Why the left should drop Engels on gender - Part 2
“According to Engels, women’s status is produced through social forces that give rise to ‘the origin of the family, private property, and the state.’ He assumes that answering the question, ‘How did it happen that women were first subordinated to men?’ is the same as addressing the question ‘Why are women oppressed and how can we change it?’ He equates the temporally first with the persistently fundamental. For Engels, capitalism presents the most highly evolved form of both women’s subjection and of economic class antagonism; that subjection must therefore be understood in its capitalist form if it is to be changed. But woman’s oppression, he also finds, predates capitalism; it arises with the first class society. Engels does not situate history within the present so as to tell whether or not fighting capitalism is fighting women’s subordination.” (MacKinnon, p 21)
Here is McKinnon’s explicit reference to the “history-version” argument for gender as a “secondary contradiction.”
I just want to break in long enough to highlight one question, which MacKinnon presents from the woman’s point of view, as opposed to the (unacknowledgedly gendered) “objective” stance that abstracts this discussion:
Is fighting capitalism necessarily synonymous with fighting gendered oppression?
Let me re-frame, to emphasize the right parts:
Can one fight the capitalist class without fighting gendered oppression?
The reason I bring these loaded question into this is that this is a mirror reflection of the challenge that was laid at the feet — often inappropriately — of feminists, by Marxists. It goes like this: Is Condoleeza Rice oppressed the same way as an Eastern North Carolina Black female poultry worker? Of course, it’s demagogic.
The question needs to be turned around? Do bourgeois men rape bourgeois women? Do working class men rape working class women?
Anyway, on to MacKinnon again… and note that this post is also categorized as “excerpts from my favorite books,” because I wil now quote MacKinnon extensively. If this motivates people to buy the book all the better.
“In [Engels’} double sense, women ‘originally’ became ‘degraded, enthralled, the slave of man’s lust, amere instrument for breeding children’ when and because feamle monogamy was require3d to guarantee paternity for the inheritance of private property. The same exclusive appropriation of surplus product in the form of private property divided society into antagonistic classes, first into precapitalist forms (slave, feudal, mercantile) and later into the capitalist form, as commodity production became generalized. These developments increasingly required a state to contain the social conflict between classes for the advantage fo the ruling classes. Thus the rise of private property, class divisions, women’s oppression, and the state ‘coincided with’ and required each other, linking the exploitation of man by man in production and social control through the instrument of the state with the subordination of woman to man in monogamyh and household drudgery.
“Before these four ‘conicident’ developments inaurgurted ‘civilization,’ Engels argued, labor was divided by sex within the clan, often with women in domestic roles, but woman;s social power was equal to or greater than man’s. In pairing marriage, the family form which preceded monogamy, woman was supreme in the household, and lieage reckoned according to ‘mother right.’ With the rise of private property, the unity of the clan dissolved into antagonistic classes and isolated family units. As production shifted out of the household, leaving women behind in it, and more private wealth accumulatedin men’s hands, lineage came to be traced by ‘father right,’ marking what Engels called ‘the world historic defeat of the female sex.’ The socialization of housework and the full entry of womeninto production is necessary to end woemn’s isolation in the family and her subordination to men within it. Woman’s liberation wil therfore come with the end of the the private property ownership and class relations that caused her oppression.”
An aside: Isn’t this too convenient a construction?
“Engels summarizes his view in an often quoted and as oten misread paragraph:
** Monogamous marriage comes on the scene as the subjugation of one sex by the other; it announces a struggle between sexes unknown throughout the whole previous pre-historic period. The first division of labor is that between man and woman for the propogation of children … the first class opposition that appears in history coincides with that of the female sex by the male. Monogamoud marriage was a great historical step forward; nevertheless, together with slavery and private wealth it opens the period that has lasted until today in which every step forward is also relatively a step backward, in which prosperity and development for some is won through the misery and frustration of others. It is the cellular form of civilized society in which the nature of the oppositions and contradictions fully active in that society can be studied.** (close quote)
“Of this analysis, Wilhelm Reich wrote that ‘Engels … correctly surmised the nature of the relationships … the origin of class divisions was to be found in the antithesis between man and woman.’ Kate Millett concludes that Engels views ’sexual dominance [as] the ekystone to the total structure of humaninjustice.’ Both interpretations share a one-sidedsocial causality precisely backward. Engels does not think that a divisions of labor, on the basis of sex or anything else, is inherently exploitative. The firs division of labor, he says, was by sex for the propogation of children. The first CLASS [caps mine, SG] opposition, on the other hand, was presumably between slaves and slave owners. The *antagonism* between men and women — not the division of labor between men and women — arose wth economic classes. In Engels’ view, classes and sexual antagonism ‘coincided’ in that they developed at the same time, but they did not coincide in the sense of falling along the same lines.
“Women were not a class for Engels. He cannot be taken to mean, as he often is, that ‘this first class division among women and m en fomrs the basis for the exploitation of the working class,’ nor did he think that the the oppression of workers ‘is an extension of’ the oppression of women. [The claim-quotes here are from Susan Williams, a socialist feminist, writing in 1973.] To Engels, sex divides labor, not relations to the means fo production. His widely-quoted spectacular references to woman as man’s ’slave’ (’who only differs from the ordinary courtesan in that she does not let her body on piecework as a wage worker, but sells it once and for all into slavery’) and to the man in the family as ‘the voureois [while] the wife represents the proletariat,’ though highly suggestive, are essentially metaphors. To argue that women are a class renders capitalism one form of patriarchal society, rather thanone form of (economic) class society, in which the patriarchal family is the appropriate family structure. Basing class relations on gender relations would make the fundamental motive force of history a struggel or dialectic between the sexes. This is an argument, but it is not Engels’. In his work, family forms support and respond to changes in economic organization, not to a sex-bsed historical dialectic. Changes in amily fomrs changing productive structures would be contrary to all that Engels take historical materialism to be about.
“In Engels’ history of gender, the transition from group marriage to paring marriage places woman in the household with one man within a communal setting marked by matrilineal descent. The transition from pairing marriage to monogamy eliminates the communal context and the woman’s right to descent, leaving her in the modern nuclear household. Because dialectical materialism claims special competency in explaining social change, the inadequacy of Engels’ treatment of these dynamic movements is particularly telling.
“Pairing marriage first arose, according to Engels, in the transition from barbarism to savagery, at a time when slavery and private property existed but were not generalized. Class society had not emerged. Although women and men labored in separate spheres, no distinction existed between the public world of men;s work and the private world of women’s household service. The community was stilla large collective household withing which both sexes worked to produce goods primarily for use. Pring marriage was primarily distinguished from the previous communal form in that one man lived with one woman. Men could be polygamous or unfaithful, but infidelity by women was severely punished. Either party could dissolve the marriage bond; children were considered members of the mother’s family (’mother right’). Why and how did this form of marital relationship arise to replace group marriage?
(quote from Engels)
The more the traditional sexual relations lost the naive, primitive character of forest life [sometimes translated ‘jungle character’] owiing to the development of economic conditions with consequent undermining of the old communism and the growing density of population, the more oppressive and humiliating [sometimes translated ‘degrading’] must the women have felt them to be; and the greater their longing for the right to chastity, of temporary or permanent marriage to one man only, as a way of release [sometimes translated ‘deliverance’]. This advance could not in any case have originated from the man, if only because it has never occurred to them, even to this day, ot renounce the pleasures of actual group marriage. (end quote)
“Engels seems to think that the existence of more people in a smaller space — higher density — of itself generates greater demand for sexual intercourse per woman. The basis for his view that women preferred marriage to one man is unclear. It seems to assume that the present reality that women largely have intercourse at men’s will rather than their own was present at the ‘origin’ of this system. Pairing marriage arose because the women, besieged by sexual demands, wanted it.”
Another aside: This weird Victorian notion is at the heart of Engels’ specific analysis, yet it is still glossed over by many Marxists as an irrelevant curiosity.
“Could not increased populaiton density as well support less intercourse, producing less crowding, or the ocntinuance of extended groups, since people were living so close together anyway? Engels assumes, rather, than explains, that s system of restricting women to one man but not restricting men to onw woman is an improvement over a system of equal lack of restraint on both. He assumes rather than explains tha tsexual intercourse with diverse partners in imposed by and desired by men, impose upon and unwanted by women. Male lust is not explained. [And the Marxist canon NEVER theorizes desire!!! -SG] Under what conditions would woomen ‘long for chastity’? The more marxist approach, methodologically, would be to inquire into the conditions that would create a person who experienced this desire or found such a social rule necessary or advantageous. The fact that men remained able to have many wives or be unfaithful while women’s fidelity was demanded makes one wonder what women gained fromthe rearrangement. Since, ‘mother right’ had supposedly given then supremacy in the clan household, women at this point presumably need not have accepted a situation they did not want.
End of part 2
Charles Brown:
On male supremacy as a secondary contradiction, I’d say it is a non-antagonistic contradiction. The contradiction between exploiting and exploited classes is antagonistic. It can’t be resolved without abolishing classes. The contradiction between women and men can be resolved without abolishing the difference between females and males. We know this because before the “origin” , there were no antagonistic classes. There were women and men, but in non-antagonistic difference ( viva la difference !). Males and females are biological complements, a natural unity and struggle of opposites. There is nothing inherently antagonistic in their differences. It is only with the rise of “civilization” that the differences between human females and males become antagonistic.
In the next communism (the first communism being ancient society) there will still be women and men , but no antagonistic classes ( if we get there without a nuclear war exterminating us first).
22 December 2005, 5:28 pmStan:
Commenting on the various defenses of Engels, and continuing from the Engels-1 thread…
Beginning with the above by Charles, an working back:
I myself used have made the distinction bewtween the *inhering* antagonism that *defines* class, as a way of critquing what I perceive to be an error in conflating the concepts of sexism, racism, and something called “classism.”
But we need to disentangle some things here along exactly the fault line on display here, and it it NOT the difference between these forms of oppression, but the difference in how we choose to represent them. It is very important in this conversationn to have some clear definitions, even if our definitions are our own arbitrary ones, becuse there is a critical distinctionn to be made.
The fault line is between indivudual or group behavior and social systems.
Sexism is the display of individual or group behavior that discriminates based on sex, for example. Sherry once ranted about a comrade who visited, becasue he expected her to bus his dirty dishes and wash his clothes while he stayed. XXX is a sexist, she said. And she was right.
Gender, the word, is the word I have been using to differentiate and describe a system of unequal and *antagonistc* social power.
Racism is the display of racist behavior. In my own world view, the system in the US is one of national oppression, with an ideology of white supremacy.
Classism, whatever that means, seems to refer to the kind of disrespectful behavior engaged in based on realor perceived “class,” often loosely defined (that is, not as a relation to the means of production, but as income or lifestyle).
Class is a system of unequal and *antagonistc* social power. On the formulation that “class” power can not be abolished without abolishing class itself, but inequality between the sexes can be abolished without abolishing men and women.. I have myself made the same argument. And I was wrong.
We are treating these two intefused, but herein analytically separated, SYSTEMS very differently. We are still describing class as a relation, but we are describing gender as attaching to actual human bodies.
