"Equal rights" and feminism

[oneday]

I am taking a Women's Studies course, and one of the questions asked at the start of the class was along the lines of: "What do you think feminism is?" I answered "a movement intended to produce equality between men and women".

I noticed many of my classmates answered "equal rights". I feel like this is not enough (neither is "equal opportunity"), but my knowledge in this area is not great enough to make a coherent response.

Can somebody help me understand this from a far left perspective, and tell me why "equal rights" is not enough, or why even my own answer is not that good?

[Antiochus]

From a far-left perspective, feminism can be defined as a movement aiming to abolish gender itself. You then need to define gender and differentiate it from biological sex. Biological sex is more or less, not changeable, i.e the set of sex chromosomes one is born with. These produce primary and secondary sex characteristics in an individual. There are individuals who do not conform to this paradigm (transgender individuals) since they are individuals of a sex "trapped" in another sex's body.

But to cut it short, what is gender? Gender is all the social attributes, functions and purported responsibilities a person has by virtue of their sexual organs. Now, women under capitalism can probably get things like equal pay and equal political rights and so forth, but they will never attain this as women. Meaning, a powerful female CEO can enjoy all the economic, political and social "rights" afforded to men; but the average sweatshop girl, cannot.

I suppose you could argue in your class that it is absolutely impossible to define what "equal rights" are, exactly. After all, 100 years ago, most individuals would have probably told you that women already had equal status to men; they could fulfill all their gender-ascribed roles if they wanted. And off course if you pointed out that they couldn't, for example, become generals or whatever, the average imbecile would have said "But men can't become nurses!". Point is, it makes little sense to continually redefine what "gender" is or isn't, and much easier and logical to end it altogether, since it is just a construct that has very implicit implications for everyday life.

[BIXX]

You then need to define gender and differentiate it from biological sex.

How about no? Biological sex is also a social construct to maintain control, why would we want that shit?

[Antiochus]

Ah thanks for your ever so enlightening post. Off course biological sex isn't a social construct. Do you even know what a social construct is? You can't simply 'do away' with biological sex anymore than you could 'do away' with any physiological organ of the human body. Sure, in the future I suppose it will be entirely plausible to change someone's karyotype in the womb, but that does nothing to support your ridiculous statement (which is just to get a few likes from ignorants) that biological sex (i.e XX, XY etc...) is a "construct".

I mean, think about what it is you are even saying. If there really isn't biological sex, the entire logic behind feminism would crumble as a result from the very assertion that the biological differences between men and women were not manipulated to give the former sex a patriarchal society.

And while you might be tempted to throw around 'social construct', keep in mind reactionaries are also sometimes all too happy to use it to. For example, they claim homosexuality is a "social construct" and not an ingrained sexual preference of a relatively wide-spectrum of human sexual behavior.

Besides mate, I'd love to know how in some sort of anti-civilization future you'd actually go about 'doing away' with biological sex? Banging two rocks together and praying to the goddess of the blue people from avatar?

[Rudolf]

You then need to define gender and differentiate it from biological sex. not how you think we need to differentiate though.




These produce primary and secondary sex characteristics in an individual. doesnt explain AIS.



There are individuals who do not conform to this paradigm (transgender individuals) since they are individuals of a sex "trapped" in another sex's body. A bit cliche, you should probably let trans* people talk about their experiences.




Besides mate, I'd love to know how in some sort of anti-civilization future you'd actually go about 'doing away' with biological sex? Banging two rocks together and praying to the goddess of the blue people from avatar?

And yet they're right. The distinction you make between biological sex and gender is problematic as they are both aspects of the same thing, of the same social process. If we're to regard gender as integral to patriarchy we must look at biological sex as it forms at its very least its appeals to nature and the assignment of people.




Biological sex is more or less, not changeable, i.e the set of sex chromosomes one is born with.

Wait, you know your chromosomes? You'll be the only person i've come across that does then. I dont see why people latch onto chromosomes as some great binary god. Biological sex is a misnomer... it's true name is "what's their genitals look like?"

In the real world sex is assigned at birth based on looking at genitals, nothing more, which in turn determines your gendered socialisation. Considering human genital variation it's flimsy. When we then take into account chromosomal, hormonal and neurological variation it becomes untenable. When we take into account the victims of sexing it becomes monstrous.


