January 16, 2012

what is this "So ... are you saying" crap?

So... are you saying that a black woman's viewpoint (for an example) *isn't* "primarily" a woman's viewpoint?

No, neither redqueen nor anyone else is saying that. Are you saying you don't want to acknowledge what is being said?

If you don't know what you're talking about, there are better ways of finding it out.

It's been explained quite clearly here.

Posters in the protected Feminists group STATED, clearly and repeatedly, that their primary identity is as something other than a woman, and their primary allegiance is to a group other than women.

They STATED that they perceived conflicts between the interests of whatever other group they identified with / felt primary allegiance to and the interests of women.

They STATED that in the event of such conflicts, they would ALWAYS, every time, adopt the perspective of the other group, and promote the interests of the other group.

Now I ask again: what other protected DU group would be expected to embrace such posters?

And how could anyone claim that rejecting claims in the Feminists forum that some other group's interests should supercede women's interests amounts to rejecting discussion of intersectionality, and that a new group is needed for that purpose?


In other words— how is a disabled viewpoint (for a random example) inherently "opposed" to a woman's viewpoint?

I give up.

Why don't you ask someone who claims that it is?

More to the point, why don't you ask the people proposing this new group what viewpoint of theirs is inherently opposed to a woman's viewpoint -- and why they think it appropriate to complain that the Feminists forum does not welcome claims that their other viewpoint is inherently more important?

January 11, 2012

there we go

You've chosen to ascribe an emotion to me right off the bat rather than acknowledge that I said something.

I think this sort of thing may actually come from the c1970 days of second-wave feminism ...

I wasn't a good touchy-feely feminist. You may not be surprised that in the other forum where I post regularly, where most posters are men, and in all the places on the internet where I am hated with a white hot passion as a result of that posting (and I'm not ascribing that emotion; they state it), I am assumed by virtually every comer to be a man on first contact. I don't deal in emotions much.

The whole rant before saying "I'm not really at all concerned about what you, as the person who wrote those posts and that message, have to say." totally proves this sentence false.

Very civil. Very civil. What I wrote was a "rant" and it disproves my statement that I am not concerned about your "comment on all this back & forth".

Did you seriously not follow that? I thought it was pretty clear that I was not concerned about your opinion in this thread because you are someone who behaved as you did in the LGBT group.

So what? You're going to dismiss something the feminist community did to the lesbian community out of hand. Not taking into consideration that it may well effect people that may participate in this site or this group? Also, not everything is about you iverglas.

You see, here's where I am always torn between thinking someone really believes what they said, and thinking they're just saying it for effect, and not knowing which is worse.

So what -- in the context of this discussion obviously. What does the behaviour of some people I've never heard of, three or four decades ago, have to do with what we are being told in this thread, which does have to do with me?

If it affects people who may participate here, like you, how? In what way, that it would result in them privileging the interests of their other identity group or groups over the interests of women? Hold a grudge against those women all you want. What does it have to do with anyone here?

Hell, tell us about it. Tell us how it made you feel, how it affected your life, how it affected your community, teach us something. If you don't think it's your job to teach (and I, for one, would not really fault you for that), consider sharing it with us. Get pissy with anybody who doesn't respond as you think is appropriate. I have no problem with pissy. As long as it is honest.

But don't come here laying blame and insinuating and disparaging and dismissing. (And I speak to a nebulous collective you here.)

Just because you think it's dumb that feminists have told me, to my face, that because of my lesbianism I can't be a feminist doesn't make it any less true or any less sexist but it's happened.

I should have realized that was going to come off unclear. I meant that what you described other people as doing sounded dumb on their part.

I've lived a fairly sheltered feminist life -- in a medium-sized city in Canada, we just tended to get on with the job, and also, nationally, the job in general has tended to be the "liberal" aspects -- which can be criticized, but it does mean that we have secured all the rights you have not yet got. Women's equality rights in the Constitution. No criminal restrictions on access to abortion. Equality rights, period, in the constitution. Equality rights extended to gay men and lesbians. (I don't know whether anybody's tried to discriminate against a trans person or any other member of your community yet, but if they did, it wouldn't work.) Loads of benefits for women: parental leave covered by unemployment insurance (in addition to short-term actual maternity leave, a year to be divided by the parents as they see fit -- including adoptive parents, and including same-sex parents); pension rights for same-sex partners (years and years ago). In my field, a large proportion of the public service workforce is gay and lesbian; my old boss years ago and her partner, both in the same organization, are; one of the handful of people I was brought in to train at odd times was; my current partner on a long-term contract we're sharing, at my invitation, is; several of the people working directly with Parliament are. And that's just of the not too many whom I know personally. Although I've never met my current partner in real life since he's way far away; the internet is grand.

We had a federally-funded thing called the Court Challenges Program, up until the new right-wing government killed it a few years ago. It paid for constitutional challenges to rights violations by governments. It covered a lot of GLBT issues, up to and including same-sex marriage. The program funded challenges by any group covered by the prohibition on discrimination, which includes the ground of sexual orientation, by the interpretation of the Supreme Court quite a while back.

