GENDER & POWER – A TUTORIAL, PART 4 – Masculinity & Femininity
Male and female, and departures from that physical polarity, among humans can be observed and described, anatomically and genetically. I carry both X and Y chromosomes, and which one I might have contributed to the creation of a human embryo before my vasectomy was a kind of biological coin toss. I do not have ovaries. If I am diagnosed with cancer, and opt for hormone therapy, I will receive estrogen, not testosterone — the latter would be like throwing gasoline on a fire. For a woman, it is just the opposite.
Secondarily, and not quite so definitively, when I begin to store additional lipids in my fat cells, they concentrate mostly above my waist first, instead of below it. The hair on my arms and legs is comparatively long and thick, and I can grow a full if not luxurious beard. It is harder for me to get a bladder infection than it is for my partner, Sherry, because my urethra is around 18 cm long, and hers is around 4 cm (if I remember my A&P correctly). On the other hand, I am more likely to manifest recessive genes that are associated with the “sexual” chromosomes because I don’t have a matching X chromosome to contribute a dominant counterpart.
So far, I have limited my descriptions to things that can be fairly confidently traced to a genetic sexual inheritance. Now I want to shift.
I have the habit of calling small children “sweetie.” So does Sherry. When boys reach around seven or eight years old, they will ask me to quit calling them that, though they won’t ask Sherry to quit calling them that.
When I get into my car at night, I never check the back seat first. She always does.
I can walk around the trail at Lynn Lake at dusk without feeling I’m risking anything. She doesn’t dare.
Mechanics generally don’t try to get over on me, even though I know very little about auto mechanics. They almost always try to get over on her.
She automatically notices what needs to be done around the house, and I have had to learn to consciously look for it.
I have never been sexually harassed, and she has.
She does not like shaving, but does shave her armpits and legs when we go to public places to swim — in order to avoid people staring at her. I only shave occasionally, and then only part of my face; and if I shaved my face completely or did not shave at all, no one would find either particuarly remarkable.
Strange men pass me with stern emotionlessness to let me know that they may be dangerous. They do not do that with her.
I can watch television and films and see frequent images of men my age (54) and older who are still portrayed as leading men and sexually desirable. She is six years my junior and seldom sees a “sexually-acceptable” woman-lead in these media below the age of 35, and then often only with massive cosmetic and surgical intervention.
If I am assertive in an antagonistic exchange with another person, I am considered either “no-nonsense” or an asshole. She is considered a bitch. I once met a woman who was Naval officer. She commanded a group of sailors; and she had to be very assertive at times. She told me that behind her back, they called her a bitch. Her notion of future equality was when she could be promoted by her subordinates to “asshole.” She wanted to be an asshole and not a bitch.
Men and women both refer to women they are angry with as “bitch.” Further down, I will assert that femaleness is “under-valued.” This is one example.
Some men who have only the most superficial apprehension of “what feminists want” will point this out — that women say it — when they are confronted for referring to a woman as “bitch.” But Black men who assault other Black men will generally accompany the assault with the epithet “nigger.” That does not mean it is okay for a white person to say the same thing; and it does not mean that there is some kind of equality at work here. In relations characterized by relative power and powerlessness, be these gender relations or racial-national relations, it is not uncommon for the powerless to incorporate the ways of thinking of the powerful into their own world views. People internalize their oppression, just as the oppressor internalizes his belief in entitlement.
Nancy Hartsock did a very good job in the first half of “Money, Sex, and Power” of showinig how capitalist (and I would add consumerist for US culture) culture continually reproduces a “market” epistemology of possessive individualism that confuses us about “power.” We think of power as a thing that someone HAS… like I have a bicycle and you don’t. But power is a relation, and so always embedded in what happens BETWEEN human beings, in “community.”
Social structures of unequal power employ behavioral expectations that are often highly ritualized, complex, and learned over the course of a lifetime. Learning these expectations is often necessary to function within a system, and over time they become “normalized” — just the way things are. With regard to biological men and women, this polarity of expectation-complexes in linguistic shorthand are called “masculinity” and “femininity.”
Masculinity and femininity are not free-standing or static behavioral constellations. They exist first and foremost in relation to one another — in a unity of opposites. They are defined in relation to one another. Masculine is NOT feminine. Feminine is NOT masculine. It is tautological. Right is the opposite of left, and left is the opposite of right. Up and down. In or out. Masculine and feminine are both opposite and inseparable, like East and West. But they are not mutual like East and West. East and West are not unequal in value over time. One does not dominate the other as a condition of its existence. They co-exist as equals. With masculinity and femininity, the former is fundamentally defined as superior against the inferiority of the latter — as inherently unequal in power. Masculinity IS the expectation of an exercise of power — over all that is “natural,” be that colonies, women, or the environment (all of which are feminized). The masculine-feminine polarity is not mutual, it is complimentary… like master-slave, like boss-worker… without mutuality.
