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

[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