Jacobin vs. Bumblebees
Jacobin vs. Bumblebees
Nine years ago, Erica West of a Trotskyist group called the International Socialist Organization (or ISO for short) wrote a polemic called The Pitfalls of Radical Feminism for the main socialist magazine in the United States, Jacobin. Although Jacobin has published a number of articles accosting "terfs" over the years, this one has remained their principal critique of radical feminism as an overall phenom. I haven't counted myself a radfem in some eight years now, so you may be wondering why I care. My main motivation to write the this response is the fact that West is actually critiquing female separatism specifically. Her polemic describes all radfems as separatists despite the obvious reality that (to my irritation) only a minority are. Female separatism is an area of ongoing overlap between my approach to life and the world of radfems (hence my presence here), so I feel obliged to defend it. Why this timing though, you ask, what with the polemic I'm responding to being nine years old already? Because my country is talking a lot about socialism, including socialist feminism, since a few members of the Democratic Socialists of America (or DSA for short) have recently won Democratic Party primaries, so the main socialist feminist critique of female separatism has gained new relevance lately, I feel.
The Pitfalls of Radical Feminism is dumb and poorly written, so large swaths of it really don’t earn a response and won't get one from me. I'll just stick to addressing the most pungent quotes therefrom in my response. West's article has four main tenets, which are 1) that women must tolerate pornographers because reducing their power in the world would require state action (oh my), 2) that patriarchy doesn’t exist under socialism, 3) that TIMs are the real victims of sexual violence, and 4) that female separatism is a form of white racism. I will now dismantle that load of horse shit (with a rhetorical shovel, not my hands...ew
).First of all, before I begin my critique of the article itself, I think it may be worth pointing out that, despite their rhetorical obsession with class conflict and constant claims to represent "the working class", groups like the ISO, the DSA, and so forth (which were or are, as applicable, based on college campuses, not at workplaces) , are in fact principally composed of disgruntled yuppies, not members of the working class as the term is commonly understood. Their ranks are mostly composed of what Karl Marx would've called the bourgeoisie, in other words, or a particular, often downwardly mobile subsection thereof, anyway, that struggles to afford the high cost of living in the expensive metropolitan areas where they most typically reside. Ideologically, they form the preponderance of the small group that Pew Research describes as "leftward progressives" and what I like to describe as the woke crowd. Because it's politically active and vocal, this demographic enjoys disproportionate representation in, and influence over, the public discourse. It's also statistically from this same demo that we get the most active and principled feminists (including likely the majority of our users here based on the bios I've seen), as are all kinds of idealists, so there's tons of overlap. Nothing wrong with belonging to said demographic by any means. I mean one way of summing it up would be to say that these are some of the smartest, best-educated, and most informed folks on Earth! But I just think it's worth clarifying that there is in fact some cosplay going on here insofar as intellectuals, small business owners, professional activists, and other members of the bourgeoisie go around proclaiming their worldview synonymous with proletarian interests and claim to speak for those of us who do in fact do menial or manual labor (work that's done with the hands) for a living. Whether it's by choosing to embrace a broadened definition of working class status that includes such persons or an intentional form of identity appropriation, there is something obnoxious and presumptuous about the practice. That's all I have to say about that for our purposes here. Moving on!
KEY QUOTES TO DISCUSS:
Quote:Radical feminists’ anti-porn work throws into sharp relief the dangers of misidentifying the roots of women’s oppression. Relying on the state for censorship, emboldening the carceral apparatus, making alliances with opponents of progressive change — this is where radical feminism’s analysis leads us.
At the core of radical feminism’s theoretical blunders is its conception of class.
For radical feminists, the two main classes in society are not the working class (who sell their labor power) and capitalists (who exploit them), but men (the oppressors) and women (the oppressed). They call this patriarchy theory.
Quote:As Marxists, we know the enemy is not men, but the capitalist class — which itself is multi-gendered and multiracial — and that our strategy must reflect this. Women’s oppression is not innate in humans but instead arose at a particular historical and political moment, alongside the development of class society and the nuclear family.
Women’s oppression persists not simply because men hate us, but because of the role we’ve played historically in the nuclear family. While men headed off to work each morning to engage in capitalist production — making cars at the factory, writing legal briefs at the office — women typically engaged in what is known as social reproduction: the biological reproduction of new workers (i.e. having children) and the day-to-day reproduction of workers — doing laundry, feeding the family, getting children ready for school, and so on.
