Actually decent article from Jacobin on radical Feminism and class

Actually decent article from Jacobin on radical Feminism and class
jacobinmag.com/2017/07/radical-feminism-second-wave-class

Other urls found in this thread:

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37941191
nikk.no/en/news/the-gender-segregated-labour-market-a-nordic-paradox/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

While the author is correct that Fordist capitalism relied on women performing unpaid reproductive labor, it is not true that abolishing capitalism will magically liberate women. You can just look at how even the most egalitarian/classless "primitive" society has some sort of patriarchal power relations.

Only because those societies still had a division of labor and class.

This isn't true btw

i don't know why i do this to myself

half the time Jacobin acts like red liberals but thenever they do something right and their audience just ignores what the article says and calls them brosocialists.

It makes sense that a liberal magazine would have a liberal audience.

Well-intentioned but terrible article.
Worse than any of these, is buying into the false dichotomy that either sexism and class war today are mutually exclusive to some degree (as 3rd wave feminists say), or that socialism magically fixes sexism (as the "brocialist" strawmen built by 3rd wave feminists say).

The reality is, like all idpol now, there are essentially three types of sexism:
1. Overt sexism: These are acts done primarily or entirely on the basis of sexism, can exist under any economic or social system, and as such can be distinguished from all other forms of oppression. Because of this, they can also be specifically targeted by legislation, and in fact have been stamped out in most nations for decades by force of law.
2. Covert sexism: These are acts indistinguishable from other forms of oppression, because they are in fact identical in every way other than motivation. Because capitalism requires so much oppression for its own sake, it provides ample camouflage for such behavior.
3. Private sexism: These are sexist thoughts and inclinations, but which are for a number of reasons either toothless enough where their targets can ignore what expressions they produce without incurring any material loss, or are simply kept secret. These do not matter, and attempting to eliminate them is an impossible fool's errand at best, a path to dystopic totalitarianism at worst.

By this standard, feminism under capitalism was legitimate and useful up to around the 1960s 2nd wave. Having beaten every significant foe it was capable of fighting, legitimate feminists were consigned to the same ideological museum as slave abolitionists and child labor abolitionists. Now, all sexism that causes harm is shielded within the shroud of capitalism, and socialism is the only weapon fit to pursue it further.

did you read the whole thing? The author was criticizing radfems like Dworkin for missing the bigger picture.

Describing that, let alone similarly exaggerated aspects of the delusionally paranoid worldview it's part of, as "admirable" is incredibly irresponsible and anti-intellectual.

It's the leftist equivalent of buying into hysterical stories about immigrant crime (with a subtext of being driven by the inherent criminality of their culture) by rightists. Yes, such things do happen, and that's tragic, but only a microscopic minority of the group targeted (men for feminists) do these crimes, the problem as a whole is tiny enough where only a small fraction of the victim group (women for feminists) are even occasionally affected by it, and such crimes are also committed at a very similar rate by the "victim" group toward the "perpetrator" group, so the whole issue isn't even truly one of idpol in statistical reality.

I realize the article is trying to bend over backward for feminists in appealing to them, but it shouldn't do that by praising the absolute worst elements within it.

If I were writing a similar paragraph, I'd make it about something deserving of praise from radfems on sexual violence, like the shelter system, or efforts to call out judges who render unfair court rulings.

Women's oppression is a good thing and if you oppose that you're Islamaphobic.

Go fuck yourself

I suspect it holds for boomers and maybe early Xers who actually lived the transition from the single-wage nuclear family with worker/homemaker/kids to the worker/worker/kids raised by state and corps kind of set up that we have now. Tradition and habit alone could probably account for it and that demographic is probably still big enough to move the stats in that direction.

That being said, I'm extremely suspicious of the stats in this area. My own """lived experience""" is that - across class divides - women tend to significantly inflate the time and effort they spend on this stuff the same way men tend to exaggerate how hard they work at their jobs. Moreover, the surveys conducted to get these statistics are so full of push-polling, leading questions and other dodgy methodology because they are nearly always conducted by advocay groups that it's hard to take any of them very seriously.

