Analysis Of Catharine Mckinnon Feminism Marxism, Method And The State

998 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Essay on marxism and feminism

The readings by Catharine McKinnon “Feminism, Marxism, Method and the State” and Sheila Jeffreys’’ The Industrial Vagina’’ address the topics of Feminism and Marxism. Marxism, feminism, and heterosexuality are theories of power because they generate inequality. Marxism deprives one the ability to work and feminism deprives one from their sexuality and all its entitlements. As a result, these terms delineate both accounts against the conception of lack of power. Furthermore, such deprivation is an infringement of Human rights. In the reading; Feminism, Marxism, Method and the state by Catharine McKinnon, she contends that both Marxism and feminism illustrate how social arrangements of inequality can be viewed as internally logical yet they are Where she raises up the question; Is male dominance a creation of capitalism or is capitalism one expression of male dominance? Is there a relationship between the power of some classes over others, and all that of all men and over all women? (Pg. 3). In my view, I would like to point out that capitalism feeds on a pre-existing system of oppression which is patriarchy. Historically speaking, the man has always been the supreme authority of the family. Authority is power. Women must take on all the tasks related to maintaining and reproducing the workforce and the family. As for men, they are always supposed to be the main economic purveyors. For example in the workforce, women’s rights are undermined by a thousand government tricks. In other words, when the capitalists need extra labour, they call upon women whom they pay less than men, which has the side-effect of dragging down wages generally. This means that the State is forced to provide services to facilitate women’s jobs or allow them to offload some of their responsibilities. Then when they no longer require women’s labour, they send them home, back to their “proper place” in patriarchal

Show More
Related

  • Political Feminism and its Misrepresentation

    1149 Words  | 3 Pages

    One theory of feminism that exists is the world is “Second Wave feminism” (Mandle, 2014). This is the most known form of it. These were the successors to the First-Wave feminists who primarily focused on suffrage and legal rights in the 19th and 20th century (Burkett, 2013). The fundamental goals of Second Wave feminism are different from the first, since they primarily center themselves on abolishing workplace inequality, such as the proverbial glass ceiling and salary difference, through anti-discrimination laws.” (Tavaana, 2014). The ideals proposed by this kind, were adopted by the government in the form of bills and laws such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 2014). This again, is what one would consider the mainstream feminism.

    Read More

  • Feminism and Gender Identities in Post Communistic Eastern Europe

    673 Words  | 2 Pages

    3.Funk, Nanette. "Feminism And Post-Communism." Hypatia 8.4 (1993): 85. Academic Search Premier. Web. 2 Mar. 2014.

    Read More

  • Relationship Between Capitalists And Wollstonecraft

    1830 Words  | 4 Pages

    She argues that men have professions and other duties that focus their minds and help to develop reason “whilst women, on the contrary, have no other scheme to sharpen their faculties” (Wollstonecraft 2004, 77). Women spend most of their time tending to the house and their beauty because that is what they are taught to focus on, in order to get the most out of their life. During their upbringing children are taught to follow the actions of those that share the same gender as them. This causes drastic differences between the sexes because there is no opportunity to overlap the characteristics of the two genders to create a more coherent and equal society. In relation to that, Marx states that all citizens, no matter their status, should have the right to private property and freedom to do as they wish with the labor they produce. Marx (1988, 81) believes “private property is thus the product, the result, the necessary consequence, of alienated labor, the necessary consequence, of alienated labor, of the external relation of the worker to nature and to himself.” The deprivation of the laborers from control of their own products causes their alienation not only from the products but also the rest of society, which ultimately creates an unstable form of community. This instability will eventually

    Read More

  • Women's Employment in the 1940s

    6013 Words  | 13 Pages

    Mies, Maria. Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale. New York: St Martin’s P, 1998

    Read More

  • Second Wave Feminism Essay

    728 Words  | 2 Pages

    At this point, the difference perspective in ideology and political action has divided the women movement into some feminism types; socialist, Marxist, radical, liberal and many others. While liberal feminist focus their struggle for equality on civil, economic, and political rights, and education, the feminist socialist and Marxist believe women 's oppression is “the product of the political, social and economic structure within which individuals live.” (Tong, 1998: pp.94). Although some other people suppose that the feminist Marxist and socialist is quiet different, but both of them believe the source of women oppression are capitalism and patriarchy. The Marxist feminism is rooted in 19th century thinker such as Marx and Engels, whether

