Gender hierarchy analysis is the lynchpin to understanding and addressing oppression

The insight involves several interactive moves. In one sense, casting the subordinated as feminine devalorizes not only the empirical gender category of women but also sexually, racially, culturally, and economically marginalized men (e.g., “lazy migrants,” “primitive natives,” “effeminate gays”). Underpinning this claim is the observation that although structural hierarchies vary by reference to the “difference” emphasized and the modalities of power involved, they typically share a common feature: the denigration of feminized qualities attributed to those who are sub- ordinated (lacking reason, agency, control, etc.). Invoking the “natural” inferiority of the feminine plays a powerful, though not exhaustive, role in legitimating these hierarchies. In a second sense, and understanding gender analytically, not only subjects (women and marginalized men) but also concepts, desires, tastes, styles, “ways of knowing,” cultural expressions (art, music), roles, practices, work, nature, and so on can be feminized—with the effect of reducing their legitimacy, status, and value. Importantly, this devalorization is simultaneously ideological (discursive, cultural) and material (structural, economic). Consider how what is considered women’s work—whether done by women or marginalized men—is typically underpaid, or frequently not paid at all; and we hardly notice, in part because the depreciation of feminized activities is so taken for granted. This devalorization normalizes—with the effect of legitimating—the marginalization, subordination, and exploitation of feminized practices and persons. Oppressions differ, as do attempts to explain and/or justify them. As Wendy Brown (1997, 86–87) states, “not simply the content but the modalities of power producing gender, race, or caste are specific to each production,” even though “these powers of subject formation are not separable in the subject itself.” Because oppressions take various structural forms, feminization is not the only “normalizing” ideology in operation. What distinguishes feminization and renders it so ideologically powerful is the unique extent to which it invokes a deeply internalized and naturalized binary—the essentialized concept of sex difference—which is then available to naturalize diverse forms of structural oppression. This warrants clarification. Even as sex and gender are increasingly ambiguous to some, most people most of the time take a categorical, essentialized distinction between male and female completely for granted: as biologically given, reproductively necessary, and psychosocially obvious. Yet constructionists argue not only that sex difference itself is produced—through contingent, historical practices and institutionalizations—but also that sex difference as an essentialized binary and masculinism as a system of asymmetrical power are co-constituted. In other words, the deeply sedimented concept of sex difference and historically institutionalized practices of gender hierarchy are mutually constituted. As one effect, the naturalness of sex difference is generalized to the naturalness of masculine (not necessarily male) privilege, so that both aspects come to be taken-for-granted givens of social life. Common sense becomes a two- pronged justification of hierarchy. On the one hand, subordinated individuals or groups are devalorized by feminization; depictions range from lack of capacity and being weak or irrational to being offensive or posing a danger. On the other hand, responding appropriately to such individuals or groups requires masculinized practices; these range from patronizing and protectionist behaviors to disciplinary measures and violent coercion. In short, not only are the subordinated devalorized by feminization, but the qualities they supposedly lack are typically just what the dominating (masculinized) group has to offer, or is compelled to practice. This conveniently justifies both the necessity of rule and who should rule. The common sense of privileging the masculine and devaluing the feminine is culturally and collectively internalized to such an extent that we are all variously complicit in its reproduction. And it is also implicitly and explicitly manipulated to reproduce inequalities as if this were natural and inevitable, thus making critique and resistance difficult. In short, devalorizing the feminine produces even as it obscures vast inequalities of power, authority, and resource distribution. Exposing how this power operates must be one objective of a critical political agenda. I argue that the transformative potential of feminist critique lies in exposing and subverting all hierarchies that rely on denigration of “the feminine” to normalize and depoliticize subjection. I am not arguing that gender hierarchy is the “primary” oppression overshadowing race or class or sexuality. The point is rather that gender hierarchy and its elevation of “masculinity” is a historically contingent structural feature of social relations, that the subordination of women is not reducible to other structural oppressions (or vice versa), and that the dichotomy of gender underpins—as the denigration of the feminine naturalizes—hierarchies of gender, class, race, sexualities, and geopolitical “difference.” Because forms of subjection differ structurally, systematic and comparative analyses of race class, gender, and sexuality require attention to “different histories, different mechanisms and sites of power, different dis- cursive formations, different regulatory schemes” (Brown 1997, 86). In this chapter, however, my focus is less on the production of subjection than on the exposure of the political work that collective and internalized gender coding does across multiple forms of subjection. I am not presuming that sexist oppression is the most salient or powerful hierarchy in any particu- lar context; I am arguing that investigating feminization as devalorization allows a broader understanding of how oppressions are naturalized and provides us with greater analytical/political leverage. Although this is only one among a number of critical insights to be expanded and applied,2 I consider it a particularly productive vantage point, especially in relation to militarization and war.