Who are Oppressed? Men? Whites? Parents?

Let me suggest that something in Harvey’s novel body of insight into Oppressions can be further developed.

We found that all oppressive and oppressed thought and behavior are rooted in Distress. And that discharging on them makes it easier to not victimize others and not to be victimized by ourselves and others.

However, what about oppressor groups? Are they oppressed?

Harvey once said after leading a workshop in the UK (where everyone seems to have Class awareness) that when you hear how Working Class children were systematically hurt, your heart bleeds. When you listen to how Middle Class children grew up, you end up shocked. But when you then learn how Owning Class kids are terrorized, your heart breaks. Such  vicious cruelty. Obviously, one needs to thoroughly mistreat young people for any of them to be able to oppress others viciously. This was once needed to maintain the colonial empire.

Listen to how rough boys have it. And the inhumane isolation perpetrated on Whites kids is unbelievable. The fear and coldness heterosexual youth receive is nothing to envy. Does that mean that Men, Whites and heterosexuals are oppressed too? So far, our Communities have said: Yes, they are oppressed (not by women or non-Whites or Gays but) by society.

Society, the culture, parents, stop boys from discharge; induce them into the army where they learn to kill and be ready to die for the greed of others; demand of them to provide for the family no matter what. Clearly, men are mistreated from childhood, oppressed by society.

I believed this for decades. I went to classes, support groups and workshops on Men’s liberation. However….

Lately, I have begun to believe that we made a mistake. Not in that boys are systematically mistreated – they are. Not in that they are thus trained, later to become the agents of Sexism. That is all sound observation. But men are not oppressed as men. All the examples of “Men’s Oppression” are actually from other oppressions.

Working Class Men (Middle Class Men included) are Oppressed by Classism that forces them to become soldiers and bread-winners.

All boys are Oppressed by Adultism that doesn’t allowed them to cry.

People put by the Oppressive Society into the role of Agents of Oppression are often terribly mistreated, leaving them ignorant, confused and feeling guilty, in exchange for arrogance and privilege. Hurt and mistreated, but not oppressed as Agents.

Now we’re at it, let me talk about some other categories of people who easily call themselves oppressed. Parents. Single women. Orthodox Jews. They may each be oppressed but not as such.

Rich owning-class parents are not overworked raising their children – their nannies might be. What is called Parents’ Oppression is really Working-Class’ Oppression. In fact, people without “their own” children are oppressed, denied excess to or closeness with young people and having any responsibility for or voice over how to raise them.

Single women are not oppressed as singles. Sexism has two main targeted grownup groups for the oppression: singles and married women. They are each oppressed in their own way – as women.

(Single women do not consist of only women who are conditioned to have a husband and happy they don’t. Even if no decent men are around, and even if they have frozen needs for a man, that doesn’t mean that they must deny having a rational wish for a male soul mate.)

(Many single women would rather or equally happily have a female soul mate. It would be bigotry to hide this and just talk about husbands. Lesbians and Jewesses have founded Feminism, but often had to be silent about their special background. Good allies gratefully acknowledge Jewish and LBTQ women now in women’s lib to honor the pioneers.)

Orthodox Jews are more targeted by blatant Jews’ hatred while less-religious Jews can often pass as non-Jews – but are then nastily put down as less-fully Jewish. Each group is oppressed but only as Jews.

Why is it important to clarify this all?

Because I believe that we can speed up General Liberation by shifting the main focus from trying to liberate ourselves from being targeted by oppression to becoming Allies with the oppressed. And we don’t need allies to men. Though oppressed groups should take upon themselves to acquire and maintain allies, so some women would want to become excellent in counseling men.

If, as an X, you wonder if you are oppressed together with other Xes, ask yourself: who form the oppressor group? If there isn’t an oppressor group, you are not oppressed as an X. Look for other backgrounds that could explain why you feel powerless and inferior.

Harvey’s Most Basic Discovery Put on Ice no More!

