Comments Elsewhere

Patrick,

Nobody in the feministing post is “categorically declaring positions and people as beyond the pale prior to investigation,” as far as I can tell. You’re talking about this as if feminist activists were unfamiliar with anti-feminist arguments or positions. By and large, that’s not so; most of us have had a great many anti-feminist arguments and positions thrown at us. Here’s what Alice Tiara was quoted as saying in the post you linked to: “I’ve been studying gender politics for more than a decade, and I want to talk about feminist issues on a fairly high level, which is not possible when you are constantly having to repeat yourself to men who don’t see sexism because of male privilege.” In other words, she’s studied the issue for quite some time, come to some decisive conclusions (say, that sexism does indeed exist and is in fact a social force), and isn’t interested in constantly revisiting the topic when there are other, less rudimentary issues that she’d much rather discuss.

I don’t see how this is any different from a 20th century historian who says she’s not interested in “debating” the Holocaust or the moon landing, or a serious evolutionary biologist who says she’s not interested in “debate” with Young Earth Creationists. This isn’t a matter of marking off some hoary dogma as unquestionable; it’s a matter of having some confidence in your conclusions after a lot of study and having better things to do with your time than try to enlighten the ignorant about such elementary matters. If earnest but ignorant people want to learn the basics about sexism or feminism, there are after all plenty of introductory books that they can pick up and read on the subject before they start demanding that feminists spend their time on arguing with them.

As for the means by which feminists can end male oppression of women, persuading sexists not to be quite so sexist is only one means among many, and not always the most useful. Building battered women’s shelters, staffing rape crisis centers, organizing co-operative childcare, disseminating information about reproductive healthcare, setting up abortion funds, clinic escorting and clinic defense, providing illegal abortions, refusing to do housework, etc. are just a few examples of the sorts of nonviolent direct action that feminists have employed to undermine sexism, which have little to do with either debating sexists or shooting at them. Labor unions don’t exist to persuade bosses to be pro-labor; they exist to organize workers for their own benefit. Similarly, feminist activism doesn’t exist to convince men to be anti-sexist; it exists to organize women for their own liberation.