“In capitalism, sex can exist but only as a productive force at the service of procreation and the regeneration of the waged/male working and as a mean of social appeasement and compensation for the misery of everyday existence.”
“Typical of the new bourgeois sexual morality was Martin Luther’s injunction to the nuns to leave the convents and get married, as marriage and the production of an abundant prole was in his view women’s fulfillment of God’s will and their ‘highest vocation.’ “Let them bear children to death,” he apparently declared. “They are created for that.”
No sixteenth-century political or religious authority expressed this sentiment as crudely as Luther, but the restriction of women’s sexuality to marriage and procreation, together with wifely unconditional obedience, was instituted.”
- Silvia Federici
Feel like there’s not a lot of knowledge around marxist feminism even in left circles so its cool to see it getting brought up. Probably an intentional political act of the ruling class to divorce material analysis from progressive gender politics. We can’t really discuss labor without addressing reproductive labor as well
This is a significant issue even in many leftist circles. It’s the consequence of class reductionism and cishet male patriarchy.
Men often gain class consciousness from alienation around not “receiving” the partner “they were promised” by the ruling class. It results in resentment and violence against women in their communities and orgs.
Liberalism is very good at coopting any threat to the growth of its ideology. Women’s liberation requires examining the roles the patriarchy attempts to lock us into. This existed before the class system and even contributed to its creation.
Exactly. Reproductive labour + the multitude of silent domestic labour women are still expected to pick up in addition to participating in conventional waged labour.