...

You miss the point on how domestic labour was originally divided (Housework was seen as the wife's way to pay rent to the husband etc.). Even in modern liberal states the domestic work is still unfairly split. bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37941191


The biggest defenders of sex-positivity are hypersexual frat boys, Johns and anti-feminists. Sex-negativity is not an attempt to moralise sex (if that is even possible these days) but to politicise it. Sex is far more than 'human desires, natural!', you cannot just say "Oh, sex is sex" or "Sex the way you want it it's you're goddamn right" like Bill Nye. You will end up missing all sorts of depraved shit like implied peadophilia or beastiatliy in porn and anime (which are very popular on the right, as well as the pseudo-left unfortunately)
The only way to tackle this and to fight for Socialism is to be "sex-negative" i.e. fully political of so-called natural sexual desires.

one direction that profoundly sexually frustrated /r9k/ kids go when they become political is the typical overt social reactionary facism-will-get-me-wife that we're all familiar with. This is the other direction.

"Sex-positive feminism" is a label within feminism itself, started and adopted by feminists. The vast majority of "hypersexual frat boys, Johns and anti-feminists" have zero need of it since most don't regard themselves as feminists of any sort (I mean, really, people who consider themselves "anti-feminist" adopt the label "feminist" now?).

It's weird how your non-moralizing looks indistinguishable from moralizing.

And bachelors' families once had to be bribed to accept other families daughters with dowries, because of the extended tribal structure of families for most of history. But in today's age of nuclear families (and frequently single-parent households!), none of that is relevant in any way.

Leaving aside mindboggling issues like who would be paying this money, how husbands' pay wouldn't plummet in response, how such tasks would be tracked inside private homes, and where the line would be drawn (I've seen some examples where not being an abrasive asshole"emotional labor" is defined as "unpaid"), who the fuck truly cares!?

Look into the "Nordic Paradox", and you'll see that when equality of opportunity is enforced most rigorously through things like the option of free domestic services and paid family leave for both sexes, equality of outcome actually decreases compared to more downtrodden societies, yet they are happier. If men and women enjoy different things (due to whatever mix of innate biological and learned cultural influences), there is no reason to attack it:
nikk.no/en/news/the-gender-segregated-labour-market-a-nordic-paradox/

You're missing the forest for the trees, again.

If a number of disturbing, deviant sexual inclinations aren't statistically linked to material harm, why care about them?

Fucking this. Now do racism!

Gotta keep up the value of that gold plated vagina.

Demanding responsibility for one's sexual practices is not going the other direction. It should be fully politicised as part of class consciousness if you like.


They have no need for it because it is now mainstream and are the staunch defenders of it. Hence why they went hell for leather against the 80s RadFems. And yes, today, the sexually free are on the right and the puritans are 'the left', that is not a contradiction but a qualitative change.

Peadophilla and beastiality are the attraction to an object, same goes for extreme types of porn and anime, where there is no reciprocation. This is not a case of making the nun blush but says a lot about the emerging anti-democratic society, which is why those form of media are so popular with fascists.


Not sure what you are saying here. Child abuse, rape etc. are not the material harm of deviant sexaul desires?

When did selling your labor become a good thing in "leftist" eyes? Housework (which I, a man, do regularly) is unallienated labor where you and other people in your household benefit directly. It's the most immediate and tangible example of production for use. Radical/Marxist feminism likes to isolate the household from the wage labor system, but that's totally nonsensical. The household can't exist without the wage earned by the breadwinner(s). Housework maintains the household, but before that the house has to be paid for. Wage labor for the breadwinner is paid (which is not a measure of it's inherent value, just a measure of exchange value within capitalism). But that labor is paid so that the money can be spent primarily on necessities, like a home and food. The household and the breadwinner's role in it is intimately entwined with capitalism as a whole. Comparatively speaking, housework is separate from capitalism (though far from entirely separate - it requires the purchase of appliances/supplies as commodities usually).

