Why do you choose to post here instead of Ovarit?

submitted by usehername from (self.GenderCritical)

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[–]WildApples 21 insightful - 1 fun21 insightful - 0 fun22 insightful - 1 fun -  (12 children)

The down voting turned me off. It felt very groupthinkish, with perfectly reasonably comments being downvoted into oblivion because it does not fit the group consensus. I worry that it will be too much like Reddit with regard to censorship and moderation, and I want to be able to express myself without having to self-censor or strive to fall in line with the majority.

I also did not like the how people there quashed and minimized racial concerns, telling POC to stay silent about their concerns to keep the group united.

[–]BEB 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I don't like the down voting either. I think it's unnecessary. If you don't like a comment, you can quickly post a response.

I also don't like the arguments, which bordered on personal sometimes, although I think (maybe?) that the Ovarit mods have gotten better about nipping those in the bud. I strongly feel that we should argue the post, not the poster.

[–]censorshipment 5 insightful - 6 fun5 insightful - 5 fun6 insightful - 6 fun -  (7 children)

That's been going on since the '70s. White baby boomers and older Gen X women silencing woc.

[–]BEB 15 insightful - 1 fun15 insightful - 0 fun16 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

There were many WoC (a term that was not used then) leaders of, or influential figures in, the (edited to add: US) 2nd Wave feminist movement. I was there, at the tail end.

Anecdotally, my whole university feminist group were WoCs or Jews.

I am not accusing you of anything (!!!) but I keep seeing this attempted rewriting of 2nd Wave feminism to claim it was only "white feminism" and it really bothers me.

Both because it seems as if it's an attempt to discredit 2nd Wave feminism as a movement of racist elites, when it was many women of every color getting fed the hell up. But also because it discounts all the hard work and contributions of WoC 2nd Wave feminists, who were crucial to the movement.

It reminds me of the gender lobby's rewriting of Stonewall to claim that it was a trans WoC who threw the first brick, which is so incredibly wrong - it was gay men and women and decades of work, sometimes in secret, that turned the tide.

If it makes any difference, I am mixed-race (but not with black).

[–]censorshipment 6 insightful - 6 fun6 insightful - 5 fun7 insightful - 6 fun -  (5 children)

My black 60 year old mom was a second-wave feminist, and she's bisexual and had a lesbian girlfriend in the late 70s. She experienced discrimination among white straight feminists.

[–]BEB 12 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 0 fun13 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

I'm sure there was discrimination, it was a different era. Edited to add: I am NOT endorsing discrimination. Also I am not trying to play down the very real, negative lived experiences of your mom; I am very sorry she had to go through that!

But this new meme that I keep seeing (and that has been seized & spread by gender ideologists) that 2nd Wave feminism didn't have strong WoC leaders and influencers, as well as rank-and-file WoC supporters, and instead was "white feminism," is IMO offensive. It erases the many WoC feminists at all levels of 2nd Wave feminism and their hard and extremely valuable work.

[–]lefterfield 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Not having lived through it, I would suspect that it's a lot more complicated than the way it's being told today (with respect to the white feminism narrative). Of course there was racism, there's racism in every group of humans that get together who aren't all the same race. But from what I've seen of this debate today, there always seems two opposing positions:

  • Hyper focus on race divides the larger movement and makes it harder to help the majority of women

  • Ignoring race means ignoring the problems faced specifically by women of that race

Both positions are true. Either one, taken too far, can push people away and discredit the movement. I think this is just a basic issue of trying to be tolerant to everyone in a large group.

[–]BEB 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

The gender lobby is definitely pushing the "white feminism" narrative in order to divide GC feminists and alienate the public from us.

It wasn't like that back then: in my experience, Second Wave feminism (in the US) was many different women of all sorts of backgrounds, finally finding the courage in sisterhood to scream.

[–]lefterfield 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I believe it. It does divide women. It's the same tactic that was used by wealthy white southerners to divide poor white southerners from poor black southerners - keep the peasants fighting each other and the elites remain in power. Which is not to say that the differences don't matter, but unity has to matter too.

[–]BEB 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Exactly. The use of "white feminism" to describe 2nd Wave feminism, and now GC feminism, is used to divide and discredit us. Oldest trick in the book.

[–]saiditthrowawaygc 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Is this in reference to my post in o/Circles? I am a mixed non-American PoC who has been very uncomfortable in the woke PoC and WoC spaces I've been in, and found them to be extremely influenced by US politics even here. I wanted to avoid the same thing happening on ovarit when spaces dedicated to non-white and non-Western women were created. I think on top of being GC, we are critical of woke rhetoric in general.

[–]BEB 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I wish people would post more on what's happening worldwide.

I used to post a lot of non-American GC news - from all over the world - but it didn't seem to generate much interest, so now I just post what I see, and since I'm American, it's mostly news from English-speaking countries.

[–]WildApples 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

No, I barely ever visit Ovarit and have not seen your post. I am a black woman, and I also feel uncomfortable in very woke spaces for POC. I do not have any issue with criticism of woke mentalities or tactics. My frustration was with seeing commenters on Ovarit downvoting and telling WOC not to make any racial critiques of other feminists. This was a few months ago, so I do not remember the specifics, but it turned me off. My race informs my outlook. I cannot turn it off nor do I want to, so I have not bothered participating at Ovarit.