I’m forced to conclude that radfems who advocate gender separatism have never actually lived it for any amount of time longer than it takes to go to the bathroom or get dressed in a locker room.
I used to be a practicing Muslim. Mosques are almost all gender separated. I’ve never actually been to a mosque that wasn’t and even the most liberal one I went to that didn’t have actual solid barriers up for meals and had mixed gender festivals still had separation for almost everything else. I know there’s some in recent years with female Imams and no separation and I know there’s a Muslim LGBT summer retreat that has no separation but I’ve never gone.
And, don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the separation there. Most of the women I know either do or are neutral about it. I’ve even seen women advocate for more separation or say they’re going to start wearing niqab unless it’s made so that no men can even glimpse them from afar. But here’s the thing...None of these women are living this 24/7. This is in western mosques. So the mosque is a refreshing break from the rest of life. Not something that they’re wanting in every aspect of life.
Let me fill you in on what happens in gender separation:
- Husbands and wives cannot pray side by side at mosques. Mothers cannot pray beside their sons and Fathers cannot pray beside their daughters. I’ve never seen children over the age of about 5 with their opposite sex parent in the prayer area and not older than maybe 10 for meals. At home, the women stand behind the men who lead prayer. But at mosques you’re behind a partition at a minimum and likely in entirely separate rooms. Sometimes you can only watch on a monitor and hear through a speaker.
- Spouses and even parents can’t contact each other unless they’ve got their phones on them and on sound or vibrate which isn’t always a thing at events and especially not during prayers. I’ve seen fathers standing at the tiny window of space in the barricade trying to wave and get their wife’s attention because their son needs something out of the car and she’s got the keys, needs to run home, needs something from mom, etc but his wife didn’t see him and no one will speak to him because he’s a man and he’d face backlash if he just walked over to find his wife. I’ve seen women doing the same thing trying to contact their husbands.
- If you’re bringing a guest to the mosque that is the opposite sex, you can’t go with them to their area. So if a son converts and decides to invite his mother or sister to learn more about Islam, then she’s is going to have to go stay fully separate from him in a room full of strangers. If she doesn’t speak Arabic, she’s going to be very lost.
- Families cannot eat meals side by side in mosques or the community centers commonly attached to them for events/holidays. Ramadan dinners (iftars) are a big damn deal and families cannot share them if they’re attending the community dinners at Mosques. They have to choose between family and community.
- Meals are stupid wasteful too because there has to be 2 of everything. 2 buffets, 2 dessert tables, 2 seating areas (sometimes 2 rooms even), etc. If you can’t provide two of everything, men and women have to be fully separate when going through the lines which takes up so much extra time. Regarding the wastefulness? You got a giant expensive decorated cake for Eid? Cool. Now you gotta pay for 2 of them because you can’t just cut a pretty cake with writing on it in half and carry the other half to a separate room. You gotta make all your dishes twice over with separate serving dishes instead of just making one big one and sharing it. You gotta order pizza (or whatever delivered food) in even numbers instead of just ordering odd numbers and sharing it. Towards the end of meals, I’ll see people going around and combining the dishes to bring more to the sex that has run out of something or to prepare take out boxes. And there’s almost always take out boxes because there’s almost always so much extra food that people take home whole other meals.
- Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha are the two Islamic holidays....and families can’t pray and eat together for them at the mosque. Imagine if you couldn’t watch your own child open Christmas presents because you were their mother and your child was a 15 year old boy. There’s literally only TWO EIDS and if you celebrate them at the mosque, then you do it without the members of your family who aren’t the same sex.
- Wedding receptions are often gender separated. This means a husband and wife can’t even celebrate their own wedding together. The wedding itself will almost always be separated as well though you’ll be in the same room for that of course and obviously the couple is together when signing the Nikkah. But they’ve got to separate for the reception.
