sodal·capitalism 34 Theorizing Gender Historical Roots of Contemporary Theory 35 and internalized by women.These stereotypes are promoted ses of rape,such as Susan Brownmiller's Against Our Will,and of through families,schools,mass media and other agencies of pornography,such as Andrea Dworkin's Pornography:Men Possessing socialization'.In principle the inequalities can be eliminated by Women,have generally followed this model. breaking down the stereotypes:for instance by giving girls better A rather more complex line of argument treated the power of training and more varied role models,by introducing equal- men and the subordination of women as effects of imperatives opportunity programs and anti-discrimination legislation,or by outside the direct relationship between the two.The more general freeing labour markets. form of this argument started from the need for 'social reproduc- A large volume of literature appeared in this vein,much of it tion',that is,the reproduction from generation to generation of academic but a good deal of it focusing on policy.Sex role theory social structures as well as bodies.This was the perspective of rapidly became the theoretical language of feminist reform within Juliet Mitchell's Psychoanalysis and Feminism,strongly influenced the state,such as the influential 1975 Australian Schools Com- by Marxist and anthropological structuralism.It was also the mission report Girls,School and Society and the 1980 OECD report perspective of a more humanist psychoanalysis in Dorothy Dinner- Women and Employment.It was even discovered that freeing sex-role stein's The Mermaid and the Minotaur.Dinnerstein's argument conventions might be good for men.Such was the claim of the deduced both the power of men and the acquiescence of women 'men's liberation'movement in the United States in the mid 1970s, from women's monopoly of early childrearing -itself seen as a through publicists like Jack Nichols,the author of Men's Liberation. technical imperative through most of human history.The theory The more radical wing of the feminist movement soon moved of social reproduction has recently been given its most sophisticated beyond the concept of 'sex roles'and the strategy of changing statement by Clare Burton in Subordination.Her argument connects expectations.These ideas were seen to be inadequate because they the cross-cultural analysis of women's subordination to the critique missed the significance of power in gender relations.Women's of education and the theory of the state-the latter theme treated Liberation groups argued that women are oppressed because men surprisingly little in radical feminism generally. have power over them:and that changing the situation of women To most socialist feminists the question was not the reproduction means contesting,and eventually breaking,this power.Analyses of society in general but of capitalism in particular.The exploitation that started from these assumptions initially found much less of women was connected with capitalism's drive for profit and its acceptance in academia and very little in the bureaucracy.They general need to reproduce itself:pressures that led to a sex-divided became common in the social movement and drew from movement work-force and the oppression of the housewife.These arguments experiences of political campaigning and consciousness-raising too 'were linked with ideas about movement strategy.While groups. sectarian Marxists argued against a separate women's movement In its simplest form the power analysis of gender pictured of any kind,the majority of socialist feminists worked for an women and men as social blocs linked by a direct power relation. autonomous women's movement which would connect with other This implies as a strategy for change a direct mobilization of movements of resistance to capitalism,especially the labour women emphasizing their common interest against that of men. movement. There have been varying accounts of the relation between the two Socialist feminists directed attention particularly to the situation blocs.Christine Delphy's The Main Enemy,with French farming of working-class women.A long argument arose in the 1970s households in mind,stressed the economic exploitation of wives about the economic significance of their unwaged work at home by husbands.American theorists tended to bypass economics for as a hidden subsidy to capital.The 'domestic labour debate' politics.Shulamith Firestone in The Dialectic of Sex saw a collective eventually petered out in a morass of Marxist exegetics,though power-play by men with the childraising family as its central not before a 'Wages for Housework'campaign had given an institution;sexual reproduction rather than housework was the industrial dimension to feminist critiques of the family.Another, key.Mary Daly in Gyn/Ecology pictured a global patriarchy and eventually more fruitful,line of attack was on the politics and sustained by force,fear and collaboration.Radical-feminist analy- economics of women's waged work.At first sight this appeared as
