Smash the Patriarchy (and Capitalism)!
From London Review of Books:
The Time’s Up movement uses the language of radical left-wing politics. But it has yet to do radical left-wing politics. Whether or not this happens will determine whether Time’s Up’s invocations of ‘solidarity’ and ‘structural change’ represent something more than the mere co-option of leftist rhetoric. Talk of ‘exploitation’ is a case in point. Sexual exploitation is itself bound up with wider power differentials, not just between men and women, but between rich and poor.
If Time’s Up’s supporters want, as their joint statement suggests, ‘to transform both the written and unwritten rules that devalue the lives and experiences of women’, then at some point they’re going to have to think about capitalism, and about their own positions as capitalism’s beneficiaries. If they don’t, they’ll soon find themselves at loggerheads with the women they’re currently claiming as allies. They’ll also find themselves with some odd bedfellows. ‘Let’s all come together,’ Ivanka Trump tweeted after Oprah’s speech, ‘women & men, & say #TIMESUP!’
