[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
No, its a documented and highly scientifically backed effect.
Its not the only effect that I care about but I do care about it.
Political movements are value neutral, or at least subjectively perceived as good or bad depending on who you ask about which movement.
If you want to say that the harmful in-group & out-group effects are a worthwhile sacrifice to achieve other ends, that’s one claim I could see as understandable but I would want to know the specifics of what the actual end goal(s) is/are before I’d support it. Further, the main way a political movement actually grows and achieves positive things is to broaden their support typically. If they lean into leveraging power they might have over a majority they’re using might makes right logic. I can certainly see the utility of that if you view the majority as stupid or evil and I’ll even admit these days its hard not to feel that way given the state of my country. At that point though I don’t even see the point other than cynical power games.
NB’s & men who fall into disenfranchised categories like bipoc, lgbt, homeless/impoverished/working class, and probably most relevant to gender issues is the neurodiverse male population. Not to mention that creating an exclusively women space can attract TERFs, where they can spread their bullshit more efficiently by leaning into the in-group & out-group effects.
Women’s issues is gender issues. Gender is like any social construct, its defined by relationships and collective beliefs.
My feminism? I was critiquing the feminism you are defending that would justify an exclusionary in-group. I’m suspicious of why you’d want to ask.
If you must know, I tend to agree with Xenofeminism. Its the form of feminism that embraces rationalism, any consistent Xenofeminist would agree with me here.
I need to address the structural failure of this conversation. For our dialogue to be productive, it must engage with the thesis presented.
I have presented a specific thesis on restorative spaces as a material necessity for movement-building. This has been consistently ignored or reframed as “exclusionary antagonism.” I understand that you reject this as it widens empathy gap between in-groups and out-groups. However, you never engage with the interior possibility for it result in healing for the oppressed in-group.
I asked a direct question regarding how political movements form in the absence of private, strategic meeting spaces. This was met with a response addressing how they grow and not how which is a refusal to engage with the history of labor and policy work that defines these movements.
I presented a clear statement, “This is only true if you fail” and your response seemed to interpret my statement as a rejection to the initial and not the subsequent. I have no doubt that this phenomena is real or scientifically supported. Rather, I was pointing out how empathy for the in-group is a analgesic to the pain of being an out-group.
Finally, and arguably the most perplexing, despite my forthright and honest comportment, there has been a persistent reticent to grant me good faith and continue to view me with suspicion. You are treating my request for feminist framing as a “trap” rather than a legitimate effort to ground the discussion and find common language. Both of these I stated at the time of the request.
So in a attempt to meet you with the language of Xenofeminism, I will, to the best of my ability relate my response in the verbiage of the text you provided. Since I am new to the school, please grant me a little grace as I fumble through it and keep in mind that I’m trying to meet you where you are while still honoring the lived experiences of an oppressed minority.
I suspect we are actually arguing about the mechanics of liberation rather than the goals. Xenofeminism (XF) is a project of rationalist engineering. If we treat social organization as a form of “technomaterialist” construction, then we must recognize that every effective tool requires specific environmental constraints to function.
My thesis of restorative spaces is the social wetware terrain in which control is wrenched from the hegemon. A laboratory requires a sterile environment to produce a pharmaceutical , an oppressed group requires a sterile social space to re-engineer the “memetic parasites” of patriarchy. It is the pre-production phase of a mesopolitical project.
Restorative spaces are the necessary pre-production phase of the mesopolitical. They are the modular laboratories where we develop the new language for sexual politics that XF calls for. You cannot bootstrap a new world into existence while still using the corrupted operating system of the dominant gaze. This is the site where we experiment with different modes of ‘directed subsumption’. It is the protected environment where we develop the very procedures intended to seep into the shell of the patriarchy and dismantle its defenses from the inside out.
It is the site of “multiple political bodies”. It’s not a site available just for women. But also for men to do the same. It is a site for BIPOC, for asexuals, for trans and for neurodivergent people. If “a hundred sexes should bloom” , we must allow for a hundred different social affordances. Just as a neurodiverse person might need a specific sensory environment to thrive, women and the marginalized groups you mentioned require specific restorative environments to build the unselfish solidarity necessary for the long game of history.
