Ep 380 - WCF End Misogyny and Trump Too

Episode 380 of RevolutionZ, titled WCF End Misogyny and Trump Too, begins with some reactions to our current times. The world is on fire, and we keep producing explanations like they’re water. They aren't. 

This episode opens with a hard question: why do we get mountains of analysis about war and authoritarian politics, quite a lot of it redundant, yet so few concrete proposals for what millions of people can do next week different from last week to actually reduce and end the carnage? 

If the point of a writer, speaker, or organizer is to strengthen an anti war and anti fascist resistance, then strategy, coordination, escalation, and staying power can’t be an afterthought to yet again explaining the roots of our conditions and pointing out how much they hurt. 

In a couple of weeks people are going to demonstrate in the next No Kings event. I hope ten million or more. Isn’t to think about and make proposals regarding what those millions of people might do on that day and still more so how they might proceed when that day runs into the next day, a more important focus than debating causes of the war or reporting its every new communique or casualty? The basics of the war are discussed everywhere. But the future of resistance; not so much. Naming our conditions and their causes matters, but it’s not a plan.

Then we continue to present The Wind Cries Freedom, my forthcoming oral history of a next American revolution, with its Chapter 24. At a conference in Las Vegas, interviewer Miguel Guevara talks with Alexandra Hanslet and Bill Hampton about gender progress, feminist organizing, and why movements fail when they treat gender and sexuality as optional. The interviewees lay out the reality: even “radical” spaces can reproduce interruption, sidelining, harassment, and invisibility unless they change their structures, not just their language and hopes. 

Alexandra and Bill describe practical mechanisms RPS adopts: childcare at every event with men sharing equally in the work, leadership, and public speaking roles at least fifty percent women, training and mentoring instead of excuses, and a standard that says if we can’t yet do it in a feminist way, we shouldn’t do it yet. The chapter pushes further into family life and care work, arguing that comparable empowerment and circumstance must also mean comparable participation in caring activities. 

Both parts of this episode convey, I hope, that while analysis is important, to cling to analysis mode at the expense of vision and strategy mode defeats self. To passionately debate what's going on and where it came from is essential for arriving at viable and worthy vision and strategy, but to do it to the exclusion of directly addressing vision and strategy mistakes "necessary" for "alone necessary." 

