NewsSocialist feminism

In Solidarity with Sex Workers: Come March with Us!

on May 30, 2018
On June 2nd a group of sex workers is organizing a protest in Oakland. They outline five goals: to make the Bay Area and local media more aware of the systematic violence against sex workers, legal and otherwise; to make it clear that sex workers’ concerns are intersectional concerns; to elevate sex workers’ voices; to be visible and to celebrate; and to celebrate the anniversary of the founding of St. James Infirmary.
We have an additional goal: we want to affirm that sex workers are workers, and, like all workers, deserve self-determination.

Sex workers have faced attacks on all sides by the law. Often they work against women: in 2010, an Australian law set restrictions on women’s breast sizes in pornography. Moral handwringing in 2014 led to the restriction of an arbitrary laundry list of sex acts in pornography.  These laws are written without consulting actual sex workers about their interests: most recently, AB-1576 was introduced to the California assembly without sex workers’ input. Laws against sex work aren’t only motivated by hegemonic Christian-tinged moral interest, but also by feminists: women and women’s groups were major proponents of the “Nordic Model” of criminalizing buying sex but not selling it, but a large body of evidence says it pushes sex work underground and makes it more dangerous.

 

And at the U.S. federal level they’re facing another vicious attack: in April, SESTA and FOSTA passed in the Senate and House, respectively. SESTA and FOSTA shift criminal and civil liability onto websites where sex workers post, discuss, and advertise. This creates a chilling effect, where websites proactively take down or filter content that may be related to sex work.

Sex workers themselves are largely opposed to SESTA and FOSTA. Like the earlier attacks, it’s unclear if they even prevent sex work; instead, workers say they’ll be forced to take more dangerous, less visible work. Sex work existed before the internet, and it will definitely exist off of the internet, but the internet provides tools, information, solidarity, and safety. Switter, a Twitter-like website used by sex workers has been impacted. People worry how they will share “bad date lists” and peer references. Backpage’s closure makes it harder for workers to find safe clients; instead they’re moving to the street.

And sex workers are being undermined by leftists: Bernie Sanders, an open socialist and sometime-darling of the DSA, voted yes on SESTA, prompting workers to produce a video open letter.

The attacks on sex work are class warfare. By marginalizing sex workers, capital creates a vulnerable class that it can exploit for profit. By making it difficult to talk about sex work on the internet, capital keeps sex workers separated and unorganized, and reinforces that vulnerability. We don’t know what society will look like after capitalism, or how and whether sex work will fit into that, but we do know that sex workers need support now. Sex workers are workers, and all workers deserve the chance to band together and control their own work.

Visibility isn’t always safe for sex workers: by making themselves present on June 2nd, they’ll be putting themselves at risk in order to organize. Join us as we stand and march with them!

Written by DSA SF SocFem member Elizabeth Morgan.

NewsSocialist feminism

Feminism for the 99%—SF International Women’s Day of Action and Rally

on March 15, 2018

On March 8th, members of DSA SF’s Socialist Feminist working group joined a coalition of organizations[1] at San Francisco’s Civic Center to celebrate International Women’s Day.  Together we made ourselves loud and clear, wearing our red, waving our signs and being unapologetically vocal about women, LGBTQI, immigrant, people of color and people with disabilities and special needs’ rights.

Those who gave impassioned speeches were from the Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense, NARAL – Pro Choice America, the Senior and Disability Action, the Queer Cultural Center, CA Domestic Worker’s Coalition, California Faculty Association, GABRIELA, Global Women’s Strike, United Educators San Francisco, Housing Rights Committee, the SF Tenants Union and Worker’s Voice/La Voz de los Trabajadores.

Our Socialist Feminist group was there for several reasons. For one, International Women’s Day is rooted in socialist feminism. In 1909, female garment workers in New York City, including young teenagers and immigrants, staged a 20,000-person strike demanding better working rights. And hint, hint—they won! Inspired by the victory, the Socialist Party established “Women’s Day” marches in 1910 across the United States.[2] In order to continue to dismantle oppressive structures of power that keep women down, outreach and coalition building with our sisters and allies at events like these is key.

We’ve started partnering with organizations and creating events, such as the counter-protest to the March for Life in San Francisco this past January with Bay Area Reproductive Justice. Our work is intersectional and has just begun; we’re currently working on projects and goals focusing on immigrant rights, reproductive justice and homelessness.

