[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
I don’t normally post on weekends but I left my lunch in the office fridge and your response has been a grain of sand in my brain. Figured I’d finish up writing my response.
It wasn’t clear how I could have responded to pull out the counter arguments I wanted to get to. I want to skip to the core of the discussion because if I used up time on initial 101 arguments, statistically the person I’m responding too gets bored, suspicious, or tired of the argument overall. Also, being flatly and snarkily blunt about a specific thing without additional details gives a chance for someone to reveal what they actually think in anger without tactical obfuscation of their actual beliefs, wasting time.
Its doesn’t work often but it has every once in a while. The alternative almost always seems like I get the same old same old boilerplate.
Its emotional to be natalist as well. Its connected to the discussion at a fundamental level, to be natalist means you value certain things as an axiom that lead to a certain derrived perspectives, one that I think is arguably similar to yours. Which is why I brought it up.
I stated it more to identify if this is a fundamental difference in our views. Something irreconcilable. Its a lonely feeling to have it confirmed. Very few have a conscious belief on the matter, pro or con. And default absent minded to natalist perspectives largely due to religion and cultural inertia.
Segregation foments adversarial attitudes. Even with trivial or made up differences. It widens the empathy gap, creates perceived out-group homogeneity, and a sense of moral superiority. Group polarization absolutely can and probably will manifest in your suggested cancer survivor group, especially with an explicit ban on people joining who are not survivors of the disease. The goal is irrelevant, the result is what matters.
Statistically very true. Not a hard rule though, and to say there is no power in a woman’s only group that couldn’t further disenfranchise a dis-empowered non-woman would be disingenuous.
“Over throwing patriarchy” is a vague goal at best though. What does that actually entail? Much like the rapture, the inevitable communist revolution, or judgement day this is just an in-group meta narrative, not really a goal at all.
I’m going to skip the meta-conversation and tactic you used. I don’t think they clarify or further the discussion about why women would want a conference without men.
Regarding natalism, I skipped it not because it was emotional, but it was tangential and unclear in how it was related to the specific topic. Again, I have nothing against emotions playing into one’s politics.
This is only true if you fail to understand the internal needs of the segregated group. In this case, it is to regain power in themselves and through connection to others who get it. This subverts any empathy gap that could happen. When a cancer survivor group meets, I don’t ever know what it was like having had cancer. But I can provide an empathetic space to understand that:
If the only result you care about is how it effects out-groups, then you misunderstand how healing and political movements are created at the earliest stages. How do you think political movements are formed if not in small groups meeting privately?
Women are historically oppressed minorities. Patriarchal systems caused their oppression. Who are the dis-empowered non-woman that are being disenfranchised?
Much of this particulars are covered in the long history of feminism. Recounting it all would take several books. Staying with in the confines of one or strain will help guide the discussion. What feminist literature have you read? Who are your guiding lights in the movement? That will dissipate the vagueness. There may not be one single definition, but the contours for disagreement move from a blob to specific corners of concern. I’m asking for these because if you view these goals as ‘religious,’ it suggests you are unfamiliar with the specific, material policy work and labor history that defines the movement. There is nothing inherently wrong with not being familiar with the field in specificity.
So in sum, I’d like to hear: