The nice thing about lesbian separatist radical feminism is that it requires nothing from me.

[xiphias]

So, a bunch of people on my friends list have been linking to a post that someone wrote last year about the misogyny in Firefly/Serenity. And, y'know, there's actually a lot of interesting stuff you can do with that, but this post was written from a radical feminist point of view, by a lesbian separatist.

And I was just thinking about how EASY radfem is for me to deal with.

See, I'm a man. And so, by lesbian separatist radical feminist logic, I can never understand a woman's point of view. And THAT means that I have no obligation to try.

Now, the way I was raised, I can look at how society is set up, I can see in what ways the deck is stacked to give men more power for being men, I can see how society promotes some sorts of interactions, and values some types of personality traits more than others. In the forms of feminism in which I was raised, I can look at those things, and see if I can find ways to work around them, to change how I think about them, to work to change society to be more equatable, to allow people to be who they are, to respect the contributions of all sorts of people, to value cooperative and consensus-building interactions . . .

But, from a radical feminist point of view, the differences are not cultural, they're inherent, and, as a man, no matter what I do, I won't change.

And that's so cool. That lets me entirely off the hook. By the feminism with which I was raised, I have a responsibility to work toward a more fair and more just world. But by lesbian separatist radical feminism, I can do whatever I want, because, as I have no ability to be different than I am, I have no responsibility to try.

Comments

[redbird]

As I understand it--and it's not my kind of feminism--lesbian separatism is more saying "in this society, no interactions between women and men can avoid being sexist and oppressive to the women. Therefore, we will not voluntarily interact with men. To the extent possible, we will work with other women, and socialize with other women, and build at least a small space where we can be away from that set of problems."

It's not about you. That much is true. But it does not say either that you inherently can't understand the problem because you're male, or that the problem is inherent in either chromosomes or physiology. Rather, a lesbian separatist might say that your part of the revolution should include educating other men and working to fight sexism. You don't need to interact with a specific lesbian separatist to work for equal pay, for example.

[ailbhe]

Thanks for that explanation. It sounds very restful, actually. And not what I had previously understood about lesbian separatism, since my only personal encounter with it was being attacked for being bi.

[mr-clarinet.livejournal.com]

That whole philosophy sounds completely moronic to me. I mean...it's fascism, through and through. One of the most dangerous things one can do is to deny the agency of others. If a woman tells you she has sex with this man because she wants to, and she really means it, then she does. It's just taking away people's rights and ownership of their own lives and bodies, something i always considered feminism to be actively against.

[redbird]

As I said, it's not my feminism--I'm openly bi and live with a male partner.

But a woman saying she will not sleep with any men, ever, is no more denying my agency than a woman saying she will not sleep with you, tonight, is. My agency does not extend to deciding who another woman should have sex with (except in that my agency includes the right not to have sex with said woman if she offers), any more than it extends to requiring you to get a job in a coal mine, or demanding that you, mr_clarinet, seduce Ted Haggard*.

Or is refusing to have sex with men as a class only fascism when a woman does it?

*to name a random stranger who is known to have had sex with men.

[mr-clarinet.livejournal.com]

sorry, i think we misunderstood.

i didn't mean to say women HAD to have sex with men; whatever people choose to do is absolutely their choice. and that is the point. this strain of feminism frequently argues that because of the sexist matrix of contemporary life, a woman can NEVER give consent in heterosexual sex, hence the "all het sex is rape" espoused by the woman in the article. an ideology i find incredibly dangerous.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

In fact, the poster specifically said that.

[holzman.livejournal.com]

"Fascism" is not a synonym for "incredibly dangerous." When lesbian separatism uses the unites the power of government and industry to prevent all heterosexual sex, heck when lesbian separatism seeks to obtainthe power of government and industry in the hopes of using it to enforce its tenets, then you can accurately call it fascist.

[mr-clarinet.livejournal.com]

it's accurately described as "fascistic" in the sense that it denies individual agency to a higher theoretical authority.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

I think you're confusing "no interactions between men and women can avoid being sexist" with "all heterosexual sex is rape." They're very different statements. You're obviously reacting to the latter (perhaps you've seen it somewhere else?) even though Redbird wrote the former, in an attempt to explain one of the motives for lesbian separatism.

If a person is paying attention (I suspect you're not, but I'll keep writing for a few minutes anyhow), it's easy to see sexism tainting almost all relationships. In the society I live in, there is just so MUCH sexism sitting there in the background...it defines default conditions people don't even think about. People can recognize the background sexism in themselves and their interactions and consciously try to minimize it. Lots of men, and lots of non-separatist women, do this kind of feminism, and I think it helps. It takes work, though. I've often wished I didn't NEED to work at raising anybody's consciousness or fighting oppression. It would be nice.

In my experience, avoiding voluntary male-female entanglements does not reduce sexism enough to notice. (The most sexist relationships in my life have been those with my mother and my grandmother.) I can accept that other women have different experiences, though, and they find avoiding men reduces their experience of sexism enough to make their lives easier. If it's a path that works for them, I wish them well.

