Older men and younger women

[John Edmundson <JWE21@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I've unfortunately (and accidentally) deleted the digest where Lou P responded
to my last post, so I can't repond in detail to the specific points he makes.
Suffice it to say though that he infered much that I didn't actually say. Non
sequitur seemed to be the most common device employed.
Lou P cites cases in Afghanistan and other third world countries to support his
case that relationships between older men and younger women are "potentially"
oppressive.
Such relationships are obviously nothing like the case of Nicolle Smith however.
I am perfectly aware of the injustices that occur in many places around the
world. My mother in law was 14 when she married her 48 year old husband and
commenced immediate breeding. Her life is a classic example of the tragic waste
of potential that affects women in many third world countries. But neither
Nicolle Smith nor the women whom Healy pursued were in anything like the
situation people like my mother in law or the women described in Lou's post
were. To suggest that there is a useful parallel here is absurd.
Of course women are still exploited in New Zealand. Women consistently earn less
than men - on average - for example. But things have changed here which must
surely lead us to reassess the theories we have relied on in the past to explain
women's oppression. In New Zealand, as I think Phil F may have already noted,
the Prime Minister is a woman,
the Leader of the opposition is a woman,
the attorney general is a woman,
the head of the largest private corporation is a woman,
the head of the largest government department is a woman,
the mayor of the largest city is a woman,
the chief justice is a woman.
Politically, these are the top jobs in the country. Economically, quite a few of
them are also dominated by women. To this we can add the minister of health, the
associate ministers of health, the deputy leader of the government's junior
coalition partner, the co- leader of the government's key non-government ally in
parliament. We have by far the largest proportion of women in parliament that we
have ever had. One of the most conservative provincial electorates in the
country elected a transsexual woman first as mayor, then as member of
parliament. I'm not trying to pretend that women have gained absolute equality,
despite some leading women politicians and feminists having hinted at this. What
I am saying is that the theory of patriarchy as a key element of capitalism is
seriously in need of review. Capitalism in New Zealand has no problem giving any
and all of the top jobs to women. This is not like when Thatcher was around and
we could say, "Well she's an aberation, one woman in power doesn't change
anything." What is more, there is no sign of a reactionary backlash against the
success of women in these jobs. Is this a characteristic of patriarchy?
Yoshie's suggestion of a need to address issues like the age of consent is an
excellent one. Questions around sexuality, like age of consent, prostitution etc
need to be studied anew if we are to have an informed position on the nature of
gender in capitalism in the 21st century, rather than carrying over the outdated
theories of the 20th. Things have changed. In New Zealand, we don't have places
where sodomy is illegal, where sex is illegal until age 21, as I understand
still applies in some US states. So these things need to be looked at again by
Marxists, rather than adopted by them from the feminist movement. In the third
world, a low age of consent is seen as a sign of oppressive religious power,
witness Lou P's Afghan example. In the Southern US, conservative religion does
exactly the opposite, both by enforcing a high age of consent and proscribing 
the
permissable forms of sexual expression.
To return to the point I made at the start of this post, we can't begin to
understand these issues if we lump together the experience of all women, whether
in advanced capitalist countries or in villages still primarily governed by
pre-capitalist religious practice.
Cheers,
John E