Heteropatriarchy Reading Party
Following up my previous post on the University of Michigan’s
denial of tenure to Andrea Smith, I’m going to be posting, reviewing, and/or linking to some of her writing over the next few weeks. Although Andrea Smith has authored or edited several books and 15 peer-reviewed scholarly articles, let’s start off with one of her non-scholarly articles, “Heteropatriarchy, a Building Block of Empire,” originally published in Against the Current and available online
here. I’ve clipped a few quotes below to give you a taste of this thought-provoking article on how heteropatriarchy not only underlies the interlocked oppressions we challenge as activists but also undermines our own activist tactics.
To join the reading party, just click over to the Solidarity website to read the whole thing there and then c’mon back here to discuss it.
| gender and sexuality are often reduced to discussions on the status of women or LGBT communities. What we pay less attention to is how the logic of heteropatriarchy fundamentally structures colonialism, white supremacy and capitalism. |
| because we have not challenged heteropatriarchy, we have deeply internalized the notion that social hierarchy is natural and inevitable, thus undermining our ability to create movements for social change that do not replicate the structures of domination that we seek to eradicate |
| our organizing often follows a gendered model that is based on a split between private and public spheres |
| Because we cannot bring our whole selves to the movement, we then end up undermining our work through personal dysfunctionality that cannot be publicly addressed. |
| because we lack an intersectional analysis of how heteropatriarchy structures white supremacy and colonialism, we end up developing organizing strategies that are problematic to say the least |
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March 13th, 2008 | Category: Intersections
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