Gendered forms of violence are structurally tied to capitalism and patriarchy – causes a laundry list of impacts

The gendered forms of violence in capitalist-patriarchal societies are, obviously, related to what is habitually recognized as violence against women. But as we do not assume that there is a coherent, much less biological or natural entity that could simply be called women, here we will use the category “women” descriptively. By using the term “gendered,” we will try to point out that both sex and gender are normative and artificial identifications. Being a cis woman, lesbian, trans woman, nonbinary person, man, and so on, is determined by socioeconomic, cultural, political and historical frameworks, while the normative ethos which imposes that gender dimorphism is beneficial for the mode of production and the gender division of labor that arises from it. Sex as a male-female empirical given fact does not exist. Sex is assigned at birth, then it is adopted or rejected, it is shaped by a whole web of coded behaviors, repetitions, rituals, and normalization practices, it is socially imposed and molded into the heterosexual sex/gender dimorphism. Therefore, sex is nothing natural, but something that is naturalized. To that extent, a “woman” is not a clearly recognizable empirical category with XX chromosomes and the ability to give birth—rather, to be a woman implies a series of complex processes that gender a large group of people as women. Therefore, gendered forms of violence do not refer only to those who society recognizes as women, but to all the “abject” who recognize themselves in that category, as well as to other subordinate identifications that are constituted in a similar way, and intertwined with gender-based normalization, disciplining and oppression. Gendered forms of violence are multiple and mutually intertwined: from femicide, domestic violence, the denial of choices concerning one’s own body and the attacks on reproductive autonomy, and obstetric violence, through sexual harassment, violence suffered by sex workers, violence suffered by transgender, gender-nonconforming, and other LGBTQIA+ people, and all the way to imposed gendered, racialized, often internalized norms of existence, expectations, stereotypes, discriminatory discourse, and other forms of marginalization and hatred related to sexuality, physical appearance, skin color, age, physical abilities and so on. Gender-based violence is ubiquitous and is often accompanied by other forms of violence that enable and situate it—instances of disciplining that are constituted by the normativization of heterosexual relationships and traditional family nuclei; subjugations in the name of imperialist and colonial divisions of the world; symbolic dimensions of violence; biopolitical violence, state, military and police violence; ecological violence which is affecting us at alarmingly high rates and so on. In order to theoretically consider the logic that generates and reproduces gendered forms of violence, it is not enough just to observe and enumerate empirical phenomena, it is necessary to address their connection through the consideration of the structural conditions of the possibility of violence. Today’s societies around the globalized world, regardless of historical-geographical specifics, are primarily connected by capitalist relations that enable the reproduction of capital. To that extent, various forms of gender-based oppression are essentially directly or indirectly bound into oppressive patriarchal labor-capital relations and the consequent violence they produce, that is, the structural or systemic violence that capitalism reproduces in specific social formations. The relations between exploitation and power situate all social interactions and relations, and the human being itself, Karl Marx argues, represents a set of intertwined social relations. In order to ascertain why gender-based violence exists, and what mechanisms produce and reproduce it through nation states, we must therefore seek an answer within the concrete historical analysis of capitalism and the structural logic of capital accumulation. This is sometimes not easy to perceive, because the violence of capital in capitalist societies does not appear as an excess, an aberration or as an anomaly, but as a norm. The compulsions and violence of the capital relation, which are primarily established as economic, are a regular instrument of subordination and discipline, something that has been stabilized by continuous repetition and pressure in such a way as to pervade every pore of our societies, embedded in our ways of thinking and perceiving, that is co-structuring our desires, language, permeating our bodies. It does not look like violence, but rather like a free contractual relationship. However, the violence of capital does not only rule over production in the narrow sense, and is therefore never only economic. Because of the fact that society as a whole is established to allow for the dominance of the capital relation in all spheres, this violence is structural. Gendered forms of violence are, in this sense, part of the package of violence by which capital maintains, reproduces and supports existing social relations. They are a part of the coercive and violent mechanisms that enable the functioning of the entire system, as well as the overcoming of its own crises and ruptures. Therefore, when speculating about gender-based violence, it is necessary to consider the nature of capitalist-patriarchal relations, property issues, and other pillars of capitalism, and to address the consequences of the supposed independence of productive from reproductive work, as well as the divisions within the working class. We will therefore try to point out the strong links between gender-based violence and capitalism.