This text was first written in the context of the European People's
Global Action conference, late August 2002 in Leiden, which over the
course of a week brought together a few hundred anti-capitalist activists
from all over Europe. Patriarchy was supposed to be a topic relevant to
all issues and therefore more or less addressed in every debate. Finally,
it turned out to be mostly absent. This text was first aimed at men
involved in anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist spaces and struggles. I hope that it can be of interest for others. This text refers to a ‘we’ in which I include myself, and if it sometimes poses difficult questions, its
primarily aimed at questioning myself. It's inspired by various
discussions in mixed and non-mixed groups inside the ‘Sans-Titre’
non-network (a French anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian experiment). I hope that it won't be understood as a moralist diatribe, but as a hopeful invitation to constructive self-reflection and action on the basis of this.

‘Prealable’: To those who believe that patriarchal oppression in our
soceity is a thing of the past (others can skip directly to the next
paragraph): During the past century in ‘rich’ countries, capitalism has
grudgingly allowed women (up until then virtually slaves) to have access
to the ‘freedoms’ of paid work and consumerism. Apart from this, we can
also acknowledge several undeniable changes in the rights and status of
women over the course of the past few centuries which have been the
result of years of underground resistance and collective feminist
struggles for more freedom and autonomy: the right to financial autonomy,
birth control, the recognition of the right to have a fulfilling
sexuality, increased participation in social and political life, and the
start of men's contribution to household tasks. These gains and
theoretical changes of status remain few and insufficient. The
fundamental structures of patriarchal domination and gender differentiation remain largely unchanged :-

· housework is still largely considered to be the woman's responsibility, and the ‘double shift’ of job + housekeeping is the common reality in a majority of families.
· inside the public sphere (be it in workplaces, leftist collectives, companies or political institutions) organisational and decision-making roles are distributed mainly amongst men.
· women are still generally thought of and educated as weak creatures, short-sighted, irrational and ruled by their feelings and emotions. This is in contrast to men, who are rational creatures with the power to reason and change the world (with their technical capacities).
· men are still viewed as the norm and women as the ‘deviation’ from this norm.
· since the beginning of courtship and the construction of western
culture in the 12th century, man has had prove his valour by
accomplishing feats, while the woman's role is generally restricted to
being passively seduced and appearing by the man's side like a trophy.
· women are depicted as objects of sexual consumption, selling points, before ever being credited with speech and reason.
· women are still the first victims of rape, sexual harassment, domestic violence, intimidation, threats, fear of going out alone and of all the associated trauma that these experiences bring.
· the right for women to derive pleasure from their bodies is often
contested, or
· accepted so long as it comes from submission to men's sexuality.
· women still, under social pressure, must obey to alienating beauty norms.

Alright, I'll stop the list... This isn't the purpose of this text.
Thankfully, exceptions to this norm are more and more frequent in certain
contexts. Nonetheless they still remain facts. For statistics, info, and
analysis, a small bibliography can be found at the end of this text.

Patriarchy and the capitalist system within us

Let's start with two definitions to understand the meanings of these
words in the text. These are fairly personal since I find the dictionary
to be quite patriarchal and capitalist regarding such matters.

Patriarchy : The economical, political, social, sexual and legal system
historically founded on the authority of the father from the private
sphere (the family) to the public sphere, and characterized by men's
domination over women. (see examples above)

Capitalism : The economical, political and social system founded on the
private property of means of production and exchanges. In the capitalist
system, the primary dynamic is the quest for profit and competition
between companies. According to Marxist theory, capitalism is based on
the search for profit derived from exploitation of workers by those who
retain the means of production and exchange. I might add that the
distinction between these two classes is not always as simple as one
might think. More generally capitalism implies the domination of the most
powerful over the less powerful at every level of the social ladder.

