THE PRINCIPAL ASPECT OF PATRIARCHY UNDER CAPITALISM

The principal aspect of patriarchal oppression is of women as a social role. This is not based on an individual’s genitals nor their personally held identity, but is being constantly determined and acted upon by their existence under capitalism. Given that we understand what the purpose of male/female gender assignment is in capitalist society, we can know that this oppression faces anyone who is socially perceived to have been assigned female at birth (AFAB).

The ongoing social scrutiny of and action upon those perceived to be AFAB is the way by which society continues, even after birth, to assign gender. Perception of being AFAB and thus being continually assigned “female” becomes the basis by which capitalist society sees one as capable of, and thus required to, uphold its “female-assigned” aspect of the division of labor, and all of this division’s generated ideas and expectations about women that come with it: to carry forward reproductive tasks and certain “acceptable” labor positions generally, to hold a particular position within a nuclear family, and to assume certain social (and sexual) roles.

Concisely, we know that male/female gender assignment came from the division of productive and reproductive labor, and that with these came a whole host of particular roles and ways of being treated that accompany each of these assignments. We know that this is to fulfill certain economic tasks and a particular labor relationship, and to reproduce these in capitalist society again and again. It is people who are socially perceived as AFAB (and thus are again and again being primarily “assigned female”) that are the primary subjects to the principal aspect of patriarchal oppression under capitalism.

In this understanding, this means that not all AFAB people spend their lives as the primary subject of the principal aspect of patriarchy. It also means that not all people who are the primary subject of the principal aspect of patriarchy are AFAB. Not all women face this principal aspect of patriarchy, and not all who face this aspect are women. It is neither genitals nor identity that determines one living as the primary subject to the principal aspect of patriarchy, but social existence under capitalism.

THE SECONDARY ASPECT OF PATRIARCHY

The secondary aspect of patriarchal oppression is what we might call the oppression of deviation from the codified assigned roles corresponding to perceived gender assignment. This, too, is meant to uphold a very particular set of social relations that correspond to the relations of production (the male/female divide and the division of productive and reproductive labor).

We can picture this deviation in a social context occuring when someone is perceived to have been assigned one gender at birth, but to have in varying degrees and amounts conformed to the social relations and attributes of the gender assignment other to their own. This can be in presentation and mannerism (that acts against the coding of their perceived assigned gender) and in the way that they have sex (if it is perceived to not promote reproduction and the economic unit of the nuclear family).

Every person typically gets elements of this aspect of patriarchy as a part of gender assignment and socialization/discipline as they are prepared to assume corresponding social and economic roles. However, when we look broadly, we see a landscape in which the primary subject to this secondary aspect of patriarchal oppression is LGBT people. In fact, it is this secondary aspect of patriarchal oppression that makes it possible for us to speak of LGBT with any specificity. However, being neatly identifying or being defined as LGBT is not determinant of who faces this aspect of patriarchy. Again, this is a structure existing independently of identity, and we can only destroy it by understanding it as it exists independently of identity.

This is the aspect of patriarchy that most oversees the social boundaries between the corresponding roles of the division of labor, and sees such “deviance” as undermining the ideas, assumptions, inherencies, and “common sense” that must continually be reproduced for patriarchy to exist.

For trans women who are generally read to be assigned male at birth, they may be seen as men who are betraying the collective task of sexually dominating women, shirking their designated roles both socially and economically, or threatening the most vital underpinnings of “inherent aspects of assigned gender” that make heterosexual men feel that their way of being and seeing the world (including both themselves and women) is “natural”.

Lesbians may be faced with disdain for being perceived as “overstepping their boundaries” as women, and limiting the scope of the competitive marketplace of sexual domination by men. Similarly, butch lesbians can be seen with contempt for how their expression and manner of dress shirks consideration or “availability” for sexual consumption by men.

There are innumerable instances to varying degrees of intensity where we can see LGBT people and even others facing the secondary aspect of patriarchal oppression. And in fact, we can see that within this aspect of patriarchy, what we understand to be the motive force of violence, exploitation, and subjugation of trans people is actually shared ACROSS identity lines. This is because the secondary aspect of patriarchal oppression, just like the principal aspect, is founded in upholding particular economic and corresponding social relations, not in identity or genitalia.

LONG LIVE THE STONEWALL MILITANT FRONT