Already 65 years ago, Harvey made his basic discovery: discharge cleans up emotional distress (in ways we don’t understand) and sometimes also (parts of) physical suffering (unblocking whatever blocks or slows down healing, and removing fear so that pain becomes bearable). Tears don’t indicate suffering but rather accompany a mental recovery process.

We now know that this works though we don’t know how. Doctors work with proven approaches all the time even if the mechanism of their helpfulness is yet unknown. Sleep (even just bed rest) helps healing, restores energy and freshness of the mind, so they prescribe bed rest and sleep hours though no one knows how this works. But brain research is taking a higher flight than ever. We need to tell (show) brain researchers what is re-evaluation so that they can study how this works.

It is clear that re-evaluation is a very deep process. It’s quite unthinkable that it can ever be replaced by medication or another quick fix. That would be like assuming that an enzyme could substitute for DNA or anything as basic as oxygen in the cell could be replaced by anything else.

Over the years it also became clear that no taken substance or manipulation (hypnosis) could enhance this basic human recovery process. In facts, anything that chemically or artificially steers the brain rather slows down or blocks re-evaluation and even creates a distress recording. (When a new person visited my mother and she asked what he would drink, he replied: Water please. She didn’t miss a beat: What, you’re in counseling too?) Also, to provoke tearing (onion peeling) does not do the job, nor is healing of sadness explained by the shedding of salt by tears. It’s simply not that simple.

Re-evaluation restores flexibility to the human brain where there was rigidity from distress recordings (see: The Human Side of Human Beings by Harvey Jackins). This means that we can’t experiment on animal and expect to find answers to how re-evaluation works. This despite the fact that reportedly elephants may weep and many animals yawn.

The furthest parts of the Universe are studied and nano-science looks very promising. Yet, re-evaluation is not studied. This while what really slows down human’s blossoming and the flourishing of human society, what often kills or murders us, is enslavement to distress recordings, a lack of re-evaluation. Since humans are the most advanced part of the Cosmos, we may say that distress recordings hamper Creation’s progress.

So, even if we miss the curiosity to want to find out how re-evaluation works, at least it should be studied in depth to give it more weight and recognition. These studies should promote insight into the excellence of the human brain and human beings and help us value and honor the uniqueness of our lives and the lives of everyone else.

As part of popularizing of our basic Theory, brain researchers need to start studying how re-evaluation works.

Why Not Spread RC Knowledge via the Internet? Reform and Orthodox RC?

This could be the most controversial piece at this blog ever. At least for people who value RC and understand why not to distort RC Theory and why not to mix it with all kinds of “foreign” ideas.

RC and Orthodox Judaism

Tell me if you too see in the following, parallels between RC and Orthodox Judaism.

Practicing Judaism is more important than contemplating it. The basic Jewish texts as in the Torah and the Talmud are not open for revision. Not everyone gets to decide what is proper Judaism and what is not. In Judaism, special care is taken that its unique message doesn’t get distorted or watered-down with “foreign” ideas. In the beginning it seemed that all people needed to become Jews (“a great people”) but we now know that that will never happen. Jews are a small group, so they need to preserve their mission against a great many outside people and ideas. Jews hold teachings of importance to the rest of mankind.

So far, did you too see things that sound like preserving RC’s teachings?

Very different are the next points.

The differences

Gentiles have not waited until the Jews were ready to teach everyone. As soon as the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek, Gentiles have begun to take the basics of Judaism and mixed them with foreign concepts, left parts out and even changed things. Billions of people now live by such religions originally built on Judaism, while there are only at most 10 million Orthodox Jews around. Besides that, many non-Orthodox-Jewish congregations and streams have come up too.

Furthermore, though Orthodox Judaism now may be looking pretty backward, much of modernity is rooted in it, like: equality for the law, universal suffrage, anti-racism, free will, universal laws of nature, etc. Without Jews’ input, humanity would be in a different place altogether.

