Chapter Ten: Via Feminism to Parkinship
This is a draft of chapter ten of a book in process titled Ambitione futuri.
It is for use by participants in the HelpAlbert ZGroup. Please do not circulate
In discussing visions for gender relations in accord with our overall conceptual framework we have in mind a good society's procreation, nurturance, socialization, sexuality, and organization of daily home life with a special eye on three dimensions of implications – those bearing on relations between women and men, between homo and heterosexuals, and between members of different generations.
Kinship Vision
A problem with this discussion, is that there is as yet very little clarity about what revolutionized kinship relations will be like in a new society. What altered or new institutions will organize procreation, nurturance, and socialization? How will the structures and social roles we fill to accomplish upbringing and home life change?
Our values imply that accomplishing kinship functions should also enhance solidarity among the involved actors, preserve diversity of options and choices, apportion benefits and responibilities fairly, and convey self managing influence – all as make sense in this sphere of life, taking into account issues of age, etc.
So with that set of broad desires, will there be families as we now know them? And whatever families we have, what else will exist? Will upbringing diverge greatly from what we know now? What about courting and sexual coupling? How will the old and young interact with what we now call adults and vice versa, how will adults react with the elderly and the young?
To fulfill our values of course good kinship structures will liberate women and men rather than causing the former to be subordinate to the latter, and likewise for other hierarchical or degrading relations. Such hierarchies would violate our values, clearly.
In these matters, we are therefore talking about liberating a side of life where the gain will be removing the features that produce systematic sexism, homophobia, and ageism, plus gaining an array of positive improvements that we can only guess at until we have experimented with more complete proposals for visionary kinship institutions, but which will at the very least include the benefits of additional people reaching their fullest potentials.
It isn't that all problems associated with gender will disappear in a good society, of course, or that all unmet desires or un-manifested capacities will be always and everywhere perfectly addressed without any pain and with maximum benefits for all. Even in a wonderful society, we can confidently predict that there will still be unrequited love. Sex will not lack turmoil. Rape and other violent acts will occur, albeit far less often than now. Social change can't remove the pain of losing friends and relatives to premature death. It can't make all adults equally adept at relating positively with children or with the elderly or vice versa. Uncle Useem and Aunt Arundhati may be a perfect match for our interests, or, perhaps not so much.
Quod autem rationabiliter exspectare et postulare possumus, non est quaedam utopiana eliminatio omnis conflictus ac doloris, sed novae pugnae formae systematicam violationem mulierum, hilarium, puerorum et senum, quae totos coetus his inducunt. pati materiales vel sociales privationes.
We can demand that innovations eliminate the structural coercion of men and women, of hetero and homosexuals, and of all adults and children into patterns manifesting and preserving systematic violations of solidarity, diversity, equity, and self mangement.
How will all this happen? Not how will we get to this better future, which is a derivative and even more difficult question that we take up later, but what will the institutions defining a vastly better kinship future look like?
Some people have good ideas, no doubt, but I have to admit that I have barely an inkling about this visionary question. Indeed, I can find very little in the way of a proposed answer in the contemporary literature of the left, though in the past people, mainly women, have attempted to provide some visionary sex-gender insights and I would like to mention some of those attempts as being worth trying to elaborate into a gender related vision.
In societatibus hodiernis, quae homines evehimus, tradendo feminas ad optiones minus perficiendas et implendas, quaenam sunt structurae definitivae, quae intrinsece efficiunt ordinem sexist, ac propterea necesse est alte immutari ad illam ordinationem removendam?
Ordinando sane intelligimus viros dominari mulieres in accepti- tibus et circumstantiis, in opportunitatibus et qualitate vitae et in potestate in eventibus socialibus.
Sexismus formam occupat in hominibus qui dominantur et ditiores condiciones habent. Subtiliorem formam accipit per diuturnos habitus communicationis et humanitatis suppositiones. Producitur et exprimitur ab institutis quae viros ac feminas distinguunt, etiam coercive ut in raptu et quatiendo, sed etiam subtilius per ea quae videntur partes mutuae acceptae esse differentiae in vita, opere et celebratione necnon per cumulativum impulsum. experientiae praeteritae existunt circa id quod homines cogitant, desiderant et sentiunt, et in iis quae homines scienter vel habitualiter vel etiam sui faciunt.
