[a sign reads FEMINIST CONFERENCE next to a closed door, a blue character shrugs and says…]
I don’t care
[next to the same door, the sign now says RESTRICTED FEMINIST CONFERENCE WOMEN ONLY, there are now four blue characters desperately banging on the door, one is reduced to tears on the floor, they are shouting]
DISCRIMINATION
SO UNFAIR!!!
LET US IINN!!
MISANDRY
I didn’t address this directly because you didn’t do the work to show you were actually interested in the conversation. That’s why didn’t have the right to be there. This response is more serious and worth giving you my attention and energy. Had you provided the context and thinking you provided in this response in the first response, I would have considered answering especially if you were able to support it’s relevancy.
I won’t be addressing the anti-natalist because I don’t see how it’s connected and it seems like it’s emotionally charged for you. Emotionally charged politics are important, but only if they are connected to the topic and if I judge that I have any relevant position to make any intervention. So I won’t be sounding off on that.
That leaves the first point where you started in your first comment “Men do the same.” and gave your thinking in this last comment. On the face of it, an out group is not an adversary. If I attend a cancer survivor’s group and people who never had cancer show up, it changes things. People who never had cancer are not my adversaries. My goal isn’t to fight those people. I want to connect with others through a shared experience.
Men’s only groups in the past was often a place where real decisions for power and profit were made. This is radically different from a the support some women may get in a women’s conference or the strategy and tactics developed from shared seed experiences for the political project of over throwing patriarchy.
I don’t normally post on weekends but I left my lunch in the office fridge and your response has been a grain of sand in my brain. Figured I’d finish up writing my response.
It wasn’t clear how I could have responded to pull out the counter arguments I wanted to get to. I want to skip to the core of the discussion because if I used up time on initial 101 arguments, statistically the person I’m responding too gets bored, suspicious, or tired of the argument overall. Also, being flatly and snarkily blunt about a specific thing without additional details gives a chance for someone to reveal what they actually think in anger without tactical obfuscation of their actual beliefs, wasting time.
Its doesn’t work often but it has every once in a while. The alternative almost always seems like I get the same old same old boilerplate.
Its emotional to be natalist as well. Its connected to the discussion at a fundamental level, to be natalist means you value certain things as an axiom that lead to a certain derrived perspectives, one that I think is arguably similar to yours. Which is why I brought it up.
I stated it more to identify if this is a fundamental difference in our views. Something irreconcilable. Its a lonely feeling to have it confirmed. Very few have a conscious belief on the matter, pro or con. And default absent minded to natalist perspectives largely due to religion and cultural inertia.
Segregation foments adversarial attitudes. Even with trivial or made up differences. It widens the empathy gap, creates perceived out-group homogeneity, and a sense of moral superiority. Group polarization absolutely can and probably will manifest in your suggested cancer survivor group, especially with an explicit ban on people joining who are not survivors of the disease. The goal is irrelevant, the result is what matters.
Statistically very true. Not a hard rule though, and to say there is no power in a woman’s only group that couldn’t further disenfranchise a dis-empowered non-woman would be disingenuous.
“Over throwing patriarchy” is a vague goal at best though. What does that actually entail? Much like the rapture, the inevitable communist revolution, or judgement day this is just an in-group meta narrative, not really a goal at all.
I’m going to skip the meta-conversation and tactic you used. I don’t think they clarify or further the discussion about why women would want a conference without men.
Regarding natalism, I skipped it not because it was emotional, but it was tangential and unclear in how it was related to the specific topic. Again, I have nothing against emotions playing into one’s politics.
This is only true if you fail to understand the internal needs of the segregated group. In this case, it is to regain power in themselves and through connection to others who get it. This subverts any empathy gap that could happen. When a cancer survivor group meets, I don’t ever know what it was like having had cancer. But I can provide an empathetic space to understand that:
If the only result you care about is how it effects out-groups, then you misunderstand how healing and political movements are created at the earliest stages. How do you think political movements are formed if not in small groups meeting privately?
Women are historically oppressed minorities. Patriarchal systems caused their oppression. Who are the dis-empowered non-woman that are being disenfranchised?
Much of this particulars are covered in the long history of feminism. Recounting it all would take several books. Staying with in the confines of one or strain will help guide the discussion. What feminist literature have you read? Who are your guiding lights in the movement? That will dissipate the vagueness. There may not be one single definition, but the contours for disagreement move from a blob to specific corners of concern. I’m asking for these because if you view these goals as ‘religious,’ it suggests you are unfamiliar with the specific, material policy work and labor history that defines the movement. There is nothing inherently wrong with not being familiar with the field in specificity.
