Was it wrong of me not to "celebrate" International Women's Day?

[Prentasid]

I have been thinking about this the last few days. I'm a male, but I didn't "celebrate" or congratulate any woman out there. Some got angry at me for not saying congratulation to them.

I have never "celebrated" the International Women's Day. I have never celebrated for gays, black people, etc.

I believe that we are all the same; we are all human beings. That's why I don't celebrate it. There is no big deal if you are a woman, if you are gay or if you are black. You are a human being.

I know that we should fight for woman's right, but I don't feel it's necessary the right way to do it.

What do you believe? Did you celebrate the International Women's Day? If not, why?

I just had to get it out. I've been thinking about it for some days now.
Maybe I should start celebrating?

[Red Economist]

As a guy, I've been thinking this too. it is something I should take more seriously. But, I think it's what you do the other 364 days that counts towards making a real difference.

It's like Christmas- why be nice to people only once a year when you can try and keep it up every other day too? Having days like this is a 'nudge' for the population, but on it's own it won't do anything beyond get people to think about it.

[tallguy]

I have been thinking about this the last few days. I'm a male, but I didn't "celebrate" or congratulate any woman out there. Some got angry at me for not saying congratulation to them.

I have never "celebrated" the International Women's Day. I have never celebrated for gays, black people, etc.

I believe that we are all the same; we are all human beings. That's why I don't celebrate it. There is no big deal if you are a woman, if you are gay or if you are black. You are a human being.

I know that we should fight for woman's right, but I don't feel it's necessary the right way to do it.

What do you believe? Did you celebrate the International Women's Day? If not, why?

I just had to get it out. I've been thinking about it for some days now.
Maybe I should start celebrating?
Christ on a bike, does it matter? Celebrate...don't celebrate.

What matters is what you do each and every day.

The real stuff.

[BIXX]

As a guy, I've been thinking this too. it is something I should take more seriously. But, I think it's what you do the other 364 days that counts towards making a real difference.

It's like Christmas- why be nice to people only once a year when you can try and keep it up every other day too? Having days like this is a 'nudge' for the population, but on it's own it won't do anything beyond get people to think about it.

Better than I could have said it.

If you were a piece of shit every other day and you chose the one day to be great, it would really mean nothing.

[Comrade Jacob]

Don't feel bad, I remembered but didn't have a clue how to celebrate. How does one celebrate woman's day? Wear a ribbon?
I am in no way bashing it even if it comes off that way.
I think it matters a lot more if you fight for women's rights and human-rights on a daily basis than doing the day thing.

[#FF0000]

I believe that we are all the same; we are all human beings. That's why I don't celebrate it. There is no big deal if you are a woman, if you are gay or if you are black. You are a human being.

This is true but this is not how society is structured. In society, it matters very much whether or not you are a woman, gay, black, an immigrant, whatever. These things, unfortunately, have a huge impact on one's access to educational resources, healthcare, their relationship to the criminal justice system, etc. etc. etc.

As for your question, I really don't know if there's a way to celebrate International Women's Day. I think people usually just acknowledge it.

[Pinto Morais]

Some got angry at me for not saying congratulation to them.


Seriously? That reminds me of those people who do something for you and get really angry if you don't thank them with enough enthusiasm. It is like they are only helping you in order to get your thanks.

[Sam_b]

It's pretty easy for white men with privilege to believe that "we are all the same", right? It is, in fact, a "big deal" to be in a patriarchal society full of oppression for women, LBGTQ people and POC; and to be able to have a space in order to bring this to attention, which is what happens on IWD in a lot of communities with activist and cultural events. If you're a man I don't think you should be particularly granted a say in the supposed "right way" for women to conduct liberation.

[Slavic]

It's pretty easy for white men with privilege to believe that "we are all the same", right? It is, in fact, a "big deal" to be in a patriarchal society full of oppression for women, LBGTQ people and POC; and to be able to have a space in order to bring this to attention, which is what happens on IWD in a lot of communities with activist and cultural events. If you're a man I don't think you should be particularly granted a say in the supposed "right way" for women to conduct liberation.

Your right, unless you are "Insert Identity" then you have no right to talk about "Insert Identity". Shesh its no wonder nothing gets done. :rolleyes:

We are the society, we are the community. The more people realize that "we are all the same" the better life becomes.

[#FF0000]

We are the society, we are the community. The more people realize that "we are all the same" the better life becomes.

I don't think that a dude never has anything to add to a discussion about feminism or women's liberation, just like being a woman doesn't necessarily mean one has some special secret knowledge or an inherently more insightful opinion about women's struggles, but I think one needs to be aware of where they stand. The fact of the matter is that society treats people very differently based on their gender/race/sexuality/whatever.

[Sam_b]

Your right, unless you are "Insert Identity" then you have no right to talk about "Insert Identity". Shesh its no wonder nothing gets done.

I didn't say this so you can keep your rolling-eyes smileys for when you actually understand an argument. Talk about women and minorities all you like. But it is not the role of white leftist men to tell women and minorities how to organise themselves. We are not all the same, as much as privileged men with fuck-all understanding of intersectionality would have you believe otherwise. This goes for society, politics and yes, even in leftist organisations.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Your right, unless you are "Insert Identity" then you have no right to talk about "Insert Identity". Shesh its no wonder nothing gets done. :rolleyes:

We are the society, we are the community. The more people realize that "we are all the same" the better life becomes.

No one said you couldn't have an opinion, just that you shouldn't expect everyone to agree with it or even listen to it since it's probably lacking a great deal in context

[neola]

You're right! Everyone is entitled to say or express their opinion but not everyone will agree to your opinion.

IMO, I don't celebrate women's day but I acknowledge it. Women's day for me is just acknowledging their rights and role in society. Yet, all men are equal in my views.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

I believe that we are all the same; we are all human beings. That's why I don't celebrate it. There is no big deal if you are a woman, if you are gay or if you are black. You are a human being.
Liberal idealism at its finest. You might as well say "we're all human beings, whether we're capitalists or workers." :rolleyes:

International Women's Day was created by socialist women, btw.

[Goblin]

I was actually invited to participate in a march, but chose not to go. Eh, blame my laziness. I did acknowledge the day though.

[Rosa Partizan]

I believe that we are all the same; we are all human beings. That's why I don't celebrate it. There is no big deal if you are a woman, if you are gay or if you are black. You are a human being.



This mindset would work out if we lived in an absolutely emancipated, progressive society. But in the world we're having now, it means marginalizing struggles of less privileged people, which basically can be anyone that is not male AND heterosexual AND white AND able-bodied and so on. It's like saying to a black person, I'm colorblind. It's awesome to be colorblind in perfect society. But until then, you can't close your eyes on what is happening to all those marginalized groups.

http://thesojournersguidetothegalaxy.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/equality-vs-justice.jpg

just imagine the two smaller persons being black or female or trans or whatever, and you get my point.

[BOZG]

The idea that we should "celebrate" International Women's Day is really just a reflection of how low consciousness is when it comes to women's oppression. The idea shouldn't be to "celebrate" women but to commemorate the enormous struggles that have been waged by women, not just for their own rights but for the working class as a whole. And more importantly it should be a day for raising consciousness about women's struggles and using it as a platform to further those struggles

I noticed that the OP is from Norwegian so I presume that some parallels can be drawn with Sweden where there are enormous contradictions when it comes to consciousness. On the one hand, feminism as a concept and ideology is a very real thing. Nearly all political parties identify themselves as feminists which indicates quite a high level of consciousness (even if it's confused) while at the same, the historic strength of Social Democracy and the relative "advancements" in women's rights undermine that consciousness. There's a very real current that things that women's equality has been achieved. And it only adds to this idea that we should "celebrate" women themselves rather than their struggles.

Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I didn't say this so you can keep your rolling-eyes smileys for when you actually understand an argument. Talk about women and minorities all you like. But it is not the role of white leftist men to tell women and minorities how to organise themselves.

Why not? Using that sort of moralist argument, you could argue that it was wrong for the petit-bourgeois Marx and Engels to tell the proletariat how to organise itself, especially since they opposed the proletarian Weitling. Politesse is not as important as correct strategy (not to mention that this sort of "men have no business telling women how to organise" thinking leads to the acceptance of murderous transphobia by bourgeois feminists).

Of course, the notion that "we are all the same" is simply not true. And the notion that existing structural oppression can be fought by ignoring it is at best misguided, and at worst a "left" cover for bigotry.

[Sam_b]

Using that sort of moralist argument, you could argue that it was wrong for the petit-bourgeois Marx and Engels to tell the proletariat how to organise itself, especially since they opposed the proletarian Weitling. Politesse is not as important as correct strategy (not to mention that this sort of "men have no business telling women how to organise" thinking leads to the acceptance of murderous transphobia by bourgeois feminists).

You could argue, but I don't think it's correct. Considering for instance that the Critique of the Gotha Programme clearly expresses emancipation as an act in which the working class takes on itself, we can clearly see where Marxist sympathies lie or should lie. If this is not enough Marx makes it plain and clear throughout, for instance:


The international activity of the working classes does not in any way depend on the existence of the International Working Men's Association. This was only the first attempt to create a central organ for the activity; an attempt which was a lasting success on account of the impulse which it gave but which was no longer realizable in its historical form after the fall of the Paris Commune.

This is not the most obvious choice of quote here; indeed it would be that "the emancipation of the working class is the act of the working class itself", from both a political and economic position. What I believe Marx to be saying here is that, as an emancipatory force, the First International is actually irrelevant when compared to the activity as a class on the whole, as it is the class itself that will work toward its own emancipation.

Now let's transport this theory to the discussion point at the moment. I don't think 'moralism' should be banded about here without actually looking into the fact that moralism itself is grounded in ethics, it's being used here merely as a disparaging term. We listen to oppressed people, that should be the bottom line; and if we can support them in their emancipation sure, but is it our role to be in some sort of leading position when we have no real understanding of the oppression which we haven't experienced ourselves? The idea of "transphobia and bourgeois feminists" is actually a pretty nasty foil here considering the work that is being done both in the feminist and LGBTQ movement to challenge and eradicate this. We should be supportive of those efforts as allies, but it reeks completely of privilege that men somehow feel the need to centre themselves in a struggle that they cannot fully grasp. Input is helpful, yes, and we should be theorising: but there is a huge difference between supporting women and doing what we can (challenging sexism) and telling them how to organise and having men take the lead as some sort of fountain of knowledge.

In short, 'telling' is perhaps not the best word here, but it needs to be recognised that it is women who need to emancipate themselves, and not have others do a bad job for them.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

You could argue, but I don't think it's correct. Considering for instance that the Critique of the Gotha Programme clearly expresses emancipation as an act in which the working class takes on itself, we can clearly see where Marxist sympathies lie or should lie. If this is not enough Marx makes it plain and clear throughout, for instance:


The international activity of the working classes does not in any way depend on the existence of the International Working Men's Association. This was only the first attempt to create a central organ for the activity; an attempt which was a lasting success on account of the impulse which it gave but which was no longer realizable in its historical form after the fall of the Paris Commune.

This is not the most obvious choice of quote here; indeed it would be that "the emancipation of the working class is the act of the working class itself", from both a political and economic position. What I believe Marx to be saying here is that, as an emancipatory force, the First International is actually irrelevant when compared to the activity as a class on the whole, as it is the class itself that will work toward its own emancipation.

In the same paragraph, Marx explicitly calls the IWA an "attempt to create a central organ for the activity [of the working class]", in other words a revolutionary leadership. That the emancipation of the working class will be an act of the working class itself is an elementary postulate of Marxist theory, but it doesn't mean that the proletarian struggle should be conducted without revolutionary leadership, or even worse, that the reactionary strata of the proletariat should be allowed to drag the vanguard down. It's a question of social power - only the proletariat can liberate the proletariat, not because of some moral principle, but because only the proletariat has the social power to do so. Groups that are doubly oppressed under capitalism - women, LGBT people etc. - must also rely on the proletariat, again not because the proletariat is Good and Noble, but because these groups do not have either the cohesion (in particular there is a large class split within these groups) or the social power to smash the bourgeois state.

Of course, this is all irrelevant, since Marx clearly did state that the proletariat, if it is to succeed in its world-historic mission of overthrowing capitalism, needs to organise in a specific way. He opposed certain proletarian leaders (Weitling for example) and organisations (the Lassalleans) even though he, himself, was not a proletarian. If men "have no business telling women how to organise", paraphrasing, then Marx had no business telling workers how to organise.


Now let's transport this theory to the discussion point at the moment. I don't think 'moralism' should be banded about here without actually looking into the fact that moralism itself is grounded in ethics, it's being used here merely as a disparaging term.

Well, yes, moralism is usually grounded in some form of ethics, but ethics itself is part of bourgeois ideology, whose social functions include maintaining the rule of the bourgeoisie.


We listen to oppressed people, that should be the bottom line; and if we can support them in their emancipation sure, but is it our role to be in some sort of leading position when we have no real understanding of the oppression which we haven't experienced ourselves?

No, the bottom line should be - we present the communist programme. In doing so we will come into contradiction with the present consciousness of both the workers and the doubly-oppressed groups of workers. This is not something to be avoided - in fact it is to be welcomed.

The notion that someone has "no real understanding" of oppression that they haven't experienced themselves is probably one of the most harmful myths in the present socialist movement. The facts - the wages, the laws, the events, all of these are a matter of public record. The only reason people claim that oppression needs to be experienced in order to be understood is that people conflate personal experience of oppression with oppression itself, emotion and impressions with the material fact of structural violence.

One of the best treatments of women's liberation I have read was written by a (Black) man; conversely, many women if not most do not understand the special oppression of women at all.


The idea of "transphobia and bourgeois feminists" is actually a pretty nasty foil here considering the work that is being done both in the feminist and LGBTQ movement to challenge and eradicate this.

"Is being done." And in the mean time, should we allow radfems into socialist spaces unchecked, because to do anything else would be to tell women how to organise themselves? As if.

[Sam_b]

In the same paragraph, Marx explicitly calls the IWA an "attempt to create a central organ for the activity [of the working class]", in other words a revolutionary leadership.

and where's that revolutionary leadership coming from?


Groups that are doubly oppressed under capitalism - women, LGBT people etc. - must also rely on the proletariat, again not because the proletariat is Good and Noble, but because these groups do not have either the cohesion (in particular there is a large class split within these groups) or the social power to smash the bourgeois state.

Yet the problem with sections of the left, invariably on the sidelines of the movement, is that this turns into a workerist mantra. It takes a very privileged section of the (predominantly male predominantly straight predominantly white) class to be up on a podium (and there's reasons they are elevated, for sure) and say that women or POC shouldn't be concerned with challenging the sexist culture of society and the left but instead put all energy into smashing the state.


If men "have no business telling women how to organise", paraphrasing, then Marx had no business telling workers how to organise.

and yet it was the leadership and direction of that very same class that succeeded, that organised itself, that built a solid platform that in fact developed Marxism further.


"Is being done." And in the mean time, should we allow radfems into socialist spaces unchecked, because to do anything else would be to tell women how to organise themselves? As if.

So it all comes out. What is the issue with radical feminism here?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

and where's that revolutionary leadership coming from?

That's far too broad a question. Of course the majority element will be comprised of class-conscious proletarians, but the exact details vary. In America, for example, one would expect the black colour-caste to provide much of the leading cadre. Declassed members of the intelligentsia and plebeian members of specially-oppressed groups are usually an important element as well.


Yet the problem with sections of the left, invariably on the sidelines of the movement, is that this turns into a workerist mantra. It takes a very privileged section of the (predominantly male predominantly straight predominantly white) class to be up on a podium (and there's reasons they are elevated, for sure) and say that women or POC shouldn't be concerned with challenging the sexist culture of society and the left but instead put all energy into smashing the state.

Ah, this old strawman. Recognising the vanguard role of the proletariat in all social struggles is not workerism - if anything it is the exact opposite of workerism, since the workerist thinks that women's liberation, queer liberation etc. is unconnected to the class struggle. But this doesn't mean that your particular strategy of "challenging sexist culture" is a good strategy for women's liberation. If anything, the entire academic, Maoist-influenced, "privilege theory"-based mode of challenging misogyny has proven itself to be a colossal trainwreck.


and yet it was the leadership and direction of that very same class that succeeded, that organised itself, that built a solid platform that in fact developed Marxism further.

Well, yes. No one said that workers are incapable of creatively developing Marxism. The point was that Marx's petit-bourgeois background is not an argument against his ideas - just as Healy's impeccable proletarian background isn't an argument for his confused nonsense masquerading as theory.


So it all comes out. What is the issue with radical feminism here?

How about violent transphobia?

[Left Voice]

Most people who celebrate International Woman's Day have no idea about its leftist origins. I shared a couple of interesting articles with friends about this, but most assumed it was a recent, liberal phenomena. Indeed, that is essentially what it has become. Quite frankly, in the context of female emancipation the origins are probably not the most important thing, but it shows how it has become a rather different thing.

