Bash Back! St. Louis (?)

What is Bash Back?

2009-12-18T18:22:00.000-06:00

The only requirement to start a Bash Back! chapter is consensus on the various points of unity listed below. Some people will have no problem with them whatsoever. However, there are undoubtedly other radical queer/transgender people who very much want to participate in direct action but who may not agree with all of the points of unity. Hence the question mark in the header of this blog.

The purpose of this post is not to start a sectarian flame war. It is merely to facilitate connections among like-minded radical queer/transgender people and to let anyone who might be interested know what comes with the "Bash Back!" name (assuming their is any interest). The name of the game is non-hierarchical, consensus-based organizing (For people who may not be familiar with the consensus process, Gay Shame has a good example of what it entails on their website.)

Having said that, I'd be interested in hearing what other radical queer/transgender people in the area think--about Bash Back's points of unity, of course, but also if you think there is even a need for a(nother?) loose collective of queer/transgender radical activists in STL- be it "Bash Back!" or something else--especially those of you who are part of an affinity group of some sort and/or any other gaggle of people who may already be engaging in direct action. Perhaps starting a BB! chapter here would be superfluous- I don't know. If that's the case, I hope you will share your experiences and/or insights and ideas with those of us who are not as well-connected to the radical queer/transgender community in the STL area!

(I already know that the liberals and progressives think that Bash Back! is the most ridiculous, stupid, counterproductive, laughable, naïve, and childish manifestation of a deep-seated psychopathology known to modern psychiatry.... but say it again in the comments section if you must).
---

From the Bash Back! News site:

Bash Back! formed in 2007 with a small group of Radical Transfolk, Queers and Allies organizing against the Republican National Convention. In April of 2008 over 100 radical Trans/Queer/Allied folk met in Chicago to formulate plans against the RNC/DNC and to start a long lasting network. Anyone who agrees with the Points of Unity can start a Bash Back! Chapter.

POINTS OF UNITY

Members of Bash Back! must agree to:

1. Fight for liberation. Nothing more, nothing less. State recognition in the form of oppressive institutions such as marriage and militarism are not steps toward liberation but rather towards heteronormative assimilation.

2. A rejection of Capitalism, Imperialism, and all forms of State power.

3. Actively oppose oppression both in and out of the “movement.” All oppressive behavior is not to be tolerated.

4. Respect a diversity of tactics in the struggle for liberation. Do not solely condemn an action on the grounds that the State deems it to be illegal.

---

So, there you have it. If anyone is specifically interested in bringing the Bash Back! movement to STL, those are the principles upon which the movement is based. Just thought I'd put that out there.

I also figured I'd post Gay Shame's points of unity (and their advice on starting a non-hierarchical direct action group) to provide an example of a radical queer/transgender tendency with similar goals but a somewhat different approach/flair:

We will express outrage through symbolic actions in order to inspire ourselves to confront power dynamics and disseminate information.

We will not only critique targets like corporations, but we will also expose inconsistencies within our social groups and so-called “communities”, in order to grow more toward our radical ideals. Whenever possible, we will use humor and satire to get our points across and to critique ourselves.

We will call out the greed and consumerism inherent in mainstream gay identity. We are dedicated to fighting capitalism and it’s resulting inequalities.

We will go beyond theorizing to make our actions not only fun but also empowering.

Our goal is to serve as a catalyst to encourage people to take direct action and civil disobedience further.

Our goal is to create a home for the culturally homeless.

Assimilation is erasure. We resist assimilation in all its forms.

Fighting racism, classism, misogyny, heterosexism, transphobia, ableism and all other hierarchies is the central purpose of GAY SHAME, not an add-on. We will create a space where radical queers can challenge these hierarchies.

Be sure to check out their image gallery-which sadly doesn't get updated anymore, though they still seem to be wreaking glamorous havoc wherever they go. You can see pictures from previous actions such as the "KKKutest of the Castro" protest, their answer to "the tired body fascism of the Castro."

So that's all for now. I look forward to hearing what you think and learning more about any opportunities for queer/transgender defiance that may already be taking place.

Pacifism As Pathology: Toward the Queerest Insurrection

2009-12-01T18:48:00.001-06:00

Below are some choice quotes from a zine that was "printed clandestinely by the Mary Nardini gang, criminal queers from Milwaukee, Wisconsin".

Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing. Hat tip to Bash Back! News where I first discovered it. Also, here is a link to a pdf of one of the most thought-provoking and important little books out there, Pacifism as Pathology. I thought about doing a separate post on it, but then I decided it would fit well here. To any pacifists who may have stumbled upon this blog: Don't judge a booklet by the link to a pdf--note that the title is Pacifism As Pathology, not Pacifism IS Pathology. Now, onto the Queerest Insurrection:
--------------------------------
Some will read “queer” as synonymous with “gay and lesbian” or “LGBT”. This reading falls short. While those who would fit within the constructions of “L”, “G”, “B” or “T” could fall within the discursive limits of queer, queer is not a stable area to inhabit. Queer is not merely another identity that can be tacked onto a list of neat social categories, nor the quantitative sum of our identities. Rather, it is the qualitative position of opposition to presentations of stability - an identity that problematizes the manageable limits of identity. Queer is a territory of tension, defined against the dominant narrative of white-hetero-monogamous-patriarchy, but also by an affinity with all who are marginalized, otherized and oppressed. Queer is the abnormal, the strange, the dangerous. Queer involves our sexuality and our gender, but so much more. It is our desire and fantasies and more still. Queer is the cohesion of everything in conflict with the heterosexual capitalist world. Queer is a total rejection of the regime of the Normal.

As queers we understand Normalcy. Normal, is the tyranny of our condition; reproduced in all of our relationships. Normalcy is violently reiterated in every minute of every day. We understand this Normalcy as the Totality. The Totality being the interconnection and overlapping of all oppression and misery. The Totality is the state. It is capitalism. It is civilization and empire. The totality is fence-post crucifixion. It is rape and murder at the hands of police. It is “Str8 Acting” and “No Fatties or Femmes”. It is Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. It is the brutal lessons taught to those who can’t achieve Normal. It is every way we’ve limited ourselves or learned to hate our bodies. We understand Normalcy all too well.

Simply put, we want to make ruins of domination in all of its varied and interlacing forms. This struggle inhabiting every social relationship is what we know as social war. It is both the process and the condition of a conflict with this totality.

In the discourse of queer, we are talking about a space of struggle against this totality - against normalcy. By “queer”, we mean “social war”. And when we speak of queer as a conflict with all domination, we mean it.

See, we’ve always been the other, the alien, the criminal. The story of queers in this civilization has always been the narrative of the sexual deviant, the constitutional psychopathic inferior, the traitor, the freak, the moral imbecile. We’ve been excluded at the border, from labor, from familial ties. We’ve been forced into concentration camps, into sex slavery, into prisons.

The normal, the straight, the american family has always constructed itself in opposition to the queer. Straight is not queer. White is not of color. Healthy does not have HIV. Man is not woman. The discourses of heterosexuality, whiteness and capitalism reproduce themselves into a model of power. For the rest of us, there is death.

A fag is bashed because his gender presentation is far too femme. A poor transman can’t afford his life-saving hormones. A sex worker is murdered by their client. A genderqueer persyn is raped because ze just needed to be “fucked straight”. Four black lesbians are sent to prison for daring to defend themselves against a straight-male attacker. Cops beat us on the streets and our bodies are being destroyed by pharmaceutical companies because we can’t give them a dime.

Queers experience, directly with our bodies, the violence and domination of this world. Class, Race, Gender, Sexuality, Ability; while often these interrelated and overlapping categories of oppression are lost to abstraction, queers are forced to physically understand each. We’ve had our bodies and desires stolen from us, mutilated and sold back to us as a model of living we can never embody.

We experience the complexity of domination and social control amplified through heterosexuality. When police kill us, we want them dead in turn. When prisons entrap our bodies and rape us because our genders aren’t similarly contained, of course we want to burn them all to the ground. When borders are erected to construct a national identity absent of people of color and queers, we see only one solution: every nation and border reduced to rubble.

Queer is a position from which to attack the normative - more, a position from which to understand and attack the ways in which normal is reproduced and reiterated. In destabilizing and problematizing normalcy, we can destabilize and become a problem for the Totality.

The history of organized queers was borne out of this position. The most marginalized - transfolk, people of color, sex workers - have always been the catalysts for riotous explosions of queer resistance. These explosions have been coupled with a radical analysis wholeheartedly asserting that the liberation for queer people is intrinsically tied to the annihilation of capitalism and the state. It is no wonder, then, that the first people to publicly speak of sexual liberation in this country were anarchists, or that those in the last century who struggled for queer liberation also simultaneously struggled against capitalism, racism and patriarchy and empire. This is our history.

If history proves anything, it is that capitalism has a treacherous recuperative tendency to pacify radical social movements. Within a couple years of stonewall, affluent-gay-white-males had thoroughly marginalized everyone that had made their movement possible and abandoned their revolution with them.