The aim of this text is not to merge patriarchy and capitalism into one
problem, but to link certain aspects of both. Theoretically, we could
imagine a large number of women appropriating values and privileges
currently held by men and specific to capitalism, which would mean a
hypothetical capitalist society with a much lesser degree of gender based
oppression. We could also imagine capitalism to disappear and patriarchal
oppression to remain just as present, as would have been the case in many
of pre-capitalist societies. Nevertheless, these two systems of
oppression often rest on a set of complementary and common values. A huge
difference is that in patriarchy, men are for the most part oppressors
and beneficiaries, whereas a majority of both men and women are victims
in the capitalist system.... This doesn't mean that all women are victims
of patriarchy to the same extent, nor that all men equal in the extent of
their participation in patriarchal oppression. There are also of course
men who are oppressed because they don't want to/can not correspond to
masculine values: ‘shy’, unsure of themselves, ‘weak’, ‘sweet’,
‘gentle’...The specificity of women in regard to these oppressions is
that these diverse traits which are automatically attributed to them as
belonging to a category, and considered as natural, which makes it harder
for them to escape from.

The patriarchal culture which has characterised our societies for the
past few millennia, is a culture based on competition, power and
domination. In this society , educational and infra-structural capacities
are first awarded to men to be competitive, to gain power and to dominate
others, starting with women. These values of power and domination are
promoted as positive values and judgement criteria. These are deeply
rooted within each of us and define our self-esteem, our sensitivity and
our relationships, whether sexual, friendly, inside the family or at work...

They are driving forces of capitalist and state social relations:
economic and political competition between corporations and parties,
competition at every level of the social ladder between individuals, the
will to accumulate and centralise power and riches. We could also
underline the parallel between economical and practical dependency of
women inside the traditional family structure, and the growing dependency
of a large part of the population on the elite's technological knowledge
and tools.

Both of these systems, the former rooted in the private sphere, the
latter in the public sphere, are complementary and mutually reinforce
each other. Logically, a coherent critical analysis of one can help us to
better understand and criticize the other. It may even be vain to want to
change the values of any one these spheres if we continue to accept them
in the other. This doesn't necessarily condemn the legitimacy and/or the
strategic interest of steps in specific struggles in one or the other of
these issues.

We can also highlight various cases in which the very foundations of
capitalist society relies on patriarchal structures:

· The free maintenance of salaried production tools (housekeeping, food, child care, emotional support)

· The creation of a category of under-paid workers

· The separation of individuals into families instead of collective or communitarian structures potentially harder to subjugate

· The exploitation of sexual frustration and using women as objects to create and maintain consumerist impulses.

These few examples show us that by confronting patriarchy, we have a
chance of undermining some of the structural underpinnings of capitalism.
The problem of anti-capitalist critique is that it constantly targets
external power structures. The interest of feminist critique, more
centred on the individual, is that it offers the tools necessary to
understand the mechanisms of oppression from inside and the way we
integrate and personally reproduce these systems of power and domination
in our social, intimate and daily relations, ranging from the manner in
which we express ourselves to our relation to technology. This doesn't
exclude the accuracy of class analysis (men/women or
proletariat/bourgeois) but enriches it with an indispensable
self-questioning (a process that we still have great difficulties to
accept and which surely explains, at least in part, systematic anger
rushes caused by feminist theories). The enemy which we usually try to
confront in the street is in fact also inside of everyone of us. Without
confronting patriarchal culture, we can destroy as many G8, world bank,
corporations and state summits as we want, we'll surely end up creating
all over again exactly the same types of social relations. You can't
change society without changing the individual, just as you can't start a
revolution without having already experienced different ways of life.

The emancipation of men?

The problem of patriarchy doesn't only relate to women's oppression and
anti-capitalist struggles. As men we can also analyse how much
patriarchal culture can also make us suffer and is in opposition to our
emancipation and the construction of different social relationships.
We're obviously actors/agents, but also often victims of constantly
needing to stay competitive, strong, of feeling the need to dominate
others even in our own ‘alternative’ spaces and collectives. But we're
usually afraid to question these attitudes, as they constitute our male
sense of selfworth and give us roles of power. We also suffer from a
sexual culture of inevitable masculine domination that is generally a
safeguard for the complementary structure of couples/family/state. To do
so, this culture bases our sexuality on violence, frustration, extremely
restrictive norms, and repression. To this regard, Reich and his book
‘Sexual Revolution’ still has some relevance. On this particular issue,
he shows that a deconstruction of masculinity could bring a great
potential to destroy capitalist society.

