myriad: Lord no, you…
Lord no, you don’t seem divisive, it’s not at that lofy height. It’s just another example of a bunch of people fighting out their personal differences for all the world to see. My point is simple – you’re not in a private meeting room, you’re on the web for all to see. Does the setting fit the discussion?
Sure; why not? This is a movement, not a conspiracy; and as far as I know Barry is operating this blog as a forum for discussion, not as a recruiting tool for new feminists. This kind of concern for keeping heated disputes underground in the name of maintaining public appearances seems wildly out of place.
You’re the converted. I pointed quite specifically to those who think about getting involved, are all new, and run screaming for the hills back into the safe arms of patriarchy where at least things are comfortably numb.
Young women undecided about feminism are not the infidel and we are not converts in possession of a dogmatic faith. Nor are they wilting violets whose special needs need to be catered to in order to bring them into the fold. They’re people like you and me and everyone else here, and if you have reasons (as you apparently do) for holding on to feminism in spite of what you see as destructive personal dynamics among some people involved in it, then you can expect that they may very well see those reasons too. Or if they don’t, then we need to think about making those reasons stronger and more apparent, rather than how we can suppress debates and disputes within feminist forums.
I don’t think that the argument here is unreasonable or destructive, but frankly, even if it were, it’s important to keep some perspective. If this is the harshest and most destructive in-fighting that folks have to deal with, then we’re pretty well off. Just to pick a couple of exmples off the top of my head, I haven’t seen anyone yet accuse someone else of being part of an menacing lesbian conspiracy to take over the women’s movement, or a CIA infiltrator trying to co-opt and disrupt radical feminism. Feminism wasn’t destroyed by much harsher and higher-stakes internal conflicts than this one, and I don’t think that this one is going to finish it off, either.
Anticopyright.