Which of these two situations do you think is better for a woman?
Situation 1:
Married couple with small child. Only the husband works. Mom stays at home with the child and raises it as she sees fit. Husband consults his wife, but makes the final decision on economic choices for the family.
Situation 2:
Married couple with small child. Both work and make a little over half as much money as the husband in situation 1. The child is raised by a daycare during the day, which reduces the income of the family somewhat. However, both parents make economic decisions as equals.
discipline posted:
ok this is why I don't hop on board with the llco line of throwing all first world feminists into the gutter and setting them on fire, and also why the french-algérienne in the essay pogfan posted doesn't go the whole 9 yards in condemning first world feminism in the way NCF pointed out. I cling to the hope that the overwhelming majority of first world feminists have the right intentions, and only god knows what is in their hearts but I operate under that assumption. so I want to tread carefully because I love and respect and owe a debt to all the women who have made sacrifices to give me such a good life.
I make criticisms of first world feminism because it has been co-opted by and absorbed into capitalism. mass "counter culture" or progressive social movements past the 70's - the last time I consider them to be of any worth - were either smashed completely (black nationalism, AIM) or appropriated. is it a stretch to say that USA feminism, for instance, has not been utterly disarmed into something docile and quaint on a university campus? sure, we can see good hearted women here and there doing their best, but as a mass movement, first world feminism has stalled and bloated in decay.
I hold first world feminism responsible for the current state of women in the USA in the same way I hold kruschev responsible for the fall of the USSR. of course capitalism did it. but there are criticisms to be made in the model that was supposed to fight it. when your derby car gets busted all to hell you don't yell at it, you examine it and try and figure out how to win the next race. likewise, there are major glaring criticisms to be made w/r/t first world feminism. I'm not blaming feminism. I'm trying to ask how we can make feminism win - even if that means changing the name or goals of the movement. girls are legit ashamed to call themselves feminists today. why is that? we need to examine how the rug got pulled out so quick. and we can't do that by blaming capitalism.
feminism in the first world has not really been coopted or absorbed -- defanged & declawed, certainly, but like you note, it's a similar fate to other movements although more reminiscent of the workers' rights movement than either of your specific examples. like the workers' movement feminism still exists in some form, but restricted to particular environments and derided by the majority. feminism has (some parts of) academia, the workers have tiny remnants of the union structure that used to exist (and which, like the uaw seems to be doing now, can still sell them out)
i think the reasons women are ashamed or afraid to call themselves feminist now really don't have a whole lot to do with feminism itself but with how society has shoved it in a corner and made it a thing to be derided and loathed. there are similar things going on -- in the united states a lot of leftists keep their politics on the dl outside the internet, and there are also probably some interesting parallels to be drawn with the phenomenon of queers staying in the closet etc
basically it still seems like you are holding feminism responsible for what has been done to it. there are issues still to be resolved within feminism, sure, but saying that it needs to be fixed in order to overcome what external forces have done to it is the wrong approach in addition to having rather funny implications when applied specifically to feminism
NounsareVerbs posted:
Not trying to advocate for any point of view here. You are obviously very well studied on this subject and I want your genuine opinion.
Which of these two situations do you think is better for a woman?
Situation 1:
Married couple with small child. Only the husband works. Mom stays at home with the child and raises it as she sees fit. Husband consults his wife, but makes the final decision on economic choices for the family.
Situation 2:
Married couple with small child. Both work and make a little over half as much money as the husband in situation 1. The child is raised by a daycare during the day, which reduces the income of the family somewhat. However, both parents make economic decisions as equals.
i don't think either is universally better (universalization is a crock, eat shit kant). what works for some doesn't necessarily work for others, what's important is that the woman has freely chosen to enter into either situation & is not held there by social, economic, or other restrictions or concerns that do not apply equally to her spouse
Married couple with a baby. Both work and make a significant amount of money. The child is raised by a nanny which reduces the income of the family negligibly. However, both parents and a financial adviser make economic decisions equally. Three men disguised as newspaper photographers kidnap the baby, the baby manages to escape but the kidnappers are in pursuit.