If we say that class is a separation of human beings (now there are actual bodies involved), then we can well say that class can be abolished, but human beings cannot.
Gender is INHERENTLY antagonistic. It is, just as class, and I would even argue is a form of class, a structural social relation of complimentary inequality — a system where domination and subordination exist as a unity of opposites… and must be abolished.
Its ideology is not white supremacy or bourgeois economics/individualism, but masculinity-femininity, which like the other two, construct a set of values that are internalized and mystificatory in order to reproduce and conceal structural power.
Emerson’s claim that feminism is “based on identity” is plain wrong.. and it is a gambit deployed by Mrxists far and wide to dimiss feminis as a whole, in order to avoid engaging the arguements of feminsts in the particular. The radical and socialist feminists hve never approached gender from the mere standpoint of being biological women, but from their opposition to the soical construction of power against biological women.
This power is played out symbolically, btw, in John’s prison example. The rape and sexual domination among male prisoners is not an example of the non-gendered-ness of dominaiton (as if it sharacteristic of some “human nature”). It is — when studied n the conrete — a direct reflection of the valorization of masculinity and femininity as inherently subordinate and devalued. The term “prison bitch” is reflective of the feminization of those who are dominated, and a direct reflection of masculinity constructed as aggression and domination. The roison rapis does not believe he is involved in a “homosexual” act, as long as he is “pitching” and not “catching.”
Now I will backtrack and point out that one cannot say — as liberals and conservatives alike do — that “discrimination” goes both ways (in an abstractly equal sense), the notion of reverse racism, for example. Because behavior that discriminates, for example white discrimination against Black, from a position of grater social power is not the same — because of the concrete context — as discrimination of Black against white.
I do not believe it was “racist” to tell my children that they cannot afford to give white people they do not know the benefit of the doubt. This was an exercise of parental responsibility, in a world where either of my boys could be killed for failing to put his hands in clear view on the steering wheel while saiting for a speeding ticket.
If the parent of a white kid tell their child not to give the benefit of the doubt to Black people they don’t know, there is a different social dynamic going on.
Abstract equality counterposed to actually existing social IN-equality, as MacKinnon (she is a law professor at U Mich) has pointed out in her devastating critique of liberal law, is precisely the way that bourgeois and patriachal and “white” dominated society protects itself juridically from challenges to operational power… by concealing it in abstraction.
Part of that dynamic, by the way, and a very gendered part, is the claim to “objectivity” that is lurking in the background of the debate between John and Yolanda/Julien, et al. No standpoint does not confer unconditional validity on the “OBJECTIVE” (often meaning abstracted) issues raised in an argument. But nor is standpoint irrelevant. Yolanda is young, Black, poor, living in the US South. The characterization of her argument as “silly” by a relatively affluent older white male inaugurates a host of dynamics that are not the same as John and I (I am 54, white, male, and have a personal [military] history that is highly valorized in this society) having a disagreement.
It matters. Asserting the primacy of “objectivity” in this dynamic between real people is a form of liberal-male abstraction that conceals these real relations of power. I will talk about that *concleament* further down.
Now, on to other matters.
The quote from Marx is not a typo or a misrepresentation. I gave the citation. There are numerous translations of Marx. Hans Ehrbar, in his notes on reading Capital, takes each section and looks closely at some of these translation variances. The actual book was Das Kapital. I’m pretty sure that was German.
The essence remains. Charles is even defending the position that the sexual division of labor is natural. though he has re-worked Marx’s words to make him seem less simplistic. Marx did NOT just say that the sexual division of labor was the first (Simone De Beauvoir said the same thing, as did others.. that’s an academic argument with no ultimate resolution). Marx said in “the sex act.” This is not “misleading.” It says what it says, adn we should take it as such, and se where it corresponds to other statements — like his repetition of the notion that labor is the father and nature is the mother. These are not harmless, generic claims, but illustrative of the very errors and prejudices that are later committed by Engels (albeit in a more sophisticated way, because Engels at least focused on the question of sexual inequality in OFPPS).
I want to refer people back to the nature v nurture discussion at http://feralscholar.org/blog/?p=218 http://feralscholar.org/blog/?p=219 http://feralscholar.org/blog/?p=220
This is a false dichotomy. When it is deployed in defense of a speculative postion on the pre-historical development of gender roles and gendered power systems, it is a smokescreen.
The reason, imo, that people are clinging so desperately to this archival and ultimately scholastic position is that we are avoiding the discussion of gendered power as we know it exists now and in the documented past. Implicit in this is the notion that we can only appeal to this past as the final reference point on women’s oppression. That is plain wrong. It is an avoidance mechanism, in my view.
Charles makes the claim in an earlier post, which Emerson and John also assert, that the abolition of economic class will resolve gendered oppression. But there is no reason to assume this is so. Moreover, and this is back to my main critique of unacknowledged leftist phallocentrism, this has beocme the perennial excuse for the left to set aside gendered power and claim that the “main blow” (really an ineffectual strategic concept, btw) must be aimed at the bourgeoisie, leaving women’s direct issues of explitation and domination AS WOMEN on the back burner.
Bebel is thrown into the mix, because he at least said that women’s struggle for political and social pwoer might have to precede the overthrow of class power… but again, the engagement is exclusively with Marxist males.
The left has NOT engaged, for the most part, with the body of feminist thought, out of outright anatgonism to it in many cases. They have not read Mies, or MacKinnon, or bell hooks, or Mohanty, or Hartsock, or Benjamin, or Hennessy, or Crenshaw, etc etc etc.
The treatment of gender by these women is in every single case more current and more sophisticated that that of Marx and Engels… and all have already incorporated Marx and Engels into their thinking.
Charles cals Marx and Engels “science.” I have heard this from my first engagemnt with left politics, even the use of the term “the science of Marxism-Leninism.” But M-L began as a state dogma, and calling it a science is dogmatic.
A aside - It is intersting that Marxists still name their method for the man, and feminists name their approach after a whole class of people.
We wouldn’t cling to the microbiology of the 19th Century to supercede the developments in microbiology of the 20th and 21st, yet we are calling Engels’ work science, when most of us have not studied the work done in this field over the last 40 years.
I would ask those who are taking the pro-Engels position here to post at the earlier threads on gender, where many of these other thinkers are represented, ie,
http://feralscholar.org/blog/?p=185
http://feralscholar.org/blog/?p=186
http://feralscholar.org/blog/?p=187
http://feralscholar.org/blog/?p=189
http://feralscholar.org/blog/?p=190
http://feralscholar.org/blog/?p=191
http://feralscholar.org/blog/?p=215
http://feralscholar.org/blog/?p=218
http://feralscholar.org/blog/?p=219
http://feralscholar.org/blog/?p=220
http://feralscholar.org/blog/?p=224
With that, I will ask those who are debating this, if you have the time and inclination, to read over this second part, and incorporate MacKinnon’s further elaboration of her critique into this debate.
Thanks all.
23 December 2005, 7:27 amjohn steppling:
Stan;
where did you get the idea i was relatively affluent? see, this is where assumptions get you.
I once….for about seven years, made good money in Hollywood….which i spent.
I grew up in a welfare family…..desperatly poor and dysfunctional….and now teach in eastern europe…ergo, I am in the Polish economy. Check what that means…..I make about $600 a month. Even in Poland this is not a living wage….so I barely make it….but I gave up Hollywood…about the time it was giving up me (for my politics mostly) and so Im happy to be here.
But affluent i never was….and since my youth was spent in the judicial system and camps…..I think I qualify as proletarian and maybe even lumpen.
Just a clarifying remark.
23 December 2005, 12:28 pmCharles Brown:
Commenting on the various defenses of Engels, and continuing from the Engels-1 thread…
Beginning with the above by Charles, an working back:
I myself used have made the distinction bewtween the *inhering* antagonism that *defines* class, as a way of critquing what I perceive to be an error in conflating the concepts of sexism, racism, and something called “classism.â€
But we need to disentangle some things here along exactly the fault line on display here, and it it NOT the difference between these forms of oppression, but the difference in how we choose to represent them. It is very important in this conversationn to have some clear definitions, even if our definitions are our own arbitrary ones, becuse there is a critical distinctionn to be made.
The fault line is between indivudual or group behavior and social systems.
Sexism is the display of individual or group behavior that discriminates based on sex, for example. Sherry once ranted about a comrade who visited, becasue he expected her to bus his dirty dishes and wash his clothes while he stayed. XXX is a sexist, she said. And she was right.
Gender, the word, is the word I have been using to differentiate and describe a system of unequal and *antagonistc* social power.
^^^^
Charles: Yes, I use “gender” to refer to the categories of oppressor and oppressed people in male supremacist society. Technically speaking , in my usage, there are not genders before the advent of male supremacist society.
“Gender” will be abolished with the rev. Sexes will continue after the communist rev. because sexes are biological categories, and it is not a revolution in human biology, but rather in human culture.
^^^^
Racism is the display of racist behavior. In my own world view, the system in the US is one of national oppression, with an ideology of white supremacy.
^^^^
Charles: Yes, it is a system with oppressor and specially oppressed groups of nationalities or socalled races. It is integral and co-definitive of the capitalist relations of production along with the wage-labor and capital relationship. The racist relations of production are a necessary condition of capitalism. Racism arose with capitalism in definitive part of its history.
Unlike gender/male supremacy, racism begins with capitalism. Male supremacy is older than capitalism, like private property.
^^^^
^^^^^
Classism, whatever that means, seems to refer to the kind of disrespectful behavior engaged in based on realor perceived “class,†often loosely defined (that is, not as a relation to the means of production, but as income or lifestyle).
Class is a system of unequal and *antagonistc* social power. On the formulation that “class†power can not be abolished without abolishing class itself, but inequality between the sexes can be abolished without abolishing men and women.. I have myself made the same argument. And I was wrong.
^^^^
Charles: I’m here to tell you you were right ( left ) :>).
That would be abolishing males and females. “Women and men” are terms of gender.
^^^^^^^
We are treating these two intefused, but herein analytically separated, SYSTEMS very differently. We are still describing class as a relation, but we are describing gender as attaching to actual human bodies.
^^^^
Charles: I’m not sure about “we”, but , I specifically said that gender is a relationship. I specifically made that distinction. The division of labor is a complementary relationship between males and females in ancient society. Gender is not a thing. It is a relationship. So, is sex. No such thing as “male” without “female”. They are complementary, co-defining categories. Like up and down, yin and yang.
^^^^
If we say that class is a separation of human beings (now there are actual bodies involved), then we can well say that class can be abolished, but human beings cannot.
Gender is INHERENTLY antagonistic. It is, just as class, and I would even argue is a form of class, a structural social relation of complimentary inequality — a system where domination and subordination exist as a unity of opposites… and must be abolished.
^^^^^^
Charles: Yes, _gender_ is inherently antagonistic, because gender is the category in male supremacist system
Sex is not inherently antagonistic. It is inherently complementary, as with yin and yang. It is a fundamental dialectic, a non-antagonistic unity and struggle of opposites. Viva la difference ! This is fundamental to all animals that reproduce by sex, not just humans.
