Which gender are you?

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff

Which gender are you?

Female
8
14%
Male
37
66%
Alchemical Androgyne
5
9%
None of your business
3
5%
It's complicated
1
2%
Other
2
4%
 
Total votes : 56

Re: Which gender are you?

Postby minime » Sun Dec 06, 2015 11:47 am

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Re: Which gender are you?

Postby American Dream » Sun Dec 06, 2015 1:05 pm

Sally Darity

Gender is a Weapon: Coercion, domination and self-determination

I was on the bus recently, and a guy about my age got on the bus and sat across from me. He and some others were looking out of the bus windows at some men in red dresses. We didn’t know why they were wearing dresses, but the guy across from me said, “That’s scary.” Another guy said, “Whatever, as long as they don’t come on the bus.” I wanted to say “what’s so scary about men in dresses?” But worrying that I might look enough like a dyke to him to get shit for it, and worrying that the effort and fear involved with confronting someone might make me cry, I didn’t say anything. I just wondered. What makes a guy in a dress so scary? And what about homophobia, transphobia, or whatever you want to call it without knowing why that guy was wearing a dress, causes men to bond by shit talking about it? There are many ways in which we are taught what our appropriate gender is, and when someone feels threatened by a gender identity or expression, we can guess that there lies the key to our struggle.

Gender is used against us, but we can also use it to free each other and ourselves. If we start undermining the rules and constraints of gender, we can more successfully fight patriarchy and domination. By writing this, I hope to plant seeds of gender rebellion, solidarity, and gender freedom.

Here’s a term you may not have come across: gender self-determination. Self-determination means each person or community being free to determine for oneself the way they want to live and the decisions that affect their lives. In the context of a struggle for gender self-determination, it means, “honoring the rights of each person to make their own choices concerning their body, their identity, their languages and the way in which they present their gender... It is about... being committed to building a world where each and every person is able to express and live their gender and bodies in ways that are liberating, full, and healing... It is our work to challenge the numerous obstacles that encroach on people’s abilities to make those decisions for their own.” Michelle O’Brien

So in what ways do we not have gender self-determination? To some people it’s laughably obvious, and to others perhaps it’s not so obvious. How are you not completely free to determine what you do with or what happens to your body? How are you not free to determine your own identity and gender presentation?

The acceptable genders in this society are man or boy and woman or girl. For most of us a medical professional determines our sex the moment we’re born. If our genitals are ambiguous, they might further determine who we are and alter our bodies to fit the male or female box without our permission. Then most of us have to wear pink or blue and of course many of us know how we’re treated differently as we’re growing up depending on if it’s been determined that we’re male or female. It’s often determined for us what we wear, what we can play, what toys are fit for us, what we should be interested in, what skills we’re encouraged to have, etc. Not only are these things pushed on us, but we might be punished in one way or another if we don’t fit accurately and acceptably into the male or female box. If it’s determined that we’re male, but we’re not masculine enough, we’re called sissies, fags, pussy-whipped, etc. If it’s determined that we’re female, but we’re not feminine enough, we are called bitches, whores, or dykes, or we will never get a boyfriend/married (and therefore have no value). All around us we’re coerced into fitting into the male or female box and we’re taught how we have to fit; we need to fulfill certain requirements starting with our bodies and including our sexuality, how we act, how we look, and what we value. We are made to think there is such a thing as a real man and a real woman, and that we’re supposed to be one or the other. We are virtually imprisoned by gender, though we may have some freedom, if we don’t behave appropriately, there are plenty of prison guards to attempt to put us in our place. To what extent do we choose this arrangement or our place in it? What would gender look like if we had gender self-determination?

If we’ve agreed that we are socialized to fit into one of the gender boxes, even coerced into it, then perhaps we can agree that we are still without choice in many ways.

Is this the natural order of things or does power play a role in the division between genders? Think about why white supremacy/racism exists and how the division between white people and other races is reinforced in different ways. Not to imply that white supremacy and patriarchy affect people or function the same way, but comparing the two can offer us some insights into how they are based on power and how they interconnect.

Gender and Power

I argue that power has a lot to do with why these social divisions exist and are maintained. In the case of gender, men in general benefit from this social division. Men are given more access, more privilege, and more value. A man must be masculine to climb up the hierarchy. A primary masculine trait that upholds patriarchy is domination. Masculinity does not necessarily involve domination, but domination is a highly valued masculine trait. Patriarchy allows and encourages men in general to control things that are deemed weaker or lower in the hierarchy. Some men even use the model of patriarchal masculinity against others by accusing them of being less than a man (i.e. insults implying homosexuality or womanliness), which is another example of how the gender dichotomy is based on power.

Being the breadwinner of the family has been seen as man’s proper role, but economic hardship due to racism and capitalism has caused situations in many families of color and poor families where men can’t make adequate money. Patriarchy (and white men colluding with it) has compelled many black men and women alike to defend black men’s manhood in the context of patriarchal racism, which reinforces the divide between men and women. In Killing Rage, bell hooks wrote, “Since most black men (along with women and children) are socialized to equate manhood with justice, the first issue on our agenda has to be individual and collective acknowledgement that justice and the integrity of the race must be defined by the extent to which black males and females have the freedom to be self-determining... [Justice] can emerge only as black males refuse to play the game — refuse patriarchal definitions of manhood.” Some black female authors have said that due to men’s need to defend their masculinity, fighting for the liberation of their race or class is a priority over the fight for women’s liberation (which, being detrimental to a struggle against racism and upholding patriarchy, benefits white men twofold).

