This is a long one. Stay with me!
Once upon a time, as a first-year political science undergraduate at the University of Melbourne, I was taught feminism 101 by Sheila Jeffreys. Jeffreys, perhaps the archetypal “radical lesbian separatist” was and remains controversial figure. But unlike many of my classmates (several young conservative women made a show of boycotting the compulsory course) I found a lot to like in her radical critique of gender relations. I’ve subsequently crossed paths with Jeffreys a couple of times professionally, in ways that have highlighted the problematic aspects of her attitude towards sex workers and trans individuals.
This is a blog about feminism. While the composition of groups, classes and interests that make up a society is variable, there is one “identity” – gender – which is just about ubiquitous across humankind because it is built on top of a universal biological scaffold: sex* [see below]. While I personally believe we can build ideologies without reference to social identities, I suspect that this cannot be done satisfactorily without addressing gendered inequalities. Thus, while we can [in theory] debate socialism or capitalism without considering differences in race or religion, a separate critique of patriarchy is a necessary co-requisite to any progressive politics.
What follows is my effort to engage with these questions, noting that I am not a woman, am incapable of experiencing the female perspective, and have not seriously engaged with the key texts. In other words, nothing below counts for very much beyond my own perspective.
Back to Basics
It is now broadly recognised that sex and gender refer in English to two distinct concepts: the former biological, the latter social. Importantly, sex itself is not a simple categorical concept but an index of variations (in primary or reproductive sex characteristics, secondary sex characteristics, endocrinal systems, neural structures etc) which may or may not co-vary in any given individual. While intersex individuals who defy traditional categorisation based on their chromosomes or primary sex characteristics are often considered the 'exceptions who prove the rule', people struggle to accept (as a recent special issue of Scientific American pointed out) that we are all sexual chimaeras to some degree. Each individual mixes stereotypically ‘male’ and ‘female’ biological and cultural traits as a result of our own particular genetic legacy, developmental history and social conditioning. We can take broad averages of particular traits, but the probability that any given individual has one hundred per cent of the biological markers statistically characteristic of their assigned sex is extremely low.
Gender, on the other hand, is the set of social roles and expectations which are constructed around sex variability. It is likely that unequal social roles based on biological sex at least partially predate society, and even the human species itself; children seem innately tuned to pick up on and reproduce gendered behaviours. Much as minor genetic differences which vary with geography (such as in antibody expression) become associated with visible but unrelated ‘tags’ (such as skin colouration or cultural practices) which are in turn constructed into racialized social hierarchies, gender is a social construct based on superficial difference markers (e.g sexual characteristics) with complex links to ultimately irrelevant biological differences (such as chromosomal make-up or hormone regulation). Our mental desire to categorise reduces all this wonderful diversity into binary [oppressive] social roles with vast consequences: male and female.
I am a radical feminist because I believe that these constructed gender inequalities pre-date all other forms of social oppression (including race and class), and there is a credible argument that gender hierarchies are the model for all other forms of exploitation and hierarchy. I further believe that gender inequality is based first and foremost on the exploitation of reproductive capacity, which is largely (but not exclusively) determined by sex. Children were the original “capital good”: the input and output of all other forms of production. Women controlled that means of production by the contribution of their labour and men constructed elaborate norms and roles to unjustly seize most of that surplus value for themselves. The modern idea of gender is constructed, like Frankenstein’s monster, from a motley set of high-salience but low-information signals in order to build a hierarchical structure that (primarily) benefits men.
Power and Patriarchy
While not every human society is patriarchal, a sufficiently large percentage of them are that it is accurate to describe gendered inequality as being representative of our species. We are neither chimpanzee (enforcing male reproductive rights through violence) nor bonobo (using social sex and uncertain parentage as a social glue), but something in between. Monogamy has deep enough roots in our species to justify the hypothesis that biology heavily weights human cultural outcomes towards equilibrium norms that enforce and reproduce it (i.e. patriarchy). But we retain sufficient behaviourial flexibility to challenge and re-write those norms when conditions allow. As I have written elsewhere, we are behaviorial omnivores who balance precariously between established practice and experimentation with new social patterns.
I am a radical feminist because (like a good Gramscian) I believe that these patterns of gendered behaviour are the result not only of the formal laws and rules that constitute society but implicit patterns of power between genders that are reproduced regardless of law. In other words, mere legal equality and the reform of discriminatory statutes so as to ensure equality of opportunity between the sexes is inadequate because gendered behaviours are embedded in a something more primal and powerful: cultural patriarchy. Discourses, beliefs and expectations about gendered behaviour will continue to reproduce the patriarchy even, perhaps especially, if laws and expectations are changed along socialist or capitalist lines to promise legal equality.
