Sexual violence and capitalism

be easy to organise to rid ourselves of the cause of the alienation – capitalist class society!

However, analysing violence against women in class terms does not simply involve dividing society into classes and measuring the level of violence. The working class is not a homogeneous whole – there are all kinds of divisions, some of which (such as religious or ethnic) are often deliberately fostered by the ruling class, or are strengthened as workers look to these identities for solace and support in difficult circumstances. Others arise more directly from divisions in the workplace: white collar workers as a group have different traditions and see themselves differently from wharf labourers or coal miners. These divisions are not set and static. White collar workers identify much more as workers today then a few decades ago. Therefore any study which examined the incidence of violence would have to be sensitive to many varying factors, influences and sometimes rapidly changing situations. Workers involved in high levels of struggle are likely to exhibit less violence. This is often remarked on by participants in mass struggles, especially revolutionary movements. None of these factors is taken seriously in studies which are intent on proving the fundamental division is men against women.

The actions of men who assault women and those of the ruling class, both male and female, shows the difference between alienated behaviour, the result of powerlessness and the use of real power. The media barons actively promote sexist images. They are responsible for helping create the environment where women are attacked. But this is only part of the picture. Employers use the oppression of women quite blatantly to employ them for lower wages in factories with the most appalling conditions and often humiliating practices designed to keep the women in their place. Women in the ruling class employ women as servants for low wages, reinforcing the unequal relations of men and women in the workforce. Prominent middle and upper class women such as Caroline Chisholm last century, Women Who Want to Be Women today, and women who edit women’s magazines for mass circulation, actively promote the sexual stereotypes. At a meatworkers’ picket in Albury in 1991, women played a prominent role trying to stop scabs. Wives of the meat bosses came to the picket and argued to the women workers that their behaviour was unfeminine, and they should not be involved in such disgusting activity. This incident highlights how the feminine stereotype benefits the ruling class. If women can be convinced that class struggle is unfeminine, it weakens workers’ ability to win concessions. On the other hand, the stereotype is not in the interests of working class men, an argument which is often won on picket lines with previously sexist workers. To compare the use of the stereotypes for profit of the ruling class with the violence of men with no social power, oppressed in the workplace and with few options in life is to completely confuse the idea of what social power is, and to let those responsible for the kind of society we live in off the hook. If we merely want to analyse people’s activity as a matter of academic interest, this remains an abstract question. If we want to change the world, it becomes of central importance.

The method adopted by Kirkby and Orr of attempting to distinguish between fundamental cause and less fundamental contributing factors is fair enough. The problem lies in their separation of gender oppression from class relations and their concern that giving any weight to the other contributing factors somehow will downgrade the importance of gender oppression. A Marxist approach is to attempt a concrete analysis in the framework of an understanding that alienation and class exploitation are fundamental. Then we can show how women’s own economic independence (or lack of it), changing (or static) attitudes regarding women’s role come together in the institution of the family.

For all their weaknesses, the most recent books at least focus on women’s experience in the most important institution for understanding women’s oppression – the family. The shift in emphasis from the «stranger danger» stressed by Brownmiller, to the endemic violence towards women in the family is welcome not simply because it more accurately reflects reality, but also because it has encouraged analysis of the family as an institution. For all the weaknesses of a book such as Family Violence, it avoids the sweeping generalisations of earlier feminists such as de Beauvoir and Brownmiller who shared a vision of women as universal victims of male dominance. Their books are immensely influential and back up the widely held view in academic anthropology that women have always been regarded as inferior to men. The most recent books do not explicitly support this idea. Nevertheless, the idea that society is fundamentally divided between men and women is so powerful that without a complete break from it any analysis ends up accepting some version of the idea of «male power». So it is necessary to establish the serious flaws in the work of writers who propound theories of patriarchy or male power and to show that women have not always been oppressed. This provides a sound basis on which to understand that class society is the fundamental cause of women’s oppression, and the fight for women’s freedom from violence is bound up with the fight for socialism.