On Twin Earth, a brain in a vat is at the wheel of a runaway trolley. There are only two options that the brain can take: the right side of the fork in the track or the left side of the fork. There is no way in sight of derailing or stopping the trolley and the brain is aware of this, for the brain knows trolleys. The brain is causally hooked up to the trolley such that the brain can determine the course which the trolley will take.
On the right side of the track there is a single railroad worker, Jones, who will definitely be killed if the brain steers the trolley to the right. If the railman on the right lives, he will go on to kill five men for the sake of killing them, but in doing so will inadvertently save the lives of thirty orphans (one of the five men he will kill is planning to destroy a bridge that the orphans' bus will be crossing later that night). One of the orphans that will be killed would have grown up to become a tyrant who would make good utilitarian men do bad things. Another of the orphans would grow up to become G.E.M. Anscombe, while a third would invent the pop-top can.
If the brain in the vat chooses the left side of the track, the trolley will definitely hit and kill a railman on the left side of the track, "Leftie" and will hit and destroy ten beating hearts on the track that could (and would) have been transplanted into ten patients in the local hospital that will die without donor hearts. These are the only hearts available, and the brain is aware of this, for the brain knows hearts. If the railman on the left side of the track lives, he too will kill five men, in fact the same five that the railman on the right would kill. However, "Leftie" will kill the five as an unintended consequence of saving ten men: he will inadvertently kill the five men rushing the ten hearts to the local hospital for transplantation. A further result of "Leftie's" act would be that the busload of orphans will be spared. Among the five men killed by "Leftie" are both the man responsible for putting the brain at the controls of the trolley, and the author of this example. If the ten hearts and "Leftie" are killed by the trolley, the ten prospective heart-transplant patients will die and their kidneys will be used to save the lives of twenty kidney-transplant patients, one of whom will grow up to cure cancer, and one of whom will grow up to be Hitler. There are other kidneys and dialysis machines available, however the brain does not know kidneys, and this is not a factor.
Assume that the brain's choice, whatever it turns out to be, will serve as an example to other brains-in-vats and so the effects of his decision will be amplified. Also assume that if the brain chooses the right side of the fork, an unjust war free of war crimes will ensue, while if the brain chooses the left fork, a just war fraught with war crimes will result. Furthermore, there is an intermittently active Cartesian demon deceiving the brain in such a manner that the brain is never sure if it is being deceived.
QUESTION: What should the brain do?
what i meant to ask was - are married american women "more free" now than they were in the 60s?
NounsareVerbs posted:
mirdath that is a nice critique of positivist ethics, did you create it?
what i meant to ask was - are married american women "more free" now than they were in the 60s?
the brain in a vat thing? no that's probably older than i am
whether married women in the states are 'more free' now -- somewhat. the big strides that have been made in that direction are reproductive rights (roe v wade was in 73) and the greater penetration (ha) of women into various areas of higher education & the workforce. the power gap between men & women is still far from closed though, and tbh i'm not sure it's even still getting smaller
like for example, reproductive rights are being rolled back little by little, either through legal means or through services simply not being available in huge swaths of the country (iirc south dakota and kansas each have exactly one clinic that will perform an abortion). the percentage of women, and various other minorities for that matter, in government or on corporate boards, is tiny, far below what would be expected if the power difference between white men & everybody else had been closed
and since the popular perception of feminism is that it's had its time, did what it came for, and only hairy-legged dykes with tenure still care about it, it's all the easier for what gains it did make to be eroded
discipline posted:
so I guess this is where we fundamentally have some major differences. how could something like FW feminism be disarmed without it having been co-opted and absorbed? when I compared it to the panthers (or any black nationalist movement) I did so because in order for those movements to be shut down there was physical violence exerted over the participants: leaders assassinated, black men and women killed, drugged up, and/or thrown in jail. even the labor movement, if we want to bring that into the discussion, suffered from both police brutality, targeted killings, and infiltration at the highest levels.
none of this happened with the FW feminist movement. instead, it was rolled up into capitalist culture. it ceased to be revolutionary and became reformist and even reactionary (sarah palin, hilary clinton, michelle bachmann). we can start with ad campaigns that offer women the chance to be "independent" by smoking cigarettes and maybe end it with FW (white) feminist spokeswomen lobbying for pornography or maybe riotgrrl gear available fresh and sweatshop made at your local target. and if girls are ashamed to call themselves feminists because of how contemporary society views feminism, how do you account for the suffragettes and girls in the 60's who stood up and claimed the title, when their societies were even more hostile to the idea of women's rights? but this is a whole other topic and maybe for another thread, I think I'll just have to respectfully disagree with you on this point for now.