36 Theorizing Gender Historical Roots of Contemporary Theory 37 an issue of simple discrimination,or an aspect of the economists' people.The liberation of homosexuality was therefore not the 'dual labour market'.But studies like Louise Kapp Howe's Pink traditional campaign for equal rights for a persecuted minority.It Collar Workers gradually revealed the gendered economy as a system was the cutting edge of a more general liberation of human of segregation,control,exploitation and social struggle of awe- potential. inspiring scope and complexity.In recent research like Ann Game Whether this blend of Marx,Freud and gay activism could be and Rosemary Pringle's Gender at Work,Cynthia Cockburn's Brothers linked to the feminist critique of patriarchy,and if so on what and Machinery of Dominance,and Carol O'Donnell's The Basis of the terms,was a major concern of gay theorists through the 1970s. Bargain,the workplace is treated as a major site of sexual politics One of the difficulties was the analysis of masculinity.Early gay in its own right.It can be analysed as an institution,as the point liberation theorists treated gayness in men as a kind of dissent of junction between labour markets and the distribution of income, from masculinity.This became less and less credible with the or as the object of ideology and education. spread of 'gay machismo'and the 'clone'style in the homosexual The problem of the general conditions for the reproduction of subcultures of the late 1970s and early 1980s.A strong current capitalism led back to sexuality and the family.Here arguments in radical feminism emphasized the differences between lesbianism converged from feminism,from the 'Freudian Left',from the 'New and men's homosexuality and wanted no truck with gay men.By Left'and counter-culture of the 1960s and from gay liberation. the early 1980s gay theory,like feminist theory,was internally Texts like David Cooper's The Death of the Family inverted the divided.David Fernbach's The Spiral Path emphasizes the theory conventional sociology of the nuclear family,presenting it as an of patriarchy,the importance of violence and the patriarchal authoritarian institution and the main tool by which a repressive state,treating homosexual men as necessarily effeminate.Dennis society could control sexuality and create conformist populations. Altman's The Homosexualization of America focuses on the new sexual Feminists in the early 1970s widely considered the family to be communities and the terms on which they can create solidarity the main site of women's oppression.Lee Comer's Wedlocked Women and defend themselves.A third tendency,strongly influenced by was perhaps the sharpest statement of the analysis of marriage, Michel Foucault,questions the very notion of 'homosexual identity housework,motherhood and family ideology that sprang from this. as a form of social regulation,and sees progress in the deconstruc- The most radical departure in the critique of the family was tion of homosexuality itself. made by theorists of gay liberation.Sex-role theory and socialist theory alike presumed that the vast majority of people were naturally heterosexual;even the early homosexual rights move- Reaction and Paradox ments had accepted that.The new movement did not.An early slogan declared Every straight man is a target for gay liberation'. As radical theories of gender multiplied and divided,and strategies The changed assumption,and the energy of gay politics in the for change became more sophisticated and controversial,a counter- early 1970s,led to a remarkable surge of theoretical work in current of reaction also gained strength.Its highlights included several countries.The Australian Dennis Altman in Homosexual: the rise of the anti-abortion movement in the 1970s,the narrow Oppression and Liberation,the Italian Mario Mieli in Homosexuality defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment in the United States,the and Liberation,and the 'gay Left'in England and the United States squeeze on the welfare state (and therefore services to women)in all developed variants of a critical theory of sexuality.They most capitalist countries,and the international moral panic created generally saw the family as the factory of heterosexuality,meeting around AIDS in the 1980s. capital's need for a labour supply and the state's need for The theoretical expression of this movement has been patchy. subordination.The repression of homosexual desire,while certainly Its doctrine is most often religious dogma,or a decayed Darwinism part of a general authoritarianism,thus had quite specific reasons. asserting that men's and women's conventional roles reflect Yet it was necessarily imperfect;and imperfectly repressed desire biological necessity and that social variation from this must was a prime source of the hatred directed against homosexual be pathological.The more sophisticated forms of biological