Humans have culture too. We have to establish cultural categories in which we place the sexes , categories that are analogous with their underlying biological, non-antagonistic categories, as was the case before the origin of the male supremacist family ( along with private property and the state in a complex called “civilization”)
^^^^^^
Its ideology is not white supremacy or bourgeois economics/individualism, but masculinity-femininity, which like the other two, construct a set of values that are internalized and mystificatory in order to reproduce and conceal structural power.
^^^^
Charles: Agree. We can say more. It’s ideology is male supremacy. That is the relationship between masculinity-feminiity is to place masculine as superior to feminine.
^^^^^
Emerson’s claim that feminism is “based on identity†is plain wrong.. and it is a gambit deployed by Mrxists far and wide to dimiss feminis as a whole, in order to avoid engaging the arguements of feminsts in the particular. The radical and socialist feminists hve never approached gender from the mere standpoint of being biological women, but from their opposition to the soical construction of power against biological women.
This power is played out symbolically, btw, in John’s prison example. The rape and sexual domination among male prisoners is not an example of the non-gendered-ness of dominaiton (as if it sharacteristic of some “human natureâ€). It is — when studied n the conrete — a direct reflection of the valorization of masculinity and femininity as inherently subordinate and devalued. The term “prison bitch†is reflective of the feminization of those who are dominated, and a direct reflection of masculinity constructed as aggression and domination. The roison rapis does not believe he is involved in a “homosexual†act, as long as he is “pitching†and not “catching.â€
^^^^
Charles: Agree with this. The trope of male supremacy goes beyond the direct relations between women and men.
^^^^
Now I will backtrack and point out that one cannot say — as liberals and conservatives alike do — that “discrimination†goes both ways (in an abstractly equal sense), the notion of reverse racism, for example. Because behavior that discriminates, for example white discrimination against Black, from a position of grater social power is not the same — because of the concrete context — as discrimination of Black against white.
I do not believe it was “racist†to tell my children that they cannot afford to give white people they do not know the benefit of the doubt. This was an exercise of parental responsibility, in a world where either of my boys could be killed for failing to put his hands in clear view on the steering wheel while saiting for a speeding ticket.
If the parent of a white kid tell their child not to give the benefit of the doubt to Black people they don’t know, there is a different social dynamic going on.
^^^^
Charles: Agree. Racism = prejudice + power. There is no reverse discrimination. The Supreme Court “reverse discrimination” doctrine is pernicious and the doctrine itself is a main form of racism of today.
Actually, my 15 year old son doesn’t understand this right now. He is arguing for colorblindness. “It doesn’t matter whether somebody is Black or white.” This is actually good as a phase. Hope springs eternal in the human breast. Maybe the world will change enough in his lifetime for this to be true, but we will see how he feels if and when he gets into the “real” America.
^^^^
Abstract equality counterposed to actually existing social IN-equality, as MacKinnon (she is a law professor at U Mich) has pointed out in her devastating critique of liberal law, is precisely the way that bourgeois and patriachal and “white†dominated society protects itself juridically from challenges to operational power… by concealing it in abstraction.
^^^^
Now, on to other matters.
The quote from Marx is not a typo or a misrepresentation. I gave the citation. There are numerous translations of Marx. Hans Ehrbar, in his notes on reading Capital, takes each section and looks closely at some of these translation variances. The actual book was Das Kapital. I’m pretty sure that was German.
The essence remains. Charles is even defending the position that the sexual division of labor is natural. though he has re-worked Marx’s words to make him seem less simplistic. Marx did NOT just say that the sexual division of labor was the first (Simone De Beauvoir said the same thing, as did others.. that’s an academic argument with no ultimate resolution). Marx said in “the sex act.†This is not “misleading.†It says what it says, adn we should take it as such, and se where it corresponds to other statements — like his repetition of the notion that labor is the father and nature is the mother. These are not harmless, generic claims, but illustrative of the very errors and prejudices that are later committed by Engels (albeit in a more sophisticated way, because Engels at least focused on the question of sexual inequality in OFPPS).
^^^^^^
Charles: Not “even”, especially. I don’t think the distinction made here changes the upshot of the reasoning etc. Not very plausible that Marx was so dense as to think the division of labor overall is based purely on the minutes or hours of sexual intercourse and not the larger factual scheme that women get pregnant and men don’t, women breastfeed and men don’t, sexual dimorphism ( “weak and strong”)
Assume for the moment that Marx thought of it that narrowly. Then I’m saying it as I attribute it to Marx. So, now the issue would be confront my argument, not Marx’s. ( Marx is dead anyway, and I’m right here, so one can get a response from me, unlike Marx).
I want to refer people back to the nature v nurture discussion at
^^^^^^
23 December 2005, 1:26 pmCharles; Ok I’ll get up to blog speed on these.
Charles Brown:
This is a false dichotomy. When it is deployed in defense of a speculative postion on the pre-historical development of gender roles and gendered power systems, it is a smokescreen.
^^^^
Charles: As I say, my position is non-speculative as one can get, in that it is based on the overwhelming majority position in ethnology and anthropological _empirical_ sciences. It is fact, not speculation based.
Here’s one basic anthro text , _Anthropology: A Global Perspective_ (by Scupin and DeCorse, 2004; they probably are not Marxists) I looked up “Band Societies” subsection on “Gender”;
“Female Status - Closely related to gender roles (it has just said they are the basis for the division of labor like Marx or I, if you prefer, say - CB) and subsistence is the question of the social status of
women. Empirical data suggest that gender relations tend to be more _egalitarian_ ( emphasis in original) - men and women having more or less equal status - in foraging societies than in other societies ( Friedl, 1975; Martin & Voorhies, 1975; Endicott, 1988.”
Of course, this relies on the comparative method, fundamental in anthro, in inferring that the foragers of recent centuries are like those in ancient society. But this is the best scientifically, empirically based inference we can make. It is the least speculative and standard in anthropolgy.
^^^^^^
The reason, imo, that people are clinging so desperately to this archival and ultimately scholastic position is that we are avoiding the discussion of gendered power as we know it exists now and in the documented past. Implicit in this is the notion that we can only appeal to this past as the final reference point on women’s oppression. That is plain wrong. It is an avoidance mechanism, in my view.
^^^^^
Charles: “People” maybe. I , myself, discuss current power relations between the genders more in my analysis of male supremacy than I discuss pre-male supremacist society.
We need an ERA Equal Rights Amendment of the Constitution , today !
Vote for and support women for public office and leadership positions all around in society.
Retain affirmative action. ( Michigan has a battle against Ward Connerly this year)
Fight rape and domestic violence.
Men surrender in the Battle of the Sexes, today.
Men do more childcare and housework.
Also, I am a Black feminist, first, but also a general feminist.
^^^^^^
Charles makes the claim in an earlier post, which Emerson and John also assert, that the abolition of economic class will resolve gendered oppression.
^^^^^
CB: Did I ? Where did I say that ? I’d don’t think it. I think and say that there must be a specific struggle against male supremaccy in conjunction with the struggle for workers’ lib. That’s why in my paper I called for Marxists to raise the struggle for women’s liberation to the same level as the struggle against capitalism.
^^^^
But there is no reason to assume this is so. Moreover, and this is back to my main critique of unacknowledged leftist phallocentrism, this has beocme the perennial excuse for the left to set aside gendered power and claim that the “main blow†(really an ineffectual strategic concept, btw) must be aimed at the bourgeoisie, leaving women’s direct issues of explitation and domination AS WOMEN on the back burner.
^^^^^
Charles: Some do this. The main point of my paper was to bring women’s lib to the front burner with workers’ lib. Take a look at it again. That I say that is patent there.
^^^^^^
Bebel is thrown into the mix, because he at least said that women’s struggle for political and social pwoer might have to precede the overthrow of class power… but again, the engagement is exclusively with Marxist males.
^^^^
Charles: Angela Davis, Evelyn Reed, Martha Gimenez, Yoshie Furuhashi, Inessa Armand and Clara Zetkin are some Marxist women, who have written on feminist issues. bell hooks is a leftist.
^^^^
The left has NOT engaged, for the most part, with the body of feminist thought, out of outright anatgonism to it in many cases. They have not read Mies, or MacKinnon, or bell hooks, or Mohanty, or Hartsock, or Benjamin, or Hennessy, or Crenshaw, etc etc etc.
^^^^^
Charles; I have read Mies, bell hooks, Angela Davis, some of the Redstockings authors, Jenny Brown, Patricia Collins, Yoshie Furuhashi, Katha Pollitt, Zora Neale Hurston, Bettina Aptheker, Judith Butler, Margaret Mead, Hillary Graham, Audre Lorde, Gayle Rubin ( we were in a class together in anthro in 1972), Shea Howell, Virginia Woolf ( wrote my high school senior thesis on Woolf), Sojourner Truth, Barbara Smith, Kate Millett et al. Mary Wollsencraft,
^^^^^
The treatment of gender by these women is in every single case more current and more sophisticated that that of Marx and Engels… and all have already incorporated Marx and Engels into their thinking.
^^^^^
Charles: Some are more sophisticated than Marx and Engels. Some not so. _Some_ have incorporated dialectical and historical materialism and some have not .
It is not possible to be the most advanced in feminist thinking and have a bourgeois or liberal position. Women , race and class are interreleted issues. Faulty positions on the other issues can undermine, to an extent, analysis of male supremacy.
For example, Margaret Sanger a historic leader in birth control, undermined herself by being racist and supporting racist eugenics. ( See _Women, Race and Class_ by Angela Davis0. This racism undermines some of her feminism - not all of it. Davis addresses how bourgeois feminism undermines some content of feminism.
^^^^^^^
Charles cals Marx and Engels “science.†I have heard this from my first engagemnt with left politics, even the use of the term “the science of Marxism-Leninism.†But M-L began as a state dogma, and calling it a science is dogmatic.
&&&&&&&
Charles: Disagree :>)
^^^^^
A aside - It is intersting that Marxists still name their method for the man, and feminists name their approach after a whole class of people.
^^^^
Charles: It’s more personal that way :>). There are other names for Marxism that refer to whole classes of people.
Proletarian Internationalism, workers of the world unite, named after the class of all the workers of the world , regardless of gender or race or nationality.
Communism refers to the whole human species . “The Internationale shall be the human race…”
^^^^^^
We wouldn’t cling to the microbiology of the 19th Century to supercede the developments in microbiology of the 20th and 21st, yet we are calling Engels’ work science, when most of us have not studied the work done in this field over the last 40 years.
^^^^
Charles: The progress of sciences is that of sublation. Prior stages are overcome _and_ preserved. Most importantly many of Engels and Marx’s insights are actually and factually and practically still totally alive. It is incredible how fresh so much of what they say is today. Some of their discussion is more pertinent than much of what living writers write.
The class struggle is raging here in Detroit. How about where you are ? You can read giant passages out of Marx and Engels that apply full force to today, at least where I am.
“Labor in white skin will not be free while labor in the Black skin is branded”
fresh as a daisy !
Workers of all countries , unite ! How’s that for “globalization” 2005 ?
