Pseudo-feminists invite RAIL & MIM to conference, then think twice 
and uninvite

Northampton, Mass. -- In March, students from Smith College's 
Queer Wimmin of Color student organization, Prism, invited RAIL to 
lead a workshop on "women of color and the prison industrial 
complex." as a part of the "Queer Colored Bodies: Arts, 
Spirituality, Health & Activism" conference. When MIM and RAIL 
objected to Prism trying to shoe-horn us into using an anti-
feminist perspective, we were uninvited with an email accusing us 
of reconstituting white supremacist patriarchy -- less than 8 
hours before we were to begin.

This episode demonstrates the ideological bankruptcy of 
"multiculturalism" and "diversity," integrationist ideologies made 
popular on college campuses in the early 1990s and now pushed by 
the Clinton administration. Instead of using an analysis of how 
various forms of oppression and social groups intertwine, 
"multiculturalists" promote mixing everything together, so you 
can't make explicit political distinctions other than how many 
"minority" groups someone belongs to. In practice, of course, such 
decisions must be made, and as explained below in this case they 
chose gender as the principal contradiction, without acknowledging 
it.

This ideology pushes terms like "African-American" to imply that 
the Black nation is part of Amerika and not oppressed by it, or 
more frequently, the term "people of color" as a way of erasing 
the distinction between Japanese imperialists and Guatemalan 
peasants (to name one example). This ideology denies the 
importance of group power and instead allows itself to be co-opted 
by tokenism. This approach is opposed to the proletarian feminist 
revolutionary nationalism of communists, which seeks to end the 
power of groups over other groups by organizing oppressed groups 
to change the system fundamentally.

The initial invitation

When we received the initial invitation to do a workshop on "women 
of color and the prison industrial complex," a MIM and RAIL 
activist quickly responded with the explanation that prison is not 
a system of repression of biological wimmin, rather that prison is 
about the repression of Black and Latino biological men. While the 
rate of growth for biological wimmin in prison is higher than any 
other group, wimmin make up less than 10% of the prison 
population. Prison is not the system's choice of weapons against 
wimmin: psychiatry is much more prevalent as a system of social 
control for wimmin.

However, the activist offered to do two workshops that should have 
fit within the organizer's agenda while retaining our political 
independence. One workshop was to be a video and discussion called 
"Through the Wire: the Repression of Three Revolutionary Wimmin 
Prisoners." This would discuss the cases and treatment of these 
three wimmin as an entry point to talking about how control units 
are used to target the most politically conscious prisoners. The 
second workshop was to be: "The prison system is at war with the 
Black and Latino Nations." The purpose was similarly straight 
forward: "To discuss how the prison system is used as a system of 
social control against the Black and Latino nations, and how we 
can fight it."

MIM holds that sex and gender and independent. Sex is biology and 
gender is a relationship to patriarchal power and the control of 
bodies. For that reason, MIM says that incarcerated biological men 
are gendered female. Biological men in prison are raped, 
humiliated nude, sexually harassed as part of a system of that 
exerts ownership over their bodies. When we first refused to do 
the proposed "women of color and the prison industrial complex" 
and suggested the above ideas, Prism wrote back saying that was 
fine, but also including a list of "Eleven Things You Should Know 
About Women In Prison In The U.S." to include in our workshop. We 
dutifully responded that we would not base out workshop around 
this document. It is true that there are a large number of 
biological womyn in prison, but biological wimmin make up only 10% 
of the total. To focus on the plight of biological wimmin ends up 
distorting what prison is primarily about: the oppression of 
biological men. So while we were not planning on ignoring the 10% 
of the prison population that is wimmin in our workshop, we were 
going to discuss this only in its larger context.

Whether the Prism activist we were corresponding with was refusing 
to hear what we were saying or actively choosing to pretend our 
political line was malleable is unclear even in hindsight. We 
don't think she simply misunderstood. Initially our workshops were 
accepted, although we discovered the name of the video and 
discussion had been changed to: "Women of Color in Prisons." The 
video is about three specific wimmin in the first control unit 
designed for wimmin (mentioned in the factsheet sent by Prism). 
While all three of the wimmin were involved in the Black and 
Puerto Rican national liberation struggles, two of the wimmin were 
white. It just wasn't accurate to advertise the video as Prism had 
done, so we politely objected again along with another detailed 
explanation.

If Prism thought our political line was malleable enough that we 
could be made to use our prestige as the largest political 
organizer of prisoners to promote their pseudo-feminist and 
integrationist agenda, this is when they abandoned the idea. The 
day before the conference, we were told that changing the name 
back was ok, but later that night one workshop was cancelled, and 
in the very early morning of the day we were to lead the workshop, 
the second was cancelled too.

