists should put their
principles at risk by not putting clear checks in place against
hierarchical power forming in the organizations we build.
We have had enough cadres, vanguards, parties, and “advanced sections”
that try and fail to activate working class people from above to build
the communist society they seek to promote. They do nothing but alienate
themselves from working class people and put freedom even further out of
our reach. We cannot reproduce that same logic in our organizations. By
doing so, we both morally and organizationally become no different than
them, a vanguard party with anarchist aesthetics.
Minimizing and seeking to eliminate hierarchical power building
internally is not enough to separate ourselves from those parties,
however. If we build these organizations and only do actions amongst
ourselves as if we are fundamentally separate from the working class, we
also fuel another key component that causes vanguard structures to fail.
This is where working groups and social insertion come into play.
The way in which these SAOs organize and interact within the larger
social fabric is just as important as how the organization is
structured. You may have a sound organization ideologically or even
practically, but if you do not apply that organization in an effective
way and do not sufficiently integrate that organization in the broader
population’s lives then it would be completely wasted. Working groups
are a wonderful way to allow members of the organization to struggle
with the masses and practice what is called social insertion within
broader social movements and organize on that basis internally. Before
we start talking about working groups and how they are used to help
facilitate social insertion, let’s go over what social insertion is and
what especifist anarchists call the Popular Organization.
Social insertion is one of the more novel developments within especifist
anarchism. To start with the definition, let us begin with what social
insertion is not. Social Insertion is not entryism. Entryism usually
seeks to control or engulf other social movements or organizations for
their own organization’s political gain. This is often done by top-down
political organizations or parties when they start to join and gain
influence within the power structures of social movements surrounding
broader social issues. By gaining ever more influence within these
social movements, they seek to take over that organization within its
leadership or lead people towards their political organization and away
from the original organization they were a part of. This often drains
the organic life from a movement by sputtering it to a halt for the sake
of another organization’s numbers. This is not what social insertion
seeks to do. Social insertion does not seek to create social movements
or make existing social movements overtly anarchist in ideology, nor
does it seek to try and drain social movements of its numbers to pour
them into the SAO from the top-down.
Social Insertion seeks first and foremost to work with the masses within
these social movements as equals and offer our services and help. We
cannot and should not see ourselves as higher than our fellow human
beings who are also struggling against the consequences of the systems
that we as anarchists seek to abolish. Although we do not seek to take
over or co-opt a social movement into an ideologically anarchist
political program, we do openly discuss our anarchist principles
whenever possible and when asked, help these broader social movements
organize in a more anarchistic direction. This could be done by
observing how these social movements are organized, how decisions are
made, what values they seek to promote or what kind of practice the
movement engages in. This is all in an effort to help facilitate or
create what is called a Popular Organization.
A Popular Organization is an organization, usually within a larger
social movement, that can be either created or influenced by members of
the SAO. It has neither the same structure nor the same ideology as the
SAO. It may concur on a lot of practical and political points such as
direct action, confrontation with the state, direct democracy, mutual
aid networks, lack of top-down leadership, etc. These movements would be
organized by and for a multitude of political ideologies coming together
for the sake of a certain intersection of struggle. Things like
protecting the homeless from violence, squatting, LGBT rights, feminist
causes, disability justice, abolishing the death penalty, etc. The
Popular Organization can be a place where anarchists help promote their
ideals and practices, while also not imposing the ideology of anarchism
from above onto the population through dishonest entryism. Especifist
anarchists fundamentally do not believe that social movements, in any
form, can be of any single ideology, whether it be Marxist, anarchist,
liberal, or any number of ideologies. There will always be some mixture
of ideologies, experiences and backgrounds that will have people
synthesize their ideas and practice to help solve broadly felt problems
within society. This is where anarchists help to contribute in this
process.
Now that we have a broad framework of what social insertion and the
Popular Organization are, we can get into detail about how the SAO can
employ what are called Working Groups and how they relate to the broader
social movements as a whole. Working groups are subsections within the
SAO that are dedicated to discussing and organizing efforts of social
work in regards to a specific social movement. There is no set number of
working groups necessary within an SAO, nor any preset criteria of what
those working groups are that will work in every situation or at any
time. For example, an SAO in Los Angeles might need a housing justice
working group while one in Kansas City might not necessarily have or
need such a working group to function effectively. I will be exploring
possible ways in which SAOs can better involve themselves within the
queer community, and will advocate that they have a queer self defense
working group and other ways SAOs can better involve themselves and
intertwine with the queer social fabric later in this essay. For the
most part though, working groups are an interchangeable node of
organizing within the SAO and can be formed and dissolved at any point
by the members of those groups. In many instances, actions by members of
these working groups may require no approval by those outside of the
working group in order to be executed. This grants these working groups
a level of autonomy from the rest of the organization at large, and
follows the principle that many anarchists promote: Those that are
affected decide. This autonomy can have its limits, however, if the
actions that these working groups do make collectively or individually
involve the promotion or involvement of the organization as a whole,
those things would likely have to be voted on in the same way that other
broad decisions would have to be made.
