Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 12:04:13 -0500
From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Men and Feminism (was All Work...)


jurriaan bendien wrote:

>It has been typical of feminist discourse to talk about personal
>experiences and try to reduce broader social forces to interpersonal
>interaction.  This I objected to in a previous post, seeing it as a fault
>of feminist discourse which in reality depoliticises things or politicises
>personal interaction in ways which are not useful.

Have you actually read any of this feminism you're caricaturing, or had a
serious conversation with a feminist? Sure, there's a lot of talk about
personal history, but that's far from the whole story. First of all, the
"personal" is a social construction - the whole notion of a "private" life
in the modern conception is a product of the last few centuries, i.e., of
capitalism. How the personalities that interact in private life are
constructed should be an interest of any Marxist. Don't Marxists care about
how subjects are constructed in bourgeois society? Or as the Gang of Four
(the band, not the Chinese politicans) put it, "Is it so private/Our
struggle in the bedroom?" And second of all, feminism is about a lot more
than the personal, and the construction of the personal - there are
feminist economists, and historians, and sociologists, who study labor
markets, and political movements, and social groupings through the prism of
gender.

I thought of just deleting this nonsense without comment, but unfortunately
there are all too many men like JB and Malecki on that sad, reduced
formation called "the left."

Doug




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