taking it apart

This is a first step from a white male in exploring patterns of patriarchy, white-supremacy, and capitalism in radical organizing and cooperative groups:

I've been politically conscious from an early age. At 8 years old I was aware of George Bush Sr. winning the election from Michael Dukacas, and believed that meant more nuclear weapons, more war, more money into the SDI. Some of my earliest memories are from Twin Oaks Community, where my parents met, from a visit when I was 4. I grew up knowing there was this whole other way of living, and never really felt comfortable in the mainstream - things just never seemed to make sense. I was raised as a feminist, an environmentalist, and a socialist. The ideals of consensus and cooperation were never explicitly spelled out, but they were the norm. No wonder the mainstream world felt weird.

It wasn't until I was 18 that I was exposed to radical, alternative lifestyles. I spent the summer caught up with Earth First! and enjoying a quintessential commune experience at East Wind Community. It didn't take much after that to "drop out." My radical sociology professors at UC Santa Cruz gave me all the facts I needed to support my objections to the institutional structure of mainstream society. After I missed the deadline to declare my major, the administration put a hold on my enrollment unless I signed up for specific classes. I didn't want my education controlled. But even more, I just didn't care anymore. The allure of a diploma just wasn't enough.

I'd been living at the Cesar Chavez Student Housing Cooperative, helping rejuvenate the house from a decrepit state, avoiding a lawsuit from the city, leading new policy changes, assisting in re-writing the membership contract, and acting as membership coordinator. I'd found my calling.

I'd been shopping for my brand of activism. Seeking and fostering deeply intimate relationships that helped the individuals involved grow and evolve had always been important to me. And collective living offered a satisfying expression of my environmentalist and cooperative values. At 19 years old I found myself in something of a homecoming, moving to Twin Oaks where I was to spend the next 8 years.

During my tenure at Twin Oaks I became an activist for intentional community. I organized for the Twin Oaks Communities Conference. I provided the bulk of energy and motivation for the Federation of Egalitarian Communities for several years. I helped build a relationship between the intentional communities movement and the student cooperative movement. I went to numerous conferences, gatherings, festivals, colleges, talking and giving workshops. I was a believer.

About 4 years ago I organized a panel discussion at the Communities Conference on "the state of the movement." I remember one of the panelists asserting that the question, do you want more community in your life is an easy one to get a yes, but most people are never going to live in intentional community. I was incensed, but also afraid. I didn't want to consider that he might be right.

Now, I agree. The Twin Oaks bylaws define the community's purpose thusly: "Together our aim is to perpetuate and expand a society based on cooperation, sharing, and equality... [w]hich serves as one example of a cooperative social organization, relevant to the world at large...." I took this very seriously, and resisted any energy in the community that wasn't in line with this. Perhaps I am just jaded and bitter, but I think the relevance of Twin Oaks, and of the intentional communities movement, is limited, and getting smaller.

I use to resist the notion that living on a rural commune was escapist. It's part of building the alternative! Finding the systems and structures that will replace those in the mainstream once unsustainable social, economic, and environmental practices demand that things change! I still believe this is true, but I also think that it is a form of escapist. Worse, at this point, it's hard not to see the intentional communities movement as another form of white flight.

The movement is predominantly made up of white, middle class individuals, and thus the culture is predominantly an extension of white, middle-class culture. This is a culture that is still very steeped in patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism. Looking from any historical perspective, this decreasingly so, but to some extent these patterns have simply become more insidious and subversive, enabled by the tendency of those on the left to assuage their guilt by tokenism and self-congratulation.

Intentional communities cannot be "relevant to the world at large" if they do not address this. The systems and structures for cooperative organization will not be accessible. A global perspective is necessary for intentional communities to develop in such a way that they effectively address unsustainable and unjust practices and policies in the mainstream, and this will only happen if mutually supportive, peer-based, cross-cultural relationships are developed.

While I still have a close relationship with Twin Oaks I have been consciously divesting my identity from the community over the last year. My experiences during this period have assisted in a re-evaluation of the intentional communities movement, paralleled with an investigation into urban working and housing collectives movement, and a renewed education in anti-patriarchy and anti-racism theory and practice.

I recently spent several months living at Tryon Life Community Farm in Portland, OR where I was fortunate to participate in an anti-racism training. Early in the training the question was raised of how racism expressed itself in the community (at the time in that group there was a woman of Lebanese decent, a woman of Persian decent, and a woman of white, Jewish, and Persian decent.) I wanted to learn so I decided to display my ignorance. I didn't see racism in the community, I said. I seemed like everyone actively expressed west-coast, new-age, hippie culture, and I didn't see any difference in how people related to each other.

