The Prostitution of Black Women Slaves

When you type the goddamn word “Slavery” in Wikipedia, I want BLACK WOMEN to be added to that so-called trifling "list".  I want BLACK WOMEN on that list to have a 15,000 paragraph entry where their experiences as BLACK WOMEN are stated and recognized.  I want it to demonstrate to us that they, the fuck-able ones, were EXPLICITLY and LITERALLY a sexual organ of their oppressors. They were their vaginas.  There is no question in our minds now that these women were OWNED, FUCKED, and LABORED. I need your consciousness to take a step further: these women were fucked like PROSTITUTES who are now in our porn or on the streets.  They were the sexual property of white men.  They were conquered.  And what do we know about wars where one peoples will fight with another?  They rape and pillage!  How is this any different from white man maiming the black woman in our American History?

If you want to hear the true Cinderella story of black women in America, here it is:

Once upon a time, Linda Brent was a slave.  She LIVED with her master, her pimp, her so-called lover.  Let’s call him (a) John.  Now, this John did not actually beat her.  He had more in store for her than simply that.  Instead, he psychologically hounded her with constant threats of violence, obscene accusations, and smears against her character.  She stated in her memoir:

“My master met me at every turn, reminding me that I BELONGED to him and swearing by heaven and earth that I would SUBMIT to him. If I went out for a breath of fresh air, after a day of unwearied toil, his footsteps dogged me.  If I knelt before my mother’s grave, his dark shadow fell on me there.”

Linda spent years being tormented by “her man”. Linda was one of the “lucky” ones though.  In her mid-20s she attempted to escape, but failed.  Instead, for 7 years, she lived secretly in a hole in the ground under a shed in her grandmother’s backyard. After those 7 years of being buried alive, she escaped to the North where she became an active abolitionist.

I deplore of you to ask yourself how this is different from the daily and persistent abuse and violence against women today?  Not just now nor during “Slavery”, but throughout all of recorded history.  Not just black women, but of every color of woman on the face of this earth, especially those who are sold through sex trafficking.  What is trafficking, after all?  It is SMUGGLING.  It is distributing what should be ILLEGAL goods.  It is the “tricking or luring of people away from their homeland to work under exploitative conditions elsewhere.”  What is America then?  It is a land where millions of people were trafficked in, exploited for their labor, and looked at (in the case of the black woman) as sexual objects, seen as a sexual appendage of the male.  You see, women were once an appendage.  We were once worth more to the male.  We once, in the time of Adam, were a rib.  No longer.  Blacks have been turned into the whip, while now all us women have been turned into a vibrating Pussy Sleeve©.  Women have been reduced to a literal object, no longer a part of the man, but a commodified, dead object to be sold on the Capitalist Market.

I am saying that black women during Slavery were being sold on the market like women who are prostituted by white men in America or Sweden or China or Africa. 

Prospective slave buyers (pimps) looked over black woman to be purchased.  These white slave owning men had to eye the merchandise before purchase.  Black women were taken into rooms before purchase where her vagina was inspected to guarantee she was without defect so that she could be fucked.  These women didn’t even have the so-called “honor” of being courted and contracted under marriage.

Control over her body was passed from white person to white person, along with a bill of sale.

White men in our American history had selective memories.  Those so-called men of intellect and honor, raped, maimed, and killed the women in their homes, their plantations, farms.

The Plantation is just another forgotten home, shoved under the carpet by white men who wish for it to be forgotten.  It is a clear example of the exploitation of human beings, of blacks and white women, in this country.  Now, blacks have been able to break away, theoretically, from the home of the white man.  Us white women, on the other hand, still glorify and strive to live under a roof with the white man, under contract.  Marriage, to the white man, is a binding contract of sexual assess, after all.  It is a degraded position of power, as the plantation home has demonstrated.

If this isn’t horrifying, then I don’t know what it.

The Privatization of Women

Andrea Dworkin has stated that we, in this society, DO NOT perceive a husband (the one who fucks) and a wife (the one who is fucked) as a SOCIAL unit.  It is, in fact, a private unit.  It is not a social part of life.  The relationship between a man and his wife is not interpreted as SOCIAL.  This is what church, state, and institutional laws are built around.  Men build goddamn walls around women, like a prisoner in solitary confinement, and then call it their home.  In this home, or prison, we are beaten, manipulated, raped, annihilated.  Women are most likely to be beaten, raped, and killed in their own home than anywhere else.  

On top of this, we, literally, are given a script for how to interpret that PRIVATE unit.  It’s in the media, our movies, our TV shows, our literature, our institutions.  It’s everywhere.  The romance of the woman (or, what should be more appropriately called the rape of the woman) is the script we are given.  Pornography demonstrates this clearly: women are beaten with a smile on their faces, and it is a ejaculatory event for both this man and this woman.

More than 50% of women report that they were ATTACKED in their own home, most commonly by their “intimate” partner.  The meaning of the word “intimate” is defined as “very private; closely personal”.  Women are captives with no political rights to defend off their attacker, their abuser, the man they were socially conditioned to love NO MATTER WHAT.  She is his property through and through.  She still cannot claim that she has been raped in a court of law without being laughed away.  She, throughout history through the eyes of men, has seemed to have cried wolf.  She cannot claim dignity nor respect nor any self.  According to Wikipedia, the definition of captive is “the state of being confined to a space from which it is difficult or impossible to escape”.  A place where one finds it difficult to escape?  This is the function of marriage.  It is a literal capture.  Women are unable to leave their male partners for economic reasons, for legal reasons, for every male class law and institution in place.

Women, who only got the vote 92 years ago, haven’t been able to participate in the construction of their society.  Their voices have been drowned out, ignored, silenced. 

To demonstrate to you how sub-human women are, in 1990 it was reported that there were 1,500 shelters for battered women in the United States. There are 3,800 animal shelters.  How is this possible, when the evidence is so clear that women are beaten, tortured, killed on a daily basis?  This means there are 2.5 times more animal shelters than there are human shelters, which supposedly are supposed to function when someone is in a state of EMERGENCY.  Apparently, a man’s best friend is only his dog, not his wife.  A dog’s function is, after all, companionship, while the wife is still relegated to the function of producing the progeny of the male through contracted intercourse.

The husband is the human being in this “PRIVATE” relationship.  Not the women; it’s never the woman who is human in this gender classed world.  The woman is property, an object of possession, a fetishized sexual being that elevates the man’s prosperity.  The wife is his bling, like his car which functions to get him around.  She is, literally, a PART of him, like his pinky finger or his spleen.  (Eve, after all, is of Adam’s rib)  She is not human.  She is the one who breeds, who CARES for him.  During Colonial times, men literally BOUGHT women.  They were brought to the colonies as wives.  This is ONLY 200 years ago out of our 50,000 year history as humans.  This was how America began: bringing captives, white and black, as slaves to the WHITE MAN.  Both white women and blacks were sexual slaves.  The white woman bred the new generations of white men, while blacks were bred as slaves.  Black women were also used as the sexual property of the white man.  America was literally born through the system of concubinage.

