International Women's Day: Tuesday 8 March

[teamsaint]

... o, not just "a reality in many people's minds", surely : a reality tout court.

But while there is clearly a 'dominating' class it seems to me that the situation is far less clear - far more fluid - nowadays as to the make up of other class groupings than was the case, say, when Marx was thinking about these things.

Well personally I would agree that this is a reality, but AH seemed to be suggesting that class is a perception whereas ethnicity is fixed and factual.
But I may have misinterpreted him.

But don't get me started on class......

( Edit: yes modern class definition is a tricky area, I'd cut out the middle man ( like Amazon) and look at wealth and inequality statistics, and not the ones that the BBC use when they occasionally bother to look at these matters.....)

[ahinton]

I would think that ethnicity is for many people a matter of ( self) perception, ( and increasingly so), and gender doesn't seem to be as fixed as once seemed the case.

Be that as it may, to the extent that it might pertain at all, there are officially/legally recognised ethnicities and, whilst gender is indeed not as fixed as it was once thought by some to be (and I refer here solely to gender qua gender here and not to sexual orientation as well), the only material change that can be said to have occurred in recent times is the recognition (albeit not by some obdurate people with heads stll firmly in the sand) of the latter two categories in LGBT, so I woudl stil maintain that ethnicity and gender have a more obvious factual basis than does "class"; whilst I am not suggesting, in Thatcherite manner, that "there's no such thing as class", there are no officially/legally recognised and accepted definitions of it in the way that there are with gender and ethnicity.

the existence of a class of people that dominates our society is a reality in many peoples minds. I should think one could prove it beyond reasonable doubt with statistics.

It's sufficiently obvious that no such proof would really need to be sought but, yes, of course there are bullies and control freaks around in many walks of life, some of whom already have and others contrive to secure official sanction for their bullying and control-freakery through the possession and/or acquisition of sufficient funds to confer upon them the financial clout to enable such activities. Whether or to what extent that identifies such folk as a social class per se is less clear and, in any case, if it did, it might suggest that there are very many other social classes each with its own agenda that it tries to pursue with varying degrees of success or none depending upon the amount of power that they can grab in order to pursue them.

I also suspect that an undue recourse to "class" in support of arguments such as are being made in this thread is more likely to spread the kind of confusion that might give rise to the dilution of those arguments, not least on the grounds that not everyone can be guaranteed to have indentical perceptions of those "classes" or who belongs to each of them because all who perceive and all who belong to such "classes" are humans and have their own individual take on such matters (provided tht they think about them at all). Women are more easily and widely identifiable as women than are members of this, that or the other "class" identifiable as members thereof.

That's all that was trying to say about this and, in so doing, I offer a mere personal opinion rather than pretending to be a sociological historian.

[P. G. Tipps]

Just a thought: being 'gender-blind' means you don't notice when there aren't (m)any women, doesn't it?

All depends what the women look like, ff ...

[ahinton]

... o, not just "a reality in many people's minds", surely : a reality tout court.

But while there is clearly a 'dominating' class it seems to me that the situation is far less clear - far more fluid - nowadays as to the make up of other class groupings than was the case, say, when Marx was thinking about these things.

That's right, but I would go further and suggest that what and who might constitue a "dominating" class is arguably also "far less clear - far more fluid - nowadays" than was once the case; to the extent that one might, for example, seek to equate the "dominating class" as synonomous with "the moneyed class", the very notion of "nouveau riche" (which is no longer all that new) calls such an idea into question because one can never be sure of whom it might constitute from one year to the next, still less that everyone by mere virtue of being asset rich and having a high income is even necessarily of a "dominant" persuasion.

You mention "when Marx was thinking about these things"; I for one, would be fascinated to be able to know what he would have thought about them in a present-day context within Western society in particular and I'm sure that I'd not be alone in being so, but I am at least confident that he would have given a great deal of thought to them.

[ahinton]

All depends what the women look like, ff ...

Yes, that's right - when shown up for being hopelessly out of touch, antediluvian and complacent, resort to puerile facetiousness; seen it all before, P. G. and, just as I wasn't impressed first time around, I remain unimpressed now.

[french frank]

All depends what the women look like, ff ...

I was about to respond - you don't fool me, Tippsy. I know when someone is just playing games

[Richard Barrett]

modern class definition is a tricky area, I'd cut out the middle man ( like Amazon) and look at wealth and inequality statistics

People often say it's a tricky area, but it isn't really, unless one is to swallow whole the mythology put about by - yes you guessed it - the ruling class. Economic relationships in society haven't changed that much since Marx's time, and in any case a Marxist analysis of class relations in our time isn't just based on what you can read in his own work but in that of generations of thinkers (and doers) who have continued and developed that work. (Like serial composition it isn't a question of tracing everything back to a source but of perceiving the interconnectedness of every component! ) I hesitate to mention a male author on the present thread (normal service will be resumed shortly) but David Harvey is someone very much worth reading in this connection, for example Spaces of Hope from 2000 which is deeply conditioned by ideas from feminism about the politics of the human body.