As others have said, those who celebrate International Women's Day but do nothing for the remaining 364 days per year aren't doing much for female emancipation.

[Buttscratcher]

Chances are, people that get angry at you for not congratulating them don't deserve to be congratulated.

[Sam_b]

That's far too broad a question.

It's not too broad a question, because the answer should be the working class. For all of orthotrots going on about collaborationism et al over contemporary issues they are exceptionally wavy as a rule on this when it comes down to it.


Ah, this old strawman.

Usually follows apologism, but let's see.


But this doesn't mean that your particular strategy of "challenging sexist culture" is a good strategy for women's liberation. If anything, the entire academic, Maoist-influenced, "privilege theory"-based mode of challenging misogyny has proven itself to be a colossal trainwreck.


I think people have a pretty brass neck saying this when the workers movement appears to be in a decline and the history of the left showing itself to be incapable of actually dealing with sexism in its ranks. It is not a strawman when the white men of the left (tm) point-blank refuse to accept it is a problem. At its very worst it's an excuse for these same men to continue as normal and not give a fuck about it.


How about violent transphobia?

Nice generalisation, belies nothing about the movement against TERPs that's going on. Going to answer the question?

[human strike]

A friend was telling me how a couple of people had wished her a "happy International Women's Day." It struck us both as an odd thing to say and I think we agreed that an "angry International Women's Day" would be more appropriate.

A related question; is womanhood (or womanness) something that should be celebrated?

[MEGAMANTROTSKY]

Well, yes, moralism is usually grounded in some form of ethics, but ethics itself is part of bourgeois ideology....
This point of yours baffles me. Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that ethics has a class basis, rather than ascribe it wholly to bourgeois ideology? It's not as if Marxism or the struggle for socialism is beyond ethics.

[Art Vandelay]

This point of yours baffles me. Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that ethics has a class basis, rather than ascribe it wholly to bourgeois ideology? It's not as if Marxism or the struggle for socialism is beyond ethics.

Indeed, the 'amoralism' of Marxists is a bit of a misnomer.


The “amoralism” of Lenin, that is, his rejection of supra-class morals, did not hinder him from remaining faithful to one and the same ideal throughout his whole life; from devoting his whole being to the cause of the oppressed; from displaying the highest conscientiousness in the sphere of ideas and the highest fearlessness in the sphere of action, from maintaining an attitude untainted by the least superiority to an “ordinary” worker, to a defenseless woman, to a child. Does it not seem that “amoralism” in the given case is only a pseudonym for higher human morality? - Leon Trotsky: Their Morals and Ours.

[Bea Arthur]

As always, a gang of pseudo-feminist "radicals" on this forum loves to talk big but refuses to put their money where their male chauvinist mouths are! While pretending to be concerned about oppression, they demonstrate in this thread that they have no qualms about doubling down on oppression by speaking on behalf of the oppressed!! What a shocker!

What's so hard to understand the fact that only the colonized have anything worthwhile to say about imperialism, that only people of color have anything to say about racism, that only LGBTQQIAA people have anything to say about LGBTQQIAA issues, that only women have anything to say about feminism?! You act as if experience doesn't directly translate into a knowledge of the structural basis of oppression!! Who are you people to tell a woman what to do with her body? Or a colonized person how her struggle against imperialism should be conducted?

Time and time again we have seen this lashing out at women trying to have women's spaces, free from the patriarchy, claiming that those spaces would be discriminatory, as if the whole world weren't one giant men's safe space!! Why is there this hostility to oppressed groups on a forum ostensibly for radicals?

[consuming negativity]

The question in the topic is kind of... well, I don't want to say dumb, but I just think it misses the point. To celebrate international women's day is to celebrate, as people ITT have said, the struggle of women. To know and appreciate the history, etc. What's important isn't whether or not you congratulated the woman on the elevator about the fact that she's a woman, but whether or not you, on a yearly basis, are aware of women's issues in society. The day's best contribution is that it serves as a reminder to those who have gotten busy, or who don't really think about this topic, to come back and spend some time on it.

I mean, I'll be honest, I did say "happy women's day" to a few of my friends who are women. I didn't really feel compelled to, it's just kinda nice to let them know you have their back. Or something. I think you could've just responded to the women who got upset by being like "oh, I didn't know that was a thing" and been honest about it. I don't think they were right to expect it (then, I'm not a woman, so what do I know?), but I don't see any reason not to wish them a happy day if it'd make them feel good and they ask you to. You know? It's nice to wish people a happy day or a good morning or whatever anyway. Especially so if they're your friend and they've made it aware that they'd like you to.

[synthesis]

What's so hard to understand the fact that only the colonized have anything worthwhile to say about imperialism, that only people of color have anything to say about racism, that only LGBTQQIAA people have anything to say about LGBTQQIAA issues, that only women have anything to say about feminism?! You act as if experience doesn't directly translate into a knowledge of the structural basis of oppression!! Who are you people to tell a woman what to do with her body? Or a colonized person how her struggle against imperialism should be conducted?

Right, leave it to Bea Arthur to turn a completely valid point into a total caricature of anything remotely progressive about identity politics.

http://i.imgur.com/igvxTm6.jpg

[#FF0000]

You act as if experience doesn't directly translate into a knowledge of the structural basis of oppression!!

Careful, now. Your mask is slipping.

[Bea Arthur]

Careful, now. Your mask is slipping.

I think you might need to see a therapist to help you with your issues of following me on this forum in order to level personal attacks. I've dealt with your thinly veiled sexism in other threads and don't intend to waste any more of my time dealing with it here. I understand that an independent-thinking woman, a woman who knows how to get what she wants, drives you nuts. That is a problem YOU are going to have to deal with on your own! Just stop stalking and trolling me!!

[BIXX]

As always, a gang of pseudo-feminist "radicals" on this forum loves to talk big but refuses to put their money where their male chauvinist mouths are! While pretending to be concerned about oppression, they demonstrate in this thread that they have no qualms about doubling down on oppression by speaking on behalf of the oppressed!! What a shocker!



What's so hard to understand the fact that only the colonized have anything worthwhile to say about imperialism, that only people of color have anything to say about racism, that only LGBTQQIAA people have anything to say about LGBTQQIAA issues, that only women have anything to say about feminism?! You act as if experience doesn't directly translate into a knowledge of the structural basis of oppression!! Who are you people to tell a woman what to do with her body? Or a colonized person how her struggle against imperialism should be conducted?



Time and time again we have seen this lashing out at women trying to have women's spaces, free from the patriarchy, claiming that those spaces would be discriminatory, as if the whole world weren't one giant men's safe space!! Why is there this hostility to oppressed groups on a forum ostensibly for radicals?


For one, I'm not a male (but also not female), so please don't generalize us as "male chauvinists".

For two, no, people from all stripes of life can contribute meaningfully to discussions about oppression. Marx was no prole, for example.

For three, you seem to be saying then that straight white males who aren't directly economically oppressed can go fuck themselves.

For four, who are you to speak for all queer folks or all minority folks or all people from colonized nations or all poor folks? Or are we to assume that you are the most oppressed person ever so your opinion is more valid and we should all take orders from you? And if you aren't the most oppressed person in the world, then your statement crumples in on itself. If your statement is true, Who are you to say who can an cannot speak for oppressed groups if you aren't part of them?

Lastly, go learn why this form of identity politics is useless. I'm not gonna help you do that because you are honestly not worth helping out, in my opinion.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

It's not too broad a question, because the answer should be the working class.

That is simply not correct - the RSDRP and the RKP(b), for example, were mainly composed of proletarians, but contained a significant element of declassed intellectuals, and with the expansion of the RKP(b) into Central Asia, of non-proletarian members (including the former bourgeoisie at times) of national minorities, both in the general membership and in the central organs of the party. Those are the facts. And they're worth more than all the ultra-proletarian posturing in the world.


For all of orthotrots going on about collaborationism et al over contemporary issues they are exceptionally wavy as a rule on this when it comes down to it.

Class collaboration implies the proletariat working for the interests of an alien class - such as, I don't know, hailing the Iranian "revolution" and demanding that it be "exported" to the Soviet Union. It doesn't mean the presence of individuals from other classes in the revolutionary leadership.

As for the supposed "hand-waving", the ICL-FI explicitly considers declassed intellectuals an element of the revolutionary party. Of course, like anyone who treats the question materialistically, i.e. proceeding from the concrete facts and not from abstract principles, they recognise that different configurations of capitalism in different regions will result in a different makeup of the revolutionary leadership - hence the line about the revolutionary potential of the Black colour-caste in the United States.


I think people have a pretty brass neck saying this when the workers movement appears to be in a decline[...]

It most likely is in decline, and if it isn't, that's only because there's nothing left to decline. On the other hand, I think this shows that the strategy of the majority of the "left" - impressionism, Stalinophobia, looking for "new mass vanguards" outside the proletariat etc. etc. - has failed, and should never have been attempted in the first place.


[A]nd the history of the left showing itself to be incapable of actually dealing with sexism in its ranks.

Only if your benchmark for what "the left" is consists of the SWP UK and the WRP.

But take the Spartacist League, for example. Shortly after being formed by dissident members of the SWP US, they expelled a group around Kay Ellens, partly because of her workerism, which led her to misogyny (particularly opposition to abortion) and homophobia. They called for "free abortion on demand", consistently, in an atmosphere of rampant family-mongering by the Maoists and the increasingly right-wing SWP. They raised the slogans of "No to the veil!" and "Down with the Shah and Khomeini!" when most of the ostensible "left" was lining up to prostrate themselves before the mullahs. When the chief of the New Zealand and Australia branches, Logan, was accused of putting pressure on a female comrade to abort, he was hauled in front of the control commission and expelled. The same happened to a group of male comrades who used their female comrades as secretaries. And so on, and so on - I would say the SL, whatever else people might say about them, dealt with the sexism in its ranks quite well. Furthermore, as much as I disagree with them on other points, I would say that the Freedom Socialist Party, the League for a Revolutionary Party, Love and Rage and the new Internationalist Group, that all of them have broken with sexism that characterises much of the US "left".


It is not a strawman when the white men of the left (tm) point-blank refuse to accept it is a problem.

What do "white men of the left" (I am reminded that, for example, the SL was partly inspired by the very black Richard Fraser, and that the FSP was founded by Fraser and his wife Clara Fraser) refuse to accept is a problem?


Nice generalisation, belies nothing about the movement against TERPs that's going on. Going to answer the question?

I already did. Radfems are transphobic - renaming radfems "TERFs" doesn't really change anything. Apart from that they are bourgeois, liberal, have no notion of class struggle, are biological essentialists etc. etc.

Of course, even if we accept this distinction between "TERFs" and supposedly "good" radfems, your position still implies that "TERFs" should be admitted into socialist spaces, socialist-organised events etc.

[Sam_b]

You've still not actually defined "radical feminists", and instead give nothing more than a lazy and incorrect generalisation. Why is that?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

You've still not actually defined "radical feminists", and instead give nothing more than a lazy and incorrect generalisation. Why is that?

Because I assume you're familiar with the history - the split in organisations such as NYRW, the institution of "consciousness-raising", the various debates between newly-formed radfem groups and so on. Is there any point to asking for "definitions"?

[Sam_b]

Because I assume you're familiar with the history - the split in organisations such as NYRW, the institution of "consciousness-raising", the various debates between newly-formed radfem groups and so on. Is there any point to asking for "definitions"?

When you're trying to generalise an entire (and international) political movement and school of thought then yes, very much so.

[Thirsty Crow]

T
As for your question, I really don't know if there's a way to celebrate International Women's Day. I think people usually just acknowledge it.
Sure there is. There are IWD marches and other sorts of events, and anyway the option always remains to get plastered in good company as a way of celebrating anything.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

When you're trying to generalise an entire (and international) political movement and school of thought then yes, very much so.

The problem is, it is difficult to define any movement. Can you define Marxism?

Broadly speaking, radfems are those whose positions are in continuity with organisations such as NYRF, Redstockings, and others. These organisations were founded on a rejection of class struggle, socialist feminism, and their views rest on a sort of biological essentialism that one doesn't see very often these days. Their homophobia and transphobia - take Redstockings and Jeffreys for example - is legendary.

[Sam_b]

So your entire understanding of the term is based in the late 1960s? Wow.

[Sam_b]

Also, asking if I can define Marxism is a classic strawman in all of this. You're fine with making some very sweeping stereotypes about "radfems" but trying to wriggle out of telling us what you believe radical feminists actually are. It's actually got nothing to do about if I can define Marxism or not, considering I've not been saying all Marxists are X.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

So your entire understanding of the term is based in the late 1960s? Wow.

The late sixties are when radical feminism emerged as a distinct tendency. So yes, my understanding of the term is informed by the historical context of its formation. But it's not as if radfems don't provide enough toxic transphobic nonsense even today (although they seem to have stopped with the Hoxhaesque homophobia, at least on paper).

Now do you have a substantive point to make or are you going to cry because someone said mean things about radfems and there's this radfem group of three people and their dog you think is OK? God, it's like psycho's progressive Syrian anarchists all over again.

[Five Year Plan]

Radical feminism gets its name from the fact that it locates men's oppression of women at the historical root (latin: "radix") of all oppression and exploitation, including class society. It is certainly true that radical feminists in the 1960s opened the eyes of a lot of people, feminists and others, to the realization that many aspects of life previously considered personal were in fact very much political. Vincent West might accuse Sam_B of constructing a strawmen about workerism, but he should be aware that before radical feminism, many socialist organizations, including Trotskyist ones, tended to conceive of politics in an overly narrow way that shut out many gender and sexuality related issues. I hope it is equally clear to Sam_B that anybody who speaks trans-historically of men and women, defined according to biologically derived power differences, as an explanatory mechanism for power and privilege, as radical feminists do, is engaging in anti-materialist essentializing of what women and a men are, and what social roles they might play.

Any politics premised on this transhistorical essentializing is bound to have significant limitations, only one of which, in the case of radical feminism, has been what Vincent correctly observed to be radfem's violent transphobia. Transgender people are verboten to radical feminists because they demonstrate the historical fluidness of gender identity, disassociating it from the rigid biological absolutes that radical feminists rely upon in their construction of the monolithic and transhistorical categories of "man" and "woman."

To Bea Arthur: I don't see how your posts have contributed to this discussion at all. If you can't keep it civil, don't participate.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Radical feminism gets its name from the fact that it locates men's oppression of women at the historical root (latin: "radix") of all oppression and exploitation, including class society. It is certainly true that radical feminists in the 1960s opened the eyes of a lot of people, feminists and others, to the realization that many aspects of life previously considered personal were in fact very much political. Vincent West might accuse Sam_B of constructing a strawmen about workerism, but he should be aware that before radical feminism, many socialist organizations, including Trotskyist ones, tended to conceive of politics in an overly narrow way that shut out many gender and sexuality related issues.

Of course. In particular, issues of gender and sexuality constituted one of Canon's major blind spots, along with China and Healy. I don't dispute that most socialist organisations of the sixties were workerist when it came to women's and LGBT issues - or that most "socialist" organisations are workerist, at least on women's and LGBT issues, today.

What I object to, and I do think this constitutes a strawman, is the notion that anyone who criticises bourgeois feminism and the associated pseudo-Maoist "privilege theory" is secretly a sinister sexist who wants the socialist movement to return to the sixties.

In any case, I wouldn't say that radical feminism as such contributed to the increased understanding of women's and LGBT issues (as I've already noted, most radfems have quite a few problems with the G and the T) in the socialist movement. Not because I dislike radfems - I do, but then again, important things are often done by absolutely vile people (orthodox Trotskyism in its current form, for example, basically goes back to a few foundational documents by the British SLL, led by the arch-fuck Healy) - but because I don't think the chronology checks out (radfems are, if I'm not mistaken, a split from the larger movement that influenced many socialist parties, but also included "politicos", lesbian separatists etc. in addition to the tendency that would become radical feminists) and because I think this underestimates the influence of socialist feminists (people like Clara Fraser).

Of course, I could be mistaken.

But this entire argument about radfems is besides the point. The fact is, there are feminist groups, composed of women and ostensibly working for women's liberation or the equivalent, that are extremely transphobic. Whether we call them radfems, TERFs (I always thought that sounds like a high-atmosphere phenomenon), Plasma Jeffreys, whatever, doesn't matter. The fact is that, if men have no business telling women how to organise, then they have no business telling these groups that they are toxic, divisive and bigoted, and throwing them out of socialist spaces and events constitutes sexism. And why stop there? Maybe misogynist (male) gay groups should also be admitted (these exist, unfortunately, although not to the extent of the Hoxhaist-Redstocking fantasy). Maybe homophobic Muslim groups should as we- oh wait.


To Bea Arthur: I don't see how your posts have contributed to this discussion at all.

You aren't the only one. Even a troll like BA, however, posts something interesting from time to time, and this time, I think it was this sentence:


You act as if experience doesn't directly translate into a knowledge of the structural basis of oppression!!

