Class analysis...

bertrand

I said that men are in the position to make society better for everyone, and choose not to. Men are victims of male violence too

Well a lot of men aren’t really in a position to decrease other men’s violence. Men in positions of power sure, but not most men. It’s not that men don’t want to (although I’m sure some don’t give a shit) but it’s not clear what they can do. Other than raise their sons to be none violent

" the rape culture it bolsters is everywhere"

Oh dear

"men are in the position to make society better for everyone"

Positive sexism is still sexism, as well as being untrue.

Beachcomber you have literally just proven my earlier point yet again.

Your objection to my point is completely based on the fact that you find it offensive, rather than on the merits of the argument.

This is why we should teach critical thinking as part of the national curriculum.

Class analysis is not trying to answer why there is a problem with e.g. male violence. It is simply identifying that e.g. male violence exists. If you want to investigate all the whys and hows and nuances involved it first needs to be identified as a thing that exists. That is what class analysis does.

Its a small minority of men that commit the vast majority of violent crimes and rape.

I challenge you on this statement. Because it is way too simplistic. The culture of male violence and the rape culture it bolsters is everywhere. I don't think there is a women alive who hasn't experienced the culture of male violence against girls and women. The very fabric of society is a normalized all pervasive culture of male violence against girls and women.

Trying to pretend that the problem is a "small minority of men" is ridiculous.

Am just reading through the thread but had to stop to go OMFG at the below from PatriarchyPersonified!

There is no logical difference between what you have just said there and someone saying that they should treat all black people in America as potential criminals.

Do you not see how offensive it is to say the above? You are saying that the action of women observing and experiencing male violence throughout their lives and then having the temerity to not trust strange men is akin to ignorant racism.

FFS

@PatriarchyPersonified the risk of violence towards women is not imaginary.

Devise a better way for women to manage the risk instead of complaining about sex segregated spaces.

"But history shows us that doing the analysis and actions has seriously improved the lives of lots of people."

Bit of a false cause fallacy here. Peoples lives have massively improved in the last 120 years for lots of reasons: technological and scientific advancements for one (mainly accomplished by the evil white men in subjects that people now want to see 'decolonised')

I find it hard to believe that academic theories like intersectionality have made anywhere near as big a contribution.

Or even that class analysis has been responsible for Western societies gradually becoming more progressive.

Class analysis is not useful because it hides nuance which is usually crucially important to the issue that one is attempting to understand. Look at things in terms of populations / demographics is obviously a very useful technique, but class analysis as usually performed isn't nearly granular enough to get at the truth.

For example, saying "men, as a class, are more violent than women" is true. It's also close to useless at giving any insight, and leads to inaccurate generalisation and misdiagnosis of the actual issues.

Aggression, as a psychological character trait, is not too different on average between men and women. Men are slightly more aggressive on average. But the two populations overlap hugely - so much so that basing any policy or analysis on "men vs women" is meaningless and misleading.

At the tail ends of the distribution, however, there is enormous difference. The most violent people are almost always men. The distribution of aggression among the male population is hugely variable.

This is a subtle, but crucially important distinction, because the question becomes not "why are men more violent than women" but "why are a small proportion of men way more violent than everyone else".

Class analysis is fine when it tries to incorporate the required level of detail and granularity in its workings. But most people who wield it don't, because they're not interested in truth, only in narrative.

Btw , giving females and males separate facilities by is actually treating both groups exactly the same whilst respecting that they are different ( in case you hadn't noticed sex) . women's loos have SAN bins and men's have urinals because we are different. But we both have equal access to loss and equal amounts of privacy.

Class analysis is a tool to help you identify that discriminatory generalisation said are taking place and a mechanism to try and work out what actions would reduce the problems.

If /when people stop treating people badly based on class assumptions then we might not need to do analysis and response based on class. This is a bit chicken and egg. But history shows us that doing the analysis and actions has seriously improved the lives of lots of people.

Its interesting to let the usual suspects on here tie themselves into knots trying to justify their 'special pleading' style postions.

Special Pleading

They can be summarised as:

Treating someone differently in a negative way based on nothing other than a personal characteristic over which they have no control is completely wrong. (Unless the characteristic is sex and they are male, in which case it's absolutely fine and reasonable.)

🤔

"men as a class are more violent than women as a class"

I don't generally see WATM when people post the above.
But I do see it when people post "men are violent".
It might be the same thing to some, not to others.

Most of us are brought up, and it's reinforced by much of the media, that broad generalisation about such groups as women and ethnic minorities is a bad thing, to be avoided, and leads to prejudice.
Class analysis is very similar isn't it?

