Radfem 2013 and the MRAs

Ok, let's assume you're right Lazarus and a good deal of the oppression women have suffered has been biological, unintentional or due to societal circumstances that are somehow spontaneous - as we are able to do so can you give a good reason why we shouldn't try to remove that oppression as much as possible from as many women as possible? Or is this oppression something you think women should just suck up?

"If you were on the losing side, it didn't turn out very well."

Absolutely... Just saying that it is important to remember that violence has a huge part to play in the roots causes of social inequality.. it is not just a natural flow occurring within a free market between equals where one person had a surplus of wheat after a good summer- violent seizure of other's goods or exploitation of labour is how you end up with a surplus in most cases...

Absolutely Mini - and Bess is often presented as if her achievement was merely marrying her way up from one richer husband to another, rather than the reality which was that her management of their assets made each one richer.

Mini It seems that missing from your historical analysis of class oppression is violent seizure/war & rape as genocide - the historical of slaughtering rival men, taking 'their' women as sex-slaves and baby factories and how this played a part in economics.

The violent capture and keeping of slaves/concubines is interwoven with the othering and low social status of women.

Ah, I see what you are referring to. I think the problem is that activities such as spinning, carding, weaving, etc, were not seen as "work" as such, just things that women had to do. This changed later, as you say, when whole industries were set up.

ooh, I agree about estate management......Bess of Hardwick, what a woman

alex, from reading it seems that with agricultural surplus came rising population because a larger population could be supported. With increasing population comes the need for more surplus which meant a need to "modernise" and find new technologies. These technologies lead to increased specialisation, plough technology led to larger areas of land being covered, the practice spreads and as it does so means women are increasingly taken out of the equation to specialise not in work out of the home but work within the home. Later of course "women's" work within the home such as wool spinning, basket making etc, became socialised again and we see a move from cottage industry which entailed making for use with only smaller quantities for exchange to making for exchange only rather than for use. The industrial revolution is when production moves from use and exchange to production just for exchange.

(btw I don't mean you when I say 'many people', Mini - I was thinking more of the people who buy into the 'men worked, women stayed at home' simplification.)

Women of the ruling elite in Tudor England worked as managers, effectively - they did jobs running houses (ie big ones with hundreds of staff), estates and businesses that would now be relatively high status and well paid, but because it was women doing it, many people don't even realise it was work at all. Go figure....

Mini

What makes you think that women's work "was increasingly private within the home"? (genuine question)

Men did not work alone in agriculture. Women were there in the fields right alongside them, often right up to giving birth and again immediately after. Wet nursing was not just a practise of the rich - it was also something that poor women did, with one woman feeding several babies so that their mothers could work.

LRD it wasn't engrained in the culture prior to the industrial revolution.

If you go far enough back sexes at one time were seen as equal.

As time went on various pressures were brought to bear.

One pressure would be the hand over/take over of power in a family. (doesn't have to be a monarchs family).

This time was quite fraught in the family. The head (male or female) would hope the linage would pass to their selected heir, but internal strife could occur.

At the time child birth (even pregnancy) was quite likely to end up in the mothers death. Thus a male head was proably prefrable, this is just practical, not some sort of sexist behaviour.

Likewise, a woman head is going to provide the heir. If she is unable to, we end up with dramas again. As Henry VIII proved, if you can't get teh heir you want you can swap wives (in various ways!). This would allow for a clear line of inheritance. If the bloke is unable to furnish himself with an heir it is still possible for his wife to provide one...

Bastard children could be acknowledged as heirs... women can't have such children.

This practical reason denied women (in the majority) from reaching such positions, thus expensive education was also removed from many. They just didn't need it.

None of ths is some sort of plot by men to hold women in a lesser place. Yes, it happened, but not for the reasons many would hope we were foolish enough to believe.

Women don't 'need' a dowry, mini. There is absolutely nothing to do with being born with a vagina that means you need someone to pay money to your future husband. The dowry system arises because society oppresses women and treats them as property

The dowry arose because women were exchanged within the class system, a system that excluded women from the exchange/market that would lead to the accumulation of property & disallowed matrilocal inheritance. The dowry was protection for the woman. It was the only property she took with her from her family, should she be returned to her family through divorce that dowry went with her.

I agree LRD that women have always worked. (excluding perhaps women of the ruling elite who had slaves and later servants) Even bringing up children is work, horticulture and small animals ( paleo-bronze age) sewing, basket weaving, pottery. Women became marginalised not from production but from "social production" after men settled and created agricultural surpluses, this led to further specialisation, agriculture relied upon more hands, more babies, more food available meant they could feed more children, population boomed. Ploughs and surpluses created markets for exchange, exchange led to wealth and because women's work was increasingly private within the home, the wealth became concentrated with those who not just created it but were involved in exchange in the social sphere of the market. I really don't think men thought, "right lets keep the little women at home and beat her into baby making". That "ideology" of inferiority came after the material conditions led to the division of labour btw public/social; and private. The ideology had the effect of perpetuating and entrenching those inequalities.

