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Wittig: la categoría de sexo — Transcript · YTtoTranscript

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Wittig: la categoría de sexo

Heterocronías Feminismos y Epistemologías del Sur · 2,391 words · 12 min read · EN

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Below is the complete, readable transcript of Wittig: la categoría de sexo by Heterocronías Feminismos y Epistemologías del Sur on YouTube. Read the full text, copy any part you need, or generate a transcript for any video with our free tool.

Good evening. This video is about a text by Monica Vitti called "Heterosexual Thought." We've taken a chapter here, which is about the category of sex, and I'm going to expand on it with some other concepts developed in other chapters of the same text. In this essay, the author shows us how the category of sex has

operated and how this way of operating has served for oppression. If we take the opposition of slave/master/ woman/man, in reality, these two oppositions are based on the same belief, the same structure. Just as there are no slaves without a master, there are also no women without men. In reality, that is the fundamental operation

of these oppositions: to make one of the members of the opposition dependent on the other. So [Music] we see that sexual difference actually operates as a censorship, and this censorship is produced, let's say, by an idea that considers nature to be the cause of this sexual difference. So, when nature is presented as the

cause of differences that actually occur in the social world, what is being hidden is precisely that this social difference implies an entire economic, political, and ideological order. So, by passing this difference off as natural, this order is obscured. So this difference, which is social, becomes abstract and is conceptualized by the masters. Then,

when the slaves rebel, they also reconceptualize it. So what is the author's main thesis? That there is no sex, there is only one that oppresses and others that are oppressed. So, in the same way that the class struggle, according to dialectical materialism, resolves the contradiction between two opposing classes, the same should happen in the struggle between

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men and women. And just as social classes would disappear in the class struggle, so too would the sexes disappear in this struggle, if they become comprehensible. Then she will argue that the conflict would mark a before and after. Before the conflict, we have categories that mark differences, and after the conflict, we would have categories of opposition. It is

precisely the conflict that will reveal that these categories of difference are actually categories of opposition. When they are categories of difference, they are taken as given, they are conceived as natural, yes. And on the other hand, the conflict, which precisely here in this context of struggle, will reveal them as categories of opposition. And here she takes some

elements, for example, women contribute three-quarters of the Society's work, and to that we must add all the reproductive work, the reproductive work in private life, the work of a housewife, the work of maintaining the children, cleaning, etc. Women are murdered, they are abused, they are forced to give birth, to marry. Yes, and although she

writes this in a context from several years ago, however, this still persists today. Let's consider that in our country today, without going any further, girls are forced to give birth. So it's not something from another era. The dominant thought, as a reason, is that there is already something that precedes thought, so that's what is

taken as natural, and in reality, what this "natural" is hiding, as we had said, is an opposition that is actually social, and it's not that it existed before. So, what is taken is a quote from Martin Hygiene and Engels's *The German Ideology*, in which it says that the thoughts of the ruling class are also the

dominant thoughts, that is to say, the categories that dominate in a context are precisely the categories of that dominant class, and so this is what will lead her to She says, well, the category of sex is a category that belongs to a dominant class, only she's going to understand a difference in what

class is, unlike Marks, my nation, which supplies precisely all the a priori assumptions, and all the a priori assumptions, that is, all the political and ideological construction, will be supplied by domination. So why do we believe what we believe? Because we take as natural categories that are given by those who have power. So what does

domination teach? Domination has a metaphysical approach, a scientific approach, and even a Marxist approach from the metaphysical point of view. If the difference between sexes is not only conceived as this category of man-woman being innate in human beings—yes, that is, that language has these innate categories—but it is also ontological, that is, that there is

a reality independent of the categories that this difference between sexes has. And that is to say, the difference between sexes, on the one hand, is in language in a way that is unnatural to human beings, but it is also independent of language and human thought. And furthermore, this category has a scientific approach. If this difference between

sexes has a scientific approach, then it says that this difference between Sex has a natural biological, hormonal, and genetic basis, yes, and all those foundations are found there, and also from the point of view of the maximum, which is a natural division of labor in the family, which occurs by sex. So all this is a thought of

domination to hide the fact that all this is part of a construction, which is the construction of patriarchy. So if the difference between sexes, that is, the fact that there are two sexes, the category of sex is a category of domination, then it is a product of social domination, it is not a

natural category, it is not something of nature, but rather it is a product of social domination. Social domination is what has produced these categories, therefore the category of sex is a political category, it does not have so much to do with the genitals of individuals but rather with relationships between individuals, and what it does is establish

as natural a relationship that is at the base of heterosexual society. This category imposes on women precisely the reproduction of heterosexual society. So, just as social production work, social production, reproduction of society, all these categories only make sense in a context of exploitation. As Marcelo clearly showed, with social production work, but also

reproduction The society's role is related to a context of exploitation. The heterosexual society of that time is what produced the category of sex, because this category of sex is a product of society, and that society— heterosexual society— is patriarchal, meaning it maintains the difference between the sexes to maintain the dominance of patriarchy.