[P. G. Tipps]

I mean that PG is making the assumption that because gender/class/ethnicity/whatever isn't significant in his mind for the music he listens to that it therefore follows that it isn't significant for all the other music in the universe. Composers make work in many ways and with many different frameworks and preoccupations.

I'm not making any assumptions, Mr Clanger ... you are doing quite enough of that without me joining in!

I have simply stated that the race, gender, religion and politics of a composer, whilst no doubt interesting to the student, is completely irrelevant to me when listening to a piece of music.That is the simple truth.

I either appreciate the piece or I don't, whether it was composed by Felix or Fanny!

Must everything be agenda-driven? Music is far too important and precious for that!

[teamsaint]

People often say it's a tricky area, but it isn't really, unless one is to swallow whole the mythology put about by - yes you guessed it - the ruling class. Economic relationships in society haven't changed that much since Marx's time, and in any case a Marxist analysis of class relations in our time isn't just based on what you can read in his own work but in that of generations of thinkers (and doers) who have continued and developed that work. (Like serial composition it isn't a question of tracing everything back to a source but of perceiving the interconnectedness of every component! ) I hesitate to mention a male author on the present thread (normal service will be resumed shortly) but David Harvey is someone very much worth reading in this connection, for example Spaces of Hope from 2000 which is deeply conditioned by ideas from feminism about the politics of the human body.

I really meant that trying to apply old class definitions to a changed world might be tricky, not to mention pointless.
but the question of who controls and runs things seems clearer than ever......

anyway, I wonder what happened to Kea's post from last night?

[doversoul1]

ahinton

there are officially/legally recognised ethnicities

That’s interesting. You don’t mean those lists you find in questionnaires? If so, there is always Other, and there are plenty of Others about these days. What if an individual has parents and grandparents all from different ‘ethnic’ groups yet s/he was brought up in a perfectly normal/ordinary way of British life, i.e. Fish & Chips, Christmas and all that? Does ‘ethnicity’ mean anything to this individual? Also, those individuals who prefer to describe themselves as ‘Other’ tend not to fit into any class category either. Whereas ‘sex’ is fixed and gender goes with it.

The attitude towards LGBT may have changed in recent years but I doubt if that has spread into women in general.

[Richard Barrett]

I have simply stated that the race, gender, religion and politics of a composer, whilst no doubt interesting to the student, is completely irrelevant to me when listening to a piece of music.That is the simple truth.

I'm sure it is. But that in fact makes you at least as "agenda-driven" as anyone else, whether you see it that way or not. The fact that you refuse to think about such issues doesn't render them nonexistent. You're often to be seen extolling the virtues of the music of Anton Bruckner - a white male heterosexual Catholic of somewhat anachronistic views, just like you. Coincidence?

[Richard Barrett]

I wonder what happened to Kea's post from last night?

I guess she must have deleted it, which is a shame.

[ahinton]

I was about to respond - you don't fool me, Tippsy. I know when someone is just playing games

...with themselves...

[ahinton]

I'm not making any assumptions, Mr Clanger ... you are doing quite enough of that without me joining in!

But by no means as much as you are dropping clanger after clanger!

I have simply stated that the race, gender, religion and politics of a composer, whilst no doubt interesting to the student, is completely irrelevant to me when listening to a piece of music.That is the simple truth.

Fine, but that's to avoid - quite wilfully, methinks - certain points being made here; the fact that the listener is unlikely to feel as though he/she is being made aware of "the race, gender, religion and politics" of a composer just by listening and without knowing any or all of these things in advance of doing so does not and indeed cannot impact upon the difficulties encountered by women composers in past generations that have by no means disappeared without trace today; those who sought to oppress, discourage or curtail the composing activites of women in the past did so, for whatever reasons, in the full knowledge that it was women with whom they were dealing.

Must everything be agenda-driven? Music is far too important and precious for that!

Who suggested that it was? That said, are you suggesting that those who sought to oppress, discourage or curtail the composing activites of women in the past were in no sense "agenda-driven" and that it therefore all just happened to come about by some perverse coincidental mischance?

[MrGongGong]

I have simply stated that the race, gender, religion and politics of a composer, whilst no doubt interesting to the student, is completely irrelevant to me when listening to a piece of music.That is the simple truth.

That's probably because you are only choosing to listen to certain musics
Music is far too important to be constrained by your lack of imagination

You ARE making the assumption that your experience is universal