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

@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).

Of course and where it's relevant I would reference those and any others I could use. I do though think it's useful not to chuck everything into the pot so to speak unless it's relevant to what you're saying.

This is where intersectionality (ie cross over - NOT meeting point) actually matters - sure capitalism oppresses everyone, but when you add being a woman too - and therefore in many times and places either overtly or covertly excluded/restricted from participating in capitalism you're obviously further oppressed than those that aren't (men)

I'm sorry OP, but from the tiny snippets you've said, it sounds like your husband enjoys thinking he gas the intellectual upperhand on you, and it sounds like he's arrogant and thinks he's smarter than you, especially when I read this -

He says I'm illogical

He might genuinely just say this to people he doesn't agree with because he doesn't see the logic of the argument. Or, he might be saying this to you, a woman he doesn't agree with because your pretty head can't understand such lotfy matters. I hope it's not the latter. :/

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

It would be worth exploring the process he used to pick you and teach you to defer to him. Once you can see it, you'll be able to spot it next time before you get hooked.

@Thelnebriati

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

It would be worth exploring the process he used to pick you and teach you to defer to him. Once you can see it, you'll be able to spot it next time before you get hooked.

I picked him (second marriage) and I really thought I'd got it right this time. He seemed a gentle, intelligent, caring man.

Unfortunately, because my health deteriorated I didn't notice soon enough that his gentleness was actually inertia. He doesn't communicate with me (not since the first couple of years) and we don't mean the same thing when we say the same words. I've also discovered he's a liar, has run up debts and continually ignores any agreements we've made. He's no loss really.

I am though, very disappointed in myself, that I still couldn't get it right. My lack of confidence is mine to own, I don't think he's undermined me on purpose but he has been a really rubbish human being. I now have to start again (again) at 60 and am never getting into a relationship with a man again. But it's worth it to keep my integrity intact.

Tell him, men cannot be feminists, they can only be feminist allies. So he's wrong right there!

Take the opression angle out. Women are a sex class in that there are all kinds of things that affect them particularly in relation to their reproductive role.

All kinds of groupings can be made of course but some are more fundamental than others. In human beings sex is probably one of the most fundamental natural groupings.

If your friend is saying that women don't have economic or political or social concerns related specifically to their sex class, he's an idiot. That being said, there are some things that affect women that are probably more closely tied to particular economic structures, or that also affect men but it manifests a little differently.

In very unintellectual, basic terms, the moment someone starts the word salad in a conversation I know they've got a political agenda, what follows is largely going to be woke and to the purpose of dismantling women's rights, and I discover an urgent need to go and wash my goldfish's hair or something.

It's like being approached by Mr Mybug in Cold Comfort Farm demanding to have a long, fascinating debate with you about whether women have souls.

@TheWeeDonkey you win the internet today

"Did he get his PhD from a Kinder Egg?"

It's like being approached by Mr Mybug in Cold Comfort Farm demanding to have a long, fascinating debate with you about whether women have souls.

🤣🤣🤣 This is perfect, @Artichokeleaves — thank you!

Ask him what the situation would be if a Queen and some random Bob were the only survivors of a plane crash on a desert island. What would happen if they didn't know who they were? Or they did and expected rescue? Or they thought were the only people left alive but remembered who they had been? To what extent is the hyperthetical Queen free of the threat of unwanted pregnancy in all those scenarios? You can solve the capitalism problem for men, but there is a whole sexist domination problem left once that is out of the way. Your ex sounds like a dick btw

It takes a special kind of stupidity to be blind to the fundamental asymmetry of the reproductive burden faced by women as a sex class.

Not all women will give birth, but every single human being is born from a woman, and this ALWAYS implies a personal cost which is NEVER shared by any man, ever.
No man has ever died from fathering a child. No man has ever suffered crippling, lifelong injuries from fathering a child. No man has ever experienced excruciating physical pain from fathering a child. No man has ever been hospitalised from fathering a child. No man has ever seen their physical mobility reduced for months from fathering a child...
Even in an entirely fair society, women would still be at a personal disadvantage due to their biology. Giving birth to the next generation of human beings is an essential role that can only be fulfilled by women, and for which some still pay the ultimate price.
Even with modern medicine, giving birth remains, for many individuals (excluding people in particularly dangerous occupations, e.g. firefighters, etc.), the single most dangerous activity that they will take part in over their entire lifetime (i.e. chance of dying in that single 24h hour period is higher than on any other day... with only one exception: being born is even riskier than giving birth)

On top of all this, society is NOT fair, and actively discriminates against women, precisely because they alone can carry that reproductive burden. It is a known risk, which means women have been, and still are (despite such discrimination being illegal in the developed world), excluded from certain activities. In some parts of the world (Afghanistan, anyone?), their "reproductive role" is in fact pretty much the only activity women are allowed to take part in.

... This is just scratching the surface, just to say: of course, women are oppressed as a sex class, and only someone who has never experienced or witnessed that oppression (and happens to be singularly lacking in imagination and observation skills) could be blind to it.

Not all women will give birth, but every single human being is born from a woman

YY, very well said.

It's also worth recognising that in the UK 80% of adult human females will give birth in their lifetime.

Mothers are an extremely significant group.
Ignore us at your peril.

@talkingdeadscot Sounds like another candidate for the first few chapters of Material Girls ;-)

[quote LightningJenny]@talkingdeadscot Sounds like another candidate for the first few chapters of Material Girls ;-)[/quote]
Oh I've tried everything. The fundamental problem is he thinks he's right (of course he does, he's a man) so there is nothing that will shift his opinion. He's a committed socialist (one of the Labour members that were expelled in the early 80's), fiercely political, his work reflects his values. But, this means he just has too much of his identity tied up with his politics and being 'on the right side of history'. Being one of the 'good guys' and for him, transgenderism IS social progress.

