The pitfalls of trying to get in with the male left

[ehrnst]

Not about the 2016 election, but really lays out the dismissive judgment on the part of the Brocialists towards women who sully themselves by working with conservatives to actually get legislation passed.

Following in the tradition of Leftists Explaining Very Rationally That Women Are Doing It Wrong, Jacobin, America’s preeminent brocialist rag, published a piece by a graduate student named Erica West, detailing the failings of radical feminism. While no political movement (including radical feminism) is without flaws, in their desperation to take a watery dump on feminism, Jacobin chose to publish something ahistorical, manipulative, and mostly baseless, by a writer who appears to never have encountered an actual radical feminist in her life.

Namely, West blames feminists for the lack of solidarity between feminists and leftists, due to our being big meanies, our failure to prioritize their issues above those of females, in particular, our efforts to work with legislators to, uh, effect legislative change, and (the kicker) our confused class analysis. West writes:

“Plagued by a narrow understanding of gendered oppression and a misguided strategy for change, radical feminism ultimately fails to offer women a clear path to liberation.“

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West argues that while radical feminists’ interest in fighting sexual violence is “admirable,” when women actually tried to do something to advance the fight, they went about it all wrong. Referencing Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon’s anti-pornography ordinance, which defined pornography as the “sexually explicit subordination of women,” West complains that the two feminists worked with some conservative politicians in an effort to pass the bill. But who, I wonder, are feminists to work with, if not politicians who have the power to pass bills? Should we consult with our “brothers” at Jacobin?

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West claims radical feminists got everything from class to the roots of women’s oppression wrong, chastising the movement for separating capitalism from patriarchy and for prioritizing the abolishment of gender. But feminists’ analysis of class as it pertains to women (that is to say, we believe women are oppressed as a class of people, by men, as a class of people) doesn’t mean we reject the notion of class oppression under capitalism. Indeed, radical feminists are continually baffled that, while so many leftists can comprehend the concept of class, in economic terms, they refuse to entertain the notion that other groups of people are also oppressed on a class basis. There can be more than one thing, and indeed, those things can be interconnected.

"Identity politics" anyone?

http://www.feministcurrent.com/2017/07/12/pitfalls-trying-get-male-left/

[Loki Liesmith]

1. Good article but would be better without appealing to

Dworkin's anti-porn jihad.

[ehrnst]

2. The derisive reaction from the male left to the legislative tactics Dworkin took

resonated with me most, especially in light of HRC being accused of being a "Wall Street whore," "corporate shill," and being "in bed with big pharma" when she got affordable HIV medication to those who needed by negotiating rather than shaking her finger at them very hard in front of crowds, calling them criminals, and demanding that they tell their shareholders to go fuck themselves.

And yes, I think that the old school left, of which Bernard is an alumn, is very much alive and well in the Brocialist white boy culture.

Susan Faludi was dead right in Backlash.