Litterally no scientific evidence for this. The research on pedophilia shows there are two types, one with malfunctioning parts of their brain that don't cause disgust when sexual attraction occurs with prepubescent children. The other half aren't attracted to children and want to cause harm due to behavioral problems often cause by trauma inflicted on them in the past.


Hahahaha this is the crusade that 3rd wave feminists had with print and video porn in the 70s and 80s. Over and over again it been shown that media in of itself doesn't cause changes in psychology, but they can reinforce alienation and other feelings and attitudes already instilled by family and life experience.

No, housework merely operates to reproduce the laborer, just like the wage is mere reproduction. Not to mention that the form of life in a household is produced by capitalist social relations.


Sexuality is definitely political, but moralism calling for "demanding responsibility" and calling for a more humanist sexuality is just conservative ressentiment. The point isn't to make sexuality normal or harmonious but rather to destroy it as a separate and distinct sphere of life and object of knowledge.

On the contrary, they're a product of normal sexuality, which is precisely the problem.

That's a terrible comparison. Housework is done by a person who directly benefits from the labor involved. Wages are decided by people who only have to deal with the aggregate result as far as their ability to continue purchasing labor.
No shit. Capitalism is perfectly content to pay people a wage and leave them to take care of themselves. Capitalism isn't some Hellenic god who can't abide unalienated labor and stomps it out wherever it appears. People working for themselves and their relations is fine until capitalism finds a way to commodify the product of that labor.

That's not what you said, what you said was:
There is a sharp line between feelz & reelz, one that study after study has repeatedly proven to be rigorously strong in the overwhelming majority of people. Because normal, healthy, functioning psychology that characterizes the average person has firm distinction between fantasy and reality.

Any attempt by moralizers to equate the two is part of an effort to slander human mental faculties, and treat us all like children, on an infinite range of totally arbitrary issues, unconstrained by any factual justification. With them as the all-powerful nannies, of course.

Didn't Jacobin published an articled shitting on venezuela and telesur earlier today and now this?
RIP in peace Jacbin ???- 13 July 2017

Women don't go to the coal mine. In time of need, the servitors of the capitalists don't point guns on the women to force them to fight their wars. When shit happen, women are saved first.


Where is this oppression of women you are talking to? Where are all the dead women killed by the exploitation of the capital? Where are all the homeless women?

The problem is to believe that women need any kind of special liberation in the first place

This is such autistic bullshit. I agree that third wave feminists and their ilk take idpol way too far but to deny the existence of women's opression in places like the Middle East and to say there are no homeless women is hopelessly delusional.

Key words here.

When I listen the feminists we talk about, I never hear them.

Every time I see this phrase:


I know that the person talking has lost sight of the nature of the problem.

Except the complete opposite is true. Autonomous/feminist Marxists argued that the capitalist production of the Fordism era relied on unpaid house work. This is because the housewife reproduced the labour power of the male worker. At least read the theory of what you're criticising before sperging out.

Yes and children are objects in terms of sexuality.


I never said they change the psychology, you would have to be quite far gone to enjoy that stuff in the first place. But they all feature unleashed sexual desire on a nonreciprocal object, anime included.

Again, I don't see how it is moralism unless you see sexality as just 'natural' and unquestionable. It's about making people question their own desires, a lot of people go "I'm alienated, it's capitalism bro!" or "What's the harm?", without ever wanting to put responsibility on themselves. This also counts for heterosexuals (how many times has a man blamed a women for their assaults, "her clothes made me uncontrollable" etc?).
It's all part of a strong disciplined class consciousness imo.


How many healthy people are watching anime child porn?
And I am far from treating people like children, it's treating people like adults and making themselves responsible for the things they do.