Actually , gender essentialism has existed for 2.5 million years , and is pretty much the first organizing principle of human society; human species-being , in Marx and Feuerbach’s terminology . It is the “ direct and natural species relationship” . It is humanity’s fundamental cultural binary and dialectical opposition. An example is the famous yin/ yang of Chinese culture ; or French “ viva la difference ! “
( Levi-Straussian structural anthropology has proven that all human culture and language are built out of symbolic binary oppositions; dialectical oppositions ) Gender is a human invention 100,000’s of years old. Human society defines gender based on objective physical characteristics , not subjective, individual feelings . Whatever feelings are unique to a gender are the feelings one gets from one’s biological sex characteristics- like the feeling of a period for a woman , or the feeling of being pregnant . A male/man can’t have these feelings. Clearly the writer is a subjective idealist / solipsist , not a materialist, not a Marxist . We Marxists are gender essentialists. Gender , a cultural idea, is a reflection of biological sex following Marx’s lead here : “ In the approach to woman as the spoil and hand-maid of communal lust is expressed the infinite degradation in which man exists for himself, for the secret of this approach has its unambiguous, decisive, plain and undisguised expression in the relation of man to woman and in the manner in which the directand natural species-relationship is conceived. The direct, natural, and necessary relation of person to person is the relation of man to woman. In this natural species-relationship man’s relation to nature is immediately his relation to man, just as his relation to man is immediately his relation to nature – his own natural destination. In this relationship, therefore, is sensuously manifested, reduced to an observable fact, the extent to which the human essence has become nature to man, or to which nature to him has become the human essence of man. From this relationship one can therefore judge man’s whole level of development. From the character of this relationship follows how much man as a species-being, as man, has come to be himself and to comprehend himself; the relation of man to woman is the most natural relation of human being to human being. It therefore reveals the extent to which man’s natural behaviour has become human, or the extent to which the human essence in him has become a natural essence – the extent to which his human nature has come to be natural to him. This relationship also reveals the extent to which man’s need has become a human need; the extent to which, therefore, the other person as a person has become for him a need – the extent to which he in his individual existence is at the same time a social being.” https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#4997): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/4997 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/79316018/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
