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.

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.

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:

1. I don’t get it
2. It serves some of them in healing

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?

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.

Women are historically oppressed minorities. Patriarchal systems caused their oppression. Who are the dis-empowered non-woman that are being disenfranchised?

“Over throwing patriarchy” is a vague goal at best though. What does that actually entail?

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:

• How do you think political movements are formed if not in small groups meeting privately?
• Who are the dis-empowered non-woman that are being disenfranchised?
• What feminist literature have you read? Who are your guiding lights in the movement?