[Marxism] Language of Contempt

["Charles Brown" <cbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

When I was still teaching, I would occasionally ask my students to propose a
male equivalent of "slut" -- i.e., a word that had all the polemical force
of "slut" but that clearly and unambiguously applied to males only. No one
ever came up with a really persuasive candidate. The brighter women in the
class would often fall back on "asshole,"
acknowledging that while it wasn't specific to males, it was the best
epithet that didn't focus on females. It is really amazing how much of the
available language of contempt is gendered, in origin and usually in current
usage. "Son of a bitch" is classic: aimed at men, but focusing on their
mother, as though the worst thing you can say about a man is that he has a
sexually erring mother.

Carrol

^^^^

CB: I know women who just use the same term for men who sleep around a lot
as the one currently popular in hip hop genre which is a derivative of the
term of offense on this thread.


>From  http://stangoff.com/?p=289#comments



Difference
Filed under: General, Gender
By Stan at 10:43 pm, 5/12/06
.constructed as hierarchy.

http://stangoff.com/


"The relationship is more like the relationship of worker and capitalist, in
that workers' have only their labor power to sell and must sell it to make a
living. By excluding women from wage-labor or equitable pay, they are
economically forced to accept the deal. Marx's metaphorical "general
prostitution of all labourers " gets at this from another angle.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm

Quoting Marx from the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844:

"Finally, this movement of opposing universal private property to private
property finds expression in the brutish form of opposing to marriage
(certainly a form of exclusive private property) the community of women, in
which a woman becomes a piece of communal and common property. It may be
said that this idea of the community of women gives away the secret of this
as yet completely crude and thoughtless communism.[30] Just as woman passes
from marriage to general prostitution, [Prostitution is only a specific
expression of the general prostitution of the labourer, and since it is a
relationship in which falls not the prostitute alone, but also the one who
prostitutes - and the latter's abomination is still greater - the
capitalist, etc., also comes under this head. - Note by Marx [31]] so the
entire world of wealth (that is, of man's objective substance) passes from
the relationship of exclusive marriage with the owner of private property to
a state of universal prostitution with the community. This type of communism
- since it negates the personality of man in every sphere - is but the
logical expression of private property, which is this negation. "






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