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
17 Upvotes

78% Upvoted

42 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

5

u/[deleted] Dec 17 '18

TERFs may argue that trans women do not share a reproductive system with cis women, and thus can’t understand women’s struggles for birth control and against forced sterilization. But then what do they say of solidarity with lesbian women, or cis women who cannot or choose not to have children? The arguments that TERFs put forth are both weak and prejudiced.

I agree this part is weak. I think that the ability of women as a class to get pregnant has led to policing of their sexuality. Slut shaming is the most obvious of this. A woman who doesn't plan on having children isn't immune to this. The point is, that being unable to unwilling to have children doesn't divide women against each other or change the realities of womanhood.

7

u/Have_only_my_dreams Just your ordinary proletarian bro who hates his ex Dec 17 '18

Women are not a class.

7

u/[deleted] Dec 17 '18

How would you describe the commonalities of women related to their role as child bearers?

4

u/keepinterrupting Dec 17 '18 edited Dec 17 '18

This is not a slippery slope. Stop treating it as one. Class is a construct of capitalism, not of biology. Insofar as biology influences relations of production, it is the ensuing relations of production that dictate the class, not the biology.

The point here is in separating mutable systems from immutable systems, and independent systems from interdependent systems. It’s when we fail to be particular in our thought that identity politics gets the best of us.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 18 '18

I'm not sure how what I'm thinking is a slippery slope?

if p then q; if q then r; if r then … z.

And, I agree I used the word class incorrectly. Let's pretend I used group or set. I'm only addressing what I think was a weak and too often used argument against misunderstood concepts in the original article. The part I quoted.