    Read More

  • Hillary Clinton Feminist Analysis

    1146 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the U.S., feminism is understood as the rights of women (usually affluent white women) to share the spoils of capitalism, and imperial power. By refusing to fully confront the exclusions of non-whites, foreigners, and other marginalized groups from this vision, liberal feminists miss a crucial opportunity to create a more inclusive and more powerful movement. Feminist movements within the U.S. and internationally have long since accepted that, for them, feminism entails the communal confrontation of not only patriarchy, but capitalism, imperialism, white supremacy, and other forms of oppressions that combine together and reinforce their struggle. It means the fighting for the replacement of a system in which their rights are negated in the quest for corporate and political profit. It includes fighting so that all people anywhere on the gender, sexual, and body spectrum are allowed to enjoy basic rights like food, housing, healthcare, and control of their labor.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Patriarchy In The Gilded Six Bits

    2245 Words  | 5 Pages

    The relation between capitalism and patriarchy is that they work together, they both adapt to one another. Capitalism stems from the Marxist theory, while patriarchy stems from the Feminist theory; taken alone, is insufficient when explaining the oppression of a woman in a capitalist society/marriage. Feminist criticism suggests that women are oppressed by patriarchy economically, politically, socially, and psychologically. According to Shorter “…the essence of capitalism has had generally negative consequences for women, lowering their status, depriving them of independency and autonomy at work, subordinating them economically to exploitation, and sexually to male domination.” In the text we see the dominance Joe holds over Missie economically and psychologically. He makes all of the incoming money and only gives Missie an allowance in exchange for affection, “Who dat chunkin' money in mah do'way?” In the text we also see the dominance Slemmons holds over Joe economically, socially, and psychologically. Slemmons appears to Joe as a “rich fat man” that he desperately wants to be like causing Joe to feel psychologically oppressed; Slemmons have more money and a fat belly and Joe has his underpaying job and slender build. This psychological oppression branches off to the social patriarchy that Slemmons holds over Joe. Joe knows he can never compete with...

    Read More

  • Catharine MacKinnon's Book Feminism Unmodified

    1292 Words  | 3 Pages

    Catharine MacKinnon, in her book Feminism Unmodified, takes a unique approach to the problem of gender inequality in America. She claims that pornography defines the way in which America’s patriarchal society perpetuates male dominance, and attacks traditional liberal methods that defend pornography on the basis of the first amendment’s right to free speech. According to MacKinnon, pornography is not an example of speech but rather an act. She proposes that this act discriminates against women as a class, and therefore violates their civil rights and should be outlawed. MacKinnon’s critics may think her argument is excessively radical, and contemporary society may not embrace the changes she suggests. However, even if she is deliberately provocative Catharine MacKinnon’s message is worthwhile: The American male power structure dominates women and must be changed. Establishing sexual equity in this power structure would be a major step in the struggle for gender equality within American communities.

    Read More

  • Comparison of Daisy Miller and The Yellow Wallpaper

    1214 Words  | 3 Pages

    Gimenez, Martha E. "Capitalism and the Oppression of Women: Marx Revisited." Science & Society 69.1 (2005): 11-32. ProQuest Central. Web. 29 Apr. 2014. .

    Read More

  • The Dual Oppressions of Working-Class Women in Agnes Smedley's Daughter of Earth by Alex Gomez

    1641 Words  | 4 Pages

    The socialist movement criticized the exploitation of workers under capitalism.  The feminist movement, lead by middle-class women, criticized the exploitation of women.  Each movement on its own ignored the fundamental objective of the other.  Yet, out of these two movements emerged socialist feminists like Agnes Smedley, who were determined to bring each movement together and give birth to a new vision that would shed light on the dual oppression of the working-class women.  Agnes Smedley, in Daughter of Earth, shows this dual oppression by exposing the characteristics of capitalism and those of the male-dominated society.

