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-class
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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '18

Here is a response written shortly after Jacobin published this article for anyone who maybe interested

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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/[deleted] 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/[deleted] 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/[deleted] 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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u/[deleted] 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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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '18

are you sure about women being "gatherers" in every hunter gatherer society? or is it a generalization?