Are women a sex class?

[talkingdeadscot]

I've always known that women are a sex class but apparently I'm wrong. Am I?
The person I was discussing this with is adamant that women are oppressed but in the same way men are oppressed, by power structures in a capitalist society. This may be true but I also know that women as a class are oppressed by their biology and the expectations society places on them because of their biology. And they are oppressed by the sex class of men. Is that what patriarchy is?
I've since worked out that this is one of the reasons they don't see trans women in women's spaces as a problem because if there's no sex class of women then it's all about power structures in wider society that we're all subject to (trans women included) so women and trans women need to be allies.
For me, there are 3 axis of oppression - class, race and sex. Of course I understand about intersectionality (the pre bastardised sort) but these are what I understand as the main categories.
So, am I right? Or is it a particular strand of feminism that doesn't believe women are a sex class? (This person says they're a feminist, a better one that me because I'm exclusionary) If I'm wrong, why? What should I read to expand my knowledge?
I don't think I'm wrong by the way, but they have a Phd and I have an A level so I always feel I'm wrong

If women were only oppressed in the same way men are oppressed, by power structures in a capitalist society, then in non-capitalist countries women (and men) would not be oppressed right?

So in China, Communist party leaders and members of the national Congress are equally females and males are they?
In this non-capitalist country, female foetuses get aborted in their millions because of a one-child policy coupled with boy preference because....?

In other non-capitalist countries like Russia, where the Putin administration has openly called feminism a "mortal sin" - women face no oppression based on their sex and that alone? It's all about capital distribution is it?

Sorry but the person you're discussing this with is ignorant.

Your friend seems to hold two opposing views at the same time, a Scrodingers Feminist;

• women don't exist as a discrete group, and
• women are oppressed enough to need a movement to advocate for specific rights needed by women.

How does your learned friend explain the fact that women had to fight to get the vote? I bet you a tenner they waffle on about how not all men had the vote at that time then change the subject.

Is it a bad faith argument? Sending you to do the legwork and bring proof from his lofty heights and then tell you the proof is not good enough?

I see the way transwomen are oppressed. It bears no resemblance to the way women are oppressed.

Some transwomen may be superficially treated the same if they "pass", but women's oppression is based on assumptions about our biology.

We were told we couldn't vote because of out brains, that our periods made us irrational and unreliable, that childbearing made us a workplace risk.

It's all about biology, not some "feminine essence".

@SunflowersInTheShade

Is it a bad faith argument? Sending you to do the legwork and bring proof from his lofty heights and then tell you the proof is not good enough?

Hahaha, I was very careful not to identify they are male but yes, it's my soon to be exH. I know I'm right but I'm an uneducated, working class woman so what do I know???? And how can you profess yourself to be a feminist if you don't even recognise women are a sex class and what that means? Drives me nuts and then I can't articulate myself properly. Then I feel stupid when I know I'm not!

Or is it a particular strand of feminism that doesn't believe women are a sex class?

A bogus one. Of course women are a sex class.

You’re right and they’re wrong/arguing in bad faith.

And your friend’s a bad analyst of capitalism to boot. How do they account for what happens to women’s labour?

If your friend thinks it’s just capitalism that is so oppressive how come:

• women were the legal property of men under both feudalism and capitalism and in non-Western precapitalist societies
• women historically have provided labour for free for men
• women were oppressed under feudalism, ancient imperialism, agrarian societies etc etc. (If it’s capitalism that’s the problem, why weren’t women equal citizens in Athenian Greece, for example?)

I wouldn’t bother much engaging with this person, who sounds like they just want a game of one-upmanship argument with you. There’s plenty of historical evidence to support your position and not much to support theirs. What I’ve learned about woke / intersectional thinkers is that they like the twisting around of devil’s advocate arguments more than anything else, and have no interest in coming to a good faith, properly researched argument that attempts to make a truth claim. So you aren’t going to win - just ignore.

(Not that it's actually relevant, but I've got a PhD if that helps)

What's the Phd in?

In my experience (exH) the PhD was an excuse to stay on at University and drink more rather than get a job.

A PhD doesn't mean they are more intelligent or more educated than you, they just game the system. For my exH it meant he was arrogant and felt he could look down on my 'poorly educated' self. 🙄

Exhibit A: What you have here is a man with a superiority complex.

Apologies and acknowledgment to all those with PhD's that don't fit that criteria, I know it's hard work, and you need a novel idea to even get started.

@EarthSight

What's the Phd in?

History of poverty in the UK.