There is a very common and predictable reaction to this assertion — always by men — that while women and men don’t “have” the same power, each “has” his and her form of power. But in making this claim, invariably men equate the power of sexual availability as a bargaining lever, or the power exercised by greater familiarity with the details of household management, or the power of “trickery” (referred to disparagingly as “female wiles”) with male structural power — higher pay, control over institutions, male privilege in daily intercourse, male standing before other male authorities, control over police and military, etc. etc.
But this is like the slave owner complaining that if he doesn’t give an extra ration to his slaves, they will malinger — childlike and ungrateful creatures that they are. It is comparing transient suvival advantage to structural power… a common tactic of the powerful in blaming victims, by claiming victimhood for oneself.
This reaction is the “separate but equal” reaction. But when you live in the same society, and even in the same family, separate is seldom equal.
There is another dimension in which masculinity and femininity are not free-standing ideological constellations. That is in their intersections with class, sector of employment, and race/nationality. There is not one masculinity and femininity, but multiple masculnities/femininities. The masculinity of the academic male is not the same as that of the military male. The femininity of the white woman is not the same as that of the Black woman or the Latina or the North American indigenous woman. A poor Black woman is always relating to the world and the people in it from the perspective of limits and expectations related to poverty, national oppression, AND patriarchy. How other people see her AS a woman, and how she regards herself AS a woman are related to the particular femininities that are available to poor Black women… which are defined by the masculinities available to poor Black men…. and so on. This further informs the situation of poor Black lesbian women, as well as that of poor Black gay men. The gendered expectations that define and circumscribe social conformity and acceptance for all these categories are influenced by all those other categories — nonetheless there are expectations that are clearly held in common based on gender.
The wife of a rich man is a wife. I am paraphrasing a feminist author here. The wife of a white worker is also a wife. The wife of a poor Black worker is still a wife. While there are class and national differences in each case, there is also something here that transcends without escaping class and nationality. Expectations of the WIFE in relation to the HUSBAND.
Though I have pointed out that there are multiple masculinities and femininities, they are bound together as gender expectations that are different yet the same — and sometimes I will refer to them in the singular — reflecting that commonality.
Masculinity and femininity are more than roles, though they relate to roles. They are, in fact, how we learn to BE male and female in the world. They are implanted very early, consolidated affectively, and are stubbornly imbedded in even the most politically conscious psyches. Masculinity and femininity form the very basis of our personalities. Before we are ever aware of class, race, nation… we are aware of sexual difference and the different expectations that are associated with it.
Note that even the concept of “roles,” which is widely accepted in discourse related to sexuality, is in fact an epistemological convention that can trace its origins to the theater (“All the world’s a stage…”). It is important to point this out now, because in any attempt to unpack this sexual dualism, we will likely rely on unexamined epistemes, or “ways of knowing.”
Let’s shift now from the more familiar convention of the term “roles” to another Thespian metaphor, and use the term “scripts” to emphasize the multiplicity of roles available within the more general ideologies of masculinitiy and femininity. For a very thorough discussion of the historical development of epistemological conventions related to sexuality, see R. W. Connell’s book, “Masculinities,” Chapter 1, “The Science of Masculinity.”
Anyone reading this blog, however, is also unlikely to be convinced of the omnipotence of social norms in establishing conformity. Most of you have displayed nonconformity in your lifetime, probably more than once. People have the potential to resist. This does not mean that all resistance is equal or equally effective. Efficacy depends on the depth and breadth of insight.
Early sex role theory was very functionalist in its approach, and described the complimentarity of masculine-feminine with no reference to social power. In fact, this approach tended to see these ideologoical and behavioral polarities as norms — even medicalized norms — that is, using medical terminology to describe conformity as “well adjusted” and “healthy.” The implication, of course, is that failure to conform is maladjusted and unhealthy.
Relate this episteme to compulsory heterosexuality and you can easily see into the attitudes displayed toward homosexual behavior by the post-WWII generation… those who didn’t eventually revert to the more atavistic description of homosexuality as an “abomination” before God. It’s interesting that both the “modern” medical description of homosexual behavior and the “pre-modern” clerical version agree ultimately on the importance to society of enforcing compulsory heterosexuality as a way of preserving a particular and static version of the family — which is actually an economic unit with the sanction of the state.
Power is always concealed in dominant discourse by what is NOT said, and by what is naturalized by not having been said.
There is a danger that we will continue to ignore systemic social power as the key dimension of masculinity-femininity even if we substitute the more flexible notion of scripts for roles, but only if we fail to put this metaphor into the context of a system as postmodernists fail to do (because they are allergic to “metanarratives”). I would point out only in passing here that the bound foot in feudal China, the spiked heel in today’s Atlanta, and the burka in Mazar-a-Sharif are costumes for different feminine scripts, but they also have one thing in common. They all limit the mobility and reinforce the male-dependency of women.
