and it says, a little way down, "Currently there are no Hosts assigned to this group"; with a link to contact admin if you want to become the first one.

Note that any hosts assigned during the test phase were removed, so if there were any, they need to re-apply.

On edit: Groups are now meant to obtain consensus for the first host, before applying. See new instructions at: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1013434

certainly useful

IMHO we need to give it some time (a week at least) for those interested to find their way here, think about it, and volunteer. There are 50 subscribers to this group right now. That's a lot of potential candidates. I'd like to see who wants to take the lead.

I agree with Pri that it would be good to have secondary hosts for the reasons she cited and I would be happy to be one, but I can't see myself as the alpha host.

So what do we do now?

on that too

And I will be happy to help co-host as well.

Being a safe haven, it does need a host. If they're willing to do it, I'd nominate iverglas and seabeyond...

almost spit out my drink when i saw me on there, lol. i am a host of a forum that hardly has anything. i dont know how to do anything. and i am not authoritative, lol lol. totally passive.

i will think about it, but lets see if there are women that want to. i am all for nominating.... YOU. i think you are such a good pick. YOU are not controversial. as many people that like me, dislike me. i wouldnt want someone to not come in here cause of that. i want everyone welcome.

One, you'd be surprised at how disliked controversial I am. I've had nearly ten years to build up a solid following!

Two. I've read, but haven't participated till now. Plus hosting the Australia group keeps me busy all day every day

Seriously, you should think about it, seabeyond. I think at least you should do the co-hosting thing...

There was me in another thread, being lazy and not looking for this one, and volunteering.

Not even jointly, seabeyond?

Before discussing hosts, I'd like to see the statement of purpose from the old board imported and pinned here.

I reproduce it below, with my own emphasis, and I might add to it, myself, that if you say or imply that anyone who holds any position you might disagree with on an issue relating to women's status is an "uptight, sexually-repressed prude", or in any other way insultingly misrepresent the position taken by someone you disagree with and the person who holds that position, you will be shown the door.

The Women's Rights group is still available for anyone who feels a need to discuss related issues and feels unable to sign on to the statement of purpose.

-------------------------------------------

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=341x1

The purpose of the DU Feminists Group is to provide a safe and non-threatening community where all those interested in discussing and trying to resolve the problems that are inherent to women in society can come and work together free from defending the basic premise that issues do exist which specifically affect and limit women, their rights and their potential.

We believe that women do not start on the same rung as men on the ladder of success; that misogyny and sexism do indeed exist in America circa 2005; and that the progress made for women's rights is being seriously and immediately threatened by this administration.

The goal of this group is to understand the problems (and how they affect women), identify the myriad causes (and how they can limit a woman's vision and opportunity) and propose solutions (and how we can bring those solutions in a meaningful way out into the greater community).

About this Group

- This is not a group to discuss gender, class or sexual orientation rights and issues. It is specifically to discuss women's rights and issues as they affect women from a woman's perspective and experience.

- If, for example, you believe that women have already achieved "full participation in the mainstream of American society..., exercising all privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men... in all aspects of citizenship, public service, employment, education, and family life,"* then this is not the group for you.

- If, for example, you believe that women who have concerns about the prevalance of pornography in our society are uptight, sexually-repressed prudes who need to be enlightened to the "facts" and "realities" of the sex industry, this is not the group for you.

- The terms "feminist/feminism" and "misogyny" have established meanings in the context of women's history. While terminology may be debated, the denigration of these relevant terms will not be allowed.

- Attempts to minimize or dismiss women and/or the issues being discussed are not welcome.

- Like-minded DUers of all genders are encouraged to participate.

* Excerpted from NOW's "Statement of Purpose". http://www.now.org/organization/bylaws.html#ArticleII

A couple of the groups I co-host did that. It's easier than changing the "official" SoP.

Alrighty: my suggestion is that anybody volunteering or accepting a nomination for host sign on to the statement of purpose adopted by the group already:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=341x1

I hereby do.

whatever i am thirding on....

and I might add to it, myself, that if you say or imply that anyone who holds any position you might disagree with on an issue relating to women's status is an "uptight, sexually-repressed prude", or in any other way insultingly misrepresent the position taken by someone you disagree with and the person who holds that position, you will be shown the door.

I don't know whether it's worth adding alongside 'uptight, sexually-repressed prude' a mention about accusing those who do support women's rights of being sexist themselves. I've seen that happen recently, which is why I'm mentioning it...