Transcript

Welcome And Chapter Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, my name is Michael Albert, and I am the host of the podcast that's titled Revolution Z. This episode continues our presentation of chapters from the forthcoming book The Wind Cries Freedom, an oral history of the next American Revolution. So this time it's chapter twenty four out of thirty. We also continue our pattern of adding to the chapter a brief commentary on events in our own time in our own world. So first, here are some comments bearing on our current situation. And what a fucking incendiary anti human mess our present situation is. I am tempted to stop right there. A greedy, malicious lunatic threatens, blusters, and actually assaults well almost everything. Lots of fine writers and informed assessors of international relations have had a lot to say already, and no doubt more with each day about ongoing Trumpian and otherwise imperial events, and particularly about the US attack on Iran and the prior history of it all. Causes and possible effects. Some of the commentaries focus on oil. Some focus on Israel's Middle East interests and aims. Some focus on US international imperial aims. Some focus on domestic US Trumpian deflections and intentions, some on Trump's own decrepit, vile moral, emotional and mental state. Is he simply out of his mind? Or is he a conniving instance of the devil, leaving behind all discars? And so on. There are insights amidst all this repeated over and over. There are, no doubt, also stupidities in the whole of it, again, repeated over and over. My own, what should I call it, reaction to the discussion being conveyed from so many directions is that particularly on the left, it is too much analysis and not enough strategy. Why do I say that? To my mind, the immediate agenda should be to focus on how to reduce and end the carnage. War and the rest too, of course. And then it should also be about how to remove its source, Trump and Company. And finally, about how to remove the institutional complex that has allowed and even propelled Trump and Company and what to then replace that institutional complex with, where the institutional task will take a lot more time to complete than will curbing war and jettisoning Trump and Company. But if that is true, then instead of ten essays that should report or try to explain causes for everyone that even mention steps needed to end the war and continue on from there, it should arguably be the other way around. Ten on what to do for everyone about what is being done to us. Isn't that obvious? Is the lack of coordination among people when they sit down to pick a topic and then address it sufficient explanation for the upside down biases of our collective output? I admit that I doubt that it is. Everyone just decides to write the same thing? After all, the motivation for addressing strategy or tactics, even if we have to do so hesitantly or incompletely, is obviously to aid the anti war effort, and more broadly the anti fascist effort, and more broadly still the pro fundamental change effort. So shouldn't that come naturally? So I have to wonder, what is the explanation for too many of the discussions being about causes of the war? Do people think that pinpointing what is in the heads of Trump and Netanyahu or what motives explain their barbarism is a necessary step toward having ideas about what to do now and how to do it? If so, then when people write or talk about either, shouldn't it always occur connected to entreaties about how to organize resistance, about what steps to take? Somehow, I doubt their strategic implications motivates the bulk of essays about causes and even predicted outcomes. But if so, fine, then again, shouldn't all those pieces have some reporting, some analysis of causes, and then draw out implications for strategy and tactics? That I would understand. The motive for that would be the same as the motive for focusing entirely on what to do. But absent that additional strategic focus, why do we report and analyze as much as we do? I'm in this seriously. I don't get it, and if I force myself to hypothesize about it, it comes out rather uncomplimentary. In a couple of weeks a shitload of people are going to demonstrate in the next No Kings event, I hope ten million or more, isn't thinking about and making proposals regarding what those millions of people might do on that day and how they might proceed when that day runs into the next day and the next, a more important focus than debating causes of the war. The basics of the war are discussed everywhere, but the future of resistance not so much. Will the millions do as they have done in the prior events? What would make the day and then subsequent days and weeks more effective in impacting Trump and Company, and even more so in growing and increasing the militancy of and the reach of and the size of subsequent resistance to Trump and Co. and to the war, but also to ICE and tariffs and assaults on everything, from health to public culture to diversity to education, and so on. There was a song when I was younger. I didn't like it all that much way back when. It was written by a guy whose name very few know, PF Sloan, who wrote it, according to reports, in one night, along with four other songs too. It became a giant hit, however, when it was recorded by Mary McGuire a year later in nineteen sixty five, and it went like this The Eastern World it is explodin', violence flarin', bullets loadin'. You're old enough to kill but not for votin'. You don't believe in war, but what's that gun you're totin'? And even the Jordan River has bodies floatin'. But you tell me over and over again, my friend, how you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction. Don't you understand what I'm trying to say? Can't you feel the fears I'm feeling today? If the button is pushed, there's no running away. There'll be no one to save with the world in a grave. Take a look around you, boy, it's bound to scare you, boy. And you tell me over and over again, my friend, how you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction. Yeah, my blood's so mad feels like coagulating. I'm sitting here just contemplating. I can't twist the truth, it knows no regulation. Handful of senators don't pass legislation, and marches alone can't bring integration. When human respect is disintegrating, this whole crazy world is just too frustrating. And you tell me over and over again, my friend, how you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction. And think of all the