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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

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Please talk to me about feminism and capitalism!

152 replies

QuentinSummers · 04/08/2017 18:36

On the "what kind of feminist are you?" quiz that's been shared here a couple of times there are a couple of questions suggesting women can't become equal under capitalism.
Then the other day I read about non earners (who are predominantly women) having no value in a capitalist system.
I don't know about political theory but sure someone here will. Could someone explain how feminism and capitalism could or couldn't work together?
Intuitively I feel like our economic/political system does need to change to take into account the unpaid work needed to run a household/raise children/look after people in society who can't support themselves. What political systems would support this and how?
Thanks everyone!

OP posts:
PricklyBall · 10/08/2017 14:37

Vestal, I don't think that's what I was trying to say, though I may have been unclear. I'm not suggesting for a moment feminism should be on the side of men so as not to split. But that in co-opting and colonising ideas like intersectionality and "lived experience", the right has found a brilliant way to get the left to eat itself - as witnessed by the rise of "liberal" feminism where one attracts more opprobrium for being "whorephobic" than for being a pimp (which is cool and edgy and sex-positive and empowers women...)

I would say radical feminism still stresses collective experience and class analysis - which is one of the reasons it suits libertarians to persuade lib fems to turn against radical feminism. With radical feminism's continued emphasis on class analysis it's much harder to do a trojan horse attack from within trick, so instead you find ways of persuading what should be our natural allies (because I think that a lot of the time - not all, but a lot of the time - lib fems should be on the same side as us) to attack us.

So - lib fems want equality in the workplace? Throw them off the scent by trying to persuade them that this is a "first world concern" of "privileged white professional women".

Lib fems want prostitutes to be safer? (As do we all, though we may differ on what we think to be the most effective strategy). Throw them off worrying about the real issues (like Daria Pionka being murdered only weeks after a "safe zone" opened in Leeds supposedly to protect women like her) by turning it into "empowerment", "sex-positivity" and the avoidance of "kink-shaming".

Lib fems want transwomen to be able to walk down the street without being beaten up by knuckle draggers/sacked by the alt right? So do I. So throw liberal feminists off the scent of engaging in any deeper analysis by pretending that the issue isn't freedom from harrassment, it's an insistence that we all engage in the group-think of believing that transwomen are exactly the same as biological women, that biology is socially constructed while gender (the tool used to oppress us) is "real".

In other words, it's all a clever exercise in stopping people actually thinking about the root of the problem, while persuading them that their political beliefs are still unsullied and their moral compass still points in the right direction.

I guess in short I'm saying that the "splitting" is being done, but through manipulative means - and this manipulation is a bad thing because it means we (collectively) take our eye of the ball, not because it's automatically a good thing to avoid all splits for the sake of it and to all sit in a circle holding hands singing Kum-ba-ya.

QuarksandLeptons · 12/08/2017 23:00

These two articles are good food for thought on the OP's original question about feminism and capitalism.

They explain why feminism doesn't need to be in thrall to male centred left wing ideology. How the liberation of women can be socialist on its own terms without pandering and being stopped by male centred socialism.

www.feministcurrent.com/2017/07/12/pitfalls-trying-get-male-left/

wlrnmedia.wordpress.com/2017/07/23/in-response-to-erica-wests-the-pitfalls-of-radical-feminism/

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