Our 2023 Anti-Supremacist Training & Creation Institutes

The Institute for Research on Male Supremacism (IRMS) invites organizers, researchers, artists, and journalists interested in misogyny and transmisogyny to join us to learn and design innovative strategies to address the roots of supremacist and authoritarian cultures, ideologies, and structures. Apply for our 2023 Anti-Supremacist Training and Creation Institutes!

Applications for our May 11-14 Institute in Los Alamos, New Mexico are now closed. Interested participants may apply for our virtual institute in June or our September institute in New Mexico. New Mexico is a safe harbor state on abortion, and this institute will focus on anti-abortion, -trans, and -drag mobilizations alongside broader analysis of the intersecting supremacist infrastructure. We especially welcome nearby regional organizers and artists from New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona, while also encouraging participants from anywhere in the United States. IRMS covers all expenses for accepted participants.

“Training and Creation” means that participants both learn more deeply about supremacist and authoritarian mobilizations, and utilize that knowledge to collaborate on effective and innovative interventions toward furthering liberatory gender expression and bodily autonomy. The institutes will discuss well-worn “playbooks” the Right has used and reused over decades on gender justice issues such as abortion rights, transgender humanity, sexuality education, and drag and queer performance, and intersecting issues such as racial justice and critical race theory.

We encourage participants to watch our anti-supremacist webinar series as part of the training & creation curricula. In the first session, now available to watch online, the Center for Applied Transgender Studies Fellows Blu Buchanan and Florence Ashley discussed how attacks on trans youth care reflect the same bioessentialist ideology as anti-abortion and anti-CRT movements. Our webinar on March 23 with journalist Amy Littlefield dived into anti-abortion strategy.

This knowledge will provide the foundation for our cohort’s creation work, generating concepts for new innovative strategies and experiments through collaborations among organizers and artists and researchers and journalists to develop ideas and resources. We aim to utilize this institute space to generate resources (from one-pagers to zines to videos) and develop or support existing innovative and root cause interventions to reach wider populations of activists. Participants will have the opportunity to receive funding ($500 to $5000) to collaborate on resource and innovation concepts generated through the institute.

An organization led by women and non-binary people, IRMS values the importance of integrating joy and resilience to sustain our ability to work on these topics. The New Mexico institute will include drag and burlesque performance and options to walk in our gorgeous local canyons. We will integrate this approach to joyful community building into designing anti-supremacist work (we look to examples such as PopMob’s queer dance parties in response to the Proud Boys).

IRMS researches supremacist movements and ideologies to design more effective structural- and culture-change strategies. These institutes are a collaborative project, co-creating a cohort of individuals who share IRMS’s desire to engage in prevention that:

● Takes creative approaches that simultaneously build community joy

● Focuses on root causes in changing culture, education, and systems

● Designs short-term tactics against a long-term strategy

● Supports sustainable cultures and emotional health for individuals in this work

● Embraces radical visions of just, liberatory, and democratic futures

Informed by intersectional feminism, our work centers opposition to misogyny, transmisogyny, and misogynoir while delving into the expansive landscape of supremacist organizing. IRMS frames our work as addressing “supremacism” rather than “extremism,” “radicalization,” or other terms connoting fringe activities. Why? Dehumanizing beliefs shape mainstream culture and structures, from high rates of intimate partner violence against women to mass violence by misogynist incel men. “Extremism” framing implies that centrist beliefs are most desirable, undermining radical social justice visioning. Our solutions build from this understanding.

Thursday, May 11th: Arrive in Los Alamos, New Mexico

5-9pm MST: Opening Dinner & Performance

After arriving in Los Alamos, NM, participants will come together to get to know one another, touch base on the approach to countering supremacism and rewriting culture and systems, and discuss expectations and agenda.

With a special performance by the Atomic Gems, Los Alamos’ local burlesque troupe!

Friday, May 12th

9-10:30am: Prevention Points in Anti-Supremacism Work

IRMS Executive Director Dr. Alex DiBranco, a fellow with the Pop Culture Collaborative and the 22nd Century Initiative, will lay the groundwork for the weekend’s conversations with a dialogue on our approach to preventing supremacism and authoritarianism.

10:45am-12pm: Canyon Walk and Talk (weather permitting) or Indoor Small Group Chats

12pm-1pm: Lunch

1:15-4:30pm: Generative Discussion on Prevention

This session will intersperse conversation with short presentations from groups in attendance and breakout groups to allow for deeper collaboration

5:30-9:30pm: Dinner & Drag at Executive Director’s House

Saturday, May 13th

9am-12pm: Anti-Abortion, -Trans, and -Drag Mobilizations

Saturday’s session will deep dive into attacks on bodily autonomy and gender expression, with presentations interspersed with discussion & breakouts.

12-1pm: Lunch

1:15-2:45pm: Where Do We Go From Here?

This session will discuss where the anti-supremacist cohort will go from this first major event: What topics should be covered in the ongoing webinar series and upcoming institutes? What needs did we identify, and how can we meet them? What resources and innovations do we plan to collaborate on, create, and disseminate?

3-4:30pm: Breakout Groups Begin Work on Concepts Identified

5:30pm: Optional: Dinner, Local Community Theater Production of Chicago, and Karaoke

Or, evening on your own.

Sunday, May 14th

9-12pm: Brunch & final wrap-up

12pm-3pm: Optional outdoor activities for attendees leaving later

Applications are now closed.

Roots, Structures, and Intersections of Supremacism

Understanding the shape and intersections of supremacist movements and ideologies is a necessary step to developing innovative, community joy-building, and long-term strategies for rewriting supremacist and authoritarian culture and structures.

In this opening training & creation session for IRMS’s 2023 anti-supremacist training & creation series, Alex DiBranco, IRMS Executive Director and Co-Founder, introduced the merits of conceptualizing our work as anti-supremacist (rather than "extremist," for instance), understanding supremacism in contemporary and historical perspective, and applying this to intersectional cross-movement organizing and effective use of media. Blu Buchanan and Florence Ashley then moved into a specific exploration of how attacks on trans youth care reflect the same bioessentialist ideology as anti-abortion and anti-CRT movements.

Recorded February 23rd, 2023

Anti-Abortion Strategy with Journalist Amy Littlefield

In this second training & creation webinar, IRMS welcomed journalist Amy Littlefield for a dive into the history and strategy of the anti-abortion movement in the United States.

Amy Littlefield is the abortion access correspondent for The Nation and a freelance journalist who has covered reproductive health and justice for The New York Times, Reveal, The New Republic, and many more outlets. Read her work on how Kansas kept abortion legal and her co-authored article with Heron Greenesmith on the links with anti-trans legislation.

Recorded March 23rd, 2023