While I understand this meme was made with the intention of fun, this kind of criticism is based only in identity, and does not address the conditions that produce and reproduce patriarchy. And this kind of identity-only criticism can be used upside down by reactionary forces, which basically reinforces the idea around men that feminism is only about hating men, and not about how patriarchy negatively affects all our lives. And we also have the reverse of anti-men identity politics movement, with anti-women identity politics by incels and red pills, which itself is a reaction against liberal feminism.
The other problem regarding this type of politics, is that it isn’t actionable. Yes, men are terrible, but can you get rid of them? Is it a desirable thing to have a society with women-only? What are you going to do with the existing men? Are they just going to disappear?
It was common during the German social democratic world in the late 19th century, which was still male-dominated, the view that woman’s emancipation would advance society. That paved way for many feminist Marxists that joined the movement and worked alongside men to criticize and attack the existing exploitative patriarchal structures. And this has made them to have real impact in society with politics like female suffrage, equality in pay, maternity leave, divorce rights, abortion rights etc. This approach is much more effective than dividing men and women into different camps that antagonize each other.
While I understand this meme was made with the intention of fun, this kind of criticism is based only in identity, and does not address the conditions that produce and reproduce patriarchy.
The conditions that produce and reproduce patriarchy are the subjugation of women into sexual chattel through which accumulated wealth and property can be transferred from one generation of men to another as well as the net benefit that men derive as a class from enforcing this system of gendered oppression upon the rest of humanity. This regime of male supremacy can only be perpetuated by a mass of willing footsoldiers who enforce the status of less-than-human on those reduced to sexual chattel and the meme is a silly way of expressing frustration with men overwhelmingly choosing to play the part with great enthusiasm.
And this kind of identity-only criticism can be used upside down by reactionary forces, which basically reinforces the idea around men that feminism is only about hating men, and not about how patriarchy negatively affects all our lives. And we also have the reverse of anti-men identity politics movement, with anti-women identity politics by incels and red pills, which itself is a reaction against liberal feminism.
Feminism is about ending patriarchy. Any form of criticism or pushback deployed against any sort of systemic oppression will naturally provoke a reaction from the beneficiaries of the system who correctly identify that their interests as a privileged class are under threat. Consequentially, no liberation movement in history has ever achieved progress by limiting itself to forms that do not produce pushback from reactionaries because the only thing reactionaries accept is the perpetuation of the system that favors them.
If men are negatively affected by patriarchy then the correct strategy for their liberation is to fight to dismantle patriarchy. Concern trolling feminist memes does absolutely nothing to further the objective of endig patriarchy so if you genuinely care about the suffering of men under it, your reaction to this post is deeply unserious.
The other problem regarding this type of politics, is that it isn’t actionable. Yes, men are terrible, but can you get rid of them? Is it a desirable thing to have a society with women-only? What are you going to do with the existing men? Are they just going to disappear?
Feminists don’t want to get rid of men. No existing feminist movement has Generalplan Man as an actual serious political objective. I have never read any piece of feminist thought that envisions a woman-only society as desirable. We want to end patriarchy. Men who chose to defend their privilege at the expense of others’ humanity are going to get trampled over in the process, and we understand the material conditions that make men buy into patriarchy, but we do not equate being a man to upholding patriarchy as an essential and immutable characteristic.
If your takeaway from this post which expresses the frustration of spending a lifetime on the receiving end of men’s participation in a horrible and exploitative system is So you want to get rid of men??? you are displaying extreme bad faith. Do you also ask PoC who vent about crackers or people from the Global South who chant Death to America if they actually want to genocide white people and scold them for reinforcing white supremacist narratives?
It was common during the German social democratic world in the late 19th century, which was still male-dominated, the view that woman’s emancipation would advance society. That paved way for many feminist Marxists that joined the movement and worked alongside men to criticize and attack the existing exploitative patriarchal structures. And this has made them to have real impact in society with politics like female suffrage, equality in pay, maternity leave, divorce rights, abortion rights etc.
I live in a post-socialist country. 40+ years of socialism and we are still a deeply misogynist and patriarchal society where women’s full humanity is systematically denied, patriarchal heads of the family exerting ownership over women and children is still regarded as normal, femicides are just Tuesday, victims are blamed for SA, and reactionaries fantasize about taking away abortion rights. The progress achieved by past socialist states was clearly not enough and we need to do better. In order to improve we need to understand why those male-dominated movements fell short. Socialist men doing some self-critique and examining their role within patriarchy, their fragility and the reactionary tendencies fueled by it would be a starting point.
