At first I was a little intimidated, because I have always felt excluded from the feminist realm, -even though I would consider myself one,- because I oppose abortion.

BUT. I have not been attacked as anti-feminist in this forum because of that, AND, I just found a couple of groups on line that also describe themselves as pro-woman, pro-life.

So, I'm now more comfortable, and look forward to participating in this forum.

And this morning I see that one of those guys has spent the time intervening elaborating himself, proliferating himself -- sheesh!

One good thing: Trinitty, I wanted very much to give you a standing ovation in the sex assault thread, except it was locked by the time I got there.

And one thing that really matters to me: Unlike our self-elaborating buddy, I take the real lives of real people entirely seriously -- personally, intellectually, politically -- you name it, I'll take it seriously. (In other words, I don't utter the expression "support group" with a sneer. Some babblers know that I happen at this point in my own life to be needing a few support groups, and they're one of them. )

But I also really hate to see women who've trained themselves to work in whatever field they want -- and that includes books, thought, even arguing with Mandos -- undermined by the kind of defensiveness that implies that "intellectual" women are betraying their sisters.

Horsefeathers. We should all be able to speak in our own voices here. We don't all have to footnote everything we say. This is a discussion board -- I'm grateful to those great researchers who can give me links and references, and to the logicians who can straighten out my muddled thought -- but I am also always grateful to people who have a humane reaction to any issue or event raised on babble, and who express it. The problem is, some of those people sometimes seem to be drawing back from debates, and maybe they're being (mistakenly) modest, but I'm betting that sometimes they're feeling resentment, too -- and that's not fair, not to either side.

[ January 12, 2002: Message edited by: skdadl ]

I was completely pissed off one day after this forum was created, because I could see that it would be a lightning rod for every man on babble who had ever had any real or imagined conflict with a woman. One thing about babble is that most of the posters are left-oriented, but many of the left-oriented men are not very supportive of feminism. When a feminist forum comes along, suddenly there is a need for them to come out and make pronouncements of support, but heavily qualified by very elementary criticisms of feminism (which are usually addressed during the second class of a first year women's studies course) and visions of what they think we should be focusing on.

I am SO tired of that kind of thing. A black friend of mine who lives in my predominantly white city tells me, "Sometimes I get tired of having to teach elementary race relations to every white person I meet who, while genuinely wanting to learn, is remarkably ignorant about the whole thing." That's how I feel about feminism sometimes in a forum like this - do we feminists really have to reinvent the wheel every time we want to have feminist discussions for every guy who knows nothing about feminism, but posts anyhow?

I think that's another gender difference - many women, when they don't know much about a topic in a forum, they either skip that forum, or they lurk in it for a while, read the posts, get a feel for the topic, try to understand a bit, and then maybe start slowly, asking intelligent questions and contributing constructively after they have some idea of what they're talking about.

But I find that so many men are different, particularly in a feminism forum. They will jump in, say they haven't read any feminist authors, make sweeping generalizations like "radical feminism is counter-productive", caricature feminist theories, characterize feminists as "anti-male", sometimes condescendingly say that they're not talking about us "good" feminists on babble, just some of the most famous theorists (whom they admittedly have never read).

Then, when we call them on it and tell them they're full of it, suddenly we're intolerant. We're not allowing them to learn. We're not open to beginners or amateurs. We're discriminating against men.

Well, like my friend, I'm tired of teaching elementary feminism to men who "want to learn" - but not badly enough to read any feminist authors before they disagree with them and dismiss them, to consider feminist positions seriously instead of caricaturing them, to consider the point of view of women (surely the point!) instead of coming up with isolated examples of injustices against men in order to score points, or to accept that this forum is here in order to discuss feminism from a PRO-FEMINIST POINT OF VIEW, not a place for men to come and dump on feminists and tell them why they hate feminism.

I swear, Audra should make another forum called, "Why I hate feminism", and then redirect all the men who come on here with anti-feminist blathering to go there and rant.

I just wanted to speak for a moment to the idea of "group-think", specifically to the idea of pro-life/pro-choice dichotemy. (I can't remember who posted her concerns about being pro-life, and I can't jump off this screen to find out.) I think that there is (or should be) room in the feminist movement for a divergence of opinions, as long as we respect each other as wimmin. For me, that means not having to defend what may be an unpopular point of view. Goddess knows we have enough struggles in the real world - we don't need to be fighting amongst ourselves either. So, if someone has a different opinion than mine, I will respect it as being a part of them, not dismiss it as being "not-feminist". Really, it's wimmin who are defining what feminism is, aren't we?