I’ve heard some interesting language used to describe the times/the scene we’re living in. I’ve heard it called a death cult, which rouses some primal response in me. I’ve heard it called “the over culture”, to distinguish the systems that run the show from the marginal places where people are trying to thrive in different ways. This post, shared by the Bad Activist Collective on Friday, described the system we live in as a “white male knowledge system”, and goes on to unpack patriarchy and why we need men to help upgrade the system. It feels like an honest response to what we’ve been sharing earlier in the week, about murdered and missing indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people. What are some of the root causes of violence and sexualized violence towards women and LGBTQ2+ folk? Toxic masculinity comes to mind.
Read on! I’d love to hear how this lands with you. Do you feel resistance or defensiveness? Do you recognize the necessity of this invitation? Does it finally put words to something? Do you believe it’s even possible? And what might it take? And what might a “white male knowledge system” be upgraded to?
As the mom of a boy, I definitely want to keep this distinction clear: toxic masculinity doesn’t mean men are toxic. It means all of us, boys included, are growing up in a toxic system that makes it very hard to be yourself. A system that is proving to be kinda lethal. The “success” of this system, is represented by the people who reach the top of it. I offer you Donald Trump and Jeff Bezos as two examples. And I rest my case.
via @badactivistcollective
It is essential to move past a ‘white male knowledge system’.
Deconstructing and abolishing the patriarchy does not mean, “if you are a man you are inherently evil”. It means people who grow up inducted into masculinity and groomed to enforce and replicate the patriarchy unknowingly, need to be active in combatting this. In deconstructing the narrative of a patriarchal system and how it enforces and replicates itself.
Emma dabiri eloquently expalins how combatting white supremacy is in part an effort to move past a white knowledge system, because it is killing all of us, literally.
“The coalition emerges out of your recognition that it’s fucked up for you, in the same way that we’ve already recognized that it’s fucked up for us. I don’t need your help. I just need you to recognize that this shit is killing you, too, however much more softly, you stupid motherfucker, you know?” Fred moten
Hop Hopkins wrote “you can’t have climate change without sacrifice zones, and you can’t have sacrifice zones without disposable people, and you can’t have disposable people without racism”
White knowledge systems mainatin economic class divisions.
An end to white supremacy is not an end to ones survival but an end to the conditions that allow the elites to exploit us all.
We need to recoginse that the systems of patriarchy and white supremacy are killing all of us, some faster than others. But equally it is literally killing us still. In this recognition we begin to move past these knowledge systems so we do not continue to replicate them unknowingly. In doing this we protect ourselves, and protect people who do not meet meet these structures. In moving past these knowledge systems we create narratives that help protect, women, BIPOC, LGQT etc.
Please move past white, patriarchal knowledge systems, if not for others do it to for yourself. It is killing you too. White violence and male violence are all too real reprocussions of implementation and replication of white supremacy and patriarchy.
Written and designed by @tomaolivar
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