21st century identity politics
29 Oct 2017, 1:21 pm
Quote:
I gave the worst examples of oppression that women face, but I think it matters little 'where' they happen. All of those issues do affect women in the UK, as well - just in smaller numbers. If they happen to one woman, it's too many. Limits to access to safe abortion happen just across the Irish Sea, and women in the UK still face social pressure from pro-life groups.
WRT predatory sexual behaviour (I assume you mean right up to rape) and sexual objectification, the clue is in the name, those are forms of oppression related to sex. Yes, a transwoman experiences them as well, if they're perceived as female, that's perceived sex in play. If they're perceived as something else, then it's still male violence and probably homophobia at work.
There are many other things that grind women down in the UK, related to their biological sex, like the shame surrounding menstruation, endemic body hatred which can lead to eating disorders (I admit gay men face this, but it's still related to sexual role, not gender), medical practice that assumes the male body as a default, child sexual exploitation, and the trio of rape, prostitution and domestic violence. Men experience some of these, but they overwhelmingly happen to women, which isn't to diminish the suffering of them men. It's the result of a system of oppression based on sex.
I'm informed by what I see in the world rather than ideology. The theory that patriarchy is a system of oppression that operates on the axis of sex simply makes the most sense to me.
Might as well give up. We're never going to agree on this.
WRT predatory sexual behaviour (I assume you mean right up to rape) and sexual objectification, the clue is in the name, those are forms of oppression related to sex. Yes, a transwoman experiences them as well, if they're perceived as female, that's perceived sex in play. If they're perceived as something else, then it's still male violence and probably homophobia at work.
There are many other things that grind women down in the UK, related to their biological sex, like the shame surrounding menstruation, endemic body hatred which can lead to eating disorders (I admit gay men face this, but it's still related to sexual role, not gender), medical practice that assumes the male body as a default, child sexual exploitation, and the trio of rape, prostitution and domestic violence. Men experience some of these, but they overwhelmingly happen to women, which isn't to diminish the suffering of them men. It's the result of a system of oppression based on sex.
I'm informed by what I see in the world rather than ideology. The theory that patriarchy is a system of oppression that operates on the axis of sex simply makes the most sense to me.
Might as well give up. We're never going to agree on this.
I recall that this thread began with the term "oppression olympics" and now the "fait accompli" that men oppress women.
The suggestion that men oppress women even when a man has done none of the things listed above, that they are complicit through group membership and inaction, for "(i)f they happen to one woman, it's too many" are premises that are hard to agree to.
I am a man. A BAME minority. I know all to well how to play the race card. I personally have experienced very little of the horrific experiences of the past, mostly, harassment by law enforcement, an uninformed comment, often, the annoying assumption that my ethnicity makes me an expert on it, and, at times, I have been confronted by refreshingly open racism from people you meet in everyday life. Whenever I meet people who are openly racist, I don't confront them, but rather, just let them talk. They often don't include me in their thinking. I am not part of the equation. They mean those others who happen to look like me but not me. Sometimes, they assure me that they don't mean me which isn't really comforting. The premise "I'm informed by what I see in the world rather than ideology" is not any different from "I call it as I see it". I think that you don't mean me when you talk about men as oppressors just men who are men like me but not me.
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”Clockmakers Lie.” The secret clakker greeting in "The Alchemy Wars" a Trilogy by Ian Tregillis
30 Oct 2017, 1:19 pm
I'm referring to men and women as classes. When people make the statement, 'whites oppress ethnic minorities', or 'able-bodied people oppress disabled people', they're doing the same thing. I used a class-based analysis of oppression. Men and women are sex classes.
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30 Oct 2017, 1:46 pm
Clakker wrote:
The suggestion that men oppress women even when a man has done none of the things listed above, that they are complicit through group membership and inaction, for "(i)f they happen to one woman, it's too many" are premises that are hard to agree to.
I broadly agree on this. However, I find it easy to agree with "one is too many". Perhaps you know more about the connotations of this statement than I do, but on the surface of it, one murder is too many, one rape is too many, one theft is too many. Something doesn't become OK because it is rare - although it does suggest that something is no longer a systemic problem in the same sense.
In particular, I do not think that privileged classes oppress other classes. Neurotypicals do not oppress autistic people. Autistic people are oppressed by 1) systems which disadvantage us, do not consider us, or actively devalue us, 2) individuals (NT or ND) acting in an oppressive way, either within or outside said systems. The mere existence of neurotypicals is not an issue, and it is perfectly possible for a neurotypical to live without contributing to ableism.
