América Latina & Caribe

Facial abstraction study. Traced a face then dumped the image layer and drew directions over stenciled layer. Tried to be a bit more detailed on the mouth because I thought it would be funny

Heads with visible hairlines are fucked up octagons with ovals stapled on

Three Guineas is the first feminist analysis of what war is and how to stop it. Woolf is relentless in her insistence that war is a male activity not only because men make war, but because war is a direct extension of masculine values and behavior. She outlines, relentlessly, the total exclusion of women from all the institutions of decision-making and power in a patriarchy. She describes what machismo is (though she did not use the word), and how its public manifestation in war-making is a somber accurate reflection of its presence in what she calls "the private house," the house where men rule and women serve. She shows how the heterosexual man-woman model is the basic model for patterns of dominance and submission which we characterize in the public sphere as tyranny. She demonstrates that the Fuhrer and II Duce are Husbands, violating without conscience nations of women. She insists that the Nazis and the Englishmen who despise them are a brotherhood with a shared appetite for illegitimate power war games, uniforms, wealth, conquest: in a word, dominance. She says that to stop war men must change the behavior of men. In her analysis, humankind must destroy patriarchy itself.

There have been a few changes since then. First, the overt messaging of warfare as manly by the ruling class has become much less widespread. Secondly, there is no longer total exclusion of women "from all the institutions of decision-making and power," but I hope that as Marxists we can recognize that representatives of oppressed groups in governance does not imply the end of that oppression and in fact just tends to obfuscate said oppression. This should be very clear when it comes to the USA. Additionally, war is still very masculine. Women's participation is still rather marginal. When it's widespread, it's sexualized and fetishized (Israel). Additionally, male sexual violence is still widespread (again, the IOF perverts).

Still, you might argue that all of this is rather essentialist, and essentialism is no good. It posits some kind of gendered spirit and is basically anathema to dialectical materialism. It results in either bad liberal allyship, transphobia, and/or kill-all-menism (which, I get the frustration, but as a serious political program it's kind of terrible).

That is why a class (Marxist) analysis of patriarchy is needed:

"Patriarchy" is the name of the political and cultural system which oppresses women. To be for the liberation of women is to be against patriarchy - no lesser commitment is a serious one. In a patriarchy all civil and religious authority (power) belongs by birthright to men. Patriarchy is a system of ownership wherein women and children are owned. *Patriarchy is the original authoritarian model, the molecular totalitarian model, and every tyrannical form is derived from it.

Leftists acknowledge patriarchy exists but tend not to treat it seriously. It isn't another, secondary form of oppression in addition to but less important than the bourgeoisie-proletariat relation - it is the primeval form of class rule.

The destruction of the master-slave political scenario, however we describe it (capitalist-worker, white black, rich-poor, etc.), requires the destruction of the source of that scenario - patriarchy.

Hence why the Marxist-Leninist bloc improved the conditions of working women but did not truly liberate them. Hence why the feminists argue war is masculine - because war followed from complex society - class rule - and the first form of class rule was patriarchy.

Men owned women, women were capital; men owned women and the children that women produced; men owned women as wives, concubines, slaves, and whatever women produced, men owned. There was one man and he owned several women and their children and whatever they all produced. There was one man and he owned families who worked his land, and in those families women were owned first by the man who owned the families, then by the man who headed her particular family. He was the master, and master became his title, then a common form of address. Women were capital; later other commodities, then money, substituted for women occasionally, then more often. Today there is corporate capitalism in Amerika and state capitalism in Russia. When we look at the failure of the socialist revolution in Russia we see clearly the inability of patriarchs to give up the ownership of women. When that basic totalitarian form of ownership survives, wherever it survives, the whole motley gamut of totalitarian behavior survives with it.

IIRC, Engels sort of discusses patriarchy, but it's been a while and I don't have time today to re-read The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. Kollontai in "The Social Basis of the Woman Question" (1909) admits women have been subordinated under all modes of production, but does not see them as a class, and believes this subordination will necessary cease following the victory of the revolution. Which given how the USSR went, that would mean the USSR wasn't socialist and/or women are actually a class oppressed by men.

What is most astounding is how left-wing economists totally ignore, as if it did not exist, so-called "women's work." Most women do domestic labor and are not paid for it. Most women do child rearing and are not paid for it. Women do slave labor, unrewarding, repetitive, involuntary, unskilled, unvalued, menial work that the poorest man will not do. Where are the left-wing writings on how women are the most viciously exploited labor force on the planet?

Well, to be fair to the Marxists, Alexandra Kollontai acknowledges, "Capitalism has placed a crushing burden on woman’s shoulders: it has made her a wage-worker without having reduced her cares as housekeeper or mother" in "Communism and the Family" from 1920. It's part of her argument for why the family unit will dissolve away. And while she's right that the family has increasingly become obsolete, neither American capitalism nor Soviet socialism has made significant process towards its dissolution. Only a consciously feminist social revolution could do so, and Soviet socialism's potential to do that petered out and was never recovered.

Last, the Left, its economists, historians, and philosophers, have seemingly not yet noticed that we are the means of production. We are, in our bodies, the worker and the means of production. Never has there been such alienated labor.

Yes and the USSR fucked up big time here when they banned abortion for two decades. Not defeating the "collective male ownership of women under socialism" allegations as Dworkin puts it or the "community of women" allegations as Marx puts it!!

To the [extent] that the Left is committed to patriarchal forms, that is, to a very great extent, it cannot help but perpetuate the values it purports to oppose. To the extent that the Left is consciously and conscientiously feminist, that is, to a very great extent, it cannot help but perpetuate the same forms of dominance and submission that it purports, in other areas, to oppose. To the extent that Leftists do not recognize the real dimension of their patriarchal alliances, that is, to a very great extent, they cannot help but perpetuate patriarchy, that system of male ownership which is the parent form of fascism. As feminists, we must view the nonfeminist Left as a reform movement.

While the Left is at least a bit less committed to patriarchal forms nowadays (thank Cybele), this is still largely true. Much of the Left supports queer relationships and identities now, but doesn't really criticize heterosexuality as a regime, the nuclear family, or male supremacy. Sex pests can still get away with a lot in leftist parties. Every now and then you see calls for the "feminist" left to coddle men so that they don't become right-wing (Marxists understand that the petty bourgeoisie tend towards fascism when their class position is in peril, yet they blame feminists for men tending towards incelism when their sex-class position is in peril). And then of course there's the issue of prostitution. Dworkin would hate Hasan, but I'm not opening that can of worms.

I begin with the proposition that the means of production must be in the hands of the people; that freedom, dignity, and nonalienated work are the rights of all people. I look to those who articulate those propositions. But in fact, or in effect, they say: the means of production must be in the hands of men

Sexism is a new word, one which has been assimilated with remarkable ease into common usage. It is meant to refer to systematic cultural, political, and psychological prejudice against women. It denotes biological differentiation/inferiority, just as racism denotes racial differentiation/inferiority. It was coined so that we could refer to the general cultural, political, and psychological conviction that women are inferior to men, and that womanly or female, qualities (as a male-supremacist culture defines them) are inferior to manly, or male, qualities [...] Properly manipulated, the word is meaningless because it no longer makes any reference to the actuality of power.

That about sums up what sexism really means and how it's misused. It has become so generic that "I hate all men" could be considered "sexist." Now of course we've added "misandry," "woke ethnostate," and "black supremacy" to this list...