Do men benefit from women's oppression?

[bloody_capitalist_sham]

Is it true that we do now? Or is it only in the past we did, but since things are better we no longer benefit. :unsure:

[More Fire for the People]

The oppression of women qua women is due entirely to male 'superiority'. All class societies systemically propagate male privilege. The form of this privilege changes from class society to class society depending on the degree of socialization of the means of production.

In our case, the case of capitalism and particularly neo-colonizing capitalism, the ruling class depends on hollow, ideological equality in order to spread its mode of production. Thus women have become equal through male approval, through signifying women as equal members of bourgeois civil society. However, de facto male privilege exists as a means to continually supply a labor force dedicated to menial and tedious work at low costs — and who other to do this task then women? They've always done it. Why? Because the privileged male says so.

[Mujer Libre]

Excellent post HA!

You've basically hit it on the head. It's called institutional sexism, and because the majority of societal institutions arose in a patriarchal society (you could say the same of race, class etc), they still privilege men. The thing about this kind of privilege is that it's basically invisible, to most women and to even more men. It goes unquestioned a lot of the time.

[TC]

No, of course they don't. Hopscotch Anthill and Mujer Libre are totally wrong and not applying marxian class analysis to gender relations.


While some men benefit from some women's oppression, men in general don't benefit simply by virtue of being male.

It is nothing but mystical idealism to believe that gender inequality is the result of "male privilege" where men, in general, as a class of people, just conspire to assert superiority or, and if women appear more equal its only because men have 'approved' of it. Thats just ridiculous. Its as silly as thinking that white workers benefit from racial oppression of black workers, as if it were they and not the capitalists who had an interest in oppression. In any case, i would suggest that anyone who has such reactionary anti-male rightwing views of gender oppression read Engel's Origin of the Family and "The Evolution of Gender Hierarchies: a Trial Formulation" by Marvin Harris.



In reality, women's oppression is the result of institution of the patriarchal family and the gender based division of domestic and social labour found in the patriarchal family. This benefits *some* men whose wives subsidize their lifestyle by providing unpaid domestic menial (useless) work, and it benefits capitalists (both male and female) who benefit from the steady population growth that patriarchal families provide, at the expense of women, but that still means that men who are neither part of a patriarchal family nor employers do not benefit in any tangible way from gender based oppression.

[Black Dagger]

Originally posted by TC+--> (TC)While some men benefit from some women's oppression, men in general don't benefit simply by virtue of being male. [/b]

So you dont think that men derive any benefit from living in a society that is patriarchal? :unsure:

How do you explain the wage gap then?


Originally posted by TC+--> (TC)It is nothing but mystical idealism to believe that gender inequality is the result of "male privilege" where men, in general, as a class of people, just conspire to assert superiority or, and if women appear more equal its only because men have 'approved' of it. [/b]

Except of course that no one is asserting that institutional sexism is a 'conspiracy' - any more than institutional racism is a 'conspiracy', this is just one of your typical strawman attacks.


Originally posted by TC
Thats just ridiculous. Its as silly as thinking that white workers benefit from racial oppression of black workers, as if it were they and not the capitalists who had an interest in oppression.

Yes, it is the capitalists who benefit most from the maintenance of racism - but that does not entail that white workers do not 'benefit' by proxy also. How can a white worker not be benefitting when their skin colour may mean they are not excluded from an industry or job? That they on average will get higher pay? etc.

This is not to suggest that there is a 'conspiracy' amongst white workers, merely that as they are not the subjects of racist discrimination (you accept that exists right?) they are an in a position of relative benefit compared to Black, Latino etc. workers.

Moreover, if white workers weren't 'benefitting' from structural racism, wouldnt that make affirmative action unnecessary?



Originally posted by TC

In any case, i would suggest that anyone who has such reactionary anti-male rightwing views ...

lolz


[email protected]

This benefits *some* men whose wives subsidize their lifestyle by providing unpaid domestic menial (useless) work

How is domestic work 'useless'? o0


TC

but that still means that men who are neither part of a patriarchal family nor employers do not benefit in any tangible way from gender based oppression.

You&#39;re totally right; in fact i think these days men actually get paid less than women, are less likely to advance at work, and are less likely to be working menial jobs&#33; <_<

[bloody_capitalist_sham]

Okay, so what about a typical working class family.

Say it consists of a husband a wife and a child.

does the working class man benefit from his wife getting paid a third less than him for the same work?

And say they lived in a country where abortion was illegal, does then her husband benefit from her not being able to control here body?

And do men benefit from women who are prostitutes? And i guess, do men benefit from other men being prostitutes and do women benefit from some men being prostitutes?

[Black Dagger]

I don&#39;t understand the point of your questions?

Of course in different contexts structural discrimination against women can also have negative consequences for their partners, what of it?

The point is that it&#39;s fucked that women are being paid less and end up working the shittest jobs with the shittest conditions (particularly in the &#39;third world&#39;)- that&#39;s the point, not that it sucks for hetero men who&#39;d like a greater combined income.

[girl#13]

Originally posted by [email protected] 19, 2007 11:08 am
And do men benefit from women who are prostitutes? And i guess, do men benefit from other men being prostitutes and do women benefit from some men being prostitutes?
Yes, otherwise female prostitution basically wouldn&#39;t exist, and yes and yes, unless you mean male prostitutes that only have male clients, in which case I can&#39;t see how women would benfit from them.
Unless my benifit you only mean financially, but even then yes, pimps benefit financially from prostitutes.

[bloody_capitalist_sham]

Bleeding gums, i was just trying to find out if i was only seeing things from one angle.

[Black Dagger]

Fair enough.

[TC]

So you dont think that men derive any benefit from living in a society that is patriarchal? :unsure:


Obviously male patriarchs benefit from patriarchal social organization, that doesn&#39;t mean that men in general do.

Its called "patriarchy" not "androarchy" for a reason, it refers to social structures that benefit fathers, men with female and juvenile dependents. Not all men have financial dependents, so not all men derive any benefit from the systematic subordination of financial dependents to patriarchs.




How do you explain the wage gap then?


The wage gap doesn&#39;t benefit male workers at all&#33;

You are incredibly naive to infer that by paying women less it means that men are payed more, what it actually means is that employers simply pay less and profit more.


If an employer has two workers and on one day she decides to pay both workers 50 pounds each, each worker derives the benefit of their own 50 pound wage, and the 100 pounds payed out in wages is factored into her cost and profit margin. If the next day the employer decides to pay one worker 50 pounds and the other worker 40 pounds, than while she benefits from only paying out 90 pounds in wages and therefore having a wider profit margin, the first worker derives no benefit from his co-worker being payed only 40 pounds as the employer is the one pocketing the difference, not him.


Moreover, the wage gap is a product of patriarchal division of domestic and social labour which translates into both actual and predicted career paths and abilities to compete, not a deliberate effort by employers to &#39;privilege&#39; male workers and discriminate against female workers. The gender wage gap compares full time year round workers without regard to hours, overtime, experience and job absence, all major factors that significantly favour men over women in patriarchal social structures due to an uneven distribution of childcare obligations. Capitalists don&#39;t actually care whether their workers are male or female, they pay the minimum they can get away with to anyone, its simply that because most women are doubly exploited both by capitalist structures and by patriarchal structures whereas most men are not, male workers tend to have an average competitive advantage useful to capitalists. Appreciating what actually *causes* gender inequality on a structural level and what the real social implications of that are requires talking about class strata and power dynamics rather than identity groups, but tough.



