Know your allies and hold them close
If I may be so bold… As a second wave feminist, I’m noticing an awful lot of infighting in feminist online communities. So much energy is being wasted drawing lines of demarcation between lesbians, bisexuals, and straight feminists who basically are coming from the same place: gender critical, anti-porn, and heavily criticizing the dominant, watered down, liberal feminist paradigm. There’s way too much holier-than-thou machinations going on.
Progressives and liberals are known for circular firing squads, and it makes for very ineffective politics. Do you want to change the world or don’t you? Keep your eye on the prize. We want to make a big mark on society. It can’t be done if we’re constantly cannibalizing our own. And trust me: our true political enemies revel in and benefit from our civil war.
As the great Bernice Johnson Reagon, founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock, said, “If you’re in a coalition and you’re comfortable, you know it’s not a broad enough coalition.”
Stop all the squabbling. Political change is serious business. Martin Luther King marched with a lot of white people. We need each other. Aim your anger where it belongs.
“So much energy is being wasted drawing lines of demarcation between lesbians, bisexuals, and straight feminists.”
No. Lesbians are rightfully calling out homophobia and lesbophobia in straight/bi feminist communities.
But do you think the homophobia/lesbophobia is as prominent with **gender-critical** feminists (which is the coalition I am part of and that I’m referring to)? Because I think it’s the takeover of LGB political and social space by the trans agenda that has sown a lot of the dissension, with their asinine accusations of “monosexual”! and “Transphobe!” Postmodern identity/gender politics has poisoned a lot of wells and I think it’s worth paying close attention to which water is actually safe to drink.
Lesbians are calling out feminists—both liberal and radical— for their homophobia and your response to that as someone who is privileged on the axis of their sexual orientation is first to vaguely accuse us of being divisive and next to point at trans activists and say “look these people are more homophobic.” By bringing them up in this particular scenario, you are derailing the conversation at hand.
But the conversation I started was that there is a lot for us to work on together. And for the record, I was not pointing the finger at lesbians. I was saying we **all** have common political goals, and it’s sad to me that we have to fight each other so much.
I don’t know if you’ve read many of my other posts, but I honestly don’t think I’ve been posting lesbophobic comments, but I’m always willing to learn and grow.
