Gender

No Woman, No Revolution, Part 7

Gender

Men and women are biologically different, but socially equal.

Any differences that are attributed to men or to women that are not biological are called “Gender”.

Discrimination between people on grounds of gender is wrong.

Opposition to gender-discrimination is not the entirety of women’s concerns. Opposition to gender-discrimination is a “human rights” matter that may be dealt with by law.

Women’s concerns as women go beyond opposition to gender-discrimination. Women should organise as women so as to become a free-willing collective subject that can act positively, and so do more than merely restore prescribed human rights.

Women organised democratically as women, and especially as working women, can be a revolutionary force. It is this revolutionary force of women that the communists need to bring into being.

The establishment of “gender desks” is not sufficient for revolutionary purposes. “Gender desks” can partially, but not completely, restore equal (bourgeois) rights to bourgeois women, but will not succeed in the task of mobilising proletarian women for the overthrow of capitalism, which is the only full emancipation available to them.

• The above is to introduce the original reading-text: What do we mean by 'Gender', Tweedie, 2012.

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