42 Comments

1. DeAnander:

   Ah, but in the People’s Paradise after a successful class revolution there will be no more oppression of women — the Apostle Paul has just been telling us so at considerable length — so we must be imagining this.

   11 December 2006, 4:25 pm

2. peggy:

   This would clinch the case against leftism, except one could always say that Ortega is a mere hypocrite, doesn’t practice what he used to preach. Alternatively, one could say that he got poisoned by religion, and if it weren’t for that, he would be okay. Therefore, I don’t think Paul is going to have his mind changed by this revelation, tellingly monstrous though it is.

   After all the stuff on the Doctrine thread, which I followed but gave up as hopeless, I want to just summarize what I see as Stan’s basic argument, with which I still agree, and build on it a bit:

   The oppression of women is the foundation of and template for all other forms of human oppression, including oppression of class by class. The fact that women are part of the ruling class in no way weakens this argument. Many women can and do take the part and play the role of the oppressor. They just follow the basic template, and deny or make light of its physical, material reality, as do many men.

   All human social processes take place in and through embodied human beings. Social processes are bodily processes, just as much as are eating, digestion and pooping. They are not and cannot be abstracted from bodies, people with bodies. Gender is embodied, race is embodied, and class is embodied. All three processes, reified as identities, are both personal and political, both public and private. But of the three, gender (built on sex) is the most inescapably embodied, followed by race (built on variations in skin color and other bodily features which cannot easily be changed by individuals), followed by class (built on acquired habitus, which becomes inscribed in our bodily praxes.

   Human beings long to escape the restrictions of their bodies. That is why we have religion, Marxism, and countless other practices which offer the fantasy of escape from the body, or simply hide bodily realities within clouds of mystification.

   Gender is built upon one of the most inescapable of human bodily facts, which is sexual dimorphism. The bodily facts of race are less well-defined and more escapable, and the bodily facts of class (the way one talks and so many other aspects of habitus) are more escapable still.

   And maybe that is why so many otherwise intelligent people insist that class is somehow the most important source of human oppression and misery, and gender is not important at all.

   Sorry if this post comes across as incoherent. I am all drugged up on painkillers right now, trying to escape some bodily facts of my own

   11 December 2006, 6:20 pm

3. skol:

   Thank you peggy, that tied up a few loose ends for me

   11 December 2006, 6:59 pm

4. xenia:

   On Marxism not recognizing the body, I have to disagree.

   Marxism in lived practice helps us be grounded in our bodies (unless you live in Stalinist times). I lived in a socialist country until my teen years, and always had practically immediate access to dental and other kinds of health care, same goes for European social democracies (tooth-ache at 2000 at night? a contact lens stuck in the eye at 2300? I was helped within 20 minutes’ walk, ok, without any service attitude, without shiny smiles, rather grumpy, but everything was efficient and free).

   In the US (and you all know well how this works), I have never had dental care. I’d get my teeth fixed by a friend from my home country, who did it for free so my family would take care of her mother. I cannot become pregnant, since I cannot pay for the birth.

   Many, many things were wrong with “real existing socialism”, but alienating me from my body was not one of them, and I come from a poor peasant family, first generation urbanite.

   11 December 2006, 7:16 pm

5. DeAnander:

   [random musings] other bodily facts of class race and gender are nutrition and access to health care… and the type of labour done and its toll on the body… girls and women in many traditional cultures are fed only after the men have finished eating and run a lifetime nutritional deficit; poor people often suffer from multigenerational nutritional deficits as compared to the more affluent; women and PoC regardless of financial class may receive biased, hostile or incompetent medical care (some of which may be worse than ‘no care’ despite apparent advantages of being able to afford care due to class privilege); workingclass people far more likely to suffer chronic exposure to industrial toxins, either from dumping or workplace exposure, but these toxins may affect women disproportionately…. and so on.

   I think it becomes more and more necessary to ask what the hell we mean by the word “class” any more. if it is still the distinction between those who own the means of production and those who do not, then the $200K/yr senior designer/engineer at Pixar Studios is proletarian because he doesn’t personally own the computer farm he uses to do his CGI… doesn’t work for me. there’s something Ptolemaic about the attempt to cram every form of injustice into the class taxonomy.

   11 December 2006, 7:17 pm

6. xenia:

   PS en cuanto al “companero” Ortega, es un mentiroso de mierda y me da azco!

   11 December 2006, 7:25 pm

7. jonny:

   If anyone buys the idea that Ortega, alleged molester, disgraced and opportunistic former head of an overtly non-secular movement which defined itself “Christian Socialist”, defines the banner of gender politics in class struggle on his shoulders, then I have a stylish bridge in Victoria to sell them.

   11 December 2006, 8:25 pm

8. Paul:

   DeAnander –

   I’ve never said that ‘after a successful class revolution there would be no oppression of woman” etc. Nor do I think Ortega’s electoral victory represents a revolution. At best, Ortega is a centre-left pan-american nationalist, who is opposed to imperialism on that basis.

   It’s really dishonest and misleading to promote a charicature of my positions that is knowingly false. If you have a problemw ith my political line, then address it on a principled level and criticize the line on the basis of its merits and faults.

   On Ortega – I think his position is reprehensible and draconian. And from my perspective, it should serve to reinforce the reactionary nature of his regime and the limitations of nationalism as a basis of political unity. I think the reactionary role of the church also plays a lot into this decision, and it could be a strategic one calculated to win some measure of support from these right-wing enclaves.