Sexing is the genital form of gendering, a process of taking social roles/presentation along with physical characteristics in adults and interpreting the person as a sexed attribute. Sexing and gendering are a similar process it's just they focus on different characteristics, one on genitals and one on roles/presentation and physical characteristics visible when clothed. These characteristics, both in the case of sexing and gendering, act as social markers but the interesting thing is that they can also be ignored in favour of others.

The fact of the matter is that the characteristics that are considered 'sexually dimorphic', some visible some not, are open to variation and subsequent interpretation. People have a range of sexually dimorphic characteristics yet everyone's assignment is either one or the other, sometimes at the severe expense of children's bodily integrity. Why's that? Why the social compulsion to designate an individual who could have various combinations of physical attributes as one or another sex?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

All that really means, though, is that biological characteristics like sex are not sharply defined, but are "fuzzy" in a sense. Fair enough - that's true for most biological terms (for example, what is a species? a moth and a human are not the same species, but then you have ring species etc.). And it does pay off to pay attention to how people with intermediary sexual characteristics are treated. Yet to say that sex doesn't exist seems rash to me - and if it doesn't, how are we going to explain the historically consistent oppression of females even in societies that had different ways of assigning gender? I.e. a lot of prehistoric figures have vague or intermediary sexual characteristics, but nonetheless these societies, in the transition to class society, subjugated females. To deny sex, it seems to me, is to deny some important biological realities and blind ourselves to the role of biological reproduction in the economy.

edit: Which is not to say the sexual binary is not a construct of class society, and grossly unscientific. A scientific understanding of the issue has to go beyond the "check one box if you're male and another if you're female", and obviously communists fight for the end of the social significance of sex.

[Hatshepsut]

The coexistence of contemporary critical feminism with Bolshevism on this forum is somewhat of an oddity, as the old-school Bolsheviks would have been utterly hostile to the feminism on American university campuses today, along with the rest of our multicultural and politically correct ideologies. These things of course weren’t known in their day, but I have no doubt they would have moved to smash them as forms of bourgeois individualism or “nationalism” had they arisen then. What fool us are the women such as Yevgenia Bosch who held positions of responsibility under Lenin, the entry of women onto factory floors, and their donning of Red Army combat boots in WWII.

I don’t agree with the original Bolshevik attitude, which in fact did entertain sexism, given that it’s 100 years old and no longer applicable in a changed world. We have experience unavailable to earlier generations of communists. Abolition of artificial gender-based distinctions, as expressed on this thread, sounds more accurate regarding a proper communist position because subordination of women itself creates a class—namely women. Although predating capitalism, thus hardly peculiar to the latter, we can plainly see how capitalism has adapted gender inequality to its own requirements, using it to extend imperialism abroad and maintain oppression of the working class at home.

Communists stand totally against class systems of all kinds. The persecution of transgendered persons follows naturally from bourgeois endorsement of a human race dichotomous in work, family, and dress. Here is a spirit of Shakespeare writing for the world stage, forcing the actors to play either pink or blue, and have operations on genitalia that fail to conform to expectations. Such discriminatory nonsense, the very need of threatened people to defend transgender identities in a circling of wagons, would disappear were the roles discarded. People would then be free to enjoy sexuality in the way they see fit, absent coercive state intrusions into bedroom and wardrobe.

Yet abolishing artificial social distinctions is very different from the multiculturalist program of “celebrating diversity,” with its attempts to empower members of the distinguished social categories rather than liberate the working class as a whole.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Many people on this site are politically self-educated, mostly relying on the Internet and without real contact with socialist organisations. This is not a criticism - I was the same a couple of years ago - but I think it does explain why many people on RL assume socialists are feminist by default. The problem is that any opposition to feminism is seen as opposition to women's liberation, when the opposite is true for socialists who are not feminists - we (I'm a sympathiser of the ICL) think women's liberation is best served, not by feminist sectorialism and quasi-class theories, but by the socialist struggle of the entire proletariat (the vanguard in the defense of all oppressed minorities). This is a bit difficult to understand, I imagine, for people who equate "feminism" with any support to women's liberation or even equality, and opposition to feminism with M"R""A" dickheads.