as for the idea that I am taking the wrong approach by saying feminism needs to be fixed in order to counter patriarchy, I see nothing wrong with this. I think you're trying to draw a connection with "victim blaming" but I don't see it because I do not consider feminism a woman nor do I even personify it as a victim. it is a collection of theory and at best a tool. it would be silly to not criticize foco tactics because we don't want to "blame" them for failing, just as it would be silly to not buy a new map to a city when the old one becomes outdated. tactics don't get hurt feelings and revolutionaries don't mind tearing up useless ideas when they don't get them where the need to go.
I wonder, what would be your solution for first world feminists? obviously a critique of capitalism is needed but why not critique what we've done so far in order to move forward? it was good enough for the last generations of women. do you think feminism as it currently exists in a first-world ideological context is something that a broad united front of women can really ally with at this time?
feminism was never regarded as being nearly as dangerous as black nationalism or organized labor in the first place. mainstream white people were actually scared of malcolm x or huey p newton or the sla or the yippies, not at all of andrea dworkin or gloria steinem or betty friedan. women have never been seen as being as dangerous as men. why respond to a minor threat with the kind of force you'd use against a major?
also feminism was never able to be as community-focused as black nationalism especially -- the various phenomena surrounding the geographic sequestration of black communities in america are quite well known. the labor movement had a much less significant geographic factor but working-class people do tend to live in the same general areas. women are dispersed through other communities, not forced into enclaves which are far easier to assault or pressure
and yes, a whole lot of radfems were/are white, middle class, & therefore rather easily pacified or at least pushed into irrelevance especially compared to black & labor leaders who didn't have a whole lot to lose. but honestly i'm not sure i can blame them for that. that the movement in what passed for its heyday didn't do more to help working class women and women of color improve their own situations & communities is a perfectly legitimate criticism though
i'm not seeing how feminism became part of capitalist/patriarchal culture. that culture has done a pretty good job at inventing its own trappings w/ saccharine 'girl power' poprock & stuff and it puts up people like palin/clinton/etc as examples of what feminism should be but saying that they represent actual feminism is buying into the illusion imo. & i don't have a problem with critiquing what has gone before -- it's good and necessary -- but your op and some of the subsequent posts did not seem to be about that so much as abandoning huge swaths of the ideas of feminism in favor of a more disjointed, fractious approach to the empowerment of women, with scant justification. obviously the feminist movement has not succeeded in ending patriarchal oppression, but ascribing it to a fault in the movement does not seem the right way to go. when you crush an ant, is it the ant's fault?
as far as solutions, i've already posted about aiming first for equal partnership in family life -- and that's something that can & should be attempted everywhere. while the movement isn't really in any shape to even be called that much, i'm kind of hopeful in spite of myself sometimes
discipline posted:
it's ok, I know it's not a literal gun to the head thing and I know it's not necessarily a inlaw joke either. I've known women pressured into becoming mothers in a serious way but I want to know what you think of when you think of coercion. here are two examples that come to my mind:
1. absence of abortion in a society
2. economic & emotional threats
but I am scrambling to figure out what you mean by coercion. I would sincerely like to know!
those two are really good examples of it -- that women, especially women with children, depend on men & are made to depend on men, and children are exploited by patriarchy to enforce that dependence. another is income disparity: a woman does not earn as much as a man & so is less able to support herself alone, and worse off still if she has children to feed. then there's stuff like the social stigma against old maids, etc -- basically it all adds up to an intense pressure on women to conform to these patriarchal expectations. that's the coercion i'm talking about
also just as an aside, things are going to be really really interesting if/when a viable male contraceptive is developed
are you saying that all mothers are coerced then, or that they are simply signing up for a situation that if fully informed about would never occur to them to choose? all the issues you mention... are these problems with motherhood or patriarchy? and what does patriarchy have to do with the bond between a mother and her child, at the breast or in the belly?