Women are literally PRIVATE PROPERTY.  LITERALLY.  To this day, this is how the laws are set up.  It is "private matters".  It is "none of your business."  Literally, it is none of society’s BUSINESS.  It is personal, not to be discussed.  Law and State interprets it this way.  The church interprets it this way.  Our learned behavior has been conditioned this way… The relationship between a man and his wife is privatized.  Women are literally owned by the men they marry.  The laws make it so. She is owned inside out.  The slit between her legs is his property.  His sexual object, his possession, his fetishized obsession.  Remember, he signed a contract saying he is the owner of her slit.  That CONTRACT states that he has sexual access to her.  He can have sexual access to her whether she likes it or not, and he will get away with it.  Like the slaves, she is the white property of his estate, his castle.  He can intimidate her, insult her, degrade her, and get away with it.  He can beat her, hurt and rape her and get away with it, and on top of that she will be the one to blame.  It is her fault; she is crazy and has “personal issues”, the script says, society says.  I am here to say that her “personal” issues ARE NOT PERSONAL.  They ARE POLITICAL.  The only thing she is trying to do is keep herself alive, trying to keep her body, mind, and soul from being violated.  And the court says, “No, you are exaggerating, lying.”  And the psychologists say, “No, you are bipolar, crazy.”  And the intellectuals say, “No, you are not worth our time nor effort.”  And her family says, “No, you are his wife. Deal with it.”  He can kill her, like chattel, and get away with murder.  And she has died a trillion times throughout history.

This is why the statement, “The Personal is Political” is so important.  I’m glad a close professor has emphasized this phrase so much to me.  Women have been privatized.  This is why the personal lives of women are so important to listen to, not to be trivialized, not to be swept under the carpet.  Yet, this is what’s going on.  Women are being ignored; to take her seriously would cause great anger, great violence, great political conflict.  The Suffragettes knew it.  In their personal conversations with each other, they strategized NOT to talk about the personal lives they inhabited with men.  These women knew it would anger men to the point of losing the vote.  They strategized not to talk about it in order to get the vote.  This must end.  Our silence must END NOW.  We are no longer living under the same state of tyranny of the 1920s… that is to say, not as much... not much, after all, has changed.  The state has reconfigured and women have done that.  Now we must act in new ways; we must have the courage to not be afraid of what men will do to us when we speak up and institute new laws.  We must end the privatization of women, the privatization of marriage, and the privatization of masculine identity.  We must end our silence on issues of “private matters”.

Feminism’s war against their oppressors has always been about ridding the masculine identity from the face of the earth.  Women have done this through changing laws, obtaining the vote, creating women shelters and rape centers, through using their words. They have done this with their mutilated bodies up for grabs, putting their lives up for the violent backlash which pounds back 10 times harder. Feminism, I will tell you, have not raised up in arms as a collective force.  They have used merely their words, marching, protesting. 

But this is a war no matter how men try to define war; it is a war which violates the bodies of women.  Men use their propaganda, pornography, which is now so proliferate that even “women’s magazines” are filled with it, showing the bodies of hot young fuckable girls with a look of sexual seduction on their faces in stiletto heels.  Women, now more than ever, have internalized this masochistic language as the pornographic imagination has extended out past farther than even anyone imagined: into the public sphere of commercials, television, the media, the internet.

This war is no different from nations violating the human rights of other nations.  War is defined as a state of emergency, and so is the condition of women as they stand now, in 4 inch high heels.  Women are in a state of emergency, yet, when we speak up, go to the authorities, talk with our closest friends and family, we are trivialized and told we deserve it, need it.  Women need to fight back against the all holy masculine identity dependent on pillage and rape.  A precondition for joy for men is putting women in their place.  This is the function of marriage, of the dating system.  It is to put a woman in her place: as a sexual object to be bred and used for physical labor.  This must change.  Men need to find a way to break the systematic sadistic joy and literal erection they get from beating, raping, and ejaculating on women.  If they do not, we, women, will force them to; they will be forced to change, and if they do not, they will perish from this world because we will make this world into something they cannot thrive in.

I'd like to leave you with a speech given by Andrea Dworkin, who highly influenced this piece.

http://andreadworkin.com/audio/montrealdworkin.mp3

Everyday Male Chauvinism

Everyday Male Chauvinism is a form of intimate partner violence that is not called violence.  This phenomena of power and control over women is unrecognizable, invisible, and remains unnamed.  This is the name of the game, and it is part of everyday relationships with men, especially white heterosexual men who are privileged in ways that are invisible to them as they are the standard.  This invisibility is what makes patriarchy tick; it's the gas that fuels the patriarchal car.  Take away the gas, and the car will no longer be able to run.  This is what making visible the invisible so powerful.  We must make them visible and call out the patriarchal mindset as it arises.  We must not take the path of least resistance.  We must persevere, fight for our rights as human beings in need of respect, dignity, and love.

Men must understand that women and men live in a world where the patriarchal empire Masculand exists and functions in every sphere of life imaginable. This is a global phenomenon, and it's not leaving without outright resistance.  "The recognition of everyday male chauvinism can result in changes in the lives of women who suffer from it.  Men, along with women, must recognise their own behaviour and WANT to change it, not merely think about it abstractly" as I have seen done even in radical circles.  Women WILL NOT progress without the help and support of men; this is not to say that women do not have power.  This capitalistic system will fall to its feet without women's constant unpaid labor of their minds and bodies.  Feminism has drastically changed the lives of every woman who has come into contact with it. Women's roles within society have dramatically changed over the past century due to the fight that women have fought: they have gained the right to vote, to work, to their sexuality, etc.  Of course, our work is not done.  We have far to go, and even farther than Feminism, but humanity for all.

The point is: It is not only necessary for women to fight, but men’s active work is needed.

"The manifestations of everyday male chauvinism are part of a systematic behaviour—they are not occasional and momentary manoeuvres but are tactical steps constituting a strategy. The strategic aim is again the maintenance of the power position, of male dominance, and its restoration if that power is injured. The emphasis is on maintenance and restoration and not on the creation of power because this latter has already been ensured largely by the social, structural element: patriarchal society."

"Men’s 'small' controlling, violent and dominant behaviours are forms of behaviour all within the limits of so called normality and are not particularly outstanding.  They are recognized by men as normal in their lives without even realizing their harmful behaviors.  They do insidious and continuous harm to women’s autonomy, dignity and even their psychic equilibrium. They are extremely common among so called 'nice' men whom public opinion would call neither violent nor particularly controlling  or male chauvinistic."

"These almost unrecognisable mechanisms of “soft” control (i..e. everyday male chauvinism) exercised over women have a devastating effect not only on women but in the long term also on the men who exercise them." These mechanisms of control used by men are damaging to both the man and the woman.  Men are held transfixed in terror, and must prove they can defend themselves endlessly.  They also must defend their property, i.e. women, cattle, his choice of business.  They must defend their "manhood" against other men, and mostly they perish even attempting that.

