Statement on Guy McPherson

We learned recently that Guy McPherson, with whom DGR has collaborated in the past, has been accused by multiple women of sexually predatory behavior. We have seen screenshots of comments where he calls women vile names (e.g., he calls one woman a "cum-gargling whore"). These accusations have been corroborated from several sources.

At the time we collaborated with Guy McPherson, we had no idea that he was treating women so poorly. Deep Green Resistance has an absolute zero-tolerance policy for abuse and will stand against any predators being allowed access to the movement or anyone who could be harmed. Our hearts go out to his victims.

Who Cooked Adam Smith's Dinner?

Book review by Daphne Francis of Deep Green Resistance

I have just enjoyed reading Who Cooked Adam Smith's Dinner? by Katrine Marcal, translated from her Swedish into English and published by Portobello books in 2015. It certainly is a change for me to find an economics book not only informative and accurate, but also highly readable and even entertaining, with at times trenchant analysis and cutting comments.

Marcal is not the first to highlight the absence of care work, done mostly by women, from calculations of Gross National Product and the decisions of that fabricated entity 'economic man'. When valued at all, this work is severely undervalued. But for me she breaks new ground in stating that, if the body was taken seriously as the starting point for the economy, it would have far-reaching results. In her words "a society organised around the shared needs of human bodies would be very different from the one we know today."

She dissects the notion of economic man which has now become such a keystone economic assumption that even our feelings of love and care are treated as preferences and impersonal sets of desires. This reduction reaches a low point in an analysis that "Faking ecstasy in bed is part of a 'rational signaling model'." Books have actually been published with the sickening title (and probably more sickening content) of how to Find a Husband after 35: (Using What I Learned at Harvard Business School) - a damning indictment of that particular academic icon. The body is turned into human capital. The disposal of radioactive waste can be sorted by cash payments to the desperately poor. Whether we shut down a life becomes a business decision; there is no more meaning in death than is left in life. Whilst the focus of Marcal's analysis is on the erasure of women, readers of this blog will be all too aware of the effect of economic man on the rest of the natural world as well.

Finally, who did cook the illustrious classical economist's dinner and organise his domestic life? We have to wait for the final chapter of the book to bring to life the story of this key part of Adam Smith's economy, a woman he effectively erased from the celebrated text into which so much of her life energy went. I won't spoil the revelation but leave you to find out for yourself the full story behind Adams Smith's academic output.

Derrick Jensen's Resistance Radio on youtube and archive page

Almost every Sunday, Derrick Jensen interviews an activist, biophile scientist, land restorationist, or other person similarly engaged in building a culture of resistance. The interviews are always worth listening to, packed with interesting information and insights drawn out by Jensen's experienced questions.

The interviews are available as mp3 downloads or audio streams from our Resistance Radio archive page, and we've now made them available on Youtube as audio with a still image of the interviewee, accessible to those who prefer to browse Youtube or want to add the episodes into playlists. We'll keep adding new interviews as they're released. See them all at the Deep Green Resistance Youtube channel, and please share these important conversations widely!

Interview of Meghan Murphy

Ernesto Aguilar, a former DGR member, interviewed Meghan Murphy of Feminist Current for Women's History Month in March 2013. Murphy presents a clear and articulate analysis of the current state of online feminism – strengths and weaknesses, successes and works in progress, allies and backlash. She spoke extensively on the destructive tendency of online discussions to turn into horizontal hostility, and the ongoing pattern of silencing women:

I don't think that attacking and harassing feminists online counts as activism, or as supporting women, even if you kind of pretend you're doing it on behalf of women. Regardless of how you frame it, it's still about woman-hating, and it's about anti-feminism, and that's not progressive. If you're a man and you're harassing or silencing women, you can't pretend to be a progressive person or a person who cares about liberty or human rights or women's lives or the well being of women. That's not what allies do.

Later in the interview, she gets specific about a prominent silencing mechanism:

There's this thing that's become popular in the feminist blogosphere, and that's this overuse of the phobia language. I think that's a big problem. It's become common practice to label any [feminist] critique as a phobia. You hear things like "kink phobia", or "whore phobia", "transphobia", on and on and on. And I've personally been accused of all of these things, and I don't hate or fear prostituted women or trans people or kinky people.