patriarchy. i've said multiple times itt that motherhood is a perfectly good thing, but as mentioned above, children are exploited in order to shore up structures that keep women subservient to or dependent on men. this is as much a problem with motherhood as the victory of patriarchy over the second wave is a problem with feminism 
basically what i was getting at there is that there are so many pressures on women to sign up for all this & so much about it that is actually used against them in the current social order that i can't see very many people who know just what they'd be in for saying 'sure, i'm in'
I think you are focusing too much on western modalities of thinking and getting into this market-share kind of mentality when assessing marriage or family. obviously there are power disparities in couples, but this is fairly heteronormative to assume that any relationship we make (or even employee-boss, child-parent) isn't also laden with power disparities. do we therefore discard all human relationships into the bin of "oppression" or do you have a set of conditions wherein a sexual or familial relationship can exist outside these boundaries? is it possible to compensate for power disparities? I can think of some examples, mostly rooted in islam, that counter such situations, but we can work out our own surely without looking to religion. how do you exist in a relationship with a power disparity? what kinds of strategies can you apply? and on an interpersonal level, isn't it possible to either formulate these strategies or else excuse yourself when and how you see necessary? here I am speaking of first world women, of course, though there are intricacies in power that are more nuanced than a dworkinist perspective - which I understand and respect and also disagree with.
once again, though, these kinds of relationships have little to do with the institution of motherhood, which can and do exist outside of heterosexual married relationships. unless you are critiquing the relationship between mother-child as well?
idk where markets or capital of any sort come into what i've said, or how talking about the power disparity in hetero relationships is itself heteronormative? i haven't brought up gay/lesbian/queer couples since that's a whole different thing wrt power & effects of patriarchy, and i don't really know a whole lot about extended-collective type families but i imagine they'd ameliorate some but not all of the problems for women that exist in the het couple structure
what i've been talking about is the coerced dependence of women as a class, on men as a class, through economic & social pressure. of course there are exceptions but we're not & haven't been discussing specific examples. power disparities exist in relationships certainly, but we have a rather different kind of relationship & a very large power disparity here. an employee punches out at the end of the day (also hi i'm a wobbly smash the wage system power to the workers), a friend goes home, the relatives' visit finally ends, but short of fairly drastic measures like separation, divorce, surrendering, or emancipation (the prior two being spousal & the latter being toward or from children), you're pretty well stuck with family as that concept exists now.
it is possible to partially compensate for power disparities -- in that a man-woman relationship can still look like a pretty good thing, and generally work out to the satisfaction of both parties -- and i think that most decent men at least try, but that doesn't make it any less imperative that equality be a natural part of a heterosexual relationship without having to depend on men (again) to act out of the goodness of their hearts towards their spouses
the problem with trying to strategize within the bounds of an unequal relationship is that it accepts the inequity up front rather than making equality a condition of the relationship itself. of course it's possible, having ended up in such a relationship, to try to work things to be more equal; but that's starting from behind. no less common for that though, and i'll admit i am not sure how best to proceed from that point (but the answer is probably 'it depends')
childrearing is different than childbearing. childrearing is ideally a shared activity but childbearing a solitary exercise, something that a woman personally experiences with her flesh and bones. I agree 100% in there being a sharing of responsibility when it comes to parenting. the prophet muhammad (saws) shared parenting responsibilities with a glad heart, and I know of many men in my life who have also shared parenting responsibilities. and this is a pro-mother issue!
yeah given that i'm one of the minority of women who is not able to bear children, you don't really need to emphasize the distinction
Edited by babyfinland ()
babyfinland posted:
I find it strange that you seem to be absolutely adverse to assigning any blame to "feminism" (which concretely means women struggling for their rights) and bent on directing all blame against "motherhood" (which concretely means mothers, generally). This has the result of neglecting women in actuality (via the fundamental uniting factor of motherhood) and monopolizing all "feminist" discourse under an umbrella of complaints against "society". This is precisely the co-opted liberal pseudo-feminism that has been instrumentalized for at least a century by Capital against women (including those in the imperialist nations) the world over. By commodifying the feminism of actual women it has been transformed into a feminism of complaints, easily passed on to a targeted community like a bad loan.