And of course, the implication (that experience does "directly translate into a knowledge of the structural basis of oppression) is so obviously wrong no one but a troll would have written something so horrifyingly stupid. Most women, in fact, don't have an extensive knowledge of the economic mechanisms that underlie misogyny (of course to the Bea Arthur persona of our troll, misogyny is probably a supraclass, suprahistorical biological datum).

Yet it seems to me that some variant of this extreme empiricism underlies much of the "men have no business..." sentiment. Sam_b explicitly stated that men don't understand sexist oppression. Another underlying cause is the desire, ubiquitous in the modern "left", and extremely dangerous in my 'umble opinion, to avoid offence at all costs. But why should communists avoid offence in political situations? The notion is absurd. Not to mention, there are women - the user Soomie comes to mind - who become offended when the oppression of women is mentioned. And so on, and so on - this enforced politesse is a black hole from which no political line can be recovered.

[Yugo45]

Where do you live? The day carries different meanings in different parts of the world. For example, if you live in a former socialist country, the day used to be for celebration/acknowledgment of women's rights. However, recently it has turned into the opposite, basically it's mix of consumerism and male dominance, a cross between Valentine's Day and Mother's Day perhaps. Nothing to do with women's rights anymore. I understand it still does in the west, though.

[PhoenixAsh]

Where do you live? The day carries different meanings in different parts of the world. For example, if you live in a former socialist country, the day used to be for celebration/acknowledgment of women's rights. However, recently it has turned into the opposite, basically it's mix of consumerism and male dominance, a cross between Valentine's Day and Mother's Day perhaps. Nothing to do with women's rights anymore. I understand it still does in the west, though.

No. It doesn't. At least not in Holland IF anybody pays attention to it at all it isn't celebrated and there may be some small demonstrations of feminist & affiliated organizations and groups...plus there maybe some lectures at universities and some events by bourgeois political identity groups.

[PhoenixAsh]

I have been thinking about this the last few days. I'm a male, but I didn't "celebrate" or congratulate any woman out there. Some got angry at me for not saying congratulation to them.

I have never "celebrated" the International Women's Day. I have never celebrated for gays, black people, etc.

I believe that we are all the same; we are all human beings. That's why I don't celebrate it. There is no big deal if you are a woman, if you are gay or if you are black. You are a human being.

I know that we should fight for woman's right, but I don't feel it's necessary the right way to do it.

What do you believe? Did you celebrate the International Women's Day? If not, why?

I just had to get it out. I've been thinking about it for some days now.
Maybe I should start celebrating?

Yes, yes you were. You are inconsiderate and should stand in the corner facing the wall for the rest of the afternoon.

Maybe you could use the day to actually draw attention to patriarchy and the position of women in society. Join a feminist group/organization and ask what you can do to help or raise awareness...or perhaps you could do that the other 364 days of the year. Challenge sexism when you encounter it. And try to get insight in your own sexism and perhaps change it.

[Skyhilist]

It's pretty easy for white men with privilege to believe that "we are all the same", right? It is, in fact, a "big deal" to be in a patriarchal society full of oppression for women, LBGTQ people and POC; and to be able to have a space in order to bring this to attention, which is what happens on IWD in a lot of communities with activist and cultural events. If you're a man I don't think you should be particularly granted a say in the supposed "right way" for women to conduct liberation.

I don't think OP meant that there isn't systematic oppression - I think his point was that in his mind everyone is a human so everyone deserves equality or something along those lines and that therefore someone's race or gender shouldn't ideally be a big deal. I might be wrong, but I don't think they were suggesting that all these groups have the same amount of privilege.

Perhaps OP was being naive enough to suggest such a thing - either way, perhaps they should at least be asked to clarify what they're saying before it's assumed that they're making what would obviously be an erroneous statement about all groups having the same amount of privilege.

But back to OP, I don't think you should feel bad for not celebrating. I mean it's not like there are really longstanding special traditions in place to celebrate the holiday anyways, so what can you really do? I was not aware that women like to be told "thank you" or "congratulations" or anything like that on International Women's Day, but I suppose next year I'll tell them that if that's their wish - I mean it's a holiday honoring them after all. Beyond that, I'm not sure it's really something you can easily celebrate anyways.

[Ele'ill]

Unless I missed something (which is possible), and not that I disagree with the idea that Sam b and #FF0000 have put forward at least not entirely, but all of it has been put forward by men, nearly the entire conversation.

[Slavic]

Unless I missed something (which is possible), and not that I disagree with the idea that Sam b and #FF0000 have put forward at least not entirely, but all of it has been put forward by men, nearly the entire conversation.

Your right, so following Sam b's line of thinking, this thread should be immediately locked and reopened so only non-white non-males can post because a white male obviously has nothing at all to say about the situation.

[Five Year Plan]

Unless I missed something (which is possible), and not that I disagree with the idea that Sam b and #FF0000 have put forward at least not entirely, but all of it has been put forward by men, nearly the entire conversation.

You do realize this is the very definition of ad hominem, right? Any guesses on why this is classified as a fallacy?

[MEGAMANTROTSKY]

...all of it has been put forward by men, nearly the entire conversation.

So what? That proves nothing, other than that you like to keep track of poster's genders as a sort of side hobby. Guess I won't knock it 'till I try it....

[Hermes]

Your right, so following Sam b's line of thinking, this thread should be immediately locked and reopened so only non-white non-males can post because a white male obviously has nothing at all to say about the situation.


You do realize this is the very definition of ad hominem, right? Any guesses on why this is classified as a fallacy?

god forbid anyone point out that few of the group the question should really be addressed to have actually posted

obv. we should lock the entire thread, yes, this follows logically

[Sinister Intents]

So what?

Few women have posted :( more women should post in this, but then again there are few women on RevLeft

[MEGAMANTROTSKY]

...but then again there are few women on RevLeft

Exactly. So his point is completely meaningless, and redundant to boot. But I suppose it allows him breathing room for an argument about how our conversation is tainted by male bias and invalidates everything we say about feminism, so that's cool and stuff.

Oh, wait, it's not. It's inflammatory and begs the question without any revelatory answers.

[Left Voice]

I'm surprised that so many people here seem to be unaware of the controversy surrounding radfems/TERFs, specifically those who are transphobic. I am far from an expert on feminism, but the transphobia has been well documented for the past 3 or 4 decades.

You don't even need to go back to the 1960s to find examples of it. Just look into Cathy Brennan and websites such as Gender Identity Watch.

I think most people here support the fight for female emancipation (debates around identity politics aside), fully support and often participate in action fighting for LGBTQ causes. However, I think we'd be going into dangerous territory if radfem groups were immune from critisism on the basis of the otherwise good work they do for female emancipation and feminism. After all, we quite rightly take socialist groups such as the SWP UK to task for their failures regarding women's rights *despite* their socialism.

It doesn't matter if a group if communist, socialist, anarchist, feminist, or whatever - if these groups are promoting bourgeois ideology such as discrimination based on sex, gender, orientation, identity, or promote conservative ideology such as sex-negativity, then they should be challenged on these fronts just like everybody else.

[Five Year Plan]

god forbid anyone point out that few of the group the question should really be addressed to have actually posted

obv. we should lock the entire thread, yes, this follows logically

The forum is overwhelmingly male, and so are the posts in this thread. Not surprising. Should we flagellate ourselves over it? I'm not sure what the point of the observation is.

[human strike]

So what? That proves nothing, other than that you like to keep track of poster's genders as a sort of side hobby. Guess I won't knock it 'till I try it....

You don't think someone's gender is relevant when they're expressing an opinion on gendered oppression? Maybe you should try it...

[Sinister Intents]

The forum is overwhelmingly male, and so are the posts in this thread. Not surprising. Should we flagellate ourselves over it? I'm not sure what the point of the observation is.

Yes, we should flagellate ourselves, perhaps self-crucifixion if possible :rolleyes:

I don't think there is really any point to the observation other than we need more female opinions

[Five Year Plan]

You don't think someone's gender is relevant when they're expressing an opinion on gendered oppression? Maybe you should try it...

If the purpose is to arrive at an understanding of how gender oppression is experienced in highly individualized and personalized ways, yes, I agree, women's presence here is very much necessary. If the purpose is to explain the origins of that oppression which underlie experience and aren't experienced first-hand, I don't think gender is a relevant factor at all. Collapsing the two is the same as saying, like that Bea Arthur troll, that experiencing oppression is the same as being totally attuned to the structural causes of oppression. If that were the case, workers' revolution would have happened long ago.

[MEGAMANTROTSKY]

You don't think someone's gender is relevant when they're expressing an opinion on gendered oppression? Maybe you should try it...
What "gendered oppression" are you speaking of here? She was referring to the male to female ratio in this thread on feminism, suggesting that the discourse was tainted because the conversation mostly consisted of men. If she had something to say about radfem from a woman's perspective, that'd be entirely welcome. But she didn't do that, did she? Drawing attention to one's gender rather than their arguments is a telltale sign in a debate that you have nothing to contribute or rebut.

[Ele'ill]

So what? That proves nothing, other than that you like to keep track of poster's genders as a sort of side hobby.

Well, it proves that in a discussion about women's voices being dismissed within most leftist organizations, non-profits, activist groups, etc.. that all kinds of highly defined lines are drawn by men. Not allowed to have an opinion on tactics? I dunno, I think an exchange of ideas and open communication is a good thing when it is desired and you find out if it's desired when you are asked to contribute.

[MEGAMANTROTSKY]

Well, it proves that in a discussion about women's voices being dismissed within most leftist organizations, non-profits, activist groups, etc.. that all kinds of highly defined lines are drawn by men. Not allowed to have an opinion on tactics? I dunno, I think an exchange of ideas and open communication is a good thing when it is desired and you find out if it's desired when you are asked to contribute.
But you didn't give any opinions or ideas. You only pointed out that a discussion thread about feminism was mostly populated by men. Which is not an idea, by the way, but an empirical fact that by itself proves nothing. So your rhetoric about open communication and an "exchange of ideas" is nothing more than a pretentious cloud of hot air.

If you're implying, on the other hand, that the heavy male presence here is making it unwelcome for female posters to contribute, I invite you show us how. Did any of us suggest that we're allergic to women's opinions in a thread on radfem? No. Instead, you've only been asserting what you need to prove, and it makes you look incredibly silly.

[Five Year Plan]

Well, it proves that in a discussion about women's voices being dismissed within most leftist organizations, non-profits, activist groups, etc.. that all kinds of highly defined lines are drawn by men. Not allowed to have an opinion on tactics? I dunno, I think an exchange of ideas and open communication is a good thing when it is desired and you find out if it's desired when you are asked to contribute.

And who is to say that the lines drawn by (some) men would be different than the lines drawn by (some) women in a discussion about the sources of gender oppression? I think open communication is a good thing, which is why I am not fond of this idea that people's views should be excluded or devalued just because they have a penis.

[Ele'ill]

But you didn't give any opinions or ideas. You only pointed out that a discussion thread about feminism was mostly populated by men. Which is not an idea, by the way, but an empirical fact that by itself proves nothing. So your rhetoric about open communication and an "exchange of ideas" is nothing more than a pretentious cloud of hot air.

I'm pointing out that men are making definite decisions about social relationships without adequate input from women (not even examples, albeit anecdotal, were given). I bring it up because I don't entirely agree with what has been said in this thread so far by users who I normally agree with on related topics and feel the position they defined is either too inappropriately heavy or a bit unclear.




If you're implying, on the other hand, that the heavy male presence here is making it unwelcome for female posters to contribute, I invite you show us how. Did any of us suggest that we're allergic to women's opinions in a thread on radfem? No. Instead, you've only been asserting what you need to prove, and it makes you look incredibly silly.

I dunno if I skipped over a fight earlier in this thread where you got wounded and emotional about probably being wrong but your tone here is sniveling and bordering tantrum. Could you stop directing your baggage at me?

[Ele'ill]

And who is to say that the lines drawn by (some) men would be different than the lines drawn by (some) women in a discussion about the sources of gender oppression? I think open communication is a good thing, which is why I am not fond of this idea that people's views should be excluded or devalued just because they have a penis.

So what part of my post(s) did you not get?

[Five Year Plan]

I'm pointing out that men are making definite decisions about social relationships without adequate input from women (not even examples, albeit anecdotal, were given). I bring it up because I don't entirely agree with what has been said in this thread so far by users who I normally agree with on related topics and feel the position they defined is either too inappropriately heavy or a bit unclear.

It's clear that (a) men are saying things in this thread, and (b) you disagree with them. What's not clear is that (b) is the direct result of (a). Do you think that MEGAMANTROTSKY or Vincent West espouse the views that they do simply because they are men? That's what unclear in your insistence on bringing up people's gender. You imply, but never argue, that people's positions are the implicit product of a sexist male worldview that men are likely to have by virtue of being men.

[Bea Arthur]

It's clear that (a) men are saying things in this thread, and (b) you disagree with them. What's not clear is that (b) is the direct result of (a). Do you think that MEGAMANTROTSKY or Vincent West espouse the views that they do simply because they are men? That's what unclear in your insistence on bringing up people's gender. You imply, but never argue, that people's positions are the implicit product of a sexist male worldview that men are likely to have by virtue of being men.

Spoken like a man with a tractor-trailer full of privilege!! Women understand women's oppression because-get this-they are women! Have you ever understood the fear that a woman has when a man approaches her in the park after nightfall? Of course not! You don't understand sexism at all! Instead you try to silence your detractors!!!

[Ele'ill]

;asdlkgh;alhigkIEPRO'PAIOSHDF;GLKHAKJGH

(i've actually lost my mind now fyi)

I was talking about #FF0000 and Sam b either defining a position too heavily, one that isn't quite what I've experienced based on what I've said in this thread so far, or not being clear enough with what they mean, which I've said now in every single post in this thread minus the one where I asked what you didn't get (which you still aren't getting). I am not agreeing with the other peripheral stuff you're padding your posts with, but I am questioning the concept of no opinion especially regarding close friends and 'comrades' who either ask, or depending on the relationship, feel comfortable with receiving input. Perhaps this is an organizational issue with different methods of organizing, I dunno.

[MEGAMANTROTSKY]

I'm pointing out that men are making definite decisions about social relationships without adequate input from women (not even examples, albeit anecdotal, were given). I bring it up because I don't entirely agree with what has been said in this thread so far by users who I normally agree with on related topics and feel the position they defined is either too inappropriately heavy or a bit unclear.
Very well. What exactly about the position was "inappropriately heavy or a bit unclear"? And I'm not sure how I could be expected to extrapolate all of that from one observation that you made, with no further explanation until you were pressed to this point.

I dunno if I skipped over a fight earlier in this thread where you got wounded and emotional about probably being wrong but your tone here is sniveling and bordering tantrum. Could you stop directing your baggage at me? I'm going to respond with something I said not too long ago here, but a key word is changed. Can you guess what it is?

Drawing attention to one's gender emotional state rather than their arguments is a telltale sign in a debate that you have nothing to contribute or rebut.
@Bea Arthur: Oh, shut up.

[#FF0000]

I'm looking at the thread again and cannot even begin to imagine what peoples issue is with Mari3l's post is. Is it tough to understand that a womans voice might be kinda valuable in a discussion about women's issues?

[The Jay]

Likewise, but I think it needs to be acknowleged a hell ov a lot more! I don't know how I'd be able to celebrate it with where I'm at, but I would if I felt I could in a way that's productive and useful!

I don't think that any holiday is a good way to bring awareness personally. Hell, even wearing an "I'm a Feminist" tee shirt would be better.

[Sinister Intents]

That gives me an idea for a business venture. Do you want to be my employee?

Sure, I work for a concrete business, wanna join me as well? I can't stand having sexist employees. I fired a person over the summer, and one of the reasons was the fact that he was being fucking disgustingly sexist. He'd cat call women and young girls "hey baby" "hey sexy" "oooh ur hawt" God he pissed me the fuck off. I fired him for being over the top fucking reactionary. He'd spout white nationalist bullshit and his views of women were fucking disgusting.

[Five Year Plan]

I'm looking at the thread again and cannot even begin to imagine what peoples issue is with Mari3l's post is. Is it tough to understand that a womans voice might be kinda valuable in a discussion about women's issues?

I think the issue isn't that she emphasizes the importance of women's voices. It's the implied claim that men's voices aren't important because they are men. Her (if Mariel is indeed a "she." If not, how ironic!) model of reasoning presupposes that men cannot fight against sexism or critique sexism or offer any kind of cogent analysis of sexism. If that wasn't what she intended to imply, then I accept that I misinterpreted her posts. Who here would disagree with the obvious fact that this forum needs more women, and that these women can contribute a lot through sharing their experiences of oppression?

[Sam_b]

Your right, so following Sam b's line of thinking, this thread should be immediately locked and reopened so only non-white non-males can post because a white male obviously has nothing at all to say about the situation.

You are having a fucking nightmare in this thread. Half due to not understanding my arguments and half for having an idiotic line of thinking.