It's not quite as clear cut with women because sexism is much more pervasive, but women are similarly prone to upholding oppressive structures and behaving in oppressive ways as men.
30 Oct 2017, 1:58 pm
Women can oppress other women as individuals, but not as a class. Oppressive systems are organised into classes. Anyone can oppress anyone as an individual. Individual women can oppress individual men, but the sex class of women does not oppress the sex class of men.
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30 Oct 2017, 2:15 pm
But I don't think of myself as being in the "men" class. I am not part of the "patriarchy." I'm an individual. I am not complicit in the oppression which occurred by men towards women. I acknowledge its existence.
Just like I acknowledge that the Europeans threw the Native Americans off their land in the US. But I, personally, am not complicit.
If somebody is oppressing me, it's the same whether or not the oppression comes from a different "class." It's oppression, pure and simple.
If I were in Nazi Germany, a woman in the SS forcing me on the train to the concentration camp oppresses me just as much as a man who does the same thing.
techstepgenr8tion
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30 Oct 2017, 2:22 pm
Here's perhaps an issue I see as well.
How do we define oppression, and if we're talking about women being oppressed by men what particular scope are we talking about?
In a way I think this hearkens back to my question from a couple days ago - ie. the international congress meeting to come up with a pronouncement of what headway women need cleared for their talents to be utilized and what forms of oppression are still holding them down.
Part of why I worry that it's nowhere near this simple is that I think both men and women have trump cards that they can wave at each other, each gender has extortion games that they can play if they choose, each has something the other wants, and it seems rare to find an area where one particular gender is in a harder place without admitting that in another facet it has greater freedom or power. While I wouldn't argue that this dismisses the possibility that men aren't gauging women in some particularly important ways it's part of why I think we need to be super clear on what these scenarios are and, who knows, I'm not even sure a debate could even be had as to which trump cards or low cards each gender has gives one a net deficit or surplus over the other, it would take a great deal of agreement on those cards to begin with and even there I'm not even sure that a decisive answer on that would be helpful regardless of which gender that math favored although perhaps it could be if we were able to work out solutions that benefited the integrity of western civilization.
I think there can only be the beginnings of a productive conversation when everyone's putting all their efforts in to clarify what is happening and triage both the understatements and exaggerations. To say the least the current social climate has been less than clement to that sort of undertaking.
_________________
“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” - James Baldwin
30 Oct 2017, 5:04 pm
puddingmouse wrote:
I'm referring to men and women as classes. When people make the statement, 'whites oppress ethnic minorities', or 'able-bodied people oppress disabled people', they're doing the same thing. I used a class-based analysis of oppression. Men and women are sex classes.
This idea of gender as a class is being disputed today (read Claudia Rankin), however Sarah Ditum wrote in Be that you are: on gender as class...
Quote:
But the destined livery of women is too often violently imposed. Forced marriage, domestic violence, FGM, rape, sexual harassment, the denial of abortion, the compulsion to sacrifice oneself to the care of others – these things are not imposed on women because we are feminine, they are imposed because we are female. By enforcing our inferiority to male needs and male desires, these forms of violence enforce our femininity – the signs and symbols of which change, but the meaning of which is always to be less than the man.
I cannot make this leap for if women are a class so are men, which would mean I am a member of a class that I neither share wealth, influence, or status with. The most negative experiences of my personal, school, and work life have been with middle class white women, yet, I argue that it still doesn't allow me to claim that middle class white women as a gender class oppress me.
I tried to point out that a conclusion about gender oppression from group to individual is inherent in the argumentation, even if second wave feminists deny this (read Sarah Ditum). The argumentation is Marxist (oppressor/oppressed) but as I said before I think Marx was wrong. Class is increasingly less indicative of the future share of wealth, influence, and status. Gender as class will not change the fact that automatization will change our current understanding of social class and class affiliation.
_________________
”Clockmakers Lie.” The secret clakker greeting in "The Alchemy Wars" a Trilogy by Ian Tregillis
30 Oct 2017, 5:32 pm
puddingmouse wrote:
Mikah, I don't think the current division of allegiance along ethnic and religious lines can last indefinitely. The reason for this is that socially-constructed identities like religion and ethnicity are unstable.
I have to disagree, while all identities change to some extent, ethnicity particularly seems to be the most stable and persistent of all identities, reasserting itself again and again, century after century, surviving empires, religious schisms and everything else. I'm not sure why, though if you believe much of modern science, there are hints appearing that it is deeply ingrained into our genes. It might be the default (and possibly most powerful) identity, a gift or curse from our distant ancestors.
