How we Constructed the Rape of Anene
The construction which underpins the continued brutal rape and exploitation of women is based on our understanding of nature. In nature, we argue, men are men and women are women. This is a biological fact and it necessarily brings with it, definitive roles within society and thus women as the weaker and maternal sex, are assigned certain roles within society. And this we say….is the way of nature. All we can do is educate our offspring that women must be respected and not raped, goes the accepted version of this sorry farce.
But this conception of nature lies at the heart of a construction which, according to radical feminists such as Kate Millet, is based on a theory of patriarchy as a power system formed by the fundamental relationship between men and women, namely sexual relations, others such as Christine Delphy , argued that all men have free access to their wives and their labour power and that it is women’s position within the domestic mode of production that explains why their work is excluded from the realm of value. Some Marxists feminists, such as Sylvia Walby would even argue that gender inequality derives from Capitalism and is not to be constituted as an independent system of patriarchy, since men’s domination over women is a by-product of capital domination over labour and is derived from capitalism and benefits capitalists.
But it was perhaps Colette Guillaumin who best articulated the position of women in society. She argues that sexual categories are constructed, and not on the basis of biological differences; the latter only becomes significant because they correspond to “real” groups, which are constituted in the context of a relation involving the appropriation of their labour power. She reaches this conclusion because she focuses on the fact that in our society the physical, material and emotional upkeep of human beings is still performed without pay. She argues that unpaid labour is an indicator of a specific type of social relation usually associated with slavery and distinct from capitalist social relations, where labour is paid, very poorly most times, but paid nonetheless.
But before we explore this further it is important to understand how Guillaumin arrives at her understanding of sexual construction.
According to Dannielle Juteau-Lee, Race and Sex are based on a common construction underpinned by naturalism and Guillaumin situates the ideology of “race”, that is racism, within the broader framework of naturalism and more specifically, in terms of the modern idea of nature, where the “natural” is seen as internally programmed, be it blood, instinct, genes, chemistry etc. The internally programmed “natural” applies not to single individuals but to a class in its totality, each member representing only a fragment of the whole.
Guillaumin argues that this ideology of nature is based on the context of social relations and involves dependency, exploitation and appropriation, be it land, of humans, of their bodies and of their labour, as well as the products of their bodies and of their labour. It is not because individuals possess a specific nature that they are appropriated (as slaves were), it is because they belong to an appropriated category that they are attributed a specific nature. In other words it is not because your skin is black that you were enslaved, that you became a slave, but because you were a slave that you became black or more importantly, that colour becomes significant.
Guillaumin reminds us that the process of slavery was underway for close to a century before taxonomies based on somatic characters were elaborated. Colour, she argues, became a discriminant when a social group was in fact constituted. In other words, slavery as a system was not built on the appearance of its agents but on the appropriation of it labour.
Juteau-Lee suggests that skin colour, which was first considered as an emblem, as a signifier, is now transformed into the expression of a specific nature. From that point on she argues, the signifier is considered as preceding the classification, as causing the classification and eventually, as determining ones position in society.
This transformation as engendered by the naturalists’ ideology hides the relations which constitute racial and sexual categories. Race and sex are treated as biological and or socially constituted independent variables, causing the observed social positions and inequalities.
Radical feminism emphasizes the fundamental opposition between men and women, where all men, irrespective of class or race, benefit, though in different ways, from a system of domination where women are economically, politically, legally and culturally subordinated to men, most feminists agree that gender is a social construct and would argue that Gender was the central concept. Biology is not destiny and femininity is constructed, added on to females where females become women and males become men.
Guillaumin turns this argument on its head by questioning the construct of sexual categories altogether. She argues that sexual categories are constructed, and not on the basis of biological differences. She argues that biological differences only became significant because they correspond to the “real” groups, which are constituted in the context of a relation involving the appropriation of their labour power. It is in the context of this relation, she argues, that markers are chosen and used to assign people to a specific group or class.
The simultaneous occurrence of subjection, material servitude and oppression embodied in the class of women, where the agents are men on the one hand and women on the other, has a specific mode of appropriation called sexage. She argues that the appropriation of one’s body and labour is not restricted to wives or companions in the domestic sphere, but to women as a category.
She argues thatand thus designated by female genitals, females become women.
Juteau-Lee describes it thus. “What we must understand is why social significance is attached to anatomical differences which serve to assign people to distinct social collectives”. She calls this representational process “ sexualisation” She argues that it is a crucial concept that allows us to examine, not the relations established between the two sexes or sexual categories, not the gendering of these biological beings, but the categorization of humans into two distinct sexual categories. This she argues, leads to the uncovering of the social relations of appropriation producing sexualization and naturalization. “It is because we are appropriated that we are sexualized and genderized, not because we are sexually different that we are appropriated.”