I think the Bolshevik programme was OK - it wasn't great, but despite the idiotic statements of individual Bolsheviks (I'm looking at you, Lenin), it was a progressive programme calling for the abolition of the family and equality for women. And the revolutionary Soviet workers' state made immense strides in equality for women, gay people and so on - I don't mean just the abolition of imperial laws against homosexuality, abortion etc. but a flowering of gay and lesbian culture in the cities and so on. After the historic defeat in Germany, of course, the family was reinvented as a "fighting unit for socialism" by the bureaucratic regime, and gay people faced the prospect of years in prison despite reassurances by the bureaucracy.

[RedWorker]

Lesbian and gay culture flourished in Russia after the revolution? Elaborate.

[Antiochus]

The fact of the matter is that the characteristics that are considered 'sexually dimorphic', some visible some not, are open to variation and subsequent interpretation. People have a range of sexually dimorphic characteristics yet everyone's assignment is either one or the other, sometimes at the severe expense of children's bodily integrity.

This is semantics at its best though. I mean, if we took it upon ourselves to use your line of reasoning, EVERYTHING exists in a fucking continuum. Try and define "human" using your same coordinates of reason. Go ahead, try to differentiate a human from a chimpanzee.

Off course biological sex exists, because it lays the foundation for gender roles in the first place. While things like 'physical strength' no longer dictate relations of power in the present day (at least, not societal), they did form the constitutive basis for it at one point. For example, can you give a single example of a matriarchal post-neolithic people? By matriarchal I mean, synonymous with patriarchy, not merely "women are treated ok". Off course you cannot.

And so, a better term for biological sex would be a "biological construct", certainly not a "social" one.


doesnt explain AIS.

Androgen insensitivity means what exactly? A different way at arriving at the same conclusion. Species can be defined by a plethora of ways; morphological, by chromosome count, by whether they can mate and produce viable offspring, etc.... But these "exceptions" do nothing to alter the fact that they exist, since our own existence is predicated upon it.


If we're to regard gender as integral to patriarchy we must look at biological sex as it forms at its very least its appeals to nature and the assignment of people.

Yes off course, but like I said, biological sex formed the superstructure for gender later on. So, humans were able to live in 'genderless' (so to speak) groups of people before the rise of agriculture, but biological sex existed nonetheless. This, at the time, relatively unimportant differentiation then formed the basis of gender by virtue of the differences between sexes (i.e physical strength, maybe aggression etc...).

[Rafiq]

No human society's gender roles has ever been reducible to inevitable physiological realities. Including pre-neolithic societies.

There are no inevitable societal consequences of inevitable physiological realities as far as sex us concerned: every human socirty must consciously articulate sexuality SECOND to its physiological basis, i.e. it is not innate.

Classifying "binaries" or difference in science is PRACTICAL. Biological sex IS REAL because it is necessary to practically understand reproduction. Without the processes of procreation, there would be no practical need to conceive sexual difference.

Ultimately biological sex, scientifically as a concept is subordinate to how we understand procreation.

[Rafiq]

That ia to say, of course there are some things in common between societies about how sex organs are conceptualized. My point is that how they function, or are articulated is subordinare to social procesaes (conscious, subconscious processes)

[Hatshepsut]

Go ahead, try to differentiate a human from a chimpanzee.

Curiously, we usually do so by looking. No one here is claiming that genotypes are irrelevant to the historical development of social roles, especially during the early stages. Instead, we claim that human possession of faculties such as written language and technology gives us the ability to structure our societies independently of genetic dictates. Chimp troops host migratory females who submit to mating advances particularly from the alpha male, and they have no choice regarding that arrangement. But we do have choices.

The historical force of gendered labor division, with women exploited as baby-making machines, was efficient so long as mortality rates were high, a situation that prevailed until about 1900. Today there's good reason to believe such usages are actually detrimental to productivity in capitalism. Thus we label societies where females remain illiterate, barefoot, and pregnant as "backward," pointing to the warlord Kingdoms of the Pashtuns for an example. Postwar capitalism demonstrates a more subtle pattern of exploitation that sets women in roughly equal material and intellectual comfort alongside men, yet continues to foist upon them the necessity of uncompensated labor at birth and in child-rearing while they also work outside the home. This has been dubbed the "second shift."

Given that even Ricardian economics considers unpaid economic exchanges inefficient as a matter of general principle, we communists must view the ladies' position in capitalism as problematic. It serves no purpose other than facilitating wealth concentration.