38 Theorizing Gender Historical Roots of Contemporary Theory 39 reductionism,like Steven Goldberg's The Inevitability of Patriarchy appeal to genetic or hormonal differences between women and NOTES men-in Goldberg's case to explain an 'aggression advantage The account in this chapter has been put together from a great many men have over women,which in turn explains their social positions. sources;even so I am conscious of its tentative and preliminary Biological -reductionism has been a popular genre in the age of character.The main primary sources are the books and papers the territorial imperative,the naked ape and the rise of 'sociobiol- mentioned in the text.For discussion and interpretation sce the ogy';but it was not an adequate response to radical arguments following: pitched at the level of the social.Conservatism too was obliged to develop a social theory.In texts like the American historian Peter Early Feminism and Sexual Radicalism Stearns's Be a Man.the emphasis is on social tradition and civility: the nuclear family,somewhat idealized,becomes the basis of a (pp.24-6).On the origins of liberal feminism see Martin (1972)and civilized and equable way of life.Compared with this urbane Rosenberg (1982).The view of Sade as a sexual radical is debatable; conservatism a more urgent note is struck by the New Right justification can be found in Carter (1979)and Thomas (1976).On theorist George Gilder.In Sexual Suicide Gilder develops an analysis early socialist feminism see Taylor (1983). of the mother-child bond as the basic social linkage,which leaves men (as fathers)floating loose.The family as an institution is Sexology and Psychoanalysis essential to prevent the destruction of social order by unbound men; and society must provide the economic and managerial roles for (pp.27-8).Weeks (1985)gives an excellent summary of the history of men.Anti-feminist conclusions are thus deduced from a strictly social sexology.His Coming Out (1977)is fundamental to the history of analysis.There is an echo of Parsons's functionalism in this argument; homosexual movements.For the bases of my interpretation of psychoan- as in the neo-conservative economists who explain the conventional alysis see 'Dr Freud and the course of history'in Connell (1983).For family as the outcome of choices by two rational individuals each the encounter with the Left and with anthropology see Robinson (1972). bent on maximizing their own welfare. The state of the field in the mid-1980s is a paradox.The Socialist Feminism impulse of the last two decades has produced a mass of factual (pp.28-9).For the general story see Rowbotham (1974).Conditions of research and a lively theoretical debate,including some theorizing women's unionization are explored in exceptional detail for the city of of very high quality indeed.It is difficult to think of any other Hamburg by Dasey(1985).On the strength of the women's movement field of the social sciences where work as penetrating and original in turn-of-the-century socialism see Dancis (1976)on the United States. has been going on.Yet as the social theory of gender has blossomed, Its impact in the Russian Revolution can be traced in the writings of the differences between lines of thought have become more distinct, Kollontai (1977).Orwell's famous sneer is in The Road to Wigan Pier, the conceptual and political distances greater.Current theories of (1962),P.152. gender are not converging.Rather they present incompatible accounts of the issues,sometimes by marking off separate parts of Academic Theorizing the field.To move on,it would seem,it is necessary to move back, to reconsider the foundations of the theories now on offer.This is (pp.29-32).Klein (1946)is a pioneering and still useful account of the the business of the next chapter. development of academic thinking about gender;Rosenberg(1982)gives more detail on early sex difference studies.The emergence of sex-role theory is sketched in Carrigan,Connell and Lee (1985).For its classic statement-apart from Parsons-scc Komarovsky (1946,1950)
40 Theorizing Gender Second-Wave'Feminism and Gay Liberation (pp.32-7).The recent development of radical theory is itself hotly disputed. Notable beginnings in charting this history have been made by Hartmann 3 (1979)and Burton (1985)on Marxist feminism;Molyneux (1979)on the domcstic labour debate;Eisenstein (1984)and Willis (1984)on American radical feminism;Walter (1980)and Carrigan(1981)on gay liberation theory. Current Frameworks This chapter tests the major frameworks for the social analysis of gender that have emerged from the history just discussed.The focus is on the general logic of different kinds of theories rather than on particular applications or particular concepts. I take this rather formal approach as it seems the best way to get a grip on the possibilities for theoretioal growth,to define both the potentials and the inherent limits of existing frameworks.This leads to a rather unusual classification of theories.Commonly recognized 'schools'of thought turn out to contain logically disparate theories.Socialist feminism for instance contains several of the types of theories discussed below.The concept of patriarchy', approached in this way,does not stand for a particular school at all.It appears in several logically different forms of theory and takes on different meanings according to its context. Three distinctions are basic to what follows:(a)between extrinsic and intrinsic accounts of the determinants of sex inequality;(b) within intrinsic theories,between those that focus on custom and those that focus on power;(c)within power theories,between those that see categories as prior to practice and those that see categories as emerging from practice.I start with extrinsic theories, not because they are less sophisticated but because they do seem the least promising for the general project of a theory of gender. Extrinsic Theories:From 'Class First'through 'Social Reproduction'to 'Dual Systems' Chapter 2 noted the divergence between feminist theories that saw direct power relations between men and women as the main determinant of women's oppression,and those that looked else-