This approach is much more effective than dividing men and women into different camps that antagonize each other.
Angry feminist vent memes did not divide men and women into different camps that antagonize each other. Male supremacy did by reducing women to sexual property and fundamentally antagonizing them through the denial of their humanity. Male supremacy that is dependent upon mass male buy-in and male enforcement in order to reproduce itself. The natural reaction of any human being with self-respect whose humanity is being denied by another is anger directed at their oppressor. If this natural reaction is making you uncomfortable then dialectical materialism suggests that the only serious way to resolve the antagonism and stop the anger at its source is to break the relationship of oppression and restore full humanity to all. Can you provide a few historical examples where a system of oppression has been dismantled by means of telling the oppressed class that they are too uppity and confrontational and its making the actual humans uncomfortable?
Sometimes we leftists tend to overanalyze things, and overcriticize things when people are just trying to be fun or to vent something out. You are completely right about this and I will recognize my error. I will refrain from commenting on memes from now on. But since we already started the conversation and I ended up ruining the mood, I will continue the discussion just for the sake of ot since it already escalated.
The conditions that produce and reproduce patriarchy are the subjugation of women into sexual chattel through which accumulated wealth and property can be transferred from one generation of men to another as well as the net benefit that men derive as a class from enforcing this system of gendered oppression upon the rest of humanity. This regime of male supremacy can only be perpetuated by a mass of willing footsoldiers who enforce the status of less-than-human on those reduced to sexual chattel and the meme is a silly way of expressing frustration with men overwhelmingly choosing to play the part with great enthusiasm.
Capitalism is indeed a patriarchal society based on property but I think it is very anachronistic to say that women are subjugated in a sexual chattel. Yes, this existed in previous patriarchal societies, and it still exists in some places where some older forms of property are still used. What it does exist are other kinds of contradictions, such as maternal and domestic labor which are most of the time unproductive (in the Marxian sense, those are very useful and society depends on it to reproduce itself), but it creates a hierarchy in the bourgeois family between the husband and the wife (the wife in the immense majority of cases). This is even worse in cases where a woman needs to be both in the productive role (selling her labor power) and in the unproductive role (managing the home and raising children). Commodity fetishism also create a hierarchy between all those who participate in the commodity market (selling labor or accumulating capital) and those who do not, so it’s not a surprise when many women feel alienated in this arrangement. So, in summary, patriarchal society changed qualitatively in capitalism, so old forms of oppression were erased, while new forms of oppression appeared (or were transformed).
Feminism is about ending patriarchy. Any form of criticism or pushback deployed against any sort of systemic oppression will naturally provoke a reaction from the beneficiaries of the system who correctly identify that their interests as a privileged class are under threat. Consequentially, no liberation movement in history has ever achieved progress by limiting itself to forms that do not produce pushback from reactionaries because the only thing reactionaries accept is the perpetuation of the system that favors them.
I know this. We all want communism and to abolish class society, including class divisions among men and women. And I am not talking about not producing a reaction, since our political work will inevitably produce one. What I was discussing was about the effectiveness of agitation, which in my opinion must not be about creating hate between identities, but should actually focus on the actual contradictions. But I think I went overboard with the post and shouldn’t take this meme seriously as its intent was fun, not exactly agitation.
If men are negatively affected by patriarchy then the correct strategy for their liberation is to fight to dismantle patriarchy. Concern trolling feminist memes does absolutely nothing to further the objective of endig patriarchy so if you genuinely care about the suffering of men under it, your reaction to this post is deeply unserious.
I addressed this in my first paragraph, and I apologize for this. It was not my intention to ruin the mood for the meme. I respect your right to post things the way you want.
If your takeaway from this post which expresses the frustration of spending a lifetime on the receiving end of men’s participation in a horrible and exploitative system is So you want to get rid of men??? you are displaying extreme bad faith. Do you also ask PoC who vent about crackers or people from the Global South who chant Death to America if they actually want to genocide white people and scold them for reinforcing white supremacist narratives?
I am a person from the Global South and I don’t like agitation based on “death to America”. People do that a lot online, but I don’t think it’s useful. I find more useful to show solidarity to the people who are suffering there and try to demoralize their government than to do identify hate agitation. But I am one voice among many who think otherwise. Note this is not the case for Israel because it’s a different contradiction (settler colonialism and ethnical supremacy).
