http://www.colorado.edu/English/ENGL2012Klages/cixous.html, 15 2005 .

Helene Cixous: "The Laugh of the Medusa"

NOTE:
In Anglo-American academic discussion, it is common to refer to Helene Cixous, Luce
Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, and others as "the French feminists." This terminology assumes that
somehow these theorists represent or speak for ALL feminists who are French, thus silencing the
voices and ideas of other feminists who are French, such as Christine Delphy, Elisabeth Badinter,
Francoise Picq, Benoite Grould, Genevieve Fraisse, Giselle Halimi, and many others. To avoid the
imperialism inherent in the Anglo-American construction of Cixous, Irigaray, and Kristeva as "the
French feminists," I will refer to these theorists as "poststructuralist theoretical feminists."
My thanks to Stephanie Cordellier for her lucid email comments and corrections regarding
the politics of labeling on this issue.
For an updated and revised version of this lecture, see Poststructuralist Feminist Theory:
Helene Cixous or the home page for English 2010, Fall Semester 2001.
You've probably noticed a difference between what Sandra Gilbert is saying in her essay
"Literary Paternity" and what Helene Cixous and Luce Irigaray are talking about in "The Laugh of
the Medusa" and "This Sex Which is Not One." Part of that difference lies in the fact that Gilbert is
a pragmatic feminist coming largely out of a humanist tradition as a literary critic, and Cixous and
Irigaray are poststructuralist theoretical feminists. They represent two distinct (different but related)
branches of contemporary feminist theory.
Gilbert's piece represents what we might call a "pragmatic" American feminist school of
thought. Emerging from a tradition called "liberal feminism", this American pragmatic feminism is
interested in looking at how systems of female oppression have been perpetuated and elaborated;
such analysis usually pays a lot of attention to history (and hence is not based on structuralist
principles of synchronic analysis). Liberal/American feminism often emphasizes understanding
origins of social practices, in order to understand how to intervene in them, to change them. That's
why I call it "pragmatic": much American feminist thought is oriented toward getting things done,
toward theorizing so that some kind of social action or change can take place. (This kind of
theorizing-for-application has its roots in a number of political movements and theories, including
Marxism and socialism, civil rights, and, of course, the "women's liberation" movement).
Gilbert's article represents the historical aspect of this kind of American feminist theory; her
article looks specifically at literary history to find that an overwhelming number of male authors
have attributed their creative capacity directly to their bodily configuration: the pen, as Gilbert
documents, is a metaphoric penis, and vice-versa. This metaphoric equation between pen and penis
is important, Gilbert asserts, because such metaphors shape how we are able to think about the
process of writing, and about creativity in general. By linking writing with having a penis, these
authors insist that writing, being creative, is a biological act, one rooted in the body--and
specifically in the male body. Her article shows that this equation is not an isolated incident,
something that just a few jerks thought, but rather is one of the dominant metaphors of creativity in
Western culture, for both male and female writers.
Now, we can critique this stance pretty easily--how come these guys thought that penises
were the physical model or analog for creating, when it's just as "logical" (and even more selfevident) to say that creativity comes from a female body, since that is, after all, the body that
actually gives birth? But that is precisely Gilbert's point: throughout Western cultural history,
women have been confined solely to the role of giving birth, of being mothers of human beings;
men, meanwhile, have signified their creativity as giving "birth," as being fathers/progenitors, of
immortal things, like books, and not being connected to beings that perish (like people).

There are lots of ways to read this assertion of male creative

fatherhood/authorship/authority. We can see it as an anxious response to the male inability to know
for sure that they really are the father of biological children (since only the mother knows for sure
who the parents of the child are). We can see it as a reaction-formation (in psychoanalytic
terminology) to the threat of castration, by asserting the predominance of the penis (as presence) as
creative organ. We can see it as an attempt to reduce what Harold Bloom calls "the anxiety of
influence," the feeling that one will never be as good as (as powerful as) one's father, and
particularly as good as one's literary forebears, one's literary "fathers." Or we can see it as a
conscious attempt on the part of male authors deliberately to exclude women writers (and women in
general) from membership in their exclusive club, by defining the only "good" writing as coming
from men.
However we decide to interpret the phenomenon Gilbert is describing, it is clear--from her
voluminous documentation--that this equation between pen and penis has been a powerful metaphor
in Western thought--one which many women authors internalized (and which countless women who
might have been authors may have internalized and believed, and allowed it to prevent them from
attempting to wield the pen). Gilbert concludes that the exclusion of women from the tools of the
trade meant that women writers found alternate methods of writing--if they couldn't use
pens/penises, what did they write with? Perhaps with milk, with blood, and on leaves and bark. She
means this metaphorically, just as the pen=penis image is a metaphor, but also literally, as the
pen=penis image is also meant literally. She means that we must look for women's writing in places,
and using instruments, not traditionally associated with writing, because those traditions are defined
by male authors.
These are themes very similar to those taken up by the poststructuralist theoretical feminists.
Gilbert poses the question in her essay, "If the pen is a metaphorical penis, with what organ can
females generate texts?" She finds her answer in images created by women writers. Cixous and
Irigaray take up the same question, and use the poststructuralist ideas of Derrida and Lacan to come
up with some provocative answers.
Helene Cixous takes up where Lacan left off, in noting that women and men enter into the
Symbolic Order, into language as structure, in different ways, or through different doors, and that
the subject positions open to either sex within the Symbolic are also different. She understands that
Lacan's naming the center of the Symbolic as the Phallus highlights what a patriarchal system
language is--or, more specifically, what a phallo(go)centric system it is.
This idea, that the structure of language is centered by the phallus, produced the word
"phallocentric." Derrida's idea that the structure of language relies on spoken words being
privileged over written words, produced the word "logocentric" to describe Western culture in
general. Cixous and Irigaray combine the two ideas to describe Western cultural systems and
structures as "phallogocentric," based on the primacy of certain terms in an array of binary
oppositions. Thus a phallogocentric culture is one which is structured by binary oppositions-male/female, order/chaos, language/silence, presence/absence, speech/writing, light/dark, good/evil,
etc.--and in which the first term is valued over the second term; Cixous and Irigaray insist that all
valued terms (male, order, language, presence, speech, etc.). are aligned with each other, and that all
of them together provide the basic structures of Western thought.
Cixous follows Lacan's psychoanalytic paradigm, which argues that a child must separate
from its mother's body (the Real) in order to enter into the Symbolic. Because of this, Cixous says,
the female body in general becomes unrepresentable in language; it's what can't be spoken or
written in the phallogocentric Symbolic order. Cixous here makes a leap from the maternal body to
the female body in general; she also leaps from that female body to female sexuality, saying that
female sexuality, female sexual pleasure, is unrepresentable within the phallogocentric Symbolic
order.
To understand how she makes that leap, we have to go back to what Freud says about female
sexuality, and the mess he makes of it. In Freud's story of the female Oedipus complex, girls have to
make a lot of switches, from clitoris to vagina, from attraction to female bodies to attraction to male

bodies, and from active sexuality to passive sexuality, in order to become "normal" adults Cixous
rewrites this, via Lacan, by pointing out that "adulthood," in Lacan's terms, is the same as entering
into the Symbolic and taking up a subject position. Thus "adulthood," or becoming a linguistic
subject, for Cixous, means having only one kind of sexuality: passive, vaginal, heterosexual,
reproductive. And that sexuality, if one follows Freud to his logical extreme, is not about female
sexuality per se, but about male sexuality: the woman's pleasure is to come from being passively
filled by a penis (remember, Freud defines activity as masculine, and passivity as feminine). So,
Cixous concludes, there really isn't any such thing as female sexuality in and of itself in this
phallogocentric system--it's always sexuality defined by the presence of a penis, and not by
anything intrinsic to the female body or to female sexual pleasure.
If women have to be forced away from their own bodies--first in the person of the mother's
body, and then in the person of their unique sexual feelings/pleasures--in order to become subjects
in language, Cactus argues, is it possible for a woman to write at all? Is it possible for a woman to
write as a woman? Or does entry into the Symbolic, orienting one's language around a center
designated as a Phallus, mean that when one writes or speaks, one always does so as a "man"? In
other words, if the structure of language itself is phallogocentric, and stable meaning is anchored
and guaranteed by the Phallus, then isn't everyone who uses language taking up a position as "male"
within this structure which excludes female bodies?
Cixous, and other poststructuralist theoretical feminists, are both outraged and intrigued by
the possibilities for relations between gender and writing (or language use in general) that Lacan's
paradigms open up. That's what Cixous means when she says (p. 309a) that her project has two
aims: to break up and destroy, and to foresee and project. She wants to destroy (or perhaps just
deconstruct) the phallogocentric system Lacan describes, and to project some new strategies for a
new kind of relation between female bodies and language.
Lacan's description of the Symbolic (as illustrated by the pictures on p. 741 of the two
doors) places women and men in different positions within the Symbolic in relation to the Phallus;
men more easily misperceive themselves as having the Phallus, as being closer to it, whereas
women (because they have no penises) are further from that center. Because of that distance from
the Phallus, the poststructuralist theoretical feminists argue, women are closer to the margins of the
Symbolic order; they are not as firmly anchored or fixed in place as men are; they are closer to the
Imaginary, to images and fantasies, and further from the idea of absolute fixed and stable meaning
than men are.
Because women are less fixed in the Symbolic than men, women-- and their language--are
more fluid, more flowing, more unstable than men. It is worth noting here that when Cixous talks
about women and woman, sometimes she means it literally, as the physical beings with vaginas and
breasts, etc., and sometimes she means it as a linguistic structural position: "woman" is a signifier in
the chain of signifiers within the Symbolic, just as "man" is; both have stable meaning ("woman" is
the signifier attached to the signified of vagina and breasts (etc.)) because both are locked in place,
anchored, by the Phallus as center of the Symbolic order. When Cixous says that woman is more
slippery, more fluid, less fixed than man, she means both the literal woman, the person, and the
signifier "woman".
Cixous' essay is difficult, not only because she's assuming we all know Freud and Lacan's
formulations about female sexuality and about the structure of language, but also because she writes
on two levels at once: she is always being both metaphoric and literal, referring both to structures
and to individuals. When she says that "woman must write herself," "woman must write woman,"
she means both that women must write themselves, tell their own stories (much as the American
feminists say women must tell their own stories) and that "woman" as signifier must have a (new)
way to be connected to the signifier "I," to write the signifier of selfhood/subjecthood offered within
the Symbolic order.
Cixous also discusses writing on both a metaphoric and literal level. She aligns writing with
masturbation, something that for women is supposed to be secret, shameful, or silly, something not
quite adult, something that will be renounced in order to achieve adulthood, just like clitoral

stimulation has to be renounced in favor of vaginal/reproductive passive adult sexuality. For women
to write themselves, Cixous says, they must (re)claim a female-centered sexuality. If men write with
their penises, as Gilbert argues, then Cixous says before women can write they have to discover
where their pleasure is located. (And don't be too quick to decide that women write with their
clitorises. It's not quite that simple).
Cixous also argues that men haven't yet discovered the relation between their sexuality and
their writing, as long as they are focused on writing with the penis. "Man must write man," Cixous
says, again focusing on "man" as a signifier within the Symbolic, which is no more privileged than
"woman" as a signifier. In an important footnote, Cixous explains that men's sexuality, like
women's, has been defined and circumscribed by binary oppositions (active/passive,
masculine/feminine), and that heterosexual relations have been structured by a sense of otherness
and fear created by these absolute binaries. As long as male sexuality is defined in these limited and
limiting terms, Cixous says, men will be prisoners of a Symbolic order which alienates them from
their bodies in ways similar to (though not identical with) how women are alienated from their
bodies and their sexualities. Thus, while Cixous does slam men directly for being patriarchal
oppressors, she also identifies the structures which enforce gender distinctions as being oppressive
to both sexes.
She also links these oppressive binary structures to other Western cultural practices,
particularly those involving racial distinctions. On 310 she follows Freud in calling women the
"dark continent," and expands the metaphor by reference to Apartheid, to demonstrate that these
same binary systems which structure gender also structure imperialism: women are aligned with
darkness, with otherness, with Africa, against men who are aligned with lightness, with selfhood,
and with Western civilization. In this paragraph, note that Cixous is referring to women as "they," as
if women are non-speakers, non-writers, whom she is observing. "As soon as they begin to speak, at
the same time as they're taught their name, they can be taught that their territory is black:"--i.e.
entry into the Symbolic order, into language, into having a self and a name, is entry into these
structures of binary oppositions.
Cixous argues that most women do write and speak, but that they do so from a "masculine"
position; in order to speak, women (or "woman") has assumed she needed a stable, fixed system of
meaning, and thus has aligned herself with the Phallus which stabilizes language. There has been
little or no "feminine" writing, Cixous says (p. 311). In making this statement, she insists that
writing is always "marked," within a Symbolic order that is structured through binary opposites,
including "masculine/feminine," in which the feminine is always repressed. Remember here, when
Cixous speaks of "feminine," it is both literal and metaphoric--it's something connected to
femaleness, to female bodies, and something which is a product of linguistic positioning. So Cixous
is arguing that only women could produce feminine writing, because it must come from their
bodies, AND she is arguing that men could occupy a structural position from which they could
produce feminine writing.
Cixous coins the phrase "l'ecriture feminine" to discuss this notion of feminine writing (and
masculine writing, its phallogocentric counterpart). She sees "l'ecriture feminine" first of all as
something possible only in poetry (in the existing genres), and not in realist prose. Novels, she says
on p. 311, are "allies of representationalism"--they are genres (particularly realist fiction) which try
to speak in stable language, language with one-to-one fixed meanings of words, language where
words seemingly point to things (and not to the structure of language itself). In poetry, however,
language is set loose--the chains of signifiers flow more freely, meaning is less fixed; poetry,
Cixous says, is thus closer to the unconscious, and thus to what has been repressed (and thus to
female bodies/female sexuality). This is one model she uses to describe what "l'ecriture feminine"
looks like. (It is worth noting, however, that all the poets and "feminine" writers Cixous mentions
specifically are men.)
Such feminine writing will serve as a rupture, or a site of transformation or change; she
means "rupture" here in the Derridean sense, a place where the totality of the system breaks down
and one can see a system as a system or structure, rather than simply as "the truth." Feminine

writing will show the structure of the Symbolic as a structure, not as an inevitable order, and thus
allow us to deconstruct that order.
There are two levels on which "l'ecriture feminine" will be transformative, Cixous argues (p.
311-312), and these levels correspond again to her use of the literal and the metaphoric, or the
individual and the structural. On one level, the individual woman must write herself, must discover
for herself what her body feels like, and how to write about that body in language. Specifically,
women must find their own sexuality, one that is rooted solely in their own bodies, and find ways to
write about that pleasure--which Cixous, following Lacan, names "jouissance." On the second level,
when women speak/write their own bodies, the structure of language itself will change; as women
become active subjects, not just beings passively acted upon, their position as subject in language
will shift. Women who write--if they don't merely reproduce the phallogocentric system of stable
ordered meaning which already exists (and which excludes them)--will be creating a new signifying
system; this system may have built into it far more play, more fluidity, than the existing rigid
phallogocentric symbolic order. "Beware, my friend," Cixous writes toward the end of the essay (p.
319) "of the signifier that would take you back to the authority of a signified!"
The woman who speaks, Cixous says, and who does not reproduce the representational
stability of the Symbolic order, will not speak in linear fashion, will not "make sense" in any
currently existing form. L'ecriture feminine, like feminine speech, will not be
objective/objectifiable; it will erase the divisions between speech and text, between order and chaos,
between sense and nonsense. In this way, l'ecriture feminine will be an inherently deconstructive
language. Such speech/writing (and remember, this language will erase that slash) will bring users
closer to the realm of the Real, back to the mother's body, to the breast, to the sense of union or nonseparation. This is why Cixous uses (p.312) the metaphor of "white ink," of writing in breast milk;
she wants to convey that idea of a reunion with the maternal body, an unalienated relation to female
bodies in general.
Cixous' descriptions of what "l'ecriture feminine" looks like (or, better, sounds like, since it's
not clear that this writing will "look like" anything--since "looking like" is at the heart of the
misperception of self in the Mirror Stage which launches people into the Symbolic order) flow into
metaphors, which she also means literally. She wants to be careful to talk about writing in new
ways, in ways that distinguish l'ecriture feminine from existing forms of speech/writing, and in so
doing she is associating feminine writing with existing non-linguistic modes. So, for instance,
l'ecriture feminine is milk, it's a song, something with rhythm and pulse, but no words, something
connected with bodies and with bodies' beats and movements, but not with representational
language.
She uses these metaphors also to be "slippery", arguing (p. 313) that one can't define the
practice of "l'ecriture feminine." To define something is to pin it down, to anchor it, to limit it, to put
it in its place within a stable system or structure--and Cixous says that l'ecriture feminine is too fluid
for that; it will always exceed or escape any definition. It can't be theorized, enclosed, coded, or
understood --which doesn't mean, she warns, that it doesn't exist. Rather, it will always be greater
than the existing systems for classification and ordering of knowledge in phallogocentric western
culture. It can't be defined, but it can be "conceived of,"--another phrase which works on literal and
metaphoric levels--by subjects not subjugated to a central authority. Only those on the margins--the
outlaws--can "conceive of" feminine language; those outlaws will be women, and anyone else who
can resist or be distanced from the structuring central Phallus of the phallogocentric Symbolic order.
In discussing who might exist in the position of outlaw, Cixous brings up (p. 314) the
question of bisexuality. Again, she starts from Freud's idea that all humans are fundamentally
bisexual, and that the Oedipal trajectory which steers both boys and girls into heterosexuality is an
unfortunate requirement of culture. For Cixous, "culture" is always a phallogocentric order; the
entry into the Symbolic requires the division between male and female, feminine and masculine,
which subordinates and represses the feminine. But by erasing/deconstructing the slash between
masculine and feminine, Cixous is not arguing for Freud's old idea of bisexuality. Rather, she wants
a new bisexuality, the "other bisexuality," which is the "nonexclusion either of the difference or of

one sex"--a refusal of self/other as a structuring dichotomy. In essence, rather than scotch-taping
masculine and feminine together, Cixous' bisexuality would dissolve the distinctions, so that
sexuality would be from any body, any site, at any time.
Without the dichotomy of self/other, all other dichotomies would start to fall apart, Cixous
says: her other bisexuality would thus become a deconstructive force to erase the slashes in all
structuring binary oppositions. When this occurs, the Western cultural representations of female
sexuality--the myths associated with womanhood--will also fall apart. Cixous focuses in particular
(p. 315) on the myth of the Medusa, the woman with snakes for hair, whose look will turn men into
stone, and on the myth of woman as black hole, as abyss. The idea of woman as abyss or hole is
pretty easy to understand; in Freudian terms, a woman lacks a penis, and instead has this scary hole
in which the penis disappears (and might not come back). Freud reads the Medusa as part of the fear
of castration, the woman whose hair is writhing penises; she's scary, not because she's got too few
penises, but because she has too many. Cixous says those are the fears that scare men into being
complicit in upholding the phallogocentric order: they're scared of losing their one penis when they
see women as having either no penis or too many penises. If women could show men their true
sexual pleasures, their real bodies--by writing them in non-representational form--Cixous says, men
would understand that female bodies, female sexuality, is not about penises (too few or too many) at
all. That's why she says we have to show them "our sexts"--another new word, the combination of
sex and texts, the idea of female sexuality as a new form of writing.
Cixous then moves on to talk about the idea of hysterics as prior examples of women who
write "sexts," who write their bodies as texts of l'ecriture feminine. Again, she's following Freud,
whose earliest works were on hysteria, and focused on female hysterics. The idea of hysteria is that
a body produces a symptom, such as the paralysis of a limb, which represents a repressed idea; the
body thus "speaks" what the conscious mind cannot say, and the unconscious thoughts are written
out by the body itself. L'ecriture feminine has a lot in common with hysterics, as you can see, in the
idea of the direct connections between the unconscious and the body as a mode of "writing".
Cixous concludes the essay (starting on p. 318) by offering a critique of the Freudian nuclear
family, the mom-dad-child formation, which she sees as generating the ideas of castration
(Penisneid, in German) and lack which form the basis for ideas of the feminine in both Freudian and
Lacanian psychoanalysis. She wants to break up these "old circuits" so that the family formations
which uphold the phallogocentric Symbolic won't be recreated every time a child is born; she
argues that this family system is just as limiting and oppressive to men as to women, and that it
needs to be "demater-paternalized."
Then she discusses other ways to figure pregnancy, arguing that, like all functions of the
female body, pregnancy needs to be written, in "l'ecriture feminine." When pregnancy is written,
and the female body figured in language as the source of life, rather than the penis, birth can be
figured as something other than as separation, or as lack.
She ends with the idea of formulating desire as a desire for everything, not for something
lacking or absent, as in the Lacanian Symbolic; such a new desire would strip the penis of its
significance as the signifier of lack or of fulfillment of lack, and would free people to see each other
as different beings, each of whom are whole, and who are not complementary. These beings, not
defined by difference, absence, or even by gender, would begin to form a new kind of love, a love
which she describes on 319-320, in the paragraph beginning "Other love . . . . "
This essay was written by Dr. Mary Klages, Associate Professor of English at the University
of Colorado at Boulder, and remains her property.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/ebert.htm. 17.02.2005
Teresa Ebert (1995)

(UNTIMELY) CRITIQUES FOR A RED FEMINISM

Source: from Post-Ality, Marxism and Postmodernism, edited by Mas'ud Zavarzadeh, Teresa Ebert
and Donald Morton, Maisonneuve Press 1995.

One
Historical materialism haunts feminism. Most postmodern feminists whom I shall call "ludic
feminists" have suppressed "objective reality" in discourse and regimes of signification.
Nonetheless, they are feeling (however indirectly) the historical pressures of the return of the
suppressed "objective reality." The increasing polarisation of wealth, feminization of labour and
impoverishment of women in the world are all historical processes whose objectivity cannot be
blunted in discourse. The issue of materialism of a reality independent from the consciousness of
the subject and outside language and other media is thus gaining a new urgency for feminists
after poststructuralism. Many are beginning to ask whether there is "an outside to discourse," as
Judith Butler does in her Bodies that Matter, and attempt to articulate this material reality. The issue
is especially pressing for Anglo-American neo-socialist feminists, who by-and-large have
substituted Foucault for Marx, discourse for ideology, and have joined other poststructuralist
feminists in embracing a cultural or discursive materialism while rejecting any "positive"
knowledge (knowledge free from the consciousness of the subject and independent from language)
as positivism. (I am using the term "neo" here because this "socialism" is one with little interest in
"labour," "exploitation," and other global issues). Perhaps the best-known neo-socialist feminist to
make this shift recently is Michele Barrett, who announces in the preface to her The Politics of
Truth: From Marx to Foucault that she is moving from Marx's "economics of untruth" "being,"
as she says, "Marxism's account of ideology, used to show the relation between what goes on in
people's heads and their place in the conditions of production "' to Foucault's "politics of truth,
being his own approach to the relationships between knowledge, discourse, truth and power." In so
doing, she announces that, "I am nailing my colours to the mast of a more general post-Marxism"
(vii). But as Renate Bridenthal asks: "Where is this ship sailing to? This is not a time for
intellectuals to be sailing away on a sea of indeterminacy" (220).
The re-theorisation of materialism in postmodern feminism follows two related paths. The
first is a re-understanding of materialist feminism coming out of the Marxist tradition. But this is
itself a contradictory and divided site involving a conflict between those feminists reclaiming
historical materialism and those who, following postmarxism, marginalise historical materialism as
"positivism." These postmarxist feminists largely subscribe to the continued dominance of
poststructuralist knowledges and are caught in the contradictions between the political necessity of
materialism and its displacement by the ludic priority given to discourse. They end up substituting
discursive determinism for what they reject as an economic determinism in classical Marxism, as
Barrett does in The Politics of Truth. The second mode of materialism is non-Marxist and is
developed entirely out of feminist encounters with poststructuralist theories (especially those of
Derrida, Foucault, Lacan and, with some recent modifications, Bourdieu) and rearticulates
materialism as what is, in fact, a mode of idealism what I call "matterism": the "matter" of the
body, the 'matter" of sexuality, the "matter" of race, the "matter" of media, and, above all the
"matter" of language.
In its engagement with "materialism" ludic postmodern feminism has reached a political
crisis. But it attempts to represent and deal with this crisis as an exclusively epistemological
question as if epistemology itself is not partisan. We, therefore, need to examine some of the
reasons why "materialism" after the serious epistemological and political challenges from
poststructuralism, postmarxism, post-Heisenbergian physics and New Historicism continues to
remain a fundamental issue in feminism and how ludic feminism (as the avant-garde of discursivist
social theory) has theorised materialism in the post-al moment.

It is important to point out that the "ludic" is not a rigidly defined category but a widely
shared social 'logic" that is articulated in a number of diverse and even conflicting ways by various
ludic theorists and feminists. The crux of all ludic postmodern and feminist theories, however, is the
rewriting of the social as largely discursive (thus marked by the traits of linguistic difference), local,
contingent, asystematic and indeterminate. In many cases, this move is accompanied by a
rearticulation of power as diffuse, a causal and aleatory most notably as articulated by Michel
Foucault and elaborated by a number of feminists, especially Judith Butler. Social systems
(totalities) become, for ludic postmodernists, merely discredited metanarratives rather than social
"realities" to be contested. According to ludic logic (which is itself a metanarrative that forgets its
own meta-narrativity), not only history but also the social are seen in semiotic terms: as "writing,"
as traces of textuality (Jacques Derrida), as "given by the universe of the phrase" (Jean-Francois
Lyotard), and as a regime or genealogy of discursive practices and power-knowledge relations
(Michel Foucault), as the "risk" of reappropriating through the materiality of literature what is lost
in conceptuality (Jean-Luc Nancy, The Experience of Freedom). In all these cases the fundamental
nature of the social is without centre or determination: for Derrida this is expressed as the absence
of any grounding ("transcendental") signified, such as "revolution," resulting from the play of
differance; for Lyotard it is articulated in terms of the "differend," while for Foucault, it is
accounted for by the a-causal, aleatory nature of power. Nancy, in his The Inoperative Community,
of course, posits the social as a community without a collectivity (of production).
The political consequences of this idealist move in which, as Derrida says, everything
became discourse" (Writing and Difference 280) are clearly articulated by the post-Marxist
political theorist, Ernesto Laclau, who develops a ludic social theory "identifying the social with an
infinite play of differences" ("Transformations" 39). Following Derrida, he argues that "to conceive
of social relations as articulations of differences is to conceive them as signifying relations." Thus,
not only is the social "de-centred," according to Laclau, but social relations, like all 'signifying
systems," are "ultimately arbitrary" and as a result "'society' . . . is an impossible object"
("Transformations," 40-41). By reducing the social to "signifying relations," that is, to a discursive
or semiotic process, Laclau renders social relations "ultimately arbitrary" (like any sign). This
means that social relations cannot be subjected to such determining relations as exploitation since
they are "arbitrary,' and if social relations are not exploitative (determined), they no longer require
emancipation. In other words, Laclau and other ludic theorists, from Derrida to Drucilla Cornell,
Foucault to Judith Butler, are not only rewriting the basic "struggle concepts" necessary for social
change (e.g., "society," "surplus labour," "history," 'class." "exploitation," "use-value," and
"emancipation") as a series of tropic Metanarratives, but they are also turning the realities that these
concepts explain into "arbitrary," indeterminate, "signifying relations." Ludic theorists, in short, are
troping the social. in so doing, they de-materialise various social "realities," cutting them off from
the material relations of production, and turn them into a superstructural matrix of discursive
processes and a semiotic, textual play of differance.
However, as long as ludic feminism continues to address the question of "women" and
does not simply collapse into a merely textual or epistemological meditation on the fate of the sign
that is, as long as it follows the feminist imperative of praxis, ludic feminism (unlike other
varieties of postmodern discourse) is pulled into debates over the actual conditions of the lives of
women. But, no serious engagement with these conditions can possibly bracket or evade the matter
of materialism. Ludic feminism is thus constantly drawn into arguments and counterarguments over
questions raised by "materialism" and its epistemological "other" idealism. Some ludic feminists,
however, have tried to obscure the problem of materialism and prevent a full critique of the issues
involved. ironically this "new" debate replays an old and familiar strategy described by Lenin
nearly a century ago in his critique of idealism (Materialism and Empirio-Criticism: Critical
Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy, 196-255). Describing the writings of the Machians, Lenin
says that one thread that runs through their texts is their rejection of binaries, their claim that they
have "risen above" materialism and idealism and "have transcended this 'obsolete' antithesis." This
gesture, Lenin writes, is no more than an ideological alibi because in their actual practices, they "are

continually sliding into idealism and are conducting a steady and incessant struggle against
materialism" (354). Like Machians, ludic feminists declare that the debate over "idealism and
materialism" is an "outdated" binary and, in the ecumenical spirit of postmodernist eclecticism
(which underwrites liberal pluralism), provide a reconciliation of the two. Judith Butler, for
instance, offers her theory of "performativity" to, in effect, "think through" the binary of what is
"characterised as the linguistic idealism of poststructuralism" and a "materiality outside of
language" (Bodies that Matter 2731). Similarly, Drucilla Cornell offers her notion of
remetaphorisation" and the "performative power of language" as a way of avoiding "pit[ting]
'materialist' feminism against feminine writing" (Beyond Accommodation 3). However, as Lenin
writes, any such "hybrid project" is in fact an alibi for the legitimisation of idealism (Materialism,
350).
The politico-epistemological crisis that "materialism" has produced in ludic feminism has to
do with its class politics. Ludic feminism becomes in its effects, if not in its intentions a
theory that inscribes the class interests of, what bourgeois sociology calls, the upper-middle classes
and of Eurocentrism. It does not acknowledge the "materiality" of the regime of wage-labour and
capital. Nor does it acknowledge the existence of a historical series independent from the
consciousness of the subject and autonomous from textuality. Such a recognition would lead to the
further acknowledgment of the materiality of the social contradictions brought about by the social
relations of production founded upon the priority of private property. Ludic feminism cannot accept
a social theory that finds private property the congealed surplus tabor of others to be the cause
of social inequalities that can be remedied only through revolution. Ludic feminism is, in effect, a
theory for property holders. Nor can ludic feminism simply revert to an a-historical, essentialist
position and posit the "consciousness" of the subject as the source of social reality. Such a move
would go against the general post-structuralist constructivism and consequently would lead to,
among other things, a reinscription of logocentrism and the phallocentrism that underlies it. Ludic
feminism therefore needs to 'invent" a form of materialism that gestures to a world not directly
present to the consciousness of the subject (as classic post-structuralism has done), but not entirely
"constructed" in the medium of knowing (language) either.' It has simply become "unethical to think
of such social oppressions as "sexism," "racism," and "homophobia" as purely "matters" of
language and discourse. Ludic feminism is beginning to learn, in spite of itself, the lesson of Engels'
Anti-Duhring: the fact that we understand reality through language does not mean that reality is
made by language.
The dilemma of ludic feminism in theorising "materialism" is a familiar one. In his
interrogation of Berkeley, Lenin points to this dilemma that runs through all forms of idealism: the
epistemological unwillingness to make distinctions between 'ideas" and "things" (Materialism 130300), which is, of course, brought about by class politics. Ludic feminism, like all forms of uppermiddle class (idealist) philosophy, must hold on to "ideas" since it is by the agency of ideas that this
class (as privileged mental workers) acquires it social privileges. Although posed as an
epistemological question, the dilemma is finally a class question: how not to deny the world outside
the consciousness of the subject but not to make that world the material cause of social practices
either. Ludic feminism, like Berkelian idealism, cannot afford to explain things by the relations of
production and labour. This then is the dilemma of ludic feminism: the denial of "materialism" leads
Iodic feminism to a form of idealism that discredits any claims it might have to the struggle for
social change; accepting materialism, on the other hand, implicates its own ludic practices in the
practices of patriarchal-capitalism the practices that have produced gender inequalities as
differences that can be deployed to increase the rate of profit. This dilemma has lead feminism to an
intolerable political crisis: a crisis that is, in fact, so acute it has raised questions about the viability
of feminism as a theory and practice itself.

Two
Given its class politics, ludic feminism has attempted to overcome this politicoepistemological crisis by theorising materialism in a way that reconciles its contradictory interests.
On the one hand, it is primarily a theory of "upper-middle class" (to use the term of bourgeois social

theory) Euroamerican women and, on the other hand, it claims to be interested in social change for
all women. These "solutions" have taken two historically determined forms.
In the early phases of its "romance' with post-structuralism roughly from the early 1970's
(as in the writings of He1ene Cixous and Julia Kristeva) to the mid-1980's (as in such early writings
of Teresa deLauretis as Alice Doesn't) ludic feminism understood materialism mostly as a matter
of "language" ("sign"). This idea of the material as the "matter" of language is perhaps most
comprehensively performed in a book published at the end of this phase of ludic materialism
namely, Textualising the Feminine by Shari Benstock (1991). By the time Benstock's book was
published, materialism-as-language theory had become institutionalised in feminism. Benstock's
conventional reading of what I am calling ludic feminism does not directly engage the question of
"materialism," but her book is basically an instance of the emergence (and decline) of the notion of
(mostly Derridean-Lacanian) textuality in contemporary feminism. Such feminists as Mary Daly,
who are not in any conventional sense post-structuralists, also have a ludic understanding of
materialism as a matter of language, as is clear from her tropic books such as Gyn/Ecology.
In theorising "materialism" as a "matter" of language, ludic feminism essentially deployed
the concept of "textuality" in Derrida (for example, in Of Grammatology, especially 141-164), the
idea of the "sign" in Lacan (Ecrits, particularly, 30-113 and 146-178), and also the notion of
language as discourse in Foucault (Archaeology of Knowledge, especially 40-49 and The Discourse
on Language). For Foucault "discourse" has an exteriority of its own ("Politics and the Study of
Discourse" 60); it is a reality in its own right and not simply a reflection of an independent reality
outside it. In his elaboration on this view of "discourse," Ernesto Laclau goes so far as to say that
"The discursive is not, therefore, being conceived as a level nor even as a dimension of the social,
but rather as being coextensive with the social as such" (Populist Rupture and Discourse 87).
Understanding materialism as a matter of language has led ludic feminism to rethink politics itself.
If the "matter" of social reality is "language," then changes in this reality can best be brought about
by changing the constituents of that reality namely, signs. Therefore, politics as collective action
for emancipation is abandoned, and politics as intervention in discursive representation is adopted
as a truly progressive politics. Since language always works in specific contexts, the new
progressive ludic politics was also deemed to be always "local" and anti-global. From such a
perspective, emancipation itself is seen as a metaphysical metanarrative and read as totalising and
totalitarian (e.g., Lyotard, Postmodern Condition). Following the post-Marxism of Laclau, ludic
feminists like Judith Butler, proclaim the "loss of credibility" of Marxist versions of history" and
"the unrealisability of emancipation." Emancipation for Butler has a "contradictory and untenable"
foundation and thus becomes part of a sliding chain of significations ('Poststructuralism and
Postmarxism"). Social change, thus, becomes almost entirely a matter of superstructural change,
that is, change in significations. Political economy, in short, is displaced by an economy of signs.
With minor local modifications in the works of various ludic feminists, this notion of
materialism is maintained in ludic theory from the early 1970's to the mid-1980s. However, from
the mid-to-late 1980's (around the time of publication of Jane Gallop's Thinking Through the Body
in 1988) the idea of "materialism" as solely a matter of language loses its grip on ludic theory. After
the publication of Paul deMan's Wartime Journalism when questions of "ethics" suddenly
become foregrounded in contemporary high theory an under the increasing pressures from New
Historicism, ludic feminism has made new attempts to rearticulate materialism in a less discursive
manner. The pressures on reunderstanding "materialism' as a non-discursive force have not been
entirely internal to theory. At the end of the 1980's, as a result of conservative social policies in the
U.S. and Europe (for example, new tax laws), a massive transfer of wealth from the working class
to the owning class has taken place. Moreover, the working of postmodern capitalism has literally
affected "everyday" life in U.S. and European cities (homelessness, crime in neighbourhoods
devastated by unemployment, abandoned children ... ). In the face of such conditions, the idea of
progressive politics as simply a question of changing representations and problematising the
"obvious" meanings in culture has become too hollow to be convincing. As part of the emergence of
"ethics" in critical theory and the decline of "high theory" itself, ludic feminism has been rethinking

10

its own understanding of "materialism." In the 1990's materialism in ludic feminism is no longer
simply the "matter" of language, rather it has become the resisting "matter" of the non-discursive, or
as Diana Fuss puts it in her Essentially Speaking, "the body as matter" (52). The main theorists of
this new version of materialism" are writers such as Judith Butler and Elizabeth Grosz.
(Increasingly the notion of materialism deployed by Eve Sedgewick and other queer theorists is to a
very large extent influenced by Butler). The idea of the non-discursive ("the real or primary
relations") is, of course, available even in the early work of Foucault himself (Archaeology of
Knowledge, for example 45-46; 68-69). Butler, whose recent writings are increasingly marked by
her engagement with something called the non/extra-discursive is, of course, a close reader of
Foucualt. (Butler's doctoral dissertation, later published as Subjects of Desire, it is helpful to keep in
mind, is focused, in part, on Foucault).
What is of great importance in any theory of materialism is the way in which the relation of
the material to the non-material is articulated. In his earlier works such as Madness and
Civilisation, Foucault had posited a more causal relationship between the discursive and nondiscursive. The "innovation" in Archaeology (and in the writings that followed) is that causal
explanation (in fact any explanation) is dismissed as a modernist search for origin. In the postArchaeology writings the discursive and the non-discursive exist side by side without any
"necessary" relation between them. The Marxist principle that the extra-discursive explains the
discursive ("it is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social
existence that determines their consciousness," Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy 21) is abandoned in favour of indeterminacy. In fact, the "indeterminateness" of the
relation between the discursive and nondiscursive is central to the idea of the "material" in ludic
feminism. Through indeterminacy, ludic feminism like all idealist theory argues for the
freedom of agency and proposes a theory of the social in which the bourgeois subject is still the
central figure. The subject in ludic feminism does not, of course, always appear in its traditional
form. However, it is commonly affirmed through a trope or a practice, such a the practice of
performance in Butler: it is, for example, impossible to think of a performance, no matter how
performative without a performer. It is, therefore, important to say here that Foucault and ludic
feminism ostensibly reject any causal explanation in order to acquire the freedom of the agent, but
in actuality the only determinism that they are opposing is the determinism of the material (labour,
class, and the relations of production). In spite of their formal objections to explanation and
causality, they, in fact, establish a causal relation in their theories between the discursive and nondiscursive in which the Marxist theory of the social is reversed. In ludic theory it is the discursive
that silently explains the nondiscursive. Dreyfus and Rabinow (hardly opponents of Foucault!) put it
this way:
"Although what gets said depends on something other than itself, discourse dictates the
terms of this dependence" (Michel Foucault 64). In other words, not only is also determining: it
organises the non-discursive. In is discourse autonomous, it more of a formal(ist) gesture towards
an "outside" which short, the non-discursive is might be regarded as "material." The
decidability/undecidability of the relation between the discursive and non-discursive and not the
mere acknowledgment (as in both Foucault and ludic feminism) that there is an extra-discursive
is the central issue in theorising materialism.
The result of this ludic positing of a relation of indeterminacy is a materialism that does not
act materially; it does not determine anything: it is an inert mass. For the poststructuralist feminist,
such as Butler, Cornell, or Fuss, this non-determinate relation is what makes the theory of the nondiscursive in postmodern feminism "progressive" and non-reductionist. However, this is a very
conservative and constraining understanding of the non-discursive and its relation to the discursive.
The indeterminacy that it posits as a mark of resistance and freedom is, in actuality, a legitimisation
of the class politics of an "upper-middle class" Euroamerican feminism that is obsessed with the
freedom of the entrepreneurial subject and as such privileges the "inventiveness" of the sovereign
subject in the form of what Butler calls "citationality," Cornell calls "remetaphorisation," and