So in sum, I’d like to hear:
No, its a documented and highly scientifically backed effect.
Its not the only effect that I care about but I do care about it.
Political movements are value neutral, or at least subjectively perceived as good or bad depending on who you ask about which movement.
If you want to say that the harmful in-group & out-group effects are a worthwhile sacrifice to achieve other ends, that’s one claim I could see as understandable but I would want to know the specifics of what the actual end goal(s) is/are before I’d support it. Further, the main way a political movement actually grows and achieves positive things is to broaden their support typically. If they lean into leveraging power they might have over a majority they’re using might makes right logic. I can certainly see the utility of that if you view the majority as stupid or evil and I’ll even admit these days its hard not to feel that way given the state of my country. At that point though I don’t even see the point other than cynical power games.
NB’s & men who fall into disenfranchised categories like bipoc, lgbt, homeless/impoverished/working class, and probably most relevant to gender issues is the neurodiverse male population. Not to mention that creating an exclusively women space can attract TERFs, where they can spread their bullshit more efficiently by leaning into the in-group & out-group effects.
Women’s issues is gender issues. Gender is like any social construct, its defined by relationships and collective beliefs.
My feminism? I was critiquing the feminism you are defending that would justify an exclusionary in-group. I’m suspicious of why you’d want to ask.
If you must know, I tend to agree with Xenofeminism. Its the form of feminism that embraces rationalism, any consistent Xenofeminist would agree with me here.
I need to address the structural failure of this conversation. For our dialogue to be productive, it must engage with the thesis presented.
I have presented a specific thesis on restorative spaces as a material necessity for movement-building. This has been consistently ignored or reframed as “exclusionary antagonism.” I understand that you reject this as it widens empathy gap between in-groups and out-groups. However, you never engage with the interior possibility for it result in healing for the oppressed in-group.
I asked a direct question regarding how political movements form in the absence of private, strategic meeting spaces. This was met with a response addressing how they grow and not how which is a refusal to engage with the history of labor and policy work that defines these movements.
I presented a clear statement, “This is only true if you fail” and your response seemed to interpret my statement as a rejection to the initial and not the subsequent. I have no doubt that this phenomena is real or scientifically supported. Rather, I was pointing out how empathy for the in-group is a analgesic to the pain of being an out-group.
Finally, and arguably the most perplexing, despite my forthright and honest comportment, there has been a persistent reticent to grant me good faith and continue to view me with suspicion. You are treating my request for feminist framing as a “trap” rather than a legitimate effort to ground the discussion and find common language. Both of these I stated at the time of the request.
So in a attempt to meet you with the language of Xenofeminism, I will, to the best of my ability relate my response in the verbiage of the text you provided. Since I am new to the school, please grant me a little grace as I fumble through it and keep in mind that I’m trying to meet you where you are while still honoring the lived experiences of an oppressed minority.
I suspect we are actually arguing about the mechanics of liberation rather than the goals. Xenofeminism (XF) is a project of rationalist engineering. If we treat social organization as a form of “technomaterialist” construction, then we must recognize that every effective tool requires specific environmental constraints to function.
My thesis of restorative spaces is the social wetware terrain in which control is wrenched from the hegemon. A laboratory requires a sterile environment to produce a pharmaceutical , an oppressed group requires a sterile social space to re-engineer the “memetic parasites” of patriarchy. It is the pre-production phase of a mesopolitical project.
Restorative spaces are the necessary pre-production phase of the mesopolitical. They are the modular laboratories where we develop the new language for sexual politics that XF calls for. You cannot bootstrap a new world into existence while still using the corrupted operating system of the dominant gaze. This is the site where we experiment with different modes of ‘directed subsumption’. It is the protected environment where we develop the very procedures intended to seep into the shell of the patriarchy and dismantle its defenses from the inside out.
It is the site of “multiple political bodies”. It’s not a site available just for women. But also for men to do the same. It is a site for BIPOC, for asexuals, for trans and for neurodivergent people. If “a hundred sexes should bloom” , we must allow for a hundred different social affordances. Just as a neurodiverse person might need a specific sensory environment to thrive, women and the marginalized groups you mentioned require specific restorative environments to build the unselfish solidarity necessary for the long game of history.
