Re: AUT: Re: Why Women Do the Drudgework

[Katha Pollitt <kpollitt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Harald,

Yes of course, true equality for women in capaitalism would mean that
women took on many more social roles than they now occupy. So in that
limited sense, "criminal" would be one of those social roles, and there
would be more female prisoners -- as, presumably, there would be also be
more women physicists and car dealers (and male secretaries and
kindergarten teachers) . I have written this myself.  However, that
wasn't all you said.  You linked this growth of women prisoners to
women's capacity to enforce their own liberation. To which I can only
say, harald, look at the people who are prisoners now.  they are the
LEAST equal people, the people LEAST able
to enforce their own liberation: blacks, Hispanics, poor people,
alcoholics, drug addicts, and the mentally ill.  the things people do
that land them in prison are typically not about enforcing their own
liberation, they are just desperately flailing about in a stew of
violence and misery, hoping to make some money by robbing a store.  Poor
black people mostly kill other poor black people etc.
  the romanticization of criminals -- which I still think you fall into
when you link jail with "enforcing one's own liberation" -- has a long
unhappy history in the American left. That's why I respond so strongly
against your post.


     --- from list aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---