What I want to have is conversations, and this is just another way to shut down conversation, and it's a part of the bullying that goes on in some parts of online feminism. It's about keeping people in line, and it's about keeping conversations restricted within narrow boundaries. If you don't like what someone says, you can call them some version of "phobic" and you can call someone a bigot and everyone shuts up. These are kind of the magic words that put fear in every feminist's heart, because they know that if they're called one of these things – some kind of "phobic" – that no one will stick up for them, because everyone else is afraid of being labeled by association. Everyone's afraid to have real conversations, because they see what happens, and they see what happens to other feminists, and they don't want that to happen to them.

Listen to the entire interview embedded below (originally posted at Feminist Current). And for elaboration on the tactic of shutting down feminist discourse by threatening to apply vague but powerful labels, see the latest article at Feminist Current: "How ‘TERF’ works", by Sarah Ditum.

Feminist Current - smart analysis of feminist issues

Meghan Murphy at Feminist Current writes a steady column of insightful and incisive articles from a strong feminist perspective, and regularly interviews women and men on a broad range of feminist issues. She lives in Canada, so some of her focus is specific to that country, but most of it is relevant to all of North America and the rest of the world. Smart and often funny, her analysis from current events to issues fought by feminists for decades is always worth the read. She also does a good job of moderating comments, so the space is useful and safe for women and feminist allies to have productive discussions.

Last summer, Murphy interviewed DGR's Rachel and Lexy Garza in the podcast Deep Green Resistance Under Attack, and has provided outstanding coverage in general of the backlash to radical feminism by Men's Rights Activists, trans/queer activists, and other misogynist attackers of women. You can see all the available Feminist Current podcasts or read the most recent Feminist Current articles. We highly recommend taking some time to peruse the site and its contents!

Saba Malik on Resistance Radio

Saba Malik is on the board of Fertile Ground Environmental Institute, a non-profit dedicated to political and environmental education, and on the advisory board of Deep Green Resistance. She is a mother of two and has been a feminist and anti-racist activist for most of her adult life. Derrick Jensen interviewed her for the May 25th airing of Resistance Radio.

In this interview, Saba Malik and Derrick Jensen discuss misogyny, ecocide, and the relationship between the two. Malik explains that a mindset of domination links the various forms of oppression we see in civilization. This mindset seizes on perceivable differences between groups to create classes, with one class justified in exploiting the other. This began with agriculture: the formation of sex classes gave men the "right" to use women for labor, offspring, and sex. As civilization expanded, this relationship was used as a model for dominating other "races" of humans and other species.

Play the embedded audio below, or listen to the interview on the DGR Youtube channel.

Browse all of Derrick Jensen's Resistance Radio interviews.

Protect Women, Feminism, and Free Speech

Call for Support! Protect Women, Feminism, and Free Speech
The past few days have seen a massive smear campaign against radical feminists such as Rachel and Lexy Garza of Deep Green Resistance. This smear campaign was launched in the aftermath of an attack on Deep Green Resistance members (one of whom was Lexy).

When feminists, supportive women and other allies responded with fury and uproar about this attack, it triggered a backlash from those who accuse DGR and other radical feminists of being transphobic. We are not transphobic, and will be further responding to these allegations.

These accusations made against us were followed by violent threats (including threats of death and sexual assault). DGR members who made similar comments would be immediately removed from the organization. This behavior is unacceptable. Now, these people have begun to contact venues for a speaking tour that Rachel is planning for next month. They have used lies and threats to coerce these venues to cancel several engagements.

Stand UP FOR WOMEN and AGAINST BULLYING AND HARASSMENT!
Let’s band together and support DGR and Rachel and help her keep her speaking engagements. A form letter is available at the link below for those who want to prevent these events from being cancelled. We urge you to consider standing against censorship. Women with controversial and salient platforms most certainly have an eager audience awaiting them, despite contrary opinion.
Support Rachel

WE NEED SUPPORT AND SECURITY!
If you would like to host the Resistance Rewritten Tour in your location please contact deepgreenresistance@riseup.net. We are calling out to feminists and allies to fight back against bullying. Don't let the bullies stop these important words from being heard.
We will be heavily increasing security at upcoming events in order to keep Rachel and other speakers safe. This costs money, so if you can help us out with security please donate at the link below, and share this message widely!
http://www.gofundme.com/resistancerewritten