Even in recent decades, as women have entered the paid workforce en masse, they’ve still tended to be saddled with the “second shift,” carrying out social reproduction at home after they return from work.
These tasks are all vital to capitalism. Workers must be fed, clothed, and prepared every day for capitalism to function. But it is in capitalism’s interest for this work to be done for free and in the private sphere.
As a result, socialist feminists argue that the only way we can liberate women is to end class society, once and for all.
Quote:This exclusion isn’t just bigoted — it’s hypocritical: while radical feminists campaign vigorously against sexual violence, it’s trans women who suffer from disproportionately high rates of sexual and physical violence (particularly trans women of color).
TERFs may argue that trans women do not share a reproductive system with cis women, and thus can’t understand women’s struggles for birth control and against forced sterilization. But then what do they say of solidarity with lesbian women, or cis women who cannot or choose not to have children? The arguments that TERFs put forth are both weak and prejudiced.
Quote:Radical feminism is also noticeably silent on the question of racism, and is burdened by a politically suspect strategy for fighting it.
Men of color perpetuate sexism just like white men. But their experience of racism also binds them together with the women of color in their communities. As Sharon Smith writes, “the need to fight alongside men in the fight against racism or in the class struggle [has] made separatist ideas unappealing” for women of color.
Quote:While radical feminists posit separatism as a political strategy — and for some, the goal — socialist feminists understand that our power lies in our numbers. The division between working-class men and women, between cisgender people and transgender people — these fissures are detrimental to our overall aims. They only make us weaker and our fight against capitalism that much harder.
Socialist feminists’ goal is to build solidarity across the entire working class. Our fates are tied together, and the struggle against gendered oppression is inseparable from the struggle against transphobia, racism, and capitalism more broadly. Any movement or theory of feminism that either explicitly or implicitly excludes trans people, intentionally misgenders them, or perpetuates transphobia has no business being on the Left.
NOTE: This is my placeholder thread for the polemic I referenced the possibility of writing here on Raddish. Content will be disorganized and decidedly incomplete for a while, but...hopefully...updated from time to time until I announce that I'm finished. Once done, I'll post a thread a Raddish linking to this post.
Nine years ago, Erica West of a Trotskyist group called the International Socialist Organization (or ISO for short) wrote a polemic called The Pitfalls of Radical Feminism for the main socialist magazine in the United States, Jacobin. Although Jacobin has published a number of articles accosting "terfs" over the years, this one has remained their principal critique of radical feminism as an overall phenom. I haven't counted myself a radfem in some eight years now, so you may be wondering why I care. My main motivation to write the this response is the fact that West is actually critiquing female separatism specifically. Her polemic describes all radfems as separatists despite the obvious reality that (to my irritation) only a minority are. Female separatism is an area of ongoing overlap between my approach to life and the world of radfems (hence my presence here), so I feel obliged to defend it. Why this timing though, you ask, what with the polemic I'm responding to being nine years old already? Because my country is talking a lot about socialism, including socialist feminism, since a few members of the Democratic Socialists of America (or DSA for short) have recently won Democratic Party primaries, so the main socialist feminist critique of female separatism has gained new relevance lately, I feel.
The Pitfalls of Radical Feminism is dumb and poorly written, so large swaths of it really don’t earn a response and won't get one from me. I'll just stick to addressing the most pungent quotes therefrom in my response. West's article has four main tenets, which are 1) that women must tolerate pornographers because reducing their power in the world would require state action (oh my), 2) that patriarchy doesn’t exist under socialism, 3) that TIMs are the real victims of sexual violence, and 4) that female separatism is a form of white racism. I will now dismantle that load of horse shit (with a rhetorical shovel, not my hands...ew ).