Universal solidarity is not a spontaneous event, but a synthetic construction that must be meticulously engineered across distinct sites of struggle over large time scales. Solidarity must be engineered between these distinct sites of restorative labor. Moving toward a true mesopolitical scale requires us to treat these individual ‘laboratories’ as modular nodes in a larger network. We do not build a universalist project by flattening our specific needs into a vague, horizontal mass, but by establishing robust protocols of transit between our specialized spaces, both externally and internally. This coordination is the necessary ‘boot-strapping’ phase—linking our local ‘social affordances’ into a cohesive, technomaterialist front capable of challenging the hegemon.
I am not arguing for a “shrine to nature”. I am arguing for the freedom to engineer the social conditions of our own healing. If we are to engineer a future beyond the binary, we must first defend the right to construct the specialized environments where that future is actually being built.
This is a good response. Thank you.
This is largely because I don’t think it does result actually in healing of the in-group. I myself sometimes crave things that are comforting yet bad for me, like junk food, remaining sedentary on a couch, binge drinking, and secluding myself in self loathing. these are intoxicating and reinforcing. They can result in bad habits. I view such groups with a similar perspective.
I did not answer this one either because I rejected the forming of a political group as an intrinsic good in the first place.
That said, fair call that I pivoted to growth. Formation I think certainly can be through an exclusionary start of course, I just don’t think explicit exclusion is needed. You can form a political group for a specific type, but you don’t really need to restrict access to only that type. Realistically, just like this comic suggests, you probably would not get too many participants outside that group anyway, but if you did they’d likely be an invaluable ally, not an antagonist to restrict your words around.
Like I stated earlier, I think this is at best a psychological comfort food. Its not healing at all, at least not in the long term.
This is because it often is a trap. It is usually a means of identifying if I’ve “done the work” rather than engage with my points. Its a means to screen for a lack of virtue, worthiness, or dedication. If I stated that I was not a feminist at all, or that I did engage in any feminist writings, I suspect you would have dismissed me. I view this as intellectual cowardice (I suppose the one thing I will judge someone’s virtue on).
There is one instance were I suppose this can be reasonable: Boredom with my points. If I say stuff you’ve heard already and hint that I will continue to sound like someone who just regurgitates vapid talking points you’d simply be saving time and energy rather than avoiding an uncomfortable discussion by ceasing to engage.
Maybe I’m wrong though and you had no intent to do this. I can’t know for sure, but I’m very weary of it. I find allistics do it most often.
This idea is not what you originally tried to sell the spaces on. However, it is at least a novel argument for their utility and a very compelling and interesting one.
I still fear the risk of habitual usage of this and I’d question whether I’d consider that a truly “clean” environment. Just because you permit only certain groups doesn’t mean you wont have them bringing into their own internalization of cultural norms with them. I thought I was straight for most of my life and still pretty strongly have internalized homophobia & biphobia. If I went to a bisexual exclusive group I do wonder if I’d run into someone bitter about non-bisexuals or bisexual erasure and find that foment my own. If I went to an autistic exclusive space, my distrust of allistics would likely be multiplied or I would spread my admittedly low opinion of allistics to others, if I wanted to be completely honest with myself.
Now, I will admit, there is one group I think I’d greedily personally engage with that would very much bring out my worst impulses: An exclusively atheist group. Religious people will often use their own emotions and attachment to social power to actively discourage the criticism of religion and spirituality. And I’ll admit, being around religious people forces me to temper some of my meanest and most unproductive thoughts about them. I couldn’t argue that it’d be good for me, thought perhaps it would be cathartic to talk shit about how petulantly stupid I see religious people.
I don’t think any particular group should exclude though. I don’t take issue with the unfairness, I take issue with the results.
Creating a group for a specific type of person but permitting outsiders is simply far and away more useful and beneficial. Its virtually all upside. Where as exclusion is more like a social heroin. Feels good, but produces bad results long term.
If we are truly connecting these nodes, then there isn’t exclusion to begin with arguably. Using the “only” as a descriptor for your group and then connecting to other “only” groups would be exclusionary, it’d just introduce a sort of negotiation table between different “nations”.
If this were actually done, maybe some good would come from it? I still think it’d be a fairly cold way of social and political organization and would still foster distrust and alienation.
I apologize if I came off as bad faith. I promise you I’m merely an impatient, cynical, suspicious, depressed, egotistical asshole.
