this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2026
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I'm not surprised by the comments who reject the idea in total. But the I am surprised by the comments that try and fail to think charitably about this. They end up both sides-ing it.
Edit: I figure I ought to do a little better job of explaining what I mean to the curious and good faith commentator.
2 & 3) We should birth fewer boys. It sounds like everyone would be happier.
Men believe that women "dominate conversation" whenever women take more than about 30% of the speaking time.
Do the following:
Scientists have done this. What they find is that men will be utterly convinced that the women are dominating the speaking and conversation time, even if 2/3rds of the time is actually given over to men speaking.
Men do this without even realizing it. You probably do this without even realizing it.
If you really want techniques on how to end "passive gendered segregation," then you need to adjust the character of cis men so they don't feel that they're being discriminated against at the exact same time they're actually dominating things. Masculinity as practiced is performative and fragile.
Never said they didn't.
I don't know if you lack the ability to understand that these four points were made in the context of why women might want a meeting without men or something else. Either way, I don't think you belong in this conversation.
Okay.
The goals of feminism.
I suppose my point is that exclusion of any group or category of person effects what is said. So it doesn't really matter. Its not a good enough reason.
Making a group explicitly exclusionary implies a perspective that the excluded group is an out-group, and thus an adversary.
Men who formed explicitly exclusionary male only spaces, boy's clubs, etc. in the past almost certainly feel some level of disdain for women. And men who enforce soft exclusion, like guys who do litmus tests to see if a woman is earnestly interested in whatever the club is about, aggressively disgust me.
This is not a feeling I apply with gendered prejudice.
I wasn't being a smart ass. (well, mostly) I'm a soft anti-natalist, my suggestion was a half joking gendered version of what I actually believe. I think that, if you have given information on what a person's life is going to be like you should be honest in your assessment if they'll live a life worth living and make the world a better place by being in it. I just have a much higher bar to clear than most people.
My view is that, if society is to give birth to 100 people, if there is a chance 1 of them will live a life so miserable that they are driven to suicide, regardless of reason, you should probably birth none of them. Guess what the global percentage of people who die of suicide is?
Its a good thing you don't get to make that decision then, asshole.
There are many kinds of feminists and forms of feminism. I assume you don't care to elaborate on specifics because you think you'd show me I'm right to view exclusionary spaces with some level of suspicion and disdain.
I didn't address this directly because you didn't do the work to show you were actually interested in the conversation. That's why didn't have the right to be there. This response is more serious and worth giving you my attention and energy. Had you provided the context and thinking you provided in this response in the first response, I would have considered answering especially if you were able to support it's relevancy.
I won't be addressing the anti-natalist because I don't see how it's connected and it seems like it's emotionally charged for you. Emotionally charged politics are important, but only if they are connected to the topic and if I judge that I have any relevant position to make any intervention. So I won't be sounding off on that.
That leaves the first point where you started in your first comment "Men do the same." and gave your thinking in this last comment. On the face of it, an out group is not an adversary. If I attend a cancer survivor's group and people who never had cancer show up, it changes things. People who never had cancer are not my adversaries. My goal isn't to fight those people. I want to connect with others through a shared experience.
Men's only groups in the past was often a place where real decisions for power and profit were made. This is radically different from a the support some women may get in a women's conference or the strategy and tactics developed from shared seed experiences for the political project of over throwing patriarchy.
I don't normally post on weekends but I left my lunch in the office fridge and your response has been a grain of sand in my brain. Figured I'd finish up writing my response.
It wasn't clear how I could have responded to pull out the counter arguments I wanted to get to. I want to skip to the core of the discussion because if I used up time on initial 101 arguments, statistically the person I'm responding too gets bored, suspicious, or tired of the argument overall. Also, being flatly and snarkily blunt about a specific thing without additional details gives a chance for someone to reveal what they actually think in anger without tactical obfuscation of their actual beliefs, wasting time.
Its doesn't work often but it has every once in a while. The alternative almost always seems like I get the same old same old boilerplate.
Its emotional to be natalist as well. Its connected to the discussion at a fundamental level, to be natalist means you value certain things as an axiom that lead to a certain derrived perspectives, one that I think is arguably similar to yours. Which is why I brought it up.
I stated it more to identify if this is a fundamental difference in our views. Something irreconcilable. Its a lonely feeling to have it confirmed. Very few have a conscious belief on the matter, pro or con. And default absent minded to natalist perspectives largely due to religion and cultural inertia.
