Wittig Considers Women to Be a Biological Category That Should Continue to Be Used
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Like a lot of Wittig's ideas about "women" being a class as opposed to a natural group are super solid. I love the explanation that identifications among women are caused by shar
This is a difficult paper to review because about half the time I was like "Yes. Yes. Yes." and then Wittig would compare the experience of lesbians to the experience of "escaped slaves" and i just , don't understand how this woman can make such good points and then in the next sentence have bad/racist/inaccurate takes.Like a lot of Wittig's ideas about "women" being a class as opposed to a natural group are super solid. I love the explanation that identifications among women are caused by shared oppression and not due to some biological predetermination. Wittig also says that "woman" is a social and political category, which I agree with. She even has this line: "Lesbian is the only concept I know of which is beyond the categories of sex (woman and man), because the designated subject (lesbian) is not a woman, either economically or politically or ideologically. For what makes a woman is a specific social relation to a man." Like hell yeah love that.
But her analysis and conflation of gender and race was not only unnecessary to the point of her text, but was also inaccurate and racist. Very classic second wave feminist but still I am disappointed. I also think that this paper is very narrow in its analysis of gender, and ignores the impacts of colonialism and roles white women played in oppressing indigenous groups that had their own gender structures, etc.
So overall a fine read, but I didn't really learn anything new and I think the lack of intersectionality is a major draw back for this text.
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ASIDE from that, the points she makes about the categories of "man" and "woman" are so good, the two being political categories (classes) which exist and are understood as natural/biological in order to enable oppression. In the second part of the essay she critiques Marxist materialism and its refusal to recognise individuals as subjects. Her attempt to unite materialism and subjectivity in how it pertains to "oppressed groups" (though she means either women or black people, never black women) is interesting and I don't know enough about it to have a formed opinion of that. She should definitely take her own advice though.
For this to eventually happen, this gendered oppression to be interrupted, sex categories should be abolished.
Lesbianism, she argues, as it exists outside of the "myth of woman" is not part of these political categories (man/woman) and the construct that embodies them, heterosexuality, and neither does it exist in response to them. Lesbianism constitutes the only 'escape' from cisheteropatriarchy and therefore the only state in which "women" can exist outwith it. Good shit.
The rating is due to the, uh, blatant racism.
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The points raised about lesbian as its own social category were very interesting though, and I think it's ironic how I've seen quite a few terves quote her when she explicitly critiques, multiple times, the belief that the root of women's oppression is biology.
Some of her comparisons with racial oppressions were very uncomfortable to read, the equivalence of womanhood and literal enslavement of black people seems, among many other issues, to forget completely about the existence of black women.The points raised about lesbian as its own social category were very interesting though, and I think it's ironic how I've seen quite a few terves quote her when she explicitly critiques, multiple times, the belief that the root of women's oppression is biology. 👀
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By [...] admitting that there is a "natural" division between women and men, we naturalize history, we assume that "men" and "women" have always existed and will always exist. [...] consequently we naturalize the social phenomena which express our oppression, making change impossible. [...] instead of seeing giving birth as a forced production, we see it as a "natural," "biological" process, forgetting that in our societies births are planned (demography), forgetting that we ourselves are programmed to produce children, while this is the only social activity "short of war" that presents such a great danger of death. Thus, as long as we will be "unable to abandon by will or impulse a lifelong and centuries-old commitment to childbearing as the female creative act," gaining control of the production of children will mean much more than the mere control of the material means of this production: women will have to abstract themselves from the definition "woman" which is imposed upon them.
It was a political constraint, and those who resisted it were accused of not being "real" women. [...] To refuse to be a woman, however, does not mean that one has to become a man. [...] how is her alienation different from that of someone who wants to became a woman? [...] At least for a woman, wanting to become a man proves that she has escaped her initial programming. But even if she would like to, with all her strength, she cannot become a man. For becoming a man would demand from a woman not only a man's external appearance but his consciousness as well, that is, the consciousness of one who disposes by right of at least two "natural" slaves during his life span. This is impossible [...]
[...] the concept "woman is wonderful" [...] does not radically question the categories "man" and "woman," which are political categories and not natural givens. It puts us in a position of fighting within the class "women" not as the other classes do, for the disappearance of our class, but for the defense of "woman" and its reinforcement. [...] Feminist [...] For many of us it means someone who fights for women as a class and for the disappearance of this class. For many others it means someone who fights for woman and her defense – for the myth [...]
Our fight aims to suppress men as a class, not through a genocidal, but a political struggle. Once the class "men" disappears, "women" as a class will disappear as well [...] Our first task, it seems, is to always thoroughly dissociate "women"(the class within which we fight) and "woman," the myth. For "woman" does not exist for us: it is only an imaginary formation, while "women" is the product of a social relationship. [...] we have to destroy the myth inside and outside ourselves. "Woman" is not each one of us, but the political and ideological formation which negates "women" (the product of a relation of exploitation). "Woman" is there to confuse us, to hide the reality "women." [...] But to become a class we do not have to suppress our individual selves, and since no individual can be reduced to her/his oppression we are also confronted with the historical necessity of constituting ourselves as the individual subjects of our history as well. [...] What is at stake [...] is an individual definition as well as a class definition. For once one has acknowledged oppression, one needs to know and experience the fact that one can constitute oneself as a subject (as opposed to as object of oppression), that one can become someone in spite of oppression, that one has one's own identity.
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this topic is defi i feel like this is a good introduction to the idea of being a woman as a forced political identity and gender itself being a social construct, and i definitely want to read more about it. it is quite confusing, but because it is so short, it's pretty easy to sit down and read through. it's very thought-provoking and there are so many branches you could go on off of this central idea, i would like to lear more about how trans and gender non-conforming people fit into this idea.
this topic is definitely something i want to look more into. i was not a fan of the comparison to slavery at the end -- i don't think we should compare traumatic historical developments simply to prove the gravity of a situation. i also don't know much about this topic or perspectives on it, so i really should do more research on it before i tout this is as being super correct and perfect. ...more
Unfortunately, there are a few passages that are at best insensitive and ignorant of black struggles, so points off for that. If Wittig compares misogyny to racism and womanhood to slavery, then what of black women, who are already suffering both?
Mostly good. Written in 1981 and still every bit as relevant. I can think of plenty people today who'd do well to refresh their memory about lesbian and feminist history with this one.Unfortunately, there are a few passages that are at best insensitive and ignorant of black struggles, so points off for that. If Wittig compares misogyny to racism and womanhood to slavery, then what of black women, who are already suffering both?
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Source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55905261-one-is-not-born-a-woman
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