Having to already deal with the patriarchal standards within their own ethnic groups, women of color also experience to different degrees being exoticized, sexualized, and otherwise dehumanized and treated as property by white people as well. It is the experience of many women that we are taught that the ideal womanhood is white economically privileged womanhood. Think about images of women in the media and who is favored and who is not. Think about how having money and time affects a woman’s ability to appropriately perform her femininity.

Patriarchy basically means rule by men. This works in abstract and systematic ways as well as tangibly between individuals. It is about discrimination and especially about control and devaluation. It manifests as abuse, violence against women, disrespect, control of sexuality and women’s bodies, objectification and beauty standards, and the devaluation of women’s contributions, views and opinions, etc. Many feminists have argued simply that women are the oppressed and men are the oppressors.

It’s obviously more complex than that. It is certainly (white straight able rich) men that are in control, but some women, queer people, people of color and other minorities are gaining access to some of the privilege in a bigger way than they had before. Do they have to buy into the system to get in? Do they have to dominate others to gain and maintain that position? Certainly, the system that they are privileging from is based on exploitation, greed, competition, imperialism, and hierarchy of social divisions. This system can succeed better by allowing a small number to access some of the wealth and power of the elite (and more people to lesser degrees). This is because the (often false) promise/possibility of wealth and power, or at least more comfortable living (as well as, on the other side of the coin, the reality of working constantly and struggling just to survive) keeps people from resisting or fighting the systems of power and that which hold them up. In addition, scarcity of wealth and power makes people with any privilege feel threatened, causing them to hold onto any power they can, keeping those social hierarchies in place. Capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy, with domination as their base, work in interlocking ways.

Because of the complexity of which patriarchy must be viewed, we must consider patriarchy as not only the rule of men but also the rule of those that are colluding in and practicing what is a value of patriarchal masculinity; domination. Or perhaps we should only use the term patriarchy when we’re talking about the rule of men, and we should use the term gender oppression in other cases (when related to gender). Men aren’t the only ones benefiting from gender oppression. Heterosexual men and women privilege from the oppression of queer people. People who fit into their appropriate gender boxes better than others privilege from the oppression of people who cannot fit into those boxes.

I argue that gender divisions are, for the most part, created within the context of power and that the border drawn between men and women is a deception. I’m not arguing that there is no difference between men and women, but that gender is more of a spectrum than a dichotomy.

Perhaps the metaphor of a border is quite useful. In thinking about the U.S./Mexico border, from which I live about 200 miles, we see that this, like many other national borders, is manmade, only to preserve a conceptual difference between places and peoples. There are geographical differences, different people and cultures, but the borders suggest that there is some absolute difference between that which is on either side. This also makes invisible those native and other peoples who live along the border. In the interest of those in power, borders create an “us vs. them” mentality, while the reality of our differences outside of power relationships is trivial.

Even if you believe that there is some biological or essential difference between men and women that is the cause for how different the ideas of “real woman” and “real man” are, it must be acknowledged that there is a wide variety of ways of being a woman or a man, and that there are people who identify as neither.

The idea that there is some essential aspect of a woman that makes her different from a man can be argued against to some extent by the huge variety of experience of being a woman. Womanhood varies by race, class, age, sexuality, ability, size, and more. Can you name one thing that all women (and no one else) share in common? If so, does that erase the experience of anyone (anyone who is intersexed or transgender for example)? Essentialism, the idea that there are essential differences between two groups, is a problematic concept. It has been used against some non-white races for the purposes of eugenicist ideas — that people of color had criminal tendencies or less intelligence and so they deserved to be forcibly sterilized. And of course it was the women and not the men who tended to be sterilized. Different people have critiqued gender essentialism and models of womanhood as based on race or class privilege, like in the case of white feminism. “...the hierarchical pattern of race and sex relationships already established in American society merely took a different form under “feminism”: ...the form of white women writing books that purport to be about the experience of American women when in fact they concentrate solely on the experience of white women...” wrote bell hooks in Ain't I a Woman.

I do not wish to argue over human nature, but rather to put ideas of difference into the context of power, and to bring to the forefront the realities of lives that are marginalized or made invisible.

Generalizing is easy and it is also easier to think in terms of simple categories. It’s easier to justify social divisions and oppression with simplicity, but humans are far too complex. Why is it that those who transcend gender categories are such a threat (and therefore a target of violence and harassment)? Is it because the act of not conforming enough to patriarchal standards of gender throws a monkey wrench into the systems of control and domination? Gender is socially constructed based on the idea that gender can be split simply into two categories and to expose it as otherwise is to undermine what gender oppression is based on.

A good example of how gender is a social construct is the case of body hair. Think about people’s reaction to a woman with armpit hair (or a little mustache). Somehow she is a threat, or she’s just “unhygienic” — even though hair naturally grows there. Isn’t it interesting that our concept of the female body is a body that is shaven? We can conclude that this idea of gender is not based on any real, natural, biological concept of a gender difference, but rather on patriarchal and capitalist domination. (Yes, women tend to have less body hair than men, but some women are harrier than some men.)