Over the years, I’ve have had senior colleagues of mine, both male and female, admit out of confidence in my discretion that they prefer to hire male over female staff. On the flip side, I’ve had well-meaning bosses offer to improve working conditions for women primarily by offering more family leave. No matter how far feminism has reformed laws in the global West, so long as expectations of the exploitation of female reproductive labour continue to be reproduced at home and through our culture, these gendered patterns of hierarchy and oppression will continue to find expression.
It’s in this regard that the critique of patriarchy also holds the potential to benefit men. While gendered roles and expectations undoubtedly offer men a privileged position, inhabiting those roles can be stressful (or dare I say, toxic) – especially when they are at odds with the legal structures of society. One interesting piece of research that bubbled up during the whole “Google Memo” fiasco was that gendered behaviourial differences may have increased in the West as formal equality became entrenched. This is not, it turns out, because women have become more stereotypically ‘feminine’, but because men have responded to their reduced relative status by increasing the practice of ‘masculinised’ behaviours. The liberation of both men and women from these stressful and harmful gendered expectations is the only just goal of a radical, emancipatory agenda.
Not THAT kind of Radical Feminist
Radical feminism has a bad reputation. Like all progressive movements, it has been prone to bitter internal sectarianism (e.g. regarding sex work and the place of trans individuals) over the past several decades. Some of these fights can be understood as manifestations of the authoritarian/libertarian axis, as I’ve written previously. Invariably, the losers of these arguments (like their Trotskyist forebears) continued to argue that they, and they alone, represent continuity with “true” radicalism while acting like puritanical asshats. Few take Trotskyists to be true representatives of socialism; nor should we treat TERFS or SWERFS as being truly representative of [radical] feminism. To be clear, if I am to describe myself as a radical feminist, it is as one who is both trans- and sex worker-inclusionary.
Trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFS) like Jeffreys and another Australian export, Germaine Greer, share with all authoritarian radicals the belief that when constructed but flawed social categories (i.e. gender) are abolished they will be supplanted by the "correct" essentialist, ones. Like Marxists who believe in the elevation of intransient class identity over bourgeois interests, they argue the abolition of gender will expose the permanent antagonism between biological (reproductive) sexes. For TERFS, the willing identification with and performance of gender roles (even as a transgression) merely reinforces the patriarchy, much like participation in the market reinforces capitalism. TERF views have historically been disavowed even by other radicals including Catherine McKinnon, Andrea Dworkin and Gloria Steinem.
Even if the origin of biological sex differences in the brain prove hard to pin down, and gender identity (like all other personality traits) is understood as emerging from the complex interaction of genes, developmental and cultural factors, the left-libertarian instinct must be offering priority to the subjective lived experience of others and trust in their capacity to make (informed) decisions about their own wellbeing. Acceptance of trans- and gender-non conforming people is not only the correct liberal individualist thing to, but also one of the best tools radical feminism has to deconstruct and upend the fixed notion of gender categories that underpins the patriarchy.
In much the same vein, a (slightly larger) fraction of radical feminists take a strongly proscriptionary approach to prostitution and pornography. Sex worker exclusionary radical feminists (SWERFs) have lobbied with conservatives, often successfully (as is the case with the so-called “Swedish model”), for the outlawing of the sex industry. I recognise as a socialist that as both sex and work, prostitution and pornography sit at the intersection of two very potent power relations: capitalism and the patriarchy. The intersection of these oppressions creates opportunities for exploitation, such as sex trafficking, that are unique in their odiousness.
However, the intersection of these patterns of oppression merely means that the democratisation of sex work is more necessary than in any other part of the economy. In prostitution and pornography, worker control of the means of production means first and foremost ensuring the enthusiastic consent of the participants. People, both men and women, may freely choose to be sex workers. The correct approach is not to critique their choices, but to make sure their decision is truly free, and not forced upon them as a result of material necessity (what I call in my book, "Politics for the New Dark Age" ‘decision slavery’)
In the end, therefore, while the left needs to integrate a critique of patriarchy into our everyday work, we must root that critique in the same individualistic and democratic framework that we apply to other forms of hierarchy and exploitation. Progressives, especially men, must be equipped with the tools to fight and win these arguments, and not see them as being somehow separate from concerns about poverty and class.