” Without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement” - Lenin
^^^^
I would ask those who are taking the pro-Engels position here to post at the earlier threads on gender, where many of these other thinkers are represented, ie,
^^^^
23 December 2005, 2:30 pmCharles: Yes it will take me a while to review the archives.
Timothy R. Anderson:
Hi there. This post is mostly off-topic, but I think it is worth the attention it will, hopefully,
garner . The fine folks at http://www.projectcensored.org
have put together a fine article about the radiation
poisoning that the AMERICAN soldier on-the-ground
in Iraq is breathing in , along with the ” liberated ” civilians of Iraq.
http://www.projectcensored.org
That’s about it . Oh, as much as possible :
Good days to all , Timothy
23 December 2005, 2:40 pmR. Anderson
Yolanda:
I’ll just add a quick comment:
“If you think gender oppression would exist in a non-capitalistic or socialist system….then I come back, as Im saying, to why.”
John, gender oppression existed millenia before capitalism was even thought of, and there is well-documented history that bears this out. Patriarcy, then and now, can exist without capitalism. I’m sure you are well aware of this, but I may be wrong.
About “relative” affluence: You’re a White man living overseas in Europe. I’m a Black woman living with her two sisters in the same city I was born in. I think that is what Stan meant by “relative affluence.” But he can tell you better than I.
24 December 2005, 3:39 pmVinyak:
Hi
Merry Christmas
I was plesantly surprised to see this blog
I knew very little about Engels when I wrote this blog
http://o3.indiatimes.com/vinayak/archive/2005/12/04/361419.aspx
I’d request you to comment and state if feminism can carry on the struggle that Engels wanted to happen
thanks
Vinayak
25 December 2005, 10:58 amhttp://o3.indiatimes.com/vinayak/archive/2005/12/04/361419.aspx
Stan:
I’m surprised you are “pleasantly” surprised, given that this blog is dedicated to the exact opposite of this statement from your blog:
“Unless men manage to negate the feminist propaganda as a whole and create an impression opposite the one feminists have created men are unlikely to regain their basic freedom.”
No ISM will carry any struggle. Conditions create the basis for struggle, mass movements create the vehicle, and leading bodies that emerge from the specific nature of those struggles in different phases and periods are forged out of the struggle itself and give these struggles their strategic direction. Feminism as a world historcal movement is absolutely essential, however. The backwardness of the above statement demonstrates why.
25 December 2005, 1:14 pmelaina:
And, to add to what Stan has said here, I would suggest a book called “Dharma’s Daughters”, which recounts the nearly impossible struggles of women’s organizing against male oppression in India.
26 December 2005, 8:51 amI’ll get back to y’all on the name of the book’s author.
elaina:
Sara Mitter. That’s the name of the author of Dharma’s Daughters. It’s been years since I read it, but it’s worth it. A lot of it is about daily life for women, mostly of India’s higher-castes, and very enlightening. Thanks, and sorry about the back-to-back and mildly off-topic posts.
26 December 2005, 8:55 amStan:
The grandbaby will be awake momentarily, so this is hit and run again.
I have no objection to the list that Charles provided earlier, which included people like Yoshie and Martha Gimenez, I have no objection to the use of declared marxist-feminists… in fact Yoshie and I are correspondents, and we posted along with Charles to many of the same lists.
My issue is that them simply being women does not imply that “marxist-feminism” has overcome the blind spot of plain marxism… I believe that it has not.
That doesn’t mean that the direction of Marxist inquiry is not a valuable lens on gender. It is. But Engels’ and Marx’s work on this represent a poor application of that method.
Moreover, the issue I have with many fellow Marx-ISTS on this topic is that they have a tendency to weed out those feminists who are not explicitly marxist, but who have done valuable interrogations on gender too, that are not antithetical to the revolutionary project we are involved in, and in fact are essential to it. That is an error. The more culpable habit, however, is for marxists to demonstrate overt hostility to anyone who does not accept the gender-orthodoxy of the left based on Engels. This is not an error. It is dishonesty, and it has often taken the form of misrepresenting and even gratuitously attacking certain feminists.
Much of this, I believe, is a sectarian impulse born out of the hostile ideological and political encirclement of socialists, that has combined with the unexamined and intellectually-defensive sexism of male left leaders.
I myself was caught up in this dynamic for some time, so this is partly personal experience, though I am not merely projecting. Self-criticism is a duty for revolutionaries, no matter how disturbing and painful it might me.
“Mathematics is not real, but it feels real,” said Richard Feynman once.
The tendency to dwell on the speculative “origins” of gender as a system of power is a defensive and decidedly “powered” practice — the ruse of “objectivity,” the tendency toward anti-affective abstraction, and the avoidance of studying the very real manifestations of gender in our current lives… and not just in variant wage scales.
That is what makes Yolanda’s experience and standpoint, among other things, important here; and that is why this abstract validity-testing is a retrenchment against dealing with the (female?) emotional content of gender.
If we are honest, male leftists will agree that we don’t deploy these kinds of anti-affective defenses when we are talking about “workers.”
It is not A masculinity we have to divest of to get real; it is Masculinity, period. The defense of it is infinitely subtle and can be interminably intellectualized. It feels that important to us. It is also an obstacle to our movement, to the movement for socialism — to which many of us are absolutely devoted.
We have to accept the trauma of gendered disruptions to our psyches and world views the same way we accept political setbacks, personal sacrifice, and the same way other revolutionaries around the world accept the fear and pain of physical violence directed against them.
26 December 2005, 9:25 amCharles Brown:
* The grandbaby will be awake momentarily, so this is hit and run again.
I have no objection to the list that Charles provided earlier, which included people like Yoshie and Martha Gimenez, I have no objection to the use of declared marxist-feminists… in fact Yoshie and I are correspondents, and we posted along with Charles to many of the same lists.
My issue is that them simply being women does not imply that “marxist-feminism†has overcome the blind spot of plain marxism… I believe that it has not.
^^^^
CB: All the best to the grandbaby !
We should focus here. My issue would be I don’t agree that the “marxist-feminist women” you refer to have a blindspot. I’d say the non-marxist-feminists have the blind spot. The main blindness being looking at things from a bourgeois woman rather than a working class woman’s point of _view_.
Also, much of my feminist thinking is based on extensive interaction with non-Marxist women. They are not feminists, but they are “actually existing” women, with actual women strengthening life methods. Most of my interaction is with Black women ( Detroit is basically a New African location) A large amount of that is with working class, Black women. So, I arrive at my discussion on feminism and women’s liberation not only through study of Marxist women but to a great extent, non-Marxist, Black, working class women’s critique of white, bourgeois women’s approach.This is also the type of critique of the Marxist point of view that I want ( and got).
But I also, study and interact with white bourgeois feminism, such as Gloria Steinem, Ms. Magazine, Millett, . And I this is not the first I have come across MacKinnon or Dworkin. As you know, we discussed and analyzed them at length on the Marxism-feminist list.
^^^^^^^
That doesn’t mean that the direction of Marxist inquiry is not a valuable lens on gender. It is. But Engels’ and Marx’s work on this represent a poor application of that method.
Moreover, the issue I have with many fellow Marx-ISTS on this topic is that they have a tendency to weed out those feminists who are not explicitly marxist, but who have done valuable interrogations on gender too, that are not antithetical to the revolutionary project we are involved in, and in fact are essential to it. That is an error.
^^^^^
CB: It would be good to be more specific here, name names and theories.
Sojourner Truth was a non-Marxist feminist who I don’t weed out. There are many others. So, as far as my approach, no I don’t weed out all non-Marxist, women feminists. However, I’m critical in my approach to the whole thing at a certain stage of thinking here as anywhere. I can’t suspend critical thinking because I am a man. That would not help women. Well, I do do some suspension of critical thinking in some phases. But at some point _everybody_ and everything is subject to critical thinking.
^^^^^^^
The more culpable habit, however, is for marxists to demonstrate overt hostility to anyone who does not accept the gender-orthodoxy of the left based on Engels. This is not an error. It is dishonesty, and it has often taken the form of misrepresenting and even gratuitously attacking certain feminists.
^^^^
Charles: Myself, I don’t get hostile, that would be _ad hominem_ or _ad womenem_. What’s there to get mad about anyway ? I’m friendly . However, actually, I am more radically honest than just about anybody you will run across.
The problem with me is the opposite of what you say. It is that I am _way_ honest. My name is Teller of Great Truths. I have to watch out not to be too, honest because there are strict taboos in European culture on speaking some of the truths I have to pronounce, so I hold my tongue.
I note this in the longer versions of my paper _For Women’s Liberation_. I criticize Marx and Engels for not being honest enough on sexual matters. Of course , there is a strict taboo on even talking about sex in modern European cultures.
^^^^^^
^^^^^
Much of this, I believe, is a sectarian impulse born out of the hostile ideological and political encirclement of socialists, that has combined with the unexamined and intellectually-defensive sexism of male left leaders.
I myself was caught up in this dynamic for some time, so this is partly personal experience, though I am not merely projecting. Self-criticism is a duty for revolutionaries, no matter how disturbing and painful it might me.
^^^^
Charles: Notice my _For Women’s Liberation_ excoriates Marx and Engels on the issues in _The German Ideology_. It would be very inaccurate to characterize my paper as not self-critical of Marxism. The subtitle is “A comradely critique of The Manifesto.” It is just that I have different take on how Marxism should be critizied on these issues. I put my criticism of Marxism up with there with any of them in terms of radicalness.
^^^^^^^
“Mathematics is not real, but it feels real,†said Richard Feynman once.
The tendency to dwell on the speculative “origins†of gender as a system of power is a defensive and decidedly “powered†practice — the ruse of “objectivity,†the tendency toward anti-affective abstraction, and the avoidance of studying the very real manifestations of gender in our current lives… and not just in variant wage scales.
^^^^^^
CB: I’d have to turn this around and say failure to include the discussion of origins with discussion of current lives leads one astray, shall we say. Take a look at Evelyn Reed on integrating the longview with the look at today’s struggles.
Also, they are not quite as “speculative” as you imply. They are based on lots of empirical investigation ( including much by women anthropologists; see earlier citations) Can’t quite let you dis anthro like that :>)
^^^^^^^
That is what makes Yolanda’s experience and standpoint, among other things, important here; and that is why this abstract validity-testing is a retrenchment against dealing with the (female?) emotional content of gender.
If we are honest, male leftists will agree that we don’t deploy these kinds of anti-affective defenses when we are talking about “workers.â€
^^^^^
Charles: My perspective benefits from some understanding of Caroline’s emotional experience of gender.
^^^^^^
It is not A masculinity we have to divest of to get real; it is Masculinity, period. The defense of it is infinitely subtle and can be interminably intellectualized. It feels that important to us. It is also an obstacle to our movement, to the movement for socialism — to which many of us are absolutely devoted.
We have to accept the trauma of gendered disruptions to our psyches and world views the same way we accept political setbacks, personal sacrifice, and the same way other revolutionaries around the world accept the fear and pain of physical violence directed against them.
Comment by Stan — 12/26/2005 @ 9:25 am
RSS feed for
^^^^^
Charles: Comrade, ultimately, I am still with you , because the most important thing is to bring the struggle for women’s liberation up in priority on the Left, and from my standpoint, in the proletarian internationalist struggle, and the Black liberation struggle ( I have an essay on Woman/Man Umoja ( Unity) , women’s liberation within the Black liberation movement. It is timely in that we are in Kwanzaa. I may send it.)
