Date:         Thu, 24 Jul 97 15:17:56 EDT
From: Renate Bridenthal <RNBBC-AT-CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Subject:      Re: M-FEM: Enough telling off


Sorry, all, I don't have the technology to review your earlier interventions
on the sex/gender issue. So here's my next one:
  I think that as long as society is organized hierarchically, the gender
system will be unequal. Some women may "cross the line" -- they did even
in feudal times -- but that only proves the line is there.  Elite women
have always reinforced the hierarchy that empowers them. Zeynep gives a
contemporary example from Turkey; in Europe, we had the notorious Maggie
Thatcher.  These remain a statistically small group of "exception women,"
which women's history has done much to expose for their very exceptionalism.
    However, a concession to Doug's point about historical change:
the seeds of the new are likely to be sprouting from the old.  I think that
the CONTRADICTION that gave rise to feminism -- more women in wage labor on
all levels plus hardly any change in traditional caretaking expectations of
women -- is one that might fuel movements for change to a non-hierarchical
more egalitarian system.
    -Renate Bridenthal
P.S. We are not all Judith Butlerites.  Some of us are still Marxists.