Gyno-Anarchy or the Strategy of the Fool

by Fulvia Serra I am not sure when it all started. I know that it is one of those things that my mother somehow passed along to me, even though I did not, at the time, want it or understand it, and even though she didn't suspect that, along the way or because of some transformational process involved in the transference, it would become this particular practice I carry into my heart and my body now. I know that I've seen her struggle with 3 or 4 abortions and 5 childbirths, and I remember her coming back from the hospital every time a little bit more defeated, a little bit more bitter and a little bit crazier. She would often talk into the mirror at her own reflection or out the windows at the particles of dust and even to us children, for lack of better listeners. Sometimes she talked about not having wanted us kids, not so many of us at least. She would often tell us how all those pregnancies, the long months of nursing and the hard job of taking care of us had destroyed her, slowly but surely. She said she lost her beauty and her health. Her hair thinned, her teeth and bones weakened, her body deformed. She told us stories of losing her language and speaking a sort of baby tongue after years of being so isolated that we had become her only interlocutors. The most striking consequence of her apparent inability to exercise any control on her sexuality and her desire or un-desire for maternity was that all the rest of her life had become compulsively micromanaged. Her diet was extremely rigid. She spent innumerable hours scrubbing floors, dusting furniture and washing clothes, in a constant struggle to keep a tight grip on her environment and to hide from the fact that the most important thing she indeed wanted to control had completely escaped her. My mother was a math teacher. She was, and still is, brilliant and beautiful. She had liked, as a girl, to write poetry, and even published some of it. She liked to sing and dance, and she had been sort of famous for being the first one in town showing off a 70s style miniskirt. Of course I've never met that girl, since by the time I entered her life her menial occupations had taken up all her attention and did not leave her any to read or write, sing or dance. I remember nonetheless being fascinated as a child by all the things she knew and all the different skills she had (best of all that of storytelling). She is a great cook, of the best kind, because she knows what food does to our body, which foods are best to eat and when and how to cook them in order to enhance their properties. She knows everything about herbs and colGraffiti art by JR She told us that she had learned from her father who had been a medical officer in Africa during the second world war and who, though never a doctor, had always been a healer. Paradoxically, her unique ability to take care of her own body and her refusal to delegate it to a clique of mostly male professionals miserably crumbled when the man who confronted her about it was my father. Of course, at the time I had no idea what a taboo it was, and somehow still is, for any woman to be in the kind of intimate relationship with her own body that is necessary in order to take charge of her own sexuality. As a child, I did not understand why she was so mad at my father, that all-powerful, adventurous, unpredictable and fun creature who was, and still is, the object of my absolute love and admiration, as well as the source of some of my worst fears. as a free spirit in a house full of women, I never considered my gender to be a medical condition (to be kept under close check, to be examined routinely, or to be treated with long term drugs), at the age of 19, when in a state of obtuse enchantment, I decided to try and take the pill. It did seem like the easiest and most reasonable solution to me at the time, and it also apparently pointed me in a direction that was diametrically opposite from the one my mother had taken. It also felt like a grown up and serious thing to do. Something like I was taking sort of a social responsibility towards myself by making my inner environment a poisoned field and giving my lover peace of mind. It did not last more than a few months though, because I could not bear the burden of headaches, fatigue and all the other side effects. Also, since I knew very well that my fertility window lasted only two days a month, putting that malignant, alien thing lects them, steeps them, stores them in alcohol solutions in the fridge, takes them orally in the form of little pills first thing in the morning, and grows them on our second floor balconies. I still remember her giving me a concoction of ground almonds and honey to cure me from my constant anemia or administering us spoonfuls of pollen to help us with seasonal change. When I called her during my freshman year in college in the midst of a full-blown depression, she advised me to take Saint John's Wort at a time when nobody even knew what it was, and so saved me the pain of having to take prescribed medication. When she developed breast cancer, she studied unrelentingly about it and eventually healed herself by changing her diet and taking herbal supplements. She never had to undergo chemotherapy, and she was cured of it once and for all. Later on, when other men came into my life as a more urgent and manageable target for love and desire, the question of their constant, menacing, indefatigable fertility wrapped itself around my head in the form of an almost comical desperation. I felt that a sort of biological conspiracy was unfolding in my personal life and, as the intellectual and political activist I already was or wanted to be, I was outraged at the amount of time and energy that I was expected to permanently spend in the attempt to protect myself from these most charming and most subtle invaders. I could not, in all honesty, understand why the blame and shame of unwanted pregnancies or abortions always fell upon women, when our bodies are, in comparison to theirs, so delightfully infertile. Compared to the seemingly endless strive to procreate of a male body, ours appear to have evolved almost entirely for the sake of aimless, unconcerned enjoyment. So, even though I am naturally and culturally very suspicious of health care institutions, and even though, being brought up into my body every morning seemed to be like the most vicious of jokes. I felt a sense of weird disembodiment and estrangement. That thing had entirely stopped my periods and replaced them with a sort of fake, light monthly bleeding. It made me feel almost like I had bleached away the wilderness and dangerousness from myself and had become a tame, sterile, emptied-out doll. I understood, in a sort of blurred way, that I had found myself in a place very similar to where my mother had been. Far away from my body, trying to avoid seeing it and erasing all that was 'inconvenient' about it. Since that day I started a journey of discovery and self-discovery and, even though I encountered the term gyno-anarchy only recently, what I have wanted has been to take full control of my sexuality, my fertility and my desire or my refusal to procreate. I had to learn how to tune in with my body, with its so mysterious and marvelous cycles, with its temperature changes, hormonal picks, micro-contractions and viscous substances. I had to take into consideration season change, stress factors and because I lived almost all my adult life in collective houses, even that most magical phenomenon known as menstrual synchrony. I had to learn when to say yes and when to say no. Most importantly, I had to learn how to follow my pleasure principle.1 The first time I read about the pleasure principle, as it was elaborated by Italian feminist thinkers like Carla Lonzi, I didn't really understand it. Or maybe I did, but it sounded too costly, too difficult and very dangerous to apply to my own life. The fact is that pleasure really, and not only sexual pleasure, is far from frivolous. It is the very fabric of which our life is made. It is the internal compass that can and should guide us towards a free and authentic life. The pleasure principle makes us daring and generous. If I follow my pleasure, it will be difficult for me to fall into oppressive traps, abusive relationships and conformist cages because my body is braver than I am and often even smarter. Never will my pleasureseeking body choose security over adventure, stereotypes over curiosity, taboos over discoveries. One of the strongest images I recall of my first year in the States is that of two young Mormons, kneeling under the rain and praying in front of an abortion clinic. I did not understand it. I also did not understand why all that revolves around abortion is labeled here with such generic and vague terms, suggesting just the opposite of it, like planned parenthood, reproductive rights or women's health.

