• PRO

    Feminism (American brand), is based on class struggle....

    feminism is marxism

    Definition and focus: I would like to focus this debate to a subsect of feminists, those that Christina Hoff Sommers referred to as 'Gender feminists'. Considering the unpopularity of being called a feminist, many have tried to expand the definition of feminism to include nearly anything a woman does to her advantage. This is not to debate the libertarian strain of 'Equity Feminist', as I do not believe they are Marxist. Moving forward, I will use 'feminist' to mean 'gender feminist'. Argument: The purpose of the initial post was to instigate a response to a well known document in feminist circles. Ms. Hanisch clearly espouses collective action and tries in her paper to expand the 'class' by including women who felt they were removed from her Marxist based movement. She identifies two groups of feminist: The first are women who are in 'therapy'. The second are the Marxist who are trying to affect political change. This second group, she clearly admits it's roots in Marxism: "Recognizing the need to fight male supremacy as a movement instead of blaming the individual woman for her oppression was where the Pro-Woman Line came in. It challenged the old anti-woman line that used spiritual, psychological, metaphysical, and pseudo-historical explanations for women's oppression with a real, materialist analysis for why women do what we do. (By materialist, I mean in the Marxist materialist (based in reality) sense, not in the "desire for consumer goods" sense.) Taking the position that "women are messed over, not messed up" took the focus off individual struggle and put it on group or class struggle, exposing the necessity for an independent WLM to deal with male supremacy." But,you are correct, one person makes not a movement. Feminism (American brand), is based on class struggle. It assumes men and women are the same. All differences are attributed to oppression by the patriarchy. In this, feminism argues that we are not a product of our biology and environment but rather purely by the environment. By assuming that men and women are the same, they come to the conclusion that the differences that exist are due to personal (and as Ms. Hanisch describes, this means it is political) oppression by the patriarchy. Consider these areas of interest to feminists in the economic area: Universal healthcare Affirmitive action Paid daycare Equality of Outcomes, not the Equality of opportunity If one is a capitalist then one would allow the free market to determine prices, supply and demand. Feminist outright reject the free market and try through political action to establish socialism to benefit their class at the expense of the rest of society. One could point to this as classic rent seeking, and I would agree that it is rent seeking, but by Marxist who have replaced the Proletariate with Women.