11

what more generally is understood as creativity, agency over the collective social relations of
production. This individuality is materialised in the uniqueness and irreplaceability of each body.
The non-discursive for ludic feminists in the 1990's, thus, becomes more and more a
question of not simply that which exists outside the discursive but as that entity which is resistant to
the discursive and the body is put forth as the prime site for this resistance. What I have said so
far about the history and theory of materialism" in recent feminist theory should not conveniently be
read to mean that, for example, no feminist theorist before the mid-to-late 1980's talked about
"materialism" as a matter of the body or that no feminist theorist, at the present time, regards
"materialism" to be a matter of language. My point is that, at the present time, the notion of
materialism as "language" is, to use Raymond Williams' terms, a "residual" concept (writers such as
Barbara Johnson, who have shown an interest in feminism in their more recent writings, for
example, still, by and large, regard materialism to be a matter of language). The idea of
"materialism" as a matter of body as, in short, a force resisting the discursive is an "emergent"
theory. We see the effort to suture these two theoretical tendencies together in the work, for
example, of Judith Butler.
In his move from the project of "archaeology" (questions of language and knowledge) to
"genealogy" (issues of power and practice), Foucault has concluded that the only possibility of
social change is through an entity that can resist the all inclusive and all-encompassing regime of
the dominant "episteme" that he himself had so thoroughly analysed in The Order of Things. Since
the episteme defines and controls all that was intelligible, to move beyond its regime, one has to
appeal to an entity that is non-thinking, non-intelligible and has the power to resist the episteme.
This entity, for Foucault, is the body, and the power of the body is acquired through its relentless
seeking of purposeless pleasure: pleasure not as the reward for performing the task of reproduction.
As Foucault elaborated in his later works, such as History of Sexuality and Discipline and Punish,
the body has its own materiality that enables it to "exceed" and "escape" discourse and its
associated regimes of power-knowledge. This, of course, does not mean that the body is not
conditioned, inscribed, and moulded by discourse. However, it does mean that power-knowledge
never succeeds in completely overcoming the body: culturalisation is never total and the body
always exceeds the power-knowledge that attempts to completely control it. This "exceeding" is
possible partly because of the internal conflicts and contradictions among the various discourses
that attempt to control the body.
The notion of the body as a resiting site in Foucault, however, is a highly political one and is
devised in part to inscribe a bourgeois ludic "materialism" (of pleasure ) in place of historical
materialism. Foucault himself is quite clear on this point. In his "Body/Power," Foucault states that
The emergence of the problem of the body and its growing urgency have come about
through the unfolding of a political struggle. Whether this is a revolutionary struggle, I don't know.
One can say that what has happened since 1968, and arguably what made 1968 possible, is
something profoundly anti-Marxist. How can European revolutionary movements free themselves
from the 'Marx effect. . . .' This was the direction of the questions posed by '68. In this calling in
question of the equation: Marxism = the revolutionary process, an equation that constituted a kind
of dogma, the importance given to the body is one of the important, if not essential elements.
(Power/Knowledge 57)
The politics of Foucault's theorising of the body as a site of resistance materialism becomes
even more clear when he says, "I wonder whether, before one poses the question of ideology, it
wouldn't be more materialist to study first the question of the body and the effects of power on it"
(Power/Knowledge 58). The materialism of the body in Foucault, then, is specifically designed to
oppose collective revolutionary praxis by substituting individual regimes of purposeless pleasurepleasure as a mode of the Kantian "sublime," a pleasure that is an excess of all systems of
representation and an escape from discourse and all social meanings. Social meanings it is
assumed are all ideological, and the true freedom of the subject is attained by transcending
ideology: pleasure deconstructs ideology (the preordained obviousness upon which the

12

metanarratives of a society are founded) and arrives at surprising encounters that can only be called
novel "experiences" (Foucault's formal opposition to "experience" notwithstanding).
This legacy of Foucauldian inferential materialism has dominated the ludic feminist notion
of the non-discursive and the material. Materialism in ludic feminism (as in Berkeley and other
idealist philosophers) is, in fact, more a theological category than a materialist one. It is a form of
what Lenin in his critique of Berkeley called "objective idealism" (Lenin, Materialism 23). The
masquerading of this objective idealism or what, in the context of Lenin's discussion of
Berkeley, could be called spiritual materialism as "materialism" in ludic feminism has
notescaped the attention of ludic feminists themselves. Kathryn Bond Stockton, herself a ludic
feminist theologian, describes the prevailing mode of "materialism" in ludic feminism in this way:
I mean materialism in its strongest sense: the material onto which we map our constructions,
'matter on its own terms that might resist or pressure our constructions, or prove independent of
them altogether. This materialism is the nondiscursive something poststructuralist feminists now
want to embrace, the extradiscursive something they confess necessarily eludes them. ("Bodies and
God" 131)
Unlike historical materialism, which foregrounds the historical praxis of the materiality of
labour, materialism, for the ludic feminist in the 1990's, is not an actual historical praxis that
determines other practices, rather it is a purely "inferential" entity. It is, in fact, the consciousness of
the subject that creates ("invents") this ludic "matter." Any understanding of "matter" as a positive
entity (labour) is dismissed in ludic feminism as vulgar determinism/positivism. The "matter" of
ludic feminism, in short, is a non-determining matter that depends on the subject and, as such, it is a
reinscription of traditional Euroamerican idealism this time represented as postmodern (nonpositivist) materialism to cover up the contradictions and crisis of patriarchal-capitalist.
Materialism becomes (through such practices as .performance") that which exceeds the existing
systems of representation an escapes from socially constructed meanings. In ludic feminism,
then, materialism (as a resisting matter) is an "invention." The seemingly "antitranscendental"
element that materialism is supposed to bring to bear upon social analysis for ludic feminists, as
Stockton herself realises, "only masks their deep dependence" upon "mystic unfathomable
Visibilities" (132). Ludic spiritual materialism, in Stockton's words, stands as a God that might be
approached through fictions and faith but never glimpsed naked" (131). Stockton's analysis is a
conservative and local one: she simply observes the striking similarities that exist between spiritual
materialism in ludic feminism and Victorian theological thought. In so doing, she blocks a more
global understanding of ludic materialism: ludic materialism is an outcome of the contradictions of
the social divisions of labour in class society. Spiritual materialism is, in short, is a strategy for
managing the crisis of class relations.
Materialism, in other words, is "invented" in ludic discourses to bring back
transcendentalism in a more postmodern and thus convincing rhetoric. Moreover, as I will discuss
more fully below, the trope of "invention" and theories of "invention" are introduced in
contemporary theory as a means to overcome the impasse of "constructivism." Constructivism
effectively combated humanism along with humanist and essentialist notions of the subject, but it
also left the subject and subjectivity too determinate: "upper-middle-class" ludic theorists have not
been able to accept any theory that circumscribes the freedom of the subject (of capital). However,
what is commonly represented, under the guise of invention, as "materialism" in ludic feminism, is
merely a re-invention of the very familiar technocratic imagination so valorised in capitalism:
materialism as techno-ludism. The most well-known example of techno-ludism that is, the
conjuncture of technocratic fancy, inventionism and spiritual materialism is Donna Haraway's
Cyborg Manifesto which has become for many the manifesto of new, post-socialist ludic
materialism. An apt commentary on the writings of Haraway and other feminist techno-theorists is
provided by Marx and Engels. In their critique of idealist philosophers, Marx and Engels called
them "industrialists of philosophy" who live on "absolute spirit," and this description remains valid
for (techno)ludic feminists today (Marx and Engels, The German Ideology 27, Collected Works,
Vol. 5). It is necessary to recall that Haraway's essay ends with what Stockton calls the trope of the

13

"Christian Pentecost" ("Bodies and God" 138): Haraway claims that "Cyborg imagery ... is a dream
not of a common language, but of a powerful infidel heteroglossia... a feminist speaking in tongues"
(Simians 181). This spiritual materialism this ludic matterism in its various forms from
cyborgian techno-ludism to Butlerian "citationality" is now the dominant theory of materialism
in the postmodern knowledge industry. It is a materialism that does not determine the non-material
but is, in fact, determined by the consciousness of the subject that infers it and thus constitutes it.
ludic materialism, then, whether perceived as the matter of sign/ textuality or as the matter of the
body is an invention to overcome the determinism of social constructionism: it is a device to return
the freedom of the subject and the contingency and non-necessity of the social with a newly
legitimated force to the entrepreneur and patriarchal-capitalism.
Materialism, however, is neither a matter of "language" (sign/discourse/ textuality) nor is it
an a-historical, inert, "resisting" mass (of the body) whose existence can be inferred by "faith or
fiction," by performativity, resignifications and other ludic rituals. In its most radical rendering,
ludic postmodern materialism leads to a form of Feuerbachian materialism about which Marx
writes: "As far as Feuerbach is a materialist he does not deal with history, and as far as he considers
history he is not a materialist" (Marx and Engels, The German Ideology 41). Materialism, is not a
matter of inference. It is the objectivity (of "surplus labour"). Moreover it is an active objectivity: a
praxis the praxis of labour through which humans "act "upon external nature" and change it, and
in this way simultaneously change themselves (Marx, Capital I, 284). As a praxis, it is historical,
and as labour, it is conflictually structured between the owners of the means of production and those
who have nothing but their own labour power to sell. Materialism, in short, is a historical praxis and
a structure of conflicts that determines other practices. Unlike the Foucauldian and ludic inert nondiscursive, it does not simply exist side by side with the discursive: it make the discursive possible;
it "explains" the discursive. Explanation is, of course, the very thing that Foucault's theory of the
autonomy of discourse is designed to erase. For Foucault all explanations (why) are ideological:
only description (how) of discourse is a legitimate form of knowledge. Materialism is not an inert
resistance to discourse, that has to be inferred by "fictions and faith." Instead materialism is (as
Marx meticulously describes it in Capital, I, 340-416) what confronts the subject of labour in "the
working day": the working day is the site in which the material and historical process of extracting
surplus labour from the worker by the capitalist takes place.

Three
Theories that approach materialism as a matter of language, as discourse, base their
argument on the assumption that discourse/textuality have an opacity and density of their own, a
physicality, which makes language "mean" not simply by the "intention" of the author and speaker
or by her conscious "control" but by its own autonomous and immanent laws of signification. This
understanding of "materialism" is transhistorical: it refers mostly to the material in the sense that I
have already described as inert matter, "medium" or "thingness" and is, in short, a form of
"matterism" rather than materialism. Or as Marx says in his "Theses on Feuerbach," "The chief
defect of all hitherto existing materialism" and we can add poststructuralist materialism to the
list "is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object of
contemplation, but not as human sensuous activity, practice" (The German Ideology I 21). And
"human sensuous activity" is above all, for Marx, labour: the way people "produce their means of
subsistence" and thus "indirectly produce their actual material life" (The German Ideology, 42).
It is, then, especially surprising to see a neo-socialist-feminist like Michele Barrett define
materialism in Marxist thought as "the doctrine seeing consciousness as dependent on matter"
without realising that "matter" in Marxism is not inert mass but the praxis of tabor and the
contradictions and class conflict.,; in which it is always involved. Barrett goes on to pose the
poststructuralist debate over materialism as one between "words and things," "matter" and
"meaning' ("Words and Things" 202, 201). However, "words and things," to use her terms, are not
finished a-historical entities: they are the product of the social relations of production. To pose the
question the way Barrett does is to erase the dialectical projector Marxism and to occlude the
structure of conflicts in capitalism. Historical materialism is an explanation of these conflicts.

14

Barrett's misreading is symptomatic of a more serious problem over the issue of materialism within
Marxist and socialist feminism. This is fundamentally the problem of the place of the relations of
production in feminist theory and political practice. It is the question of whether feminist
knowledge should give priority to the way people "produce their means of subsistence" (labour)
to the material reality and historical struggles of the relations of production or whether, as Seyla
Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell argue, "the confrontation between twentieth-century Marxism and
feminist thought requires nothing less than a paradigm shift ... the 'displacement of the paradigm of
production"' (Feminism as Critique 1). This is not simply a debate among materialist feminists. The
"displacement of the paradigm of production" by a majority of postmodern, Anglo-American neosocialist feminists has significantly contributed to the occlusion of the economic and suppression of
the problem of exploitation in most other feminist theories and consequently in contemporary social
theory in general. It has produced a ludic or post-al socialist feminism without Marxism, turning it
into a general left-liberalism, and has participated in the ludic substitution of a discursive politics of
individual, libidinal liberation for a revolutionary politics of collective socioeconomic
transformation.
Why should this displacement matter? The erasure of Marxism from feminism and (ludic)
postmodern knowledges has become so pervasive that the importance of these issues has been
largely suppressed, and the question itself can no longer even be asked without requiring extensive
explanation. It matters because, as Marx and Engels say, "the free development of each is the
condition for the free development of all" (The Communist Manifesto 75), and there can be no "free
development" unless the fundamental needs of each person are met: unless production fulfils needs
instead of making profits (Marx, The Gotha Program 10). Making profits, in short, is the denial of
the needs of the many and the legitimisation of the desires of the few. As a revolutionary (not a
post-al) socialist feminist, Nellie Wong argues,
Without overthrowing the economic system of capitalism, as socialists and communists
organise to do, we cannot liberate women and everybody else who is also oppressed.
Socialist feminism is our bridge to freedom.... Feminism, the struggle for women's equal
rights, is inseparable from socialism.... (Socialist Feminism, 290).
A revolutionary socialist feminism is based on historical materialism. It insists that the
"material" is fundamentally tied to the economic sphere and to the relations of production, which
have a historically necessary connection to all other social/cultural relations. The "material," in
other words, contrary to ludic theory does not simply exist autonomously as a resisting mass, side
by side with autonomous discourse. Materialism, as Engels puts it, means that "the degree of
economic development," in a society forms "the foundation upon which the state institutions ... the
art and even the religious ideas ... have been evolved, and in the light of which these things must
therefore be explained instead of vice versa ('The Funeral of Kari Marx" 39). It is to repeat what
is so violently erased in idealist theory therefore, not "the consciousness of men that determines
their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness" (Marx, A
Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy 21). In short, Marx argues that "the nature of
individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production" "both with
what they produce and with how they produce" (The German Ideology 42).
For a red feminism this means that issues about the "nature of individuals" gender,
sexuality, pleasure, desire, needs cannot be separated from the conditions producing individuals:
not just the discursive and ideological conditions but most important the material conditions, the
relations of production, which shape discourses and ideologies. Thus the struggle to end the
exploitation and oppression of all women, and in particular of people of colour, lesbians and gays,
within the metropole as well as the periphery, is not simply a matter of discursive or semiotic
liberation or a question of the resisting "matter of the body," but a global social relation: it thus
requires the transformation of the material conditions the relations of production producing
these forms of oppression.
Historical materialism thus means the primacy of women's and men's productive practices
their labour processes in the articulation and development of human history and in the

15

construction of their own subjectivities. As Marx argues in Capital, through labour the subject "acts
upon" external nature and changes it and in this way the labourer simultaneously changes her/his
own nature (v. 1, 283). Such a view of materialism also understands 'reality" to be a historically
objective process: reality exists outside the consciousness of humans ideas do not have an
autonomous existence and thus reality is not merely a matter of desire of the body, or the operation
of language (or, on the other hand, of the "thingness" of things). This does not mean that reality, as
we have access to it, as we make sense of it, is not mediated by signifying practices. But the
empirical fact that reality is mediated by language in no way means, as Engels and others have
argued, that it is produced by language. Social relations and practices are, in other words, prior to
signification and are objective. The subjugation of women, then, is an objective historical reality: it
is not simply a matter of representation by self-legitimating discourses. The extraction of surplus
labour is an objective social reality in class societies and all social difference are produced by it,
whether directly or through various mediations. Transformative politics depends on such a view of
reality since if there is no objective reality there will be little ground on which to act in order to
change existing social relations. Transformative politics, in other words, does not simply
"redescribe" the existing social world through different discourses as does ludic politics (e.g., see
Rorty, Contingency 44-69), but rather acts to change the "real" social, economic the material
conditions of the relations of production exploiting women and determining our lives.

Four
It is by now commonplace among ludic postmodernists and feminists, including many
socialist feminists, to dismiss the insistence on relations of production as economic reductionism
and to discredit the concept of any determination of the "superstructure" (e.g., the cultural,
ideological, representational, political, juridical, etc.) by the economic base. This is, for instance,
the core argument against historical or dialectical materialism and for cultural materialism in Donna
Landry and Gerald MacLean's Materialist Feminisms (e.g., 61-62). It is necessary to discuss this
book at some length since it articulates many of the questions I have raised in this chapter the
problem of feminism, critique and materialism in direct opposition to my own argument. A
critique of their book, therefore, will provide a more open contestation between my argument and
that of ludic feminism. Landry and MacLean's book attempts "to present a history of the debates
between Marxist and feminist social and cultural theorists in the 1960's, 1970's and early 1980's,
primarily in Britain and the United States, and to analyse what has happened to transform those
debates in recent years" (ix). But as deconstructionists they are quite ambivalent about the project of
writing a history and end up with what they themselves describe as a "schematic and inconsistent"
"chronological narrative." Materialist Feminisms is especially representative of the discursive, postMarxist turn in socialist feminism and demonstrates some of the limitations of this ludic mode.
They begin their book by saying that "this is a book about feminism and Marxism written
when many people are proclaiming the end of socialism and the end of feminism.... We find these
claims to be both premature and misleading" (vii). However, the authors are deeply invested in
poststructuralism, especially deconstruction, as the ground of their knowledges, and this leads them
to turn Marxism into a textuality that they try to deconstruct. In fact, the book expends considerable
energy trying to displace and erase Marxism altogether from materialism and from feminism. Thus,
while the book begins by treating Marxist, socialist, and materialist feminism as nearly
synonymous, it concludes by saying: "Need materialism be only an alias for Marxism? We hope
that by now the distinction between Marxist feminism and materialist feminism is clear" (229). But
in writing a materialist feminism without Marxism, the book offers little more than a left-liberal,
poststructuralist "identity politics of undone identities."
The core of Landry and McLean's notion of materialism is an adaptation of Raymond
Williams' notions of "cultural materialism" and "green socialism" which they graft onto
deconstruction. While they continue to call their position "historical materialism" (following
Williams' revisions), they, in fact, fundamentally break with the tradition of historical materialism
and instead subscribe to the, by now, dominant discursive conception of materialism:

16

the production of signs, of signifying systems, of ideology, representations, and discourses is

itself a material activity with material effects. Instead of arguing that the material or economic base
produces certain effects, like culture and ideology, as part of its superstructure, a cultural materialist
would argue that ideology and the discourses generated by social institutions are themselves located
in material practices which have material effects that affect even the economic structures of the
base. (61)
This issue of the "materiality of the many signifying practices" and whether or not cultural,
ideological and discursive practices (superstructure) are determined by the "material or economic
base" is the basic conflict between a cultural/discursive materialism and historical materialism. As
Landry and MacLean explain, "from a cultural materialist position, arguments for the determinism
of the "base' suffer from economic reductionism" (61-62).
But it is not really "reductionism" that disturbs Landry and MacLean since they seem to
have no trouble at all in accepting the post-marxist view of Laclau and Mouffe that "history and the
real are discursive" (1 40), which is itself quite a reductionist and deterministic position. What
Landry and MacLean, like other poststructuralists and postmarxists, are doing is simply replacing
"economic reductionism" with a "discursive reductionism" and calling it a new non-deterministic
materialism.
Thus, Landry and MacLean claim that the "more adequately materialist feminist reading" is
one that reads both Marx and the world "as texts," for the world and history are "always
discursively constructed" (139-140). Their main argument against Marx (and for deconstruction),
thus involves reading "Marx's concept of value," following Gayatri Spivak, "as a catachresis or
pun," which "not only shifts the grounds of debate from a tendency towards economic reductionism
but opens potentially productive contradictions in Marx's texts" (64). But "surplus value" in Marx is
the profit gained from the appropriation and exploitation of the contradictions in the social divisions
of labour in production. To turn it into a linguistic pun, not only erases a powerful explanatory
concept, but it also "shifts the grounds of debate" from social contradictions over the exploitation of
people's lives and labour to the play of textual differences. The ultimate goal of such readings of the
"labour theory of value" in Marx is to turn it into a concept analogous to "value" in Saussure
(Course in General Linguistics 111-122). However, "value" in language is a "local" condition of
meaningfulness (Saussure 116). Signs acquire their "value" by "opposition," to use Saussure's own
term, but this "opposition" is itself the outcome of prior material oppositions which Voloshinov
effectively discusses as the oppositions of classes: language is "an arena of class struggle," that is, a
site in the struggle over the extraction of surplus value (Marxism and the Philosophy of Language
23). The meaning of the sign "black," in other words, is not determined simply by a local, immanent
"opposition" to white but by the way "black" and "white" are constructed and given meaning in the
process of production. immanently it would be difficult to explain why "black market" is a term of
derogation and 'white lie" is a term of justification and thus acceptance. "Black" in black market is
negative because of what is outside discourse: the race and class antagonisms over the social
divisions of labour and expropriations of surplus value antagonisms which are made intelligible
and fought out in the arena of discourse. "Surplus value" in the labour theory of value, in short,
determines not only the value of the sign but of all systems of intelligibilities in class societies
(Alex Callinicos, Race and Class 16-39).
However, for discursive materialists, in spite of their formal protests, discourse in their
practices determines not only the "real" but also social and political change. Materialist feminism,
then as put forth by Landry and MacLean and the majority of ludic postmodernists and feminists
becomes a discursive "politics of difference" sensitive to the "leaky distinctions" among
questions of race, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, post-coloniality, religion, and cultural identity, as
well as class and gender" (90). Materialist feminism is reduced, in short, to what Landry and
MacLean celebrate as a poststructuralist "identity politics of undone identities." But such an identity
politics completely displaces the transformative struggle against "interlocking systems of
oppression racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression," called for by earlier materialist
feminists, such as those of the Combahee River Collective (145). This substitution of a politics of

17

difference reunderstands power relations, following Foucault (History of Sexuality, l, 85-102), as

reversible relations of difference and rearticulates binaries, oppositions and hierarchies as discursive
categories and practices that can be "reversed ... [and] displaced" by a "deconstructive reading." But
such a rhetorical displacement of binaries does not eliminate the real existing social and historical
binaries between exploiter and exploited. it simply covers them over, concealing their grounding in
the social divisions of labour and the relations of production.

Five
At the core of discursive materialism is the poetics of invention. The post-al politics of
"invention" is a politics of discursive transformation that seeks to move "beyond" established codes
into a "utopian" space of unencumbered (semiotic) freedom through the subversion of existing
regimes of discourse and hierarchies of representation, language games, and signifying relations. It
is a politics of local, contingent acts generating new phrases, idioms, linkages and rules of
judgments for each particular situation without any pre-existing criteria. Such judgments, according
to Jean-Francois Lyotard, have 'to be always done over again" because they concern
incommensurable linkages among differends linkages that must be "always done over again" in
order not to suppress some other differend, some other linkage (Differend 140). Politics is thus
reduced to discursive alterations and subversions: what Lyotard calls the "invention of new idioms"
for the differend.
As I earlier suggested, part of what is at stake in the emphasis on "invention" by ludic
postmodern and feminist theorists (not only Lyotard but also Derrida, Butler, and Cornell, as well as
Luce Irigarary, Helene Cixous, Gregory Ulmer and others) is the crisis of social constructionism.
Structuralism and, later on, poststructuralism critiqued traditional humanism for its metaphysics of
presence by which it secured its basic categories (self, consciousness, gender, sex, race ...) in
nature. They offered, as a "supplement" to this theory of the subject, the notion that the subject was
not naturally created but was socially constructed. By now, the idea of social construction as
opposed to a "natural" essentialism has become the ludic orthodoxy, and the conflict between
"essentialism" and "constructionism" has become one of the most contested scenes in feminism.
Recently, however, the theory of the subject as socially constructed is turning into an impediment
for ludic feminists and postmodern theorists, for whom constructionism seems too deterministic and
restrictive of the agency of the subject. Ludic theorists are thus attempting to problematise this
determinism through the trope of "invention" the multiple, indeterminate, reversible play of
significations that subverts any stable, definite meanings. For these ludic critics, the subject's
inventiveness that is, her/ his participation in the discursive "play" of language games,
metaphors, significations enables her/him to overcome the determinacy of social construction
and move into the terrain of a utopian future.
This move first to a semiotic constructionism and then to invention involves a double
displacement of historical materialism. By construing social construction largely in terms of a
discursive construction, structuralists and poststructuralists have substituted a linguistic
determinism for a historical materialist concept of construction as determined by the forces and
relations of production. Now the more recent ludic rejection of even linguistic determinism entirely
eclipses the historical actuality of determinism without having to address its materialist and
economic forms.
This valorisation of a liberating inventiveness and complete erasure of any form of
necessary relation is clearly evident in Drucilla Cornell's "utopian feminism" with its strategies of
"remetaphorisation" (Beyond Accommodation). But perhaps one of the fullest articulations of this
eclipse of historical material'. m in the shift from constructionism to invention is developed by
Judith Butler in Bodies that Matter.
Butler's work combines a deconstructive textualism with a Foucaultian analytics of power. It
is thus important to briefly critique here the basic presuppositions of Foucault's notion of power.
Power in Foucault is not understood as primarily textual, although it is irrevocably linked to the
operation of discourse and knowledge relations. Rather power, according to Foucault, "must be
understood in the first instance as the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in

18

which they operate and which constitute their own organisation" (History of Sexuality 92).
Moreover, these "force relations" of power are, according to Foucault, Self-constituting, immanent,
local, diffuse and a-systematic. Power, in other words, is "aleatory" (that is, marked by chance and
arbitrariness); contingent (rather than historically determined); heterogeneous (divided by
difference within), and unstable by provoking "resistance" it "undoes" itself. Foucault's analysis
of the local, specific and contingent, however, is based on a quite abstract, static, a-historical and
mystified concept of power: for Foucault "Power is everywhere ... comes from everywhere ... is
permanent, repetitious, inert" it is always already with us and always will be. Moreover,
Foucault turns resistance into a nearly automatic, immanent response to the exercise of power:
"where there is power, there is resistance" (95-96). For "Resistances," Foucault declares, "are
inscribed in the [relations of power] as an irreducible opposite" rather like a natural resistance to
a physical force (96). Such a theory of power substitutes a logic of contingency for the logic of
social necessity. In so doing, it preempts any need for collective, organised social transformation
any need, in other words, for emancipation, and more important, it dispenses with the necessity for
organised social and political revolution to overthrow dominant power relations. All we need to do,
according to this ludic logic, is recognise and validate the local "multiplicity of points of resistance"
that power itself already generates.
Perhaps the most "appealing" aspect of Foucault's theory for most "left" critics and feminists
is that it offers, as Foucault himself says, "a non-economic analysis of power" as opposed to the
"economism in the theory of power" in Marx as well as in the juridical-liberal notion of power
(Power/Knowledge 88-89). Foucault conflates these two quite opposed understandings of power by
equating a trope with a theoretical explanation he follows the ludic assumption that
explanation/concepts are, in fact, tropes. He characterises the juridical-liberal notion of power as a
form of economism simply because it relies on the trope of commodity exchange. Whereas, in "the
Marxist conception of power," he says, "one finds none of all that" (88). What one does find and
what Foucault's entire theory of power is an attempt to displace is, as Foucault describes it: "an
economic functionality of power ... power is conceived primarily in terms of the role it plays in the
maintenance simultaneously of the relations of production and of a class domination which the
development and specific forms of the forces of production have rendered possible" (88-89). In
opposition to a Marxist theory of power which always insists on the dialectical relations of
power and the economic Foucault (the former student of the Marxist philosopher Louis
Althusser) develops an unrelentingly anti-historical-materialist theory of power. He severs power
from its material connection to the social relations and contradictions of production, and reduces it
to an abstract force confined to the superstructure. His is an anti-dialectical theory that substitutes
an analytics of localised, reversible domination for a theory of systematic global exploitation. This
ludic displacement of historical materialism has made Foucault one of the main articulators of postMarxism in late capitalism and given him an extraordinary influence among academics,
professionals and other middle and upper class knowledge-workers, especially in the West.
Building on Foucault's theory of a localised, diffuse, a-systematic power, Butler rewrites
constructionism, specifically the construction of gender/sexed bodies, as indeterminate. In short, she
rewrites it in terms of invention what she calls "performativity" or "citationality." In Bodies that
Matter, Butler specifically contests, what she calls, "radical linguistic constructivism" which "is
understood to be generative and deterministic" and forms a "linguistic monism, whereby everything
"is only and always language" (6). According to Butler, "what ensues," from this position, "is an
exasperated debate that many of us are tired of hearing" (6): a debate over determinism and agency,
over essentialism and constructivism. She decries the way structuralist and radical linguistic
theories reduce "constructivism" "to determinism and impl(y) the evacuation or displacement of
human agency" (9). This is an especially important issue in Butler's work. She is committed to the
preservation of "agency"; in fact, it is the priority of her post-al politics. But she rejects both the
"voluntarist subject of humanism" and the "grammatical" subject of structuralist and classical poststructuralist theories. She thus dismisses those who "construe" construction "along structuralist
lines," because they "claim that there are structures that construct the subject, impersonal forces,

19

such as Culture or Discourse or Power, where these terms occupy the grammatical site of the
subject" (9). In other words, she objects to what she considers to be a personification of "discourse
or language or the social" that posits a grammatical subject as initiating the activity of construction.
Butler attempts to displace this grammatical logic of structuralist and "radical linguistic
constructivism" (the logic of subject and predicate) with a more open rhetorical or discursive logic
of agency as "reiteration": in other words, with a notion of agency as invention, which she variously
calls "performativity" or "citationality."
She argues that Foucault's "view of power" should be "understood as the disruption and
subversion of this grammar and metaphysics of the subject" (9); it is an analytics of power that, for
Butler, accounts for the generation of subjectitivities without in turn positing a determining subject.
This enables Butler to understand construction as "neither a subject nor its act, but a process of
reiteration by which both 'subjects' and ,acts' come to appear at all. There is no power that acts, but
only a reiterated acting that is power in its persistence and instability" (9). In other words,
subjects/agents, are for Butler, effects of the agency of a reiterative power that she calls
performativity. Butler is asserting a localised and localising theory of power and construction
(performativity) that is determinate yet indeterminate; involves subjectivities but not a "Subject,"
and an agency that constructs its own agents.
Invention or performativity enables Butler to posit a mode of inquiry into the
construction of the subject that she claims "is no longer constructivism, but neither is it
essentialism," because there is, Butler asserts, "an 'outside' to what is constructed by discourse" (8).
However, this is an "inventive" rather than a conventional notion of "outside": as Butler says,
this is not an absolute 'outside,' and ontological there-ness that exceeds or counters the
boundaries of discourse; as a constitutive 'outside,' it is that which can only be thought when it
can in relation to that discourse, at and as its most tenuous borders. (8)
In other words, the very "outside" to discourse that allows us, according to Butler, to escape
the dichotomy of constructivism/essentialism, is itself invente through the play of discourse. By this
she means that "the extra-discursive is delimited, it is formed by the very discourse from which it
seeks to free itself" (11). However, this is not so much a move beyond the "exasperated debate" as it
is yet another ludic displacement of fundamental issues through a tropic play that conflates
differences through a logic of supplementarily.
The limits of this discursive "invention" of the outside (the "extra-discursive") are made
especially clear in Butler's ludic articulation of matter/materiality. She re-understands "the notion of
matter, not as a site or surface, but as a process of materialisation that stabilises over time to
produce the effect of boundary, fixity, and surface we call matter" (9). In other words, Butler is
substituting "materialisation" for construction, but in so doing, she puts forward a concept of
"materiality," "matter," "materialisation" that breaks both with the common sense understanding
where these terms refer to a reality or referent outside language and with a historical materialist
understanding, in which these concepts refer to the objective reality of the actual historical
conditions produced by the mode of production. Instead, Butler rewrites materialisation, itself, as a
form of discursive practice: as she says, "materialisation will be a kind of citationality, the
acquisition of being through the citing of power" (15). Citationality that is, the practice of
"citing," repeating, summoning sexual norms and "laws" is, in turn, also a form of
performativity. Performativity, a concept Butler originally developed in Gender Trouble, is a form
of performance, but its meaning, for Butler, cannot be simply reduced to performance, especially
theatrical notions of performance as role playing. Butler argues that "performance as bounded 'act'
is distinguished from performativity insofar as the latter consists in a reiteration of norms which
precede, constrain, and exceed the performer . . . further, what is 'performed' works to conceal, if
not to disavow, what remains opaque, unconscious, unperformable. The reduction of performativity
to performance would be a mistake" (Bodies 234). The meaning of performativity, in other words,
slides into a kind of "speech act" that enacts, repeats or "cites" the norms of sex. In fact, one of the
main concerns of Bodies that Matter is "the reworking of performativity as citationality," so that

20

Butler now defines performativity as "the reiterative and citational practice by which discourse
produces the effects that it names" (14, 2).
Butler's "outside" to discourse, in other words, is what discourse itself constructs through
"exclusion, erasure, violent foreclosure, objection." But this "outside" is itself supplementary: it is a
"disruptive return" that constitutes what excludes it. For example, the primacy of masculinity in
Western metaphysics is, Butler argues, "founded ... through a prohibition which outlaws the spectre
of a lesbian resemblance" (the lesbian phallus); masculinity, then, is an "effect of that very
prohibition ... dependent on that which it must exclude" (52). The "outside" (the excluded lesbian),
in other words, is the necessary ground "constituting" the "inside" of masculinity and
heterosexuality. Butler is following here the classic poststructuralist erasure of the boundaries
between inside and outside, that is, "supplementarily" (Derrida, Grammatology 144-145). But this
supplementarity what Butler insists is the "indissolubility of materiality and signification" (30)also locates us as always already in an infinite semiotic loop: a kind of discursive Mobius strip.
Butler reduces materiality to the materiality of the signifier and the effects of signifying processes,
notably citationality. As she declares, "it is not that one cannot get outside of language in order to
grasp materiality in and of itself; rather, every effort to refer to materiality takes place through a
signifying process which ... is always already material" (68).
Thus, sex, for Butler, is not "a bodily given ... but ... a cultural norm which governs the
materialisation of bodies" (2-3). The "construction" of sexual identity is an activity of
performativity in which the body "assumes" or "materialises" its sex through a process of
"citationality" that is, a speaking in and through bodies in which the symbolic laws, norms and
discourses of heterosexuality are "cited" in the same way, according to Butler, that a judge "cites" a
law (14). There is in Butler's theory then an equivalency or rather a tropic sliding and linking
together of materialisation, performativity, citationality as all forms of discursive reiteration. In
other words, "matter" (the body) is given its boundaries, shapes, fixity and surface it is
"materialised" (sexed) through the "citationality" of discourse, through the "reiteration of
norms." The materiality of sexuality, then, is not outside language but is the effect of discourse.
However, in a footnote, Butler specifically disclaims that materiality is "the effect of
'discourse' which is its cause" (Bodies 251, n. 12). But, she is able to make this disclaimer only
through a series of dissimulations that in turn validate "dissimulation," itself, as the crux of her
theory of materiality/materializations. She does so by deploying Foucault's theory of power, which,
as I have already indicated, posits power as diffuse and dispersed without a cause or originary
source. Foucault's aleatory and contingent notion of power enables Butler to, as she says, "displace
the causal relation through a reworking of the notion of 'effect.' Power is established in and through
its effects, where these effects are the dissimulated workings of power itself" (251, n. 12). Butler is,
in short, deconstructing causality (following Nietzsche's re-reading of causality through its effects
in his The Will to Power) into a circuit of supplementary relations in which the "cause," as
Nietzsche claims, is itself the effect of its own dissimulated causality, or the "effect" is itself the
causality of its own dissimulated effects. This move enables her to rewrite materiality as the "effect
of power": according to Butler, "'Materiality' appears only when its status as contingently
constituted through discourse is erased, concealed, covered over. Materiality is thus the
dissimulated effect of power" (251, n. 12, emphasis added). In Butler's ludic argument, materiality
is thus entirely confined to the level of the "superstructure," to discourse. Moreover, this ludic
articulation of materiality is an extended ideological re-mystification. in the name of openness, it
puts forth an understanding of power as a closed, self-legitimating operation. It completely
suppresses the real material conditions of what Marx calls the "working day": the production of
profit (surplus value) through the exploitation of our unpaid and subsistence labour.
Butler's suppression and mystification of the materiality of materialism the materiality of
labour is quite explicit in two brief references she makes to Marx's historical materialism. The
first is an offhand reference in which she attempts to appropriate Marx to her position by linking
him to her rereading of classical notions of matter as "temporalised" and as positing the
"indissolubility of ... materiality and signification" (Bodies 31). She attributes this temporalisation

21

to what she claims is Marx's understanding of "'matter' . . . as a principle of transformation" (31).