Yet, non-RCers hardly have heard of RC. Its wisdom has not been revealed to many non-RCers at all.

I want to suggest, since Judaism is around much longer than RC, that these differences could be predicting where RC is (and should be) going.

Popularizing RC

In the olden days, when RC was young and its Theories were not yet tested on other continents and people from all cultures, it made a lot of sense to carefully guard what ideas were spread with the RC trademark.

Especially it was found that attempts to mass communicate RC did not work well. This was often tried because it circumvents having to discharge one’s embarrassment. Yet, personal guidance by an RC teacher seems essential to get the RC message across and not distorted by personal biases or people getting stuck in not doing sessions.

However, this was when the RC Communities were shaky and there was no Internet yet. Things have changed. Orthodox RCers may want to keep our heritage pure and unadulterated, but the world needs our insights.

RC Discoveries are not our Private Property!

Not just are billions of people in great need to learn the basics of what we’ve found in RC, those discoveries are not our private property! In the past 65 years, billions of people have gone to their graves in the firm life-long conviction that crying is harmful. They never had someone warmly listen to their even smallest upsets. I find this intolerable.

Crying is beneficial when not drugged. Taking turns work better than interrupting each other. The Person is not the Pattern. There is no evil intelligence. There are no Shoulds in the Universe. Etc., etc., etc.

What will happen when we start proclaiming RC’s basics all over the Internet? They will get distorted. Opportunists will glue their own advertisements to them for profit. All kinds of believers will hijack our findings. Learned and fake experts will begin to deny its truths.

This may be painful to watch for purists and lovers of honesty. But at least it gives to every person in the world a rejection of the almost universally believed nonsense that so long has chained us all.

Billions of people should learn some kind of insight into discharge soon. Just like billions learned Monotheism from the Jews. Non-RC will be attached to it, but still, this is progress, just like all kinds of non-Jewish ideas got mixed up with the Monotheism but still spread its central teachings. Reformist Counseling Communities will rise up. This is not bad. It will be high-jacked by moneymakers, but in the end, people will figure out what’s true and what’s nonsense. Non-RCers will come to RC to check the basics, just like many Gentiles sometimes try to get a glimpse of original Jewish wisdom. Caring grownups the world over will stop babies from crying a bit less. Do it for the babies! Idol worship (with its useless sacrifices) is seriously down in the world now most people believe in Monotheism. The Torah was given in the desert (no man’s land) to show that it’s not the Jews’ private property, but a teaching to be passed on to all of humanity. It’s unthinkable that RC, with Class Liberation at its heart, would form a new elite, unwilling to include all humans into our circles. RC must stay Orthodox and guard the pureness of RC Theory and practice, but it must become liberal (generous) in the spreading of its findings.

Change Now!

I insist that we will make the spreading of RC’s findings a part of the RC One Point Principle and start disseminating them from now on to every corner of the Internet, with great priority.

Our goal is no longer to drastically enlarge the number of RCers. (But the Communities do need to reach people from more cultures.) Our goal is to have the whole world take turns – also outside of RC. Do it for the babies.

And apparently, I’m not the only one who believes so. So much for my bold thinking. Present Time brings a New Website for People New to RC. Here you may find the basics, among them a Glossary of RC jargon terms. And a link to all basic counseling literature. Some of these texts may say what you always believed – even if you never told anyone or never heard so from anyone. Others may be eye-openers. And some may be hard to digest – and for that we do sessions – and the site helps you how to start them.

All RC texts come from our attempts to heal our distresses and help others to do the same, to help create a world where people don’t hurt each other but rather help each other heal and from thinking about what seems to work and what didn’t. So these are the results of experiment and work, not of academic theorizing and philosophizing.

Is it Rational to be Transgender?

This is of course a personal piece. It’s not speaking for anyone else. Pieces by other Trans co-counselors would add to the picture and make it more representative of Trans lives and awareness in general. In particular, this text lacks female-to-male-Trans and gynophile input.