I guess I used to admire him because he was an educated man who practised what he preached (I thought).

Over the last year I've realised he is stupid in many ways but he still manages to make me doubt my arguments.

Oppression or NO oppression, it doesn't matter, forget about the oppression Olympics argument, they need to use their eyes and acknowledge all the things that biological females experience in their daily lives. If they can't be bothered to do that, it says more about them.

@BunnyBerries

Oppression or NO oppression, it doesn't matter, forget about the oppression Olympics argument, they need to use their eyes and acknowledge all the things that biological females experience in their daily lives. If they can't be bothered to do that, it says more about them.

Yes, you only have to look at what's happening in Afghanistan now to see that it's the sex class of women who are suffering. Men and boys are also suffering of course, but they aren't being taken out of education and losing their freedoms in the same way.

How does your husband categorise rape and sexual abuse in societies that aren't capitalist?

When you are arguing with someone, it's important to ask yourself what kinds of incentives they might have to hold that opinion. What's the driving force there? What do they have to gain, if anything?

It seems to me that by framing women's oppression as being the same as men's (both products of capitalism, apparently), he gets to erase women's sex based oppression at the hands of individual or collective groups of men entirely and instead frame it as purely the product of a system.

Even if you don't believe there's a shred of difference between men & women's psychological traits, one thing us for sure in ANY society, capitalist or not, and that is that men are generally significantly stronger than women. A lot of men across the world use that to their advantage to enact depraved sexual fantasies that have nothing to do with capitalism.

It's a non-question. The sex class clearly exists, far more sharply delineated than any human class you can conceive of.

Go on, try to name a clearer one. Alive vs dead, maybe? (Rich and poor certainly don't exist as clearly)

Not having a name for a sex class would be ludicrous. Not even that - it would have to be a truly Orwellian suppression to stop it arising.

Almost every language in existence has 'male human' and 'female human' among its oldest words. I can't actually think of an exception. Can anyone?

What could be more fundamental to a mammalian species acquiring conciousness and speech?

But when they get to a certain level of education, such mammals can't half spout some shit.

And thank you, I'm still smiling over 'schrodingers feminist'. I'll think of that every time he starts his nonsense.

History of poverty in the U.K.?!? In history or in economics?

I’m a historian with a PhD, and I tell you he is just trying it on. He can’t possibly believe what he’s saying; he’s messing with you (or else he’s a really shit historian 🤣)

What period does he work in?

@foxgoosefinch

History of poverty in the U.K.?!? In history or in economics?

I’m a historian with a PhD, and I tell you he is just trying it on. He can’t possibly believe what he’s saying; he’s messing with you (or else he’s a really shit historian 🤣)

What period does he work in?

In history, specifically 17th Century.

I really can't understand how he can believe what he's saying but he certainly appears to. He says I'm illogical and I say the same to him.

He is such a disappointment.

Wow. Yes, I can see why he’s soon to be exH!

Ask him how many women writers, philosophers, natural scientists, theologians, classicists and historians were published during the seventeenth century, and why he thinks so few were women? And then ask him if he’s read any of the ones who were published, and if not, why not. (I bet he hasn’t.)

Commiserations. He sounds an insufferable dick.

Actually, don’t bother asking him anything. It would only give him an opportunity to drone on. Just think how nice it will be when he’s an ex.

@foxgoosefinch

Actually, don’t bother asking him anything. It would only give him an opportunity to drone on. Just think how nice it will be when he’s an ex.

Yep, counting the weeks till March

I've read your other threads and I'm glad you're making 2022 the year to lose this excess useless weight.

I also have no PhD but but I am a woman and I do have a Google machine and a little knowledge of feminist literature. In 17th Century UK women were still the property of the men in their lives be that father, brother or husband.

I'm guessing he didn't read A Vindication of the Rights of Women when he was doing his PhD? "I shall first consider women in the grand light of human creatures, who, in common with men, are placed on this earth to unfold their faculties"

I'd ask him two questions

1. Did he get his PhD from a Kinder Egg?

1. If women are not a distinct sex class, where did he come from?

Luckily for you women in the UK are able to divorce their husbands now unlike 17th Century UK and unfortunately still many countries around the world because of our distinct sex class.

I don’t think oppression is limited to sex, class and race. I think there may be other things like disability, intelligence, specific interests (eg urban vs rural, North vs South, specific industries).

@Namenic

I don’t think oppression is limited to sex, class and race. I think there may be other things like disability, intelligence, specific interests (eg urban vs rural, North vs South, specific industries).

...also nationality, religion, educational status....