The universal reality of male violence to police female behavior, and male economic power to consolidate female dependency on males, exist in a world where structures of power are being destabilized by ceaseless change and providing opportunities for resistance. So, in most periods masculinity-femininity are relatively stable categories. Yet in every instance of destabilization there is a struggle by women against men’s power… and often a violent backlash by men. Masculinity-femininity are contested.
The tempo of change in late capitalism is such that destabilizations occur almost constantly. The question, of course, is whether patriarchy as a system of power that is inextricable from class, imperialism, and white supremacy, will be destabilized to the point where it can be decisively overthrown or only restructured. Thinking about the probability of overthrowing patriarchy is a good way to appreciate how deeply entrenched patriarchy is, and how difficult this overthrow will be.
Ti Grace Atkinson quipped once that, “compared to feminism, communism was child’s play.”
Nonetheless, these norms, scripts, expectations, rules… are contested all the time, and the backlash that occurs takes many forms.
Struggling against power — as Robin DG Kelley noted in “Race Rebels,” where he described all manner of unorganized resistance to American Apartheid in the South — can be spontaneous and individualized or planned and collective. When a Black restaurant worker spits in an obnoxious white patron’s food, that is individualized resistance. When a group of young people go to a restaurant to “sit-in” as a way of exposing Apartheid, that is collective.
On the other hand, when men who are threatened by women’s decreased dependency and increased organization, they often adopt an individual strategy of “overconformity,” where they compulsively acquire “masculine” accoutrements, be they giant automobiles, guns, or attack-breed dogs, and just as compulsively behave as if they are trying out for a role with the World Wrestling Foundation — affecting a kind of bright-eyed homicidal aggression becauese they equate fear with respect. When they work with the Republican Party and the Christian Coalition to legally strip away women’s control over their own reproductive capacities, then this is organized backlash.
Divisions of “male” labor and divisions of “female” labor respond to changes in economic and political struggle. Look at the more “respectable” masculinity that prioritizes responsibility to the family — which keeps men who are not in the ruling class working. Compare that to the “fascist” (used here as a descriptive term, not a system) masculinity displayed by the masculine over-conformers described above — which merges easily with the idealization of military masculinity in times when warfare plays a more central role in society — for example, during crises of (economic & social) destabilization. War becomes necessary to “rescue” the power of the dominant nation and-or class.
Of course, the marriage of fascist individualistic masculinity with the soldier-ideal does not fit with real soldiery, the latter requiring high levels of collectivity and suppression of the individual will. There is no “Army of One.” That is an oxymoron, but that’s another story.
The rise of fascist masculinity, however, does constitute a precursor to systemic fascism. Masculinity contains femininity within it, not apart from it, because the system of male power is phallocentric yet requires its opposite. Femininity becomes a strategy for relating to masculinity. The destabilization of masculinity accompanies more general social destabilizations, because male power is inextricable from class and national power.
Destabilizations threatening entrenched power (class, national, and gendered) threaten the “respectable” power holders, whose control over the state and civil society translate into control over this renegade-masculinity. But in crisis, the bourgeoisie often “releases” reactionary forces into the political arena as a counterweight to strengthening currents of class, national, and gendered resistance.
The danger inherent in this deployment of descriptively-fascist forces is that they can wrest control of civil society and the state away from the “respectable” masculine bourgeois and become structurally fascist. The Trojan Horse for this incursion is generally masculine populism — and analysts of fascism have generally paid only token attention to the gendered aspects of this discourse (a monumental oversight). As we saw with Mussolini and Hitler, however, the fascist state doesn’t survive long without the re-incorporation of bourgeoisie, with their technocrats, professionals, and managers. Getting everyone worked up into racial-national-masculinist frenzies prepares them psychologically for war, but it doesn’t get the plain work done to build the weapons or circulate capital through the society.
It is easy today to see the resurgence of a descriptively-fascist masculinity over and against “respectable” masculinity, and it is not particularly difficult — with the right interpretive tools — to connect this to a state of profound systemic crisis (destabilization). I strongly recommend Jackson Katz’s documentary film, “Wrestling with Manhood,” as a kind of audio-visual primer on this topic.
Masculinity — in every guise — is an expression of domination and latent violence. Even the weird touchy-feely male cults of Iron Johns — who claim to be allies of women (!) — take the “warrior” as their point of reference. Fascist masculinity simply brings this latent violence into full and open expression. It should be remembered that social struggle by women was required to end the notion of domestic privacy that entitled even “respectable” men (including the bourgeois) to physically “discipline” their wives.
During the opening stages of the 2003 full-scale invasion of Iraq, the spin-masters of the Pentagon attempted to deploy multiple masculinity-femininity scripts within the fictions developed around one female war casualty — PFC Jessica Lynch. In this ham-handed attempt to appeal simultaneously to putative feminists, to feminize and demonize Iraqis, then polish off the fables with a stage-managed “rescue” of the “damsel in distress” by Alpha-male special operations troops, a minor crisis erupted when the right-wing rebelled against the GI Jane storyline on the one hand, the fakery of the rescue (making cheap actors out of the idealized macho special operations warriors) was uncovered, and the racial-national contradictions surfaced over the different treatment the press afforded Lynch, as opposed to a Black woman solider (who really was captured) in the same engagement — Shoshanna Johnson.