Male domestic violence and rape in our culture is turned into a fiasco of "victim blaming" where women are castigated as whores and deserving of men's violence.  So, what makes us think the more subtler forms of violence against women like verbal abuse and intimidation are ever even remarked upon in our culture in our daily lives?  Even when it's the most common, most widespread mechanism of control.  Break a woman (soldier) down, and they are yours forever.

Maybe you're thinking to yourself that women are very often violent themselves, even violent against men.  Yes, this is true.  Women can act in all sorts of ways just as men can and vice versa, but the violence women commit is against the flow of the dominant system of patriarchy.  They are working against an everyday patriarchal society where violence committed by men is dominant in their daily lives.  Women, unlike men, are quickly and swiftly shut down and dismissed as bitches, worthless whores, witches, man haters, crazy, unreasonable, illogical.  Pick your favorite.  On the other hand, when a man acts this way, in an intimidating (although, for them, reasonable) way, he is treated like next years king.

In simpler terms, intimidation on women looks bitchy, unreasonable, deserving of put-downs and hatred.  On men, it looks like terror, logical, right, and even can be sexy.

To really make this point compare these photos:

While both look harsh and terrifying, which one's anger looks and feels unjustified, unreasonable, stupid?  Which one looks and feels terrifyingly reasonable?

This woman in the photo uses intimidation and slave-owning techniques just like the man, so don't both genders use intimidation and everyday "male" chauvinism?  Women may use everyday male chauvinism as a mechanism to protect themselves, to fight off feelings of powerlessness from the unequal division of power, or to stand up against the dominant power structures set up to put women back in "their place."  Sometimes the woman, herself, usually alone, must use the dominant system of revenge: castigating him for his indifference and ruthlessness, jail him, use capital punishment.  This is not because she just loves to be sadistic like a man.  It's because it's the only way she is finally able to gain any sort of sense of safety.  If your attacker keeps attacking and threatens to kill you, rape you, or hurt you and those close to you, and if the capitalistic world institution can't help you (even further, they discredit you and castigate you), you are left to defend yourself "outside the proper lawful system".  Outside this "moral" system of lawfulness, we are left to fend for ourselves in a world where our concerns are not considered worth a even a cent! We, women, must stand together, and SHOUT, SCREAM at the top of our lungs that we are not immoral, psychotic, or vengeful.  It is the system which "drives us crazy" and "makes us psychotic and hysteric".  It is a personal feeling and experience that every woman has experienced in a wide variety of ways.  That sick Chicana woman.  That blonde whore.  That negress slut animal.

The majority of women who use violence are merely protecting themselves against the systematic violence that is committed against them on a daily basis.  Any oppressed group can use the tools of the master when the time arises in the right moment of strategic consideration, but, watch out for some serious BACKLASH and watch out FOR YOUR VERY LIFE.  For instance, a man may rape a woman or maybe he throws her around a little bit, or maybe he says something hurtful, or maybe he cheats on her.  The woman may use violence that typifies everyday male chauvinism when other mechanisms aren't available due to her systematic oppression, but the difference is she will be labeled an uncontrollable raging bitch, and therefore simply dismissed as hysteric.Women are castigated as very violent in comparison to men . It's not their "normal" roles to be violent, so any instance of violence by women is heavily sedated by the power structures in place. Neutralized I should say.  This is what we are fighting, women.  Listen up.  Men are neutralizing us before we even have the chance to stand on our two feet.  They kick us down before we even stand.

More men need to LISTEN, really listen... really gravitating to the weight of what women are saying daily about their particular struggle within their very lives NOW.  Women also, especially, if we are even to get this war back on with more equal footing.  What is she going through?  What is she concerned about endlessly as if in a psychosis that can't be woken up from?  Even those men who give us the time of day to speak don't seem to realize the gravity of what we are saying.  After all, their emotional range isn't ideologically supposed to be anything more than an emotional-less stone or anger.  Alas, we are to only be seen, looked upon as their porcelain dolls for them to glorify when we go with the flow, and we will be vilified when we act against the flow of THEIR power structures.  If we "go with the flow" we are seen as innocent, pure dolls, but when we ACT against that flow, we are demonized and systematically dismissed.

We are never to be heard.  We are like children with little right to exist beyond men's needs.  Men treat us like children as they "know better".  They have an "intellectual stamina" over women due to all that inherent male superiority given to them by this patriarchal structure.  Believe me, they realize this structure exists and that it oppresses women.  They invented it afterall, this system of slavery, this slavery of the gender class woman -- can you contradict me?

This is, of course, the same old story of male logic which keeps women down and out of intellectual circles in all fields of life except love, motherhood, and wifehood.  This is of course the biggest farce.  Women very well know what's going on.  They've been learning since they were BORN that they could not be "men" as they were stuffed into a pink bonnet and severely punished for acting out against the gender class man.

Men have been indoctrinated with the idea that they are the show runners of the world.  They see themselves as the rulers, the bosses, the kings, the organizers, the politicians, and this is, indeed correct. THEY ARE.  Big whoop.  Women are the ones breaking their backs with little reward or little thanks from their bosses, their husbands, their boyfriends, and even their families.  They do the dirty work.  They clean, sweep, organize the home, print the kids homework, create the pamphlets for that organization, set the dates for that beach or business trip, shop for your groceries, and the list is almost endless.

What is all very, very critical to this is the man's (and woman's) realization of his (her) socialization, indoctrination as a kid.  As a young boy, he adapted to the terrain of traditional roles set up for him before he's even born (his father maintained the family, his mother takes care of him, and on top of that he sees how other families interact in such similar ways).  His father uses "male logic" on his mommy.  His mommy uses kisses, hugs, complements, and sex as a tool of submission when she requests anything from a man, including him.  These ideas are indoctrinated, uploaded, buried beneath the boy's very understanding of men and women.  It becomes reality.  Even if he knows about patriarchy and wishes theoretically to dispose of it because (logically) he knows this is best for Homo Sapiens survival, he still knows these patriarchal roles are functioning NOW in the world.  He knows, at anytime, he can use these mechanisms and maneuvers against women and other men which degrade both.  He knows, beneath all of that, that he has the capacity to destroy a woman's self-esteem and sleep with any woman he wishes simply through the mechanisms he's used on his mother or sister or that cousin he felt up when he was 15 and she was 5.

This is so well into his very life-being.  He doesn't realize how much of that is in him, even when he may endorse the equality of both women and men in order to dissolve the gender classes.  He exploits and abuses the fact that the woman is an “expert” at taking care of others. He know she's been conditioned to do just that, so why not let her do it as she knows best and it'll be easier anyways, right guys?  By reinforcing women's already socialised calling “to live for others”, it leads the woman into the roles that are hers “by nature”, "by roles", and now "by patriarchy". 

Do you really think men aren't thinking this?  That if they get their wives or girlfriends to do the laundry or those dishes or plan that trip, he won't have as much to think about except his long held desire to exploit her and live out his dream of become "expert" or "theoretician".  It'll be just like living with mommy.