42 Theorizing Gender Current Frameworks 43 where.The most influential extrinsic theories(apart from biological Nevertheless;the seeds of a much more powerful analysis were determinism,which will be discussed in chapter 4 and is not a present in Miles's remarks about the family.In the middle and later form of social theory)have been Marxist analyses that locate the 1970s this was developed by a number of theorists,particularly in fundamental determinants of women's oppression in class relations, Britain,under the influence of structuralist Marxism. the capitalist system,or the 'relations of production'understood The central idea was that the family,sexuality or gender in class terms. relations at large were the site of the reproduction of 'relations of The simplest version of this idea is the view that 'women's production'.A particular pattern of relations of production(which liberation depends on the class struggle'because capitalism is the mainly means class relations in industry)is taken in Marxist root cause of all social inequalities and class struggle against theory to define a 'mode of production'(capitalist,feudal,etc.).A capitalists is therefore primary.In Women's Liberation,Class Struggle, mode of production provides,so to speak,the backbone of a whole an American booklet circulated in the early 1970s,Karen Miles historical epoch.These relations of production could not exist summarized a widespread view of how women's oppression serves without being reproduced,from day to day,year to year,generation the ruling class.Capitalists get higher profits because women to generation.This need calls into existence social processes workers get lower wages;sexism divides the working class; centering on the family,domestic life and the raising of children. women's oppression maintains the family,which in turn maintains Different theorists gave somewhat different accounts of these capitalism.This simple synthesis of socialist and feminist ideas processes.Juliet Mitchell saw patriarchy as the sphere of ideology, proved too much for more orthodox Marxists to digest.Recent inserting people into their slots in the world of production.Other evidence is the rousing restatement of the class-first view by the English theorists traced a whole new set of social relations here, British Trotskyite Tony Cliff,Class Struggle and Women's Liberation. the'relations of reproduction'.There was agreement,nevertheless, At remarkable length (the book is one of the longest analyses of that these processes or this sphere was the main determinant of modern feminism yet published by a man)Cliff argues that there the subordination of women. can be 'no compromise'between Marxism and feminism:the latter Social reproduction theory in this form represented a major is a bourgeois deception of honest working women.Essentially advance over simple class-interest theories of patriarchy and offered similar views are official doctrine in the Soviet Union and China, a synthesis of several important lines of thought.'Reproduction one of the few points on which these regimes still agree.In China could be understood as bearing children to fill places in production the regime has tried to break women free from the extended and servicing the tired worker at the day's end.Here theory could patriarchal family by substituting the ideal of a harmonious nuclear connect with the basic facts of life documented by working-class family,with the sexual division of labour remaining unchallenged. women themselves,in autobiographical writings from Margaret The Soviet regime is equally complacent about women shouldering Llewelyn Davies's Life As We Have Known It to Gwen Wesson's the social burden of childcare and other work in the home.Policy Brian's Wife,Jenny's Mum.Alternatively 'reproduction'could be on sexual politics has been consistently subordinated to the twists seen as a matter of culture and psychology,of 'socialization', and turns of the class line. making square people to fit square holes in capitalist industry. As theory,these views give little to bite on.The priority of class This picked up themes that were familiar in socialist critiques of struggle is,as Christine Delphy comments on similar arguments the ways education and culture were distorted to fit the needs of in France,'a postulate,a dogma'.There is an obvious objection: capitalism.When Andrew Tolson argued a connection between the subordination of women started long before capitalism,occurs competitive masculinity and the functional requirements of capital- in all classes under capitalism,and has continued in countries ism,the material was new but the form of argument was very that have ceased to be capitalist.The fact that women of different familiar to socialists. classes have different interests is of great importance.But it does Above all,reproduction theory argued a systemic connection not need a dogma of the theoretical priority of class to recognize between the subordination ol women and economic exploitation this. in capitalism.The link was seen as embedded in a whole integrated