After radical feminism?
Jul. 30th, 2010 10:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marjaerwinA few sketchy thoughts; I still embrace anarchafeminism and a version of radical feminism, and would like to know your best ideas.
I think radical feminism has a lot of good ideas, better than liberal feminism, but it could do with a lot of rethinking.
Does patriarchy even exist any more? Men die sooner. Men get imprisoned more often. What does it say that misogyny and gender oppression are as strong as they are, if patriarchy is so much weaker?
Is privilege the best way of thinking about it? A rigid two-caste system could oppress everyone without privileging anyone.
Is everyone either cis or trans? Definitions of cis which slip between meaning anyone who is not trans and meaning someone who feels gender congruence are alienating to many non-trans feminists.
And we need to find ways of thinking and acting which respect individual choice, enable collective action, and add to both. I hate the way liberal feminists have hijacked the rhetoric of choice. There is a difference between choice and scabbing. If we don't have bargaining-power, then we don't own our own choices. I hate the way illiberal feminists have hijacked the rhetoric of cooperation. There is a difference between solidarity and whore-bashing. Count me with the whores.
I think radical feminism has a lot of good ideas, better than liberal feminism, but it could do with a lot of rethinking.
Does patriarchy even exist any more? Men die sooner. Men get imprisoned more often. What does it say that misogyny and gender oppression are as strong as they are, if patriarchy is so much weaker?
Is privilege the best way of thinking about it? A rigid two-caste system could oppress everyone without privileging anyone.
Is everyone either cis or trans? Definitions of cis which slip between meaning anyone who is not trans and meaning someone who feels gender congruence are alienating to many non-trans feminists.
And we need to find ways of thinking and acting which respect individual choice, enable collective action, and add to both. I hate the way liberal feminists have hijacked the rhetoric of choice. There is a difference between choice and scabbing. If we don't have bargaining-power, then we don't own our own choices. I hate the way illiberal feminists have hijacked the rhetoric of cooperation. There is a difference between solidarity and whore-bashing. Count me with the whores.
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no subject
Date: 2010-07-31 02:28 am (UTC)And that many people then, who are cis, are not cissexist.
Also that fewer people than we like to think are cis.
A closeted girl who swallows her pain for 80 years and dies in a nursing home, after a long depression, never telling anybody that she was, in fact, yearning more than anything to be a womon, is a womon's narrative. It just isn't one we hear.
And yeah... I am a conservative whose policy prescriptions look like no other conservative's, it often seems, so I do understand the importance of saying one is, well... doing it wrong... though I'm starting to, like other people who have initially relied on conservatism to reclaim rights, begun to think the crown is not the guarantor she claims to be...
Privilege and patriarchy
Date: 2010-10-14 12:14 am (UTC)Hey Marja,
Thanks for this. I'm sorry I'm late to the discussion. A couple of halting suggestions.
I guess this depends on what group of phenomena "patriarchy" is supposed to be encompassing. The strand of radical feminism I've always identified with has seen patriarchy as rooted primarily in men's violence against women, and especially the sexualized violence of rape, wife-beating, abortion laws, etc. As much has been done to challenge all of these, they are still everywhere and still largely committed with impunity, and I think as long as, e.g., men are raping 1 out of every 4 women, and this has systemic effects on constraining women's behavior and gender expression, patriarchy as I understand it is still in place.
It's true that men get imprisoned more often, but as far as I know that's always been true, as long as there have been prisons. Prison is oppression, but at present it's almost exclusively form of oppression that some men inflict on other men. (Maybe that will change as more women become police, prison-guards, and political office-holders, but at present all those are still predominantly the province of states-men.) And I think the major causes of, e.g., men's shorter life expectancies (labor conditions under state capitalism, violence among men, etc.) are also examples of things men do to other men. But hasn't patriarchy, as a hierarchical structure, has always included internal hierarchy among the patriarchs, and intersected with cross-cutting forms of oppression?
I'm inclined to doubt it. But I'm increasingly uncertain that "privilege" is the best way of thinking about much of anything; I'm not sure if we have the same reasons for worrying in this case. I'm worried because I'm worried about how far the all-encompassing use of "privilege" to explain has shifted the focus from what oppressors do to what oppressors have. Of course there were reasons for that -- unpacking invisible knapsacks and making privileged people aware of the limitations of their own standpoint and all that -- but what we have now is a basically epistemological approach (about becoming aware of, and owning, how much "privilege" you do or don't have) to the micropolitics of one-to-one or one-to-many power-relationships -- an approach which provided a handy conceptual tool for the analysis and criticism of individual beliefs, attitudes, conduct, epistemic standpoints, etc. -- but which seems to have been wrenched out of that context and awkwardly repurposed into an all-encompassing framework for viewing all forms of oppression, exploitation, bigotry, ignorance, alienation, interpersonal friction, or abusive behavior. I do think that one effect of this is that it has proved really, extremely awkward for any attempt to talk about power relationships that involve more than two sides, and hence also for horizontal, diagonal, or intersectional power (such as the hierarchies of power among men under male supremacy, for example; or the way in which "cis" women, trans women, trans men, gay men, genderqueer folks, children, etc. are all oppressed -- but differently oppressed, in different directions, by patriarchal violence).
Everything else is really interesting and important; I just wish I had something more articulate to say about it.
Re: Privilege and patriarchy
Date: 2010-10-14 01:50 am (UTC)Privilege has become the default model in radical circles. I think it actually gets in the way in most discussions. For example, it centers the privileged person's ignorance of the situation over the oppressed person's knowledge of the types of oppression she faces. It also encourages knee-jerk reactions that "I didn't choose this privilege!" "I haven't seen this privilege," or "I am oppressed too." It invites confusion from people not familiar with the topic. I think it makes more sense to speak of oppression than of privilege.
Patriarchy is conceptually problematic because it implies a social order where men, as a class, rule over womyn, as a class. Men's violence against womyn oppresses all womyn - through fear, the reality that absolute safety from male violence does not exist, and that relative safety is precarious at best. But it's not something that all men do, and it's not something that all men benefit from. It is closely tied into masculinity, to violence against non-masculine men, and violence between masculine men as they try to divvy up access to womyn.
I think it makes more sense to speak of masculinity and misogyny. (Perhaps I should read the works of John Stoltenberg?)
Интересно почитать
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Date: 2011-07-04 09:55 am (UTC)Спасибо за инфу
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