um i'm pretty explicit about not blaming motherhood at all? like, multiple times?
mirdath posted:babyfinland posted:
I find it strange that you seem to be absolutely adverse to assigning any blame to "feminism" (which concretely means women struggling for their rights) and bent on directing all blame against "motherhood" (which concretely means mothers, generally). This has the result of neglecting women in actuality (via the fundamental uniting factor of motherhood) and monopolizing all "feminist" discourse under an umbrella of complaints against "society". This is precisely the co-opted liberal pseudo-feminism that has been instrumentalized for at least a century by Capital against women (including those in the imperialist nations) the world over. By commodifying the feminism of actual women it has been transformed into a feminism of complaints, easily passed on to a targeted community like a bad loan.um i'm pretty explicit about not blaming motherhood at all? like, multiple times?
yes you're very clear that we should blame patriarchy, and first step is smash motherhood?
I'm also like literally astounded that you claim that feminism hasn't been co-opted by capitalism, because I would go farther than discipline has gone and say that a perverse capitalist feminism has always co-existed alongside imperialism.
This is all a bunch of obnoxious theoretical pedantry divorced so completely from the lives of women who are in desperate need of actual feminist struggle that I can't even consider it feminism, just as supporting Sarah Palin and her anti-woman politics is not feminism. If your prime concern is the lack of informed choice, then you would work with women in your community to inform their choices, or at least show some interest in awareness campaigns or something. But your primary concern is not the actual informedness of women, but the organization of society such that it impedes a perfect libertarian social market, which is the ideological and utopian basis for the barbarism and injustice of capitalism.
Correct me if I'm wrong. I don't mean this as a personal attack but this is how I'm unpacking your statements.
discipline posted:
so according to this, as far as I can tell, basically all situations of motherhood one could think of in the west happen are basically coerced. and you are against that, ok that's fine. but I still don't see what that has to do with forming a broad united front lobbying for motherhood issues? unless you are saying it is unethical to support women in this situation and should instead focus efforts on smashing the situational construct?
it's unethical to support the continuance of the situation imo. of course i'm not saying attack the structure & ignore everything else, that'd be dumb, but it's important to go after that structure as well or any gains will be temporary at best
I don't understand what you mean by children being exploited to shore up structures that keep women subservient to or dependent on men, can you please explain what you mean?
maybe our difference is that while I think effort is better expended in bettering their material conditions, you take issue with the theoretical foundation of motherhood and want to put more energy out to radically change that in hopes that material conditions will follow. or maybe you think material conditions cannot be changed until you address the theoretical foundation first? am I close?
i mentioned the income disparity as something that ties women w/ children to men above -- that's a good example. in the us, women make less money than men. raising children is expensive -- & so that disparity pressures women to depend on a higher-earning man to provide for their children
like i've been saying, it's not a problem with motherhood itself, it's with how society handles it -- putting the burden of raising children on women, and pressuring them to depend on men in order to shoulder that burden. that's what needs to be changed. & that is a material condition, just not among the ones you were looking at in the op. if raising a child is an equally (or even just more equally) shared responsibility it reduces patriarchy's ability to use the child against the mother. next step would be income parity probably, if we're still operating within a capitalist framework (if not, income isn't an issue obviously)
I don't disagree that there are power inequalities that exist in most heterosexual relationships. however, instead of trying to radically reformulate human relationships as they've been for the last 10,000 years I suggest addressing the material conditions before we wrack our heads over more ephemeral things like the love between two people or relationship between parent and child. I don't think you'd disagree with me that more womens shelters, free healthcare for women and children, paid maternity leave, and a general economic improvement would be noble motherhood-related goals to work towards, as would most women and it would be a good united front to work under. you will find less women who are willing to sign up on a crusade to smash the nuclear family. what I'm saying is FW feminism has been hamstrung into inaction by nature of the symbiotic relationship it has with capitalism. we need a radical reawakening and reformulation of goals and most of all, the immediate need to take action.
the healthcare & leave & stuff is actually promoting greater equality in family life, and reducing economic dependence on men (and in the case of shelters, acting as a safety net when things go really, really sour). of course i agree that these are all good things, but they are good things because they act to even out the power disparity between men & women.