I'm not in the mood to read a novella sized thread about this.

Fucking tough. The argument's there to see and if you want to take it seriously you don't lazily ask for cliffs.

[The Jay]

Who even are you?

You're right. You do that to everyone so you wouldn't remember me. Anyway, back to the topic.

I think that dedicating a day to women is a poor way to address their role in society as people. Separating women into another category from that of humanity is a thing that should no longer be used but that is not possible yet unfortunately.

If we really want to discuss ending sexism we need to end the way that people think about social roles: domestic work being for women, child rearing, and diminutive posts within business (obviously opposing business at the same time). The fact that women are becoming more common in CEO positions is good if you're coming at this from the liberal side, but I think that the more important thing for radicals to harp on is the treatment of women in our day to day lives.

Basically, like most grassroot solutions, the goal is to talk to people around you.

[Manic Impressive]

I'm with Morgan Freeman on this one

I3cGfrExozQ

[#FF0000]

I'm with Morgan Freeman on this one

I3cGfrExozQ

On the "relegating history related to a group of people to a day/month is ridiculous" bit or the "if you ignore systemic discrimination against an entire group of people it will go away" part.

[BIXX]

Unless I missed something (which is possible), and not that I disagree with the idea that Sam b and #FF0000 have put forward at least not entirely, but all of it has been put forward by men, nearly the entire conversation.



Well, it proves that in a discussion about women's voices being dismissed within most leftist organizations, non-profits, activist groups, etc.. that all kinds of highly defined lines are drawn by men. Not allowed to have an opinion on tactics? I dunno, I think an exchange of ideas and open communication is a good thing when it is desired and you find out if it's desired when you are asked to contribute.


If I am to understand correctly, these are the posts everyone got all butthurt about?

Honestly I have no issues with what is said here. It in no way completely endorses Bea Arthur's view (which is only women can contribute in any meaningful way in discussions of feminism). It is just an observation- that men tend to dominate conversations on the left.

[BIXX]

I think the issue isn't that she emphasizes the importance of women's voices. It's the implied claim that men's voices aren't important because they are men. Her (if Mariel is indeed a "she." If not, how ironic!) model of reasoning presupposes that men cannot fight against sexism or critique sexism or offer any kind of cogent analysis of sexism. If that wasn't what she intended to imply, then I accept that I misinterpreted her posts. Who here would disagree with the obvious fact that this forum needs more women, and that these women can contribute a lot through sharing their experiences of oppression?


That wasn't what Mari3L said at all... You are saying that Mari3L and Bea Arthur have the same position, where thy clearly do not.

[BIXX]

Here is my opinion: every gender has some part to contribute to feminist theory. HOWEVER, we should also realize there are some things a woman will know that a man can never know, or that a minority will know that a white person never will know. THIS DOES NOT MEAN that people who have privilege can't contribute to a conversation about oppression they don't feel, but they have to understand that there will be times when their opinion is inadequate because they have no idea what it is like to be oppressed in certain ways, even if they are oppressed in others.

[Manic Impressive]

On the "relegating history related to a group of people to a day/month is ridiculous" bit or the "if you ignore systemic discrimination against an entire group of people it will go away" part.
All of it actually :lol:.

I knew it would piss you off. But I think you've got the wrong end of the stick with what he's saying. I don't think he's saying ignore systemic discrimination at all. A bit like Chomsky's how to win the war on terror? "stop fighting it". Look at it this way society is made up of individuals. We all enforce the idea of race (or gender for that matter) through how we interact with others. I think he's saying we need to kill the idea of race within ourselves as individuals and eventually that will have a wider impact on society.

I think the first point is very poignant as well. Lefty liberal crackers can often act in a paternal way to discriminated groups. Which can come across as being extremely patronizing to those they are earnestly trying to help. It can often become a relationship where they are not treating the other person as an equal but as a child who needs their help. A new white man's burden. Patronizing as fuck. Black history month, international women's day, it's all liberal guilt appraising bullshit.

I think ultimately what Mr Freeman is saying in the clip is that he wants to be treated as an equal rather than receiving either discrimination or special treatment as a result of that discrimination.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

I didn't say this so you can keep your rolling-eyes smileys for when you actually understand an argument. Talk about women and minorities all you like. But it is not the role of white leftist men to tell women and minorities how to organise themselves. We are not all the same, as much as privileged men with fuck-all understanding of intersectionality would have you believe otherwise. This goes for society, politics and yes, even in leftist organisations.

As one of the "privileged" white male communist workers, and admittedly knowing fuck-all about how living as a woman or minority is, I'm going to disagree on whether "we" (going along your bourgeois categories of course) have a right to criticize "women" on how to organize themselves:

If "women" organize themselves into organizations that put women's demands above the strategic economic, political interests and goals of the proletariat (the liberation of humanity through the abolition of classes) - if our working class women join associations that advance the "equal rights" of bourgeois society, for women to hold the inherently corrupt positions of power in the bourgeois states and organs of capitalist production to gain the rights of privilege which men have used to coerce, torture, deceive and exploit the working people for millennia- then it is the duty of us communist men (whether privileged, exploited, white, black, yellow, hetero- homo- trans- or whatever-sexual) to fight against these anti-proletarian ideas of the women's movement, for an introduction of it into the communist party-movement, a political submission (or "allegiance") of its leaders to that of the communists.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Here is my opinion: every gender has some part to contribute to feminist theory. HOWEVER, we should also realize there are some things a woman will know that a man can never know, or that a minority will know that a white person never will know.

And that might those things be?


THIS DOES NOT MEAN that people who have privilege can't contribute to a conversation about oppression they don't feel [...]

Oppression isn't defined by how someone feels, although much of "privilege theory" and similar nonsense depends on a conflation of the two. Oppression is structural, material violence. What this means in practical terms is that there is no equivalence between a petit-bourgeois radfem having a tantrum because icky trans people had been admitted to "her" event, and a trans person getting beaten up.

Of course - and I notice Sam_b still hasn't responded to this - if you follow the "men don't have any business telling women how to organise" school of lazy quasi-politics, socialists should welcome radfems with open arms.


I knew it would piss you off. But I think you've got the wrong end of the stick with what he's saying. I don't think he's saying ignore systemic discrimination at all. A bit like Chomsky's how to win the war on terror? "stop fighting it". Look at it this way society is made up of individuals. We all enforce the idea of race (or gender for that matter) through how we interact with others. I think he's saying we need to kill the idea of race within ourselves as individuals and eventually that will have a wider impact on society.

Just like how, if we "kill the idea of capitalism within ourselves as individuals", eventually that will have a wider impact on society, right?


I think ultimately what Mr Freeman is saying in the clip is that he wants to be treated as an equal rather than receiving either discrimination or special treatment as a result of that discrimination.

Well, Mr. Freeman can do without "special treatment" just fine. Black proletarians, who are routinely discriminated against in the workplace, imprisoned, killed by the police - those people would probably welcome special treatment. But I assume that since Mr. Freeman is black, his opinion is sacred to some people on this site.

[Luís Henrique]

What's to "celebrate" in March 8th? The killing of some working class women?

No, we shouldn't "celebrate" the Women's Day. We should use it as a tool to organise, discuss, fight against patriarchy and capitalism. Otherwise it is useless, or even worse, it waters down the meaning of the date.

Luís Henrique

[Quail]

First, stop with the personal attacks, one-liners, etc. If I see any more, the offending users will receive an infraction. I'll trash the trash in a minute.

Secondly, International Women's Day isn't and shouldn't be a "celebration" - it's a day for action and for commemorating the action that women have taken in the past to get to where we are today.

Lastly, I do think that women and other people oppressed by patriarchy are likely to have more insight into patriarchy, and as men it is your role to show solidarity and give us the autonomy to liberate ourselves. That doesn't mean you know nothing, or that your opinions are invalid, but it does mean that you should take a back seat. If, as someone who doesn't experience sexism, you think that you know better and you are better informed than all of those who do, you're (subconsciously or not) perpetuating the notion that people who experience sexism are inferior, because if we weren't, why would we need you to tell us how to liberate ourselves? It's patronising and insulting.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Lastly, I do think that women and other people oppressed by patriarchy are likely to have more insight into patriarchy, and as men it is your role to show solidarity and give us the autonomy to liberate ourselves. That doesn't mean you know nothing, or that your opinions are invalid, but it does mean that you should take a back seat. If, as someone who doesn't experience sexism, you think that you know better and you are better informed than all of those who do, you're (subconsciously or not) perpetuating the notion that people who experience sexism are inferior, because if we weren't, why would we need you to tell us how to liberate ourselves? It's patronising and insulting.

I'm sorry, but that simply doesn't follow. If I think I "know better than" some women (i.e. I think my opinion is correct and theirs isn't), this doesn't mean I think all women are incorrect.

And of course, women are not a homogeneous bloc, and to communists, the difference between bourgeois and proletarian women is greater than the difference between women and men proletarians (although that difference still exists).

[BIXX]

And that might those things be?

Well for one they will directly experience oppression- women being objectified, minorities being blamed for crimes they didn't commit, among other things.

My question is how you could even doubt there are things oppressed folks will experience that people who aren't oppressed in the same area won't experience?


Oppression isn't defined by how someone feels, although much of "privilege theory" and similar nonsense depends on a conflation of the two. Oppression is structural, material violence. What this means in practical terms is that there is no equivalence between a petit-bourgeois radfem having a tantrum because icky trans people had been admitted to "her" event, and a trans person getting beaten up.

I know oppression is not based in how someone feels- I meant "feel" in the sense that they experience it.

Regarding transphobia and radfems (among their other issues) I wrote a paper about that once- I didn't include historical shit but it was just a minor analysis of "radical" feminism.


Of course - and I notice Sam_b still hasn't responded to this - if you follow the "men don't have any business telling women how to organise" school of lazy quasi-politics, socialists should welcome radfems with open arms.


I never said this. However, I do feel that women will in most cases know better how to deal with their own oppression. As quail said, if you adopt the position that they don't know what's best for them, then you reproduce the same set of patriarchal relations that claim they are inferior.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Well for one they will directly experience oppression- women being objectified, minorities being blamed for crimes they didn't commit, among other things.

My question is how you could even doubt there are things oppressed folks will experience that people who aren't oppressed in the same area won't experience?

I asked what members of the oppressed groups know that members of the dominant groups can't know, not what they experience. Experience isn't knowledge, unless you follow the Bea Trolltur school of epistemology.


Regarding transphobia and radfems (among their other issues) I wrote a paper about that once- I didn't include historical shit but it was just a minor analysis of "radical" feminism.

Alright?


I never said this.

But it follows from what you said. Radfem groups are women's organisations that follow a particular organisational and ideological model, which includes violent transphobia among other things. So if men can't comment on women's organisations, the socialist movement, which includes a lot of men to say the least, shouldn't attack or exclude radfems.


However, I do feel that women will in most cases know better how to deal with their own oppression. As quail said, if you adopt the position that they don't know what's best for them, then you reproduce the same set of patriarchal relations that claim they are inferior.

Then I refer you to my response to Quail.

[Luís Henrique]

Well for one they will directly experience oppression- women being objectified, minorities being blamed for crimes they didn't commit, among other things.

All of us experience oppression, in some degree, and in some way or another. Beign oppressed because you are Black, or female, is different from being oppressed because you are short, or bald, only in two ways: first, in degree, and second, in that the former oppressions are structural in our societies, while the latter are not. But the subjective feeling, or the "experience" if you prefer, is the same, which is the reason even a very privileged person can understand the oppression suffered by disabled Black lesbians in pre-Mandela South Africa: it is the same as what you feel in [insert minor discrimination situation of choice here], just taken up to eleven, and then made a mainstay of society-as-it-is, so that it can't be simply removed by good will or individual introspection.

Luís Henrique

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I don't think it's the same at all - no one is going to beat you up for being bald for example, the state won't come and seize control of your viscera etc.

But at the same time, I don't think the experience of oppression needs to be the same. Like I said, it's a material fact. I can recognise that people are being killed for their orientation even if I've never been hanged.

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

Just like how, if we "kill the idea of capitalism within ourselves as individuals", eventually that will have a wider impact on society, right?

That's exactly right, because it is tied to material changes. In order to carry out the process of killing "capitalism within ourselves as individuals" we would have to implement material changes on a large scale, globally. This involves both social and political change. What you've done here is criticise the quote for apparently shearing off the materialist conception while keeping an idealist conception of how change occurs. The thing is, both are right but material conditions come first in terms of importance.

[Quail]

I'm sorry, but that simply doesn't follow. If I think I "know better than" some women (i.e. I think my opinion is correct and theirs isn't), this doesn't mean I think all women are incorrect.

And of course, women are not a homogeneous bloc, and to communists, the difference between bourgeois and proletarian women is greater than the difference between women and men proletarians (although that difference still exists).

If you think you know how to organise for women's liberation better than (revolutionary) women, i.e., the people who are likely to have the most experience and knowledge about their own oppression, then the implication is that women need the input of men and can't liberate themselves.

[Five Year Plan]

I don't think it's the same at all - no one is going to beat you up for being bald for example, the state won't come and seize control of your viscera etc.

But at the same time, I don't think the experience of oppression needs to be the same. Like I said, it's a material fact. I can recognise that people are being killed for their orientation even if I've never been hanged.

I think Luis Henrique's post is well taken once it is understood that his point was that on a microscopic level the experience of being singled out and disadvantaged (or targeted for negative behavior) as a result of being a woman is similar to the experience of being singled out and disadvantaged for being bald, or fat, or ugly. As an example, knowing you were likely denied a promotion because you were overweight and therefore perceived as lazy (despite the cause being a glandular problem) probably feels just as shitty and offensive as being passed up for a promotion because you are a female. The experience is very similar in terms of the powerlessness and pent up outrage, even if these two experiences on a macroscopic level are very different in terms of how they are (or are not) structurally tied into capitalism.

This is an important point because it means that even people who do not directly experience women's oppression, by virtue of not being a woman, can feel intense solidarity with oppressed women because of his own past experiences with being singled out and disadvantaged for bs reasons. While he might not ever know what it's like to go through the exact same concrete situations that a woman does, the sentiment he has experienced is basically the same on the microscopic, not structural, level.

I do, however, understand what Quail is getting at, though I think the way she and others are trying to make this point actually leads us into dangerous territory of the kind you mentioned earlier, where the majority-male revolutionary socialists defer to the Concerned Women of America on questions of women's oppression. Quail and others can obviously correct me if I am wrong, but the point is that women, because they are women, will tend to feel a greater sense of urgency in struggling against women's oppression than men, for whom the issue is more abstract. So if the vast majority of women who are experiencing some purported "solution" to their oppression are rising in opposition to that solution, then chances are something has gone wrong somewhere along the way. And in formulating a new solution with women, men should listen to those women's experiences more closely than they should other men talking about their experiences with the "solution." It's not that complicated of a point, really, but somehow it keeps getting tied up with more sweeping proclamations about women's views, in general, being more valuable, or women having a natural insight into the underlying causes of oppression, and so on. Women will have to occupy the center of any struggle against women's oppression, although I think it's clear that this struggle will only succeed if the women occupying that center are socialist women standing alongside like-minded men in struggling for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism.

[Manic Impressive]

Just like how, if we "kill the idea of capitalism within ourselves as individuals", eventually that will have a wider impact on society, right?
Yes pretty fucking similar actually. A complete paradigm shift in ideology. Unless of course you don't think workers are capable of emancipating themselves? :rolleyes:


Well, Mr. Freeman can do without "special treatment" just fine. Black proletarians, who are routinely discriminated against in the workplace, imprisoned, killed by the police - those people would probably welcome special treatment. But I assume that since Mr. Freeman is black, his opinion is sacred to some people on this site.
I find his views concurrent with the views of workers. They don't want any discrimination. Either positive (an oxymoron) or negative. They don't want to be treated any differently, they don't want to be spoken down to. Is that so hard to comprehend?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

That's exactly right, because it is tied to material changes. In order to carry out the process of killing "capitalism within ourselves as individuals" we would have to implement material changes on a large scale, globally. This involves both social and political change. What you've done here is criticise the quote for apparently shearing off the materialist conception while keeping an idealist conception of how change occurs. The thing is, both are right but material conditions come first in terms of importance.

I don't think that's a good reconstruction of what MI was trying to say - if it was, he wouldn't have quoted Morgan Freeman, who obviously has no interest in a social revolution, approvingly.

"Killing the idea of race within ourselves as individual" can only mean ignoring the socioeconomic realities of race, becoming "colour-blind". As long as racial oppression still exists, this is objectively racist. The idea is analogous, not to "let us adopt a socialist standpoint and change the world", but "let's close our eyes and pretend the proletariat-bourgeois distinction doesn't exist".


If you think you know how to organise for women's liberation better than (revolutionary) women, i.e., the people who are likely to have the most experience and knowledge about their own oppression, then the implication is that women need the input of men and can't liberate themselves.