As Connell points out, “there is gender politics within masculinity.”
Given the paradox that there are certainly differing masculinities (within which are contained corresponding feminities), but that there can be no clear taxonomy of categories in a period where these categories are subject to nearly constant destabilization, it may be useful (if not rigorous) to think of various masculinities as cults — that is, not just a belief system that demands conformity and which is expressed through rituals, but one that is transient. This transformaotin of hegemonic masculinities into more cult-like associations is also a result of the accelerating process of commodification in consumer society. Two differing examples might be the reactionary theocratic patriarchy of a group like the Promise Keepers and the fan base of the World Wrestling Federation. As I said, not rigorous, but at least another perspective from which to view masculinities in the flux of the core countries in this period of late capitalism.
And differing masculinities exist not only in a polar relation to femininities, but to each other. What is the relation between urban Black American “gangsta” masculinity, for example, and the cult of white cop-masculinity?
Over-conformed (fascist) masculinity is actually a response in some respects to the sexual vertigo created by this generalized instability… and attempt to get one’s patriarchal bearings. The irony, of course, is that even this is a highly marketed commodity, requiring certain fashions, expensive vehicles, designer attack dogs, gym passes combined with anabolic steroids, and even cosmetics. Part of the whole package is also that these over-conformed men are caught up in the marketplace of desire and find themselves — just as women in the past — feeling pressured to compete as sexual commodities.
Does that mean there is a form of parity developing between men and women? That women going to male strip shows, etc., is an indication that women have reclaimed their sexual agency? Hardly. One need only look at the actual content of beatuty standards (male and female) and the specific scripts of the come-on (whether it is “real life” or on a stage), and male desire is still constructed as aggression… female desire still constructed as helpless (melting) before that aggression.
Women may be resisting conformity to the Victorian gender binary wherein the women were considered asexual, but the cues and symbols of arousal in modern/post-modern sexuality remain firmly encoded as the strong, dominant male (and the lunar, receptive woman), even when the “masculine” or “feminine” roles are adopted by the female-top and male-bottom (and several other correlatives) as a form of dramatic sex play. The decisive break with Victorianism by consumer sexuality did not crash patriarchy. It just updated the operating system.
Masculinity-femininity is linked to biological maleness and femaleness for its instrumentality – policing compulsory heterosexuality — even though these characteristics are NOT irrevocably bound to biological males and females. To be “masculine” is to be “over-valued” (privileged), aggressive, dominant, and even violent… while femininity exists as an opposite-compliment — under-valued, passive, subordinate, and masochistic. Butch women and effeminate men are seen as Masculine and feminine respectively, even if aberrant. That is because the differentiations in expectation are related directly to POWER.
The most glaring instance of this is rape. What, after all, is a “prison bitch”?
john steppling:
Really fascinating post, Stan.
) I own and have trained (and still sometimes do when I cant make money any other way) attack breed dogs…or protection dogs. I am not sure you should imply defining someone by what they do…..this is the same issue with a lot of identity politics (gay…which as Vidal said, is something you do, not who you are). I think to say “masculine” is an expression of domination is…too one dimensional. Now, the examples you go on to give seem correct and I dont argue them….I agree. But this has to be seen in a very large context — of general social domination. How all pleasure (per our earlier thread) is an expression of dominated avoidance of pain….or freedom must appear in the light of unfreedom….its just sold as freedom. Its hyper Orwellian at this point. So The Promise Keepers are expressing several things at once, including a defensive masculine ethos….but most of what they express is about domination.
Let me ask a couple things and question one or two things.
For instance (since this personal
I think that its very important to recognize, as you do, the way that the bourgeoisie enables the ruling class…reinforces the structure of domination — we see this every day with the latte-liberals like Marc Cooper or Kristoff. Apologists for occupation and for the nation-state and the new police state (check the coverage now of new orleans). However, you are close to fetishizing this whole notion of gender when you start arguing for masculinity as a form of domination , per se. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Sometimes its not. I know a lot of attack dog trainers who fit your description — but its a symptom — and a compensatory impulse. Its not saying much to make that observation. The red herrings in such discussions are endless — use of the word “bitch” for example…which I doubt the working poor women of Bolivia care much about…at least not at this point. It becomes a distraction when larger issues are in play. (like anger at poor inner city blacks for using the word “bitch’….when this is class conditioned….and is simply a question of education).
So since I am basically a Marxist Freudian I suspect you can fill a lot of the blanks — and I wont go on too much longer. Domination is more and more sophisticated in its methods….better marketing, and better technology. PArt of this marketing uses regressive notions of gender identity. Boys must be tough and girls must be submissive and on and on and on. But I suppose my point is about over-determining symptoms — that at a certain point start to mystify the very issue one is raising. The over compensatory attributes of a hyper masculinity neednt be only one thing….usually they are the result of lots of forces…historical and personal….or ontogenetic and phylogenetic. (as it were). We live in a system that almost demands unhealth and mental sickness. Slavery or madness as Artaud put it.