Except of course that no one is asserting that institutional sexism is a &#39;conspiracy&#39; - any more than institutional racism is a &#39;conspiracy&#39;, this is just one of your typical strawman attacks.


H.A. Said "Thus women have become equal through male approval" as if it was passed by some male committee lol. In any case the issue is class not gender, gender is relevant because it affects class strata not because theres some arbitrary desire to ensure &#39;male superiority&#39;. The only type of superiority any society has a real interest in maintaining is the superiority of the ruling class.


How can a white worker not be benefitting when their skin colour may mean they are not excluded from an industry or job? That they on average will get higher pay? etc.

lol no they wont. Do you honestly think that capitalists pay one demographic of workers less so they can pay another demographic more? What would the possible logic in that be? If anything (domestic) racism hurts white workers because the maintenance of an underemployed racial underclass drives defacto minimum wages down and advantages employers on the job market; its an arrangement that benefits employers not any employees.

By your (ridiculous) logic, a class conscious self-interested majority working class would be racist and racial nationalist parties would be real working class parties&#33; Thankfully your logic is wrong.



This is not to suggest that there is a &#39;conspiracy&#39; amongst white workers, merely that as they are not the subjects of racist discrimination (you accept that exists right?) they are an in a position of relative benefit compared to Black, Latino etc. workers.

Being in a relatively better social position does not mean that they derive any absolute benefit from differences in treatment, that would presume that they pocket the difference when in fact they do not. You&#39;re thinking in terms of liberal social status rather than Marxian classes.

If one person is disadvantaged, it may or may not be to the advantage of another person who is not disadvantaged. This is not a zero-sum competitive game.



Moreover, if white workers weren&#39;t &#39;benefitting&#39; from structural racism, wouldnt that make affirmative action unnecessary?


No. You obviously miss the point of affirmative action. Its not to compensate for some sort of inbuilt advantage that white workers have but to provide increased representation for disadvantaged demographic groups. To assume that black workers (or, more likely students or professionals) faced certain obstacles to their career advancement does not imply that those obstacles somehow helped or facilitated white workers. That would be taking a totally mystical non-materialist view.



How is domestic work &#39;useless&#39;? o0


The fact that it isn&#39;t *obvious* to you why domestic work is useless just shows that you have accepted the assumptions of patriarchal society that glorifies motherhood and domestic life as a way to maintain its exploitive relations. Its the same attitude that romanticizes a home cooked meal that takes hours of pointless and wasted labour to prepare, that deems pointlessly repetitive cleaning, vacuuming, neatening, dusting, rearrangement, clothes folding, bed making, and so on as house "work".

""The woman continues to be a slave of the home, despite all the liberating laws, because she is overburdened, oppressed, stupefied, humiliated by the menial domestic tasks, which make her a cook and a nurse, which waste her activity in an absurdly unproductive, menial, irritating, stupefying and tedious labor. The phrase emancipation of women will only begin for real in the country at the time the mass struggle begins (led by the proletariat already owning the power of the State) against this petty home economy, or more precisely, when their mass transformation begins in a large-scale socialist economy." -Lenin

"The state of affairs with respect to the equality of men and women is no better than their legal inequality, which we have inherited from prior social conditions, is not the cause but the effect of the economic oppression of women...Women cannot be emancipated unless they assume a large socially measurable role in production and are only tied insignificantly by domestic work. And this has only been possible with modern industry, which not only admits feminine labor in a large scale but fatally demands it." -Engels

"just go into the house, the inmost sanctuary, of a rich man and tell me if it is not the most senseless waste of labour power when you have a number of people waiting on one single individual, spending their time in idleness or, at best, in work which results from the isolation of a single man inside his own four walls? This crowd of maids, cooks, lackeys, coachmen, domestic servants, gardeners and whatever they are called, what do they really do? For how few moments during the day they are occupied in making the lives of their masters really pleasant, in facilitating the free development and exercise of their human nature and inborn capacities — and how many hours during the day they are occupied in tasks which arise only from the bad arrangement of our social relations"-Engels



You&#39;re totally right; in fact i think these days men actually get paid less than women, are less likely to advance at work, and are less likely to be working menial jobs&#33; <_<

Your sarcasm just shows you miss the point. Treating someone badly doesn&#39;t tangibly benefit another who is treated less badly, there is no magical transference of the misery of one person to the betterment of all others.

[PRC-UTE]

TC laid it out well and she summarised the historical materialist theory. I&#39;ve read Engels Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State which explains how patriarchy came about, (as well as the state, which is a result of class antagonisms) and so far it&#39;s the only scientific explanation on offer.

[Black Dagger]

Originally posted by TC+--> (TC)Obviously male patriarchs benefit from patriarchal social organization, that doesn&#39;t mean that men in general do.

Its called "patriarchy" not "androarchy" for a reason, it refers to social structures that benefit fathers, men with female and juvenile dependents. Not all men have financial dependents, so not all men derive any benefit from the systematic subordination of financial dependents to patriarchs.[/b]

Right, so you don&#39;t think that men generally are advantaged in a patriarchal society - ok.

Would you also say that white people are not generally advantaged (relative to Blacks, Latinos etc) in contemporary society?

Moreover, since you take a literal understanding of the term &#39;patriarchy&#39; - does this entail that you do not think that structural sexism exists?

(since you limit patriarchy to the private sphere)


Originally posted by TC+--> (TC)You are incredibly naive to infer that by paying women less it means that men are payed more, what it actually means is that employers simply pay less and profit more.[/b]

Uh... actually TC that&#39;s not what i said (or think) nor was it inferred by my post :unsure:

In fact i didn&#39;t elaborate in any detail on my opinions on the wage gap between men and women (i raised the issue as a question to you), so perhaps you could lay off the strawmen?

I did however talk a bit about racial disparities:


Originally posted by me
This is not to suggest that there is a &#39;conspiracy&#39; amongst white workers, merely that as they are not the subjects of racist discrimination (you accept that exists right?) they are an in a position of relative benefit compared to Black, Latino etc. workers

This is similar logic to what i would apply to the male-female wage gap.

Not that &#39;men get more because women get less&#39;... but rather, what i said plainly in this paragraph... compared to women, men are in a position of relative benefit.

I.E. Women get paid less than men.

In future perhaps you could reply to my comments directly rather than your interpretations of inferred points of view i do not hold :)


Originally posted by TC
Moreover, the wage gap is a product of patriarchal division of domestic and social labour which translates into both actual and predicted career paths and abilities to compete, not a deliberate effort by employers to &#39;privilege&#39; male workers and discriminate against female workers. The gender wage gap compares full time year round workers without regard to hours, overtime, experience and job absence, all major factors that significantly favour men over women in patriarchal social structures due to an uneven distribution of childcare obligations. Capitalists don&#39;t actually care whether their workers are male or female, they pay the minimum they can get away with to anyone, its simply that because most women are doubly exploited both by capitalist structures and by patriarchal structures whereas most men are not, male workers tend to have an average competitive advantage useful to capitalists.

I more or less agree with this.


Originally posted by TC
H.A. Said "Thus women have become equal through male approval" as if it was passed by some male committee lol.

Whatever, i think you are deliberately reading too much into his comments just so you can slag him off.


Originally posted by TC
Do you honestly think that capitalists pay one demographic of workers less so they can pay another demographic more?

Uh... no.


Originally posted by TC
By your (ridiculous) logic, a class conscious self-interested majority working class would be racist and racial nationalist parties would be real working class parties&#33; Thankfully your logic is wrong.