i am not trying to 'smash the nuclear family' nor have i ever said anything about eradicating it. the status of men as primary earners and heads of household is what needs to be taken down, not the mother-father-children unit
mirdath posted:
I'm not emphasizing the distinction to try and single you out and apologize if it came across that way. I'm emphasizing it because a lot of posters itt and a lot of people irl have confused the two... hence pushing out a child somehow being analogous with housework to some minds! I am less about criticizing or deconstructing childrearing at this point and more about supporting healthy and safe childbearing, mostly because I think it's an issue women can all agree on.
there's an analogy to be made with breast cancer, in that FW feminists are somewhat unconsciously seeking some sort of united front issue, and that capitalism has delivered breast cancer up to them because it is the least political, least offensive thing some focus groups could come up with, complete with teddy bears and pink ribbons. we'll "march for a cure" but not march for free healthcare to pay for that cure! and so on. I'll try and rustle up the paper somewhere.
i'm pretty sure i've read some (first world) feminist takedowns of the breast cancer awareness thing as essentially a distraction, capitalism branding itself as woman-friendly, etc etc but if you could find that it'd be really cool. it kind of demonstrates that you have feminism, & you have the 'girl power' illusion presented by capital/patriarchy in order to distract from the former
babyfinland posted:
mirdath are you sayin that heterosexuality and childrearing are inherently oppressive and so they should be abolished?
no, crimony, how do you even get that from what i've said
babyfinland posted:
So I've been thinking about it, mirdath, and I think you're advocating a "free market feminism" that is simply social libertarianism (everyone just do whatever they want and "society" should stay out of individual choice). You use "feminism" as a weapon to push that agenda, you're not advocating any sort of struggle against patriarchy or the oppression of women, you're just advocating libertarian principles. You're using "feminism" as a complaint against social institutions generally and to push a ideological agenda that would undermine the struggles of women who inhabit those societies. There is analogous to libertarians who argue for the dismantlement of welfare programs in order to establish the free market.
This is all a bunch of obnoxious theoretical pedantry divorced so completely from the lives of women who are in desperate need of actual feminist struggle that I can't even consider it feminism, just as supporting Sarah Palin and her anti-woman politics is not feminism. If your prime concern is the lack of informed choice, then you would work with women in your community to inform their choices, or at least show some interest in awareness campaigns or something. But your primary concern is not the actual informedness of women, but the organization of society such that it impedes a perfect libertarian social market, which is the ideological and utopian basis for the barbarism and injustice of capitalism.
Correct me if I'm wrong. I don't mean this as a personal attack but this is how I'm unpacking your statements.
you're wrong, i'm explicitly approaching this from a marxist perspective & attacking capital as one of the primary forces keeping women dependent on men, where on earth are you getting this
mirdath posted:babyfinland posted:
mirdath are you sayin that heterosexuality and childrearing are inherently oppressive and so they should be abolished?no, crimony, how do you even get that from what i've said
it is possible to partially compensate for power disparities -- in that a man-woman relationship can still look like a pretty good thing, and generally work out to the satisfaction of both parties -- and i think that most decent men at least try, but that doesn't make it any less imperative that equality be a natural part of a heterosexual relationship without having to depend on men (again) to act out of the goodness of their hearts towards their spouses
the problem with trying to strategize within the bounds of an unequal relationship is that it accepts the inequity up front rather than making equality a condition of the relationship itself. of course it's possible, having ended up in such a relationship, to try to work things to be more equal; but that's starting from behind. no less common for that though, and i'll admit i am not sure how best to proceed from that point (but the answer is probably 'it depends')
You say that heterosexual relationships are always-already power-inequitous and then speak about the problems of strategizing within the bounds of an unequal relationship. So it follows that heterosexual relationships should be abandoned and conceded to capitalism
mirdath posted:babyfinland posted:
So I've been thinking about it, mirdath, and I think you're advocating a "free market feminism" that is simply social libertarianism (everyone just do whatever they want and "society" should stay out of individual choice). You use "feminism" as a weapon to push that agenda, you're not advocating any sort of struggle against patriarchy or the oppression of women, you're just advocating libertarian principles. You're using "feminism" as a complaint against social institutions generally and to push a ideological agenda that would undermine the struggles of women who inhabit those societies. There is analogous to libertarians who argue for the dismantlement of welfare programs in order to establish the free market.