If we want to find the source of gender injustice it stands to reason that we need to determine which social institutions and which roles within those institutions give men and women responsibilities, conditions, and circumstances, that engender motivations, consciousness, and preferences that elevate men above women.
Vnam structuram invenimus in omnibus societatibus quae hierarchiae exsistunt homines patrem, sed mulieres matrem filios. Hoc est, invenimus duas partes admodum dissimiles, quas viri ac feminae in proximo generatione agunt, unumquodque munus sociale definitum et in solo minimo sensu biologice fixum.
Una ratione simplex structuralis mutatio relationum propinquitatis esset ad tollendam hanc differentiam matris/patris inter viros ac mulieres.
What if instead of women mothering and men fathering, women and men each parented children? What if men and women each related to children in the same fashion, with the same mix of responsibilities and behaviors (called parenting), rather than one gender having almost all the nurturing as well as tending, cleaning, and other maintenance tasks (called mothering), and the other gender having many more decision-based tasks, with one gender being more involved and the other more aloof – and so on?
I am not highly confident that replacing gender defined mothering and fathering with gender blind parenting would alone eliminate all the defining roots of sexism, but I do think this is likely to be a key innovation critical to removing the underlying causes of sexist hierarchies.
Haec praecipua opinio emersit, vel saltem primum eam offendit in opere Nancy Chodorow, eminentissime in libro cui titulus "Reproduction of Mothering" (University of California Press). Liber causa fecit matrem esse munus sociale et non biologice definitum et uti matres filias procreare, quae vicissim non modo facultates maternae habent, sed matris desiderium. "Hae facultates et necessitates" Chodorow pergit, "ex ipsa relatione matricis exstruuntur et crescunt. At contra, mulieres uti matres (et viri non matres) filios gignunt, quorum facultates et necessitates nutriunt systematice imminutae sunt et. repressit. "
Pro Chodorow, implicatio illa fuit "divisio sexualis et familiari laboris in qua mulieres mater et magis implicantur in relationibus affectivis interpersonalibus quam viri in filiabus et filiis divisionem facultatum psychologicarum quae eos ducit ad hanc divisionem sexualem et familiarem reproducendam. laborem."
Chodorow summarized by claiming that "all sex-gender systems organize sex, gender, and babies. A sexual division of labor in which women mother organizes babies and separates domestic and public spheres. Heterosexual marriage, which usually gives men rights in women's sexual and reproductive capacities, and formal rights in children, organizes sex. Both together organize and reproduce gender as an unequal social relation."
Ita fortasse una notatio valde melioris societatis relationes vis generis erit ut viri et feminae ambo parent, nulla divisione inter matrem et patrem.
Another very typical structure that comes into question for many feminists thinking about improved sex-gender relations is the nuclear family. This is hard to even define, I think, but has to do with whether the locus of child care and familial involvement is very narrow, such as resting with only two biological parents, or instead involves many more people – perhaps an extended family or friends, community members, etc.
It seems highly unlikely that a good society would have for its gender relations any rules that required a few typical household organizations and family structures such that everyone must abide only those. We wouldn't expect that adults would by law have to live alone or in pairs or in groups in any single or even in any few patterns. The key point is likely to be diversity, on the one hand, and that whatever multiple and diverse patterns exist, each frequently chosen option embodies features that impose gender equity rather than imposing gender hierarchy.
While I don't feel equipped to describe such possible features, I can say that the men and women that are born, brought up, and then themselves bear and bring up new generations in a new and much better society will be full, capable, and confident in their demeanor and also lack differentiations that limit and confine the personality or the life trajectories of either – whether to some kind of narrow feminine or narrow masculine mold.
The same can be said, broadly, about sexuality and intergenerational relations. I don't think we know, or arguably even as yet have a very loose picture of what fully liberated sexuality will be like in all its multitude of preferences and practices or what diverse forms of intergenerational relations adults and their children and elders will enter into. What I think we can say, however, is that in future desirable societies no few patterns will be elevated above all others as mandatory though all widely chosen options will preclude producing in people a proclivity to dominate or to rule, or to subordinate or to obey, based either on sexual orientation or on age (or on any other social or biological characteristic, for that matter).
