Women's movements fighting for gender and sexual liberation: Difference between revisions

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Prerequisite: Comment to the Privilege Walk.
'''Outline'''


Comments on the Privilege Walk. Intersectionality
- A Marxist-feminist analysis of women’s oppression and exploitation


WOMEN'S MOVEMENTS FIGHTING FOR GENDER AND SEXUAL LIBERATION
- Gender, sexuality, intersectionality: the question of oppression in a broader framework


I. A Marxist analysis of women's oppression
- Women's liberation struggles


What are we learning from our classics? Marx and Engels "Origin of the family, private property and the State" - Dialectical and not cultural or psychological<br> material analysis of gender difference - sexual division of labour - importance of reproduction - an intuition on the family<br>
Concepts that will be taken up and updated by femsoc in the 1970s and by the current TRS<br>
Origin of the oppression of women<br>
Societies analysed in written history, all patriarchal, of different forms in combination with the mode of production<br>
Examining other pre-historic societies: discussion among anthropologists and archaeologists on the interpretation of resources<br>
Consensus on the existence of nomadic communities, gatherers and harvesters, more egalitarian, before the Neolithic and the existence of private property<br>
Analysis of pre-colonial societies gives us clues, not certainty<br>
Conclusion. Gender relations are not a fixed and eternal fact but vary according to history, environment and production methods<br>


II. Sex, gender, family, violence<br>
'''Readings:'''
1. Gender identity is socially constructed<br>
2. The family<br>
The family changes in time and space -> we can imagine another Role of the family in capitalism:<br>
- economic : daily and generational reproduction of the labour force, consumption of goods<br>
- social : refuge, damping of tensions caused by exploitation and alienation<br>
- but contradictory - ideological and psychological :<br>
gender, discipline, status quo certification ---→ to obtain this : gender violence against women and dissenting sexual identities<br>


III. New feminist movement and its antecedents<br>
[https://4edu.info/index.php?title=%27%27%27Friedrich_Engels%27%27%27,_Origins_of_the_Family,_Private_Property_and_the_State Excerpts from Friedrich Engels, Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State] in [https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/preface.htm Preface to the first edition, 1884]
Women have always struggled in popular movements<br>
We speak of feminism when they struggle with a gender consciousness<br>
We speak of a wave when the mass of women is concerned and a large part is mobilized with strong effects in society<br>
1. First wave - in Europe - in the colonized countries struggles for legal equality, suffrage, access to education and employment<br>
2. Second wave - the staff is political - role of psychoanalysis - sexual liberation of women and LGBTQ subjects - symbol construction and androcentrism<br>
3. Today Third wave - departs from the peripheral countries<br>
- independently of other social opposition movements (not in the wake of...)<br>
- in a context of multiple crises: economic and financial, social, environmental, reproductive,... where women, having conquered rights and freedoms in the 20th century have the most to lose<br>
Feminization of social movements - relationship between the two<br>


- Characteristics of the 3rd wave:<br>
[https://fourth.international/en/world-congresses/11th-world-congress-1979 World Congress resolution 1979 “Socialist revolution and the struggle for women's liberation”] read [https://4edu.info/index.php?title=Resolution_from_11th_World_Congress_(1979):_%22Socialist_revolution_and_the_struggle_for_women%27s_liberation%22._Fragments. Fragments]
new generation, political movement, intersectional, importance of LGBTQI issues, centrality of the issue of macho violence, structural.<br>
theoretical reference to the TRS and constructivist eco-feminism.<br>
appropriation and transformation of the traditional workers' movement's tools of struggle: the feminist strike, the spaces of mutual aid and new mutualism, social reproduction as an issue of class struggle.<br>


* Excerpts from [['''Friedrich Engels''', Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State]]  
[https://fourth.international/en/international-committee/666/299 IC Resolution 2021 New Rise of the Women's Movement]  


* '''Adrienne Rich''' [[Criticism of heterosexuality]]<br>
[https://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article3718 Remarks on Gender (Cinzia Arruzza)]  


Adrienne Rich (1929-2012) - poet and radical feminist<br>
Her first book on feminist issues was: '''Of Women born; Motherhood as Experience and Institution'''(1976)<br>
This text is an extract from the essay '''Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence''' published as an essay in 1980 <br>
and republished in her book '''Blood, Bread and Poetry''' (1986).


* [http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article2407 What is ecofeminism? Interview with Yayo Herrero]
'''Further readings'''


* [https://4edu.info/images/d/d3/Kumari_Jayawardena.pdf Extract from: Kumari Jayawardena: 'Feminism and nationalism in the third world', chapter 4: Women's struggles and "emancipation from above" in Iran]
[https://4edu.info/index.php?title=Criticism_of_heterosexuality Extract from the essay Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence Adrienne Rich Criticism of heterosexuality 1980]


* [https://4edu.info/images/f/f9/Tithi_Bhattacharya.pdf Extracts: Tithi Bhattacharya, "Introduction: Mapping SRT" in Social Reproduction Theory & "How not to skip class: social reproduction of labor and the global working class".]
[https://4edu.info/images/f/f9/Tithi_Bhattacharya.pdf Extracts: Tithi Bhattacharya, "Introduction: Mapping SRT" in Social Reproduction Theory & "How not to skip class: social reproduction of labor and the global working class".]
 