Assimilationists want nothing less than to construct the homosexual as normal - white, monogamous, wealthy, 2.5 children, SUVs with a white picket fence. This construction, of course, reproduces the stability of heterosexuality, whiteness, patriarchy, the gender binary, and capitalism itself.

Our bodies have been born into conflict with this social order. We need to deepen that conflict and make it spread.

We must create space wherein it is possible for desire to flourish. This space, of course, requires conflict with this social order. To desire, in a world structured to confine desire, is a tension we live daily. We must understand this tension so that we can become powerful through it - we must understand it so that it can tear our confinement apart.

This terrain, born in rupture, must challenge oppression in its entirety. This of course, means total negation of this world. We must become bodies in revolt. We need to delve into and indulge in power. We can learn the strength of our bodies in struggle for space for our desires. In desire we’ll find the power to destroy not only what destroys us, but also those who aspire to turn us into a gay mimicry of that which destroys us. We must be in conflict with regimes of the normal. This means to be at war with everything.

If we desire a world without restraint, we must tear this one to the ground. We must live beyond measure and love and desire in ways most devastating. We must come to understand the feeling of social war. We can learn to be a threat, we can become the queerest of insurrections.

When Breeders Attack: An Alternative Response

2009-11-30T02:48:00.002-06:00

First watch this:

Now, pay very close attention to this local demonstration:

Now one last clip:

Queers praising the Catholic Church?

Planning to meet with the archbishop over tea in order to beg him to end the crusade against queer and transgender people?

Best of luck with that.

Here is how one gay activist group ordered participants to behave when the Westboro Baptist Church showed up at a local high school:

It is important we congregate before the Phelps family arrives and block their ability to display their horrific signs toward the children of our community. We are encouraging folks to make angel wings , or to bring larger white or colorful fabric stretched on polls with nothing written on them. We can pull these sheets together and simply surround the Phelps signage thus blocking their hate.

This is a peaceful counter protest so no graphic signs, just images of peace, love and unity. The color white is wonderful as is the rainbow symbolizing the most universal image of Godly peace.

Now for an example of a different approach (listen to them chant "fags hate god" after assaulting the Phelps family):

Next, we have a Christian-produced video of a Bash Back! action at a virulently anti-queer and anti-transgender church in Lansing, MI- remember that as you listen to the narrator. This church has since implemented intense security measures- in other words, they felt fear and were forced to spend money on security measures that made going to church on Sunday a bigger pain in the ass than going through airport security. Watch how Bash Back! gave them a taste of the fear they force queer and transgender people to live with every fucking day:

Here's Bill O'Reilly's coverage of the action:

Did you hear that ADF fucker talk about how "intolerant" the demonstrators were?

How far has our "tolerance" of religious queer bashing gotten us?

Do you think that they would stop their assault on us if we said "pretty please" and talked about our love for Christ too?

Here is a local NBC affiliate's take on it. Note the Catholic League President calling it a "Nazi-like tactic". He should know, considering that the current Pope served in the Nazi infantry during seminary.

So who are these evil militant queers?

Well, believe it or not, that rag Details did a story on them that might give you an idea.

"But that is so militant! I mean, if we're like, that radical, then no one will take us seriously and we won't get anywhere."

I got some news for you Mary. No one is taking us seriously now. And where are "we" trying to get exactly?

Ever heard of the White Night riots in San Francisco? Here's original footage from news coverage of the event. I think it is safe to say that San Francisco became a safer place for queers and transgender people thanks to the evil fag, dyke and tranny terrorists who finally got fed up and decided to bash back.

If you aren't afraid of getting arrested for creative, non-violent (i.e., not harming people--property however...) and provocative activism that will let the Christofascists know that if they fuck with us, they are going to regret it, then use this site as a starting point. Talk amongst yourselves in the comments section.

If there are enough queer and trans people who are interested, perhaps this place can serve as a potential catalyst for direct actions the bigots in this town won't soon forget. It's time to put the queer-bashers on notice that assaulting us could be hazardous to their health. It's time to create a space where transgender people are valued and respected--not ignored and marginalized by the mainstream gaysbien community.

Tired of being pushed around?
Then stand in solidarity with your queer and transgender comrades across the country and BASH BACK!
-----
(I have tried to tone down the rhetoric that caused offense to some folks without changing the basic message of the original post. The comments from the original post are still saved, and I'll gladly re-attach them to the body of this revised post if anyone cares. The goal is not to censor anyone--so say the word and they'll be back up).