Why men need to read Hegel before going out on a date

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Sat, 2013-04-20 10:50

Catchfire

Longer interview from Jacobin on feminism

We started out saying we were going to have a collective living situation, we started out saying we were against monogamous marriage, we started out saying coupledom is the way into hell. We started out by saying that the attack against patriarchy isn’t enough; we need to have collective living and meaningful ways of raising our children that are completely different. But many of us gave it all up to return to heterosexual marriage, which is a disaster. For the majority of women it is a complete disaster.

This is why I was recently asked for my opinion on monogamous marriage. Well, WHERE is monogamous marriage? I’ve rarely seen it. I just see men fucking around, I mean, where’s the monogamy? I believe that some women are forced to practice it, probably not very willingly. I think that if feminists really spoke to the emotive force behind the fantasy and the nostalgia, and spoke to the devastation, we would actually be able to make an intervention. As long as we keep saying “Well, if women want equality they just have to live with it,” then what are we talking about? Really? Women are going to have to fight for custody? Because they work?!

It’s terrifying what has happened to women under formal equality feminism. That’s one of the reasons why I wrote At the Heart of Freedom, you know: this is not freedom for women. I don’t think you can find freedom for women in coupled heterosexuality given the pervasiveness of this Jacques Lacan fantasy. The only way for women to move forward is through very inventive collective living arrangements. And why don’t men want that? Because they’re terrified of (getting back to the fantasy, now) women. You know, as in all these science fictions that say you have to kill off all the men and leave just six and then simply get the sperm because, well, how many men do you really need? A couple? And if boys are born you can just knock them out, too, right? You can get all their sperm and women can just go on producing babies and kill all the boys, I mean you know, these fantasies are very deep and it has to do with women’s reproductive power, which nobody wants to talk about.

So I think feminists have got to stop pretending that freedom and neoliberalism and license are the same thing. A very unpopular position.

Issues Pages:

Feminism

Sat, 2013-04-20 17:40

lagatta

Well, having read Hegel sounds like criteria I might insist on, but little as I like marriage and fambly I run screaming from the "smash monogamy" stuff. She seems some years older than me, but basically of the same generation, and a lot of us have VERY bad memories from that period.

By the way, I've seen the kind of adoption she describes in South Africa in Indigenous communities here:

DC: I have argued that the birth mother should not have to give up custody. In South Africa there are all kinds of informal arrangements. I am the co-mother of a daughter, which I take very seriously. I have a second daughter, and I don’t have any paperwork on her, but I consider myself responsible for her education. So, in South Africa, and in Africa generally, that’s why they don’t understand the word ‘single mother,’ because you don’t have aunts and uncles, you have ‘second mothers’ and ‘second fathers,’ ‘fourth mothers’ and so on. This wiping out of interconnectedness in the U.S. is a complete disaster. That’s why I defend public education. Why are you responsible for someone else’s children? Because we are inherently interconnected.

Including very young teenagers whose pregnancy is not a disaster, not just because of it not being viewed as "immorality", but more important, these girls who become mothers don't have to take on all or even most of the responsibility, but the bond is never broken.