   Also, I think xenia makes some really good points about what the socialization of certain aspects of production and distribution mean in practical terms for people and their well being. I’m not defending or advcoating state-socialism, and I’m not a Marxist, but it doesn’t take much to recgonize how important the “conquest of bread” [as Kropotkin put it] is.

   I agree with everything you say about the degrading global conditions enforced upon women. What I disagree with is the liberal analysis you draw from it – the idea that gender and ethnic oppression is augmented socially along class lines, and that class isn’t the primary contradiction at work. You’ll find every major revolutionary feminist organizaiton in the history of humanity has carried a similar or nearly identical line to the one im forwarding now [including, as i've mentioned before, Mujeres Libres], and I find it interesting you are position yourself against that line.

   As for class, you’re right – there needs to be a wholesale reevaluation of what class means in advanced industrialized countries, because often the definition of class is so skewed, and based strictly on monetary terms, or even on ownership at a local level [small capitalist vs. small capitalist] that is has lost its meaning in relation to much of the advanced theory on class structures. One of the biggest problems is the inability to analyze contradictions within classes, especially within the working class.

   11 December 2006, 8:56 pm

9. Paul:

   Peggy – I am confused by your insistence that Ortega’s actions should “clinch the case against leftism”. His actions are clearly inexcusable and draconian, as I’ve noted before — I doubt there would be any disagreement on this forum about that.

   It’s disturbing you would equate Ortega with the political left. What political left are you talking about? What do you think of the Nepalese revolutionaries, who have abolished child sex slavery in the areas they control, and who have women occupying almost half of the senior officer roles in their army? Are they also part of your left? What about the Spanish anarchists who abolished prostitution on a mass scale and established massive communal daycare and mess halls, for the first time in the 20th century? Are they also part of your left?

   It’s a red herring to say that Ortega represents the left, when those of us who are on the revolutionary left have clearly labelled him a reactionary for a long time.

   11 December 2006, 9:01 pm

10. Paul:

    by the way — Xenia’s post really puts things into perspective, and shames those who would deny the basic material rights of women in favour of their ethereal and entirely theoretical critiques of how power and domination exist.

    11 December 2006, 11:27 pm

11. peggy:

    Paul, it’s not that some leftist organizations can’t and don’t do good things. And I didn’t mean that we should take up arms against the left. I meant that we can’t count on the left to transform human society as it needs to be transformed. The left has failed massively. Everyone knows that. Besides, social justice is not just a leftist ideal, and there are too many self-professed leftists who act against social justice, most of all against social justice for female human beings. Meanwhile, there are many non-leftist organizations that act effectively to achieve social justice in certain domains. Who has achieved the most? In my opinion people who have no political agenda at all, but just see what they can do to help, and do it.

    Certainly, Ortega is not representative of the left. But neither is Castro, really. Castro is one of a kind. One might even argue that all the true and great triumphs of the left have been accomplished by men who were sui generis. And that is a very big problem right there. Maybe that is THE problem.

    Therefore, I think, along with Stan, that we should abandon our faith in the Left. Learn from the mistakes of leftism, and move on. Know the true foundations of oppression and get down to attacking those foundations. Otherwise, the best we can hope to achieve is temporary amelioration of symptoms, and that is just not enough.

    12 December 2006, 1:52 am

12. James M:

    Sorry to jump in the middle of this with a somewhat OT post, but I think everyone here would do well to read this woman’s blog. In regards to the particular essay I’m linking to, I’m finding the English language does not possess the proper epithets it makes me want to shout (in solidarity with what she expresses.)

    12 December 2006, 3:32 am

13. Charles:

    Was there a successful revolution in Nicaragua ? I think the counterrevolution succeeded a long time ago there , no ?

    12 December 2006, 2:23 pm

14. Charles:

    The oppression of women is the foundation of and template for all other forms of human oppression, including oppression of class by class.

    ^^^^^

    CB: Yes, this is a fundamental theme of this blog.

    So, how is it the “foundation” of colonialism and slavery ? Please elaborate .

    It’s 1400 in Europe. How does the oppression of women in Europe form the foundation for the initiation of slavery and colonialism ?

    Or take 2006. How does the oppression of women form the foundation of the U.S. invasion of Iraq ,and oppression of the Iraqi people ?

    How does the oppression of women cause the exploitation of the working class by the bourgeoisie ?

    12 December 2006, 2:34 pm

15. Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff:

    Such great commentary in here!

    Paul (and others, such great posts, Peggy!), a point I wanted to make with the post Stan posted up there (and it’s a post I make a lot wrt other issues) is that neither the Right nor the Left can be trusted to act in ways which are in women’s best interests, because neither is woman-centered. Both sides are male-led and male-centered. Yes, sometimes each side acts in ways which benefit women. The Right under Bush has done some good work against sex trafficking/human slavery. The Left has done good pro-reproductive rights work. But usually if you look closely, you see that when the Left engages in activism or work which benefits women, usually men also stand to benefit, and where there are issues which mostly or only benefit women, those issues receive comparatively short shrift by both Right and Left, i.e., issues around pornography/prostitution in particular. If you are a student of recent history, you also find that although the Right has usually been pretty much consistently anti-women’s rights, and openly so, the Left has consistently sold women’s rights down the river whenever it needed to cut some deal– just as Ortega did here. What is notable here is, the deal the Right and Left cut over the bodies of women is so starkly clear, obvious and unapologetic, not to mention it is on the heads-of-state, national scale. Usually these deals get cut more or less on the downlow, or with the benefit of multiple layers of smoke and mirrors to obfuscate the details.

