Re: AUT: Marxist explanations of sexual violence

[Michael Handelman <mhandelman1@xxxxxxxxx>]

--- Scott Hamilton <s_h_hamilton@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> 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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If we want to get more psychoanalytic and less
economic, isn't much of Wilhelm Reich's work helpful
in understanding the nature of sexual violence?

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