In any case, improved understanding of gender identity should give a boost to liberation from internalized sexism in women and to contradicting sexist patterns in men that keep institutionalized sexism in place. It could also help undermine other biases that relate to gender, the sexes or sexuality, like LGBQI oppressions. In other words: such clarity could be useful for much more than integration of some Trans-people in RC. I have included information for people who are new to all of this.

A few first points on terms:

The biological sexes are what we see on the outside, the term gender should be reserved for how we identify “on the inside.” For example: someone’s sex or body might be male, while her gender identity can be female: a male-to-female Trans-person.

Gender refers to what gender identity we have ourselves; sexual orientation (also “on the inside”) refers to which biological sex we need our sexual partner to be. Issues from these two classifications overlap but basically they are independent of each other, just like being Italian and a chef. So can a person who looks like a man, feel a women and have a sexual preference for women. It might not work for her to “just be a heterosexual man,” disrespecting her gender.

More details on terms to follow.

A Gay Life

My life story about Gay in a nutshell. When I was six years old, most guys (of any age) walked hand in hand with girls only, while as a young lad I was romantically attracted to guys. When I was ten, I heard the word homo for the first time, surprised that there must be so many that there even was a word for them/us. After that, I presumed to be Gay. It has been and continues to be a useful assumption.

Thanks to Harvey Jackins, working on ESM became a priority and I have only profited from that. It removed quite some sexual compulsion about men (and other addictions) and quite some fear of closeness with women. Working so early for so long also improved awareness about young people. All of life greatly picked up. As it turned out, sex with a woman was possible too, but that never became something particularly fancied. Working very early, revealed what made me choose to be Gay and what made me Trans (though even with this knowledge I still can’t reverse either).

Transgender Awareness

Yet, a few years ago, a brilliant long-term counselor of mine, who also loves me very much, suggested in my session that I could have something with Transgender. It was a big shock. But on hindsight he was right. This narrative is a bit different from the sometimes stereotypical Trans stories popular in the media.

I am male-to-female Trans-person but still fond of my male body. My Trans part could be illustrated with examples that are certainly not exclusive to or defining of women (or men), but nevertheless together still might be unusual as awareness and feelings in men:

• Outlook on the world – why do people always fight?
• Outlook on women – I want to say “us” when I’m with them.
• Outlook on men – strange how immature men often relate
• Effects from sexism – after swallowing a lot of sexism (first of all by identifying with my mother) it became second nature to serve and please others and be intimidated by unfriendly others. (There was not much encouragement against this timidity inside or outside RC for someone supposedly not a girl.)
• Even before entering RC, listening and being supportive was easy, just like for my mother. And even in RC, taking leadership and coming across a deeply listening ear were hard.
• Too bad I couldn’t get pregnant and bear children.
• Outlook on sex – climaxing is important but without relationship, friendship and much cuddling it’s just stale pastime.

Yet:

• Multi-tasking is a challenge – supposedly a women’s talent.
• Nurturing is my gift but it drains more than it energizes.
• In school, I was trained to reason like a guy (only later, women in RC showed me that one can explain by giving examples) and I’m often hyperaware of principles, much like my father.
• Often, it is hard to find what’s just right in front of my nose.

In any case, I identify now as partly Trans, intergender or bigender, though largely still in the closet about any of this.

What could be a general direction or commitment for Trans-people? “Standing guard” seems to help me. Maybe that’s understandable giving how unsafe many Trans-people appear to feel.

More on terms:

Some Trans-activists say that only Transsexual is the proper term for a mismatch between gender and biological sex. Others prefer Transgender, that they chose to imply a rejection of the “binary system,” which expects people to label themselves and others as either female or male, with no in-between shades of gray and no options outside one-or-the-other thinking. In any case, a neutral term to bypass this discussion is: Trans-people.

