File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9803, message 550


Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 17:38:08 -0500
From: Yoshie Furuhashi <Furuhashi.1-AT-osu.edu>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Assistants to your self-emancipation


Hi Charles,

I am planning to reply to your previous posts as well, but I have yet to
get around to them. Sorry for my tardiness.

<< -   An Equal Rights for Women Amendment to the Constitution, revive that
campaign, in the form of a Bill of Rights for Women, as well as a general
statement that women shall have equal rights with men. The Bill of Rights
would include freedom and liberation to pursue and material enabling to
provide for self-happiness,, education and joy; pay equity or comparable
worth pay; reproductive, sexual and caring labor power and freedom for
women, including fulfillment of all material needs for reproductive and
caring and schooling labor; protection and safety from bodily brutalization
and abuse for women and children>>

I am afraid that legal struggles of this kind have probably exhausted their
usefulness.

<<  - Improve mens' caring and nurturing labor skills, particularly child
care skills. Programmatically and systematically men can learn more home
economics and housework, how to feed, cloth, wash , etc. children. I know
there are many men who are an exception to this generalization, who do a
lot of housework, but in general it is an accurate generalization. This is
especially important because women do so much wage earning too, doublework.
It is patently unfair and exploitative.>>

<<- It does not follow that because women biologically get pregnant that
they must do most of the childcare after birth., from infancy through
schoolteaching.>>

About the above two, I think that it is not simply the ideology of sexism
that creates the unequal and gendered division of labor in social
reproduction. Without equal participation and equal treatment in terms of
wages and also special paid leaves for pregnancy + childbirth, women will
keep earning lower wages, which will in turn perpetuate an economic
'rationale' for the aforesaid division of labor in care-giving. (And of
course, the double burden in turn will reinforce women's marginality in the
labor market.) I think this is an issue that labor movements + marxists
ought to foreground.

<<- Total equality for women in political and leadership postitions, in
government , religion, academe, business and all institutions of power.>>

We had better begin with ourselves--within labor movements and marxist
politics. Right now, government, academe, business, etc. are doing a much
better job making use of women's labor and knowledge, including some women
in leadership positions too.

<<-all-arouind anti-male chauvinism and anti-male supremacy , equality
without identity. We want a unity and non-antagoniatic struggle of
opposites.  Something like what happens in dancing.>>

I like your metaphor. But can you be more specific?

<<- Affirmative action with quotas. (quotas are reasonable and not
arbitrary, by the way. Their quantification can also be made reasonable ,
not arbitrary)>>

Can't agree more. Quotas are reasonable from the marxist point of view.
Quotas are also great challenges to the myth of meritocracy.

<<-  Men who conceive of this as "what's good for the goose is good for the
gander" feminism. This program is in men's self-interest as well as women.>>

For working-class men, yes. What do you think we can do to make this a
generally shared premise in marxist politics?

<<-  Men declare their surrender in the Battle of the Sexes.>>

Men can declare it if they want to, but power isn't something you can
surrender except in certain artificial contexts.

Yoshie




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