[G4b3n]

Explicitly, liberal feminism is about equal rights and opportunity. It is a movement by and for middle class white women, plane and simple.
And the radical must ask a few questions in response to this:
Who are these "rights" for? And of what use are they to working people?
What good is equality of opportunity if opportunity is primarily the opportunity to impose authority over others? Oh that corporation has a female CEO? Yah I am sure that has helped working women a shit ton.

I do not really feel like explaining radical feminism in depth but some people have touched on it.

[Rafiq]

No human society has ever been determined by the genetic constitition of its individual members. It is nonsensical, pure lunacy to think before written language and "technology" (which means what? Which homo sapiens sapiens were without technology?) Humans were animals we could have put in the zoo. Humans were never animals so long aa they were human. That is why looking toward primitive societies to answer questions of "human nature" is ridiculous: there is no human natural state, every human society has an inner logic of its own, every human society is dictated by the sum-total of social relations. Primitive societies have vast, intricate rituals, customs, mythology, etc. To sustain themselves. It never "comes natural". Sexuality is never conceived naturally. It must not only be learned, but structured in such a way that reproduces the conditions of a given society. Gender roles in HG societies served a function only explicable by HG societies. Natural bases which are trans historic are not viable subjects of investigation because they are not up for critical examination where it concerns matters about "human nature" (social qualities), they are axioms, i.e. no one argues against every human society needing food.
Then again, even natural bases are subordinate to the social: all "biology" can account for are autonomous physical reflexes which account for nothing as far as human life but accidents or trivialities of being. For many animals walking is a matter of responding to reflexes: not so for humans.

To think that humans were at some point "moee dictated" by biologucal processes assumes that at one point there was balance between the human species and nature (ecology). But there never was. Every society was characterizes by mass migration and driving vast swaths of game extinct, with no predictable trajectory path encoded in their DNA to account for it. All of it is subordinate to a new category: the social.

[Rafiq]

There is a disgusting idea among conservatives that we have "primitive instincts" that are kept in check or inversely proportional to civilization. As though civilization isn't constituted by humans. This point of difference made between "human nature" and the societies they constitute a part of is not only wrong, it serves to justify the barbarous depravity of our societies.

Hobbsean mythology is the highpoint of reification. Humans were never dictated by "instinct". The idea is pure nonsense!

[Rudolf]

Off course biological sex exists, because it lays the foundation for gender roles in the first place The irony is of course that gender roles determined the assignment of biological sex for people born right now.



Androgen insensitivity means what exactly? A different way at arriving at the same conclusion. AIS is an intersex condition. I mentioned it in response to your erronous assertion that sex chromosomes determine things like secondary sex characteristics.. Here's a hint, that's the role of hormones. People with AIS have XY chromosomes yet beause their body doesn't respond to androgens they mostly have female sex characteristics.



This is semantics at its best though. I mean, if we took it upon ourselves to use your line of reasoning, EVERYTHING exists in a fucking continuum.

Not semantics, no. When analysing sex characteristics biologists tend to use the following: chromosomes, gonads, genitals, hormones and secondary sex characteristics. This is the continuum of sex characteristics and there's a remarkable amount of variety in even just the first 3. In order to place human bodies in one of the two categories, male or female, the categorisation is inevitably on the basis of gender conceptions.

The experiences of intersex people is telling. Upon being discovered at birth it's a "medical emergency" despite intersex 'conditions' presenting few if any health risks. The "treatments" often carry substantial risk and are not based on the health of the child but of enforcing a sex binary.

In the case of a child with ambiguous sex characteristics but with ovaries they are usually assigned female regardless of other characteristics because they could theoretically bear children in the future. This child's non-female sex characteristics are thus erased and their anatomy restructured. In the case of a child with a vagina but testes the sex assignment is typically based on the size of the phallic structure. If it's just too small there's no way you can be male :rolleyes:


Our ideas about what constitutes a male or female body are ultimately rooted in the gender division in society and the ideology arising from that. People are assigned male or female to the extent that their anatomy is perceived to fit into the roles assigned to men or women. So nothing new or original, i'm just saying things cleverer people have said before me.

THere's alot of clever people on this board, i'm sure people can kick out a decent marxist/feminist analysis on biological sex and intersex people.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

There are individuals who do not conform to this paradigm (transgender individuals) since they are individuals of a sex "trapped" in another sex's body.
No, we aren't, and that's a shitty way to describe being trans.