>WSNers: Ahmet writes: "if Kohler means by "magic word" that we are attributing
>every problem to capitalism, THAT IS TRUE. Capitalism, as a social system, not
>only a mode of producton, is the responsible agent of inequality, sexism, >racism
>and lack of democracy in the world.
Randall, you are confusing. It is ME who wrote it, not Ahmet
>Boy, that is a lot of work for one concept!who is a boy here? i am not a "boy".. what kind of a male dominated list is this? once, i was called "mother theresa"-- "Mine"ism as a combination of Marx and Mother Theresa. (thanks to Gert). okay, it was a joke. then somebody else made vulgar sexist jokes calling me a "heroine". now, people call each other "boy". let's try to use a "gender neutral" language here. too much political correctness may be boring, but i am always the victim of sexist language, not you "guys"!!!
>Sexism, lack of democracy and
>racism too? Well, when does capitalism start and sexism start? >I'm of the view
>that sexism is earlier. So how does capitalism cause sexism >while occuring
>historically after sexism? Our feminist friends might not go >with that one, and
>they would be right.Patriachy "predated" capitalism, as Engels showed us. however, "modern patriarchy" is a unique development of modern capitalism, private property and bourgeois marriage contract. if you think that sexism existed since the existence of humanity, you are wrong. this is very much like saying that capitalism existed since the existence of humanity. as marxist feminists showed us that we can not project "nuclear family" onto pre-capitalist gender relations. this would be "naturalizing" and "universalizing" nuclear family. nuclear family (as well as sexism) can not be talked about transhistorically as if it is ahistrocial phenomenon. it is a unique form of "male oppression" emerged as a unique form of reproduction unit. different forms of family structures existed before capitalism too. Engels talks about "pairing marriage" prior to the emergence of monogomous marriages. sometimes, it is better to talk about household rather than a family. for example, in ancient Greece, women and slaves were the property of men in a single household called the "oikos". in the middle ages, women were producers in putting out system that was oriented towards domestic production. Marxist feminist, Heidi HArtman, observes that with the plundering of country side as a result of capitalist development in Britain (primitive acculumation), women lost their domestic jobs and were forced to migrate to cities as wage owners, when new forms of gender division of labor developed in factories, and public and private domains went through a process of reconfiguration . while household production gradually gave its place to factory production, women started to work both outside (factory) and inside (home), being subject to domestic patriarchy and capitalist patriarchy at the same time; their husbands and capitalist boses. Capitalism still reinforces this domestic work by extracting surplus from women's domestic labor. women work outside, but still take the responsiblity of traditonal household tasks (child caring, homeking, etc..).
the important think we have to realize is that gender division of labor can not be abstracted from class nor can be reducible to it. working class women, minority women, have different forms of gender oppression from, let's say, middle class, white women, though both groups are subject to control of men.
when i said that capitalism is the responsible agent of sexism, I did not mean that it "caused" it. i implied that capitalism galvanized "patriarchy", sexism, so to say, with a new form of masculinist ideology. there was prostitution in older times, but now we have porn sites, sex industry, child prostitution, as DEEP rooted manifestations of sexism. the worst part of it is that capitalism produces various "ideological mechanisms" in action by naturalizing and rationalizing this sexism as a pleasure giving activity. the whole discourse of sexuality is a discourse on how women and men, particularly women, are supposed to take certain sex roles. take another example : marriage and motherhood. these patriarchal institutions always existed in different phases of history, but now you have witty nitty magazines, specifically adrressing women (middle class generally), prasing the "duties" of motherhood (married) while portraying an image of "emancipated" women defined according to the criteria of masculinist/middle class ideology. work, but be a good mother!!! be a successful woman, but do not be ugly slogans!! capitalism emancipates women only in a PARTIAL way; it does not LIBERATE them from men's domination.
>Upshot: We must resist theorizing with sledgehammers. Everything bad is >causedwhat do you mean here? is sexism in human nature then?
>by capitalism? Isn't that categorical overkill?
Mine Aysen Doyran
PhD Student
Department of Political Science
SUNY at Albany
Nelson A. Rockefeller College
135 Western Ave.; Milne 102
Albany, NY 12222