How can especifist anarchism be intersected with the needs of the queer
community today? We will start to use the tools laid out previously to
help deal with the current situation that will be explained in the
following paragraphs. We will also contrast these tools with the tools
used by previous queer anarchisms to better understand why this new
framework is necessary. We need to talk about the previous queer
anarchisms because there are problems that we face today that their
frameworks are not equipped to solve, or solve effectively.
One of the main ways in which especifist anarchism could very clearly be
intersected within the struggles that queer people face is with having
not just a working group dedicated to social insertion within LGBT
social movements, but to help build queer self defense organizations as
Popular Organizations. These could be something as simple as Gun Clubs,
Group Workout Sessions, Group Self Defense Courses, De-escalation
Groups, Queer Partisan Militias, or any pertinent groups and combination
of those listed. Building Queer Self Defense organizations is critical
to the survival of our community in the coming years within the United
States. As the rise of overt fascism continues to become more apparent,
especially on the streets, people need to know in some sense how to
defend themselves. These skills are sorely absent within the queer
political sphere, and anarchists have a keen responsibility to help
these skills become more prominent within the broader social movements.
As I have said previously about Popular Organizations, these self
defense organizations should not be ideologically anarchist as they need
to appeal to a broader spectrum of queer folks outside of anarchist
social circles. Again, with this in mind, we should help influence how
they operate either in conception or in discussion. By doing so we can
really help prefigure these self defense organizations into something
more than hobby groups and into a social and political force against
fascism.
Other Queer Anarchists have approached this issue quite differently. In
2019, an online campaign started to gain traction within social media
under #ArmTransWomen. This campaign has been started by trans women who
are more individualist anarchists, whether they be egoist, post-left or
insurrectionary. The goal is quite simple, popularize this hashtag as
both a slogan and a rallying cry to have trans women (and other trans
people) start the process of community defense by individually arming
themselves.
Many of the advocates’ approaches to organization have been to refuse
any political prescription or prefiguration in regards to this campaign.
Many folks within this movement have said when asked that the question
of organization would be dictated entirely by the conditions of that
area and that prescribing anything would be pointless and even expose
risk to authority counter-intelligence. Although it is true that
prescribing examples will not apply to every place and time, this does
not mean that anarchists should refuse the work of advocating a
framework in their opinion and discussing it with others. The
experimental work that is organizing as an anarchist cannot be done
entirely spontaneously or individually within a certain context. At the
very least, you need to start with a hypothesis if you can’t find
functioning examples in the physical world. You do not impose anything
on others by advocating a clear set of theory and practice.
Do folks who have this mindset view all people as so ignorant and
incapable of thinking for themselves? Do they see a person’s framework
and mindlessly apply it to the letter with no adjustment for their own
context? This is a gross misunderstanding of how top-down structures
take hold within people’s minds and thinks that having an ideology in
itself imposes some sort of unjust power over people convinced by it.
This infantilizes them in my view. We cannot reject the practice of
introducing other people to anarchist ideas, as influencing others
through discussion and debate can be incredibly healthy when done well
in social spaces.
Not having any political prescriptions can have disastrous consequences
for the campaign and organizations that spawn from it. As a result,
these organizations could be co-opted by right-libertarians for their
own purposes. There is a real risk of this very simple hashtag being
reduced to “Trans People Get Guns,” and stopping right there. The self
defense organizations that arise from the campaign would be breeding
grounds for more of the same kind of gun clubs that have been prevalent
within queer gun culture for decades. I have talked about the issues
with how groups like the Pink Pistols and those like them perpetuate a
very hyper-individualistic view of gun culture in regard to defense and
ownership. I don’t see this campaign doing much to deter such a
conception.
Having popular organizations and social movements with a variety of
political views does not mean we should let anyone co-opt our struggles
in opposition to the goals that anarchists have. If this
right-libertarian streak were to metastasize within this social
movement, it would be much more difficult to join in struggles for
black/POC liberation, indigenous liberation, disability justice and many
other issues that right-libertarians are comically bad at addressing.
This rejection of co-option is not one for the sake of ideological
purity as some might suggest, but is on a practical basis for how
coalitions would need to be built between marginalized social movements
in order to survive.
On the topic of ideological diversity, this is an opportunity to address
some of my suggestions for an organization to queer gun culture at the
end of Queers With Guns. When I was speaking about how an organization
could do all of those things, I did not have an especifist anarchist
perspective in mind and didn’t have as much knowledge about organizing
as I do now. My initial conception of a single, overtly anarchist
organization akin to the Black Panthers hosting not just self defense
but also queer health clinics, safe houses for homeless queers, etc. is
something that I wouldn’t agree with now. I would still wish to create
an armed self defense organization as well as the aforementioned
programs. However, I would say that those organizations and services
should be provided by popular organizations within social movements
instead of being made an overtly anarchist organization, as I had
previously thought and alluded to in Queers with Guns. These
organizations should be gateways towards anarchist practice and ideas
within the general public as much as possible, not made into an overtly
anarchist ideological program.