[mightydoll.livejournal.com]

avoiding male-female entaglements, it seems to me would do a hell of a lot more to INCREASE sexism..you see, without the opportunity to interact with real women, or "real feminists" or any women at all, how are men going to actually be given any kind of motivation or opportunity to overcome prejudicial impulses?

It's absolute malarky, I'm sorry.

Incidentally, EVERY interaction that EVERY person has with every other person is based in part on prejudices and stereotypes. They're not all negative, but that's just the fact of life. This is not a "woman problem" or a "racial problem" or an "international crisis", it's just the way the human brain works. It's not even necessarily a problem or a crisis in most cases, what I think we need to look at is the VALUE JUDGEMENTS that rise from these stereotypes. Often, there's not one involved, in which cases, just dealing honestly and respectfully with the assumption that offends you is often all the solution necessary.

[brooksmoses]

However, see the comment that vvalkyri posted a link to, in the subthread just a bit above this. The person who xiphias is writing this in response to explicitly considers those two things to be essentially the same -- to paraphrase her, she says that, in current culture, nearly any interaction between a man and a woman he wishes to have sex with will involve the man pressuring the woman to have sex, and in that situation the sex is rape.

[griffen.livejournal.com]

If a person is paying attention (I suspect you're not, but I'll keep writing for a few minutes anyhow), it's easy to see sexism tainting almost all relationships.

More like "if a person operates from the premise that sexism is endemic, then a person will see sexism tainting almost all relationships."

It's been well-established by social psychologists that the way we frame a question or a problem often leads us to a preconceived conclusion; the theory limits what we see. I dislike feminist theory because it's an inherently limited and limiting theory that tries to frame everything wrong with society as a gender clash, and that's demonstrably not the case.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Can you really say "feminist theory" as one thing? I've seen many different kinds of feminist theory operating from many different sets of postulates.

[griffen.livejournal.com]

In sociology, it's considered a branch of theory. Theory, global, as in basic orientation to problems. Feminist theory's main axiom can be summarized as "Gender discrimination is at the root of all social problems." Sure, there's lots of riffs on that, but that's still the base tenet of the whole theoretical school.

I think it's limited. I also think queer theory, race theory, and other such theories are equally limited. The reason is that they essentially scapegoat one difference between groups of people and try to paint it as the only important difference. Each of those theories could be just as easily folded into a larger theory called Difference Theory, and they'd explain about as much as they do now (not very much). WHY people discriminate on the basis of race, gender, class, orientation, etc., etc., etc., is a much richer question with much richer answers, in my opinion. The conclusions reached by the binary theories I've listed all seem to boil down to "Well, people in [dominant group] lord it over people in [non-dominant group] because they're horrible people and selfish and bad and want to hold onto their power." Okay, that may be true as far as it goes, but is that really a functional or workable explanation? I don't think so. As long as you presuppose that a condition exists, you will find results that support it. Many scientists, including Einstein and Heisenberg, have shown that.

I will, however, laugh in the face of anyone who accuses me of racism, sexism, or homophobia simply because I think these theories are weak. They're very real problems, but I think they're symptoms of bigger and more fundamental problems. It's best to treat the underlying problem rather than the symptoms, IMO.

Edited to add a critical phrase that was left out of the original comment.

[mightydoll.livejournal.com]

you said it so much more eloquently than I, but that is what I was trying to get at as well...

*points* what s/he said!

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

(actually the poster in the thread discussed does seem to consider all het sex to be rape

[jehanna.livejournal.com]

I have such a huge problem with defining people that way. As if no man could ever be worthy, and all women were inherently "safer" for other women....

....and in my experience these are the same sorts of feminists who like to claim that transwomen are not and never will be "real" women, and therefore should not be treated as women or allowed into womens' space. And that is something I can never, ever approve of.

[redbird]

As I said, it's not my philosophy. It doesn't suit me much better than most of the other ways of dividing humans into two groups, insisting that one is superior, and that the differences between the groups are huge and innate.

At the same time, it's far from the worst such approach--there is no lesbian separatist equivalent of the Taleban forming armed gangs and murdering people for teaching boys to read and write.

[jehanna.livejournal.com]

Yup, got that bit from your post....and while I agree that it's not the worst thing in the world due to the lack of physical violence, some of these folks have done emotional violence to people I care about, so I tend to get worked up about this.

[redbird]

Point taken.

[brooksmoses]

Thank you for explaining that in a way that makes sense. I had not had it explained that way before.

In particular, how it can not be about me is something that was new. All of the previous explanation that I had heard (which may or may not be the same as all of the previous explanations that had been aimed in my direction; I'm not saying I heard everything said to me) had been equivalent to "It's not about you because it's about you not existing", which as far as I'm concerned is very much about me, just as any attempt to cause me to not exist is about me.

(The key, I think, is the difference between "the world should not have men in it" and "my world should not have men in it, but there's plenty other world for you". And also that your version, unlike the one ailbhe refers to, includes the idea that it's okay for other women to have different choices about whether to relate to men.)

[ex-serenejo.livejournal.com]

You already know that I adore you, right? Just checking.

[redbird]

It's nice to hear.