To argue for Feminist Standpoint’s particular gendered analysis, Hartstock constructs a sexual division of labor to differentiate between women’s and men’s activity and products. Her theory relies on the normative gendered discourses at the time of its writing to inform a “specific epistemology and ontology manifested by the institutionalized sexual division of labor” (289). This labor is highlighted as salient “only when it occurs at the level of society as a whole” (289) such as the stereotypical tasks Polish and Icelandic female protesters used to shut down their respected countries by to show their collective resistance through.
It is important to note here that Hartstock’s definition of sexual division of labor – which she describes as …show more content…
Their consciousness is bound by their (institutionally) assumed innate reproductive abilities. Pregnancy is their labor; children are their product. Therefore, given the commonality of pregnancy and mothering, Hartstock claims they meet the Marxist standard to be considered a class of laborers (and therefore, through their communal consciousness as a marginalized, subjugated class, enable Feminist Standpoint’s analytic …show more content…
None of these eighty-one women listed as being murdered could have become pregnant by any scientific or biological standards (although they could have raised children all the same); not all of these women were married housewives or worked as domestic staff (although many of them were sex-workers who catered to a male clientele). All of them were trans women of color, identities constructed at the center of crisscrossing indexes of race and gender, intersections not readily recognized by Feminist Standpoint. It appears that while it understands the relationships between cisgender women and the patriarchal sexual divisions of labor which defines them, Feminist Standpoint Theory cannot envision (and therefore advocate for) any woman who exists outside of these particularizing
It is important to note here that Hartstock’s definition of sexual division of labor – which she describes as …show more content…
Their consciousness is bound by their (institutionally) assumed innate reproductive abilities. Pregnancy is their labor; children are their product. Therefore, given the commonality of pregnancy and mothering, Hartstock claims they meet the Marxist standard to be considered a class of laborers (and therefore, through their communal consciousness as a marginalized, subjugated class, enable Feminist Standpoint’s analytic …show more content…
None of these eighty-one women listed as being murdered could have become pregnant by any scientific or biological standards (although they could have raised children all the same); not all of these women were married housewives or worked as domestic staff (although many of them were sex-workers who catered to a male clientele). All of them were trans women of color, identities constructed at the center of crisscrossing indexes of race and gender, intersections not readily recognized by Feminist Standpoint. It appears that while it understands the relationships between cisgender women and the patriarchal sexual divisions of labor which defines them, Feminist Standpoint Theory cannot envision (and therefore advocate for) any woman who exists outside of these particularizing