Those who are interested in getting involved (with priority given to folks who identify as women) are welcome to reach out via email (socfem@dsasf.org) or attend our next meeting at the DSA SF office (3/17, 2-4pm at 350 Alabama St). We hope to see you there in solidarity!

[1] The coalition organizing this event included the IWS National Committee and March 8th, Bay Area for Reproductive Justice, Democratic Socialists of America: San Francisco, International Socialist Organization: Northern California, Refuse Fascism Bay Area, Women’s March San Francisco, and Worker’s Voice/La Voz de los Trabajadores.

[2] https://www.teenvogue.com/story/international-womens-day-2018-the-history-of-iwds-black-feminist-and-socialist-roots

Direct actionJusticeNewsSocialist feminism

Marching for Reproductive Justice

on January 22, 2018

The Rally for Reproductive Justice will take place on January 27th – we begin at the Federal Building (90 7th St.) at 11:30 a.m to voice strong opposition to the Walk for Life, a hypocritically named movement backed by individuals who stand against reproductive justice for women. We ask you to come out on the streets and stand with us as we declare our goals: free contraception; free abortion; on demand; without apology.

In July 2017, SF DSA voted to ratify a statement by our Socialist Feminism Committee which cemented our chapter’s commitment to never compromise on reproductive justice. Our statement made clear that “[T]he socialist society we envision includes support for a full range of reproductive choices. We demand free and universal access to contraception and abortion, free and universal access to fertility support, and free and universal access to transgender healthcare.” In keeping with these principles, at our December chapter meeting, we endorsed the Rally for Reproductive Justice to counter the Walk for Life West Coast. The Walk for Life—a mass march organized by Christian fundamentalists opposed to reproductive justice for women—will attempt to take over the streets of San Francisco on Saturday, January 27, 2018. Their explicit goal is to oppose access to reproductive healthcare, contraception, sex education and, abortion. This march targets the basic human rights of self-determination and bodily autonomy.

SF DSA is joining the Rally for Reproductive Justice not only to defend against this attack on crucial human rights, but also to recognize the importance of reproduce justice as an emblematic movement for personal liberty and social progress. The fight for reproductive justice includes the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children or not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.[1] While indigenous women, women of color, and trans people have always fought for reproductive justice, we want to take this opportunity to recognize that the term was invented in 1994 by a group of black feminists who recognized that the women’s rights movement, led by and representing middle class and wealthy white women, could not defend the needs of all women. Reproductive justice is an active framework that sees reproductive rights in a political context in the fight against racism and gender and class oppression.[2] Fighting for reproductive justice is an integral part of building socialism and equality in this world, and SF DSA is committed to this fight.

We also recognize that the Walk for Life is a complete misnomer. Our comrades in DSA Chicago have said it best:

“There is nothing “pro-life” about these people – they don’t care about babies once they’re born, they’re pro-gun, pro-war, and pro-Trump. They want to ban contraception and comprehensive sex ed. They don’t care that black women are drastically more likely to die in childbirth than white women. They’re perfectly happy to see funding cut for programs that serve disabled infants, children, and adults. They don’t care that folks across America are suffering from lead poisoning and treatable diseases. They don’t care that folks across America are getting murdered by police. They don’t care that trans folks, people of color, and sex workers are getting murdered every day. They don’t care that folks around the world are being killed by American bombs. For these reasons and more, we call them not ‘pro-life’, but ‘pro-lie’.”

The Walk for Life is no different than the fascist threat we stood up to in August last year. It is incumbent upon us to stand against this threat and reaffirm our commitment to reproductive justice. Join us and our coalition partners [3] as we mobilize again to make clear that SF DSA stands with our community in opposing this sexist agenda. Join us as we make our position clear: Free Abortion. On Demand. Without Apology.

Event details: https://www.facebook.com/events/552430751801203/

 

 

 

[1] http://sistersong.net/reproductive-justice/

[2] https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/reproductive-justice-not-just-rights

[3] Our coalition partners include: UC Student-Workers Union – UAW Local 2865, United Educators of San Francisco, International Socialist Organization – Northern California, Workers’ Voice/La Voz de los Trabajadores, CODEPINK San Francisco, Resistance SF, South Beach District 6 Democratic Club of San Francisco, Refuse Fascism Bay Area, Socialist Action, Left Party, The Committee to Elect Stephen R. Jaffe, Bay It Forward and our comrades in Silicon Valley DSA and East Bay DSA.