Or that I disagree with those particular revolutionary women - and it needs to be said that deciding who is a revolutionary and who is not isn't a politically neutral act. I don't recognise radfems or Wohlforthites as revolutionaries, for example.

Of course, I don't mean to imply that political disagreement can't be caused by the structural misogyny of capitalist society. But to establish that, I think, you need to look at a pattern of behaviour rather than an isolated incident.

That said, I do think women, as such, can't liberate themselves. Neither can LGBT people, or black people etc. This doesn't mean that I denigrate these groups (I am gay myself), but that objectively, they don't have the social power that the proletariat has.

I think this is one point of contention between us - a lot of people on this thread seem to conceive of liberation struggles as independent struggles that merely intersect the class struggle, whereas I view them as one unified struggle, led by the proletariat (and note that the vanguard of the proletariat - the most progressive and militant workers - will be made out of women and minorities to a disproportionate extent).


I do, however, understand what Quail is getting at, though I think the way she and others are trying to make this point actually leads us into dangerous territory of the kind you mentioned earlier, where the majority-male revolutionary socialists defer to the Concerned Women of America on questions of women's oppression. Quail and others can obviously correct me if I am wrong, but the point is that women, because they are women, will tend to feel a greater sense of urgency in struggling against women's oppression than men, for whom the issue is more abstract.

In general, yes, but as always the devil is in the details. For example, there were quite a few prominent female Bolsheviks whose views on women were, let's be honest, creepy even by the rotten standards of the times (Krupskaya, Kollontai - how did the second one become an icon of "socialist feminism", by the way?). In the SL, the most misogynist members gathered around Kay Ellens. And so on.

Of course, in general what you say is correct. But partly, that is the fault of the workerism in the socialist movement - one important aspect of the socialist education, which I think is ignored in most groups, is making male militants understand that without women's liberation, socialism is impossible.


So if the vast majority of women who are experiencing some purported "solution" to their oppression are rising in opposition to that solution, then chances are something has gone wrong somewhere along the way.

Fair enough. But we aren't talking about e.g. the unveiling campaign, but specifically about organisation. Here, I think we can apply the lessons of the general socialist movement - we don't have to try and fail with women's popular fronts, or women's a-partyism etc.


Yes pretty fucking similar actually. A complete paradigm shift in ideology. Unless of course you don't think workers are capable of emancipating themselves?

Demonstrably, they are, and equally demonstrably, passive propagandism and sentiments of the "change yourself to change society" type are useless to militant workers.


I find his views concurrent with the views of workers. They don't want any discrimination. Either positive (an oxymoron) or negative.

Then maybe you should stop living in your little fantasy world and pay attention to the demands of black militant groups, black union members etc.

[Five Year Plan]

In general, yes, but as always the devil is in the details. For example, there were quite a few prominent female Bolsheviks whose views on women were, let's be honest, creepy even by the rotten standards of the times (Krupskaya, Kollontai - how did the second one become an icon of "socialist feminism", by the way?). In the SL, the most misogynist members gathered around Kay Ellens. And so on.

Obviously there is no strict correspondence between the experience of being a woman and having the right programmatic views of what causes women's oppression and how, exactly, to overcome that oppression. This is the view you keep repeating, and in the process you use this (correct IMO) argument to dismiss experience altogether. My point is that, while your interlocutors here are making experience do far too much political work, your apparent total dismissal of experience is going too far in the opposite direction.

Experience can, in my view, be thought of as a guiding barometer which, while it might not tell people in what direction we should go, can certainly tell us which direction we shouldn't be going. The processing of this experiential information entails that women not only be active in the process of liberating themselves, but in some sense be at the "center" insofar as being at the center means that their experiences serves as a foundation (construed as I did above) for the politics in a way that cannot be true for non-men. Women and their experiences have to be the basis of the political movement to overcome women's oppression, even if those experiences are not the totality of that movement and by themselves cannot provide anybody, least of all women, the programmatic framework for overcoming oppression.

[Quail]

Or that I disagree with those particular revolutionary women - and it needs to be said that deciding who is a revolutionary and who is not isn't a politically neutral act. I don't recognise radfems or Wohlforthites as revolutionaries, for example.

Of course, I don't mean to imply that political disagreement can't be caused by the structural misogyny of capitalist society. But to establish that, I think, you need to look at a pattern of behaviour rather than an isolated incident.
The problem here from my perspective is that you assume that your opinion is equally well-informed as the women you're disagreeing with. However, there is I would say a substantial difference between reading about oppression and dealing with it abstractly, and actually living and experiencing it. My lived experiences are what have made me understand not only the nature of sexism but the real importance of fighting against it.

Comparing this to how I feel about racism, for example, which I don't experience, I know and understand how racism works and affects other people, but I will never truly understand what it is like to live with racism. Therefore I don't feel that I am qualified to fight against racism without the input of people of colour, because if they're anything like me they will have been thinking about racism and how to fight it as long as they have experienced it and every time they do experience it. So they're going to have a lot more valuable insight than I ever could have, whether I agree with them or not.


That said, I do think women, as such, can't liberate themselves. Neither can LGBT people, or black people etc. This doesn't mean that I denigrate these groups (I am gay myself), but that objectively, they don't have the social power that the proletariat has.

I think this is one point of contention between us - a lot of people on this thread seem to conceive of liberation struggles as independent struggles that merely intersect the class struggle, whereas I view them as one unified struggle, led by the proletariat (and note that the vanguard of the proletariat - the most progressive and militant workers - will be made out of women and minorities to a disproportionate extent).

I think this is a bit of a straw man. I think that women's liberation (and that of any marginalised group) is an essential part of anarchism, and vice-versa, but I think that capitalism and patriarchy need to be fought together rather than seeing the struggle against patriarchy as a corollary of the overthrow of capitalism and therefore secondary to the class struggle. Women have to wage a war on two fronts, because we're fighting not only capitalism and patriarchy in wider society, but sexism within our own movements and organisations.

[Five Year Plan]

The problem here from my perspective is that you assume that your opinion is equally well-informed as the women you're disagreeing with.

You do understand that the implication of this statement is that Vincent West is a presumptuous sexist unless he acknowledges that Phyllis Schlafly understands women's oppression more than he does (or Marx did)? You don't have a problem with this implication?

[MEGAMANTROTSKY]

Yes pretty fucking similar actually. A complete paradigm shift in ideology. Unless of course you don't think workers are capable of emancipating themselves? :rolleyes:
It sounds like you're saying that workers must politically and morally cleanse and reinvent themselves before carrying out an active struggle against capitalism. The understanding of Marxism is that workers will achieve this through the struggle for socialism, not before. This condescending logic might be second nature to the SEP or the Second International, but it has little standing outside those organizations.

[Manic Impressive]

It sounds like you're saying that workers must politically and morally cleanse and reinvent themselves before carrying out an active struggle against capitalism.
No that's the strawman that was put up. That's not what I'm saying


The understanding of Marxism is that workers will achieve this through the struggle for socialism, not before. This condescending logic might be second nature to the SEP or the Second International, but it has little standing outside those organizations.
I'm not really sure what you're saying here. "The struggle for socialism" is incredibly vague. Do you mean the fight for reforms? Strikes? Selling newspapers? All of these things could mean the struggle for socialism to different people. For Marx the in built antagonism between worker and employer is what causes class consciousness. The fact that the worker must always try to sell his labour for the highest amount and the employer must always attempt to obtain the workers labour for the lowest amount. That is the class struggle. However, instead of it being completely pre-determined there must also be ideology countering the predominant ideology, which is always that of the ruling class. This is when ideas (or theory) meet practice (or praxis). There needs to be both.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Obviously there is no strict correspondence between the experience of being a woman and having the right programmatic views of what causes women's oppression and how, exactly, to overcome that oppression. This is the view you keep repeating, and in the process you use this (correct IMO) argument to dismiss experience altogether. My point is that, while your interlocutors here are making experience do far too much political work, your apparent total dismissal of experience is going too far in the opposite direction.

Experience can, in my view, be thought of as a guiding barometer which, while it might not tell people in what direction we should go, can certainly tell us which direction we shouldn't be going. The processing of this experiential information entails that women not only be active in the process of liberating themselves, but in some sense be at the "center" insofar as being at the center means that their experiences serves as a foundation (construed as I did above) for the politics in a way that cannot be true for non-men. Women and their experiences have to be the basis of the political movement to overcome women's oppression, even if those experiences are not the totality of that movement and by themselves cannot provide anybody, least of all women, the programmatic framework for overcoming oppression.

I apologise for the repetition; it must be tedious, but I don't think some people are willing to accept the fairly elementary fact that experience of oppression doesn't necessarily result in knowledge of the structural causes of oppression (or the existence of oppression, for that matter).

As for experience of oppression, in general, I don't think it should be dismissed out of hand. But at the same time, I think that any strategy that emphasises experience over theory and principle will run into problems.

Take your suggestion, for example - that experience be used as a "barometer which tells us the direction we shouldn't be going". Now, prima facie this is very reasonable. In fact, I think it would work in maybe nine cases out of ten. Even so, I think there have been situations when this approach would have resulted in an incorrect line.

Abortion, for example. Many women have a highly negative experience of abortion, partly due to living in a misogynist society, partly due to very real economic and social pressures to abort (often coming from the same sources as pressures to not abort, naturally), and so on, and so on. This, in turn, causes some women to take an anti-abortion stance. And certainly very few women would support free abortion on demand at any stage of the pregnancy, as our anarcho-Bernsteinite friend likes to remind us every now and then. Now, I'm not mentioning this to make fun of these women, or to paint them as misogynist devils (I think the entire situation is unfortunate). But the thing is, when we demand free abortion on demand at any stage of the pregnancy, we encounter a backlash, and a significant number of the people who are opposed to this demand are women. Some of them might be our comrades. But this doesn't mean that we're going in the wrong direction.

Furthermore, the experience of women is in fact heterogeneous and often opposed. Often it is at variance with the experience of other oppressed groups (it is possible, for example, for a ciswoman to feel uneasy around transwomen because of negative experiences with biological males, and a transwoman to feel uneasy around ciswomen because of a pattern of exclusion and direct physical violence directed at them).

But as I said, I don't think experience should be dismissed out of hand. But it needs to be evaluated and integrated into a particular theoretical framework, based on historical and dialectical materialism (in fact, I could make a broader epistemological point about empiricism and distrust of theory, but I think people dislike me enough as it is). Now, what this means is:

(1) That we must resist drawing what are prima facie natural conclusions from certain kinds of experience. For example, while as communists we sympathise with the woman who has been brutalised by biological males, we can't allow ourselves to condone transphobia.

(2) This task - evaluating and integrating the experience of oppressed groups - will fall to a revolutionary leadership that will not be exclusively composed of women and oppressed groups. Generally, I think the overwhelmingly male (and straight, white, "native" etc.) makeup of most socialist parties is problematic, because obviously we aren't attracting the people who have the greatest potential for militancy, but even when this is corrected there will still be men, cis persons, whites etc. in the revolutionary leadership.

The problem is that many people view these two points as insulting to women. I sympathise with their reasons for doing so - the history of the socialist movement is filled to the brim with petit-bourgeois bastards like Wohlforth dismissing the struggle of everyone but the most stereotypical chisel-jawed macho straight muscular coal worker. But looking for insult in the normal operation of a political organisation is a recipe for paralysis and capitulation to bourgeois forces (how many socialist organisations have been dragged into popular fronts based on some aspect of structural discrimination?).

Quail, I think this answers much of your post as well.


I think this is a bit of a straw man. I think that women's liberation (and that of any marginalised group) is an essential part of anarchism, and vice-versa, but I think that capitalism and patriarchy need to be fought together rather than seeing the struggle against patriarchy as a corollary of the overthrow of capitalism and therefore secondary to the class struggle.

Alright, but placing the struggle against the structural oppression of women (I am a bit cautious about the term "patriarchy" because it is sometimes construed as a supra-class, almost a-historical, system of oppression of women) in the context of the class struggle doesn't make it secondary (it is only secondary in the sense that it can't be achieved independently, but in a very real sense, that goes for socialism as well - socialism without women's liberation is impossible), or unimportant.

[PhoenixAsh]

The idea that permeates this thread that the struggle against patriarchy is the domain of women etc. and identity politics at the exclusion of all others is troubling. The fact is that women need men need heterosexuality need LGBTQ in order to do so and that no single identity group can or will ever be able to do so.

IMO this is caused by the predominant role privilege theory is taking in the praxis of political activism...and how a 2 dimensional, useful theoretical concept is heedlessly applied to reality....without concern for nuance, individual narrative and based on assumptions and generalizations as an absolute. Privilege theory put into praxis becomes the lefts blind spot in which we compare each others level of oppression in order to assess how valuable an opinion is rather than validate the opinion on its contents....and shows how much we all have been rooted in patriarchy and are all still a product of it.

Basically privilege theory ultimately boils down to: "I am more oppressed so stfu because..." and ...to put it bluntly...rather than helping us beyond "balls and tits and who you fuck or don't fuck and the color of our skin"....it actually forces everybody to focus on it.

The equally troubling side effect of privilege theory in praxis is the fact that it is based on assumptions. Assumptions about somebodies sexuality, sex, gender, identity...which leads to extremely troubling and sexist situation where you have to clearly identify what and who you are before arguments are taken serious or are even heard and heeded. Some people don't want or need that.

Every thread about this subject has sooner or later boiled down to such a situation. This heedless and false application of a once useful theoretical model to practical reality is abominable and destroying the left.

There are three questions everybody needs to ask themselves when it comes to these kind of debates:

1). If cis men don't understand patriarchy and how it works, how have they managed to dominate and oppress all others?
2). If women understand patriarchy how could they have let centuries of oppression happen?
3). Are you extremely certain you are not making unwarranted assumptions about somebodies identity?

No man can understand what it is to be a woman. No heterosexual can understand what it is to be homosexual. No non-trans person can understand what it is to be a trans persons. But it definitely goes the other way around as well. And everybody..without exclusion...men, woman etc..we are all products of patriarchy, conditioned by it...and governed by its principles. So we need to shut up when others speak and listen because unless we base ourselves on discussions on contents where opinions are heard, weighed and valued based on their merit rather than the gender and identity of the person making them...and unless we challenge sexism, privilege, oppression..and the basic behavior in both men and women* associated with it... when we encounter it...within our groups, between ourselves in society...we are going to get fuck all anywhere.


* a life time in patriarchy...and some women even in our communities still don't understand that their behavior is formed by patriarchy and they still have some or all of the behavioral reflexes associated with it that signal their "insubordinate status". Just as men in our communities still don't understand what precisely in their behavior is sexist and oppressive. And yes I know I am focusing here on binary gender...but this goes for everybody.

[Five Year Plan]

Take your suggestion, for example - that experience be used as a "barometer which tells us the direction we shouldn't be going". Now, prima facie this is very reasonable. In fact, I think it would work in maybe nine cases out of ten. Even so, I think there have been situations when this approach would have resulted in an incorrect line.

There are exceptions to every rule, but the point stands that if most women are complaining most of the time about a particular change that has occurred in social practice or policy, anybody interested in battling women's oppression needs to take notice of that and accept that it is indeed a negative change, even if the reasons given for why it is negative are grounded in a highly problematic theoretical context. It doesn't suddenly become positive for women just because the bureaucratic men at the head of the party say so. That was all my point is.


Abortion, for example. Many women have a highly negative experience of abortion, partly due to living in a misogynist society, partly due to very real economic and social pressures to abort (often coming from the same sources as pressures to not abort, naturally), and so on, and so on. This, in turn, causes some women to take an anti-abortion stance. And certainly very few women would support free abortion on demand at any stage of the pregnancy, as our anarcho-Bernsteinite friend likes to remind us every now and then. Now, I'm not mentioning this to make fun of these women, or to paint them as misogynist devils (I think the entire situation is unfortunate). But the thing is, when we demand free abortion on demand at any stage of the pregnancy, we encounter a backlash, and a significant number of the people who are opposed to this demand are women. Some of them might be our comrades. But this doesn't mean that we're going in the wrong direction.Your example doesn't line up with the instances where I thought that experience (of collectivities, not isolated individuals) was useful as a barometer. A more fitting example involving abortion would be if a change in abortion policy resulted in large numbers of women, a majority, rising up in protest on the basis of their own experiences (and NOT on the basis of non-experiential ideology) with reproductive decision making and the decision of whether or not to have abortion. That's not just something to chalk up to theoretical differences. There is value to those experiences in determining the way forward for a revolutionary.

[synthesis]

The idea that permeates this thread that the struggle against patriarchy is the domain of women etc. and identity politics at the exclusion of all others is troubling. The fact is that women need men need heterosexuality need LGBTQ in order to do so and that no single identity group can or will ever be able to do so.

IMO this is caused by the predominant role privilege theory is taking in the praxis of political activism...and how a 2 dimensional, useful theoretical concept is heedlessly applied to reality....without concern for nuance, individual narrative and based on assumptions and generalizations as an absolute. Privilege theory put into praxis becomes the lefts blind spot in which we compare each others level of oppression in order to assess how valuable an opinion is rather than validate the opinion on its contents....and shows how much we all have been rooted in patriarchy and are all still a product of it.

