Please don't tip the activists - a service charge is included in the bill

I generally respect Penny Red's writing, although I don't always agree with her. however, her latest effort, "Tips for activists", leaves me feeling somewhat disappointed.

I like point 1, "Your enemy is never, not ever, the group along from you who happen to disagree with you on one small point of policy, however important you believe that policy is." Point 2 starts off quite well, too: "We do not all have to get along, hold hands in a circle and think about rainbows in order to work together. That's not what successful politics is about". It just goes a little bit pear-shaped at the end with: "Just because someone across the table from you doesn't agree with your economic analysis/position on sex work/ does not make them your enemy. Not when you have a common enemy to contend with."

I think that using sex work in there and treating it as just an academic thing on a par with an "economic analysis" is a mistake to start with. But then there's the very real issue that some activists' positions on sex work have very real consequences for the real, actual lives of other activists - namely, the ones who happen to be sex workers! And that point gets extended to a whole lot of other things, particularly surrounding sexuality. I can't speak properly on behalf of sex workers, but several whose blogs I read regularly have made the point hat when your policy or position says they shouldn't exist, that they should submit themselves to someone else's idea of what is "proper" - that is, if they should sacrifice themselves for YOUR revolution - then they don't want to be a part of that revolution, and no, there is no way you can work together when you say they shouldn't exist. As I say, I can't say for sure that I agree with that as a sex worker, because I'm not a sex worker. but I am a kinky and transgressive person by the very naure of my sexuality, and when people's theories, policies and positions on sadomasochism, bondage, Dominant/submissive kink and whatever else, say that I should not exist - say that I must sacrifice myself for the good of the Revolution, then no - we cannot work together. And yes, actually, that does make that person my enemy, on exactly the same level as the "common" enemy that we supposedly share.

That's why kinky folks, and sex worker folks, simply cannot work with radical feminists who deny them their autonomy, even though they do share some goals (like eliminating trafficking, child abuse, etc).

Which seques neatly into the problem with point 3: "It ain't about you. No, really. The chances are that if you have the time, energy and personal empowerment to join a political or activist group, that's great, but it means that it isn't about you any more. The people on whose behalf you are planning action and getting organised, those people come first, and their needs and wants come before your personal political qualia." As the above passage shows, there's a lot of people who are in some area or another, actually a part of the group on whose behalf they are getting active! Not just kinky, sex worker, trans*, LGB but in more economic circles as well, not everyone in activism is taking on a role of gallant knight at last bringing his skills honed in the tourneys to the rescue of a fair maid; some people actually are fair maids doing it for themselves!

Penny Red saves point 3 by concluding it with "as soon as you let personal ideological quibbles counteract the progress of positive action, you're doing it wrong." It just seems to me that there's a huge gulf between ideological quibbles and stuff that's actually real and happening to people like me (proverbial "me" - a sex worker caring about shit actually happening to sex workers, a kinky person caring about kinkphobic laws/attitudes, trans person caring about actual stuff that affects the lives of trans folks, etc). I think point 3 is trying to address this, but in the muddle of 2 and 3 and more, that gets rather lost.

Point 4 looks good, certainly the bit about kicking out any racist/sexist/homophobe ideologues ("anyone advocating intolerance" I suppose is supposed to cover transphobic, kinkphobic, etc too). But I'm not so sure about "advocating violence". penny groups this in with "intimidation and bullying", which sounds like it's talking about violence aimed at one's own side, which is indeed absolutely not going to work. But I can't help feeling that ultimately, very few human rights advances have ever been won without at least the credible threat of violence being deployed by someone. Yes, there's usually a pacifist/non-violence-ist movement as well (the acceptable face that can negotiate the victory) but people forget that Nelson Mandela (for example) was officially head of a terrorist organisation that the ANC started (he says so in his autobiography); that Martin Luther King was not the only leader in the civil rights movement in the USA, but there were groups like the Black Panthers around as well; that Gandhi may have been a pacifist, but the British left India after large-scale riots there. So "advocating violence", at least on a theoretical level, as a means to achieving real change, shouldn't exclude folks from the movement altogether.

Point 5 is perfect: "If your strategy for achieving social justice won't work until every single mechanism of capitalist society is dismantled from the ground up, then it's time to start work on a back-up plan. Plan A (world socialist revolution) is absolutely fantastic, as long as there's also a Plan B in play for the meantime."

Points 6 and 7, about listening and recruiting, sound good, but I feel like there is more potential there than actual substance to what Penny wrote. Again, I look back to my issues with points 2 and 3. Forming bridges, talking to people, listening, etc - it only works if they're willing to do the same in return. It also depends upon the other side being willing to concede what we need. I realise that's supposed to be covered by point 4, but then we've got to ask where we go to find the wonderful people who won't be nasty.

Point 8 - hey, I live outside of London!

Point 9 - "...watch it again, and remember that it was made in the 1970s, and ask yourself how long it's going to be until we pull our bloody socks up." Exaclty what I thought when I saw it for the first time!