NewsSocialist feminism

There can be no compromise on reproductive justice

on August 2, 2017

San Francisco Democratic Socialists of America’s Socialist Feminism Committee drafted the following statement about reproductive justice, subsequently ratified by the chapter at our July meeting, in response to discussion both within and outside of the DSA surrounding the Omaha, Nebraska mayoral race. The statement affirms our commitment to reproductive justice as a central plank of a just society, not only from a moral perspective, but an analytical one one as well. The way workers are oppressed under capitalism and wage labor is inextricably linked to the way that the tasks of child-bearing, child-raising, and homemaking are dictated; freedom and justice for the working class must necessarily extend to the domestic sphere in terms of relationships, the family unit, and bodily autonomy.

Yesterday, the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the person tasked with winning the House of Representatives for the Democratic Party,  publically reneged on the fight for reproductive justice, declaring that Democratic candidates need not support abortion rights to receive financial support for campaigns. This selective abandonment of the Democratic party’s ostensibly ‘core values’ is precisely what inspired us to write the letter below over three months ago. In light of this announcement, we felt it important to reiterate our unwavering commitment to reproductive justice.

Now more than ever, socialists must unite to affirm our demand: reproductive justice for all. DSA SF will never support candidates, policies, or social movements that concede  on reproductive justice. Reproductive justice is central to our theory and practice of socialism. We will continue to fight for bodily autonomy of all forms, without compromise.

— Alisha Foster, Darby Thomas, Teresa Pratt, Jennifer Snyder, Shannon Malloy  DSA SF Steering Committee

Open letter to DSA National

from DSA San Francisco Chapter

Dear DSA National,

In light of recent national debate about the endorsement of anti-choice candidates in local electoral campaigns, we state firmly that the San Francisco chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America does not compromise on issues of reproductive justice. Universal access to free abortion, as one of many components of bodily freedom, is fundamental to our vision of socialism.

It is incumbent on DSA to promote a feminist analysis of political economy, one which emphasizes that any capitalist system will necessarily exploit reproductive labor. An elected official who has supported (or will support) restricted access to abortion stands in the way of economic and reproductive justice — such policies disproportionately affect the working class and exacerbate economic inequality while also violating the fundamental human right to reproductive and bodily autonomy. Any policy restricting either of these rights is incompatible with socialism.

Our support for reproductive justice is not separable from a broader socialist analysis, and any compromise on this fundamental aspect of the socialist program is unacceptable. The San Francisco chapter of the DSA thoroughly and unequivocally rejects such a stance and advocates for universal and public support for reproductive justice.

We submit the following statement as a testament to our socialist vision for reproductive justice and bodily freedom.

In solidarity,

San Francisco Democratic Socialists of America

————

Statement on Reproductive Justice

As socialists, we believe that the right to shape the conditions of your labor is a fundamental human right. This includes the conditions of reproductive labor: the work of bearing and rearing children, and any other unwaged care — cooking, cleaning, emotional support — that is necessary for society to function. This labor plays a key role in every economic system; only the advent of the wage makes it appear otherwise. Because reproductive labor is work, it can be exploited like any other form of work.

This establishes the need for reproductive justice: the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy. Everyone has the right to have children or not have children, and to parent those children in safe and sustainable communities. Crucially, the intersection of class- and race-based oppressions has produced various systems of bodily control under capitalism. Historically, this involves both the ideological and legislative denial of access to abortion and contraception as well as the less widely-known history of compulsory sterilization, the latter of which has an undeniable tie to eugenics in this country. Thus, the reproductive justice we demand involves liberation from all forms of bodily control.

This introduces a crucial tenet of our demand: while reproductive justice is undoubtedly tied to economic justice, there is no need to derive it from an argument of economic expediency. That is, bodily freedom is central to socialism as a moral good in its own right. It is as fundamental as workers’ rights, or healthcare for all, or the abolition of poverty. A woman, trans man, or non-binary person’s right to control their body is not reducible solely to an issue of economic justice.

Thus, the socialist society we envision includes support for a full range of reproductive choices. We demand free and universal access to contraception and abortion, free and universal access to fertility support, and free and universal access to transgender healthcare. These programs allow individuals to determine the conditions of their own reproductive labor as well as their bodily freedom. Giving all people freedom to exercise their human capacities for parenting and gender expression must be part of any socialist program, for it resists the ideological naturalization of motherhood as a biological and cultural inevitability.

