Curiously, the two big “anti-feminist feminist” discussion boards have recently been removed by their supporting sites. SheThinks, an astroturf campus organization created by the right-wing Independant Women’s Forum, removed the online discussion board as part of a site redesign – although the rest of SheThinks.org seems to have been left online. Just as well – the SheThinks.org board was dominated by overt misogynists and feminist-haters who mainly used the board as a place for bad-mouthing the much more successful and lively Ms Magazine boards. In essence, the SheThinks board was a spin-off of the Ms. boards, a home for anti-feminist posters who had been booted off of Ms.
Meanwhile, the folks at Ifeminists.com – whose public discussion forum actually had a life of its own, rather than just being a satallite of a pro-feminist board – have taken their boards down. Wendy McElroy says this is because the boards were too successful – she no longer had time to moderate them. (Update: I just came across this livejournal post, talking about hypocripsies in McElroy’s moderation, and just basically trashing McElroy on many other grounds.)
As far as I know, there are no longer any public forums online sponsored by anti-feminist feminists (that is, right wing anti-feminists who self-identify as feminists). (I’m using “right-wing” broadly here; McElroy is a libertarian, not a Republican).
UPDATE: McElroy later reinstated her discussion board.
For folks interested in genuinely feminist discussion boards…
For folks interested in genuinely feminist discussion boards, the Ms Magazine forums are the biggest and most active – although they can also be very harsh on newcomers (countless troll invasions have made them a bit paranoid), and the discussions tend to be dominated by radical feminists, which might make other sorts of feminists uncomfortable (if you’re pro-porn, don’t even bother going there). Also, some of the posters there are really mean, and a few of them are openly bigoted against transsexuals. (Other posters are not bigots, and some are transsexual themselves). On the other hand, the best posters at Ms are incredibly smart and well-informed.
Empower, a spin-off the the Ms boards, isn’t as active, but is more user-friendly; a good board if you want to avoid being flame-roasted by mean people, and you don’t mind slower-paced discussions.
Bust Magazine’s boards are very active, dominated by a younger and more liberal set. For some reason, the Bust forum folks hate the Ms forum folks and vice-versa (possibly the split is over the porn issue, since many Bust posters are pro-porn). I haven’t read this forum as much (I’m a Ms forum person), but the posters seem to have a lot of fun.
The Margins. Women-only forums, mainly for radical feminists. Extremely well-written and researched discussions take place here; even if you can’t participate, it’s rewarding to lurk. (Or that was the case six months ago; I haven’t lurked here in a while).
There are tons of others, but I’m not gonna go describing each one… look around, you’ll find ’em..
Don’t forget that the Ms. Musings weblog finally has a comment section! And I think Christine’s latest entry is outstanding.
“Women-only forums”
Would this be only for women-born-women, or are trans folk welcome as well?
I suppose that online, they can’t really tell. How would someone verify that she is female?
I don’t know why right-wing anti-feminists identify as feminists, anyway. Conservatives have succeeded in turning “feminist” (perhaps even more than “liberal”) into a term of opprobrium.
I had a suitemate in college who said that she wasn’t a feminist. I asked her if she believed in equal rights for women.
She said yes.
I told her that she was a feminist.
She said, “I thought feminists hated men.”
I managed to restrain myself from going into hysterics. “No, feminists just don’t want to be controlled by men, or treated as lesser people.”
She said, “Oh, OK. I guess I’m a feminist.”
I saved the lecture on the differences within the feminist movement, and why she probably was an equality/ liberal feminist, for another day.
“hypocripsies” is just a typo, but “hypocrispies” deserves to be the name of somebody’s blog somewhere.
Hee hee.
PG: “I suppose that online, they can’t really tell. How would someone verify that she is female?”
I assume it’s an honor system.
All I could ever keep in my mind during my brief lurks at SheStinks was that so many of its regulars revelled in gleeful stupidity/bigotry and cultivated a posting style that was kind of a bad caricature of lower/working-class males and how they talk. The irony of behind the fact that none of the bluebloods or spouses of millionaires that ran SheStinks would give such men the time of day IRL, though she would hand him her car keys at the parking garage (then refuse to leave a tip) was not lost on me.
I was a regular poster to the iFeminist boards a few years ago, before they were as well known and therefore as troll-laden as they eventually became. It used to be a really good board, filled with real discussions of gender issues and feminism.
I know you’ve had a discussion of this issue before, but I really take offense at your assertion that non-liberals can’t be feminists. I believe strongly in equal treatment under the law of all people regardless of gender. I believe that discrimination based on gender is wrong, and I condemn anyone who commits it. As far as I’m concerned, those are the only important criteria for being a feminist. Belief in affirmative action, free childcare, welfare, banning porn, or any other political ideology are not required. Those feminists who would exclude me and others like me from their movement only prove that they don’t speak for the interests of all women.
I don’t think you’re summing up Amp’s commentary quite as he wrote it, Amy P., but he can speak for himself. (And I don’t feel like going round-and-round on the issue again just now.)
