DiscussionPolitical Lesbian is a concept that led to the concept of translesbianism.

submitted by GayPartisan from self.LGBDropTheT

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[–]cryptoterfthrowTomcattin' 23 insightful - 1 fun23 insightful - 0 fun24 insightful - 1 fun -  (9 children)

Second-wave feminists did start it, but radical feminism isn't a religion, so people are allowed to change their minds. Myself and other women who enjoy reading radical feminist literature cringe at the idea of political lesbianism, and so I hope the radical feminists of today are vehemently against it.

Every political and social movement has room for error and learning from mistakes.

I still feel sorry for straight women stuck with dating straight men.

Edit - I also reject the notion that second-wave feminist paved the way for autogynephiles and predators to call themselves lesbians, they'd been doing that in their bedrooms before then.

[–]DiveBarDiva 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (8 children)

I’ve been reading “cynical theories” by James Lindsay and he explains that both feminism and gender ideology are rooted in Marxism. You should check out his groomer schools episodes that talk and pushing trans and queer in schools came out of Antinio gramsci’s papers in the 40s it sounds like a weird connection to make but it will make sense if you listen to the groomer schools episodes. Feminism definitely helped us get to we are today someone . They are allegedly rooted in Marxist theory as well. Though they are not usually compatible they have the same Marxist theory woven into it.

[–]soundsituationI myself was once a gay 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I don't think there is any argument against modern feminism being rooted in or at least inspired by Marxism unless you see Marxism only as an economic theory rather than a rubric of axes of oppression. James' contention that the trans wave was ushered in by radical feminism is a harder sell for me, though. I get what he's saying--that in declaring gender a social construct, feminists left the door open for others to claim that sex is a social construct--and I see the historical progression (because this was Butler's exact argument) but I don't see the logical one. It's comparing something that is somewhat and sometimes materially determined to something that always is. Furthermore, it's not like feminists introduced the idea of social constructivism. Subjectivism has been around since forever, and was revived by the postmodernists well ahead of 2nd wave feminists.

[–]jjdub7TERF (Trans Exterminating Reactionary Fascist) 4 insightful - 4 fun4 insightful - 3 fun5 insightful - 4 fun -  (1 child)

Marxism [...] as [...] a rubric of axes of oppression

I'll believe this when my gay white ass out-earns Beyonce, or hell, even Lori Lightfoot for that matter.

[–]cryptoterfthrowTomcattin' 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I'm glad you gave Lori Lightfoot as another example, because I was going to say that in the case of female celebrities, I'm skeptical of how many make money by putting out sexualised music videos. It's another way of playing into the male gaze, and isn't 'empowering'. Having said that, I don't know much about either Lori or Beyonce.

It depends on what you work as. I know that, in the UK at least, some of the poorest people are lower class white males. They are often completely passed over by schemes set up to help people in poverty/people with fewer opportunities, because males have fewer biological vulnerabilities than females, them being white means they don't have the same history as black people, and they're the 'evil cis white male' after all.

I see this as an issue with intersectionality. You can't create an oppression hierarchy when they all depend on different things.

[–]PenseePansyBio-Sex or Bust 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

in declaring gender a social construct, feminists left the door open for others to claim that sex is a social construct

I don't follow this at all! "Gender" (meaning gender-roles: specifically, the male gender-role and the female gender-role) is a social construct; what else could it possibly be? The same as all other stereotypes, and all other social roles (think Hindu castes, for example). They're ideas; products of human culture, defined and imposed by the society you live in.

But this in no way suggests that the same is true of sex! That's not an idea; it's a concrete physical reality, a matter not of social roles or culture, but of biology. And not even just human biology, either; it's how most animal and plant species reproduce, and is, in fact, characteristic of life on Earth.

Here's the difference: "gender" will cease to exist the moment that humans stop believing in it. Whereas sex existed long before our species did... and will continue to do so long after we're all gone.

[–]JulienMayfair 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I haven't read Lindsay's book yet, but I think there are some problems with the argument that feminism and gender identity theory are "rooted" in Marxism. You can easily cite early feminist texts like Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), written and published before Karl Marx was even born. Just from the title, that's very obviously rooted in the language of human rights that comes out of The Enlightenment.

And a fairly clearly-articulated idea of gender identity was floating around among the early sexologists in the late 19th C. like Krafft-Ebbing who talked about the idea of inversion, "a masculine soul in a female body" or vice-versa. Looking back, it was always obviously an attempt to conserve heterosexuality and stereotypical gender roles, as it often still is. In other words, a man attracted to other men must really be a woman. That's where the idea of a man trapped in a woman's body comes from.

I did research in 19th C. medical ideas for my dissertation, and the latter part of the century is rife with crackpots and crackpot ideas about gender and human psychology.

Lindsay is probably correct that these ideas get packaged with Frankfurt School Marxism in the period since the 1960s, but they have distinctly older and different roots.

[–]jjdub7TERF (Trans Exterminating Reactionary Fascist) 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

GREAT BOOK. New Discourses is also awesome at explaining why so many "progressive" movements today are actually just flailing, gnashing strains of failed Marxist apologia.

[–]cryptoterfthrowTomcattin' 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Looking at the synopsis, it only seems to reference fourth-wave feminism. The fourth wave is very identity politics driven, which is fantastic if you want to detract from the goal of women's sex-based rights. Each wave of feminism of course branches off from the previous one, but as it branched from third wave feminism (one I also have disdain for as that is where intersectionality took hold) and failed to learn from mistakes made from the previous wave, it is more palatable to the public and likely has internal inconsistencies.

As someone who hasn't watched nor read the things you suggested, I don't think social movements and revolutions in general will ever reach their end goal, as there are far too many people alive today - it would be near impossible to change everyone's minds and get them on board. That doesn't mean a big structural change isn't necessary to fix issues that started a long time ago; it all depends on who's willing to put in the work to make it happen.

It also happens to be far less convenient than taking a stance which means certain things continue as they do. But I'll leave it at that.