pre-capitalist sex

[Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema]

I agree actually. The positive developments came later than the ones I described as
"an extreme of male dominance, with extreme idealization of femininity in the late
bourgeois family.." Nineteenth century bourgeois society, as you know, had its own
internal contradictions, and some among them led to what you describe. At the same
time, much of the bourgeois sexual values that reached their zenith a bit more than a
hundred years ago are still formally normative, though honored in the breach in
practice. Still, they have legal force, as in the legal stigmatization of sexual
relationships outside of legal matrimony. The religious right thrives on
propagandizing around this, and there are liberals, and ex-liberals, like Alan Wolfe,
the communitarians, etc., who want to enforce marriage as a norm, despite its
otiosity. That's why I think its' important to understand the historically limited
character of bourgeois family life and christianity as a mass -- not medievally
aristocratic -- phenomenon.
Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema

James Heartfield wrote:


> In message <3AD5ECE9.AB62676 at erols.com>, Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema
> <crdbronx at erols.com> writes
> >Meanwhile the bourgeoisies evolved an extreme of male dominance, with extreme
> >idealization of femininity in the late bourgeois family. Conventional historical
> >understanding, such as most of us picked up in school, sees this as the
> >prevailing
> >pattern of gender relations in most or all of the past. In fact, pre-modern
> >European
> >societies had much more complex relations between men and women, with, as
> >concomitants, much less intense homophobia, less stringent marriage
> >institutions,
> >much less extensive and effective Christian ideological hegemony.
>
> That seems a bit one-sided to me. I think it is fair to say that the
> sexual division of labour pre-capitalism, though stultifying, is not
> oppressive, in that neither sex had rights or autonomy. The initial
> sexual division of labour under capitalism, by contrast was profoundly
> oppressive, taking a natural distinction and giving it a new content of
> social oppression.
>
> On the other hand, recent developments see the formal oppression of
> women dismantled (universal suffrage, property rights, equal pay
> legislation etc.); and furthermore, the most significant social change
> in the twentieth century has to be the improvement of women's social
> position. I used to be of the opinion that women's equality was
> unattainable under capitalism. But it seems to me that women have a
> better social standing under capitalism - at least in the developed
> world - than they did under pre-capitalist social relations.
>
> As to homosexuality, as much as its oppression was an event of
> capitalism, so too has been its possibility and its liberation. There
> may have been same-sex relations before capitalism, but there was not
> such a thing as a homosexual identity. (see Ken Plummer, Greek
> Homosexuality)
>
> >
> >
> >
>
> --
> James Heartfield