You missed a point where Rich talks about how lesbians exist beyond the gay male existence. So just because gay men may be getting more recognition and more acceptance in the workplace or in media or politically or whatever that doesn't mean that lesbians are seen as equals. Lesbians are still seen as sex objects and a fetish for straight men. Lesbians are also still faced with discrimination in the workforce (at the time Rich wrote this and at the time of my comment.) Just because gay men have managed to break barriers doesn't mean lesbians have managed to break those same barriers. Though today it is a lot better than it was at the time that Rich wrote this.
Regarding the point around the wage gap and men not wanting multiple women hired at lower wages for reasons of machismo...although I definitely think there are situations where that may be the case, I think that a Marxist feminist perspective is useful here. Patriarchy (as an arm of capital) strives to maintain women as domestic servants, fulfilling the role of housekeeper and child rearer (often in conjunction with wage labour, but the focus being the subjugation of women in the domestic environment). Bringing more women into the work force at a lower wage may serve the interests of capital on the surface level, but the side effect of that is taking more women out of their domestic roles, ultimately resulting in some amount power and control being taken away from men. Maintaining the subjugation of women in the domestic sphere is more materially beneficial than shifting their primary exploitation to wage labour. It is also worth considering that we cannot generalize all workplaces in a discussion like this. It very often IS the case that workplaces which provide lower compensation (such as fast food or retail businesses, or even more extreme examples like sweatshops) have large numbers of underemployed and/or poorly compensated women on staff. Working class women are often expected to maintain wage labour in addition to domestic duties, and are actively exploited in both of these ways. There is little to no upward mobility in these sorts of jobs, and so patriarchy is not threatened by women working these jobs. These women are not able to gain power over men from working these jobs. The pay gap emerges more clearly (and becomes more relevant here) in medium to higher income jobs, especially professional careers. This is the type of situation where I think my first point is most relevant. So working class women have always made up a lot of the work force, but only in those low paying areas. Allowing women into the higher paying jobs, even at a rate lower than what men make, IS a material challenge to patriarchy and the subjugation of women and therefore undesirable to the capitalist.
I loved this video so much because 1) it def helped me with the paper and 2) on how you're speaking in a really balanced way for all audience. I mean, I was smiling and just listening to you speaking to the male audience (or the man-child :D) and it really did made me put this comment here as an appreciation for your skills as both a good teacher -- in the sense that you explained this very well and as someone who sure knows how to target their audience. I usually dont put comments and i was supposed to take down some notes and I was stopped midway. Keep going with your talent! And thank you.
Thank you for posting this content in such an accessible way! I've been assigned this text many times and didn't want to reread it again for another class so this was a great refresher!
Love this! Listen to it a few times and shared it. The only thing I was looking for is when you do your playlist I wish you had a place we could find all of the gender and queer stuff? I don’t know if that’s something you would consider in the future
You could also do Haraway's making kin in the chthulucene. It's a study and exploration of kinships beyond marriage. Further, you could also consider doing Halberstam's 'In queer time and place'. We have outgrown Rich's text. We need something more contemporaneous and intersectional. I am interested to know if trans men treat women better? I may be having deep seated prejudices inside but what factors (apart from biological) lead one to transition into a man? Is it the supposition that a man has a better bargaining power in the world? Is it the unspoken privileges bestowed unwarranted upon a man? If that's a sociological factor that drives the transition, then the root of such desire is in itself patriarchal. The very idea of 'manhood' that a pre trans man embodies is something I wish to know very much about.
I want to tread lightly here because there are some important things to consider. Firstly, I wholeheartedly believe that there is no such thing as a "pre-trans" person. There may have been a time in a trans person's life when they weren't aware, but that does not, in my mind, make them any less of the gender the identify with. I don't think that there are 'sociological' reasons for someone to be trans. It isn't a mode of political resistance, and it isn't a choice. I don't think trans men necessarily treat women better. Trans men are not immune from masculinity that is inherently opposed to women. In other words, a trans man is a man (although they may experience discrimination in different ways) and is therefore susceptible to the same hegemonic structures. To say otherwise risks implying that trans men are more feminine than cis men which I simply don't subscribe to. I totally agree that Rich's thought is outdated. I still think there's some value, even if its just to trace the trajectory of lesbian feminism, however.
@Nosferatu Zodd Hi! Thanks for adding but I wouldn't like to believe that it's about a 'very marginal fraction of the mankind'. I may have been read incorrectly in my comment but I didn't intend to overarch it into a sociological presupposition. Although I agree, my understanding of 'transition' may be parsimonious when I say a 'pre trans' person (as David points out). Coming on to the suicide part of your comment, well, the factors could be extremely personal and I do think that the totalizing mainstream of heteronormativity has been erected so that the 'deviant' ones may never find their answers. Their suicide could be seen both as a last chance to affirm on one's lives and as an instrumented murder, where you give the arms and ask them to end themselves.
