Sexual classes and reproductive classes are identified in terms of how people relate to reproduction:
"There are thus within reproduction separate but interrelated types of material production, for example, in sexuality, fertility and birth, early childwork. For each of these there are slightly different sets of classes or sub classes. In terms of sexuality, divisions obviously exist between men and women, but also between gays and straights. Fertility and birth are based not only on the biology of sex but also on the social control of fertility."
(Hearn 1987 page 63)
Hearn is critical of the domestic labour debates that analyse gender divisions as "economic" concepts. The house and domestic arrangements are important in sexual politics not because of the amount of domestic labour done there but because that is where reproduction in relation to birth and early childwork occurs:
“It is also at these various points of reproduction that conditions for me, and I suspect other men, appear. I sometimes want to engage in penetrative sex, but blow this may be unwanted; I sometimes wish to be more involved in birth, but blow this may be unwelcome; I sometimes seek to be more involved in childwork, but blow this may be for other reasons than nurture. The essential matter is that in reproduction men often seem to stand in contradictoiy relations to women in a number of different ways and these contradictions, which are questions of both (sexual) class power and personal experience, often centre on the points of reproduction."
(Hearn 1987 page 64)
This is one of Hearn's most illuminating pieces of writing combining as it does the personal, the political and the theoretical. It is also one of the few points at which he relates theory to lived experience and this may be helpful in creating a sense o f shared experience with other men. However, although he raises such concerns as whether penetrative sex and child work could be unwelcome he does not pursue them. It is in areas such as these that the differences between men and women over similar "personal" issues become much more apparent and require far more investigation.
He then goes on to broaden out this theory, arguing that the closer one approaches the points of reproduction the more clearly divided the workers are by sex. Classes are further broken down into a hierarchy of sexualities, at present white male heterosexuality is dominant; dominant in the sense that it defines all other sexualities as inferior to its own. Hearn argues that egalitarian heterosexuality would result in a loss of domination of heterosexuality over other sexualities. Thus heterosexual men assist in the maintenance of hierarchic heterosexuality even if they do not act in an oppressive manner. This is an important point as it means that there is no clear division between “good” and “bad” men, those who are oppressive and those who are not.
6.9 Hum an value
The second element of the material theory of reproduction concerns "human value", that is, what human beings consider to be the intrinsic worth of other human beings and is again a reiteration of an argument from Birth and After Birth. This section relates strongly to the "personal is political" in demonstrating what men expect from women in ‘conventional’ relationships and how this is vital for the functioning of patriarchy at a wider societal level. Much of the argument was originally drawn from O'Brien. She argued that the relationship between the biological and the social structure of reproductive relations was due to the historical development of the reproductive process. Hearn argues that:
“The capacity to reproduce possessed by women is in effect appropriated (by men), so that women themselves are seen to have less value than men, just as workers are seen to have less value than owners and managers. It is in this w>ay that reproductive materialism is more fundamental than productive materialism. It is the materialism of existence - of the valuing of women, of humans, of existence at all. The analysis of reproduction is badly in need of a new concept that describes the way in which human existence is turned into something like but slightly different from a commodity - a ‘human tithe ’ or something of the sort. It is this ‘human tithe ’ that we routinely and exhaustively extract from each other; and that above all men extract from women...The essential feature of this process of appropriation of babies, children and sex is that it depends on something less
subtle than the circulation and exchange of commodities under capitalism. It depends on direct appropriation without recompense, and it is in this sense that patriarchy ultimately hinges on violence. Such possible violence lies not only in
individual men, but also importantly in the state itself. "
(Hearn 1987 page 69)
Hearn seems to be trying to demonstrate that through the institution of fatherhood all men gain from patriarchy whether or not they are fathers. Therefore, for a man to be in favour of the current structures of fatherhood is to be in favour of patriarchy. However, I find the whole “human value” argument to be not only unclear but also unspecific. Using such remarks as “something like” and “something of the sort” suggests he is unclear himself what he is trying to say. Many women do not have to rely on men for economic support, many women chose not to have children and Hearn assumes that women have no say in how children are raised. Connell argued that the family could act as a site where women gained some form of power and could challenge male control, an important factor ignored by Hearn (Connell 1987).
Hearn is not very specific in what he means by "appropriated by individuals and by the state". Few men reading the work may recognise their relationships with women as being so blatantly exploitative. Presumably "nurtured products" are used by the state for its purposes, either in wars, employment and the more generalised adoption o f male and female roles. If this is the case then I take “appropriation” to mean that they attend patriarchal institutions, such as schools and job training, so that they become the willing participants of a patriarchal system. Hearn's stated intention was to produce a work that presents a challenge to patriarchal ideology so at this point it would be helpful if he outlined methods by which this appropriation could be tackled. For example, should women keep their children away from state schools, nurseries and so forth? More personal concrete examples would have been very helpful. If the public-private divide was created so that men could take control of the process of birth and nurturing, then to challenge this dichotomy is to challenge the patriarchal system.