Women are conditioned to be a mother, wife, assistant, secretary, dispatcher, psychologist, social worker, telephonist, receptionist, cleaner and cloakroom attendant all at once for one man and for those men she works for at "her" job without any help from other men or women what so ever (unless, she dare ask for it, for help... which may lead to a hit, a put down, and terror).

“Often men feel that a relationship has deteriorated when the mechanisms of male power, which are accepted as everyday communication, are no longer enough to maintain power over women.” -Why Does He Abuse? Why Can He Abuse?

***This writing was highly influenced by the paper, Everyday Male Chauvinism.  Direct quotes are taken from it and have been modified by me.  No copyright infringement intended. 

Abuse of the MIND

Are you being emotionally abused??

I really want you to THINK about this, hard.  

If you can't feel love from someone who says they love you, it's NOT love.

REPEAT: LOVE SHOULD FEEL LIKE LOVE.

Listen to your INSTINCTS, your EMOTIONAL RESPONSES in every situation.

Listen and protect yourself against harm.  Set Boundaries. 

In the past...

How have your parents treated you?

Do you feel they don't let you become the person you want to be?

Do you feel they demand obedience from you through FORCE of will?

How have your boyfriends and/or husband(s) treated you?

Do you feel they use you only for sex?  

Do you ever feel that they can't share other parts of 

themselves with you in an emotionally healthy way?  

Do you feel they demean you?

Do you feel inadequate around them?

Do others in society regulate your sexuality?

Do you feel you are being shoved into a BOX?  

Do you feel pressure to be something you don't want to be, 

and even forced into being something you don't want to be?

Does your sexuality feel  like it SHOULD be

more than horny, sexy, inadequate, or dirty?

Do others make you feel different, ugly, wretched?

Do others make you  feel like you don't belong because of your ethnic makeup?  

Do you feel uneasy in a grocery store or in a shopping mall 

where your ethnicity doesn't predominate?

Do you  feel  GUILTY for being YOURSELF?

REMEMBER: Abuse isn't always a clear WORD-GAME.

Emotional abuse takes different forms.

Emotional abuse IS SUBTLE and INVISIBLE.  

This is how domination and submission works.

NEVER TAKE THE PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE!

STAND UP FOR YOUR RIGHTS!

RESIST DOMINATION!

RESIST SUBMISSION!

Emotional abuse is the most common way oppressed peoples of the world 

are held under the control of those who are our abusers.

Yes, that's right.

World capitalism is based on the domination of the false categories of 

adult white heterosexual men who

 UTILIZE 

Emotional and Physical abuse 

to 

CONTROL, MANIPULATE, and DISTORT 

our 

minds, hearts, and bodies.

This is TERRORISM. 

A terrorism so intimate that it infiltrates our very thoughts, emotions, minds, and souls.  

This is a RAPE of the mind, body, and SOUL.

Emotional abuse is CLEAN VIOLENCE.  It leaves no marks, no PROOF of abuse.

This is the perfect weapon. . . 

A weapon used by the dominators of a world system based on ABUSE of its people.

This weapon annihilates personal identity, and shames.

It destroys the oppressed people's of the world sense of SELF.

http://www.joy2meu.com/emotional_abuse.html

REMEMBER: Love is not, nor will it EVER be:

Critical       Shaming  Abusive      Controlling      Manipulative

Demeaning     Humiliating     Separating     Discounting

Diminishing        Belittling        Negative       Traumatic

Painful most of the time            etc.

Dirty Women

I dare all to look at a woman with respect and decency instead of looking at her with disdain, like a worthless object.

What do you see and feel when you LOOK at this woman? Do you feel disgusted? Do you feel revolt?  Do you feel dirty? Or do you see that loving woman who's your grandma who you only speak to now on Christmas?

 

What do you see when you look at this woman?  Is she that slut you've always wanted to fuck over?  Is she overcompensating?  Is she just that 'mistake' you never want to look at again?  I dare you to believe that and see where it takes you.  Karma is a bitch.  Be careful where you tread.  

What do you see here? Do you see a dirty animal beneath you, beneath decency and love?  Do you see a sexualized being only worth conquering?  Women in this world might as well be equated to commodities who are exchanged on the basis of looks. Look closely at the women around you, especially those who have raised you, who have been your friends, your confidants. Do you think they are truly happy with the psychotic system put in place to keep them disturbed, fearful, and stir-crazy? Women are bought and sold, traded.  Just like blacks, communists, gays, and other 'scums of the earth', women are wading through a world where they must rise just to your kneecaps just to get SOME respect and decency those others get like it's just a damn gift handed over to them at birth.  White, heterosexual, conservative dicks can't see how wretchedly hard it is for us to rise and be all we can be.  The oppressed of the world can't stand this dilemma.  The privileged, the ones born with a BIRTH RIGHT, have no idea how much we suffer under their legacy of humiliation, subjugation, and oppression.  Let us learn and move on.

The Origin of The Family, Private 

Property, and the State 

A Summary

The origin, written by Friedrich Engels, is significantly based on Karl Marx’s notes from the book Ancient Society: Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization by Lewis Henry Morgan, an American anthropologist.  After his death, Marx’s notes were picked up by Engels who transformed them into The Origin.  It is important to remember that The Origin is composed of the thoughts of many people as Engels was influenced by many.  Engels was influenced by Marx and Morgan as mentioned before, but he’s also influenced by Bachofen, who wrote Mother Right and believed in the historical change of the sexes to monogamy.  Engels was also influenced by J.F. McLennan who was regarded as the pioneer of developing a history of the family.

 

Engels’ Origin of the Family, like Morgan’s Ancient Society, subdivides human history into three stages: savagery, barbarism, and civilization.  These stages are divided according to the progress made in food production: namely hunter gatherer societies under savagery, horticultural societies under barbarism, and commodity production under civilization.  The progress made in food production led to changes in the social organization of society; this is a materialistic explanation of society where society’s production (the production of the means of existence: food, shelter, tools) & society’s reproduction (the propagation of the species) determines society’s social organization.  Increases in food production over the three stages of human history led to changes in the social organization of kinship arrangements which are built upon differing arrangements of marriage.  Increases in food production over the stages also led to different social organizations of the division of labor, the rise of surplus production, and the gentile constitution giving way to the state.  Another important aspect of these stages are the gens, which was a kinship organization based on blood relation with descent recognized from the female line.  The gens was also bound together through religious and social institutions between whom marriage was prohibited.  The gens is based on matrilineal descent due to the fact that women are more easily identified as the biological mother as they literally carry the next generation.

The economic base of society (production) determines the superstructure of society (the family); this is a materialistic explanation of society.  As the economic base of society increased in wealth due to the increase of production, the family is transformed into the monogamous family.  In other words the amassing of property or surplus (the mode of production or the economic base of society) broke up the gens, replacing it with the modern single monogamous family (the superstructure of society) dominated by private property, social classes, and the state.

