I expect anarchist white men to try to change the subject when patriarchy and racism are discussed. I expect it because that’s what white men do when their systemic privileges are challenged, and as I discuss in the last post the majority of the anarchist movement is no different. The immediate response by most anarchists is a derailment. Usually this takes a form like “what about the working class?” or “what about the oppression of men?”. Yesterday’s post generated a unique derailment and a bit of concern trolling which took the classic form of “The real problem is:”. This time the so-called “real problem” is how the movement deals with children.

This particular response amused me because I am a father and because I happen to moderate a small forum focused on radical parenting news and issues. Raising a radical child is the primary focus of my life. As anarchists parenting a white child who is genetically male and who presents as a boy my wife and I know that the most important thing we can do is to minimize his socialization into systems of oppression that inform and intertwine with capitalism and the state. The most important ideology that informs radical parenting is feminism (children and education are quite covered by “patriarchy” which is far more than a technicality). This is because the state and capital are going to feel like oppressors as he gets older – he will be both a worker and a state subject. What needs focus from us are those ways in which the system will grant him privilege as a white male and the way his participation and defense of those systems is rewarded. Where he will be oppressed is secondary. We live in a capitalist system, we are parenting under capitalism. We cannot avoid the production of a worker, we can hope to raise a revolutionary.

To touch on education for a moment, there is little use in arming children with critical thinking skills, logic, and a sense of individual power and then ignoring class and privilege and their systemic application. We don’t need to raise a generation of post-left narcissists. But it’s all just so much hot air. We don’t have access to the education system. We don’t have access to other people’s children unless we are educators, and educators are workers who depend on the system for a wage, not independent agents. It should be clear why I left children off the list in the last post: The only children we can radicalize are our own.

So what about the kids? We can use them as an excuse to not talk about real oppression and we white men can raise more white men who are comfortably anti-state while comfortably reproducing patriarchy and racism even in our radical communities, or we can apply a feminist focus and we will raise more autonomous and thoughtful and revolutionary people.