This is all a bunch of obnoxious theoretical pedantry divorced so completely from the lives of women who are in desperate need of actual feminist struggle that I can't even consider it feminism, just as supporting Sarah Palin and her anti-woman politics is not feminism. If your prime concern is the lack of informed choice, then you would work with women in your community to inform their choices, or at least show some interest in awareness campaigns or something. But your primary concern is not the actual informedness of women, but the organization of society such that it impedes a perfect libertarian social market, which is the ideological and utopian basis for the barbarism and injustice of capitalism.
Correct me if I'm wrong. I don't mean this as a personal attack but this is how I'm unpacking your statements.you're wrong, i'm explicitly approaching this from a marxist perspective & attacking capital as one of the primary forces keeping women dependent on men, where on earth are you getting this
i havent seen any marxist perspective or any discussion of capitalism or anything, its all about social choices and coercion. vague complaints against "society" is not marxist, you need to work within the concrete and analyze it as a class problem to be able to claim a marxist perspective. maybe i missed that, could you show me where you think youve done this?
"we need men. abortion which destroys life is not acceptable in our country. the soviet woman has the same rights as the man, but that does not free her from a great and honorable duty which nature has given her: she is a mother, she gives life. and this is certainly not a private affair but one of great social importance" stalin 1936
http://www.radicalanthropologygroup.org/old/class_text_049.pdf
Ortner argues that female inferiority is a cultural universal and is caused by this line of cultural logic:
Nature is essentially opposed to culture, as it is perpetually destructive, always creating new to replace old. Nature is an insurmountable reality that will destroy all that man creates in due time. It is an impossible force for culture to control.
Culture is mostly concerned with seeking to build a reliable foundation for human beings to depend on, both in terms of ideas and a physical reality which is more friendly for the human body.
Women are seen by men as closer to the nature side of reality because of childbearing. A wild force exists in women that cannot be subjugated by culture. Men can be raised from birth to serve the system, but women nearly always bring new life into the culture, threatening the old. In some cultures, the births that women provide remind the male of his inevitable death.
Fearful men react to this perceived "threat" by creating culture which subjugates women into roles that imply they are a service to man and culture rather than an equal participant in the cycle of life.
This is of course a short summary, and includes my personal take on the dynamic. Ortner expands these arguments very precisely.
babyfinland posted:
i havent seen any marxist perspective or any discussion of capitalism or anything, its all about social choices and coercion. vague complaints against "society" is not marxist, you need to work within the concrete and analyze it as a class problem to be able to claim a marxist perspective. maybe i missed that, could you show me where you think youve done this?
i've been talking about the issues between women as a class & men as a class all along? idk what you're reading but i'm pretty sure it isn't my posts so welp yall have fun with that
FyadorPostoevsky posted:
feminism in the west obviously revolves around capitalist consumption. "reproductive rights" i need the RIGHT to kill my flesh and blood so that i can continue to consume comfortably. any hardship is fascist fyi, freedom is sex in the city
but what about when having a baby makes a woman a better capitalist consumer cause she has to buy nicer headphoens so that she can turn her ipod up loud enough to drown out the cries but still have the wallflowers sound good. i read about this in a ethnography i'm pretty sure it was called we could drive it home with one headlight
mods_ass posted:
but what about when having a baby makes a woman a better capitalist consumer cause she has to buy nicer headphoens so that she can turn her ipod up loud enough to drown out the cries but still have the wallflowers sound good. i read about this in a ethnography i'm pretty sure it was called we could drive it home with one headlight
umm that was totally refuted by yasmin macpherson's book "three marlenas" which proved that women are naturally gentle and loving and that they spend almost 90% of their day in a circle with other women chanting about how much they love their place. maybe talk to a real woman. i mean poor woman. see no speak no hear no evil about us. three marlenas.
discipline posted:
pushing out a child somehow being analogous with housework to some minds!... supporting healthy and safe childbearing, mostly because I think it's an issue women can all agree on.