    Thanks for posting my post, Stan, and for the great comments thread.

    Heart/Cheryl

    12 December 2006, 2:57 pm

16. Jonny:

    Just read that link, James.I’m sure no one at the bottom of any caste system has had worse experiences than that writer.I’ver read no better case for ending male impunity
    to commit crimes against women, and the private property
    system that forced the writer and her child to co-habitate with such men(and the one woman mentioned).

    12 December 2006, 3:36 pm

17. DeAnander:

    @JamesM — not OT at all

    @all my apologies for a momentary lowering of the usual standard of civil discourse on t’other thread. The Right Rev. Paul’s — so very rev and o so very, very right — preaching style got up my nose and caused an allergic reaction a few minutes with the neti pot and we should be all calm and decorous once more.

    sometimes the tone is the message.

    12 December 2006, 6:32 pm

18. Ricky:

    Ortega represents the corrupting influence of power in in and on the body politic, and how it remains true up and down the entire continuum regardless of doctrine or ideology. In that alt-universe it’s Necessity that trumps all. And justifies all. Like most, he truly believed he had no choice.

    And he also fleshes out how the desire and exercise of power in public life is so intimately connected with male sexual “expression” in the supposedly private. No doubt, also like most, he truly believed his “sex drive” is “hard-wired”. But that’s a lie, too. Not bred in the bone – just the brain. Many brains. Particularly the brains of those who happen to hold a controlling interest in the way things are.

    John Stoltenberg said it: “What makes male supremacy so insidious, so pervasive, such a seemingly permanent component of all our precious lives, is the fact that erection can be conditioned to it.”

    That’s a problem. And will continue to be a problem until class-men relinquish their power, forgo male priviledges, and disavow and disregard their sense of entitlement.

    Tall order, that.

    What does a man do – how does he feel – when he hears screams in the night?

    It’s not simply a matter of recognizing it. It’s a matter of who goes first.

    My theory is, Christianity could be Trojan Horse in that regard. Embedded at the heart of its Story is one man (and a God) who did exactly that.

    It’s a thought. And a hopeful one at that. So that’s pretty much what I’m about – the New Man. And politics, like charity, begins at home.

    12 December 2006, 7:43 pm

19. Ricky:

    If you want to know all about sects and sectarianism and the party spirit, one doesn’t need to look much further than a feminist analysis of power.

    12 December 2006, 8:07 pm

20. peggy:

    Charles, I could answer you, but then you would find fault with my answer and we would get into a dispute and it would just go on and on. Been there, done that. Not worth the time.

    13 December 2006, 12:22 am

21. Jonny:

    Ricky, aside from culling phallic terminology, and accepting gender oppression as the root of imperialism, how might “class-men relinquish their power, forgo male priviledges, and disavow and disregard their sense of entitlement”?

    When I look at the world, I see many people in power positions doing good things. Might beleiving that power “invariably” corrupts cut off any hope/ambitions to use state (or soviet or federation or central commitee) power to raise up the conditions of all women? I can’t imagine pimps, pornographers, molesters, or any other gender oppressor voluntarily re-humanizing his victims without encouragement and a change in social conditions. Use of power derived from organizing may be our only option. I prolly don’t need to list the massive advances made for all humans (including women)by powerful males. I’m with Geronimo Pratt on having powerful female leadership, like Elaine Brown led the Black Panthers.

    13 December 2006, 3:33 am

22. Jonny:

    How exactly to grow the new man in the old dirt…Cuba is arguably farthest ahead here….where’s those earthworms?

    13 December 2006, 3:36 am

23. skol:

    OT: Earthworm!
    This is imageshack, so I hope you have a pop-up blocker.

    I was bored. Hope you like

    13 December 2006, 3:29 pm

24. Ricky:

    how might “class-men relinquish their power, forgo male priviledges, and disavow and disregard their sense of entitlement”?

    Looking for a “to-do” list, grasshopper? Alright.

    1. Love one woman. Not to kill over, but to die for.

    2. Ask her.

    13 December 2006, 6:36 pm

25. peggy:

    skol: Excellent flag! Let’s use it.

    13 December 2006, 11:41 pm

26. Elaina:

    Once again, the men save the day with their superior knowledge of feminism, class struggle, and contradiction. Why don’t we bake ‘em some cookies and bring ‘em their slippers, already?

    I deal with machismo every day. Every goddam day. I deal with it in Spanish and in English, from white men and men who are not white, from poor men (these are usually the men who are not white, but from poor white men, too,) and in its internalized form from women from varying class backgrounds and ethnicities.

    When the idea, or the “program,” as it were, dictates that you’re supposed to act like the man to beat the man, you get to see things from a unique perspective. That’s all I’m sayin’.

    Where does the Left, or any organizational program that takes it’s guidance from a class-theory perspective, get the notion that, for example, that a person’s strength is measurable by how domineering she/he is?

    A politic’s measure of patriarchy isn’t only readable in it’s theory; it’s highly evident in practice and programming as well.