We must consider how gender divisions have historically been shaped within power relationships. An interesting dimension to the concept of gender is Butch Lee and Red Rover’s theory on the connections between capitalism, race, and gender fromNight Vision:

Understanding that race was politically constructed by capitalism to carry out class roles, then it's just another step to see that the same goes for gender. Capitalism's ingrained mindset that these things are somehow naturally determined, biologically fixed, is hard to break... these minor physical differences are only a reference point for the vast superstructure of race that world capitalism created... When european capitalism reshaped gender under its rule, they did so around class and race. White women were to be unnaturally “feminine” — which meant weaker, delicate, dependent, “lily-white”, housebound, caretakers to men, “alluringly” satisfying to male domination. Only upper-class women and women from the middle classes, the Lady & the Housewife, could truly become these artificial women, of course. By definition, colonial and lower-class women were excluded, had failure to gender, we might say. Race became gender. For the making of the white race involved the politicized un-making of women to fit into “white.” euro-capitalism artificially remade its women physically weaker, domestic & dependent.


Butch Lee and Red Rover also argue in the same book that capitalism started with the witch trials — the genocide of women and the state’s accumulation of their property. Activists, organizers, theorists, and the like can go round and round trying to determine what oppression came first, what formed what, what’s more important to fight, etc. Those who focus on class and/or race often leave the discussion of gender oppression in the dust, if not simply reference it. It is necessary to see the interconnections no matter what oppression we’re focusing on.

Freedom for All Genders

In this context of these power relationships it makes sense for any liberation movement to address the complex system of hierarchies. Narrowing our focus down to gender, how can we strive for freedom for all genders?

All genders?

We are a movement of masculine females and feminine males, cross-dressers, transsexual men and women, intersexuals born on the anatomical sweep between female and male, gender-blenders, many other sex and gender-variant people, and our significant others. All told, we expand the understanding of how many ways there are to be a human being. Our lives are proof that sex and gender are much more complex than a delivery room doctor’s glance at genitals can determine, more variegated than pink or blue birth caps. We are oppressed for not fitting those narrow social norms. We are fighting back.

-Leslie Feinburg, TransLiberation

Those of us who act and talk like there are only male and female should examine our assumptions and widen our view. There is a variety of ways to identify, perform, and express gender. Based on the actual experiences of people, rather than scientific classification or patriarchal thinking, gender is more of fluid-like than binary.

To deny the fluidity of gender is to deny many peoples’ experiences. It is also common among communities where gender non-conformity and gender-variance is marginalized or invisible, to assume that these things come out of race or class privilege, which is also to deny many people’s experiences and further marginalize them.

Gender is also intimately connected with sexuality. Whether one acceptably looks or acts an appropriate gender by our society’s standards or not, freedom to do what we want or to not do what we don’t want with our bodies and our love is restricted in many ways. Therefore, gender self-determination must also include the freedom of consensual sexuality between and among all genders.

Think about the oppression one must face as someone who does not identify with or perform the gender they are expected to. (Why are they expected to?) Consider the safety of a person who is transsexual, transgender, genderqueer or any other gender-variant identity. If a person desires or needs to live as the “opposite gender” from what he/she was born, their ability to pass as that gender may affect their survival (either in terms of possible violence or lack of a good job, etc. or both). Emi Koyama wrote in “Transfeminist Manifesto”, “Because our identities are constructed within the social environment into which we are born, one could argue that the discontinuity between one’s gender identity and physical sex is problematic only because society is actively maintaining a dichotomous gender system. If one’s gender were an insignificant factor in society, the need for trans people to modify their bodies to fit into the dichotomy of genders may very well decrease, although probably not completely.” Transsexual and transgender people often require the services of the medical community in order to pass (passing describes a transgender person's ability to be accepted as their preferred gender. The term refers primarily to acceptance by people the individual does not know, or who do not know that the individual is transgender — wikipedia). However, similarly to how being homosexual was/is considered having a condition, often gender-variant people are said to have “gender dysphoria” or “gender identity disorder” based on concepts of “normal” and “abnormal”. The medical establishment is also that which first determines our gender.

Institutionalized Gender Oppression

It is important to consider how the medical establishment is an institution of gender oppression. There is a history of patriarchal heteronormative development of western medicine. The lack of respect for women and their choices, lack of non-sexist research on women’s health, denial of female experiences such as PMS, lack of respect for queer people (even considering them crazy or diseased), lack of adequate AIDS research and affordable drug costs, lack of respect for intersex people, non-consensual mutilation of most/some intersex people, circumcision of most boys without consent, strict rules on how mothers should birth their babies, high cost abortions, risky unhealthy contraceptives, lack of appropriate education about and screening for HPV which can cause cervical cancer, lack of respect for transsexual and other gender-variant people (and on and on)... not to mention that being poor or brown compounds the disrespect and lack of proper care and access. This is an example of institutionalized gender oppression.