Of course &#39;my&#39; logic is ridiculous, it&#39;s a strawman of your creation ;)


Originally posted by TC
Being in a relatively better social position does not mean that they derive any absolute benefit from differences in treatment...

Not in all cases, no.


Originally posted by TC

If one person is disadvantaged, it may or may not be to the advantage of another person who is not disadvantaged.

I agree.


Originally posted by TC
No. You obviously miss the point of affirmative action. Its not to compensate for some sort of inbuilt advantage that white workers have but to provide increased representation for disadvantaged demographic groups.

Actually i think you are the one missing the point... well at least one of the points of AA, which is to break down &#39;bastions of privilege&#39; in certain industries, Severian talked a bit about this in one of the past threads on AA (my bold):


Originally posted by Sev
Affirmative action has also benefited millions of Black and female workers. In fact, it&#39;s been most heavily applied, and most successful, in industry, in the U.S.

That&#39;s part of the legacy of the mass civil rights movement - and it&#39;s something that many unions supported, fought for, got included in union contracts. Correctly so.

Affirmative action is a necessity for uniting the working class. How can you have unity on the basis of excluding some workers from employment?

All you get then: on the more priviliged, say white side: racist mobilizations that tried to try to keep Black workers out and reserve certain jobs for whites. And on the other hand: Black workers who didn&#39;t hesitate to scab since it was the only shot they&#39;d ever have at the better jobs.

That&#39;s the past, in most industries: affirmative action has largely corrected that, in the U.S. anyway. Which is a good reason to defend it, and extend it if we can.

http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=57049


Originally posted by TC

To assume that black workers (or, more likely students or professionals) faced certain obstacles to their career advancement does not imply that those obstacles somehow helped or facilitated white workers.

*sigh*

Again i never said or inferred that. Nor is that my opinion.


[email protected]
The fact that it isn&#39;t *obvious* to you why domestic work is useless just shows that you have accepted the assumptions of patriarchal society that glorifies motherhood and domestic life as a way to maintain its exploitive relations. Its the same attitude that romanticizes a home cooked meal that takes hours of pointless and wasted labour to prepare, that deems pointlessly repetitive cleaning, vacuuming, neatening, dusting, rearrangement, clothes folding, bed making, and so on as house "work".

Did you enjoy that righteous condemnation?

Because neither this paragraph nor the quotes you provided have answered my question; I&#39;m well aware of the exploitative nature of domestic work, but labelling it &#39;useless&#39; seemed to imply that it had no value? And following that it should be unpaid etc. Hence my confusion as to what you meant when you said it was &#39;useless.&#39;


TC
Your sarcasm just shows you miss the point. Treating someone badly doesn&#39;t tangibly benefit another who is treated less badly, there is no magical transference of the misery of one person to the betterment of all others.

see: the million other times above where you&#39;ve guessed wrong about things i never said.

[syndicat]

males benefit materially from the labor of women in a variety of ways. Having to do less housework. Women who work for wages and have a male partner still work two jobs, one paid, one unpaid, in that they still do most of the housework. In recent times men have only increased the housework they do to some extent. consider for example the lack of access of women to a number of kinds of better paying jobs, such as in skilled trades, such as carpenters, auto mechanics, elevator technicians. in these trades the jobs tend to go to white males due to the nature of employment contacts, old boy networks. this applies also to men who have no dependents. women suffer on average greater unemployment and lower wages.

women are more likely than men, in a couple, to be the person who takes time off from work to look after a sick child or take the child places he/she has to go. disruption of a woman&#39;s employment will tend to disadvantage her in the labor market. given the lower wages women make, it is rational for a couple to assign the woman to the role of primary person responsible for the children. but, again, this disadvantages women. and marriages often fall apart, and you end up with many impoverished female-headed households.

it&#39;s a mistake to try to reduce the structure of gender inequality to the class system, as historical materialism does. structural gender inequality existed before capitalism and has existed throughout known history.

it&#39;s true, nonetheless, that it is in the interests of working class men to support greater gender equality, even tho this may sound paradoxical. that&#39;s because the privilege of working class men due to a better situation than women is minor compared to the much greater gains that become possible when the working class is united, and is not divided into separate groups competing for separate deals.

[bloody_capitalist_sham]

consider for example the lack of access of women to a number of kinds of better paying jobs, such as in skilled trades, such as carpenters, auto mechanics, elevator technicians. in these trades the jobs tend to go to white males due to the nature of employment contacts, old boy networks.

I thought it was because men were more likely to accept a dangerous job that had a higher wage than women.

Because lots of the most dangerous jobs, like construction, mining and stuff, have quite high fatality and injury rates compared with other jobs, so shouldn&#39;t these people be paid more for the risk?

and can the same be said of mainly female profession like being a nurse? Like old girl networks and stuff?

[Reuben]

Thequestion of course is which men and in which contexts. Given the divergent and in fact contradictory positions of men on the basis of socio economic position (and of course other factors) it is problematic to talk about whether men benefit from this or that.


Certainly the association of women with domesticity in some ways benefits men on a cross class basis - that is to say that men acorss classes tend to benefit from women disproportionately taking on and being expected to take on the burden of household tasks.

Yet the corollary of female domesticity is the role of the male breadwinner. The impact this has on men is crucially dependent on socio-economic position. A man in a low paid job or in unemployment suffers not only material privations but the cultural burden of failing in his role as a provider. Interestingly, in the 1920s the Conservatives used the expectation that men should provide for their families to attack striking workers.

On the issue of women paid less, the question to ask is to whom the money that they would have been payed flows. To their male colleagues? i think not. To the capitalists, i think so

Gendered norms not only reflect and maintain the subordination of women but also the subordination of working class men. Take, for example, the practice carried out by women during the first world war of handing white feathers (to connote cowardice) to men who had not gone to fight. Here gendered expectations of were used to discipline men into fighting a bosses war - and the prime agents were women.

[TC]

Right, so you don&#39;t think that men generally are advantaged in a patriarchal society - ok.


BlackDagger/Bleeding Gums you seem much more intent on trying to score points and use sophistry in debate than actually answer the question of this thread. The question is not "do men have fewer disadvantages on average than women", which appears to be the question you intend to misdirect your answers to, its "do men benefit from women&#39;s oppression", and the answer to that is, in general, as men, no.

Whether women are more oppressed than men, and whether men benefit from womens oppression, are two totally different questions and you&#39;re trying to conflate the two. To be relatively advantaged does not entail benefiting from another&#39;s oppression. This is pretty basic logic.



Moreover, since you take a literal understanding of the term &#39;patriarchy&#39; - does this entail that you do not think that structural sexism exists?

(since you limit patriarchy to the private sphere)

I never limited patriarchy to the private sphere, because the private sphere isn&#39;t limited to the private sphere. To say that the origin of gender inequality is in the family and not in capitalist buisness practice is not to say that it doesn&#39;t have society wide implications because family members are also members of societies and the private and public spheres have totally overlapping membership.

You seem to be taking Thatchers line that you can either talk about individuals and families or society; she was obviously wrong. A division of labour in the family will translate into different strata of the same class in the public sphere due to differing time and social commitments that limit the amount of time available for public production and public life.



Uh... actually TC that&#39;s not what i said (or think) nor was it inferred by my post unsure.gif

In fact i didn&#39;t elaborate in any detail on my opinions on the wage gap between men and women (i raised the issue as a question to you), so perhaps you could lay off the strawmen?