Activism for men

Many of us, European activists, involved in various collectives, are
white, heterosexual, middle-class men. We've been educated to feel
strong, self-confident with our ideas and analyses, to be able to speak
loud and to fight to show that we're better than others. It makes us
skilled in the art of ‘meeting warfare’. We are capable in various highly
valued areas and specific technical fields such as building, repairing,
computer work. Other people, and especially women, generally suffer from
a cultural and educational background – even sometimes in left
middle-class intellectual families - which have prevented them from
acquiring these nice patriarchal tools. Some often feel disempowered in
the activist culture and it's ways of doing things that are supposed to
be so different. Many of them are quickly sick of it, others have great
difficulties to assert themselves inside it. Let's only give a few
examples of this patriarchal activism:

· In our actions and the mythology that we build around, we keep on
glorifying the most spectacular/confrontational aspects and the
situations in which male heroes can rise on the stage of activism. To
take a common example, we'll pay a lot more attention to the one who has
dropped the banner than to anyone who painted it. More care to the stones
thrown at cops than to the time spent talking about new repressive laws
with people in the street (which doesn't mean that we shouldn't drop
banner or throw more stones at cops, men and women together... it's
another debate).

· In many situations, we can feel a constant pressure to show how
courageous we are, how much we don’t give a shit about repression and are
ready for revenge, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. I'm
pro-direct action and I'm not against various strategies that include
what some would consider to be ‘violent,’ but not when it turns in a
contest of testosterone, that sometimes strategically blind us, and can
also quickly exclude many.

· Even if some types of methodologies are useful in their efficiency (if taken as reaching our goal with positive and equalitarian political methods and without alienating collectives and individuals), we should also be conscious that a typically masculine understanding of efficiency (meaning doing things as fast as possible by those who know best how to do them) disempowers and excludes many, especially women. We could say the same of our tendencies to compile as many spectacular events as we can instead of giving time for long-term and sometimes more efficient campaigns.

· The justifications that we always have to keep on doing things instead of others (“it will be less tiring, safer, better done”) often hide old sexist gallantry, be it in activist or more personal environments. We often give priority to technical discussions and fellowship between specialists without facilitating the participation of others (but rather to stay spectators).

· We're constantly developing relations of the type ‘I know better, I do better...’ where we mostly try to show that we are more radical, stronger, that we're right or that we were there, that we've been listened to, that we’ve been involved since a long time, that we made great sacrifices for the cause.

· Regarding the relationships in the anti-capitalist radical scene, I often wonder whether we're happy to see people doing good things and
changing the world together through various ways, or if we're in fact
sometimes secretly or openly eager to see other groups or collectives
stagnate or have difficulties. Do we sincerely want other people to do
cool things and help them to do so, or do we want to be seen as the most
prestigious?

· We sometimes end up reproducing party type politics (‘I agree with him because he's my friend’) hiding important and needed political debates (often pushed by oppressed minorities) for the sake of unity.

The examples described here could seem to be excessively negative and
critical, but many situations have shown how greatly they can paralyse
our movements on a large scale.

