Feminism, Women and National-Anarchism; An Interview with Andrew Yeoman of BANA

What can you tell us about yourself?

Well first of all thank you for the invitation to interview on your blog!  I think I should start by mentioning that a few years ago I was inspired by an idea called National Anarchism, a philosophy that includes the combination of pride in ones national heritage and freedom of association to a live a more fulfilling and meaningful life.  So I went on to share the ideas of National Anarchism to a wider audience and set about putting the ideas into practice.  It has been quite an exciting journey so far and the enthusiasm and dedication of others I met along the way has surpassed my wildest dreams!  

Otherwise I think it’s important to mention that I’m the youngest of three siblings, a half brother and half sister and another sister not related by blood.  

Besides my mother my oldest sister is one of the most important influences on my life.  I didn’t get to know her until I was a teenager when she moved to Michigan in order to get to know our mother better.  After she graduated college she had lived all across Europe and was full of stories about the people and places she saw.  She introduced me to the ubiquitous nineties coffee-shop culture and taught me to appreciate the abundant beauty of life.  As the oldest sibling she had developed a strong independent streak and rebellious attitude towards what she considered the stifling social expectations of Southern Baptist Christianity she was raised in and embraced feminism as her preferred outlook on life.  When I was younger we would get into fierce debates on the merits of her various views and she rarely lost!  There was a period in my life when I considered myself a feminist.

Otherwise my personal understanding of the world is constantly evolving and I love learning new things and having new experiences.  I love traveling but it seems like I never get to do enough of it!  I am unmarried and have no children.

What is your opinion on feminism and how it has impacted American women?  

On that topic I think that American women deserve sympathy and a certain level of empathy.  I’m not willing to call all feminist ideas as misguided or unimportant, there are many valid concerns they have raised in the past.  As far as I can tell the most influential part feminism has done in society has been to re-prioritize women’s personal value system.  Whereas in the past women’s social values has been ruled by social expectations revolving around motherhood these days women don’t have many expectations placed on them except perhaps going to college and getting a job.  

Of course women have their own inherent desires and possibilities that don’t always jive with the ‘Sex and the City’ attitude towards personal and social life.  But in the positive sense I have seen feminism give voice to women’s feelings being better appreciated in society at large and that influence can be seen in the reemergence of the importance of the body’s health and more holistic attitudes towards emotional development.  

However adversely to the positive influences I feel that too often feminism is used as a weapon to try to get women to compete with men in terms of wealth, status, and the direction of American public life.  I think that public policy in the United States since 1920-and perhaps even earlier- can be seen as the indirect influence of women on society and increasingly since the 1990′s as the direct influence of women.  I think one of the most misguided notions is viewing society through the lens of gender domination, i.e., is some institution male dominated or female dominated.  I think either case can have its uses, such as in schooling or career choices, but it is absolutely against nature to insist that their be a fifty fifty ratio of men and women in all aspects of life and that such a view contradicts the role that men and women naturally assume.  

Many young white men unsure of the truth of the assertions of feminism and some accept their views at face value and attempt change their behavior in a way they think women want: they become nice, non threatening, too agreeable, always gentle, never judgmental, and a whole of host of things that actual women don’t want a man to behave like (or at least not all the time!). 

I think that feminism should be analyzed as a symptom of a deeper sociological or even spiritual unease in the modern world that has the strange situation where men and women don’t know how to fully complement one another. I think the  failure of marriage and vast increase in professional social services and counselors designed to raise the next generation of children whereas in the past one’s family and local community would fulfill that role are examples of a breakdown in gender relationships that feminism is at least partially at fault for.

How has it impacted the American populace overall? Do you have an opinion on how it has affected Western Civilization?

Well let me start by limiting who I’ll be analyzing since I’m not qualified to discuss for all the different groups of people classified as Americans these days.  I’ll limit my response to considering feminist’s effects on adult white men and woman.  Most American women are introduced to feminism through college not as an introduction to womanhood but an introduction to a certain sort of sexual licentiousness and the study of various deviants as a model that is presented as the pinnacle of social and personal responsibility.  Examples include Virginia Woolf, Anasis Nin, Nancy Friday, Starhawk, various lesbians, and others with the goal of showing the young women in these classes that no one has the right to tell them who they can or should have sex with and that their is no higher social responsibility to sexuality (such as sustainable birthrates) or divine forces (such as Catholic edicts against birth control) than their own desires.  