So do you admit then that men who do not have patriarchal personal relations or major financial investments do not benefit from women&#39;s oppression?


Not that &#39;men get more because women get less&#39;... but rather, what i said plainly in this paragraph... compared to women, men are in a position of relative benefit.

The question of whether or not men derive benefit from women&#39;s oppression is not one of "relative benefit" (as in, are they relatively less oppressed on average) but one of absolute benefit (as in, are they better off due to women&#39;s oppression). So you&#39;re confusing the issue.

Sure, they might be in a better position, but they don&#39;t derive any benefit from the discrepancy in their position.



In future perhaps you could reply to my comments directly rather than your interpretations of inferred points of view i do not hold smile.gif


In the future perhaps you could be a little less fucking condescending. :D


I&#39;m well aware of the exploitative nature of domestic work, but labelling it &#39;useless&#39; seemed to imply that it had no value? And following that it should be unpaid etc. Hence my confusion as to what you meant when you said it was &#39;useless.&#39;

Actually i did answer your questions and the lenin and engels quotes addressed it. Domestic work doesn&#39;t have any value&#33; The Marxian Labour Theory of Value holds that all value is added by labour, but it does not hold that the reverse is true, that all labour adds value, some labour is wasted labour that adds no value, domestic labour is one such instance of this.

The marxist view of womens emancipation is not that women should be paid to be house wives (or "home makers" if you prefer) as you seem to be implying, rather that the role of house wives should be abolished. Domestic labour shouldn&#39;t be paid, it should be eliminated as an activity consuming anyones time, and collectivized in the areas where this is prohibitively difficult.

[Black Dagger]

Can you please answer this question from before?


Originally posted by me+--> (me)Right, so you don&#39;t think that men generally are advantaged in a patriarchal society - ok.

Would you also say that white people are not generally advantaged (relative to Blacks, Latinos etc) in contemporary society?[/b]

Thanks
---------------------------------




Originally posted by TC+--> (TC) To be relatively advantaged does not entail benefiting from another&#39;s oppression. This is pretty basic logic.[/b]

Why do i have to keep repeating myself? :huh:

See my last post:


Originally posted by me


Originally posted by TC

Being in a relatively better social position does not mean that they derive any absolute benefit from differences in treatment...


Not in all cases, no.

-----------------------------------------------------



Originally posted by TC
You seem to be taking Thatchers line that you can either talk about individuals and families or society; she was obviously wrong.

It&#39;s obvious that i&#39;m not &#39;taking Thatchers line&#39; - i never stated a position, i was asking you a question in an attempt to understand YOUR position.

Since you have now stated that you think patriarchy DOES extend into the public sphere, how do you think its manifests there? In what ways?

Or are you simply referring to the benefit derived by bosses?



Originally posted by TC
So do you admit then that men who do not have patriarchal personal relations or major financial investments do not benefit from women&#39;s oppression?

No, i do not accept that - my response to this question can be found in my last post, or below in this one.


Originally posted by TC
he question of whether or not men derive benefit from women&#39;s oppression is not one of "relative benefit" (as in, are they relatively less oppressed on average) but one of absolute benefit (as in, are they better off due to women&#39;s oppression).

I dont think it&#39;s so black and white. Some men do benefit directly because of the oppression of women, others less so... i know, you dont agree - this has gone back and forth several times already.


Originally posted by TC
In the future perhaps you could be a little less fucking condescending.

Only if you take your own advice.


[email protected]
Actually i did answer your questions and the lenin and engels quotes addressed it. Domestic work doesn&#39;t have any value&#33; The Marxian Labour Theory of Value holds that all value is added by labour, but it does not hold that the reverse is true, that all labour adds value, some labour is wasted labour that adds no value, domestic labour is one such instance of this.


Ok, it&#39;s just before you said &#39;useless&#39; not &#39;valueless&#39;, hence the misunderstanding.


TC
The marxist view of womens emancipation is not that women should be paid to be house wives (or "home makers" if you prefer) as you seem to be implying, rather that the role of house wives should be abolished.

Yup, you got me&#33;

My idea of &#39;women&#39;s emancipation&#39; is to institutionalise patriarchy <_<

[LSD]

This would seem to be a rather confused thread, largely I suspect because the initial question was so unclear in its meaning.

What exactly does "benefit" mean in this context? Likewise, what does "oppression" mean? Does it mean economic oppression, as in capitalist exploitation? Does it mean social exploitation as in patriarchal social norms? Or does it mean some combination of the two?

If we&#39;re talking concrete material gain, that is the kind of "benefit" that is measurable and quantifiable in monetary terms, then I would say that the answer is in general no, although it&#39;s by no means that simple.

But most men do not benefit from capitalist patriarchy most of the time.

The fact is the ecomonic factors tend to cancel each other out, more women working doesn&#39;t just mean more workers, it also means more consumers which in turn requires more production.

Which is why when women started working, it was not accompanied by a massive rise in unemployment.

And in terms of pay disparity, as has been pointed out, there are a lot of reasons for it, but whatever your analysis, I think that everyone realizes that it&#39;s not that men are making more, it&#39;s that women are making less.

There&#39;s no such thing as a "male" bonus, anymore than there is a "white" one. Everyone is getting paid the minimum the bourgeoisie can get away with, it&#39;s that when it comes to women, that figure is a little bit lower.

But men would be making the same amount whether women were oppressed or not.

But then sexism is not about money, it certainly isn&#39;t about capitalism. Indeed capitalism&#39;s tendency is away from gender discrimination, just as it is away from racial discrimination.

That isn&#39;t to say that individual capitalists won&#39;t exploit sexism to make a buck, nor that they can&#39;t well be sexist themselves, but capitalism as a socioeconomic force is inexorably leading us towards a sexually neutral economy.

This is the "two great camps" paradigm of which Marx wrote 150 years ago; maximum exploitation requires maximum penetration. You can make more money if 100% of the population is working than if only 50 is.

And, in the end, that&#39;s all that capitalism is about: making money. The rest is all barnacles on the hull.

You see, what&#39;s keeping patriarchy alive right now is social inertia, the fact that a million odd years of custom and entrentched belief can&#39;t end in few short decades.

People believe in things like "masculinity" and "gender roles" for the same reason that they believe in things like "God" and homophobia, because, for the most part, it&#39;s what they were raised with.

And that&#39;s where patriarchy does benefit men, even the working class ones. Not in terms of class or Marxian power relations, but in terms of everyday living.

And, yes, that benefit is relative, most benefit is after all, but it&#39;s nonetheless real.

There&#39;s a reason, after all, that women are so much more likely to be raped, so much more likely to be murdered by a spouse, so much more likely to be the one staying at home; and yet at the same time also more likely to have a door opened for them, to be trusted by a stranger, or to be given custody of a child.

It&#39;s all part of a very old, very complex paradigm of femininity that has nothing to do with class and everything to do with a system of beliefs that predates capitalism, and probably even class itself, by millenia.

And while that is gradually changing, it isn&#39;t changing fast enough. Nor will a change in economic circumstances, even a revolutionary one, accelerate that process.

Which is why it is important to be mindful that while, interelated certainly, racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.. are not mere manifestations of capitalism, but complex social phenomena with their own histories and their own solutions.

(why is it that all my posts end up being so fucking long...?)

[Black Dagger]

I&#39;d agree with that, with an emphasis on this part:


Originally posted by LSD+--> (LSD)People believe in things like "masculinity" and "gender roles" for the same reason that they believe in things like "God" and homophobia, because, for the most part, it&#39;s what they were raised with.