Institutionalized gender oppression can even be as simple as going to the bathroom. Many of us don’t have to think about it. Or perhaps we’re reminded of the story about how the equal rights act was argued against because it was said that eventually men and women would have to share public bathrooms. What if you avoid going to a public restroom because you don’t know if you are safe doing so? Many transsexual, transgender and other gender-variant people may not be able to pass as an appropriate gender to “belong” in one gendered restroom or the other. The reaction of other people is one situation which can be a matter of physical safety or harassment or a weird expression on someone’s face, but one can get fired, or even arrested for entering the “wrong” bathroom. A report on bathrooms on the Transgender Law Center website stated: “Bathrooms reinforce the current gender system. Bathrooms are a daily structural reminder that we must know at each moment whether or not we identify as female or male. Male and female, these are our only choices. Why must we artificially divide the huge gender diversity into two groups? Why is it so important that we relieve ourselves with only those who are lumped into the same group as ourselves?”

What if you are gender-variant and you have to go to jail or prison? Think strip-searches, harassment, improper medical care, verbal and physical abuse... What about employment...?

Nearly every social institution is founded on the assumption that people can and will fit properly into their gender boxes. This is not freedom.


Continues at: http://theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Sal ... ation.html
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Re: Which gender are you?

Postby zangtang » Sun Dec 06, 2015 1:18 pm

....for those for whom 23-odd paragraphs just ain't enough!
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Re: Which gender are you?

Postby brainpanhandler » Sun Dec 06, 2015 1:46 pm

A report on bathrooms on the Transgender Law Center website stated: “Bathrooms reinforce the current gender system.


Uhhhh, No. Horses pull carts.

Bathrooms are a daily structural reminder that we must know at each moment whether or not we identify as female or male. Male and female, these are our only choices. Why must we artificially divide the huge gender diversity into two groups?


This is not an artificial division. Most of us unambiguously identify and present as stereotypical males and females in my experience.

Why is it so important that we relieve ourselves with only those who are lumped into the same group as ourselves?”


Because most of us unambiguously identify and present as stereotypical males and females and because people are generally a little uptight about being in mixed sex bathrooms? Should we be? I don't know. Maybe not. But that's how it is. I'm happier to have my mom and my niece be comfortable using a public restroom.

Why even write this?:

Because it's basic common sense and because asking questions like: "Male and female, these are our only choices. Why must we artificially divide the huge gender diversity into two groups?" only serves to alienate a large percentage of people who see such a question as nonsense.
"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." - Martin Luther King Jr.
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Re: Which gender are you?

Postby American Dream » Sun Dec 06, 2015 2:32 pm

Pitting Transfeminism against Cisfeminism is to me, unneccesary...


What Is Patriarchy?

by Malise Rosbech

Part of our Patriarchy 2013 series: A brief encounter with the birth, life & death of patriarchy

First published: 30 September, 2013


It is perhaps one of the most used terms in feminist discourse, but the concept of patriarchy has a history that we need to address. Not only has it got the potential of excluding and discriminating against other groups of people, it is also sometimes reactionary and anti-feminist. Feminism should abandon the concept of patriarchy and instead look towards the future of an intersectional feminism.

Patriarchy was taken up by Max Weber in order to describe a form of household organization in which the father dominated an extended network of kinship and controlled the production of the household. While patriarchy literally means ‘the rule of the father/-s’, its resonance for feminism is based on the theory put forward by early radical feminists to conceptualise an general category of male dominance. Kate Millett was in her work Sexual politics one of the first to provide a theoretical understanding of patriarchy as 'the rule of men'. That is, patriarchy should be understood as a universal power relationship that is all-pervasive, penetrating other forms of social divisions, different societies and different historical epochs. It is therefore the primary oppression: patriarchy is, for example, ‘more rigorous than class stratification, more uniform, certainly more enduring.’ That patriarchal structures might vary is less significant than the fact that it actually exists cross-culturally.

According to this understanding of patriarchy women are always, in some way or other, oppressed, exploited and/or dominated by men and the concept of class in relation to the oppression of women is transitory and illusory: ‘whatever the class of her birth and education, the female has fewer permanent class associations than does the male. Economic dependency renders her affiliations with any class a tangential, vicarious and temporary matter.’ This would seem to imply that the concept of class can only be applied to men. Millett puts forward a theory of a fundamental system of domination that is independent of the historical and any socio-economic relations.

Radical feminist Shulamith Firestone’s concept of patriarchy is perhaps not that far from the one put forward by Millett insofar as it gives patriarchy analytical independence and primacy. For Firestone, however, the hierarchical relation between the sexes is rooted in biological sex, hence her theoretical aim is ‘to take the class analysis one step further to its roots in the biological division of the sexes.’ Although Firestone argues for the need to revolutionise reproductive technology and thereby free women from childbearing, the account of how women are biological ‘burdened’ itself falls into biologistic assumptions.

In these early conceptions of patriarchy we find two main issues. Firstly, as they invoke a certain universal and trans-historical idea of male dominance over and above socio-historic context as a form of ‘truth’, it leaves us with little hope for change and further analytic study. As Michele Barrett points out, the concept of patriarchy ‘invoke[s] a generality of male domination without being able to specify historical limits, changes or differences' and even ‘without a case being made as to why and how men acquired this control’. Secondly, this universal dominance is often grounded in ‘biological facts’ thereby naturalising this form of oppression. This understanding of patriarchy is still dominant today or has at least paved the way for the modern uncritical use of the concept of patriarchy by which we acknowledge the oppression of women by men, but we fail to ask why or how men gained and maintain this control over women.