What I’m really wondering is, what the blazes happened to that board to change it so between the time you were there and the time it was mercifully shut down ? Why in blazes didn’t its moderators intervene ? N.O.T.A. knows, what you describe sounds like it would have been much better P.R. for the organization than the seething cauldron of bile they ended up with. :(
Amy, are you sure you’re not mixing up the ifeminists and shethinks boards? The ifeminists boards were never that bad.
Amy, I no longer feel that one has to be politically left to be a feminist; I recanted on that a while ago. I think feminists are people who are working to bring about the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes; if you think that conservative or libertarian methods of bringing that about are more effective, that’s cool with me. (I mean, I disagree with you, but I’m not going to argue that you’re not a feminist.)
I still feel that people who are professional anti-feminists for a living are anti-feminists; and I’m not going to be cowed into not calling a spade a spade in order to be nice about it. I’m not going to pretend that a vapid right-wing liar sell-out like Wendy McElroy, who has not once in her entire life had a kind word to say about any feminist who wasn’t a republican or a libertarian, who is so strongly anti-feminist that she’s infuriated at the idea of anti-rape programs aimed at men in Africa because that’s too “PC feminist” for her tastes, is anything but the vapid right-wing lair sell-out she is.
The difference between McElroy and you is that when a father’s rights group puts out a dishonest study, you object to it, and that’s great; McElroy, in contrast, publicizes it on her site. To McElroy, any left-wing feminist is the enemy, and no lie told about “PC” or “gender” feminists is wrong. If you want to identify as a conservative feminist, that’s okay with me. But McElroy is an anti-feminist, and I don’t think she can honestly be called anything else.
Also, some of the posters there are really mean, and a few of them are openly bigoted against transsexuals.
Meanness is one thing; transphobia is another. It kinda makes me a little angry, in fact (in that vibrating, steam out my ears manner), but I promise I won’t troll there to pick fights with them. But it saddens me. What are the roots of this bigotry? Is it the same territorial pissing that makes some insecure lesbians I know distrust bisexual women? From what I hear, the Michigan Women’s Festival still bars M2F trannies. Again, sad. A transexual woman would attend the MWF for the same reasons as any woman—to reaffirm herself as a woman.
I never checked the boards at either, but I’ve liked the ifeminists site much better than shethinks. Admittedly, “liked much better” means, “everything I’ve read at shethinks was a bunch of crap, while I’ve seen one or two things worth reading at ifeminists,” rather than “ifeminists is way cool and I want to visit it all the time.”
The Ms. weblog and its comment section are cool. I’m not sure I have enough flame resistant attire for the message boards.
Kevin, there are out-and-out transphobes to be found, but there are also WBW who don’t mind MTFs in general so much as they mind MTFs who insist that they “were always women/girls” just as WBWs are. That does smack somewhat of a colonization impulse, if you ask me, and it denies the male privilege that even a man who always “felt female” had until he underwent his transformation. For that matter, it denies that there’s something different –and not necessarily for the worse– about someone who changes genders in mid-life. These things should be explored, not swept under the rug and denied.
I also don’t care much for certain trans-defenders who are known to address the leeriness of certain WBW feminists toward transexuals with the “defense” that, “Hell, my MTF friend’s way more of a woman than *you*.” What the blazes is that supposed to mean, for N.O.T.A’s sake ? Grrr…
That said, I don’t go much in for finger-pointing and name-calling. Much. It does sometimes bug me that the feelings a man might have of “not being like other men” should be channelled into a physical attempt to physically transform into a woman. If society as a whole gave the male gender (as well as female) a hell of a lot more latitude in what behaviors they were “permitted,” maybe transexualism wouldn’t be such a necessary “cure” for so many.
Just my two cents.
Oh, Amp, sorry for the board mix-up.
My bad. I guess I missed your epiphany on feminist conservatives, and when I read that noxious screed you linked to (and I’m not just saying that because I disagree. I looked at the footnotes, and some of the stuff she links to is pure hate-filled propaganda), I jumped to conclusions. Glad to see that we can agree to disagree on our means sometimes while embracing the same ends.
As for Wendy, I disagree on that. I can’t say I’ve read everything she’s ever published, but the portion of her work that I have read always seemed fairly reasonable in the grand continuum of feminism and its critics. Do you have a source for your claim about the male rape program, because I’d really like to read that?
Thanks,
Amy
First of all, even if you think that Ms. McElroy’s stuff is reasonable – and I agree she’s not the rabid women-hater some anti-feminists are – that doesn’t necessarily contradict my claim that she’s an idealogical anti-feminist, whose work shows a consistant bias against and dislike for feminists and feminism (as distinct from “ifeminism”).
Regarding her feelings about anti-rape programs in Africa, McElroy did indeed object to such an anti-rape program on the grounds that it was “gender feminism” (whatever that means) and therefore bad. Check out this Foxnews column:
One of the “other purposes” is to teach gender feminism to African men and boys. American tax money will re-educate African men to “respect” women, presumably in the belief that men’s bad attitudes cause AIDS.
