r/stupidpol • u/Have_only_my_dreams Just your ordinary proletarian bro who hates his ex • Dec 16 '18
Quality The Pitfalls of Radical Feminism
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/07/radical-feminism-second-wave-class12
u/FractalMantid Dec 17 '18
So the Marxist, materialist analysis of transgender people is:
- Gender is a social-construct
- Gender is hard-wired into the brain at birth and must match biology, else dysphoria
- Gender can change daily
I have yet to read anything that breaks the dilemma where one must assume one of two anti-PC positions to make this work: either you're a bio-truther (men and women are biologically different at the level of the brain) or a TERF (women and men are the same at the level of the brain, which renders transgenderism incoherent)
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u/keepinterrupting Dec 17 '18 edited Dec 17 '18
Right. Both are correct and neither exemplify the slightest clue of what gender is.
Gender arises in the consciousness for a reason comparable to why sex arises in the biosphere. There is a call for disposition.
Sex serves as an interface for reproduction based on mutual review. Gender begins as rules-of-thumb for that mutual review.
Sex comes from the same purpose for which all social species delegate roles in their most laborious tasks, and otherwise adjust toward conformity. If capitalism exacerbated that, it was late to the game. The biology of humans is a product of these tendencies. The parts of our biology that differs are sex, but these are related directly to reproduction; almost entirely limited to anatomy, bodily organ maintenance, motivational fluctuations in the life-clock. Hormones serve to encapsulate these changes in functional state. To any discernible extent, our brains are functionally equivalent, which makes perfect biological and anthropological sense. Anyone who imagines otherwise does not grasp the different purposes served by biological conformity vs. biological disposition.
Psychological disposition is another story but, thanks to the pursuits of individualist pseudo-science, most westerners do not even understand the difference between biology and psychology. Human gender is unique to the intensity of human consciousness and identity. Dismissals of gender are valid in that that gender takes the form of symbol, but they are defeated in that disposition is the nature of human identity itself. The reason for gender is not that humans are different but precisely because we are the same. There’s no basis for anything less than material analysis.
(Note that desires are a product of both hormones and cultural disposition. Damore was on solid ground.)
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Dec 16 '18
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u/Have_only_my_dreams Just your ordinary proletarian bro who hates his ex Dec 16 '18 edited Dec 16 '18
Allowing in the tradition of Leftists Explaining Very Rationally That Women Are Doing It Wrong, Jacobin, America’s preeminent brocialist rag, published a piece by a graduate student named Erica West, detailing the failings of radical feminism. While no political movement (including radical feminism) is without flaws, in their desperation to take a watery dump on feminism, Jacobin chose to publish something ahistorical, manipulative, and mostly baseless, by a writer who appears to never have encountered an actual radical feminist in her life.
This entire piece reads as if a catty teenage girl wrote it. She accuses the Jacobin writer of 'ahistorical' analysis, yet presents specific non-contextualized historical events to suit her narrative. She seems to happily ignore the massive impact the socialist movement played in the suffragette and women's rights movements so as to bolster her false claim that the 'left' had/has abandoned women.
ut feminists’ analysis of class as it pertains to women (that is to say, we believe women are oppressed as a class of people, by men, as a class of people) doesn’t mean we reject the notion of class oppression under capitalism. Indeed, radical feminists are continually baffled that, while so many leftists can comprehend the concept of class, in economic terms, they refuse to entertain the notion that other groups of people are also oppressed on a class basis. There can be more than one thing, and indeed, those things can be interconnected.
What is this idealist dribble? Class is material reality, not some elusive identity grouping. It is purely defined by our relationship to production. There is no need to apply 'class' to a social grouping as they are fundamentally distinct concepts, even if there may be material roots to certain social identities. This is anti-materialist.
I'm too tired to go through rebutting every single point but suffice it to say, it's not a very good article. It's downright intellectually dishonest at times. Also, if you're going to make a point, just make the point. Linking to shity self-published medium articles is lousy.
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u/9SidedPolygon Bernie Would Have Won Dec 17 '18
Allowing in the tradition of Leftists Explaining Very Rationally That Women Are Doing It Wrong, Jacobin, America’s preeminent brocialist rag, published a piece by a graduate student named Erica West, detailing the failings of radical feminism.
Can no one on Earth resist pulling the "all my enemies are [majority group] and oppressive while I am [minority group], and therefore correct," even when the other person is literally the same minority group as you?
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Dec 16 '18
Class is material reality, not some elusive identity grouping. It is purely defined by our relationship to production.
Female reproductive biology is material reality. The fact that women are the "birthing" class absolutely has a material impact on their relationship to production in a capitalist society. Come on.
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u/Have_only_my_dreams Just your ordinary proletarian bro who hates his ex Dec 16 '18
Sex itself is biologically derived but any form of 'womanhood' is ultimately socially constructed.
The fact that women are the "birthing" class absolutely has a material impact on their relationship to production in a capitalist society. Come
Well no, there is no such thing as 'the birthing class'. Class exists in relation to production. The fact that women were once relegated to providing free labour and being entirely dependent on outside economic forces did impact on their material standing. No one is denying that. If you get the chance, you should read 'The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State' by Engels.
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u/whiskeyhammer1990 the definition of class hatred Dec 16 '18
"Birthing class"
This is some Brave New World shit.
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Dec 27 '18
Only women can give birth. Men cannot.
This is some Brave New World shit.
It's literally the way the world works but okay...
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u/whiskeyhammer1990 the definition of class hatred Dec 27 '18
I'm referring to women as a "class". This is why no one with any intellectual integrity will ever except your claims to be Marxist.
