General status of gender relations vs. Quibbles

James Baird jlbaird3 at yahoo.com
Fri Dec 24 20:21:26 PST 1999



>
> It is inaccurate to speak of "gender phenomena" as simply
> "social/discursive phenomena." Gender is an effect of oppression, just as
> race is. No oppression, no gender. No oppression, no race.
>

But isn't this a case of Humpty Dumptyism, declaring that words mean what you say they mean, neither more nor less? You define "gender" as something socially constructed by oppression. Fine. But that definition has nothing in common with what the average person thinks of when they think "gender". Maybe I just have a hard time because, while I can come up with a (no doubt extremely flawed) picture of what a society without the concept of "race" would look like, I can't do a similar thing with "gender". There are physical differences between the sexes, and those differences go deeper than skin color. Absent some kind of major changes in the human animal, how do you construct a society in which those differences do not affect one's social experience?

Jim Baird

__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Thousands of Stores. Millions of Products. All in one place. Yahoo! Shopping: http://shopping.yahoo.com



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list