The Cult of ‘Persynality’

My present relationship with the feminist movement is akin to one’s begrudging love for their loud old aunt Mildred who has too many cats and a nasty habit of getting drunk and telling offensive jokes at family reunions – she’s often a pain in the ass; but she’s your dear old pain in the ass. So, I’m at once cognizant of the fact that most self-described feminists are middle-class white people with gross, reformist politics and that my own ideological roots are in the feminist community – this is why I’m still willing to defend feminism from attacks by whiny outsiders¹, in much the same way that you might feel OK mentioning the fact that Aunt Mildred kinda smells like mothballs & Dr. Scholl’s foot pads; but hearing random strangers who aren’t family members laugh about it sets your blood to boiling. Yes, she’s weird and rude and smells like the bottom of her bedroom closet; but she’s my weird, smelly aunt and I love her despite her flaws, so back off.

Upon meeting large numbers of feminists in meatspace during my mid to late teens and onward, I encountered a likable enough community. Yes, there was no shortage of smug, middle-class white liberals and infighting about irrelevant crap; but generally, even online discourse was what I’ll call ‘outwardly-focused’ – talking about and/or planning on-the-ground activism, heated debates on how certain business practices and government policies impact different women, anecdotes from our daily lives, and so on.

..and then, like a careless chef dropping a head of lettuce behind the fridge and promptly forgetting about it, I was completely uninvolved with the feminist community for a couple of years. Upon my return, I encountered a big old rotting mess.

Red Triangle Technology Collective

“What is the Red Triangle Technology Collective? More than anything else, it’s a means by which we can become independent from corporate and state-controlled communications mediums. From Facebook to Google, Verisign to Yahoo, relying on entities which are sympathetic to the ruling class for our entire network is a strategy for fail.

We need our own solutions – by us, for us, with our needs and principles in heart and mind. That’s what RTTC is.”

– Matt D. Harris, founder

In a nutshell, the purpose of the Red Triangle Technology Collective is to provide a no-cost hosting solution for radical projects and websites. This way, people who can’t afford (or would like to avoid) a commercial provider can still start developing their ideas on the web! 

Our team is worker-managed – we democratically (via consensus when possible; via voting when not) make the majority of non-technical decisions regarding the management of the co-op. This includes things like projects to provide services for, criteria for services, memberships in the co-op, and potential future expansions into new areas. Technical decisions are made by the engineering team on a consensus basis.

Red Triangle Technology Collective

Via GonzoTimes; emphases mine:

The Red Triangle Technology Collective has officially begun operating today, moving towards implementing phase 1 of the plan!  We’re currently focusing on getting our websites designed and implemented, getting a logo, and fundraising to be able to implement phase 1. We announced several weeks ago our intent to launch right here at Gonzo Times, and outlined some core principles and goals.  With the formal plan, released yesterday, we’ve refined these ideas and made public our tentative budget for phases 1, 2, and 3.

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MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WILL DIE

An addendum, added several months after the fact – This is so..wow. Even though I still hate the same things you’d expect a green anarchist to hate, I no longer endorse many of the key ideas contained here & would actually argue against some of them. I really doubt (m)any people read this, but I felt like pointing this out. Ancaps still suck, though; that hasn’t changed.

Primitivists & anti-civ types are probably the most frequently strawmanned subgroup of anarchists; and as an anti-civver, I get rather sick of hearing the same arguments over and over again

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I was recently sucked into a silly facebook quibble with an ancap who regurgitated the usual, anti-primitivist tosh:

Cutting Corners

This image makes me recall a conversation with a former friend about a year ago, in which she (a chronic procrastinator, with her piles of unpaid parking tickets & overdue power bills) expressed total shock at the concept of late-term abortions, musing about what kind of person would “just wait around”until the last minute to schedule an abortion.

Presumably, the sort of person who can’t afford to take several days off work to have and recuperate from an abortion. The sort of person who didn’t realize she was pregnant until the second trimester. Or the sort of person who doesn’t own a car.

Several months ago, when I aborted, I bypassed all of the above – no gas-guzzling car ride to a clinic flanked with screeching protesters; no awkwardly invasive sonogram. …because I couldn’t afford it.

“free market” follies

A cross-post from the discussion group:

Anarcho-capitalists are often caught in a contradiction – in one breath, they define “capitalism” as an unhampered free market, arguing that the economic system we have isn’t capitalism.

..but in the next breath, they’ll engage in apologetics for features of our current economic system as though they’re defending transactions that take place in a free market – “But the tenant signed a contract!”, “But the disabled single mom voluntarily chooses to work at Wal-Mart!”, and so on.