Apart from that, it all looks good...

by this part of the SoP:

'The terms "feminist/feminism" and "misogyny" have established meanings in the context of women's history. While terminology may be debated, the denigration of these relevant terms will not be allowed.'



Just for info, I posted this in a thread here back in November, and it might be useful on that point.


Sexism and misogyny are different. A rough equivalent would be the difference between racialism and racism:

ra·cial·ism
1. a. An emphasis on race or racial considerations, as in determining policy or interpreting events.
. . b. Policy or practice based on racial considerations.
2. Chiefly British Variant of racism.

rac·ism
1. The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.
2. Discrimination or prejudice based on race.

Discrimination and prejudice are different, but "racism" tends to be used in North America to cover both. A practice of not hiring people of a particular race is "racist" (but perhaps more accurately "racialist&quot ; a person who hates people of a particular race is "racist".

For sex, the former (discrimination, advocating discrimination) would be "sexist" and the latter (prejudice) "misogynist".



Perhaps it would be misogynist to accuse women's rights advocates of being sexist.

eta: I do agree that we should discuss whether our SoP should be the same as DU2.

so I am not in the best position to propose hosts -- but based on dedication and contribution to this group (and leaving aside the unwilling seabeyond ) I would like to nominate redqueen.

regardless of the number of all the reason.

so very easy, i am.

I accept the nomination to serve as host or co-host, and agree to the SOP.

I know I'm probably thought of as controversial as well, however I like to think that despite my strong opinions and firmly-held beliefs, that I would serve capably.

Just to complicate matters -- if there isn't one of those fine consensus things and we need an elimination round, or actually just for participating in the decision one way or another -- I would be grateful, at least, if anyone who wants to participate would also sign on to the SoP.

Can I suggest?

- a consensus that redqueen be host,

and that she then (as I understand the system works)

- appoint co-hosts as consensus in this thread decides

- pin the old statement of purpose on the board


co-host proposals seem to be

seabeyond
La Lioness Priyanka
PeaceNikki
iverglas


I'd suggest two co-hosts.

Could we to respond to this post (i.e. this one of mine here, to keep it kind of organized) with our choices of

- host name
- two co-host names

?

I contacted her privately and she agreed to have her name in the pool.

Also, I don't think this decision should be buried in this thread. There have already been at least two groups where a host was assigned without a real opportunity for the group to discuss and comment on the choices. In both cases new hosts were chosen. While redqueen is popular in this thread (and certainly should be a strong candidate for host) there are 70+ subscribers and only a handful have weighed in.

This is an old thread and I strongly suggest that we start a new thread specifically asking for subscribers to vote on choices.

I didn't have the whole thread open and was working from careless memory.

I'll start a new thread!

I think anyone interested in hosting/co-hosting should add to it herself.

that seems to intentionally not want a queer/people of color/poverty analysis of feminism.

"This is not a group to discuss gender, class or sexual orientation rights and issues. It is specifically to discuss women's rights and issues as they affect women from a woman's perspective and experience. "

I had forgotten that the old one excluded so many with that phrase. Since the longest thread in the DU3 version concerns 2nd vs. 3rd wave there seems to be interest here in discussing feminism beyond that exclusion.

On the part of what one might call "regular" members of this group - certainly.

But there is a considerable volume of posts in that thread that express views quite contrary to the SoP adopted for the original group. Discussion of the alleged waves of feminism is one thing; posts from people claiming to be "third-wave feminists" but plainly not sharing any of the analysis that this group was founded on, and confronting long-standing members on what had been understood to be the common analyses of the group, are another.

In the past, the Women's Rights forum was available for discussions of that nature. It still is.

Put simply, I'm not interested in this group at all, if I am to be faced with this kind of confrontation. If I want that, and I seldom do, I can go to GD. Or go find somebody to argue with in real life. I stopped doing that a long time ago, too.

Let's remember this has always been a protected group -- just like other groups on DU. People who don't like that can go somewhere else, and are welcome to invite members of this group to engage them there. Or not, if that is their choice. We have that choice too: not to be engaged by DU members who seek confrontation over what we regard as fundamental issues and analyses. And most especially not to be told to move to the back of the bus. That is what the part of the SoP referred to says:

"This is not a group to discuss gender, class or sexual orientation rights and issues. It is specifically to discuss women's rights and issues as they affect women from a woman's perspective and experience."