And that&#39;s where patriarchy does benefit men, even the working class ones. Not in terms of class or Marxian power relations, but in terms of everyday living.

And, yes, that benefit is relative, most benefit is after all, but it&#39;s nonetheless real.

There&#39;s a reason, after all, that women are so much more likely to be raped, so much more likely to be murdered by a spouse, so much more likely to be the one staying at home; and yet at the same time also more likely to have a door opened for them, to be trusted by a stranger, or to be given custody of a child.

It&#39;s all part of a very old, very complex paradigm of femininity that has nothing to do with class and everything to do with a system of beliefs that predates capitalism, and probably even class itself, by millenia.[/b]

This is what i was trying to get at when in i asked TC how she thought patriarchy manifested in the public sphere... as i have a feeling that she would argue that women/men are not &#39;oppressed&#39; because of socio-cultural constructions such as &#39;femininity&#39; - but only in economic terms.

IMO that is really the only significant difference in the positions presented here; is &#39;oppression&#39; defined in economic terms or a combination of economic and social terms?


LSD
why is it that all my posts end up being so fucking long...?)

Coz your paragraphs are only three lines :P

[Severian]

Yes, male privilege is real. In that sense, men benefit. Obviously. Clown&#39;s crap only makes sense if you deny the existence of systematic sexist discrimination, as she does, as the right wing of capitalist politics does. Her line of BS has been refuted, including with statistics, before.

Including in this previous thread on male privilege (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=54564&st=25&#entry1292150940) Plenty o&#39; good stats there on the wage gap and related topics.

LSD says:

but capitalism as a socioeconomic force is inexorably leading us towards a sexually neutral economy.

Basically a wishy-washy version of Clown&#39;s "there is no sexism" right-wing bullshit, and just as contrary to observed fact. No, capitalists do benefit from sexism, and do perpetuate it. Only struggle can reduce systemic sexism, the bosses and the workings of their system won&#39;t do it for us.

The whole capitalist class benefits from sexism, not just individuals, because they profit when they can pay women workers less. Obviously.

What&#39;s more, having lower-paid sections of the workforce helps them drive down the wages of white men, too. And finally, divide-and-rule helps perpetuate their whole system.

Which explains the observed fact that sexism doesn&#39;t go away and capitalism isn&#39;t, here on Planet Earth, "inexorably leading us towards a sexually neutral economy."

The wage gap, for example, has narrowed little, and that mostly because men&#39;s wages are dropping faster in the bosses&#39; war on the working class. In some other senses sexism is actually getting worse: access to abortion is being rolled back...betcha the number of women in poverty is increasing.

Which brings us to another sense in which you have to ask: which men benefit from sexism?

Because sexism helps perpetuate the capitalist system. And even within that system, the lower wages paid women help drive down wages for men too - through competition in the labor market.

Obviously this is contrary to the interests of all workers, including male ones.

We all have a common interest, as workers, in fighting capitalist exploitation - an interest which requires us to oppose every kind of oppression and discrimination, including sexism.

I tend to think that class interest overrides male privilege - when you take the broad and long view.

[LSD]

Basically a wishy-washy version of Clown&#39;s "there is no sexism" right-wing bullshit

Actually, it&#39;s not a "wishy-washy" version of anything. Nor am I agreeing with Tragic Clown that there&#39;s no such thing as first world patriarchy.

What I&#39;m saying is that, monetarily speaking, most men don&#39;t actually benefit from sexism. The capitalists may, in that they can pay a segment of their workers less, but that&#39;s not because they&#39;re paying their male employees more.

And I notice that for all your insinuations that I&#39;m a "wishy washy ... rightist", you haven&#39;t actually disagreed with that contention. Nor I imagine are you likely to, since it would be akin to saying that male workers have an interest in perpetuating patriarchy.

Tragic Clown is absolutely correct in that while sexism undoubtably harms women in the workforce, it does not do so by benefiting (insofar as that word is understood to be economical in nature) their male colleagues.

Where she errs on this subject, however, is in assuming that benefit can only be economic; that is in extending economics, particularly Marxian economics, into areas in which it is not actually that relevent.

That&#39;s not unique to her, of course, indeed that kind of overreaching has been a feature of Marxism since its inception, and it&#39;s perfectly understandable why.

It would be fantasic if all human relations could be reduced to class and nothing more, but the real world just isn&#39;t that black and white.


No, capitalists do benefit from sexism, and do perpetuate it.

Yes they do, but they do so individually, not systematically.

As I said:

Originally posted by me
That isn&#39;t to say that individual capitalists won&#39;t exploit sexism to make a buck, nor that they can&#39;t well be sexist themselves, but capitalism as a socioeconomic force is inexorably leading us towards a sexually neutral economy.

This is the "two great camps" paradigm of which Marx wrote 150 years ago; maximum exploitation requires maximum penetration. You can make more money if 100% of the population is working than if only 50 is.

There&#39;s no doubt that being able to get away with paying women less in the interest of the bosses, but it&#39;s equally certain that that kind of irrational prejudice can&#39;t persist in an ultimately materialist system like capitalism.

For the same reason that racism cannot survive capitalism, sexism will eventually whither away and die, all on its own.

Again, it won&#39;t happen quickly and I am by no means suggesting that we should sit by and wait for history to take care of itself. We can, and must, do all we can to accelerate the process.

But make no mistake, capitalism itself recognizes only one divide, that between those who get paid and those who do the paying. Again, that is what Marx meant when he wrote that the world was rapidly seperating into two "great camps".

And while I&#39;m certainly not one to take Marx&#39;s contentions as gospel, and am more than aware that his analysis was probably more than a little coloured by Hegelian dualistic fetishism, I think on this issue he got it absolutely correct.

The capitalists are interested in making mony. Sometimes that means acting sexist, sometimes it means not. In the long run it means acting without regard to sex or race or orientation or any other "externalities" that get in the way of maximizing quarterly gain.

Don&#39;t get caught in the game of blaming all the evils of the world on capitalism, there&#39;s a reason that Marx called it historical progression. Capitalism is superior to the economic order that preceded it largely because of its underlying liberalism.

It&#39;s paradigmatic assertion of the equality of all property-holders.

That&#39;s not a particularly progressive position by today&#39;s standards, but it was far bettert han that which it replaced. And say what you want about it, it&#39;s nonetheless a non-sexist model.

Which is why Cato-type libertarians are almost universally pro-choice. Capitalist doesn&#39;t mean conservative, it just means capitalist.


The whole capitalist class benefits from sexism, not just individuals, because they profit when they can pay women workers less. Obviously.

What&#39;s more, having lower-paid sections of the workforce helps them drive down the wages of white men, too. And finally, divide-and-rule helps perpetuate their whole system.

You&#39;re making the comon mistake of assuming that the capitalist class views itself as a capitalist class, or has anything approaching a coherent group agenda.

The capitalist class is far more consumed with battling itself then it is with "divide-and-ruling". As far as the bourgeoisie is concerned there&#39;s no such thing as class war.

Which means that while, yeah, they like paying workers less, they don&#39;t do it as part of a concerted effort to keep the class down. They do it &#39;cause it&#39;s useful in the moment, but useful prejudices are fleeting, especially when they have no roots in the foundations of the system itself.

And capitalism is not a sexist system. Sexism persists only because it was already there when capitalism came along and was too ingrained in the society to be swept away by enlightenment liberalism.