Segregation foments adversarial attitudes. Even with trivial or made up differences. It widens the empathy gap, creates perceived out-group homogeneity, and a sense of moral superiority. Group polarization absolutely can and probably will manifest in your suggested cancer survivor group, especially with an explicit ban on people joining who are not survivors of the disease. The goal is irrelevant, the result is what matters.
Statistically very true. Not a hard rule though, and to say there is no power in a woman's only group that couldn't further disenfranchise a dis-empowered non-woman would be disingenuous.
"Over throwing patriarchy" is a vague goal at best though. What does that actually entail? Much like the rapture, the inevitable communist revolution, or judgement day this is just an in-group meta narrative, not really a goal at all.
I'm going to skip the meta-conversation and tactic you used. I don't think they clarify or further the discussion about why women would want a conference without men.
Regarding natalism, I skipped it not because it was emotional, but it was tangential and unclear in how it was related to the specific topic. Again, I have nothing against emotions playing into one's politics.
This is only true if you fail to understand the internal needs of the segregated group. In this case, it is to regain power in themselves and through connection to others who get it. This subverts any empathy gap that could happen. When a cancer survivor group meets, I don't ever know what it was like having had cancer. But I can provide an empathetic space to understand that:
If the only result you care about is how it effects out-groups, then you misunderstand how healing and political movements are created at the earliest stages. How do you think political movements are formed if not in small groups meeting privately?
Women are historically oppressed minorities. Patriarchal systems caused their oppression. Who are the dis-empowered non-woman that are being disenfranchised?
Much of this particulars are covered in the long history of feminism. Recounting it all would take several books. Staying with in the confines of one or strain will help guide the discussion. What feminist literature have you read? Who are your guiding lights in the movement? That will dissipate the vagueness. There may not be one single definition, but the contours for disagreement move from a blob to specific corners of concern. I’m asking for these because if you view these goals as 'religious,' it suggests you are unfamiliar with the specific, material policy work and labor history that defines the movement. There is nothing inherently wrong with not being familiar with the field in specificity.
So in sum, I'd like to hear:
No, its a documented and highly scientifically backed effect.
Its not the only effect that I care about but I do care about it.
Political movements are value neutral, or at least subjectively perceived as good or bad depending on who you ask about which movement.
If you want to say that the harmful in-group & out-group effects are a worthwhile sacrifice to achieve other ends, that's one claim I could see as understandable but I would want to know the specifics of what the actual end goal(s) is/are before I'd support it. Further, the main way a political movement actually grows and achieves positive things is to broaden their support typically. If they lean into leveraging power they might have over a majority they're using might makes right logic. I can certainly see the utility of that if you view the majority as stupid or evil and I'll even admit these days its hard not to feel that way given the state of my country. At that point though I don't even see the point other than cynical power games.
NB's & men who fall into disenfranchised categories like bipoc, lgbt, homeless/impoverished/working class, and probably most relevant to gender issues is the neurodiverse male population. Not to mention that creating an exclusively women space can attract TERFs, where they can spread their bullshit more efficiently by leaning into the in-group & out-group effects.
Women's issues is gender issues. Gender is like any social construct, its defined by relationships and collective beliefs.
My feminism? I was critiquing the feminism you are defending that would justify an exclusionary in-group. I'm suspicious of why you'd want to ask.
If you must know, I tend to agree with Xenofeminism. Its the form of feminism that embraces rationalism, any consistent Xenofeminist would agree with me here.
I need to address the structural failure of this conversation. For our dialogue to be productive, it must engage with the thesis presented.
I have presented a specific thesis on restorative spaces as a material necessity for movement-building. This has been consistently ignored or reframed as "exclusionary antagonism." I understand that you reject this as it widens empathy gap between in-groups and out-groups. However, you never engage with the interior possibility for it result in healing for the oppressed in-group.
I asked a direct question regarding how political movements form in the absence of private, strategic meeting spaces. This was met with a response addressing how they grow and not how which is a refusal to engage with the history of labor and policy work that defines these movements.
I presented a clear statement, “This is only true if you fail” and your response seemed to interpret my statement as a rejection to the initial and not the subsequent. I have no doubt that this phenomena is real or scientifically supported. Rather, I was pointing out how empathy for the in-group is a analgesic to the pain of being an out-group.
Finally, and arguably the most perplexing, despite my forthright and honest comportment, there has been a persistent reticent to grant me good faith and continue to view me with suspicion. You are treating my request for feminist framing as a "trap" rather than a legitimate effort to ground the discussion and find common language. Both of these I stated at the time of the request.