Perexiguam notionem habemus quid exemplaria specifica sexus-genus emergant, multiplicent, et continue crescant in meliore futuro - exempli gratia, monogamum et non, hetero, homo, vel bi-sexualem, et involvunt curas transformatas institutiones, familias, scholas. ac fortasse alia spatia politica et socialia pro pueris, quam pro adultis et senibus. Sed confidenter suspicari possumus actores omnium aetatum, genera, ac relationes consensuales non graves ineunt a stigmatibus immunes esse.
All the above is vague and modestly formulated. Will renovated kinship include the broad structural features intimated above? I don't know. I certainly believe future kinship will be very diverse, at any rate. But even without knowing the inner attributes of new institutions for family life and related interactions and while waiting for kinship vision to emerge more fully from feminist thought and practice, I think we can still say some useful things about these domains relations to economics and polity, and vice versa.
Cognatio visionaria et Societas
Cognatio instituta necessaria sunt ut homines ad necessitates sexuales et motus animi excolendas et implendas, ad vitam cotidianam componendam, ad novas filiorum generationes excitandas. Cognatio hodiernae relationes viros supra feminas et liberos elevant, masculorum concubitores opprimunt, potentias humanas sexuales et motus inducunt.
In humanitatis societate definitiones sociales iniunctae graves eliminabimus, ut quisque vitam suam pro libito persequi possit, cuiusvis sexus, sexus, praerogativa et aetas. Nulla non-biologice imponatur divisio sexualis laboris cum viris aliud genus operis faciendi ac feminae, aliud simpliciter faciente vi viri ac feminae, nec erit hierarchicum munus obtrectatio hominum secundum praeferentiam sexualem. Relationes generabimus quae sociales mulieres necnon viri respiciunt contributiones et sexualitatem quae physice dives est et affectuose adimplens.
Verisimile est, exempli gratia, novae affinitatis formae angustias monogamiae possessivas superabunt, servatum etiam altitudinem ac continuitatem quae ex diuturnis relationibus provenit. Novae formae fortasse arbitrarias divisiones officiorum inter viros ac feminas delebunt ut liberum utrumque sexum alat et inchoet. Verisimile erit etiam pueris locum administrationis sui tradendi, sicut etiam sustentationem ac structuram quae infantes egent.
Sed quid hoc fieri potest? Meam sententiam strictam, prout nunc stant, pendens magis cognita et experientia, sequitur.
Uti patet, feminae debet habere libertatem procreandi, libertatem procreandi sine metu sterilitatis vel privationis oeconomicae, et libertas non per impedimentum accessum ad coercendum et abortum procreandum. Nulla in hac re gravior esse potest quam detrimentum habere de possessione privata instrumentorum productionis. Sicut proprietas privata abrogat iura operariorum ad suas facultates laborantes regendi et moderandi, negatio nativitatis et abortus iura mulierum abrogat iura ad earum procreandi facultates moderandas et regendas ac per hoc vitam in genere.
Sed affinitatis feminist affinitas etiam curare debet ut munus educationis puerilis ab sexu non secernat et quod pro traditis coniugibus sustineatur, singulis parentibus, lesbians et hilaris parentur, ac magis implicatae, multiplices dispositiones parentium. Omnes parentes facilem accessum ad qualitatem diurnariam habere debent, laboris flexibile horas et optiones parentum valedixit. Non est absolvere parentes filiorum educationem, ut in posteros transferantur ad curas curandas, quae praecipue a mulieribus (vel etiam feminis ac viris) constituuntur, quae viles aestimantur sociales. Idea est status infantium educationis elevare, commercium inter infantes et adultos valde personale fovere, officia pro his inter se commerciis aeque inter viros ac mulieres et in societate distribuere.
