[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
If your issue is that it rhymes, then I think you’re missing how the powerful use this to oppress and exploit people. When minorities do it, it is done to regain power and dignity from being oppressed and exploited.
Uhh, are you trying to imply that discrimination isn’t bad as long as it serves your dignity? That would legitimise its use by the powerful. They could just claim to be preserving their dignity from the damage it would take in associating with minorities. Or is it that it’s fine as long as you aren’t ‘powerful?’ That’s an easily gamed relitivism. People will justify antisemitism with how many Jewish people are in positions of wealth/power. I mean, more than they already try to. I’m guessing that’s not something you’d prefer.
Being able to tell the difference between people who have historically been exploited and oppressed and those powerful people feigning it is an easy task. Rascists do it. White supremicists do it. It is no reason to abandon the tools of restoration for the oppressed. It’s not the only one, but it is one.
Again, if you are suggesting it is legitimate for one, it becomes transitively legitimate for the other, regardless of whether you think it should. If you are saying it is a legitimate tactic, everyone can use it, even the people you don’t like, and you are just diving into a multigenerational, essentialist, retributive justice death spiral.
Change comes from the oppressed organizing in their own spaces and not by holding the moral high ground.
The powerful will do whatever they need regardless of the moral high ground or not. They haven been using exclusion for centuries to maintain their position. They don’t need my ‘permission’ or a ‘logical precedent’ to gatekeep. They have the systemic power to do it regardless.
They manufacture legitimacy for themselves using ‘tradition,’ ‘efficiency,’ or ‘safety’ to mask their gatekeeping. They don’t borrow legitimacy from the marginalized. Throughout history, the dominant group has never waited for a logical ‘green light’ from the oppressed to justify exclusion. And they won’t give up power because we have the moral high ground.
If we ‘disarm’ and stop creating restorative spaces, we lose a vital tool for survival, while the powerful lose absolutely nothing. Abandoning a functional tool for restoration (like a support group or a focused conference) because a bad actor might mislabel their own dominance as ‘restoration.’ That’s like saying we shouldn’t use a scalpel to save a life because a murderer might use one to take one. The intent and the material outcome are what define the action, not the fact that a blade was used.
They will continue to exclude because they can, with or without a consistent moral philosophy. You are prioritizing the ‘purity’ of a logical rule over the material survival of a group.
Can you name a single historical instance where a dominant group stopped a practice of exclusion because they realized they no longer had the ‘transitive legitimacy’ to continue it?
I just want to say it is so refreshing to finally see a comment from someone who genuinely understands power and oppression finally shine through in a thread that has been so muddled and confused it’s been maddening to read.
Thanks. Just as surprising is the lack of empathy that would imagine why someone might need that space. I wonder if it’s been all in vain.
You’re making the same conflation as several other people here. A private space can exclude through non-invitation without specific/class exclusion. A conference is not a private space. It is public. By rendering the space public, it creates an equality of people as possible attendants as members of the public. By excluding a generalized group, it discriminates through stereotype, which brings things to the meat of your point.
If you take the whole matter into amorality, there is nothing wrong with ANYTHING the powerful do, and render any argument about dignity of the oppressed meaningless. You have no place left to stand and you lose. If you argue the powerful are somehow different from other people, you establish a belief in inherent inequality. You have no place from which to claim injustice, and you lose. If you fight against the powerful without some semblance of reason, you cannot form a cohesive collective, so you will have no power with which to fight them, and you will lose.
Feminism. If each generation of feminists had never made claims to human dignity, there would be no liberation or justice. If they had only focused on stripping the dignity of powerful men, they never would have gotten the support of the rest of their society. Action disrupts the old system but the moral argument is what transforms society into something new. The ‘dominant group’ isn’t the 1% crowd. It’s the 90% who they trick into supporting them. The ‘powerful’ shit themselves at the idea of seeing the majority turned against them. If early feminists hadn’t convinced the people around them of the capability and equality of women, it wouldn’t have mattered how hard they tried, they would just have been ignored by the majority and snuffed out by the powerful minority. If they hadn’t fought to establish a moral norm of equality, all their screams would have been noise fading into the void. Acting like you actually believe in your principles isn’t ‘disarming’ yourself. It’s letting the enemy take your rifle so you can take the fort. It’s planting the tree so your children can sit in its shade. It’s how you get justice rather than get yours.
First, a conference is a private space, not a public space. It is invitational to a private event. The non-invitation of a group of individuals without exclusion is functional a non-point to me. It’s performative at best. “We didn’t technically not invite flat earthers to the astrophysics conference, we just didn’t extend an invitation to any individuals who also happen to be flat earthers.” Its a distinction without a difference.
Events like a conference can have multiple purposes including highlighting under represented views. The function is what determines the allowed group. If it’s coalition building, then men would be invited. If it’s to highlight women’s voices and foster bonding, then it will exclude men. By explicitly excluding the class of men, it signals an invitation to sharing. People prep for this before hand and know it’s a place they can share openly. See the four points I listed in my initial comment.
Absolutely does not. There’s nothing about the oppression of women that a man’s voices can lend that speaks from first hand experience. Acknowledging men are not women is not stereotyping. Its definitional.
No one’s claiming amorality. The morality being used by the powerful to undermine the solidarity building of women or other oppressed groups is not the one that needs centering. The morality that puts healing through community and connection comes before opening to others. There’s a morality that allows the voiceless to find their voice.
The powerful are different because they have power. As a class, they will do anything they need to do to hold on to that power. As individuals, sure… same. As a class, different. This is not inherent inequality, its historical and class based.
The best point you have, though surprisingly, failing to actually answer my question is the note of creating a mass movement. I asked for a "single instance where the dominant group stopped their exclusion because they lost the ‘transitive legitimacy’.
The opening of the doors was after long sessions of small groups agitating to make a difference. Guess how many men were allowed to attend CWLU’s Liberation School for Women? The Quaker Bright Circles would meet and practice their religion together and affirm their dignity as women first. Then they bought to other Quaker. Before a mass movement comes the long arduous act of developing solidarity.
No fort has been taken by dropping your rifles.