The three stages of human history begins with Savagery.  Savagery, or what modern anthropology refers to as hunter gatherer society, was dominated by group marriage, the gens with matrilineal kinship, and equality between women and men where the sexes had a ‘natural’ division of labor.  According to Engels, this ‘natural’ division of labor is a sexual division of labor which proclaims that women naturally own the household, having real supremacy over her own labor within the household.  Men, on the other hand, naturally own the instruments of productive labor which are responsible for the ‘productive work’ of obtaining and producing food.  The stage of savagery experienced two types of group marriage: the consanguine family and the punaluan family.  Both the consanguine family and punaluan family had prearranged marriages decided before birth where whole groups of men and women mutually possess one another in marriage.  The first stage of the family is the consanguine family, which excludes marriage between parents and children (i.e. exclusion of marriage between generations) but not among brothers, sisters and cousins who are all held together in group marriage.  The consanguine family gives way to the punaluan family, which is the second stage of the family and prevents brothers, sisters, and cousins from marrying.  Due to this exclusion of marriage among sisters, brothers, and cousins within the punaluan family, the gens develops where descent is recognized through the mother.  The gens separates brothers and sisters into different families.

The second stage of human history is Barbarism, which is comparable to horticultural or pastoral societies.  The third stage of the family, the pairing family, comes to fruition under Barbarism where marriage is decided by the parents and prohibits marriage among all relatives, ending group marriage for good.  The pairing marriage is between one unrelated woman with one unrelated man, giving men a better warrant of paternity but still not passing down inheritance to the man’s children.  While group marriage comes to a close under Barbarism and ends group marriage as the pairing marriage rises, the gens with matrilineal descent still lives on becoming common to all, leaves men with better paternity, and is characterized by the supremacy of women since women were all from the same gens under one family while men were separated into the different families of the women.

Barbarism is also the beginning of animal domestication and the origin of agriculture, which coincides with the transition from the pairing family to the monogamous family as they are connected through a materialist explanation where increases in production lead to changes in the superstructure, the family.  In the eastern hemisphere of the world animal domestication becomes prominent, while the western hemisphere is dominated by agriculture.  This is where the two hemispheres of the world split from each other into different stages of human history.  The eastern hemisphere marched on through Barbarism and on into Civilization, while the western hemisphere becomes inert, remaining in Barbarism until the eastern hemisphere conquered the west.  This stagnation of the west is due to the lack of animals capable of being domesticated.  In the east, however, animal domestication flourished, increasing production as domesticated herds aided in the process of crop production.  This increase in production included all branches, i.e. cattle raising, agriculture, domestic handicrafts.  This increase in production lead to a crop surplus and created a regular exchange system.  This crop surplus of the east resulted in the first great social division of labor where pastoral societies separated from the rest of the barbarians or from the Barbarism Stage and transitioned into Civilization.  As an increase in production due to the labor of domesticated animals lead to an increase in surplus, new labor forces were needed to maintain this growth in production.  Slavery became the answer to maintaining growth in production and became functional within society unlike never before.  Before, slavery was worthless as human labor power couldn’t before produce a surplus.  As slavery became functional within society, it produced the first great cleavage of society into classes where there were masters and there were slaves; one group was composed of exploiters while the other was exploited for their surplus producing labor.  Also, for the first time, wars were waged as a regular industry for the sole purpose of plunder to gain their property for wealth.  Domesticated animals were passed out of the common ownership of the gens and into the ownership of individual heads of families as a cleavage of society into classes can’t maintain a harmonized or coherent society like the gens.

Barbarism began with the pairing family where men and women were still relatively equal, but, with a surplus in production, a transition to monogamy ensued.  Therefore, this is a materialistic explanation where a change in the production with the beginning of a surplus (the material basis for the change) affected the superstructure of society: the family.  The family began the transition to monogamy due to the economic changes in production.  This revolution of the family to monogamy only occurred in the east, not the west until eastern intervention.  This revolution of the family is constructed from the first ‘natural’ division of labor between the sexes.  In other words, the already-in-place ‘natural’ division of labor guided how the family was constructed.  Men have always acquired the necessities of life owning and producing the means of production, while women utilize the products produced by men in order to run the household which they own.  The ‘natural’ division of labor doesn’t cause the transition to monogamy (a surplus owned by the men does) but it sets the stage for an altered form of the family.  As men have always owned the means of production, they inherited the domesticated animals and slaves as they are both tool of production.  Women don’t own the domesticated animals and slaves; their realm of ownership is within the household, which was at first considered as equally important as owning the means of production.  As stated before, domesticated animals and slaves produced a surplus, which became the property of men, not women.  Women still enjoyed the surplus created from animal production by men, but they didn’t own it.  In other words, the ‘natural’ division of labor between men and women stayed the same, but it structured the division of property between women and men as men solely owned the new property of the cattle and slaves which produced a surplus.  Therefore, men alone owned the surplus, giving men an advantage over women as they had more wealth which created unequal power between men and women.  With this advantage, men overthrew the matriarchal gens and replaced it with the single monogamous family based on male inheritance as we now know today.  This was done by men in order to put in place a system of male lineage where their male children inherited the surplus and the surplus producing property of domesticated animals and slaves.  The transition to monogamy and the abolition of the gens was a step taken by men due to their exploitive position.  The surplus they gained through slaves and domesticated animals increased their wealth and amplified their position over women within the family.  With this leverage over women, men overthrew the gens in order to secure inheritance rights for their children, passing inheritance on through the male line instead of the female line.  Ever since the overthrow of the gens, women have been degraded to the servitude of men, becoming instruments of reproduction to ensure the paternity and inheritance rights of his children.

During the ending of Barbarism the second social division of labor occurs where handicraft production is separated from agricultural production.  This leads to commodity production where production is no longer for use by producers but is directly exchanged for money or cattle which acts in the place of money.  In other words, production becomes no longer used by the producer, but is now exchanged for cattle and later money.  Slavery now becomes essential to society where freemen and slaves become the new cleavage of class society.  Since there are inequalities in property ownership among the men in individual heads of families, it breaks up communities, leading to the erosion of kinship and the movement of people no longer bound to their territory.  The transition to private property due to a surplus in production (the economic base) leads to changes to the single monogamous family (the superstructure).

This now brings us to the stage of civilization: the current stage of human history.  Civilization is characterized by the monogamous single family, commodity production with exchange between individuals, and the state which overthrew the gentile constitution of previous times.  Civilization only developed in the eastern hemisphere, until it was brought into the west during colonization.  Civilization is dominated by the monogamous family, the fourth stage of the family.  Under the monogamous family, marriage is decided by economics as the single family is the economic unit in society.  The monogamous family is based on male supremacy as monogamy is used to subjugate women who are used to produce children with undisputable paternity in order to pass down the property of domesticated animals and slaves through the male line.  Before both women and men’s tasks were social and public (women upheld the communistic household while men produced food communistically), but, under the monogamous family, the household lost its public character, moving into the private sector where women were excluded from public production.  While the term monogamy implies sex with only one other person, the ‘monogamous’ family is actually supplemented by adultery and prostitution.  This is because marriage is predominately decided by economics, which makes it a matter of convenience and not a matter of love.  The monogamous family didn’t develop due to matters of sex love but due to economic reasons where men could pass down private property through the male line.  

