Big Tent Feminism - Just how big is this tent, anyway?

I've been thinking a lot about differences between feminists recently. Differences in how we approach gender identity issues, differences in how we relate to men, differences between women of different races and classes. Part of what set me off on this path was the comments of the ever-perceptive Sydney at Alas on the ways in which white feminists marginalise women of color, which set me off on a quest to find non-Western feminist blogs (I found a few good ones if anyone wants links). The other thing that prompted my excursion into ideological self-criticism was reading a news article about Mary Daly, which prompted me to re-read some of her work.
So, the first thing to come out of my self-criticism exercise - I agree that mainstream feminism does indeed marginalise women of color. Not only that, it also tends to marginalise poor women. I don't think that this is the result of any kind of deliberate attempt to exclude these women, I think it's a combination of selfishness (ie I'm going to focus on the issues that affect me) and laziness (it's easier not to have to think about how other women's experiences may be different. Reaching out to others is work. Understanding is work). I think that this is a real weakness within the movement. It has become particularly apparent with the increasing dangers faced by women in Iraq. There are established feminist groups in Iraq that are trying to fight against the imposition of Sharia law and the erosion of Iraqui women's civil rights. There are feminist women in the West who want to help, and who have far more of the resources to be able to do so (money, access to the media) than the Iraqi women do. The problem is that there are no established connections between the two groups. Western feminists can't even send messages of support and solidarity, because we don't know who to send them to. This is a problem. There are also many women in Africa facing huge problems, frankly much bigger problems than women are facing here in the USA, and what are we doing to help and support them? Not much. That is also a problem. In fact, to my mind it's not just a problem, it's a betrayal of what feminism is supposed to stand for. If we believe in freedom and justice for women that needs to mean ALL women, not just the women who look like us.
The issue of how we deal with men is also a divisive one. This is where the work of Mary Daly comes in. I'm about to say something that will probably make a lot of other feminists very angry, but I think it needs to be said.
Reading Mary Daly makes me feel profoundly depressed. On some basic level I find her philosophies morally and ethically unacceptable. Part of what she says sound reasonable, even uplifting, and then we get to stuff like this.
"I think it's not a bad idea at all. If life is to survive on this planet, there must be a decontamination of the Earth. I think this will be accompanied by an evolutionary process that will result in a drastic reduction of the population of males. People are afraid to say that kind of stuff anymore."
It's not that I'm afraid to say that kind of stuff, it's that I don't agree with it (and I don't appreciate the implication that other feminists feel the same way she does and are just afraid to admit it, by the way). Why in the hell would anyone think that a "drastic reduction" in the number of men would be a good idea? This isn't feminism, it's eugenics. Eugenics is a deeply evil idea, an appeal to the twisted underbelly of the human psyche, and I don't much care what anyone's justifications are for why it's OK to be promoting it in their special set of circumstances. I think that at some point Daly took a wrong turn. She seems to have lost sight of the fact that patriarchy is a social system and has instead decided that patriarchy is men. Patriarchy is not men. It favors men, certainly, it hurts women in a far more direct and limiting way than it hurts men, but men are trapped in its web just as certainly as women are. She's oversimplifying, and when has that ever been a good idea?
This ties in to a number of experiences I had at university. I was a psych major but took a number of feminism classes. I loved the actual lectures, devoured the reading material, but there was always an undercurrent of gender essentialism among certain of the texts, certain members of each seminar group, that made me deeply uncomfortable. Anyone who's ever had any exposure to gender studies knows what I'm talking about. Woman as all-nurturing earth mother, man as warrior and destroyer of worlds. Gender as a dichotomy, with men and women as binary opposites, forever destined to misunderstand and conflict with each other.
I'm going to be frank here. This model is bullshit. It doesn't reflect my life, it doesn't reflect the lives of anyone I know. What about the soft, femmey men? What about the stone butches? What about the women like me who feel no particular inclination to be nurturing and earth-mothery? What about the vast majority of human beings who each have a unique combinatiion of traditionally "masculine" and "feminine" traits? Where do they fit in the binary theory?
Don't misunderstand me. The vast majority of feminists completely get that gender is a fluid thing, hard to pin down and subject to almost infinite variations. But what about the essentialists in our midst? What do we do about them?
