Should feminist discussion groups be women-only spaces?

oh I started a women's group once with funding from local authority and there was a bit of 'oh no poor men' so someone set up an equivalent, for which there was a glaring lack of interest obviously

my group still going strong 20 years later of course :)

I suppose it depends on whether you think people who are not part of a group can sit and talk about how people who are part of that group think and feel.

So can a white person join a group of black people and talk about how they are affected by racism.

Can a non disabled person join a group of people with disabilities and talk about how they struggle for access or services or help.

But of course, that depends on he purpose of the group. People who are not part of a particular group can certainly be part of a group whose aim is to discuss the difficulties that group has and ways to make a difference.

but does someone who is not part of that group get to decide what those difficulties are, or must they accept that they are whatever the members of that group feel that they are and concentrate only on addressing them as they are presented.

and how do members of a group feel about having someone from what they may see as a group that is part of the problem, sitting there and, in their view perhaps, telling them how to feel and how to solve an issue.

I don't know. Those are just some off the top of my head thoughts.

sorry, didn't read first post very well

I wouldn't be interested in attending a group about women's issues that admitted men, why would men even want to be there? They could start their own and invite women to speak there.

I'm just not very interested in men's thoughts on these things, all you ever hear anywhere and everywhere you go is male voices droning on and on and on. It would be nice for them to shut up and listen for once, so I'm not in favour of banning them as such (from Internet discussions do you mean?) but it would be nice if some of them could learn to edit themselves a bit. At least until the airwaves generally have evened out a bit more and we are more used to hearing women too.

I don't see why it has to be a binary choice. Surely some can be women only, others to women and men.

I do think all issues benefit from wide and diverse input, but men's voices are pretty loud already. There's a need for women to be able to see what it's like to discourse without a male presence. We hear men's voice all the time on every subject, including feminism, so it's important for there to be space for women to think about and discuss issues without that bias. At the same time women's liberation requires both men and women to accept and understand the issues that prevent women from being equal in our society. So there need to be spaces where men fit in too.

There should be a range of mixed and woman-only. People will participate in this that interest them and from which they believe they derive benefit.

Letting anyone dominate discussion sounds to me more like poor chairing, rather than inherent in the membership.