First, like many Englishspeaking socialist feminists of the 1970s, their account of women’s subordination focused on the exploitation of women’s labour within the home. The French materialist feminists were perceived to be ‘relatively similar’ in two particular ways.

Toril Moi has suggested that, ironically, ‘these feminists have become less frequently translated and less well-known precisely because of their relative similarity : they have … been perceived as lacking in exotic difference’. Among those excluded from this construction are the French materialist feminists. The specificity of french materialist feminismĬritics of the category ‘French feminist thought’ that emerged in the 1980s have observed that it is an eminently Anglo-American construction, in which the so-called ‘holy trinity’ of Irigaray, Kristeva and Cixous rank as the canonical figures. This is possible, I will suggest, if we adopt a cluster-based understanding of sex some strengths and potential limitations of this cluster-based understanding will be considered in conclusion. I will then suggest that this latter denial damages the claim of French materialist feminism to be materialist, and that – contrary to the French materialists’ claims – it is possible to affirm the biological reality of sex division and still pursue the abolition of gender.

I will use this reconstruction to bring out two key elements of French materialist feminism: (1) its proposal that gender can and should be abolished (2) its – related – denial that sex division is a biological reality. In this article I will take issue with their position on sex, by way of an initial reconstruction of the history of the English-speaking feminist reception of French materialist feminism. The French materialist feminists – Christine Delphy, Monique Wittig, Colette Guillaumin and Nicole-Claude Mathieu, among others – are among the earliest and best-known exponents of this line. The incomplete materialism of French materialist feminism Alison stoneĪccording to one important and influential line of feminist interrogation of the category of sex, we only believe that there are two biological sexes because our thought and perception are constrained by the two-gender social system under which we currently live.

Christine delphy close to home