So what I am trying to say?…..Im not sure. I dont want to blame victims….because we all are victims in this system and we are all fucking nuts because of it.
Even attack dog trainers.
Gender is a huge issue and I am deeply grateful you are addressing it…..I am only looking to probe some of the details….
18 September 2005, 5:26 amalright…more if and when I think of it.
sam:
Hey Stan,
18 September 2005, 11:19 amYour new layout can’t be seen on safari.
Stan:
To all posters, I want to apologize in advance for not being able to reply at length right now to much of what gets posted… and for the fact that the next gender installment (for those who care) will be a while coming. I just dropped off the Bring Them Home Now bust tour yesterday, have my grandchild over now, and will be headed to DC next week to prepare for Sept 24-26. Then, it looks like many of us from Veterans for Peace and Iraq Vetarans Against the War will be headed to Angola, LA, to develop rotations for an assistance camp there — which will have a political dimension in demanding self-determination for the victims (including the right of return). At least two other organizing trips, two speaking trips, and four writing deadlines, before November… which is already filling up. The combination of the Cindey Sheehan catalyst, Sept 24, and Karina ripping the benevolent-character-mask off the system, has made for interesting, but very busy, times.
I use Safari, and it shows up fine for me. I suspect that this glitch is something else, but I am not a very good techy.
For John, I know you realize that to cram so much into so little space requires broad strokes (forgive the mixed metaphor). Overconformed males also have firearms. I have firearms. The characteristics that are emphasized and magnified and polarized by the gender binary exist as potentialities for all people. It is their separation into a system of social domination that is at issue. The idea that instrumentality is masculine and expressiveness is feminine, for example, does not make either instrumentality or expressivness problematic. It is masculinity-femininity that is problematic… because this polarity is constructed complimentarily with a built-in power gradient.
If power were not the issue, there would be no such thing as masculinity-femininity. I hope I have been specific enough, and strong enough in my emphasis on particualr masculinities in particular societies (subject to destabilization by changes in the means of production/reproduction) to avoid the charge of fetishizing.
And I look forward almost with trepidation to Lydia’s link. It sounds very creepy. Thanks for dropping in, Lydia. Hope to hear more from you.
Thanks to all, and again my apologies for what will be some pretty hands-off moderation for a while.
18 September 2005, 12:57 pmjohn steppling:
No, I think I got your point later…..maybe my masculine defensivness about dogs (:) — but I still stick to some of my point….there is a fetishized aspect lurking here.
But more later….its a good discussion. Power a very complex topic.
Best of luck with the trip!!
18 September 2005, 5:15 pmOnward, JS
Stan:
Definitely complex. That’s why I so appreciate Hartsock’s 1983 critique of the various epistemologies of power in the first third of “Money, Sex and Power – Toward a Feminist Historical Materialism.”
She points to the perennial recrudescence of “exchange” even in theories of power that attempt to escape it, and she blows the libertarians’ “rational actor” completely out of the water – a worthy accomplishment all by itself – before engaging the far more subtle issues of power raised by Poulantzas and Miliband.
Strongly recommended for anyone who wants to wrestle with this issue.
18 September 2005, 7:45 pmYolanda Carrington:
To something John Steppling said a few days ago in first post: Do you think that arguments against misogynistic language (example: men using “bitch” to describe women) are “red herrings?” In what discussion on gender would this ever be true? And your assumption that either women in Bolivia or in the inner-city Black folks don’t “care much about it,” or that it is “class-conditioned?” Tell me if I am taking you out of context, sir.
Believe me, women of color care a lot about it. Language is at the heart of misogyny and dominance. I don’t know about other folks, but this fact is pretty obvious to me. Maybe that’s because because I actually experience the phenomenon. That should count for something.
19 September 2005, 10:45 amjohn steppling:
Stan;
Lowith said the liberation of women would come from the liberation of labor. I think this points toward a part of what is germane here. I will write more later on this….but I think one of the things that is hard for us is to imagine is a non-repressive society…what it would be like.
So is there is biological difference, and if your right that without power we have no masculinity and no feminity, then we have to address what difference is (and here we run into lacan and foucault and the rest). Power is linked to exploitation and repression, and this is where we get too complex for this thread.
Ms Carrington: my point is that a word like “bitch” has a class base as well. Its used in prison (in fact I think the use we find now, often, began around the 1940s in american prisons). I am against demonizing the underclass when its uses this word. This is tricky, because Im not saying its alright to use it — in an ideal world we wouldnt be insulting each other but I find other things much more pernicious. Of course language is important — but i believe it a distraction to focus on certain words (I know arguments for changing man hole cover to people hole cover….which just seems a waste of time) when often you end up blaming the victims too. I know an awful lot of under class women of all colors who use the word “bitch” as well as under class men….most of whom are deeply mysoginistic. Education is required. Demonizing is not. I hope that clarifies what was a not very clear post to begin with.
