norton ash wrote: Unless racist Christians men who don't know history and won't address prevailing sexist power structures or human sexuality are dominating the dialogue here.
FIFY, and I think it's spot on.
It's absolutely clear to me that with few exceptions the men who frequent this board thoroughly enjoy their differential power and accorded privileges and have no desire whatsoever to embark on examinations that might disturb their enjoyment. Some of them have expressed great distress at the very thought of such an examination. For me, this puts into question the sincerity of their expressions of support for social justice in other contexts. If a person is genuinely concerned with the objectification and mistreatment of other people, that should include women, otherwise he's just paying lip service to values that have no real home in his native feeling or intent.
Sexual politics here generally mirror the larger society and therefore comprise no challenge to it in any way. This venue is a boys' club where women's contributions are tolerated as long as they're diffused with conciliatory qualifiers, and aren't too angry. There's an unreasonable cruelty in requiring that oppressed people not express their anger at being oppressed. There's also an inherent cruelty in denying that an oppressed group is oppressed, but that issue was finally and thankfully addressed here to a degree.
Women have always been required to make themselves feel at home in hostile environments, part of that process involves banishing awareness. I think the only way I could maintain further involvement on the board is to interrupt that banishment process and approach this place at all times as enemy territory. It is most difficult to resist the urge to believe that talk about social justice extends to the status of my sex. I am easily fooled by expressions of compassion. Perhaps that's what makes the misogyny here more insidious than it might be in a right wing group, it wears an Obama-like mask.
Carry on boys.
