I. The Stratification of Genders

Genders are classes which have this particular characteristic: they are not divided and redivided on the same level, but they divide several different universal levels. Classes group together and exclude objects and events inside the same universe on the same plane. Genders group together and exclude objects and events inside the same universe from plane to plane.

Classes section and arrange the universe at any given level. Genders divide the universe into different levels.

The relations between human groups of interests or ideas are class relations because the relations are strictly located between them. The relations between man and woman are generic relations insofar as they are relations between man and woman on the one hand, and humanity (which is shared between man and woman) on the other hand. Anyone who thinks that the proletariat and bourgeois social classes, for example, are sufficient to yield the social universe, which reduces to them, must claim that the relation between the proletariat and the property-owning class is in fact the relation between society and these two classes, as much as between these two classes. In this way, one often solidifies classes into genera and conceives of society generically. Conversely, genera may be thought of as the primary classes, as Engels does.However true this may be, classes are instances caught between the individual and the generic. Whoever wants to dissolve them makes them lose their meaning in the multiplicity of individuals; whoever desires, on the contrary, to attribute substance to them constructs them as genders of society or as their principle of generation.

The structure of classes locally crystallises into relations of origin, ideas, or interests. Genders are constructed in sexed relations. No gender exists except sexed gender. We have already addressed the problem of 'art genres'.