So my experience is totally outside yours. There were some lesbian-straight conflicts, yes, but I was not involved and I couldn't really tell you much what they were about. Not a great admission, but there I was, working on my own end of things, much as you say you are. I've actually been far more active in tenant rights, immigrant rights and international solidarity than I have in formal feminist stuff.

Your experience still doesn't speak of anyone here, or justify any mistreatment of anyone here. And there has been mistreatment, from your "side". Whether there has been mistreatment in the other direction -- I have never seen any. Dissent is not mistreatment.

Are you more sensitive to dissent than others might be? Than me, no doubt. But because of your experiences, do you feel dissent as mistreatment? Say so. Get clarification.

You can't compute because you don't experience an additional level of discrimination unless you're a lesbian. Which would explain why I may have a different point of view on feminism than you might. That was the whole point of making sure the SOP is inclusive.

And I am still waiting for someone to tell me what that different pov might be, and how it might stem from these other identities. Could we not cut the meta-discussion and cut to the chase?

I think I stated the differences in my post. Lesbians experience an additional level of discrimination (in the US anyway, I can't speak to Canada) based on our sexual orientation and a look or having people no longer talk to you can't really be explained other than saying we experience an additional level of discrimination that forms our worldview.

But it does not say anything about anyone else here. And that's the issue. Not whether your issues should be discussed here as encompassed by feminist issues (that would be up for discussion, I suppose, based on what they were and how they were to be discussed). But why there is this prima facie hostility to other feminists, flowing from your "side". I'm not hostile you you or your issues or your concerns; I'm hostile when I'm attacked without cause.

Instead of 'defending' Lioness or my opinion that there can be different viewpoints on feminism you've actually argued that we aren't fit to host the community because we didn't stand up in your defense in another thread.

No, I didn't. You both participated in the attacks, and the "you" in question was not just me, let's remember. And I can't imagine why someone who has attacked members of this group in other forums would consider hosting this group. Would that happen in the LBGT group?

If your worldview really is so coloured by bad experiences that you can't see other feminists and what they say for what they actually are, rather than for what you for some reason expect or want them to be, well, don't know what to say. Spend some more time reading here, maybe, standing back a little farther.

For pity's sake, I have no idea why I would want to narrow the discussion to only one branch or version or subset of feminism. I'd have to rule myself out if that progressed too far (and of course in a much more sophisticated way than I'd expect to see here! -- no offence to those who are more sophisticated in this area than I).

I am simply one of many who has had too much of being attacked, and not engaged.

January 11, 2012

me personally

I can't imagine that I would *ever* block anyone. I can't imagine an emergency arising that would call for unilateral action -- but if something dreadful did happen, and hopefully there were at least other members around, I'd do it if it seemed to be the host's duty to do it. Otherwise, I might think someone needed blocking and put it to other hosts, or pass on requests for blocking to the rest.

There would also have to be some concrete event, substantiation of a complaint, demonstration of something characterized as "dismissive or abusive behaviour toward feminists" that really amounted to a pattern, and not just a bad hair day. I'm pretty tolerant of rough and tumble; my posts should always be read that way (apart from the invisible tongue-in-cheek idiotfaces).

I'm not tolerant of other people being lied about, their words twisted, ideas attributed to them that they have not espoused, and the like, in order to portray them as reprehensible.

But again, I can only imagine that banning decisions would be made not in haste, and not unilaterally, and not without at least an opportunity for hopefully all hosts to weigh in, and I would never expect that to happen in the space of less than a day. I'm not on a banning campaign, honestly. And I'd always prefer to ask that someone agree to lurk and come back next week rather than ban them.

I'm not big on shutting off avenues and sources of ideas and discussion, truly. I'm big on civil discourse -- which doesn't mean making nice, it means addressing what is said, not dismissing it, not misrepresenting it, not addressing something that was not said, not pretending something was said that wasn't, not pretending to know what someone thinks, not claiming to hold some trump card, and not going after the speaker rather than the words.

As an ordinary poster, I'm just looking for genuine engagement, and I'm almost always willing to say the well is never too poisoned to start that process. I want to see it start, though. Some straightforward talk.

January 11, 2012

as the person who posted this in the thread where I was attacked

http://www.democraticunderground.com/11372559


and then refused to clarify, in response to a query there and my PM (when I could not post), that you were NOT talking about me and others who had posted similarly in that thread:


-- "some folks were causing trouble in William769s thread on the issue" is NOT how you would have described the LGBT group members you claimed to be talking about in this, sorry, incoherent PM to me:


You know full well that NO ONE interpreted your post as referring to those people. You said NOTHING to them in public. And referring to the attack on me as a "perceived slight"? There seems to have been agreement on how to trivialize the attack. Others here don't perceive it as a "perceived slight".

(And no, I could not alert on the call-out, as that had already been done and failed.)


So as I was saying -- I'm not really at all concerned about what you, as the person who wrote those posts and that message, have to say.