However, Butler is able to appropriate Marx for a genealogy of (idealist) theories of matter, only by
profoundly misreading him and completely excluding the issue of labour from his work. In a
footnote to her observation on Marx, she specifies that her reading is based on the first of Marx's
Theses on Feuerbach, in which, she says, Marx "calls for a materialism which can affirm the
practical activity that structures and inheres in the object as part of that object's objectivity and
materiality" (250, n. 5). She goes on to argue that on the basis of "this new kind of materialism that
Marx proposes ... the object is transformative activity itself and, further, its materiality is established
through this temporal movement.... In other words, the object materialises to the extent that it is a
site of temporal transformation ... as transformative activity" (250, n. 5). This reading is a
remarkable act of mystification and idealist abstraction, for it completely suppresses the
fundamental element in Marx's "new kind of materialism": this "practical activity," this
"transformative activity," constituting the object is labour. Marx's reunderstanding of materiality in
the first Theses on Feuerbach as "sensuous human activity, practice" is the insistence on materiality
as labour. To reduce labour to mere temporality is to exclude its materiality and do exactly what
Marx opposes: to substitute "interpretation" for "transformation" of the world. As Marx writes in
Capital, "Labour is, first of all, a process . . . by which man, through his own actions, mediates,
regulates and controls the metabolism between himself and nature.... Through this movement he
acts upon external nature and changes it, and in this way he simultaneously changes his own nature"
(Capital, Vol. I, 283). Labor, of course, takes place in a temporality, but this is a specific "history"
(i.e., a particular articulation of a mode of production), not an abstract, idealist, immanent
"temporality" of differance. However, Butler does indeed reduce this transformative activity to
basically an abstract (and quite idealist) notion of "temporal movement." Of course, the notion of
temporality informing Butler's concept of materiality as well as her concepts of performativity
and the differences within reiteration and citationality is not a historical, materialist temporality
but rather the deconstructive trope that is one of the core principles of the Derridean notion of
differance.
In "basing" her theory of materiality on Foucault's notion of a diffuse, autonomous,
contingent and aleatory power, Butler, like Foucault, makes power, itself, the constitutive "base" of
society and all social processes, substituting it for the Marxist concept of a determining economic
base. But how effective is such a move, especially when we also consider that Butler has articulated
Foucault's analytics of power in relation to a deconstructive logic of supplementary, thus generating
a circular logic that quite outdoes Foucault? As I have already suggested, Butler constructs a
supplementary circuit in which all the fundamental concepts of her social analytics are equivalent
or tropically slide one into the other. She declares not only that "'materiality' designates a certain
effect of power or, rather, is power in its formative or constituting effects" (34), but also that
"performativity is one domain in which power acts as discourse . . . [as] a reiterated acting that is
power" (225). Moreover, Butler insists, as we have already seen, on the "indissolubility of
materiality and signification" (30) and that "materialisation will be a kind of citationality" (15), that
is performativity. In other words, power is not only the constitutive base of the social, immanent in
all processes, but, through a series of tropic slippages power is materiality is discourse is
citationality is performativity. Such an understanding of power and materiality becomes so closed
and circular as to border on the ludicrous. It does not so much explain processes of power and social
construction as avoid explanation altogether by inventing a series of tropic displacements. Butler is,
of course, following Foucault, who claims that "power is everywhere ... comes from everywhere"
(History of Sexuality 93). But as Nancy Hartsock rightly points out, "Power is everywhere, and so
ultimately nowhere" (170). Such a notion of power is so broad and idealist, it is both absurd and
quite ineffectual. How much more absurd, then, is Butler's supplementary logic in which power is
materiality is discourse is citationality is performativity.? Not only is power everywhere and
nowhere, but power is everything and nothing.
While this may be a quite ineffectual theory of power for any politics of social
transformation, it is nonetheless a very appealing and popular one among ludic feminists and

22

theorists, precisely because it provides an analytics of power in which we do not have to confront
the global relations and systematicity of power; in which we do not have to deal with the most
serious consequences of power operating in dialectical relation to the mode of production and
division of labour , the consequences, in other words, of exploitation. By construing power as
immanent in all processes, as operating as discourse, as citationality and thus as a "reiterative
acting" divided by differences-within this ludic logic constitutes power as reversible, as
generating its own resistances. The "compulsory power relations," that Butler argues operate
through multiple local sites to "form, maintain, sustain, and regulate bodies" (34), are themselves
"unstable" and indeterminate: generating and sustaining resistance along with regulation. Moreover,
the privileged place ludic theories accord discourse means, as Foucault argues, that "Discourse
transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile
and makes it possible to thwart it." The agency of change, in other words, is discourse itself or
power as discourse. More, specifically, it is what Butler calls "resignification."
The politics of such a ludic theory is that it blurs the lines between the powerful and
powerless, oppressor and oppressed, and produces a social analytic that turns the historical binaries
of social class into reversible matters of discourse in which exploiter and exploited become shifting
positions in the (Lacanian) Symbolic, open to resignification. This means that, through the play and
invention of discourse (resignification), every subject, everyone, always already has access to the
power imminent in discourse without any connection to the position of the subject in the social
division of labour. In other words, in this analytics of power, the social relations of production-class
relations-are covered up and concealed. Everyone is always already located in multiple sites of
resistance no matter what their location in property relations may be. This view occludes the source
of power: the fact that power is always constructed at the point of production. In contrast, power for
historical materialists is always linked to relations of production and labour. In any society divided
by the unequal division and appropriation of labour, power is a binary relation between exploiter
and exploited; powerful and powerless; owner of the means of production and those who have
nothing but their labour power to sell. Power, thus, cannot be translated into a plurality of
differences as if all sites of power are equally powerful. The resolution of these binaries does not
come about through a linguistic resignification but through revolutionary praxis to transform the
system of exploitation and emancipate those it exploits.
We especially see Butler's assertion of the agency of invention (citationality) as a dematerialised site of reversible power in her efforts to account for the way "sex is both produced and
destabilised in the course of this reiteration" of norms (10). Not only does citationality invoke the
"chain of binding conventions," but it is also "by virtue of this reiteration that gaps and fissures are
opened up," producing instability, and "this instability is the deconstituting possibility in the very
process of repetition, the power that undoes the very effects by which "sex" is stabilised" (10). In
other words, as supplementary processes, citationality, reiteration, and performativity, all
simultaneously constitute and "deconstitute"; regulate and deregulate; 'produce and destabilise" the
materialisation-sexing-of the body. The process of reiteration (citationality/performativity) is, in
and of itself, a process of invention: the reversible, de-stabilising, de/reconstituting play of
significations that subverts any stable, definite meanings. What this means is that the "regulatory
power" of norms-which is established through reiteration-is itself reversible: it is also a deregulatory
power.
However, contrary to ludic claims, this diverse deployment of deregulating invention by
Butler, as well as by Cornell, Lyotard, Derrida and others (whether as performativity, citationality,
resignification, remetaphorisation, refiguring, the differend, differance ... ) is not a progressive
move beyond (free of) the bounds of existing systems and their material conditions. Rather
invention is a way of avoiding the consequences of the structural forces in society-the social
relations of production. The logic of invention is a double move that attempts to displace
exploitation. Again, it does so by first construing material structural forces either as discourse or as
so heavily mediated by discourses as to be "indissociable" from them, as Butler does. Then it
reinterprets these structures in terms of the trope of invention and a differential logic

23

(differance/differend/difference-within), thereby defining them as, in themselves, heterogeneous,

indeterminate, self-deconstructing processes. In other words, within this ludic logic, structures are
always already being undone by their own destabilising processes, their own differences-within.
This means, in effect, that, for ludic theorists, there are no exploitative or determining structures or
systematic relations, including production, because such structures would always already be in the
process of undoing themselves and their effects. Of course, ludic critics do not deny oppression
(that is, domination as opposed to exploitation), but they largely confine both their recognition and
explanations of the occurrences of oppression to particular, local events and gestures of power that
are, by definition, reversible, that generate their own resistances. What this means is that there is no
need for revolution or class struggle since any oppressive "structure" is itself a deconstituting
process that undoes its own effects (oppression). Domination is especially seen as undoing its own
attempts to regulate subjectivities. As Butler argues, "'sexed positions' are not localities but, rather,
citational practices instituted within a juridical domain," which attempts to "confine, limit, or
prohibit some set of acts, practices, subjects, but in the process of articulating that prohibition, the
law provides the discursive occasion for resistance, a resignification, and potential self-subversion
of that law" (Bodies 109). Liberatory politics, for Butler, is thus a matter of invention, of
resignification: the difference-within every citation or repetition of norm that opens up a space for
reinvesting the norm and its symbolic regime, as in the regime of heterosexuality.
However, by trying to explain heterosexuality as regulatory regime of discourse, a
compulsory symbolic law operating through "citationality," Butler confines "the regime of
heterosexuality" entirely to a scene of the superstructure, to a discursive order. She suggests how it
may operate, but she is not able to explain in any way why it does so; why it has the social and
historical power it does; why it deploys (cites) the norms that she thinks it does. In cutting off
heterosexuality-as well as materiality-from the material conditions of production, she isolates the
"regime" of heterosexuality from any relation to patriarchal capitalism. This move then enables her
to substitute the symbolic regime of heterosexuality for the social formation of patriarchal
capitalism (which she entirely occludes) as the determining structure constructing our lives, gender
and sexuality. Moreover her post-al politics posits invention as the latest trope for the freedom of
deregulated subjectivities and unbounded desire-unconstrained by the "truth" of needs. But in
actuality, the deployment of invention justifies, normalises and, in the name of deregulation,
regulates the subjects of the new World Order. None of these ludic modes of invention-Butler's
resignification, Cornell's remetaphorisation, Haraway's recoding, Lyotard's ode to the pleasures of
inventing new phrases break the logic of the dominant ideology of capitalism which produces
subjects according to the needs of the moving forces of production.
Butler's own analysis points up the limits of her ludic privileging of the discursive. Class,
labour and the relations of production are the suppressed, covered over," "exclusionary" and
"constitutive outside" of her own theory. Her notion of citationality, for instance, is unable to
explain the material reality, of lesbian and gay oppression. Thus, she briefly moves toward a class
analysis of resisting sexualities in order to ask, "For whom is outness a historically available and
affordable option? Is there an unmarked class character to the demand for universal 'outness'"
(227)? However, following her notion of citationality, Butler regards class, itself, to be a
performance: an individual quoting of the texts of power. In other words, class, for Butler, is based
on "power" as access to discourse and is contingent and individual; it does not concern the position
of the subject in the social relations of production. But class is not the "effect" of power; rather it is
the construct of production and, as such, it is a collectivity of practices.
For historical materialist feminists and lesbian/gay critics, however, "outness," and the
possibility of exploring alternative sexualities is not simply a matter of individual "desire" nor is
class a series of individualities. This is not to deny that one -experiences" sexuality on the level of
individual experience, rather it questions whether sexuality can be explained on the level of
experience. Butler's question about the "affordability" of "outing" both hints at and withdraws from
dealing with the historical forces that, in fact, make "individual" experience socially possible. In his
text, "it's Not Natural," Peter Ray demonstrates how the

24

industrial revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries broke down the traditional
bonds and constraints of a society which had been tied to the land by economic necessity. Millions
began to work in the cities for money wages, and for some at least the possibility arose of living
outside the traditional family arrangements. Heterosexuality and homosexuality were concepts
developed by the medical, moral and legal authorities at that time, in order to police the new society
by demarcating acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. Male homosexuality was not specifically
outlawed in Britain until 1885. (32)
Similarly John D'Emilio's work develops a sustained argument for the way alternative
sexualities are tied to the labour relations of capitalism (Making Trouble). In her intimate critique,
"A Question of Class," the contemporary lesbian theorist and writer, Dorothy Allison offers an
explanation of alternative sexualities and class that is an effective intervention in the ludic reading
of queerity. She argues that "Traditional feminist theory has had a limited understanding of class
differences and of how sexuality and self are shaped by both desire and denial" (Skin 15). Focusing
specifically on lesbian sexualities, she writes:
I have known I was a lesbian since I was a teenager, and I have spent a good twenty years
making peace with the effects of incest and physical abuse. But what may be the central fact of my
life is that I was born in 1949 in Greenville, South Carolina, the bastard daughter of a white woman
from a desperately poor family, a girl who had left the seventh grade the year before, worked as a
waitress, and was just a month past fifteen when she had me. That fact, the inescapable impact of
being born in a condition of poverty that this society finds shameful, contemptible, and somehow
deserved, has had dominion over me to such an extent that I have spent my life trying to overcome
or deny it. I have learned with great difficulty that the vast majority of people believe that poverty is
a voluntary condition. (Skin 14-15)
No matter how much ludic theorists try to erase questions of class, poverty and the
economic from their work, their analysis is haunted by the relations of production and divisions of
labour. We find this "return of the repressed" of the relations of production in Butler's ludic analysis
in the opening chapter of Bodies that Matter, in which she attempts to "discern the history of sexual
difference encoded in the history of matter" through a "rude and provocative" re-reading of Plato
(54, 36). She begins by positing matter within the metaphysical binary of matter and form, and
confines her argument to this metaphysical circuit. But at two points in her text, when she attempts
to explain why Plato has constituted the category of the "excluded" in the way he has, she is forced
to move beyond the domain of discourse to the relations of production and the division of labour.
As Butler explains, "This xenophobic exclusion operates through the production of racialised
others, and those whose 'natures' are considered less rational by virtue of their appointed task in the
process of labouring to reproduce the conditions of private life" (48, emphasis added). And again,
she says, "There is no singular outside, for the Forms require a number of exclusions; they are and
replicate themselves through what they exclude, through not being animal, not being the woman,
not being the slave, whose propriety is purchased through property, national and racial boundary,
masculinism, and compulsory heterosexuality" (52). All these exclusions are part of the same
"singular outside": the material relations of production which construct all of the social divisions
and differences around labour and the appropriation of social resources. In other words, for all
Butler's discursive displacements, the concealed, sutured over base of her own theory-as it is of any
theory or knowledge practice-is still the (occluded) economic base.
We can see the consequences of these different theories of materialism by briefly examining
the construction or "materialisation" of female gender-what Butler calls "girling." To describe this
process, Butler adapts Althusser's concept of "interpellation" which means the ideological process
of "calling" a person to take up (identify with) the position "named" (e.g., girl). According to Butler,
medical interpellation ... (the sonogram notwithstanding) ... shifts an infant from an 'it' to a
'she' or a 'he,' and in that naming, the girl is 'girled,' brought into the domain of language and
kinship through the interpellation of gender.... The naming is at once the setting of a boundary, and
also the repeated inculcation of a norm. (7-8)

25

Butler understands this naming ("girling") as placing the infant in a "regulatory regime" of
discourse (language and kinship). But for historical materialists, ideological interpellation does not
simply place the infant in discourse, but more important it also places the child in the relations of
production, in the social division of labour (according to gender, heterosexuality, race, nationality).
Butler's theory of performativity completely eclipses this dialectical relation between ideology and
the economic. Butler is concerned with changing how "bodies matter," how they are valued. But
without relating ideological "interpellation" to the relations of production, no amount of
resignification in the symbolic can change "What counts as a valued body"-for what makes a body
valuable in the world is its economic value.
This truth is painfully clear if we move beyond the privileged boundaries of the uppermiddle class in the industrialised West (for whom basic needs are readily fulfilled) and see what is
happening to "girling" in the international division of labour especially among the impoverished
classes in India. Here the "medical interpellation" (naming) of infants/foetuses, particularly through
the use of the sonogram, immediately places "girled" foetuses not only in discourse but also in the
gender division of labour and unequal access to social resources. About 60 per cent of the "girled"
foetuses are being immediately aborted or murdered upon birth (female infanticide) because the
families cannot afford to keep them. The citational acts, rituals, and "performatives" by which
individuals are repeatedly "girled" such as expensive ear-piercing ceremonies and exorbitant bride
dowries-are not simply acts of discourse, but economic practices. In India, under postcolonial
capitalism, the appropriation of women's surplus labour is increasing to such an extent that these
rituals and "performatives" of "girling" are becoming highly popular and widely exploited sources
of capital and direct extraction of surplus labour. So much so, the unmarried woman's family is itself
being "girled" in order for its combined labour to collectively produce the surplus value taken from
the "girled body" (e.g., bride dowries). Revolutionary praxis and not simply "resignification" is
necessary to end the exploitation and murdering of hundreds of thousands of economically devalued "girled" bodies.

Six
How is making discourse or the matter of the body the ground of politics and social analytic
any less reductive than the economic base? Yet, while economic reductionism is to be avoided at all
costs according to ludic theories, a discursive reductionism or a theological matterism is widely
embraced as a complex, sophisticated, and open multiplicity. The issue here is not whether
"reductionism" is negative: it is not-ask any rigorous scientist (Weinberg, "Two Cheers for
Reductionism"). To articulate the relations connecting seemingly disparate events and phenomena is
in fact a necessary and unavoidable part of effective knowledge of the real. Rather the question is
why are some reductions-particularly those connecting the exploitation and gender division of
labour to the accumulation of capital-suppressed and rendered taboo in ludic (socialist) feminism
while other reductions-such as the discursive construction of sex/gender or a matterist resistance as
performance-are championed and widely circulated? The answer, of course, does not lie in the
"logic" of the argument, although that is the way it is commonly represented. On a purely
epistemological or logical level both moves establish a necessary relation between two phenomena.
Instead, the answer is in the economic, social and political interests these two forms of
"reductionism" support and the power of bourgeois ideology to discredit historical materialist
knowledges.
Thus what is at stake in this displacement of the economic by discourse is the elision of
issues of exploitation and the substitution of a discursive identity politics for the struggle for full
social and economic emancipation. Marx and Engels' critique of the radical "Young Hegelians"
applies equally to ludic cultural materialists:
they are only fighting against 'phrases.' They forget, however, that to these phrases they
themselves are only opposing other phrases, and that they are in no way combating the real existing
world when they are merely combating the phrases of this world. (The German Ideology 41)
This is not to say that the conflicts over ideology, cultural practices and significations are not
an important part of the social struggle for emancipation: the issue is how do we explain the relation

26

of the discursive to the non-discursive, the relation of cultural practices to the "real existing world"whose objectivity is the fact of the "working day"-in order to transform it? Obviously this relation is
a highly mediated one. But for ludic materialists the relation is so radically displaced that it is
entirely suppressed: mediations are taken as autonomous sites of signification and consequently the
actual practice of ludic cultural analysis is confined entirely to institutional and cultural points of
mediation severed from the economic conditions producing them. The analysis of "mediations"
becomes a goal in itself, and the operation of "mediations" is deployed to obscure the "origin"
(surplus labour) and the "end" (class differences) that in fact frame the "mediations." It is only in the
context of historical materialism that one can point up the politics of this erasure of "origin" (arche)
and "end " (telos) in poststructuralist theory. In ludic feminism the arche and telos are erased as if
they were merely metaphysical concepts. My point is that the erasure of arche and telos serves a
more immediate and concrete purpose: it makes it impossible to connect the "mediated" to other
social practices, and consequently the inquiry into and analysis of the "mediations," themselves,
take the place of knowledge of the social totality in which mediations are relays of underlying
connections. For historical materialist feminists, however, cultural and ideological practices are not
autonomous but are instead primary sites for reproducing the meanings and subjectivities
supporting the unequal gender, sexual and race divisions of labour, and thus a main arena for the
struggle against economic exploitation as well as cultural oppression. The untimely time of red
feminism has come.
Further Reading:
Foucault | Drucilla Cornell | Derrida | Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Lenin | Lyotard | Richard
Rorty | Nietzsche | de Saussure
Philosophy Archive @ marxists.org

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http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/fireston.htm. 17.02.2005
Shulamith Firestone (1970)

THE DIALECTIC OF SEX

Source: The Dialectic of Sex, publ. The Women's Press, 1979. Just the first Chapter reproduced
here.
Sex class is so deep as to be invisible. Or it may appear as a superficial inequality, one that
can be solved by merely a few reforms, or perhaps by the full integration of women into the labour
force. But the reaction of the common man, woman, and child - 'That? Why you can't change that!
You must be out of your mind!' - is the closest to the truth. We are talking about something every bit
as deep as that. This gut reaction - the assumption that, even when they don't know it, feminists are
talking about changing a fundamental biological condition - is an honest one. That so profound a
change cannot be easily fitted into traditional categories of thought, e.g., 'political', is not because
these categories do not apply but because they are not big enough: radical feminism bursts through
them. If there were another word more all-embracing than revolution - we would use it.
Until a certain level of evolution had been reached and technology had achieved its present
sophistication, to question fundamental biological conditions was insanity. Why should a woman
give up her precious seat in the cattle car for a bloody struggle she could not hope to win? But, for
the first time in some countries, the preconditions for feminist revolution exist - indeed, the
situation is beginning to demand such a revolution.
The first women are fleeing the massacre, and sharing and tottering, are beginning to find
each other. Their first move is a careful joint observation, to resensitise a fractured consciousness.
This is painful: no matter how many levels of consciousness one reaches, the problem always goes
deeper. It is everywhere. The division yin and yang pervades all culture, history, economics, nature
itself; modern Western versions of sex discrimination are only the most recent layer. To so heighten
one's sensitivity to sexism presents problems far worse than the black militant's new awareness of
racism: feminists have to question, not just all of Western culture, but the organisation of culture
itself, and further, even the very organisation of nature. Many women give up in despair: if that's
how deep it goes they don't want to know. Others continue strengthening and enlarging the
movement, their painful sensitivity to female oppression existing for a purpose: eventually to
eliminate it.
Before we can act to change a situation, however, we must know how it has arisen and
evolved, and through what institutions it now operates. Engels's '[We must] examine the historic
succession of events from which the antagonism has sprung in order to discover in the conditions
thus created the means of ending the conflict.' For feminist revolution we shall need an analysis of
the dynamics of sex war as comprehensive as the Marx-Engels analysis of class antagonism was for
the economic revolution. More comprehensive. For we are dealing with a larger problem, with an
oppression that goes back beyond recorded history to the animal kingdom itself.
In creating such an analysis we can learn a lot from Marx and Engels: not their literal
opinions about women - about the condition of women as an oppressed class they know next to
nothing, recognising it only where it overlaps with economics but rather -their--analytic method.
Marx and Engels outdid their socialist forerunners in that they developed a method of
analysis which was both dialectical and materialist. The first in centuries to view history
dialectically, they saw the world as process, a natural flux of action and reaction, of opposites yet
inseparable and interpenetrating. Because they were able to perceive history as movie rather than as
snapshot, they attempted to avoid falling into the stagnant 'metaphysical' view that had trapped so
many other great minds. (This sort of analysis itself may be a product of the sex division, as
discussed in Chapter 9.) They combined this view of the dynamic interplay of historical forces with
a materialist one, that is, they attempted for the first time to put historical and cultural change on a
real basis, to trace the development of economic classes to organic causes. By understanding
thoroughly the mechanics of history, they hoped to show men how to master it.

28

Socialist thinkers prior to Marx and Engels, such as Fourier, Owen, and Bebel, had been able
to do no more than moralise about existing social inequalities, positing an ideal world where class
privilege and exploitation should not exist - in the same way that early feminist thinkers posited a
world where male privilege and exploitation ought not exist - by mere virtue of good will. In both
cases, because the early thinkers did not really understand how the social injustice had evolved,
maintained itself, or could be eliminated, their ideas existed in a cultural vacuum, utopian. Marx
and Engels, on the other hand, attempted . a scientific approach to history, They traced the class
conflict to its real economic origins, projecting an economic solution based on objective economic
preconditions already present: the seizure by the proletariat of the means of production would lead
to a communism in which government had withered away, no longer needed to repress the lower
class for the sake of the higher. In the classless society the interests of every individual would be
synonymous with those of the larger society.
But the doctrine of historical materialism, much as it was a brilliant advance over previous
historical analysis, was not the complete answer, as later events bore out. For though Marx and
Engels grounded their theory in reality, it was only a partial reality. Here is Engels's strictly
economic definition of historical materialism from Socialism: Utopian or Scientific:
Historical materialism is that view of the course of history which seeks the ultimate cause
and the great moving power of all historical events in the economic development of society, in the
changes of tile modes of production and exchange, in the consequent division of society into
distinct classes, and in the struggles of these classes against one another-. (Italics mine)
Further, he claims:
... that all past history with the exception of the primitive stages was the history of class
struggles; that these warring classes of society are always the products of the modes of production
and exchange - in a word, of the economic conditions of their time; that the economic structure of
society always furnishes the real basis, starting from which we can alone work out the ultimate
explanation of the whole superstructure of juridical and political institutions as well as of' the
religious, philosophical, and other ideas of a given historical period. (Italics mine)
It would be a mistake to attempt to explain the oppression of women according to this
strictly economic interpretation. 'The class analysis is a beautiful piece of work, but limited:
although correct in a linear sense, it does not go deep enough. There is a whole sexual substratum of
the historical dialectic that Engels at times dimly perceives, but because he can see sexuality only
through an economic filter, reducing everything to that, he is unable to evaluate fit its own right.
Engels did observe that the original division of labour was between man and woman for the
purposes of child-breeding; that within the family the husband was the owner, the wife the means of
production, the children the labour; and that reproduction of the human species was an important
economic system distinct from the means of production.
But Engels has been given too much credit for these scattered recognitions of the oppression
of women as a class. In fact he acknowledged the sexual class system only where it overlapped and
illuminated his economic construct. Engels didn't do so well even in this respect. But Marx was
worse: there is a growing recognition of -Marx's bias against women (a cultural bias shared by
Freud as well as all men of culture), dangerous if one attempts to squeeze feminism into an
orthodox Marxist framework - freezing what were only incidental insights of' Marx and Engels
about sex class into dogma. Instead, we must enlarge historical materialism to include the strictly
Marxian, in the same way that the physics of relativity did not invalidate Newtonian physics so
much as it drew a circle around it, limiting its application - but only through comparison - to a
smaller sphere. For an economic diagnosis traced to ownership of the means of production, even of
the means of reproduction, does not explain everything. There is a level of reality that does not stem
directly from economics.
The assumption that, beneath economics, reality is psychosexual is often rejected as
ahistorical by those who accept a dialectical materialist view of history because it seems to land us
back where Marx began: groping through a fog of utopian hypotheses, philosophical systems that
might be right, that might be wrong (there is no way to tell); systems that explain concrete historical

29

developments by a priori categories of thought; historical materialism, however, attempted to

explain 'knowing' by 'being' and not vice versa.
But there is still an untried third alternative: we can attempt to develop a materialist view of
history based on sex itself.
The early feminist theorists were to a materialist view of sex what Fourier, Bebel, and Owen
were to a materialist view of class. By and large, feminist theory has been as inadequate as were the
early feminist attempts to correct sexism. This was to be expected. The problem is so immense that,
at first try, only the surface could be skimmed, the most blatant inequalities described. Simone de
Beauvoir was the only one who came close to - who perhaps has done - the definitive analysis. Her
profound work The Second Sex - which appeared as recently as the early fifties to a world
convinced that feminism was dead - for the first time attempted to ground feminism in its historical
base. Of all feminist theorists De Beauvoir is the most comprehensive and far-reaching, relating
feminism to the best ideas in our culture.
It may be this virtue is also her one failing: she is almost too sophisticated, too
knowledgeable. Where this becomes a weakness - and this is still certainly debatable - is in her
rigidly existentialist interpretation of feminism (one wonders how much Sartre had to do with this).
This, in view of the fact that all cultural systems, including existentialism, are themselves
determined by the sex dualism. She says:
Man never thinks of himself without thinking of the Other; he views the world under the
sign of duality which is not in the first place sexual in character. But being different from man, who
sets himself up as the Same, it is naturally to the category. of the Other that woman is consigned;
the Other includes woman. (Italics mine.)
Perhaps she has overshot her mark: Why postulate a fundamental Hegelian concept of
Otherness as the final explanation and then carefully document the biological and historical
circumstances that have pushed the class 'women' into such a category - when one has never
seriously considered the much simpler and more likely possibility that this fundamental dualism
sprang from the sexual division itself ? To posit a priori categories of thought and existence 'Otherness', 'Transcendence 'Immanence' - into which history then falls may not be necessary. Marx
and Engels had discovered that these philosophical categories themselves grew out of history.
Before assuming such categories, let us first try to develop an analysis in which biology
itself - procreation - is at the origin of the dualism. The immediate assumption of the layman that
the unequal division of the sexes is 'natural' may be well-founded. We need not immediately look
beyond this. Unlike economic class sex class sprang directly from a biological reality: men and
women were created different, and not equal. Although, as De Beauvoir points out, this difference
of itself did not necessitate the development of a class system - the domination of one group by
another - the reproductive functions of these differences did. The biological family is an inherently
unequal power distribution. The need for power leading to the development of classes arises from
the psychosexual formation of each individual according to this basic imbalance, rather than, as
Freud, Norman O. Brown, and others have, once again-over-shooting their mark, postulated, some
irreducible conflict of Life against Death, Eros vs. Thanatos.
The biological family - the basic reproductive unit of male/female/infant, in whatever form
of social organisation - is characterised by these fundamental - if not immutable - facts:
(1) That Women throughout history before the. advent of birth control were at the continual
mercy of their biology - menstruation, menopause, and 'female ills', constant painful childbirth, wetnursing and care of infants, all of which made them dependent on males (whether brother, father,
husband, lover, or clan, government, community-at-large) for physical survival.
(2) That human infants take an even longer time to grow up than animals, and thus are
helpless and, for some short period at least, dependent on adults for physical survival.
(3) That a basic mother/child interdependency has existed in thus has shaped some form in
every society, past or present, and the psychology of every mature female and every infant.

30

(4) That the natural reproductive difference between the sexes led directly to the first
division of labour at the origins of class, as well as furnishing the paradigm of caste (discrimination
based on biological characteristics).
These biological contingencies of the human family cannot be covered over with
anthropological sophistries. one and caring. for their observing animals mating, reproducing young
will have a hard time accepting the 'cultural relativity' line. For no matter how many tribes in
Oceania you can find where the connection of the. father to fertility is not known, no matter . how
many matrilineages, no matter how many cases o sex-role reversal, male housewifery, or even
empathic labour pains, these facts prove only one thing: the amazing flexibility of human nature.
But human nature is adaptable to something, it is, yes, determined by its environmental conditions.
And the biological family that we have described has existed everywhere throughout time. Even in
matriarchies where woman's fertility is worshipped, and the father's role is unknown or
unimportant, if perhaps not on the genetic father, there is still some dependence of the female and
the infant on the male. And though it is true that the nuclear family is only a recent development,
one which, as I shall attempt to show, only intensifies the psychological penalties of the biological
family, though it is true that throughout history there have been many variations on this biological
family, the contingencies I have described existed in dictatorship, their seizure of the means of
production, all of them, causing specific psychosexual distortions in the human personality.
But to grant that the sexual imbalance of power is biologically based is not to lose our case.
We are no longer just animals. And the kingdom of nature does not reign absolute. As Simone de
Beauvoir herself admits:
The theory of historical materialism has brought to light some important truths. Humanity is
not an animal species, it is a historical reality. Human society is an antiphysis - in a sense it is
against nature; it does not passively submit to the presence of nature but rather takes over the
control of nature on its own behalf. This arrogation is not an inward, subjective operation; it is
accomplished objectively in practical action.
Thus the 'natural' is not necessarily a 'human' value. Humanity has begun to transcend
Nature: we can no longer justify the maintenance of a discriminatory sex class system on grounds of
its origins in nature. Indeed, for pragmatic reasons alone it is beginning to look as if we must get rid
of it (see Chapter 10).
The problem becomes political, demanding more than a comprehensive historical analysis,
when one realises that, though man is increasingly capable of freeing himself from the biological
conditions that created his tyranny over women and children, he has little reason to want to give this
tyranny up. As Engels said, in the context of economic revolution:
It is the law of division of labour that lies at the basis of the division into classes. [Note that
this division itself grew out of a fundamental biological division.] But this does not prevent the
ruling class, once having the upper hand, from consolidating its power at the expense of the
working class, from turning its social leadership into an intensified exploitation of the masses.
Though the sex class system may have originated in fundamental biological conditions, this
does not guarantee once the biological basis of their oppression has been swept away that women
and children will be freed. On the contrary, the new technology, especially fertility control, maybe
used against them to reinforce the entrenched system of exploitation.
So that just as. to assure elimination of economic classes requires the revolt of the
underclass (the proletariat) and, in a -temporary dictatorship, their seizure of the means of
production, so to assure the elimination of sexual classes requires the revolt of the underclass
(women) and the seizure of control of reproduction: not only the full restoration to women of
ownership of their own bodies, but also their (temporary) seizure of control of human fertility - the
new population biology as well as all the social institutions of child-bearing and child-rearing. And
just as the end goal of socialist revolution was not only the elimination of the economic class
privilege but of the economic class distinction itself, so the end goal of feminist revolution must be,
unlike that of the first feminist movement, not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex
distinction itself: genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally. (A

31

reversion to an unobstructed pansexuality Freud's 'polymorphous perversity' - would probably

supersede hetero/homo/bi-sexuality.) The reproduction of the species by one sex for the benefit of
both would be replaced by (at least the option of) artificial reproduction: children would born to
both sexes equally, or independently of. either, however one chooses to look at it; the dependence of
the child on the mother (and vice versa) would give way to a greatly shortened dependence on a
small group of others in general, and any remaining inferiority to adults in physical strength would
be compensated for culturally. The division of labour would be ended by the elimination of labour
altogether (through cybernetics). The tyranny of the biological family would be broken.
And with it the psychology of power. As Engels claimed for strictly socialist revolution: 'The
existence of not simply this or that ruling class but of any ruling class at all [will have] become an
obsolete anachronism.' That socialism has never come near achieving this predicated goal is not
only the result of unfulfilled or misfired economic preconditions, but also because the Marxian
analysis itself was insufficient: it did not dig deep enough to the psychosexual roots of class. Marx
was on to something more profound than he knew when he observed that the family contained
within itself in embryo all the antagonisms that later develop on a wide scale within the society and
the state. For unless revolution uproots the basic social organisation, the biological family - the
vinculum through which the psychology of power can always be smuggled - the tapeworm of
exploitation will never be annihilated. We shall need a sexual revolution much larger than inclusive of - a socialist one to truly eradicate all class systems.
I have attempted to take the class analysis one step further to its roots in the biological
division of the sexes. We have not thrown out the insights of the socialists; on the contrary, radical
feminism can enlarge their analysis, granting it an even deeper basis in objective conditions and
thereby explaining many of its insolubles. As a first step in this direction, and as the ground work
for our own analysis we shall expand Engels's definition of historical materialism. Here is the same
definition quoted above now rephrased to include the biological division of the sexes for the
purpose of reproduction, which lies at the origins of class:
Historical materialism, is that view of the course of history which seeks the ultimate cause
and the great moving power of all historic events in the dialectic of sex: the division of society into
two distinct biological classes for procreative reproduction, and the struggles of these classes with
one another; in the changes in t he modes of marriage, reproduction and child care created by these
struggles; in the connected development of other physically-differentiated classes [castes]; and in
the first division of labour based on sex which developed into the [economic-cultural] class system.
And here is the cultural superstructure, as well as the economic one, traced not just back to
economic class, but all the way back to sex:
All past history [note that we can now eliminate 'with the exception of primitive stages'] was
the history of class struggle. These warring classes of society are always the product of the modes
of organisation of the biological family unit for reproduction of the species, as well as of the strictly
economic modes of production and exchange of goods and services. The sexual-reproductive
organisation of society always furnishes the real basis, starting from which we can alone Work out
the ultimate explanation of the whole superstructure of economic, juridical and political institutions
as well as of the religious, philosophical and other ideas of a given historical period.
And now Engels's projection of the results of a materialist approach to history is more
realistic:
The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man and have hitherto ruled him
now comes under the dominion and control of man who for the first time becomes the real
conscious Lord of Nature, master of his own social organisation.
In the following chapters we shall assume this definition of historical materialism,
examining the cultural institutions that maintain and reinforce the biological family (especially its
present manifestation, the nuclear family) and its result, the psychology of power, and aggressive
chauvinism now developed enough to destroy us. We shall integrate this with a feminist analysis of

32

Freudianism: for Freud's cultural bias, like that of Marx and Engels, does not invalidate his
perception entirely. In fact, Freud had insights of even greater value than those of the socialist
theorists for the building of a new dialectical materialism based on sex. We shall attempt, then, to
correlate the best of Engels and Marx (the historical materialist approach) with the best of Freud
(the understanding of inner man and women and what shapes them) to arrive at a solution both
political and personal yet grounded in real conditions. We shall see that Freud observed the
dynamics of psychology correctly in its immediate social context, but because the fundamental
structure of that social context was basic o all humanity - to different degrees - it appeared to be
nothing less than an absolute existential condition which it would be insane to question - forcing
Freud and many of his followers to postulate a priori constructs like the Death Wish to explain the
origins of these universal psychological drives. This in turn made the sicknesses of humanity
irreducible and incurable - which is why his pro posed solution (psychoanalytic therapy), a
contradiction in terms, was so weak compared to the rest of his work, and such a resounding failure
in practice - causing those of social/political sensibility to reject not only his therapeutic solution,
but his most profound discoveries as well.
Further Reading:
Biography | Critique of Political Economy | Utopian & Scientific | Linda Nicholson | Franz Fanon |
Kate Millett | de Beauvoir, The Second Sex
Philosophy Archive @ marxists.org

33

http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/friedan.htm. 17.02.2005
Betty Friedan (1963)

The Feminine Mystique

CHAPTER 5
THE SEXUAL SOLIPSISM OF SIGMUND FREUD
Source: The Feminine Mystique, 1963.
IT would be half-wrong to say it started with Sigmund Freud. It did not really start, in
America, until the 1940s. And then again, it was less a start than the prevention of an end. The old
prejudices - women are animals, less than human, unable to think like men, born merely to breed
and serve men - were not so easily dispelled by the crusading feminists, by science and education,
and by the democratic spirit after all. They merely reappeared in the forties, in Freudian disguise.
The feminine mystique derived its power from Freudian thought; for it was an idea born of Freud,
which led women, and those who studied them, to misinterpret their mothers' frustrations, and their
fathers' and brothers' and husbands' resentments and inadequacies, and their own emotions and
possible choices in life.
The new mystique is much more difficult for the modern woman to question than the old
prejudices, partly because the mystique is broadcast by the very agents of education and social
science that are supposed to be the chief enemies of prejudice, partly because the very nature of
Freudian thought makes it virtually invulnerable to question. How can an educated American
woman, who is not herself an analyst, presume to question a Freudian truth ? She knows that
Freud's discovery of the unconscious workings of the mind was one of the great breakthroughs in
man's pursuit of knowledge. She knows that the science built on that discovery has helped many
suffering men and women. She has been taught that only after years of analytic training is one
capable of understanding the meaning of Freudian truth. She may even know how the human mind
unconsciously resists that truth. How can she presume to tread the sacred ground where only
analysts are allowed?
No one can question the basic genius of Freud's discoveries, not the contribution he has
made to our culture. Nor do I question the effectiveness of psychoanalysis as it is practised today by
Freudian or anti-Freudian. But I do question, from my own experience as a woman, and my
reporter's knowledge of other women, the application of the Freudian theory of femininity to
women today. I question its use, not in therapy, but as it has filtered into the lives of American
women through the popular magazines and the opinions and interpretations of so-called experts. I
think much of the Freudian theory about women is obsolescent, an obstacle to truth for women in
America today, and a major cause of the pervasive problem that has no name.
There are many paradoxes here. Freud's concept of the superego helped to free man of the
tyranny of the 'shoulds', the tyranny of the past, which prevents the child from becoming an adult.
Yet Freudian thought helped create a new super-ego that paralyses educated modern American
women a new tyranny of the 'shoulds', which chains women to an old image, prohibits choice and
growth, and denies them individual identity.
Freudian psychology, with its emphasis on freedom from a repressive morality to achieve
sexual fulfilment, was part of the ideology of women's emancipation. The lasting American image
of the 'emancipated woman' is the flapper of the twenties: burdensome hair shingled off, knees
bared, flaunting her new freedom to live in a studio in Greenwich Village or Chicago's near North
Side, and drive a car, and drink, and smoke, and enjoy sexual adventures - or-talk about them. And
yet today, for reasons far removed from the life of Freud himself, Freudian thought has become the
ideological bulwark of the sexual counter-revolution in America. Without Freud's definition of the
sexual nature of woman to give the conventional image of femininity new authority, I do not think
several generations of educated, spirited American women would have been so easily diverted from
the dawning realisation of who they were and what they could be.

