A chatty, questions and random comments thread

The people at the top shit on the people at the bottom; the basic format of 'civilization' since the dawn of recorded history.

'But it'll be all different when the patriarchy is gone', pffft, maybe... if Homo sapiens evolves into a totally different species.

What am I doing?

Trying to make sure that more people understand what is - and is not - consent.

Trying to understand the impact that the DV changes will have on the dealings in family relationships [I still fear that stupid men/MRA will use it as a "well, I only hit 'er her 'cos she used domestic violence on me"]

Encouraging girls to climb and boys to cook

As an aside, looking at some reading on post dominator culture Eisler, Chalice & Blade and so forth.

Also read: an interesting essay framed within sci-fi writing by Liza Yaszek (although earlier modes of feminism posited an inevitable opposition between phallocentrism and gynocentrism without acknowledging how the two are bound together by a shared investment in logocentrism. The task for postfeminists, as Diane Mowery Davis sees it, is to recognize this commonality and then to move beyond it by embracing a "third position that is not really a position at all but a perpetual mobility isn't exactly 101 level reading...)

I particularly liked
In 1985 Donna Haraway's groundbreaking "Cyborg Manifesto" urged feminists to begin seriously considering the promises and perils of a technoscientific culture that reorganizes women's relations to themselves, their families, and their communities in the name of global capitalism. which is rather more what I expected to learn about - but then we all know what expectations do...

Its my gut feeling that it will come from an unexpected place and spread like wildfire when critical mass is reached

oh if only when it does happen can we please make sure that there is not an elite vanguard of educated white women heading it up

"I suggested separate education might be a way, I wondered if female reproductive control might be a way to achieve what you see as your objectives. "

So what? Why do you want me to set certain ideas in stone? All we need is to give women the space they need to organise and they come up with the answers to their local needs. No imperious spreading of 'superior' wisdom necessary.

"who decides what is critical mass[?]"

Critical mass is not a decision, it is a tipping point when the revolution happens. No one decides this point and dictates it to anyone else, its when people everywhere notice it and say "f*ck me!- the revolution is here! Yippee!"

Its very different to slaughtering a dictator then sitting in his throne.

I'm not even sure it goes as far as that - I think he's repeating something rather than anything else. I think it has as much depth as him saying 'I support Chelsea' when (a) he never watches football so has no real opinion on the matter and (b) his football kit is from another team entirely that his uncle supports.

I do say 'no, girls are cool' but the female BF is new - I'll go for 'well, XX isn't yuk, is she?' next time.

DS1 sees no conflict in between 'urgh, girls' and naming his two best friends as a boy and a girl. I've let that one go for now...

He is 5. He is at the stage of 'girls are yuk!'

TBH I need to catch myself at these things too as I grew up in a SAHM-WOHD family and although both DH and I WOH, it's easy to fall into the gender roles so I am trying to be mindful.

On a wider scale, I am donating to refuges, signing petitions, writing to my MP about abortion rights. I like your thread on teaching style, LRD.

I have just changed a diary appointment from 'girls' night out' to 'womens' night out'. And I sat down with DS1to do a mechanical task yesterday to show him I could do it as well as DH (only to find it had been pre-assembled, rats!)

OK, must me my misogynistic mindset learned through oppression under the patriarchy.

I have no idea what a post-patriarchal society would look like.

I have no idea how we would get there.

I don't even see the baby-steps towards it.

I have no idea how we would recognise it if we did.

I don't see evidence of the current class-ridden society crumbling, if anything, across the world I see regression in women's rights and equality.

Saying to me You don't need to have people making autocratic decisions in a non-oppressive society, surely? I just don't follow how it could be non-oppressive if people did make autocratic. doesn't address how will we know if we have reached this state...

FoodUnit 's impassioned argument for women to meet and gather in non-oppressive environments, to create those non-oppressive environments and protect those non-oppressive environments, whilst doing whatever can be done to challenge and tear down patriarchy -blasting away all the barriers that hold women down.

has interesting tonal differences non-oppressive/tear down & blasting but is rather short on substance...

From those non-oppressive environments how do you tear down the patriarchy and blast barriers? At the very least there will need to be some form of engagement with the environment in which those barriers are made manifest.

Evolution or revolution? unless the technological advances are made that allow for social change to happen then nothing can happen. If you consider control of reproduction and IVF as an example, it is more palatable to the masses to sell them the idea of IVF for infertility. People are not ready to take on the idea that women could be freed of the biological burden of reproduction. At what point would societal expectations and acceptance of science catch up with technology?

No one can envisage what a post capitalist/ post patriarchal society would be like. Marxists have no better idea of how life might be, although the historical materialist conception of society and change tell us how change happens and what the likely conditions would have to be for that change to happen.

LRDtheFeministDragon

If harsh, I apologise. Exasperated, perhaps.
It's the language I'm asking to be explained.

"A clear, universal and self-evident vision."

To paraphrase, I asked "What's one of them, then?"

I would have to infer from that "universal and self-evident" would show high degree of acceptance as opposed to one which everyone else will follow/fall line with.

The whole until every woman has the opportunity to find voice, (or enough from all different walks of life - for it to reach a critical mass)

tone rankles a bit - who decides what is critical mass, what are "the different walks of life", is this democratic, built upon a republican whose rights are enshrined...

otherwise you just have privileged women speaking for those who are more thoroughly oppressed and this hasty nod to womanism in realisation that WoC have issues with the agenda being pushed forward...

Happy for someone to point me to a 101ish approach to how the replaceable to the patriarchy will look, and paths to achieve this.

Ah.

I see.

Verbiage bereft of meaning, largely.

"How do we get to a state where we can know "how the truly unoppressed woman thinks, what she wants, what her actual needs are and how she wants to live"?"

I already answered that.

If you think

As patriarchy crumbles and more and more women rise from oppression a vision will become clear, universal and self-evident in my opinion. is an answer, fine.

So I asked

"Can we have any examples of a "clear, universal and self-evident" vision?"

I can't be bothered to answer this, so that's a no, then.

I don't hear either a clearly articulated idea - just a lot of hand waving, and I don't see how you will get there.

I suggested separate education might be a way, I wondered if female reproductive control might be a way to achieve what you see as your objectives. Mostly, it sounds like passionate revolutionary ardour - which we've seen in South America, Eastern Europe, the Far East - and it has rarely ended well.

Good luck with your revolution however you manage it.