Although you say in #3 that systemic injustices are equiprimordial, in #1 and #2 you summarise them all as "patriarchal". Doesn't that choice of word imply that you still see sexism as the root of all the other forms of oppression?
In short: yes. Which is why I tend not to use it as much anymore.
(Although I'm not sure that looking at the difference between the rule of men and the rule of [the name of] the father is purely a linguistic quibble. And as far as I know, there aren't that many other names for the superstructure I call systemic injustice. Other than patriarchy, the main one I've heard put forth was "kyriarchy.")
Because I was responding in large part to a particular second-wave radical feminist viewpoint, and casting my own position as a third-wave postmodernist type of radical feminism, I used explicitly feminist/anti-patriarchal language in this post to emphasize that connection. Without that context, I would have made a larger effort to use neutral language.
It's still the same psychological mechanism, though, which is while I feel it's over-optimistic to believe that a society without, say, sexism would also be without heterosexism; or any other form of category-based prejudice.
Well, I guess I see it as that psychological mechanism is itself what feminists call "sexism" and what anti-racists might call "racism"; this is why the impulse to think that the form of systemic injustice one is studying is primordial. If the psychological mechanism is still in place, I don't think it's possible to say that sexism or racism has ended, because it's still possible to analyze the injustice left in the world as a sublimated form of racism or sexism, respectively.
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Date: 2008-03-26 03:45 pm (UTC)In short: yes. Which is why I tend not to use it as much anymore.
(Although I'm not sure that looking at the difference between the rule of men and the rule of [the name of] the father is purely a linguistic quibble. And as far as I know, there aren't that many other names for the superstructure I call systemic injustice. Other than patriarchy, the main one I've heard put forth was "kyriarchy.")
Because I was responding in large part to a particular second-wave radical feminist viewpoint, and casting my own position as a third-wave postmodernist type of radical feminism, I used explicitly feminist/anti-patriarchal language in this post to emphasize that connection. Without that context, I would have made a larger effort to use neutral language.
It's still the same psychological mechanism, though, which is while I feel it's over-optimistic to believe that a society without, say, sexism would also be without heterosexism; or any other form of category-based prejudice.
Well, I guess I see it as that psychological mechanism is itself what feminists call "sexism" and what anti-racists might call "racism"; this is why the impulse to think that the form of systemic injustice one is studying is primordial. If the psychological mechanism is still in place, I don't think it's possible to say that sexism or racism has ended, because it's still possible to analyze the injustice left in the world as a sublimated form of racism or sexism, respectively.