I'm really enjoying reading this thread

I like that idea mooncup.

I also like that 'the Middle Ages' seems to go from something like second century AD to about 1700, but then, Oxford university always had ridiculously long time-spans too, so I can't get too worked up.

lazarus - ooh, thank you. I am glad to see you realize your errors. A basic primary school history textbook should help, next time.

Why do you think modern re-enactments represent those trades? And what does it have to do with anything?

My personal view is probably the one sabrina expressed.

Women don't 'need' a dowry, mini. There is absolutely nothing to do with being born with a vagina that means you need someone to pay money to your future husband. The dowry system arises because society oppresses women and treats them as property.

If it were due to the economic system purely, men would also need dowries just as often. Plainly, it must stem from misogyny therefore.

I think mini has pretty much said what I feel far better than I can at this time.

LRD, well done. Your arguement is so compelling. Have you thought of a reason why modern re-enactments would represent those trades? Or do you thnk we should have a few town beggars, and other un-skilled trades thrown in for good measure?

Maybe the village leper could be wandering around in bandages.

In an arranged marriage, men are not used as chattels on the basis of their gender.

Neither were women, they were chattels on the basis of their SEX.

female infanticide: would that not be due to the fact that female off spring would need to have a dowry. Again, its due to the economic/class system that excluded women from property rights. Some time after we moved from matrilocal to patrilocal inheritance because marriage allowed for men to know with some certainty that the babies were related to him. I don't think it stems from misogyny, although misogyny upholds and perpetuates the practice.

'When LazarussLozenge "Why do you think women stayed at home, whilst men worked? Sexism in action or just a common sense response to the practicalities of life at the time?" I happen to agree.'

But they didn't. This is the point. Unless you think sexism only came into force with the industrial revolution, this model doesn't work. This is why I have a problem with trying to make the historical basis of women's oppression the most important thing to look at - we simply don't have the history to tell us when and why it happened. It was ingrained in culture long before it became more usual for work to happen outside the home. It endures no matter how this job, or that job, becomes male-dominated or female-dominated, becuase the structure of work is not the root problem. The root problem is the oppression of women.

"infamouspoo Sat 27-Apr-13 12:32:46

hmmm, perhaps Lazarus would care to explain the long history of female infanticide and now the abortion of female babies and why this doesnt happen to male babies?
And then tell me men have had it as bad."

Hmmm. Why do you think this happened? Because of some sexist idea or for a practical reasons?

This sort of discussion method doesn't really lend itself to such wide ranging topics, response are not instant, nor are they heard by all. Others can jump in and turn the whole thing in to a mess quite easily.

Mini I think trying to pin the existence of MRAs on radfems is a bit grim. Radfems aren't responsible for other people's misogyny

Sorry, when I asked my original question about the cause of the MRA backlash, I was being lazy. I don't think the backlash is caused by Radfem blogs, rather I think there is a dialectic btw the two. One is not the cause of the other in a linear cause and effect way.

If you reduce everything down to biological determinism or even to (another example) capitalism V socialism you end up with an antagonism. It is impossible to say that one is as a response to the other in a linear causal way. Only historical social process leads to consensus where one wins out. Consciousness is key but so is the process of antagonism.

Women have been fighting their subjugation for a very long time because it is historical, the process of subjugation is historical and is not based on biological determinism but from the division of labour that sprang from practical necessity. Women shaped society and the relations btw men and women just as much as men. There is a dialectic btw both material base structure (economic/mode of production/technologies/human development) and the super structure (ideologies, ideas that shape social relations, religion, feminism, patriarchy theory and even marxism !) & the relationships btw men and women. The relationships are structures by that two way dialectic btw base and super structure.

When LazarussLozenge "Why do you think women stayed at home, whilst men worked? Sexism in action or just a common sense response to the practicalities of life at the time?" I happen to agree.

So whilst I don't blame Radfem conferences or blogs for the phenomena of MRA, both create an antagonism and a dialectic, both will be shaped in response to the other.

To simply close ranks and only discuss theory and opinion with others that validate your opinion leads to more antagonism not solutions. However necessary that antagonism is to the social process, it also relies upon the idea of gradual change through consciousness. If we want to see change we have to be in dialogue with the opposition. Retreating through any form of separatism be that in conferences, blogs, daily life or activism entrenches the problem further. Rather than doing anything that further creates antagonism, radicalisation and deepens the rift, we need to be looking at how we can break down those divisions, be they social or material. Women working is a great example of this were it not for the fact that middle class women entering production displaced working class men. But that is due to capitalism not just to women themselves in their quest for equality. Production shapes social relations, just as the social relations shape production. We need men to understand & not feel marginalised and join the MRAs. The answer for me is more feminism but my caveat is that it needs to be socialist not radical (IMO)

You know, I didn't even think that.

I was too busy with those Roman swords in the middle ages with the longbows, the 'mid-wifes', and the gamekeepers.

It was a lovely image, I think I've seen similar at the Renaissance Fayre.