Serina

“I interpret autonomy as this innermost subjectivity and area of freedom – small as it may be – without which human beings are devoid of their essential human essence and dignity, without which they become puppets or organisms without an element of free will and consciousness, or mere assemblies of organic matter, as is the model of reproductive engineers today. In the concept autonomy, therefore, the feminist aspiration to maintain and strengthen or recreate this innermost subjective human essence in women is expressed and preserved. On the other hand, we cannot close our eyes to the fact that capitalism, by focussing on the atomized individual in its marketing strategies has, to a large extent, perverted the humanist aspiration inherent in the concept of autonomy.”
― Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour

“Whereas the concept patriarchy denotes the historical depth of women’s exploitation and oppression, the concept capitalism is expressive of the contemporary manifestation, or the latest development of this system. Women’s problems today cannot be explained by merely referring to the old forms of patriarchal dominance. Nor can they be explained if one accepts the position that patriarchy is a ‘pre-capitalist’ system of social relations which has been destroyed and superseded, together with ‘feudalism’, by capitalist relations, because women’s exploitation and oppression cannot be explained by the functioning of capitalism alone, at least not capitalism as it is commonly understood.”
― Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour

“Capital is able to hide behind the figure of the husband, called ‘breadwinner’, with whom the woman, called ‘housewife’, has to deal directly and for whom she is supposed to work out of ‘love’, not for a wage. The wage commands more work than what collective bargaining in the factories shows us. Women’s work appears as personal service outside of capital’ (Dalla Costa, 1973: 34; transl. M.M.).”
― Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour

“Wittig’s assertion is based on her analysis of heterosexuality as a regime, not merely the ‘default’ sexuality, but a political institution that has structured and continues to structure the organization of society, philosophical modes of thought, and even language itself. She conceptualizes the state of women as an enrollment, at birth, into the heterosexual contract, analogous to Rousseau’s social contract: an arrangement into which they are all entered without consent, whose terms and conditions are never explicated but are enforced all the same, set up to extract all benefits and return precious little (if any) compensation to women-as-a-class. To Wittig, the goal of feminist struggle is not an attempted rehabilitation of ‘womanhood’, a category that was and remains subordinate in its very conceptualization. Rather, the struggle for liberation is a struggle for abolition of this category, a mutual annihilation of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ such that social existence is no longer defined by a relation of extractive parasitism.”
― Talia Bhatt, Trans/Rad/Fem