Marx explained the rise of classes as the result of the production of a sufficient surplus in society to enable a minority to be freed from work and to live off the labour of the majority. Friedrich Engels argued in The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State that women’s’ oppression arose with the development of private property and this division of society into classes. In order to keep control over their property and right to exploit, it was necessary for men of the new ruling elite to exert control over women’s reproduction in a way previously unknown. This led to the family where women were subordinated to men. In order to oppress the women of the new elite, all women had to be controlled and regarded as inferior. Engels concluded from this that women’s oppression would only cease with the end of class society. Engels’ theory was grounded in the proposition that the way human society organises production is central to all other aspects of life, that ideas do not come out of the blue, but are products of real material and social circumstances.

Brownmiller and de Beauvoir share a glaring weakness; the enormity of their assertions compared to their research or analytical material. De Beauvoir, in a chapter on the supposed «Data of Biology» writes about all mammals as though the sexual activity of whales and dolphins can tell us about human society. From this, the male is the superior, aggressive, competitive being, while the female is «first violated … then alienated – she becomes, in part, another than herself’ by the fact of a lengthy pregnancy. In an attempt to deny her biological determinism, de Beauvoir appeals to the individualistic theories of existentialism which in turn confirm woman’s «enslavement… to the species» She accepts the reactionary concept «man the hunter» so common in anthropology and right wing popularised views of human nature: «In times when heavy clubs were brandished and wild beasts held at bay, woman’s physical weakness did constitute a glaring inferiority.»

So in spite of her professed attempt to show that women’s position is defined culturally, she repeatedly returns to the concept of a fixed, unchanging human nature, and one which fits with reactionary views of humanity at that. It is not clear why, if this will to dominate is part of original human consciousness, there is any point in discussing women’s oppression – surely it is inevitable.

Brownmiller has been very important in establishing the idea that men have always been violent towards women. It is therefore worth looking at her argument at some length. The striking thing about the book is its complete lack of knowledge of anthropological studies and complete lack of scientific enquiry in support of her sweeping generalisations. How do we know rape is used by all men to intimidate all women? Brownmiller «believes» it.»

It was women’s «fear of an open season of rape» which led them to strike the «risky bargain» of «conjugal relationship» and was the «single causative factor in the original subjugation of woman by man.» Since Brownmiller wrote, there has been a wealth of anthropological studies which throw serious doubt on the assertion that women have always been oppressed and therefore have suffered male violence. She cannot be blamed for ignorance of these (although those who continue to propagate her ideas can), however she was not ignorant of evidence which contradicted her statements, and even included it in the book.

For instance, some attempts to understand what the earliest human societies would look like have been based on studies of non-human primates, extrapolating from them to build a picture of human evolution. Brownmiller quotes Jane Goodall, who studied wild chimpanzees and found the female did not accept every male who approached her. Even persistent males were not known to rape. Brownmiller also quotes Leonard Williams’ Man and Monkey which concluded «in monkey society there is no such thing as rape, prostitution, or even passive consent.» Brownmiller claims that because human females are sexually active any time, unlike other primates, men are capable of rape. The implication is that monkeys and chimps are physically incapable of rape. However Sally Slocum found that non-human primates «appear not to attempt coitus (when the female is unreceptive), regardless of physiological ability.»

This might seem an esoteric discussion in an article about violence against women today. However, the idea that men are violent by nature and women passive and nurturing, always an idea of the right wing, is now widely held in feminist circles. So we need to be aware there are two quite distinct strands of feminist thought on the question. The right wing argument was backed up by the anthropological theory that the dawn of humanity was made possible by «man the hunter.» From the mid-sixties there were challenges to this interpretation. New research – much of it, but not all, by feminists – shows that there is the possibility of humans living in harmony and that violence towards women is explained by social and material developments rather than by biology.

The other strand, to which de Beauvoir and Brownmiller contributed, can sound radical because it criticises men’s violence and stereotypes of masculine aggression rather than glorifying them. But let’s be clear, their ideas are just as reactionary as the old «man the hunter» myth because fundamentally they accept the same premise: men are naturally predatory and violent, more capable of dominating than women. Some of Brownmiller’s argument is simply dishonest. She quotes the anthropologist Margaret Mead about a society where rape was unknown; «the Arapesh (do not) have any conception of male nature that might make rape understandable to them.» This clearly raises the concept of rape as a social phenomenon and not simply the result of men’s physiological attributes, apart from the fact that it proves rape has not always been a feature of society. But Brownmiller blithely skips over this inconvenient fact to go on to societies where violence towards women is extreme with no attempt to explain the differences.

