Re: From Patriarchy to Sexism (was Re: incompleteabstractionvs.empiricism)

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx 11/01/00 01:00AM >>>

What needs to be explained, however, is change -- the change from
patriarchy (an ideology of universal subordination) to sexism (an
ideology born to justify a _special case_ of unfreedom & inequality
_in the face of the revolutionary bourgeois theory of political
liberty & equality for all_).

(((((((((((

CB: Perhaps it can be explained similarly to the origin of capitalist slavery and eventually racism, which occurred at about the same time as the change Yoshie describes. At the original accumulation of capitalism, the new bourgeoisie hit upon combining wage-labor and oppressed-labor in one mode of production or division of labor. Oppressed-labor included unpaid women's labor , and sexist ideology was its rationalization. Similarly, racist/white supremacist ideology was the rationalization of the enslavement of Africans, and the colonialization of the colored peoples of the world. Both of these special false consciousnesses or ideologies were necessary to overcome the simultaneous general revolutionary bourgeois theory of political liberty and equality for all , as Yoshie mentions. That is there was need for a special rationalization for making women and people of color an exception to the general ideology of equality, as in the Declaration of Independence , etc.