How did this happen?[…]
Rep. Joseph Crowley, D-N.Y., attached an amendment that called for educating African men and boys about gender equality. Crowley explained, “In addition to ABC, they [men] should also learn the big ‘R,’ respect [for women].” (ABC refers to the AIDS-prevention approach favored by the Bush administration: A for abstinence, B for be faithful and C for condom use.)
By contrast, Crowley’s amendment demanded funding “for the purpose of encouraging men to be responsible in their sexual behavior, child rearing and to respect women.” It provided for programs “reducing sexual violence and coercion, including child marriage, widow inheritance and polygamy.”
The Senate accepted the amendment almost as a matter of rote. Someone should have asked, “Why should the average American, already staggering under the twin burdens of taxation and a weak economy, foot the bill for teaching gender sensitivity to men in Africa?”
As a side note, McElroy’s column originally included an ignorant screed about “widow inheritance” (which I blogged about at the time), but that bit was quietly cut out by Fox several days after publication.
By the way, Amy P., my most recent post on “can conservatives be feminists?” can be read here, plus there’s a follow-up post here.
I have to admit that I don’t know how we will achieve equality for women without some impetus from the government, which I assume conservatives and libertarians oppose. We started with a blatantly patriarchal society — which had its patriarchy institutionalized in laws — and now we’re trying to get away from that.
How do you show that raping your wife is wrong until we get marital rape laws (which VA didn’t pass until recently, and with some people still opposing it), considering the pre-existing assumption that women are men’s property?
How do you show that asking your secretary for sex is wrong until we get sexual harassment laws, considering the pre-existing belief that such behavior was acceptable?
I think porn is protected by the First Amendment, and in any case the porn bans in Canada seem to have had their most deleterious effect on lesbians. But with the pre-existing assumption that women will raise the children and men will bring home the bacon, how do you help women get into the workplace without available, affordable (not necessarily free) quality child care?
What is the problem that Phyllis Schlafly and her intellectual descendants among conservative women have with “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex”? Why shouldn’t gender be reviewed by the Supreme Court with the same strict scrutiny used for race?
I don’t think conservatives and libertarians can solve the problem without using what they would consider to be liberal tools.
PG’s points remind me of one of my major quarrels with ifems, liberatarian and Conservative fems… as well as women like Amy P. who are proud of not embracing any of those other “isms” as causes. To wit: To accept that the other “isms”/causes are irrelevant to feminist struggle is to assure that only women of a few certain races, classes, nationalities and religions will ever achieve equality. They will –suprise !– tend to come from the same races, classes, nationalities and religions that are already dominant forces in the world. They will oppress other women of less fortunate backgrounds and thus acheive equality with men the most like themselves.
Uh-uh. Not acceptable to me. Feminism is the business of all women, not just the ones who look like me and can afford the same kind of clothes, speak the same language, and so on…
Well, I would like to say that not only do I whole-heartedly agree with every word Amy S. just typed, but I remain steadfast in my opinion that conservatives and libertarians cannot be feminists. I tried to give some libertarian “feminists” a chance recently, but they turned out to confirm all of my former opinions. So, I’ll continue discounting any claims of being a feminist from any libertarian or conservative.
To clarify: to open the definition of feminism wide enough to encompass libertarian and conservative definitions of feminism does nothing but render the term feminism null and void. It loses all of its meaning entirely.
Of course, perhaps that’s the goal of the libertarian and conservative “feminists”.
This is off-topic, but I read Amp’s two previous posts on the conservative feminist question; one of these posts concludes with a comment that he would post on the issue of pro-life feminists. I was just wondering if that post ever got written because I’ve been puzzling over that issue myself and would like to read someone else’s opinions both from the post itself and the comments to the post.
Just wanted to add another suggestion for people looking for feminist-oriented discussion boards. She-Net.com is a fairly close-knit group so not prone to the big fights that often tear up other groups. It has general discussion, quite a lot of political discussion, mostly from left-wingers with just enough conservatives to keep it interesting. Worth checking out.
http://members.tripod.com/feministhate/id143.htm
is true link try also:
http://www.angelfire.com/bug/better_than_a_girl/
but I remain steadfast in my opinion that conservatives and libertarians cannot be feminists
On what basis? I’m curious.
I would have thought it likely social conservatives aren’t often feminists, by the definition of the word. But, libertarians can’t be feminists? There are the “individual liberties” type libertarians, and the “laissez faire capitalist” libertarians. (The capitalists seem to get the most press.)
Why couldn’t either be a feminist?
I am a woman in my early 30’s in Boston, and I am wondering if I can get help from some generous, beautiful and smart women in their 30’s, to take me to a personal injury lawyer, and get medical attention, before further deterioration in my health.
I was a homemaker in Irvine, CA, and I started getting symptoms that seemed to be indicative of someone else’s issues, especially since August 2004. The Indian community does not have the money or desire to get me a personal injury lawyer.
Thank you.
S H
PS: I don’t understand what is happening. Am I being mistaken for someone else, or am I being used as a tool, or does someone have a personal vendetta against me?