34

The concept 'penis envy', which Freud coined to describe a phenomenon he observed in
women - that is, in the middle-class women who were his patients in Vienna in the Victorian erawas seized in this country in the 1940s as the literal explanation of all that was wrong with
American women. Many who preached the doctrine of endangered femininity reversing the
movement of American women towards independence and identity, never knew its Freudian origin.
Many who seized on it - not the few psychoanalysts, but the many popularisers, sociologists,
educators, ad-agency manipulators, magazine writers, child experts, marriage counsellors,
ministers, cocktail-party authorities - could not have known what Freud himself mean by penis
envy. One needs only to know what Freud was describing, in those Victorian women, to see the
fallacy in literally applying his theory of femininity to women today. And one needs only to know
why he described it in that way to understand that much of it is obsolescent contradicted by
knowledge that is part of every social scientist's thinking today, but was not yet known in Freud's
time.
Freud, it is generally agreed, was a most perceptive and accurate observer of important
problems of the human personality. But in describing and interpreting those problems, he was a
prisoner of his own culture. As he was creating a new framework for our culture, he could not
escape the framework of his own. Even his genius could not give him, then, the knowledge of
cultural processes which men who are not geniuses grow up with today.
The physicist's relativity, which in recent years has changed our whole approach to scientific
knowledge, is harder, and therefore easier to understand, than the social scientist's relativity. It is not
a slogan; but a fundamental statement about truth to say that no social scientist can completely free
himself from the prison of his own culture; he can only interpret what he observes in the scientific
framework of his own time. This is true even of the great innovators. They cannot help but translate
their revolutionary observations into language and rubrics that have been determined by the
progress of science up until their time. Even those discoveries that create new rubrics are relative to
the vantage point of their creator.
Much of what Freud believed to be biological, instinctual, and changeless has been shown
by modern research to be a result of specific cultural causes. Much of what Freud described as
characteristic of universal human nature was merely characteristic of certain middle-class European
men and women at the end of the nineteenth century.
For instance, Freud's theory of the sexual origin of neurosis stems from the fact that many of
the patients he first observed suffered from hysteria - and in those cases, he found sexual repression
to be the cause. Orthodox Freudians still profess to believe in the sexual origin of all neurosis, and
since they look for unconscious sexual memories in their patients, and translate what they hear into
sexual symbols, they still manage to find what they are looking for.
But the fact is, cases of hysteria as observed by Freud are much more rare today. In Freud's
time, evidently, cultural hypocrisy forced the repression of sex. (Some social theorists even suspect
that the very absence of other concerns, in that dying Austrian empire, caused the sexual
preoccupation of Freud's patients.) Certainly the fact that his culture denied sex focused Freud's
interest on it. He then developed his theory by describing all the stages of growth as sexual, fitting
all the phenomena he observed into sexual rubrics.
His attempt to translate all psychological phenomena into sexual terms, and to see all
problems of adult personality as the effect of childhood sexual fixations also stemmed, in part, from
his own background in medicine, and from the approach to causation implicit in the scientific
thought of his time. He had the same diffidence about dealing with psychological phenomena in
their own terms which often plagues scientists of human behaviour. Something that could be
described in physiological terms, linked to an organ of anatomy, seemed more comfortable, solid,
real, scientific, as he moved into the unexplored country of the unconscious mind. As his
biographer, Ernest Jones, put it, he made a 'desperate effort to cling to the safety of cerebral
anatomy'. Actually, he had the ability to see and describe psychological phenomena so vividly that
whether his concepts were given names borrowed from physiology, philosophy, or literature - penis
envy, ego, Oedipus complex - they seemed to have a concrete physical reality. Psychological facts,

35

as Jones said, were 'as real and concrete to him as metals are to a metallurgist'. This ability became
a source of great confusion as his concepts were passed down by lesser thinkers.
The whole superstructure of Freudian theory rests on the strict determinism that
characterised the scientific thinking of the Victorian era. Determinism has been replaced today by a
more complex view of cause and effect, in terms of physical processes and phenomena as well as
psychological. In the new view, behavioural scientists do not need to borrow language from
physiology to explain psychological events, or give them pseudo-reality. Sexual phenomena are no
more nor less real than, for instance, the phenomenon of Shakespeare's writing Hamlet, which
cannot exactly be 'explained' by reducing it to sexual terms. Even Freud himself cannot be
explained by his own deterministic, physiological blueprint though his biographer traces his genius,
his 'divine passion for knowledge', to an insatiable sexual curiosity, before the age of three, as to
what went on between his mother and father in the bedroom.
Today biologists, social scientists, and increasing numbers of psychoanalysts see the need or
impulse to human growth as a primary human need, as basic as sex. The 'oral' and 'anal' stages
which Freud described in terms of sexual development the child gets his sexual pleasure first by
mouth, from mother's breast, then from his bowel movements - are now seen as stages of human
growth, influenced by cultural circumstances and parental attitudes as well as by sex. When the
teeth grow, the mouth can bite as well as suck. Muscle and brain also grow; the child becomes
capable of control, mastery, understanding; and his need to grow and learn, at five, twenty-five, or
fifty, can be satisfied, denied, repressed, atrophied, evoked, or discouraged by his culture as can his
sexual needs. Child specialists today confirm Freud's observation that problems between mother
and child in the earliest stages are often played out in terms of eating; later in toilet training. And yet
in America in recent years there has been a noticeable decline in children's ' eating problems '. Has
the child's instinctual development changed ? Impossible if, by definition, the oral stage is
instinctual. Or has the culture removed eating as a focus for early childhood problems - by the
American emphasis on permissiveness in child care, or simply by the fact that in our affluent
society food has become less a cause for anxiety in mothers ? Because of Freud's own influence on
our culture, educated parents are usually careful not to put conflict-producing pressures on toilet
training. Such conflicts are more likely to occur today as the child learns to talk or read.
In the 1940s, American social scientists and psychoanalysts had already begun to reinterpret
Freudian concepts in the light of their growing cultural awareness. But, curiously, this did not
prevent their literal application of Freud's theory of femininity to American women.
The fact is that to Freud, even more than to the magazine editor on Madison Avenue today,
women were a strange, inferior, less-than-human species. He saw them as childlike dolls, who
existed in terms only of man's love, to love man and serve his needs. It was the same kind of
unconscious solipsism that made man for many centuries see the sun only as a bright object that
revolved around the earth. Freud grew up with this attitude built in by his culture - not only the
culture of Victorian Europe, but that Jewish culture in which men said the daily prayer: 'I thank
Thee, Lord, that Thou hast not created me a woman,' and women prayed in submission: 'I thank
Thee, Lord, that Thou has created me according to Thy will.'
Freud's mother was the pretty, docile bride of a man twice her age; his father ruled the
family with an autocratic authority traditional in Jewish families during those centuries of
persecution when the fathers were seldom able to establish authority in the outside world. His
mother adored the young Sigmund, her first son, and thought him mystically destined for greatness;
she seemed to exist only to gratify his every wish. His own memories of the sexual jealousy he felt
for his father, whose wishes she also gratified, were the basis of his theory of the Oedipus complex.
With his wife, as with his mother and sisters, his needs, his desires, his wishes, were the sun around
which the household revolved. When the noise of his sisters' practising the piano interrupted his
studies, 'the piano disappeared,' Anna Freud recalled years later, 'and with it all opportunities for his
sisters to become musicians.'
Freud did not see this attitude as a problem, or cause for any problem, in women. It was
woman's nature to be ruled by man and her sickness to envy him. Freud's letters to Martha, his

36

future wife, written during the four years of their engagement (1882-6) have the fond, patronising
sound of Torvald in A Doll's House, scolding Nora for her pretences at being human. Freud was
beginning to probe the secrets of the human brain in the laboratory at Vienna; Martha was to wait,
his 'sweet child', in her mother's custody for four years, until he could come and fetch her. From
these letters one can see that to him her identity was defined as child-housewife, even when she was
no longer a child and not yet a housewife.
Tables and chairs, beds, mirrors, a clock to remind the happy couple. of the passage of time,
an armchair for an hour's pleasant daydreaming, carpets to help the housewife keep the floors clean,
linen tied with pretty ribbons in the cupboard and dresses of the latest fashion and hats with
artificial flowers, pictures on the wall, glasses for everyday and others for wine and festive
occasions plates and dishes . . . and the sewing table and the cosy lamp, and everything must be
kept in good order or else the housewife who has divided her heart into little bits, orle for each piece
of furniture, will begin to fret. And this object must bear witness to the serious work that holds the
household together, and that object, to a feeling for beauty, to dear friends one likes to remember, to
cities one has visited, to hours one wants to recall.... Are we to hang our hearts on such little
things ? Yes, and without hesitation....
I know, after all, how sweet you are, how you can turn a house into a paradise, how you will
share in my interests, how gay yet painstaking you will be. T will let you rule the house as much as
you wish, and you will reward me with your sweet love and by rising above all those weaknesses
for which women are so often despised. As far as my activities a]low, we shall read together what
we want to learn, and I will initiate you into things which could not interest a girl as long as she is
unfamiliar with her future companion and his occupation . . .
On 5 July 1885, he scolds her for continuing to visit Elise, a friend who evidently is less
than demure in her regard for men:
What is the good of your feeling that you are now so mature that this relationship can't do
you any harm ? . . . You are far too soft, and this is something I have got to correct, for what one of
us does will also be charged to the other's account. You are my precious little woman and even if
you make a mistake, you are none the less so.... But you know all this, my sweet child ...
The Victorian mixture of chivalry and condescension which is found in Freud's scientific
theories about women is explicit in a letter he wrote on 5 November 1883 deriding John Stuart
Mill's views on ' female emancipation and the woman's question altogether'.
In his whole presentation, it never emerges that women are different beings - we will not say
lesser, rather the opposite from men. He finds the suppression of women an analogy to that of
Negroes Any girl, even without a suffrage or legal competence, whose hand a man kisses and for
whose love he is prepared to dare all, could have set him right. It is really a stillborn thought to send
women into the struggle for existence exactly as man. If, for instance, I imagined my gentle sweet
girl as a competitor, it would only end in my telling her, as I did seventeen months ago, that I am
fond of her and that I implore her to withdraw from the strife into the calm, uncompetitive activity
of my home. It is possible that changes in upbringing may suppress all a woman's tender attributes,
needful of protection and yet so victorious, and that she can then earn a livelihood like men. It is
also possible that in such an event one would not be justified in mourning the passing away of the
most delightful thing the world can offer us - our ideal of womanhood. I believe that all reforming
action in law and education would break down in front of the fact that, long before the age at which
a man can earn a position in society, Nature has determined woman's destiny through beauty, charm,
and sweetness. Law and custom have much to give women that has been withheld from them. but
the position of women will surely be what it is: in youth an adored darling and in mature years a
loved wife.
Since all of Freud's theories rested, admittedly, on his own penetrating, unending
psychoanalysis of himself, and since sexuality was the focus of all his theories, certain paradoxes
about his own sexuality seem pertinent. His writings, as many scholars have noted, give much more
attention to infantile sexuality than to its mature expression. His chief biographer, Jones, pointed out
that he was, even for those times, exceptionally chaste, puritanical, and moralistic. In his own life

37

he was relatively uninterested in sex. There were only the adoring mother of his youth, at sixteen a
romance that existed purely in fantasy with a girl named Gisele, and his engagement to Martha at
twenty-six. The nine months when they both lived in Vienna were not too happy because she was,
evidently, uneasy and afraid of him, but separated by a comfortable distance for four years, there
was a grande passion of 900 love letters. After their marriage, the passion seems to have quickly
disappeared, though his biographers note that he was too rigid a moralist to seek sexual satisfaction
outside of marriage. The only woman on whom, as an adult, he ever focused the violent passions of
love and hate of which he was capable w as Martha, during the early years of their engagement.
After that, such emotions were focused on men. As Jones, his respectful biographer, said: 'Freud's
deviation from the average in this respect, as well as his pronounced mental bisexuality, may well
have influenced his theoretical views to some extent."
Less reverent biographers, and even Jones himself, point out that when one considers
Freud's theories in terms of his own life, one is reminded of the puritanical old maid who sees sex
everywhere. It is interesting to note that his main complaint about his docile Hausfrau was that she
was not 'docile' enough - and yet, in interesting ambivalence, that she was not at her ease ' with him,
that she was not able to be a ' comrade-in-arms'.
But, as Freud was painfully to discover, she was not at heart docile and she had a firmness of
character that did not readily lend itself to being moulded. Her personality was fully developed and
well integrated: it would well deserve the psychoanalyst's highest compliment of being 'normal'.
One gets a glimpse of Freud's 'intention, never to be fulfilled, to mould her to his perfect
image', when he wrote her that she must 'become quite young, a sweetheart, only a week old, who
will quickly lose every trace of tartness '. But he then reproaches himself:
The loved one is not to become a toy doll, but a good comrade who still has a sensible word
left when the strict master has come to the end of his wisdom. And I have been trying to smash her
frankness so that she should reserve opinion until she is sure of mine.
As Jones pointed out, Freud was pained when she did not meet his chief test - ' complete
identification with himself, his opinions, his feelings, and his intentions. She was not really his
unless he could perceive his " stamp " on her. ' Freud ' even admitted that it was boring if one could
find nothing in the other person to put right'. And he stresses again that Freud's love ' could be set
free and displayed only under very favourable conditions.... Martha was probably afraid of her
masterful lover and she would commonly take refuge in silence.
So, he eventually wrote her, 'I renounce what I demanded. I do not need a comrade-in-arms,
such as I hoped to make you into. I am strong enough to fight alone.... You remain for me a precious
sweet, loved one.' Thus evidently ended 'the only time in his life when such emotions [love and
hate] centred on a woman'.
The marriage was conventional, but without that passion. As Jones described it:
There can have been few more successful marriages. Martha certainly made an excellent
wife and mother. She was an admirable manager - the rare kind of woman who could keep servants
indefinitely - but she was never the kind of Hausfrau who put things before people. Her husband's
comfort and convenience always ranked first.... It was not to be expected that she should follow the
roaming flights of his imagination any more than most of the world could.
She was as devoted to his physical needs as the most doting Jewish mother, organising each
meal on a rigid schedule to et the convenience of der Papa. But she never dreamed of sharing his
life as an equal. Nor did Freud consider her a fit guardian for their children, especially of their
education, in case of his death. He himself recalls a dream in which he forgets to call for her at the
theatre. His associations 'imply that forgetting may be permissible in unimportant matters'.
That limitless subservience of woman taken for granted by Freud's culture, the very lack of
opportunity for independent action or personal identity, seems often to have generated that
uneasiness and inhibition in the wife, and that irritation in the husband, which characterised Freud's
marriage. As Jones summed it up, Freud's attitude towards women ' could probably be called rather
old-fashioned, and it would be easy to ascribe this to his social environment and the period in which
he grew up rather than to any personal factors'.

38

Whatever his intellectual opinions may have been in the matter, there are many indications
in his writing and correspondence of his emotional attitude. It would certainly be going too far to
say that he regarded the male sex as the lords of creation, for there was no tinge of arrogance or
superiority in his nature, but it might perhaps be fair to describe his view of the female sex as
having as their main function to be ministering angels to the needs and comforts of men. His letters
and his love choice make it plain that he had only one type of sexual object in his mind, a gentle
feminine one....
There is little doubt that Freud found the psychology of women more enigmatic than that of
men. He said once to Marie Bonaparte: 'The great question that has never been answered and which
I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is,
what does a woman want?'
Jones also remarked:
Freud was also interested in another type of woman, of a more intellectual and perhaps
masculine cast. Such women several times played a part in his life, accessory to his men friends
though of a finer calibre, but they had no erotic attraction for him.
These women included his sister-in-law, Minna Bernays, much more intelligent and
independent than Martha, and later women analysts or adherents of the psychoanalytic movement:
Marie Bonaparte, Joan Riviere, Lou Andreas-Salome. There is no suspicion, however, from either
idolators or hostile biographers that he ever sought sexual satisfaction outside his marriage. Thus it
would seem that sex was completely divorced from his human passions, which he expressed
throughout the productive later years of his long life in his thought and, to a lesser extent, in
friendships with men and those women he considered his equals, and thus 'masculine'. He once said:
'I always find it uncanny when I can't understand someone in terms of myself.'
The motive force of woman's personality, in Freud's theory, was her envy of the penis, which
causes her to feel as much depreciated in her own eyes 'as in the eyes of the boy, and later perhaps
of the man', and leads in normal femininity, to the wish for the penis of her husband, a wish that is
never really fulfilled until she possesses a penis through giving birth to a son. In short, she is merely
an homme manque, a man with something missing. As the eminent psychoanalyst Clara Thompson
put it: 'Freud never became free from the Victorian attitude towards women. He accepted as an
inevitable part of the fate of being a woman the limitation of outlook and life of the Victorian era....
The castration complex and penis envy concepts, two of the most basic ideas in his whole thinking,
are postulated on the assumption that women are biologically inferior to men.'
What did Freud mean by the concept of penis envy? For even those who realize that Freud
could not escape his culture do not question that he reported truly what he observed within it.
In the boy the castration-complex is formed after he has learned from the sight of the female
genitals that the sexual organ which he prizes so highly is not a necessary part of every woman's
body . . . and thenceforward he comes under the influence of castration-anxiety, which supplies the
strongest motive force for his further development. The castration-complex in the girl, as well, is
started by the sight of the genital organs of the other sex. She immediately notices the difference
and, it must be admitted, its significance. She feels herself at a great disadvantage, and often
declares that she would like to have something like that too and falls a victim to penis envy, which
leaves ineradicable traces on her development and character-formation, and even in the most
favourable instances, is not overcome without a great expenditure of mental energy That the girl
recognises the fact that she lacks a penis does not mean that she accepts its absence lightly. On the
contrary, she clings for a long rime to the desire to get something like it, and believes in that
possibility for an extraordinary number of years and even at a time when her knowledge of reality
has long since led her to abandon the fulfilment of this desire as being quite unattainable, analysis
proves that it still persists in the unconscious, and retains a considerable charge of energy. The
desire after all to obtain the penis for which she so much longs may even contribute to the motives
that impel a grown-up woman t3 come to analysis, and what she quite reasonably expects to get
from analysis, such as the capacity to pursue an intellectual career, can often be recognised as a
sublimated modification of this repressed wish.

39

'The discovery of her castration is a turning-point in the life of the girl,' Freud went on to
say. 'She is wounded in her self-love by the unfavourable comparison with the boy, who is so much
better equipped.' Her mother, and all women, are depreciated in her own eyes, as they are
depreciated for the same reason in the eyes of man. This either leads to complete sexual inhibition
and neurosis, or to a 'masculinity complex' in which she refuses to give up 'phallic' activity (that is,
'activity such as is usually characteristic of the male') or to 'normal femininity', in which the girl's
own impulses to activity are repressed, and she turns to her father in her wish for the penis. ' The
feminine situation is, however, only established when the wish for the penis is replaced by the wish
for a child - the child taking the place of the penis.' When she played with dolls, this 'was not really
an expression of her femininity ', since this w as activity, not passivity. The ' strongest feminine
wish', the desire for a penis, finds real fulfilment only ' if the child is a little boy, who brings the
longed-for penis with him.... The mother can transfer to her son all the ambition she has had to
suppress in herself, and she can hope to get from him the satisfaction of all that has remained to her
of her masculinity complex.'
But her inherent deficiency, and the resultant penis envy, is so hard to overcome that the
woman's super-ego - her conscience, ideals - are never as completely formed as a man's: 'Women
have but little sense of justice, and this is no doubt connected with the preponderance of envy in
their mental life. ' For the same reason> women's interests in society are weaker than those of men,
and 'their capacity for the sublimation of their instincts is less'. Finally, Freud cannot refrain from
mentioning ' an impression which one receives over and over again in analytical work ' - that not
even psychoanalysis can do much for women, because of the inherent deficiency of femininity.
A man of about thirty seems a youthful, and, in a sense, an incompletely developed
individual, of whom we expect that he will be able to make good use of the possibilities of
development, which analysis lays open to him. B. t a woman of about the same age, frequently
staggers us by her psychological rigidity and unchangeability.... There are no paths open to her for
further development; it is as though the whole process had been gone through and remained
unaccessible to influence for the future; as though, in fact, the difficult development which leads to
femininity had exhausted all the possibilities of the individual . . . even when we are successful in
removing the sufferings by solving her neurotic conflict.
What was he really reporting ? If one interprets ' penis envy ' as other Freudian concepts
have been reinterpreted, in the light of our new knowledge that what Freud believed to be biological
was often a cultural reaction, one sees simply that Victorian culture gave women many reasons to
envy men: the same conditions, in fact, that the feminists fought against. If a woman who was
denied the freedom, the status, and the pleasures that men enjoyed wished secretly that she could
have these things, in the shorthand of the dream, she might wish herself a man and see herself with
that one thing which made men unequivocally different - the penis. She would, of course, have to
learn to keep her envy, her anger, hidden: to play the child, the doll, the toy, for her destiny
depended on charming man. But underneath, it might still fester, sickening her for love. If she
secretly despised herself, and envied man for all she was not, she might go through the motions of
love, or even feel a slavish adoration, but would she be capable of free and joyous love? You cannot
explain away woman's envy of man, or her contempt for herself, as mere refusal to accept her
sexual deformity, unless you think that a woman, by nature, is a being inferior to man. Then, of
course, her wish to be equal is neurotic.
It is recognised now that Freud never gave proper attention, even in man, to growth of the
ego or self: ' the impulse to master, control or come to self-fulfilling terms with the environment'.
Analysts who have freed themselves from Freud's bias and joined other behavioural scientists in
studying the human need to grow, are beginning to believe that this is the basic human need, and
that interference with it, in any dimension, is the source of psychic trouble. The sexual is only one
dimension of the human potential. Freud saw women only in terms of their sexual relationship with
men. But in all those women in whom he saw sexual problems there must have been very severe
problems of blocked growth, growth short of full human identity - an immature, incomplete self.
Society as it was then, by explicit denial of education and independence, prevented women from

40

realising their full potential, or from attaining those interests and ideals that might have stimulated
their growth. Freud reported these deficiencies, but could only explain them as the toll of 'penis
envy '. He saw that women who secretly hungered to be man's equal would not enjoy being his
object; and in this, he seemed to be describing a fact. But when he dismissed woman's yearning for
equality as 'penis envy', was he not merely stating his own view that women could never really be
man's equal, any more than she could wear his penis?
Freud was not concerned with changing society, but in helping man, and woman, adjust to it.
Thus he tells of a case of a middle-aged spinster whom he succeeded in freeing from a symptomcomplex that prevented her from taking any part in life for fifteen years. Freed of these symptoms
she 'plunged into a whirl of activity in order to develop her talents, which were by no means small,
and derive a little appreciation, enjoyment, and success from life before it was too late'. But all her
attempts ended when she saw that there was no place for her. Since she could no longer relapse into
her neurotic symptoms, she began to have accidents; she sprained her ankle, her foot, her hand.
When this also was analysed, 'instead of accidents, she contracted on the same occasions slight
illnesses, such as catarrh, sore throat, influenzal conditions or rheumatic swellings, until at last,
when she made up her mind to resign herself to inactivity, the whole business came to an end).
Today, when women's equal intelligence has been proved by science, when their equal
capacity in every sphere except sheer muscular strength has been demonstrated, a theory explicitly
based on woman's natural inferiority would seem as ridiculous as it is hypocritical. But that remains
the basis of Freud's theory of women, despite the mask of timeless sexual truth which disguises its
elaborations today.
Because Freud's followers could only see woman in the image denied by Freud - inferior,
childish, helpless, with no possibility of happiness unless she adjusted to being man's passive object
- they wanted to help women get rid of their suppressed envy, their neurotic desire to be equal. They
wanted to help women find sexual fulfilment as women, by affirming their natural inferiority.
But society, which defined that inferiority, had changed drastically by the time Freud's
followers transposed bodily to twentieth century America the causes as well as the cures of the
condition Freud called penis envy. In the light of our new knowledge of cultural processes and of
human growth, one would assume that women who grew up with the rights and freedom and
education that Victorian women were denied would be different from the women Freud tried to
cure. One would assume that they would have much less reason to envy man. But Freud was
interpreted to American woman in such curiously literal terms that the concept of penis envy
acquired a mystical life of its own, as if it existed quite independent of the women in whom it had
been observed. The real injustices life held for women a century ago, compared to men, were
dismissed as mere rationalisations of penis envy. And the real opportunities life offered to women
now, compared to women then, were forbidden in the name of penis envy.
The literal application of Freudian theory can be seen in these passages from Modern
Woman: The Lost Sex, by the psychoanalyst Marynia Farnham and the sociologist Ferdinand
Lundberg, which was paraphrased ad nauseam in the magazines and in marriage courses, until most
of its statements became a part of the conventional, accepted truth of our time. Equating feminism
with penis envy, they stated categorically:
Feminism, despite the external validity of its political programme and most (not all) of its
social programme, was at its core a deep illness.... The dominant direction of feminine training and
development today . . . discourages just those traits necessary to the attainment of sexual pleasure:
receptivity and passiveness, a willingness to accept dependence without fear or resentment, with a
deep inwardness and readiness for the final goal of sexual life impregnation.
It is not in the capacity of the female organism to attain feelings of well-being by the route
of male achievement.... It was the error of the feminists that they attempted to put women on the
essentially male road of exploit, off the female road of nurture....
The psychosocial rule that begins to take form, then, is this: the more educated the woman
is, the greater chance there is of sexual disorder, more or less severe. The greater the disordered
sexuality in a given group of women, the fewer children do they have.... Fate has granted them the

41

boon importuned by Lady Macbeth; they have been unsexed, not only in the matter of giving birth,
but in their feelings of pleasure.
Thus Freud's popularisers embedded his core of unrecognised traditional prejudice against
women ever deeper in pseudo-scientific cement. Freud was well aware of his own tendency to build
an enormous body of deductions from a single fact - a fertile and creative method, but a two-edged
sword, if the significance of that single fact was misinterpreted. Freud wrote Jung in 1909:
Your surmise that after my departure my errors might be adored as holy relics amused me
enormously, but I don't believe it. On the contrary, I think that my followers will hasten to demolish
as swiftly as possible everything that is not safe and sound in what I leave behind.
But on the subject of women, Freud's followers not only compounded his errors, but, in their
tortuous attempt to fit their observations of real women into his theoretical framework, closed
questions that he himself had left open. Thus, for instance, Helene Deutsch, whose definitive twovolume The Psychology of Woman - A Psychoanalytical Interpretation appeared in 1944, is not able
to trace all women's troubles to penis envy as such. So she does what even Freud found unwise, and
equates 'femininity' with 'passivity', and 'masculinity' with 'activity', not only in the sexual sphere,
but in all spheres of life.
While fully recognising that woman's position is subjected to external influence, I venture to
say that the fundamental identities 'feminine-passive' and 'masculine-active' assert themselves in all
known cultures and races, in various forms and various quantitative proportions.
Very often a woman resists this characteristic given her by nature and in spite of certain
advantages she derives from it, displays many modes of behaviour that suggest that she is not
entirely content with her own constitution . . . the expression of this dissatisfaction, combined with
attempts to remedy it, result in woman's 'masculinity complex.
The 'masculinity complex', as Dr Deutsch refines it, stems directly from the 'female
castration complex'. Thus, anatomy is still destiny, woman is still an homme manque. Of course, Dr
Deutsch mentions in passing that 'With regard to the girl, however, the environment exerts an
inhibiting influence as regards both her aggressions and her activity.' So, penis envy, deficient
female anatomy, and society 'all seem to work together to produce femininity'.
'Normal' femininity is achieved, however, only in so far as the woman finally renounces all
active goals of her own, all her own 'originality', to identify and fulfil herself through the activities
and goals of husband, or son. This process can be sublimated in non-sexual ways - as, for instance,
the woman who does the basic research for her male superior's discoveries. The daughter who
devotes her life to her father is also making a satisfactory feminine ' sublimation '. Only activity of
her own or originality, on a basis of equality, deserves the opprobrium of 'masculinity complex'.
This brilliant feminine follower of Freud states categorically that the women who by 1944 in
America had achieved eminence by activity of their own in various fields had done so at the
expense of their feminine fulfilment. She will mention no names, but they all suffer from the
'masculinity complex'.
How could a girl or woman who was not a psychoanalyst discount such ominous
pronouncements, which, in the forties, suddenly began to pour out from all the oracles of
sophisticated thought?
It would be ridiculous to suggest that the way Freudian theories were used to brainwash two
generations of educated American women was part of a psychoanalytic conspiracy. It was done by
well-meaning popularisers and inadvertent distorters; by orthodox converts and bandwagon
faddists; by those who suffered and those who cured and those who turned suffering to profit; and,
above all, by a congruence of forces and needs peculiar to the American people at that particular
time. In fact, the literal acceptance in the American culture of Freud's theory of feminine fulfilment
was in tragi-comic contrast to the personal struggle of many American psychoanalysts to reconcile
what they saw in their women patients with Freudian theory.
A New York analyst, one of the last trained at Freud's own Psychoanalytic Institute in
Vienna, told me:

42

For twenty years now in analysing American women, I have found myself again and again
in the position of having to superimpose Freud's theory of femininity on the psychic life of my
patients in a way that I was not willing to do. I have come to the conclusion that penis envy simply
does not exist. I have seen women who are completely expressive, sexually, vaginally, and vet who
are not mature, integrated, fulfilled. I had a woman patient on the couch for nearly two years before
I could face her real problem - that it was not enough for her to be just a housewife and mother. One
day she had a dream that she was teaching a class. I could not dismiss the powerful yearning of this
housewife's dream, as penis envy. It was the expression of her own need for mature self-fulfilment.
I told her: ' I can't analyse this dream away. You must do something about it.'
This same man teaches the young analysts in his postgraduate clinic at a leading Eastern
university: 'If the patient doesn't ht the book, throw away the book, and listen to the patient.'
But many analysts threw the book at their patients and Freudian theories became accepted
fact even among women who never lay down on an analyst's couch, hut only knew what they read
or heard. To this day, it has not penetrated to the popular culture that the pervasive growing
frustration of American women may not be a matter of feminine sexuality. Freud was accepted so
quickly and completely at the end of the forties that for over a decade no one even questioned the
race of the educated American woman back to the home. When questions finally had to be asked
because something was obviously going wrong, they were asked so completely within the Freudian
framework that only one answer was possible: education, freedom, rights are wrong for women.
The uncritical acceptance of Freudian doctrine in America was caused, at least in part, by the
very relief it provided from uncomfortable questions about objective realities. After the depression,
after the war, Freudian psychology became much more than a science of human behaviour, a
therapy for the suffering. It became an all-embracing American ideology, a new religion. It provided
a convenient escape from the atom bomb, McCarthy, all the disconcerting problems that might spoil
the taste of steaks, and cars and colour television and backyard swimming pools. And if the new
psychological religion - which made a virtue of sex, removed all sin from private vice, and cast
suspicion on high aspirations of the mind and spirit - had a more devastating personal effect on
women than men, nobody planned it that way.
But the practice of psychoanalysis as a therapy was not primarily responsible for the
feminine mystique. It was the creation of writers and editors in the mass media, ad-agency
motivation researchers, and behind them the popularisers and translators of Freudian thought in the
colleges and universities. Freudian and pseudo-Freudian theories settled everywhere, like fine
volcanic ash. Sociology, anthropology, education, even the study of history and literature became
permeated and transfigured by Freudian thought. The most zealous missionaries of the feminine
mystique were the functionalists, who seized hasty gulps of pre-digested Freud to start their new
departments of 'Marriage and Family-Life Education '. The functional courses in marriage taught
American college girls how to ' play the role ' of woman - the old role became a new science.
Related movements outside the colleges - parent education, child-study groups, prenatal maternity
study groups and mental-health education- spread the new psychological super-ego throughout the
land, replacing bridge and canasta as an entertainment for educated young wives. And this Freudian
super-ego worked for growing numbers of young and impressionable American women as Freud
said the super-ego works - to perpetuate the past.
Mankind never lives completely in the present; the ideologies of the super-ego perpetuate
the past, the traditions of the race and the people, which yield but slowly to the influence of the
present and to new developments, and, so long as they work through the super-ego, play an
important part in man's life, quite independently of economic conditions.
The feminine mystique, elevated by Freudian theory into a scientific religion, sounded a
single, over-protective, life-restricting, future-deriving note for women. Girls who grew up playing
baseball, baby-sitting, mastering geometry almost independent enough, almost resourceful enough,
to meet the problems of the fission-fusion era - were told by the most advanced thinkers of our time
to go back and live their lives as if they were Noras, restricted to the doll's house by Victorian

43

prejudice. And their own respect and awe for the authority of science - anthropology, sociology,
psychology share that authority now - kept them from questioning the feminine mystique.
Further Reading:
Biography | The Second Sex | Kate Millett | Firestone | Franz Fanon | Freud
Philosophy Archive @ marxists.org

44

Biographical Information
"Luce Irigaray: A Biography," by Bridget Holland
[Copyright 1998 Bridget Holland.]
Luce Irigaray was born in Belguim in the 1930s. She received a Master's Degree from the
University of Louvain in 1955. She taught high school in Brussells from 1956-1959. Irigaray
moved to France in the early 1960s. In 1961 she received a Master's Degree in psychology from the
University of Paris. In 1962 she received a Diploma in Psychopathology. From 1962-1964 she
worked for the Fondation Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique in Belgium. After this she began
work as a research assistant at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris where she
is currently Director of Research.
In the 1960s Irigaray participated in Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic seminars. She trained as
and became an analyst. In 1968 she received a Doctorate in Linguistics. From 1970-1974 she taught
at the University of Vincennes. At this time Irigaray was a member of the EFP (Ecole Freudienne de
Paris), a school directed by Lacan. In 1969 she analysed Antionette Fouque, a feminist leader of the
time (MLF).
Irigaray's second Doctorate thesis, "Speculum of the Other Woman," was closely followed
by the cessation of her employment at the University of Vincennes. This damage to her career was
cruelly ironic -- the phallocentric economy she condemned for excluding women swiftly silenced
her. This illustrated her main point -- the machinery of phallocentrism can't accept sexual difference
and the existence of a different female subjectivity.
Irigaray was able to find an audience in feminist circles. The Women's Movement (MLF) in
Paris is very factional, but since 1970 Irigaray has refused to belong to any one group. She was
involved in demonstrations for contraception and abortion rights. She was invited to give seminars
and speak at conferences throughout Europe. Dozens of these lectures have been published. In the
second semester of 1982, Irigaray held the chair in Philosophy at the Erasmus University in
Rotterdam. Research here resulted in the publication of An Ethics of Sexual Difference, establishing
Irigaray as a major Continental philosopher.
Irigaray's work has influenced the feminist movement in France and Italy for several
decades. Since the 1980s she has spoken in support of the Italian Communist Movement, touring
and lecturing in Italy. Irigaray has conducted research over the last decade at the Centre National de
Recherche Scientifique in Paris on the difference bewteen the language of women and the language
of men. This research takes place with speakers of many different languages and is discussed in her
recent writings. In 1986 she transferred from the Psychology Commission to the Philosophy
Commission as the latter is her preferred discipline.
Early receptions of Irigaray in the English-speaking world often mistakenly labeled her an
'essentialist.' this view is now generally considered false, as a better understanding of the complex
linguistic, philosophical and psychoanalytic precepts Irigaray writes from is gained.

Bibliography
BOOKS
[Note: This information was contributed by Judith Poxon.]
I Love To You: Sketch of a Possible Felicity in History. Trans. Alison Martin. New York:
Routledge, 1996.
Thinking the Difference: For a Peaceful Revolution. Trans. Karin Montin. New York:
Routledge, 1994.
An Ethics of Sexual Difference. Trans. Carolyn Burke and Gillian C. Gill. Ithaca: Cornell
Univ. Press, 1993.
Je, Tu, Nous: Toward a Culture of Difference. Trans. Alison Martin. New York: Routledge,
1993.
Sexes and Genealogies. Trans. Gillian C. Gill. Ithaca: Cornell Unviersity Press, 1993.

45

Elemental Passions. Trans. Joanne Collie and Judith Still. New York: Routledge, 1992.
The Irigaray Reader. Ed. Margaret Whitford. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1991.
Marine Lover: Of Friedrich Nietzsche. Trans. Gillian C. Gill. New York: Columbia Univ.
Press, 1991.
Speculum: Of the Other Woman. Trans. Gillian C. Gill. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1985.
This Sex Which Is Not One. Trans. Catherine Porter. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1985.
ARTICLES
[Note: Some of this information was contributed by Alison Stone.]
"The Question of the Other." Yale French Studies 87 (1995): .
"Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche." Radical Philosophy 71 (1995): .
"Ecce Mulier?" Trans. Madeleine Dobie Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 15 (1991):
144-158.
"Equal to Whom?" Trans. Robert Mazzola. in The Essential Difference. Ed. Naomi Schor
and Elizabeth Weed. (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1991).
"Love Between Us," in Who Comes After the Subject? Ed. Eduardo Cadava, et.al. (New
York: Routledge, 1991).
"Questions to Emmanuel Levinas on the Divinity of Love." Trans. Margaret Whitford. in
Re-Reading Levinas. Ed. Robert Bernasconi and Simon Critchley. (Bloomington: Indiana Univ.
Press, 1991).
"Sorcerer Love: A Reading of Plato's 'Symposium: Diotima's Speech'." Hypatia 5 (Winter
1989): 32-44.
"Is The Subject of Science Sexes?" Trans. Carol M. Bove. Hypatia 2 (Fall 1987): 65-87.
"The Fecundity of the Caress," in Face to Face with Levinas. Ed. Richard A. Cohen.
(Albany: SUNY Press, 1986).
"Women, the Sacred, and Money." Paragraph: A Journal of Modern Critical Theory 8 (Oct
1986): 6-17.
"Is the Subject of Science Sexes?" Trans. Edith Oberle. Cultural Critique (Fall 1985): 73-88.
"And the One Doesn't Stir Without the Other." Trans. Helene Vivienne Wenzel. Signs 7
(1981): 60-67.
"Women's Exile." Trans. Couze Venn. Ideology and Consciousness 1 (1977): 62-76.
"Experimental Method in Psycholinguistics," (co-authored with Jean Dubois) in Method and
Theory in Linguistics. Ed. Paul L. Garvin. (The Hague: Mouton, 1970).
INTERVIEWS
"Thinking Life as Reason: An Interview with Stephen Pluhacek and Heidi Bostic." Man and
World 29 (1996): 343-360.
"Je -- Luce Irigaray." (interview with Elizabeth Hirsch and Gary A. Olson) Hypatia 10
(spring 1995): 93-114.
"Luce Irigaray," in French Philosophers in Conversation. Ed. Raoul Mortley. (London:
Routledge, 1991).
"Luce Irigaray," in Shifting Scenes: Interviews on Women, Writing, and Politics in Post-68
France. Ed. Alice A. Jardine and Anne M. Menke. (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1991).
"Interview: Paris, Summer 1980," in Women Analyze Women in France, England and the
United States. Ed. Elaine H. Baruch and Lucienne J. Serrano. (New York: New York Univ. Press,
1988), pp. 149-164.

Secondary Sources
Burke, Carolyn, Naomi Schor, and Margaret Whitford, ed. Engaging with Irigaray.
Columbia University Press, 1994
Grosz, Elizabeth. Irigaray and the Divine. Local Consumption Occasional Papers
(Monograph No. 9),1986.

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Huntington, Patricia. Ecstatic Subjects, Utopia and Recognition: Kristeva, Heidegger,

Irigaray.
Vasseleu, Cathryn. Textures of Light: Vision and Touch in Irigaray, Levinas and MerleauPonty. Routledge, 1998.
Whitford, Margaret. Luce Irigaray: Philosophy in the Feminine. Routledge, 1991.

Internet Sites
[Note: This information was contributed by Bridget Holland.]
You can read a discussion of "This Sex Which Is Not One" by Brenda Harmon at this
address: http://www.colorado.edu/English/ENGL2012Klages/Irigaray.html or click here.
http://www.let.ruu.nl/womens_studies/rosi/cyberfem.htm#par1 or click here.
http://www.colorado.edu/English/ENGL2012Klages/Irigaray.html, 15 2005 .

Luce Irigaray
The phallogocentric system generates many binary oppositions; one of which is:
penis/vagina/nothing/clitoris/labia
In this binary, the penis is privileged over both zero and multiples. So the opposite of the
penis is many different things - this might be a moment of deconstruction. There is excess on the
right side of the binary, what are the implications of this excess as opposed to the lack that is seen in
the Freudian paradigm? This is what the French Feminists are interested in --Cixoius and Irigaray
want to turn the idea of lack into an idea of excess and challenge the binary opposition that is
evident in the phallogocentric system of language. The French Feminists say that women don't fit
into a binary opposition, they are more, they are in excess of the left side of the opposition. There is
more to woman than lack or nothingness. When culture privileges the left side of the binary, the
penis, we subordinate multiplicity, this type of privileging does away with multiples, which includes
the female body, the feminine gender and female sexuality. These things are subordinated in favor
of the perceived oneness of the male body, the masculine gender and male sexuality.
Phallogocentrism sets up simple binary oppositions which are not satisfying to the French
Feminists, they want to challenge phallogocentrism and explore the possibilities of a system that is
not set up on these simple binary oppositions, they want to explore what the notion of excess could
mean to not only female gender and sexuality, but male sexuality as well, Irigaray, also, wants to
explore how this notion of excess could impact our thinking about heterosexuality and
homosexuality.
The French Feminists believe that gender differences have an impact on sexuality and that if
you use the penis as a metaphor for not only gender but sexuality as well; it figures sexuality as a
oneness rather than a multiplicity because there is one sexual organ, the penis, there is one source of
sexual pleasure, the penis, there is one notion of sexual desire, that of masculine desire.
In Freudian paradigm, female sexuality is viewed and defined in relation to or in opposition
to male sexuality. Irigaray states that female sexuality always refers back to male sexuality in a
patriarchal culture. --- Her first sentence in the article, pg. 99 --- "Female sexuality has always been
theorized within masculine parameters." Female sexuality is therefore dependent for its existence on
male sexuality. Irigaray asks, where is female sexuality located if female sexuality always relates
back to the penis? Irigaray also points out that in the Freudian model, female sexuality is always
coded in terms of reproduction, that the notions of female sexuality are caught up in reproduction
and that reproduction is also linked to female pleasure and desire.
In her article, "This Sex Which is Not One," Irigaray questions the assumption that female
sexuality is dependent upon male sexuality. She asks and attempts to answer, such questions as,
Where is female sexuality located if it always refers back to the penis? Where does female pleasure
reside? What is female desire and what does it look like, if it looks like anything at all? And why
does Freud insist that the penis is the only true sex organ?