On top of this dispute, some people may dislike the word transsexual (and homosexual) because it needlessly and inappropriately seems to refer to sexuality – which it does not: it refers to biological sex. Or gender could be preferred because that would be more essential than biological sex (“gender studies”).

One could make many puns on trans (transfat, transportation) but better avoid “joking” like that about oppressed groups. It feels icky and may hurt. We know how to discharge awkwardness without embarrassing anyone.

Thinking About Policy – Hormones and Operations

From the above you may deduce a stance against a general norm that in order to be “really” a Trans person, one must take sex hormones and have sex change operations to flip the body’s visible sex. (When we put it positively, we won’t speak of sex change but of gender-confirmative changes.)

Typically, many GLBTQIs hate an overdone drive towards “normalcy,” which in this case would be: either be a stereotypical man or woman. The medical profession has corrupted itself in several fields (like psychiatry, pediatrics) trying to “normalize” “patients.” (Nevertheless, let’s credit physicians for persisting in their find for a century now, that gender identity can’t be changed, but body appearance can.)

So, “gender mismatch” does not always need to be “gender dysphoria” – the psychiatric expression for unhappiness with one’s biological sex. Why couldn’t one be proud of and happy with what is, like: a male body and a female identity at the same time?

Therefore, let’s help popularize the option for Trans-people to keep one’s body as is and still identify, and choose to be addressed and recognized as the other sex (or as “them” or “it” or sometimes as she and sometimes as he – ask them). Beware: This renaming should not be abused as escape route for male-bodied people to flee necessary work on our sexism patterns and queue-jumping male privileges!

In any case, let’s not condemn or frown upon anyone for choosing sex changes. We may deeply understand how one can be fed-up with being mismatched on gender by others constantly, and long for “being normal” in the public eye, and then go for such drastic medical options.

Presently, many Trans-people seem to give in to hormones and operations because they can’t take it any longer that others all the time misjudge their gender. (Yet, Gays and Lesbians often need to correct others on making wrong assumptions on the sex of their partner/spouse, and it’s not the end of the world.) Besides, in many places in the world some try to escape danger of being spotted as “pre-operative” Trans-persons or Gay as it there is a mortal danger. Hence, we could expect that when Trans and Gay oppressions diminish, more Trans-people would embrace any clash between their gender identity and biological sex without trying to “solve” it.

Yet, this Intersex situation may not work for all Trans-people. Some, from a very young age, really hate their sex characteristics and can’t wait to change: breasts to beard (vv), genitals and hormonal status.

BTW: Hormonal change leads to reshaping the skeletal bones and silhouette, which takes a couple of years. To acquire beard or breast goes faster. In a male-to-female it leads to infertility (standard is to freeze sperm ahead of treatment), in a female-to-male it does not.

NB: Full or partial cross-dressing most of the time is not related to Transgender. It can be part of playing with stereotypical roles for the sexes or genders (travesty, Queer!) or be a role play in sexuality.

Some female-to-male Transsexuals have only changed hormonally (beard) and had “top surgery” (breasts removal), changing their public image but retaining their life-giving ability (womb).

There is a report from a group of female-to-male Transsexuals who after the operations refused to give up on their gentle “feminine” side, rejecting super-macho norms. It seems a special challenge to show one’s gender without buying into (oppressive) stereotypes and expectations about the sexes/genders. However, Trans-people should not be singled out for blame for using existing stereotypical ridged sex and gender role norms.

Sessions – Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation

Many deep session can change how we feel, what we dream of and long for, what attracts and repulses, and what to do and refrain from.

Nevertheless, no matter how much we discharge (5,000+ hours), two things seem immutable, given: gender identity (whether we see ourselves as a man or a woman – try changing that) and sexual orientation (which kind of biological sex our partner’s body must have for us to feel unified with them through sex – try changing that). We certainly can clean those two up, but it seems to me that we cannot choose between the two alternatives for each. This is kind of a bummer with our notion of free choice and autonomy, but we also cannot discharge away gravity, or produce a womb by re-evaluation, and we’ll get over it.