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Gyno-Anarchy, continued
Coming from a culture where miscarriage and abortion are described with the same word and seen as almost the same thing, I had a lot of problems accepting that it is so difficult for women in this country to say aloud 'I don't want to be a mother' or 'I don't want this baby'...to own their desire to be other than procreators. When recently the funds to Planned Parenthood were dramatically cut, I realized how much of our lives revolves around institutions, depends on politicians and is delegated to the expertise of a large group of mostly white males. I started thinking of a diversion tactic that I call "the strategy of the fool." I first encountered something like this when Mario Tronti, my Political Philosophy professor in Siena, gave me to read a little book called Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, while I was writing my final dissertation. It was written by Etienne De La Boetie around 1550, and it's based on the idea that to liberate ourselves from tyranny, all we have to do is give it our back and turn a deaf ear to its postulates. Turn your back and the monster will disappear, turn your back and create a new order, founded upon pleasure, relationships and shared practices, rather than bureaucracies and profit. Internalize the strategy of refusal, apply it to your own body. Refuse to let the approval of majorities and politicians matter all that much and, most of all, do not ever delegate to them the care of what is important to you. Of course it requires practice, sabotage and diversion and of course it's not at all that simple, but it does at least turn us into different kinds of heroes, unlikely warriors, brilliant farcical characters like Odysseus in the Iliad, the hero who refused to be a champion and played the fool to avoid a war he did not really care about.2 Or like Rachel in the Bible, who stole the family idols from the paternal hearth and hid them under her saddle so that, when her father tried to search her, she could turn the contaminations norms against him and say that she was menstruating and so could not be touched. It allows us to use words like fighting, struggle and warriors, without the fear of falling into the usual male war rhetoric and describing a set of practices that, though not necessarily nonviolent (ending a life process is always a radically violent act), are not aggressive. And so I put together a workshop at the Wooden Shoe,3 one in which I suggested that we all steal the family idols and play the fool, that we learn about our bodies and what makes them feel happy and loved, that we learn how to best take care of ourselves and of each other, instead of relying on the medical institution. I met a lot of women there, some of them very young. Some of them, I discovered, didn't even realize when they were fertile

or that it could be tracked down at all, for that matter. Together with them I mostly laughed, a healthy laugh that opened the Pandora's box of giggles on homemade spermicide and post-fertility hangovers, unveiling the deeply comical side of sexuality.

