#feministdragon

[feministdragon]

i don’t bother arguing with men any more, especially argubait accounts like this, but @terracottaplant gave such a succinct answer i had to share

[feministdragon]

dash did a thing

[feministdragon]

On the potential disappointment of low numbers of women showing up for a feminist event you created

i once put an ad out for an event, and only one (1) woman responded. we started meeting for coffee. seven years later not only have we opened an (tiny, underfunded, optimistic and persistent ) NGO together with an incredible group of 9 women, which is now one of the mainstays of my life, but also she is one of my best friends. so. y'know. put up the ads for that event, and watch everything unfold for you, slowly, deliciously, over time.

[feministdragon]

so a few hours ago I saw a woman post that she lives in a rural area and sees how tired the women in her area are and wants to know what to do to help them. and unfortunately I didn't save her post down to reply to but while I was biking thought of one answer which is, basically,

a friend of mine did a once-every 2 months barbeque, where each time she invited the usual crowd and asked them to bring sb new. She started with two coworkers (I was one of the coworkers). She made it really clear that it was okay to bring new friends, and the reason she gave was, "that keeps it from being boring!". if women wanted to bring a male friend, she would be like, "it's just more fun if it's just us girls, yanno?"

you don't use radfem language, you don't lecture, you don't explain, you don't try to do anything, you just, literally hang out with them, build connections, build relationships. women are naturally helpful to each other, and you'll start seeing women helping each other, and sometimes, late into the evening, someone might tell their story, and everyone will learn something.

now my friend did this in a city, but in a small enclave in the city, where a lot of people knew each other's business. and people would snark about the women's barbeque, but it wasn't really interfered with, it was just women having a beer.

anyways, this is how you begin. how the story goes from there depends a lot on you, on your community, the women involved etc. but at least, at the very least, you're creating a moment of lightness and solidarity in at least a few women's lives, and that is worth something you know? sometime's it's worth everything.

[feministdragon]

calling pam bondi a cunt is wrong, cunts are strong and beautiful. they should be calling her a dick. dicks are weak, controlled by emotion, always trying to get into where they don’t belong.

[feministdragon]

feminism is always in this weird position of trying to get fish to understand that they’re swimming in water

[feministdragon]

Lesbian Origins, by Susan Cavin

[feministdragon]

I know it’s odd to say, but we can’t really talk about how to liberate women until we know what a society where women are free looks like.   Like, you can’t know how to get there until you know where there is. 

and this is something lacking in all feminist writing i’ve read so far.  there’s an assumption that we all know what it is we’re working toward.   But it’s never defined or fleshed out.   I mean, most feminist writing don’t even explicitly state that we are working towards the emancipation of women, the liberation of  women.   And this is partly why we’ve fallen into the weaksauce concept of ‘equality’ with men.   

so, to know how to get there, we’ve gotta talk about what ‘there’ is.   What does the emancipation of women look like?  how does that affect the social organization?  the economic sphere?  the organization of labor?  the organizaiton of land?   

if the family unit is the instrument of the oppression of women, then what is the basic economic/social unit?  is it the neoliberal view of every man for himself?  is it the collectivist view of small communes with shared finances?   What economic/social model exactly best facilitates the freedom of women?  This needs to be broadly understood, so we know what the goal is, so we know how to best work towards it.