[a sign reads FEMINIST CONFERENCE next to a closed door, a blue character shrugs and says…]
I don’t care
[next to the same door, the sign now says RESTRICTED FEMINIST CONFERENCE WOMEN ONLY, there are now four blue characters desperately banging on the door, one is reduced to tears on the floor, they are shouting]
DISCRIMINATION
SO UNFAIR!!!
LET US IINN!!
MISANDRY
Sure, these two comic panels aren’t very nuanced, and everyone deserves a safe space. But imo that is irrelevant to this issue, because they should create their own safe space then, not insist on intruding in someone else’s safe space. Like, why even?
What do you think the Gentleman’s Clubs, and Men only gyms were? Those were sued into non-existence. Women are the only people that are legally allowed to have a safe space because of feminists
‘Why don’t they just form their own safe space?’ has the same ring to it as ‘I’m not a white supremacist. I’m a racial separatist. Those <epithet>s can just go somewhere else. I just don’t feel safe with those things around.’ Discrimination based on an immutable, unchosen characteristic like sex isn’t somehow more acceptable or reasonable than on skin color.
Is it not more about dicussing their problem, in a space they created for it? Black Lifes Matter is a good example of this. Black people want to discuss their issues, and suddenly all lives matter and what about this and that group?
This is not saying that other problem does not exists or are any less real or problematic, but instead they someone should be able to talk about their perceived problem without being forced to include someone else’s problem. Those people with those other problems are just as welcome to have their own discussions.
Not quite. Black Lives Matter wasn’t excluding any supporters based on skin color, last I checked. There might have been a small subset who had some twisted racial theories but, for the most part, it was just people looking to fight racism in the police and happy to accept attendants of any color as long as they were aligned with that main goal. While it would be reasonable to not allow people who wanted to come into a meeting and either digress by focusing on the climate effects of police cruisers, or disrupt by trying to refocus the group around how the police treat some other ethnic group, if BLM had said ‘no whites allowed,’ I think it would have been far less effective, far more divisive, and ultimately promoted racism.
That’s why it seems counterproductive to exclude men. From an idealist view, if you believe being a man has some effect that means you can’t have something relevant to add to a conversation, or perhaps more importantly, can’t learn from hearing the words of others, that’s already sex essentialism, the thing feminists have been fighting for longer than feminist has been a word. And from a pragmatic view, the ones who MOST need to learn about the problems of sexism are the men who are so often blind to it as the beneficiaries of it. If you kick out the mysogynists, you have no mysogynists. If you kick out the men, you leave the men who could be allies standing outside with the mysogynists, who will be only too happy to tell them all about how men and women ‘should’ be.
In above comic it’s not the whole movement of feminism being closed to men, it’s only one conference.
And let’s be honest, the men that get upset by a women only conference are exactly the men you didn’t want there in the first place to talk about feminism.
This kind of signs create the picture of men associated with something bad. Next time try to pick words for such signs with more respect
That comparison in this context is honestly a bad look.
You’re comparing men, who have historically been the oppressors in pretty much every oppression scenario, to the groups of people they have historically oppressed. (POC, women, any marginalized group really.) That is a very important distinction because the power dynamics are reversed.
People wanting a single safe space away from a group of people who have victimized them in the past (and more often than not continue to victimize them) is not the same as a group of people who hold most of the power excluding a less powerful group from everyday activities because they deem them inferior.
And it’s not exactly a slippery slope towards the oppression of men either, just look at the current state of the world and try to figure out which way that slope is slipping. Women are fucking tired, man.
I didn’t know that I am an oppressor lol
There is an important distinction here. You, I presume, have a ‘safe space’ of your own, your home, or even just your room if you share. That is your personal space. It makes sense that only those you trust should come in. However, when you put up a sign, it changes a space. A sign, such as one announcing a conference or symposium, even with a barrier like ticketed/preregistered entry, says it is a public event. Not a ‘safe space,’ but a space specifically for encountering and engaging with others, the public. The public is a group that is supposed to include everyone. Excluding people from that group effectively designates them as unpeople. If it were to be invite only, a private space, there would be no argument if, say, the invitees were all women, but the transition to a public event, combined with the discrimination based on unchosen characteristics creates the offense of sexist discrimination. It is one thing to demand relevance (e.g. no entering a feminist conference to shout about misandry) but it is another to treat everyone who, through no choice of their own, happens to be some type of person as an unperson. It’s prejudicial bigotry.
We are all oppressed by the patriarchy, every older man I know born from 60s - 90s believes being emotional is weakness, don’t cry, don’t act like a woman. You’re basically not allowed to be you, and most remain extremely stunted their whole life. Discriminating based on sex is also hurting the men who didn’t want any part of this to begin with. Women have more danger and more men ruining things for them in general, so I don’t agree with them saying a safe space shouldn’t be restricted, but I just don’t think it’s so black and white.
This is one of the major reasons (among many others both real and manufactured) that the current right wing won over so many voters. And once they were won over it just takes another election cycle of propaganda to entrench them.
It doesn’t matter the various reasons someone will argue that race/sex/whateverelse ism is okay when it’s done against (white/men/straight/christian) because historically they are the oppressors. There is either true equality or there is nuance on equality and you really cannot have it both ways yourself without falling into the mirror image of the hypocrisy you are arguing against.
You could take almost the exact same logical argument that people use for women only shelters and use it for white only shelters, yet if said without any shred of irony one is easily classified as a form of prejudice and the other is not (by a portion of the population).
It’s tiring still pointing this out to people a decade later as they are at the same time doing the “how did we get here??” Song and dance about the current fascism.