    Men of all classes and races/nationalities tend to see “women” as “women”, whatever the woman’s class or national background. According to these “revolutionary” (and I put the word in quotes because this shit ain’t revolutionary) “theories” of feminism’s “place” in the greater scheme of oppressions, male privilege can’t happen in a situation where a male of an oppressed class or nation is in interaction with a woman who is of a privileged class or white. And the theory ignores in whole that even highly privileged women experience oppression.

    Which is utter bullshit, and much more highly-fallutin’-ly theoretical than the material reality of how male privilege plays out across the board.

    Hell, I know plenty of people who don’t eat veal, including myself, because the conditions under which the calves are raised are “inhumane”- they’re trapped in tight cages, not allowed to move about, fed till they nearly burst, pumped full of hormones, etc. But according to this, ahem, model that I’m seeing spring forth, from Paul and from Charles, as long as a woman’s fed and clothed and polished and manicured she’s privileged and immune to oppression.

    Bullshit, like I said. Anyways, enough rambling, I gotta sleep.

    14 December 2006, 12:10 am

27. Charles:

    Charles, I could answer you, but then you would find fault with my answer and we would get into a dispute and it would just go on and on. Been there, done that. Not worth the time.

    Comment by peggy — 12/13/2006 @ 12:22 am

    ^^^^^^
    CB: Last time I read your post, you were saying nobody would pay attention to what you wrote. When I said give yourself more credit, you said , still, nobody replied to what you said. So,now I pay attention to what you wrote , and reply, but it’s not worth your time ?

    What game are we playing ? :>)

    Oh, I know. you want me to read what you say, reply to it, but agreeing only. I get it. I’ll just write ditto marks under everything you say.

    14 December 2006, 4:18 pm

28. Charles:

    Hell, I know plenty of people who don’t eat veal, including myself, because the conditions under which the calves are raised are “inhumane”- they’re trapped in tight cages, not allowed to move about, fed till they nearly burst, pumped full of hormones, etc. But according to this, ahem, model that I’m seeing spring forth, from Paul and from Charles, as long as a woman’s fed and clothed and polished and manicured she’s privileged and immune to oppression.

    ^^^^
    CB: Ok I’ll take the bait. No that’s not my idea.

    I say, go ahead and separate yourself from the “left”, since the left is so out of it. See if you can persuade some non-left, center and rightwingers and apolitical types to be feminists.

    Of course, you’ll say something like that I think I know more about what you are doing than you do. Ok. What is the purpose of all the political education about feminism ? Are you trying to persuade some people to adopt your point of view and do something, or not ? Maybe your aim is just to say good things, without trying to persuade anybody, I don’t know.

    If you are trying to persuade some men to stop doing something they are doing and start doing something you want them to do, then I’d say lefts, with all their faults, are better candidates to be persuaded than lots of other men. They have a basic concern for oppressed groups, in general. Also, you probably want to be on the workers’ side in the class struggle ( although , of course, I shouldn’t think I know anything about your interests). Ultimately, feminists and Marxists are very much on the same side.

    So, criticizing Lefts and separating yourself from them may be theoretically correct, but then won’t your political group be just as small as left groups or even smaller ? But again, of course, I don’t know what you are doing. I’m sure it’s big mystery that I shouldn’t think I know anything about.

    I’m not rambling, taking anything, and I’m not sleepy.

    14 December 2006, 4:45 pm

29. James L:

    Jonny, this site might interest you. I found it in the links on the right hand side of this site. There isn’t much content on it, but it’s still thought provoking.

    14 December 2006, 8:46 pm

30. Elaina:

    My focus is not so much on persuading men, here, to do the right thing. I do enough of that in my day-job, and sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.

    I shoot really straight and clear here 1. because too many women feel alienated from this site by all the conversation-interrupting dickwagging that goes on, and some woman has to do it and 2. so that women who read here and don’t feel like they can post what they want to say, due to said dickwagging, will get a little bit of encouragement from what I say. Even if what they have to say is against, or not in jive with, or complimentary to my own opinion. I post here so that other women will feel compelled to take up space on this male-dominated blog.

    SO NO. MY POSTS ARE NOT FUCKING FOCUSED ON MEN AND THE SHIT THAT THEY NEED.

    I didn’t realize that was a requirement. So I guess I’m out. Fuck it.

    15 December 2006, 12:58 am

31. peggy:

    For heavens sakes, Charles, all you do is argue. A bit of argument is fine and necessary, but a steady diet of it, from the ever-prolix and tireless you, can be a bit of a turn-off.

    15 December 2006, 1:00 am

32. peggy:

    Okay, Charles, I will answer the questions you posed above. Bear in mind that the intellectual labor I (a women) am providing for you (a man) is free of charge:

    Q: It’s 1400 in Europe. How does the oppression of women in Europe form the foundation for the initiation of slavery and colonialism ?

    A: Capitalism requires unlimited free natural resources and unlimited cheap labor for its continuation. Women have provided and continue to provide unlimited free labor to support paid labor. Europe did not have in itself sufficient natural or human (female) resources to expand its capital base, therefore it turned to extra-European sites for new human and material resources. If Europe had not become dependent on free (mostly female) human resources for its subsistence and growth, it would not have had to turn beyond its bounds for other free human and natural resources in the first place.