First of all, before I begin my critique of the article itself, I think it may be worth pointing out that, despite their rhetorical obsession with class conflict and constant claims to represent "the working class", groups like the ISO, the DSA, and so forth (which were or are, as applicable, based on college campuses, not at workplaces) , are in fact principally composed of disgruntled yuppies, not members of the working class as the term is commonly understood. Their ranks are mostly composed of what Karl Marx would've called the bourgeoisie, in other words, or a particular, often downwardly mobile subsection thereof, anyway, that struggles to afford the high cost of living in the expensive metropolitan areas where they most typically reside. Ideologically, they form the preponderance of the small group that Pew Research describes as "leftward progressives" and what I like to describe as the woke crowd. Because it's politically active and vocal, this demographic enjoys disproportionate representation in, and influence over, the public discourse. It's also statistically from this same demo that we get the most active and principled feminists (including likely the majority of our users here based on the bios I've seen), as are all kinds of idealists, so there's tons of overlap. Nothing wrong with belonging to said demographic by any means. I mean one way of summing it up would be to say that these are some of the smartest, best-educated, and most informed folks on Earth! But I just think it's worth clarifying that there is in fact some cosplay going on here insofar as intellectuals, small business owners, professional activists, and other members of the bourgeoisie go around proclaiming their worldview synonymous with proletarian interests and claim to speak for those of us who do in fact do menial or manual labor (work that's done with the hands) for a living. Whether it's by choosing to embrace a broadened definition of working class status that includes such persons or an intentional form of identity appropriation, there is something obnoxious and presumptuous about the practice. That's all I have to say about that for our purposes here. Moving on!
KEY QUOTES TO DISCUSS:
Quote:Radical feminists’ anti-porn work throws into sharp relief the dangers of misidentifying the roots of women’s oppression. Relying on the state for censorship, emboldening the carceral apparatus, making alliances with opponents of progressive change — this is where radical feminism’s analysis leads us.
At the core of radical feminism’s theoretical blunders is its conception of class.
For radical feminists, the two main classes in society are not the working class (who sell their labor power) and capitalists (who exploit them), but men (the oppressors) and women (the oppressed). They call this patriarchy theory.
Quote:As Marxists, we know the enemy is not men, but the capitalist class — which itself is multi-gendered and multiracial — and that our strategy must reflect this. Women’s oppression is not innate in humans but instead arose at a particular historical and political moment, alongside the development of class society and the nuclear family.
Women’s oppression persists not simply because men hate us, but because of the role we’ve played historically in the nuclear family. While men headed off to work each morning to engage in capitalist production — making cars at the factory, writing legal briefs at the office — women typically engaged in what is known as social reproduction: the biological reproduction of new workers (i.e. having children) and the day-to-day reproduction of workers — doing laundry, feeding the family, getting children ready for school, and so on.
Even in recent decades, as women have entered the paid workforce en masse, they’ve still tended to be saddled with the “second shift,” carrying out social reproduction at home after they return from work.
These tasks are all vital to capitalism. Workers must be fed, clothed, and prepared every day for capitalism to function. But it is in capitalism’s interest for this work to be done for free and in the private sphere.
As a result, socialist feminists argue that the only way we can liberate women is to end class society, once and for all.
Quote:This exclusion isn’t just bigoted — it’s hypocritical: while radical feminists campaign vigorously against sexual violence, it’s trans women who suffer from disproportionately high rates of sexual and physical violence (particularly trans women of color).
TERFs may argue that trans women do not share a reproductive system with cis women, and thus can’t understand women’s struggles for birth control and against forced sterilization. But then what do they say of solidarity with lesbian women, or cis women who cannot or choose not to have children? The arguments that TERFs put forth are both weak and prejudiced.
Quote:Radical feminism is also noticeably silent on the question of racism, and is burdened by a politically suspect strategy for fighting it.
Men of color perpetuate sexism just like white men. But their experience of racism also binds them together with the women of color in their communities. As Sharon Smith writes, “the need to fight alongside men in the fight against racism or in the class struggle [has] made separatist ideas unappealing” for women of color.
Quote:While radical feminists posit separatism as a political strategy — and for some, the goal — socialist feminists understand that our power lies in our numbers. The division between working-class men and women, between cisgender people and transgender people — these fissures are detrimental to our overall aims. They only make us weaker and our fight against capitalism that much harder.
Socialist feminists’ goal is to build solidarity across the entire working class. Our fates are tied together, and the struggle against gendered oppression is inseparable from the struggle against transphobia, racism, and capitalism more broadly. Any movement or theory of feminism that either explicitly or implicitly excludes trans people, intentionally misgenders them, or perpetuates transphobia has no business being on the Left.