Taking A Dive For The Cause

It was New Years Eve when I learned of this post, and I’ve spent the last 13 days digging around the radfem blogosphere reading all the posts that sprouted from that initial post. One post in particular caught my attention. As the thread developed you could see each side digging in for the long haul. As of Thursay morning, I stopped posting there because I could feel the negative energy building, which started to wear on me physically and mentally. I’ve been thinking about why it was so important for me to post there after the post went extremely negative.

Last night I was reading a post over at Taking Steps. Brownemipower said:

“It’s exhausting work, this “proving” shit, and I refuse to spend my time doing it, and I support any one elses right to not do it.” – brownfemipower

At the moment I read that I wanted to jump up and down, screaming in total agreement! I need to learn to not get so caught up in the different discussions so much that it drains energy away from me.

Over at “The Fine Art of Free Speech and Dissent,” Renegade Evolution discussed the “casting out” of a radfem blogger.

“Take for instance Laura. Here is a woman who has done a lot for women. Who cares about women. Who is anti porn/anti exploitation/anti anything that is anti woman. She’s smart, kind, funny, and willing to look outside ‘the box’ for greater knowledge and understanding of women…all women…

…and that’s the problem, isn’t it? She broke the rules. She not only started talking to women who were not anti-porn, or indifferent to porn, or thinking about porn, or yeah, in some cases, pro-porn, she did not treat them lesser than. She called out some mighty big names in certain branches of feminism for their bigotry. And oh yeah…she admitted to not only caring a lot about the man in her life, but caring, on occasion, about the feelings of men in general, them being the other half of the human species and all.

Blasphemy, and she must be cast out.“

Soon after I read this post, I received this in my google alerts.

“Totalization is one of the pathologies that distinguishes radical and non-radical activists the most markedly. Radicals typically pick a single villain—modernity, the patriarchy, government, capitalism—and then proceed to argue that this villain is the source of all trouble in the world. Non-radical activists do engage in trumping hierarchies and prioritize issues, but only radicals will claim that the world fits into a neat scheme in which all evil flows directly from one original sin, and that the only sensible thing to do is fight that one sin.“

Later he said:

“you might ask yourself how come these radicals sacrifice some of their agenda for political cohesion. The answer is that like Orwell’s pacifists, they’re always less tolerant toward natural allies than toward natural enemies.“

I’m gonna take brownfemipower’s (and Jen Burke’s too) advice. I should conserve my energy for efforts that will end in making alliances, instead sparring with enemies.