    Q. Or take 2006. How does the oppression of women form the foundation of the U.S. invasion of Iraq ,and oppression of the Iraqi people?

    A. George W. Bush is bent on proving his masculinity by way of making war on Iraq. He is trying to overcome what he perceives as his father’s weakness for not invading and conquering Iraq when Bush the First was president. In this classic patriarchal drama, women’s interests do not figure, nor do the interests of people without great wealth.

    Q. How does the oppression of women cause the exploitation of the working class by the bourgeoisie?

    A. Again, in this situation, women’s work is taken for granted, assumed to be a free natural resource. The traditional bourgeouis family expects its women not to have to work outside the home for money. In the traditional working class family, women have to work outside the home for money. In both bourgeouis and working class homes, women are expected to do the unpaid work of minding the household and raising the children. Both bourgeois and working class women are hampered by these expectations, but working class women are more hampered than women of the bourgeoisie.

    Charles: Just read the work of Maria Mies. She has been largely neglected both by Marxists and by feminists, and I do not know why, because she puts it all together clearly.

    15 December 2006, 4:27 am

33. DeAnander:

    I am moved to quote (with permission) my buddy rootlesscosmo, on various points:
    

    [on masculinist styles of argumentation and competitive, insistent verbal duelling/sparring:] [feminist divorce-lawyer friend] tells her clients, “Just disengage.” But he’ll get the last word? — Yes. He’ll feel victorious? — Yes. But he’s wrong? — You’ll never persuade him of that. But he’s insulted me? — Indeed he has, and continuing the exchange only lets him do it some more. But this means the loudest, most bullying voices dominate the public arena? — Yes, and what else is new? The one thing that will make him–eventually–look elsewhere is for you to fall silent and stay that way. The first rule of family law: Boys Win, Girls Lose. The system works.

    [on the Doctrine thread (one of the longest in FS history I believe):] I have skimmed it, and yes, it’s fairly tedious, because it feels to me as though this (to me pointless) dispute is dragging Stan back into the sectarian swamp when I wish he’d engage some deeper theoretical problems. I really liked Joaquin’s (I think) quote from a pretty obscure work of Marx about the difference between innovators and their followers, but nobody (as far as I’ve seen) has stopped to ask what class is or why it matters. One loyalist announced that the proletariat is a minority in the US — not what Marx predicted at all — and that what matters is its historic mission, not anything transient like what it wants or thinks — admittedly hard to divine since we’re not sure who’s in it.

    I really think the whole theoretical apparatus needs to be laid aside — listening to that solemn whiteboy reading passages from the Manifesto under the cartoon Stan linked to only reinforced this opinion. Society reduced to two antagonistic classes? Wages depressed to a uniform level of misery? The executive of the state “nothing but” a committee for managing the affairs of the bourgeoisie? Come on. If we don’t know our world any better than that, we’re not doing serious politics, and the claim to be practitioners of a “science” is pitiable.

    In fact I think the debate over Primary Contradictions is also not a useful way to invest time and intellectual energy, because it’s still trying to find a way to explain history in terms Hegel would have recognized (even if “with a new content,” as we used to say, ignoring the Hegelian principle that Form and Content, too, make up a dialectical unity.) Why do we need Marx’s idea of class to defend workers’ rights? Why do we need to talk about Marx at all to understand the pervasiveness and depth of women’s oppression? Do we need Marx on the Irish to grasp the way racism has shaped every aspect of US history, from railroad labor law to the actuarial tables? Sure, if something the old boy said seems apposite, quote him by all means; quote Melville or Sylvia Plath or William Blake, but let’s not bother about the definition of Melvillism-Plathism, OK? when there’s a calamitous world out there and a very slim chance of saving it from utter disaster.

    I’m definitely a Bernsteinian, at least as far as political strategy goes: all we know for certain is that there is injustice, that those who are treated unjustly will resist, that self-respect dictates we side with them and not with their oppressors, and that — as [feminist friend] says, and I’ve come to agree very strongly — we’re lousy at foreseeing the consequences of our choices and we’re responsible if they’re terrible, even if our intentions were the best and our information the most reliable we could get.

    [and apropos of good intentions and bad results:] I really do not know what Jonny means by citing George Jackson and Mao. Did George Jackson’s goal of uniting prisoners across “race” lines come to pass? Was George Jackson’s 1971 declaration that “fascism is here” accurate, and if so, why are we still debating whether it’s coming? Was Mao’s homily about unity against an external enemy borne out by events in China? How can any sane person, knowing what happened to the Chinese people under the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, suggest that Mao is a guide to building a better world? Good god, what next–the wisdom of Abimael Guzman? The thoughts of Comrade Number One, Pol Pot?

    NB: these are rootless’ words and thoughts, not my own. he has gone back to using Safari, which hiccups when interacting with WP or at least with this instance of WP, so I post on his behalf.

    15 December 2006, 7:26 pm

34. Jonny:

    Admission: I am male, and do not wish to dominate this blog, but rather seek to clarify why I cited George Jackson’s thoughts(which included George’s reference to Mao).
    Jackson’s group’s organizing work DID unite the prisoners of Soledad prison, who before that were about as divided as prisoners are today(maybe the gulf between prison gangs/races is at least as great as that between women and men on the outside, seeing as they were raping and brutalizing eachother as US prisoners and too many on the outside continue to do today). The progress in Soledad, like the Panther’s community schools,free breakfast and medical programs, ended with state mayhem against the activists. Imho, with the inordinate number of POC incarcerated in the US, and the expansionist aggressive wars of the US gov, a Black prisoner under John Birch Society type guards might well perceive himself to be living under fascism.Too bad you weren’t in George’s cell with him to explain how he was wrong.