hate there is in Red China, then take a look around to Selma, Alabama. Ah, you may leave here for four days in space, but when you return it's the same old place. The poundin' of the drums, the pride and disgrace, you can bury your dead, but don't leave a trace. Hate your next door neighbor, but don't forget to say grace. And you tell me over and over and over again, my friend, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction. No no, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction. Other quibbles with it aside, I think I found it a bit too apocalyptic in nineteen sixty five. I wasn't quite ready for it then. It was my last year in high school. Now, oh so many years later, it falls short of catching the scope of Trumpian mayhem that is unfolding. Trump tells Iran you must unconditionally surrender. What the hell does that mean? I, Trump, decide all? No wait, he continues, there is another way to end the war. Two other ways, actually, I think he offered. One was to pick new leaders who we ratify. Hmm. That is, however, unconditional surrender, isn't it? We choose your government. Basically then, become a US outpost, a US colony. And the other way for it to end that he mentioned, as we pound away it could get to a point where there is no one left to surrender. That would end it too. Yeah, he actually said that. Pardon my rant, but did Hitler ever literally proclaim himself king of not just Germany, but of the world? Has there ever been another time since Hitler when one man's whims, neuroses or decisions, whichever you think may be vomiting forth from him, had so much deadly consequences for so many people? In the future, when we reach a world in which the idea of global subservience, military domination, and billionaires on parade is unthinkable, what will our descendants say about these times, about us? These are indeed the worst of times, but also, though it is harder to seem the best of times. As Dickens put it, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness. It was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity. It was the season of light, it was the season of darkness. It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. We had everything before us, we had nothing before us. We were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way. How can I quote that? Because in reaction to today's rot, resistance grows. How might one write that paragraph today? Better question, how should one who lives now think and act in light of our conditions, which include not only monumental hypocrisy, ignorance, illogic, callousness, violence, and social self immolation, but also growing resistance, millions starting to act and tens of millions wanting to How might one write that paragraph today? Better question How should one who lives now think and act in light of our conditions, which include not only monumental hypocrisy, ignorance, illogic, callousness, violence, and societal self immolation, but also growing resistance, millions starting to act, and tens of millions wanting to do so. I guess what I'm suggesting is so I guess what I'm suggesting is that the time when mostly exposing ills was paramount has passed. Our times require instead mostly proposing viable, worthy steps and paths forward. The Wind Cries Freedom is an oral history of a revolution that has yet to happen, but that takes off in a world eerily similar to our own and is therefore very much about attaining an end to fascism and beyond that a new world. Its motivation is our times and our needs. In its twenty fourth chapter, Alexandra Hanslet and Bill Hampton together at a conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, discuss with Miguel Guevara, their interviewer, issues of gender progress and practice. To start, Miguel asks Alexandra. Alexandra, modern feminist insights had been present in left activism for over sixty years, and yet RPS made addressing gender and sexuality in society and within its own ranks a core or explicit priority. Why was that still necessary? It's true. Feminist ideas have been part of left spaces for generations, but too often those ideas were compartmentalized. They'd be tacked on to the end of a broader platform or mentioned in a paragraph after labor and race. They were sometimes seen as optional, as side issues, or worse, as quote divisive. And inside movements, even when the rhetoric was right, the reality often wasn't. Women, especially women of color, were still doing the lion's share of organizing and caretaking. They were still getting interrupted, sidelined, and tokenized. Trans folks and queer folks were still being beaten, erased, and forced into invisibility. Sexual harassment happened and was still often ignored. Gender dynamics played out behind the scenes, even in radical spaces, because we hadn't fully uprooted the system inside ourselves or in institutions. So RPS had to say enough. We're not aiding adding gender to we're not adding gender justice to our vision. It is in the vision. We're not including queer liberation as an afterthought. It is also core to what freedom means. And this wasn't just a moral imperative, it was strategic. Because how can you claim to fight for a liberated society while reproducing the very hierarchies you claim to oppose? You can't build freedom on the foundation of domination. You can't win dignity while denying people theirs. Can't win dignity while denying people theirs. So RPS made it clear if our politics didn't center gender justice, if it didn't interrogate power in all its forms, public and private, it wouldn't work, and it wouldn't be worth winning. We had to model something different, not just with words, but in how we treated each other, how we built community, how we listened, held space, shared leadership, named harm, and practiced healing. It wasn't always smooth, it wasn't always perfect, but it was necessary, and it made us stronger, because liberation isn't just the absence of oppression, it's the presence of care, of safety, of joy, of love. And that's what we were building. We had made tremendous gains, there's no denying that, and you could see it in so many tangible ways. Back in the nineteen fifties, and of course earlier, women doctors were almost mythological. Try for that, and you didn't just encounter obstacles, you encountered impossibility. Women were confined to the household, expected to clean, care, and smile, but not to lead, not to shape society. Initiative was punished. Assertiveness could get you institutionalized or brutalized. And yet, over the decades, feminist