Radfem 2013 and the MRAs

[MooncupGoddess]

As many of you will remember, the Radfem 2012 conference in London was explicitly open only to born women and consequently attracted lots of condemnation and anger from people who saw this as transphobic. It was kicked out of its original venue at Conway Hall and went underground (very successfully in the end).

This year Radfem 2013 has not explicitly banned transwomen... but instead it's come under attack from Men's Rights Activists, who have staged a demo at the planned venue, the London Irish Centre, while making lots of unpleasant and ridiculous claims about how radical feminists want to murder small boys and the like. As a result the venue is threatening to cancel the booking.

www.mralondon.org/

bugbrennan.com/2013/04/20/statement-from-rad-fem-2013/

I have mixed feelings about the whole trans issue but have no hesitation in declaring the MRAs utter misogynist knobbers and am disappointed the London Irish Centre has seemingly caved into them.

I am not suggesting that we work backwards. Because I find historical materialism intuitive (and for me simple) I am always working forwards.

An analogy, why are some countries still pre-capitalist? ie third world and still largely undeveloped along industrial lines? why did capitalism happen here first and why did the industrial revolution happen in Britain? because the pre-exsisting relations btw classes and the existing mode of production, the fact that the peasants became the proletariat when they had no land to farm created the conditions for new forms of production and new social relations. So everything is always moving forwards.

In India and some areas in the east where pre-capitalist production was not feudal in nature capitalism exploits the historically specific and backward forms of production and exchange to its advantage. BUT things move on as can be seen now the peasants are being expelled from the land (that no one actually owns) to make way for capitalist forms of production. The shanty towns are being raised and in their place flats and offices are built. The proletariat are created, they are now propertyless and require employment for wage labour.

But India has a class system (caste ?) and women have appalling rights but strangely there are more women in politics than here.

If you cycle back to the civil rights movement, women were involved in politics. It isn't necessary to want to have power over others and sit in Westminster. To do so may only extend a few rights to a few women and always within the existing socio/economic class system that creates inequality.

Of course there is lots of evidence for fertility goddesses etc... but is there any evidence that there has ever been a truly equal (or indeed matriarchal) society? I've read Engels on the subject but thought his position was generally seen as rather ill-supported (but would love to hear more of this if I'm wrong).

Yes, I know there is evidence for fertility goddesses ... but I think in thousands of years people might very well look at statues of the Virgin Mary in a similar light, and we all know that Catholicism is not deeply, deeply committed to women's lib.

I disagree that everything is always moving forwards. That seems to me - historically - to be a meaningless statement. What is 'forward', who gets to define progress? What backwards movements do we have to ignore to define this progress? It is an artificial way of looking at history, to say that we constantly move fowards, IMO.

I would like to believe we always move forwards but I know it is not so.

My brain can't do English lit or retain anything like.......syntax I was grappling around wondering what had changed in the English language that made some books seem Greek to me.

Well, my syntax can be shocking.

I think to be honest, I am just not up to this. I'm sorry - I'm trying, and I can see you're trying to simplify, but it's over my head.

Do you think we might think Mono-theist religions aren't sexist at some point in the future. I hope not, if that is so we might still be oppressed.

I recently read Gerda Lerna (again after many years) and she wrote about some of the finds that had been made by archaeologists. They had found the small stone carvings of women with huge bellies, some squatting as though in labour. Apparently many women within domestic settings kept these stone deities for luck long past the creation of "god" as male creator of all life. Seems to me that men in early pre-history may have been both amazed & suspicious of women giving birth but by the time of state formation and writing, building temples and cities I think they would have understood perfectly well how babies were made. I think it was Aristotle who thought women were immoral and had to be guided, his ideas stemmed from the idea that both slaves and women must be ruled over to protect the property rights of the man. Of course by this time there was a fully formed class system.

It's possible we might not even know they were monotheist, I think.

We don't really know how the cultures that made women-goddess figurines thought about religion. In fact we don't know for certain those figurines are goddesses at all.

It's just an interpretation - one that suits us nicely because we like to make pictures of an idyllic past and patronize it slightly at the same time. But we don't know.