    Great leap forward – life expectancy increased by years for both men and women. Literacy soared. Women’s rights advanced. Mao’s group should have known better, right rootless?

    Cultural revolution: the old political class and family joined the party at the last second when it looked like the party would prevail. weaseled into roles as corrupt party officials. How do you get rid of parts of the government without repeating Stalin era mistakes?
    As we know, Mao’s group’s plan didn’t work out either.
    But those men and women were still living longer, and could still read! Where were you to tell them they were better off before, rootless?
    This post is getting too long…so I’ll save clarifying the Cambodian and Peruvian situations for another time.Radical means from the root.Think big, rootless.

    16 December 2006, 3:15 am

35. Sks:

    Am sorry, but Marxism not recognizing the body is epistemologically incorrect.

    In fact, Marxism was among the first european philosophical schools to view the body as is.

    Joseph Dietzgen, who both Marx and Engels credit (and not so magnanimously as they thought) as being the creator of “historical materialism” (a large chunk of what we call “Marxism”) says:

    “Thinking is a work of the body[...]In order to think I require a substance that can be thought of. This substance is provided in the phenomena of nature and life[...]Matter is the boundary of the mind, beyond which the latter cannot pass[...]Mind is a product of matter, but matter is more than a product of mind”.

    Yes, gender is not touched, and one can presume patriarchial inclinations in working-class Dietzgen (later a rather influential anarcho-syndicalist in Chicago).

    However, that quote (which Lenin also quoted, and is perhaps Dietzgen’s most famous), is exemplary of the Marxian/Marxist philosophical preocupation with the body. Philosophers until then spoke of the mind as supreme, above the puerile, dirty, and sexually (in THAT sense) problematic body. After marxism, body and mind are one, and hence we can begin to see the mind as also puerile, dirty, and sexually problematic. It was the key step that allowed western science and philosophy to go beyond thinking and into acting. It planted seeds that among its many outgrows lies gender radicalism.

    Definitely it is interesting to explore why marxism was and is so dominated by patriarchal thought, but definitely a source of this thought is not ignorance of the body.

    I offer that the existence of a great deal of marxian mannerism and language in early radical gender theory and early radical feminism actually put lie to this perception: it was because marxism was the closest available linguistic tool capable of touching the body as it is, rather than as we want/need it to be.

    No coincidence either that radical anthropology, which is the scientific forebearer of contemporary radical gender thought, also shares this link to marxism. If the thought of, say, Stephen Jay Gould as intellectual enabler of radical feminism sounds contradictory, perhaps it is. It doesn’t diminish its truth.

    I do recognize I sound like I am defending marxism in terms that might sound fetishist, but it is not. My goal is rather to question the revisionist epistemology that seeks to deny marxism as a force for liberation of concrete oppression, including that of the body.

    In seeking to purge from marxism its oppresive existence (which rather sadly, outweights in practice other aspects), I do not think it is positive to deny its liberationist existence… Doing so is an exercise of extremism, like equating Hitler and FDR, because both were corporatist capitalists, or Hitler and Stalin because both presided death camps…

    On other things:

    mencanstoprape.org is interesting and ultimately positive, but still stirs a tought. Its propagandistic emphasis on male strength diverter to other uses seems a bit problematic. Not just the obvious reinforcement of male stereotypes as brawny dimwits, but also of far more dangerous (for gender relations) archetypes of men as protectors of damsels in distress. There is an entire body of “erotica” (and not so erotica: any “Danger Mouse” episode would do) dedicated to this archetype, in which men stop rape.

    And lets not get into the USA’s racial politics, were rape victims are overwhelmingly white and rapists overwhelmingly black, *IF* we are to believe the prision-industrial complex.

    Ultimately it perpetuates both a self-image and attitude to gender thats completely patriarchal. “Be a *man*, *choose* not to rape” is ultimately both conterintutive and condesending: men are both told to be more manly as a way to stop the quintessential male behaivior and incapable of stopping being men (or at least the most nefarious side of its existence), with out somehow being “less”.

    I might understand it as a transitional step in the development of men as they relate to women, but leaves a bit of a bad aftertaste. Am I just being sour?

    Treason to gender is loyalty to humanity!

    16 December 2006, 5:37 am

36. Sks:

    “How exactly to grow the new man in the old dirt…Cuba is arguably farthest ahead here….where’s those earthworms?”

    Actually, even the USA is better in gender matters than Cuba.

    I speak from experience.

    Now, the *women* of Cuba against overwhelming odds, including a homophobic, womanizing patriarch of a Comandante, do give a lesson or three in their struggle.

    But far from won, it is.

    (which is very on topic: Fidel is buddy-buddy with Ortega since forever)

    16 December 2006, 5:42 am

37. Vincent S. Paglia:

    This site is a great resource. My comment is unrelated to Nicaragua’s ban on abortion, instead focusing on your frothing condemnation of Daniel Ortega as a child molester.

