Why is Mumsnet so GC?

I've never come across another space, online or otherwise, where being GC is the norm.

That says something very frightening about freedom of speech, given that most people realise that humans can’t change sex. In a healthy society, people would not be afraid to debate and question these issues.

Why are posters bringing in words like paradise and utopian.

Nobody has said that.

This is about recognising that through research (some of which was relatively new at the time paper were written, in that many early socities were matrilineal for reasons only those alive at the time could clearly say. Not just in Europe but elsewhere.

At some point it changed.

And with it women's status and independence.

The Engels Marx paper put the change down to property ownership.

Other people might say something different.

None of the points in response to the extract I posted put forward any ideas about how or why women became subjected.

If we want to change that then at least having any understanding of what underpins it, allowed it to happen.

And likewise the existence of matriarchal or matrilineal societies in the past are really interesting to think about. Maybe they were awesome in many ways. But like @TempestTost says, they weren't necessarily problem free or paradises.

It makes me think about Camus' point about the most dangerous thing being utopianism. e.g. the utopian dream of communism justifying anything because if you think you are building a perfect world you would go through anything for it. There's a big difference between noting that pregnancy/caring for babies puts women at massive risk of exploitation and saying that therefore if you changed that reality you would remove the exploitation of women. I don't think that makes Firestone wrong for thinking about it - its good as a thought experiment. But people who genuinely believe you can and should grow babies in artificial wombs etc have a place on the fringes but not leading the conversation.

Yes, some people do argue this, but it isn't very clearly evidenced. And certainly not at the time it was written. It's a history based on a theory, rather than a theory based on a history, if that makes sense. And a mythic theory at that.

In practice both patrilineal and matrilinieal societies are a mixed bag in many ways. Both in terms of who hold power, the different social structures, and sexual roles. And it's not like private property didn't exist in some of them either.

Bloody well said!

I'm not going to go on commentating, but suggest not just relying on the extracts I have quoted.

They come from a much longer analysis that accepted (which many still do) that in many cultures the early structure of society was matrilineal ie the blood line was through women. Men, whose role in conception wasn't always understood, were in a sense irrelevant.

Does anyone really think that before private property existed, as much as that was ever the case, there was no significant division between men and women?

There have been a number of interesting threads on FWR on early matrilineal societies, how and why the ended, you could read them and see that nobody is suggesting there has been a time when there was no division between men and women. More that somehow it got reversed and what had once made women primary (pregnancy, creating new life) then became a means of exploitation / oppression.

I dont understand some of the responses to the quotes I posted.

I am not a marxist(!) but was just illustrating that according to Marx the first oppression was of the sex class of women by the sex class of men.

It uses a marxist set of tools to structure itself. It is fundamentally Marxist in outlook. Which is what I said.

It's quite a stupid idea in itself though. Does anyone really think that before private property existed, as much as that was ever the case, there was no significant division between men and women?

Yes, but I think this is exactly the kind of thinking that leads to trashumanism. And it's about the destruction of women as women. Essentially, to not be exploited you need to become biologically indistinguishable from a man.

That's shaped a lot of feminist thinking outside of radical feminism too, it's the basis of a lot of the kind of anti-mother feminism that alienates so many women. And, rather ironically, ends up as a kind of handmaiden to capitalists who prefer to have women as workers. Tough in the end Communist regimes have done much the same, and have been quite open about using bc and abortion to make sure women's bodies serve the party, so the same thing really.

For Engels, ownership of property created the first significant division between men and women in which the woman was inferior.

Exactly. Biological differences take on significance as a consequence of property (eg. economic) relations. This is not the same as saying Radical Feminism is a form of Marxism.

This is sort of a creation myth though. It's historical accuracy is not particularly established, and I'm not sure that was actually important to him anyway.

Myths can be useful, but they can also be reductionist, and I'm not sure how well crafted this one is in the end. Really the idea that history is all dialectic around class struggle has the quality of being an article of faith, which when you accept it, shapes all interpretation of what is observed. But is the lens itself well founded enough to really function? I'm not so sure that it is.

If oppression on the basis of sex is in fact analogous, the does that mean the way to overcome sex oppression is to abolish sex?

You are right that some people argue that is the "solution" but the RF response is to acknowledge that sex is real and the problem is exploitation and discrimination based on facts ie women give birth, (people with little "capital" are economicallly exploitable).

So Shulamith Firestome, probably the first marxist radical feminist, tought the solution was to abolished what was exploitable in women, ie getting pregnant and proposed there could be a scientific solution of artificial wombs. (Not anything to do with current trans ideology). In other words she was accepting that men could not be trusted not to be exploitative, so the only answer was to remove the basis of exploitation (as would giving everyone a basic wage).

Yes, this is quite interesting, because he is taking his ideas about class, which are about a relation of role, and applying them to biological roles which are fixed.

I don't think it's difficult to see why some people then feel it is valid to apply to other kinds of categories like race or sexual orientation.

The other interesting element is that their idea about class is to abolish its existence, that is how to destroy class oppression.

If oppression on the basis of sex is in fact analogous, the does that mean the way to overcome sex oppression is to abolish sex?

I think you can see how that might begin to take people in some directions that we are now, much later, reaping the rewards of.