The biological argument can be challenged in many ways, but the broadest critique is that it is a philosophically illegitimate and illogical move to subsume and reduce various complex socially and historically constructed phenomena under one category of biological difference. This reductionism often assumes that behavioural differences are caused by the biological differences we can observe. Even if it happened to be true that women ‘generally’ were better at certain 'female tasks', we should not forget the intersection of culture and biology; that women and men generally are raised to excel at different tasks and less at others.

Although it is important to locate the question of biological difference in a feminist analysis, for example of childbearing, the fallback into biological reductionism is a dangerous one. The (in)-famous feminist distinction between sex as a biological given and gender as the imposed social construction upon it, has not only led to the emphasis of a causal role of procreative biology and gender attributes, and the reassertion of separate spheres for men and women, but also trans* exclusion in feminist discourse. Trans women are excluded because taking sex difference as a biological given means radical feminists think that only women born with the requisite female sexual reproductive organs can be classed as women. The radical feminist conception of patriarchy, then, can contribute to a feminism which excludes and discriminates.

Christine Delphy and others attempted to develop a materialist analysis of women’s oppression, that is, understanding the ‘woman question’ in relation to human production. Delphy argues that women are a class, which should be understood in relation to the institution of marriage. Marriage, according to Delphy, is a form of labour contract in which the husband appropriates the unpaid labour from his wife and this constitutes what Delphy calls ‘the domestic mode of production’. The problem is here that patriarchy gains analytic independence and we get the impression that patriarchal relations can be studied without historical and sociocultural context. Again, the concept of patriarchy is invoked as a trans-historical and universal and it not able to specify historical limits, differences or changes.

Patriarchy has more recently undergone a welcomed reconceptualisation. Rosemary Hennesy, for example, describes patriarchy as a system by which more social resources ‘accrue to men as a group at the expense of women as a group’ but that patriarchy is a ‘variable and historical social totality in that its particular forms for organizing social relations, such as work, citizenship, reproduction, ownership, pleasure, and identity, have had a persistent effect on heterogendered structures in dominance at the same time these structures vary and are sites of social struggle.’ She even differs between bourgeois, postmodern and public patriarchy.

Now, this conception allows more room for understanding the historical and cultural context. What is important to notice in this conceptualisation, is that patriarchy becomes differential. That is, when patriarchy is variable in a context, it can be theorised how it works in concert with for example a racial system of white supremacy or the class system. This could for example mean that we could understand how some men have more patriarchal powers than others, and that not all men equally benefit from patriarchy. In this way patriarchy is only one out of many forms of oppression and it should always be understood and theorised in conjunction with other oppressive structures.

Yet, the issue here is that it never loses its universality of oppression; although it is a variable, the bottomline is that men dominate women. According to this understanding of patriarchy we would only be able to theorise how some men are ‘lesser patriarchs’ than other men, but never how a woman can inhabit the role of the patriarchal oppressor. In reality this understanding of patriarchy doesn’t take us much further than the Radical Feminist sex/gender distinction inasmuch as it does not fully theorise how cis-women (women whose gender matches the sex they were assigned at birth) can and do participate in the oppression of other women and minorities. The latest example is the exclusion of trans*-women from the Radical Feminist meetings.

There are, of course, other approaches to the understanding of patriarchy, some which work to view the oppression and domination of women within a larger social structural framework. Marxist feminists, for example argue that both the subordination of women and the division of classes developed historically at the same time as private property. Friedrich Engels argued that with the emergence of private property, woman's work sank to insignificance compared to the man’s ‘productive’ labour and women’s social position subjugated: ‘The overthrow of mother right was the world historical defeat of the female sex’. Bourgeois families which owned private property, emerged as patriarchal families as men ensured their property was passed on to their sons only. Both the bourgeois family and private property were by-products of capitalism which subordinated and oppressed women.

Unlike the radical feminists, marxist feminists argue that class exploitation is the base of sexual oppression, and that women’s emancipation requires a social revolution overthrowing capitalism. Marxist feminists tend to argue that it is not women’s biology but private property, monogamy, marriage, political and economic domination by men and their control over sexuality, which has led to patriarchy. The oppression of women is here situated within a broader context, and we can perhaps through the inherent intersection of class and female domination, theorise how women can participate in structural oppression. For instance, upper- and middle-class women can oppress working-class women through class domination. It is clear here that patriarchy intersects with other forms of oppression, however, it still fails to fully incorporate an even more complex international form of structural and hierarchical oppression. Moreover, marxist feminism has tended to be sex/gender-blind and ‘race’-blind, focusing on the overthrow of capitalism, and thus can be oppressive in itself.

‘Kyriarchy’ is a neologism coined by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza to denote interconnected oppressing systems in which a person or a group of people might be dominated or oppressed in some relationships but privileged in others. Kyriarchy is the intersectional extension of the concept of patriarchy, but one that does not rely on the inherent dualism of the sex/gender distinction. Kyriarchy encompasses sexism, racism, homophobia, trans*phobia, classism, ableism, cissexism and other forms of hierarchical structures that has been institutionalised or/and internalised. The currently very popular term ‘intersectionality’ is the study of these intersections of oppression and domination.