    I’ve noticed how in spite of your generally critical attitude toward accusations and government prosecutions, anytime any male is accused of anything criminal — be it violence, sexual abuse, or threats — against a female, you are the first to lead the lynchmob toward an immediate guilty verdict absent any kind of hearing or evidence or opportunity for the accused to defend himself.

    The truth that women are oppressed does not mandate that every male accused of something by a female is automatically guilty. As a human being and as a criminal defense attorney, I have personally observed the infinite range of possibilities–other than the
    simple, no-need-for-evidence-or-thought judgment of “guilty”–that exist every time a criminal accusation is presented. The potential of individuals to (1) deliberately lie, (2) unintentionally misremember events, and/or (3) tell an incomplete picture of the truth, cannot be overestimated. These possibilities are at least as common, if not more so, in accusations of child abuse, sexual abuse, and domestic violence, as in other types of criminal allegations.

    In each of these well-publicized accusations, people love to jump to conclusions without actually knowing any of the persons involved, hearing/seeing evidence, or subjecting the accuser to any kind of inquiry or test of their claims.

    It’s a lynch mob mentality, plain and simple, and it’s the type of flawed mentality that we cannot tolerate on the Left.

    Otherwise, your insight is powerful and persuasive.

    Best,

    VP

    16 December 2006, 2:07 pm

38. jonny:

    Sks- “Actually, even the USA is better in gender matters than Cuba? hmmm..let’s start with the bad and move to the good. The number of women entering US prison from 1980 to 1998 rose by 516%…

    Here is what happens to many of the 140,000 women in US prisons…
    http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0315-04.htm

    And here is another relevant report….
    http://web.amnesty.org/report2001/webamrcountries/UNITED+STATES+OF+AMERICA?OpenDocument

    Cuba is roasted for having 300 political prisoners, I don’t know how many are female. On the other hand, the Cuban gov still refuses to repatriate one of my heroes, feminist Assata Shakur(a leader of the BLA), even in return for a slackening of some parts of the long-running and illegal US embargo against the island. Evidently, Cuba is far from a simple country.

    and now the good….Cuba’s post-rev literacy rate and life-expectancy is 98% and 76 respectively, compared to the US’s 99% and 76. Life expectancy reflects overall quality of life. Cuba’s policies on homosexuality are another discussion, one which I’m not knowledgable enough to take up at this time.

    Vincent’s comment may be relevant to the Ortega allegations. A lynch mob mentality presented as a fact, then used to portray other ideological enemies as “best buds” with the alleged molester. Guilt by association. What follows some context on my own development…(no direct connection to the above)

    After I myself was molested as a child(among many) by a man with a beard, it took many years to rid myself of what had developed into an instinctual fear of and deep hatred for guys with beards.It took even longer to learn to separate gay men from child molesters. Until I had learned that separation, I would have been the first to unjustly accuse and attack someone who seemed a likely perpetrator based upon my previous experiences. Such an (understandable, in retrospect) orientation inhibited my development for some years.
    If I hadn’t luckily happened to meet some 100% solid guys with beards and been forced to re-examine my flawed convictions, I would doubtless still carry them with me.

    I see signs, and am hopeful that this site, among its many good projects, also births a new type of North-American feminism within which a strong will to power figures prominently. All of these great ideas merit implementation ASAP.

    16 December 2006, 7:54 pm

39. DeAnander:

    Cuba is also, sad to say, a favourite “sex tourism” spot, discussed and recommended on the fora and message boards (here’s a typically loathesome web site) where male consumers of sex tourism hang out. The US blockade with its warping effect on the island’s currency and economy provides an incentive; but it’s interesting to note that the socialist solidarity and fierce defiance of US domination [which can only inspire the rest of us with yearning and admiration] that achieved the miracles of Cuban food security and medical/educational equity, did not create sufficient gender equality (or national pride?) to protect Cuban women from exploitation by foreigners carrying US dollars.

    As usual the women become a political football in duels between men: rightwingnuts in the States point to Cuban prostitution [talk about the mote in your neighbour's eye, when the US is home afaik to the biggest porn/prostitution industry on earth] as proof of the immorality and brutality of Communism; the Castro regime meanwhile denies that there is any problem all, because these things don’t happen in socialist states, yada yada. The women don’t seem to get a word in edgewise… you can find a fair amount of text about Cuban prostitutes online, but it’s hard to find anything by these women, despite the fact that their literacy rate is probably the highest of any population of prostituted people in the world…

    The advent of information technology and internet connectivity has only made it harder for the Castro government to ban prostitution. Some civil libertarians celebrate this as a victory for human rights in Cuba… the wonderful Internet disabling the State’s power to control individuals and “interfere in the bedroom”. Making it easier for men to rent women’s bodies, some victory for human rights… When “the bedroom” is also “the sweatshop,” do we celebrate the State’s nose being kept out of it?

    “Poverty” is cited as the reason for Cuban prostitution, especially in the rightwing Western press which always has to emphasise Cuba’s poverty (the socialist state must be painted as a failure). But given the excellence of Cuban healthcare, the island’s exemplary food security, guaranteed housing, etc., the teeth of poverty are blunted in Cuba as compared to other third world nations or the inner cities or devastated rural counties of America (the thirdworld hinterland of the firstworld superpower). It seems clear that a guarantee of the basics of survival is not sufficient to ensure that women are not prostituted. One thing we don’t really know — since all the easily-accessible reports seem to come from men with an axe to grind one way or another — is whether Cuban female prostitutes are exploited by pimps, or organised into socialist collectives, or each woman independent, or what…? If anyone knows more about the riddle of prostitution in socialist Cuba, I for one am curious to learn.