Sorry quote above was a response to

for Marxists, this would always be analysis of the relationship between social phenomena and underlying economic structure, specifically class structure.

In fact Marxism as described by Engels was about the privitisation of women, their role as mothers, and the demolishing of matrilineal socieites.

ie the first class oppression was of men by women, who became merely the means of production (children) who were then owned by men.

ie in patriarchal society men are societal capitalists

Or a metabullshit?

Do you feel the Catholics are correct then, to see sacramentalism as essential to what it means to be a Christian? Or Trnitarianism, which of course disqualifies the Mormons and JWs? Who has the authority to define the limits of any ideological movement?

I am saying that any intellectual movement has schools of thought. Marxism hasn't been one thing for a very long time, not within the 20th century even, no active Marxist I can think of maintained perfectly Marx's theoretical views, and suggesting it has been one thing is quite disingenuous, you have to know it's bullshit.

I have no argument with the idea that are what might be called classical Marxists out there, but they don't have any particular authority to define what counts as "essential" to Marxism.

Many of the neo-Marxists don't feel any compunction about simply calling themselves Marxists, I've differentiated precisely because I think, especially in the context of radical vs intersectional feminism, there is relevant difference. If it makes you feel more comfortable you can think of it as something-other-than-Marxism-which-draws-heavily-from-Marxism, but it's a PITA to write out. It really doesn't make any difference to the comparison I was making between classical and neomarxism, and radical and intersectional feminism.

Property and economics begin to play a larger part in the family, as a pairing family had responsibility for the ownership of specific goods and property. Polygamy is still common amongst men, but no longer amongst women since their fidelity would ensure the child's legitimacy. Women have a superior role in the family as keepers of the household and guardians of legitimacy. The pairing family is the form characteristic of the lower stages of barbarism. However, at this point, when the man died his inheritance was still given to his gens, rather than to his offspring. Engels refers to this economic advantage for men coupled with the woman's lack of rights to lay claim to possessions for herself or her children (who became hers after a separation) as the overthrow of mother-right~~ which was "the world historical defeat of the female sex". For Engels, ownership of property created the first significant division between men and women in which the woman was inferior.

On the monogamous family, Engels writes:

It develops from the pairing family, as we have already shown, during the time of transition from the middle to the higher stage of barbarism. Its final victory is one of the signs of beginning civilization. It is founded on male supremacy for the pronounced purpose of breeding children of indisputable paternal lineage. The latter is required, because these children shall later on inherit the fortune of their father. The monogamous family is distinguished from the pairing family by the far greater durability of wedlock, which can no longer be dissolved at the pleasure of either party. As a rule, it is only the man who can still dissolve it and cast off his wife.

The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_the_Family,_Private_Property_and_the_State

~~ Primitive communism, according to both Morgan and Engels, was based in the matrilineal clan where women lived with their classificatory sisters – applying the principle that "my sister’s child is my child". Because they lived and worked together, women in these communal households felt strong bonds of solidarity with one another, enabling them when necessary to take action against uncooperative males.

No it really isn't.

Are you perhaps meaning to describe a grand narrative, totalising narrative or metadiscourse? Of which Marxism may be one example?

Je suis Marxiste. Tendance Groucho.

I'm not sure what you are trying to actually say here. Writing what you have in no way makes it less true that there are now different schools of Marxism.

Arguably, radical feminism is a Marxist analysis grafted on to sex, although Marx himself did this somewhat too.

It's rather like a Catholic arguing that Baptists aren't really Christians because they don't believe in the Sacraments.

I love the first paragraph of this. And the second but the first the best.

Where do you see the differences?

Another vote of thanks here for Mumsnet for keeping this space open for discussion.

IRL I am retired and so can discuss this at will because no one can take away my job or income. I find it utterly terrifying that women have been persecuted out of jobs for expressing basic facts like people cannot change sex. It’s McCarthyism or Stalinism all over again and it’s a real eye opener into how quickly a society can decide what is “wrong think.”

At the moment I am reading both Wolf Hall and Life and Fate, which both deal with freedom of thought and speech, one through the views permitted on religion in the Reformation and the other through views permitted in WWII Russia. They are the same phenomenon. We haven’t got around to burning people or the gulags yet but the consequences have nonetheless been real and have prevented open discourse. This is why Mumsnet has been so very important.

Fwiw I also think the whole thing is an age and experience thing; the Uni age daughter of a friend has been fiercely TWAW but to be brutally honest, nothing bad has happened in her life yet and she doesn’t have enough experience to join the dots. When people, mostly women, grow up a bit more, it’s easy to see the nonsense and the threat. This is why protecting children from non facts is so important as they are as vulnerable to TWAW nonsense as they are to Father Christmas - they’ll believe anything.

The Times online comments section is pretty much GC. Some are 'be kind' or 'why should I care' posters that don't have a clue, who are quickly put straight by other posters.
But I don't think any of the GC people are able to express this in their workplace for fear of reeducation or dismissal. The more court cases defending the right be hold GC views the better for the rest of us.

It's the inability to TALK and discuss that freaks me out. As if reality is turned on its head and science is now incorrect.

I am so glad Justine has stood up to her bullies and let the conversation continue here. She is a really brave woman

Really? Thanks, I first clicked on it from the 'trending' section and thought it was in Chat! My bad: thanks for correcting me!