Your efforts and leadership in self-criticism of male supremacy-patriarchy advance all these struggles.
Mine is “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander” feminism. Men , what’s good for women , is good for men. This is the ultimately wise common sense.
I’m am so proud of the way you have directed this blog, brother !
26 December 2005, 1:42 pmStan:
I am running again, but have to note that many of my comments were not directed at Charles, who works hard on the gender stuff, but at the left in general. We have our struggles, but they are comradely. I DO want to address the class-woman issue, because I think there is an error there, but can’t right now. Unfortunately, I am about to tell my son goodbye until March, as he heads back to that place.
I hate this fucking war!
26 December 2005, 1:48 pmCharles Brown:
Truly.
Peace in !
26 December 2005, 5:01 pmJulian Real:
Hi Charles.
I just wanted to introduce myself and say what an education it is to read your thoughtful posts, and to encourage you to tell those truths that European-American culture may not wish to hear. More truth-telling, please!
I appreciate and respect the place you are coming from, in your political discourse, and in your life. I disagree with some of what you say, but, like Stan, not so much that I wouldn’t call you a comrade.
So, comrade, here is my latest writing on the subject at hand, and it is aimed more at John and Emerson than at anyone else I’ve read here. But it is FOR all of us.
I hope you find it useful.
With respect.
Julian (see my next long-ass post.)
27 December 2005, 12:22 pmJulian Real:
The ‘Patriarchal Racist Ignorant Condescending Know-it-all’: an experiential analysis distilled from Stan Goff’s blog discussions on Engels and MacKinnon
By Julian Real
Copyrighted 2005. All Rights Reserved
(Note: CRAP stands for Corporate Racist Atrocious Patriarchy.)
In this essay, I will begin by making several truth claims.
1. Patriarchal racist ignorant condescending know-it-alls (or p.r.i.c.k.s, for short) are poorly equipped, individually and collectively, experientially and situationally, through social position and privilege (not biology) to know much about women that is useful in the activist struggle to end patriarchy. Some p.r.i.c.k.s are white heterosexual men, and some of them are caring and respectful partners to women, though many are not. Respectful or not, I know of no white heterosexual men who are anti-patriarchy activists in support of the radical feminist project to end racist patriarchy, except Stan. Note: being a p.r.i.c.k., like being a white heterosexual man, is not a permanent condition, and therefore one can be transformed into an humane citizen, as society radically transforms away from patriarchy.
2. P.r.i.c.k.s are raised with sufficient privileges to assume they have enough knowledge to discuss just about everything, and they can pretend and/or presume, against great evidence, that they know what they are talking about. Too often, p.r.i.c.k.s privilege men’s limited experiences, man-gendered and ethnically white philosophical ideas, facts of his-story, and needlessly abstract theoretical frameworks, placing them at the center of their arguments and actions, in part to avoid dealing with the way they disrespect women, daily. What is simultaneously marginalised is (surprise!) women’s experiences, ideas, herstory, and frameworks. Due to this general disinterest and ignorance of a substantial portion of reality (women’s), p.r.i.c.k.’s knowledge remains astoundingly partial and seriously biased, but is not called either by them. It is, rather, called “reality†or “important philosophical inquiryâ€â€”especially when it is so academically elite (read: abstract) as to be practically incomprehensible. That some p.r.i.c.k.s retreat to their abstract minds’ “universally important thoughts†is not questioned, until now?, as a very specific political strategy for NOT dealing with women’s real condition as women. Not all white heterosexual men participate in this pro-man prioritisation and anti-woman marginalisation, but they can choose to do so without consequence of being held accountable, systematically, by other white men. For example, a woman may speak up, occasionally, after her fury subsides from the last disrespectful comment, to call a white man on something racially sexist or sexually racist, but he can generally evade her points by taking (or maintaining) possession of the discourse used in the discussion. He will often dismiss her points of view, her experiences, as “silly†with a casual and paternalistic disregard institutionally afforded to white heterosexual men. (Note: p.r.i.c.k.s rarely call one another’s ideas “sillyâ€.) He will point out that we are talking about “ideas†here, not “emotions†as if they were disconnected. He will alert her to the wonders of white heterosexual men’s great work, ignoring, rather completely, the great works of women of many ethnicities, which he has likely never seen, let alone defended as “great†and “importantâ€. The “literary canon†was compiled around what white men, many of whom were p.r.i.c.k.s, loved to read. That academic white men love to read work that doesn’t have much to say about women’s real lives, especially those of Colour, means something. Feminists have pointed this out, many times. Academic p.r.i.c.k.s don’t seen to be able to listen, let alone hear, what these women are saying, because, well, they are so busy blissfully reading the books by their people.
3. Engels was a European married man, and, quite possibly, a p.r.i.c.k.
4. Engels was not situated or experienced, was too privileged, was not in the position, to know much about women as humans, that is, as humans altered into (e)raced women, systematically, through oppressive experiences of patriarchy, white and male supremacy, misogyny, sexism, heterosexism, racism, and other ethnic hate and discrimination. In other words, Engels didn’t know how some humans become women through practices of subordination, by other human beings, called men, in patriarchy; and brilliant man that he was, it never occurred to him to find out. He did some very valuable intellectual work, but not on this matter. Engels is an expert on “the woman question†in the sense that Shakespeare is an expert on people of Colour. That both of these “white†men can be seen to be experts on “humanity†means something very dangerous: and that is that their humanity is awfully white and manly, and, therefore, ethnically and gender specific, in terms of how they view the world, and who they see as universally human when they look out at it.
5. Due to this, it is imperative that p.r.i.c.k.s learn to listen and take in the experiences and knowledge of activist and radical women of all ethnicities, who unavoidably endure way too much CRAP.
6. Ethnically oppressed men, and white gay men, *may* know something, due to political location, experientially and positionally, about racism and heterosexism, but are also poorly equipped (politically, not biologically) to know much, if anything, that politically pertains to women of all ethnicities, as women, in various patriarchies.
7. Any men that *do* know anything meaningful about the politically harmful conditions women face as women—conditions that constitute women as women (see the next three paragraphs), know it from women or women’s writing, directly. I do not know of one single living or dead exception to this point. There are abundant examples, however, of white heterosexual men *claiming* knowledge of women’s conditions that they simply do not have the experience to truthfully claim. For this reason, Engels, among many other white heterosexual men, must be “left behind†generally, except as an example of the above claims: he and his work may, in other words, be utilised to prove the claims made above, but his work cannot disprove them.
“Womanâ€, in this view, is not primarily or essentially a biological category. While some (not all) “human females†share physiological experiences, such as menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, lactation, and menopause, the meanings of and responses to those experiences are strongly cultural and political: cultural laws about menstruating women being associated with being “unclean†for example, turn what could be an morally neutral adolescent to mid-life sometimes monthly experience into one tainted with negative patriarchal social stigma. That these physiological phenomena happen to some “human femalesâ€, only at some ages, doesn’t equate with being gendered, in my view, any more than having pale skin, blond hair, and blue eyes equates with being Aryan (or otherwise raced). Admittedly, physiological and biological processes such as menstruation and pregnancy are more psychologically and socially impressive and involving than having a particular eye color (usually), but this involvement still doesn’t add up to having a gender. Genitals are real, physiological processes are real, sexes (genders) are assigned in a nonconsensual, compulsory way. And if, as tons of people believe, the simple appearance of genital formations amounted to “having a genderâ€, then what “gender†do intersex babies have, when born?
As with “womanâ€, there is nothing about whiteness, heterosexuality, or manhood that is essentially biological. These are primarily social constructs, cultural phenomena, political affiliations: they are terms of position and privilege, rendered real through cultural and social forces and mandated identities. These identities and conditions are not learned from non-human animals, and what is “animal†in us is unlearned by being social, politically regulated human creatures. Seen this way, rape is not, as many men like to believe, a natural condition of being a male animal, even a human one; rape is a response learned in patriarchy, about who men and women are and how women and girls, and feminised boys and men, are to be treated. Being raped, and being “not a man,†are mutually constituting. Rape, among other atrocities, helps make some humans into girls and women, and stigmatises some boys and men as feminised.
The meaning of so-called “significant biological differencesâ€, and the enforced ignorance about actual, more diverse differences in eroticism and ethnicity, is what is relevant here, not the facts of their physical existence. As noted earlier, some people give birth: some women, not men, do this. But many women do not give birth, or cannot, or are celibate and carry a firearm, or are post-menopausal, and they are still considered women, even while misogynistically derogatory terms are attached to some of those specific categories of women (such as “barrenâ€, “man-hating lesbosâ€, and “old hagsâ€. Having a vulva at birth does not sufficiently, empirically, define “woman†as such. Some transgendered people born with vulvas do not identify as women when adults, nor appear as such. Joan of Arc escaped being patriarchally female by resisting all instructions, and refusing all associations with the sex she was supposed to be. (See pages 83-105 in Intercourse, by Andrea Dworkin, for a brilliant discussion of Joan’s life in these terms). In most patriarchies, people are defined dualistically (that is, incorrectly, distortively), through physiological qualities and biological capabilities, which are then taken as significant and supportive of creating a separate allegedly natural category of sexually subordinated humans called “womenâ€. Not surprisingly, intersex, multi-ethnic, transgendered, and ungendered folks are invisibilised by these binary, hierarchically arranged social forms. (They don’t do much for women’s human visibility, either.) In the case of transgendered folks, the only way to be socially real and acceptable is to “choose†one or the other as your patriarchally correct physiology and identity. That there is no way to “choose†*not* to do this, *while* being socially real and acceptable, is not something the surgical world finds ethically and politically necessary to contend with. That women cannot choose to be not-women, yet not-men, and be socially real and acceptable means that women do not have the real choice to be ungenderedly human. No one does, really, in patriarchal cultures that have gender dualism. I once knew a person who was not born male or female, had no primary or secondary sexual characteristics, and was, in fact, fully human. That there are no pronouns for this person–in English, at least, tells you something about how our reality is denied us through language.
In Pornography: Men Possessing Women, Andrea Dworkin puts it this way (p. 17): “Men have the power of naming, a great and sublime power. This power of naming allows men to define experience, to articulate boundaries and values, to designate to each thing its realm and qualities, to determine what can and cannot be expressed, to control perception itself.â€
As Catharine MacKinnon states in her book Feminism Unmodified (p. 47), from a talk delivered at the Conference on Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, July 11, 1983): “We purport to want to change things, but we talk in ways that no one understands. We know that discourses have fashions, that we’re in the midst of a certain fashion now, that a few years from now it will be another, that ten years ago it was different. We know better than to think that this is the pure onward progress of knowledge. We participate in these fashions, are swept along in them, but we don’t set them. […]
Sometimes I think to myself, MacKinnon, you write. Do you remember that the majority of the world’s illiterates are women? What are you doing? I feel that powerfully when I think about what brings us all here, which is to make the changes we are talking about. When someone condemns someone else for the use of jargon, they tend to suppose that they themselves speak plain plate glass. I’m not exempting myself from this criticism, I’m saying that I see it as fundamental to developing a politics of language that will be constructive as well as deconstructive.â€
To pretend that patriarchally gendered and gendering terms, or raced and (e)racing terms, are not primarily social and political is to operate out of a dangerous biological essentialism that has the effect, necessarily, of reinscribing and reinforcing each of the atrocious phenomena (the “isms†and their accompanying forms of hate and harm) named earlier, relegating them to a somehow natural state, as if beyond social critique and political intervention. Similarly, if we believe men will always create military wars—that it is men’s “nature†to do so, we are destined to live in a world where such wars persist. This point must also be made regarding men’s patriarchal war against women.