Ceterum, quid sociale opus maius esse potest quam ut civium progeniem enutriat? Quid igitur irrationius esse potest quam ideologiae patriarchales, qui negant ii, qui hoc munus sociale criticum implent statum quem merentur? Actio consanguinitatis in optabili societate non solum aequius disponenda, sed etiam socialis aestimatio huius activitatis emendanda est.
Feminism should also embrace a liberated vision of sexuality respectful of individual's inclinations and choices, whether homosexual, bisexual, heterosexual, monogamous, or non-monogamous. Beyond respecting human rights, the exercise and exploration of different forms of sexuality by consenting partners provides a variety of experiences that can benefit all. In a humanist society that has eliminated oppressive hierarchies, sex can be pursued solely for emotional, physical, and spiritual pleasure and development, or, of course, as part of loving relationships. Experimentation to these ends will likely not merely be tolerated, but appreciated.
Opus est visione relationum sexum, in quibus feminae non amplius subordinatae sunt, et ingenia et intelligentia dimidiae speciei libera demum est. Visio indigemus qua homines alere possunt, pueritia tempus est ludi et responsabilitatis augendi cum facultate sui iuris discendi sed non timoris, et in qua solitudo non tenet vitium cuius manubrium singulis annis transit.
Digna consanguinitatis visio repetet vitam ab habitu et necessitate ad quam artem formandam omnes capaces sumus ad exercendam et expolitionem. Sed nulla simulatio haec nocte confici posse. Neque est quod putes unum genus institutis-sus-parens omnibus optimum esse. Dum familia nuclearis hodierna, praesertim si sit valde praesens vivendi exemplar vel saltem maxime admirandum, nimis compatible cum normis patriarchalibus probatum est, aliud genus familiae nuclearis sine dubio evolvendum est cum multitudine aliarum formis cognationis. homines experiuntur quomodo metas feminism assequantur.
Economics and Women and Men
Capitalist economics is more subtle than some critical analysts think vis a vis women and men. There is, in fact, nothing in the defining institutions of capitalism–private ownership of productive property, corporate divisions of labor, authoritative decision making, and markets–that even notices much less differentiates and hierarchically arrays men and women due to a strictly economic dynamic and logic. On the other hand, if a society's sex gender system produces a differentiation between men and women, capitalist economy will not ignore that reality but will, indeed, accommodate it or even co-reproduce it, as discussed in Part One.
Ita, si viri ac mulieres familiares aliaeque cognationis relationes induuntur ut illae exspectationes relativae dominationis vis illae sint, oeconomia capitalista sub lumine huius rei operabitur.
Dico posito quod villicum conducere quaerit. Etsi vis laboris est masculus et mulier et vir valent, et mulier melius habet documenta et aptior ad res ipsas quae agitur, nihilominus in societate sexist vir longe probabilius est officium obtinere et hoc verum est. etiam si dominus rei nullum sexum omnino habeat.
Ratio est, quia dominus laboris indiget ut moderatori oboedienti ac subordinato sentiat, et procuratori indiget ut vim auctoritatis et superioris sentiat, et longe minus probabile est hanc formam contra praeconceptas societatis ordinationes sexuales emergere quam illud. ad requisitam normam emergendi ordinationes.
Aliis verbis, divisio laboris corporata magis utitur quam incurrat contra hierarchiam sexum, quae per relationes familiares et affinitatem stabilitur. Viros supra feminas collocat, quam praecepta a propinquitate manantia neglecta.
Similiter exemplaria solvenda reddent pacta differentialis potentiae quae sexismum viris et mulieribus imponit. Viri, omnia alia aequalia, plura excerpere poterunt ad idem opus quam mulieres, ex dominis subordinationis et minoris pactionis potestatem feminarum opprimendi.
These are the minimal accommodations of capitalist economies to sexist kinship relations. Capitalism's hierarchies don't challenge and largely incorporate gender hierarchies. Women disproportionately occupy subordinate positions. Women earn less. There emerge the distressing details including the tremendous incidence of female poverty, ill health, and rape and other violence that we all by now know about.