Which explains the observed fact that sexism doesn&#39;t go away

Once again, that&#39;s the social inertia of a half-million years of human history. It doesn&#39;t just go away in a few decades.

But there can be no doubt that things are far better today (at least in the first world) than they were a mere half-century ago.

And while a lot of that is due to the hard-fought efforts of feminists and civil rights activists, it&#39;s no coincidence that their campaigns coincided with the rise of industrial capitalism. Or that the more sexist countries around right now are also some of the least developed.

Capitalism, and the civil foundation on which its liberal precepts lie, is rooted in a fundamentally individualistic worldview. All persons are equal before property, even if they are not equal in property.

The capitalist doesn&#39;t care if you have a penis or a vagina when he sells you the rope, he just cares that have money

[JayFitz]

I think this is an interesting thread but misses the elephant in the room. Modern capitalism wouldn&#39;t be in existence, at least as powerful as it is, except for one very important invention. . .

The Modern American Woman--the worlds most efficient purchasing machine.

Now before anybody screams at me "sexist&#33;"(hold on, you&#39;ve been conditioned by Madison Avenue to do that too) consider the facts. The single greatest marketing target audience for advertisers--women. The only growing marketing group--women. Just look around, and take a mental survey of what one sees for sale--offered blatantly to women or men--or to men to get women? In fact, on will find that other than food, it&#39;s actually hard to find products marketed exclusively to men.

If you wanted to make sure that everybody spent every last dime they ever had and then some--if you were to engineer a society designed to oppress with debt, legal obligations, fear, and discontent, you&#39;d have a hard time doing so better than what exists.

Seriously, who really believes we live in a Patriarchal society? The cornerstones of our culture in the US are marriage, family, and home life. You really think men dreamed this up?

In all fairness, the evidence that women get paid less is questionable, don&#39;t we really think? I know one can bark the statistics, but ignoring many others, ie absentee rates, production, etc. I think it&#39;s pretty close especially if one doesn&#39;t skew the data by throwing in the incomes of the very rich.


How about mandatory compelled fatherhood? How about pro-choice for men? In some states you can&#39;t get a vasectomy without having your wife sign off, or that used to be the case recently(Idaho, for me.)

There will never be any meaningful social change until we can educate women to not be such voracious consumers.

So, do men benefit from living in a patriarchal society? Like the Ukraine? Generally not, because in capitalist countries where the men really do rule the economy sucks.
Maybe they don&#39;t care, but it seems to me they might. But living in a matriarchal ultra-consumerist capitalist state is nigh on to slavery.

[Pawn Power]

Originally posted by [email protected] 22, 2007 09:44 am
In fact, on will find that other than food, it&#39;s actually hard to find products marketed exclusively to men.


Tools, cars/trucks, sports related things (tickets, televised games, equipment, etc), a lot of electronics, tv programs, ect. Thats a lot of shit&#33;


If you wanted to make sure that everybody spent every last dime they ever had and then some--if you were to engineer a society designed to oppress with debt, legal obligations, fear, and discontent, you&#39;d have a hard time doing so better than what exists.
Well, that has something to do with capitalism and not gneder. In reality, women are more often the ones who, in the familey, attempt to save money.


Seriously, who really believes we live in a Patriarchal society? The cornerstones of our culture in the US are marriage, family, and home life. You really think men dreamed this up?
Oh, I see your point. Women "conspired" a society in which they labor for free, frequently face sexual harassment, are debased mentally and emotionaly by their own class, and are disproportionately subject to physcial violence and rape. :angry:

[JayFitz]

There&#39;s no question that some very rich men benefit from the society as it is. Some very rich women do as well. Like all these issues if we are insightful we can see reduced to economic issues. The sexist issue, for sure, as in some sense women are exploited by the popular media, which they gobble like goldfish, and taught again and again how to be disappointed in how they look, who they have for a man, what their kids don&#39;t have, how old they are--etc etc, and then buy everything on the planet(literally) to fix the discontent. The key is this--the sexism that exists isn&#39;t what people say it is--women being held down, low paying jobs, not treated with respect in the workplace. The sexism is most damaging is that cooperate marketing plays to most womens inherent weaknesses and foibles, hence "People" magazine-and from a very early age are taught that no amount is ever ever ever enough. And we raise our daughters to be whores. It&#39;s very sinister exploitation indeed.

The rest of it? Media created smokescreen to obscure the fact of what is going on. It&#39;s very effective.

Fact: men face sexual and physical abuse at HIGHER rates than women. I&#39;ll find links. It&#39;s true. It simply goes unreported as our society views violence against men as somehow "acceptable."

[JayFitz]

And by the way, where do you find a women that does housework? Hook me up&#33; :D

[Pawn Power]

There&#39;s no question that some very rich men benefit from the society as it is. Some very rich women do as well. Like all these issues if we are insightful we can see reduced to economic issues.
I never mentioned "benifit." I was addressing the oppression of women and your refutation of a patriarchal soceity.


The sexist issue, for sure, as in some sense women are exploited by the popular media, which they gobble like goldfish, and taught again and again how to be disappointed in how they look, who they have for a man, what their kids don&#39;t have, how old they are--etc etc, and then buy everything on the planet(literally) to fix the discontent.
Not those that don&#39;t have the cash&#33;

Firstly, the role of advertising in creating or extracting "wants" from consumers plays to all genders and furthermore, typecasts those "genders," similarly to the way you are doing, to fill certain traits. Secondly, none of those "arguments" refutes patriarchy.


The key is this--the sexism that exists isn&#39;t what people say it is--women being held down, low paying jobs, not treated with respect in the workplace. The sexism is most damaging is that cooperate marketing plays to most womens inherent weaknesses and foibles, hence "People" magazine-and from a very early age are taught that no amount is ever ever ever enough. And we raise our daughters to be whores. It&#39;s very sinister exploitation indeed.
[My emphasis]
Opps&#33; It seems you let you true colors show a bit more blatantly here. There is no inborn trait that makes women shop. The suggestion of such a thing is ludicrous at the least. Society, culture, family, ect. fabricates "genders" which people are then pigeonholed into and subsequently ascribed certain mannerisms, characteristics, ect. Indeed, capitalism utilizes all this to sell shit.



Fact: men face sexual and physical abuse at HIGHER rates than women. I&#39;ll find links. It&#39;s true. It simply goes unreported as our society views violence against men as somehow "acceptable."
I believe the statistic you are refering to references men that are in prision, where those things are much more common and which men disproportionatly comprise.

In the world outside of prison, women are much more likely to be sexually harassed and raped.

[Pawn Power]

Originally posted by [email protected] 22, 2007 11:28 am
And by the way, where do you find a women that does housework? Hook me up&#33; :D
And a patriarch to boot&#33;

While you clearly find that funny, it indeed contravenes your refutation of patriarchy.

[JayFitz]

Jesus, have a sense of humor&#33;

Here is a link to a very fine and comprehensive site detailing "abuse" in all its forms in the united states elsewhere in the developed world. One will conclude two things fairly if one reads through it to some degree.

Abuse for both sexes is ill reported, and certainly underreported in the case of men. The data suggests that boys and girls face abuse and oppression at all but equal rates.

http://www.jimhopper.com/abstats/

Heres that official government report from census data. The conclusion, and I think fairly, is that women get paid less in the us--about 80 cents on the dollar, but also work fewer hours and have less work history in general. It would be difficult to retain the notion that women are oppressed by any patriarchal elite.

http://usgovinfo.about.com/gi/dynamic/offs...items/d0435.pdf (http://usgovinfo.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=usgovinfo&cdn=newsissues&tm=36&f=00&tt=2&bt=1&bts=0&zu=http%3A//www.gao.gov/new.items/d0435.pdf)

But being held down and oppressed by the MAN doesn&#39;t mean that women aren&#39;t the single largest and most powerful consumer demographic. . .