I like this idea a lot. I would sway one away from picking an enemy as a bad guy (such as capitism etc.) Societies across the world have been putting down women for a long time - and western societies have played a big role in beginning to free women of these demeaning ideas about their potentials. Now I am not a 100% believer in capitalism or the western approach. In my own work I feel a huge call towards Eastern and other cultural perspectives. I think they are necessary if we want to heal the West. I just don't like the idea that "Western societies" are specifically those who demean lesbian women. As a women who is interested in women, I am very happy to be in the United States :)
Thank goodness the man is interested in this, speaking on it, and highlighting it. This is one of the only things that I could find on the essay when I was looking for the pdf.
Interesting video. Regarding the point about pornography being shaped to appeal to men, couldn’t one argue that this is just the result of market demand? The erotic novel industry seems to appeal to the “female gaze” or something approaching that. The consumers of these books seem to be mostly women, so it makes sense from a business perspective to cater to them.
@Nosferatu Zodd I get that the market reproduces whatever idea is popular, but I gave an example of an industry where the sexual fantasies of women are catered to. We have to be able to determine an area of change that can be perceived as preferable over that area not changing even if everything in the world is patriarchal and there isn’t anything that can escape participating in it(possibly ever for the existence of humanity). Otherwise, all possible changes in society count as patriarchal and are by definition undesirable. If the market serving male fantasies is patriarchal, then we can argue that the market serving female fantasies is, at least, less patriarchal. If they are both equally patriarchal, then all products that serve any sexual fantasy are undesirable. This seems like a strange form of moral relativism.
@Nosferatu Zodd it’s just odd to view all states of the world where anything is commodified as equally undesirable. We’re no where near abolishing all instances of commodification. Do we just not bother making any change until then? I’m asking for a model of enacting improvements to the world that isn’t contingent on literally having a classless, moneyless, stateless world tomorrow. All large goals have to be broken down into smaller ones in order for them to be achieved.
@Nosferatu Zodd Since you're able to make claims about what states of the world you find preferable, then is it not preferable for the market to shift away from exclusively serving the sexual fantasies of men via commodities? I don't see what's wrong with saying "It's better, but not enough".
@@xenoblad Some of the comments have been deleted but this is a very interesting conversation that I actually wanted to raise with @Theory & Philosophy in respect of the female gaze and bell hooks’ oppositional gaze. Now for about 60-70 years women in Japan started creating something called BL -boys love, which was romantic and homoerotic stories which tried to tell not quite ungendered stories but as though gender did not matter I guess is a basic summary. Women created this for themselves because of the inability to express and to explore sex, sexuality in potentially transformative ways to look at these as feminine people in highly patriarchal societies, but they often did it alongside queer men: men who were closeted, sometimes trans or eggs, lesbians, non-binary, ace people etc. Even today many of these queer creators operate in the industry under the banner of “straight women” in order to create their art without harassment. Men who are the outcasts of both comphet as well as homonormativity (restrictive, privileged notions of queerness and largely a phenomenon of neoliberal western capitalist society but not exclusively) gravitated toward this genre as creators as well as consumers because they could identify with the emphasis on masculinity that normalised emotional interiors, relationality, community and equality over the usual contents of mainstream gay media that values hook ups, independence, dominance and the hyper masculinity body. Today BL is a multibillion industry with some of the content on public TV, winning the creators awards, the actors recognition as best male-male couple, and all this is happening in some of the most socially repressive and politically authoritarian regimes on the planet! Because it is a global phenomenon and its impact has been described as shifting the focus of the queer world from the western world (US/UK) to the east, to the Far East. We’re talking about countries like China where its biggest BL production The Untamed passed 10 billion views - that’s more than all the people in China, we’re talking about Thailand which is under a military junta, we’re talking about the Philippines which is a deeply religious catholic country. This genre of filmmaking from the female gaze, which is evolving and now has probably a majority queer audience - even if many of them are still female they’re some kind of queer, is really quite intellectually interesting and I wish more philosophical theorists and people interested in these issues about power, and socially transformative potential of media that is in active rebellion against normativity, and that that blatantly sets out to challenge power (in the case of China because of censorship the creations are in opposition to the official narrative even while they collaborate with capitalist interests to extend its reach and impact) would give it a look in. Everything isn’t just black or white 😉. Fascinating field!