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Irigaray says that in this phallogocentric model, the kind of sexuality that gets privileged is
one based on looking because the one sexual organ, the penis, is visible. So the Freudian model of
sexuality, which privileges the penis, is based on the visual; it is scopophilic.
They (girls) notice the penis of a brother or playmate, strikingly visible and of large
proportions, at once recognize it as the superior counterpart of their own small and
inconspicuous organ, and from that time forward fall a victim to envy for the penis.
(Sexuality and the Psychology of Love, "Anatomical Distinction Between the Sexes",
pg.177.)
Male sexuality is based on having a penis, which is privileged because it can be seen; it is
visible (and larger); therefore, it is superior. In contrast, a woman's sexual organ(s) cannot be seen;
therefore it is inferior and becomes equated with having nothing. In other words, male sexuality is
based on having a penis, female sexuality is based on having nothing. This system sets up the
simple binary opposition of penis/nothing.
According to Freud, since women have nothing, women are always trying to get a penis for
themselves in order to fill the lack: " A little girl . . . makes her judgment and her decision in a flash.
She has seen it and knows that she is without it and wants to have it" (Ibid, pg. 177). Freud
theorizes that women do one or a combination of the following three things in order to fulfill the
desire to have a penis:
1. She will try to acquire the penis for herself by having a baby, especially a male baby.
But now the girl's libido slips into a new position by means - there is no other way of putting
it - of the equation "penis=child." She gives up her wish for a penis and puts in place of it a
wish for a child (Ibid, p. 180-81).
This desire has its roots in the Oedipus Complex, when the female child yearns to have a
baby by her father to make up for her lack of a penis. This "wish" is repressed and redirected
to having a baby with a man other than her father.
2. She will find or attempt to find a husband who is like her father, whom she believes is
capable of giving it (the penis) to her. In fact, Freud believes that in certain cases newly
married women "wish to castrate the young husband and keep his penis" (Ibid, p.72).
3. She will try to procure the masculine rights and privileges that the penis represents:
The hope of someday obtaining a penis in spite of everything and so of becoming like a man
may persist to an incredibly late age and may become a motive for the strangest and otherwise
unaccountable actions. Or again, a process may set in which might be described as a "denial,"
....Thus a girl may refuse to accept the fact of being castrated, may harden herself in the conviction
that she does possess a penis and may subsequently be compelled to behave as though she were a
man. (Ibid, pg. 178)
According to Freud, if a woman acts like a man, i.e., rational, logic, etc, she is in essence
denying the `fact of her castration' and is neurotic.
Therefore, according to Irigaray's reading of Freud, in the Freudian paradigm, female desire
is always the desire for a penis to fill the lack or nothingness. Male desire, on the other hand, is to
get back to the mother's body, to have sexual relations with his mother as is evidenced in the
Oedipus complex. The result is that male and female desire look different; the female attempts to
fill her desire by getting a penis, and the male attempts to fill his desire by having sex with a female
other than his mother.
This explains sexual desire, but Irigaray sees a difference between female desire and female
pleasure. The female desire to get a penis doesn't address female pleasure. According to Freud,
female pleasure, as opposed to female desire, can be found, first and foremost, in reproduction. A
woman's sexual pleasure is closely linked with her reproductive capabilities; it is only through sex
as a reproductive act and the subsequent childbirth and child rearing that a women is able to gain
pleasure from sexual intercourse, since a child is a penis substitute. Irigaray wants to talk about
female sexual desire without the maternal instinct, she wants to divorce female pleasure from a
woman's reproductive capacities. There is no relation between sexuality and reproduction for men

48

--- it can and is separated, but for women, in the Freudian model there seems to be no such
separation.
There is also another component of female pleasure, according to Freud, and that is the
pleasure a women gains from being an (sexual) object of male desire. Based on this, he says that 1.
women's pleasure is always masochistic, it comes from being a sexual object, from being looked at
and desired by men -- and 2. Women get pleasure by giving a man pleasure; pleasure, for a women
comes from the emotional connection and relationship of pleasing a man. Irigaray question this
notion of maschocistic pleasure by pointing out that women in the sexual imaginary of Western
culture have always been a male fantasy, hence maschocism is something forced on women by
culture, not a quality inherent within them. Thus, women don't define their own sexuality, desire, or
pleasure. Irigaray states that historically female desire has been located in male desire, thus a
woman's pleasure does not reside in the woman herself. In other words, men gain pleasure from
sexual intercourse and women gain pleasure from emotional connection and relationship and by
being a beautiful object for a man's viewing pleasure.
Irigaray states that the Freudian notion of sexuality constructs a certain binary opposition:
...the opposition "virile" clitoral activity/"feminine" vaginal passivity which Freud--and
many others--claims are alternative behaviors or steps in the process of becoming a sexually
normal woman, seems prescribed more by the practice of masculine sexuality than by
anything else. (Pg. 99)
In other words, the practice of masculine sexuality requires that a woman gain pleasure from
vaginal intercourse, which is viewed as feminine and passive, rather than clitoral manipulation,
which is viewed as masculine and active, since it is through vaginal intercourse that men are able to
have an orgasm and thus gain their own pleasure. In this paradigm, women must be passive (enjoy
vaginal intercourse only) in order to be thought of as a normal, non-incentous, reproductive,
heterosexual, adult; one who is feminine and the object of the masculine subject. Female sexual
pleasure and/or orgasm, for the woman herself, is strikingly absent in the Freudian notion of
sexuality.
Irigaray posits female pleasure as auto-erotic; a female is always touching herself:
A women "touches herself" constantly without anyone being able to forbid her do so, for her
sex is composed of two lips which embrace continually. Thus, with herself she is already
two - but not divisible into ones - which stimulate each other. (p. 100)
This auto-eroticism does not necessarily lead to orgasm, it is pleasure in and of itself, and
does not require an instrument. Male pleasure, on the other hand, does require some type of
instrument in order to stimulate the penis, be it a hand, a visual or visual fantasy which necessitates
language, or the 'hole' of the woman; he must have something to masturbate with. Irigaray contrasts
this auto-erotic female pleasure to the Freudian notion of the active male sexuality /passive female
sexuality. She contends that a woman contains a multiplicity of desires "before any distinction
between activity and passivity is possible." (p. 100)
Irigary perceives female language patterns as developing out of this pleasurable auto-erotic
self-touching of a woman's sexual organs. A woman constantly retouches herself in conversation:
one must listen to her differently in order to hear an "other meaning" which is constantly in
the process of weaving itself, at the same time ceaselessly embracing words and yet casting
them off to avoid becoming fixed, immobilized.(p. 103)
In contrast to the masculine construct of language, which is rational, linear and privileged by
the patriarchal culture, a woman's language is filled with ebb and flow, multiple beginnings, and
multiple paths. Virginia Woolf is an example of an author who used the construct of feminine
language. Her characters experience continual interruptions of their consciousness; the
conversations in their own minds are in a continual state of doubling back upon themselves and
weaving patterns of memories together with currently happening events.
Irigaray questions the privileging of the visual over the non-visual. She points to the visual
construct of the Freudian position as being the reason the penis is exalted, it can be seen and this in
turn leads to the privileging of the male body. She seems to be alluding to the fact that Freud simply

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articulated and named a system that has been operating in Western Civilization for centuries. For
example, she states that: "...in Greek statuary this nothing to be seen must be excluded, rejected
from such a scene of representation. Woman's sexual organs are simply absent from this scene: they
are masked and her slit is sewn up." (p.101). The penis comes to symbolize the epitome of the
masculine, which connotes strength, reason, sanity, etc. The objectification of women is also based
on the visual, she is relegated to a passive role as she strives to be a beautiful object for men's
viewing pleasure. Due to this privileging of the male body, the male is seen as the active subject
while the female becomes the passive object.
The privileging of the visual affects language, also, in that the majority of things that can be
represented with language are things in the shape of the phallus (phallomorphic), things that are
longer than they are wide. There is not a single (one) word that describes the female sexual organ,
they are many, hence the female organ can't be represented in a phallogocentric system that of
necessity privileges the phallomorphic. The phallomorphic is seen as one, which sets up a binary
opposition of phallomorphic/things that are not one. This system does not like anything that is not
one, so the number one is privileged over zero or multiples. However, a women is "neither one nor
two...And her sex organ, which is not a sex organ, is counted as no sex organ." ( p.101).
Irigaray poses the question, what does the idea of multiplicity do to the phallomorphic
system that Western civilization, and more recently Freud, exalts? The Freudian paradigm of
sexuality is phallomorphic in that male sexuality is based on having a penis, a single sex organ,
while female sexuality is based on having nothing or zero. Yet, Freud himself separates the female
sexual organs into at least two parts, the clitoris, which he views as a little penis and the vagina,
which is simply a hole that the penis goes into in order to facilitate ejaculation. So the binary
opposition becomes one of penis/nothing, clitoris, vagina. Therefore the binary explodes, the
signifiers on the right side are in excess of the signifier on the left side. It is at this point that we
experience a moment of deconstruction, the system has exploded due to the multiplicity and
plurality within it.
Irigaray theorizes that another system is needed, a system that will privilege the feminine as
much as the masculine and will be based on the multiplicity of female sexuality: "A women has sex
organs just about everywhere." (p. 103). The system she imagines will be constructed on the notion
of more than one, a system that would include multiple erogenous zones, and where pleasure would
be diffuse and plural. This system would liberate heterosexuality for both female and male.
Irigaray states that true heterosexuality is impossible within the Freudian system because a
male's desire is to reunite with the mother's body and the female's desire is to obtain a penis.
Sexuality is indirect, the man and woman are not relating to each other directly but are responding
to unmet childhood needs. They relate to each other in the roles of mother and father or look to the
partner to fulfill and resolve the Oedipal complex. Thus, the couple continually miss each other
under the phallogocentric Freudian system. Irigary believes that sexuality should be reconfigured so
that women and men can directly relate to each other, without the intervention of reproduction
and/or a child. This reconfiguration would be based on the diffuse nature of female sexuality that is
present everywhere in a woman's body, not confined to a singe male sex organ. Such a system not
only might liberate female sexuality but male sexuality as well, in that it might destroy the idea that
male sexuality is located in only one place (the penis), and thus liberate men to explore their own
sexuality in all its facets.
Irigary presents the notion that female eroticism is not based on the visual, the precept of
looking, the male `gaze', all of which are predicated on the phallogocentric system, but rather on
touch. Touch requires closeness or nearness while vision is distancing. All relations that privilege
sight privilege distance between subject and object, and therefore true connection is impossible in a
system that privileges vision.
A system based on female sexuality would counter vision with touch, it would lessen the
distance between people. There would be no clear boundaries between self and other or subject and
object; rather a female centered system, which would privilege multiplicity and plurality, would
lead to connection; a flowing and blending of the boundaries that separate people, not only in the

50

sexual realm but in daily life. This blurring of boundaries, Irigarary says, might ultimately lead to
the blurring of ownership.
According to Irigary, once the notion of vision is upset the entire phallogocentric system will
crumble. This upset will call into question who owns what and more specifically, who owns female
sexuality. In a phallogocentric system, female sexuality is a commodity and the female is a product
within the system. Once the system is upset might not a women own herself and her sexuality?, or
would there rather be a multiplicity and plurality of ownership?, or would it call into question the
entire concept of ownership?
In conclusion, Irigary uses Freud's theory of sexuality to point out the limitations that are
imposed on female sexuality by such a paradigm. She challenges the reader to rethink the notions of
sexuality and asks one to expand or discard the preconceived notions of what sexuality means in a
phallogocentric culture. She envisions a sexuality and a system based on excess and plurality, one in
which females and males relate to one another directly; a sexuality and system that is limitless in
scope, fluid in practice, ever-changing and ever-expanding.
Brenda Harmon
10-25-96
Last revision: October 30, 1996
For comments, send mail to Mary Klages
Return to English 2010 Home Page

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http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/millett.htm.17.02.2005
Kate Millett (1969)

Chapter 2 of "Sexual Politics"

THEORY OF SEXUAL POLITICS
Source: Sexual Politics (1969) publ. Granada Publishing. The Second Chapter, Theory of Sexual
Politics reproduced here.
The three instances of sexual description we have examined so far were remarkable for the
large part which notions of ascendancy and power played within them. Coitus can scarcely be said
to take place in a vacuum; although of itself it appears a biological and physical activity, it is set so
deeply within the larger context of human affairs that it serves as a charged microcosm of the
variety of attitudes and values to which culture subscribes. Among other things, it may serve as a
model of sexual politics on an individual or personal plane.
But of course the transition from such scenes of intimacy to a wider context of political
reference is a great step indeed. In introducing the term "sexual politics," one must first answer the
inevitable question "Can the relationship between the sexes be viewed in a political light at all?"
The answer depends on how one defines politics.
[The American Heritage Dictionary's fourth definition is fairly approximate: "methods or
tactics involved in managing a state or government." One might expand this to a set of stratagems
designed to maintain a system. If one understands patriarchy to be an institution perpetuated by
such techniques of control, one has a working definition of how politics is conceived in this essay].
This essay does not define the political as that relatively narrow and exclusive world of
meetings, chairmen, and parties. The term "politics" shall refer to power-structured relationships,
arrangements whereby one group of persons is controlled by another. By way of parenthesis one
might add that although an ideal politics might simply be conceived of as the arrangement of human
life on agreeable and rational principles from whence the entire notion of power over others should
be banished, one must confess that this is not what constitutes the political as we know it, and it is
to this that we must address ourselves.
The following sketch, which might be described as "notes toward a theory of patriarchy,"
will attempt to prove that sex is a status category with political implications. Something of a
pioneering effort, it must perforce be both tentative and imperfect. Because the intention is to
provide an overall description, statements must be generalised, exceptions neglected, and
subheadings overlapping and, to some degree, arbitrary as well.
The word "politics" is enlisted here when speaking of the sexes primarily because such a
word is eminently useful in outlining the real nature of their relative status, historically and at the
present. It is opportune, perhaps today even mandatory, that we develop a more relevant psychology
and philosophy of power relationships beyond the simple conceptual framework provided by our
traditional formal politics. Indeed, it may be imperative that we give some attention to defining a
theory of politics which treats of power relationships on grounds less conventional than those to
which we are accustomed. I have therefore found it pertinent to define them on grounds of personal
contact and interaction between members of well-defined and coherent groups: races, castes,
classes, and sexes. For it is precisely because certain groups have no representation in a number of
recognised political structures that their position tends to be so stable, their oppression so
continuous.
In America, recent events have forced us to acknowledge at last that the relationship
between the races is indeed a political one which involves the general control of one collectivity,
defined by birth, over another collectivity, also defined by birth. Groups who rule by birthright are
fast disappearing, yet there remains one ancient and universal scheme for the domination of one
birth group by another - the scheme that prevails in the area of sex. The study of racism has
convinced us that a truly political state of affairs operates between the races to perpetuate a series of

52

oppressive circumstances. The subordinated group has inadequate redress through existing political
institutions, and is deterred thereby from organising into conventional political struggle and
opposition.
Quite in the same manner, a disinterested examination of our system of sexual relationship
must point out that the situation between the sexes now, and throughout history, is a case of that
phenomenon Max Weber defined as herrschaft, a relationship of dominance and subordinance.
What goes largely unexamined, often even unacknowledged (yet is institutionalised nonetheless) in
our social order, is the birthright priority whereby males rule females. Through this system a most
ingenious form of "interior colonisation" has been achieved. It is one which tends moreover to be
sturdier than any form of segregation, and more rigorous than class stratification, more uniform,
certainly more enduring. However muted its present appearance may be, sexual dominion obtains
nevertheless as perhaps the most pervasive ideology of our culture and provides its most
fundamental concept of power.
This is so because our society, like all other historical civilisations, is a patriarchy. The fact
is evident at once if one recalls that the military, industry, technology, universities, science, political
office, and finance - in short, every avenue of power within the society, including the coercive force
of the police, is entirely in male hands. As the essence of politics is power, such realisation cannot
fail to carry impact. What lingers of supernatural authority, the Deity, "His" ministry, together with
the ethics and values, the philosophy and art of our culture - its very civilisation - as T. S. Eliot once
observed, is of male manufacture.
If one takes patriarchal government to be the institution whereby that half of the populace
which is female is controlled by that half which is male, the principles of patriarchy appear to be
two fold: male shall dominate female, elder male shall dominate younger. However, just as with any
human institution, there is frequently a distance between the real and the ideal; contradictions and
exceptions do exist within the system. While patriarchy as an institution is a social constant so
deeply entrenched as to run through all other political, social, or economic forms, whether of caste
or class, feudality or bureaucracy, just as it pervades all major religions, it also exhibits great variety
in history and locale. In democracies, for example, females have often held no office or do so (as
now) in such minuscule numbers as to be below even token representation. Aristocracy, on the other
hand, with its emphasis upon the magic and dynastic properties of blood, may at times permit
women to hold power. The principle of rule by elder males is violated even more frequently.
Bearing in mind the variation and degree in patriarchy - as say between Saudi Arabia and Sweden,
Indonesia and Red China - we also recognise our own form in the U.S. and Europe to be much
altered and attenuated by the reforms described in the next chapter.

I Ideological
Hannah Arendt has observed that government is upheld by power supported either through
consent or imposed through violence. Conditioning to an ideology amounts to the former. Sexual
politics obtains consent through the "socialisation" of both sexes to basic patriarchal polities with
regard to temperament, role, and status. As to status, a pervasive assent to the prejudice of male
superiority guarantees superior status in the male, inferior in the female. The first item,
temperament, involves the formation of human personality along stereotyped lines of sex category
("masculine" and "feminine"), based on the needs and values of the dominant group and dictated by
what its members cherish in themselves and find convenient in subordinates: aggression,
intelligence, force, and efficacy in the male; passivity, ignorance, docility, "virtue," and
ineffectuality in the female. This is complemented by a second factor, sex role, which decrees a
consonant and highly elaborate code of conduct, gesture and attitude for each sex. In terms of
activity, sex role assigns domestic service and attendance upon infants to the female, the rest of
human achievement, interest, and ambition to the male. The limited role allotted the female tends to
arrest her at the level of biological experience. Therefore, nearly all that can be described as
distinctly human rather than animal activity (in their own way animals also give birth and care for
their young) is largely reserved for the male. Of course, status again follows from such an
assignment. Were one to analyse the three categories one might designate status as the political

53

component, role as the sociological, and temperament as the psychological - yet their
interdependence is unquestionable and they form a chain. Those awarded higher status tend to adopt
roles of mastery, largely because they are first encouraged to develop temperaments of dominance.
That this is true of caste and class as well is self-evident.

II Biological
Patriarchal religion, popular attitude, and to some degree, science as well assumes these
psycho-social distinctions to rest upon biological differences between the sexes, so that where
culture is acknowledged as shaping behaviour, it is said to do no more than cooperate with nature.
Yet the temperamental distinctions created in patriarchy ("masculine" and "feminine" personality
traits) do not appear to originate in human nature, those of role and status still less.
The heavier musculature of the male, a secondary sexual characteristic and common among
mammals, is biological in origin but is also culturally encouraged through breeding, diet and
exercise. Yet it is hardly an adequate category on which to base political relations within
civilisation. Male supremacy, like other political creeds, does not finally reside in physical strength
but in the acceptance of a value system which is not biological. Superior physical strength is not a
factor in political relations - vide those of race and class. Civilisation has always been able to
substitute other methods (technic, weaponry, knowledge) for those of physical strength, and
contemporary civilisation has no further need of it. At present, as in the past, physical exertion is
very generally a class factor, those at the bottom performing the most strenuous tasks, whether they
be strong or not.
It is often assumed that patriarchy is endemic in human social life, explicable or even
inevitable on the grounds of human physiology. Such a theory grants patriarchy logical as well as
historical origin. Yet if as some anthropologists believe, patriarchy is not of primeval origin, but was
preceded by some other social form we shall call pre-patriarchal, then the argument of physical
strength as a theory of patriarchal origins would hardly constitute a sufficient explanation - unless
the male's superior physical strength was released in accompaniment with some change in
orientation through new values or new knowledge. Conjecture about origins is always frustrated by
lack of certain evidence. Speculation about prehistory, which of necessity is what this must be,
remains nothing but speculation. Were one to indulge in it, one might argue the likelihood of a
hypothetical period preceding patriarchy. What would be crucial to such a premise would be a state
of mind in which the primary principle would be regarded as fertility or vitalist processes. In a
primitive condition, before it developed civilisation or any but the crudest technic, humanity would
perhaps find the most impressive evidence of creative force in the visible birth of children,
something of a miraculous event and linked analogically with the growth of the earth's vegetation.
It is possible that the circumstance which might drastically redirect such attitudes would be
the discovery of paternity. There is some evidence that fertility cults in ancient society at some point
took a turn toward patriarchy, displacing and downgrading female function in procreation and
attributing the power of life to the phallus alone. Patriarchal religion could consolidate this position
by the creation of a male God or gods, demoting, discrediting, or eliminating goddesses and
constructing a theology whose basic postulates are male supremacist, and one of whose central
functions is to uphold and validate the patriarchal structure.
So much for the evanescent delights afforded by the game of origins. The question of the
historical origins of patriarchy - whether patriarchy originated primordially in the male's superior
strength, or upon a later mobilisation of such strength under certain circumstances - appears at the
moment to be unanswerable. It is also probably irrelevant to contemporary patriarchy, where we are
left with the realities of sexual politics, still grounded, we are often assured, on nature.
Unfortunately, as the psycho-social distinctions made between the two sex groups which are said to
justify their present political relationship are not the clear, specific, measurable and neutral ones of
the physical sciences, but are instead of an entirely different character - vague, amorphous, often
even quasi-religious in phrasing - it must be admitted that many of the generally understood
distinctions between the sexes in the more significant areas of role and temperament, not to mention
status, have in fact, essentially cultural, rather than biological, bases. Attempts to prove that

54

temperamental dominance is inherent in the male (which for its advocates, would be tantamount to
validating, logically as well as historically, the patriarchal situation regarding role and status) have
been notably unsuccessful. Sources in the field are in hopeless disagreement about the nature of
sexual differences, but the most reasonable among them have despaired of the ambition of any
definite equation between temperament and biological nature. It appears that we are not soon to be
enlightened as to the existence of any significant inherent differences between male and female
beyond the bio-genital ones we already know. Endocrinology and genetics afford no definite
evidence of determining mental-emotional differences.
Not only is there insufficient evidence for the thesis that the present social distinctions of
patriarchy (status, role, temperament) are physical in origin, but we are hardly in a position to assess
the existing differentiations, since distinctions which we know to be culturally induced at present so
outweigh them. Whatever the areal" differences between the sexes may be, we are not likely to
know them until the sexes are treated differently, that is alike. And this is very far from being the
case at present. Important new research not only suggests that the possibilities of innate
temperamental differences seem more remote than ever, but even raises questions as to the validity
and permanence of psycho-sexual identity. In doing so it gives fairly concrete positive evidence of
the overwhelmingly cultural character of gender, i.e. personality structure in terms of sexual
category.
What Stoller and other experts define as "core gender identity" is now thought to be
established in the young by the age of eighteen months. This is how Stoller differentiates between
sex and gender:
Dictionaries stress that the major connotation of sex is a biological one, as for example, in
the phrases sexual relations or the male sex. In agreement with this, the word sex, in this work will
refer to the male or female sex and the component biological parts that determine whether one is a
male or a female; the word sexual will have connotations of anatomy and physiology. This
obviously leaves tremendous areas of behaviour, feelings, thoughts and fantasies that are related to
the sexes and yet do not have primarily biological connotations. It is for some of these
psychological phenomena that the term gender will be used: one can speak of the male sex or the
female sex, but one can also talk about masculinity and femininity and not necessarily be implying
anything about anatomy or physiology. Thus, while sex and gender seem to common sense
inextricably bound together, one purpose this study will be to confirm the fact that the two realms
(sex and gender) are not inevitably bound in anything like a one-to-one relationship, but each may
go into quite independent ways.
In cases of genital malformation and consequent erroneous gender assignment at birth,
studied at the California Gender Identity Center, the discovery was made that it is easier to change
the sex of an adolescent male, whose biological identity turns out to be contrary to his gender
assignment and conditioning - through surgery - than to undo the educational consequences of
years, which have succeeded in making the subject temperamentally feminine in gesture, sense of
self, personality and interests. Studies done in California under Stoller's direction offer proof that
gender identity (I am a girl, I am a boy) is the primary identity any human being holds - the first as
well as the most permanent and far-reaching. Stoller later makes emphatic the distinction that sex is
biological, gender psychological, and therefore cultural: "Gender is a term that has psychological or
cultural rather than biological connotations. If the proper terms for sex are "male" and "female," the
corresponding terms for gender are "masculine" and "feminine"; these latter may be quite
independent of (biological) sex. Indeed, so arbitrary is gender, that it may even be contrary to
physiology: ". . . although the external genitalia (penis, testes, scrotum) contribute to the sense of
maleness, no one of them is essential for it, not even all of them together. In the absence of
complete evidence, I agree in general with Money, and the Hampsons who show in their large series
of intersexed patients that gender role is determined by postnatal forces, regardless of the anatomy
and physiology of the external genitalia.''
It is now believed that the human foetus is originally physically female until the operation of
androgen at a certain stage of gestation causes those with y chromosomes to develop into males.

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Psycho-sexually (e.g., in terms of masculine and feminine, and in contradistinction to male and
female) there is no differentiation between the sexes at birth. Psycho-sexual personality is therefore
postnatal and learned.
... the condition existing at birth and for several months thereafter is one of psycho-sexual
undifferentiation. Just as in the embryo, morphologic sexual differentiation passes from a plastic
stage to one of fixed immutability, so also does psycho-sexual differentiation become fixed and
immutable - so much so, that mankind has traditionally assumed that so strong and fixed a feeling
as personal sexual identity must stem from something innate, instinctive, and not subject to
postnatal experience and learning. The error of this traditional assumption is that the power and
permanence of something learned has been underestimated. The experiments of animal ethologists
on imprinting have now corrected this misconception.
John Money who is quoted above, believes that "the acquisition of a native language is a
human counterpart to imprinting," and gender first established "with the establishment of a native
language.'' This would place the time of establishment at about eighteen months. Jerome Kagin's
studies in how children of pre-speech age are handled and touched, tickled and spoken to in terms
of their sexual identity ("Is it a boy or a girl?" "Hello, little fellow," "Isn't she pretty," etc.) put the
most considerable emphasis on purely tactile learning which would have much to do with the child's
sense of self, even before speech is attained.
Because of our social circumstances, male and female are really two cultures and their life
experiences are utterly different and this is crucial. Implicit in all the gender identity development
which takes place through childhood is the sum total of the parents', the peers', and the culture's
notions of what is appropriate to each gender by way of temperament, character, interests, status,
worth, gesture, and expression. Every moment of the child's life is a clue to how he or she must
think and behave to attain or satisfy the demands which gender places upon one. In adolescence, the
merciless task of conformity grows to crisis proportions, generally cooling and settling in maturity.
Since patriarchy's biological foundations appear to be so very insecure, one has some cause to
admire the strength of a "socialisation" which can continue a universal condition "on faith alone," as
it were, or through an acquired value system exclusively. What does seem decisive in assuring the
maintenance of the temperamental differences between the sexes is the conditioning of early
childhood. Conditioning runs in a circle of self-perpetuation and self-fulfilling prophecy. To take a
simple example: expectations the culture cherishes about his gender identity encourage the young
male to develop aggressive impulses, and the female to thwart her own or turn them inward. The
result is that the male tends to have aggression reinforced in his behaviour, often with significant
anti-social possibilities. Thereupon the culture consents to believe the possession of the male
indicator, the testes, penis, and scrotum, in itself characterises the aggressive impulse, and even
vulgarly celebrates it in such encomiums as "that guy has balls." The same process of reinforcement
is evident in producing the chief "feminine" virtue of passivity. In contemporary terminology, the
basic division of temperamental trait is marshalled along the line of "aggression is male" and
"passivity is female." All other temperamental traits are somehow - often with the most dexterous
ingenuity - aligned to correspond. If aggressiveness is the trait of the master class, docility must be
the corresponding trait of a subject group. The usual hope of such line of reasoning is that "nature,"
by some impossible outside chance, might still be depended upon to rationalise the patriarchal
system. An important consideration to be remembered here is that in patriarchy, the function of
norm is unthinkingly delegated to the male - were it not, one might as plausibly speak of "feminine"
behaviour as active, and "masculine" behaviour as hyperactive or hyperaggressive.
Here it might be added, by way of a coda, that data from physical sciences has recently been
enlisted again to support sociological arguments, such as those of Lionel Tiger who seeks a genetic
justification of patriarchy by proposing a '"bonding instinct" in males which assures their political
and social control of human society. One sees the implication of such a theory by applying its
premise to any ruling group. Tiger's thesis appears to be a misrepresentation of the work of Lorenz
and other students of animal behaviour. Since his evidence of inherent trait is patriarchal history and
organisation, his pretensions to physical evidence are both specious and circular. One can only

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advance genetic evidence when one has genetic (rather than historical) evidence to advance. As
many authorities dismiss the possibility of instincts (complex inherent behavioural patterns) in
humans altogether, admitting only reflexes and drives (far simpler neural responses), the prospects
of a "bonding instinct" appear particularly forlorn.
Should one regard sex in humans as a drive, it is still necessary to point out that the
enormous area of our lives, both in early "socialisation" and in adult experience, labelled "sexual
behaviour," is almost entirely the product of learning. So much is this the case that even the act of
coitus itself is the product of a long series of learned responses - responses to the patterns and
attitudes, even as to the object of sexual choice, which are set up for us by our social environment.
The arbitrary character of patriarchal ascriptions of temperament and role has little effect
upon their power over us. Nor do the mutually exclusive, contradictory, and polar qualities of the
categories "masculine" and "feminine" imposed upon human personality give rise to sufficiently
serious question among us. Under their aegis each personality becomes little more, and often less
than half, of its human potential. Politically, the fact that each group exhibits a circumscribed but
complementary personality and range of activity is of secondary importance to the fact that each
represents a status or power division. In the matter of conformity patriarchy is a governing ideology
without peer; it is probable that no other system has ever exercised such a complete control over its
subjects.

III Sociological
Patriarchy's chief institution is the family. It is both a mirror of and a connection with the
larger society; a patriarchal unit within a patriarchal whole. Mediating between the individual and
the social structure, the family effects control and conformity where political and other authorities
are insufficient. As the fundamental instrument and the foundation unit of patriarchal society the
family and its roles are prototypical. Serving as an agent of the larger society, the family not only
encourages its own members to adjust and conform, but acts as a unit in the government of the
patriarchal state which rules its citizens through its family heads. Even in patriarchal societies
where they are granted legal citizenship, women tend to be ruled through the family alone and have
little or no formal relation to the state.
As co-operation between the family and the larger society is essential, else both would fall
apart, the fate of three patriarchal institutions, the family, society, and the state are interrelated. In
most forms of patriarchy this has generally led to the granting of religious support in statements
such as the Catholic precept that "the father is head of the family," or Judaism's delegation of quasipriestly authority to the male parent. Secular governments today also confirm this, as in census
practices of designating the male as head of household, taxation, passports etc. Female heads of
household tend to be regarded as undesirable; the phenomenon is a trait of poverty or misfortune.
The Confucian prescription that the relationship between ruler and subject is parallel to that of
father and children points to the essentially feudal character of the patriarchal family (and
conversely, the familial character of feudalism) even in modern democracies.
Traditionally, patriarchy granted the father nearly total ownership over wife or wives and
children, including the powers of physical abuse and often even those of murder and sale.
Classically, as head of the family the father is both begetter and owner in a system in which kinship
is property. Yet in strict patriarchy, kinship is acknowledged only through association with the male
line. Agnation excludes the descendants of the female line from property right and often even from
recognition. The first formulation of the patriarchal family was made by Sir Henry Maine, a
nineteenth-century historian of ancient jurisprudence. Maine argues that the patriarchal basis of
kinship is put in terms of dominion rather than blood; wives, though outsiders, are assimilated into
the line, while sisters sons are excluded. Basing his definition of the family upon the patria potestes
of Rome, Maine defined it as follows: "The eldest male parent is absolutely supreme in his
household. His dominion extends to life and death and is as unqualified over his children and their
houses as over his slaves." In the archaic patriarchal family "the group consists of animate and
inanimate property, of wife, children, slaves, land and goods, all held together by subjection to the
despotic authority of the eldest male."

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McLennon's rebuttal to Maine argued that the Roman patria potestes was an extreme form
of patriarchy and by no means, as Maine had imagined, universal. Evidence of matrilineal societies
(preliterate societies in Africa and elsewhere) refute Maine's assumption of the universality of
agnation. Certainly Maine's central argument, as to the primeval or state of nature character of
patriarchy is but a rather naif rationalisation of an institution Maine tended to exalt. The assumption
of patriarchy's primeval character is contradicted by much evidence which points to the conclusion
that full patriarchal authority, particularly that of the patria potestes is a late development and the
total erosion of female status was likely to be gradual as has been its recovery.
In contemporary patriarchies the male's de jure priority has recently been modified through
the granting of divorce protection, citizenship, and property to women. Their chattel status
continues in their loss of name, their obligation to adopt the husband's domicile, and the general
legal assumption that marriage involves an exchange of the female's domestic service and (sexual)
consortium in return for financial support.
The chief contribution of the family in patriarchy is the socialisation of the young (largely
through the example and admonition of their parents) into patriarchal ideology's prescribed attitudes
toward the categories of role, temperament, and status. Although slight differences of definition
depend here upon the parents' grasp of cultural values, the general effect of uniformity is achieved,
to be further reinforced through peers, schools, media, and other learning sources, formal and
informal. While we may niggle over the balance of authority between the personalities of various
households, one must remember that the entire culture supports masculine authority in all areas of
life and - outside of the home - permits the female none at all.
To insure that its crucial functions of reproduction and socialisation of the young take place
only within its confines, the patriarchal family insists upon legitimacy. Bronislaw Malinowski
describes this as "the principle of legitimacy" formulating it as an insistence that "no child should be
brought into the world without a man - and one man at that - assuming the role of sociological
father." By this apparently consistent and universal prohibition (whose penalties vary by class and
in accord with the expected operations of the double standard) patriarchy decrees that the status of
both child and mother is primarily or ultimately dependent upon the male. And since it is not only
his social status, but even his economic power upon which his dependents generally rely, the
position of the masculine figure within the family - as without - is materially, as well as
ideologically, extremely strong.
Although there is no biological reason why the two central functions of the family
(socialisation and reproduction) need be inseparable from or even take place within it, revolutionary
or utopian efforts to remove these functions from the family have been so frustrated, so beset by
difficulties, that most experiments so far have involved a gradual return to tradition. This is strong
evidence of how basic a form patriarchy is within all societies, and of how pervasive its effects
upon family members. It is perhaps also an admonition that change undertaken without a thorough
understanding of the sociopolitical institution to be changed is hardly productive. And yet radical
social change cannot take place without having an effect upon patriarchy. And not simply because it
is the political form which subordinates such a large percentage of the population (women and
youth) but because it serves as a citadel of property and traditional interests. Marriages are financial
alliances, and each household operates as an economic entity much like a corporation. As one
student of the family states it, "the family is the keystone of the stratification system, the social
mechanism by which it is maintained."

IV Class
It is in the area of class that the caste-like status of the female within patriarchy is most
liable to confusion, for sexual status often operates in a superficially confusing way within the
variable of class. In a society where status is dependent upon the economic, social, and educational
circumstances of class, it is possible for certain females to appear to stand higher than some males.
Yet not when one looks more closely at the subject. This is perhaps easier to see by means of
analogy: a black doctor or lawyer has higher social status than a poor white sharecropper. But race,
itself a caste system which subsumes class, persuades the latter citizen that he belongs to a higher

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order of life, just as it oppresses the black professional in spirit, whatever his material success may
be. In much the same manner, a truck driver or butcher has always his "manhood" to fall back upon.
Should this final vanity be offended, he may contemplate more violent methods. The literature of
the past thirty years provides a staggering number of incidents in which the caste of virility
triumphs over the social status of wealthy or even educated women. In literary contexts one has to
deal here with wish-fulfilment. Incidents from life (bullying, obscene, or hostile remarks) are
probably another sort of psychological gesture of ascendancy. Both convey more hope than reality,
for class divisions are generally quite impervious to the hostility of individuals. And yet while the
existence of class division is not seriously threatened by such expressions of enmity, the existence
of sexual hierarchy has been re-affirmed and mobilised to "punish" the female quite effectively.
The function of class or ethnic mores in patriarchy is largely a matter of how overtly
displayed or how loudly enunciated the general ethic of masculine supremacy allows itself to
become. Here one is confronted by what appears to be a paradox: while in the lower social strata,
the male is more likely to claim authority on the strength of his sex rank alone, he is actually
obliged more often to share power with the women of his class who are economically productive;
whereas in the middle and upper classes, there is less tendency to assert a blunt patriarchal
dominance, as men who enjoy such status have more power in any case.
It is generally accepted that Western patriarchy has been much softened by the concepts of
courtly and romantic love. While this is certainly true, such influence has also been vastly
overestimated. In comparison with the candour of "machismo" or oriental behaviour, one realises
how much of a concession traditional chivalrous behaviour represents - a sporting kind of reparation
to allow the subordinate female certain means of saving face. While a palliative to the injustice of
woman's social position, chivalry is also a technique for disguising it. One must acknowledge that
the chivalrous stance is a game the master group plays in elevating its subject to pedestal level.
Historians of courtly love stress the fact that the raptures of the poets had no effect upon the legal or
economic standing of women, and very little upon their social status. As the sociologist Hugo
Beigel has observed, both the courtly and the romantic versions of love are "grants" which the male
concedes out of his total powers. Both have had the effect of obscuring the patriarchal character of
Western culture and m their general tendency to attribute impossible virtues to women, have ended
by confining them in a narrow and often remarkably conscribing sphere of behaviour. It was a
Victorian habit, for example, to insist the female assume the function of serving as the male's
conscience and living the life of goodness he found tedious but felt someone ought to do anyway.
The concept of romantic love affords a means of emotional manipulation which the male is
free to exploit, since love is the only circumstance in which the female is (ideologically) pardoned
for sexual activity. And convictions of romantic love are convenient to both parties since this is
often the only condition in which the female can overcome the far more powerful conditioning she
has received toward sexual inhibition. Romantic love also obscures the realities of female status and
the burden of economic dependency. As to "chivalry," such gallant gesture as still resides in the
middle classes has degenerated to a tired ritualism, which scarcely serves to mask the status
situation of the present.
Within patriarchy one must often deal with contradictions which ale simply a matter of class
style. David Riesman has noted that as the working class has been assimilated into the middle class,
so have its sexual mores and attitudes. The fairly blatant male chauvinism which was once a
province of the lower class or immigrant male has been absorbed and taken on a certain glamour
through a number of contemporary figures, who have made it, and a certain number of other
working-class male attitudes, part of a new, and at the moment, fashionable life style. So influential
is this working class ideal of brute virility (or more accurately, a literary and therefore middle-class
version of it) become in our time that it may replace more discreet and "gentlemanly" attitudes of
the past.
One of the chief effects of class within patriarchy is to set one woman against another, in the
past creating a lively antagonism between whore and matron, and in the present between career
woman and housewife. One envies the other her "security" and prestige, while the envied yearns

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beyond the confines of respectability for what she takes to be the other's freedom, adventure, and
contact with the great world. Through the multiple advantages of the double standard, the male
participates in both worlds, empowered by his superior social and economic resources to play the
estranged women against each other as rivals. One might also recognise subsidiary status categories
among women: not only is virtue class, but beauty and age as well.
Perhaps, in the final analysis, it is possible to argue that women tend to transcend the usual
class stratifications in patriarchy, for whatever the class of her birth and education, the female has
fewer permanent class association than does the male. Economic dependency renders her
affiliations with any class a tangential, vicarious, and temporary matter. Aristotle observed that the
only slave to whom a commoner might lay claim was his woman, and the service of an unpaid
domestic still provides working-class males with a "cushion" against the buffets of the class system
which incidentally provides them with some of the psychic luxuries of the leisure class. Thrown
upon their own resources, few women rise above working class in personal prestige and economic
power, and women as a group do not enjoy many of the interests and benefits any class may offer its
male members. Women have therefore less of an investment in the class system. But it is important
to understand that as with any group whose existence is parasitic to its rulers, women are a
dependency class who live on surplus And their marginal life frequently renders them conservative,
for like all persons in their situation (slaves are a classic example here) they identify their own
survival with the prosperity of those who feed them. The hope of seeking liberating radical
solutions of their own seems too remote for the majority to dare contemplate and remains so until
consciousness on the subject is raised.
As race is emerging as one of the final variables in sexual politics, it is pertinent, especially
in a discussion of modern literature, to devote a few words to it as well. Traditionally, the white
male has been accustomed to concede the female of his own race, in her capacity as "his woman" a
higher status than that ascribed to the black male. Yet as white racist ideology is exposed and begins
to erode, racism's older protective attitudes toward (white) women also begin to give way. And the
priorities of maintaining male supremacy might outweigh even those of white supremacy; sexism
may be more endemic in our own society than racism. For example, one notes in authors whom we
would now term overtly racist, such as D. H. Lawrence - whose contempt for what he so often
designates as inferior breeds is unabashed - instances where the lower-caste male is brought on to
master or humiliate the white man's own insubordinate mate. Needless to say, the female of the nonwhite races does not figure in such tales save as an exemplum of "true" womanhood's servility,
worthy of imitation by other less carefully instructed females. Contemporary white sociology often
operates under a similar patriarchal bias when its rhetoric inclines toward the assertion that the
"matriarchal" (e.g. matrifocal) aspect of black society and the "castration" of the black male are the
most deplorable symptoms of black oppression in white racist society, with the implication that
racial inequity is capable of solution by a restoration of masculine authority. Whatever the facts of
the matter may be, it can also be suggested that analysis of this kind presupposes patriarchal values
without questioning them, and tends to obscure both the true character of and the responsibility for
racist injustice toward black humanity of both sexes.

V Economic and Educational

One of the most efficient branches of patriarchal government lies in the agency of its
economic hold over its female subjects. In traditional patriarchy, women, as non-persons without
legal standing were permitted no actual economic existence as they could neither own nor earn in
their own right. Since women have always worked in patriarchal societies, often at the most routine
or strenuous tasks, what is at issue here is not labor but economic reward. In modern reformed
patriarchal societies, women have certain economic rights, yet the "woman's work" in which some
two thirds of the female population in most developed countries are engaged is work that is not paid
for. In a money economy where autonomy and prestige depend upon currency, this is a fact of great
importance. In general, the position of women in patriarchy is a continuous function of their
economic dependence. Just as their social position is vicarious and achieved (often on a temporary

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or marginal basis) though males, their relation to the economy is also typically vicarious or
tangential.
Of that third of women who are employed, their average wages represent only half of the
average income enjoyed by men. These are the U. S. Department of Labor statistics for average
year-round income: white male, $6704, non-white male $4277, white female, $3991, and non-white
female $2816. The disparity is made somewhat more remarkable because the educational level of
women is generally higher than that of men in comparable income brackets. Further, the kinds of
employment open to women in modem patriarchies are, with few exceptions, menial, ill paid and
without status.
In modem capitalist countries women also function as a reserve labor force, enlisted in times
of war and expansion and discharged in times of peace and recession. In this role American women
have replaced immigrant labor and now compete with the racial minorities. In socialist countries the
female labor force is generally in the lower ranks as well, despite a high incidence of women in
certain professions such as medicine. The status and rewards o$ such professions have declined as
women enter them, and they are permitted to enter such areas under a rationale that society or the
state (and socialist countries are also patriarchal) rather than woman is served by such activity.
Since woman's independence in economic life is viewed with distrust, prescriptive agencies
of all kinds (religion, psychology, advertising, etc.) continuously admonish or even inveigh against
the employment of middle-class women, particularly mothers. The toil of working class women is
more readily accepted as "need," if not always by the working-class itself, at least by the middleclass. And to be sure, it serves the purpose of making available cheap labor in factory and lowergrade service and clerical positions. Its wages and tasks are so unremunerative that, unlike more
prestigious employment for women, it fails to threaten patriarchy financially or psychologically.
Women who are employed have two jobs since the burden of domestic service and child care is
unrelieved either by day care or other social agencies, or by the cooperation of husbands. The
invention of labor-saving devices has had no appreciable effect on the duration, even if it has
affected the quality of their drudgery. Discrimination in matters of hiring, maternity, wages and
hours is very great. In the U. S. a recent law forbidding discrimination in employment, the first and
only federal legislative guarantee of rights granted to American women since the vote, is not
enforced, has not been enforced since its passage, and was not enacted to be enforced.
In terms of industry and production, the situation of women is in many ways comparable
both to colonial and to pre-industrial peoples. Although they achieved their first economic
autonomy in the industrial revolution and now constitute a large and underpaid factory population,
women do not participate directly in technology or in production. What they customarily produce
(domestic and personal service) has no market value and is, as it were, pre-capital. Nor, where they
do participate in production of commodities through employment, do they own or control or even
comprehend the process in which they participate. An example might make this clearer: the
refrigerator is a machine all women use, some assemble it in factories, and a very few with
scientific education understand its principles of operation. Yet the heavy industries which roll its
steel and produce the dies for its parts are in male hands. The same is true of the typewriter, the
auto, etc. Now, while knowledge is fragmented even among the male population, collectively they
could reconstruct any technological device. But in the absence of males, women's distance from
technology today is sufficiently great that it is doubtful that they could replace or repair such
machines on any significant scale. Woman's distance from higher technology is even greater: largescale building construction; the development of computers; the moon shot, occur as further
examples. If knowledge is power, power is also knowledge, and a large factor in their subordinate
position is the fairly systematic ignorance patriarchy imposes upon women.
Since education and economy are so closely related in the advanced nations, it is significant
that the general level and style of higher education for women, particularly in their many remaining
segregated institutions, is closer to that of Renaissance humanism than to the skills of midtwentieth-century scientific and technological society. Traditionally patriarchy permitted occasional
minimal literacy to women while higher education was closed to them. While modern patriarchies

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have, fairly recently, opened all educational levels to women, the kind and quality of education is
not the same for each sex. This difference is of course apparent in early socialisation but it persists
and enters into higher education as well. Universities, once p]aces of scholarship and the training of
a few professionals, now also produce the personnel of a technocracy. This is not the case with
regard to women. Their own colleges typically produce neither scholars nor professionals nor
technocrats. Nor are they funded by government and corporations as are male colleges and those coeducational colleges and universities whose primary function is the education of males.
As patriarchy enforces a temperamental imbalance of personality traits between the sexes,
its educational institutions, segregated or coeducational, accept a cultural programming toward the
generally operative division between "masculine" and "feminine" subject matter, assigning the
humanities and certain social sciences (at least in their lower or marginal branches) to the female and science and technology, the professions, business and engineering to the male. Of course the
balance of employment, prestige and reward at present lie with the latter. Control of these fields is
very eminently a matter of political power. One might also point out how the exclusive dominance
of males in the more prestigious fields directly serves the interests of {patriarchal power in industry,
government, and the military. And since patriarchy encourages an imbalance in human temperament
along sex lines, both divisions of learning (science and the humanities) reflect this imbalance. The
humanities, because not exclusively male, suffer in prestige: the sciences, technology, and business,
because they are nearly exclusively male reflect the deformation of the "masculine" personality,
e.g., a certain predatory or aggressive character.
In keeping with the inferior sphere of culture to which women in patriarchy have always
been restricted, the present encouragement of their "artistic" interests through study of the
humanities is hardly more than an extension of the "accomplishments" they once cultivated in
preparation for the marriage market. Achievement in the arts and humanities is reserved, now, as it
has been historically, for males. Token representation, be it Susan Sontag's or Lady Murasaki's, does
not vitiate this rule.