The answer I got was very edifying: There are parts of ourselves that we simply don't express in white culture. We've learned how to assimilate and you're simply not aware of it. The culture you take for granted is the norm. That's racism, that's white supremacy.

I reflected back to Twin Oaks. In the last couple years of my time there we'd had a surprising influx of 4 African-American women over the course of a couple years. Two we're half white, two were not. The two that were not got into bitter conflicts with various other members of the community, as well as the systems and structures, and left in state of mutual enmity. Of the two that we're half white, the one that had been raised more in black culture also struggled with the passive-aggressiveness and indirect communication prevalent in the community. While she mostly "fit in" and was a "hard-working, respected member of the community," she also ended up in some bad conflicts with people and ultimately left. The last of the four, raised in a military family, the one who was the most calm, reasonable and conflict averse, is still there, and is a well loved and respected member.

Early in my time at Tryon I went to a conference called Beyond Patriarchy, at the University of Oregon, in Eugene, where I'd been invited to lead a workshop on men and feminism. I'd given men's issues workshops several times in the past. I was invited to lead based on piece I wrote after facilitating two discussions on sexism at Twin Oaks last winter.

Going to the conference I decided to take the opportunity to practice my feminism. In workshops I attended I focused on listening, and made sure that there were at least a few women who spoke more than me. I made a point of staying aware of my tendency to evaluate women from a sexual perspective and focused on relating to people in a non-sexualized, non-gendered manner.

I went to a workshop on the historical and cultural background to women's reproductive rights. The participants were told that, according to historian Gerda Lerner, in one of the earliest written code of laws, from the Sumerians circa 5000 BCE, something like half the laws involved curtailing the rights of women. The most brutal punishments were reserved for women who practiced abortion, while the rights of men to expose unwanted infants were upheld.

Through this workshop the thing that I got the most was how patriarchy has for millenia not only systematically disempowered women, but taught women to distrust themselves. I realized on a deeper level than every before that for all my insecurities and negative self-messaging, I still tend to assume a sense of confidence and superiority in expressing my opinions and ideas, and that this is not the norm for women. I shared this with a friend who offered a quote they'd recently read. The person said that they thought that "as men get older many for the first time begin thinking maybe they were wrong. Whereas women, as they get older, for the first time begin thinking maybe they were right."

While in Portland, my partner and I, in preparation for relocating to Charlottesville, VA (the city nearest Twin Oaks) with the plan of helping start some kind of multi-faceted urban community project, interviewed people from about a dozen different collectives and non-profits. We learned a lot about what has worked and what hasn't worked for these groups, which was very similar to what we knew about the dozens of intentional communities and cooperatives we'd collectively visited during our time at Twin Oaks. Many of these themes related to the new depth of understanding I was gaining about patterns of patriarchy and white supremacy, patterns that I believe also often relate to the culture of capitalism. This in turn related to conversations I'd been having with a good friend at Tryon about leadership, and the need to find a true expression of cooperative leadership. All of a sudden I was realizing how even the most radically oriented cooperative groups that I knew of were still fundamentally struggling with this stuff, sometimes in very obvious ways.

This needs to change, I thought. When I get back to C'ville I need to get more training in this stuff. I need to figure out how to build cross-cultural, cross-race relationships as a foundation to the organizing work I want to do. I need to help my white, intentional communities associates recognize and counter the effects of the patriarchy, white-supremacy, capitalism bloc.

But what's the way out, I began asking myself? Rebecca, a new friend, professor at Portland State University, and anti-racism activist, had been providing me with language and a theoretical frame work for what I was experiencing. She sent me a link to an organization providing workshops on challenging white-supremacy. Their website states, "Challenging White Supremacy (CWS) workshop organizers believe that the most effective way to create fundamental social change in the U.S. is by building mass-based, multi-racial grassroots movements led by radical activists of color." That list bit really triggered me. But I'd been so engaged in this stuff that I recognized I was being triggered. Okay, I thought, is this my white supremacy expressing itself? After a couple days I realized, yeah, putting myself under the leadership of people of color, and women, would probably do me a lot of good.

All this has lead me to a question that's been guiding my thinking for the last few weeks: how would our ways of engaging with each other and our methods of organizing change if they came from women and people of color? I'm only beginning to explore this question, both within myself as a white male, and in conversations with others, and further writings will follow. To bring this first step of exploring these ideas to a close, here is a list of the ways of engaging and methods of organizing I see as stemming from patriarchy and white supremacy present in alternative circles (thanks to Kassia for helping me flesh out this list.)

1. Cooperative groups tend to be formed by or around one or two highly motivated individuals, who tend to be white men. This tends to create power struggles between the "founders" and other members of the group, especially if significant property

2. Many members of cooperative groups tend to have an almost exclusively inward-looking perspective on their group, as opposed to seeing it in the context of a larger movement or larger society.

