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

having watched 'made in dagenham' recently, it struck me how the unions were colluding with the manufacturers to prevent women receiving equal pay. even an organization meant to protect the workers, only wanted to protect the male workers.

also, there was the usual 'we can't afford to pay more, the factory will close and you'll all lose your jobs' line.

well, if they can't pay their workers without going bust, they obviously are doing something wrong. Yet it was the underpaid women, working in skilled manual labour, who were blamed for it.

ok, that was a while ago, but that 'blaming the victim' attitude is still highly prevalent.
want to have a baby out of wedlock? you're the one frowned on, not the man.
want to live in a female society, or even just have female only swimming sessions? that's taking advantage, it's pc gone mad.

i want to change these things but without having to overthrow society, demonize the males, ruin the economy.

i'd just like us all to be respectful to each other, whether someone is a CEO of a multi-national, or a sahp. the age, sex, color etc of that person should be irrelevant. if they do a good job is more important.

Sakura suggest you talk to some ethnic minorities and non-straight people before declaring their pursuit of equality is a waste of time. Right now you sound very uneducated about the real struggles these groups face (God forbid, comparable to sexual discrimination).

MrMan I suggest you take your male priviledge elsewhere.

Very patronising to crash into a thread with a "suggestion".

However it is very illuminating as it actually illustrate's sakura's post perfectly:

Men tell us we should concentrate on cass, race, ethnicity.. intersectionality--- but that is just ways of diluting the women's movement and throwing women off the scent. Sex based oppression is the original oppression. It is the oppression that must be overthrown.

BTW I will not be responding further to your attempt to derail this thread.

.

As it turns out, I have as much right as anyone else to respond to this thread (until Mumsnet publish a rule that only women can post on this board, in which case I will be more that happy to respond). It is very curious logic that you think that women can be as mean and vindictive as they like, but as soon as I show up, Sakura will melt. This is not a de-railment: it is me responding directly to what someone has posted.

In turns of my privilege, as it turns out I have very little. That's because I am an ethnic minority a very long way from white. So tell me, have you been stopped by half the policemen who pass you? Do you get pulled for security at every airport? Do you have people look at you all the time on buses like they're wondering if you're about to mug them? If not, then I would really appreciate people to shut the hell up when they tell people that it's a waste of time to support my right to be treated like a normal person.

Oh, hang on... a non-white male is obviously very threatening so you won't post. Probably just as well.

as for 'original' oppression, you don't think that black people were oppressed from the very first day white people started showing up? You don't think that there is also just a little bit of history behind 'darkies' getting the short end of the stick? this attitude really does make my blood boil.

mrman on the car getting pulled over- yes,yes. colleague of mine regularly pulled over driving his car.regularly had to take calls confirming his id and status and please could they let him speedily get to work where he was v much needed

and yes its an open forum.post away and get stuck in like all of us,mrman

MrMan: No one is going to deny that the poor and the non-white are oppressed by the white and the wealthy. But the poor and the non-white women still have it worse, because the poor, non-white men in their lives oppress them. (If you're talking in broad group-based terms, of course there are poor non-white men who treat the women they know fairly, just as white wealthy ones treat the women they know fairly. But an awful lot of left-wing or ethnic minority activist organisations have a shocking attitude towards women - make the tea, spread your legs, shut up, your interests will be dealt with once we've sorted out ours...)

mrman - we have all said that there are other forms of oppression, no-one is saying that there aren't. and that it is a complex issue with someone's race, sex, age, height etc etc all having an influence.

you have been pulled over by the police, others are harassed as they take the kids out. different forms of oppression, both embedded within the patriarchy. and by making us all resent each other, instead of looking towards the most privileged, the patriarchy continues.

fwiw, a woman with the same dob, background, education etc as you, and the same skin colour, has fewer life choices than you do. so you may be far down the 'pecking order', but a woman with identical background, just female, not male, is even more disadvantaged. look at figures for poverty & how women are less affluent, even when well educated.

which is why we're discussing these things.

this is the feminist forum, so we discuss female oppression. i'm just as happy to discuss religious, racial, age discrimination etc on the appropriate thread.

(btw, i have been the only person of my skin colour on a bus, in fact, in the street, so I do know how it feels. It may just be a stereotype, but i would be more afraid of a man walking behind me in a lonely street, than a woman, no matter what the skin colour of either. Or it may be because of the dangers that women do face. Being stopped by the police is annoying. Being stopped by a rapist isn't.)

MrMan: what makes you so sure that the women posting on this thread do not suffer racial discrimination? Have you met us ? Seen our photos, know what race/colour we are? I don't and I don't imagine anything about the posters on Mumsnet until they tell me.
GothAnne: what makes you assume Sakura is thinking of leaving her husband for "ideology"? Whatever she means about "trying separatism" might have other casual factors which she hasn't chosen to share. I think you are more than a bit harsh there.
Also: I understand your opposition to revolutionary retoric. However, I must say that your attitude seems quite self defeating. If I have understood you correctly (and correct me if I am wrong) you seem to be saying that any effort on THX part of feminists or anyother political group etc is ultimately futile: that what they are doing won't chane anything. As far as I can see no one is claiming that an utopia can be created in a women's only space, merely that the most common harassments suffered by women at the hands of men as a group will be significantly reduced or even eliminated. I don't doubt there would be other problems since as you rightly point out feminists and women's groups are not immune to being blinded by privilege. However, I don't think that the best way to tackle this is to say that nothing can ever change. Human history is full of changes (for good and ill) in all its aspects.