organizing changed that landscape. It reshaped our laws, our norms, and our expectations. It carved out space for possibility. So yes, we had won immense victories. But and this part is crucial, there's a difference between winning some meaningful change and winning all the changes we need. And there's also a difference between winning something and keeping it. Because even when you successfully roll back oppressive policies, if you don't root out the systems that created them, those same policies will keep coming back. That's what patriarchy does, that's what white supremacy does, and that's what capitalism does. You win ground, and then you have to defend it over and over. The core structures, the commodification of women's bodies and infantilization of women's minds, those remained. And so the cycle repeated. High heels disappeared, and then they returned. Rape rates dropped and then surged again. Sexism didn't fully disappear, it regrouped. Feminists had changed consciousness, habits, laws, and that was real and powerful. But each new generation seemed to inherit not only the gains but also the backlash. The pressures kept reappearing. That wasn't a mystery. It was structural. Something in the very makeup of our society kept producing the conditions for sexism to return. So yes, we had won massively, but our wins were fragile, and they were always under threat. For example, reproductive rights suffered a devastating reversal half a century after Roe v. Wade, when the right wing Supreme Court overturned that decision in 2022. RPS understood that. From the start, we knew we couldn't just celebrate progress. We had to go deeper. We had to ask, what are the root causes of this inequality? And then we had to organize, not just against sexist behavior, but against the systems that make that behavior profitable, normalized, and repeatable. And here's the thing we also had to face. Those systems didn't just exist out there, in government, business, media, and families. They existed in here, in our movements, in our organizing spaces, in our own relationships. We weren't exempt. Sure, the most extreme manifestations of sexism inside progressive spaces had been reduced over time. But anyone being honest had to admit that the gains were unstable. Some of the same toxic dynamics were creeping back in during the 2020s. And beyond our movements, misogyny was resurgent. Sometimes we caught ourselves wondering, is this just how it is? Are we fighting against something that is natural? Are we asking too much? Even seasoned feminists had those fears sometimes. I know I did. You get exhausted. You start questioning your own reality. Patriarchy gaslights us into thinking it's natural. And once you buy that lie, even a little, you stop believing the change is permanent or even possible. And then came Trump. His misogyny wasn't just rhetorical, it was radioactive. He paraded every suppressed cruelty into the spotlight. He made it clear sexism never left. It just went underground. It hid behind polite smiles, boardroom buzzwords, and mainstream liberal cons complacency. Trump was a siren, a warning, and RPS heard it. We knew we had to be different. We couldn't just resist, we had to transform. That meant confronting gender and justice as a central, structural, ongoing struggle inside our society and inside ourselves. Miguel asks, Bill, can you remember what gave you a sense that a powerful feminist component was essential? Regarding society, it was still the case that women earn less than men for the same work. Violence against women persisted, and in some places it was even intensifying. Women's health too often was treated as a political football rather than a basic human right. And yes, there were men, too many, who saw the progress that women had made not as a shared victory, but as a threat to their own identity. They feared that, quote, being a man was under siege. But for me, what cut the deepest was the situation of women inside the movement, because that was where I pinned my hopes for change. Gender in the movement, it was a mixed picture. There was a lot of talk about women's leadership. And don't get me wrong, progress had been made. If you compare it to fifty years ago, women were certainly way more visible, more involved, and more influential. In fact, often more so than men. But let's be honest, the glass was still no more than half full. In some movement institutions, in some organizing spaces, the voice of women wasn't just underrepresented. It was quieter than in some corners of the mainstream. And that was a warning sign, a symptom. The question is, a symptom of what? From my own experience, I knew women still walked home at night with their keys gripped between their fingers. I knew they were facing abuse online just for speaking up. I knew that in too many meetings they still weren't being heard. Sure, we weren't the nineteen fifties anymore, but we weren't where we needed to be either. And looking at the trends, I started to wonder, are we still climbing, still getting better, or are we starting to slip? RPS took a hard look at that, and we came to believe that the root of the problem wasn't just in public policy or media or paychecks. It was in the very structure of family life, and in the institutions shaped by kinship norms that reinforce gender norms. There had always been sincere and militant rhetorical support for feminist ideals in the movement, but rhetorical support is one thing, structural change is another. Miguel asks, what was to be done within RPS and the and the movement writ larger. Inside RPS, we rolled up our sleeves and started making changes. The first step? Daycare. Every organizational meeting, every event, daycare was available. But there was a catch and it mattered. Yes, women with childcare experience helped set the tone, but staffing had to be at least half male. That sent a message. We weren't just solving one problem and reinforcing another. We were moving forward together. The second innovation was visibility. At marches, at teach ins, at conferences, public speaking roles had to be at least fifty percent women. That sparked some complaints. I remember the grumbling quote, this is a quota, we're sacrificing quality. But the truth is those same critics had been perfectly comfortable with a status quo where men who didn't understand the needs of half the population did all the talking, while women's rights were left on the sidelines. This was a pattern. We saw it with gender, we saw it with race, we saw it with class. Those with power tend