Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> > IMHO, a largely homosocial society, which Japan is, is not the same > > thing as a society of gender apartheid,
me:
> I don't know if Japan has gender apartheid or not. (IIRC, I put a > question mark after the word "apartheid.") But it seems to me that > almost everybody in positions of power in the state and economy in > Japan is male. That suggests to me that women are subordinate in the > hierarchy.
Yoshie, now:
Almost everybody in positions of power in the state and economy in many heterosocial societies have been men, including most other capitalist states (outside some countries that have established explicit gender quotas) and all socialist states. What women need is explicit gender quotas ...
you've got to admit that "western" capitalist countries have allowed _some_ women to be in power (to be as bad as men). Some state governors in the US have been women, as have some senators and CEOs. In my cursory understanding of the issue, the US is doing much better than Japan on this count (which of course is only one dimension of the issue). what to do specifically about this problem (quotas, etc.) is another issue, for another day. Yoshie:
> > unless you consider PEN-l to > > be operating on the basis of gender apartheid, too.
me:
> pen-l suffers from not having enough women, yes. LBO-talk is better on > that score, but has some other problems that need not concern us here.
Yoshie:
LBO-talk doesn't have many women posting here either. Aside from me, you only see very infrequent postings by several other women, and that's all.
I dunno. It seems there are _more_ women on LBO-talk than on pen-l (which is what I said above). me:
> But pen-l does not have anything like gender apartheid. There are no > rules -- either overt or covert -- against women participating as > members.
Yoshie:
That's what I mean by homosocial society, based upon customs rather than laws.
but pen-l itself has absolutely no power.
> Usually > women don't participate, but that's not because of men's power as much > as men's obnoxious styles.
Men's obnoxious styles come from their social power.
but pen-l itself has abolutely no power.
> Most importantly, pen-l has absolutely no power, no influence, no > import, as an organization. If we men totally dominated it, it would > be like being in charge of something more laughable than the Grand > Duchy of Fenwick (with no foreign aid and no Q-bomb).
True, but political organizations to the Left of the Democratic Party -- except ones that are specifically feminist -- also have few women in leadership positions. So, if socialists ever take power here in the USA, they will simply replicate hitherto existing socialist societies dominated by male leaders.
My contention is that socialist organizations have to practice gender equality (something that's much more likely with independent women's caucuses than without) if they are ever to "take power." even if they don't follow my advice (as seems likely), if they take power (as seems unlikely at present), they will be dealing with a country in which women have already made some major gains (though not enough ane they're not written in stone). That means that they will not simply replicate the hitherto-existing socialist societies.
> Am I right to think that there are feminist and even Marxist-feminist > on-line discussion groups? Feminists -- and women in general -- don't > need pen-l, and so pen-l has no power over them.
There are feminist ones, but there isn't any Marxist-feminist one in the English language. ...
obviously, that's something to be fought against. It's really easy to set up a discussion group on-line. I recently helped to set one up for parents of kids with Asperger's syndrome in Los Angeles (via Yahoo).
Then, obnoxious Marxist men such as Doug feel free to write me out of Marxism, and obnoxious Marxist men such as Lou purge me from their comfortably mostly homosocial Marxist environments, so it's no wonder that there are few women who remain Marxist and feminist. Men just don't tolerate such creatures!
are personal insults useful? how?
> let us now recap old messages: > > Yoshie had asserted: > >>>>>> It will be nice if Iran will get developed into a homosocial > but gender-egalitarian society.<<<<< > > that would be "nice," but I replied. > >>>> with one sex controlling the state and the economy, who do you > think will dominate? being relegated to domestic labor has a tendency > to "divide and rule."<<<< > > Yoshie replied to this: > >>> The female proportion of Iran's labor force has gone up, from 20% > in 1980 to 33% in 2004. Give it a couple more decades, and it will > be close to Japan (41% in 2004) and the USA (46% in 2004). <<< > > I responded: > >> being in the labor force isn't the same thing as being in power. In > the US, feminists had to fight to break down the walls set up by the > old boys network and still haven't succeeded completely.<< > > then Yoshie responded: > >No, but women need their own sources of income aside from what men > bring in if they are to have more bargaining power within families and > communities, and getting into workplaces outside homes brings women > together with other women and men, which is a better political terrain > than household labor that is often solitary in a country above a > certain level of economic development.< > > in this tennis-like game, it seems to me that Yoshie totally ignores > issues of power. It seems nothing but the old "feminism of the 2nd > international," in which the automatic processes of capitalist > development liberate women. I keep on bringing up issues of societal > structure and power. I don't deny that "automatic" changes in the > labor market create _possibilities_ for women's liberation. But as I > said, it requires women's actual struggle to realize those > possibilities.
Yoshie:
It should be obvious that I'm talking mainly about possibilities, unless I specifically state that there will be automatic changes.
I kept on bringing up obstacles to these possibilities and you seemed to ignore my points.
But women's entry into wage labor itself is usually already a result of women's own struggle, against state policy, company policy, men in their family, older women in their family, and so on. You ought to know that without having that pointed out in every posting.
No, I don't think that women's entry into the paid labor force is primarily a result of women's own struggle. Usually, it's like Rosie the Riveter: with so many of the men off at war and excess demand for workers developing domestically, the US government pulled the women in (and then tossed out when the war ended). In many cases in poorer countries (and in the US in an earlier era), women (especially younger ones) are brought into waged employment because (male) employers see them as more docile than men (while their families let them go because commercialization of agriculture implies that they desperately need the money). -- Jim Devine / "But the wage of sin don't adjust for inflation. It's a buyer's market when you sell your soul." -- Jeffery Foucault, "Ghost Repeater."