Arwen started me thinking about this in a new way and gave me a word for what I do when I encounter essentialist theories. I matronize them. I don't take them seriously. In the back of my own mind I'm patting them on the head and saying "yes dear, I know, you're upset". I tuck them into bed with a nice cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit. I assume that something, some bad experience in their past, has hurt these women so deeply that withdrawal from men is the only answer for them. I don't mean withdrawal in the sense of lesbianism, I mean complete withdrawal, a drastic alienation from anything with the slightest tinge of maleness. And honestly, if they wish to withdraw themselves I have no issue whatsoever with that choice. It's not my decision to make. The problem is that they're advocting separatism as the only acceptable feminist option, and I'm not willing to accept that.
In spite of my overall respect for Dworkin there are bits and pieces of her theory that provoke this same reaction in me. I recognise the fact that what she's saying is true for her, and is true for millions of women all over the world, but it's not true for me. It doesn't reflect my life experiences.
This is where a bit of background might come in handy. From the age of 2 till 8 I lived in Libya. In our little expat community there were only a few families and a much larger number of men on what was called "bachelor status", men who worked there alone while their families stayed home, who only saw their wife and kids for perhaps a month out of every year. Whenever my parents would go to a party these men were my babysitters. My Mom threw frequent dinner parties at which there were always at least a few of these men - indeed a large part of the reason that she threw the parties was because she felt sorry for these men who were separated from their families for so much of the time. The reason I have never been able to swallow the "women are naturally nurturing and men are not" idea is that I spent my childhood surrounded by extremely nurturing men. They read me stories, they helped me take me baths, they kissed skinned knees and tended colds, they told me jokes when I was sad, they took me swimming and answered my incessant questions about how and why and what and where and dammit I need to know how everything works! In a way I was an incredibly fortunate child. These men lavished upon me all the affection that circumstances prevented them from lavishing upon their own children who were so far away. I loved every one of my "uncles", and I always knew that they loved me.
This is why the essentialist, separatist part of feminism is completely anathema to me. I love men. Not all men, obviously. I don't really love all women either. All human beings have the potential to be nasty and selfish and cruel, and all too many don't even try to be any better. Some try and fail, eaten up by their own personal demons. But there is nothing wrong with "men" in the abstract that the demolition of the patriarchy couldn't potentially fix, and I simply cannot accept the idea that some people cannot separate the social and political system that grinds us all down from the individuals who live within that system. To do so would be to deny my own life experience, and I'm not willing to do that.
I've been chewing this over in one way and another ever since university, hell probably since long before that, and for a long time I've just kept my mouth shut out of fear of angering and alienating my fellow feminists, and I'm not willing to do that any more. This is my movement too, and I demand the right to have a say in how it works. I'm not willing to write off half the human race, and I'm not willing to lend my support to those who do. I would also like to remind my sisters that in promoting essentialist arguments they are acually letting the men who behave badly off the hook. If we set up a binary in which men simply are "that way", if we "other" them, then are we not conceding that they are incapable of change, of being people whom we can work with rather than against? Does anyone really think that that's a good strategy? Furthermore, if we don't speak out against those of our sisters who are promoting deeply misguided philosophies, we are allowing their arguments to shape the public image of what the word "feminist" means. That's a very bad idea. Feminism is in serious need of a PR makeover.
In a way I suppose what's coming through here is the Second Wave vs Third Wave divide. I can understand why the women who came before thought differently. I respect their right to their opinions. I don't think that means that I, or any other younger feminists, need to defer to them when I think they're wrong. I think that if we ever want to gain any traction for the movement in the court of public opinion we need to make it crystal clear that the movement has progressed, that most people abandoned essentialist thinking long ago. That may mean speaking out against our sisters when they say things we disagree with. It may mean agreeing to disagree.
I think that we need to move towards a new vision of what feminism means. That new visions needs to be much more inclusive than the one it's replacing. We need to open up the conversation to include the voices of women of color, and when they start talking the rest of us need to shut up and listen. We need to reach out to poor women in language they can understand, and take their concerns seriously. We need to reach out to women in the Third World, and we need to recognise that their lives matter every bit as much as ours do. We need to embrace and work with men who share our basic philosophy.
How big is that tent anyway? Is it big enough for all of us? I suspect it is. If it isn't it's time to built a bigger tent.