I think far into the future, people will probably be equally ill-informed about us.

Engles, really difficult to read. I have read some but I found it very hard work. MooncupGoddess I take my hat off to you if you have read a lot.

I did read a while back that more recent anthropologists are looking at archaeological and newly found artefacts of all kinds and increasingly concluding that Engles was more correct than not. I'll see if I can remember where I read this and link.

I do think, btw, that it is always a spectrum, understanding stuff like how babies are made.

In Tudor times, there wasn't a consensus about when women were fertile.

Even later, people still thought female reproductive organs were basically a penis turned inwards, because women were a repressed, wrong-way-round echo of men.

And it's only within the last couple of generations that we've learned that sperm don't just swim towards a passive waiting egg, they're actively pulled in the right direction by the woman's body.

Obviously all of those things aren't equally significant bits of knowledge, but I think it is quite telling that we are constantly realizing that our assumptions are shaped by what we expect about sex relations. So I find it hard to accept we can trace 'progress' in any meaningful way through history.

I'm not certain. It is tempting to think that we have reached the apex of civilisation, I'm sure at every point in history we have thought this. It might be fear of the unknown. I mean, what comes after the revolution (what the hell is a revolution anyway.......can't happen in a single day) we look back and think that peasants walked off the land on Monday and got a factory job on Thursday and yet it was years in the making. same with the French revolution, it didn't happen in a day, the conditions existed that propelled the change forward. I think we'll have lots of historical sources in the future but we might lack the insight to understand the events fully. Plus history is always written for the ruling class ( men always rich) it is never a complete set of factual truths. How could it be because to study every account however subjective might build a full picture but how do you knit it all together into a complete objective understanding.

Yes, do, Mini, that would be great. I've only read The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State which I loved.

Surely what you describe is progress in scientific knowledge, though, LRD? Or have I missed your point?

I guess eggs had to be passive because women were meant to be passive. You, know its all down to the men, the active ones to get the job done.

Yes, that's sort of what I mean ... I think we always reckon we can look back at history and say 'ahh, yes, it was then that the true progress occurred/the shift began'.

I don't say this to be defeatest. I am aware that we currently pretend we're getting around this by being ever so carefully qualified in what we say. And it is very fashionable to talk about how one's analysis of, say, chartism or the Peasants' Revolt is actually teaching us more about our own preconceptions and so on.

But we still do it, we still make pronouncements about those historical events.

I am fine with this so far as it's history. I am less fine with the idea that a political ideology is invalid because we cannot know the root causes of the patriarchy. Even if we could suddenly discount the way history works, and achieve a blinding trans-historical insight into those root causes, I don't believe it would change how we fight the patriarchy. I don't belive it would make the patriarchy more, or less, of a root problem in our modern world.

MooncupGoddess, wow. Taken hat off. I have only read exerts but its on my to do list. I'll have a scout back through my history on PC and look and see if I can find what I was reading.

Sorry, my last was to yours of 22:22, mini.

Yes, absolutely about 'passive' eggs. It is bizarre, isn't it?

mooncup - yes, what I describe is progress in scientific knowledge. I was responding to mini saying that by the time states and class systems had developed, we knew how babies were made. I am not sure things coincide so neatly, as I think we keep on learning more.

I am also trying to say that I think what we consider to be 'knowledge' (scientific or historical) is conditioned by our contemporary preconceptions (no pun intended). So, people thought they 'knew' how babies were made for centuries. But we keep making new discoveries that re-frame the old certainties.

It is quite likely more such discoveries will be made and we will again find that we have to reassess.

These discoveries don't all go in the same direction, though. People get the wrong ideas, or forget about a good idea for centuries (is it Lucretius who thought the world was composed of tiny particles or 'atoms'?). We live in a particular moment in time, and we naturally see everything from that point in time. So we arrange the past, conceptually, in terms of progress towards our current ideas. And that is a distortion. Inevitably.