And in that patriarchal heterosexual society, marriage is presented as an institution that implies the appropriation of women, that is, it assigns women to unpaid work. And look at this; we can see examples. When I was a young girl, I was always struck by the fact that my mother used the possessive pronoun. They said that because my mother's name was Olga

Molina C., and she even stated, and in the documents, she appeared as Olga Molina de Minuto. Later, well, because they explained to me when I was a child, "No, because when you get married, you become, in passing, the same name. In the name change that happens when a woman gets married, she becomes, in passing, the

husband's last name." So there was a possessive pronoun there that was clearly expressed. The appropriation of women, and even later when I went to university and had some female classmates, I was horrified to see that some of them, even on their degrees, which they had earned through their own effort by studying and passing their courses, still used their

married name. So, there was, let's say, no awareness on the part of the women that they were being appropriated in that institution. So, women are always available, or must always be available, to men. What we see here, and what the author points out, is that women become visible sexually and become invisible as social beings. Notice that in

our language, and at least in our country, " woman" has two meanings: on the one hand, it signifies gender, but also, "woman" signifies a marital status. That is to say, the term itself represents, has content, that sense of appropriation. Therefore, the category of sex is a totalitarian category, the author tells us. We have to

start thinking outside of that category if we truly want to think, if we want to think seriously. And here's what we were talking about in previous videos: not just seeing how concepts operate within the framework of scientific theories, but how Concepts operate in society, yes, and here we see that we are facing a category that

is totalitarian, and we have to try to understand how this category operates in society. It is a category that, notice, exerts an operation of reduction. We already know what reductionism is, and it is taking a part for the whole. So we take a part of a being, which is their sexuality, and we take it for the whole. Yes, that is to say,

the woman becomes visible as a sexual being, meaning that her sexuality encompasses all her aspects. The spiritual is not considered, this and other aspects, her intellect, are not considered. Sexuality encompasses her entire being. Yes, therefore it is a reductionism, it has been totalitarianism and reduction. When slavery was abolished, and after the abolition of slavery,

any declaration of color was considered discrimination. That is to say, if someone referred to someone by their color, it was considered a crime of discrimination. But that doesn't happen precisely with the case of the declaration of sex, which continues to be called, and continues to be, a category that explains, a category that

determines, yes, and the declaration of sex is not exactly wrong. Viewed precisely because the rules, just as slavery is, have been abolished, but the same cannot be said for the relationship between men and women. Therefore, we must reconstruct and dismantle this category of sex. Woman, what is woman? Woman is a myth. As Simon de Bulwer said, one is not

born a woman, but rather becomes one. It is civilization that produces woman; it is culture, society. And this is not about changing, seeking, or replacing patriarchy with matriarchy because, in reality, both matriarchy and patriarchy—and this also applies to all those feminisms that appeal in some way to matriarchy— are heterosexual. What they do is change

the sex of the oppressor, but they remain heterosexual. That is, we must move beyond heterosexuality. That is what this author proposes. To admit that the difference between men and women is natural is to naturalize history and social phenomena; we naturalize them, we accept them as simply the way they are. That's a destiny that can't be

changed. So, woman, if what "woman" means is an imposition, but this doesn't mean that instead of being a woman, one wants to become a man, it has nothing to do with that. Precisely what is desired is to deconstruct that and get out of that category of woman because we must remember that nothing natural exists in society if there is no

nature in society, that is, there are no natural phenomena in society. So she poses this question: what does feminism mean? Feminism can have two meanings: one is the struggle for women, and the other is the struggle for the disappearance of the class of woman, just as Marxism seeks the disappearance of the class, of the

class difference. Well, here too it would be the struggle for the disappearance of the class of woman. If we stay with the struggle for women, what we are doing is strengthening the myth, the myth of woman. On the other hand, if we think about making this class disappear, this class distinction between man and

woman, then there we will truly dismantle the patriarchy. One might ask, says the author, well, why call it feminism? Well, because the term feminism maintains a political link with the first feminist movement, but also, and she also affirms, precisely the history of the movement. It is a historical movement, yes, but its objective is neither

equality and women's rights, nor the difference of this movement, nor the bloc that would be the feminism of difference, which we have already seen, but rather that all of that would go toward strengthening the myth. What needs to be done is to eliminate the category of sex. So the first thing we have to

do is distinguish women from woman. Women are, let's say, social relations. When we talk about women, they have to do with social relations. In contrast, woman is the myth. Woman is a political and ideological construct that precisely negates women, and therefore is a political and ideological construct of patriarchy. So the author defends the idea of a

social class, which is that of women, and this is precisely where she opposes Marxism. What she is going to say is that Marxism made it impossible for this social class of women to take The awareness that they were a class, then, says the natural division of labor, precisely hides the class conflict between men and women. The awareness of

oppression is not a reaction, it is not only a struggle against that oppression—that's good, but there has to be something deeper; there has to be a conceptual reevaluation of the social world. This has to take language, yes, and precisely see how those categories operate in order to deconstruct them and get rid of them, to

look for new concepts. That is, there is an awareness that will be a result of language. That's why, although the author doesn't mention it here, it's very important for me to return to inclusive language as an adjustment, a form of awareness of the oppression of one class over another, of one social class over another, of the

class of men over the class of women. And this is a cognitive practice. Yes, this implies a cognitive practice; this has to do with knowledge, it has to do with epistemology. That's why an epistemology that serves to raise awareness of oppression is fundamental, which is the only way, let's say, to defeat patriarchy. Well,

thank you very much. We'll see in upcoming videos