I don't think you understand the debate over essentialism then, because the entire point is that there is not a single "motherhood" that is a matter of consensus for all women globally. This is because you insist on saying that "motherhood" is a unitary function. It is not, precisely for the reason that it is bound up with a wide range of cultural factors including the broader role of women. "Motherhood" is always something situated and contingent. What you are doing is imagining an essential role for women and then suggesting it would be a point of political consensus. But this is a political act, and you need to recognize it as such.
You are trying to grip tightly on an essential core of femininity, but this core does not actually exist in a firm way. All you can do is make a political argument, such as saying "women care about having and taking care of kids." But what that means is not some simple biologically determined thing. It involves what the proper role of women's work is in general. As I've tried to suggest, housework *was* traditionally, in many societies, bound up with women's work and in particular the mother role. So when you try to build a consensus around "we have a mother's care" then immediately you break into "how should this care be provided" - which is a contingent debate. Imagine almost any policy and you immediately divide people. Is it that children deserve care, so you want child care services? One section will say that this is harmful, that child care is a private matter and that the role of individual mother as provider must be upheld. That's just an example, any other political fix is based on this.
Basically, I would say that consensus is something that is *produced* and *contingent.* It is not something you get by trying to line up people based on some essential qualities.
mirdath posted:babyfinland posted:
i havent seen any marxist perspective or any discussion of capitalism or anything, its all about social choices and coercion. vague complaints against "society" is not marxist, you need to work within the concrete and analyze it as a class problem to be able to claim a marxist perspective. maybe i missed that, could you show me where you think youve done this?i've been talking about the issues between women as a class & men as a class all along? idk what you're reading but i'm pretty sure it isn't my posts so welp yall have fun with that
appending "as a class" to the genders does not a marxist analysis make
Edited by tapespeed ()
In adopting its resolution on the observance of Women’s Day, the General Assembly cited two reasons:
"to recognize the fact that securing peace and social progress and the full enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms require the active participation, equality and development of women; to acknowledge the contribution of women to the strengthening of international peace and security."
This is a far cry from the world of the majority of women. The abyss between these feminists and working-class women was highlighted at the International Women’s Year Tribunal organized by the United Nations in Mexico in 1975. Here two worlds met. On the one side were the middle-class women led by Betty Friedan, the founder of NOW and one of the original inspirers of the women's movement in America. On the other were working-class women, among them Domitila Barrio, a Bolivian miner’s wife and mother of seven. She had for fifteen years organized miners’ wives in struggles to aid their husbands on strike. An indication of the miners’ conditions was that their life expectancy was a mere 35 years. Domitila Barrio had organized a long hunger strike of women, and had gone to prison a number of times, on one occasion suffering a miscarriage while in custody. She bitterly attacked the rich feminists who turned up to the conference. To the president of the Mexican delegation she said:
"Senora, I’ve known you for a week. Every morning you show up in a different outfit and on the other hand I don’t. Every day you show up all made up and combed like someone who had time to spend in an elegant beauty parlour and who can spend money on that, and yet I don’t. I see that each afternoon you have a chauffeur in a car waiting at the door of this place to take you home, and yet I don’t. And in order to show up here like you do, I’m sure you live in a really elegant home, in an elegant neighborhood, no? And yet we miners’ wives only have a small house on loan to us, and when our husbands die or get sick or are fired from the company, we have ninety days to leave the house and then we are in the street. Now, senora, tell me: is your situation at all similar to mine? Is my situation at all similar to yours? So what equality are we going to speak of between the two of us? If you and I aren’t alike, if you and I are so different?"
The rich women, she claimed, were blind to the conditions of women like herself:
"They couldn’t see the suffering of my people; they couldn’t see how our companeros are vomiting their lungs bit by bit, in pools of blood. They didn’t see how underfed our children are. And, of course, they didn’t know, as we do, what it’s like to get up at four in the morning and go to bed at eleven or twelve at night, just to be able to get all the housework done, because of the lousy conditions we live in."
She could not understand Betty Freidan’s statement that she, Domitila, and her friends were "manipulated by men".
edited for formatting. the whole article is available here, in the May-June 2010 edition.
http://www.bannedthought.net/India/PeoplesMarch/index.htm