_________________
Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory, Farewell!
30 Oct 2017, 6:19 pm
Mikah wrote:
puddingmouse wrote:
Mikah, I don't think the current division of allegiance along ethnic and religious lines can last indefinitely. The reason for this is that socially-constructed identities like religion and ethnicity are unstable.
I have to disagree, while all identities change to some extent, ethnicity particularly seems to be the most stable and persistent of all identities, reasserting itself again and again, century after century, surviving empires, religious schisms and everything else. I'm not sure why, though if you believe much of modern science, there are hints appearing that it is deeply ingrained into our genes. It might be the default (and possibly most powerful) identity, a gift or curse from our distant ancestors.
Or perhaps simply the most obvious one. If there's a deeply-ingrained rule of "same = safe, different = unsafe", then noticeable physical distinctions via our primary sense - the one to which we typically devote around half of our 'mental processing power' - would be the most immediate and visceral triggers.
30 Oct 2017, 10:17 pm
Mikah wrote:
puddingmouse wrote:
Mikah, I don't think the current division of allegiance along ethnic and religious lines can last indefinitely. The reason for this is that socially-constructed identities like religion and ethnicity are unstable.
I have to disagree, while all identities change to some extent, ethnicity particularly seems to be the most stable and persistent of all identities, reasserting itself again and again, century after century, surviving empires, religious schisms and everything else. I'm not sure why, though if you believe much of modern science, there are hints appearing that it is deeply ingrained into our genes. It might be the default (and possibly most powerful) identity, a gift or curse from our distant ancestors.
Ethnicity doesn't really exist, according to our genes. We're all related to each other. It's entirely socially constructed. That's not to say it doesn't matter, but it's immaterial in the second meaning of that word. Ethno-nationalism's power as a patriarchal ideology in the 19th and 20th centuries is the reason it's still around in its death throes. In a globalised world, it will start to look as empty as it actually is.
Well, not before the remnants of that ideology do some serious damage first, unfortunately. Also, there's still the bias of in-group/out-group based on superficial differences (like skin colour), which is difficult to overcome, but that's different (although related) to ethno-nationalist ideology. Once that's gone, we'll still have the problem of humans being shallow and resentful of those who are different.
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Last edited by puddingmouse on 30 Oct 2017, 10:38 pm, edited 2 times in total.
30 Oct 2017, 10:28 pm
Clakker wrote:
puddingmouse wrote:
I'm referring to men and women as classes. When people make the statement, 'whites oppress ethnic minorities', or 'able-bodied people oppress disabled people', they're doing the same thing. I used a class-based analysis of oppression. Men and women are sex classes.
This idea of gender as a class is being disputed today (read Claudia Rankin), however Sarah Ditum wrote in Be that you are: on gender as class...
Quote:
But the destined livery of women is too often violently imposed. Forced marriage, domestic violence, FGM, rape, sexual harassment, the denial of abortion, the compulsion to sacrifice oneself to the care of others – these things are not imposed on women because we are feminine, they are imposed because we are female. By enforcing our inferiority to male needs and male desires, these forms of violence enforce our femininity – the signs and symbols of which change, but the meaning of which is always to be less than the man.
I cannot make this leap for if women are a class so are men, which would mean I am a member of a class that I neither share wealth, influence, or status with. The most negative experiences of my personal, school, and work life have been with middle class white women, yet, I argue that it still doesn't allow me to claim that middle class white women as a gender class oppress me.
I tried to point out that a conclusion about gender oppression from group to individual is inherent in the argumentation, even if second wave feminists deny this (read Sarah Ditum). The argumentation is Marxist (oppressor/oppressed) but as I said before I think Marx was wrong. Class is increasingly less indicative of the future share of wealth, influence, and status. Gender as class will not change the fact that automatization will change our current understanding of social class and class affiliation.
Sex class, not gender class.
You were oppressed by the bourgeois, adults and white people as classes when you were a poor, BME child. You were oppressed by women (I assume mostly in the education system - which supports the status quo) as individuals. If those women were poor, uneducated, young and BME, they wouldn't have been able to oppress you on class lines (they still might be a***holes to you).
Class is simply patterns of accumulating power or lack of power among groups, which (this is the important bit) form an overarching power structure. Economic class in the Marxist sense has changed as capitalism has changed, but given the grossly unequal distribution of wealth currently, there is still some value in the concept of economic class, too.