If so, we cannot choose which gender recognition (from ourselves and others) we need and which of the sexes our partner needs to be so that we may “feel one” through sexuality. Still, at all times, we keep full freedom where to put our attention and what to do with our life.

Allies – Inside and Outside of RC

Oppression against Trans-people is not primarily on medical issues. Rather, when a Trans tries to pass as non-Trans (as Cis), many people still would pick up somehow that s/he’s kind of “different” from them, also in RC. More than a few seem pretty uncomfortable with that, no matter how a closeted Trans-person would try to behave – from serious to friendly. This may disturb relationships more than “visible” identities. To be safe for Trans-people, Cis-Allies need to get over their Trans-uneasiness. This is nothing shameful – most people seem to have this awkwardness. Stand out by working on it!

It’s clear to me how Cis-people (non-Trans-people) could profit from gender identity work (see the below direction). We often need to tell heterosexuals that they too have a specific sexual identity, Whites that they also have a culture to be proud of, and men that they have a good body to praise as well, which as Allies they need to claim and clean up. Equally, we might need to tell Cis-people that they too have a gender identity to clean up.

A direction to say: I’m not a (wo)man – I just pass as one. (I discharge when I say the direction with “man” or with “woman”.)

Just as with this work on other identities, sometimes the counselor must really persist when confusion comes up. After all, the goal of taking a direction is not to miraculously understand things after just contemplating it, but to actually declare it, say what that would imply and discharge. Re-evaluation always follows. I believe this direction cleans up our identity rather than removing it, making old gender-role-related putdowns and expectations less susceptible to restimulation.

There seems no connection between being androphile or/and gynophile (being attracted to men or women) and gender identity. Yet the oppressions (as so many) do have similarities. Allies to Gays need to work on their own sexuality and own sexual orientation but also on upsets about homosexuals (abnormal, scary, disgusting, evil). Allies to Trans-people need to work on their gender – see above direction. They may also ask themselves: What would I feel and desire if my body was the opposite sex that I feel I am? Allies to Trans-people too need to look at what upsets them about Trans-people (abnormal, scary, disgusting, evil). Besides, if one fancies one gender much over the other, a sex change in a loved one may make that person (not) attractive to you – feelings of loss or gain to work on!

Last but not least, Harvey Jackins once credited RC with stopping an anti-Jewish wave in the US. But because it was still confused about homosexuals, the repression came out against homosexuals instead (Anita Bryant), he said. We would not want a repeat of history against Trans-people (President Trump just announced a Trans ban for the US military. Promisingly, it’s not yet implemented thanks to opposition by US military leaders). On the one hand, we are forty years on, and Trans-people (and Gays and Lesbians!) in the US are not as isolated as homosexuals were then. There are now a lot of Allies in many communities in the US and Europe. On the other hand, we would want RCers to join this fight as Cis-Allies, to take it on, not secondary to uprooting classism, adultism, racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, sexism, ablebodyism, etc.

NB: No Cis-Ally needs to agree that Trans-ideas are sound, in order to stand with Trans-people against discrimination and oppression.

Speeding up Liberation? The Next Step After Splitting up Into Oppressed Groups is What?

Maybe we can speed up general Liberation, so central to RC, by shifting the main focus from our own Liberations, from having been targeted by Oppressions, to becoming excellent Allies to all of the Oppressed?

I’m proposing a “paradigm shift” for RC. A paradigm shift is the opposite of a slow development. It is a sudden leap forward whereby a former set of ideas is either replaced or taken to a higher level. Well, in this case, I’m not proposing to ax anything that we learned, but rather to accelerate what we are doing by shifting our focus.

In the beginning, and for beginning RCers often still, it’s been difficult to split up in oppressed groups. Shouldn’t we unite rather than divide?

