Date: Sun, 20 Jul 97 18:41:20 UT
From: "Margaret Morganroth Gullette" <mgullette-AT-msn.com>
Subject: RE: M-FEM: Re: double standard


The question of whether capitalism ultimately needs racism and sexism, etc. is 
a particularly interesting one now, after thirty years of the embourgeoisement 
of a sizable minority of African-American women and men, women in general, 
Asian women and men, etc--with concomitant gains in representation, self-image 
of the affected populations, altered relations within the family, liberal 
congratulations about the decline of racism, sexism, etc.  
	The phenomenon of permitting a certain segment of the oppressed and exploited 
to join the next-to-top class cuts many ways. Some of the affected climb 
rapidly toward conservatism and whatever lip-service they pay, their 
identification with their group of origin is shallow. That's effective for 
capitalism, surely. 
	I think anyone who looks can see that the next-to top class is going to be 
very "inclusive." (Except, as I argue in my book Declining to Decline, and in 
my forthcoming Nation essay, there will be fewer people over 50, or perhaps 
eventually 45.Midle-ageism will be added to the other isms.)
	That inclusiveness will leave racism, sexism, homophobia, etc., largely but 
differentially intact. I agree with Yoshie that women will continue to be 
asked to perform extra human services even as the double standard declines in 
the ways Renate describes (through the socialization of once-female labor). 
But women at the bottom will do more of that work (care of the material house, 
the aging and dying). 
	 Racism will be worse for some subproletarians as it magically weakens its 
hold over those in the Class of the Inclusive. Middle-ageism will be worse for 
the fully unemployed but leave the over-employed untouched--delightfully 
fulfilled and self-actualized. 
	At the popular culture level, the Class of the Inclusive will do increasingly 
more work at representing the All and the isms will get pointed to as having 
disappeared. (Our own American Disappeared.) One answer to the functions of 
popular culture is that it explains the new in history in a way that soothes 
the potentially or partially alienated. The new Ideal will be the old American 
Dream of progress through upward mobility plus inclusivity. Those who don't 
make it will not be victims of racism, etc., but individual failures. This 
will be the long-term outcome, to weaken group identity and substitute for it 
the isolated atomistic private failure.
	The "double standard" is a fruitful topic--as long as we look a little more 
steadily at this new double standard--the Class of the Inclusive and all the 
rest. 
	If M-Fem readers would like to pursue this topic in its many ramifications, 
one question might be, how does the left combat this? 
----------
From: 	owner-marxism-feminism-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU on behalf of 
Carrol Cox
Sent: 	Saturday, July 19, 1997 10:58 PM
To: 	marxism-feminism-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Subject: 	Re: M-FEM: Re: double standard