Men’s “token torturers” in feminist spaces

This is a short but good article illustrating what I meant in the last paragraph above www.womanist-musings.com/2008/09/why-is-it-always-white-women.html

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Are you meaning something along the lines of Stockholm Syndrome and brainwashing?
That certain women have been manipulated by men, or by the patriarchy into adopting the very philosophies and methods that they claim to be opposing,
instead have take them on board and rationalised them, thus becoming unwitting Trojan horses?
Do you demonise such individuals, attempt to re-educate them, dismiss them, annihilate them?

Wikipedia on Intersectionality

(Very) Basically that sexism, racism, classism etc. are interlinked and work together to maintain the power structures of an unfair society.

Can you provide a reference for this cut and paste segment please?

I agree with both meditrina and Emmeline with regard to the piece and what it appears to advocate. I find it actually quite depressing - reminding me how much feminists have forgotten (or choose not to remember) about the past, and how much they fail to acknowledge about oppression in the here and now.

Mary Daly was famously called out by Audre Lorde for her racism in the late 1970's. The wisdom and insight of some of her work was always tempered for me by her failure to acknowledge the role of white privilege (including her own, and that of other white feminists) in the oppression of women of colour. Ditto for her views on trans women.

Greythorne, the wiki definition of Intersectionality is a pretty good starting point:

Intersectionality is a feminist sociological theory first highlighted by Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989). Intersectionality is a methodology of studying "the relationships among multiple dimensions and modalities of social relationships and subject formations" (McCall 2005). The theory suggests?and seeks to examine how?various biological, social and cultural categories such as gender, race, class, ability, sexual orientation, and other axes of identity interact on multiple and often simultaneous levels, contributing to systematic social inequality. Intersectionality holds that the classical conceptualizations of oppression within society, such as racism, sexism, homophobia, and religion-based bigotry, do not act independently of one another; instead, these forms of oppression interrelate, creating a system of oppression that reflects the "intersection" of multiple forms of discrimination.

This article by Crenshaw led to something like a Damascus Road moment for me nearly 20 years ago.

What bothers me alot about what seems to be a more recent incarnation of Radical Feminism (remember folks, I'm very old and was involved in many women's campaigns 20 plus years ago, with radical feminists, who most definitely didn't not subscribe to such a prescriptive, exclusive philosophy,) is the focus on exclusion, on "othering" those whose actions, behaviour or appearance do not conform to the requisite ideal.

So, a rejection of intersectionality basically means seeing racism (and other forms of institutional prejudice) as not important, or at least far down the ranks below misogyny. Worse, I've heard the racism experienced by some women of colour as "a result of patriarchy," which neatly absolves white, privileged feminists of any responsibility for perpetuating racist oppression. Clever that, but women of colour ain't buying it.

Just what I wondered Greythorne

Is a space only women only if if is defined that way by the women in the space and they have control over the boundaries of the space or are other spaces containing only women but not defined by women only groups not women only spaces IYSWIM?

What's "intersectionality"?

Eats that starts off talking about women only spaces then morphs into feminist spaces. It takes the position there is only a very narrow definition of feminist but talks about it as though all women-only spaces ought to be subscribing to that view.

It's only a couple of paragraphs, so maybe I'm reading this out of context. But I read it as assuming that all women-only spaces or possibly just all feminist spaces should subscribe to one branch of feminist theory. I understand the desire not to be railroaded when discussing from that standpoint, but there is no entitlement to thinking that women will subscribe to that viewpoint just because they are women or identify as feminists.

If a group of women want to tightly define what and how women can converse they need to be creating something other than women-only spaces.

Presumably safe space refers to validated registration and actively moderated or pre-moderated sites if referring to Internet postings.

Personally, I prefer open sites such as MN. For I prefer to see inclusion and do not want to write off the vicissitudes of any sector of society on the basis of sex and that means tackling issues as they affect everyone. To me, feminism inherently involves consideration of, and efforts to improve, society for everyone. I do not like to see victims written off as token just because they are fewer in number.

Great, yet another way for rad-fems to deny any other sort of feminism than their own - if you don't toe the rad-fem party line on every issue, then you're not a free-thinking woman, you're a deeply-damaged male plant!

Some people on MN say they don't go on FWR because they don't understand half the language. Can't think what they mean by that?

It sounds like Sir Humphrey. :)

What does this even mean???