This is why I want to get back to political ideology, rather than seeking root causes in prehistory. The political ideology that patriarchy is a system of oppression, is never going to change. People might give up on it as an ideology, but in itself, it isn't subject to change. Therefore it is qualitatively different from, say, the perception that women are born less intelligent than men, or the idea that the earth moves around the sun.

Btw, I really appreciate you both being so patient with me!

Tell me to quiet down if I'm doing that thing of wandering around a discussion being incoherent, won't you?

Yes, identifying progress in political/economic terms is very different from identifying scientific progress, because one has to decide on the criteria by which it's judged and it's hopelessly subjective. It's easy to see political history as being on a bumpy upward ride towards the nirvana of liberal democracy... but liberal democracy, even if the best of our options so far, isn't a panacea for all the other problems in society.

Agree re limited relevance of the roots of patriarchy.

Sorry, x-post - I see what you mean about our understanding of scientific progress being inexorably distorted by the lens of the present. Though I still think that some types of understanding are more distorted by the lens of the present than others - otherwise one just ends up in a post-modern heap not able to draw any conclusions about anything.

(Aristotle of course thought that sperm were actually little homunculi containing all the material necessary to become fully functioning humans. Women just provided a cosy warm environment for the sperm to develop into a baby. Aargh!)

Oh, absolutely, I agree some types of understanding are more distorted than others. And I agree about the dangers of said post-modern heap. Which is why I like political ideology, and why I don't think it is necessary or valuable to compromise that ideology if it's something you truly believe is right.

Compromise all sorts of things - but compromising ideology really means re-writing it. There is no point unless you believe it's right.

Aristotle has a lot to answer for.

I can't imagine swallowing whole the party manifesto of the labour party. But I know how the labour party came into being and why. I know what it was a response to. I am more likely to accept the ideology (I don't because its sold out)

I can't follow the ideology of the radfem until I can understand what that ideology is in response to. It came about as a response to something and that something is both historical (non specific in terms of time/place) but not rooted in any material fact what so ever. This is why I struggle with it. It is aHistorical but at the same time exists

Well...... patriarchy came out of somewhere for it to exists. If it didn't come from somewhere then it can't be proved to exist beyond being a narrative we use to explain the social relations as situated within that superstructure (where all thoughts and feelings exist outside of but in relation to the material base structure)

Fair enough, mini. Is this perhaps just a difference in how we all think?

I wouldn't swallow Labour's party manifesto either. I'd also see their manifesto not so much as a political ideology, but as an application of that ideology that involves plenty of compromises.

I'm trying to think why I don't mind not knowing why the patriarchy happened, and I admit, I'm not sure.

But I don't feel any struggle to understand what radical feminism is a response to, because it is obvious to me that women are oppressed as a class, and that is enough for me. In the same way that, even if I didn't know anything at all about the history of race relations, I like to think I would still feel that discrimination against black people (or whoever) is wrong.

I don't see the issue. I don't see how the patriarchy (which is a structure explaining how the world works) has to 'exist' in the same concrete, historical terms as, say, the Labour party. I don't think the ideals of any political party 'exist' in that concrete, historical sense either, do they?

I am now imagining little sperm sized humans Aristotle was a twerp.

Awww, but they'd be cute little sperm-sized humans.

I can't help seeing them as tadpoles, really. Not a pleasant thought.

Hmm, I think we have different perspectives on this, Mini. I certainly find that knowing the early history of the Labour party helps me understand its subsequent development, but it doesn't make me more likely to accept its ideology. Similarly, whether I know where Communism or neoconservatism came from doesn't significantly affect my critique of them.

Isn't radfem ideology simply a response to the world we see around us which privileges men and invents gender roles to keep women down? I guess your objection is that it isn't rooted in the means of production, so for you as a Marxist it's not a legitimate ideology...?

I do get the feeling we are dignifying the MRAs in this situation quite a bit - is that just me?

We are discussing ideologies - am I unfair to think that, although I can see there is a set of beliefs MRAs put foward, they are to a fairly big extent really just pushing an ideology no more complex than 'WTF we don't like these women'? I could be being mean. I've just never met a sensible man who sees things in such ridiculous terms as that bloke Mike Buchanan, or for that matter most of F4J.