Class analysis...

[BertrandRussell]

Why do people find it so difficult? Am I being too simplistic and missing something?
White people as a class have more power than black people as a class.. Men as a class are more violent than women as a class. Is there anything controversial there?

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

It doesn’t matter if it’s a tiny minority (and I’m not actually sure it is tiny)

Where there are no female specific loos, rape and sexual assaults rise hugely.

Thus in the situation of women’s bathroom and toilet facilities, sex segregation is proportionate and justified.

When men as a class stop raping entirely we can reopen negotiations on the bathrooms.

If I decided that my life experience and crime statistics meant black people were more likely to be criminals, i would be entitled to put in place whatever boundaries i wanted to, to protect myself.

Class plus situation equals response.

But this is the thing; class analysis can lead individuals to a certain action or response.

But then we have to extrapolate that action or response out to a class level to see its effects to see whether or not it is a valuable response. It can't just be that "this is how people are going to be because of the results of class analysis".

If you want to make things better you have to extrapolate the action taken to see if it will help or hinder things at a class level. If you stop at simply justifying it on the basis of class analysis you fail at appreciating the effects of those actions at class level!

IMO the best action and the ones tat should be promoted are the ones that have the greatest class benefits, although that obviously doesn't always work for the individual.

RatRolyPoly 1 in 5 women have been raped or sexually assaulted since they were 16. If you take into account rape and sexual abuse from when they were underage, the figure is much higher.

This does not include women simply being made to feel uncomfortable or intimidated by inappropriate behaviour from men.

It is absolutely reasonable for women to treat strange men as potential rapists or abusers given the context. That is why we are aware of who us around us at night, why we don't accept lifts from strangers, why we meet first dates in public, why we have single-sex spaces where women are vulnerable (eg hospital wards and prisons) and need privacy (toilets, changing rooms).

Are you saying women should not take the precautions?

To conflate with racism is a nonsense.

I was only conflating with racism in response to a pp who used the example of black crime in the US.

It is absolutely reasonable for women to treat strange men as potential rapists or abusers given the context.

It is reasonable for individual women to treat strange men as potential rapists or abusers.

But is it the best thing for women as a class?

And actually, women are far more likely to experience sexual and physical abuse from intimate partners than strangers of acquaintances; we're less likely than men^ to experience it from strangers and acquaintances; shouldn't we only be treating intimate partners as potential rapists and assaulters?

What i'm saying though is the individual woman may feel she is benefitting sufficiently from acting a certain way that it outweighs the negatives for her. But is it beneficial for women as a class to live that way? Do the benefits outweigh the negatives?

The problem is, if you ask that question you get accused of not caring about the individuals, or told them no benefit to women as a class is worth the assault of one single woman. And I do understand that - it's hard - but you can't hold up class analysis on the one hand and then ignore it on the other.

...or told THAT no benefit to women as a class...

Not "them"

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

It is not a small minority of men who refuse to accept or do anything about it rhough

Babel

I don't think introducing situation helps your argument.

Let's imagine I'm in the US and I'm in a high crime area (i.e a situation where crime is more likely) I am approached by a black person. Am I justified in treating them differently than if they were white because black people statistically commit more crime?

Why not? I have now introduced a situational root into the scenario as you requested.

It's still intuitively unfair and wrong to do so.

Your example is an individual situation.

Bathrooms are a class situation

bertrand

I also find the fact tht many men won't accept that "as a class men are more violent than women as a class" (AACMAMVTWAAC) Incredibly frustrating because it means they can wash their hands and carry on, rather than doing what they can to change it. Men have the power to make society so much better yet they (as a class) choose not to

Well you are talking about an individuals take on your class analysis (which isn’t about individuals). So you can see why the class analysis gets misinterpreted at the individual level.

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

Like some people blaming the Muslim faith for a terror attack. Why didn’t Muslims do more to stop extremism etc. Well most of the 2 million Muslims in this country don’t know anyone linked with extremism.
You can ask people to stop violent acts that they have nothing to do with.

"It sounds like you are asking them to take responsibility for and prevent acts of violence they have nothing to do with."
That's certainly not what I meant. But I do think that if you accept that you are a member of a class that, for example, commits most of the violent crime, you should look to see if your behaviour-the way you parent your sons, for example, contributes in any way to that. And if there is you can do to change the trajectory of your "class".

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

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.

Back to the racism analogy - I don’t think I’m racist. I acknowledge racism exists. I acknowledge that I’m probably unaware of a huge number of issues connected to it because it’s not my lived experience. I acknowledge that power structures in the West are set up to favour white people over people of colour. I call it out when I see it and I’m open to people of colour telling me what is and what is not an issue because they are the ones who live with the consequences day to day. I wouldn’t dream of telling a black woman how to feel about racism - she gets to tell me, and I get to listen and understand more and asses my actions and experience in the light of that.

Right now men are just saying namalt. Refusing to engage. Denying. Derailing.

"White males kill, torture, and abuse, more than any other demographic."

What utter nonsense and typical of the nonsense spouted on this thread.

We live in the West, which is predominantly white. Our news media mainly reports on news stories which happen in our Western first world predominantly white society.

You have very little to no idea what is taking place on a daily basis in non white cultures/societies/regions

Let's imagine I'm in the US and I'm in a high crime area (i.e a situation where crime is more likely) I am approached by a black person. Am I justified in treating them differently than if they were white because black people statistically commit more crime?
*
Why not? I have now introduced a situational root into the scenario as you requested.
*
It's still intuitively unfair and wrong to do so.

So if it's 5:30am and I've gone out for a run (alone, obviously), and I see a man walking towards me...

Is it 'intuitively unfair' of me to cross the road, and run faster? When I wouldn't do that if it was a woman walking towards me?

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

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.

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.

"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.

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"

You appear to be forgetting that men are also the victims on men's violence.

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)

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 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.

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

"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?

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.)

🤔