From: Albert-Lunde@nwu.edu (Albert Lunde)
Subject: Re: Seperatists etc.
Followup-To: soc.bi
Summary: feminism
Originator: lunde@casbah.acns.nwu.edu
Reply-To: Albert-Lunde@nwu.edu (Albert Lunde)
Organization: Ministry of Silly Walks
Date: Sun, 20 Dec 1992 04:49:28 GMT

In article <1gum0bINNgqa@agate.berkeley.edu> 
 rsr@soda.berkeley.edu (Roy S. Rapoport) writes:
>In article <1992Dec19.025452.6359@news.acns.nwu.edu> 
 Albert-Lunde@nwu.edu (Albert Lunde) writes:
>->I have some feeling of affinity to lesbian-feminist seperatists.
>->At the same time, I can't be one and I realized some years ago that, as a 
>->man, there was nothing I could do to satisfy the most extreme positions.
>
>Well, assuming you don't mean to imply that lesbian-feminist separatists
>(can we just use LFSers?) are somehow more extreme than other feminists, I
>would like to point out that there _is_ something that you, or I, or any
>other man could do to satisfy the most extreme positions (I think separatism
>is actually a fairly logical and rational choice.  I define extreme
>positions as the Valerie Solanas (sp?) / Andrea Dworkin / other androcide
>advocates positions) ... But then again, most of us are unwilling to die for
>almost any cause, especially that espoused by a fanatic.

I meant to suggest that *some* seperatists do take extreme positions.

I don't want this to be understood as a generalization about
lesbians, feminists, seperatists or combinations of the above.

I wouldn't feel affinity to lesbian-sepratism, if I didn't think there was 
some value to the contents.

It's risky to talk about negative images of men from feminist sources,
because people may see this as a generalization. I'd say in excess of
80% of what I've received from feminism was positive and benifitial to
me, and most of the feminist women I've interacted with have been
rational and compassionate.

At times in my life the idea of dying for a cause has looked attractive;
but I've never seen a way that dying for feminism would do anything
but raise the average level of male chauvinism. Besides, someone could
say I was doing it because men are all fixated on death ;) ;)

>->Part of my personal development has been trying to use my own judgement
>->to take feminist ideas and see where I fit in the picture. This
>
>Part of my personal development, in terms of my pro-feminist views, has been
>to use my own judgement to take feminist ideas and see where I _don't_ fit
>in the picture.  Where, just _maybe_, my input is not really necessary or
>welcomed, where I should shut up and let the women do the talking. [...] 

Well, these may be two sides of the same thing. I'm not trying to
take control of the feminist movement and tell women where they should
go with it.  And they don't necessarally want to take responsiblity
for solving men's problems. I can accept that a lot of feminist
thought is written by women for women, with only secondary thought
given to men.  It seems to imply to me that if I want to apply
feminist principles and women's experience to getting insights about
my life situation, it's up to me to do some of the work of adjusting
for the different context.

(As for "shutting up", in the more immediate context of the net, I tried 
being pretty diffident at the start of soc.feminism; I was fairly vocal
at the start of alt.feminism -- I'm not sure either made a difference.
It's kind of like not voting -- there's no way to tell the anarchists
from the apathetic.  If someone else is saying what I'd say, I
may be willing to sit back and agree.)

>->may involve agreeing with or disagreeing with feminist "conventional
>->wisdom" (if I may call it that), but I respect this body of ideas
>->and take them seriously.
>
>I'm not sure what feminist CW is.  I've seen too many views of feminism,
>some of which I agree with 100%, some of which I think is stupid and
>self-destructive.  [...]

Yea, I wasn't speaking clearly. What I meant by feminist "Conventional
Wisdom", in this context, may not be something universally agreed on,
but rather something taken as common place or axiomatic in certian
schools of feminist thought.  In this context, it might be a statement
like "men can't really understand women", or "all men have social
privledge", "the personal is political", "lesbian sadomasochism
is firmly rooted in patriarchial sexual ideology", "patriarchy 
influences our entire society" (these are just examples, I agree/disagree
with some more than others).

What I'm driving at is: out of diverse and sometimes contradictory 
voices, I have to pick and choose. I've been following feminism in
various ways for something like 20 years, and it's so tangled with
the threads of my life I have no idea of what I would be like without
it. I relyed on it for my sex education and much of my guidance
in coming out. And I initially internalized a lot of what it
said rather uncritically. I still have internalized a lot, but I'm
more selective about how I listen to these internalized voices.

