Gender

The acerbic author of Deschooling Society and Medical Nemesis here takes on all sides in the sex-role debate: from the "animal sociologists," blind to "what is characteristically and exclusively human," to academic feminists who view the past through the social science categories of the present. To Illich, all miss the critical difference between "vernacular gender" and "economic sex." Vernacular genders are the cultural patterns that, in pre-industrial societies, regulate the language, attitudes, and behavior of each sex. Tools are intrinsic to gender relationships ("to the degree that one can actively master one's tools, their shape determines his/her self image"); and the very division between domains "creates the tension that holds [each] society together." With industrialization, these gender patterns disappear and the sexes are reduced to more neutered categories. But no compensating reduction in sexism occurs. Instead, the widening wage gap, continued discrimination, and institutional sexism lead Illich, like others, to see the industrial order as intrinsically sexist. The answer, however, is not wages for housework - for housework is "shadow work," as "unlike productive employment. . . as it is unlike homesteading and traditional household activities." And the entrance of men into this realm merely opens "a new field for competition between the sexes." In contrast to those who associate gains in women's rights with increased prosperity, Illich sees in scarcity the possibility of a new rapprochement. "A contemporary art of life can then arise, so long as our austere and clear-sighted acceptance of the double ghetto of economic neuters then moves us to renounce the comforts of economic sex." Some of these ideas have appeared elsewhere in the Illich canon (Tools of Conviviality, The Celebration of Awareness, Shadow Work); but their extension to encompass gender is surprisingly effective. An energetic attack on entrenched positions, and sure to provoke. (Kirkus Reviews)