There are at least two very important contributions the concept of intersectionality brings to the feminist discourse and struggle. Firstly, that all forms of oppression should be challenged and fought against. This is of course a much more inclusive concept than patriarchy, recognising the wider struggle against all domination. Secondly, that experiences of domination differ and overlaps. That is to say that one form of oppression cannot be separated from another, for example, sexism can be racialized and racism sexualised. You can therefore not say that a black woman experiences racism as something separate from sexism. The sexism that black women face is often shaped by their gender. Although both black and white women, abled and disabled women, middle class and working class women experience sexism, it is significantly different in form. The concept of patriarchy can be conflated to ‘sexism’, however feminism is not just about sexism; women as a group are not solely oppressed on the axis of sex.

This of course is where the three words 'check your privilege' come into the picture. While intersectionality is the study of intersections, ‘check your privilege’ is an everyday statement that can remind individuals of any structural social advantages they might have by position, birth or other, such as being a man, white, cis or wealthy. ‘Check your privilege’ is just a reminder of how privilege might have affected what you have said or done. The purpose and measure of kyriarchy and intersectional studies is to understand the power and tendencies to silence, oppress and minimize others.

An example of the way in which the intersectional nature of kyriarchy is often ignored in feminist circles can be found in the struggle for abortion and contraception in the 1960s. As these campaigns were mostly led by white middle-class women, they ignored the fact that many black and working-class women were subject to forced sterilization programmes all over the world. This is still a major problem particularly in developing countries, with women in, for example, India or Sri Lanka forced either by bribery or threats to have hormonal contraception inserted or to be sterilised, often with fatal consequences due to unhygienic or unprofessional surroundings.

Intersectionality has its pitfalls too, about which we should be aware. Centered around the category of identity, kyriarchy has the potential of fragmenting more than including, if it is held with the belief that only each identity category of oppressed people themselves are the only effective organisers against their oppression. However, there is no inherent theoretical connection between intersectionality and separatism. It is one form it can take out of many. It could also be confused with the idea that more privileged people should ‘just be nicer’ to the not-so-privileged people. We need to be clear that this is a wider struggle against institutionalised structures that keep these different forms of oppression in place.

The ‘woman’s struggle’ is not a separate issue from these other struggles and it cannot be fought solely on its own grounds. Individual ‘liberation’ is often pursued at the expense of others, and this has happened too many times in feminism and its struggle against ‘patriarchy’. In contrast to an analysis of patriarchy, an intersectional analysis does not centralise one form of oppression at the expense of another. In fact, it takes as its standpoint that these institutions and structures operate to produce and reproduce each other. In fact, they are one and the same thing. At best, social relations can be picked apart for the purposes of philosophical analysis, however one form of oppressive structure cannot be declared more central than the others. Feminism needs to declare patriarchy dead, and move on to an inclusive and broader struggle against all forms of oppression and domination; we need to call for unity. After all, what is ‘liberation’ good for if some are left behind?

Malise Rosbech is a feminist philosophy-postgrad, freelance writer and campaigner specialising in materialist feminism.


http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php ... patriarchy
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Re: Which gender are you?

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Sun Dec 06, 2015 2:39 pm

American Dream » Sun Dec 06, 2015 1:32 pm wrote:Pitting Transfeminism against Cisfeminism is to me, unneccesary...


Sure, but...

...that's your privilege showing, right?

I'm actually not making a joke here.
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Re: Which gender are you?

Postby American Dream » Sun Dec 06, 2015 2:43 pm

It doesn't ring true to me- all the gender-transgressors I know- as well as most all of the feminists- see Feminism and Transliberation as part and parcel of the same process...
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Re: Which gender are you?

Postby slomo » Sun Dec 06, 2015 3:20 pm

According to this understanding of patriarchy women are always, in some way or other, oppressed, exploited and/or dominated by men and the concept of class in relation to the oppression of women is transitory and illusory: ‘whatever the class of her birth and education, the female has fewer permanent class associations than does the male. Economic dependency renders her affiliations with any class a tangential, vicarious and temporary matter.’ This would seem to imply that the concept of class can only be applied to men. Millett puts forward a theory of a fundamental system of domination that is independent of the historical and any socio-economic relations.


So Barbara Bush and Hilary Clinton have it worse than your average American truck driver? OK.
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Re: Which gender are you?

Postby guruilla » Sun Dec 06, 2015 3:21 pm

Project Willow » Sun Dec 06, 2015 10:13 am wrote: How on earth does feminism contribute to rather than stand in opposition to the war on female sexuality? How have these “suspects” (men presumably) been responsible for feminism it self? Either that needs great qualification or you are suggesting that I and my sisters before me should have been happy being wholly dependent on a man, unable to vote, own property, get divorced, get an education, use our talents and our brains for anything else than serving a husband, and that my foremothers who fought and died so that future generations could live in greater freedom, who called themselves feminists, were really just manipulated by men all along. I don’t know anyone who could seriously argue something like that, so please explain.

I will try. First off, full disclosure (and I am sure no surprise to anyone), I am not versed in feminist rhetoric or history. I have never been close friends with or “dated” a feminist (as far as I know, it’s possible it just didn’t come up); most of the women I have known, all of them strong, independent, creative-spirited women, have either been quite anti-feminist in their ways, or at best, sort of tired of/pissed off with/indifferent to feminism.

