why do women collude in their own oppression?

Some people feel more powerful when they are not part of a collective - as if the collective is bleeding them of their importance, distinction, uniqueness, individuality, 'freedom.'

IME the Queen Bee who colludes in the oppression of other women seems to be seeking male approval while claiming the opposite and denigrating other women for being silly, inferior, trivial, etc. Those women who say, 'I've always preferred male friends' etc.

I think people are more likely to identify with smaller groups. In general I believe a woman of a minority is more likely to take greater interest in things regarding her race than her sex.

Feminism is really seen as a middle class white womans pursuit (in general in this country), whether it is or not almost does not factor as that is what it is seen as and it puts off many women. Also i do feel that the more extreme elements of feminism get the most attention and that also puts many women off. Women have sons,brothers,fathers,friends etc and family bonds are stronger for most people than that of bonds to a stranger who shares the same sex.

Because it makes women powerful if they identify with all other women

X posts! Didn't know you were here Proles

"Actually a third idea is that they do it to feel empowered and to impress men...."

Yes, Prolesworth calls it 'wanting to be part of the cool gang', which I think is a perfect analogy

I am often alarmed by women who are actively anti feminist, I wonder what their motivations are. Is it simply because they don't identify with what they believe a feminist is or is it that they truly believe that feminism has had a negative impact on society? Actually a third idea is that they do it to feel empowered and to impress men....

I am also think that the promotion of the empowered female as an object of beauty who happens to have made a little cash is completely damaging, hence moving away from the feminist idea too. The five minute celebrity, the new role model is anti feminist and unless you are prepared to take a personal tangent it's hard to avoid identifying with some vacuous celeb than a woman making her mark for something credible.

On another note why can't women be funny and biting, like a man, without being accused of being a bitch? Men can compete and be called 'strong' and 'powerful' whereas women are accused of being aggressive and bitchy.

They do have a worse time of it Lenin, which is why a middle-class woman, who is generally more powerful, is able to help all women, but only if she identifies with women as a group. So feminists should encourage women's identification with each other.

This nonsensical argument that middle class women are only out for themselves in an "I'm allright Jack" brand of feminism is a) wrong- historically and currently, and b) divisive

It has happened in the past (the NOW example, or Maggie Thatcher), but it's being blown way out of proportion, and in fact is being jumped upon by anti-feminists to sort of prove that feminism can't help women... or something...

Systems Thinking? Would you mean that independent elements can never constitute an entire system?

If so, then these sort of comments simply polarise and do blame individual males - as I said earlier, they don't help the argument, and also certainly do not use system thinking.

"All women are subject to male oppression. All women and girls face the risk of male violence against women for example."

Oh so some of us escape do we sprogger....

Yes Sakura, but we are like that because we can't get a man - makes us ugly, bitter and twisted and we let ourselves go :)

It's true Posie, the ultimate scapegoat. The "ugly" feminist, what a perfectly coined myth to attempt to keep women in their place.

I think feminists are mocked so readily by anyone, especially women, that you have to be mighty strong to keep at it. The notion of beauty, albeit cosmetic, is pretty hard to avoid and whilst you fight it you get sidelined.

In fact, surely by not identifying with other women, for example, taking the POV of: "I do not identify with a mother in the third world with a dying baby at her breast, even though I am a woman and a mother" is harmful to women?
I think that this non-identification, this inability to identify with women, is what leads women to collude with the oppressor rather than align themselves with other women accross all countries, races and classes.

Yes, but surely you'd agree that, considering the fact that women are disenfranchised on a global scale and that only men have the power to create the wars that women are, as yet, unable to stop, it empowers women when they identify with other women?

'...those people who don't want women to be identified as a group'

You can put me in that camp. I want to identify as myself with my own strengths and weeknesses.

I want all people to be identified as people.

Labels are for soup cans.

We wouldn't be where we were today if it weren't for radical feminists.

I have heard so-called feminists spout lies that feminists are racist and classist.
This is a distortion of history, and is an ethno-centric view. For example, some groups of feminists in certain countries have been.

And this very viewpoint is confusing because it suggests that only white women, or middle class women have historically been feminists. This is a strange point of view to hold. Did working class women, despite being disenfranchised, not run businesses and have community networks? Were they not midwives? All these areas are branches of feminism. What about the black midwives who worked for free, and illegaly in the US because black women could not afford proper medical treatment. Were they not feminists? On the topic of race, were the Japanese housewives in the 1970s who fought against pornography not feminist?

The answer is yes they were. Many feminists have never been white or middle class so this idea that feminists exclude other women is an argument often used by anti-feminists.

'NOW' feminist activists in America were racist and classist, only fighting about white middle-class concerns. In the same decade Andrea Dworkin, a prolific radical feminist, wrote reams of work pointing this out. Betty Friedan, radical for her 'feminine Mystique' worked hard on trying to get people to work together in "The Second Stage"

But radical feminsits' points of view are always ignored and glossed over as insignificant to further the aims and ends of those people who don't want women to be identified as a group that share the common experience of biology.

So to those who wish to denigrate radical feminists, by all means disagree with their POV, but it is ridiculous to say that radical feminism divides women. It does not and this is a harmful distortion.

'yet it seems that, say, Jews and black people seem to have created a stronger identity than women and to collude less in their oppression'

What?!? Jewish women and BME women have the same identity as Jewish men and BME men? There is ONE Jewish identity and ONE BME identity?

'A lot of the radical feminist argument I see on here never considers the grey (or the other side), and instead makes fundamental sweeping judgements about all of masculinity and males.I don't see that male/female is so divergent and the rhetoric simply creates and perpetuates a deeper separation and thus I don't think anything is achieved for women.'

Absolutely! In fact it not only achieves nothing, it ensures that many people who would work for the aims of feminism don't as they are completely turned off.

'Feminists should take more care in forming beliefs about prostitutes. Information and reflection on prostitution, then, has the potential for a humane, affirmative approach to this myth-laden institution.'

The myths as set out by the users of prostution? Ha bloody ha! In the vast majority of 'transactions' a man is paying a woman to wank into her body. This isn't a belief I have formed but knowledge from accounts written by women who have been involved with prostitution.

Gotcha Milly. Thank you :)