Basically privilege theory ultimately boils down to: "I am more oppressed so stfu because..." and ...to put it bluntly...rather than helping us beyond "balls and tits and who you fuck or don't fuck and the color of our skin"....it actually forces everybody to focus on it.

The equally troubling side effect of privilege theory in praxis is the fact that it is based on assumptions. Assumptions about somebodies sexuality, sex, gender, identity...which leads to extremely troubling and sexist situation where you have to clearly identify what and who you are before arguments are taken serious or are even heard and heeded. Some people don't want or need that.

I don't think this is the problem with privilege theory at all. If feminists or whoever else don't want to listen to the opinions of men or white people, etc, or want to (justifiably) qualify their criticism on the basis of subjective experience, that's their prerogative. The problem with privilege theory is that it is born from the same roots in academic Maoism as Third-Worldism, the latter of which posits that because straight white cismale workers in the West do not suffer from special oppression, it puts them in a "privileged" position relative to all other groups and therefore in practice assumes that their interest - both subjectively and objectively - lies in maintaining the status quo. Therefore the insinuation is that these "privileged groups" are essentially the class enemy of oppressed groups, a perspective that is fundamentally the antithesis of class analysis. It elevates oppression and discrimination to being an end in and of themselves, rather than being functions - very important functions - of capitalist class society, and class is reduced to just another category that is oppressed and discriminated against. Overall this criticism of privilege theory you've presented seems very idealist to me and almost resembles the concept of "reverse racism," if filtered through the narrative of "colorblindness" in this analogy.

[PhoenixAsh]

I don't think this is the problem with privilege theory at all. If feminists or whoever else don't want to listen to the opinions of men or white people, etc, or want to (justifiably) qualify their criticism on the basis of subjective experience, that's their prerogative.

That is certainly the case; however...when people justify dismissive behavior because of relative positions of privilege...it is directly related to privilege theory and in fact the direct application of this theory to praxis. We see this happening throughout the autonomous and anarchist scenes. Privilege theory thus becomes a weapon and a shield.



This criticism of privilege theory you've presented seems very idealist to me and almost resembles the concept of "reverse racism," if filtered through the narrative of "colorblindness" in this analogy.

Unfortunately this criticism of privilege theory is objectively observable and has nothing to do with idealism. The fact remains that trans men are often seen as heterosexual cis males and have their opinions dismissed unless they identify themselves as a suppressed group. "Gender confused" for lack of a better term men or those who do not feel comfortable expressing their identity or their gender or those who pass as heterosexual and male or women who chose confomist gender roles are pretty much excluded or dismissed based on assumptions. These are not idealism or concepts of reverse racism. These are all real life examples encountered in the scenes, communities and organisations where privilege theory was implemented as a basis to organize.

privilege theory reduces us to our gender, identities, ethnicities, etc. while at the same time obfuscating modes of oppression and interconnection of oppression.

[Quail]

You do understand that the implication of this statement is that Vincent West is a presumptuous sexist unless he acknowledges that Phyllis Schlafly understands women's oppression more than he does (or Marx did)? You don't have a problem with this implication?

No. FFS. Every time this thread comes up people twist my position to be "even the most reactionary woman knows more about fighting women's oppression than you do because you're a man" ugh. My argument is that if there are two people, a man and a woman, and say for the sake of argument they're both in the same communist organisation - then the woman is more likely to have a better understanding of women's oppression because of her day to day experiences with it. Am I clear now?

[Ele'ill]

I think the issue isn't that she emphasizes the importance of women's voices. It's the implied claim that men's voices aren't important because they are men.


model of reasoning presupposes that men cannot fight against sexism or critique sexism or offer any kind of cogent analysis of sexism. If that wasn't what she intended to imply, then I accept that I misinterpreted her posts.I was putting forth a questioning observation that was a general opposite of what you're posting here.




Her (if Mariel is indeed a "she." If not, how ironic!)

If I was cisgender, and a dude, this still wouldn't be ironic.

[Five Year Plan]

No. FFS. Every time this thread comes up people twist my position to be "even the most reactionary woman knows more about fighting women's oppression than you do because you're a man" ugh. My argument is that if there are two people, a man and a woman, and say for the sake of argument they're both in the same communist organisation - then the woman is more likely to have a better understanding of women's oppression because of her day to day experiences with it. Am I clear now?

I commented specifically on your comment to Vincent West: "The problem here from my perspective is that you assume that your opinion is equally well-informed as the women you're disagreeing with."

Why is it wrong for West to contend that his opinion is better informed than the women he's disagreeing with, in light of how both sides of the disagreement have expressed definite views which everybody is entitled to evaluate (which means his contention is not based on an "assumption")? Is his opinion or argument automatically inferior because he's a man and his interlocutors are women?

Even if we accept your idea that, on average, women have a better "understanding" of women's oppression (an ambiguous formulation which I'll get to in the next paragraph), this general statistic doesn't necessarily mean that in this specific case Vincent can't be right, or his female interlocutors wrong, in a way that makes him contending his correctness premature or problematic.

By "understand women's oppression" and "be informed about women's oppression," I am operating under the assumption that we are talking about understanding the root causes of it, and how it is interwoven within other forms of oppression and exploitation. If you mean "understand women's oppression" to mean "experience and feel women's oppression," then it goes without saying that all women would "understand" this better than all men.

But being a woman does not mean you "understand" women's oppression in the first sense anymore than being a worker means you "understand" how capitalism functions as a system of exploitation thriving on surplus labor.

Vincent and I have stressed this over and over again in this thread. Experiencing something is not the same as understanding it. Anybody who has been to a good therapist can tell you this. The therapist helps people really understand past experiences, because going through an experience and really understanding it are often two entirely different things.

[Five Year Plan]

I was putting forth a questioning observation that was a general opposite of what you're posting here.

You'll have to forgive me for being a cis-gendered male dolt. What is a "questioning observation"? More to the point, what was the observation you were making, besides the obvious fact that on revleft, including its discrimination subforum, men are over-represented and women under-represented?

[Quail]

Just quickly, before I have to go to my lecture...

I have met a significant number of men who have read all the literature and theory and supposedly understand how women's oppression and capitalist exploitation are linked, and yet they themselves engage in sexist behaviour to the detriment of the women who have to work with them politically. Obviously these men (and they're not even uncommon) are missing something from their analysis, which I can only conclude comes from being oblivious to the way that sexism affects their female comrades on a day-to-day basis. You can tell me how it's equally possible for men to understand women's oppression until the cows come home, but until my experiences with male comrades match up with what you're saying, I'm afraid I can't take you seriously.

Additionally, as a man who does not experience sexism, you're not repeatedly forced to think about it and wonder how you could change things so that not only do you not have to deal with it personally, but so that nobody else has to feel as fucked up as you do. So I'd wager women spend an awful lot more time thinking about sexism, reading about sexism, thinking about how best to fight it, etc., in which case it makes sense that they are more knowledgeable about the subject.

[Five Year Plan]

Quail, you're usually a better poster than this. Your post is full of a straw that demonstrates either that you haven't read and carefully thought about the points I have been making. Take your first paragraph:


Just quickly, before I have to go to my lecture...

I have met a significant number of men who have read all the literature and theory and supposedly understand how women's oppression and capitalist exploitation are linked, and yet they themselves engage in sexist behaviour to the detriment of the women who have to work with them politically. Obviously these men (and they're not even uncommon) are missing something from their analysis, which I can only conclude comes from being oblivious to the way that sexism affects their female comrades on a day-to-day basis.

I have stated in this very thread that women, by virtue of actually having to experience women's oppression, have a greater sense of urgency in tackling questions of women's oppression, and potentially even learning about it on the higher theoretical level.

You are right that having the right abstract understanding doesn't translates into actively fighting sexism in day-to-day personal or intimate interactions with friends and comrades. But when did I ever say they did? My contention that I don't think experience automatically conveys to somebody a profound understanding of the factors underlying that experience is not the same as contending that a theoretical understanding of the underlying factors of an experience gives somebody an incentive to fight oppression, or at least the same incentive as a person experiencing the oppression might have. Please address my argument, and not the strawman you've invented.


You can tell me how it's equally possible for men to understand women's oppression until the cows come home, but until my experiences with male comrades match up with what you're saying, I'm afraid I can't take you seriously.It is still not clear what you mean when you say "understand" women's oppression. Do you mean experience it as a woman, or understand the large-scale social forces behind it? Or do you think that one is the same as the other?


Additionally, as a man who does not experience sexism, you're not repeatedly forced to think about it and wonder how you could change things so that not only do you not have to deal with it personally, but so that nobody else has to feel as fucked up as you do.Somebody here is making an awful lot of "assumptions" (as you accused Vincent West of doing earlier). Let's guess who.


So I'd wager women spend an awful lot more time thinking about sexism, reading about sexism, thinking about how best to fight it, etc., in which case it makes sense that they are more knowledgeable about the subject.Women talking about sexism is not the same as women talking about it from an informed revolutionary perspective. Part of the problem here is that the discussion in this thread continually invokes "women" in the abstract, as a monolithic category, and doesn't take account of the ways in which race, class, sexual orientation, and other variables dramatically transform the way that "womanness" is experienced. We can add to the mix political orientation, and say that "liberal women who spend a lot more time thinking, reading about sexism, thinking how best to fight it, etc.," are not more informed about sexism (in the second sense of the word) than a revolutionary socialist man who has also spent a good deal of time thinking about and researching the issue.

The central issue here is just as Vincent West explained it above, though I continue to disagree with what I see as his total erasure of the epistemological value of experience: experiencing something is not the same as understanding it. Understanding something doesn't occur spontaneously by virtue of experiencing it. Revolutionary theory is needed for revolutionary action, but by no means guarantees revolutionary action, including in the field of women's liberation.

One reason there is so much resistance to this otherwise obvious statement is that the more visible strains of modern-day anarchism are heavily influenced by postmodernism, which rejects as "oppressive meta-narratives" any large-scale social explanation of the kind that theory undertakes. As opposed to grand theory, which supposedly does violence to the uniqueness and intricacy of the individual, we are supposed to rely on a kind of intuitive experience. The only person that can have experience, of course, is the person himself. So making him choose to do anything that is at odds with his knowledge or experience is to commit an act of political violence. As a result we see the rise of consensus-based decision making and all the disasters that go along with it.

[Quail]

Quail, you're usually a better poster than this. Your post is full of a straw that demonstrates either that you haven't read and carefully thought about the points I have been making. Take your first paragraph:

I'm busy at the moment and I've had this conversation so many times, you'll have to forgive me for not dropping everything to read or write walls of text in detail.


I have stated in this very thread that women, by virtue of actually having to experience women's oppression, have a greater sense of urgency in tackling questions of women's oppression, and potentially even learning about it on the higher theoretical level.

You are right that having the right abstract understanding doesn't translates into actively fighting sexism in day-to-day personal or intimate interactions with friends and comrades. But when did I ever say they did? My contention that I don't think experience automatically conveys to somebody a profound understanding of the factors underlying that experience is not the same as contending that a theoretical understanding of the underlying factors of an experience gives somebody an incentive to fight oppression, or at least the same incentive as a person experiencing the oppression might have. Please address my argument, and not the strawman you've invented.

If all this grand theoretical knowledge doesn't translate into actually doing anything about sexism, then I have to question how well that theoretical knowledge has been understood. I'm sorry but I don't care how well someone claims to understand the relationships between patriarchy and capitalism, etc., if they're continuing to act in a way that perpetuates sexism. What is the point in analysing sexism from a revolutionary communist perspective, but refusing to do anything to fight it in the here and now? Yes, in order to achieve full liberation we need to abolish capitalism, but it seems to me this is often used as a lazy excuse for male comrades to sit back and do fuck all.


It is still not clear what you mean when you say "understand" women's oppression. Do you mean experience it as a woman, or understand the large-scale social forces behind it? Or do you think that one is the same as the other?

I think what I have said applies to both. I can't speak for everyone (and I keep qualifying my statements with "if other women are anything like me" but that's getting ignored), but for me personally experiencing something does make me want to understand the social forces behind it, so naturally I've read into it. Because my life experiences have pushed me to do that.


Women talking about sexism is not the same as women talking about it from an informed revolutionary perspective. Part of the problem here is that the discussion in this thread continually invokes "women" in the abstract, as a monolithic category, and doesn't take account of the ways in which race, class, sexual orientation, and other variables dramatically transform the way that "womanness" is experienced. We can add to the mix political orientation, and say that "liberal women who spend a lot more time thinking, reading about sexism, thinking how best to fight it, etc.," are not more informed about sexism (in the second sense of the word) than a revolutionary socialist man who has also spent a good deal of time thinking about and researching the issue.


My argument is that if there are two people, a man and a woman, and say for the sake of argument they're both in the same communist organisation - then the woman is more likely to have a better understanding of women's oppression
We're not talking about a fucking male communist and a liberal woman though and it's infuriating that you keep making these false comparisons.


The central issue here is just as Vincent West explained it above, though I continue to disagree with what I see as his total erasure of the epistemological value of experience: experiencing something is not the same as understanding it. Understanding something doesn't occur spontaneously by virtue of experiencing it. Revolutionary theory is needed for revolutionary action, but by no means guarantees revolutionary action, including in the field of women's liberation.
Experiencing something can give a person unique insights into it and push them to learn more about it... etc etc. That isn't saying automatically that experiencing something magically endows someone with a perfect and complete understanding of it, but blah blah sick of repeating myself.

I think I'm going to duck out here for the time being because I'm just getting pissed off.

[human strike]

Just quickly, before I have to go to my lecture...

I have met a significant number of men who have read all the literature and theory and supposedly understand how women's oppression and capitalist exploitation are linked, and yet they themselves engage in sexist behaviour to the detriment of the women who have to work with them politically. Obviously these men (and they're not even uncommon) are missing something from their analysis, which I can only conclude comes from being oblivious to the way that sexism affects their female comrades on a day-to-day basis. You can tell me how it's equally possible for men to understand women's oppression until the cows come home, but until my experiences with male comrades match up with what you're saying, I'm afraid I can't take you seriously.

We do not think our way into a new way of doing, we do our way into a new way of thinking. In my experience how much or how little knowledge a man has of women's oppression has little to no impact on their sexist behaviour (from my perspective of them). The most misogynist men I've had the displeasure of personally knowing have been from the left. Understanding this or that theory means shit if a serious undertaking isn't made of putting it into practice and claiming to know this shit better than women do isn't putting it into practice. Really it's typical of a movement that prioritises form above content; image above substance.

[consuming negativity]

All Mari3l (sp) was saying was that the opinions of more women should be brought into the conversation so that we can get a better perspective. I don't get how that's controversial. If you were going to make a poll to discover how Washington DC feels about X issue, you wouldn't go and poll just the white people, or just the men, or whatever. Your sample would have to take into account the actual demographics of the city to be trly representative. Similarly, when discussing women's issues or the issues of any group, you need to consider all perspectives before coming to a conclusion. When a particular issue effects a segment of the population more than another, their opinions should be considered even more seriously. For example: your opinion about yourself is most important by far, but nobody is taking that to mean "don't listen to what anyone has to say about you". In fact, refusing to listen to any opinions about yourself would be a really bad idea. Similarly, the opinions of women about issues that effect them the most are very important, but it doesn't suddenly mean "men can't contribute". Rather, what was being said was that participation was /favoring men/ and that women's opinions should be encouraged to give us a better perspective. Wanting men to not dominate the conversation about issues involving the other major gender/sex binary is simply logical and fair.

And yeah, you can totally learn a thing or two about women in society by talking to your average social democratic female friend who has nothing to do with communism, or perhaps even feminism. I know Quail said she wasn't going to try to make this point, but these women have valuable experiences as women and they shouldn't be written off as know-nothings just for having lousy politics. You can run rings around her theoretically, and completely destroy her in any arguments about how this or that works, but so what? She still has experience that you won't ever have, that gives her a different look at the issue. Just because she might be wrong about other shit doesn't discount that, in the same way that I still try to talk to my doctor about my medical issues even though she's not a communist. She's still got a lot to add about medicine, so I listen to her. This isn't any different, really.

[Five Year Plan]

I'm busy at the moment and I've had this conversation so many times, you'll have to forgive me for not dropping everything to read or write walls of text in detail.


If all this grand theoretical knowledge doesn't translate into actually doing anything about sexism, then I have to question how well that theoretical knowledge has been understood. I'm sorry but I don't care how well someone claims to understand the relationships between patriarchy and capitalism, etc., if they're continuing to act in a way that perpetuates sexism. What is the point in analysing sexism from a revolutionary communist perspective, but refusing to do anything to fight it in the here and now? Yes, in order to achieve full liberation we need to abolish capitalism, but it seems to me this is often used as a lazy excuse for male comrades to sit back and do fuck all.


