Part of the reason that patriarchy remains the ruling religion of the planet such that men can exact a plethora of pernicious harms on and against women and girls is because of the way people, both male and female, think about the reality of sex and gender. The normative cognitive pattern is oftentimes convoluted and, as many radical feminists point out when examining the way mainstream people think about the issue, crazy. Examples of this craziness would be the widespread, common belief that there exists a relatively equal “battle of the sexes” in which men commit various physical and emotional deleterious harms against women as women conversely subject male people to a wide range of somatically and emotively harmful actions. The inaccuracy of this argument is understood in the radical feminist retort: “Oh, so a man rapes a woman and then she rapes him right back?” The fallacious reasoning and language that produces the commonly accepted idea that misogyny and misandry coexist in equal proportions is not the only concept which complicates and compromises our ability to accurately understand the male proclivity towards multifarious types of violence (including but not limited to “sexual” violence and non-”sexual” violence).
Another concept which has made the attempt to establish radical, revolutionary ways of understanding and responding to the reality of male supremacy difficult is ongoing contention regarding whether the term “sex-based oppression” or “gender-based oppression” should be utilized to reference the processes of degradation and dehumanization that women experience under patriarchy. In this post, I argue that both terms can and should be used to discuss patriarchy while acknowledging that the radical feminist norm is to only incorporate the former term into academic and non-academic discourse regarding the ongoing wars that men wage against women.
To understand the issues that exist with respect to whether the term sex-based oppression or gender-based oppression should be used in discourse regarding patriarchy, one must consider the origins and ideological camps in which the terms are situated. Although difficult to pinpoint precisely, it seems that the term “sex-based oppression” is linked to the term sexism. Coined in 1965 by Pauline Leet during a forum at Franklin and Marshall College, the term was likely modelled on premises similar to those that gave rise to the word “racism.” Leet defined sexism as a process which involved using fallacious logic to legitimate discrimination against female people. The term was subsequently utilized by many other individuals, including Caroline Bird in her introduction to the text “Born Female.” As dissident and increasingly radical discourses and theoretical frameworks continued to surface, the phrase “sex-based oppression” appeared and gained prevalence in various feminist circles and academic groups. The term finds its home with radical feminists, and individuals of this ideological group utilize the term to advance the idea that the oppression women experience is rooted in biological sex (which includes things like physical vulnerability and reproductive capacities which exist because of the reality of female bodies). Radical feminists such as Gayle Rubin contributed to the development of a theoretical framework which enabled individuals to contemplate sex-based oppression without conflating biological gender and sex. Biological sex is distinct from biologically-related yet not bound understandings of gender, with gender being a social construct through which the application of certain values, attributes, characteristics, expectations, and social norms are projected onto both men and women based on their biological sex.
Unlike sex-based oppression, the term gender-based oppression does not find its origins in the understanding of male supremacy as an ideology and practice which involves expressing hatred and control of female bodies. Rather, gender-based oppression is rooted in understandings of how various sociocultural, political, and economic factors have given rise to the concept of gender, with this concept functioning as the springboard through which members of both sexes can be oppressed. In defining gender oppression, the Wiley Online Library asserts that:
Gender oppression is defined as oppression associated with the gender norms, relations, and stratification of a given society. Modern norms of gender in western societies consist of the dichotomous, mutually exclusive categories of masculinity and femininity. Developing in tandem with industrial capitalism and the nation-state, they had particular consequences for women and men. While masculinity was to consist of rationality, autonomy, activity, aggression, and competitiveness (all qualities that made men the ideal participants in the emerging public sphere of economy and polity), femininity was defined in contrast as emotionality, dependency, passivity and nurturance -– all qualities that deemed women’s “place” in the private sphere.
Within this framework, the reader can identify how gender-based oppression is rooted in the development of ideas regarding women and men which unfolded in context of specific ideological realities, including but not limited to economic norms. In this example, we learn that men come to be associated with masculinity, with this state being associated with the acquisition and possession of specific characteristics that are deemed positive, good, valuable, etc. Conversely, women are relegated to the sphere of femininity, being associated with attributes that are deemed less valuable and connotative of inferiority such as passivity, nurturance, and dependence. It is important to note that the aforementioned excerpt emphasizes that masculinity and femininity are conceptualized as mutually exclusive realities, meaning that this construction of gender conforms to the logic of domination’s inclination towards organizing individual identity and social life in terms of hierarchies and binaries. The hierarchical, binary-based organization of both race-based and gender-based realities works to reinforce inequality by emphasizing difference and division as the natural and/or inevitable ways to interpret one’s existence in relation to other individuals who are not a member of one’s invented “group.”