So in a attempt to meet you with the language of Xenofeminism, I will, to the best of my ability relate my response in the verbiage of the text you provided. Since I am new to the school, please grant me a little grace as I fumble through it and keep in mind that I’m trying to meet you where you are while still honoring the lived experiences of an oppressed minority.
I suspect we are actually arguing about the mechanics of liberation rather than the goals. Xenofeminism (XF) is a project of rationalist engineering. If we treat social organization as a form of "technomaterialist" construction, then we must recognize that every effective tool requires specific environmental constraints to function.
My thesis of restorative spaces is the social wetware terrain in which control is wrenched from the hegemon. A laboratory requires a sterile environment to produce a pharmaceutical , an oppressed group requires a sterile social space to re-engineer the "memetic parasites" of patriarchy. It is the pre-production phase of a mesopolitical project.
Restorative spaces are the necessary pre-production phase of the mesopolitical. They are the modular laboratories where we develop the new language for sexual politics that XF calls for. You cannot bootstrap a new world into existence while still using the corrupted operating system of the dominant gaze. This is the site where we experiment with different modes of 'directed subsumption'. It is the protected environment where we develop the very procedures intended to seep into the shell of the patriarchy and dismantle its defenses from the inside out.
It is the site of "multiple political bodies". It’s not a site available just for women. But also for men to do the same. It is a site for BIPOC, for asexuals, for trans and for neurodivergent people. If "a hundred sexes should bloom" , we must allow for a hundred different social affordances. Just as a neurodiverse person might need a specific sensory environment to thrive, women and the marginalized groups you mentioned require specific restorative environments to build the unselfish solidarity necessary for the long game of history.
Universal solidarity is not a spontaneous event, but a synthetic construction that must be meticulously engineered across distinct sites of struggle over large time scales. Solidarity must be engineered between these distinct sites of restorative labor. Moving toward a true mesopolitical scale requires us to treat these individual 'laboratories' as modular nodes in a larger network. We do not build a universalist project by flattening our specific needs into a vague, horizontal mass, but by establishing robust protocols of transit between our specialized spaces, both externally and internally. This coordination is the necessary 'boot-strapping' phase—linking our local 'social affordances' into a cohesive, technomaterialist front capable of challenging the hegemon.
I am not arguing for a "shrine to nature". I am arguing for the freedom to engineer the social conditions of our own healing. If we are to engineer a future beyond the binary, we must first defend the right to construct the specialized environments where that future is actually being built.
This is a good response. Thank you.
This is largely because I don't think it does result actually in healing of the in-group. I myself sometimes crave things that are comforting yet bad for me, like junk food, remaining sedentary on a couch, binge drinking, and secluding myself in self loathing. these are intoxicating and reinforcing. They can result in bad habits. I view such groups with a similar perspective.
I did not answer this one either because I rejected the forming of a political group as an intrinsic good in the first place.
That said, fair call that I pivoted to growth. Formation I think certainly can be through an exclusionary start of course, I just don't think explicit exclusion is needed. You can form a political group for a specific type, but you don't really need to restrict access to only that type. Realistically, just like this comic suggests, you probably would not get too many participants outside that group anyway, but if you did they'd likely be an invaluable ally, not an antagonist to restrict your words around.
Like I stated earlier, I think this is at best a psychological comfort food. Its not healing at all, at least not in the long term.
This is because it often is a trap. It is usually a means of identifying if I've "done the work" rather than engage with my points. Its a means to screen for a lack of virtue, worthiness, or dedication. If I stated that I was not a feminist at all, or that I did engage in any feminist writings, I suspect you would have dismissed me. I view this as intellectual cowardice (I suppose the one thing I will judge someone's virtue on).
There is one instance were I suppose this can be reasonable: Boredom with my points. If I say stuff you've heard already and hint that I will continue to sound like someone who just regurgitates vapid talking points you'd simply be saving time and energy rather than avoiding an uncomfortable discussion by ceasing to engage.
Maybe I'm wrong though and you had no intent to do this. I can't know for sure, but I'm very weary of it. I find allistics do it most often.
This idea is not what you originally tried to sell the spaces on. However, it is at least a novel argument for their utility and a very compelling and interesting one.