And my criticism of the men-hate stuff was in relation to it being actionable. I prefer a propositive kind of agitation rather than a negative hate based agitation. If I am negative, I prefer to target their values, their institutions, rather than the people itself.
I live in a post-socialist country. 40+ years of socialism and we are still a deeply misogynist and patriarchal society where women’s full humanity is systematically denied, patriarchal heads of the family exerting ownership over women and children is still regarded as normal, femicides are just Tuesday, victims are blamed for SA, and reactionaries fantasize about taking away abortion rights. The progress achieved by past socialist states was clearly not enough and we need to do better. In order to improve we need to understand why those male-dominated movements fell short. Socialist men doing some self-critique and examining their role within patriarchy, their fragility and the reactionary tendencies fueled by it would be a starting point.
I know this as well. But the fundamental problem is that the restoration of capitalist property has very likely made patriarchy worse. It’s impossible to fight patriarchy with values alone, you need to change the economic base of those values.
Angry feminist vent memes did not divide men and women into different camps that antagonize each other. Male supremacy did by reducing women to sexual property and fundamentally antagonizing them through the denial of their humanity. Male supremacy that is dependent upon mass male buy-in and male enforcement in order to reproduce itself. The natural reaction of any human being with self-respect whose humanity is being denied by another is anger directed at their oppressor. If this natural reaction is making you uncomfortable then dialectical materialism suggests that the only serious way to resolve the antagonism and stop the anger at its source is to break the relationship of oppression and restore full humanity to all. Can you provide a few historical examples where a system of oppression has been dismantled by means of telling the oppressed class that they are too uppity and confrontational and its making the actual humans uncomfortable?
The biggest problem is that angry feminists have already become a caricature with people misrepresenting actual feminist struggles with female angst. So the effect of angry agitation today IMHO is the opposite of this intent. It barely convince women who are trapped in the conservative mindset.
But again, saying this for the last time, I know the audience of Lemmygrad, and I recognize that this space should care for people who simply want to vent out their issues. Not everything should be agitprop material, and many times people just want to share their frustration and this is totally understandable.
And this kind of identity-only criticism can be used upside down by reactionary forces, which basically reinforces the idea around men that feminism is only about hating men, and not about how patriarchy negatively affects all our lives. And we also have the reverse of anti-men identity politics movement, with anti-women identity politics by incels and red pills, which itself is a reaction against liberal feminism.
This is just victim blaming, it’s not even remotely useful commentary. Women do not have to be perfect paragons of social justice who must do all the emotional labour in the world so that men can’t twist their words. There is no sincere misandrist movement anywhere and feminism is in no way to blame for incels. Again, this is just victim blaming.
The other problem regarding this type of politics, is that it isn’t actionable. Yes, men are terrible, but can you get rid of them? Is it a desirable thing to have a society with women-only? What are you going to do with the existing men? Are they just going to disappear?
This is where both your comment and your thought process should have started. Valerie Solanas is maybe one of the only thinkers to take this line of reasoning to its conclusion, and her writing is incredibly revealing with regards to why it’s an inherently flawed standpoint.
This is just victim blaming, it’s not even remotely useful commentary. Women do not have to be perfect paragons of social justice who must do all the emotional labour in the world so that men can’t twist their words. There is no sincere misandrist movement anywhere and feminism is in no way to blame for incels. Again, this is just victim blaming.
I’m not blaming liberal feminists for having incels. What I am telling is that every political progressive movement will produce a political reaction, as socialism and communism produced fascism, which is a bourgeois political mass movement. Identity-only progressive feminist movements now have a correspondent in identity-only reactionary anti-woman movements.
And as a materialist I am completely aware that many of the grievances of the incels were not caused by the feminists, but simply because of the material conditions of capitalist patriarchy that increasingly alienate men and women from society and social relations.
But political reaction relies more on aesthetics and identity than on actual material conditions. For these reactionaries, anti-men idpol serves only as propaganda material for recruitment, as many of these disenfranchised and resented men won’t find a place in the anti-men movement, but there will be plenty space for them in reactionary anti-women movements. So there isn’t even a dispute over hearts and minds.