The pseudo-importance of gender questions in our collectives

We have all experienced meetings in which premises of debates end with
this sad joke - “Yes, gender issues are really important, but let's reach
a decision/organise this debate/plan this action first. We'll deal with
it next time...’ Efficiency is always a good excuse. It's an example
among many others of the, often conveniently ignored, way in which we
give priority to certain struggles and wait for the day of revolution and
the end of capitalism to deal seriously with patriarchy (or power
structures in our collectives, or incoherencies between our ideas and
practices...). We always consider ourselves as anti-sexist, but how much
time do we truly take to work on the issue of patriarchy? When we address
this issue in a mixed context, it's generally restrained to what's
happening far from us, or to a depressing list along the lines of ‘men
do/don't do this; women do/don't do that’(see the first paragraph of this
text) without any more analysis and/or real potential to move towards
concrete changes. If we only count the initiatives taken by
straight/hetero men, anti-sexism in the radical, anti-capitalist
movements, mainly appears to be a superficial folklore. We sometimes
debate but let women take real initiatives on the issue. And the women
who do it are often judged and condemned, as some accuse them of acting
in too confrontational a manner (when they disturb the great consensus of
masculine fellowship, or point to the inconsistencies between theory and
individual practices. Just think about the extremely tense reactions that
arise when non-mixed spaces or meetings are suggested during meetings,
debates, action camps...). The result is that many women who have a will
to struggle against patriarchal society end up by giving up actions,
collectives and mixed movements such as PGA.

Changing... a few specific ideas.

· Gender issues should be a major focus in every one of our collectives and every action - why is this action generally organised by white middle-class men? What can we concretely do to change this situation and to create a comfortable frame for others? Are we ready to take time for all this? Here are a few ideas:

· Allocate time and space for non-mixed meetings between men and between women inside each collective.

· Intervene every time we perceive the habitual division between tasks taken care of by women or men in our collectives, places, meetings and activities.

· Clearly formalised structures for meetings (for example by way of hand signals/gestures, clear agendas, turns of speech, clear reports,
moderators, a fluid decision-making process to reach consensus, giving
priority to people who don't usually express themselves, etc.) help at
the very least to feel at ease during meetings, and to break the monopoly
of the big mouths

· Often, women who take care of children must reduce the time they might want to spend on militant activities. Political
groups should take concrete measures to collectively take care of
children at times when their mothers wish to take part in activities. At
the PGA conference, some activists from London described how they had
occupied a nursery that was on the verge of closing down after having
been privatised. These people tried to self-manage the nursery and turned
it into a social centre for the neighbourhood with baby-sitting services.

· One should also take time to think about ostentatious pro-feminist attitudes that can easily hide a superficial strategy of acknowledgement, seduction, maybe even paternalist attitudes and re-appropriation of feminist struggles. To my mind, this doesn't mean that one shouldn't discuss patriarchal themes with women, but rather that we should question a minimum our reasons and ways of doing it.

If you know how to make a bomb... Other basic and funny strategies to
subvert patriarchal culture starting with ourselves and ultimately ending
up with (why not?) the whole world.

We assume that most of the differences between men and women are neither
essential, nor permanent, neither rooted in any natural or religious
transcendental order. For the most part, these differences are the result
of our socialization and of cultural and economical circumstances
throughout history. It is still possible for us to intervene freely on
these differences and to modify them as we please (even if it's hard work that can take generations...). I modestly present here a paradigm for this process of change. A paradigm that can be freely recycled, changed or
developed.

1) Ingredients and goals

Our first task is to try to define and analyse methodically what, in our
patriarchal culture, is more often attributed to men on one side, and to
women on the other. We should then attempt to perceive the various ways
in which these differences are used by some to dominate others. We can
assume that there are presently good and bad things, to keep or to
reject, in both masculine and feminine specific social attributes.
Therefore, a potential aim would be to build a society in which, what we
believe as fulfilling could be equally shared on an egalitarian basis,
such as self-confidence, technical/practical capacities, the care given
to others, communication skills, creating beautiful things, practical
things, cooking, growing vegetables, repairing a computer or building a
wall...

2) Pastry-making theory and the re-composition of the ingredients

A second step would be to evaluate our various capacities, what they can
offer us in both positive and negative aspects, what we would like to
keep and transform for a society that would be less ugly. None of these
qualities are intrinsically good or wrong. It all depends on our use of
it, and of our capacities to transform it: for example, masculine
self-confidence as it is presently expressed often oppresses others. But
it also potentially offers fulfilling potentials to individuals. It can
initiate huge dynamics, the will to surpass oneself and to change things.
This step should bring us many theoretical questions, both profound and
instructive, such as: how to keep the will to change things without
competition, how to keep sexual desire without domination, the capacity
to talk and to argue without predominantly using it to win people over...
Pastry theory is a process that needs to be constantly renewed.