VI Force
We are not accustomed to associate patriarchy with force. So perfect is its system of
socialisation, so complete the general assent to its values, so long and so universally has it prevailed
in human society, that it scarcely seems to require violent implementation. Customarily, we view its
brutalities in the past as exotic or "primitive" custom. Those of the present are regarded as the
product of individual deviance, confined to pathological or exceptional behaviour, and without
general import. And yet, just as under other total ideologies (racism and colonialism are somewhat
analogous in this respect) control in patriarchal society would be imperfect, even inoperable, unless
it had the rule of force to rely upon, both in emergencies and as an ever-present instrument of
intimidation.
Historically, most patriarchies have institutionalised force through their legal systems. For
example, strict patriarchies such as that of Islam, have implemented the prohibition against
illegitimacy or sexual autonomy with a death sentence. In Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia the
adulteress is still stoned to death with a mullah presiding at the execution. Execution by stoning was
once common practice through the Near East. It is still condoned in Sicily. Needless to say there
was and is no penalty imposed upon the male correspondent. Save in recent times or exceptional
cases, adultery was not generally recognised in males except as an offence one male might commit
against another's property interest. In Tokugawa Japan, for example, an elaborate set of legal
distinctions were made according to class. A samurai was entitled, and in the face of public
knowledge, even obliged, to execute an adulterous wife, whereas a chonin (common citizen) or
peasant might respond as he pleased. In cases of cross-class adultery, the lower-class male
convicted of sexual intimacy with his employer's wife would, because he had violated taboos of
class and property, be beheaded together with her. Upper strata males had, of course, the same
license to seduce lower-class women as we are familiar with in Western societies.

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Indirectly, one form of "death penalty" still obtains even in America today. Patriarchal legal
systems in depriving women of control over their own bodies drive them to illegal abortions; it is
estimated that between two and five thousand women die each year from this cause.
Excepting a social license to physical abuse among certain class and ethnic groups, force is
diffuse and generalised in most contemporary patriarchies. Significantly, force itself is restricted to
the male who alone is psychologically and technically equipped to perpetrate physical violence?
Where differences in physical strength have become immaterial through the use of arms, the female
is rendered innocuous by her socialisation. Before assault she is almost universally defenceless both
by her physical and emotional training. Needless to say, this has the most far-reaching effects on the
social and psychological behaviour of both sexes.
Patriarchal force also relies on a form of violence particularly sexual in character and
realised most completely in the act of rape. The figures of rapes reported represent only a fraction of
those which occur, as the shame of the event is sufficient to deter women from the notion of civil
prosecution under the public circumstances of a trial. Traditionally rape has been viewed as an
offence one male commits upon another - a matter of abusing "his woman." Vendetta, such as
occurs in the American South, is carried out for masculine satisfaction the exhilarations of race
hatred, and the interests of property and vanity (honour). In rape, the emotions of aggression,
hatred, contempt, and the desire to break or violate personality, take a form consummately
appropriate to sexual politics. In the passages analysed at the' outset of this study, such emotions
were present at a barely sublimated level and were a key factor in explaining the attitude behind the
author's use of language and tone.
Patriarchal societies typically link feelings of cruelty with sexuality, the latter often equated
both with evil and with power. This is apparent both in the sexual fantasy reported by
psychoanalysis and that reported by pornography. The rule here associates sadism with the male
("the masculine role") and victimisation with the female ("the feminine role''). Emotional response
to violence against women in patriarchy is often curiously ambivalent; references to wife-beating,
for example, invariably produce laughter and some embarrassment. Exemplary atrocity, such as the
mass murders committed by Richard Speck, greeted at one level with a certain scandalised, possibly
hypocritical indignation, is capable of eliciting a mass response of titillation at another level. At
such times one even hears from men occasional expressions of envy or amusement. In view of the
sadistic character of such public fantasy as caters to male audiences in pornography or semipornographic media, one might expect that a certain element of identification is by no means absent
from the general response. Probably a similar collective frisson sweeps through racist society when
its more "logical" members have perpetrated a lynching. Unconsciously, both crimes may serve the
larger group as a ritual act, cathartic in effect.
Hostility is expressed in a number of ways. One is laughter. Misogynist literature, the
primary vehicle of masculine hostility, is both an hortatory and comic genre. Of all artistic forms in
patriarchy it is the most frankly propagandistic. Its aim is to reinforce both sexual factions in their
status. Ancient, Medieval, and Renaissance literature in the West has each had a large element of
misogyny. Nor is the East without a strong tradition here, notably in the Confucian strain which
held sway in Japan as well as China. The Western tradition was indeed moderated somewhat by the
introduction of courtly love. But the old diatribes and attacks were coterminous with the new
idealisation of woman. In the case of Petrarch, Boccaccio, and some others, one can find both
attitudes fully expressed, presumably as evidence of different moods, a courtly pose adopted for the
ephemeral needs of the vernacular, a grave animosity for sober and eternal Latin. As courtly love
was transformed to romantic love, literary misogyny grew somewhat out of fashion. In some places
in the eighteenth century it declined into ridicule and exhortative satire. In the nineteenth century its
more acrimonious forms almost disappeared in English. Its resurrection in twentieth-century
attitudes and literature is the result of a resentment over patriarchal reform, aided by the growing
permissiveness in expression which has taken place at an increasing rate in the last fifty years.
Since the abatement of censorship, masculine hostility (psychological or physical) in
specifically sexual contexts has become far more apparent. Yet as masculine hostility has been fairly

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continuous, one deals here probably less with a matter of increase than with a new frankness in
expressing hostility in specifically sexual contexts. It is a matter of release and freedom to express
what was once forbidden expression outside of pornography or other "underground" productions,
such as those of De Sade. As one recalls both the euphemism and the idealism of descriptions of
coitus in the Romantic poets (Keats's Eve of St. Agnes), or the Victorian novelists (Hardy, for
example) and contrasts it with Miller or William Burroughs, one has an idea of how contemporary
literature has absorbed not only the truthful explicitness of pornography, but its anti-social character
as well. Since this tendency to hurt or insult has been given free expression, it has become far easier
to assess sexual antagonism in the male.
The history of patriarchy presents a variety of cruelties and barbarities: the suttee execution
in India, the crippling deformity of foot-binding in China, the lifelong ignominy of the veil in Islam,
or the widespread persecution of sequestration, the gynaecium, and purdah. Phenomenon such as
clitoridectomy, clitoral incision, the sale and enslavement of women under one guise or another,
involuntary and child marriages, concubinage and prostitution, still take place - the first in Africa,
the latter in the Near and Far East, the last generally. The rationale which accompanies that
imposition of male authority euphemistically referred to as "the battle of the sexes" bears a certain
resemblance to the formulas of nations at war, where any heinousness is justified on the grounds
that the enemy is either an inferior species or really not human at all. The patriarchal mentality has
concocted a whole series of rationales about women which accomplish this purpose tolerably well.
And these traditional beliefs still invade our consciousness and affect our thinking to an extent few
of us would be willing to admit.

VII Anthropological: Myth and Religion

Evidence from anthropology, religious and literary myth all attests to the politically
expedient character of patriarchal convictions about women. One anthropologist refers to a
consistent patriarchal strain of assumption that "woman's biological differences set her apart . . . she
is essentially inferior," and since "human institutions grow from deep and primal anxieties and are
shaped by irrational psychological mechanisms . . . socially organised attitudes toward women arise
from basic tensions expressed by the male." Under patriarchy the female did not herself develop the
symbols by which she is described. AS both the primitive and the civilised worlds are male worlds,
the ideas which shaped culture in regard to the female were also of male design. The image of
women as we know it is an image created by men and fashioned to suit their needs. These needs
spring from a fear of the "otherness" of woman. Yet this notion itself presupposes that patriarchy
has already been established and the male has already set himself as the human form, the subject
and referent to which the female is "other" or alien. What ever its origin, the function of the male's
sexual antipathy is to provide a means of control over a subordinate group and a rationale which
justifies the inferior station of those in a lower order, "explaining" the oppression of their lives.
The feeling that woman's sexual functions are impure is both world-wide and persistent. One
sees evidence of it everywhere in literature, in myth, in primitive and civilised life. It is striking how
the notion persists today. The event of menstruation, for example, is a largely clandestine affair, and
the psycho-social effect of the stigma attached must have great effect on the female ego. There is a
large anthropological literature on menstrual taboo; the practice of isolating offenders in huts at the
edge of the village occurs throughout the primitive world. Contemporary slang denominates
menstruation as "the curse." There is considerable evidence that such discomfort as women suffer
during their period is often likely to be psychosomatic, rather than physiological, cultural rather
than biological, in origin. That this may also be true to some extent of labor and delivery is attested
to by the recent experiment with "painless childbirth." Patriarchal circumstances and beliefs seem to
have the effect of poisoning the female's own sense of physical self until it often truly becomes the
burden it is said to be.
Primitive peoples explain the phenomenon of the female's genitals in terms of a wound,
sometimes reasoning that she was visited by a bird or snake and mutilated into her present
condition. Once she was wounded, now she bleeds. Contemporary slang for the vagina is "gash."
The Freudian description of the female genitals is in terms of a "castrated" condition. The

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uneasiness and disgust female genitals arouse in patriarchal societies is attested to through religious,
cultural, and literary proscription. In preliterate groups fear is also a factor, as in the belief in a
castrating vagina dentata. The penis, badge of the male's superior status in both preliterate and
civilised patriarchies, is given the most crucial significance, the subject both of endless boasting and
endless anxiety.
Nearly all patriarchies enforce taboos against women touching ritual objects (those of war or
religion) or food. In ancient and preliterate societies women are generally not permitted to eat with
men. Women eat apart today in a great number of cultures, chiefly those of the Near and Far East.
Some of the inspiration of such custom appears to lie in fears of contamination, probably sexual in
origin. In their function of domestic servants, females are forced to prepare food, yet at the same
time may be liable to spread their contagion through ;L A similar situation obtains with blacks in the
United States. They are considered filthy and infectious, yet as domestics they are forced to prepare
food for their queasy superiors. In both cases the dilemma is generally solved in a deplorably
illogical fashion by segregating the act of eating itself, while cooking is carried on out of sight by
the very group who would infect the table. With an admirable consistency, some Hindu males do
not permit their wives to touch their food at all. In nearly every patriarchal group it is expected that
the dominant male will eat first or eat better, and even where the sexes feed together, the male shall
be served by the female.
All patriarchies have hedged virginity and defloration in elaborate rites and interdictions.
Among preliterates virginity presents an interesting problem in ambivalence. On the one hand, it is,
as in every patriarchy, a mysterious good because a sign of property received intact. On the other
hand, it represents an unknown evil associated with the mana of blood and terrifyingly "other." So
auspicious is the event of defloration that in many tribes the owner-groom is willing to relinquish
breaking the seal of his new possession to a stronger or older personality who can neutralise the
attendant dangers. Fears of defloration appear to originate in a fear of the alien sexuality of the
female. Although any physical suffering endured in defloration must be on the part of the female
(and most societies cause her - bodily and mentally - to suffer anguish), the social interest,
institutionalised in patriarchal ritual and custom, is exclusively on the side of the male's property
interest, prestige, or (among preliterates) hazard.
Patriarchal myth typically posits a golden age before the arrival of women, while its social
practices permit males to be relieved of female company. Sexual segregation is so prevalent in
patriarchy that one encounters evidence of it everywhere. Nearly every powerful circle in
contemporary patriarchy is a men's group. But men form groups of their own on every level.
Women's groups are typically auxiliary in character, imitative of male efforts and methods on a
generally trivial or ephemeral plane. They rarely operate without recourse to male authority, church
or religious groups appealing to the superior authority of a cleric, political groups to male
legislators, etc.
In sexually segregated situations the distinctive quality of culturally enforced temperament
becomes very vivid. This is particularly true of those exclusively masculine organisations which
anthropology generally refers to as men's house institutions. The men's house is a fortress of
patriarchal association and emotion. Men's houses in preliterate society strengthen masculine
communal experience through dances, gossip, hospitality, recreation, and religious ceremony. They
are also the arsenals of male weaponry.
David Riesman has pointed out that sports and some other activities provide males with a
supportive solidarity which society does not trouble to provide for females. While hunting, politics,
religion, and commerce may play a role, sport and warfare are consistently the chief cement of
men's house comradery. Scholars of men's house culture from Hutton Webster and Heinrich Schurtz
to Lionel Tiger tend to be sexual patriots whose aim is to justify the apartheid the institution
represents. Schurtz believes an innate gregariousness and a drive toward fraternal pleasure among
peers urges the male away from the inferior and constricting company of women. Notwithstanding
his conviction that a mystical "bonding instinct" exists in males, Tiger exhorts the public, by
organised effort, to preserve the men's house tradition from its decline. The institution's less genial

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function of power center within a state of sexual antagonism is an aspect of the phenomenon which
often goes unnoticed.
The men's house of Melanesia fulfil a variety of purposes and are both armory and the site of
masculine ritual initiation ceremony. Their atmosphere is not very remote from that of military
institutions in the modern world: they reek of physical exertion, violence, the aura of the kill, and
the throb of homosexual sentiment. They are the scenes of scarification, head-hunting celebrations,
and boasting sessions. Here young men are to be "hardened" into manhood. In the men's houses
boys have such low status they are often called the "wives" of their initiators, the term "wife"
implying both inferiority and the status of sexual object. Untried youths become the erotic interest
of their elders and betters, a relationship also encountered in the Samurai order, in oriental
priesthood, and in the Greek gymnasium. Preliterate wisdom decrees that while inculcating the
young with the masculine ethos, it is necessary first to intimidate them with the tutelary status of the
female. An anthropologist's comment on Melanesian men's houses is applicable equally to Genet's
underworld, or Mailer's U. S. Army: "It would seem that the sexual brutalising of the young boy and
the effort to turn him into a woman both enhances the older warrior's desire of power, gratifies his
sense of hostility toward the maturing male competitor, and eventually, when he takes him into the
male group, strengthens the male solidarity in its symbolic attempt to do without women." The
derogation of feminine status in lesser males is a consistent patriarchal trait. Like any hazing
procedure, initiation once endured produces devotees who will ever after be ardent initiators,
happily inflicting their own former sufferings on the newcomer.
The psychoanalytic term for the generalised adolescent tone of men's house culture is
"phallic state." Citadels of virility, they reinforce the most saliently power-oriented characteristics
of patriarchy. The Hungarian psychoanalytic anthropologist Geza Roheim stressed the patriarchal
character of men's house organisation in the preliterate tribes he studied, defining their communal
and religious practices in terms of a "group of men united in the cult of an object that is a
materialised penis and excluding the women from their society." The tone and ethos of men's house
culture is sadistic, power-oriented, and latently homosexual, frequently narcissistic in its energy and
motives. The men's house inference that the penis is a weapon, endlessly equated with other
weapons is also clear. The practice of castrating prisoners is itself a comment on the cultural
confusion of anatomy and status with weaponry. Much of the glamorisation of masculine comradery
in warfare originates in what one might designate as "the men's house sensibility." Its sadistic and
brutalising aspects are disguised in military glory and a particularly cloying species of masculine
sentimentality. A great deal of our culture partakes of this tradition, and one might locate its first
statement in Western literature in the heroic intimacy of Patroclus and Achilles. Its development can
be traced through the epic and the saga to the chanson de geste. The tradition still flourishes in war
novel and movie, not to mention the comic book.
Considerable sexual activity does take place in the men's house, all of it, needless to say,
homosexual. But the taboo against homosexual behaviour (at least among equals) is almost
universally of far stronger force than the impulse and tends to effect a rechannelling of the libido
into violence. This association of sexuality and violence is a particularly militaristic habit of mind.
The negative and militaristic coloring of such men's house homosexuality as does exist, is of course
by no means the whole character of homosexual sensibility. Indeed, the warrior caste of mind with
its ultravirility, is more incipiently homosexual, in its exclusively male orientation, than it is overtly
homosexual. (The Nazi experience is an extreme case in point here.) And the heterosexual roleplaying indulged in, and still more persuasively, the contempt in which the younger, softer, or more
"feminine" members are held, is proof that the actual ethos is misogynist, or perversely rather than
positively heterosexual. The true inspiration of men's house association therefore comes from the
patriarchal situation rather than from any circumstances inherent in the homo-amorous relationship.
If a positive attitude toward heterosexual love is not quite, in Seignebos' famous dictum, the
invention of the twelfth century, it can still claim to be a novelty. Most patriarchies go to great
length to exclude love as a basis of mate selection. Modern patriarchies tend to do so through class,
ethnic, and religious factors. Western classical thought was prone to see in heterosexual love either

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a fatal stroke of ill luck bound to end in tragedy, or a contemptible and brutish consorting with
inferiors. Medieval opinion was firm in its conviction that love was sinful if sexual, and sex sinful if
loving.
Primitive society practices its misogyny in terms of taboo and mana which evolve into
explanatory myth. In historical cultures, this is transformed into ethical, then literary, and in the
modem period, scientific rationalisations for the sexual politic. Myth is, of course, a felicitous
advance in the level of propaganda, since it so often bases its arguments on ethics or theories of
origins. The two leading myths of Western culture are the classical tale of Pandora's box and the
Biblical story of the Fall. In both cases earlier mana concepts of feminine evil have passed through
a final literary phase to become highly influential ethical justifications of things as they are.
Pandora appears to be a discredited version of a Mediterranean fertility goddess, for in
Hesiod's Theogony she wears a wreath of flowers and a sculptured diadem in which are caned all
the creatures of land and sea. Hesiod ascribes to her the introduction of sexuality which puts an end
to the golden age when "the races of men had been living on earth free from all evils, free from
laborious work, and free from all wearing sickness." Pandora was the origin of "the damnable race
of women - a plague which men must live with." The introduction of what are seen to be the evils of
the male human condition came through the introduction of the female and what is said to be her
unique product, sexuality. In Works And Days Hesiod elaborates on Pandora and what she
represents - a perilous temptation with "the mind of a bitch and a thievish nature," full of "the
cruelty of desire and longings that wear out the body," 'lies and cunning words and a deceitful soul,"
a snare sent by Zeus to be "the ruin of men."
Patriarchy has God on its side. One of its most effective agents of control is the powerfully
expeditious character of its doctrines as to the nature and origin of the female and the attribution to
her alone of the dangers and evils it imputes to sexuality. The Greek example is interesting here:
when it wishes to exalt sexuality it celebrates fertility through the phallus; when it wishes to
denigrate sexuality, it cites Pandora. Patriarchal religion and ethics tend to lump the female and sex
together as if the whole burden of the onus and stigma it attaches to sex were the fault of the female
alone. Thereby sex, which is known to be unclean, sinful, and debilitating, pertains to the female,
and the male identity is preserved as a human, rather than a sexual one.
The Pandora myth is one of two important Western archetypes which condemn the female
through her sexuality and explain her position as her well-deserved punishment for the primal sin
under whose unfortunate consequences the race yet labours. Ethics have entered the scene,
replacing the simplicities of ritual, taboo, and mana. The more sophisticated vehicle of myth also
provides official explanations of sexual history. In Hesiod's tale, Zeus, a rancorous and arbitrary
father figure, in sending Epimetheus evil in the form of female genitalia, is actually chastising him
for adult heterosexual knowledge and activity. In opening the vessel she brings (the vulva or hymen,
Pandora's "Box") the male satisfies his curiosity but sustains the discovery only by punishing
himself at the hands of the father god with death and the assorted calamities of postlapsarian life.
The patriarchal trait of male rivalry across age or status line, particularly those of powerful father
and rival son, is present as well as the ubiquitous maligning of the female.
The myth of the Fall is a highly finished version of the same themes. As the central myth of
the Judeo-Christian imagination and therefore of our immediate cultural heritage, it is well that we
appraise and acknowledge the enormous power it still holds over us even in a rationalist era which
has long ago given up literal belief in it while maintaining its emotional assent intact. This mythic
version of the female as the cause of human suffering, knowledge, and sin is still the foundation of
sexual attitudes, for it represents the most crucial argument of the patriarchal tradition in the West.
The Israelites lived in a continual state of war with the fertility cults of their neighbours;
these latter afforded sufficient attraction to be the source of constant defection, and the figure of
Eve, like that of Pandora, has vestigial traces of a fertility goddess overthrown. There is some,
probably unconscious, evidence of this in the Biblical account which announces, even before the
narration of the fall has begun - "Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of
all living things." Due to the fact that the tale represents a compilation of different oral traditions, it

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provides two contradictory schemes for Eve's creation, one in which both sexes are created at the
same time, and one in which Eve is fashioned later than Adam, an afterthought born from his rib,
peremptory instance of the male's expropriation of the life force through a god who created the
world without benefit of female assistance.
The tale of Adam and Eve is, among many other things, a narrative of how humanity
invented sexual intercourse. Many such narratives exist in preliterate myth and folk tale. Most of
them strike us now as delightfully funny stories of primal innocents who require a good deal of
helpful instruction to figure it out. There are other major themes in the story: the loss of primeval
simplicity, the arrival of death, and the fist conscious experience of knowledge. All of them revolve
about sex. Adam is forbidden to eat of the fruit of life or of the knowledge of good and evil, the
warning states explicitly what should happen if he tastes of the latter: "in that day that thou eatest
thereof thou shalt surely die." He eats but fails to die (at least in the story), from which one might
infer that the serpent told the truth.
But at the moment when the pair eat of the forbidden tree they awake to their nakedness and
feel shame. Sexuality is clearly involved, though the fable insists it is only tangential to a higher
prohibition against disobeying orders in the matter of another and less controversial appetite - one
for food. Roheim points out that the Hebrew verb for "eat" can also mean coitus. Everywhere in the
Bible "knowing" is synonymous with sexuality, and clearly a product of contact with the phallus,
here in the fable objectified as a snake. To blame the evils and sorrows of life - loss of Eden and the
rest - on sexuality, would all too logically implicate the male, and such implication is hardly the
purpose of the story, designed as it is expressly in order to blame all this world's discomfort on the
female. Therefore it is the female who is tempted first and "beguiled" by the penis, transformed into
something else, a snake. Thus Adam has "beaten the rap" of sexual guilt, which appears to be why
the sexual motive is so repressed in the Biblical account. Yet the very transparency of the serpent's
universal phallic value shows how uneasy the mythic mind can be about its shifts. Accordingly, in
her inferiority and vulnerability the woman takes and eats, simple carnal thing that she is, affected
by flattery even in a reptile. Only after this does the male fall, and with him, humanity - for the
fable has made him the racial type, whereas Eve is a mere sexual type and, according to tradition,
either expendable or replaceable. And as the myth records the original sexual adventure, Adam was
seduced by woman, who was seduced by a penis. 'The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she
gave me of the fruit and I did eat" is the first man's defence. Seduced by the phallic snake, Eve is
convicted for Adam's participation in sex.
Adam's curse is to toil in the "sweat of his brow," namely the labor the male associates with
civilisation. Eden was a fantasy world without either effort or activity, which the entrance of the
female, and with her sexuality, has destroyed. Eve's sentence is far more political in nature and a
brilliant "explanation" of her inferior status. "In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children. And thy
desire shall be to thy husband. And he shall rule over thee." Again, as in the Pandora myth, a
proprietary father figure is punishing his subjects for adult heterosexuality. It is easy to agree with
Roheim's comment on the negative attitude the myth adopts toward sexuality: "Sexual maturity is
regarded as a misfortune, something that has robbed mankind of happiness . . . the explanation of
how death came into the world.''
What requires further emphasis is the responsibility of the female, a marginal creature, in
bringing on this plague, and the justice of her suborned condition as dependent on her primary role
in this original sin. The connection of woman, sex, and sin constitutes the fundamental pattern of
western patriarchal thought thereafter.

VIII Psychological
The aspects of patriarchy already described have each an effect upon the psychology of both
sexes. Their principal result is the interiorisation of patriarchal ideology. Status, temperament, and
role are all value systems with endless psychological ramifications for each sex. Patriarchal
marriage and the family with its ranks and division of labor play a large part in enforcing them. The
male's superior economic position, the female's inferior one have also grave implications. The large
quantity of guilt attached to sexuality in patriarchy is overwhelmingly placed upon the female, who

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is, culturally speaking, held to be the culpable or the more culpable party in nearly any sexual
liaison, whatever the extenuating circumstances. A tendency toward the reification of the female
makes her more often a sexual object than a person. This is particularly so when she is denied
human rights through chattel status. Even where this has been partly amended the cumulative effect
of religion and custom is still very powerful and has enormous psychological consequences.
Woman is still denied sexual freedom and the biological control over her body through the cult of
virginity, the double standard, the prescription against abortion, and in many places because
contraception is physically or psychically unavailable to her.
The continual surveillance in which she is held tends to perpetuate the infantilisation of
women even in situations such as those of higher education. The female is continually obliged to
seek survival or advancement through the approval of males as those who hold power. She may do
this either through appeasement or through the exchange of her sexuality for support and status. As
the history of patriarchal culture and the representations of herself within all levels of its cultural
media, past and present, have a devastating effect upon her self image, she is customarily deprived
of any but the most trivial sources of dignity or self-respect. In many patriarchies, language, as well
as cultural tradition, reserve the human condition for the male. With the Indo-European languages
this is a nearly inescapable habit of mind, for despite all the customary pretence that "man" and
"humanity" are terms which apply equally to both sexes, the fact is hardly obscured that in practice,
general application favours the male far more often than the female as referent, or even sole
referent, for such designations.
When in any group of persons, the ego is subjected to such invidious versions of itself
through social beliefs, ideology, and tradition, the effect is bound to be pernicious. This coupled
with the persistent though frequently subtle denigration women encounter daily through personal
contacts, the impressions gathered from the images and media about them, and the discrimination in
matters of behaviour, employment, and education which they endure, should make it no very special
cause for surprise that women develop group characteristics common to those who suffer minority
status and a marginal existence. A witty experiment by Philip Goldberg proves what everyone
knows, that having internalised the disesteem in which they are held, women despise both
themselves and each other. This simple test consisted of asking women undergraduates to respond
to the scholarship in an essay signed alternately by one John McKay and one Joan McKay. In
making their assessments the students generally agreed that John was a remarkable thinker, Joan an
unimpressive mind. Yet the articles were identical: the reaction was dependent on the sex of the
supposed author.
As women in patriarchy are for the most part marginal citizens when they are citizens at all,
their situation is like that of other minorities, here defined not as dependent upon numerical size of
the group, but on its status. "A minority group is any group of people who because of their physical
or cultural characteristics, are singled out from others in the society in which they live for
differential and unequal treatment." Only a handful of sociologists have ever addressed themselves
in any meaningful way to the minority status of women. And psychology has yet to produce
relevant studies on the subject of ego damage to the female which might bear comparison to the
excellent work done on the effects of racism on the minds of blacks and colonials. The remarkably
small amount of modern research devoted to the psychological and social effects of masculine
supremacy on the female and on the culture in general attests to the widespread ignorance or
unconcern of a conservative social science which takes patriarchy to be both the status quo and the
state of nature.
What little literature the social sciences afford us in this context confirms the presence in
women of the expected traits of minority status: group self-hatred and self-rejection, a contempt
both for herself and for her fellows - the result of that continual, however subtle, reiteration of her
inferiority which she eventually accepts as a fact. Another index of minority status is the fierceness
with which all minority group members are judged. The double standard is applied not only in cases
of sexual conduct but other contexts as well. In the relatively rare instances of female crime too: in
many American states a woman convicted of crime is awarded a longer sentence. Generally an

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accused woman acquires a notoriety out of proportion to her acts and due to sensational publicity
she may be tried largely for her "sex life." But so effective is her conditioning toward passivity in
patriarchy, woman is rarely extrovert enough in her maladjustment to enter upon criminality. Just as
every minority member must either apologise for the excesses of a fellow or condemn him with a
strident enthusiasm, women are characteristically harsh, ruthless and frightened in their censure of
aberration among their numbers.
The gnawing suspicion which plagues any minority member, that the myths propagated
about his inferiority might after all be true often reaches remarkable proportions in the personal
insecurities of women. Some find their subordinate position so hard to bear that they repress and
deny its existence. But a large number will recognise and admit their circumstances when they are
properly phrased. Of two studies which asked women if they would have preferred to be born male,
one found that one fourth of the sample admitted as much, and in another sample, one half. When
one inquires of children, who have not yet developed as serviceable techniques of evasion, what
their choice might be, if they had one, the answers of female children in a large majority of cases
clearly favour birth into the elite group, whereas boys overwhelmingly reject the opinion of being
girls. The phenomenon of parents' prenatal preference for male issue is too common to require
much elaboration. In the light of the imminent possibility of parents actually choosing the sex of
their child, such a tendency is becoming the cause of some concern in scientific circles.
Comparisons such as Myrdal, Hacker, and Dixon draw between the ascribed attributes of
blacks and women reveal that common opinion associates the same traits with both: inferior
intelligence, an instinctual or sensual gratification, an emotional nature both primitive and childlike,
an imagined prowess in or affinity for sexuality, a contentment with their own lot which is in accord
with a proof of its appropriateness, a wily habit of deceit, and concealment of feeling. Both groups
are forced to the same accommodational tactics: an ingratiating or supplicatory manner invented to
please, a tendency to study those points at which the dominant group are subject to influence or
corruption, and an assumed air of helplessness involving fraudulent appeals for direction through a
show of ignorance. It is ironic how misogynist literature has for centuries concentrated on just these
traits, directing its fiercest enmity at feminine guile and corruption, and particularly that element of
it which is sexual, or, as such sources would have it, "wanton."
As with other marginal groups a certain handful of women are accorded higher status that
they may perform a species of cultural policing over the rest. Hughes speaks of marginality as a
case of status dilemma experienced by women, blacks, or second-generation Americans who have
"come up" in the world but are often refused the rewards of their efforts on the grounds of their
origins. This is particularly the case with "new" or educated women. Such exceptions are generally
obliged to make ritual, and often comic, statements of deference to justify their elevation. These
characteristically take the form of pledges of "femininity," namely a delight in docility and a large
appetite for masculine dominance. Politically, the most useful persons for such a role are
entertainers and public sex objects. It is a common trait of minority status that a small percentage of
the fortunate are permitted to entertain their rulers. (That they may entertain their fellow subjects in
the process is less to the point.) Women entertain, please, gratify, satisfy and flatter men with their
sexuality. In most minority groups athletes or intellectuals are allowed to emerge as "stars,"
identification with whom should content their less fortunate fellows. In the case of women both
such eventualities are discouraged on the reasonable grounds that the most popular explanations of
the female's inferior status ascribe it to her physical weakness or intellectual inferiority. Logically,
exhibitions of physical courage or agility are indecorous, just as any display of serious intelligence
tends to be out of place.
Perhaps patriarchy's greatest psychological weapon is simply its universality and longevity.
A referent scarcely exists with which it might be contrasted or by which it might be confuted. While
the same might be said of class, patriarchy has a still more tenacious or powerful hold through its
successful habit of passing itself off as nature. Religion is also universal in human society and
slavery was once nearly so; advocates of each were fond of arguing in terms of fatality, or
irrevocable human "instinct" - even "biological origins." When a system of power is thoroughly in

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command, it has scarcely need to speak itself aloud; when its workings are exposed and questioned,
it becomes not only subject to discussion, but even to change. Such a period is the one next under
discussion.
Further Reading:
Biography | Frantz Fanon | Shulasmith Firestone | Sigmund Freud | Linda Nicholson | The Second
Sex, Simone De Beauvoir | Betty Friedan
Philosophy Archive @ marxists.org

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http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/nichols2.htm. 17.02.2005
Linda Nicholson (1986)

Gender & History, Chapter 1

THE CONTEMPORARY WOMEN'S MOVEMENT
Source: Gender & History (1986) publ. Columbia University Press. Just the first chapter,
Contemporary Women's Movement and Chapter on Karl Marx, reproduced here.
IN THE LATE 1960s the women's movement in the United States formulated the slogan,
"The personal is political." Many of the women who took up this slogan had been active in the
various protest movements of the sixties. The slogan was directed in part to other activists and was
created to justify attention to a new cause: the personal relations between men and women. Such
justification was perceived necessary because of the widely held attitude that the practices which
took place between women and men acting qua women and men stood outside the domain of
politics. For the activists of the 1960s, if these practices were not political, they were not
appropriate objects for the scrutiny and struggle for change that were demanded by the relations
between, for example, different racial groups. The early feminists intended to challenge this attitude
through this slogan.
At one level the slogan expressed what was clearly false. Modern Western society appears
obviously split between the two spheres of family or personal life on the one hand and public life on
the other. The term "political" has been traditionally limited to describing the interactions within the
public sphere, supposedly different in content from the interactions of private life. The feminists
responded that apparent differences in content were often illusory; they argued that power
dynamics, for example, existed in both. They added that the relations between the sexes, like
relations between other social groups, were regulated by societal rules. The difficulties individual
women experienced in their "private" lives were shared by other women and consequently were not
"personal." Moreover, they argued that the supposedly private nature of gender shaped and was
shaped by the content of social relations outside as well as inside the home. Thus the early feminists
proclaimed that the popular ideology which placed personal relations between the sexes outside
politics created obstacles against an adequate understanding of such relations.
To use the terminology of contemporary philosophy, the slogan "The personal is political"
expressed a stipulative definition; intended was a change in traditional understandings of the term
"political." Something more than language use, however, was also at stake. Descriptions of social
reality bear a curious relation to the reality they are about; in part such descriptions help constitute
the reality. In this case, the popular belief in a distinctness of the realms of personal and public life
has been an important ingredient in keeping the realms separate. To challenge this belief was thus in
part to challenge the reality constituted by it. In short, the slogan "The personal is political"
expressed a stipulative and constitutive definition. It was stipulative in that it sought to redefine the
term "politics" and constitutive in that such a new definition must in turn affect the reality being
defined. The slogan was thus itself a political statement; by its very utterance it sought to make a
change in social reality.
The slogan provides, I believe, an important clue to understanding the significance of the
contemporary women's movement and marks it as unique as a political movement. This uniqueness
is reflected not only within the political practice. Rather I wish to argue, and this will be a central
argument of this book, that the theory which is currently being developed by those active in the
contemporary women's movement represents a comparably unique contribution to existing political
theory. The attention contemporary feminist practice has given to gender relations and the family is
reflected within feminist theory in the study of both as necessary components of political theory.
The consequence, I intend to show, carries serious implications for existing political theory.
As a preliminary step toward making this argument, I shall describe in this chapter the role
the slogan has played in the politics of the contemporary women's movement, particularly as this

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movement has existed in the United States. It should be noted that the slogan only arose within a
certain section of the movement and so cannot be attributed to the movement per se without
qualification. The different parts of the contemporary women's movement have had a changing and
complex relationship among themselves. Indeed, at certain points in the 1960s it would have been
misleading to talk about "the" women's movement. In the late 1960s there existed at least two very
different movements. The mass media recognised this difference in their distinction between what
they called the "women's rights" movement versus what they dubbed "women's lib," the latter a
pejorative shortening of the term "women's liberation." The "women's rights" movement was
composed primarily of those professional women who initiated activities in the mid 1960s and who
were involved in such organisations as the National Organisation for Women. "Women's liberation,"
on the other hand, was largely constituted by younger women who were active in the 1960s' protest
movements of the New Left and whose concern with women's issues began to receive national
attention only toward the latter part of the decade. It is from within "women's liberation" that the
tendency "radical feminism" emerged, the label intended as a means of distinguishing it from the
"liberal feminism" expressed in the "women's rights" movement. While radical feminism
distinguished itself from a feminism more "on the right," there was also dialogue and confrontation
with those "on the left" and in particular with women who identified more strongly with Marxism
and labelled themselves "Marxist feminists."
One of the important sources of difference among "liberal," "radical," and "Marxist"
feminists has concerned the nature of their respective endorsements of the slogan "The personal is
political." Only within radical feminism was the endorsement unambiguous; some of the early
exponents of radical feminism broke out of the New Left with precisely this banner. Liberal
feminism and Marxist feminism have had a more complicated relationship to the slogan. In fact, an
important source of tension within both has had to do with the question, "How political is the
personal?" The differing assessments by liberal, radical, and Marxist feminists of the relation
between personal and public life is related in turn to fundamental differences in the underlying
theories of each on the nature of social life.