I still fear the risk of habitual usage of this and I'd question whether I'd consider that a truly "clean" environment. Just because you permit only certain groups doesn't mean you wont have them bringing into their own internalization of cultural norms with them. I thought I was straight for most of my life and still pretty strongly have internalized homophobia & biphobia. If I went to a bisexual exclusive group I do wonder if I'd run into someone bitter about non-bisexuals or bisexual erasure and find that foment my own. If I went to an autistic exclusive space, my distrust of allistics would likely be multiplied or I would spread my admittedly low opinion of allistics to others, if I wanted to be completely honest with myself.
Now, I will admit, there is one group I think I'd greedily personally engage with that would very much bring out my worst impulses: An exclusively atheist group. Religious people will often use their own emotions and attachment to social power to actively discourage the criticism of religion and spirituality. And I'll admit, being around religious people forces me to temper some of my meanest and most unproductive thoughts about them. I couldn't argue that it'd be good for me, thought perhaps it would be cathartic to talk shit about how petulantly stupid I see religious people.
I don't think any particular group should exclude though. I don't take issue with the unfairness, I take issue with the results.
Creating a group for a specific type of person but permitting outsiders is simply far and away more useful and beneficial. Its virtually all upside. Where as exclusion is more like a social heroin. Feels good, but produces bad results long term.
If we are truly connecting these nodes, then there isn't exclusion to begin with arguably. Using the "only" as a descriptor for your group and then connecting to other "only" groups would be exclusionary, it'd just introduce a sort of negotiation table between different "nations".
If this were actually done, maybe some good would come from it? I still think it'd be a fairly cold way of social and political organization and would still foster distrust and alienation.
I apologize if I came off as bad faith. I promise you I'm merely an impatient, cynical, suspicious, depressed, egotistical asshole.
My main problem with this kind of thinking is the way it mirrors racial segregation. 'I just don't feel safe with those people around,' is an all too common sentiment among racists. The key has to be to find ways to make people feel safe and humanised among those who are different in everyday life, because simply creating isolated bunkers of 'safety' that exclude others based on unchosen characteristics of their body is not a recipe for a cohesive, cooperative society.
Sure that’s a fair point but I think it’s important to point out people also self segregate along all sorts of lines, including racially. It’s one thing if the state is enforcing segregation or if a group of people with something in common want to hang out with each other at the exclusion of people who don’t have that thing in common. Segregation and self segregation aren’t the same things.
Tbf if I'm invited to a whites only party to discuss "white interests" like idk Ultimate Frisbee and Mayonnaise or whatever "white interests" would be, I'm probably not going even if it is "self segregation" so it's "better" than if the government did it. I mean you're not wrong, letting the people choose to be racist instead of enforcing it through law is "better" I guess but imo we should strive for more. I don't think we can actually fix society's ills until society can sit in a room together and talk, y'know? Idk I guess I just like diversity more than sameness.
Hol up.
Segregation and self-segregation are indeed different, but the difference is in where the choice occurs, not in whether the body doing it is a legally recognised government. You gave two examples of one and called one of them the other. Self-segregation is where individual choices add up to an effective separation. Choosing to deny access to a public event to a particular group, even without state power, is still segregation, enforced by the host as a local seat of power.
If your issue is that it rhymes, then I think you're missing how the powerful use this to oppress and exploit people. When minorities do it, it is done to regain power and dignity from being oppressed and exploited.
Uhh, are you trying to imply that discrimination isn't bad as long as it serves your dignity? That would legitimise its use by the powerful. They could just claim to be preserving their dignity from the damage it would take in associating with minorities. Or is it that it's fine as long as you aren't 'powerful?' That's an easily gamed relitivism. People will justify antisemitism with how many Jewish people are in positions of wealth/power. I mean, more than they already try to. I'm guessing that's not something you'd prefer.
Being able to tell the difference between people who have historically been exploited and oppressed and those powerful people feigning it is an easy task. Rascists do it. White supremicists do it. It is no reason to abandon the tools of restoration for the oppressed. It's not the only one, but it is one.
Again, if you are suggesting it is legitimate for one, it becomes transitively legitimate for the other, regardless of whether you think it should. If you are saying it is a legitimate tactic, everyone can use it, even the people you don't like, and you are just diving into a multigenerational, essentialist, retributive justice death spiral.
Change comes from the oppressed organizing in their own spaces and not by holding the moral high ground.
The powerful will do whatever they need regardless of the moral high ground or not. They haven been using exclusion for centuries to maintain their position. They don't need my 'permission' or a 'logical precedent' to gatekeep. They have the systemic power to do it regardless.