This is where both your comment and your thought process should have started. Valerie Solanas is maybe one of the only thinkers to take this line of reasoning to its conclusion, and her writing is incredibly revealing with regards to why it’s an inherently flawed standpoint.
I don’t know Valerie Solanas, so I ask you to state here her reasoning instead of just citing her name if you want to have further discussion.
While I understand this meme was made with the intention of fun, this kind of criticism is based only in identity, and does not address the conditions that produce and reproduce patriarchy. And this kind of identity-only criticism can be used upside down by reactionary forces, which basically reinforces the idea around men that feminism is only about hating men, and not about how patriarchy negatively affects all our lives. And we also have the reverse of anti-men identity politics movement, with anti-women identity politics by incels and red pills, which itself is a reaction against liberal feminism.
The other problem regarding this type of politics, is that it isn’t actionable. Yes, men are terrible, but can you get rid of them? Is it a desirable thing to have a society with women-only? What are you going to do with the existing men? Are they just going to disappear?
It was common during the German social democratic world in the late 19th century, which was still male-dominated, the view that woman’s emancipation would advance society. That paved way for many feminist Marxists that joined the movement and worked alongside men to criticize and attack the existing exploitative patriarchal structures. And this has made them to have real impact in society with politics like female suffrage, equality in pay, maternity leave, divorce rights, abortion rights etc. This approach is much more effective than dividing men and women into different camps that antagonize each other.
The conditions that produce and reproduce patriarchy are the subjugation of women into sexual chattel through which accumulated wealth and property can be transferred from one generation of men to another as well as the net benefit that men derive as a class from enforcing this system of gendered oppression upon the rest of humanity. This regime of male supremacy can only be perpetuated by a mass of willing footsoldiers who enforce the status of less-than-human on those reduced to sexual chattel and the meme is a silly way of expressing frustration with men overwhelmingly choosing to play the part with great enthusiasm.
Feminism is about ending patriarchy. Any form of criticism or pushback deployed against any sort of systemic oppression will naturally provoke a reaction from the beneficiaries of the system who correctly identify that their interests as a privileged class are under threat. Consequentially, no liberation movement in history has ever achieved progress by limiting itself to forms that do not produce pushback from reactionaries because the only thing reactionaries accept is the perpetuation of the system that favors them.
If men are negatively affected by patriarchy then the correct strategy for their liberation is to fight to dismantle patriarchy. Concern trolling feminist memes does absolutely nothing to further the objective of endig patriarchy so if you genuinely care about the suffering of men under it, your reaction to this post is deeply unserious.
Feminists don’t want to get rid of men. No existing feminist movement has Generalplan Man as an actual serious political objective. I have never read any piece of feminist thought that envisions a woman-only society as desirable. We want to end patriarchy. Men who chose to defend their privilege at the expense of others’ humanity are going to get trampled over in the process, and we understand the material conditions that make men buy into patriarchy, but we do not equate being a man to upholding patriarchy as an essential and immutable characteristic.
If your takeaway from this post which expresses the frustration of spending a lifetime on the receiving end of men’s participation in a horrible and exploitative system is So you want to get rid of men??? you are displaying extreme bad faith. Do you also ask PoC who vent about crackers or people from the Global South who chant Death to America if they actually want to genocide white people and scold them for reinforcing white supremacist narratives?
I live in a post-socialist country. 40+ years of socialism and we are still a deeply misogynist and patriarchal society where women’s full humanity is systematically denied, patriarchal heads of the family exerting ownership over women and children is still regarded as normal, femicides are just Tuesday, victims are blamed for SA, and reactionaries fantasize about taking away abortion rights. The progress achieved by past socialist states was clearly not enough and we need to do better. In order to improve we need to understand why those male-dominated movements fell short. Socialist men doing some self-critique and examining their role within patriarchy, their fragility and the reactionary tendencies fueled by it would be a starting point.
Angry feminist vent memes did not divide men and women into different camps that antagonize each other. Male supremacy did by reducing women to sexual property and fundamentally antagonizing them through the denial of their humanity. Male supremacy that is dependent upon mass male buy-in and male enforcement in order to reproduce itself. The natural reaction of any human being with self-respect whose humanity is being denied by another is anger directed at their oppressor. If this natural reaction is making you uncomfortable then dialectical materialism suggests that the only serious way to resolve the antagonism and stop the anger at its source is to break the relationship of oppression and restore full humanity to all. Can you provide a few historical examples where a system of oppression has been dismantled by means of telling the oppressed class that they are too uppity and confrontational and its making the actual humans uncomfortable?
