When one takes an intersectional perspective on patterns of oppression and domination, it becomes clear that familiar forms of systemic injustice, such as misogyny and anti-Black racism, are inseparable. Some feminist theorists conclude, from this, that the systems behind these injustices cannot be individuated—for example, that there isn’t patriarchy and white supremacy, but instead only white supremacist patriarchy. This chapter offers a different perspective. Philosophers have long observed that a statue and a lump of clay can be individuated although inseparable, (...) and that statues and lumps of clay do different explanatory and predictive work for the same causal outcomes. This chapter suggests that the same is true of systems such as patriarchy and white supremacy. These systems, like the injustices they produce, are inseparable. But they can be individuated, and when they are individuated, they do different explanatory and predictive work. (shrink)

This article argues that systematic comparative analyses of women's strategies and coping mechanisms lead to a more culturally and temporally grounded understanding of patriarchal systems than the unqualified, abstract notion of patriarchy encountered in contemporary feminist theory. Women strategize within a set of concrete constraints, which I identify as patriarchal bargains. Different forms of patriarchy present women with distinct “rules of the game” and call for different strategies to maximize security and optimize life options with varying potential for active or (...) passive resistance in the face of oppression. Two systems of male dominance are contrasted: the sub-Saharan African pattern, in which the insecurities of polygyny are matched with areas of relative autonomy for women, and classic patriarchy, which is characteristic of South and East Asia as well as the Muslim Middle East. The article ends with an analysis of the conditions leading to the breakdown and transformation of patriarchal bargains and their implications for women's consciousness and struggles. (shrink)

Drawing on conceptual tools from philosophical bioethics, economics, and materialist feminism, we advocate viewing transnational commercial surrogacy as labor and consider what it means to compensate women for this work. We find two distinct but interrelated concerns emerge in our discussion of wages for surrogates: how to value and compensate for social reproduction, and how to establish a fair wage for surrogates. We explore limitations of minimum wage policy in addressing the undervaluation of biological and emotional labor in the transnational (...) commercial surrogacy industry. We argue that subsidization is a superior method of addressing at least one cause of undervaluation. (shrink)

While it represents a common form of gender-based violence, misogyny is an often-overlooked concept within academia and the queer community. Drawing on queer and feminist scholarship on gay male misogyny, this article presents a theoretical challenge to the myth that the oppressed cannot oppress, arguing that specific forms of gay male subjectivities can be proponents of misogyny in ways that are unrecognised because of their sexually marginalised status. The authors’ interest in the doing of misogyny, and its effects on specific (...) bodies and subjectivities, leads them to discuss the extent to which white gay male misogyny can function to reinforce a particular gender and racial hierarchy that continually confines queer femininities to the status of the abject other, for failing to exhibit their feminine credentials and for making gender trouble. The study also addresses how specific markers of femininity are depoliticised through the workings of this misogyny, exploring what femininity does when it is conceptualised outside a heteronormative framework. To address these ideas, the authors firstly propose a theoretical account of misogyny in order to understand its analytical status as a cultural mechanism within the psychic economy of patriarchy. Secondly, they use queer approaches to effeminacy and subject formation for making the case for gay male misogyny and its connections to femininity within white gay cultures, asking how misogyny might become an essential component of the performance of hegemonic masculinity. The article concludes with a discussion of the ways in which gay male misogyny reinforces white male dominance over women and queer femininities specifically, advocating for resistance to the reproduction of such patriarchal arrangements. (shrink)