[https://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article2407 What is ecofeminism? Interview with Yayo Herrero]
 
[https://4edu.info/images/d/d3/Kumari_Jayawardena.pdf Extract from: Kumari Jayawardena: 'Feminism and nationalism in the third world', chapter 4: Women's struggles and "emancipation from above" in Iran]
 
[https://archive.newpol.org/issue34/brenne34.htm Johanna Brenner “Transnational Feminism and The Struggle for Global Justice”]
 
 
'''Quotations:'''
 
''Fourth International Resolution: On Lesbian/Gay Liberation 2003 ''https://fourth.international/en/world-congresses/540/173:
 
Heterosexism is rooted in the heterosexual, patriarchal family institution characteristic of capitalism. The family is the ‘primary socioeconomic institution for perpetuating the class divisions of society from one generation to the next’, in the words of the 1979 resolution on women’s liberation. In the form it has developed under capitalism, it ‘provides the most inexpensive and ideologically acceptable mechanism for reproducing human labour’ - by using unpaid, largely female labour to care for the young and old as well as working-age adults - and ‘reproduces within itself the hierarchical, authoritarian relationships necessary to the maintenance of class society as a whole’. This family form is particularly oppressive to women and children.
 
''Cinzia Arruzza, Remarks on Gender 2014''
 
To say that within capitalist society women’s oppression and power relations are a necessary consequence of capitalism, and that these phenomena do not have their own independent and proper logic, is not to support the absurd argument that holds that gender oppression originates with capitalism. What is being defended here is a different argument, tied to the particular characteristics of capitalism. Societies in which capitalism has supplanted the preceding mode of production are characterized by a profound and radical transformation of the family.
 
''Simone De Beauvoir The Second Sex (1949)''
 
One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. ... Biology does not determine what makes a woman a woman—a woman learns her role from man and others in society. Woman is not born passive, secondary, and nonessential, but all the forces in the external world have conspired to make her so.

Latest revision as of 15:32, 18 November 2022

Outline

- A Marxist-feminist analysis of women’s oppression and exploitation

- Gender, sexuality, intersectionality: the question of oppression in a broader framework

- Women's liberation struggles


Readings:

Excerpts from Friedrich Engels, Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State in Preface to the first edition, 1884

World Congress resolution 1979 “Socialist revolution and the struggle for women's liberation” read Fragments

IC Resolution 2021 New Rise of the Women's Movement

Remarks on Gender (Cinzia Arruzza)


Further readings

Extract from the essay Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence Adrienne Rich Criticism of heterosexuality 1980

Extracts: Tithi Bhattacharya, "Introduction: Mapping SRT" in Social Reproduction Theory & "How not to skip class: social reproduction of labor and the global working class".

What is ecofeminism? Interview with Yayo Herrero

Extract from: Kumari Jayawardena: 'Feminism and nationalism in the third world', chapter 4: Women's struggles and "emancipation from above" in Iran

Johanna Brenner “Transnational Feminism and The Struggle for Global Justice”


Quotations:

Fourth International Resolution: On Lesbian/Gay Liberation 2003 https://fourth.international/en/world-congresses/540/173:

Heterosexism is rooted in the heterosexual, patriarchal family institution characteristic of capitalism. The family is the ‘primary socioeconomic institution for perpetuating the class divisions of society from one generation to the next’, in the words of the 1979 resolution on women’s liberation. In the form it has developed under capitalism, it ‘provides the most inexpensive and ideologically acceptable mechanism for reproducing human labour’ - by using unpaid, largely female labour to care for the young and old as well as working-age adults - and ‘reproduces within itself the hierarchical, authoritarian relationships necessary to the maintenance of class society as a whole’. This family form is particularly oppressive to women and children.

Cinzia Arruzza, Remarks on Gender 2014

To say that within capitalist society women’s oppression and power relations are a necessary consequence of capitalism, and that these phenomena do not have their own independent and proper logic, is not to support the absurd argument that holds that gender oppression originates with capitalism. What is being defended here is a different argument, tied to the particular characteristics of capitalism. Societies in which capitalism has supplanted the preceding mode of production are characterized by a profound and radical transformation of the family.

Simone De Beauvoir The Second Sex (1949)

One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. ... Biology does not determine what makes a woman a woman—a woman learns her role from man and others in society. Woman is not born passive, secondary, and nonessential, but all the forces in the external world have conspired to make her so.