All Marxist vanguard groups have taken a feminist stance. That is, they’re adamantly pro-choice, anti-sexist, despise use of the word “bitch,” and occasionally feature women’s issues in their publications.
So why do women continue to experience sexist repression from the male leaders and members of these groups?
The short answer is, because they’re products of their society as well. All men (and women) are raised to be exploitative to the “lower” classes, genders, races, and sexual orientations. And most progressive and radical folks recognize this, admit to their places of privilege, and try their best not only to to transcend them but fight the good fight along with their oppressed comrades.
However, things do fall through the cracks. Women are rarely seen in positions of leadership amongst vanguard parties, and the ones who do write on feminist issues for a party’s newspaper usually tack the issue onto the party’s agenda as a whole, not necessarily in regards to why women’s issues deserve specific, individual attention.
So today I’m just venting like this. Feeling “put down” by some of my male comrades who believe themselves to be better versed on feminist issues than I am, I’m writing up some things I wish all progressive and radical males and vanguard groups in particular would consider. I realize I’m putting myself at dire risk of being a culprit of dreaded “identity politics,” but sometimes those carry some validity as well. Sometimes.
Here we go.
I have experienced gender oppression first-hand, so don’t tell me how I should react to it. That would be like me, a white woman, telling an immigrant Hispanic family exactly how to deal with the day-to-day racism that shapes their lives and criticizing them for dealing with it in ways that contradict my personal vision for racial justice.
An overthrow of patriarchy does not necessarily require an overthrow of the capitalist system. I may believe that as well, but sometimes you just sound obnoxious and opportunistic when you try to win over the hearts of feminists in that way. It’s fine to have an egalitarian discussion on the topic with feminists, but a woman’s dedication to a feminist movement is not an “in” for you to make your move in trying to “convert” them to your particular -ism.
I don’t need to be told how to view “Juno,” or any other movie for that matter. My abortion at age 18 was frightening and painful and left permanent scars on my attitude towards future childbearing. I’m not a bad feminist just because I think it’s fine for someone to make a movie about a girl being to afraid to go through with it, especially considering the lousy support systems available for women today. My experience is valid, as are all women’s experiences. I trust women to make the best decisions they can obtain, and will always work to better those options. I am 100% committed to reproductive justice, and view abortion as a tangible experience in many women’s lives, not as an issue to push my agenda.
I am not “taking a step back” when I sit down to knit a scarf for my partner, a man who I love. My decisions to partake in stereotypically “feminine” acts are enlightened, and I am not a bad feminist because of it. I would be a bad feminist if I thought less of women who did NOT knit hats for their partners. But I’m not doing that now, am I?
Women do not, in fact, hold up “half the sky.” Women, especially in pre-revolution China, hold up far more than half the sky. Gender equality requires not only women being able to step up to a better life, but for men to take a step down from their places of power. If women were to obtain the same amount of power as men, we would only continue to compete for more power, and would end up exploiting not only each other but people of other races and classes in particular. Male power is capitalist power. It is white supremacist power. And all need to be relinquished in order for social justice to be obtained.
Acts like “gender fucking” and cross dressing do not mean women are “trying to be like men.” Masculinity being the norm by which all other genders are measured, it makes sense that in attempting to be comfortable and in control, women will start to look an awful lot like men. We are not “abandoning” our femaleness here, just our femininity that causes so much discomfort and subjugation.
April 3, 2008 at 2:53 am
I’m not sure I understand your criticism of the “half the sky” slogan. Would you care to elaborate?
April 3, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Mao’s assertion that women hold up half the sky was revolutionary in its day because it insisted on women’s equality. Or, more likely, the idea that women and men SHOULD be equal, not that they already were pre-revolution. I think the context penned pre-revolutionary China chauvinism as suggesting women “held up” less than half the sky, and in attempt to address sexism, Mao said they held up half the sky. What I’m suggesting is that under patriarchy, women hold up MORE than half of the sky and need to hold up LESS in order to gain equality. The “sky” might have been a reference to social agency instead of work as I’m reading it, in which case yeah women had less than half. I really was just using that quote to comment on the needs of a major overhaul of our power dynamics, no so much a criticism.
April 6, 2008 at 1:24 am
Thanks for the clarification. I agree that women hold up far more than half the sky IF the sky is understood to mean the burden of work. I do believe Mao meant “the sky” to be symbolic of social agency.
(Of course, if you want to be really anal about it, you could argue that women hold up more than half the sky by virtue of being more than half of the population in most countries of the world. But it loses its power and universality if you have to say “women hold up fifty-one-point-seven-percent of the sky,” or whatever the proportion is in whatever country you may be in. Another example of the necessity of oversimplification in agitprop.)
Anyhow, I don’t mean to take away from the totality of this thread. Much of your response does strike home to me with regards to the RCP, the group I’ve spent the most attention to in my five-or-so years as an armchair internet revolutionary. (I considered myself a supporter for much of that time, before being disillusioned with its recent turn for the worse, which Mike Ely has so eloquently exposed).
Take the issue of abortion: I can’t comment on “Juno” directly (having not seen it myself), but there is a general problem among men of the Left (full disclosure: myself included) in failing to make the proper distinction between women’s liberation and sexual liberation–understanding that while the latter is necessary to achieve the former, the inverse is not true, and in fact the latter has been effectively used by the ruling classes as a weapon AGAINST the former (pornography etc.)–which is related to the one-sided view of abortion that buries the health risks involved with the procedure NOT JUST as practiced in this society, but also historically in the USSR and PRC when they were genuinely socialist.
Likewise with the pill, or more recently the HPV vaccine (the RCP newspaper printed an article last year about the latter which was a golden example of this shallow approach–exploiting the controversy to launch another hyped diatribe about the spectre of “Christian Fascism,” without comment on the sinister secular agenda of Big Pharma in promoting this potentially dangerous (and unnecessary!) treatment).
::whew:: that’s enough Avakianesque run-ons for one night
take care