First, I still smart a little over the 2nd-wave feminists initially pushing lesbians out of their cause because we were too controversial or claiming our rights weren't their rights--I hold a bit of grudge, what can I say?

Were any of them me? Do you have one single shred of basis for lumping me in with these alleged persons -- or anyone else in this group or at this site? If not: so what?

I've encountered modern-day feminists who feel the same way; that somehow my lesbianism makes me less of a woman and therefore, I can't be a feminist.

I don't know, that just sounds dumb to me. Certainly, as a lesbian, you won't share some of the "personal is political" issues of straight women. Certainly, I hope you don't disparage women who do have those issues. I'd want to know a whole lot more about this allegation.

You see, coming here and making blanket statements about a group you label a particular way, to make a point with the women *here*, just doesn't quite work.

Back to the topic of my allegiance to the queer community; I can still be fired from my job just for being gay. ...

Well, not anywhere in Canada you can't. Not fired, not denied housing, not denied marriage, not denied spousal benefits under private insurance plans, not denied adoption, not denied immigration sponsorship or inheritance or next-of-kin or pension rights or family leave, all whether married or not -- not treated differently in any other way in the public or private sectors based on this irrelevant distinction. And that's how it should be, and that's what my political party has fought for, and that's what I've always maintained. Cripes, one of my very first posts ever at DU (which makes it over a decade ago) was to challenge a view I couldn't believe I was seeing at a progressive website: that landlords have property rights that should enable them to refuse to rent housing to whomever they like; I think that case involved an unmarried heterosexual couple, but obviously I challenged the idea that such discrimination could be practised on any irrelevant personal characteristic, which sexual orientation is in that situation. Couldn't believe my eyes.

I know you don't live up here in socialist Utopia. At DU, I support people seeking changes like that, and like universal healthcare, for instance. I know you still don't have rights. If feminists don't support that struggle, well, I wouldn't call them feminists. I don't know that they can be expected to take it on directly though, is the thing. Like women being the driving force behind abolition in the US, and so many other social and political causes -- and always leaving their own (or being told to leave their own) aside: there are women's issues that are equally important, just different. And that do affect you as a lesbian woman.

I'm referred to more often as a dyke than a bitch.

Here at DU? I doubt that. I think you're protected from that here, no? But women haven't been protected from being called bitches ... and you don't object? Not sure what you're saying. Would other feminists here not object to lesbians being called dykes??

Until the gay part of me gets the same rights as the woman part of me, then my allegiance to the gay community stands.

It does not compute. Or at least it does not address the issues at hand here.

Certainly it is understandable that you would focus on the violations you experience of the most basic rights. But how does that call for denigrating women who focus on issues of greater concern to them? Say, male intimate partner violence against women. Maybe you don't want to devote your scarce time and energy to that; no problem for me. Neither do I, as it happens. Choices have to be made. But I admire advocates in that field, just as I do advocates in the cause of your own that you cite.

That isn't a question of allegiance. It isn't an either/or in terms of analysis or mutual support or mutual respect. It's just a question of choice, given scarce resources. There's no conflict between public/private sector equality for GLBT people and protecting women from male partner violence, or working for workplace equality for women, for example, ideologically or philosophically. Has someone suggested to you that there is?

For example, as a lesbian woman, not only could I get underpaid for being a woman but at some places I may not even get a job or get fired for being a lesbian (as I stated above). Because of that, I'm going to view the world differently and form different opinions on things and it's going to make my feminism different.

But again, what are these differences? You undoubtedly view the world as even more hostile than some other women do. (As a victim of a life-threatening sexual assault, I view it as pretty damned hostile, I can tell you!) But why project those problems onto other feminists, which is what we see happening? A fuck you, we have our own problems and yours can go to hell attitude. I've said before: feminists are not the oppressors. Why the hostility to us?

What is the actual conflict between the two sets of issues here?

I agree with La Lioness Priyanka that it may be better to have a diverse group of hosts only because diversity in thought (as is there diversity in feminism) is a good thing and it brings different perspectives to discussion.

I'm going to have to stick to my position that I will need to see a nominee who has NOT engaged in dismissive or abusive behaviour toward feminists at this website in order to agree to the nomination, myself.

Neither you nor Priyanka meets that criterion, in my personal books.

Anyone who wants to contend that I or any other nominee also fails in that regard is of course welcome to present the reasons - in the form of things like actual quotations, not allegations.

January 10, 2012

group host / statement of purpose

It was pointed out in the other thread that the discussion had become a little obscure, so here's a new thread.


1. The proposals for host/co-hosts are as follows:

My understanding is that each is willing or can be persuaded -- anyone not willing, speak today or forever hold your peace! If I have left anyone out whose name has been mentioned, forgive me, let me know and I will edit.

Shall we state our preference for host, and (I would suggest) two co-hosts whom the host would then appoint?


2. Statement of purpose

It would be pinned on the board by the co-host.

I will reproduce the SoP from the old DU group, and can we say whether we agree with retaining it?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=341x1