Civilization also leads to the third great social division of labor where the merchants were born.  The merchants became the mediators between the producers, creating a division between those who direct production (the merchants) and those who execute production (the producers).  The merchants’ primary concern is with exchanging products for profit, not with production.  This third social division of labor led to periodical trade crises; metallic money as an instrument of domination of the non-producer over the producer; loans leading to interest; wealth in commodities, increases in slaves, money, and land; the concentration and centralization of wealth increasing mass impoverishment; and the breaking up of the settled conditions of life from the repeated shifting and changing of residence due to the pressure of trade, alteration of occupation, and changes in ownership of land.

As stated previously, the state comes to dominate society with the birth of civilization replacing the old gentile constitution of previous stages of human history.  The gentile constitution was a social institution that divided society based on the gens and was for the will of the people requiring members to be settled in the same territory.  Division of labor under the gentile constitution is based on the ‘natural’ division of labor where only the sexes are divided, each the master in their own sphere and owning the instruments of their labor.  Under this system, there are no poor or slaves, no ruler reigning over the people, and no complicated administrative apparatus.  All are equal and free with no difference between rights and duties among people.  As the state took over society due to the sale and purchase of land and the progressive division of labor, the gentile constitution sank to the level of private associations and religious bodies.  The state came from the material need to support and maintain the new system of the monogamous family where men owned private property (i.e. the surplus producing slaves and domesticated animals, the money, etc.).

The state is a machine for the plundering, oppression, and domination of others in order to protect the possessing class against the non-possessing class to secure riches and sanctify the private property of men, classes, and male privilege.  The state requires many features in order to function.  First, it requires people be grouped on the basis of territory where traditional kinship is eroded in order to break people apart into classes.  Territory becomes heterogeneous where slaves, citizens, and foreigners all coincide in the same territory.  The state also requires an armed public force consisting of an army, prisons, a police force, and other coercive institutions.  This armed public force is separated from the masses of the people, serving state authorities not the people as it’s impossible to have a people’s army because of the cleavage of society into classes.  Third, the state needs class opposition and division where the privileged have the rights and the unprivileged have the duties of society, setting people against each other in classes.  Fourth, the state necessitates an alienating power standing above the warring classes of society in order to suppress open conflict and keep it within the bounds of ‘order’ letting the classes fight it out on an economic level.  Fifth, the state needs taxes to maintain the armed public force, which inevitably leads to state debt as it’s never enough.

Engels proposes society is moving towards a fifth stage of the family which I’ve termed the egalitarian family where marriage is decided by ‘sex love.’  Previously, marriage was decided before birth under group marriages, by parents under the pairing family, and by economics under the monogamous family of civilization.  The monogamous family still holds true even today as marriage is still linked with material economic wellbeing (i.e. women still marry men as a security measure where our culture is pervaded by the idea that women need men in order to survive economically).  Engels argues that society’s production, the economic base of society, will eventually lead to the development of social property instead of private property.  Private property with its ownership over land, animals, slaves, and money is the economic foundations of the monogamous family and the material conditions for the existence of patriarchy.   Engels argues that with a social revolution of society’s production into social property, monogamy will be truly realized.  This social revolution will transform the means of production into social property where women can prosper economically without the security of men.  The labor of women will leave the private sector of society and will no longer be excluded from social production; this will lead to the destruction of the monogamous family where patriarchy rules under private property.

Outlaw Needs

Outlaw Needs the illegitimate, non-hegemonic ways we meet our basic needs of love, affection, education, leisure time, health care, food, shelter, etc. Examples: non-heterosexual love, using illegal drugs as a recreational activity or as a medicine, robbery

The fight for social justice isn’t just about anger and outrage.  Anger and outrage are merely the starting point for understanding why we’re so motivated (and unmotivated) to resist.  For example, many out there see the #Occupy Movement as just a mass riot of trouble making, angry anarchists with no objectives or demands. The anger is real and legitimate, precisely because our needs and the needs of our loved ones aren’t being met.  We’re out there because oppression and exploitation proliferate and control us.  Our health care is shitty, exploitative, profit motivated.  Our lives revolve around meaningless consumerism. Our jobs, if we have one, are alienating, boring, underpaid, meticulous, competitive. Our very lives and the lives of those we love are broken and fragmented, destroyed by forces which are kept invisible and hidden from our eyes.

Yes, this movement is fired by anger, an anger which should be understood, realized, and paid close attention to, but—complimentary to that—a movement endures through our love for others and for our community.  We human beings want fulfilling, enriching lives where we are free to act and love in a world which is safe, but we are, although rightfully, too busy with the agony and pain we are experiencing under a system that hasn’t been addressing our fundamental needs.

It is important to recognize that love is connected to our survival needs.  Historical Materialism¹, in fact, takes survival needs as a starting point (i.e., as a species we require food, shelter, etc.).  But humans meet these needs socially—through concrete, historically-specific modes of social organization. We keep our bodies alive through social interaction as we must support one another and care for one another in order to survive.  The easiest example is the one where caretakers feed, cloth, and care for young who are helpless on their own.  This demonstrates that we need one another and need love from others in order to survive and thrive.  Hence, social interaction IS a vital need just as water or food is a vital need.  Love IS a vital need as we need others to care about us in order to survive.

Workers in capitalist society, however, don’t control their human needs, but are in fact outlawed and controlled.  This is one site of struggle under capitalism.  When workers exchange their labor power for a wage, they’re forced to give up their human needs in several ways.  First, the minimum wage isn’t a livable wage as it doesn’t cover the costs of basic needs (i.e. food, clothing, housing, health care, education, intellectual and creative development).  Second, the production of labor power (i.e. care for the proceeding generations of workers, children) is not fully covered by wages.  The feeding, clothing, and caring of children is underpaid or unpaid as this has been seen as women’s natural unpaid role, i.e. the mother.  Third, and lastly, consciousness has been commodified, which has separated mind from body, public from private, ways of knowing from their historical material conditions, and love from the meeting of human needs.

Critical psychology was elaborated in the early 1970s by European Marxists who rejected mainstream bourgeois psychology. One of their key concepts is Action Potence, which refers to an individual’s ability to satisfy needs and assure a satisfactory life.  There are two types of Action Potence: Restricted Action Potence and Generalized Action Potence.  Restricted Action Potence refers to an individual trying to make the best of their current position. Generalized Action Potence, on the other hand, refers to an individual trying to go beyond their current positioning in order to better their existing position. The first refers to action that is immanent to the existing order, while the latter attempts to transcend that order.