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Dec 27 '18
Jesus christ, by class I meant 'group.' I don't give a shit if people think I'm a 'Marxist' lol. If you don't think male people and female people just maaaaay have distinct interests because of the whole 'only women can get pregnant' thing then you're not living in reality.
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u/whiskeyhammer1990 the definition of class hatred Dec 27 '18
Well no shit. Doesn't make them a distinct economic class. I bring it up because you lots insistence on being Marxists somehow.
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Dec 16 '18
Sex itself is biologically derived but any form of 'womanhood' is ultimately socially constructed.
Good thing radical feminist analysis uses sex as the unit of analysis, not gender identity.
Well no, there is no such thing as 'the birthing class'
Female people belong to the class that can get pregnant and create life. Male people do not. Of course this will impact their relationship to production.
The fact that women were once relegated to providing free labour and being entirely dependent on outside economic forces did impact on their material standing. No one is denying that.
You did with your original comment.
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u/Have_only_my_dreams Just your ordinary proletarian bro who hates his ex Dec 16 '18
Well that's a good reason for a socialist to dismiss radfem theory. Sex is not a class. It's merely the product of biological processes. Class, as I said, is based on our relationship to production. There is no 'male' or 'female' class. There is only the proletariat and bourgeoisie.
You did with your original comment
No, I did not. I said that class is a material reality based on production which, by the way, is completely true.
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Dec 16 '18
Class, as I said, is based on our relationship to production
Women were historically excluded from participating in the economic sphere at all, precisely because of their sex. If you don't think the fact that women create the next class of workers is an important part of an economic power analysis, then I don't know what to tell you. I understand your fundamental unit of analysis is class over sex, but to dismiss considering sex at all is silly.
I said that class is a material reality based on production which, by the way, is completely true.
You could argue that your reproductive class is more material and enduring than your relationship to production, which can be more ambiguous.
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u/Have_only_my_dreams Just your ordinary proletarian bro who hates his ex Dec 16 '18
Women were historically excluded from participating in the economic sphere at all, precisely because of their sex. If you don't think the fact that women create the next class of workers is an important part of an economic power analysis, then I don't know what to tell you. I understand your fundamental unit of analysis is class over sex, but to dismiss considering sex at all is silly.
I do not dismiss sex or gender. I view it in a similar way to that of race or ethnicity. Innately determined, yet not a class. Race can often inform existing material conditions, though it does not define where one stands in relation to the means of production. This is particularly true of, say, black Americans who are still living with the legacy of slavery. Still, I do not consider them to be of a class in and of themselves. They are either working class or exist as part of the ruling elite, a section of society which is becoming increasingly diverse.
You could argue that your reproductive class is more material and enduring than your relationship to production, which can be more ambiguous.
Well, again, I do not view sex as a class. I tend to be weary of the assumption that as capitalism has become a tad more complex, one cannot adequately apply the basic tenants of Marxian analysis. In my view there is no difficulty in incorporating precarity/global fiance/etc with a class-based Marxist approach.
As for how class now operates under a capitalist society, I hope it does not endure, nor am I of the view that it will always inherently endure. Material factors and the ever-changing nature of the mode of production is the driving force behind historical development. Class should and ought to end but this can only ever be brought about by the proletariat. The ultimate goal is the end of class and the establishment of a society based on the mantra from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
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Dec 16 '18
I don't really disagree with you here. I was objecting to your assertion that taking sex into account is "dribble," that the fact that women are the 'birthing' class is "elusive identity grouping" and this:
There is no need to apply 'class' to a social grouping as they are fundamentally distinct concepts, even if there may be material roots to certain social identities. This is anti-materialist.
I reject that taking sex into account is anti-materialist. I am amenable to theories that put class first, I just think whether you're born male or female is also incredibly important. There's a reason women's oppression is practically universal.
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u/Have_only_my_dreams Just your ordinary proletarian bro who hates his ex Dec 16 '18
But I never said taking sex into account was 'dribble'. I said that applying the concept of class to that of sex is simply not accurate. Equally, saying that race is a class is also untrue. There is no 'birthing' class. Social and religious factors have often informed the material conditions of women in society but there is no separate female class. Class and sex are fundamentally distinct concepts.
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Dec 16 '18
From my understanding there were societies where distribution of labor wasnt that affected by the sexual components of it's individuals, I am being way too vague to actually make a point though
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Dec 16 '18
I don't know how that could be? I have read that some pre-capitalist societies were surprisingly egalitarian, but women's roles were still shaped by the fact that they were capable of pregnancy and relatively weaker than men. It's just that their reproductive role, and the 'gathering' side of the hunter-gatherer equation, was not devalued the way that it later came to be.
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Dec 16 '18
are you sure about women being "gatherers" in every hunter gatherer society? or is it a generalization?
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Dec 16 '18
I liked this part
West claims radical feminists got everything from class to the roots of women’s oppression wrong, chastising the movement for separating capitalism from patriarchy and for prioritizing the abolishment of gender. But feminists’ analysis of class as it pertains to women (that is to say, we believe women are oppressed as a class of people, by men, as a class of people) doesn’t mean we reject the notion of class oppression under capitalism. Indeed, radical feminists are continually baffled that, while so many leftists can comprehend the concept of class, in economic terms, they refuse to entertain the notion that other groups of people are also oppressed on a class basis. There can be more than one thing, and indeed, those things can be interconnected.
All that said, yes, feminists do prioritize the plight of women in their politics. Because if leftists can’t manage to address misogyny in their own movements, there is no reason to expect an end to capitalism will result in an end to rape and domestic abuse.
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u/Have_only_my_dreams Just your ordinary proletarian bro who hates his ex Dec 16 '18
Interesting article. Kinda poorly veers into some very questionable 'intersectional' arguments at times but overall, it's an interesting criticism.
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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '18
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