This is not the same as saying they were cut off from their own femaleness or under the thumb of the patriarchy, my impression was rather the reverse, that they found feminism to be an overly ideological imposition of set and rigid values and modes of behavior that did not allow for a deeper experience and expression of themselves as women. Simply put, I have always had the impression, through knowing these women, that feminism was more about a masculine expression that a true feminine one.

But I don’t see feminism as some monolithic force that is either one thing or another. I am distrusting of ALL ideologies, bar none, so insofar as feminism can be reduced to an ideology, then I am unsympathetic to it. (I think the kernel of truth in the transgender movement is that each individual psyche has its unique expression that can’t be determined or regulated by any external set of values or beliefs.)

I’m not arguing that feminism does not have its good points, only that, like every ideology, it has been co-opted, and I think to some degree incepted, as a part of the larger social engineering program. I understand you don’t like it if I throw out facts that suggest this, such as about Bernays & smoking or about a deliberate strategy to push feminist ideas in order to get women into the workplace. But isn’t the honest approach to address these facts, rather than object to what you think I am implying by them—which is simply that feminism has more aspects to it than merely the liberation of women?

While I appreciate you taking the time to question me, and really value the chance to have a dialogue, this polarization of either/or is something I keep seeing at this board and it’s the very thing I was pointing at. You make it seem like, simply by questioning some of the historical and ideological elements of feminism, I am suggesting that “you and your sisters” “should have been happy being wholly dependent on a man, unable to vote, own property, get divorced, get an education, use our talents and our brains for anything else than serving a husband, and that my foremothers who fought and died so that future generations could live in greater freedom, who called themselves feminists, were really just manipulated by men all along.” Surely you know that’s a ridiculous assumption, one that puts an impossible burden on any man (in this case, me) who simply wants to look more deeply into the subject, and who is attempting to reconcile opposing viewpoints. It seems meant, unconsciously, to drive me into the “MCP” camp, and in the process to reinforce the stereotype of feminists as reactionary ballbusters who, when faced with anything less than blind unthinking agreement, cry "male domination."

Project Willow » Sun Dec 06, 2015 10:13 am wrote:
Did you just say that I'm ignorant of psychology and the techniques of manipulation?

I’m sure you know loads about it and probably lots more than I do in certain areas. But it is one thing to know it, another to apply it. What I was trying to point to was a kind of ideological identification which a) leaves out all the ways in which unconscious trauma has shaped our beliefs and our very identities; b) prevents any real vulnerability, openness and hence deeper communication with those whose beliefs and identities have been differently shaped, by similar traumas.

Project Willow » Sun Dec 06, 2015 10:13 am wrote:
Let me tell you a little something. Feminism was the very first lever I picked up that allowed me to begin to pry myself out of the clutches of abusers 30 years ago. It gave me names for my lived experiences, it was the key to opening the door to begin working on the trauma I experienced. It has informed and helped empower every step of my long journey out of the grips of the mind control network. It informs the practice of all of my caregivers (psychologists!) The Second Wave gave birth to the child abuse survivor movement, the consciousness raising meetings inspiring survivor support groups. Are you not aware that your whole concept of hidden trauma is based on literature created primarily by feminist scholars and clinicians? How can you mention it without thought referencing Judith Lewis Herman, or Alice Miller? Are these people upon whom the very formation of your own theories depend being played too? Are they pawns in some man's game?

No, except insofar as we are all pawns in this social engineers’ game. I don’t see those authors as feminists, I see them as women and as human individuals. If their discoveries and writings were in service to an ideology, even an apparently “progressive” one like feminism, that would make them much less interesting or trustworthy to me. None of these women you cite would have been able to do the work they did without Freud, and we all know how unreliable and even untrustworthy Freud was (especially around sexual abuse of children). Facts do not have ideological content, though they can be used ideologically.

As for referencing these authors, I reference the people I cite and sometimes they are women and sometimes they aren’t. I think there’s room to confuse when someone is being unconsciously demeaning towards women and when they simply don’t see any need to protect or defend their honor because they already know how capable women are. In my case, there are definitely both sides, unconscious fear of/hostility towards women, and a fundamental recognition of their power and depth and uniqueness (without any idealizing).

Project Willow » Sun Dec 06, 2015 10:13 am wrote:
Without feminism we wouldn't be talking about hidden trauma, abuse, trafficking, elite pedo networks, or mind control, we'd be talking about oedipal complexes.

I don’t really agree with that either (or that it's not worth talking about both). Feminism was part of something happening in society and in the collective human psyche, and these things were part of that emergence also. To try and create a hierarchy of cause and effect in order to credit a movement which we personally found liberating seems like a form of idolatry to me. There are people out there who feel they have been saved by Christianity too, and maybe they have been; that doesn’t make Christianity itself a force for good. It doesn't even makes the teachings themselves necessary true.

"Woman" is a far deeper and truer identity than "feminist." If the latter is the means to rediscovering the former, that's great. But it doesn't make it essential to it, much less synonymous with it.

signed, Man.
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Re: Which gender are you?

Postby slomo » Sun Dec 06, 2015 3:36 pm

guruilla » 06 Dec 2015 11:21 wrote:
Project Willow » Sun Dec 06, 2015 10:13 am wrote: How on earth does feminism contribute to rather than stand in opposition to the war on female sexuality? How have these “suspects” (men presumably) been responsible for feminism it self? Either that needs great qualification or you are suggesting that I and my sisters before me should have been happy being wholly dependent on a man, unable to vote, own property, get divorced, get an education, use our talents and our brains for anything else than serving a husband, and that my foremothers who fought and died so that future generations could live in greater freedom, who called themselves feminists, were really just manipulated by men all along. I don’t know anyone who could seriously argue something like that, so please explain.