to resist sharing it. They argue that others just aren't ready, that we're doing them a favor by protecting them from responsibility. And worse, that kind of logic doesn't just preserve injustice. It teaches those being excluded to stop expecting more. So we set new norms leadership groups, at least fifty percent women. Not enough women prepared, then invest in training and mentoring, in practice before the work begins. Deal with the imbalance or don't proceed. It was that simple. And the women in the movement, they organized. They didn't settle for applause, lines or polite agreement or encouragement. They weren't looking for thanks for coming. They were demanding change and when polite requests didn't work they escalated peacefully but unmistakably. I'll never forget this moment. I was chairing a meeting maybe sixty woman in the women in the room, a hundred men, and then the door opened. Twenty more women walked in together, purposeful. They looked at me and said sit down I did. Then they told the room from here on half the organizing, half the leadership, half the air time goes to women. You don't like it? Fine. You'll hold your meeting under major disruption. And I'll tell you there wasn't a good argument against that. These types of engagement were very effective, albeit at first hard to endure. The rising reports of rape on campus created a sense of urgency, and I'll be honest, I wasn't sure if the actual rate had dramatically increased or if we were finally just paying attention. Either way, the change in awareness was real and necessary. And then came a case after a radical conference in Los Angeles this is still before RPS a movement leader, a man, had raped a young woman. This wasn't the first time but the dam burst. The outrage changed everything. Any lingering hesitancy evaporated. Women weren't just pushing for change, they were going to win it. There were still some men, plenty of them, who argued that insisting on gender equity was slowing things down. They said quote we've got urgent goals, let's not derail progress. Even some women at times would say we're moving too fast, let's not overreach. And the fear was that in pushing for war we might end up helping reactionary forces regroup. But for most women and for many men, that line of thinking lost its persuasive power because we'd come to see that avoiding fundamental change inside our own ranks wasn't strategy. It was hypocrisy. It was weakness. What we needed was a new kind of militance one that refused to accept delay but still approached people with care, with solidarity. A militance that recognized structures as the root problem, not individuals. And the standard became clear if we couldn't do something in a feminist way, then we had no business doing it at all, at least not yet. Those who opposed these efforts usually said we're just trying to achieve critical goals, we're not trying to block feminist gains, and in many cases I believe that was their sincere intent. But the truth is after endlessly hearing not yet there came a point where not yet sounded like never. The women of RPS weren't asking for apologies. They didn't want symbolic gestures or personal promises to do better. They weren't focused on blame. They were focused on structure, on mechanisms, on making the system itself foster equality, not just hope for it. What set this new wave apart though wasn't just the demands it wasn't even the militancy. Feminists in the sixties and seventies had shown plenty of that. What changed this time was the tone, the strategy. In earlier years too often the result had been polarization us versus them, women versus men. This time the challenge to sexism came wrapped in empathy. Hostility was directed at unjust systems, not individuals, and it made a difference. Let me be clear those earlier feminists weren't wrong to be angry. They weren't wrong to demand more. But if their strategies had a shortcoming it was that they didn't always prioritize how to sustain change, how to build broader support. What RPS did was carry forward their ambition while also expanding the coalition. Now there was one more change that at first barely registered, but it was important. We'd already decided that to challenge class hierarchy we had to change how labor was divided. We needed balanced job complexes, not lopsided roles that conferred all the power to one set of employees. Some women in RPS took that logic a step further. They asked if we're serious about ending gender inequality, don't we need to look at our roles inside families and relationships too? Don't we need to change how nurturing, how care, how responsibility gets distributed? And the answer we began to settle on was yes. When men dominate the workplace and the home becomes a woman's domain, inequality gets baked in. When men court and pursue and women are pursued, we're shaping patterns of power before relationships even begin. And beyond that, just as empowerment must be balanced at work, maybe it must be balanced at home too, because otherwise we're cultivating hierarchy in our most intimate spaces The upshot if nurturing makes us empathetic and if care work fosters compassion then men need to be a part of that too, not as a favor, not as charity, but as part of rebalancing the social equation. In the movement in families and societies at large, just as we should all be comparably empowered, we all should also be comparably caring. And just like the rest of our changes this wasn't framed as punishment. It wasn't about shame. It was about building a better version of ourselves together. Instead of men fathering and women mothering we needed to have adults being parents adults parenting new roles to attain new and different outcomes and asked Miguel what about the broader culture? What about tendencies toward cultural conflict, cultural dominance and survience what about race? What was the solution perpetual intercultural hierarchy, anger, fear and violence? And so ends this episode of Revolution Z. The reason what it that it ended with that question, I'll be honest here, was that uh when I was editing the book I came upon some advice for novelists mainly about how to deal with chapters. The advice was that each chapter shouldn't be a ending period full stop. Each chapter should conclude in a way that sort of intimated the next chapter so you can probably guess the next chapter of The Wind Cries Freedom will be about race and inter intercommunalism and uh cultural issues. And all that said, this is Michael Albert signing off until next time for Revolution Z.