Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> [snip]
> That's what I mean by the disappearance of gender & liberation of
> differences. Some differences we note now may continue to be noted,
> and other new differences may be given more attention, in the world
> without gender oppression, but they won't be organized into the
> principle of hierarchy, exclusion, marginalization, etc which gender
> has been. In the world without gender oppression, there is no reason
> why sex should be considered more significant than other differences
> such as hair color.
It may help to call attention to the *only* reason to be concerned about understanding the future: to understand the present. Marx's few brief references to the classless future were not intended to pose a goal for struggle but to bring out more clearly the dynamic we experience *now*: One cannot understand capitalism without seeing it in terms of a classless future (and this holds even if, as is entirely possible) that classless future never emerges. (We'll be dead so we won't know. That was Marx's own remark, incidentally, when someone quizzed him on whether with his personal preferences and pastimes he himself would enjoy living in the communist society he projected.) Similarly, we can best make sense of the gender structure of the present by seeing it in terms of a genderless future.
Perhaps the 2d international categories of theory-propaganda-agitation are useful here. Discussion of a genderless (as of a classless) future falls in the realm of theory or propaganda (speaking to those already in the tent), not of agitation. My post yesterday putting Doug and Mark into the same category was grounded in this distinction: they both seem to think that propaganda and theory can do the work of agitation. First-rate propaganda material -- e.g. Doug's LBO -- does not except by accident reach anyone whose mind it can change; it won't work as agitation. What it does is arm the agitator (whose work is for the most part on a personal basis: direct interaction with fellow workers, neighbors, etc.)
Carrol