_________________
Zombies, zombies will tear us apart...again.
Last edited by puddingmouse on 30 Oct 2017, 10:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
30 Oct 2017, 10:34 pm
techstepgenr8tion wrote:
Here's perhaps an issue I see as well.
How do we define oppression, and if we're talking about women being oppressed by men what particular scope are we talking about?
In a way I think this hearkens back to my question from a couple days ago - ie. the international congress meeting to come up with a pronouncement of what headway women need cleared for their talents to be utilized and what forms of oppression are still holding them down.
Part of why I worry that it's nowhere near this simple is that I think both men and women have trump cards that they can wave at each other, each gender has extortion games that they can play if they choose, each has something the other wants, and it seems rare to find an area where one particular gender is in a harder place without admitting that in another facet it has greater freedom or power. While I wouldn't argue that this dismisses the possibility that men aren't gauging women in some particularly important ways it's part of why I think we need to be super clear on what these scenarios are and, who knows, I'm not even sure a debate could even be had as to which trump cards or low cards each gender has gives one a net deficit or surplus over the other, it would take a great deal of agreement on those cards to begin with and even there I'm not even sure that a decisive answer on that would be helpful regardless of which gender that math favored although perhaps it could be if we were able to work out solutions that benefited the integrity of western civilization.
I think there can only be the beginnings of a productive conversation when everyone's putting all their efforts in to clarify what is happening and triage both the understatements and exaggerations. To say the least the current social climate has been less than clement to that sort of undertaking.
How do we define oppression, and if we're talking about women being oppressed by men what particular scope are we talking about?
In a way I think this hearkens back to my question from a couple days ago - ie. the international congress meeting to come up with a pronouncement of what headway women need cleared for their talents to be utilized and what forms of oppression are still holding them down.
Part of why I worry that it's nowhere near this simple is that I think both men and women have trump cards that they can wave at each other, each gender has extortion games that they can play if they choose, each has something the other wants, and it seems rare to find an area where one particular gender is in a harder place without admitting that in another facet it has greater freedom or power. While I wouldn't argue that this dismisses the possibility that men aren't gauging women in some particularly important ways it's part of why I think we need to be super clear on what these scenarios are and, who knows, I'm not even sure a debate could even be had as to which trump cards or low cards each gender has gives one a net deficit or surplus over the other, it would take a great deal of agreement on those cards to begin with and even there I'm not even sure that a decisive answer on that would be helpful regardless of which gender that math favored although perhaps it could be if we were able to work out solutions that benefited the integrity of western civilization.
I think there can only be the beginnings of a productive conversation when everyone's putting all their efforts in to clarify what is happening and triage both the understatements and exaggerations. To say the least the current social climate has been less than clement to that sort of undertaking.
I'm feeling a bit besieged, but I recognise that's no reason to disengage. I also recognise that you don't debate/not debate because of feelings, but I'm just explaining why it's taking me so long. Also, I started this thread, so I should clarify where I've been asked to. I haven't forgotten your question, and I will try to answer it.
_________________
Zombies, zombies will tear us apart...again.
31 Oct 2017, 1:43 am
puddingmouse wrote:
Ethnicity doesn't really exist, according to our genes. We're all related to each other. It's entirely socially constructed.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean when you say it is socially constructed. Just to check would you also say that the idea of species is a social construct too?
puddingmouse wrote:
That's not to say it doesn't matter, but it's immaterial in the second meaning of that word. Ethno-nationalism's power as a patriarchal ideology in the 19th and 20th centuries is the reason it's still around in its death throes. In a globalised world, it will start to look as empty as it actually is.
I think the 19th/20th century forms are dead too, themselves a weird mix of socialism/communism, the relatively new idea of the nation-state and what I believe to be in-group racial preference exhibited, as far as I can tell, by all humans everywhere. Where you predict a slow fading of racial politics and conflict, I see only new forms of the same age old conflict appearing in different guises, e.g. identity politics. In a globalised world, with increased contact, competition and localised diversity, these human tendencies will intensify and escalate beyond your wildest nightmares.
_________________
Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory, Farewell!
31 Oct 2017, 3:47 am
puddingmouse wrote:
Sex class, not gender class.
You were oppressed by the bourgeois, adults and white people as classes when you were a poor, BME child. You were oppressed by women (I assume mostly in the education system - which supports the status quo) as individuals. If those women were poor, uneducated, young and BME, they wouldn't have been able to oppress you on class lines (they still might be a***holes to you).