Photo of 1970s feminist march in Rome by Tano D'Amico Some of them are alof Black Queer American feminism, like ready my new heroes, like Cassie, who Laura Harris, redefined the notion of pleasoon after started a fertility class for the sure and desire so that it became the central West Philadelphia Free Skool; like Nicole, point in a new conception of reality, one that who volunteers as a hand-holder at Planned could operate as a possibility of resistance Parenthood, whispering in the ear of fright- to patriarchal oppression. In "Let's Spit on ened women who need to feel loved and Hegel," Carla Lonzi defines pleasure and accepted; or like Sarah and Toni, who were the pursuit of pleasure as an inherent revonot even there really, because they are bik- lutionary force. ing down the West Coast on a budget of $4 a day to talk to women about menstrual cups 2. When Helen was abducted, Menelaus and body awareness and who started the called upon the other suitors to honour their Handsome Young Men Projectwhere men oaths and help him to retrieve her, an atare encouraged to stop telling women what tempt that would lead to the Trojan War. Odto do with their bodies and start instead a ysseus tried to avoid it by feigning lunacy, dialogue that includes learning and sharing as an oracle had prophesied a long-delayed new, woman-loving practices. return home for him if he went. He hooked Oh... and by the way, they just made it to LA. a donkey and an ox to his plough (as they have different stride lengths, hindering the efficiency of the plough) and started sowing his fields with salt.

The fact is that pleasure really, and not only sexual pleasure, is far from frivolous. It is the very fabric of which our life is made.
dia has generally underreported the health activism that is the focus of your book. How did the BPPs health activism relate to their better-known stances against white supremacy, capitalism, and police violence? Alondra Nelson: Yes, its true. The Black Panthers health activism has been underreported across the ideological spectrum. Their critics obviously did not want to cast them in a positive light. And, as your question suggests, even the Partys supporters said little about this important aspect of the BPPs work. I think its plausible to say that many on the Right and some of us on the Left--in very different ways and for completely opposite reasons--were captivated by a vision of the Party that did not include its health politics. Depictions of African Americans working in their neighborhoods, wearing white medical coats, was unspectacular compared to images of Black radicals wearing leather jackets and carrying guns. It is ironic that our collective memory of the Panthers remains so incomplete

Notes

Medical Self Defense, continued

1. The pleasure principle was first elaborated by Sigmund Freud in opposition to the reality principle. Freud claimed that the passage into adulthood required the ability to operate in opposition to the pleasure principle and so to defer the satisfactions of needs and desires in view of more practical considerations, those that could be included in the reality principle. Italian feminist thinkers in the 70s and later some exponents Free Medical Clinic. But, like all of the BPPs health activism, this work extended beyond the clinic, including in this case, confronting police brutality. (Branch shared meeting notes with me from the 1970s from her personal archive where the formation of BPP health programs and prisoners protection from medical discrimination were seamlessly discussed). The LA Panthers advocated for and provided health care for incarcerated persons; some of these men and women needed medical attention because they had been abused while in police custody. A3N: How does the story of the BPPs health activism, as presented in your book, contribute to and challenge the traditional presentations of the BPP by both the mainstream and alternative media? AN: Body and Soul offers an account of the BPP that moves away from the narrow confines of the so-called culture wars, in which the Party can only ever be a positive force or a negative element. Paying attention to the Partys health activism calls into question the inaccurate stereotype of the activists as aimless thugs.

3. The workshop was entitled Writing our Secrets on the Walls and it revolved around the idea of being able to talk openly about issues such as pregnancy avoidance, induced miscarriage and abortion from a womanloving point of view, a perspective that does not perpetuate violence against women and focuses mainly on the necessity to recreate a community of women able to share knowledge and practices around the female body. We also gain a different perspective on things we thought we already knew about the BPP, like the fact that the Panthers were avid followers of Fanon, Che and Mao, whose writings were required reading for all members. Through the prism of health, one can see very clearly the influence of Fanons dissection of colonial medicine in Algeria on the Panthers understanding of medical discrimination in the U.S. We can take seriously the fact that Fanon and Che were physicians as well as political thinkers. We can appreciate that Mao, who established the barefoot doctors lay health worker program, made available to the Party not only broad revolutionary principles, but also specific ideas about health care as political practice. A3N: What do you think were the most successful tactics employed by the BPP as part of its health activism? Strategically speaking, what lessons from the BPPs health activism do you think are most applicable for todays activists to learn from? AN: In addition to setting up their own

because their health activismfrom their political writing about medical issues in The Black Panther newspaper, to their practice of DIY healthcareexemplified the anti-racist, anti-capitalist stance for which they are known. In fact, the reality of health inequality brought the BPPs political perspective into sharper relief because it offered stark and specific examples of how economic and racial oppression literally damaged bodies, families and communities. As you know, the BPP was originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, a name that reflected that protecting communities from police brutality was a primary motivation for the groups founding. The BPP exposed the misuse of power whether it was at the hands of police officers or physicians. So, its also useful to think of the Panthers as being engaged in medical self-defense. In Los Angeles, Party members Ericka Huggins and Elaine Brown, nursing professor Marie Branch, Dr. Terry Kupers, and others established that chapters Peoples

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