I think what I have said applies to both. I can't speak for everyone (and I keep qualifying my statements with "if other women are anything like me" but that's getting ignored), but for me personally experiencing something does make me want to understand the social forces behind it, so naturally I've read into it. Because my life experiences have pushed me to do that.



We're not talking about a fucking male communist and a liberal woman though and it's infuriating that you keep making these false comparisons.


Experiencing something can give a person unique insights into it and push them to learn more about it... etc etc. That isn't saying automatically that experiencing something magically endows someone with a perfect and complete understanding of it, but blah blah sick of repeating myself.

I think I'm going to duck out here for the time being because I'm just getting pissed off.

Of course theoretical knowledge that doesn't inform practice is useless, but that doesn't mean that the knowledge then becomes wrong from an epistemological point of view. It's useless (or rather, unused) knowledge, not wrong knowledge. The solution to the problem of men who understand the basis of women's oppression on paper but do nothing in reality is to light a fire under their lazy asses, not to patronize women by pretending their gender experiences automatically bestow them with higher level knowledge of what causes their oppression or how to overcome it. The logical conclusion of this is the fiasco where the troll RealYehuda was caricaturing disgruntled black youth, but people here wouldn't correct him on his politics at all, lest they do violence to his "experiential" knowledge. Not saying you are one of these people, but I have no time for people who don't take women or black people seriously enough to think they can handle critiques of their politics from men or white people.

You keep getting outraged that people are comparing a socialist man with a liberal woman. Fine, if you don't want people making the comparison, drop the talk about knowledge "women" as a category and "men" as a category possess by virtue of being women and men. Otherwise, you are inviting that counter-example which shows that, whatever the "average" man and "average" woman would tend to think, some specific men do know a lot more about the causes of women's oppression (and therefore how to overcome it) than many women do.

What this means for our purposes is that you don't flag Vincent West as a problem child for presuming to know more than this or that woman on this forum as wrong from the start. He might very well know, because he might not be the average man. You adjudicate whether he is wrong on the basis of his argument, not on the basis of his gender, or the gender of his interlocutors.

That's all I am saying, really, and why it is causing you to get worked up is puzzling.

[#FF0000]

That's all I am saying, really, and why it is causing you to get worked up is puzzling.

It's because you're so aggressively missing the point, arguing things that Quail (nor anyone else) ever said. How do your ankles hold up from all the ducking and weaving you do for literally no reason?

[Five Year Plan]

It's because you're so aggressively missing the point, arguing things that Quail (nor anyone else) ever said. How do your ankles hold up from all the ducking and weaving you do for literally no reason?

Without any specifics, this post is as valuable as me just telling you in a single line: "Nope, you're wrong." If you want to participate in the discussion, I invite you to do so. What you've done here is the online equivalent of cheerleading and egg-throwing. From a "committed user" I expect better.

You might want to start off by explaining what point you think I've missed, and what content in my posts makes you think I've missed it.

[#FF0000]

You might want to start off by explaining what point you think I've missed, and what content in my posts makes you think I've missed it.

I honestly don't even know what to tell you because Quail said it so many times before.

"That isn't what i'm saying", she says

"This is what you are saying and this is why you are wrong. I expected better", you reply.

[Five Year Plan]

I honestly don't even know what to tell you because Quail said it so many times before.

"That isn't what i'm saying", she says

"This is what you are saying and this is why you are wrong. I expected better", you reply.

This doesn't address either of my questions.

[MEGAMANTROTSKY]

You can run rings around her theoretically, and completely destroy her in any arguments about how this or that works, but so what? She still has experience that you won't ever have, that gives her a different look at the issue. Just because she might be wrong about other shit doesn't discount that, in the same way that I still try to talk to my doctor about my medical issues even though she's not a communist.

Thank you for summarizing the attitudes of certain people here, which basically amounts to "theory is useless without the specific experiences of a gender identity to go along with it." And your doctor comparison is preposterous. Writing a prescription doesn't provide an explanation of the social origins of the illness, and doesn't pretend to. Instead of comparing apples and oranges, you're really trying to equate rutabagas and Lego pieces.

[#FF0000]

This doesn't address either of my questions.

I don't know how much clearer it can be made, but I will try.


Thank you for summarizing the attitudes of certain people here, which basically amounts to "theory is useless without the specific experiences of a gender identity to go along with it."

You see, the issue in this thread is that nobody has this attitude. People are saying "Women's voices are important when talking about women's struggles because their personal experiences may provide valuable insights". You and megamantrotsky, have taken this to mean "WOMEN ARE THE ONLY PEOPLE WITH ANYTHING OF VALUE TO SAY IN A DISCUSSION ABOUT WOMEN'S ISSUES". When people point out that nobody is saying this, you continue to go on as if that is exactly what everyone is saying.

[Rosa Partizan]

That's a very tedious discussion, especially when you add parameters like "liberal", "revolutionary", blah blah. It becomes more and more difficult to prove on an empirical basis. Let's say that there are plenty of men in general that know more about sexism and sexist structures than women, because a ton of women doesn't give a fuck about it, they enjoy patriarchy because they're used to it.

On the other side, experiencing some stuff first-hand will most def give you a more complete outlook on it than just reading about it. THIS is all that was claimed in this thread by Quail and #FF. No one was like, you guys should gtfo because you have no idea, and every woman knows better about it. If you take a look at all this theoretical framework, you will most certainly see that most of this stuff was actually written by women. Big surprise, huh?

I agree that women's struggles should be supported by men and that no supporting guy should be rejected because of his gender. However, he can be cutting edge when it comes to theory and still he will not know what it's like to be shamed for abortion, clothing, promiscuity and so on.

[Five Year Plan]

You ... have taken this to mean "WOMEN ARE THE ONLY PEOPLE WITH ANYTHING OF VALUE TO SAY IN A DISCUSSION ABOUT WOMEN'S ISSUES". When people point out that nobody is saying this, you continue to go on as if that is exactly what everyone is saying.

Do you mind pointing to any place where I have claimed Quail is saying that women are the only people with anything of value to say in a discussion about women's issues? To my knowledge, the only person here who has said something so preposterous is a notorious troll.

[Lily Briscoe]

I've been trying to figure out what this discussion is even about (on a substantive level) for awhile now, but it actually seems to be getting less and less clear the longer it goes on...

[synthesis]

Some of y'all Trots were making some interesting points about epistemology a couple pages back, but now it seems like you're just arguing for the sake of arguing. I think it's because Vincent West is the only one on your side who seems to know what he's doing.

[consuming negativity]

Thank you for summarizing the attitudes of certain people here, which basically amounts to "theory is useless without the specific experiences of a gender identity to go along with it." And your doctor comparison is preposterous. Writing a prescription doesn't provide an explanation of the social origins of the illness, and doesn't pretend to. Instead of comparing apples and oranges, you're really trying to equate rutabagas and Lego pieces.

Women can bring something to the table in discussions that men simply can't: their experiences and perspectives as women. Do you agree or disagree? If you agree, then I don't see any purpose to further discussion.

[Five Year Plan]

Some of y'all Trots were making some interesting points about epistemology a couple pages back, but now it seems like you're just arguing for the sake of arguing. I think it's because Vincent West is the only one on your side who seems to know what he's doing.

Is this sudden onslaught of substance-free, vague one-liners some kind of under-handed attempt to get this thread shut down or what?

What epistemological points of his did you agree with? What limitations did you see in Vincent's arguments? In other words, what do you have to contribute besides a silly scorecard tally?

[PhoenixAsh]

Patriarchy can not exist without the witting and unwitting participation of everybody involved. Just as men are, as a generalization, less oppressed through patriarchy then women this does not mean men, both generalized and individual, are not forced into a specific set of gender roles which can be, individually, very harmful nor does it mean that women do not help enforce these gender roles and their own and help perpetuate them.

This is why privilege theory is so limiting and should remain a generalizing theoretical model instead of a realistic means of organization or a leading guideline in debates. It compares relative subjugation and relative privilege but ignores the inter connectivity and reciprocity of oppression.

From it come fairly dangerous assumptions. Like for example:
"men do not experience oppression through patriarchy" which if of course a blatant generalization and in most cases obviously untrue even when it concerns a heterosexual male.
"the one experiencing more oppression knows more about the nature of oppression" which has been effectively argued against
"all men are assumed to be heterosexual until stated otherwise" which is problematic for several reasons

And (this will probably be the most controversial one):
"men are more active in structural sexism than women"

This one is a difficult one to understand...but basically...social norms and practices are carried and perpetuated by the majority of the community including women; who are not just victims of patriarchy but participants in it. Not only because they continue to accept it and conform to it but in actively promoting gender stereotypes.

Heterosexual men do experience structural oppression through patriarchy from both men and women which can be vicious and can have serious consequences. Generally speaking this gets either denied, waved away as unimportant or depreciated. As a generalization (but not always on an individual level) however heterosexual men absolutely and undeniably do not experience the same level and scope of oppression as do women nor will men ever truly understand what a woman experiences through patriarchy. They can imagine it, they can try to empathize with it; but unless you lived it...you will not know.

This does not mean women understand patriarchy better. It means that they have a better insight and a unique perspective on what patriarchal oppression is, and means, from a woman's perspective. So when it comes to talking about woman's liberation men would do wise to listen more carefully and use their insight to learn and evaluate their own behavior.

But what does not follow is that women automatically know or understand how to fight, and what is the best way to fight, patriarchy. It does not follow that women in general even realize they are being structurally suppressed (and I think there is a fairly good and sound argument to make that the majority of women do not see or experience their lives as being structurally oppressed) and it does not follow that women have all the answers. It also doesn't mean that women who experience and perceive structural oppression will do something to research it better or actively get involved in participating in the struggle (again, there are many women who simply accept the situation as something they can't do anything about or care about it). So it purely means women, in general, who realize that they are subjected to patriarchy, have a far better chance to know and understand what women experience as women through patriarchy. Nor does it follow that women who have researched patriarchy, thought about patriarchy, thought about how to fight it and actively participate in the struggle agree on its nature, or on what is sexist behavior.

And there is another very dangerous assumption in these debates. The one that theoretical knowledge and understanding of oppression, and experience of oppression, imparts insight and understanding of behavior expressed by themselves or the accurate evaluation of subjective experience and narrative...and how these perpetuate a subjugated status or perpetuate a mode of oppression towards others. And this is true for men, women and other of whatever sexuality, identity, ethnicity and political ideology.

[PhoenixAsh]

All Mari3l (sp) was saying was that the opinions of more women should be brought into the conversation so that we can get a better perspective. I don't get how that's controversial.

I don't understand what is controversial is either. We need more women on this board and debates like these are useless unless we hear from all oppressed and oppressing groups a broad perspective of opinions.

As it stands now we have to make due with a marginal female input and a relatively marginal trans and LBGQ input. I have no clue about the status ethnic backgrounds of posters...but I assume it is a safe bet that most of the participants are white to some degree or another.

[MEGAMANTROTSKY]

Women can bring something to the table in discussions that men simply can't: their experiences and perspectives as women. Do you agree or disagree? If you agree, then I don't see any purpose to further discussion.
Naturally, women themselves would be the best source of information on the effects of gender inequality, because they are likely to experience it personally. So that is something that I will not deny.

But...having agreed on this point, what does it mean? Is there nowhere else to go after acknowledging the personal grievances that an oppressed social group has undergone?

It is clear to me that you are fetishizing experience to the point it becomes an ahistorical category of its own--not to be touched by the dirty hands of the ignorant, lest they place themselves at risk of being accused of prejudice and insensitivity. The silliness of this mode of thought is quite self-evident. All of us are free to draw whatever conclusions we want on what we personally have gone through, and there's nothing wrong with that. But when experience(s) is placed into the open, for all to see (say, a forum), the rules suddenly and abruptly change. Suddenly we are no longer the ones who have the final say on what our experiences mean to us, and can in many cases be interpreted differently and perhaps even more clearly. In general, we do not have the final say on our own experiences. If we did, than psychology, debate and discussion would appear to us as something quite alien, intrusive and very unnecessary (not to say it isn't regarded as such by some).

And that is the political essence of this thread. Instead of presenting a thorough investigation, experience is instead used as a cop-out; another way of saying "shut up, you don't get the point", if you will, despite having turned ourselves into pretzels trying to get to the intellectual kernel underlying all of this.

And with that, I'm off. I've had it with this thread.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Threads like this make feminist separatism seem like a good idea to me. Seriously.

[synthesis]

Is this sudden onslaught of substance-free, vague one-liners some kind of under-handed attempt to get this thread shut down or what?

What epistemological points of his did you agree with? What limitations did you see in Vincent's arguments? In other words, what do you have to contribute besides a silly scorecard tally?

I'm talking about really engaging with the other side of the argument and debating it on their terms, rather than just trying to beat someone in a discussion. Take some responsibility for your defensiveness.

[PhoenixAsh]

I'm talking about really engaging with the other side of the argument and debating it on their terms, rather than just trying to beat someone in a discussion. Take some responsibility for your defensiveness.

Whose terms? The women, some of which there is disagreement with on some issues, or the men making the same arguments?

And which terms?

[synthesis]

Whose terms? The women, some of which there is disagreement with on some issues, or the men making the same arguments?

And which terms?

I'm talking about when you're arguing with someone, and a major part of their grievance is that "you don't get it" - in this case the role of female perspective in matters of patriarchy - you should want to prove that you're at least trying to get it. (Not aimed at you at all, PA, it's a rhetorical "you.")

[Ele'ill]

You'll have to forgive me for being a cis-gendered male dolt.

I don't have to do anything.



What is a "questioning observation"?



More to the point, what was the observation you were making, besides the obvious fact that on revleft, including its discrimination subforum, men are over-represented and women under-represented?

You really don't need to be hand fed this shit like you're a baby bird but I'll repeat myself again, I was observing the tendency in the thread (and other threads) where, very roughly, the concept of men having a say in women's struggle is argued against by men and argued for by men both making very definite lines that cannot be crossed or at least are being unclear maybe because the conversation always goes slightly off course after the first couple posts. The dialogue imo is different from what I've experienced irl which is why I was simultaneously desiring more input from women on the forum while questioning the current conversation.

[PhoenixAsh]

I've been trying to figure out what this discussion is even about (on a substantive level) for awhile now, but it actually seems to be getting less and less clear the longer it goes on...

In essence it is a very long winded debate between two people who in essence agree with one another but seem to have trouble understanding this because something is lost in translation between debating styles and some sloppy writing which leaves room for misinterpretation....and we are all pitching in...

[PhoenixAsh]

I'm talking about when you're arguing with someone, and a major part of their grievance is that "you don't get it" - in this case the role of female perspective in matters of patriarchy - you should want to prove that you're at least trying to get it. (Not aimed at you at all, PA, it's a rhetorical "you.")

Basically this is what I was getting at. The debate gets confused because they are arguing the same thing and there is some refusal to understand this.

[Ele'ill]

Who are the two people?

[PhoenixAsh]

Threads like this make feminist separatism seem like a good idea to me. Seriously.

Regardless of what happens...feminist separatism is never ever a good idea and quite detrimental to the struggles against patriarchy and capitalism.

[PhoenixAsh]

Who are the two people?

Quail and Aufheben are effectively arguing the same point from different perspectives.

It is all quite "Don Quichotte" and the windmills.

[Five Year Plan]

I'm talking about when you're arguing with someone, and a major part of their grievance is that "you don't get it" - in this case the role of female perspective in matters of patriarchy - you should want to prove that you're at least trying to get it. (Not aimed at you at all, PA, it's a rhetorical "you.")

I'm not sure which thread you've been following, but the complaint you're invoking here ("you just don't get it!") is one that I have not made at all, but which has been directed at me constantly, most notably by a string of substance-free posts by FF0000. But far be it from me to mention that, lest I sound "defensive."

[Five Year Plan]

Quail and Aufheben are effectively arguing the same point from different perspectives.

It is all quite "Don Quichotte" and the windmills.

Yes, well, I think Quail and I are closer than the framing of our back-and-forth would indicate. My biggest issue is with the way she phrased a specific reproach she issued to Vincent West, and which I thought was doing more to hinder principled political discussion than to facilitate it.

[PhoenixAsh]

Yes, well, I think Quail and I are closer than the framing of our back-and-forth would indicate. My biggest issue is with the way she phrased a specific reproach she issued to Vincent West, and which I thought was doing more to hinder principled political discussion than to facilitate it.


Not to be entirely an asshole...but you have to look at the positive side. There is a lesson in there somewhere.

Because as eloquent as your posts are and as argumentatively sound they appear and as much as I may agree with some of your arguments...basically this is what you have been doing too.



Yes, well, I think Quail and I are closer than the framing of our back-and-forth would indicate. My biggest issue is with the way she phrased a specific reproach she issued to Vincent West, and which I thought was doing more to hinder principled political discussion than to facilitate it.