One common practice of pseudo-feminists, which MIM has exposed 
extensively, is that they side with the state in its persecution 
of men accused of rape. Revolutionary feminism as practiced by MIM 
acknowledges instead that rape under the system of patriarchy is 
indistinguishable from "normal" sex, and the difference between 
"rapists" in prison and "rapists" in suburban homes is often the 
result of national oppression. The principal contradiction under 
imperialist patriarchy is still national oppression, and 
organizing for state-sponsored persecution of oppressed nationals 
in the name of protecting wimmin is a major direct contribution to 
imperialism. It is much easier for the pseudo-feminists from Prism 
to side with "women of color" in prison without talking about 
biological men in prison in part because they have elevated the 
gender contradiction to principal and think the oppressed-nation 
men in prison are in power who need to be stopped.

In the imperialist countries, elevating gender to the principal 
contradiction serves imperialism (and white supremacy) because it 
supports the state's imprisonment of oppressed nationals, mostly 
biological men. RAIL and MIM work against the rape of biological 
men and wimmin under the system of imperialist patriarchy by 
attempting to overthrow that system, rather than beefing up the 
repressive apparatus of the state.[M.E.1]

The uninvitation

For it's political education purpose, we print the email we 
received from Prism below:

The first paragraph of the email:

"After discussion with the members of prism concerning your 
workshop format, we have decided it is not possible for us to 
accept either of them. While the content and discussion of both 
appear interesting we feel there is an extreme need on your part 
and the part of your organization to interrogate how your 
'radical' rhetoric reproduces and reconstitutes white supremacist 
patriarchy. Your refusal to facilitate a workshop on issues 
specific to women of color should alert you to this fact."

MIM responds:


We refused to facilitate a workshop on issues specific to wimmin 
of color for reasons we carefully explained three times in 
correspondence with Prism: we don't want to participate in 
covering up what prison is mostly about: the oppression of Black 
and Latino men. Apparently, staying within issues specific only to 
womyn of color wasn't a firm requirement for Prism, or your 
program wouldn't have had a workshop on the World Bank and 
International Monetary Fund. Half of the people oppressed by the 
IMF aren't womyn. But in our case, we had two workshops bound to 
be too revolutionary for your intergrationist conference, so you 
pulled the plug.

Insisting that we focus a workshop entirely on wimmn of color 
prison is like insisting that we focus on racism against Black 
congresspeople. It's an interesting topic, but one that after a 
few minutes ends up ignoring what the primary purpose of the 
institution is: in this case to oversee the oppression of Blacks, 
Latinos, the First Nations and the entire Third World. How 
Representative Conyers, for example, is treated by House staff is 
irrelevant to how Conyers' role covers for the blatant genocide 
against Black people overseen by the U.$. Congress.

And this whole debate doesn't answer the other question, if Prism 
knew so carefully what it wanted said about prisons, why not just 
do it themselves? The only logical answer, is that they wanted the 
prestige of MIM and RAIL's organizing work to give it credibility.

The second paragraph of the email:

"We hope you are able to take this opportunity to examine your 
place in america as a 'radical' White person and how you can make 
your politics more accepting of women of color as well as bring a 
critical analysis of race into your discussions."

MIM responds: If it's true that the MIM & RAIL activist you were 
in email contact with was white, it's interesting that this only 
became an issue ITAL after END you decided that you couldn't get 
the activist to spout what you wanted to hear. MIM's politics are 
the scientific summation of the needs of the world's majority, 
which happen to be -- to use your terms -- "women of color." It is 
not in the interests of Third World women or any group of people 
suffering under U.$. imperialism to throw scientific analysis out 
the window.

You have to work pretty hard to make the prison system into 
something primarily about oppressing biological wimmin. In fact 
the prison system is the perfect symbol of national oppression as 
the principal contradiction that needs to be faced. Gender 
oppression of the biological wimmin and men in the system is an 
important part of that system, but its primary purpose is national 
oppression and control.

ITAL MIM welcomes letters from prisoners of any sex on this 
question. We need articles about how prison controls prisoner's 
bodies and sexuality. We could also use articles to pass along to 
Prism and those who raise similar charges about MIM's role in the 
struggle to defeat capitalism, imperialism and patriarchy. The 
charge that MIM's politics are not "accepting" to women of color 
or that we lack "a critical analysis of race" is relatively common 
coming from college students, especially at the more elite schools 
like Smith College. Letters from prisoners on this topic would be 
of use long beyond this one incident. END