What I meant about Bolivian women (as an example) was that they were rather too busy trying to feed families and survive to even enter this argument at this point. I find mostly college educated women to engage in this discussion….about a word like “bitch”. Thats my point….because, yes, again, such language matters. All language matters. Words must not lose meaning (as Confucious said…sort of). Bitch in prison is used to describe anyone who is weak and easily exploited…..so the equation is that women are weak. Yes? So it links to exploitation and (per this thread) power. But there is a class dimension to it…and one cant be, or shouldnt be, indifferent to that dimension.
21 September 2005, 3:15 amStan:
Engels said the same thing as Lowith, and this has been the perennial excuse of the left to subsume gender opression within the class-first struggle. This is – in my view – an economistic reading of gender.
Also not sure I agrtee with the Bolivian thesis. While struggles may not exist around the semantics of oppression (I am not sure), struggle around gendered power certainly does. This is most definitely NOT the exclusive purview of college-educated women. Feminisms in the global periphery (which includes Black feminism in my view) are powerful social forces that remain hidden from our metropolitan view (even that of many ‘first-world’ feminists).
The term bitch has been around a long time for women, in every stratum, but its transfer to men as a way to feminize them for abuse may be more recent. I don’t think anyone here would engage in class demonization, but that does not exempt this language (used by women who have internalized oppression – just another aspect of hegemonic power) from critique.
Yolanda is a personal friend – and I can assure readers that she is not an academic, but a ‘feral scholar,’ and she is as qualified as anyone I know from very hard experience to talk about race-class-gender oppression.
My moderation will be patchy for the next few days. Return from DC on the 27th. I hope everyone will go. And it’s more than stopping a war now. DC is the staging ground for a second war at home – the 2nd Battle of New Orleans, you might say, where we are obliged to fight for the self-determination of the victims as part of the struggle of African America against imperial power.
See http://www.wbai.org/index2.php?option=content&do_pdf=1&id=6893
21 September 2005, 7:03 amjohn steppling:
Stan….you think this an economistic reading? I dont quite, I dont think, follow that. Class and economics interact rather clearly — hard to seperate them, but class in my mind always supercedes other matters. This is not to say that gender and power are not relevant to a discussion of class. It IS to say that without a class awareness one ends up fetishizing….IMO. And when one does that one is more easily co-opted, theoretically anyway, by the values of the ruling class. That is the lesson of class awareness, no? And of false consciousness.
Ive had a lot of arguments on this…so I know and expect arguments…..but my Bolivian thesis is probably easily enough broken apart….if one goes deep enough into it….but I do think certain terms can be a distraction for more pressing issues….and I dont think I at all suggested exempting such terms from critique. But here we are spending a lot of this thread on this topic….and it seems to happen a lot. I just want the poor to organize and understand class as the unifying issue. New Orleans is certainly pertinent in this respect.
Struggle around gendered power issues….as you put it….means class is not important? I read Lowith (and engles) as saying that without class first, you tend to lose before you start….power is mediated by class all the time in just about, if not completly, all cases.
Didnt meant to suggest Ms Carrington was anything….i dont know her. Just my experience around the world is that american academics tend to concern themselves more with language…..some poor dont write or read for one thing….the struggle to eat comes first. In Poland where I live the new poverty (following entry into the EU) has become acute. It is clearly all about class at this point. How gender would enter this, here, is a fascinating question.
Its not about demonizing class, its about demonizing people for interalizing oppression….due to class….and not accepting their oppression –and expressions of it — even when such expressions need critique. How and what that critique is and works is the issue I would say.
21 September 2005, 11:58 amStan:
Gender is at least as universal as a system of power as class, may have preceded it historically (and at least corresponded to it, possibly setting the stage for class division), and the reason that the left hasn’t accepted this, imo, is that the left has largely been led by men. Gender becomes and invisible system of power to menin the same way that capitalist ideoloogy renders class invisible… by naturalizing it.
None of these systems is extricable from the other.
In the same way that the rich man’s wife enjoys class privilege, the poor husband enjoys gender privilege. And these are structural privileges, exploitative in every way. Marxists have been (rightly) loathe to suggest that revolutionary activity has to separate national questions from the class struggle and even develop cross-class alliances in the context of national liberation fights. But when it comes to gender, they only want to talk about gender in its economic dimension as a way of keeping the whole question subordinated to class.
To steal a quote: Sex is to feminism what work is to marxism; that which is one’s own, yet most taken away.
Part of the problem has been that Marx and Engels themselves were guilty of naturalizing sexuality – explicitly so. Given that patriarchy continued to hold sway in the left, this invisibility remained in place as Marxism (upper case) became a schematic doctrine, complete with prophets and holy texts.