But we found that everyone sitting together was less powerful and more fake (at the expense of the oppressed) than first splitting up. When separated, we could practice combating our internalized victimhood, learning to like our fellow oppressed and supporting our own leaders and not in-flight. The goal never was to stay separate. Rather, we split up in order to eventually come together again from a better place.

It has been such an important phase in which we all looked at our own internalized oppressions to go against it and liberate ourselves and each other from it, and at times, with some Allies on the side.

But this has also colluded with ego-centrism. Everything always reminding us of how “little us” needed attention. Ready for a bold idea?

Maybe we can now begin focusing on being Allies to everyone. Surely, understanding how we were oppressed must teach us what people targeted by other Oppressions go through and how important Liberation is. But to a limit.

Maybe this resembles being a counselor. To be a good counselor, we must client. But the goal is not just to spread clienting around the globe. Rather, it would be good if everyone learned to counsel, to listen.

(Yes, sometimes, when we client successfully, others might be impressed, but nothing will teach them better the benefit of good clienting than them getting a go at it.)

I imagine that if we were going to do a lot of Allies work, we’ll counsel a lot about having been oppressed ourselves; that at “Allies to” meetings, most participants would like to be in a support group of their own Liberation group(s).

This idea of focusing on being Allies to everyone should result in us working more on our own internalized oppression. Being Allies to so many groups (and nature and the environment) should speed up and intensify us working on our own Liberations. But now not in a self-centered frame of mind but rather from seeking everyone else’s liberation with us.

Instead of ever-growing amounts of sessions, classes, support groups and workshops on Weigelias’ Liberation, let’s begin to prioritize sessions, classes, support groups and workshops on being Allies to Weigelias’ Liberation. (Weigelia is Harvey’s generic term for any oppressed group.)

Allies to Women, Allies to Jews, Allies to the Working Class, Allies to GLBTQIs, Allies to Weigelias, Allies to Nature.

Harvey compared the oppressive society to people of every oppressed group standing in a circle, each with a long piece of wood, everyone hitting all the others over their heads. Maybe liberation then can be that they each hold a flashlight, shedding light on everyone else’s struggle.

Maybe this could fuel internalized oppression for people that are conditioned to look after the interests of everyone else but themselves (women, Jews, GLBTQ, young people)? Yet, there is no danger of exploitation in this if truly everyone looks out for all the others, as then those groups also would be taken care of by many Allies.

But also, (more importantly,) we are not being Allies to look after others but rather to liberate ourselves from oppressive recordings – which might be worse for our physical and emotional well-being and functioning than our “own” internalized oppressions! We will be regaining all the clarities that the oppressive society has left with every oppressed group (and become as playful as young people, good at closeness as World Majority People, cooperative as Working Class people, quick as the Jews, etc.).

Maybe we see an (unsuccessful) attempt to this in the Wide World with the recent emergence of “Intersectionality.” This is a new student idea highlighting that everyone’s liberation struggles are interconnected with those of every other oppressed group. As a White Straight feminist, you must oppose Racism, Homophobia, etc.

Yet, at the moment (but it is early), this idea seems doomed to fail in that it tries to replace Class analysis. (That might be a major reason why anti-Semitism is not included – it sets Jews away as over-privileged, as the oppressor, perhaps also because, as we found out in RC, anti-Semitism (as every oppression) is deeply rooted in Classism.) This is understandable from a student movement in the Trump era, but it’s faulty nevertheless. However, most recently, the Women’s March organizers have gotten the message and begun to embrace Jews too.

In any case, I don’t propose to replace anything – only to focus most of our attention on being Allies.

In a way, this is nothing new. I did a lot of this when I was new to RC, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one. But it would make a difference if this were a community effort.

Harvey thought that RC had helped popularize the idea of Support Groups. They’re everywhere now, for every group thinkable. Just imagine RC popularizing Allies With … Support Groups to the same extent.

What do you think? Are we ready to try this (with discharge)?