3) Practice and pastry mix

We should then develop practices through which men and women could
acquire positive social benefits of each gender. Aim to exchange
knowledge (skill-sharing), slow the pace of what we usually do and take
the time to explain it to others. Increase the value of some things that
are usually discredited (house cleaning for example) and explore new
activities. We mainly define our social role, even in the activist world,
by our activities (be they cooking, flyer writing, meeting, cleaning,
painting, communicating with others..). We are more than often too afraid
to give up this rôle. We are afraid to loose some of the privileges it
gives us. We are also often afraid to try to do something new when
there's already someone that does it well. We should nevertheless take
time to get out of our shell, to do things that we aren't used to, and to
offer space for others in the activities that we usually monopolise
(which can take time before working efficiently). This process should be
guided by the will to get away from our usual foci in order to feel
things from new perspectives, to find new beautiful things... An
important tool for this can be to have spaces at our disposal that are
protected enough for us to feel comfortable to experiment within them. It
is important that these spaces (like some squats, autonomous places,
collective housings) are not just spaces of public activities but also of
collective daily life: living spaces!

4) Incorporating exotic ingredients

Freeing ourselves from patriarchal culture means starting with what we
have in terms of redistributing and recreating our old gender habits, but
it also means doing something new: creating new words (because our
language structures our relationship to the world - I've used in this
text, quite paradoxically, a certain amount of typically manly and
warlike language concepts in order to subvert others), inventing new
feelings, new couples or non-couples relationships, inventing qualities
and styles that don't exist yet, spaces and actions that make us live
differently. All the stories, pictures, movies, situations that we have
lived with, especially as kids, have slowly constructed our sensitivity,
our ways of having sex, what we find as beautiful, exciting, what make us
cry or make us stronger. We have all felt how difficult it can be to
combine newly learnt theoretical ideas and analysis with our sensitivity.
Renewed debate and thought, rational will to change our feelings toward
things can help us, little by little, to make sensitivity change.

Nevertheless, it's often difficult, as pictures and fictions constantly
push us back to a standardized sensitivity. Moreover, even if we change
individually or in communities, these pictures and fictions will continue
to shape the desires and frustrations of the generations that will follow
us. Sensitivity needs to be fed on dreams and stories, our theoretical
ideas need a new imaginary world. A struggle aimed at deconstructing
masculinity should therefore spend time building a new subversive culture
(be it through books, music, painting, theatre, movies) which would give
us pictures and feelings of de-gendered society and of the necessary
struggles and tensions to reach it.

Beware !
The repetition of these operations could make us compose a new world
where everybody could be free to live diverse and fulfilling feelings,
practices and sexualities, without having one's desires and potentials
determined by being born male or female. So...
LET'S DREAM !


PS : This text predominantly proposes ideas and actions for men in the
frame of mind to question patriarchy and masculinity. However, in the
last part ‘how to make a bomb’, I've considered mixed dynamics as I state
only really general ideas. But I have to say that I find it really
problematic, profiting in many aspects from this oppressive system, to
give my opinion on whatever women should or should not do. The fact that
this text is addressed to men doesn't imply that men are the only actors
of this system and the only one who have to question and change.

Patriarchy, as with every oppressive system, is often accepted and
maintained from both sides, so initiatives and a will to emancipate
ourselves are needed from both sides. But to start with, many women have
struggled for ages with these issues without much support. Moreover, as a
man, it seems to me really counter-productive and dangerous to focus on what women should or should not do and what they do well or wrong. We'll never act instead of them and should never wish to do so... So instead of taking the rôle of external judges, let's first take care of what we can do ourselves. As oppressors, it could even be easier for us, in many regards, to break this system, with a little bit of good will.

Nicolu - dijon -janvier 03 - nicolu at chutelibre(dot)org – with the great help of juules and others for the still unsatisfaying english translation To be read :... As most of my documentations was in french, I'll have to
find english ressources and you'll have to wait a little bit for that.