I will try. First off, full disclosure (and I am sure no surprise to anyone), I am not versed in feminist rhetoric or history. I have never been close friends with or “dated” a feminist (as far as I know, it’s possible it just didn’t come up); most of the women I have known, all of them strong, independent, creative-spirited women, have either been quite anti-feminist in their ways, or at best, sort of tired of/pissed off with/indifferent to feminism.

This is not the same as saying they were cut off from their own femaleness or under the thumb of the patriarchy, my impression was rather the reverse, that they found feminism to be an overly ideological imposition of set and rigid values and modes of behavior that did not allow for a deeper experience and expression of themselves as women. Simply put, I have always had the impression, through knowing these women, that feminism was more about a masculine expression that a true feminine one.

...

"Woman" is a far deeper and truer identity than "feminist." If the latter is the means to rediscovering the former, that's great. But it doesn't make it essential to it, much less synonymous with it.

signed, Man.

Great post, thank you.

I want to focus on one small part of it, which is the heart of the issue for me:
You make it seem like, simply by questioning some of the historical and ideological elements of feminism, I am suggesting that “you and your sisters” “should have been happy being wholly dependent on a man, unable to vote, own property, get divorced, get an education, use our talents and our brains for anything else than serving a husband, and that my foremothers who fought and died so that future generations could live in greater freedom, who called themselves feminists, were really just manipulated by men all along.”

I agree that it is regressive to subject a whole class of persons legally dependent on another class, and early 20th Century feminism was right to oppose that, so I am sympathetic to the surface-level criticism in this passage. However, the passage "for anything else than serving a husband" is deeply (shall we say) problematic for me. Because when people love each other, commit to each other, they do end up serving each other. Of course I believe service must be mutual, but the emotional tone of feminism as it has developed through to the latter 20th Century is one of great hostility towards intimacy. It reads like "what have men done for me lately?"

This explains your observation:
... most of the women I have known, all of them strong, independent, creative-spirited women, have either been quite anti-feminist in their ways, or at best, sort of tired of/pissed off with/indifferent to feminism.

This is not the same as saying they were cut off from their own femaleness or under the thumb of the patriarchy, my impression was rather the reverse, that they found feminism to be an overly ideological imposition of set and rigid values and modes of behavior that did not allow for a deeper experience and expression of themselves as women. Simply put, I have always had the impression, through knowing these women, that feminism was more about a masculine expression that a true feminine one.

The women you are describing are rejecting (or are at least indifferent to) feminism because they perceive its underlying message of alienation.
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Re: Which gender are you?

Postby slomo » Sun Dec 06, 2015 4:33 pm

Image

Let's see what Google Images has to say about "Male Tears" coffee mugs.. Imagine genders reversed. Note, when you search for "female tears" you still mostly get "male tears", with a handful of "Feminazi tears" or "SJW tears" thrown in. No hatred of men here, no ma'am!
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Re: Which gender are you?

Postby guruilla » Sun Dec 06, 2015 4:40 pm

Not familiar with the Male Tears meme, here in my small town social bubble. Can someone explain to to me?
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Re: Which gender are you?

Postby slomo » Sun Dec 06, 2015 4:45 pm

I would think that the statement "I drink male tears" is self-explanatory.

Maybe this will help:
https://www.tumblr.com/search/i%20drink%20male%20tears
https://www.tumblr.com/search/drinking%20male%20tears

Can you imagine what would happen if I said something like "I drink female tears" anywhere popular on the internet? (Of course, things being the way they are on this board and elsewhere, I have to qualify that I absolutely wish to do no such thing.)
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Re: Which gender are you?

Postby Project Willow » Sun Dec 06, 2015 4:48 pm

Why is it so important that we relieve ourselves with only those who are lumped into the same group as ourselves?”


It has nothing to do with identity and everything to do with sex. Women do not wish to be even more vulnerable to male violence than they are now. While trans women are not more violent than men, they are still more violent than women, but even this may be the lesser point, as it is men who will use the trans exception to invade and assault women in sex segregated spaces like prisons, shelters, locker rooms, and public bathrooms. It has already happened and is happening. A trans woman was allowed into a shelter in Canada and proceeded to sexually assault a woman and child there. This is a central collision of rights between women and trans people and can't just be ignored or argued away with theory.
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Re: Which gender are you?

Postby guruilla » Sun Dec 06, 2015 5:22 pm

slomo » Sun Dec 06, 2015 4:45 pm wrote:I would think that the statement "I drink male tears" is self-explanatory.

Maybe this will help:
https://www.tumblr.com/search/i%20drink%20male%20tears
https://www.tumblr.com/search/drinking%20male%20tears

Can you imagine what would happen if I said something like "I drink female tears" anywhere popular on the internet? (Of course, things being the way they are on this board and elsewhere, I have to qualify that I absolutely wish to do no such thing.)

Oh yeah, duh. Combination of visual with verbal cues; I didn't put together the tears with the drinking. Ouch. That's really vicious.
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