A mouthful and quite a bit to get our heads around I am sure. So let us then on this basis proceed to examine the construction of sex as a social category and compare its trajectory to that of race.
Juteau-Lee argues that first, “race” is considered to be evidence and behavior is imputed. Second there is an attempt to separate the biological fact from the social and psychological characteristics, where biological race does not determine behavior and social position as there exists no necessary relation between these two components. Third, some scientists will affirm that race does not exist as a biological entity. Fourth, some social scientists discover the relations producing social groups and fostering the construction of an ideology of “race”. Signifiers in this case, skin color are finally seen as chosen after the establishment of social categories. She then does the same for “Sex” where she suggests, “first, Sex is seen as evidence, there are two biological sexes and therefore two sexual categories. “Sex” is an independent variable, it determines the place occupied in the sexual division of labour and in society in general. Second, biological sex is separated from gender. You are not born women you become one. Efforts are made to understand gender relations and gendering. At this point, the categorization of human beings into two distinct biological categories is not questioned. Biological differences between men and women are seen as self evident and as leading to sexualisation as a process of signification. Femininity and masculinity are seen to be added to on to femaleness and maleness. Third, some social scientists, mainly materialist feminists, argue that bipartition of gender is foreign to the existence of sex as a biological reality.” Here Nicole-Claude Mathieu argues that race and sex are first conceptualized as being constructed on the basis of biological differences. Guillaumin maintains That “ Race and sex are real, but only as ideological constructs used to identify groups socially constituted in the context of a relation of appropriation.”
So, why is this argument so readily accepted when dealing with race but attracts fierce resistance when it is applied to “sex”?
Juteau-Lee argues that the concrete realities of the relationship between men and women determine to a large extent how these arguments are accepted and because this relationship is fundamentally based on the appropriation of womens labour in the form of unpaid work, without contracts, time limits and working conditions. Furthermore she argues that violence is often employed to reproduce this system of domination, women like other minorities and exploited are harassed, beaten, raped and murdered because they are women.
Mathieu in turn presents an argument that suggests society places an amazing amount of constraints on women, such as heterosexuality and monogamy, in order to ensure that they are kept within their socially assigned specific location within the system of production and Juteau-Lee identifies this as proof that we are confronted here not by a biological fact but by a social fact.
She argues that Guillaumin`s emphasis on sexage and collective appropriation sheds light on most contemporary problems left unsolved by other feminists approaches. These are, for example: the existence of patriarchy outside the home, the continuing oppression of women even when they evolve outside of marriage, as unmarried and or divorced women, as nuns or lesbians, the specific forms of violence exerted against them in different sites and in different historical periods, the continuing poverty and pauperization of women, the fact that in the last instance. Poor or rich, black or white, from the “centre” or “periphery they are still responsible for the unpaid upkeep of human beings.
And so, it is precisely this materialist position that roots the point of commonality of females and women. Their homogeneity is not common biology but sex class. A class which is not based on biological sex but where “sex” operates as a signifier, the latter serving to identify a group constituted in the context of a social relation of appropriation.
It is the insistence of the difference argued by most feminists that is most alarming to me and is what initially prompted my research on this matter. In Guillaumin, I have found a rational thought process, which rather than celebrate difference, it is decidedly cautious about difference. She in fact argues that Difference has always been tied to domination, and she has always been suspicious of exhortations to claim the right to be different, be it ethnically racially or sexually. Fighting for your right to be different, as we are so clearly seeing within the “coloured” community today, can also mean, fighting for your subordination. But that is another debate.
Guillaumin argues that while there are positives to differences the disadvantages are numerous. “It renders invisible the social construction of the naturalist discourse and perpetuates it. It denies that women, blacks and other dominated groups are constructed in the context of social relation of domination and dependence. Furthermore she argues that this approach fosters the development of an essentialist theory of identity and of identity politics by making invisible the process constituting groups as a social category.
It is thus this materialist feminist position which seeks to understand the relations which constitute and construct the social categories of sex that most appeals to my rational mind. It allows me to understand and participate in the feminist debate on an equal footing knowing where I am positioned within the struggle for emancipation of women understanding full well that the unity of women is critical and that only they can truly liberate themselves but accepting that a materialist conception of the women`s struggle does not limit my participation to a biological accident but is rather one of rational thought and concrete and daily social relations.
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