With that being said, the service that could be next on the list of
importance is access to Hormone Replacement Therapy outside of the
current market in preparation for or in response to the repression of
trans healthcare. It is a proven fact that one of the cornerstones for
the survival of the trans community is access to hormones. With the
shadow of state repression of these drugs looming over our community, we
need to start preparing for when, not if, the state starts to hammer
down on legal forms for all trans people to have affirming healthcare.
The foundations for an underground trans healthcare network needs to be
built now in order to be the most effective when current conditions
become drastically untenable. Of course, when dealing with this
possibility, you are going to have to work within very precarious legal
grounds. In order to build and maintain this kind of service
effectively, a much tighter security culture is going to have to be put
in place to keep you and the people you’re helping safe. For more
detailed context on security culture, I would recommend “What Is
Security Culture” by CrimethInc.[3] Many of the prescriptions made by
this pamphlet can not only be applied to these actions, but to all
actions you do to keep you and your fellow organizers safe.
Another way in which these organizations can help work within the
struggle for queer liberation is participating in the housing of
homeless queer people. The rate at which trans people especially have
been made homeless was already bad enough. With this current spiral of
violence and fascist mobilization against queer people in general, the
reactions towards newly realized queer people is going to be more
severe. This will likely cause an increase in homelessness within the
queer community due to rejection by their families and friends. This
work, like the work related to HRT, is going to involve preparation for
a tsunami of despair and need. Before we can think of laying the
groundwork to help address a drastic increase in queer homeless people,
we must involve ourselves within the work associated with housing people
right now. We cannot possibly seek to prepare for an intensified crisis
of homelessness within our communities without working with current
social movements for the homeless. Gaining those essential skills will
be necessary to address much bigger issues later.
All of these prescriptions are not an exact guide that SAOs should
follow or implement in that order. Although I stress the importance of
building the foundations of queer self defense first, the context of
your situation might not allow for such building to form a foundation.
One might have to start off with a simple reading group or some other
small project within the queer community as an anarchist organization.
One might not even be in the position to make an SAO, and can only
socially insert themselves into social movements and do the ground work
of finding those that have common values, talking to them about
anarchist ideas and practice. I only hope that whatever you plan on
doing, you can do so with a better understanding of how you can organize
and connect with the people around you.
Regardless of your context, what I hope for folks to take away from this
essay is that there is a different path to anarchist organizing within
the queer community than what other queer anarchisms had already laid
out for the past few decades. I hope some of my suggestions and examples
can help shine a light as to how we can not only queer gun culture, but
queer all of society towards our collective liberation through social
revolution. In more clear terms, us and us alone, within the most
marginalized, can truly be trusted with the responsibility of building a
better tomorrow, together. We must oppose the current system at every
turn not just out of negation, but out of defense of a positive system
of care, love, and struggle. We must attack the current system not just
for the goal of its destruction, but to also cultivate the better world
we seek with the seeds that we have planted. As the FARJ explain in
“Social Anarchism and Organization:”[4]
“[...] destruction alone is not enough, since ‘no one can wish to
destroy without having at least a remote idea, real or false, of the
order of things that should, in their opinion, replace that which
currently exists’.”
We can’t be certain that we will even see the world that we want to
build, nor can we know what it would fully look like once we destroy the
current structure. We must have hope that through our actions this new
world can be given room to arise from the ashes of the old one. As
something a friend of mine[5] once said:
“I do not know whether it is reachable or not...but I will do what is
necessary to achieve it.”
We are the agents within this time who must safeguard and spread the
seeds of this new world until the time is ripe for them to sprout in a
spirit of freedom and resistance against this death machine. This meat
grinder is chewing us up every day, and as queer people this will likely
get worse. We must not only keep our community safe here and now, but we
must also prepare for the coming time in which overt fascism might truly
overtake the United States Empire and seek an exterminationist campaign
against us. No amount of ballot measures, canvassing, voting, or posting
on the internet will change this course. We must build the structures of
care we need now before our entire community is backed against the wall
and crushed, before liberal NGOs and nonprofits are shut down, before
our healthcare is denied coverage by insurance companies, and we are
chased back into the shadows of public life: we must act. I only hope we
are ready for this total war against our existence. We have no choice:
it is either total freedom or complete destruction.
Criminal Intimacy – Mary Nardini Gang
Gender Nihilism – Alyson Escalante
Gender Nihilism – Automatic Writing
My Preferred Pronoun is Negation – Bash Back
Queering Anarchism – C.B. Daring, J. Rogue, Deric Shannon, and Abbey Volcano
Toward the queerest insurrection – Mary Nardini Gang
Whore Theory – Mary Nardini Gang
An Anarchist Programme – Errico Malatesta
Anarchism and the Black Revolution – Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin
What is Communist Anarchism? – Alexander Berkman
[1]
Queers with Guns – Elisha Moon Williams
[2]
[3]
What is Security Culture? – CrimethInc
[4]
Social Anarchism and Organization – FARJ
[5]