Black people weren't oppressed the minute white people showed up MrMan.

There are plenty of records of Nubians living as full Roman citizens. Racism was invented in order to justify the trans-atlantic slave trade - it's only really existed for about 400 years. In the 1530s Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, outlawed slavery in all his dominions as it was a crime against God to enslave human beings. A century later, white Europeans had invented an excuse as to why slavery of black people wasn't a crime, and the excuse was that they weren't as fully human as white people, so God wouldn't mind.

Women as a class have been oppressed for far longer than that. As far back as Aristotle, men have been telling each other that women weren't human, that the measure of all things is man and that women are just deformed, incomplete, immature not-quite-as-good-versions-of-men. Sexism is far more entrenched than racism and will take much, much longer to root out.

The word privilege when used in a political context, doesn't mean that you're a friend of Tara Palmer Rama Barmey Woman. It means that compared to another group, you have privilege. In your case, male privilege. In my case, white privilege. Also in my case, able-bodied privilege, heterosexual privilege and educational privilege. Most of us have some sort of privilege and the joy of having it, is that we don't notice we have it.

catita - I'm glad you posted that, I wondered why MrMan was so sure we're all white too!

A few non-white feminists on here aren't there?

But men always assume that you can't be in favour of feminism and concerned with other struggles and injustices at the same time.

Women's rights have got to go to the back of the queue, their rightful place.

Sorry that should say non-feminist men

Intelligent ones know that women who are feminists, are likely to give a shit about other stuff as well. I've never met a feminist who only cared about women's rights. Whereas I've met plenty of lefty-boy socialists who only care about the dictatorship of the proletariat and every other social issue is an irrelevant bourgeois deviation as far as they're concerned

Exactly HerBex, you have to be REAL NANA to say "If you're a feminist you must be racist, or classist"
Compartmentalizing.

All sane people acknowledge that there are various problems. But all sane people must acknowledge that women are 50% of ANY disenfranchised group, and fighting for the rights of a compartmentalized group won't help the women within that group, only the men.

If a disabled woman fights for disabled rights and gets somewhere she still has the face the misogyny of the medical institutions, just like any other woman. Her disabled male counterpart does not.

Men have played women off against each other to their advantage for ages. I honestly believe that if the feminist movement is to move forward, women will have to start realizing that the men in their respective groups don't give a shit about them, but are willing to use their energy to further their own ends.

As I said earlier, black men dumped black women as soon as they got the vote in America. Look what happens in every male revolution including the recent Egyptian one. As soon as the women have enabled the men to achieve their aims it's "get back into the kitchen"

We're not. moving. forward. Women are going to have to get over this conditioning that splits them off from other women and pits them against each other.
It. only. serves. men.

What the fuck is with the "I am more oppressed than you" competition?!

There are loads of forms of discrimination, they are all stupid, they are all destructive, and more importantly they all need to be challenged.

Sakura: that's why I like the slogan of the feminist contingency of the Spanish protesters at the moment: "la revolución será feminista o no será." ("the revolution will feminist or it won't be a revolution").

Interesting diversion, as a feminist of colour I agree/disagree with all of you.

Being a black woman does not mean you transcend the oppression of women, however nor can you transcend the experience of racism, I have said it before and will say it again. I have witnessed sexism by anti racists and racism by feminist. That does not mean I will disengage with either group.

The dismissal of the intersection of gender and race can only be possible from either side, from a position of male or white privilege. From my perspective life can never be as binary in a way it is still possible for white women or black men. Do feel this discussion is very far away from discussing the possibility of separatism and what that may look like though!

Snowmama I agree with you. I think people experience and speak from within a variable range of privilege; privilege that makes you often blind to discrimination suffered by those who have less than you do (hence some white feminists can find it hard to see/recognise the enormity of their privilege compared to that of a woman of different race; or some married/living with male partner feminists can find it hard to see/recognise their privilege compared to that of a single mother, or a lesbian etc etc).

I would hope that noone would argue that feminists are immune from being racist/classist/ (insert variable here); but I also would hope that this discrimination be pointed out and criticised as ruthlessly as any other. There is no point in being self congratulory or lionising feminists as perfect people. I don't think that anyone has suggested as such, despite all the criticisms made thus far on this thread (and I am emphatically not including you in them) in this sense.

I really do think that the only way for this discussion to get back on track is to discuss feminist separatism as an concept which does not claim to be anything more than being a space in which the male presence is restricted. As far as I can see, that is all that seems to be championed. Not an utopia where no one is ever discriminatory; not an utopia where there is no violence nor conflict; not an utopia where everyone is completely happy all the time; an certainly not a place where evil feminists will sit and plot the overthrow of the patriarchy in favour of a matriarchy

The question seemed to be what would the advantages of this be? (And related, the disadvantages?)