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Sep. 22nd, 2006 10:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tylikIf anyone is interested, there is a great discussion going on in the Dykes to Watch Out For Blog about the whole debate about transwomen and the Michigan Women's Music Festival. Mind you, 165 posts of discussion and counting... (I'm having a bit of a moment of deja vu, as it seems quite a bit like a discussion I was involved with on the subject back in about 1993.)
Anyhow, it's got me thinking about minority only or oppressed group only spaces (as opposed, of course, to majority only or dominant group only spaces). Which reminds me that when it comes to a lot of these things, I just don't know.
I'm part of one woman only community. It's quite dear to me, if in some part for historical reasons. I don't otherwise seek out gender defined space these days. I think this is in part because gender doesn't mean that much to me personally. Which is something that becomes more clear to me the more gender queer friends I have. I'm happy enough with my female body. If I'd prefer for it to be less agressively female, that's mostly a practical thing -- some people may find the tits decorative, but I'm the one who has to lug them around, they're kind of in the way, and I suspect that they're hard on my already beleaguered back. I do sometimes feel a little frustrated by the social vocabulary of gender -- it's as if I can read all of a language, but can't speak all of it. Sometimes I can see what I have said being shaped by my having said it as a woman, and that's a little frustrating... but it's possible enough to be subversive about gender. I can imagine myself as a man. I'd like to try that, but only if I had the option of switching back. I don't think it would change some essential me, but it might teach me a lot about what is that essential me as what is, well, less essential. Anyhow, it's interesting, but either I'm much more female than I realize, or it's just not that important to me.
But women only space is still my most direct experience with this sort of $somegroup only space. (With the obvious exception. I am white. More on that later.) I'm talking about institutionalized spaces. Sometimes I hang out just with chicks, and that can be cool. Of course, sometimes when I'm hanging out with a bunch of male engineers I get a similar sense of letting down my hair because hey, we're all part of a common culture and that commonality is nice and we can make engineer in jokes and geek out and it's a very happy thing. And sometimes when I'm hanging out with some of my Chinese friends I get a similar feeling, and that, my dears, is a mind fuck, because I've known my whole life that I'm an oversized white chick. Anyway. I'm not talking about incidental or private groupings. I'm not talking about who was invited over to dinner where, I'm talking about things a little more formalized. That's a spectrum, too, BTW. There are a lot of people who I wouldn't invite over to dinner who I have invited over to events at the Woodinville house because I thought that those events had taken on a certain sense of being community functions, and no longer just my parties and I'd invite who I'd want to. And yet hosting public events is something else again.
I generally buy the explanation that marginalized groups need their own spaces, whereas groups with access to power can't have them at least in ways that allow them to further cement their holds on power. (Of course, power is a bit contextual, and who has what power in what circumstance is pretty hard to track. Which doesn't mean that you can make generalizations about who does and doesn't have power, but the *are* generalizations.)
And then I think about a conversation I had with a friend years ago, talking about what clubs I might like to go dancing in (back then this was a simple equation, because I don't dance where there is smoking). In the midst of the conversation, she gave me a half-guilty half-conspiratorial smile, and said that there was one place in particular that she enjoyed because she "really had a liking for white people's music". And we shared that guilty smile... and damn if I still don't know what I think of that. Invocation of shared culture? What the hell did the comment mean, anyway? Clearly we both thought we understood it the same way, that instant.
What would a world look like in which the power imbalances weren't linked to gender, ethnicity, skin color, or what have you? Would every arbitrary group get their own space if they wanted it? Would no one? Would no one want it? Would there be themed events that focused on one thing or another but didn't exclude anyone? Would it make any more or less sense that green eyed people, or black haired people having their own space and gatherings?
Anyhow, it's got me thinking about minority only or oppressed group only spaces (as opposed, of course, to majority only or dominant group only spaces). Which reminds me that when it comes to a lot of these things, I just don't know.
I'm part of one woman only community. It's quite dear to me, if in some part for historical reasons. I don't otherwise seek out gender defined space these days. I think this is in part because gender doesn't mean that much to me personally. Which is something that becomes more clear to me the more gender queer friends I have. I'm happy enough with my female body. If I'd prefer for it to be less agressively female, that's mostly a practical thing -- some people may find the tits decorative, but I'm the one who has to lug them around, they're kind of in the way, and I suspect that they're hard on my already beleaguered back. I do sometimes feel a little frustrated by the social vocabulary of gender -- it's as if I can read all of a language, but can't speak all of it. Sometimes I can see what I have said being shaped by my having said it as a woman, and that's a little frustrating... but it's possible enough to be subversive about gender. I can imagine myself as a man. I'd like to try that, but only if I had the option of switching back. I don't think it would change some essential me, but it might teach me a lot about what is that essential me as what is, well, less essential. Anyhow, it's interesting, but either I'm much more female than I realize, or it's just not that important to me.
But women only space is still my most direct experience with this sort of $somegroup only space. (With the obvious exception. I am white. More on that later.) I'm talking about institutionalized spaces. Sometimes I hang out just with chicks, and that can be cool. Of course, sometimes when I'm hanging out with a bunch of male engineers I get a similar sense of letting down my hair because hey, we're all part of a common culture and that commonality is nice and we can make engineer in jokes and geek out and it's a very happy thing. And sometimes when I'm hanging out with some of my Chinese friends I get a similar feeling, and that, my dears, is a mind fuck, because I've known my whole life that I'm an oversized white chick. Anyway. I'm not talking about incidental or private groupings. I'm not talking about who was invited over to dinner where, I'm talking about things a little more formalized. That's a spectrum, too, BTW. There are a lot of people who I wouldn't invite over to dinner who I have invited over to events at the Woodinville house because I thought that those events had taken on a certain sense of being community functions, and no longer just my parties and I'd invite who I'd want to. And yet hosting public events is something else again.
I generally buy the explanation that marginalized groups need their own spaces, whereas groups with access to power can't have them at least in ways that allow them to further cement their holds on power. (Of course, power is a bit contextual, and who has what power in what circumstance is pretty hard to track. Which doesn't mean that you can make generalizations about who does and doesn't have power, but the *are* generalizations.)
And then I think about a conversation I had with a friend years ago, talking about what clubs I might like to go dancing in (back then this was a simple equation, because I don't dance where there is smoking). In the midst of the conversation, she gave me a half-guilty half-conspiratorial smile, and said that there was one place in particular that she enjoyed because she "really had a liking for white people's music". And we shared that guilty smile... and damn if I still don't know what I think of that. Invocation of shared culture? What the hell did the comment mean, anyway? Clearly we both thought we understood it the same way, that instant.
What would a world look like in which the power imbalances weren't linked to gender, ethnicity, skin color, or what have you? Would every arbitrary group get their own space if they wanted it? Would no one? Would no one want it? Would there be themed events that focused on one thing or another but didn't exclude anyone? Would it make any more or less sense that green eyed people, or black haired people having their own space and gatherings?