These studies are presented in a way of exploring the full gamut of sexuality from a women’s perspective that is often critical of men for failing to live up to their expectations, ignores men altogether, or is blatantly used as a recruiting drive for the lesbian lifestyle.  

The cumulative effect of this on the female population has been a rejection of certain, but not all, masculine traits and a unconscious view among the male population that feminists are conspiring to convince women to reject them altogether.  As white male values prohibit fighting or physically assaulting women, the basic cultural attitude men have chosen towards feminism is to appease or ignore feminists instead of directly challenging their approach.  It is telling that male culture has no direct equivalent of feminism for their own gender, although this seems to be changing.

I believe that real feminism is largely contained to academic life but its wider effects include condoning attitudes towards homosexuality that previous to certain metropolitan areas in the 1980′s, was never so widely accepted as it is today across Western civilization.  Much more important is the increasingly female dominated workforce and college campuses strangely applauded by feminists as a ‘triumph of women’ when a holistic vantage point would shows an unprecedented failure of men to enter the roles they have traditionally played.  

I think it’s fair to say that despite its positive effects feminism has been disastrous on Western civilization however I really believe that feminism is a symptom of a much deeper spiritual malaise or death urge personified in psychology as the Greek daemon of death named Thánatos.

What changes would you like to see in regards to feminism’s effect on American society? 

Well I think reversing those effects or stopping them all together is impossible and is far to much a reactionary attitude to make any difference. It doesn’t make any sense at all to stand up and say “hey you! stop thinking those ideas, they make me uncomfortable!”  That is an example of the fairly typical response of tradition minded people, such as Christians in response to feminism.  

To change feminism’s effect on society it is necessary to change feminism needs to be changed from within its realm- the aspirations of the women who identify with it- and it will take women themselves to consciously change the direction the feminist phenomenon has gone.  

The way to do this is through better ideas and better examples of personal and social sexual responsibility than the feminists at present are offering.  With such a low barrier of entry to revolutionize feminism from within, I think it is so easy and inevitable to happen.  I think it will happen with charismatic women with traditionalist views who offer a vision of a post-feminist future.  Writers like Christina Hoff-Sommers are making great strides in this direction.

In what way can National-Anarchism provide solutions? How do tribes and autonomous communities benefit women? 

One of the most important trait of tribes is that they provide a safe community and protection to its members.  It is almost cliche to mention that safety is a prerequisite for higher forms of civilization, but what if there was no safety?  In previous eras, local communities had a strong sense of solidarity and the existential importance of protecting women from harms way.  Contemporary society no longer has those values.  When young women reach adulthood they are quite literally thrown to the wolves and no one cares about their fate.  

But besides safety, tribes provide community and an environment where can play many roles for the benefit of the tribe: caretaker, nurse, mentor, friend, leader, and other roles are built into the community.  A woman can simultaneously play several important social roles in a day whereas a typical office worker has at most a couple of social outlets.

What roles and functions do you see women playing within the National-Anarchist scene?  

That’s an interesting question and one that featured prominently in Leftist circles I used to frequent.  The easiest answer is “whatever they want to” but that leaves out a lot of important details!  It’s my belief that everyone should be free to choose their own level of involvement and in what they contribute.  I believe that an individual has natural creative talents that can and should be developed to the level of perfection a person wants.  So with that in mind I don’t believe that it is necessary to have a dogmatic view on what women can and cannot contribute.

In the fight for freedom a woman’s place is not at home.

What functions do female members fulfill in BANA?

Well in BANA we have been very fortunate to have a variety of women get involved with our collective.  We have students, professionals, young mothers, and elder female members in the BANA network.  Women are encouraged to ‘follow their bliss’ and develop the skills and roles they have a natural affinity for.  Some are artists and make designs for t-shirts and fliers.  Others are thinkers and carefully deliberate on what actions to take.  My basic attitude is to be helpful and encouraging to everyone who wants to contribute to making a positive impact in our community and in that regard women are not treated any differently then men.  Although the number of activists in BANA is small, our group has taken on the character of a movement rather than an organization and I look forward to having coed housing cooperatives and conventions where men and women can feel at home.