It means nothing to him that I am also a socialist and that plenty of socialists don't accept this ideology as reality. I've had to rethink everything and remove myself from political movements. I've had to reevaluate my whole political thinking just in case I'm wrong. Apparently plenty of women agree with him and indeed, have remained in the movement. That is enough confirmation that he is right. To hell with what his own wife thinks! Even when I said it's basically gaslighting to tell me that I must now accept a penis can be female he retorted that I'm gaslighting him by telling him it isn't and never can be! How can you argue with that level of obtuse??

There is no discussion that can be had because we don't speak the same language. But, despite it all, he still manages to make me feel stupid. So, I breathe, calm down, rediscover my equilibrium and ground myself in reality (material reality!) and know deep down that I am right.

Thank you all for giving me a space to help with that

There are plenty of daft brocialists out there - misogyny has always been the Achilles heel of many socialists. It’s one of the reasons I left the Labour Party too.

He’s a bad Marxist though if he thinks that women’s material experience and reproductive capacity doesn’t render them a distinct sex class under capitalism. He should go away and reread his Marx and Engels, and some Marxist feminism to boot.

Sorry that you have to put up with this twit, OP. One thing I’ve been really surprised by throughout the emergence of the who gender ideology debate is how closely my existence and experience as a woman is tied to my self - to the extreme that it feels like my allegiance to being female is stronger and more essential than just about any other aspect of my existence - class, culture, political beliefs, etc. I now can’t vote for Labour even over this and feel totally alienated by leftist politics as a result - something younger me would never have imagined. Obviously not all women may feel like this, but I think quite a lot do.

I really think men underestimate just how much sex is an inextricable part of our experience and selfhood, more so than any other kind of allegiance. The fact that they seem totally bemused at how strongly women feel about this is really telling. And if that isn’t evidence of women being a distinct sex class, I don’t know what is.

He’s a bad Marxist though if he thinks that women’s material experience and reproductive capacity doesn’t render them a distinct sex class under capitalism. He should go away and reread his Marx and Engels, and some Marxist feminism to boot

Funnily enough, he told me I should read Engels again!

it feels like my allegiance to being female is stronger and more essential than just about any other aspect of my existence - class, culture, political beliefs, etc

Me too, I take it all so personally because it is personal. My whole life has been determined in many ways because I'm female. I'm 60 now so things were so different when I was young. I was bought up a Catholic, I was in care, I was pregnant at 16 and the opportunities that were open to me were not the same as were open to my brothers. That was made clear to me over and over again.

I've stood alone many times even though that sounds dramatic. I've tried to reject Catholicism (although it seems at times it's always there). I kept my baby when the Church wanted to take him away from me. I discovered feminism via my library when I was 20 and loved Dworkin and Greer and many others. I voted Labour and championed Labour policies when all in my family and community were Tory. I threw my first husband out even though apparently it was a sin to do so and no one helped me. I had relationships with women and then men again. I brought up 4 children on my own and cared for my mother till she died. I could go on...... And now, when I say that men cannot become women I'm again on my own, even my daughter isn't with me. That's ok though, I still stand with all women even though they don't always want me to.

As for my stbexH, everything is theory to him, he's had a nice middle class life. I'm sure it's had it's challenges in different ways but he's always had the support of wider community and allegiances. That's a nice place to be.

And in my last post, I realise that the description I gave of him is the version I fell in love with. The version I live with now is someone completely different and I don't like him at all.

@talkingdeadscot

He’s a bad Marxist though if he thinks that women’s material experience and reproductive capacity doesn’t render them a distinct sex class under capitalism. He should go away and reread his Marx and Engels, and some Marxist feminism to boot

Funnily enough, he told me I should read Engels again!

it feels like my allegiance to being female is stronger and more essential than just about any other aspect of my existence - class, culture, political beliefs, etc

Me too, I take it all so personally because it is personal. My whole life has been determined in many ways because I'm female. I'm 60 now so things were so different when I was young. I was bought up a Catholic, I was in care, I was pregnant at 16 and the opportunities that were open to me were not the same as were open to my brothers. That was made clear to me over and over again.

I've stood alone many times even though that sounds dramatic. I've tried to reject Catholicism (although it seems at times it's always there). I kept my baby when the Church wanted to take him away from me. I discovered feminism via my library when I was 20 and loved Dworkin and Greer and many others. I voted Labour and championed Labour policies when all in my family and community were Tory. I threw my first husband out even though apparently it was a sin to do so and no one helped me. I had relationships with women and then men again. I brought up 4 children on my own and cared for my mother till she died. I could go on...... And now, when I say that men cannot become women I'm again on my own, even my daughter isn't with me. That's ok though, I still stand with all women even though they don't always want me to.

As for my stbexH, everything is theory to him, he's had a nice middle class life. I'm sure it's had it's challenges in different ways but he's always had the support of wider community and allegiances. That's a nice place to be.

And in my last post, I realise that the description I gave of him is the version I fell in love with. The version I live with now is someone completely different and I don't like him at all.

Wow, what a powerful post. I think you've got more than enough experience of how your sex has affected your life to make you an expert on the subject.

The man is not worthy of you and I'm glad you see that. God how disrespectful to counter your lifetime of adversity with academic talking points.

Apparently plenty of women agree with him and indeed, have remained in the movement. That is enough confirmation that he is right.
Well there's this

mobile.twitter.com/talkRADIO/status/1476131289870778374

And the screenshot attached which shows most people agree with you OP....