Class is simply patterns of accumulating power or lack of power among groups, which (this is the important bit) form an overarching power structure. Economic class in the Marxist sense has changed as capitalism has changed, but given the grossly unequal distribution of wealth currently, there is still some value in the concept of economic class, too.
You were oppressed by the bourgeois, adults and white people as classes when you were a poor, BME child. You were oppressed by women (I assume mostly in the education system - which supports the status quo) as individuals. If those women were poor, uneducated, young and BME, they wouldn't have been able to oppress you on class lines (they still might be a***holes to you).
Class is simply patterns of accumulating power or lack of power among groups, which (this is the important bit) form an overarching power structure. Economic class in the Marxist sense has changed as capitalism has changed, but given the grossly unequal distribution of wealth currently, there is still some value in the concept of economic class, too.
Judith Butler disputed the distinction between sex and gender in her work Gender Trouble: Gender and the Subversion of Identity and, others, Queer Theory has gone, further and claimed sex in the biological sense is constructed, as well.
My experience which I did not describe is my experience. It is subjective and any theory I apply will be subjective. Let's take stock: race, sex, gender, ethnicity all have been deemed to be constructed or disputed as a category in the humanities. In German, the word 'Deutungshoheit' (elucidation sovereignty) comes to mind. The idea that I am oppressed by bourgeois white women because I am poor and black, despite my saying that it is not so, would based on 'elucidation sovereignty' of theorists trained and educated in Marxist theory.
Quote:
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. Yogi Berra, Shakespeare of Baseball
Elucidation sovereignty comes in all forms, amongst my class there's Uncle Tom, Oreo, Banana, acting <insert French, German, White, Australian...>, for someone for getting an education, becoming an atheist or changing religion, with the ever effective "you think that you're better than us" clubbing when all else fails. My point is theory is exactly that theory, they're applicable only in parts, and only by the generalizing of the theorist.
_________________
”Clockmakers Lie.” The secret clakker greeting in "The Alchemy Wars" a Trilogy by Ian Tregillis
31 Oct 2017, 4:42 am
Mikah wrote:
I think the 19th/20th century forms are dead too, themselves a weird mix of socialism/communism, the relatively new idea of the nation-state and what I believe to be in-group racial preference exhibited, as far as I can tell, by all humans everywhere. Where you predict a slow fading of racial politics and conflict, I see only new forms of the same age old conflict appearing in different guises, e.g. identity politics. In a globalised world, with increased contact, competition and localised diversity, these human tendencies will intensify and escalate beyond your wildest nightmares.
If humans didn't have reasoning faculties at the front of their brains, you would be entirely correct. One could extrapolate before the 18th century that religious fundamentalism would continue apace and that we'd never have an Enlightenment, but we did. There are many countries now with full religious freedom where the majority of people are non-religious, and the majority of religious people that remain are far from fundamentalists.
There is a counterbalance to ethnic prejudice, and that's the fact that humans aren't completely stupid. There will be a continuation of ethnic conflict, it will perhaps intensify in some cases, but I think social evolution is a thing.
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Zombies, zombies will tear us apart...again.
31 Oct 2017, 5:07 am
@Clakker, is't none of my business if you want to avoid class-based theories of oppression. I won't tell a black person how to think about their experiences, and I apologise if it came across that way. I was trying to clarify the class-based analysis, but you already understand it and reject it. I don't reject it because it makes sense to me, although it's not perfect.
I think Judith Butler is completely incorrect about sex and gender. I stick to the second-wave line that's based on material reality:
sex class: The way reproductive labour is divided into those who bear children and those who don't (females and males). This applies whether or not the individuals reproduce, as it affects all aspects of social life. Decided by biological factors in a sexually dimorphic species.
gender: Stereotypes based on how the sex classes are 'supposed' to act that maintain the current hierarchy.
This is where I differ from radical feminists: Gender roles may or may not have some origins in evolutionary psychology, but it's mostly socially constructed, and it's a hierarchy that serves patriarchy, nevertheless. Jungian theory about the psychological components of gender (animus and anima) is interesting, but those ideas are very far from the current concept of 'gender identity'. I think people are making a mistake turning to class-based theory when talking about gender and avoiding psychoanalysis. Class-based theory makes sense when talking about sex because sex is material. Gender being psychological, like spirituality, needs a psychological analysis.
_________________
Zombies, zombies will tear us apart...again.
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