I know. I have read the same thing but I know Quail's post style and though her phrasing was awkward she did correct it later on and to be fair...she did have a point. Plus...which you should also not ignore is the fact that she has been running through the same hoops over and over and over again on this board.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Regardless of what happens...feminist separatism is never ever a good idea and quite detrimental to the struggles against patriarchy and capitalism.
Um, it's called sarcasm.

[PhoenixAsh]

Um, it's called sarcasm.

ahh...I missed that.

In my defense that might be because these kind of debates have a tendency to split groups and cause rifts. Not necessarily because of men vs women but also of men vs men and women vs women and men & women vs transgendered. Whatever...seen it all. :unsure:

I blame the effects of applied privilege theory.

[synthesis]

I'm not sure which thread you've been following, but the complaint you're invoking here ("you just don't get it!") is one that I have not made at all, but which has been directed at me constantly, most notably by a string of substance-free posts by FF0000. But far be it from me to mention that, lest I sound "defensive."

Right, that was directed at you. You should be trying to show that you "get it."

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Apologies for not keeping up with the thread; my sleep schedule has been erratic for the last few days. As a result, this post is probably all over the place a bit.



There are exceptions to every rule, but the point stands that if most women are complaining most of the time about a particular change that has occurred in social practice or policy, anybody interested in battling women's oppression needs to take notice of that [...]

Of course. My point was never that experience should be ignored - I don't know if that would be insulting, but it would definitely be politically suicidal. Rather, what I tried to say is that experience can't be accepted "as it is"; that it needs to be evaluated and interpreted in some framework (for us, Marxist theory).


[...] and accept that it is indeed a negative change, even if the reasons given for why it is negative are grounded in a highly problematic theoretical context.

However, I think this is going too far. Of course, in most cases, if an oppressed group is protesting certain social changes, these changes are negative for that group. But at the same time, I think most members of the oppressed groups reach the analogon of what Lenin calls "trade union consciousness" (again, I am not saying this to denigrate members of these groups - all of this is grounded in very real material circumstances). And certain changes are negative for the oppressed groups in the short term while immensely benefiting them in the long term - e.g. the repeal of laws against same-sex behaviour (which was followed, in most countries, by a short period in which gay people were disproportionately arrested on "public disorder" charges etc.).


It doesn't suddenly become positive for women just because the bureaucratic men at the head of the party say so. That was all my point is.

I don't think that's very fair. In the present period, there is no revolutionary party of the proletariat - but if a socialist league or circle is being run in a bureaucratic manner, and if it excludes women, then it has excluded itself from the sort of revolutionary leadership I am talking about. The SWP and WRP are obvious examples (sure, the WRP had Torrance, but ultimately the WRP leadership were puppets of Healy until the WRP's own 25th of July).

On the other hand, I don't think it is fair to characterise all existing socialist groups in this manner. As much as I disagree with the LRP or the FSP, for example, I don't think "bureaucratic men" is a good description of the leadership of these parties. Nor do I think it is a good description of the SL leadership. (Which is not to say that these groups don't have problems when it comes to the percentage of women, black etc. workers in the party and in the leadership.)

One more thing - I don't think the revolutionary leadership should "just say" that this or that notion, perhaps commonly held by women or gay people etc. is wrong, and leave it at that. Just as with workers, we need to engage women, and other specially-oppressed groups, and win them over to what we consider the correct line.


Your example doesn't line up with the instances where I thought that experience (of collectivities, not isolated individuals) was useful as a barometer. A more fitting example involving abortion would be if a change in abortion policy resulted in large numbers of women, a majority, rising up in protest on the basis of their own experiences (and NOT on the basis of non-experiential ideology) with reproductive decision making and the decision of whether or not to have abortion. That's not just something to chalk up to theoretical differences. There is value to those experiences in determining the way forward for a revolutionary.

Fair enough - I think it is important to distinguish between positions taken mainly on the basis of direct experience (to the extent that experience can be direct) and those taken mainly on the basis of bourgeois ideology (anything else would mean either completely ignoring experience or completely ignoring false consciousness). But the problem is, even direct personal experience, common across a given specially-oppressed group (that is how I understand the term "experience of collectivities"), can lead to incorrect and even reactionary conclusions. E.g. workers who were laid off due to cheaper immigrant labour agitating for the closure of borders, "British jobs for British workers" etc.

Once again, my point is not that we need to ignore experience, but that every experience needs to be interpreted in some framework, and our framework is that of Marxist materialism. This means that some of the conclusions we reach will differ from those that are widely accepted in specially-oppressed groups. This is to be expected - the communist places himself in contradiction to the consciousness of the proletariat and the oppressed.


I have met a significant number of men who have read all the literature and theory and supposedly understand how women's oppression and capitalist exploitation are linked, and yet they themselves engage in sexist behaviour to the detriment of the women who have to work with them politically. Obviously these men (and they're not even uncommon) are missing something from their analysis, which I can only conclude comes from being oblivious to the way that sexism affects their female comrades on a day-to-day basis. You can tell me how it's equally possible for men to understand women's oppression until the cows come home, but until my experiences with male comrades match up with what you're saying, I'm afraid I can't take you seriously.

The thing is, and I'm not going to sugar-coat this because I am getting a bit upset as well, that many men (and women) simply parrot fashionable rhetoric without understanding a thing about it. Understanding something and not knowing how to apply it is nonsense - it's like the common situation at university when the student supposedly "understands the theory" but can't solve problems to save their life. (Of course, it could be the case, as aufheben says, that these people do know how to apply their knowledge, but don't want to. That's a separate problem.) Furthermore, it is in fact very easy for groups to loudly proclaim their feminism and then act in a structurally misogynist manner, both in their internal life and when it comes to the slogans they raise etc.


Additionally, as a man who does not experience sexism, you're not repeatedly forced to think about it and wonder how you could change things so that not only do you not have to deal with it personally, but so that nobody else has to feel as fucked up as you do.

That might be the case with the modern "left", but socialists should think about oppression - not only out of theoretical interest (and issues of sex, gender and sexuality are among the core issues when analysing capitalism, particularly in the modern period), but because they should be "tribunes of all of the oppressed", as Lenin put it.


What is the point in analysing sexism from a revolutionary communist perspective, but refusing to do anything to fight it in the here and now?

Alright, but who does that? Groups like the SEP and the SPGB, sure, but they don't represent the entire socialist movement (thank the nonexistent gods). As for other groups - I can't speak about the personal behaviour of their members (at least I can't really say anything substantial), but many of them do fight for women's liberation alongside the struggle to overthrow capitalism.


We're not talking about a fucking male communist and a liberal woman though and it's infuriating that you keep making these false comparisons.

The problem with this is that who is a socialist and who is a liberal is far from uncontroversial. For example, I consider the SPGB to be a liberal organisation. Undoubtedly some anarchists consider me to be a liberal. Etc. Often, certain feminist authors are presented as man-eating radicals, but turn out to be milksop liberals or worse.

[Five Year Plan]

Right, that was directed at you. You should be trying to show that you "get it."

Consider this additional evidence that I am indeed trying to "get it": what is the "it" I am not getting?

Without any specifics, your accusation comes across as little more than a petty personal attack.

[Five Year Plan]

Apologies for not keeping up with the thread; my sleep schedule has been erratic for the last few days. As a result, this post is probably all over the place a bit.




Of course. My point was never that experience should be ignored - I don't know if that would be insulting, but it would definitely be politically suicidal. Rather, what I tried to say is that experience can't be accepted "as it is"; that it needs to be evaluated and interpreted in some framework (for us, Marxist theory).



However, I think this is going too far. Of course, in most cases, if an oppressed group is protesting certain social changes, these changes are negative for that group. But at the same time, I think most members of the oppressed groups reach the analogon of what Lenin calls "trade union consciousness" (again, I am not saying this to denigrate members of these groups - all of this is grounded in very real material circumstances). And certain changes are negative for the oppressed groups in the short term while immensely benefiting them in the long term - e.g. the repeal of laws against same-sex behaviour (which was followed, in most countries, by a short period in which gay people were disproportionately arrested on "public disorder" charges etc.).



I don't think that's very fair. In the present period, there is no revolutionary party of the proletariat - but if a socialist league or circle is being run in a bureaucratic manner, and if it excludes women, then it has excluded itself from the sort of revolutionary leadership I am talking about. The SWP and WRP are obvious examples (sure, the WRP had Torrance, but ultimately the WRP leadership were puppets of Healy until the WRP's own 25th of July).

On the other hand, I don't think it is fair to characterise all existing socialist groups in this manner. As much as I disagree with the LRP or the FSP, for example, I don't think "bureaucratic men" is a good description of the leadership of these parties. Nor do I think it is a good description of the SL leadership. (Which is not to say that these groups don't have problems when it comes to the percentage of women, black etc. workers in the party and in the leadership.)

One more thing - I don't think the revolutionary leadership should "just say" that this or that notion, perhaps commonly held by women or gay people etc. is wrong, and leave it at that. Just as with workers, we need to engage women, and other specially-oppressed groups, and win them over to what we consider the correct line.



Fair enough - I think it is important to distinguish between positions taken mainly on the basis of direct experience (to the extent that experience can be direct) and those taken mainly on the basis of bourgeois ideology (anything else would mean either completely ignoring experience or completely ignoring false consciousness). But the problem is, even direct personal experience, common across a given specially-oppressed group (that is how I understand the term "experience of collectivities"), can lead to incorrect and even reactionary conclusions. E.g. workers who were laid off due to cheaper immigrant labour agitating for the closure of borders, "British jobs for British workers" etc.

Once again, my point is not that we need to ignore experience, but that every experience needs to be interpreted in some framework, and our framework is that of Marxist materialism. This means that some of the conclusions we reach will differ from those that are widely accepted in specially-oppressed groups. This is to be expected - the communist places himself in contradiction to the consciousness of the proletariat and the oppressed.



The thing is, and I'm not going to sugar-coat this because I am getting a bit upset as well, that many men (and women) simply parrot fashionable rhetoric without understanding a thing about it. Understanding something and not knowing how to apply it is nonsense - it's like the common situation at university when the student supposedly "understands the theory" but can't solve problems to save their life. (Of course, it could be the case, as aufheben says, that these people do know how to apply their knowledge, but don't want to. That's a separate problem.) Furthermore, it is in fact very easy for groups to loudly proclaim their feminism and then act in a structurally misogynist manner, both in their internal life and when it comes to the slogans they raise etc.



That might be the case with the modern "left", but socialists should think about oppression - not only out of theoretical interest (and issues of sex, gender and sexuality are among the core issues when analysing capitalism, particularly in the modern period), but because they should be "tribunes of all of the oppressed", as Lenin put it.



Alright, but who does that? Groups like the SEP and the SPGB, sure, but they don't represent the entire socialist movement (thank the nonexistent gods). As for other groups - I can't speak about the personal behaviour of their members (at least I can't really say anything substantial), but many of them do fight for women's liberation alongside the struggle to overthrow capitalism.



The problem with this is that who is a socialist and who is a liberal is far from uncontroversial. For example, I consider the SPGB to be a liberal organisation. Undoubtedly some anarchists consider me to be a liberal. Etc. Often, certain feminist authors are presented as man-eating radicals, but turn out to be milksop liberals or worse.

Vincent, I get you and fully agree with you when you say that experience doesn't necessarily translate into reliable knowledge of the causes behind the experience (and therefore how to prevent the experience from continuing to occur), but I must continue to stress that experience has value as a foundation for building that reliable knowledge. This doesn't mean that without direct experience, a person can't make theoretical contributions to a form of oppression he or she has never experienced.

What it means is that, as with questions relating to the class struggle, answers to questions are put to the test through practice, by going through experiences to see how correct or incorrect those answers are. In the case of working class revolution, workers' experiences provide the testing ground. With oppressed groups, it is the actions and experiences of the oppressed groups. This is why they have to be at the center of their own emancipation, whatever allies they might have, whatever theoretical misconceptions from which they may have had to be pried at some earlier point. This is only possible because, as I said in my earlier post, workers and oppressed groups are somewhat rational and, while not necessarily having the far-reaching theoretical knowledge or long-term blueprints in which to situate their own experiences, know the difference between a positive and a negative experience. Disentangling what aspects of the experience are negative, what aspects of reality are responsible for those negative components, etc., are the stuff of principled political discussion. But that discussion must build off the experiences, not bypass them.

[Luís Henrique]

experience

But what experience?

We don't usually think it is the experience of the factory floor that makes people aware of exploitation. It is the much more complex social experience of exploitation - which includes the experience of resisting exploitation, and of the way the exploiters react to such resistance - that is key.

To quote a woman, "those who don't move do not notice their chains". And so, the mere passive experience of being exploited/oppressed as a woman (as a worker, as a homosexual, as a foreigner, etc) won't give anyone a revolutionary consciousness.

I think that a woman who is engaged in a liberatory movement does have a more important experience than a man who isn't. But then she also does have a more important experience than a woman who merely takes what happen to her as a natural, or perhaps even sacred, part of "being a woman".

More importantly, the point of being engaged in a liberatory movement is not to convince others, or ourselves, that the specific problems we face in our particular situation in class struggle are more important than the specific problems of others, but to reach an ample, expanded, encompassing understanding of exploitation and oppression, so as to be able to fight back with success. This understanding cannot come, moreover, from a specificist point of view, for the different oppressions that people suffer are part of a system. Women are not ill-paid or raped for the sake of it, nevermind how much money or pleasure bosses, abusive husbands or rapists may derive from it, but to maintain and fortify a whole system of exploitation that does far more than oppress and exploit women. Conversely, the exploitation of workers determines the existence of a system of oppression and exploitation of women in general and of working class women in particular, that cannot be reduced to the simple extortion of surplus-value (which, in and of itself, is a genderless process), but does imply the exclusion of many people from the direct production of surplus-value, exclusion that is in many cases a gendered process.

Otherwise female liberation would be possible under capitalism, and would consequently imply only reforms, not a revolution.

To sum it up, a revolutionary needs to understand and fight against many kinds of discrimination and oppression that he or she does not experience personally. If only first hand, direct personal experience counts as what builds a revolutionary consciousness, then I am afraid a revolutionary consciousness is impossible...

Luís Henrique

[Sea]

Days are arbitrary. Even May Day. Yeah it's about Haymarket but that's not the only day where something relevant to the worker's cause happened. If there were events you could have attended that were relevant to the cause on that day, yes, it's important. But in that case it's the events, not the day. A capitalist can celebrate may day and I'm sure that there are plenty of people who celebrate int'l women's day and are still sexist pigs year round. You should attend events whatever day they're on too.

Prentasid, I have a task for you. Make a list of all the problems and bad things you can thing of that women are forced to endure and are dealing with around the world simply because of their gender. Then ask yourself, is anybody going to really give a shit just because you forgot to boil an entire social cause down to a single day? I'm not even entirely sure what day it was even though I saw the google thing. I probably wouldn't even know what day may day is if it weren't for the fact that it's called "may day". Though honestly I likely wouldn't know what day today is if there wasn't a calendar immediately below the window where I'm typing this so maybe that's just me.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

I don't think recognizing a socially constituted day of remembrance is a moral concern for anyone.

Recognizing the struggles for women's equality independently of these special days IS a moral concern though.

[Luís Henrique]

http://www.sindsep-df.com.br/upload/arquivos/0741306001358257553.pdf

Luís Henrique

[NoXiOuScRaSh]

I don't think recognizing a socially constituted day of remembrance is a moral concern for anyone.

Recognizing the struggles for women's equality independently of these special days IS a moral concern though.

I agree with this statement Holidays are not meaningless but every day before and after that day should be used to some measure to fight for Women's rights and rights of any exploited person. I admit I did not observe this holiday myself but I fight for the support of equality in society as many days as I can... I think this is more important.

[Tigertilda]

I marched on International Women's day. I wanted to highlight gender inequality in our society and show that we do not accept injustice. Neither in our workplaces or in the community.

I'd be pissed if a man said congratulations to me. It's not a birthday, it's a day against injustice. One in three women worldwide are subjected to sexual or physical violence during their lives. Every day 1,000 women die from unsafe abortions and lack of prenatal care, the list is long. There is nothing to celebrate.

It was founded over a hundred years ago on the initiative of the German communist Clara Zetkin, to unite people in the fight for women's suffrage. I think that International Women's Day is part of the left movement and I'm disappointed in all the leftist guys that put "women issues" aside. (Of course you can be a good feminist, even if you do not stand on the barricades March 8 but it's a great opportunity, just saying.)

[Bad Grrrl Agro]

It is often difficult to celebrate International Womyn's Day for me. I'm usually busy celebrating my birthday on that day.

[Bad Grrrl Agro]

I'd be pissed if a man said congratulations to me. It's not a birthday, it's a day against injustice. One in three women worldwide are subjected to sexual or physical violence during their lives. Every day 1,000 women die from unsafe abortions and lack of prenatal care, the list is long. There is nothing to celebrate.


I'd rather a man say solidarity to me on International Womyn's Day. Coincidentally it is my birthday.