I don’t think you are accusing me of fetishizing (just inferring) so much as being guilty of essentialism. On that count, I refer back to my own points on essentialism-antiessentialism in the previous installment. The fetishization of commodities happens when we see the finished product apart from its production history. The production of sexuality – so to speak – is deeply connected to but not reducible to commodity production, because patriarchy is not the power of the bourgeoisie over the worker, it is the power of men over women.
What is housework? Is it commodity production?
Gotta run. But I hope this continues.
21 September 2005, 12:46 pmjohn steppling:
Hey Stan….
21 September 2005, 1:32 pmyes, I hope we can continue a bit….though I know you’re busy.
I think we are both slightly confusing, or being cavalier about terms like fetishizing.
The fetishizing of commodities was about attributing human properties to commodities ( so, yes, not seeing production history but also creating additional attributes to the material object)…..and in a certain sense is very close to, or even part of “reification”…which was more changing social relations into objective relations….(as russell jacoby put it “treating your appliances like friends, and your friends like appliances”).
So when i use the term fetishizing, I am referring more to the over-determining quality of fetishizing. But now I have to go back and read Marx on fetishizing commodities….
see how these things get started
More soon—
john steppling:
Stan…..a quick few thoughts…..as i am finding myself suddenly quite busy as well with film school about to start and what not.
I wonder about language in this context. Language is a living thing and changes. It both creates reality and reflects it. What happens if I hire a woman, and I pay her a lousy wage and giver her no health benifits….but I promise not to say “bitch”? She is still exploited. Same for race…Condi Rice, now sec of state, comes out and says race had nothing to do with New Orleans. A black sec of state hasnt done much for racial equality. Raising the minimum wage might do a bit more.
22 September 2005, 2:24 pmNow i know language matters; dont get me wrong, please. I just think class matters much more. They obviously intersect….along with race and other things as well. How and where that intersection happens is what is complicated. This brings me back to questions about ‘difference’ and I find myself going almost all Buddhist on you. The original seperation — that endless longing for re-uniting…this is the Buddhist short version of grief. Of human suffering…a constant attempt to return to the unity we spring from. These days violence seems to be part of the attempt at regeneration — and such violence is part of a history of patriarchy.
Alright…now Ive confused myself.
I promise to contribute more coherent comments when I have time…..but I am not trying to dismiss language….or gender….but only to defend the neccessity of class awareness…for that is where material oppression begins (inho).
m.c.:
John, I think the term that defines the phenomena you are describing is a rhetorical word, Synecdoche.
Examples of this would be appointing Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court while letting the Justice Department turn a blind eye to racial profiling; giving Colin Powell & Condi Rice the Sec of State job but not creating fair, honest, and equitable foreign policies with neighbors like Cuba and Haiti; having a national day for environmental awareness, costing nothing(I just made this one up) but staffing the E.P.A., Dept of Interior, Dept of Energy with oil, coal and chemical corporation lawyers/lobbyists and letting them gut enforcement laws and regulations.
23 September 2005, 7:11 pmpeggy:
Thanks, Stan, for taking a stand on the issue of gender versus class. Yes, gender division precedes any other kind of class division, and one might plausibly argue that without the former the latter could not exist, might never have even arisen.
But, as a male champion of feminism, please be careful. My choice of words in the previous sentence is deliberate. Your situation is ironic, and perhaps even contradictory. I know you can transcend the contradiction. I am just not sure if you are fully aware of it yet. It seems that you are putting the blame too much on male human beings. You can do this and get away with it because you are a male human being, too. An exemplary one at that. And arguing against personal interest is always persuasive. I (an academic woman) could never get away with saying some of the things that you (a military man) can say. It is good for you to say those things. Just … avoid the traps a champion may fall into.
A vast number of women, maybe all of us, internalize and naturalize our oppression to a greater or lesser degree. We not only collude in our own oppression, we strengthen and develop this foundational system of domination and exploitation in many creative ways.
Once one begins to see through feminist eyes, one finds it easy, indeed irresistable, to blame men for their arrogance, their obtuseness, their cruelty, their selfishness, and on and on. But ultimately, of course, such an approach is stupid and counterproductive. The relationship itself is what is hurting us, and the relationship itself has neither consciousness nor agency. If we want to change the relationship, we must change ourselves. It does no good to insist that the person on the other side is the one who must change. Especially when the one on the other side has it good, being just how he is, acting just how he does.
WE have to change. We women have to change. Radically and collectively. One at a time won’t do it. We have to make some serious sacrifices, more than we have already made throughout our lives and our whole species history. We may have to give up what is most important to us. I am not sure if we can do this. I hope we can, but I just don’t know.
Maybe if we realize, it is not just for the sake of our own liberation, whatever that may be, but for the sake of the whole of fucked-up humanity, and if we don’t like humanity, then for the sake of life on earth, we may do this. We must do this. If we realize it is not really for us, but for the survival and well-being of gazillions of others, including not even humans, maybe we can do it.
24 September 2005, 11:34 pmpeggy:
Here is an example of why women have to change:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/09/24/abuse.england.ap/
Lynndie England is a perfectly normal young American woman. And that is the problem right there. That is why she did what she did.