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/10782.asp

There&#39;s a LOT more on that if you look. Marketers assume 3 of 4 purchases in the US are made by women.



The point of this? That its a NON issue, or at least, in the mind of any sensible progressive, a tangential issue to serious social reform. The primary problem that both men and women, is, and remains, economic oppression and poverty. It would be much more sensible for us to focus on those issues first.

[Severian]

Originally posted by LSD+May 22, 2007 12:49 am--> (LSD &#064; May 22, 2007 12:49 am) What I&#39;m saying is that, monetarily speaking, most men don&#39;t actually benefit from sexism. The capitalists may, in that they can pay a segment of their workers less, but that&#39;s not because they&#39;re paying their male employees more.

And I notice that for all your insinuations that I&#39;m a "wishy washy ... rightist", you haven&#39;t actually disagreed with that contention. ]money[/b] [/b]
What you&#39;ve said, and repeat in this post, is that capitalism is doing away with sexism. Obviously, that&#39;s a wishy-washy version of Clown&#39;s claim that capitalism has already done away with sexism. Which is a rebranding of the capitalist right&#39;s claim of exactly the same thing.

And I certainly did dispute your contention that capitalism is doing away with sexism. You&#39;re just dodging around and avoiding the real issue. As usual.

You and I are approaching this from opposite class directions. Opposite reasons for objecting to the statement that men generally benefit from sexism.

You say the capitalist class is doing away with sexism. I say the working class must fight to do away with sexism.

Sexism is no mere "irrational prejudice", as you put it. (And then, ironically, refer to materialism, after trying to explain millenia of oppression by means of "irrational prejudice&#33;) It is an integral, structural part of class society.

It is built into the patriarchal family. Which is essential to the inheritance of property and the continuation of class society across generations.

Class society cannot do without sexism. Capitalism&#39;s unlikely to do without racism, either - and certainly shows no signs of doing so. But sexism&#39;s even older and deeper.

The oppression of women was born with class society and private property. But I&#39;m not going to rehash all of Engels&#39; "Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State" here. You could stand to read it though, or anything by Evelyn Reed.

The capitalist class certainly does have an interest in employing women. That&#39;s not new. During the industrial revolution, they often preferred to employ women and children - because they can pay them less.

You&#39;re idiotically conflating an interest in employing women with an interest in paying them the same. On the contrary, the ideological arms of the capitalist class are working overtime to convince women they should feel guilty for working - not so they&#39;ll stop working, but so they won&#39;t fight for their rights as workers.

Additionally, the capitalist system cannot do without women&#39;s unpaid labor within the family unit. If they had to pay people to do all that work, the profit rate would be subzero.


You&#39;re making the comon mistake of assuming that the capitalist class views itself as a capitalist class, or has anything approaching a coherent group agenda.

The capitalist class is far more consumed with battling itself then it is with "divide-and-ruling". As far as the bourgeoisie is concerned there&#39;s no such thing as class war.

Bullshit&#33; Read any of G. William Domhoff&#39;s sociological studies of the upper class, for example. The upper class is the most class-conscious element of society. They know each other, send their children to the same schools, belong to the same clubs. Discuss politics in organized groups from the Business Roundtable to the Council on Foreign Relations.

Just look at what&#39;s been happening in politics, across the industrialized world, for the past 20 years. It&#39;s been a one-sided class war successfully waged by the whole ruling class, while the working class has been able to organize only sporadic resistance workplace-by-workplace.

As a result, wages and social benefits have been gutted, in a varying extent depending on the country. And of course this has typically affected women workers even more than men....a phenomenon sometimes called "the feminization of poverty".

But if you just base yourself on Pope Redstar&#39;s infallible proclamations, and not facts about the real world, you can go on claiming that capitalism has some progressive role and is doing away with sexism.


JayFitz
There&#39;s a LOT more on that if you look. Marketers assume 3 of 4 purchases in the US are made by women.

Riiight...because most shopping, like most unpaid domestic work, is done by women...therefore women are not oppressed. More looking-glass logic. Your arguments, also, are identical to those of the right wing of bourgeois politics.

And long ago refuted, when put forward by the right-wing pundits who developed them. On the wage gap, for example, which is in fact larger than 80%:

The 80% figure apparently comes from the conservative ideological magazine National Review. (http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/lukas200408200939.asp) They, at least, said "after controlling for factors such as work experience, education, and occupation" you get 80%. You, of course, conveniently left that out.

And that&#39;s the same place you get everything from. Everything you&#39;ve posted is just a regurgitation of the standard line of the U.S. political right .

As it happens, the National Committee on Pay Equity includes both the liberal feminist National Organisation for Women and the AFL-CIO union federation. They link a census bureau report and say: (http://www.pay-equity.org/info.html) "Overall, among full-time, year-round workers, women&#39;s median earnings were 74% of men&#39;s, the report shows." Which is an honest use of statistics.

The wage gap is real, and so is sexist discrimination, in the job market and elsewhere.

Adapted from this post (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?act=Post&CODE=08&f=77&t=54564&p=1292150940&st=25)

Oh, and I&#39;m warning you, JayFitz, for your blatantly sexist attitude towards individual women - purchasing machine, where can you find a woman who does housework, etc.

No, wait, after looking at your other posts I&#39;m restricting you. There&#39;s zero progressive content to any of them. Your book&#39;s apparently about a variety of survivalism, not usually associated with progressive forces. Maybe some anti-technology tinge there, nothing progressive about that. Your only reference to class politics is about how neo-Nazis allegely represent them better.

So: blatant sexism, nothing positive to counterbalance it, no indication that you&#39;re any kind of leftist.....restrict.

[LSD]

What you&#39;ve said, and repeat in this post, is that capitalism is doing away with sexism. Obviously, that&#39;s a wishy-washy version of Clown&#39;s claim that capitalism has already done away with sexism. Which is a rebranding of the capitalist right&#39;s claim of exactly the same thing.

That has got to be the most convoluted attempt I have ever seen to accuse someone of being a rightist&#33;

Honestly, Severian, if you want to insult me, at least have the common decency of doing it straight. I think I&#39;m suffering from jetlag trying to follow that logic of yours up there.

But, OK, let&#39;s try and break it down a bit, shall we?

What you are basically saying is that because Tragic Clown asserts that something has already happened and I contend that something is in the process of occuring, my position is nescessarily the "wishy-washy" version of hers.

You also propose that since both Tragic and the "feminist" right superficially agree on the conclusion that patriarchy does not exist in the first world, Tragic&#39;s position is in fact a "rebranding" of rightist politics.

Which, I guess, makes me a "wishy-washy rebranded rightist" ....uh oh, there comes that jet lag again...

But you see the problem with all of this convolution is that despite it&#39;s Humphreyesque wit, it manages to miss the point entirely.

That point being, of course, whether or not I&#39;m right, whether or not sexism has diminished.

Luckily, that should be a simple matter to resolve. Whether or not something "has happened" is a question of fact, not logic, and so it should be a simple matter of comparing sexism today with that of some pre-capitalist or early capitalsit era.

Not so luckily, however, "degree of sexism" is not an objective measure and nothing approaching a uniform standard on this issue has ever been put forward.