STAND UP!
This is another example of the continued threats of harassment and calls to silence those who have spoken out and organized in support of radical feminism. Deep Green Resistance will not tolerate threats of violence or attempts to intimidate or silence women. The actual and immediate threat against females as a class is continued brutalization and repression by males as a class. The real reason for this oppression is the inherently toxic violation imperative that we call ‘masculinity,” and it is on these issues that our focus will remain, despite ongoing attempts to foment horizontal hostility. Ultimately, we defend women only spaces: some of the only spaces left for women to effectively organize and resist their own oppression. We stand in solidarity with all groups and individuals who fight to end the oppression of women under patriarchy.

Criticism of the politics raised by the transgender movement is very different than a wholesale hatred of people who choose to transition. This nuance is very often missed by the very same people spamming venues with blanket declarations of transphobia.

Resistance Rewritten Tour Description
It's often repeated that "history is written by the victors." The colonist and the slave owner, the warmonger and the CEO alike use their stolen power to control which stories are remembered, taught, and celebrated - and which are distorted, suppressed, and in some cases, forgotten altogether.

Spanish philosopher George Santayana put it rather more bluntly when he wrote that "history is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there." But it is not enough to dismiss mainstream historical narratives as irrelevant. We must ask- what has been omitted, and why? When we look past the rosy fiction to the buried truth, we begin to uncover a true history of resistance that is still unfolding.

In the era of catastrophic biodiversity loss, toxification, and climate change, the world is facing challenges of unprecedented magnitude, and we are running out of time. The stakes could not be higher. Will we fall prey to the lies of the powerful and miss our chance at victory, or can we write a brighter future by learning from resistance movements of the past?

Incidents This Weekend

Three incidents occurred at the "Law and Disorder Conference" in Portland May 11 and 12 concerning Deep Green Resistance and transgender/queer activists. A lot of lies have been told about these incidents. We need to tell the facts of what physically happened.

Two women were tabling, handing out DGR literature and selling books. A group of five transgender/queer activists came up to the table. One of the male queer activists began shouting at the women, using aggressive language. This man made threatening gestures toward the women. He grabbed and defaced table materials. When one of the women went to protect the materials, he marked her arm and hand as well.

This conference states it has a policy of safe spaces, but "safe spaces" evidently doesn't apply to women, because although most people in the room had no choice but to hear the shouting, no one, including the organizers, intervened to stop this man and his aggressive behavior.

A half an hour later, a male DGR member tried to engage in respectful conversation with these queer activists. They began chanting at him and insulting him, culminating in them throwing trash and food at his head.

The next day, Sunday, the DGR crew went back, for more tabling, and an angry mob of queer activists again approached the table, yelling and cursing at them, and demanded that they leave. Once again, for all their talk of "safe spaces," the organizers did not intervene, nor provide a safe space.

You will see that throughout all of this, the DGR members were respectful and courteous. They tried to de-escalate. Nonetheless, they were the recipients of bullying, threats, and silencing.

One of the organizers, Brandon Speck, witnessed much of this, and at least pretended to express concern for the women. He originally said that the perpetrators would not be invited back next year. He also promised that he would write up a statement of solidarity with the victims condemning the attacks. He further promised to run this statement by the victims before publishing it. He was not telling the truth. He did not run the statement by the women, and the statement he did publish indeed blames the DGR members for their own victimization. Women from all over responded en masse to this by pointing out that this was the classic victim-blaming that characterizes patriarchy and misogyny. The thread was deleted, and the organizer falsely claimed this was because of "violently transphobic comments." This was as much a lie as their original release blaming the victims. The only violence in the comments was directed at DGR members.

DGR has never threatened anyone, and has a Code of Conduct that disallows making threats against people. Any DGR person who behaved as violently as any of the queer activists did at this conference would be immediately banned from DGR. Instead, what has happened is a barrage of threats against DGR members, up to and including mass beheading. And yet these comments are allowed to remain.

We ask everyone to stand in solidarity with all victims of patriarchal, male-pattern violence, starting with the women who were subjected to this at the Law and Disorder conference.