Whither Feminism? March 28, 2006 zuzu Okay, Ilyka rejected that one because it’s too pretentious, but I’ve always wanted to use it. Check out the above link for Ilyka’s thoughts on wrapping up her Blog Against Strawfeminism week.
For an interesting whither feminism heads up, go to the english wikipedia site, and look up feminism. It’s kind of a bland entry and suffers from oh, I guess you could call it middle class white feminism. Then go to the Discussion tab for it, where you get to view the process of editing the entry. There’s probably twice as much text there as people argue and discuss about what to put in the actual entry. And its the same damn thing as on a lot of feminist blogs, only the Tangomen and Tlalocs get to edit and delete the sentences in the entry “Feminism”. And you find out, in part, why the entry is bland and more narrow instead of a comprehensive survey of the many threads, varieties and colors of feminism. Because there are dudes there who pull and wrench it towards white, towards heterosexual, and shit, towards male. I can’t help but think that like our entry under ‘Feminism’ in wikipedia, if feminists spend ooodles of time lavishing attention on ‘contrarians’, it often comes at the expense of discussions and inclusions that might be more important. And the ‘Feminism” that you and piny and lauren and jill and all the community of commentors (including me now) here at Feministe write, collectively, becomes more defensive, with less time, space and energy to engage in writing a Feminism that will help move people who are suffering all over the world out of bondage and mutilation to freedom. Because those are the stakes. And for that matter, the entry for “Feminism” in wikipedia is also a big stake.
I can’t help but think that like our entry under ‘Feminism’ in wikipedia, if feminists spend ooodles of time lavishing attention on ‘contrarians’, it often comes at the expense of discussions and inclusions that might be more important. And the ‘Feminism” that you and piny and lauren and jill and all the community of commentors (including me now) here at Feministe write, collectively, becomes more defensive, with less time, space and energy to engage in writing a Feminism that will help move people who are suffering all over the world out of bondage and mutilation to freedom. Because those are the stakes. I think you’re absolutely right. I think it’s an issue we have to work out how to handle, because I think letting a troll go on discourages some other people from participating in the discussion of the original topic and lets the troll steer the conversation to the anti-feminist tropes.