It is grossly assumed that white heterosexual men speak for all of humanity. They don’t. Much of the time, even when claiming otherwise, they speak for themselves, for their own experience, universalising it, pretending it applies to more than just them. This projection and extension of white men’s being is a consequence of extraordinary privilege, which can and often does have the effect of rendering these social creatures profoundly arrogant and self-centered. Women of all ethnicities know (experience, endure) this arrogance daily. This privileged arrogance is manifested in institutions and other practices that women cannot avoid, and, as unavoidable, may need to ignore or repress, or, tragically yet commonly, participate in and support, much to the empowerment of CRAP.
On Stan’s blog, there is a challenge to some white heterosexual men’s speech, to their forms of speech as legitimately privileged, as well as to the content of the speech (that is, what it purports to say). A note to white heterosexual men: when you, as members of an oppressor class, are oppressive, and because of that, women, and other folks, respond with anger, or in other expressive ways that make you uncomfortable, I recommend *not* trying to get those challenging you to change their manner of expression, or their style of discourse. Why? Because the requirement that oppressed people speak with a privileged tongue, in a man-gendered manner, with a white ethnic accent, is a form of oppression. Specifically, it is but one of CRAP’s entitlements to decide who can speak and who can be heard.
“That’s fucked up!†is an appropriate critical response to what many p.r.i.c.k.s have to say. That some p.r.i.c.k.s register this sort of response as “inappropriately critical†or “over reactiveâ€, to use note two such dismissive terms, does not make it either inappropriate or unmeaningful, as a response. That some white men prefer to hear “rational†(ahem) cognitive argumentation in forms familiar to those white men, means, only, that those white men do not want to learn how to hear more emotionally unrepressed and intellectually real commentary. P.r.i.c.k.s can, usually, get away with “closing their ears†to this sort of critique. They have the power and privilege to tell the rest of us how we should debate or engage in discussion. To paraphrase my main point here: “That’s just a big load of CRAPâ€.
Most women cannot and do not ignore white heterosexual men’s privileged arrogance. They instead find ways around it, under it, over it, or through it. They combat it individually and collectively, passively or actively, affectionately or aggressively. Only those women so unrelentingly inundated, insulted, and injured by this privileged arrogance pretend to not know about it, or do not, consciously, let themselves know about it. Only those for whom there seems no way around it, under it, over it, or through it, is there the solution, a political survival mechanism as it were, which does not often even allow for survival: they repress the knowledge of what white heterosexual men do, and, especially, the political meaning and reasons they have for doing it. In this repressed state, and with some privileges, at times, women are as dangerous to humanity as men, especially to children and other women. (The function of this sort of repression in creating men’s violence has already been discussed in the essay, The Trauma of the Gendered Child, elsewhere on Stan’s blog.)
In this discussion about Engels, some white heterosexual men have made great attempts to bolster the authority of one of their own. What they have not been willing to admit is this: they have no systematically lived experiences, no social-political position (no legitimate one, that is), from which to claim this authority. It is, rather, only by “virtue†of the privileges afforded white heterosexual men (privileges, which, along with their traumas, constitute them), that they make such grandiose truth claims to begin with. Acting unconsciously or arrogantly from this stance, oppressively, is what makes some white heterosexual men into p.r.i.c.k.s.
This must be systematically exposed and seriously challenged, if we are to move beyond “white heterosexual man as authority on the worldâ€, a pernicious and delusional stance they take, not from a base of knowledge, but, rather, from a base of privileged presumption and profound ignorance. P.r.i.c.k.s presume what people not in their group mean by what they say and do, while ignoring complaints about what they say and do. They march ahead like ghosts in the night, pretending they have substance and the power to illuminate. They have neither. Sometimes, of course, they white heterosexual men do have something useful to say about CRAP, usually because some oppressed “other†said it first, and they appropriated it, not giving credit to the originator of the thought. Every thought expressed here–what I write–has been informed, deeply and thoroughly, by women’s writing about patriarchy and women’s experience of it.
Charles, an African-American man, who is well-read in feminist theory, and well connected to real women, is, among the marxists here, the most understanding of the need to raise the consciousness of the Left on matters of gender oppression in male supremacy. I just don’t know if Stan calls himself a marxist or not, but if so, I include him with Charles, as another anti-racist man who is seriously concerned about the Left’s privileging of economics over gender.
I know what I know, about women-as-humans and men-as-humans, only because of my experiences of patriarchy, male supremacy, misogyny, sexism, heterosexism, racism, and other forms of ethnic hate and discrimination. I do not know these things through personal and interpersonal (social) experiences only, though this has created a solid foundation of important emotional knowledge. I know them also through reading of the experiences of women, almost never well-articulated by men. James Baldwin is one exception I can name. He was neither white nor heterosexual, and this is significant in understanding why he could know more about women’s experiences of oppression, and write convincingly about women’s plight inside racist patriarchy. (See the Communion chapter in Andrea Dworkin’s book, Intercourse, for a deeply respectful, stunning analysis of Baldwin’s worldview and ethics.)
You will find that those white heterosexual women who know most about women’s diversely oppressive condition and experiences, are those who have read or talked openly and respectfully with women of many non-dominant ethnicities and sexualities. You will find that white heterosexual women who have not consulted or learned about the experiences of women of many non-dominant ethnicities and sexualities are limited in their understandings, but still carry much experiential knowledge, of patriarchy, male supremacy, misogyny, and sexism, as experienced within their own men’s ethnically privileged arenas. White heterosexual women are, not surprisingly, less reliable on matters of patriarchal heterosexism and racism. They, like their brothers, have been and ought to continue to be held accountable to their privileged unwillingness to listen to women of Colour, women of other oppressed ethnicities, and women of many sexualities.
Generally speaking, you will find that radical feminist lesbian women are more knowledgeable on matters of patriarchal heterosexism.
Generally speaking, you will find that women of Colour are most knowledgeable on matters of patriarchal sexualised racism, as well as on matters of patriarchy, white and male supremacy, misogyny and race-hate, and sexism.
In conclusion:
White heterosexual men simply don’t know what the fuck they are talking about, when claiming to know the truth about women. What they know with any accuracy, they know from emotionally and politically meaningful intellectual contact with women.
Lesbian white women, and women of oppressed races and ethnicities of all sexualities, do know what they are talking about, when speaking of these and other matters, due to what they experience and their contact with other women similarly or differently affected. Oppressed people, it has been noted many times, often know much more about oppressors and their institutions, than oppressors know themselves.
That there is a connection between experience and knowledge is something p.r.i.c.k.s are not willing to admit, in large part because it would destabilise and challenge (to the core) their abilities to legitimately make truth claims about women.
I offer as proof of what I say, every entry in the discussion on Stan Goff’s blog about Engels and MacKinnon (see both “comments†sections).
That Stan is exceptional on these matters, means this: he, unlike *any* other white heterosexual man I know, pays attention to what women say. He listens and learns from women of all ethnicities, has emotionally close politically accountable friendships with lesbian and heterosexual women, and therefore knows, experientially, through respectful engagement and empathy with those women, what women endure that men do not, inside CRAP.
Empathy is the key ingredient in the political group “men†knowing anything at all about the political group “womenâ€. Cognitive intellectual analysis, especially abstract intellectual analysis and academic philosophising will not get any man very far—except among his own people, who, often, do the hiring in academic institutions, and the publishing of their books. College courses and academic texts often thrive by promoting needlessly abstract conceptions of the world of white men’s ideas. But unless he has found ways to respectfully empathise with women, thereby learning one dimension of those women’s bases of knowledge, and engage respectfully with their cognitive intellectual knowledge, he is lost in a tiny ethnic and gendered universe that he rather alarmingly believes is the entirety of the Universe, as he conceives of it.
I invite men of all sexualities, races, and other political locations and affiliations, to politically empathise with the women around them, in order to know and befriend them better. I challenge men to read the work of politically radical feminist women. (A suggested reading list follows.) Then, and only then, might those men have something useful to say about radically and effectively challenging CRAP.
I will conclude by making this truthful statement: The writings of Andrea Dworkin and Catharine A. MacKinnon are to a cogent critique of patriarchy and analysis of male supremacy, what the writings of Marx and Engels were to a cogent critique of capitalism and analysis of the dictatorship of the proletariat: each set of writings are profoundly important to understanding, deeply, the central conditions and key determinants of each oppressive social-political phenomenon, patriarchy and capitalism, respectively.
Recommended reading list. All works are non-fiction, unless otherwise noted.
By Andrea Dworkin:
Woman Hating
Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics
Pornography: Men Possessing Women
Right-wing Women
Ice and Fire (a novel)
Intercourse
Letters From a War Zone
Mercy (a novel)
Life and Death: Unapologetic Writings on the Continuing War Against Women
Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women’s Liberation
By Catharine A. MacKinnon
Sexual Harassment of Working Women
Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law
Toward A Feminist Theory of the State
Only Words
Women’s Lives, Men’s Laws
By Dworkin and MacKinnon:
Pornography and Civil Rights: A New Day for Women’s Equality
In Harms Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings (editors)
See also, by Patricia Hill Collins:
Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment
Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism
And, by Patricia Williams:
Alchemy of Race and Rights
Seeing a Color-Blind Future : The Paradox of Race
…for additional perspectives on humanity outside the experiential and intellectual limitations of a white ethnic experience.
MacKinnon, deservedly, gets the last word on this post: from p.13, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State:
“Engels, by contrast [to Marx], considered women’s status a social phenomenon that needed explanation. He just failed to explain it.”
27 December 2005, 12:56 pmStan:
I admit to being a bit embarrassed at being singled out, no matter how flattering. There are quite a few of us out there who are working at this.
This is an important insight, but it veers dangerously close to name-calling, even in the form of an acronym.
Thanks to Julien for the hard work on this; but let’s work with an eye to persuasion.
Check rules: http://feralscholar.org/blog/?p=25
27 December 2005, 2:32 pmJulian Real:
We all have our work to do, Stan. Every one of us. Dworkin did, and MacKinnon still does.
But I’m not gonna withhold support and compliments to those who, in my view (whatever that’s worth), deserve it.
You deserve my praise, brother.
Now get back to huggin’ and holdin’ that grandbaby!! Times a-wastin’!
Julian
27 December 2005, 2:47 pmCharles Brown:
Hey Julien,
Good to meet you.
Your fervor in fighting c.r.a.p. etc. is what we need more of.
Are you anti-capitalist ,pro-working class ? I suspect you are , but I don’t see a reference to the class struggle in criticisms of crap and pricks.