    17 December 2006, 12:26 am

40. Sks:

    I

    On the “jineteras”.

    This a great question in that it hits right on the head what constitutes prostitution or not.

    First in Cuba, it is socially considered that there are two types of prostitutes:

    1) The “classic” prostitute with a pimp. This type gets called prostitute by everyone, and takes both cuban and foreign clients. She is paid for sex, never companionship. Her market is mostly bureaucrats, businessmen, and business travelers.

    2) Tourist hanger ons, mostly independent (although lately I have hear of a phenomenon of older jineteras staking out territory and charging others for the privilege to use it, in effect becoming madams). She doesn’t take money upfront, and is not considered and doesnt consider herself a prostitute. You could call her a barter prostitute and provides companionship and even sightseeing guidedance. They entirely go for tourists, and many in fact are seeking marriage to get out of Cuba.

    Now I think both are prostitutes, social euphemism aside. But you asked.

    Now as to “why”, well thats a a question that party sociologists are still debating, but the consensus in what I have read is that the classic prostitute tends to be a woman more or less forced into it by the pimp, who is usually either her husband or boyfriend (he maight have others). The motive of the pimp is luxury wealth.

    The barter prostitutes however tend to be women who want to live outside of Cuban society, having a sort of wanderlust. There is also a luxury profit motive, but this seems secondary to the wanderlust. In fact, women who are not sucessful in a few years tend to forget about it.

    What is interesting, more ever, is that this wanderlust tend to be even out of the Cuban exile community. In a sense it is a escape.

    Some Cuban feminists have written positively of the jinetera experience in this shade of it, seeing it as a break with patriarchial traditions of ownership. Ill try to dig some biblio up.

    II

    Yeah I am all for defending and upholding the many triumphs of the Cuban Revolution. Its just that gender isn’t one of them, at least from the perspective of radical undertakings.

    Using jail figures in the USA is quaint: those represent less than 10% of the total prision population, the bulk of which are black men. This is not to say women are not oppressed int he USA, just that prisions are not even in the top ten. So, next…

    What I did mean is that in the USA women have legal guarantees and even in places social mores that allow them to exist independent of men to a degree that would be unthinkable in Cuba. Partly, it is related to “freedoms” in the liberal capitalist sense, but partly it is related the the strong, century old women’s movement and its struggles. This movement, in all of its complexity has always had in common a true independence from men.

    The “mass organizations” for women in Cuba are a caricature of a women’s movement, and represent in fact a continuation of gender oppression under the guise of feminism. It is very similar to the existence of class society in Socialist Cuba, except people do have free health care, while “mass organizations” do jack shit, and sometimes cover up, all kinds of gender oppression.

    I have become less tolerant of leftists that try to pass Cuba off as this kind of socialist utopic paradise when it isn’t.

    While the poverty in Cuba has to do much more with it being a poor country than it being socialist, and in fact its socialists elements ail the suffering of millions, the class struggle, racism, and sexism, are still fundamental parts of Cuban society, and the Cuban state does very little to stop this things.

    They have done some positive things, but I am not the complacient type. A constitutional ammendment forbidding sex discrimination is useless if all your major ministers and military commanders, in a militarized State, are men.

    The USA lacks such clear constitutional language, however women have been in all of the important executive positions short of vice president and president.

    That they did imperialism’s bidding is another discussion. What is important is that the leader of the USA, themselves patriarchal men, have been forced to recongize in practice the equality of women.

    17 December 2006, 3:57 am

41. James L:

    Hi Sks,

    You’ve made some good points about mencanstoprape.org, but I don’t see the “my strength is not for hurting” theme as being as problematic as you do. It can be interpreted as implying a subordinate, dependant role for women, but it can also be interpreted as a refutation of conventional masculinity without any such connotations. The patriarchal definition of a man is someone who dominates other people and hurts them, and the more hurt he causes the higher his status. So the suggestion that hurting people is not desirable seems highly subversive to me.

    Also, I don’t think that the way they talk about strength implies that it is exclusively a male characteristic. So I don’t think it perpetuates any sort of dichotomy in this regard.

    I see this kind of campaign as being a necessary transitional step, because the intention is to communicate ideas to people who have grown up (or are growing up) in a patriarchal society, and to do that you need to relate those ideas to something they understand. The concept of strength does have some odious connotations, but it has other meanings as well. I think the use of the word has the potential to change its meaning over time, rather than perpetuating the current value system.

    20 December 2006, 1:53 am

42. Elki:

    Rather than prologue-bashing each other, can we forward our views on this abortion subject? I find it horribly oppresive for woman not to have this as her given right to choose. In the case of rape or forced sexual encounter that causes the pregnancy, that this new law is to be implemented is barbaric and primitive. If men could fall pregnant im sure this wouldnt even be an issue – abortions would be granted.

    If i was any of the woman who was caught up in a heinous crime of falling pregnant to a rapist – i would leave the country and get an abortion elsewhere. The depths of shame, and psychological pressures to bring a child into the world this way cannot be expressed.

    29 December 2006, 7:45 pm

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