When she does attempt an explanation of the absence of rape, Brownmiller is not beyond repeating sexist, elitist attitudes to women’s experiences. Mrs Rowlandson, wife of an ordained minister, was taken captive by American Indians in 1676.

She did well to add the last sentence, but it does not save her from the feminist author three centuries later. Brownmiller admits this story was «not atypical»; she quotes a historian of 1842 who concluded the Indians only learnt to mistreat women by contact with whites. But to admit that Indian men did not rape and abuse women, even those from an invading, pillaging society, would be to admit rape may not be explained by the fact that man discovered at the dawn of time «that his genitalia could serve as a weapon to generate fear.» Instead, she dismisses the evidence by an appeal to the prejudice Mrs Rowlandson foresaw: «the natural reluctance on the part of women to admit that sexual abuse has occurred.» She does not attempt to explain why women were less reluctant in the later period. She even upholds the old wowserist idea that women do not seek sexual activity, they only have it thrust on them by disgusting males: she dismisses Fanny Kelly’s description of «several braves who went out of their way to do her favours» as «apparent innocence.»

«Rape in warfare (says Brownmiller) is not bounded by definitions of which wars are ‘just’ or ‘unjust’.» The examples she gives are the «German Hun» (presumably it is acceptable to be racist about men) in Belgium during World War I, the Russians in World War II, the Pakistani army in Bangladesh in 1971, and the American GI’s in Vietnam – none of which could be called a just war from a left wing perspective. The Vietcong (who were fighting a just anti-imperialist war), according to news correspondent Peter Arnett and not disputed by Brownmiller, «were prohibited from looting, stealing food or rape … We heard very little of VC rape.» Arnett thought their (extraordinary by his experience) behaviour needed some explanation which he attempted by reference to the fact «they had women fighting as equals among their men». Brownmiller offers none.

Brownmiller and de Beauvoir could claim credibility because anthropologists until the 1960s almost universally agreed women had always been oppressed. Anthropology, because of its claim to scientific research, was difficult to challenge. However a key starting point for assessing anthropological evidence is a recognition that it is nothing more than collected observations of academics from the more developed world who visited pre-capitalist societies. Their observations cannot be read at face value. Firstly, they took with them the cultural and social views of capitalist society which distorted their interpretation of what they saw. Anthropologists such as Eleanor Burke Leacock, Karen Sacks and others have convincingly shown how male-oriented and prejudiced influential anthropologists such as Malinowsky and Levi Strauss were.

Western anthropologists and other observers, imposing their view of the world on the societies they studied, assumed the nuclear family of modern capitalism to be a universal feature of human organisation of reproduction and sexuality. Society was assumed to be divided into the «public», male sphere and the «private», female sphere, a concept clearly associated historically with the rise of capitalism and completely useless in understanding the co-operative, collective nature of gatherer-hunters’ lives. In many societies there was a sexual division of labour in which women took most responsibility for children and gathering, while men did most of the hunting. Because women’s responsibility for child care in our society contributes to their inferior status and oppression, it was erroneously assumed this could be read into the meaning of their work in all societies. Even many feminist anthropologists «assume low status for maternity, which they see as constraining activities, hindering personality development, and reducing women’s symbolic value. They project the values of our culture onto other cultures.» Judith Brown, writing about the division of labour by sex, assumes that women’s reproductive role determines their existence as gatherer-hunters, and that women’s «tasks are relatively monotonous and do not require rapt concentration; and the work, is not dangerous, can be performed in spite of interruptions» (by children). This ignores evidence from many societies where women’s work is very skilled and varied, providing, the bulk of food. Sacks shows that in some societies women adapt the number of pregnancies to the needs of production. She showed that! Kung women do not take a break from gathering while nursing their infants, which «attests to the cultural centrality of women’s productive roles, as well as countering a simple minded reproductive determinism.»

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