3. Many members of cooperative groups participate in those groups out of a sense of image or exclusive cultural identity.

4. There tends to be a focus on theoretical, visionary ideas and concepts as opposed to relationships and practical, hands activities

5. Individuals in cooperative groups tend to work in isolation as opposed to working in concert with each other on projects and activities.

6. The driving motivation for organizing tends to be around some kind of revolutionary political critique or ideology as opposed to having a spiritual, humanitarian, or earth-based orientation.

7. The atmosphere of work and living environments tends to be goal and productivity oriented, on doing and accomplishing, as opposed to loving, caring, peaceful, and nurturing. Spaces tend to be disorganized. Aesthetics of calm and comfort and basic needs like healthy food are deprioritized.

8. There is limited space for emotional struggle or expression. Sharing about one's personal life is a byproduct of working together as opposed to being a core component.

thoughts from a feminist man

In February a woman at Twin Oaks engaged the community in a discussion on feminism. I facilitated the two meetings that happened on the topic, which meant I kept my personal thoughts to myself ;0) But before I left I decided to write my thoughts and share them with the cmty.

I have mixed feelings about identifying myself as feminist, similar to my ambivalence around calling myself an anarchist, pagan, or polyamorous. Feminism means many things to many people, and for the most part I prefer to avoid having people project their judgments and associations onto me. But in some cases claiming that kind of identity is important. In this situation the cmty had heard a lot from mild to moderately charged feminist women, and a lot from confused and defensive men, and very little from men speaking from an empowered, feminist perspective. It felt important to me to break up the gender split that seemed to be developing.

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How I dismantle and perpetuate sexism and traditional gender roles:

While these statements use unqualified and hypothetical phrasing each one was born of my personal experience. Said another way, I do all of these sometimes and do none of them all the time. I chose this phrasing because the lists are meant to describe my experience as well as reflect the experience of others. In reading this I hope you will either recognize these behaviors in yourself or others or will recognize corresponding or complimentary behaviors in yourself or others.

As a man, I dismantle sexism and traditional gender roles when...

...I pass someone else (esp. a woman) on the street or in a work area, and one of us must step aside, and I don't assume I have the right-of-way.

...I'm speaking to more than one person and make sure to look at all people an equal amount of the time while speaking.

...someone is speaking to me and a woman, and the person speaking is speaking to me more than the woman, and I repeatedly glance at the woman while the person is speaking to encourage them to speak to both of us.

...I don't assume that my idea is the best or that what I have to say is more important than what others have to say.

...I don't assume that other people don't have the ideas or information that I have.

...I make sure not to take more than my share of the air-time, even if this means sitting in silence.

...I spend time listening to others before speaking, and when I leave space for others to say things that I might have said.

...I encourage Willow to express all his feelings.

...I am cuddly and affectionate with Willow.

...someone asks me a question to which I don't know the answer or have no information on the topic, and I say "I don't know."

...I seek emotional support from other men.

...a woman tells me about an experience of sexism she's had and I just listen and learn.

...I let myself be small and scared, and when I let myself be held.

...I pay attention to the impacts of my words and actions, acknowledge any negative impacts, and make commitments to myself to shift my behavior.

...I feel my feelings and express them in constructive ways.

...I slow down and try to understand what's going on around me rather than trying to exert influence or control.

As a man, I perpetuate sexism and traditional gender roles when...

...I act like I've got it all under control and will take care of everything.

...I make it sound like I know what I'm talking about even when I don't, or that I'm sure about something when I'm not.

...I seek intimacy primarily from sexual/romantic relationships with women.

...I prioritize sexual/romantic relationships over platonic relationships.

...a woman is having difficulty with a task involving physical strength or dexterity, or that is technically complex, and I try to help without asking if help is wanted (rarely do I do this with men.)

...I unconsciously infuse my interactions with women with sexual energy.

...I assess a social situation in terms of which women I might be able to have sex with and which men might get in the way of that.

...I give Willow a hard time for feeling scared to do something.

...I engage in escapist behavior to avoid feeling my feelings.

...I side with women against other men.

...I put pressure on my lover(s) to be sexual.

...I damage an inanimate object during an interpersonal conflict as a way of getting attention or gaining power.

...I fail to take into account the larger social context of sexism and gender issues during conflicts with women (even if they are in a more powerful position at the time.)

...I don't allow women, or other men to be more powerful than me.

Reflections on my gender socialization:

I remember being 6 years old, standing on the playground next to another boy. "You're standing like a girl," he said. "Huh?" I responded. I looked down. My right foot was pointed forward, my left cocked to the side with my knee bent. "That's how girls stand. Boys stand with both their feet forward." He said it good-naturedly enough, clearly trying to help me out. And I looked around - he was right. I started standing "like a boy."