Liberal Feminism
To understand these differences it is helpful to go back to the early 1960s and the reemergence of "women's rights" as a topic of political discussion in the United States. Following the
enactment of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution granting women suffrage, the issue had
remained relatively dormant for almost forty years. Two events of the early 1960s are often credited
as important in marking the end of the silence; the publication in 1963 of The Feminine Mystique by
Betty Friedan and the establishment of a Presidential Commission on the Status of Women by John
F. Kennedy in 1961. That The Feminine Mystique became a best-seller soon after its publication
seemed to indicate a widespread discontent with the prevalent national ideal of the "happy
housewife." At least as articulated by Friedan, women's daily life in the suburbs deviated
significantly from its popular image and possessed a multitude of negative features. Women
consequently needed to begin questioning their exclusion from all those spheres of activity which
had become predominantly viewed as the domain of men. A similar questioning of women's
exclusion from non-domestic life was expressed in the document American Women, released in
1963, the official report of Kennedy's commission. While that document did not challenge
traditional conceptions of women's place within the family, it did argue forcefully against women's
exclusion from other domains. While endorsing "the fundamental responsibility of mothers and
home-makers and society's stake in strong family life," the commission also put forth such
recommendations as for the increased availability of day care services for everyone regardless of
family income and for tax deductions for the child care expenses of working mothers. Kennedy's
original commission spawned a variety of governmental agencies, including a Citizens Advisory
Council on the Status of Women, an Interdepartmental Committee on the Status of Women, and
various state Commissions on the Status of Women. These groups began to provide a forum for
discussion of women's status within the law as well as a means of contact for those interested in
making changes in that status. Of special importance was a meeting of the National Conference of

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State Commissions, held in the summer of 1966 in Washington, D.C. Out of that conference
emerged NOW, the National Organisation for Women. It grew out of the need felt by some that an
extra-governmental action group exist which would put pressure on existing governmental bodies,
such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The existence of NOW was officially
announced at a press conference on October 29, 1966, with Betty Friedan becoming its first
president. The purpose of the organisation was stated as the following: "To take action to bring
women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now, exercising all the
privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men." The political stance of
NOW is further illustrated in the Women's Bill of Rights which it drew up at its second national
conference in November 1967 in Washington, D.C. The Bill of Rights was to be presented to the
platform committees of the Democratic and Republican parties as well as all major candidates
running for national office in the 1968 election. It was composed of the following eight demands:
1. Equal Rights Constitutional Amendment
2. Enforcement Laws Banning Sex Discrimination in Employment
3. Maternity Leave Rights in Employment and in Social Security Benefits
4. Tax Deduction for Home and Child Care Expenses for Working Parents
5. Child Care Centers
6. Equal and Unsegregated Education
7. Equal Job Training Opportunities and Allowances for Women in Poverty
8. The Right of Women to Control Their Reproductive Lives.
Two of the above planks brought controversy. The first demand supporting a constitutional
equal rights amendment was opposed by women from the United Auto Workers. That union with
others was officially against such an amendment on the grounds that it would conflict with various
state protective laws. Demand 7 was fought by other women who argued that abortion was not a
women's rights issue; they subsequently left NOW when NOW endorsed this demand.
The statement of purpose and statement of demands express a particular emphasis: a concern
to eliminate those obstacles barring the full participation of women in non-domestic activities.
Certainly some of the above demands, such as demands 5 and 8 concerning childcare and
reproductive rights, also touch on issues relating to women's "personal" lives. However, even these
in the context of the other demands and the statement of purpose appear as means to ensure a more
primary end: the ability of women to participate equally with men in activities and occupations
outside the home. What also can be concluded from the above is an emphasis within NOW on
making changes within the law to bring about this end. All the above eight demands are ones that
could be brought about by legal means. This, of course, is not surprising, in that the demands were
developed for endorsement by political parties and candidates. The point, however, is that NOW
viewed such activity as crucial on its agenda. That it did so followed from the motivation behind its
genesis: that there exist an extra-governmental action organisation which would work to put
pressure on existing governmental bodies to bring about legal change.
However, while in the mid and late sixties it may have been correct to describe the politics
of NOW or other liberal feminist organisations such as WEAL (Women's Equity Action League) or
BPW (Business and Professional Women) in this way-as concerned primarily with women's ability
to function equally with men outside the home-this characterisation has become increasingly
problematic. Liberal feminists, like many others, have steadily focused their attention on women's
personal lives. Thus liberal feminists, with others, have discussed such topics as "the politics of
housework," the demeaning portrayals of women in television and advertising, the oppressive
nature of traditional understandings of women's sexuality, etc. There are complex reasons for this
growing attention by liberal feminists to personal issues as ends in themselves. Many follow from
widespread societal changes which will be discussed at greater length in the following chapter. For
now it simply can be noted that issues associated with personal life have, during the twentieth
century, steadily become issues of public concern for American society at large, and this has been
manifest in many aspects of American life, including but not limited to the women's movement.
Thus a defining aspect of the New Left of the 1960s and that which distinguished it from the old left

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was a concern with matters of "consciousness" and "lifestyle." The New Left itself was affected by
the "beat generation" which preceded it and the "hippie" movement which was a part of it, both of
which placed a strong emphasis on matters personal and viewed them in political terms. Apart from
the New Left there has existed a widespread national concern over social mores regarding marriage
and sexuality. Thus that many liberal feminists have come to incorporate a focus on personal
relations within their concern for "women's rights" is understandable within the context of an
existing general societal concern with such issues. Moreover, many liberal feminists, as a
consequence of their feminism, have taken note of the strong arguments made by more radical
feminists, that the achievement of parity with men outside the home necessitates changes in
traditional patterns within the home. They have thus increasingly come to recognise the
interconnection of domestic and non-domestic life.
Of course, the degree to which domestic life is believed to be in need of change varies
widely within the national culture, and part of this variance is also reflected in the women's
movement, still creating important differences between liberal feminism and its more radical allies.
It is one thing to argue that women should retain their surnames in marriage or that women and men
should share housework responsibilities. It is something quite different to protest the privileged
status given to heterosexuality as a mode of sexuality or more radically to argue against its
desirability for women. Thus an increasing unanimity on the position that traditional mores
governing personal relations need to be changed coexists with important divisions concerning the
extent of the changes believed to be needed. Thus while liberal feminism may have increasingly
accepted the dictum that "The personal is political," this has coexisted with a tendency toward
caution in making such politics revolutionary.
Connected with the difference in conceptions of how radically domestic life needs to be
changed are other differences concerning how radically non-domestic life needs to be changed.
Liberal feminism has tended to accept the basic structures of existing political and economic
institutions, pressing hardest on the need to make them accessible to women. This contrasts with the
leftist perspective present in varying degrees in radical feminism and strongly in Marxist feminism
which sees such institutions as hierarchical, competitive, and individualistic.
This latter difference between liberal feminism and its more radical allies has had important
consequences concerning their respective positions on the relation of private and public life. While
liberal feminism, like other versions of feminism, tends to be sympathetic toward redefining the
relation of private and public, for liberal feminism this often means the subsumption of the private
under the public. In this respect there is a close similarity between liberal feminism and twentiethcentury welfare state liberalism, as both look to the extension of state functions as a means of
alleviating social problems. Both positions reflect that movement within the twentieth century for
the state to extend its domain, taking over in many contexts activities thought previously to be the
province of the family and the household. Examples are the further development of public
education and the emergence of social security, welfare, and public health agencies. Such
phenomena, in conjunction with increased state regulation, both in regard to familial matters and
also in regard to economic activities, have caused some to speak of the creation of a new domain
altogether: the sphere of the "social," a sphere of state control arising on the collapse of old
boundaries between the private and the public. Liberal feminism, insofar as it advocates extending
this domain to meet the needs of women, can thus be described as supporting that realignment of
the private and the public which entails the subsumption of the former under the latter.
This tendency within liberal feminism to view problems in private life as solvable by an
extension of public regulation both ties it to classical and contemporary liberalism and differentiates
it from many other forms of contemporary feminism. It ties it to classical liberalism insofar as
liberalism has classically celebrated, though in different forms in different centuries, the public
realm as articulated reason, or law, in ordering social life. Classical liberalism, of course, has also
worried about infringements of liberty made possible by a too powerful state. Contemporary liberal
feminism, like contemporary welfare state liberalism, tends (though not unequivocally) to view the
good accomplished by the extension of such reason or law as outweighing the personal liberties

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diminished in consequence. Both stances, however, can be differentiated from a growing tendency
in radical and left-wing feminism to argue that such a conception of reason or law emphasises traits
associated with masculinity, such as the inclination to abstract from particular differences in needs
and circumstances and to de-emphasise the importance of compassion and care.' Neo-Marxists and
anarchists have argued that in its twentieth-century instrumentalised form, public "reason" has been
employed as a means of domination, giving power to the "expert" and turning others into passive
clients of state control.' Neo-Marxist and anarchist feminists have pointed out that in the
institutionalised form of such "reason," in public bureaucracies, masculine control over women has
taken new forms, going beyond traditional paternal modes. They have argued that while the state
here may be undermining "patriarchy," at least in its traditional form, this has not necessarily
entailed the promotion of gender equality but rather has often merely changed the nature of gender
inequality. Women's personal dependence upon individual men has frequently been replaced by a
more impersonal subordinate position within the workplace and by a mass dependence on the states'
welfare institutions. Private patriarchy, in short, has itself become public.' What all these positions
share, therefore, in opposition to liberal feminism, is the recognition that the breakdown of the
separation of private and public is insufficient to satisfy feminist requirements but must be
conjoined with a restructuring of the public.

Radical Feminism
We can further understand such differences by looking more extensively at that political
position known as radical feminism. In part, radical feminism was created by women who had been
active in NOW and were dissatisfied with what they perceived of as NOW's conservatism. Thus in
1967 at the annual meeting of NOW subsequent to the one in which the above demands were
formulated, a group of New York women allied with Ti-Grace Atkinson left NOW and subsequently
formed an early radical feminist organisation, "The October 17th Movement," later called "The
Feminists.'' Radical feminism was to a large extent also constituted by women whose previous
political activity had been in the diverse organisations of the New Left. This was the case, for
example, with such women as Shulamith Firestone and Jo Freeman, who founded an early radical
feminist organisation, Radical Women, in New York City in the fall of 1967. These two women,
with others, had earlier presented a series of women's demands to a New Left conference, the
National Conference for a New Politics, in the spring of that year. None of the demands were taken
seriously, causing them to begin thinking about the necessity of separate women's organisations
outside existing groups.
The early organisers of radical feminism shared with the rest of the New Left a belief in the
systemic nature of much of political injustice. Thus when these women began to perceive the
situation of women as representing a case of this injustice, they employed the adjective "radical" to
describe their stance. It signified a commitment to look for root causes. Radical feminists viewed
the activities of women who had been involved in NOW or other existing business and professional
women's organisations as "reformist," helpful and necessary but fundamentally inconsequential.
This view stemmed both from a belief that the criticisms liberal feminism made of relations
between women and men in both domestic and non-domestic life did not go far enough, and also,
from a belief that liberal feminism had no sense of the importance of gender, and the social relations
of domestic life, in structuring all social life. For radical feminism, liberal feminism's belief in the
power of the law to remedy inequalities between women and men testified to a lack of insight into
the fundamentality of the "sex-role system," those practices and institutions which were important
in creating and maintaining sex-role differences. Of particular importance was the family, for it was
here that biological men and women learned the cultural constituents of masculinity and femininity,
and learned about the fundamental differences of power which, according to radical feminism, were
a necessary component of both. A quotation from a manifesto of New York Radical Feminists
illustrates the political position:
Radical feminism recognises the oppression of women as a fundamental political oppression
wherein women are categorised as an inferior class based upon their sex. It is the aim of radical
feminism to organise politically to destroy this sex class system.

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As radical feminists we recognise that we are engaged in a power struggle with men, and
that the agent of our suppression is man insofar as he identifies with and carries out the supremacy
privileges of the male role. For while we realize that the liberation of women will ultimately mean
the liberation of men from their destructive role as oppressor, we have no illusion that men will
welcome this liberation without a struggle....
The oppression of women is manifested in particular institutions, constituted and maintained
to keep women in their place. Among these are the institutions of marriage, motherhood, love and
sexual intercourse (the family unit is incorporated by the above).
In sum, for radical feminism, women's inferior political and economic status were mere
symptoms of a more fundamental problem: an inferior status and lack of power built into the role of
femininity. Radical feminism challenged prevailing beliefs that the constituents of this role, such as
women's abilities and interests in child-rearing or lack of assertiveness or even the content of
women's sexual interests, were "natural." Rather the argument was made that all but certain limited
biological differences between women and men were cultural. The constituents of the sex-role
system were social constructions, and more important, such constructions were fundamentally
antithetical to the interests of women. The norms embodied in femininity discouraged women from
developing their intellectual, artistic, and physical capacities. It dissuaded women from thinking of
themselves and from being thought of by others as autonomous agents. Whereas "masculinity"
embodied certain traits associated with adulthood, such as physical strength, rationality, and
emotional control, "femininity," in part embodied traits associated with childhood, such as weakness
and irrationality. The norms of femininity created an emphasis in women's lives on achieving the
roles of wife and mother whose outcome was a comparable imbalance between men and women in
economic and emotional autonomy. Moreover, while the norms embodied in femininity often
worked against women, the norms embodied in masculinity served to create many unattractive
beings, those who too frequently were aggressive, selfish, instrumental in their dealings with others,
and unskilled in the arts of nurturance and caring. The source of the problem, according to radical
feminism, was to be found in the home and family, where girls and boys received their initial and
most primary lessons on the differences between the sexes and where adult women and men played
out the lessons that they learned. The lessons of gender differences learned and practiced in the
home were in turn transferred to the outside world when women did leave the home. Thus when
women took paid employment, they replicated and were expected to replicate the practices and
inferior status of women which were a part of the home. In sum, according to radical feminism, the
inferior status of women as political or economic beings was merely the symptom of a problem
whose roots were to be located elsewhere.
Radical feminism also generated new forms of political organising. Organisations such as
NOW, WEAL, BPW had engaged in traditional political means to improve women's status. Such
groups sent telegrams and lobbied in Congress. Members of NOW sometimes marched or
demonstrated. The primary intent of such actions was to bring about changes within the law. While
radical feminists also marched and demonstrated, the intent of the action was not always the same.
The point was not necessarily to change people's thinking so that they might vote differently but
sometimes to change people's thinking so that they might live differently. This conception of
political organising was embodied in the phrase "consciousness-raising." In the early years of
radical feminism, this was occasionally attempted through street theatre, itself a practice carried out
within the New Left. This tactic was employed in Atlantic City in the fall of 1968 at an event which
first brought "Women's Lib" to national attention. The New York Radical Women demonstrated
outside the Miss America contest, crowning a sheep "Miss America" and throwing such feminine
articles of clothing as bras, girdles, curlers, false eyelashes, and wigs into a "Freedom Trash Can.""
It was from this event that the media's description of "Women's Lib" as "bra-burners" was
generated. The more prevalent form that consciousness-raising took within the early years of
"Women's Lib" was small-group discussion. Women came together to discuss the implications of
gender in their own lives, which included its personal as well as its political and economic
components. What is notable about such groups is that they expressed, and were consciously

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designed to express, a political statement in their very purpose. The attention that radical feminists
gave to the dynamics of personal relations was accompanied by a belief that attention to feelings
and personal experience was a necessary condition for eliminating the present sex-role system.
Since the components of that system were embedded in deep and complex ways in daily life
experience, it was only through careful examination of that experience that the multiple
manifestations of gender could be understood and thus changed.
This attention to "personal experience" had immense significance for the direction
contemporary American feminism has taken. On a practical level it entailed a rethinking of the
nature of social change. On a theoretical level it entailed anew focus on the family as a central
institution in structuring social life. To be sure, radical feminism was not the first social movement
to devote attention to the family and personal life. Psychoanalytic theory has also been concerned
with both the family and sexuality. For many radical feminists, however, much of psychoanalytic
theory appeared to reflect uncritically prevalent assumptions concerning gender. For example,
psychoanalytic theory did not question the dominant position that men played within the family or
within society at large. It often assumed the universal existence of the family type which prevailed
in the middle classes in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Western society. In short,
psychoanalytic theory did not treat the family as a social institution whose dynamics might be
susceptible to criticism and possible change; it did not address the family and gender relations in
political terms.
Thus the initial task which faced early radical feminist thinkers was that of creating a theory
which both treated the family as a social institution and recognised its centrality in structuring social
life as a whole. Thus if for liberalism the state, or public law, has been seen as possessing priority in
structuring social life, and if in certain interpretations of Marxism the economy, or sphere of
production, has been viewed as the base from which might be explained all other social phenomena,
so for radical feminism the family, sometimes described as the sphere of "reproduction," occupies
an analogous role. This point was made explicit by Shulamith Firestone, one of the early radical
feminist theorists, in her rewriting of Engels:
Historical materialism is that view of the course of history which seeks the ultimate course
and the great moving power of all historic events in the dialectic of sex: the division of society into
two distinct biological classes for procreative reproduction, and the struggles of these classes with
one another; in the changes in the modes of marriage, reproduction and childcare created by these
struggles; in the connected development of other physically differentiated classes (castes); and in
the first division of labor based on sex which developed into the (economic-cultural) class system.
An important problem with Firestone's argument, which surfaces in much, and particularly
early, radical feminist writing, is a tendency to resort to biology to ground the analysis. In
Firestone's case this tendency manifests itself in her claim that the ultimate causes of women's
oppression are biological differences between women and men. That women bear and nurse
children makes necessary a basic family form in which women are fundamentally dependent on
others in a way in which men are not. This power imbalance between women as a class and men as
a class is replicated by a similar imbalance between children and adults. From such biologically
based imbalances result the imbalances of power which have marked all human societies. However,
for Firestone, biology need not be destiny. Technological developments in the reproduction of
children conjoined with cultural changes in child-rearing would end the so far universal "tyranny of
the biological family.
As many critics have pointed out, Firestone's account suffers from the obvious problem of
ahistoricity. That we associate child-bearing or child-rearing with dependence and devalue those
who perform such tasks need not imply that all other societies make or have made similar
associations. Similarly, Firestone's account seems to project onto all societies a modem Western
nuclear type of family with a certain gender division of labor. This projection seems allied with her
association of child-bearing and child-rearing with dependence. If we abstract from our own nuclear
family, where individual women are often dependent on individual men, to different family forms
with different divisions of labor, then it is easy to see that a pregnant or lactating woman need be no

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more dependent on a larger social group than any other member of that group. To respond here that
any other member possesses a greater possibility of leaving that group because of a greater ease in
existing self-sufficiently is to belie both the social nature of human existence and the fact that
women are as capable of forsaking children as men.
These problems in Firestone's account bear explicating only because they reflect
methodological problems prevalent in radical feminist theory. Within the larger body of that theory
there has been a tendency to create transhistorical descriptions and explanations and at times to
resort to biology. As Heidi Hartmann notes, the radical feminist emphasis on psychology tends to
blind it to history.' Also, the inclination to articulate a transcultural perspective follows from the
need to create a theory which will explain the universal phenomenon of female oppression. The
emphasis on biology is connected with this need and also with the radical feminist focus on the
family, as the family tends to be viewed in modern Western culture in largely biological terms. The
contradiction here is that radical feminism's attention to the family and to gender has been
motivated by the desire to denaturalise both, to enable us to see both as constructed and changeable.
It has been one of the important contributions of radical feminist theory to make the point that
women are made and not born. The dilemma for radical feminism has been to retain this awareness
of the social construction of gender and the family while also maintaining an awareness of the
persistent and deep-seated phenomenon of female oppression and the importance of the family both
in generating that oppression and in structuring non-domestic life.
Radical feminist practice and theory has also changed in many ways since its genesis in the
late 1960s. One change is a growing attention to issues of race and class. Another is an
abandonment of the early reliance on the terminology of "roles" and the "sex-role system." As
Alison Jaggar has noted, role terminology implies that women and men have a high degree of
choice vis-a-vis gender; role terminology suggests that gender is a kind of mask or script which
people may assume or relinquish at will. Also, radical feminism in more recent years describes
women's oppression less as a consequence of "the family" and more in terms of specific practices
which have been associated with that institution, such as mothering and sexuality.
Indeed, one of the most important changes in radical feminism since the late 1960s has been
its increased, explicit focus on sexuality, a change associated with the extension of radical feminism
into lesbian feminism. An article which greatly contributed to this development was "The Woman
Identified Woman." This paper claimed that women must eliminate the need for male approval and
the practice of identifying with male beliefs and values, both central components of a misogynist
culture. The authors argued that an important means for women to accomplish such tasks and to
remove the self-hate women typically have toward themselves is to love other women, both
emotionally and sexually. At the very least, women cannot let the label "dyke" stand in the way of
developing such love and removing such self-hatred. More recently, Adrienne Rich has also tied
together female self-identification and lesbian sexuality under the phrase, "a lesbian continuum." By
using the term "lesbian" to denote not only female homosexuality but also instances "of primary
intensity between and among women, including the sharing of a rich inner life, the bonding against
male tyranny, the giving and receiving of practical and political support," Rich argues that "We
begin to grasp breadths of female history and psychology which have lain out of reach as a
consequence of limited, mostly clinical, definitions of 'lesbianism'.
However, radical feminism has gone even further than stating that there is a connection
between lesbianism and women coming to define and love themselves. Made more explicit, both by
Rich and others, is the assertion that women's oppression is constituted by heterosexuality. As
Catherine MacKinnon puts it, "Sexuality is the Iynch-pin of gender inequality." It is worthwhile
examining the following passage from the article in which this point was made for its illustration of
the similarities and differences between early radical feminism and more recent forms:
Implicit in feminist theory is a parallel argument: the moulding, direction, and expression of
sexuality organises society into two sexes-women and men-which division underlies the totality of
social relations. Sexuality is that social process which creates, organises, expresses, and directs
desire, creating the social beings we know as women and men, as their relations create society. As

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work is to Marxism, sexuality to feminism is socially constructed yet constructing, universal as

activity yet historically specific, jointly comprised of matter and mind. As the organised
expropriation of the work of some for the benefit of others defines a class- workers-the organised
expropriation of the sexuality of some for the use of others defines the sex, woman. Heterosexuality
is its structure, gender and family its congealed forms, sex roles its qualities generalised to social
persona, reproduction a consequence, and control its issue.
MacKinnon, like Firestone before her, defines feminism by contrast with Marxism. As
Marxism has defined production, or human labor recreating the conditions of its existence, as
central to its analysis of oppression, so feminism, according to MacKinnon, makes sexuality the
cornerstone of its analysis of oppression. Thus MacKinnon is continuing that path well trodden by
contemporary feminists, of recognising that Marxism, while providing a deeply insightful tool for
analysing social oppression, has no means for comprehending gender oppression. What is unique in
MacKinnon's argument is her explicit claim that the central lacuna in Marxism and that which
serves as the defining issue for feminism is sexuality.
MacKinnon's argument gives us clues for seeing both what has been most insightful in
radical feminism and its major problems. Contemporary radical feminism has been relatively
unique in the concerted attention it has given to matters often thought of as either natural or trivial,
issues such as sexuality and the family, and in arguing for the centrality of these phenomena in
structuring relations between women and men and social life as a whole. The insightfulness of the
first point, that in at least some cultures sex may be instrumental in structuring gender is illustrated
in the English language where the word "sex" refers both to sexual activity and to gender.
Moreover, the illuminating power of the second point, that both sexuality and gender are concerns
not only of "private life" but of all social life, must also be recognised as a crucial contribution of
radical feminism. For one, it enables us to see the interconnection of gender oppression in domestic
and non-domestic settings. Also, it helps us realize that the liberal feminist solution of extending the
sphere of state control is not necessarily a solution for women: that to extend the realm of state
control may entail merely a substitution in new forms of masculine power, or gender inequality, in
women's lives.
However, if the strengths of radical feminism lay in its recognition of the interconnection of
sexuality and gender and of their importance in affecting social life, its weaknesses result from its
tendency to collapse gender into sexuality and to see all societies as fundamentally similar. Indeed
the interconnection of these two problems can be seen in MacKinnon's analysis. MacKinnon argues
that "sexuality is the Iynch-pin of gender oppression." A question one might put regarding this
assertion is: does it hold true for all women? For example, one might say that the form of sexism
experienced by contemporary, poor, black, American women at the hands of a white, maledominated, state bureaucracy and corporate world seems at least as central, if not more central, a
form of sexism in the lives of these women than the sexism experienced in the context of
heterosexual relations. In other words, MacKinnon's analysis does not appear to leave room for the
possibility that forms of gender oppression, such as those experienced in work, politics, or religion,
might express or have come to express a central form of the oppression of some women. This is not
to deny that sexuality might have played a central role historically in generating gender oppression,
but that would constitute a historical and not an analytic truth, which would have to be integrated
with historical analysis to explicate gender oppression in other periods. Indeed, as I will argue in
later chapters, when one provides this kind of historical analysis, the insights of radical feminism
appear at their strongest.

Marxist and Socialist Feminism

The New Left, out of which radical feminism emerged, was composed of a diverse
collection of political groups and contained a wide spectrum of political views. An important
component of the New Left were individuals who described themselves as socialists or Marxists.
The relation of Marxists to the contemporary women's movement has been complex. In the late
1960s and early 1970s there were many who believed that the women's movement could at best be
described as reformist, demanding changes which were relatively superficial to the social order per

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se. Allied with this perspective was a tendency to see no important differences between liberal and
radical feminism. According to many Marxists, the ultimate political demands of both could be
summarised in the slogan, "Where there are men, there women shall be." This goal could be easily
satisfied by working class women performing those working class jobs traditionally performed by
men and ruling class women stepping into the positions of power of their husbands. Such a political
transformation would not alter, however, the fundamental class structure of capitalist society, which
would be relatively compatible with such changes. The notion that gender differences were
relatively superficial societal differences stemmed from the position that the oppression women
suffered as a consequence of their gender was insignificant in comparison with the oppression black
people suffered as a consequence of their race and even less significant in comparison with the
oppression black and white working class people suffered as a consequence of their class. Some
Marxists pointed to women of relative privilege and status, such as Jacqueline Kennedy, to illustrate
the absurdity of sympathising with women merely as a consequence of their gender.
The above derogatory stance of many Marxists to the women's movement diminished
somewhat by the early 1970s. Gender joined the ranks of race to become a worthy organising issue.
Persisting for a longer time was the question of how gender oppression was best to be explained.
While many Marxists came to accede to radical feminism's claim that gender oppression was a
significant type of oppression, the argument remained that radical feminism lacked an adequate
explanation of its cause. Radical feminism employed the phrase "sex-role system" to explain female
oppression and looked to the family as its carrier. For many Marxists such a framework was
ahistorical; it tended to place the family and the practices associated with both masculinity and
femininity outside history and class. Many believed that what was necessary was an analysis which
could explain the initial genesis of female oppression, its evolution within history, and the specific
forms it took within diverse class formations.
For many Marxists this analysis was available in Friedrich Engels' The Origin of the Family,
Private Property, and the State. Engels posited an initial state of social organisation as primarily
peaceful and egalitarian. The basic social unit in such societies was the collective kin group. All
economic and political activities were communal and public. There was no difference in status
between men and women; the political and economic egalitarianism that prevailed extended also to
the relations between the sexes. Such societies operated mainly at the level of subsistence; the little
social surplus that was created was passed on through the line of the mother. By a gradual
evolutionary process the form of group marriage which existed in such societies was replaced by
what Engels called the "pairing family," not identical with later monogamous marriage. The pairing
family represented a loose association and did not undermine the communistic structure which still
prevailed; that was destroyed only with the creation of a social surplus made possible by the
introduction of cattle breeding, metal working, weaving, and agriculture. Within the existing
division of labor, it was men who were in charge of food production. Men's role in creating the new
wealth in turn became contradictory with the principle of matrilineality. Matrilineality needed to be
overthrown; that it was, in turn, brought about the emergence of the patriarchal family:
Thus on the one hand, in proportion as wealth increased it made the man's position in the
family more important than the woman's, and on the other hand created an impulse to exploit this
strengthened position in order to overthrow, in favour of his children, the traditional order of
inheritance. This, however, was impossible so long as descent was reckoned according to mother
right. Mother right, therefore, had to be overthrown, and overthrown it was.... The reckoning of
descent in the female line and the matriarchal law of inheritance were thereby overthrown, and the
male line of descent and the paternal law of inheritance were substituted for them.... The overthrow
of mother right was the world historical defeat of the female sex. The man took command in the
home also; the woman was degraded and reduced to servitude; she became the slave of his lust and
a mere instrument for the production of his children.... The establishment of the exclusive
supremacy of the man shows its effect first in the patriarchal family, which now emerges as an
intermediate form.

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The attraction of Engels' explanation for contemporary Marxists was that it enabled a
recognition of the radical feminists' claim that sex oppression was significant without necessitating
an abandonment of the traditional Marxist framework. It was for Engels the same phenomenon, the
existence of an initial social surplus, which was simultaneously linked with the oppression of
women and the beginning privatisation of property. Private property, responsible for class
domination, was thus also connected with gender domination. The struggle for communism, as the
struggle for that form of social order which replicated at a higher level of subsistence the
communality and egalitarianism of primitive society, would bring about the simultaneous ending of
both forms of domination.
This account by Engels has been subject to a wide variety of criticisms, many of which I
will examine in a later chapter. For now, however, we might focus on some of the most widespread
criticisms that were made of his analysis, particularly by radical feminists in the course of the
1970s. In counter to Engels' argument, radical feminists claimed that male domination, labelled
"patriarchy," extends further back than even to the beginnings of class society. Thus they argued
against Engels' claim of a single cause, private property, to explain all forms of social inequality.
Engels' explanation, it was believed, by failing to give credence to the autonomy and persistence of
patriarchy, also failed to give adequate recognition to its strength.
This specific criticism was conjoined with a more generalised suspicion of traditional
Marxism's focus on the "economic." A persistent tendency within Marxism has been to interpret
such terms as "economic" or "production" to refer to phenomena taking place outside the home. A
consequence has been a tendency to dismiss both practically and theoretically the domestic sphere.
Thus even when Marxists became sensitive to the radical feminist claim that women did indeed
constitute an oppressed group, they tended to treat this oppression as a phenomenon most
interesting in its non-domestic manifestations. For example, many appeared to equate their
commitment to feminism with a concentration on the situation of women as paid workers.
I noted earlier that if liberalism could be characterised as giving theoretical and practical
priority to the state as a means of social change, and radical feminism saw the roots of gender
oppression and oppression in general as stemming from the family, Marxism could be characterised
as giving priority to the sphere of the economy. Thus Marxists have believed that it will be from
changes in the organisation of the economy that changes in both the state and the family will follow.
Marxists have tended to view the sphere of home and family, as presently constituted, as either nonproblematic or as vestigal survivals of an earlier form of social production, which would wither
away as a consequence of the steady advancement of capitalism or the establishment of socialism.
However, from the perspective of radical feminism, such a viewpoint suffers from a problem similar
to that of liberalism: both liberalism and Marxism fail to see how gender dynamics are built into the
operation of both the state and the economy. By failing to give credence to the dominating
dynamics of familial patterns in all of social life, both liberals and Marxists tend to recreate such
dynamics in all the social changes they instigate or envision.
For many Marxist women (and some men), many of these charges rang true. Many were
drawn to radical feminism's claim that Marxism's emphasis on the "economic" entailed a dismissal
of the importance and persistence of women's oppression and a lack of insight into its dynamics.
Many were also sympathetic to radical feminist criticisms of Engels' account. On the other hand,
many of those who were sympathetic to such charges were also critical of radical feminism's
tendencies toward biologism and ahistoricity. If Marxism had ignored the persistence of women's
oppression by concentrating on the economic sphere, it also seemed that radical feminism, by
concentrating on the family, tended to ignore the diversity of such oppression. Moreover, many
Marxist feminists believed it was important to retain not only Marxism's emphasis on history but
other aspects of the theory, such as Marxism's concepts of "materialism" and "class." The task then
became one of reinterpreting such concepts so that they were no longer susceptible to criticisms by
radical feminism.
Those who took up this task identified their position by the label of "socialist feminism." As
a stance it represents less a particular theoretical position than a commitment to integrate the

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insights of radical feminism and Marxism. The results have varied widely. One of the most
influential and representative examples was Heidi Hartmann's article, "The Unhappy Marriage of
Marxism and Feminism: Towards a More Progressive Union." Hartmann, like other socialist
feminists, criticised both a radical feminist approach for being blind to history and insufficiently
materialist and Marxist categories for being sex-blind. She argued that we need to understand the
categories of patriarchy and capital as descriptive of independent sets of social relations which
became, by the early twentieth century, mutually supportive. A form that this mutual
accommodation took was the family wage, as well as a sexual division of labor which placed
women in certain "feminine" low paying jobs. This theoretical approach paralleled, for her, what
was also required politically: "a practice which addresses both the struggle against patriarchy and
the struggle against capitalism.
Hartmann's position too has been subject to a variety of criticisms. One, by Iris Young, notes
a problem which follows from the very strength of Hartmann's argument. Young applauds the
"materialist" component of Hartmann's analysis, that it does not limit gender oppression to the
realm of culture or psychology but locates it in men's control of women's labor power. However,
Young notes that if one describes "patriarchy" in this way, i.e., as basically a mode of production, it
is difficult to differentiate it analytically from "capitalism," also conceptualised as a mode of
production. Young claims that it does not help here to argue that "patriarchy" and "capitalism" are
two distinct modes of production existing alongside each other, a position she attributes to Ann
Ferguson as well as to other "dual system" theorists. She argues that almost inevitably such an
approach ends up situating patriarchy within the family and hypostatising the division between
family and economy specific to capitalism into a universal form. Moreover, she argues that such an
approach, by situating patriarchy within the family, fails to adequately account for women's
oppression outside of the family.
With Hartmann and Young I would argue that patriarchy is not limited to culture or
psychology but must be understood as a distinct form of social organisation, regulating work as well
as sexuality. In this sense, it is in part, but only in part, "a mode of production," existing in the
modern period alongside of, in conjunction with, and at times, in antagonism to capitalism as "a
mode of production.'' In other words, gender as well as the system of private property and wage
labor organises the production and distribution of resources in the modern period. However, I would
claim against Young that if we identify patriarchy not with the family but rather as a certain type of
kinship structure which in pre-modern times organised work, sexuality, religion, etc., we can
understand how in the modern era aspects of patriarchy might be found both in the family and also
in the spheres of politics, the economy, etc., as these progressively became separated spheres. The
full telling of this tale, however, must await further chapters.

Conclusion
In the above I have attempted to point out the strengths and weaknesses of the different
varieties of contemporary American feminism and to begin to suggest that approach which will best
conjoin these strengths and eliminate the weaknesses. The fuller articulation of this approach will
come in later chapters, where I also elaborate its advantages over traditional political theory as
represented in liberalism and Marxism.
Needing to be stressed at this point, however, is that many of the strengths of all the variants
of contemporary American feminism and some of the dilemmas came about as a consequence of
something new in political theory: a focus on the family. While this focus has been strongest in
radical feminism, it has influenced liberal feminism and brought about, through the work of
Marxists, the construction of socialist feminism. As we shall see in the following chapter, this focus
on the family has been more true of twentieth-century American feminism than it was of the
nineteenth-century movement. To understand what has brought about this change and to provide a
deeper understanding of the significance of the theory being created, I would now like to turn to an
examination of the nineteenth-century movement and to changes taking place within this country
over the past two centuries.

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http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/nichols.htm. 17.02.2005
Linda Nicholson (1986)

Gender & History, Chapter 6

KARL MARX: THE THEORETICAL SEPARATION OF THE
DOMESTIC AND THE ECONOMIC
Source: Gender & History (1986) publ. Columbia University Press. Just the first chapter,
Contemporary Women's Movement and Chapter on Karl Marx, reproduced here.
As LOCKE'S WRITINGS in the seventeenth century expressed the historical separation of
kinship and state taking place in his time, so also in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries a new
branch of study arose, economic theory, which expressed a comparable separation of the economy
from both the state and kinship taking place in these centuries. While nascent versions of an
"economy" can be traced back at least to the Middle Ages, it was only by the eighteenth century that
this sphere became independent enough to generate its own body of theory, constructed in the
writings of such figures as Smith, Ricardo, and Marx.
Distinguishing Karl Marx in this list, not only from Smith and Ricardo but even more
strongly from economic theorists who were to come later, was his recognition that the seemingly
autonomous operation of the economy belied its interdependence with other aspects of social life.
Marx, more than most economic theorists, had a strong sense of history and in consequence was
aware of the origins of contemporary economic relations in older political and familial relations and
the continuous interaction of state, family, and economy even in the context of their historical
separation. However, while Marx more than most economic theorists was aware of the
interconnection of family, state, and economy, his theory did not consistently abide by this
awareness. Most important, the assumption common to much economic theory, that there is crossculturally an economic component of human existence which can be studied independently from
other aspects of human life, exists as a significant strand within his writings, and most prominently
in what might be called his philosophical anthropology or cross-cultural theory on the nature of
human life and social organisation. Indeed, Marx, by building a philosophical anthropology on the
basis of this assumption, developed and made more explicit that very perspective in much other
economic theory which in other contexts he criticised.
This inconsistency makes Marx a crucial figure for feminist theory. In the previous chapter I
argued that Locke, by obscuring the separation of family and state as historical, contributed to a
perspective on the analytic distinctiveness of these realms which has been harmful for
understanding gender. Similarly, I would claim that feminist theory needs to challenge that
prevalent modern assumption on the autonomy of the economic which has been equally harmful for
comprehending gender. Yet in this respect feminist theory has in Marx both a strong ally and a
serious opponent. As we shall see, feminists can employ much of the historical work of Marx and
many Marxists in comprehending both the evolution of the separation of family, state, and economy
and their interaction. On the other hand, Marx's philosophical anthropology raises serious obstacles
for Marxism's understanding of gender, and thus its ability to become an ally of feminism.

