anarchism and intersectionality

I enjoyed this. Thot it was purty good.

anarchism and intersectionality:http://blackrosefed.org/refusing-to-wait-anarchism-intersectionality/
Refusing to Wait: Anarchism and Intersectionality

This essay argues that anarchists can learn from the theory of “intersectionality” that emerged from the Black feminist movement. Indeed, anarchist conceptions of class struggle have widened as a result of the rise of feminist movements, civil rights movements, as well as the gay, lesbian, queer and trans liberation movements. What can be learned and how do we see their relationship to class struggle? Do we dismiss them as “mere identity politics” or are there valuable overlaps and influences that should be incorporated? – A PDF pamphlet version of this article can be found HERE. Originally published in 2009.

By Deric Shannon and J. Rogue…

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…….Marxist feminists, on the other hand, tended to locate women’s oppression within the economic sphere. The fight against capitalism was seen as the “primary” battle, as “The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles”–that is, human history could be reduced to class (Marx and Engels 1967). Further, Marxist feminists tended to believe that the economic “base” of society had a determining effect on its cultural “superstructures”. Thus, the only way to achieve equality between women and men would be to smash capitalism–as new, egalitarian economic arrangements would give rise to new, egalitarian superstructures. Such was the determining nature of the economic base.

Out of the conversations between Marxist feminism and radical feminism another approach emerged called “dual systems theory” (see e.g. Hartmann 1981; Young 1981). A product of what came to be dubbed socialist feminism, dual systems theory argued that feminists needed to develop “a theoretical account which gives as much weight to the system of patriarchy as to the system of capitalism” (Young 1981: 44). While this approach did much to resolve some of the arguments about which fight should be “primary” (i.e. the struggle against capitalism or the struggle against patriarchy), it still left much to be desired. For example, black feminists argued that this perspective left out a structural analysis of race (Joseph 1981). Further, where was oppression based on sexuality, ability, age, etc. in this analysis? Were all of these things reducible to capitalist patriarchy?

It is within this theoretical backdrop that intersectionality emerged. But it wasn’t just abstraction and theory that led to these insights. As mentioned before, part of the reason feminists saw a need for a separate analysis of patriarchy as a systemic form of oppression was due to their experiences with the broader Left. Without an analysis of patriarchy that put it on equal footing with capitalism as an organizing system in our lives, there was no adequate response to male leaders who suggested that we deal with women’s oppression after we deal with the “primary” or “more important” class struggle.

But these tensions were not limited to the Left, they also existed within the feminist movement. Perhaps one of the best examples of this on the ground was in the pro-choice movement in the United States. Before Roe vs. Wade in 1973, abortion law was considered an issue to be dealt with on a state-by-state basis. Feminists mobilized around Roe Vs. Wade to see that legal abortion would be guaranteed throughout the country. The ruling eventually did give legal guarantees to abortion through the second trimester, but the “choice” and “legalization” rhetoric left too much unaddressed for many feminists.

And this experience set the stage for re-thinking the idea of a universalized, monolithic experience of “womanhood” as it is often expressed in traditional identity politics. Black feminists and womanists, for example, argued that focusing solely on legalized abortion obscured the ways that black women in the United States underwent forced sterilizations and were often denied the right to have children (see Roberts 1997). Further, working class women argued that legalized “choice” is pretty meaningless without socialism, as having abortion legal, but unaffordable, didn’t exactly constitute a “choice”. True reproductive freedom meant something more than just legal abortion for working class women. Many wanted to have kids but simply couldn’t afford raising them; some wanted a change in the cultural norms and mores of a society that judged the decisions women made about their bodies; others wanted proximity to clinics for reproductive health–in short, a “reproductive freedom” framework would take into account the interests of all women, not just be structured around white, heterosexual, middle-class women’s concerns (the seeming default position of the “pro-choice” movement)……see link