As socialists, we must also support the broad range of programs that are necessary to make it possible to have and raise children with dignity. These include decent holistic prenatal care, free and universal child care and public schools, and access to healthy food and clean water. These material necessities of reproductive labor should be shared by all of society. We must counter the ideology that women are the childbearing center of each individual family unit; by placing the bulk of the economic burden of raising the next generation on individual families, we reproduce the current system wherein families with disparate means simply pass on their wealth from generation to generation. If abortion is legal, but not free and accessible, only wealthy women can control their reproductive labor. Likewise, if some wealthy women are able to hire poorer women to perform household tasks at low wages, only wealthy women are in control of their domestic labor. Neither of these are wins for feminism or for socialism.
There is no time to lose. Our current political climate has provided a platform the bigotry that disciplines gender in every possible way — most recently, with a healthcare reform proposal that treats rape and pregnancy as pre-existing conditions. All socialists must raise the issue of reproductive justice — at work, on university campuses, in our local political domains and on the national level. As long as we live in a society that drastically restricts women’s reproductive freedom, we will continue to fight for reproductive and bodily liberation alongside all other forms of social liberation.

Illustration courtesy of See Red Women’s Workshop. Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

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Fearless CitiesNewsSocialist feminism

The Feminization of Politics

on June 11, 2017

Fearless Cities opened on Saturday with a plenary session of leaders from Barcelona en Comú. It was held in the basilica of the Universitat de Barcelona, with the speakers taking their place far from the pews, behind a table that had been set up in front of the altar. The deputy mayor, Gerardo Pisarello, joked that it was unfortunate that the panel was seated in such a high place, but that, perhaps, it was just, and just about time—time for women to take their place in such institutions.

The plenary session was entitled The Feminization of Politics. For Barcelona en Comú, this concept is more than a commitment to feminist issues. It represents an entire reconfiguration of political practice. Barcelona’s Councilor for Feminisms, Laura Pérez Castaño, spoke about four of the key practices necessary for realizing this concept.

  1. Parity between women and men, between the masculine and the feminine. Not content with the mere legal equality inherited from liberal traditions of the past, Castaño envisions an end to the marginalization of feminine concepts and knowledge. We can imagine a world where female victims of sexual violence are not automatically treated with suspicion, or where knowledge about child care is taken just as seriously as more traditionally male pursuits.
  2. Reduction of verticality. Horizontalizing our political spaces will require ensuring that all are speaking in equal proportion, and that all are listening equally as well. To get there, we must recognize the outsize role that men can often take up in public debate. It will require consulting experts, less often from the universities and more often from the territories actually affected by policy.
  3. Inclusion of women and domestic workers. This means holding meetings at all hours of the day, not always in the evenings! It means providing predictable child care and publicizing it. And it means always being vigilant when it comes to who can participate in the meetings.
  4. Centrality of gender in our politics. The feminization of politics is not guaranteed, even for Barcelona en Comú. Achieving it is an ongoing struggle and dialectic within our organizations. With that in mind, we must not fail to center gender in our analysis and practice, because only then will we accomplish this vision of a more universal politics.

These concepts surfaced many more times over the course of the weekend, informing our discussions of economic justice, building power, radical democracy, and many other issues. We’re excited to do everything we can to help bring this idea back into our chapter, to see how it can inform our organizing and political practice. Look out for more posts soon!

NewsSocialist feminism

Socialist feminism panel

on May 10, 2017

Socialism and Feminism…you can’t have one without the other.

DSA SF and Northern California ISO, with a guest speaker from Socialist Alternative, talked about the role of women in revolution and how we can work to fight sexism today.

We know the liberation of women can’t be achieved by merely gaining power within our existing system since the system only works when people (especially women and other marginalized groups) are oppressed… The question is now how do we work for true equality across genders and races and borders?

Our Socialist Feminist Panel, the final event in the Solidarity Series with ISO and Socialist Alternative, was a total success and was also totally packed! With three female-identifying panelists, including the brilliant Moira Weigel representing DSA, we covered some of the highlights in feminist history, feminism as it relates to LGBTQ communities, reproductive rights, and more. There was also a Bread and Roses Photo Booth created by our awesome comrade Darby, which pretty much put it over the top as the raddest event ever known in the history of all events to date on the planet Earth.

Go Socialist Feminist Working Group!