So if you were to assert (but which I note you didnt&#39;, and don&#39;t think I&#39;m not going to touch upon that fact later in this post&#33;) that sexism has in fact not diminished and/or that it has worsened since the advent of capitalism, I suppose I cannot convince you otherwise.

Ultimately, that is a subjective determination, for the time being at least.

But I suspect that if you were to poll this board -- or certainly society at large -- the consensus would be uniformly on my side, that sexism has diminished, indeed that it has done so drastically.

Not utterly, of course, but drastically nonetheless. And, most relevently, that it has done so concurrently with the rise of capitalism and that this phenomenon can be observed in numerous places and numerous times.

There&#39;s nothing surprising about this, of course, it&#39;s just basic materialism; when you change the economics, you change the society. Ending feudalism didn&#39;t just end Feudal economic arrangements, it also precipitated the end of feudal social arrangments, although critically, this process was not immediate.

Well the same is true for sexism. Social inertia still carries it forward, but the pressure of the "market" pushes harder in the opposite direction; and given enough, time sexism will end.


You say the capitalist class is doing away with sexism. I say the working class must fight to do away with sexism.

And ne&#39;er the twain shall meet?

Of course the working class must fight to do away with sexism, just like how 150 years ago the working class had to fight for the doing away with slavery. But that&#39;s not to say that absent working class agitation, slavery would have persisted.

Again, I am not proposing that we should "wait" for capitalism to end sexism on its own, again that process is much too slow and imbalanced to be trusted. But if we are to fight sexism, and other like issues, successfully, the first step must be making an honest analysis.

And an honest reading of the situation says that, yes, at its core, capitalism is gender-neutral. It doesn&#39;t care about gender -- or race or nationality or orientation or "creed" or anything else that isn&#39;t about poperty.

Obviously capitalism and sexism are deeply intertwined at this point, such was also the case for sexism and feudalism back in its day; but interconnection does not mean indistinguishability.

Sexism remains a distinct social phenomenon, one with its own history and paradigms. And its manifestations are by no means restricted to the economc sphere.

Which, of course, was my whole point in this thread; that sexism&#39;s primary face is not one of monetary "bennefit" but one of social harm.

A point which, again I note, you have still not actually disagreed with.


Sexism is no mere "irrational prejudice", as you put it. It is an integral, structural part of class society.

Actually, it&#39;s both.


Class society cannot do without sexism.

Of course it can.

It can&#39;t do the same as it&#39;s doing now, but then no one ever accused capitalism of being inflexible.

There were those in the 19th century who proposed that capitalism could not survive without slavery, or that global capitalism could not persist absent the grand European colonial empires to sustain them.

Both of those predictions proved false.

That&#39;s not to say that racism doesn&#39;t live on or that imperialism doesn&#39;t persist, but rather that both have changed. And, in the case of racism at least, has certainly diminished.

For whatever you can say about modern American racism, and you can say a lot, it doesn&#39;t compare to the racism of 50 years ago; and that racism, of course, can&#39;t compare to that of 50 years before that.

That&#39;s the nature of social progress, indeed that&#39;s the whole point of that word, "progress", things change and, generally, change for the better. Not because of some grand master plan, of course, but because of the inevitable evolutionary process of adaptation.

That, of course, was Marx&#39;s great discovery, his magnum opus to history and philosophy and sociology; that great events are moved not by great men or great dieas, but by the underlying forces of society itself.

But for all Marx&#39;s genius, we must recognize that he was writing in a time of ardent formalism. In an era dominated by notions of mechanistic determinism on the one hand, and Prussian rigidity on the other.

By his own analyis, Marx the man could not help but to be influenced.

Obviously neither of us can say with absolute certainty what Marx thought of this or thought of that, but I would wager (and I doubt that you&#39;d disagree) that were we to construct a time machine and meet Marx in, say, 1870s London and ask him if he thought that in the year 2007 the world would still be uniformly capitalist, he would almost certainly say no.

I have no proof of that, of course, but men, even "great" men, don&#39;t tend to think in larger terms than generations, certainly not when dealing with the social sciences. And seeing the great revolutionary movements of his own time, how could Marx but think that working class insurrection was on the horizon?

Which, of course, only goes to show just how adaptable capitalism really is, just how much it has managed to -- despite all its many failings -- keep things going these past odd four hundred years.

So when you write that class society cannot "do" without sexism I cannot help but laugh. There is only one thing which class society "cannot do with" and that is class.

The rest are all specifics.

And the specifics of capitalism is that it all comes down to property in the end, not genitals. An apatriarchal capitalist society would be markedly different from the one in which we presently live, I grant you, but it would be no less capitalistic.

No less indeed than an imagined non-racist capitalist world would be.

Capitalism rests on very few foundations, that is probably it&#39;s greatest strength. All it needs is the owners and the owned, the "two great camps" of which Marx wrote all those years ago.

&#39;Cause on that point, the man was insdisputably spot on.


The oppression of women was born with class society and private property.

That is, of course, a debatable point. Indeed, the "origins" of sexism as well as those of racism and indeed class itself are all hotly controversial subjects, subjects which I suspect neither of us are qualified to debate at expert levels.

But even granting your assertion that sexism was a product of emergent class society, it still does not follow that sexism today has not become its own problem.

Indeed, while origins can tell us a great deal, the one thing they are generally useless at is reporting on the status quo.

So however sexism started, the relevent fact here is that over the thousands of years of its life, it has evolved into a socio-cultural phenomenon, one strongly linked with belief and culture and identity.

And while there certainly remains a strong economic element to its manifestation, it is patently incorrect to assert that sexism remains a solely economic issue.

(incidently, that happens to be the position that your arch-nemisis Tragic Clown holds. As usual, those who quarrel the most are those with ultimately the most in common)


Additionally, the capitalist system cannot do without women&#39;s unpaid labor within the family unit. If they had to pay people to do all that work, the profit rate would be subzero.

Again, capitalism can "do" with a great deal more than you give it credit for; and your lack of imagination is not an argument.


The upper class is the most class-conscious element of society. They know each other, send their children to the same schools, belong to the same clubs. Discuss politics in organized groups from the Business Roundtable to the Council on Foreign Relations.

That&#39;s not class, it&#39;s social prestige. It&#39;s commonly labeled class in popular culture and popular media, but that&#39;s a bastardization of the term and you know it.

The "upper class" is no more "class-concsious" than anyone else, in fact probably less so considering that a Marxian class analysis would tend to disparage them.

That Warren Buffet quote, the one where he references "class war", that&#39;s a joke; a jocular aside meant to crystalize the collapse of physical communism in the east and ideological communism in the west.

Your average CEO thinks of "class war" about as much as he thinks of "dialectics".

But then Marxism was never about conscious conspiracy, the whole point in fact of historical materialism is that individuals don&#39;t have to be aware of their being for it to shape them, it shapes them by its nature.

And so capitalists exploit workers because it is their function in a market economy, not because of some dark grand design or planned class combat. And when they fight for reduced workers rights or greater "business opportunities" they do so out of the hope that it will increase that month&#39;s profit statement.

But it&#39;s not an organized conspiracy.

[Eleftherios]

I have once heard a patriarch say that if you do not put down and thoroughly control the woman you have a relationship with early on, then she will be like the "man" of the house and you will be subservient. He also makes his wife do ALL of the work in the house, including the cooking, the dishes, cleaning, etc.

So yeah, some men do benefit from women&#39;s oppression while others don&#39;t