Separatist Feminism

[VictorGollancz]

Ok, I really am really very late for work at this point but I thought it might be nice to have a space in which we can discuss separatist feminism. I've read a lot of advocates of it, and even incorporate some elements of it into my own life - I prefer not to live with men, for example - but I don't practise it totally and I can't find any examples of any separatist communes.

Does anyone know anything more about it? Does anyone live in a separatist way?

Surprisingly good Wiki link here

Lenin - yes that birth rate statistic was quoted and the article effectively said Italian women had gone on strike and were refusing to play the traditional female role until they get a better deal.

I think I am right in saying that women were and still are basically expected to stop working as soon as they get married in Italy (like the UK in the 1950s). Hence they are refusing and the birth rate has plunged.

Japan is another incredibly low birth rate country where, again, women are expected to give up work once married and naturally they are refusing to give up their economic freedom and instead choose to live with their own parents rent free and enjoy life on their own terms.

Interesting Italian study.

What bothers me about it is that in order to escape traditional subjugated roles, women have had to become more like men - i.e. economically independent with no caring responsibilities.

Without structural and legislative change, I think as soon as Italian women start having children again, which they will, things will go back to the way they were. Or you'll end up with a class difference - where educated young women get the pick of 'enlightened' men while poorer, uneducated women who can never hope to achieve real economic independence, will continue with lives blighted by sexism.

Given that most women want to have children (they just don't want to handicap their lives as a result) I think a separatist community that allows children would actually have more to offer women. Faced with the choice of a decent job and no children, or a poorer life with children, I will always choose the latter. But what I'd really like is both, of course.

The response of governments to the birth rate strikes, has been to up child benefit, to try and bribe women to have children.

Rather than looking at the structural disincentives for women to have children and changing them.

" i just as much need to hear, and engage with, the male perspective on certain issues, or i will have a biased view point"

There is absolutely no chance of anyone in our culture, not hearing and engaging with "the male perspective". It's the only one most of us ever get to hear and engage with, because it is the only one that is presented.

Engaging with other women without the intervention of males, enables women to clear their heads and re-learn a female perspective, IMO and is valuable for that reason alone. A little bit of separatism every now and again is a really good thing, this thread has made me realise. I wouldn't want it forever, but every now and again, as long as we have patriarchy, it's a necessity for battery re-charging purposes.

that or they'll just increasingly have children on their own sunshine. single parenthood will increase, by women doing it on their own or through women having higher expectations of marriage and getting divorced more. the social stigma of single parenthood will decrease grudgingly (like we see here, but good god it's grudging in some quarters) and so it goes.

isn't that what has happened here?

it's funny that what people like to call the break down of society is essentially the liberation of women from restrictive roles and lives that they were once completely stuck in.

even now society would rather groan and moan and demonise people than make some changes for women.

simultaneously to society moaning and groaning there are women choosing to live in poverty and struggle with work, parenting, health etc rather than give in and go back to those roles.

stalemate really.

they can moan their arses off about people like me but we're not going anywhere. a tory government will try to 'incentivise' people to live the 'right' way with idiot paltry tax breaks and making people who don't even poorer but it won't work.

i wonder if sooner or later people will just accept that society has changed and ruling from a falsely privileged and statused norm is not democracy - you're supposed to represent what your citizens are, not what you think they should be. given that what they are is not criminal.

What I think is true is that the traditional set up works best for men, yet they don't want to admit it, so all the skewed statistics about how children suffer if there isn't a man ruling living in the house are a way of convincing women that they need to obey men and service them for the sake of the children.

Absolutely SGB, plus the brainwashing of females starts from birth. Have you analyzed Cinderella, Sleeping BEauty, Snow White...? This is because men love coupledom and marriage and know they need it. Women are actually better off emotionally when they are single.

So it then stands to reason that if a woman is better off emotionally, then she is going to be in a better position to raise her child.

But society would rather have us depressed and married than free and happy, and yes, skews the statistics that present marriage as a good option for women.

how bizzare,now women can be sneered at by other women in the name of feminism?aha,so the unquestioning masses are brainwashed by cultural stereotypes and literature,but not clever ole you?how v convenient that you don't presumably include yourself in such brainwashing.as you see all its folly.whilst others dont.gosh how v clever

this is a similar to people who decry daily mail as shaping and creating prejudice in the suggestible masses, but not themselves naturally. as they are cleverly above it

how v patronising

not disputing the awful content
sniggering at the pomposity of others are brainwashed, but the clever few aren't

did you mean to post that fly?
is that intended to the poor brainwashed masses?
or the clever few who rise above such cultural sublimation

ease up on they hyperbole.for millionth time dont exaggerate
nowt random about it
do keep up

dont dispute the saturation of cosy domesticity and supplicant wifey
dispute that it necessarily brainwashes folk,id like to give em more credit as being able to be selective and objective

i also accept that if one chose man, and sahm and traditional familial roles thats not necessarily brainwashing as result of literature. some folk may chose that set up

I never thought I'd say this, but I am warming to SM and do agree with her here. I do have dim views of people who poo poo conformity, we are social animals and need to fit in somewhere...even if that place is outside of normality, we still group together.

I would like to assert that separatism is not feminism at all, it's a rather pointless exercise and theory. Women, en masse, will never withdraw their labour and from thius thread that's hardly the point. Most seem to have a subjective reason to withdraw and, seemingly, are allowed to say every individual male is the same as the other. What about male feminists?

Some of us choose 'love' for want of a better word.

well,the majority chose man-woman unit with demarcated roles.i dont believe them all to be brainwashed. so whilst i didn't go for the married,sahm,man as main wage earner,shared finances.i dont necessarily believe those who did are "brain washed"

and to a greater or lesser extent we all conform to societal norms and roles. gay community has embraced cp,and thats marriage to all intents. are married gay people brain washed?

Children are factors though aren't they? They are the reason the human race survives, as well as that elephant in the room I like to call a father,.