    Read More

  • Documentary on Suffrage, Not for Ourselves Alone by Geoffrey C. Ward

    562 Words  | 2 Pages

    Hartmann, H. (1981). The Unhappy marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Towards a More Progressive Union. In C. R. McCann & S. Kim (Eds.), Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives (3rd ed.) (pp 182-201).

    Read More

  • Critical Analysis Of US Third World Feminism

    766 Words  | 2 Pages

    Sandoval theory is influential within second wave feminism. The reasoning behind this article is to provide a framework for theorizing about oppositional activity and consciousness in the United States in the post-modern world (Sandoval, 1991). Primarily, interested in race, class, and culture third world feminist expand on the male/female division. Sandoval credits Louis Althusser for the use of his theory of ideology. Much of her article incorporates influential authors that we have previous discussed in our discussion including Sojourner Truth, bell hooks, and Barbara Christian. She first introduces the concept of hegemonic feminism by discussing the different periods in history: 1. Liberal: women are “as fully human as men” 2. Marxist: “women are different from men” 3. Cultural/radical: “women are superior” (Sandoval, 2001). She later argues that oppositional consciousness is topographical rather than typological. According to Sandoval, there are four cateofries that fit well into the hegemonic frame: equal rights, revolutionary, supremacist, separatist. Yet they add, differential to act as “the mechanism that permits the driver to select, engage, and disengage gears in a system for the transmission of power (Sandoval,

    Read More

  • Feminism Without Boarders, By Chandra Talpade Mohanty

    1227 Words  | 3 Pages

    Mohanty explains solidarity is needed in order to unite people from different parts of the world, as well as to get a voice that is loud enough to be properly heard; on the other hand, the notion of “sisterhood” has a tendency to overlook the differences between women in order to make them into a single homogenous group (Mohanty, 7). On the matter of her anti-capitalist critique, she is a little less clear on what she wants to put in capitalism’s place. She does say in her introduction that her ideal world includes “socialist practices”, as well as cites many prominent socialist feminists, but she never identifies herself clearly as a socialist or as for a fully socialist economy (Mohanty, 4). It is clear that her new vision for feminism contains a socialist nature in addition to her call for solidarity over the world’s

    Read More

  • The Marxist Feminism Theory

    2174 Words  | 5 Pages

    Marxist theory has different points which are gender, class, labor and housework wages, and lastly capitalists. First of all, Marxist has different meanings which Bryson explains, “. . . With the young Marx’s claim that ‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it” (Bryson 13). I believe the Marxist theory for feminism have a good and bad problems. The reasons are trying get a word out to help the women by explaining jobs in gender, different classes each women are in, housework should be a paid job not voluntary job, and capitalist helps women by getting out of the house and get outside of house to the real world in employment. Marxist can help women if they

    Read More

  • Patriarchy Essay

    1858 Words  | 4 Pages

    Women’s subordination within the labour market is seen by Marxist feminists as suiting the needs of capitalism as women are considered a ‘reserve army of labour’ as they are a more disposable part of the workforce. According to Beechey (1986) women are a cheap ‘reserve army of labour’ that are brought in during economic booms but then thrown out during slumps. Women are often not members of trade unions and are prepared to work for less money as their wage could be a second income. This benefits capitalism as a group of unemployed people looking for work creates competition and exploitation. Employers are given an advantage which allows them to reduce wages and increase the rate of exploitation. Benston (1972) supports this as women are used to benefitting the operation of the capitalist economy by carrying out unprepared work in the home. This proves that patriarchy dominates women which leads to women’s subordination. Hartmann (1981) believes that patriarchy and the economy both play a crucial role in explaining and understanding gender inequality. Historically, men have controlled women especially by control of labour power. This can come through legislation that operates economically to the benefit of men, for example Maternity and Paternity Rights. This proves that patriarchy and economics together explains gender inequality. However, Walby (1986) argues that women staying at home can actually harm capitalism because if women were to compete for jobs with men this would lower wages and increase profits. Women who earn also have superior spending power which would boost the economy and benefit

    Read More

More about Analysis Of Catharine Mckinnon Feminism Marxism, Method And The State

Open Document