[PEN-L:11407] Re: Male Chauvanist Mathematics

[Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 09:22 AM 7/22/97 -0700, Jim Craven  wrote:

>Maybe, just maybe, this discussion needs to be widened and deepened.
>Plato once noted that "those who seek power are invariably the least
>fit to wield it." No doubt the positions of power under capitalism--
>and other systems--are largely dominated by males. No doubt those
>males prefer others from the same gender with similar proclivities and
>world views around them. No doubt those in power view women as
>inherently ill-equipped to assume/exercise power. But it goes further
>than that.
>
>Capitalism as a system and those who hold/exercise various forms of
>power, demand, for their continual expanded reproduction, hierarchies,
>depreciation/degradation of the real producers, commodification of
>every aspect of life and very narrow/restricted pathways and criteria
>for accession to effective power of the few over the many.


That brings the question whether capitalism is a 'system' that generates its
own logic of domination that operates independently or even in the oppostion
to the logic of domination developed by other 'systems' (which, I believe is
the Marx's position), or perhaps capitalism is an 'opportunistic oppressor'
-- it merely utilizes whateven form of oppression it can find in the area it
operates, but none of these from are "intrinsically " capitalist.

As I understant the feminist position on that issue (cf. Heidi Hartmann,
which is a bit old stuff, but this 'old stuff' that developed mainly as the
labour market analysis is a better critical social science, IMHO, than the
later identity politics stuff), they argue for the latter, that is, that
gender oppression is not necessarily subsumed under the class oppression
(e.g. working class wives who do the housework for their working class
husbands are exploited by both theier husbands and the capitalist bosses to
whom their husbands sell their labour power, reproduced thanks to the
houserwork of their wives -- which seems to be consistent with the argument
Jim is making).

While I do not have the answer to that question, I also see a certain danger
of the second position.  If oppression is ubiquituous and not intrinsically
tied to a particular form of the organization of economy & society -- then
it is perhaps a part of the "human nature" as bourgeois pundits tell us, and
there is little we can do to avoid it.



>Of course within any social class or strata typically women are far
>more oppressed than the males. But when we compare for example, the
>forms and levels of oppression typically faced by a white, female,
>tenured academic at a leading university with the forms and levels of
>oppression faced by a typical American Indian male on a Reservation
>or a typical Chicano migrant farm worker or a typical ghettoized
>African--American male or a typical White sharecropper, the
>differences in forms and levels of oppression are like night and day.
>That is why this crude (some of it petit-bourgeois in my
>opinion) feminism which sees oppression only in gender terms, which
>speaks of "male" logic versus "female" logic, or, which speaks of
>"typical" female characteristics (e.g. intuition, nurturing,
>cooperation) versus "typical" male characteristics (competition,
>mathematical formalism etc) is simply not only off the mark, but also
>highly destructive and diversionary from the real forms,
>levels sources, causes, mechanisms and consequences of oppression.


Ditto.  The association of femininity with caretaking , gentleness and
"making it nice" and masculinity with brutality and aggression is petty
bourgeois -- and played a crucial role in the "switching off" the women's
movement in post-Weimar Germany by the Nazis.  The Nazis developed women's
organization structures totally within, and controlled by the male dominated
nazi state and sold those structures by appealing to the ideology of the
"lebensraum" (living room) that was defined in the German culture as the
"female" place protected from the male brutality of the outside world.
Those organizations within organizational structures of the nazi state were
supposed not only to "protect" the women from the brutality of theoutside
world, but to provide them an opportunity to play their "natural" roles
"making it nice" in the world brutalized by men (translation: provide
support services for the nazi war effort).  For a discussion see Claudia
Koontz, _Mothers in the Fatherland_.

regards,

wojtek sokolowski
institute for policy studies
johns hopkins university
baltimore, md 21218
sokol@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
voice: (410) 516-4056
fax:   (410) 516-8233

POLITICS IS THE SHADOW CAST ON SOCIETY BY BIG BUSINESS. AND AS LONG AS THIS
IS SO, THE ATTENUATI0N OF THE SHADOW WILL NOT CHANGE THE SUBSTANCE.
- John Dewey