Feminism and Collapse

Every once in awhile in industrial collapse-related blog posts and comments, I notice something kind of creepy. There seems to be an attitude among some posters that feminism is some sort of frilly extra, like supermarkets with food shipped in from many miles away. Granted, I could be misreading this. Maybe I'm more sensitive to this sort of thing than they would expect people to be, so they don't feel a need to qualify their statements so they don't come off as oppressive types who think that what I do with my life should be somehow restricted based on what sex I am.

I'm lucky enough so that pretty much everyone I actually like/talk to is accepting of my gender and sexual orientation (this isn't anywhere near everyone who knows me because I hate having to correct people and explain myself.) And people who aren't accepting seem to prefer mentioning their feelings to my mom or my brother (which suits me just fine, though I don't think they like hearing that sort of thing anymore than I do.) Even so, I'm well aware that there are still people who aren't nearly so accepting in our midst, including in the area I live in (in the U.S., at any rate. I don't notice much prejudice against queer people in Berlin, but then again, I don't exactly broadcast my queerness here, either.) This hasn't stopped me from being straightforward about who I am so far, but all that really means is I'm more prepared to avoid certain people entirely and/or tell them where they can shove their silly ass-backward opinions than I am to pretend to be something I'm not.

Even if I don't face much immediate difficulty due to being queer, I am constantly aware that my nature comes off as a bit alien to a lot of people, which can potentially result in hostility if they see who I really am. I get reminded of this every time I hear someone make a wrong assumption about what pronouns to use when referring to me (though I do not take that by itself as a sign of hostility--just cluelessness resulting from societal conditioning that assumes people like me don't exist.) Even if I don't feel threatened, I am still very alert to potential threats.

Back to collapse. Hopefully I've made it clear why, say, some straight people's assumptions that when our communities become more geographically restricted due to lack of fuel, we will fall back on "traditional" ideals of marriage where such unions only apply to heterosexual couples alarms me. It seems to imply that we would also go back to shunning queer people. That does not have to be the case. But it is the most recent "tradition", and such traditions make for a horrifying reality.

I doubt that most people in the online collapse community are actively hostile towards queer people or women, even if the degree of hostility that crawled out of the woodwork after a snit between Dmitry Orlov and several feminists, including Gail Zawacki at the Age of Limits conference was kind of revolting. I don't think I disagree with either person's initial position--it seems like language and life experience got in the way of these two being able to see eye to eye. Gail appears to have been alarmed that the "societies that abide" that Dmitry mentioned hold people to different standards based on their sex, and couldn't make the assumption that Dmitry seemed to expect her to make--that these societies aren't perfect, but they're doing something that makes them extremely resilient, so we should look to them as examples if we want to build resilient communities that will survive industrial collapse and emulate what makes them so resilient (which doesn't have to include hostility towards people who don't conform to expected gender roles.)

The collapse community in general doesn't seem to concern itself much with current social politics--it's more concerned with the future, and how our actions now will affect that future. The mentality seems to be that when our long-term survival is at stake, social politics become irrelevant. This is sensible, and probably difficult to find fault with when one has enough social privilege so they don't have to worry about how people who don't conform to expected gender roles will be treated by a society that does not question them.

But sexism (be it in the form of misogyny, cissexism, heterosexism, or otherwise) hurts everyone to some degree and weakens our society by excluding people who could be leading productive, healthy lives and forcing people into roles that don't suit them. Our societies are not yet free of this spectre. In many communities, if people had to stop bothering with social politics today in order to focus on survival, the default that would probably win out would probably be closer to shunning anyone who doesn't conform to traditional gender roles where women are expected to have children and everyone is expected to marry someone of the other sex. And that is why we must continue to fight for the acceptance of queer people and the freedom for people of any sex to do what suits them in life regardless of gender roles, impending difficulties resulting from peak oil and climate change be damned.