Without some common ground -- and yes, some exclusions -- this is just GD writ small.

It is for the group to decide what is fundamental, not for anyone who might want to post here, for whatever reason. And it was decided originally that simply cloaking one's self in the label "feminist", of whatever wave, was not adequate for that purpose.

and discussion of whether those exclusions are too exclusive.

i think we will know intent or agenda in a post.

but i like that we have discussed so many things in this forum already.

Open and honest discussion of feminism from different viewpoints, although I think it generally takes more than one post to ferret out people who are here just to be difficult.

type arguments, we are all on our way to figuring it out.

but

i am certainly not afraid disagreeing adn discussing. there are women i respect soooooooo much and will disagree with a particular issue, or angle or even a lot of issues. doesnt mean i dont want to chat. i do. doesnt mean i need to be coddled, i dont.

when dishonesty and namecalling and purposeful misrepresentation comes into the mix, then we all experienced net users recognize that.

since the default especially in academia now is certainly not second wave feminism

Whatever this "second wave feminism" stuff is, it seems to be entirely US-centric. I am not a resident of the US. My feminism has always involved both the personal and the political, and acknowledged the common interests with other disadvantaged groups. My life has always included sex. I am not Betty Friedan or whatever other icon of your "second wave" you might be wanting to portray me/us as.

I'm also not willing to accept one person's, or any group of people's, definition of "third wave feminism" that happens to suit their purposes. Discussions of what it is are interesting. Using it as a blunt instrument to hit women women over the head with who, for example, perceive and oppose the objectification of women in the broader culture, and in some alleged manifestations of feminism within that culture, is not.

Allowing women to define feminism for themselves, as that well-worn wiki article phrases it, is bullshit. There, I've said it.

"The fact that feminism is no longer limited to arenas where we expect to see it — NOW, Ms., women's studies, and redsuited Congresswomen ..." -- well for me it never was. Feminism did not exist only in the USofA in the 1970s. I was working with women who were in conflict with the criminal justice system, and with low-income women and refugee women. My classmates were organizing and representing immigrant working women and mounting legal challenges to discriminatory legislation and policies in the fields of unemployment insurance and family property rights and the rights of Aboriginal women and foreign domestic workers. My friends and other local women were running shelters for victims of spousal violence and crisis centres for victims of sexual violence. My party's MPs were working to enact legislation that advanced women's interests in every realm.

And of course there were all those women themselves -- low-income and immigrant and visible minority and Aboriginal and so on. The claim was that they were excluded, but I didn't see it myself. Some of their concerns may have been invisible in the women's movement as they were in the broader society (especially true of Aboriginal women), but I'm not going to blame us feminists for that and I never agreed with the "third wave" criticism on that point. To me, it just amounted to blaming the victim: women, and feminists specifically, were supposed to be curing all the ills of the world, once again. Don't blame men in the groups in question (like the men who exploited Aboriginal prostitutes or the male trade union leaders who ignored low-income working women), or the broader society; blame women and feminists.

Here's something said in Canada about the "third wave" recently:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/third-wave-of-feminism-urged-by-prominent-canadian-women/article1701942/

I actually don't have a great deal of respect for McTeer, whom I once knew and whom you would certainly call "second-wave" in the most pejorative sense (her claim to fame, other than being a Prime Minister's wife - who kept her surname - is her work in the field of reproductive technology and the law), let alone another Conservative Party speaker named there, but I certainly agree with that last comment. And in Canada, it is critiques of that kind of "third-wave feminism" that you are most likely to see. They somehow think that the superficial is sufficient. The "personal" is not always superficial. But a hell of a lot of the time, it damned well is.

I wonder whether the way to stop feeling alienated from the feminist movement might be to actually join it ...

As I understand it, the "third wave" originated in the challenge to the "second wave" by women who felt excluded and that their interests were not being considered - women of colour. That's certainly what happened here in Canada, and it got pretty nasty. And it sure ain't what I hear hereabouts when I hear "third wave".

Anyhow.

I would appreciate it if you would refrain from dismissing the concerns of women in this group, that being all the post I am replying to does.

The "queer" take on pornography, for instance -- and I am not entirely ignorant of more learnèd discourse on that than one finds at DU -- does NOT overrule or invalidate the take that a large number of straight feminists (and lesbian feminists as well) have on it. The fact that some straight "third wave" feminists do not share, actually refuse to address, our analyses and concerns does not mean our analyses and concerns are illegitimate, let alone that their analyses are all legitimate.