Marx's Materialism
A concept which lies at the center of Marx's views on human life and social organisation is
the concept of materialism. It is a concept around which there has been much controversy in the
various interpretations of Marx. The earliest interpreters, such as Engels, Plekhanov, and Lenin,
developed a reading of Marx, labelled "dialectical materialism," which emphasised the continuities
between human and natural phenomena and their common comprehension in scientific law. This
interpretation was in turn challenged by a variety of writers who found components in Marx's
writings which stressed the distinctiveness of human thought and action. An example here is Jurgen
Habermas, who, within the tradition of critical theory, has described his project as the creation of a
"reconstructed materialism." Many socialist feminists, in the attempt to integrate aspects of Marx's

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theory with a feminist approach, have stated their intent to build a "feminist materialism." Thus it
appears that any adequate analysis of Marxism must come to grips with this concept and answer the
question: what is Marx's materialism?
Part of the difficulty involved in answering this question, and one of the reasons why a
variety of answers has been given to it, is that there are very few passages in Marx's works where he
explicitly elaborates the meaning of this very basic concept in his theory. Moreover, those passages
where he does so are highly ambiguous. The ambiguity is illustrated in the well-known description
of his theory in the Preface to The Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy:
The general conclusion at which I arrived and which, once reached, became the guiding
principle of my studies can be summarised as follows. In the social production of their existence,
men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of
production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production.
The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society the real
foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite
forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general
process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines
their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.
In this passage there are five phrases which appear to be key in indicating what Marx
considered primary for explaining social life: (I) "the social production of their existence," (2) "the
development of their material forces of production," (3) "the economic structure of society," (4) "the
mode of production of material life," and (5) "their social existence." The specific meaning of many
of these phrases is unclear, and their relationship to each other also is not clear. Particularly
problematic is the last sentence claiming that social existence "determines" consciousness.
Following the death of Marx, many of his early interpreters chose to interpret such passages
as the above and particularly its last sentence as indicating a commitment of Marx to an ontology
composed of two elements: the material and the mental, being and consciousness. The
accompanying belief was that Marx's materialism could at least partly be defined in terms of giving
causal priority to the former as opposed to the latter. Thus Marxism as social theory came to be
viewed as spotlighting the material or physical conditions of human existence: the physiological
conditions of human behaviour, the natural environment upon which the behaviour acts and the
physical aspect of such behaviour itself. What was seen as differentiating Marx from earlier
materialists was that he was also "dialectical," meaning that he viewed such conditions in
interaction with each other. Because of this stress on interaction, Marx appeared to be following a
certain tradition set by Hegel. Marx, however, was said to "stand Hegel on his "feet" by giving his
dialectics a natural content. This interpretation was well supported by much in Marx's writings:
Since we are dealing with the Germans, who are devoid of premises, we must begin by
stating the first premise, namely, that men must be in a position to live in order to be able to "make
history." But life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and
many other things. The first historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy these needs,
the production of material life itself.
This interpretation of Marxism contains a number of problems. To posit a dichotomy
between "social being" and "consciousness" leaves one with the difficulty of explaining how the
conscious element can be removed from social existence. Moreover, as is clear from many passages
in Marx's writings, Marx himself did not believe this was possible. He states, for example, that
human activity is conscious activity, as manifested in the universality of its object.' He also
frequently argues that human needs are historically variable. It is difficult understanding this latter
claim without attributing to human needs at least a partial cognitive content.
Many of the writers in sympathy with a more humanistic Marxism have attempted to avoid
such difficulties through what might be labelled a "praxis" or "instrumentalist" elaboration of
materialism. It is well represented in Shlomo Avineri's The Social and Political Thought of Karl
Marx. In this work Avineri interprets the dichotomy that Marx creates between foundation and
superstructure or life and consciousness not as a distinction between "matter" and "spirit" but rather

85

as a distinction "between conscious human activity, aimed at the creation and preservation of the
conditions of human life, and human consciousness, which furnishes reasons, rationalisations and
modes of legitimisation and moral justification for the specific forms that activity takes." This
reading of Marx thus draws on Marx's claim that social agents may not necessarily provide the most
adequate descriptions and explanations of their activity to salvage his commitment to the position
that human existence is conscious existence.
The instrumentalist reading of Marx, found in varying forms in Avineri and other scholars,
agrees with the earlier dialectical materialist account in recognising the centrality for Marx of
human activity in interaction with its environment. The differences lie in how this activity is
described. The instrumentalist approach differs from that of the dialectical materialist in ways
similar to early twentieth-century instrumentalists' differences from empiricist and stimulusresponse accounts of human behaviour. At stake in both challenges is an emphasis on the role of
consciousness in distinguishing human from other forms of natural existence. Thus Avineri and
others have tended to point to those passages in Marx's writings where Marx notes the role of
consciousness in guiding behaviour. A frequently noted passage, useful because it is found in
Marx's later work, is one in Capital where Marx distinguishes the behaviour of humans from
animals by noting that for humans the goals which motivate behaviour need not be physically
present:
We presuppose labour in a form that stamps it as distinctively human. A spider conducts
operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many of an architect in the
construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that
the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every
labour process we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its
commencement.
Similarly, Avineri and others have tended to draw on Marx's Theses on Feuerbach where, as
in the following, Marx stresses the active role of consciousness in giving content to the objects of
perception:
The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism (that of Feuerbach included) is that the
thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not
as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively."
The instrumentalist reading of Marx is powerful; it is both more sophisticated conceptually
than the previous account and truer to at least one significant strain within Marx. It does not,
however, resolve an important ambiguity within Marx which contemporary feminists have recently
identified.
Both the dialectical and instrumentalist interpretations of Marx recognised the centrality for
Marx of human activity engaged in satisfying the conditions of human life. The two interpretations
differed only in that the former tended to view such activity and such conditions in biological terms.
From a feminist perspective both theories contain a common deficiency. While neither theory
provides any grounds for differentiating, for "scientific" Marxists among biological needs, and for
"humanistic" Marxists among historically constituted needs, both theories in fact end up giving
priority to certain needs-those which can be satisfied by the use or consumption of physical objects.
Similarly, both accounts do in fact, though without explanation, stress one type of activity as central
for Marx in satisfying the "conditions of life"-that activity which results in procuring or producing
such objects. Thus those human activities associated with the gathering, hunting, or growing of food
and the making of objects become central and other activities such as child-rearing or nursing
become marginal. To be sure, this elimination of certain needs and activities is not universally
present in either interpretation. Engels, for example, on at least one occasion describes activities as
child-rearing as equivalent in importance to those activities involved in the production of food and
objects:
According to the materialist conception, the determining factor in history is, in the final
instance, the production and reproduction of immediate life. This, again, is of a twofold character:
on the one side, the production of the means of existence, of food, clothing and shelter and the tools

86

necessary for that production; on the other side, the production of human beings themselves, the
propagation of the species. The social organisation under which the people of a particular historical
epoch and a particular country live is determined by both kinds of production: by the stage of
development of labor on the one hand and of the family on the other. The lower the development of
labor and the more limited the amount of its products, and consequently, the more limited also the
wealth of the society, the more the social order is found to be dominated by kinship groups.
However, within this structure based on kinship groups the productivity of labor increasingly
develops . . ., the old society founded on kinship groups is broken up. In its place appears a new
society, with its control centred in the state, the subordinate units of which are no longer kinship
associations, but local associations; a society in which the system of the family is completely
dominated by the system of property.
Even in the above Engels is somewhat ambivalent regarding the equivalence of what has
been described in the feminist literature as "reproductive" and "productive" activities. Engels in this
quote locates "reproductive" activities in the institution of the family or kinship. He argues that
while in early societies with low productivity of labor the family "dominates," in later societies the
system of the family is itself dominated by the system of property. This would seem to imply that
whether productive or reproductive activities are basic varies historically. However, since he argues
that the factor deciding this variation is itself the productivity of labor, it would appear that
production is always the ultimate "determining" factor. This implication of his argument is indeed
further elaborated in other sections of the work from which this passage was taken.
The same ambiguity, also culminating in a focus on activity aimed at the creation of food
and objects, can be found in writers in the instrumentalist tradition. For example, Avineri elaborates
the concept of "material base" in Marx to mean "conscious human activity, aimed at the creation
and preservation of the conditions of human life." From this elaboration there would appear to
follow no differentiation between productive and reproductive activities. However, a few pages
later, Avineri goes on to claim, without explanation, that for Marx "the concrete expression of this
human activity is work, the creation of tools of human activity that leaves its impact on the world."
A reasonable question to ask, which has recently been asked by feminists, is why this should be so,
i.e., why should the concrete expression of human activity be work as so elaborated?
The source of this unclarity in the interpreters of Marx regarding the relation of reproductive
to productive activities has its source in Marx. In particular, it stems from an ambiguity in Marx's
use of the term "production." This ambiguity is illustrated in the following passage (emphasis
added):
The production of life, both of one's own in labour and of fresh life in procreation now
appears as a double relationship: on the one hand as a natural, and on the other as a social
relationship. By social we understand the cooperation of several individuals, no matter under what
conditions, in what manner and to what end. It follows from this that a certain mode of production,
or industrial stage, is always combined with a certain mode of co-operation, or social stage, and this
mode of co-operation is itself a 'productive force.' Further, that the multitude of productive forces
accessible to men determines the nature of society, hence, that the 'history of humanity' must always
be studied and treated in relation to the history of industry and exchange.
In the first sentence "production" refers to all activities necessary for species survival; by the
middle of the passage its meaning has become restricted to those activities which are geared to the
creation of material objects (industrial). While from the meaning of "production" in the first
sentence, Marx could include family forms under the "modes of cooperation" he describes, by the
middle of the paragraph its meaning has become such to now include only those "modes of
cooperation" found within the "history of industry and exchange." In effect, Marx has eliminated
from his theoretical focus all activities basic to human survival which fall outside a capitalist
"economy." Those activities he has eliminated include those identified by feminists as
"reproductive" (childcare, nursing) and also those concerned with social organisation, i.e., those
regulating kinship relations or in modem societies those we would classify as "political." Marx's

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ability to do this was made possible by his moving from a broad to a narrow meaning of
"production."
This ambiguity in Marx's use of "production" can be further understood in terms of the
variety of meanings the word possesses. First, in its broadest meaning it can refer to any activity
that has consequences. More narrowly, it refers to those activities that result in objects. Finally, in
an even more specific sense, it refers to those activities that result in objects that are bought and
sold, i.e., commodities. Similarly, if we look at such related words as "labor" and "product" we can
find a confusion between respectively (1) activity requiring any effort and the result of such activity,
(2) activity resulting in an object and that object, and (3) activity resulting in a commodity and that
commodity.
Marx and many of his later followers often do not make clear which of these meanings they
are employing when they use these and related words. For example, when Marx claims that labor is
the motor of historical change, does he mean all human effort which changes the natural and/or
social environment, only that effort which results in objects or effort which results in commodities?
Similarly, Marx's concept of the "economy" often becomes confusing, in part as a consequence of
ambiguities in his use of "production." To illustrate this point it is helpful to refer again to the
passage quoted earlier from the Preface to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy:
In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which
are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the
development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production
constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and
political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode *
of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life.
In the above, Marx equates the "economic structure of society" with its "relations of
production." Since a reasonable interpretation of "mode of production of material life" would be all
activities conducive to the creation and recreation of the society's physical existence, the "relations
of production" should reasonably include all social interaction having this object as its end. Thus the
family should count as a component of the "economy." Even if we interpret the phrase "mode of
production of material life" to refer only to activities concerned with the gathering, hunting, or
growing of food and the making of objects, the family, in many societies, would still be included as
a component of the economy. Neither of these two meanings of "economy," however, is the same as
its meaning in post-industrial capitalism, where the "economy" comes to refer principally to the
activities of those engaged in the creation and exchange of commodities. Thus Marx's concept of
economy in the above is ambiguous as a consequence of the ambiguity in his concept of production.
Such ambiguities in the meaning of key words in Marx's theory in turn make possible certain
serious problems within the theory. In particular, they enable Marx to falsely project features of
capitalist society onto all societies. This point is illustrated by examining Marx's claim that "the
changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense
superstructure." This claim is intended as a universal claim of social theory, i.e., it is meant to state
that in all societies there is a certain relation between the "economy" and the "superstructure." If we
interpret "economy" here to refer to "all activities necessary to meet the conditions of human
survival," the claim is non-problematic but trivial. More frequently, "economy" is interpreted by
Marx and Marxists to refer to "those activities concerned with the production of food and objects."
Here, while the claim ceases to be trivial, it now contains certain problems as a cross-cultural claim.
While all societies have some means of organising the production of food and objects as well as
some means of organising sexuality and childcare, it is only in capitalist society that the former set
of activities becomes differentiated from the latter under the concept of the "economic" and takes on
a certain priority. Thus by employing the more specific meaning of "economic" in his cross-cultural
claims, Marx projects the specialisation and primacy of the "economic" found in capitalist society
onto all human societies.
A Marxist might respond that yes, there is this ambiguity in many of the texts of Marx and
his followers, but that it can be avoided by careful attention to the following distinctions: that only

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the most general meaning of "production," "labor," and "economic'' can be employed crossculturally; that the more specific meaning of these terms applies only to class societies and the most
specific meaning only to capitalist societies. The point might be made that Marx is accomplishing a
variety of different tasks in his writing: (I) he is developing a general, cross-cultural theory of
human existence and social organisation; (2) he is articulating a theory of class societies; and (3) he
is offering a specific analysis of capitalist society. For these different tasks, he needs different
meanings for the above terms.' Thus cross-culturally, Marx would define "labor" very generally as
that process by which human beings regulate the material reactions between themselves and nature.
In class societies this general activity is developed most strongly in the activity of producing food
and physical objects. Finally, in capitalist society, the latter activity becomes most predominantly
the even more narrowly circumscribed activity of producing commodities.
This response, while forceful, contains certain weaknesses which can be seen when we
attempt to translate the above distinctions into actual theoretical claims. Most important, the
interpretation of the most general meaning of "labor," as "that process by which human beings
regulate the material reactions between themselves and nature" remains ambiguous. If we translate
this phrase to incorporate activities we would describe as familial, political, and economic, we have
differentiated it from the more narrow meanings but have emerged with a very trivial cross-cultural
theory whose specific import is difficult to see. On the other hand, if we mean it to include only
activities concerned with the making of food and objects, we have a theory more theoretically
interesting but still subject to the preceding charges.
Moreover, it is the latter option which in the literature has almost always been followed;
Marx and Marxists most always interpret "labor," "production," and "economic" to refer to those
activities concerned with the making of food and objects. The following represent only a few
examples:
Production is always a particular branch of production-e.g. agriculture, cattle-breeding,
manufacture etc.-or it is a totality.
The obvious, trite notion: in production the members of society approximate (create, shape)
the products of nature in accord with human needs.... Production creates the objects which
correspond to the given need.
Assume a particular state of development in the productive forces of man and you will get a
particular form of commerce and consumption.
The response could perhaps be made that Marx employs this more narrow meaning of
production because of the implicit assumption that he is speaking only of class societies where,
according to the above response, this meaning would be appropriate. But even here the objections
raised previously still hold: why should we assume that even in all class societies that those
activities concerned with the making of food and objects are primary or even that they are
sufficiently differentiated to make such a claim? Are we not again merely projecting features of
capitalist society backward?
Let us look first at the idea of an economic component of society as a separable sphere. This
idea is built into Marx's statements on determinacy, for to argue that anything is a determinant one
must be able to separate it from that which is being determined. In Marx's case, the assertion that
the nature of production or the "economic" structures all other aspects of society commits him to the
point that the "economic" can be differentiated from other aspects of society. But as many
commentators on Marx have pointed out-such as Georg Lukacs or the group of theorists writing in
Socialisme ou barbarie-such a claim is relatively true only for capitalist societies. In pre-capitalist
societies, economic aspects of life are more clearly intertwined with the religious, the sexual, and
the political.
One means which Marxists have employed in responding to this point has been to
distinguish economic functions from economic institutions. Thus the argument has been made that
it is only in capitalist society that the economy, the state, and the family are separated as institutions.
However, this does not mean that the theorist cannot differentiate the "economic" as a societal
function even in societies which do not differentiate it as an institution. An example of this type of

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response is to be found in the writings of Maurice Godelier. Godelier argues that in many early
societies it is the dominant institution of kinship through which the economic function is expressed.
Thus, while here the economic does not determine as an institution, it does as a function.' Isaac
Balbus has argued that the above reinterpretation of Marxism makes the theory into a tautology. As
he claims:
for Godelier, what activity can be demonstrated to predominate over all the other activities
in a society becomes, by definition, the mode of production! The theory of determination by the
mode of production, then, becomes true by definition and does not lend itself to possible
falsification. Nor is it a terribly useful tautology because it in no way helps us to understand which
social activities become determinative-and thus function as the mode of production- under what
conditions. We are back to where we started, because this was exactly what the theory of the
determinative power of the mode of production was supposed to tell us!
An even more fundamental question can be raised: what grounds do we have for believing
that it is important to focus on the economic component of kinship in kinship-organised societies as
a separable social component? The argument that we need to separate out an economic function
even in societies which themselves do not separate out the economic as an institution rests
ultimately on the belief that such a function is basic and thus must receive specialised attention. We
are back to the issue of primacy.
Thus, let us look more closely at this issue. Marx, by asserting the primacy of the economic,
cannot merely be arguing that the production of food and objects is a necessary condition for human
life to continue. That certainly is true, but the same can be said about many other aspects and
activities of human beings: that we breathe, communicate with each other through language and
other means, engage in heterosexual activity which results in child-bearing, create forms of social
organisation, raise children, etc. Rather Marx appears to be making the stronger and more
interesting claim that the ways in which we produce food and objects in turn structure the manner in
which other necessary human activities are performed. But the force of this claim, I would argue,
rests upon a feature true only for capitalist society: that here the mode in which food and object
production is organised to a significant extent does structure other necessary human activities. This
is because in capitalist society, the production of food and objects takes on an importance going
beyond its importance as a necessary life activity.
To express the same point in another way: insofar as capitalist society organises the
production and distribution of food and objects according to the profit motive, those activities
concerned with the making and exchanging of food and goods assume a value which is relatively
independent of their role in satisfying human needs. The ability of such activities to generate a
profit gives to them a priority which can be mistakenly associated with their function in satisfying
such needs. As Marshall Sahlins has noted, this priority makes credible a kind of reflectionist or
economic determinist theory where the system of production and exchange appears basic:
Since the objectives and relations of each subsystem are distinct, each has a certain internal
logic and a relative autonomy. But since all are subordinated to the requirements of the economy,
this gives credibility to the kind of reflectionist theory which perceives in the superstructure the
differentiations (notably of class) established in production and exchange.
Thus, if in capitalist society such activities as raising children or nursing the sick had been as
easily conducive to making a profit as activities concerned with the production of food and objects
became, we might in turn believe that the manner in which human societies raise children or nurse
their sick structures all other life activities in which they engage.
This priority given to the making of food and objects in capitalist society has had many
diverse ramifications. One was a transformation in prevailing attitudes toward labor. In precapitalist societies, such as that of ancient Greece or medieval Europe, labor was held in contempt.
It was recognised that some humans must necessarily engage in it, as it was recognised that all
human beings must eat, sleep, defecate, etc. But all these activities were viewed as that which
expressed the lowest and most animal-like aspects of human existence, and not those in which
humans should take any pride.

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This negative stance toward labor began to change in the early modern period. Labor or
industriousness became a sign of one's saintliness and no longer a sign of one's beastliness. In
association with this change arose also a fundamental alteration in motivation: the rise of the
acquisitive motive. R. H. Tawney describes the shift involved by way of contrast with the medieval
attitude toward gain:
But economic motives are suspect. Because they are powerful appetites, men fear them, but
they are not mean enough to applaud them. Like other strong passions, what they need, it is thought,
is not a clear field but repression. There is no place in medieval theory for economic activity which
is not related to a moral end, and to found a science of society upon the assumption that the appetite
for economic gain is a constant and measurable force, to be accepted, like other natural forces, as an
inevitable and self-evident datum would have appeared to the medieval thinker as hardly less
irrational or less immoral than to make the premise of social philosophy the unrestrained operation
of such necessary human attributes as pugnacity or the sexual instinct. The outer is ordained for the
sake of the inner; economic goods are instrumental.... At every turn, therefore, there are limits,
restrictions, warnings against allowing economic interests to interfere with serious affairs.
In an earlier chapter I argued for the specificity of the "family" to the modern period on the
grounds that while some of the features we associate with the family may have existed before this
period, they did not possess the same significance which they later acquired. Similarly, we might
say here that while an acquisitive motive may have existed before the early modern period, it too
existed with a different significance; it existed within the context of shame and silence. This context
began to disappear in the modern period and the acquisitive motive became the basis upon which
the economy-meaning those activities concerned with the production and distribution of food and
objects-became organised. With the rise of prominence of the acquisitive motive attendant upon the
emergence of capitalism came a change in how these activities, and the conditions which make
them possible, were viewed. Activity concerned with the making of food and objects became
"labor" and acquired a new evaluative standing. The soil, an important physical condition to such
activity, became "land." Finally, with land, the tools conducive to the productivity of labor became
"capital." What distinguishes "labor" from "work," "land" from "soil," and "capital" from "tools" is
the motive of accumulation.
Marx, in many respects, assumes these values and assumptions of capitalist society within
his cross-cultural theory. Thus he assumes that labor is the prime manner in which human beings
express and define themselves:
Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you
like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to
produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organisation....
What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with
how they produce.
As Jean Baudrillard comments on the above: why must our vocation always be to
distinguish ourselves from animals, and moreover, why must this be in the form of production?
On this dialectical base, Marxist philosophy unfolds in two directions: an ethic of labor and
an aesthetic of non-labor. The former traverses all bourgeois and socialist ideology. It exalts labor as
value, as end in itself, as categorical imperative. Labor loses its negativity and is raised to an
absolute value.... A spectre haunts the revolutionary imagination: the phantom of production.
Everywhere it sustains an unbridled romanticism of productivity.
It is not only the idolisation of labor that Marx takes over from bourgeois society. It is also at
times, and more surprisingly, an assumption of natural acquisitiveness. For example, Marx and
Engels explain the emergence of the first class division on the basis of the creation of an initial
social surplus. An implicit premise is that any surplus over what is required for bare subsistence will
be sought after and struggled over. But why should we assume this to be the case without an
assumption of acquisitiveness? This same reliance on an assumption of acquisitiveness seems also
present in Marx's claim that in the conflict between expanding modes of production and existing
relations of production, the outcome is, if not determined, at least prejudiced on the side of the

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expanding productive forces. At least part of the effectiveness of this argument for modern readers
rests on the force of the shared assumption of acquisitiveness.
Similar questions can be raised about Marx's dictum on the perpetuity of human need
creation. Marx argues that in the process of humans acting on the natural world to satisfy their
needs, they create new needs which in turn demand satisfaction. Thus he claims in The German
Ideology: "The satisfaction of the first need (the action of satisfying, and the instruments of
satisfaction which have been acquired) leads to new needs; and this production of new needs is the
first historical act." This, however, appears a valid description of human behaviour only in capitalist
societies.
Such societies have as an important basis the perpetual creation of need. However, there are
many examples of societies which after laboring to satisfy their needs, stop working. Marx is aware
of societies where needs are not being continually created. In his work he frequently draws on a
distinction between societies which consume their surplus and remain stable for long periods of
time and societies which invest their surplus and have histories. However, Marx does not appear to
have reconciled this historical awareness with the above more general, anthropological claim.
Most significant for the purposes of this book is Marx's projection of the autonomy of the
economic into his cross-cultural theory. To illustrate how that projection may be a function not
merely of the embeddedness of Marx's work in capitalist values and assumptions but even more
specifically of certain unique features of his time, I would like now to look more closely at the
historical context in which Marx wrote.

The Historical Context of Marxism

One theorist whose work can provide us with useful tools for understanding the historical
context of Marxism is Karl Polanyi. One of the major theses of his book The Great Transformation
is similar to a point stressed here: that while it is true that all societies must satisfy the needs of
biology to stay alive, it is only true of modern society that the satisfaction of some of these needs in
ever increasing amounts becomes a central motive of action. This transformation Polanyi identifies
with the establishment of a market economy whose full development, he argues, does not occur
until the nineteenth century. Polanyi acknowledges the existence of markets, both external and
local, before this century. However, he makes a distinction between what he describes as external,
local, and internal trade. External and local trade are complementary to the economies in which they
exist. They involve the transfer of goods from a geographical area where they are available to an
area where they are not available. The trading that goes on between town and countryside or
between areas different in climate represent such types of trading. Internal trade differs from both
the above in that it is essentially competitive, involving "a very much larger number of exchanges in
which similar goods from different sources are offered in competition with one another." Polanyi
claims that these different forms of trade have different origins; in particular, internal trade arose
neither from external nor from local trade, as common sense might suggest, but rather from the
deliberate intervention on the part of the state. The mercantile system of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries established its initial conditions, making possible the beginnings of a national market.
While state intervention was necessary to establish the initial conditions for a national
market, the true flourishing of such a market required the absence of at least some of the kinds of
state regulation found under mercantilism. A market economy is one where the movement of the
elements of the economy- goods, labor, land, money-is governed by the actions of the market.
Under feudalism and the guild system, non-market mechanisms controlled two of these elements,
land and labor. This non-market control over labor and land did not disappear under mercantilism; it
merely changed its form. The principles of statute and ordinance became employed over those of
custom and tradition. Indeed, as Polanyi claims, it is not until after 1834 in England, with the repeal
of the Speenhamland law which had provided government subsidies for the unemployed and
underemployed, that the last of these elements, labor, was freed to become a commodity. Thus it
was not until the nineteenth century in England that a market economy could be said to be fully
functioning.

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A market economy has certain distinctive features. Of key importance is the dominance of
the principle of price as the mechanism for organising the production and distribution of goods.
This means that not until all the elements necessary to the production and distribution of goods are
controlled by price can a market economy be said to be functioning. A market economy demands
the freeing of the elements comprising the economy from the governance of other social
institutions, such as the state or the family. Polanyi does not discuss the decline of the family in
governing such elements. He does, however, stress the separation of the political and the economic
as a necessary condition of a market economy:
A self-regulating market demands nothing less than the institutionalised separation of
society into an economic and political sphere. Such a dichotomy is, in effect, merely the
restatement, from the point of view of society as a whole of the existence of a self-regulating
market. It might be argued that the separateness of the two spheres obtains in every type of society
at all times. Such an inference, however would be based on a fallacy. True, no society can exist
without a system of some kind which ensures order in the production and distribution of goods. But
that does not imply the existence of separate economic institutions; normally, the economic order is
merely a function of the social, in which it is contained. Neither under tribal, nor feudal, nor
mercantile conditions was there, as we have shown, a separate economic system in society.
Nineteenth century society, in which economic activity was isolated and imputed to a distinctive
economic motive was, indeed, a singular departure.
Polanyi goes on to argue that not only does a market economy require the separation of the
elements of the economy from other spheres of social life, but that this means in effect the
dominance of the principle of the market over other social principles. Since two of the elements of
the economy, land and labor, are basic features of social life, to subordinate them to market
mechanisms is in effect to subordinate society to the market:
But labor and land are not other than the human beings themselves of which every society
consists and the natural surrounding in which it exists. To include them in the market mechanism
means to subordinate the substance of society itself to the laws of the market.
We might qualify Polanyi's argument by saying that not all labor becomes subordinate to the
laws of the market when the economy becomes a market economy; domestic labor does not, at least
in any simple sense. Since, however, some of the labor essential to human survival does become
subordinated to the market, we can still accede to this point of the growing dominance of the
market. Moreover, we might also agree with his further claim that the organisation of the economic
system under a market mechanism means also the dominance of the economic. He argues that this
occurs because "the vital importance of the economic factor to the existence of society precludes
any other result. For once the economic system is organised in separate institutions, based on
specific motives and conferring a special status, society must be shaped in such a manner as to
allow that system to function according to its own laws. This is the meaning of the familiar
assertion that a market economy can function only in a market society." Such an argument can be
supplemented by the earlier claim that the alliance of the production of goods with the acquisitive
motive means the rise in importance of the production of goods over other life activities. The
acquisitive motive is such so that to allow it as a motive means to allow it as a dominant motive.
Thus, a thesis often thought of as central to Marxism, the separation and dominance of the
economic, is in effect a defining condition of a market economy. Moreover, as follows from
Polanyi's analysis, it is just this condition which only becomes true within the nineteenth century.
Thus one can conclude that Marxism as social theory is very much a product of its time, insightful
as an exposition of that which was becoming true, and false to the extent that the limited historical
applicability of its claims was not recognised.
Polanyi provides us with another claim about the origins of a market economy which also
might shed some light on the historical context of Marxism. Occasionally Marx's materialism has
been given a technological interpretation. Following from such a reading, the degree of a society's
technical competence in producing food and objects is taken as the primary fact in explaining that
society. There is much evidence in Marx's writing for such an interpretation. It is consistent with the

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previously quoted Preface to The Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy where Marx
does appear to treat "the development of their material forces of production" as the most basic fact
about a society to which even the "relations of production" must be "appropriate." G. A. Cohen
convincingly argues for such a reading and also provides examples of many other passages in
Marx's work which support it. One often quoted instance is the following from The Poverty of
Philosophy:
Social relations are closely bound up with productive forces. In acquiring new productive
forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing
their way of earning a living, they change all their social relations. The hand-mill gives you society
with the feudal lord: the steam-mill society with the industrialist capitalist.
However, again we might interpret as historically specific this claim about the socially
causal role of technological development. Polanyi points to the importance of technological
developments in the eighteenth century for bringing about the rise of a market economy. He notes
that as long as the machinery used in production was simple and inexpensive, production remained
an accessory to commerce, engaged in only as long as it produced a profit. However, once
machinery became more complex and expensive, its purchase demanded steady use to pay back the
initial investment. It thus became necessary to ensure the steady supply of the necessary elements of
production: labor, land, and money. In consequence, these elements had to be brought within the
market system itself.
However, a thesis of technological determinism, while perhaps more true for the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries than for others, even here needs qualification. As the above example
indicates, technological developments can only be socially efficacious when the social conditions
allow them to be such. A concern with producing goods more efficiently and in greater amounts
makes sense only in a society which both values the increased production of goods and has no
means other than technological advance for accomplishing it. As Robert Heilbroner points out, there
have been - many societies where such a concern was lacking. Neither the societies of antiquity nor
of the Middle Ages showed much interest in technological development, at least as this applied to
the production of goods. Even societies such as the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, who created an
impressive technology of architecture, showed no interest in developing a technology of production.
Thus technological development, even when socially efficacious, itself requires explanation.
As noted, Polanyi claims that a defining condition of a market economy is a separation of
the economic and political. Not noted by him, but also essential, is the separation of the economic
from the domestic and familial. Indeed, when we think of what is pivotal about industrialisation it is
that the production of goods ceases to be organised by kinship relations and to be an activity of the
household. The creation of goods by members of the household for the purpose of use by the
household and organised primarily in accordance with family roles becomes replaced by the
creation of goods by members of many different households for the purpose of exchange and
organised in accordance with the profit motive. The commoditisation of the elements of production
means not only, as Polanyi notes, a withdrawal of control on the part of the state over these
elements but also a withdrawal on the part of the family. When labor remained at home, its content
and organisation were primarily family matters; when it left only p its consequences, wages,
remained such.
Thus from the above analysis we can comprehend the emergence of the "economic" as
separate from both the family and the state as the outcome of a historical process. This kind of
analysis, I have repeatedly suggested, is one most in sympathy with the requirements of feminism.
It is also one which might be used to challenge and explain the tendency among Marx and his
followers to employ the category of the "economic" cross-culturally. The irony, however, is that
such a historical analysis could itself be described as Marxist. Polanyi's work builds on the kinds of
historical investigations Marx himself carried out in studying the emergence of capitalism out of
earlier social forms. This irony reinforces a point suggested earlier-that while in Marx's concrete
historical analysis there is much from which feminism can draw in comprehending the changing

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relation of family, state, and economy, it is most strongly in Marx's cross-cultural claims that the
theory becomes unhelpful.
However, one point of qualification needs to be made even to this distinction. It is not only
in Marx's actual historical investigations that he avoids the problems found in his cross-cultural
theory. Also at times in his reflections on theory he becomes cognisant of the dangers of ahistoricity.
Precisely on such grounds, he himself criticises other social theorists. For example, in The Poverty
of Philosophy he accuses Proudhon of falling into the mistake of bourgeois economists who fail to
recognise the historical specificity of economic categories. Similarly, as Anthony Giddens notes,
one of the two principal criticisms which Marx makes against political economists in the Paris
Manuscripts is that they assume that the conditions of production present within capitalism can be
attributed to all economic forms. In Capital Marx frequently notes that what he is describing is true
only of a particular society. For example, he claims that "definite historical conditions are necessary
that a product may become a commodity." Thus, many of the distinctions Marx makes in Capital,
such as that between use value and exchange value, are distinctions applicable only for certain
societies.
The problem, however, is that Marx does not offer clear guidelines for avoiding the mistake
of historical projection. He certainly does not want the social theorist to employ only those
categories available to the social agents whom the theory describes. Marx, on at least one occasion,
argues for the useful application of categories which have arisen in later societies to explain earlier
societies:
Bourgeois society is the most advanced and complex historical organisation of production.
The categories which express its relations, and an understanding of its structure, therefore, provide
an insight into the structure and the relations of production of all formerly existing social formations
the ruins and component elements of which were used in the creation of bourgeois society. Some of
these unassimilated remains are still carried on within bourgeois society, others, however, which
previously existed only in rudimentary form, have been further developed and have attained their
full significance, etc. The anatomy of man is a key to the anatomy of the ape.
Marx explicitly states that the above does not entail that we see "in all social phenomena
only bourgeois phenomena," for, as he claims, the earlier phenomena always exist in a different
form. However, what he does not further remark on is the always difficult decision of determining
for any particular case whether the phenomena being studied are sufficiently similar to be granted
an identical label.
Even if Marx's methodological remarks provided us with clear guidelines, this would not
remove the possibility that he himself occasionally failed to follow such guidelines and falsely
generalised phenomena from his own society onto others. This latter tendency is a feature of his
work, and the problems which result, exemplified most strongly in his cross-cultural theory, make
that work frequently unhelpful for explaining gender. To elaborate this point, that is, to show that it
is precisely Marx's ahistoricity which accounts for the theory's weaknesses in analysing gender, I
would now like to focus specifically on the consequences of these problems for Marxism's analysis
of gender.

Marx on Women, Gender Relations, and the Family

In comprehending Marxism on gender it is first important to note that Marx's concept of
class relies on the narrow translation of "production" and "economic"-i.e., as incorporating only
those activities concerned with the making of food and objects. Thus the criterion which Marx
employs to demarcate class position, "relations to the means of production," is understood as
relation to the means of producing food and objects. For Marx, the first class division arose over the
struggle for appropriation of the first social surplus, meaning the first surplus of food and objects. A
consequence of such a definition of class is to eliminate from consideration historical conflicts over
other socially necessary activities, such as child-bearing and child-rearing. A second consequence is
to eliminate from consideration changes in the organisation of such activities as components of
historical change. The theory thus eliminates from consideration activities which have historically
been at least one important component in gender relations. But again we can ask of the theory

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questions similar to those raised earlier: why ought we to eliminate or to count as less important in
our theory of history changes in reproduction or child-rearing practices than changes involved in
food- or object-producing activities? First, does it even make sense to attempt to separate the
changes involved, prior to the time when these activities were themselves differentiated, i.e., prior
to the time when the "economy" became differentiated from the "family"? Furthermore, is not the
assumption of the greater importance of changes in production itself a product of a society which
gives priority to food and object creation over other life activities?
Many feminist theorists have noted the consequences for Marx of leaving out reproductive
activities from his theory of history. Mary O'Brien, for example, argues that one effect is to separate
historical continuity from biological continuity, which one might note is particularly ironic for a
"materialist":
Thus Marx talks continuously of the need for men to 'reproduce' themselves, and by this he
almost always means reproduction of the self on a daily basis by the continual and necessary
restoking of the organism with fuel for its biological needs. Man makes himself materially, and this
is of course true. Man, however, is also 'made' reproductively by the parturitive labour of women,
but Marx ultimately combines these two processes. This has the effect of negating biological
continuity which is mediated by women's reproductive labour, and replacing this with productive
continuity in which men, in making themselves, also make history. Marx never observes that men
are in fact separated materially from both nature and biological continuity by the alienation of the
male seed in copulation.
Similarly, though from a different perspective, Marx's lack of consideration of reproductive
activities enables him to ignore, to the extent that he does, the component of socialisation in human
history. In other words, the failures in Marx's theory which result from his attraction to a narrow
interpretation of "materialism" might have been alleviated had he paid more attention to the activity
of child-rearing.
As O'Brien points out, there is a tendency for Marx to negate the sociability and historicity
of reproductive activities, to see such activities as natural and thus ahistorical. Alternatively, he
occasionally treats changes in the organisation of such activities as historical effects of changes in
productive relations. Thus she notes that in The Communist Manifesto, Marx treats the family as a
superstructural effect of the economy. This is evidenced also in a letter to P. V. Annenkov of
December 28, 1846, where Marx states: "Assume particular stages of development of production,
commerce and consumption and you will have a corresponding social constitution, a corresponding
organisation of the family, of orders and classes, in a word, a corresponding civil society.... Here
again, such tendencies in Marx can be explained by looking to the role and ideology of the family in
an industrial society. When "productive" activities leave the household and in turn come to
constitute the world of change and dynamism, then activities of "reproduction" become viewed as
either the brute, physiological, and non-historical aspects of human existence or as by-products of
changes in the economy.
One important problem which specifically follows from seeing "reproductive" activities as
universally the consequence of productive" activities is that we are thereby prevented from
comprehending the integration of production and reproduction in pre-capitalist societies. Godelier
has come closest to this awareness in his claim that in many pre-capitalist societies the institution
through which the "economic" determines is kinship. But, in societies organised through kinship,
sexual and economic relations are integrally linked. An important consequence is that women and
men in such societies occupy very distinctive relations to those activities concerned with the making
of food and objects in connection with those rules regulating marriage and sexuality. Moreover, this
distinctive relation to "productive" activities cannot be described solely in terms of a "division of
labor." While some gender division of labor even in relation to the making of food and objects
appears consistent throughout history, women have also had less control over the means and results
of such activity than men, again, in connection with those very rules which organise marriage and
sexuality in kinship-organised societies.

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The conclusion of this recognition, however, is that gender certainly in kinship-organised

societies, and perhaps to varying extents in societies following, should be viewed as a significant
class division even following a traditional understanding of class. In other words, even if we
subscribe to the traditional Marxist translation of production to refer to activities concerned with the
making of food and objects, then gender relations, since historically involving different access to
and control over these activities constitute class relations. This point takes us beyond the traditional
feminist castigation of Marxism for its sole focus on production Part of the limitation of that
castigation was that it shared with Marxists the belief in the separability of productive and
reproductive activities. But if we recognise this separability as historically tied to a form of social
organisation where the principle of exchange has replaced the principle of kinship as a means of
organising the production and distribution of goods, then our comprehension of the limitations of
Marxism on gender is deepened.
Another means of explicating this point is by noting that when Marx and Marxists use the
category of "class," they have most paradigmatically in mind the examples of such societies as
capitalism or feudalism. In feudal society kinship relations to a significant extent still organise
production relations, but gender here may be less fundamental in some instances in indicating
relation to the "means of production" than connection with a specific parental lineage. In capitalist
societies, connection with a specific parental lineage remains a component in constituting class, but
only also in conjunction with the actions of the market. Neither society, however, illuminates the
case of more "egalitarian" societies where differences in parental lineages among men may be less
important an indicator of differences in control over production than gender. In other words,
whether gender is or is not an important class indicator must be empirically determined in every
instance and we cannot assume, as do many Marxists, that gender and class are inherently distinct.
Rather the evidence seems to be that in many early societies gender is a fundamental class indicator,
a fact resonating throughout subsequent history, though also in conjunction with, and at times in
subordination to, other factors. This last point brings us finally to the issue of Marxism's ability to
analyse gender in capitalist society. Much of my criticism of Marx has rested on the claim that he
falsely generalises features of capitalist society onto societies where such features do not hold and
that this failure accounts for the theory's weaknesses in analysing gender. The implication of this
argument would be that the theory is adequate as an account of capitalism and as an account of
gender relations within capitalist society. One problem with this conclusion is that it ignores the fact
that capitalist society contains aspects of pre-capitalist societies within it which are highly relevant
to gender. For example, it is true that in capitalist society the economy does become more
autonomous of other realms than has been true of any earlier society. But insofar as Marxist theory
treats the "economic" as autonomous, it loses sight of the ways in which even capitalist economies
grew out of and continue to be affected by "non-economic" aspects of human existence. Indeed,
Marxism, by attributing autonomy to the "economic," comes close to that liberal position which
would deny the influence over the market of such factors as gender, religion, ideology, etc. Of
course, in specific contexts and in specific disagreements with liberals and conservatives, Marxists
often argue for the determinacy of such non-economic factors. Again, however, Marxism as
historical analysis appears incompatible with Marxism as cross-cultural theory. The way out of this
dilemma for Marxists would be to eliminate the cross-cultural theory and more consistently follow
the historical analysis. This would mean describing the progressive domination of the state and later
the market over kinship as a historical process. This type of approach could enable Marxism to
correct two failures which are linked within the theory: its failure in explaining gender and the
history of gender relations, and its failure to be adequately cognisant of the historical limitedness of
certain of its claims. By recognising that the progressive domination of the market has been a
historical process, it might avoid the latter failure. By recognising both the centrality of kinship in
structuring early societies and its centuries-long interaction with such other institutions as the state
and the market, it could provide itself with a means for analysing gender. In an earlier chapter I
noted that Marxists have occasionally described radical feminism as ahistorical. Whereas radical
feminism pointed to the universality of the family, Marxists argued that this institution is always the

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changing effect of developments in the economy. Ironically, however, it may be a function of

Marxism's failure to pay sufficient enough attention to the fundamentality of kinship and its
changing relation to other social institutions and practices that has caused the theory to become
falsely ahistorical itself.

Marxism and Feminism

From the above analysis we can resolve certain disputes among contemporary Marxist
feminists. In particular, we can better assess the merits of each side in the dispute over "dual
systems theory" discussed briefly in an early chapter. Marxist feminists have recognised that Marx's
category of "production" leaves out of account many traditional female activities. In response, some
have argued that we need to augment the category with the category of "reproduction." This, for
example, is the position of Mary O'Brien: "What does have to be done is a modification of Marx's
sociohistorical model, which must now account for two opposing substructures, that of production
and that of reproduction. This in fact improves the model."
Other Marxist feminists offer similar or somewhat revised models. Ann Ferguson and Nancy
Folbre, for example, prefer to label the augmented category "sex-affective production" rather than
"reproduction." They note that the term "reproduction" is used by Marx to describe the "economic
process over time." To employ it to refer to activities such as child-bearing and child-rearing might
result in some confusion. Moreover, they argue, by including those traditionally female-identified
tasks under the category of "production," we are reminded of the social usefulness of such tasks. As
discussed earlier, such proposals have been described by Iris Young as constituting variants of what
she labels "dual systems theory." Young also recognises the narrowness of Marx's category of
production:
Such traditional women's tasks as bearing and rearing children, caring for the sick, cleaning,
cooking, etc. fall under the category of labor as much as the making of objects in a factory. Using
the category of production or labor to designate only the making of concrete material objects in a
modern factory has been one of the unnecessary tragedies of Marxian theory.
Young, however, does not approve of focusing on those activities which have fallen outside
this category to make Marxism more explanatory of gender. One weakness in such a solution is that
it fails to account for gender relations which occur within "production." In other words, Young is
making the point stated earlier in this chapter: that gender has been a significant variable even
among those activities concerned with the making of food and objects. Thus any analysis of gender
must do more than enlarge the traditional category.
The basic problem of dual systems theory, according to Young, is that it does not seriously
enough challenge the very framework of Marxism. That this framework is gender blind must
indicate a serious deficiency, whose remedy cannot merely be supplementation. Moreover, dual
systems theory, by making the issue of women's oppression separate and distinct from that which is
covered by Marxism, reinforces the idea that women's oppression is merely a supplemental topic to
the major concerns of Marxism.
The analysis in this chapter enables us both to understand the attractiveness of dual systems
theory and to meet Young's challenge. Dual systems theorists are correct in recognising that an
important source of Marxism's inability to analyse gender is the narrowness of its category of
production. Where they go wrong, however, is in not seeing this problem as in tum a function of
Marxism's engulfment within the categories of its time. Marx's exclusion of certain activities from
"production" is not sufficiently appreciated as a symptom of the particular period the theory is
reflecting. Within industrial society many of those activities the category leaves out do become
identified with women and become viewed as outside production. This very exclusion is reflected in
Marx's categories.
This assessment of the failure of Marx's category provides us with a different remedy from
that proposed by dual systems theorists. While we might agree with such theorists that the addition
of the category of "reproduction" to the category of "production" might be necessary for
understanding gender relations within industrial society, neither category is necessarily useful for
analysing earlier societies. Indeed, since there is no reason to believe that the kinds of social

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divisions expressed by these categories played a significant role in structuring gender relations
within such societies, there would be no reason for employing them. This is not to say, of course,
that gender did not play a significant role in earlier societies. It is rather that the categories through
which we need to grasp it have to be understood as historically changing, reflecting the changing
emergence, dominance, and decline of different institutions. Thus in early societies it appears that
the key institution in structuring gender, as well as those activities we would label political or
economic, is kinship. Social theory must focus on the differential power relations expressed within
this institution to explain relations between men and women as well as among men as a group and
women as a group. For later periods, we need to focus on the transformation of kinship into family,
the emergence of the economy and the state, and the interaction among these. In short, we need to
do the type of historical work described in chapter 4. As noted there, many feminist historians have
come to recognise the historicity of many modern institutions and the need to be aware of such
historicity if we are to explain gender. It is time for feminist theorists, including Marxist feminist
theorists, to join in this recognition.

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