Feb. 15, 2003: CubDest agency (8th article in the World Social Forum Series).

 Irene León, Equatorian feminist, of the Latin-American News Services, declared that the Third World Social Forum (WSF) had adopted a so called "gender and diversity transversality" as an instrument of social analysis and action. This method establishes a new "revolution" in human mind and a consequently new basis for all social, political, cultural and economic perspectives.

This is in fact one of the most powerful instruments to demolish thinking and life, orienting society toward communitarian anarchy, radically opposed to the 10 Comandments of God.

The "gender transversality" is an expression forged by XXth centhury feminists. This expression is not easily understandable, bit it means the application of class struggle methods to deconstruct normal relationship between men and women, in the concrete order of facts. Among other purposes it aims at demolishing the traditional concept of family and of the relationship husband and wife. The main obstacle to be removed is what feminists call "androcentric paradigm", whose alleged erroneous characteristic would be setting "masculine reference" at the middle of family relations and of political-social "practice and theory" as well.

In a similar way "diversity transversality" would be an attempt to implement a kind of ideological class struggle, the instruments of which would be "discriminated" organizations and social groups, such as Indians, African descents, women and all those "discriminated in reason of their sexual orientation", says Mrs. León. It was this last category that attracted the greatest attention at the WSF, having occupied the buildings of the ancient gas company, in Porto Alegre, to hold its numerous seminars and panel discussions. "The only way to put an end to homophobia is through a radical change in society, and therefore we struggle against capitalism," Thaís Wadhy explained, who represents the so-called movement of Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, Transformists and Transgender Advocates of the PSTU (Socialist Party of Urban Workers), manifesting the socio-political and cultural goals of homosexual practices, condemned by the natural law and by the Church.

Irene León concluded her remarks by saying that the criteria for accepting both "transversalities", of gender and diversity, in an event of the magnitude of the WSF, prepares the way for the building "of a new social collective," and, even more, for a "vision" of society that was inspired by the "cosmic visions and perspectives of those who suffer discrimination." In other words, a society that, from a moral perspective, would establish a kind of glorification of original sin and its consequences.

According to the Brazilian professor Silvio Gallo, of anarchistic persuasion, the concept of "transversality" was used for the first time by the French philosopher and therapist Félix Guattari, a follower of the so-called chaos theories (cf. F. Guattari, "Chaosmosis: a new aesthetic paradigm", 1992). This author, together with another philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, defended transversality as an intellectual instrument that is indispensable for opposing what he called the "arborescent paradigm" of the very structure of human thought. From the point of view of such a paradigm or model, thought is considered to be like a great tree, the roots of which are planted in firm ground (that is, in premises taken to be true), which make possible the growth of a solid trunk, which, in its turn, branches out abundantly.

Deleuze and Guattari, availing themselves of concepts like "chaotic intimacy of brain function," question and attack all "arborescent" thought, precisely because it is based on solid principles, and on absolute and hierarchical truths. And they maintain that transversality is an efficacious means for dismantling such a conception of thought, which constitutes a brake against the revolution of ideas, in mentalities, in political and social systems.

Professor Gallo, quoting Edgar Morin, well known French sociologist who also uses criteria of analysis of theories of chaos, states that transversality goes even further than the so-called harmonizing of disciplines, for this latter "did not succeed in breaking with this hierarchical structure of knowledge."

Without a doubt, much more could be said about transversality, diversity, theories of chaos and other related themes. The very theologians of liberation are not above these ideas. Leonardo Boff said that "chaos is at the basis of the new order" and that he belongs "to the current of thought which believes it is possible to escape from the conflict by stimulating the positive (sic) elements of disorder."

This series of articles on the Third World Social Forum, as a revolutionary laboratory, adopted a descriptive method with the objective of facilitating the understanding of the extent of such an event, without refuting its errors philosophically, a task that without a doubt is indispensable and could be employed by specialists.

Whatever the case, it is clear that these observations, which are founded in Thomistic thought, contrast profoundly both with the theories of chaos as well as with the "transversal" analysis of reality. Finally, it is appropriate to repeat the warning made in the first article: these commentaries do not intend to encompass without distinction the totality of the 100,000 participants, but only the most representative, dynamic and influential that, during the event, assumed a distinctly revolutionary action.

Related articles:

CubDest, "World Social Forum, "Diversity" and New Totalitarianisms", 2003.

CubDest, "Foro Social Mundial: revolución cultural, feminismo e indigenismo", 2002.

CubDest, "Las redes ‘nómades’ y su estrategia rumbo al caos", 2002.

CubDest, "El caos, estrategia anticristiana", 2001.