Restricted Action Potence is encouraged under capitalism as it maintains the capitalist system by producing compliant subjects who accept their current, alienating social conditions.  Sexual identities (and all other reified identities) are an example of Restricted Action Potence as they restrict the power to collectively change the existing society as it divides social relationships.  So what is the Generalized Action Potence which can see change and go beyond our existing conditions?  Revolutionary love which begins with our human needs and relates them to the historical reality of capitalism and to the form of society that will emerge from its ashes. 

Outlaw needs are the grounds for beginning the process of politicizing capitalism and people.  We need to tap into people’s alienated labor, their costly health care, their dead end jobs which pay little, their dehumanized sexualities, their depleting leisure time, even their boredom.  This is the starting point for politicizing people and helping them see that capitalism is a dead end.  Our own personal lives are destructed and decaying due to the current exploitative system of capitalism which outlaws so many of our basic needs.

 We must also begin with the exiting realities and see that we cannot dismiss people’s experiences, which are organized through reified categories (like gender and sexual identities), but we must work on them and beyond them through the process of creating collective consciousness. And that’s not just a rational process, but one that is also affective, emotional and symbolic.  We should work on forming collective consciousness through disidentification. That is to say, through an unlearning practice/process where we work on our existing ways of identifying by uprooting them in order to see them in a historical frame which was produced from a mode of production which outlaws many human needs.  This process is not easy, and can lead to fear, anger, and frustration as it calls into question the identities we’ve relied on our whole lives.  This process is never over as we are limited by our historical position and always in a position of reworking our awareness to make visible the historical and material conditions of capitalist culture.

(1) According to The German Ideology by Marx and Engels, historical materialism’s starting point for social theory is the presence of real living individuals who need to produce what is needed to survive (i.e. Species Being).  Under Capitalism, our Species Being is mediated by the collective of human laborers, but these human laborers are stratified into a class structure where the product of their labor is owned and controlled by the bourgeoisie in order to accumulate a profit.  Capitalists extract this surplus labor from human laborers in order to obtain a profit.  

 What is Feminism? An Introduction to Feminist Theory by Chris Beasley summarizes seven definable “types” of feminism which include Liberal, Radical, Marxist, Socialist, Psychoanalytic, Postmodern or Poststructuralist, and Race/Ethnicity Feminists.  There are many more definable categories of feminism but the book restricts itself to these seven westernized feminisms, which I think is a mistake.  This is a mistake because it limits what feminism is as a whole, taking in only some of the pieces of the whole puzzle.  Without a complete puzzle, the finished picture cannot be discerned, nor be meaningfully discussed.  However, this focus on a few western feminisms does help us zoom in a bit, aiding us in getting a closer look at specific areas of feminism or specific pieces of the puzzle.

While feminism is difficult to define and has extremely diverse perspectives, there are some premises that can be discerned.  Feminism is usually understood as expanding, altering, or breaking away from traditional social and political thought or what could also be referred to as mainstream thought.  Mainstream thought is seen as being flawed as it’s seen as being ‘malestream’, focusing on men as the center of analysis and leaving women to the sidelines who are viewed as second rate men or other.  Mainstream thought is also structured by misogyny and dualisms with hierarchies, which Feminists reject to varying degrees.  Feminism is also an alternative to the normative (the mainstream) which concentrates on women or womanhood as the center of analysis, although there is much debate within feminism about how woman or womanhood should be defined.

While Feminism in general does see sexual difference as shaping the social and political (i.e. how we think and feel), there are five different viewpoints within feminism about sexual difference.  First, there is the notion of sameness where women and men are seen as being the same.  This view is linked to Liberal Feminism and Marxist/Socialist Feminism.  The Second view sees differences between men and women but challenges the hierarchy between men and women.  This view is linked to Radical and Psychoanalytic Feminists.  The third view shifts its focus away from the sameness/difference dichotomy to the question of power, wishing to resist and destabilize sexual hierarchy.  This view is linked to Postmodern/Poststructuralist Feminists.  The fourth view sees men as potential political allies for the struggles of women where men and women are seen as becoming similar through political struggle and alliance.  This view is linked to Race/Ethnicity Feminists, Socialist Feminists, and Postmodern/Poststructuralist Feminists.  The fifth view of sexual difference sees women as morally or innately superior to men.  This last view is linked to Radical Feminists. 


There are four major groupings of feminists: Classical, Psychoanalytic, Postmodern/Poststructuralist, and Race/Ethnicity.  Classical Feminists include Liberal, Radical, Marxist, and Socialist Feminists, all of which focus on realism and materialism and stress the externalized factors of oppression.  Liberal Feminism, also termed penis envy feminism, focuses on the individual, reform, sameness, the public sphere, and Welfare Liberalism.  Liberal Feminists wish to reform policies and practices (i.e. endorse welfare liberalism where benefits and opportunities are redistributed but doesn’t challenge the organization of society) to allow individual women equal access to the male dominated public sphere.  This perspective likens equality to letting women being able to do what men do.  This view is much less structural, not seeing the inherent incapabilities of capitalism to give women liberation.  Liberal feminism is also very focused in on the mainstream, seeing women’s oppression as individualist problems needing fixing through changing individuals.  It doesn’t see the capitalistic system as inherently oppressing women or other minority groups, much less see how it’s oppressing all people.  Like my parents, they don’t see the entire capitalistic system oppressing its people.  What they do see is the negative outcomes of capitalistic society, but they don’t relate it to capitalism as inherently oppressive.  Notice I emphasized inherently.  I’ve emphasized inherently because my parents, and many other liberals, do recognize the problems found within capitalism (i.e. the drive for profit, deregulation, poverty, environmental degradation, etc.) but they don’t see capitalism as the main problem.  They believe reforming the system (not overthrowing the system) is the way to go, but they don’t see that once reform/reregulation is achieved it will at some point be obliterated due to capitalism’s need to oppress all people in order to exploit their labor for profit, separate and isolate people through ideology in order to keep their focus off the inherent ruthlessness of capitalism, and tear apart the welfare system in order to further make a profit concentrated in the hands of the very rich¹.


Radical Feminism focuses on the private sphere (i.e. sexuality, bodies, sexual violence, the reproductive body, feminine motherhood), difference, separatism, patriarchy/men being the main enemy being fought, and on revolution through small-scale action.  I have always found Radical Feminism as strange, but at the same time intriguing.  Just like Liberal Feminism and maybe all Feminisms, Radical Feminism is narrow in its perspective.  While Radical Feminism does critique patriarchy and heterosexuality critically in useful ways, it doesn’t seem to sympathize with men and sees separatism away from men as the answer (these are broad statements; not all Radical Feminists believe this way).  They see men as the enemy being fought, as something to separate from in order to create spaces for women.  While I do think it’s important for women to be able to discuss the variety of issues at hand and create “safe spaces” without the presence of men in order to facilitate skills that men dominate in, we can’t separate ourselves completely and endlessly from men.  Why is this?  Because men aren’t inherently oppressive.  Capitalism is inherently oppressive, not men.  After all, if we hold to separatism, how can you explain my own radicalization without the influence of two men who really expanded my understanding of feminism itself?  Also, if we separate from each other as men and women, then we lose the experiences of the other, which I believe is critical for understanding the ways in which capitalism shapes all our lives in oppressive systems.  Radical Feminists are sometimes perceived as critiquing men as the ones who are inherently oppressive, which I don’t agree with.  To illustrate my point in a different way, blacks are oppressed under the capitalistic system, but blacks aren’t biologically, inherently, essentially oppressed outside the confines of capitalism.  Radical Feminism also maintains sometimes biological, clear-cut differences between men and women, seeing women as something to celebrate, leaving men to the side as something not worthy of their time.  I think men are worthy of our time.  As a preliminary tactic while we hasten and await, men need to develop alongside women in order to facilitate a process of growth outside of capitalist oppressive structures.