Sometimes we leftists tend to overanalyze things, and overcriticize things when people are just trying to be fun or to vent something out. You are completely right about this and I will recognize my error. I will refrain from commenting on memes from now on. But since we already started the conversation and I ended up ruining the mood, I will continue the discussion just for the sake of ot since it already escalated.
Capitalism is indeed a patriarchal society based on property but I think it is very anachronistic to say that women are subjugated in a sexual chattel. Yes, this existed in previous patriarchal societies, and it still exists in some places where some older forms of property are still used. What it does exist are other kinds of contradictions, such as maternal and domestic labor which are most of the time unproductive (in the Marxian sense, those are very useful and society depends on it to reproduce itself), but it creates a hierarchy in the bourgeois family between the husband and the wife (the wife in the immense majority of cases). This is even worse in cases where a woman needs to be both in the productive role (selling her labor power) and in the unproductive role (managing the home and raising children). Commodity fetishism also create a hierarchy between all those who participate in the commodity market (selling labor or accumulating capital) and those who do not, so it’s not a surprise when many women feel alienated in this arrangement. So, in summary, patriarchal society changed qualitatively in capitalism, so old forms of oppression were erased, while new forms of oppression appeared (or were transformed).
I know this. We all want communism and to abolish class society, including class divisions among men and women. And I am not talking about not producing a reaction, since our political work will inevitably produce one. What I was discussing was about the effectiveness of agitation, which in my opinion must not be about creating hate between identities, but should actually focus on the actual contradictions. But I think I went overboard with the post and shouldn’t take this meme seriously as its intent was fun, not exactly agitation.
I addressed this in my first paragraph, and I apologize for this. It was not my intention to ruin the mood for the meme. I respect your right to post things the way you want.
I am a person from the Global South and I don’t like agitation based on “death to America”. People do that a lot online, but I don’t think it’s useful. I find more useful to show solidarity to the people who are suffering there and try to demoralize their government than to do identify hate agitation. But I am one voice among many who think otherwise. Note this is not the case for Israel because it’s a different contradiction (settler colonialism and ethnical supremacy).
And my criticism of the men-hate stuff was in relation to it being actionable. I prefer a propositive kind of agitation rather than a negative hate based agitation. If I am negative, I prefer to target their values, their institutions, rather than the people itself.
I know this as well. But the fundamental problem is that the restoration of capitalist property has very likely made patriarchy worse. It’s impossible to fight patriarchy with values alone, you need to change the economic base of those values.
The biggest problem is that angry feminists have already become a caricature with people misrepresenting actual feminist struggles with female angst. So the effect of angry agitation today IMHO is the opposite of this intent. It barely convince women who are trapped in the conservative mindset.
But again, saying this for the last time, I know the audience of Lemmygrad, and I recognize that this space should care for people who simply want to vent out their issues. Not everything should be agitprop material, and many times people just want to share their frustration and this is totally understandable.
This is just victim blaming, it’s not even remotely useful commentary. Women do not have to be perfect paragons of social justice who must do all the emotional labour in the world so that men can’t twist their words. There is no sincere misandrist movement anywhere and feminism is in no way to blame for incels. Again, this is just victim blaming.
This is where both your comment and your thought process should have started. Valerie Solanas is maybe one of the only thinkers to take this line of reasoning to its conclusion, and her writing is incredibly revealing with regards to why it’s an inherently flawed standpoint.
I’m not blaming liberal feminists for having incels. What I am telling is that every political progressive movement will produce a political reaction, as socialism and communism produced fascism, which is a bourgeois political mass movement. Identity-only progressive feminist movements now have a correspondent in identity-only reactionary anti-woman movements.
And as a materialist I am completely aware that many of the grievances of the incels were not caused by the feminists, but simply because of the material conditions of capitalist patriarchy that increasingly alienate men and women from society and social relations.
But political reaction relies more on aesthetics and identity than on actual material conditions. For these reactionaries, anti-men idpol serves only as propaganda material for recruitment, as many of these disenfranchised and resented men won’t find a place in the anti-men movement, but there will be plenty space for them in reactionary anti-women movements. So there isn’t even a dispute over hearts and minds.
I don’t know Valerie Solanas, so I ask you to state here her reasoning instead of just citing her name if you want to have further discussion.