From: Will Steeves <goid@zooid.guild.org>
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Women-Only Events / Men-Only Events (was: my two cents...)
Date: 18 Dec 1992 16:09:26 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu
Originator: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu

jill@ucsu.Colorado.EDU (Jill Lundquist) writes...
JL> In article <92Dec2.224348edt.19389@zooid.guild.org> goid@zooid.guild.ORG (Wi
JL> teeves) writes:
JL> >KATHY MCCLOSKEY <KMCCLOSKEY@FALCON.AAMRL.WPAFB.AF.MIL> writes...
JL> >
JL> >KM> "Wouldn't you agree that most incidences where women feel left out
JL> >KM> of discussions are really their own fault?"
JL> >
JL> >KM> This last one brings me to the heart of the whole thing.
JL> >KM> Feminism, to the core, is not about exclusion, but inclusion.
JL> >
JL> >Unfortunately, many "women's only" events seem to contradict this
JL> >noble ideal.  This isn't mean to demean all feminism, but it must be
JL> >acknowledged that separatist feminism is hardly the route to greater
JL> >understanding between the genders, when their basic attitude seems
JL> >like "Men are all bad, so we have to exclude men from what we do".

JL> I have met some very wounded women who did need to exclude men
JL> from their lives forever.  In fact, I needed to exclude men
JL> from my life as much as I could for about six months for
JL> reasons I am not interested in discussing now.

Hmmm, if you were intending to keep it private, you probably just blew your
cover by mentioning it.  (I could be wrong, but I won't say anything more
about it, since it seems to bother you).  Still, I salute your confidence and
bravery in admitting to the fact that you felt this way, because of what
happened.


JL> That form of
JL> separatism, or more accurately that reason for needing to stay
JL> apart, is a tragedy whether pursued by women or by men.

Agreed!


JL> However, there is another aspect to women's only events, and I
JL> have no idea whether it has an equivalence in men's events.  In
JL> general, there is something different about women's events,
JL> something comfortable.   After reading Deborah Tannen, I am
JL> inclined to call it a cultural similarity.  One of the things
JL> that rang truest to me about Tannen's book is her assertion
JL> that mixed groups tend to communicate in the same style that
JL> men's groups do, but women's groups communicate in another style
JL> that almost never comes out in mixed groups.

Actually, there *is* an equiuvalent experience that comes out in men-only
groups as well.  During my time with in Search Of Justice (Well, in a
technical sense, I am "still with them," though I have no official contact
for months, plus I have been excluded from the messages given by the President
- presumably, we have our share of disagreements <-: ), which had a policy of
men-only meetings (which BTW, I did *not* agree with), there was a certain je
ne sais quo about their meetings, a comfortable feeling that we all supported
each other and didn't need to worry about anyone condemning us for feeling the
way that we did.


JL> The point of the healthy variety of separatism is finding out
JL> who we are, not in calling men names.

Unfortunately, those who do call men names, give a bad name to the ones who
don't.

Not only that, but I think that it's quite hypocritical for separatist feminists
to complain about men-only events in the men's movement (I'm not saying that
you are doing this, I'm just making a general point).  Indeed, I was on
television in Canada when the male feminist Martin Dufresne was calling the
men's movement "male supremacists" and accusing them of spreading hate against
women at men-only meetings - I basically called him a hypocrite because he
didn't seem to have a problem with women-only events.

---
Will Steeves, goid@zooid.guild.org                      "Neil Hull is GOiD"
ZOOiD BBS, Toronto, Ontario - The Zoo Of Ids            "GOiDS Rule"
(416) 322-7876

"Cthulhu for President in '92 - Why vote for the _lesser_ of two evils?"
                                                          - Bronis Vidugiris
---
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