When I was 8 years old two male friends of mine and I experimented sexually with each other. As we walked back to our apartment complex one of them said, "I hope this doesn't mean we're gay." My stomach lurched. I was almost sure it meant we were gay, and I was terrified at the prospect. Two of my father's best friends were a gay couple. I'd never felt negatively towards gays, but I knew how other people felt about them. I was already made fun of a lot at school.

When I was 9 years old we moved and I went to a new school. "What do you do at recess here?" I asked one boy during my first recess there. At my previous school, with my old friends, we would bring various toys to school and play elaborate games around the roots of the giant trees bordering one side of the school field. "We play sports." "Is that it?" "Yeah." He said it like there wasn't anything else one would do. I started playing sports.

All through junior high it was all I could do to keep myself out of the way of the violent interactions of other boys in my school. Miraculously, I think by staying quiet, looking stoic, and simply being larger than most other kids, I never got beat up, but I watched quite a few boys who looked more nerdy and who had slighter frames become the focus of some very unpleasant attention.

Also in junior high was when I realized that I was suppose to be having sex. Or, at least, I was suppose to be talking about how I was having sex. And I wasn't suppose to be masturbating - that was bad, for some reason I never quite figured out.

When I was 18 years old a chiropractor pointed out how most men, myself included at the time, tend to walk like toy soldiers. He pointed out that twisting the lower back and swinging the hips as one walks is much better for the body. So he had me walk across the room and moved my hips for me as I walked. I continued practicing. I started receiving comments about how my gait appeared feminine or queer. But mostly these were actually said as compliments or appreciations, and I found myself beginning to feel my body more.

Thoughts on the creation of an empowered, non-misogynistic male identity:

Very early in life it was pointed out to me that neither did I want to conform to traditional male gender roles, nor did I want to embrace the wishy-washy, insecure version of masculinity (a SNAG, or sensitive new age guy) that formed in reaction to feminism (this approach has seemed satisfying to neither feminist women nor to the men trying to please them.) And I certainly didn't want to become an unintentional, confused mixture of the two, which is what I saw and continue to see in many men in alternative cultures. I wanted to be powerful, but not in a way that took power from or over others, and role models seemed to be in scarce supply.

How do I empower myself in a way that empowers others, and vice versa? I think most men have the idea that they're not suppose to be angry or aggressive. I think learning how to express those feelings in constructive ways (i.e. not at others, and not in ways that fuel resentment, bitterness or animosity) is important. But there's a deeper level. Taking the energy behind those emotions and expressing it in creative, passionate, positive ways that make the world a better place. And I'm not talking about the angry anarchist activist. I'm talking about having a vision of how you want the world to look, and how people behave and treat each other in that world, and living into it, making it happen by being it. This applies to a lot more than sexism or gender identity.

Recently Ivy asked me, "have you ever felt like you had to apologize for your maleness at Twin Oaks?" My first response was "no." Then I said, "I don't think I'm a good person to ask." Why? I've spent a lot of time feeling guilty about being a man in world where men commit so much violence towards women, as well as other men (yes, there are instances of violence and oppression by women towards men, but few in comparison to the reverse, and nothing as systemic and institutionalized over the course of millennia.) I've spent plenty of time fearing and hating myself and other men. No one could have made me feel worse about myself than I made myself feel. But I got through it. How? Basically I realized that feeling bad wasn't doing anyone any good. What I needed to do was acknowledge my behavior, determine how I wanted to do things differently, and persistently practice the new behavior. I've come along way, I know I'm doing my best, and I know I'm continually trying to do better. I feel good about who I am. I may do things that I see the need to apologize for, but I see no reason to apologize for who I am.

Men don't just oppress women. Men oppress other men. And the men who oppress other men were oppressed by other men. Many men are emotional cripples. Men are taught to hate and fear each other. Men are taught that they are only worth what they can accomplish and provide.

Many men are so starved for intimacy and connection. Men are taught that the only way to get intimacy is through sexual/romantic relationships with women. It's very easy for emotional dependency to develop, which can lead to obsessive/possessive behavior, resentment, domineering behavior, violence, etc.

If there is nothing else that's been important for me to learn on my path it's to have compassion for men, including myself. Men don't just victimize women and other men, they are victims of their own behavior. This doesn't mean they aren't responsible for their behavior - they most certainly are. They must muster the courage to face the oppressor within themselves, and the fear and pain that lies underneath. And they must do this with the support of other men. Women can help, but they cannot be expected to help nor can they really understand and be there for men in the way that other men can. Women figured this out decades ago. It's time for men to step up.