25 September 2005, 12:33 amstacia:
i wouldn’t be a man for anything in the world. watching my beloved brothers struggle under horrible oppression…forget it. having to hide pain and hurt, to have to withhold expressions of love and warmth until finally, mercifully, those feelings died, to need alcohol to bring your heart back to life again, to need rock n’ roll on the radio, so you could find out what it was okay for you to feel, and then, for the duration of the song, or until the beer was gone, to feel it. and then they went into the marines! what if women, in order to prove that they were ‘real women’ had to look down a gun and kill other women? men aren’t oppressed any more or less than women, just differently. the oppressions need each other. just get liberated for your own sake. that’s enough.
27 September 2005, 12:32 ampeggy:
Stacia, I wouldn’t want to be a man, either, for all the reasons you said, plus some. But those who are numb *want* to be that way. They don’t even know there’s another way to be, or if they do, they shun it like the plague. But, now, see, we’re already into man-bashing. Pitying them is kind of a form of bashing. What to do? And if I got liberated for my own sake, it would be kind of lonely out there in liberation-land.
27 September 2005, 8:15 pmStan:
I am immensely grateful for the comments being posted here, and further gratified that folks are relating to each other and not just the (frequently) absentee moderator. (-:
Given that it took close and repeated reading of at least 60 books to begin to feel informed enough to attempt a book on gender and militarism, and the fact that I now have an unread recommended bibliography from friends, colleagues, and comrades that numbers in the hundreds, it is crystal clear to me that these little thinkpieces are only punching tiny peepholes into the nature of patriarchy… or andrarchy, as some call it. My intent is pretty conservative, and that is just to make the case that there is something to see and understand on the other side of those apertures, and that the stakes are very high.
Obviously, I am also confronting the (imo) instrumentally simpleminded notion that this system can be corrected by granting women access to sexuality that mirrors the sexuality (abstractly) of men. For many years, that was exactly where I was, arguing for abstract “equality” and dismissing the question of how we desire as inexplicably mysterious. On examination, this turns out to be a blank-faced liberal front, and it has to be confronted in the most decisive way, especially on the left.
I’ve spoken to this question of Lynndie England before, and I agree with Peggy. But I would add that there would have been no Lynndie England without Charles Graner. Let’s not forget that after Lynndie England was swept into the vortex of official denial and damage control, Graner married the other young woman who was implicated in the scandal. There would also have been no Charles Graner without the US prison system that spawned him in his current form, Alberto Gonzales, Stephen Cambone, or Donald Rumsfeld. All powerful men! as well as political representatives of the reactionary pole of the capitalist class.
I hope I am cognizant of the pitfalls that Peggy mentions with regard to being an ally of women in struggle. It is contradictory in innumerable ways, not the least of which is how I can “authorize” the same thing that many women have said for years. I don’t know how to get around this, except by acknowledging it early and often. For whatever reasons, I have managed to get the attention of a few men – who are in my own mind my “target audience” on the gender issues – and I am trying to convey to them from as many directions as possible exactly what Stacia says: our liberation is wrapped up with that of women. It’s a tricky thing to get across these days, however, when an entire core society is being so mentally formatted by consumerism and the social darwinist ethos that accompanies it. Any message about recapturing our ability to emotionally connect with the world is already tautologically frozen out of the collective consciousness – men shut down on the whole message as soon as they spot these markers of “feminine weakness.” We are speaking to them in a foreign language – linguistically and affectively.
I hope I don’t come across as “blaming” men, but by the same token, let’s be honest. Patriarchy is a system of unequal power, and those who dominate do get real, material benefit from it. At the same time that I can say – as Fanon did about the settler’s emotional anesthesia and the native’s imitation of the settler (internalized oppression) – that there is a price paid for domination as well as oppression, I also have to defend the right to self-defense, and the self-determination struggles of those on bottom (now there’s a gendered metaphor!). In practice, the question is always, which side are you on?
I don’t intend to bash anyone, and I doubt Stacia does. Sometimes, as we all know from personal relationships, however reluctantly, we have to hurt the feelings of even those we love, and be hurt by them, in the intersubjective struggle to be human. That inertia has to be disrupted.
I trust the materialist conception of history enough and the dialectical method enough to know that there is the system first and last, but the latter deamnds that we not become mechanical, after all; that we recognize the stability of systems as being transient. The dualistically described “material” world IS permeable to to thought, as Hornborg says, though not to incantation. The ideological struggle and the process of critique are essential to the struggle for liberation.
28 September 2005, 11:50 amEBS:
On the importnace of language – as we dismantle the disrespect inherent in our verbal constructions, we create a culture where there is no basis in the definition of what a person is “naturally” that justifies their exploitation. The exploitation and inappropriateness of the expectations become clearer. As long as women are bitches, their complaints can be ignored, it is just “yapping” and “bitching”.
30 September 2005, 11:32 am