Just to be honest and directly to points of potential dispute (not to be argumentative, but it’s not interesting to sit around and agree about everything; no progress without struggle, too) I do not find by my empirical evidence that homosexual men have better understanding of women than heterosexual men. The women ( mainly Black women) I’m in communication with don’t seem to find this to be true either. Homosexual men, as a general matter , are as male supremacist as heterosexual men. There’s nothing about having sex with women that makes one understand them less than not having sex with them, in general. In fact, the opposite would be the case. I know my position on this is not a la mode on the Left, but like I said, I gotta tell the truth. Actually, I’m a teller of hard truths, not great truths. That was a typo. This one I tell now is hard to hear on the Left today, but…maybe I should ask you why you think homosexual men might understand women better than heterosexual men , in general ? Or why you include the adjective “heterosexual men” and not just “men” ?
I guess the more general point is that my approach is the opposite on sex between women and men. I see women and men having sex as very important ( not just to have kids) but as a major potential basis for resolution of conflicts between women and men, as a basis for unity between women and men. I’d say that intimacy and sex between women and men is one of the ways that men do learn what they know about women ( and vica versa). So, my thing would be to get the male supremacy out of sex, but not bang on heterosex. In fact, frankly, I consider banging on heterosex as reactionary ( sorry; not you personally). I’m not kidding. Anti-heterosex converges with the long term reactionary nature of the Christian Church’s attitude on sex etc. And it undermines one best potential bases for resolving the conflicts between women and men.
So, there you have it honest and frank. Lets continue to mull over this in a friendly way.
Overall, I don’t cop to “I don’t understand women , because I’m a man.” It’s too much like that old male supremacist idea that ,well, “I can’t understand women;women are inscrutible”. I understand them very well, especially after being in touch with them for 55 years. I _have_ been listening to what they say all this time. I’d have to be very stupid not to have learned a lot about them. I understand them and I understand their complaints, and so it is my responsibility to do something about their complaints. A claim that “men ( white or of color)don’t understand women” is bit of a copout.
Men, women are not a Ms-tery. So, just go and do the right thing.
Cheerio,
Charles
27 December 2005, 8:13 pmYolanda Carrington:
Hello folks,
Julian…again brotha…you’ve managed to say exactly what is on MY mind, in a clear, concise, loving, and thoroughly intellectual way. I’ve got to thank you. I know you don’t personally identify as un homme, but maybe your status as a bio-male will insure that men will hear you fully.
I’ve been purposefully staying away from Feral Scholar for the past couple of days. On blog discussions, I try to be as fair, thorough, and open-minded as possible, but I knew that I could not maintain this stance much longer. I’m going to be completely honest here. Certain people—a couple of men—made me feel worthless and stupid, when I know damn that I am neither. Whether that was intentional on their part or not, the shit happened. I tried not to get “emotional†about it, and be as “objective†as possible, but you and I know that these notions are bullshit in the face of domination.
Charles, you are one of the men I am talking about. Please let me explain why.
I’ve been reading the discourse between you, Stan, and Julian, and they have tremendous respect for your views and insights. I think that you have good ideas, too. But–Black woman to Black man–let me be complete honest: You have pissed me off tremendously with some of your comments. I have purposefully remained silent because I didn’t want to react out of hurt, but much of what you’ve have said has made me feel invisible and silenced again, and I’ve been battling invisibility in this movement for YEARS. Stan can back me up here.
I’m coming from the heart, intellectual objectivity be damned.
I never engage in this kind of argument, but please allow me great latitude here. With all due respect, Charles, I think many of your ideas on sex and gender are complete bullshit (yes folks—“silly†Yolanda said it). You consistently naturalize gender, even after you are challenged on it. I will make a redundant statement again: MAN AND WOMAN ARE NOT SEXES. “Man†and “woman†is GENDER, socially/politically/historically constructed, and NOT natural.
I emphatically reject your idea that the “unity†between men and women—sexually, politically or otherwise—is the answer to ending patriarchy. There is one important fact that you are forgetting: Men DOMINATE women. There can be no unity through domination. The domination of women by men MUST end.
I don’t feel like addressing each my beefs with your comments point-by-point, because there are too goddamn many of them, brother, but I’ll hit a few. Like this next gem:
“I guess the more general point is that my approach is the opposite on sex between women and men. I see women and men having sex as very important (not just to have kids) but as a major potential basis for resolution of conflicts between women and men, as a basis for unity between women and men.â€
Do you really believe what you just said above? Oh my God.
And this lovely non-response to Julian’s argument:
“Anti-heterosex converges with the long term reactionary nature of the Christian Church’s attitude on sex etc. And it undermines one best potential bases for resolving the conflicts between women and men.â€
“Anti-heterosex????†Are you serious? I sure hope not. (Do you have any idea how homophobic this is?)
“Conflicts between women and men???†Huh???
Since when is oppression and domination “conflict?â€
Black woman to Black man: You are gender-privileged, STRAIGHT UP. I can’t make you see this; you’ve got to recognize your privilege for yourself. All I can do is let you know how I feel. I hope that you can listen—I mean truly listen—to what I (and all women) have to say.
You cannot speak for women—Black, working class, or otherwise. Period. You ain’t a woman. As far as concrete experience goes, you don’t know what the word means.
But you are a man.
I want to offer a challenge, Charles. What can you say about being a man? How does being a man make you feel? Do you see yourself specifically AS A MAN, and if you do, what does that mean to you? Does being a man make you feel good, or not?
When you stop trying to speak for women, and be honest about being a man, I will call you a comrade. But not until then, brother.
From the heart of struggle,
28 December 2005, 1:08 amYolanda
Yolanda Carrington:
To Stan,
I want to thank you for providing this forum for folks like me to speak. I would never have felt comfortable challenging people the way I do on this blog, not even a year ago. You have worked hard to make this a safe space for women, queer folk, people of color, and unschooled folk to have put their ideas out and be challenged.
I hope you are doing well this holiday, and I hope your son gets back home safe and sound. Thank you again for all you do.
love, Yolanda
PS: Stan has been my friend for four years, folks.
28 December 2005, 3:32 amStan:
Yolanda is hitting pretty damn close to the bulls eye (again!).
I’m not sure yet, not having worked through it yet, whether “compulsory heterosexuality” can serve as the same entry point on gender that Marx made on productive relations with the “commodity.” I do know that CH can be unpacked in much the same way for a long time… like Mary Poppins’ handbag, the stuff just keeps coming out of it.
I’m struggling with another comrade — who came to socialism through anarchism — on whether gender relations are incorporated into existing captialism through “monogamy.” The fact that gay couples have often embraced and even fight for legal recognition of monogamous relations serves to complicate and even obfuscate the issue by providing exceptions that prove the rule.
The reason I prefer CH is that Rich’s formulation — which she arrived at from the standpont of a woman-identified and woman-loving woman — is that it describes the dominant social paradigm not in quantity (two = monogamy) but quality (2 = male + female, and not equally). The complimentariness of it — as opposed to mutuality — is built into the construct.
The problem before us, on gender, stems not from the number, two, but from the relation, male over female. Reducing gender to the simple dyad (monogamy) causes the powered unity of opposites between men and women to disappear. The preoccupation with monogamy opposed to polyamory is a privileged standpoint for the tiny handful of people who have individually escaped articulation into families that are themselves articulated into patriarchal capitalism and imperialism. That’s consitently the problem with anarchist analysis — its devotees fail to account for thier own class position.
The notion of “heterosexual equality” mirrors the popular rationalization for racial segregation pre-Brown v Board — separate but equal. Seems like a useful analog, no? But we have to depart from the kind of mandatory economism favored by male-marxism, almost as a scientific control measure, to extract, study, and describe the gendered content of this social relation.
Standpoint DOES matter here, a lot. No, standpoint does not guarantee validity, but trying to draw a direct line to validity is often an evasion, particularly of the affective content of this relation.
The positivism of many radicals (men esp) is rooted in the construction of every issue outside of individual child development, intrapsychic experience, and the emotional resonance of our (socially constructed) identificaiton with our OWN masculinity or femininity.
“Anti-hetero” is similar to “reverse racism” as a way of flipping the script to duck the issue of unequal power.
In erotic sexual relations and experience, many of these feelings we have that form our deep attachments to our own sexual “identities” are reinforced by overwhelmingly powerful biochemical responses etched into our body memories, and experienced as almost sacrosanct.
That’s why Ti Grace Atkinson said that “compared to feminism, commmunism was child’s play.”
That’s why Yo’s point is so important, from where I stand (-:
The serious struggle for men who want to practice real soidarity has to begin with a fearless and honest inventory not just of our behaviors, but of our very way of DESIRE, which we can only naturalize (and therein justify the evasion of critique) out of pure privilege.
This is a genuinely scary and often painful, protracted process. It is also, imho, a revolutionary duty and responsibility.
For the record, I count both Yolanda and Charles comrades.
Adelante!
28 December 2005, 9:32 amStan:
Clarification on the preceding:
I don’t mean to imply that (1) the fight for gay marriage is a distraction — I am on record as saying that it is extremely important and a key issue the left should unite with, or (2) that individuals are bound to monogamous relations until compulsory heterosexuality is a relic — only that the ability to engage in polyamorous relations is not available as an option (for MANY reasons) to most people, and that this individual “right” as well as way-of-life does not absolve us of the responsibility to interrogate the form and content of desire in those relations.
28 December 2005, 10:04 amJulian Real:
Hi Charles.
First, I hope you are able to answer Yolanda’s questions thoroughly, and non-defensively. I was giving you some benefits of my doubts about your position on male supremacy, but I have more information now, both from Yolanda, and you, to be clearer about where you stand on this matter, as well as on homosexuality, and I will respond, respectfully, and in a way that I hope brings us closer to one another in struggle, not further away. I am not invested in being close with any man who values unconsciousness (obliviousness) of their own male privilege over honest, painful self-reflection, though, and so I am telling you up front that how you respond to Yolanda is going to make a HUGE difference in my mind as to how willing you are to be, genuinely, in struggle with your own male privilege, along with male supremacy. Personally, I don’t see these as separate struggles, and I think Yolanda is completely right to call you on what she is calling you on. But she can, and does, speak for herself.
I’ll respond more specifically now, to some of what you have posted lately, including, of course, your reply to me. (Thanks for that. I am with you on the honesty and truthfulness thing. Enough bullshit. But I think that’s Yolanda’s point, isn’t it?)
But just a word on “honesty”. My brother, two years older, used to routinely disrespect and disregard me in typical older brotherly “honest” ways. I was closer with my female cousins, who were around both our ages. They did not disrespect and disregard me as he did. He used to tell me I had to be tougher. I told him, “Maybe if you weren’t so brutal in your manner, I wouldn’t have to get so tough. There’s two ways we can go here, brother: I toughen up, or you become more humane.” For the record, I refused to “toughen up” and my brother, in the decades since, has learned to be more humane, and he has sincerely apologised to me for his chronic mistreatment of me when we were young. His apology was only accepted by me on the grounds that the behaviour STOP, and never show itself again. He is not particularly insightful about why he did what he did, which I find to be typical of the oppressor: little self-awareness about matters of their oppressiveness to others. But he is very loving and deeply supportive of me now, including of my political work.
