AUT: Marxist explanations of sexual violence

[Scott Hamilton <s_h_hamilton@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi autopsy and revo-readers,

Does anyone know of any work by Marxists on sexual
violence (that's the general term the experts use to
cover everything from rape to incest to harassment at
work)?

I have been helping someone employed by a sexual
health group do some research and formulate some
viewpoints on this issue. For me, it is essential to
take a broad and materialist view of this issue - to
transcend the narrow empiricism - the uncontextualised
statistics and reproduction of faddish homilies -
which compromise much of the work I have seen.

The leap from analyses of the likes of unpaid domestic
labour and women's role in the reserve army of labour
to explanations of actual sexual violence is a great
one. I have been trying (proabaly ineptly) to make it
by focusing on ideology - that is, on the ideological
reproduction of women's economic place in capitalism
via the operation of empiricism/commodity fetishism. I
figure that the presence of sexist ideology - which,
of course, comes in many forms, from Baptism to
political correctness to ostensibly liberatory guides
to being a 'superwoman' - is a necessary condition for
acts of sexual violence, and that credible claims can
thus be made about a 'material base' for sexual
violence in capitalist society.

If the base often makes itself felt indirectly,
through the agency of ideology, it may also make
itself felt directly, by ensuring an environment that
encourages such violence (the 'privacy' of the
family-as-economic-unit and the economic dependence of
many women on men are cases in point here).

Does anyone have any thoughts, references?

Cheers
Scott

=====
"Revolution is not like cricket, not even one day cricket"

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