I appreciate the candor regarding your own suspicions It helps clear the air. My request for a feminist framing wasn’t an intellectual ‘screening’ or a test of virtue. It was for a common language where we could talk about the actual mechanics of power.
Here is where we still diverge on the logic of restorative spaces:
1. Can we strategically use the exclusionary spaces?
You argue that exclusion is an ‘analgesic’ that leads to bad habits. If a space exists purely for catharsis, it risks becoming a ‘shrine to nature.’ It becomes therapy and not politics. A therapeutic intervention may be need to find kinship and language, but what you do with that determines if it is a political organization. Politics move beyond the therapeutic. Politics changes the state to make sure that these acts don’t violate others like you. A larger politics, the one I will always argue for, connects with other oppressed nodes.
However, you are viewing these groups through a therapeutic lens (identity) rather than an intersectional political lens (formation). From the XF manifesto:
The universal must be grasped as generic, which is to say, intersectional. Intersectionality is not the morcellation of collectives into a static fuzz of cross-referenced identities, but a political orientation that slices through every particular, refusing the crass pigeonholing of bodies.In a political laboratory, ‘sterility’ is about controlling variables. When you say a group shouldn’t restrict access because an outsider might be an ‘invaluable ally,’ you are making an untested assumption. In the early phase of formation, an uncalibrated ‘ally’ often inadvertently forces the group to translate its internal strategic needs into the language of the dominant gaze just to be understood. That political terrain is not set for this act of translation.
This isn’t a new idea in our conversation, I previously said
“[Men’s only groups in the past] is radically different from a the support some women may get in a women’s conference or the strategy and tactics developed from shared seed experiences for the political project of over throwing patriarchy.”
And I still stand by this. During the transition from therapeutic space to political space, there’s a push and pull, a back and forth. You are developing new language that speaks to the oppressed group, providing some healing, but acting politically through developing tactical methods, strategic goals and, eventually when you open up to other nodes, language they can understand. The explicit exclusion is about fostering unfettered creative political engagement. Unsealing this to the public can cause the political goals to evaporate.
These exclusive groups may invite “outsiders” for very specific insights. But it’s invitation only for strategy and tactic building. It plants the seeds for node interfaces.
2. Nodes and Hinting Beyond Nodes
Opening up to another node is an explicit strategic decision that requires political coherence in language and in body. More than negotiation, you are inviting to coordinate shared political goals with other nodes, not individuals seeking validation from allies.
Addressing when you said: “If we are truly connecting these nodes, then there isn’t exclusion to begin with arguably.”
Nodes start unconnected to develop internal integrity. The exclusion is real, but temporary. Nodes need to develop trust with one another first. This is cold. Creating trust exists in a sea of uncertainty. But the goal is not to stop there. But there must exists since oppressions are try to oppress and exploit as individuals while preventing node formation. The coldness is for functional integrity. The exclusion exists, but the that is not the goal.
The eventual goal is not to live exclusively in the nodes as a node resident, but free from nodal labeling through a transformation of the system that oppressed individuals even before nodes existed. This ‘cold’ coordination is the only way to ensure that when we do connect, we are doing so as a cohesive political body capable of directed subsumption, rather than being swallowed whole by the very system we are trying to dismantle.
3. Clean Spaces Are Not Clean
No space is perfectly ‘clean’. We all bring internalized cultural norms with us. But the purpose of the exclusive space isn’t to ignore those internalized toxins, but to create a controlled environment where we can isolate and deconstruct them without the external pressure of the ‘out-group’ reinforcing them in real-time. We don’t resist these thoughts. We analyze where they come from to determine if they serve a political purpose or if they are just ‘memetic parasites’ that need to be purged.
4. The ‘Long Game’ of Subsumption
The goal is a directed subsumption. It is a deliberate construction of new procedures that ‘soften the shell’ of the current system and dismantle its defenses. It is done is near simultaneity with the isolation and deconstruction of internalized toxins from the dominant system. In the process of self release from the internalized system, the tendency to attack the system politically opens up. This is only the beginning of the subsumption process. We engineer the future through destroying the inhibitators. We get creative space to develop new modes while this is happening and imagine what these modes can be if they open with the fall of the oppressive structures.
If we are to engineer a future beyond the binary, we have to be willing to build the ‘barracks’ where those procedures are designed. This is not asking for a place to hide, this is so we can build the infrastructure of transition.