 

Marxist Feminism focuses on economics, class, capitalism, revolution, sameness, collectivity, and the public sphere.  Marxist Feminists see capitalism as the main enemy being fought, as opposed to Radical Feminists who see men and patriarchy as the main enemy.  Marxist Feminism’s idea of sameness is different from that of Liberal Feminism’s idea of sameness.  While Liberal Feminists see sameness as something women need to achieve on par with men (women need to become like men, having equality within the public sphere of politics, government, and social life), Marxist Feminists see sameness as something that has been disrupted by capitalism.  Without capitalism, women and men wouldn’t differ very much.  Marxist Feminism see oppressed people through a collective lens, believing men, women, and all oppressed people need to come together in unity as workers of exploitive wage labor in order to overthrow the oppressive  and exploitive structures of capitalism.  They see unity among the proletariat as we all are exploited for our labor.  They say we can’t unite under identity politics in the long run (i.e. gender/sexual identity, racial identity, etc.).  Rather we must unite under our common exploited labor, which is where our sameness lies.  Marxist Feminism sees class relations as built upon a hierarchy where wealth is distributed unequally; they also see class relations as the source of power, oppression, and inequality.  Lastly, Marxist Feminists see class oppression as the creator of sexual oppression and as the primary oppression of women.  Radical Feminists, on the other hand, see sexual oppression as the creator of class oppression and as the primary oppression of women.  In other words, Radical Feminists see the interrelations between men and women as primary to oppression, while Marxist Feminists see economics as primary to oppression.  As debates occurred between Radical Feminists and Marxist Feminists in the 1960s and 1970s over the causes of oppression, Socialist Feminism was birthed as an inbetween drawing from both Marxist and Radical Feminists perspectives to form one cohesive viewpoint.  Socialist Feminists look critically at both capitalism and patriarchy, bring them together into a single analysis.  This Socialist analysis critiques both class relations and sex/gender, relating them together.


The 2^nd major feminist grouping are Psychoanalytic Feminists, which include Freudian, Lacanian, and Post-Lacanian French Feminists.  All of these types of feminisms deal with the issue of difference, seeing women as other.  They focus not just on the economic aspects of power but also on the psychological aspects.  Freudian Feminism focuses on differences due to the formation of subjectivities, the category of sex, the mother who helps form a sexed self, and believe altering the psychological will change social relations.  While critiquing the psychological element of humans is of importance for analysis and can be of help in changing individual people away from capitalistic ideology, Freudian Feminism is limited in its ability to change the system.  It doesn’t seem to be too critical of the capitalistic system, and its analysis seems to forgo seeing things through the lens of the oppressive and exploitive capitalistic system.  Like Susie Orbach’s book Bodies², she seems to have a good understanding of our psychology and bodies, but she doesn’t base our psychology as due to a capitalistic system but rather on the beauty, fashion, etc. industries within the system.  Lacanian Feminism focuses on the abstract, difference due to the sexed self, language which is based on a symbolic system of differences where the sexed self arises, and the symbolic phallus which is the ultimate signifying mechanism of society.  The self and sexuality are seen as socially constructed, arising out of language and the symbolic phallus, which are both masculinized.  Lacanian Feminists believe the outsider status of femininity can’t exist outside the masculinized arrangement of society.  This makes sense; if the dichotomy of masculine and feminine are obliterated, then neither one will exist anymore.  The current state of femininity can’t exist outside the current dominate masculinized culture because femininity is based on subordination, submission, and oppression.  Post-Lacanian French Feminism rejects this notion of femininity being utterly castrated.  While French Feminism does accept the notion that femininity is an outsider status under the current arrangement of society, they believe a new, alternative language needs to be developed which destabilizes the existing order and challenges the way women are interpreted in language and culture.  Lacanian Feminism and French Feminism seem to both have slightly different angles on the subject.  Lacanian Feminists interpret women/femininity as an inferior position (which it is under the current dominate system of capitalism), while French Feminism critiques this inferior position of women, calling for a reinterpretation of the current position of women.

The third major grouping of feminists are Postmodern/Poststructuralist Feminists (i.e. Post Feminists) and Queer Theorists, all of which stress the differences between men and women and who also stress differences among women and vice versa.  As opposed to other Feminists, they really emphasis difference to the point of rejecting any sort of unity (universalism) between people.  They reject universalism as it marginalizes differences and is connected to domination and censorship.  For example, if there is unity between men and women then these Feminists see this as a way to ignore the differences between them and therefore the domination of men occurs under this “unity”.  They also reject any form of fixed categories or identities (i.e. woman, black, middle-class, straight, etc.) saying we’re all essentially different.  These Feminists are perhaps correct to state that we are all different, but aren’t we similar in some ways also?  Aren’t we all made of flesh, blood, bone, have brains which are the center of the nervous system, take in nutrients into our bodies to survive, cry, and so many other things?  We obviously have our similarities, but Post Feminists may make it sound like we have none at all.  Even under a capitalistic society which divides us into categories/identities, we still have our similarities.  Under capitalism we are ALL oppressed.  Isn’t that a similarity, even if those oppressions are different?  Under capitalism, workers predominately work under exploitive wage labor.  Now isn’t that a similarity?  While Post Feminists do reject universalism, their main focus isn’t on this sameness/difference dichotomy.  They’ve shifted their focus to the question of power wanting to destabilize and resist hierarchy.  Like Radical Feminists, I am very drawn to Post Feminists/Queer Theorists, even if I don’t completely agree with them… But I don’t completely agree with ANY one “type” of particular feminism.

The last major grouping of feminists are Race/Ethnicity Feminists who are similar to Post Feminists/Queer Theorists in that they also reject universalism, sameness, identity categories, etc. as they see it as marginalizing minority groups like blacks.  They hold to anti-assimilationist views where they see universalism or sameness as marginalizing or ignoring differences among people, which reiterates hierarchy.  They don’t see women as a unified grouping/category (for example, black women have differing political concerns compared to those of white middle class women).  While they do critique unity in sameness, they see men as potential political allies for the struggles of women where men and women are seen as becoming similar through political struggle and alliance. 

¹ Richard Wolff’s Capitalism Hits the Fan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZU3wfjtIJY

² Orbach, Susie. Bodies. New York. Picador. 2009.