They manufacture legitimacy for themselves using 'tradition,' 'efficiency,' or 'safety' to mask their gatekeeping. They don't borrow legitimacy from the marginalized. Throughout history, the dominant group has never waited for a logical 'green light' from the oppressed to justify exclusion. And they won't give up power because we have the moral high ground.
If we 'disarm' and stop creating restorative spaces, we lose a vital tool for survival, while the powerful lose absolutely nothing. Abandoning a functional tool for restoration (like a support group or a focused conference) because a bad actor might mislabel their own dominance as 'restoration.' That’s like saying we shouldn't use a scalpel to save a life because a murderer might use one to take one. The intent and the material outcome are what define the action, not the fact that a blade was used.
They will continue to exclude because they can, with or without a consistent moral philosophy. You are prioritizing the 'purity' of a logical rule over the material survival of a group.
Can you name a single historical instance where a dominant group stopped a practice of exclusion because they realized they no longer had the 'transitive legitimacy' to continue it?
I just want to say it is so refreshing to finally see a comment from someone who genuinely understands power and oppression finally shine through in a thread that has been so muddled and confused it's been maddening to read.
Thanks. Just as surprising is the lack of empathy that would imagine why someone might need that space. I wonder if it's been all in vain.
You're making the same conflation as several other people here. A private space can exclude through non-invitation without specific/class exclusion. A conference is not a private space. It is public. By rendering the space public, it creates an equality of people as possible attendants as members of the public. By excluding a generalized group, it discriminates through stereotype, which brings things to the meat of your point.
If you take the whole matter into amorality, there is nothing wrong with ANYTHING the powerful do, and render any argument about dignity of the oppressed meaningless. You have no place left to stand and you lose. If you argue the powerful are somehow different from other people, you establish a belief in inherent inequality. You have no place from which to claim injustice, and you lose. If you fight against the powerful without some semblance of reason, you cannot form a cohesive collective, so you will have no power with which to fight them, and you will lose.
Feminism. If each generation of feminists had never made claims to human dignity, there would be no liberation or justice. If they had only focused on stripping the dignity of powerful men, they never would have gotten the support of the rest of their society. Action disrupts the old system but the moral argument is what transforms society into something new. The 'dominant group' isn't the 1% crowd. It's the 90% who they trick into supporting them. The 'powerful' shit themselves at the idea of seeing the majority turned against them. If early feminists hadn't convinced the people around them of the capability and equality of women, it wouldn't have mattered how hard they tried, they would just have been ignored by the majority and snuffed out by the powerful minority. If they hadn't fought to establish a moral norm of equality, all their screams would have been noise fading into the void. Acting like you actually believe in your principles isn't 'disarming' yourself. It's letting the enemy take your rifle so you can take the fort. It's planting the tree so your children can sit in its shade. It's how you get justice rather than get yours.
First, a conference is a private space, not a public space. It is invitational to a private event. The non-invitation of a group of individuals without exclusion is functional a non-point to me. It's performative at best. "We didn't technically not invite flat earthers to the astrophysics conference, we just didn't extend an invitation to any individuals who also happen to be flat earthers." Its a distinction without a difference.
Events like a conference can have multiple purposes including highlighting under represented views. The function is what determines the allowed group. If it's coalition building, then men would be invited. If it's to highlight women's voices and foster bonding, then it will exclude men. By explicitly excluding the class of men, it signals an invitation to sharing. People prep for this before hand and know it's a place they can share openly. See the four points I listed in my initial comment.
Absolutely does not. There's nothing about the oppression of women that a man's voices can lend that speaks from first hand experience. Acknowledging men are not women is not stereotyping. Its definitional.
No one's claiming amorality. The morality being used by the powerful to undermine the solidarity building of women or other oppressed groups is not the one that needs centering. The morality that puts healing through community and connection comes before opening to others. There's a morality that allows the voiceless to find their voice.
The powerful are different because they have power. As a class, they will do anything they need to do to hold on to that power. As individuals, sure... same. As a class, different. This is not inherent inequality, its historical and class based.
The best point you have, though surprisingly, failing to actually answer my question is the note of creating a mass movement. I asked for a "single instance where the dominant group stopped their exclusion because they lost the 'transitive legitimacy'.
The opening of the doors was after long sessions of small groups agitating to make a difference. Guess how many men were allowed to attend CWLU's Liberation School for Women? The Quaker Bright Circles would meet and practice their religion together and affirm their dignity as women first. Then they bought to other Quaker. Before a mass movement comes the long arduous act of developing solidarity.
No fort has been taken by dropping your rifles.