Once the feminist reader grasps the historical development of the terms “sex-based oppression” and “gender-based oppression” as well as their signification within distinct ideological circles, she can begin conceptualizing how to utilize the terms in a manner that parallels her own belief system. Although I am a radical feminist, I deviate from the group’s norm of utilizing “sex-based oppression” and not incorporating “gender-based oppression” into discourse regarding how patriarchy adversely impacts women. I understand the argument against “gender-based oppression” and want to consider it briefly here. The argument against utilizing the term “gender-based oppression” is (rightfully) rooted in radical feminist hostility towards constructing and consciously or unconsciously maintaining ambiguous, vague understandings of how structures of domination, particularly patriarchy, operate. Specifically, to suggest that one is oppressed based on “gender” makes discourse regarding oppression notably broad and amorphous given that it could mean that one is experiencing subordination based on any aspect of the social production of gender such as hair color, weight, tone of voice, clothing preferences, etc. Also, gender-based oppression is a term used fluidly to refer to the subordination that both men and women can experience under patriarchy. Sex-based oppression, on the other hand, is a term that radical feminists use to reference the subordination that women experience from men within a patriarchal framework in which males constitute a dominant class while females operate as the subordinate class. The emphasis with the term “sex-based oppression” is to unequivocally convey that in our living world, it is primarily men dominating women within a framework predicated upon misusing and exploiting female bodies. The term “gender-based oppression” does not convey this profound structural inequity and thus, in the minds of many if not most radical feminists, fails to accurately convey what patriarchy is as well as the material impact that it has. I agree with radical feminists that the term “gender-based oppression” is ineffective in conveying what the term “sex-based oppression” does, but I do not agree that this means we should summarily eliminate the former term from our discourse regarding male supremacy. Rather, I argue that both terms speak to specific aspects of patriarchy and we can attain a more lucid, acute awareness of how male supremacy operates by incorporating each of them into our dissident discourse.
To elaborate on my personal approach to utilizing the terms “sex-based oppression” and “gender-based oppression,” I want to first reiterate that I use both phrases because each term has distinct meanings which unveil the way male supremacy negatively affects female people. Under male supremacy, female existence involves sex-based oppression in context of the material reality of sexual dimorphism. To elaborate, men recognize that we are female because of our biological disposition and the distinct physical features that make us distinguishable from men. Men have and continue to utilize these biological and physically observable realities to argue that women are inferior and subsequently create written laws, social codes, and unspoken rules which contribute to our subordination. An example of sex-based oppression would be making abortion illegal because the issue pertains directly to the material reality of female bodies in context of our reproductive capacities. The oppression transpires as men attempt to control what women do with their bodies in the unique context of determining whether to sustain life in their physical wombs and subsequently release a sentient being out of their body and into the physical world.
Unlike sex-based oppression, gender-based oppressions are the forms of discrimination which result from the socially constructed ideas (which may pertain to biology but also speak to invented ideas regarding female behavior) of women that exist within society and alongside sex-based oppression. An example of gender-based oppression would be job segregation, in which women are confined to lower-paying or no-paying jobs such as domestic work based on sexist, gendered ideas regarding what women can and should do. For example, women are gender-tracked into a plethora of “helping,” low-paying professions on the grounds that we are more caring and compassionate, with this process of gender-tracking contributing to the perpetuation of gender-based (and sex-based) economic inequality.
When we think about examples of subordination that women experience as a result of the presence and proliferation of male supremacist values, it is important to remember that we can produce examples which represent the activation and agency of both sex-based and gender-based oppression. An example of this would be a woman being anally, vaginally, and orally raped after a man watches a pornographic film featuring a female person being subjected to this type of subordinating, “sexualized” violence and violation and subsequently concluding that he wants to experience the somatic realities depicted visually in a visceral, experiential way. (Yes, I am using this graphic example on purpose because I want people to recognize the depth and scope of deleterious harms which can transpire in context of the purportedly “harmless” use of pornography.) The sex-based nature of the oppression that the woman who is subjected to the sexual assault experiences results from the material reality of a female body being violable due to the male’s penis being pressed into a female vagina against her will. The gender-based nature of the oppression results from the cultural construction of women as objects-not-subjects who enjoy or at least willingly submit to the dehumanization and degradation that transpires in violent porn. This gendered construction is culturally and socially sustained through a plethora of damaging practices and processes, including but not limited to the immersion of women and girls in forms of media (books, movies, television shows, etc.) which depict female people as visual objects rather than thinking minds who move freely and utilize their bodies independently.
In conclusion, it is important for radical feminists to recognize that the words, phrases, and concepts we use to think about patriarchy matter. For many years, we have read, discussed, and thought about the way that male supremacy’s efficacy is related to and contingent upon men’s ability to control the language which constitutes the way we think about reality. In developing and modifying language to reflect feminist frameworks of viewing the world, we need to be cognizant of why we are doing so rather than robotically adopting any linguistic structure we see being appropriated from other real feminists and/or pseudo-feminists. Additionally, we need to recognize that rejecting or modifying any of these linguistic structures does not necessarily reflect a diminished commitment to radical politics but might rather convey mere dissent from specific points or ideological perspectives. Ultimately, we need to keep thinking about ways to use and modify the language that exists within feminist discourse so that we can continually cultivate a more acute awareness of how patriarchy operates and what we can do to problematize its presence and pervasiveness.