I don't think I would ask that men as a class take responsibility for improving the rights of women. I would expect all classes to do so, but I might expect more from those more in A position of power and less from those who had other problems

"I don’t think that’s what’s being asked. What’s being asked is that men acknowledge the issue, and are open to talking about the issues that spring from it. Such as how every power structure is set up to benefit men. And they acknowledge that even non violent men benefit from it"

The discussion here is starting to sound awfully like "white fragility" theory, except with "male" in place of "white".

For those that don't know, white fragility argues that racism isn't something people do, it's something that white people are - automatically, by default they are racist.

The argument is that western society was built via slavery, colonialism and exploitation of other races. The white people of the West got rich and that wealth continues to trickle down and benefit whites today, as do the legacy structures and systems in place.

White people are privileged and better positioned to suceed via their inheritance of this wealth/systems. Therefore by inheriting these systems and not questioning the structures or their history then they are automatically racist.

Telling white people they are unconsciously and automatically racist and their shock/surprise at this news is the "fragility" aspect.

Their denials are proof of their guilt.

We saw this play out when Munroe Bergdorf made the comments that got her sacked from Loreal, how very similar her line about the white race being the most violent on earth is the the line I quoted a few posts above! ""White males kill, torture, and abuse, more than any other demographic.""

She then went on the BBC and complained about having to defend her opinion vs the "facts and figures" used to counter her claims by Andrew Neill and the other "middle aged white men" of the panel (Ed Balls and Michael Portillo. "My lived experience > your facts and figures" she complained! Just let that sink in for a moment.

White fragility theory is utterly racist. It's also totally orwellian - using someones denials as proof of their guilt.

Where I do not understand class analysis is where it leads to ‘your ideas are less valid than mine as you have more privilege’.

Larry, but that "check your privilege" mentality is not class analysis. It's identity politics.

I do get angry that the poor in this country get a rough deal, that wealth inequality is dreadful, and that many of our resource problems could be reduced if good jobs migrated north

However it would not surprise me to find that within a group of the same level of wealth that you can still identify that women end up worse off /treated less fairly than the men. My personal experiance would be that women the poorest parts of our society are treated much worse than those in the middle classs. ( on average)

People who don't get class analysis often accuse those doing the analysis of pigeon holing and victimization.

Which is deeply ironic.

When feminists do class analysis we do not create the categories "subjugated women" and "dominating men" - we simply examine these status categories as power institutions created by male supremacy.

So feminists get accused of being the ones doing the generalizing when what we are actually doing is observing and commenting on how society generalizes.

And for victimization let's take the example of prostitution. Feminists get accused of victimizing prostituted women. But it isn't feminist analysis which victimizes prostituted women; the institutions of misogyny and prostitution are what victimize prostituted women.

So there is a weird reversal with anti feminists accusing feminists of doing exactly what feminists analyse Patriarchy as doing.

One of the reasons for this is IMO the interfacing of ultra capitalism with neo-liberalism. AKA "There is No Such Thing as Society".

Individuals have no political power. They can be socialized into being compliant consumers and workers. It's anti Marxism. Current identity politics have the appealing appearance of being about individuals but they aren't really. They are about divide and conquer. And the people doing the dividing know very well which class they belong to (and intend to remain in) whilst they deny the existence of class for others.

It's a backlash to class politics. Feminists consciousness raised by using the utterly brilliant "the personal is political" analysis. Nowadays we are socialized to think that the political is personal. It's a total and intentional reversal and extremely powerful.

"It sounds like you are asking them to take responsibility for and prevent acts of violence they have nothing to do with."

One class having an obligation to protect another class, due to the nature if their birth. Sounds like a restrictive gender role to me.

Not sure quite how this is relevant, but it occurs to me that it is easy to imagine an alternate universe where it is white people who are much more likely to be violent, and black people who are nervous/frightened of them. (Actually, the American South not that long ago might fit the bill for this.)

Whereas there is no (realistic) alternative universe in which men would be more frightened of female violence. Naomi Alderman's The Power aside. In that book, all women walk around equipped with inherently greater strength and the ability to do serious damage. Like it or not, in real life (nearly) all men walk around equipped the same, even though the majority choose not to use it.

I don’t think that’s what’s being asked. What’s being asked is that men acknowledge the issue, and are open to talking about the issues that spring from it. Such as how every power structure is set up to benefit men. And they acknowledge that even non violent men benefit from it

I personally disagree. Every power structure is not set up to benefit men, it’s set up to benefit white middle and upper class men.
The poor in this country are shafted, female, male, it’s much worse if you are not white but it’s still shit.

in the same way that some people just can't understand the notion of class some people can't do empathy.