Magni interest scire tamen altiorem esse vim campi vi hierarchiae in relationibus oeconomicis seexistendi. Styli et exempla morum ac morum masculi et feminini sexus patriarchalis systematis generati, muneribus oeconomicis imponere possunt, ut hi lineamenta illius proprie incipiant potius quam accommodare vel abutere.
In other words, women's economic jobs can take on attributes of nurturance and care giving and maintenance which are in no sense required by or even entirely logical in light of only economic dictates, and similarly for men's roles taking on male patterns also imposed by kinship definitions even contrary to purely economic logic.
In this case we will see jobs in the economy that both reflect and very importantly actively reproduce male and female behavior imposed by a patriarchal sex gender system. The economy then becomes complicit in reproducing sexism. Thus, as Batya Weinbaum points out in the book Curious Courtship of Women's Liberation and Socialism, "
Parecon et Parpolity Impact
In parecon, however, reproduction of sexist relations emanating from a patriarchal sex gender system disappears. It isn't just that a participatory economy works nicely alongside a liberated kinship sphere. It is that a parecon precludes or at least militates against non-liberated relations among men and women. Parecon is in contradiction to sexism.
Parecon non dabit hominibus comparatione plus laboris possibilitatis vel reditus plus quam feminae, quia huiusmodi commoda cuilibet coetui ad quemvis alium pertinentia praebere non potest.
Job libratum complexus et administratione sui necessitatem et adultos quae- rere possunt in decretis et ad laborem creativum permittendi, cuiuscumque generis vel alterius attributionis biologicae vel socialis.
Non est processus pareconium permanentium hierarchiarum in genere relationum natarum, quia nullae sunt hierarchiae in pareo quae eam manere possunt. Mulieres minus quam viros mereri nequeunt, nec minus habent operas, nec minus sententias dicunt.
Sed quid de domestico labore? Multi feminists hoc loco mirabuntur, "parecon asserit differentiam tollere in opere et in reditibus ab sexismo hodierno requiritur, sed pars oeconomiae domestica est? Cur aut cur non?"
Proclive est dicere nullam esse huic quaestioni rectam responsionem, sicut ad alias maximas quaestiones, extra quaestiones definitivas oeconomicos.
In other words, I can imagine a society that treats household labor of diverse types as part of its participatory economy and I can imagine one that doesn't. With my current state of understanding, I would prefer, myself, the latter type, for a few reasons. But neither choice is ruled out or made inevitable, I think, purely by the logic of parecon.
Beyond that logical openness, however, I tend to think household labor shouldn't be considered part of the economy to be subject to the norms of productive labor with remuneration for effort and sacrifice, etc.
First I think this because I just don't think nurturing and raising the next generation is like producing a shirt, stereo, scalpel, or spyglass. There is something fundamentally distorting, to my thinking, about conceptualizing child care and work place production as being the same type of social activity.
Secundam principalem rationem laboris domestici censeri non debere puto ut pars productionis oeconomicae, quia fructus domestici laboris maxime ab ipso vel ipso effectore fruuntur. Possumne ego pluris tempus impendere in consilio et sustentatione domestica, et inde magis remunerationem accipere? Si ita, operis coactionem possideo et tunc plus reditus nimis. Hoc aliud est quam aliud opus, et videtur mihi mutans consilium conclavis mei vel hortus conservandi similior est consumptio quam est sicut productio.
Puta me libet canere, vel exemplar aeroplanorum construere, vel quicquid. Actio, quam amabam, multum commune habet cum labore, sed consummationem vocamus, quod id faciam auspiciis meis et mihi. Quod autem opus appellamus, id quod sub auspiciis consiliorum opificum agimus, ad enuncianda, quae praeter nos solum, fruuntur.
Is there a problem in saying that because caring for and raising children is fundamentally different in kind than producing cars or screwdrivers and in saying that maintaining a household is different in its social relations and benefits than working in a factory, and deducing that on these bases we shouldn't count household labor as work to be remunerated and occur under the auspices of parecon's workplace institutions?
I guess if we think it is impossible to have a transformation of sex-gender relations themselves then there is a problem, yes. If the norms and structures of households and living units are highly sexist, and if a parecon doesn't incorporate household labor as part of the economy and subject to its norms, then household labor will be done overwhelmingly by women and will as a result reduce their leisure or their time for other pursuits relative to men.
