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ziq wrote

"But I told someone on the internet that Emma Goldman had some good ideas, why do I need to do woman's work too??"

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ziq wrote

Honestly, fuck theory. Praxis or stfu.

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ziq wrote

"stfu and praxis" makes more sense.

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Faolinbean wrote

But praxis comes from theory

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ziq wrote (edited )

Theory only goes so far imo. The basics of anarchy are really easy to grasp.

Beyond the basics, the theory detracts more than it helps anarchy in my experience.

The more affixes we add to the word, the more allowances we make for concepts like 'justified hierarchy'; the more dilluted our anarchy becomes from its core concept of "oppose all authority".

And I'm a nihilist so I'm skeptical of ideology by default. Theory has a way of building ingrained ideology that people have difficulty breaking away from. And it gets them to focus on unattainable goals like post-scarcity (Bookchin's theory) and utopianism (Kropotkin) at the expense of here-and-now praxis.

It's my goal to break anarchy down into a few simple concepts anyone can understand and draw natural conclusions from. I think the movement has become too academic and insular. The more convoluted the theory, the less useful it is to me.

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ziq wrote (edited )

Communism is pure theory that's had countless attempts at being actualized, but none that actually resulted in communism.

Anarchy is praxis, it's something we integrate into our lives everyday as we struggle against authority.

When people say they're an ancom, to me it sounds like they're saying they'll be an anarchist after a faraway revolution that creates the perfect conditions for their ideology to be practiced. It doesn't compute to me.

I need to be an anarchist now, I can't wait for a theoretical future that likely won't ever come.

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ziq wrote (edited )

For a good example of theory getting in the way of praxis, see that reddit thread we talked about earlier where an ancom was calling reparations made to indigenous people a 'liberal' concept incompatible with 'anarchism' (communism).

They were unable to see past their utopian ideology's rules to realize what they were saying had no relevance in the real world where indigenous people starve while settlers lounge on their 10 thousand acre ranches.

They were insinuating the only anarchism they consider valuable is a post-revolutionary one; a fictional one.

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ziq wrote (edited )

I just noticed how on topic all this is with OP:

i've read anarcho-feminist texts that spend pages saying what xenosagaepisodeone managed in one sentence

This is anarchist theory at its best. It's such a simple and logical concept that it doesn't need tomes of text to explain it and you don't need to be a scholar to make sense of it.

Anarchist theory: reject authority

Anarchist praxis: reject authority

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edmund_the_destroyer wrote

She does most of the laundry and cooks half the meals. I cook the other half of the meals and do all of the dishes. So I think I've reached baseline, hooray.

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[deleted] wrote

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edmund_the_destroyer wrote

Great point. She doesn't have to do that, and never has on routine household work. But unfortunately she did have to do that, a lot, when it came for taking care of the kids. We didn't reach the point where I was carrying my fair share, more or less, of the work (crucially) without being asked for probably the first five years of parenthood. That's a huge burden I unfairly placed on her.

I'm trying to teach my sons not to make the same mistake, and my daughters not to accept any such labor or emotional labor imbalance in their own relationships.

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[deleted] wrote (edited )

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edmund_the_destroyer wrote

You're being very kind, and I appreciate it. But to repeat, for a few years I felt incredibly proud of myself for acting like I do and trying to get my kids to do the same. Then it sank through my thick skull that I was congratulating myself for reaching a state that should be the species-wide default.

If you're in a partnership with someone you both should do your best to split the work, including all associated emotional labor. Your sexual identity is irrelevant to that. It just so happens that in modern American culture cis+het men are least likely to automatically assume their fair share. I have a few friends and relatives with miserable relationships because of that and many more that ended because of it.

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[deleted] wrote

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edmund_the_destroyer wrote

I'm sorry that happened. As I said, I know a lot of relationships that are in terrible shape or failed completely because one person (in these cases, always a man) didn't carry any of that workload.

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geegaw wrote

having partners

check out mr and mrs well-adjusted here

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