A few more reflections on the usefulness of men-only groups as a tool to
struggle against patriarchy and oppressive masculinity.

The idea of women-only and men-only groups, practices and actions is
often rejected and badly mistaken as a segregationist strategy or a way
to reproduce gender differences. Most of the anti-authoritarian feminist
groups I know, in European countries at least, use women-only groups as
one of the best ways they have to understand the oppressions they suffer
from, and to emancipate and empower themselves. Most of these feminist,
as far as I know, don't do it on a seperationist basis and still develope
mixed lives, activities and discussions. Throughout history, groups of
oppressed people (be it proletarians, slaves, black people, colonised
people, indigenous people, GLBTQIs...) made the choice to have some times
and spaces specifically between themselves to organise against their oppression and oppressors.

Even if many men and anarchists, feeling threatened, criticize without
taking the time to try to understand the positive aspects of women's
groups, it's women's perfectly legitimate choice to do so. It's not
really for me to explain it more and I'd rather focus on something
different in many regards but that I've experienced as really useful and
a great tool to positively and collectively confront masculinity:
men-only groups.

Let's make it clear that I don't see men-only group as an aim in itself.
It's a means to help building the mixed and degendered society that we
can dream of. I would also add that, in my experiences, men-only groups
didn't look like a popular tribunal/court, puritan confessional or
collective therapy where men would have to judge themselves or to compete
to be the best pro-feminist. They're on the contrary aimed at being a
place where men share a common goal of feeling comfortable to talk and to
change themselves and help others. We are also taking care not to end by
just reinforcing the usual masculine solidarity against women (some
men-only movements, especially in the US are just conservative,
essentialists and pro-masculinists and have nothing to do with what we fight for).
Anti-patriarchal male groups do not work by the fact it's a men-only
group. Society is full of men-only discussions and spaces (bars, sport
clubs, groups of friends, some collectives) that often just reflect
patriarchal and virile relationships between men. Anti-patriarchal men´s
groups work when some men choose to do something that rarely happens -
taking some formal and organised time to discuss and struggle against
patriarchy.

If we seriously want to confront masculinity, we need deep and serious
talks about a lot of personal, intimate and difficult issues. We can
consider ourselves anti-sexist and struggle with it for years, our mixed
collectives/discussions/groups will still sometimes reflect a lot of
oppression, focus on seduction, fears, frustrations, angers that make us
feel secure in disclosing ourselves and showing emotional vulnerability.
Non-mixed groups give the possibility to get out of the usual competitive
arena. I've seen myself and many other men addressing personal issues
that they would never have talked about (at least before) in mixed groups
and debates.

One of the basic reasons for men’s groups to work sometimes so
efficiently is that a discussion is always easier when you share a common
experience with people around, and can sometimes be uncomfortable when
you have to speak of something that doesn't necessarily give you the role
of the good guy in front of people who could feel oppressed in that
situation. It's good to go beyond this, but men-only groups offer a way
to question ourselves, perceive that we share problems and feelings with
others, and feel more confident to change. It can help to develop, step
by step, more sincere and productive discussions in mixed groups.
In my experience we usually, collectively don't take much time and
initiative as men to speak about patriarchy. We often follow feminists
and at the best say they're right. There are a lot of ‘uneasy issues’
that we usually skip in informal situations. Men´s groups are a way to do
our part of the job as men and to try to change ourselves while women use
women´s groups to do so... It can help us reach better relations and
understandings of oppression when we go back to our mixed groups,
discussions and lives. Our relations between men are, to me at least,
really frustrating, with constant competition and pressure to be the
strongest, smartest, funniest, the one who knows the most and acts and
speaks the best. While those who are not so good at whatever it is, can
just shut up and listen. These relationships are often enclosed inside rigid norms that prevent us from many great feelings, discussions, physical exchanges. Changing our relations to women is therefore only part of the job, changing our relations to other men is one of the most important things that we can start doing through men-only groups.