I was just revisiting a book that has been extremely important in my life: Homophobia, A Weapon of Sexism by Suzanne Pharr. I wasn't the only one who found it worthwhile -- it was, and still is, used in Women's Studies curricula, starting not long after its original publishing in 1988.
As I skimmed it again the other day, I found a few things a bit dated, but societal sexism and misogyny don't change all that much.
Here's a passage from the introduction that puts the entire thing into sharp focus. I wish I could share it with every single person of the 99% Movement:
Actually, we have to look at economics not only as the root cause of sexism but also as the underlying, driving force that keeps all the oppressions in place. In the United States, our economic system is shaped like a pyramid, with a few people at the top, primarily white males, being supported by large numbers of unpaid or low-paid workers at the bottom. When we look at this pyramid, we begin to understand the major connection between sexism and racism because those groups at the bottom of the pyramid are women and people of color. We then begin to understand why there is such a fervent effort to keep those oppressive systems (racism and sexism and all the ways they are manifested) in place to maintain the unpaid and low-paid labor.
Susan DeMarco and Jim Hightower, writing for Mother Jones, report that Forbes magazine indicated that “the 400 richest families in America last year had an average net worth of $550 million each. These and less than a million other families—roughly one percent of our population—are at the prosperous tip of our society. In 1976, the wealthiest 1 percent of America’s families owned 19.2 percent of the nation’s total wealth. (This sum of wealth counts all of America’s cash, real estate, stocks, bonds, factories, art, personal property, and anything else of financial value.) By 1983, those at this 1 percent tip of our economy owned 34.3 percent of our wealth. Today, the top 1 percent of Americans possesses more net wealth than the bottom 90 percent.” (small snip)
In order for this top-heavy system of economic inequity to maintain itself, the 90 percent on the bottom must keep supplying cheap labor. A very complex, intricate system of institutionalized oppressions is necessary to maintain the status quo so that the vast majority will not demand its fair share of wealth and resources and bring the system down. Every institution—schools, banks, churches, government, courts, media, etc—as well as individuals must be enlisted in the campaign to maintain such a system of gross inequity.
snip
Economics is the great controller in both sexism and racism. If a person can’t acquire food, shelter, and clothing and provide them for children, then that person can be forced to do many things in order to survive. The major tactic, worldwide, is to provide unrecompensed or inadequately recompensed labor for the benefit of those who control wealth. Hence, we see women performing unpaid labor in the home or filling low-paid jobs, and we see people of color in the lowest-paid jobs available.
The method is complex: limit educational and training opportunities for women and for people of color and then withhold adequate paying jobs with the excuse that people of color and women are incapable of filling them. Blame the economic victim and keep the victim’s self-esteem low through invisibility and distortion within the media and education. Allow a few people of color and women to succeed among the profit-makers so that blaming those who don’t “make it” can be intensified. Encourage those few who succeed in gaining power now to turn against those who remain behind rather than to use their resources to make change for all. Maintain the myth of scarcity—that there are not enough jobs, resources, etc., to go around—among the middleclass so that they will not unite with laborers, immigrants, and the unemployed. The method keeps in place a system of control and profit by a few and a constant source of cheap labor to maintain it.
If anyone steps out of line, take her/his job away. Let homelessness and hunger do their work. The economic weapon works. And we end up saying, “I would do this or that—be openly who I am, speak out against injustice, work for civil rights, join a labor union, go to a political march, etc.—if I didn’t have this job. I can’t afford to lose it.” We stay in an abusive situation because we see no other way to survive.
This is why feminists like me (tho, alas, not all feminists since not all of them understand this, or even know or think of Patriarchy as a problem) can be heard saying something like this: "It's all of a piece; it's all related; you can't hope to stamp out one oppression without also addressing the others; every time you stand up against one oppression you stand up against all of them' there is no hierarchy of oppression (that's a patriarchal divide-and-conquer myth); etc.
If the 99%ers want to change the system, IMO the only way to REALLY change it is to overthrow Patriarchy.
And THAT by the way is why some of us are called "radical feminists" -- because we believe that the root, the
radix, is Patriarchy and must be overthrown if we are to have equality.
Oh, my lads and oh, my lassies, what a grand life we'd have then. NOW you can see how much our economics for the other 99% depends on it too.
There's a line from one of my other favorite feminist books,
The Chalice and the Blade by Riane Eisler, describing early goddess-worshipping societies, and it mentions something like "an easy and comfortable relationship (which included sexuality) between the sexes," in its description. And much more that made it sound like heaven to me.
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