But why assume that? Why shouldn't it be that transformed norms for household labor are produced by a transformation of sex gender relations themselves, rather than by calling household labor part of the economy?
Take it in reverse. If this were a book about feminism and the rest of society and if I had mapped out a feminist sex-gender vision, I don't think many people would ask whether we can count the workplace as a household so that it gets the benefits of the innovative relations that new families and living units have. We would assume, instead, that there would need to be a revolution in the economy, not just in kinship, and we would rely on the former for the chief redefinitions of life at work even as we also anticipated and required that the economy abide and even abet the gains in kinship, and even as we worked to ensure that the gains of each meshed compatibly with the other.
Quoquo modo, plane parecon contra sexismum militat, quia ex altera parte nulla est ratio quin hierarchias sexist nec non incorporet, et ex altera parte efficit et remunerat feminas modo quod obstet ut facile subordinatur in quovis. aliis regnis.
The situation with the polity is even more simple and straightforward. Of course legislative and other structures in no way favor one gender versus another. And obviously laws must be consistent with feminist kinship, as feminist kinship must nurture and socialize people capable of participatory in self managing political relations. So the polity will have laws, constitutional and otherwise, guaranteeing the character of political relations is consistent with and even reproductive of the feminist benefits of new kinship relations, and vice versa.
Perhaps it is the paucity of my understanding showing, but other than in direct analogy to the above discussion, I honestly don't see a deeper relation of economics or politics and sexuality. If there is homophobia or other sexual hierarchies in a society, and if the economy is capitalist, then the economy will to the extent owners are able to do so exploit whatever differentials in bargaining power they are handed and likewise a typically top down polity will at least reflect them and often exacerbate them. Beyond this, however, the capitalist economy and any authoritarian polity may also incorporate gay and straight behavior patterns into economic roles, consumption patterns, etc. With parecon and parpolity, however, no exploitation of sexual difference is even possible much less enacted in the economy because there is one norm of remuneration and one logic of labor definition that applies to everyone which by their very definition foreclose options of hierarchy, while the polity derives from and thus reflects and protects the will of men and women schooled by feminist relations.
More positively, it seems to me that whatever liberated sexuality will mean in a future society it can only be hastened and abetted by economic and political relations that bestow on actors self managing power and just allocations thereby tending to generate actors expecting to be creative, initiating, and self managing in other spheres of their lives than just the economic.
In other words, what healthy sexuality requires of an economy and polity to be consistent and even nurturant of its outcomes a parecon can and automatically does deliver–people prepared to partake of life fully and equally to others, utilizing their capacities, enjoying dignity and equity of conditions, and self managing their options.
What about intergenerational conflict? Whereas capitalism will exploit age differentials for profit via remuneration for the young and old reduced due to these constituencies’ reduced bargaining power and will take advantage of different capacities related to age differences for exploitative divisions of labor and will rush premature labor entry or slow warranted labor withdrawal compared to humane choices, again for exploitative reasons, a parecon will not only not promote humane behaviors but will literally make their obverse impossible due to being contrary to defining parecon norms and structures. Similarly a parpolity will likewise protect and incorporate the will of people of all ages, as self management permits nothing less.
Societies will decide the role of the elderly, retirement ages, etc. and likewise for young people's entry into economic and political responsibility. While familiar and other extra-economic intergenerational relations will certainly not be governed solely by economic or political impositions and will arise, instead, due to a host of variables including new kinship and gender forms, the fact that a parecon and a parpolity require developed and fully participatory and self managing actors imposes on life more generally a respect for all actors and gives all actors material equality and behavioral wherewithal and habits contrary to any kind of subordination emanating from any other of society's institutions.
We don't yet know what liberating gender, sexual, and intergenerational relations will be like but we can say parecon and parpolity would appear likely to be quite compatible and even nurturing of them, just as they would nurture and socialize young people into preparedness for self managing economic and political life. Before long hopefully further kinship vision will exist and this claim and parecon and parpolity – along with feminist kinship – can be further elaborated, tested, or refined, as need be.
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