Charles: We need an ERA Equal Rights Amendment of the Constitution , today !
Vote for and support women for public office and leadership positions all around in society.
Retain affirmative action. ( Michigan has a battle against Ward Connerly this year)
Fight rape and domestic violence.
Men surrender in the Battle of the Sexes, today.
Men do more childcare and housework.
Also, I am a Black feminist, first, but also a general feminist.
J: I find your to-do list shockingly liberal, coming from a Leftist radical. The ERA was designed to make women equal to men, as men define men, thereby allowing women to be patriarchal too. What’s progressive about that? Please read MacKinnon on the ERA… hold on… I’ll go get it: She discusses the early (radical) feminist movement in the U.S., with its flaws–in part it being terribly ignorant of the white and class privilege that flowed through some of the arguments, including some overt racism and plenty of covert racism–but also notes, concisely, what the radical agenda WAS that began to be thwarted by a liberal agenda (read: deferential to patriarchy), much to the benefit of CRAP, and the demise of Radical Women’s Liberation Movement–movement from patriarchy, by, um, ENDING patriarchy, once and for all. “Ba-bye, now, patriarchy. Ba-bye. Don’t forget to close the door behind ya.”
In part, she says (after recounting feminism’s earlier radical days): “Then something happened. Or started to happen. Or maybe it had been happening all along and some of us had overlooked it. The first time I noticed it was with the Equal Rights Amendment. We were told that we could and should have this constitutional amendment because sex equality under law was not really going to do very much, would not really change anything, surely nothing basic. What the movement had identified as the pervasive, basic oppression and exploitation of women by men became transformed into an evil called ’sex-based classifications by law.’ That, suddenly, was what sex equality had to change. Under this notion of sex equality, we were given the choice of being the same as men–the left’s option for us–or different from men–the right’s version. We were told that the left’s version was clearly better and the only route to true equality. So-called gender neutrality–ignoring what is distinctively done to women and ignoring who is doing it–became termed the feminist position. I heard no one challenge the fact that, under this approach to ERA, either way it was the male standard, either way it was not what the movement had in mind by equality. The ERA strategy based on this analysis was, apparently, that sex equality can be made nonthreatening to the hierarchical status quo and still be real. This approach never identified male supremacy as what we had to contend with. It presented the extraordinary spectacle of feminists ardently denying that sex equality would make much difference while urgently seeking it.” (Catharine A. MacKinnon, Women’s Laws, Men’s Lives, p. 262)
C: Your fervor in fighting c.r.a.p. etc. is what we need more of.
J: Thank you.
C: Are you anti-capitalist ,pro-working class ? I suspect you are , but I don’t see a reference to the class struggle in criticisms of crap and pricks.
J: I don’t take litmus tests. I am anti-money economies, Charles. Pro-environmentally friendly, fully sustainable cultures. I am an activist in support of any movement that seeks to END patriarchy, not indulge it, and specifically, to END CRAP, to end rape, to end racism, and to end the oppression and exploitation of women in all myriad and atrocious forms. That’s my spiritual-political agenda, Charles. Call it what you will. (I see no signs that the Right or Left is willing to take up this radically transformative spiritual-political project.) I seek a world where women are free and safe to be human, fully human, in ways each individual human desires, in a free context, not a caged one, which is all women have now, and which, tragically, shapes women’s desires to be only women, to be female the patriarchal way. Patriarchies shape men’s desires too, in part by making men think “man” exists naturally. Also by believing that there is an “opposite sex”, and then eroticising the opposition.
C: Just to be honest and directly to points of potential dispute (not to be argumentative, but it’s not interesting to sit around and agree about everything; no progress without struggle, too)
J: Agreed. And moving right along…
C: I do not find by my empirical evidence that homosexual men have better understanding of women than heterosexual men. The women ( mainly Black women) I’m in communication with don’t seem to find this to be true either. Homosexual men, as a general matter , are as male supremacist as heterosexual men. There’s nothing about having sex with women that makes one understand them less than not having sex with them, in general.
J: You seem to be ignoring some very basic realities in patriarchies, Charles. First, it is precisely the intimate placement of women to men in heterosexual contexts that allows men the access to do such atrociously intimate harm. Most heterosexual women are injured in the home–it is the most dangerous place for those women to be, if a man lives there with them …or knows where they live. Out gay men, last time I took the survey, don’t rape women. Out gay men, also, aren’t the primary perpetrators of battery and incest against girls and women. Heterosexual men are. Your reality seems spuriously selective. Why is that? Perhaps because women will not often speak about what beloved heterosexual men do to them, as children or adults, to other heterosexual men, and, sometimes, to anyone? All the women I know, of whatever race and ethnicity, are survivors of intimate harm by men, male supremacist harm. Some of it is rape, some of it is battery, some is incest, some is child molestation, some is systematic denigration of them as girls-not-boys, inappropriate and damaging leering when the girls become adolescents, systematic condescension, systematic ignorance of their real lives, systematic privileging of girls either being “like boys” and gaining respect, or being “like girls” and gaining a very evil form of “respect” called “sexual objectification and violative interest”.
Now, I am in no way saying that gay men are not, at times, and systematically, misogynistic. Lord knows. But those gay boys grow up with bullying straight men as their roles models, or with harmed women as their role models, and so I blame straight society on that, not gay society. Do gay misogynists need to be held accountable? Sure. I’ll get right on that as soon as I’m done with all the straight misogynist men. What time do you think that’ll be, Charles? Should I schedule that for 2007? Straight white men hold privileges and positions of power, politically and socially, that gay white men do not hold. I’m going for the top of the pile of privileged folks, and not choosing to spend my time in horizontal hostility, a very important term crafted by Flo Kennedy. Women can fight each other all day long. Some, unfortunately, do. I can fight with gay men all day long, for the rest of my life. But who does that leave unchallenged? Hmmm. Oh, yeah, the most privileged and powerful men on Earth: white heterosexual men. And those with money have even more privileges, to purchase more pornography perhaps, or to purchase more female sexual slaves, or to purchase (or is it “rent”?) more prostitutes. So, yes, straight white rich men DO have more misogynist privileges, compared to poor straight white men: privileges of exploitative access to down and out women, that (patriarchal) money, coupled with male supremacist inclinations, purchases.
C: In fact, the opposite would be the case. I know my position on this is not a la mode on the Left, but like I said, I gotta tell the truth.
J: Who’s truth are you telling? Not Yolanda’s, not mine, not any woman’s truth that I know.
C: Actually, I’m a teller of hard truths, not great truths. That was a typo. This one I tell now is hard to hear on the Left today, but…maybe I should ask you why you think homosexual men might understand women better than heterosexual men , in general ? Or why you include the adjective “heterosexual men†and not just “men†?
J: Partly because heterosexual men will do anything to have the feminist spotlight taken off them, and I’m not enabling that to happen in my work. Also, most men in support of radical feminism, or most men I know who are deeply sympathetic to and empathic with women, to what women endure at the hands of men, are gay men, because gay men also endure some of the same CRAP–the sexual objectification, the sexual exploitation, the battery, the rape. There’s nothing abstract going on in my knowledge-base, Charles. I know some sexist gay men, and some gay men I would consider to be misogynistic, but none that do to girls and women what I know straight men do to girls and women. Any reason I should take the spotlight OFF straight white men? Are they getting too sunburned? And the really sweet straight white middle class men I know, and I’ve known enough of them, still do not find time in their days to take up the matter of ending rape and racism. They’re too busy playing videogames, reading comic books, listening to white music, and endlessly worrying about things which effect a tiny fraction of the world’s population.
C: I guess the more general point is that my approach is the opposite on sex between women and men. I see women and men having sex as very important ( not just to have kids)
J: I see sex between women and men as a key site of misogynist aggressive and non-aggressive harm to women’s human dignity, and bodies, and childbirth as a key killer of women worldwide.
C: but as a major potential basis for resolution of conflicts between women and men, as a basis for unity between women and men.
J: Do you mean “post-fight, make-up sex”? What are you talking about, really? What sex are you talking about? And between whom? I know some heterosexuals who have loving, respectful sex. But that doesn’t make any case FOR heterosexual sex, given the totality of its expression on Earth against women’s bodies and psyches. I’m not willing to make the exceptional into the commonplace, in order to let men off the hook for objectifying, fetishising, degrading, humiliating, and bludgeoning women sexually, in political speech, and through more physically assaultive acts.
C: I’d say that intimacy and sex between women and men is one of the ways that men do learn what they know about women ( and vica versa).
J: This reminds me of a Dave Matthews lyric. (I’m not into Dave Matthews, for the record.) “Hike up you skirt a little more, and show your world to me.” I just want to yell at the fucker: you might try looking into her eyes for the location of her world, buddy. You might try engaging her intellectually and emotionally, to find out what her world is. You ain’t gonna find it in her vagina. What you’ll find there is ‘YOUR fetishised, obsessive world’ dude. Get your head out of there, unless it’s there to give her some real pleasure.”
C: So, my thing would be to get the male supremacy out of sex, but not bang on heterosex.
J: You say this as if, generally and commonly, they are not fused at the hip, so to speak. In what universe is heterosex not a common site of male supremacy?
C: In fact, frankly, I consider banging on heterosex as reactionary ( sorry; not you personally). I’m not kidding.
J: I believe you.
C: Anti-heterosex converges with the long term reactionary nature of the Christian Church’s attitude on sex etc.
J: I’m talking, first of all, about ending male supremacy, ending patriarchy, in all its forms and “positions”. That includes heterosex. Sex uneffected CRAP might happen, in theory, but less so in practice, in my experience and that of most women I know. Women and men do find many things together in bed: mostly who each of them have become (in and by patriarchal harm to each of their humanities), and what their lives have cost them. Please read the Communion chapter of Intercourse, and the rest of it, for a reality check on this sexuality that you think is some oasis from male supremacy. I’d call that view of yours a mirage. Men and women can and sometimes do find comfort together, and occasionally something that approximates intimacy, but most women I know have felt treated like an ejaculatory receptacle, not infrequently, when in bed with men. Hetero men, by and large, like to leave their sperm in various places, rarely in someone they consider fully, humanly real.
C: And it undermines one best potential bases for resolving the conflicts between women and men.
J: I think ending patriarchy would go much further in resolving those conflicts, but I’m a radical on these matters.
C: So, there you have it honest and frank. Lets continue to mull over this in a friendly way.
J: I am genuinely interested to know where you are doing your research? Do women talk with you, openly and honestly, about the harm they endure from men? Do they talk about that feeling, while being penetrated, of knowing the man is off somewhere else, in fantasy about some woman he saw on the street or in a strip club, earlier that night? Do they tell you about waiting for the guy to get away from the computer, checking out women used and abused in prostitution (with a camera), while trying to appease their girlfriends’ rightful indignation and humiliation: “It’s just what I like to do, baby–there’s nothing disrespectful to you about me looking at these pictures. You’re a real woman. You’re the one I love. These pictures of whores mean nothing to me. It’s just my form of entertainment. Like you have Dr. Phil., and your soap operas.”
C: Overall, I don’t cop to “I don’t understand w