Universal solidarity is not a spontaneous event, but a synthetic construction that must be meticulously engineered across distinct sites of struggle over large time scales. Solidarity must be engineered between these distinct sites of restorative labor. Moving toward a true mesopolitical scale requires us to treat these individual ‘laboratories’ as modular nodes in a larger network. We do not build a universalist project by flattening our specific needs into a vague, horizontal mass, but by establishing robust protocols of transit between our specialized spaces, both externally and internally. This coordination is the necessary ‘boot-strapping’ phase—linking our local ‘social affordances’ into a cohesive, technomaterialist front capable of challenging the hegemon.
I am not arguing for a “shrine to nature”. I am arguing for the freedom to engineer the social conditions of our own healing. If we are to engineer a future beyond the binary, we must first defend the right to construct the specialized environments where that future is actually being built.
This is a good response. Thank you.
This is largely because I don’t think it does result actually in healing of the in-group. I myself sometimes crave things that are comforting yet bad for me, like junk food, remaining sedentary on a couch, binge drinking, and secluding myself in self loathing. these are intoxicating and reinforcing. They can result in bad habits. I view such groups with a similar perspective.
I did not answer this one either because I rejected the forming of a political group as an intrinsic good in the first place.
That said, fair call that I pivoted to growth. Formation I think certainly can be through an exclusionary start of course, I just don’t think explicit exclusion is needed. You can form a political group for a specific type, but you don’t really need to restrict access to only that type. Realistically, just like this comic suggests, you probably would not get too many participants outside that group anyway, but if you did they’d likely be an invaluable ally, not an antagonist to restrict your words around.
Like I stated earlier, I think this is at best a psychological comfort food. Its not healing at all, at least not in the long term.
This is because it often is a trap. It is usually a means of identifying if I’ve “done the work” rather than engage with my points. Its a means to screen for a lack of virtue, worthiness, or dedication. If I stated that I was not a feminist at all, or that I did engage in any feminist writings, I suspect you would have dismissed me. I view this as intellectual cowardice (I suppose the one thing I will judge someone’s virtue on).
There is one instance were I suppose this can be reasonable: Boredom with my points. If I say stuff you’ve heard already and hint that I will continue to sound like someone who just regurgitates vapid talking points you’d simply be saving time and energy rather than avoiding an uncomfortable discussion by ceasing to engage.
Maybe I’m wrong though and you had no intent to do this. I can’t know for sure, but I’m very weary of it. I find allistics do it most often.
This idea is not what you originally tried to sell the spaces on. However, it is at least a novel argument for their utility and a very compelling and interesting one.
I still fear the risk of habitual usage of this and I’d question whether I’d consider that a truly “clean” environment. Just because you permit only certain groups doesn’t mean you wont have them bringing into their own internalization of cultural norms with them. I thought I was straight for most of my life and still pretty strongly have internalized homophobia & biphobia. If I went to a bisexual exclusive group I do wonder if I’d run into someone bitter about non-bisexuals or bisexual erasure and find that foment my own. If I went to an autistic exclusive space, my distrust of allistics would likely be multiplied or I would spread my admittedly low opinion of allistics to others, if I wanted to be completely honest with myself.
Now, I will admit, there is one group I think I’d greedily personally engage with that would very much bring out my worst impulses: An exclusively atheist group. Religious people will often use their own emotions and attachment to social power to actively discourage the criticism of religion and spirituality. And I’ll admit, being around religious people forces me to temper some of my meanest and most unproductive thoughts about them. I couldn’t argue that it’d be good for me, thought perhaps it would be cathartic to talk shit about how petulantly stupid I see religious people.
I don’t think any particular group should exclude though. I don’t take issue with the unfairness, I take issue with the results.
Creating a group for a specific type of person but permitting outsiders is simply far and away more useful and beneficial. Its virtually all upside. Where as exclusion is more like a social heroin. Feels good, but produces bad results long term.
If we are truly connecting these nodes, then there isn’t exclusion to begin with arguably. Using the “only” as a descriptor for your group and then connecting to other “only” groups would be exclusionary, it’d just introduce a sort of negotiation table between different “nations”.
If this were actually done, maybe some good would come from it? I still think it’d be a fairly cold way of social and political organization and would still foster distrust and alienation.
I apologize if I came off as bad faith. I promise you I’m merely an impatient, cynical, suspicious, depressed, egotistical asshole.