KRITIQ thank you for the links. I am just reading Chitra Nagarajan and several things struck me.
My pleas for us to focus on poverty, race, immigration status, exclusion and marginality are taken very seriously........people think ?that?s interesting? for a few minutes, to offer the illusion of diversity and to lend legitimacy with the melanin in my body to whatever is taking place
Feminism that fails to tackle the very worst most pressing and dire forms of oppression that effect the most disadvantaged women fails in its own mission.
I wanted though to concentrate on what Nagarajan lists as areas of disadvantage, poverty, immigration (status) exclusion and marginality. Poverty and immigration share in common the fact that they are not culturally defined but socially defined. Exclusion and marginality, I am assuming that Nagarajan would define these culturally.
I don't accept that racism stems from cultural differences and therefore I would argue that exclusion and marginality are the cultural manifestations of class exploitation under a capialist system that seeks to hove off groups, creating some that are super exploited. Slavery or more recently the maquiladora factories along the U.S boarder, many argue that the exploitation stems from racism but the exploitation of workers is colour blind in so far as we are all exploited but some groups are further disadvantaged. Not by skin colour or culture but because they lack social power, social power being the accumulated wealth of previous exploitation.
As a feminist, even I conclude that feminism is like many other "isms" post 70s, essentially single issue activism centred around women's liberation. A movement that fails to alleviate the subjugation of ALL women would seem to be failing. A movement that fails to listen to the different experiences of all women, failing to create equality amongst women stands little chance of achieving its mission because it lacks the methodology and tools to tackle inequality. But its mission is to tackle gender/sex inequality, no one ever claimed that feminism would tackle global warming, stagnating wages, rising poverty, racism and bring down the state!
But we have many single issue groups all proclaiming that their very own, very specific and very individual battles should take special precedence. This draws us to conceptualise oppression as being a result of cultural, racial, sexual and theocratic differences. We have new political groupings reactionary to established movements, a recent invention "the MRA groups" which is reactionary to the feminisation of labour, falling wages and rising male unemployment. In what way male unemployment and impoverishment is meant to benefit working class women is a mystery to me but the MRA think we women are celebrating a great victory.
I believe that people are encouraged through the study of history, modern media, education and mainstream politics to accept a cultural explanation, which is why feminism has to some extent made the great gains that it has for white middle class women. Liberal feminism in particular is very much in keeping with the aims of neo-liberal economic policy and political ideology. Liberal feminism is very much extended into the mainstream and not just because we women are shouting and getting our message over. If anything it is more to do with changes to the mode of production under capitalism and an acknowledgement that in the short term women could be further exploited both as cheaper labour and uber-consumer.
This cultural hegemony which goes unchallenged disallows us from starting to concentrate on what we have in common. To do so would require a different methodological approach, a theory that would explain the origins of all oppression.
The fascinating thing to me is the question of whether there is a progressive purpose to this period of liberal single issue politics where not only has feminism disowned its left wing roots but where women themselves are divided along class, race and theoretical lines. Maybe it is evolutionary in some way or maybe it is simply a product of neo-liberalism and beneficial to capitalist class exploitation.