- Non school classes (I never went to an Islamic school and can’t speak for that but I know the smaller one attached to my Florida mosque had mixed classes due to being so small. The graduating class there in my year was like 7 people.) and sports are separated. This means if there’s not enough demand for EACH SEPARATE CLASS then one sex won’t have a class. Men almost always get more classes and sports because a lot of them don’t have enough interest only among women for women to have one. At one mosque I used to go to women got ONE SPORT NIGHT A WEEK because that was the only night they could drum up enough interest and get enough women to show up to shut down the community center to men to all men and boys. Men got the other six nights. ICLR, my prefered of the local mosques, actually had TWO WHOLE YOGA CLASSES FOR WOMEN but they couldn’t maintain enough interest in them. If you could mix men and women, you’d have enough attendance for almost any sport or class you want. But without mixing, the smaller attendance events get cut. Unlike with men, there’s no rule in Islam that says women actually have to go to the mosque ever if they don’t want to. So the result of this is that men wind up more involved in the community there.
And finally...
- Western dating is...not really a thing. It’s changed more with dating sites and tinder and the like. But a lot of marriages (especially first marriages) are still worked out through a glorified game of Telephone. Here’s how it goes... - A person glimpses someone of the opposite sex they decide is physically attractive from what they can see of them (modesty is a big thing in Islam for men and women). They have most likely never spoken to this person except maybe basic greetings in passing and might not even know their name because of the separation. So you’ve got nothing more than “I think they’re physically attractive” to decide if you want to build a lifelong relationship with this person. - They go to their opposite sex sibling (if they have one), a close friend’s opposite sex sibling (if they have one, and if their friend if on board with chaperoning the conversation), or their opposite sex parent (if they have one who is also Muslim, alive, around, and agreeing with their pick) and say “Hey, so I saw this person who I think is attractive. I’d like to get to know them and see if they’re interested in marriage” - That opposite sex person goes to the person deemed attractive and asks if they would be interested in getting to know the original person with the intent of marriage if everything works out. The answer is largely gonna depend on “do I feel like getting married at this point in time” and “are they physically attractive?” because, again, that’s all you get to know about them when you are separated - If yes, then families get together and work out chaperoned public dates. If you’re like me and you don’t have a family then you will likely either not get married in the mosque community or you will have to find a family to adopt you. Not literally, of course. Just in a parent friend kind of way. I had a husband and wife kind of adopt me like that because their little daughter decided I was her sister now. They told me if I ever wanted to get married to let them know and they’d find me a good spouse.
Now. All this assumes that radfems gender separatists aren’t just lesbians who are advocating for heterosexuality and bisexuality to be abolished from humanity. But we all know that won’t happen so let’s not entertain idiocy. And of course this is just mosque things and not all of life. And yet there’s already problems with it. Especially in the dating thing. But also...if I need spiritual guidance from the Imam? I gotta go find his wife. If I need to discuss something like renting the community center or finances with the mosque board? Gotta go hope they didn’t gender segregate that too or else I gotta go find the brother I don’t have.
Story: When I was 18, my (non muslim) grandparents were being abusive and my phone had gotten wet and broken. So a woman from the mosque wanted to use mosque charity funds to get me a phone to they could keep in contact with me and I could call them for help if I needed it. She had to call up her husband to drive back out to the mosque and talk to the Imam because the woman in the mosque’s board (Yes, only one. Mosque male population vastly outnumbers the female population. The one was specifically there to counter the separation so women didn’t have to talk to men to communicate with the board) was out of town. Because, of all people, the imam ESPECIALLY couldn't be seen violating the gender separation and especially not with so young and so unmarried a woman as me. So what should have been a 15 minute “can I fill out this form for these funds?” turned into over an hour because her husband had to find someone to wait at home for their kid who was on the way home from school.
In short. Gender separation can be fine when it’s a short time and not strictly enforced. Women only spaces are a great concept though measures should be taken for things like emergencies. But asking the world or even a whole individual society to be like that? Oh hell no. That’s not how societies were meant to be. And if you’re out here advocating it then I’m honestly forced to conclude you’re just talking out of your ass, are reacting based purely on emotion with no logic, and that you have no idea what you’re talking about.
