TC
11th February 2009, 04:37
I think the "General" grouping needs to be broken down into "Class" and "Non-Class." Discrimination, Philosophy, and Sciences belong to the second group. That way, specifically sexist posters can be restricted from posting in the above three fora.
Folks here don't seem to understand two things:
1) Sexism (be it male chauvinism or homophobia), unlike racism, predates capitalism.
2) The economic root of sexism lies in the economic family structure that we've known for thousands of years.
Did you miss out on the history lessons that covered the genocide of the Native Americans, the slave trade, Roman treatment of non-Italians/Greeks, Greek treatment of non-Greeks, imperial Japanese belief in their own racial supremacy over the Chinese and Koreans, the conquistadors, the crusaders, the anti-jewish pogroms, or any other set of racist and racial supremacist historical institutions, events and movements that predated capitalism by centuries?
How do you account for your blatant disregard of milliennium's worth of pre-capitalist institutional and personal racism?
Your thesis that sexism is more tolerable than racism because sexism is 'not class based' and predates capitalism whereas racism is 'class based' and post-dates capitalism is empirically incorrect as every grade school student knows.
It seems to me that a more likely explanation than your willful ignorance is a belief that the oppression inherent in sexism and the patriarchal family structure is somehow more natural or organic or kind or just than the oppression inherent in capitalism. (never mind that pre-capitalist economic formations were generally as or more oppressive).
Alternatively do you, in a total departure from Marxism, actually date the beginning of capitalism far earlier (say, thousands of years) than the bourgeois revolutions or industrialization, but imagine that sexism existed in pre-state/agricultural formulations?
I think its important to get this out, because the crude reductionism of the faux-maxist belief that 'class' conflict consists entirely of a two party single axis conflict between a unified and undifferentiaetd bourgeois and a unified undiferentiated proletariat is among one of the most theoretically and politically problematic positions of the faux-marxist privileged left.
Folks here don't seem to understand two things:
1) Sexism (be it male chauvinism or homophobia), unlike racism, predates capitalism.
2) The economic root of sexism lies in the economic family structure that we've known for thousands of years.
Did you miss out on the history lessons that covered the genocide of the Native Americans, the slave trade, Roman treatment of non-Italians/Greeks, Greek treatment of non-Greeks, imperial Japanese belief in their own racial supremacy over the Chinese and Koreans, the conquistadors, the crusaders, the anti-jewish pogroms, or any other set of racist and racial supremacist historical institutions, events and movements that predated capitalism by centuries?
How do you account for your blatant disregard of milliennium's worth of pre-capitalist institutional and personal racism?
Your thesis that sexism is more tolerable than racism because sexism is 'not class based' and predates capitalism whereas racism is 'class based' and post-dates capitalism is empirically incorrect as every grade school student knows.
It seems to me that a more likely explanation than your willful ignorance is a belief that the oppression inherent in sexism and the patriarchal family structure is somehow more natural or organic or kind or just than the oppression inherent in capitalism. (never mind that pre-capitalist economic formations were generally as or more oppressive).
Alternatively do you, in a total departure from Marxism, actually date the beginning of capitalism far earlier (say, thousands of years) than the bourgeois revolutions or industrialization, but imagine that sexism existed in pre-state/agricultural formulations?
I think its important to get this out, because the crude reductionism of the faux-maxist belief that 'class' conflict consists entirely of a two party single axis conflict between a unified and undifferentiaetd bourgeois and a unified undiferentiated proletariat is among one of the most theoretically and politically problematic positions of the faux-marxist privileged left.