(This is not to say I don't screw things up, sometimes spectacularly,
I think I have replaced the folly of youth with the more informed 
recklessness of age ;);).)

>
>->(I'm not planning to give up my Mary Daly books or Alex Dobkin records.)
>
>Who are they?

Mark Daly is a noted lesbian-feminist writer/philosopher (who started
out as a Catholic theologian, writing "The Church and the Second Sex",
but progressed to a "feminist post-christian" position with
"Beyond God The Father", and really hit her stride with "Gyn/Ecology",
analyzing and denouncing patriarchy from a lesbian-feminist view.
(She has continued in a related vein for several more books.)

I think she could fairly be called a seperatist, and one of the
more literate and influential voices of recent feminism.

(The two biggest feminist books of 1978 were "Gyn/Ecology" by Mary Daly and 
"Women and Nature" by Susan Griffin. I got them, and devoured them like
many others. I still respect them both, but Susan Griffin's work
speaks to me more profoundly.)

Mary Daly is also noted for serious and joking "games" with words
"dis-covering" and "re-membering" new meanings (and sometimes 
re-spelling them.) (Thus the joke in another thread about Scrabble.)

Alex Dobkin is a lesbian musician of some years standing who has
sometimes called herself a seperatist. Her music is wise and funny
and sexy and spiritual and full of life. I'm especially fond
of "The Amazon ABCs", "The Woman in You Life is You" and the album
"Lavender Jane Loves Women."

>->I may have some ego tied up in thinking of myself as a feminist,
>
>Probably true (I don't mean this as sarcasm or a flame, just as a
>non-emotional statement).

Yes.

>Quite a few of us (men) have taken the label
>'feminist' for external, rather than internal reasons.  I'm not sure how
>well we've internalized the lessons that feminism may have to teach us.  I'm
>not sure how well _I've_ internalized the lessons that feminism, my feminist
>friends, and others, have sought to teach me.  Until Im sure, I'll use
>'pro-feminist' to describe myself (though I was once called a radical
>feminist by a female friend of mine).

Well, as I suggested above, my situation is that I internalized a lot,
then had to step back from it and start sorting things out.

I think I encountered the idea of men calling themself pro-feminist
(or anti-sexist) in the book "For Men Againist Sexism", somewhere about
say 1980.  The book had a lot of impact on me, especially the essays
"Refusing to Be a Man" by John Stoltenberg, and "The History of
a Short Unsucessful Academic Career" by Michael Silverstein,
and it seemed a lot more radical than say Herb Goldberg or Warren
Farrall (or more recently Robert Bly).

The book exemplifies a stance that is in some ways complementary
to lesbian-feminism (if not seperatism):  men supporting feminism 
from a tactful distance. Like lesbian-feminism I still feel a
lot of affinities to this; yet still ask some questions.

I have arrived at my present position after several years trying
some alternatives. This is kind of a spiral process.

>->at least to the extent that it would bother me that if I
>->was seen as not denouncing Roy loudly enough I would be
>->seen as anti-feminist. 
>
>Think you would have denounced me more loudly than you had (I don't think
>you've really denounced me harshly, actually) if that was the only way to
>retain your 'feminist' label?

I hope not.  Yet, I am especially on the net, aware of how even silence
can be read as taking sides.  (As I've indicated, I have my own
internal dialogs with feminist "daemons" and "furies" to both inspire
and confuse me.)

I was trying to strike a balance between non-accepting judgement and
non-judgemental acceptance.

I am trying to express a third voice, not just throw my weight
to one "side" or another.

>->This is not (*Thank Goddess and/or Muffy*) alt.feminism, and
>The two may be equivalent :)

"The Goddess is every woman without exception throughout the world..."
(Z.Budapest). And Muffy is an avatar I would be glad to worship ;)

>->I hope we are not so far apart we can't hear each other.
>I think we can all hear each other fine.  Whether or not we choose to listen
>is another story. [...]

Yes. I've seen some newsgroups practice a "duo-log": people talking past
each other for weeks at a time, and endless threads of contradiction.

(Reminding me at times of "The Argument Clinic" from Monty Python.)

I'd rather share experiences, wax philosophical, or flirt.

-- 
 Albert Lunde         | Interfaith  |     *Y*Y*      "A branch on the
 Albert-Lunde@nwu.edu |  Bisexual   |      *Y*        tree of life"
                      |  Feminist   |.......|.........................
Newsgroups: soc.bi