The availability of same-sex marriage does not mean that marriage is not a patriarchal institution designed and used to oppress women. The existence of gay and lesbian pornography does not mean that pornography produced for straight men, the vast bulk of what is produced and used, is not a phenomenon that contributes to the oppression of all women - half the population. The existence of happy hookers in one country, of any sex / sexual orientation / gender identity, does not mean that prostitution is not an institution that oppresses vast millions of women. Just as the presence of a few women in the legislative chambers and boardrooms of a nation does not mean that women are not economically exploited and discriminated against in that country even.

No one's exceptional experience, or personal or group "perspective", invalidates our experience and the perspective it gives us, or the overarching reality we know exists.

Here is where my feminism intersects with my progressivism.

Being progressive means recognizing vulnerability to exploitation and oppression, and agreeing that in order to protect vulnerable individuals and groups from genuine and serious harm, I may have to agree to waive some exercises of my own freedoms.

This too is complex. What if the group being asked to waive is itself disadvantaged and oppressed? What if the freedom is more crucial to their situation than it is to mine? Matter for serious discussion there. I'm not interested in using pornography or prostitutes. If a group I don't belong to claims that one of those phenomena is crucial to its efforts to gain recognition of the human dignity of its members for who and what they are and without them having to conform to some other paradigm, do I capitulate on behalf of the people I know are seriously harmed by the phenomena? (I don't bother responding to the "nobody is the boss of me" argument, since a progressive doesn't make it.) Can I say that their position is still inimical to the interests of the people who deserve my concern? Can I say, even, that those people win, in my estimation? Others say no; why can I not say yes?

Because women are less worthy of our concern than the other group in question?

We can discuss whether it would benefit each group to consider the other's perspective and whether each group's efforts might be another road to the same thing (will same-sex marriage and gay/lesbian porn actually subvert the phenomena in a way that benefits women?).

But, in this group, I am not going to be told that my concerns as a woman are secondary, my analysis as a feminist is wrong, or I am a homophobe or racist or any other vile thing because I refuse to sit at the back of the bus or throw other women under it.

You participated in the thread in the GLBT group in which I was attacked. You have several posts there.

Does your identification with that community overcome your aversion to seeing women attacked - by false allegation to boot - for expressing a feminist view? -- in that case, expressing disapproval of heterosexual men rating women on their appearance at a website for people who supposely hold values that include the equal rights and dignity of women, and subsequently expressing disapproval of beauty pageants in general, and in fact saying precisely fuck all in any way about the GLBT community or people?

Why did you think it appropriate to comment approvingly on things said in that thread, and not to disapprove of what was said about and to me?

How is what you did in the interests of women, and consistent with the values held by feminists?


edit - and frankly, I have to state straight out that I oppose you being a host of this group, for that reason if no other: you legitimized the attack on a woman speaking as a woman, from a woman's perspective and experience (and worse, an attack based on a demonstrably false allegation), and you legitimized the dismissal of feminist concerns and analysis, by your complicity there.

And that ain't consistent with any SoP a group I want to belong to would adopt.

given that you seem not to agree with the SoP, at least as you say you understand it.

There's nothing in that statement that says that the issues mentioned should not be discussed here as they relate to women's issues -- see, for example, the thread on what people consider to be the most important issues today.

The reference to "women's rights and issues as they affect women from a woman's perspective and experience" indicates how the discussion is to be framed; it does not define "women's issues".

I'm a socialist feminist. In the thread I mentioned, I referred to the chicken-egg nature of the question: can women be safe w/o economic security, can women have economic security w/o being safe? e.g. That chicken-eggness is of course inherent in women's issues as it is in the issues of any other disadvantaged group.

A discussion of whether it is reasonable to expect to achieve safety for women without reforming the economic system would not be problematic, to my mind, since if focuses on the concerns and interests of women. If it broadened to include assertions that feminists should work to reform the economic system in the interests of other groups rather than working to further women's safety interests, or to focus instead on, say, the safety interests of blue-collar men that feminists should work to further because of their common safety interests, disregarding women's economic interests, that would cross the line, to my mind.

I would see no problem in discussion of how various groups' concerns and interests intersect with women's, and how that might affect feminists' analysis and actions.

It is the setting up of the concerns of another group as overriding the concerns of women qua women that I think is the problem. The consensus in this group in the past has been that there has been and is quite enough of that elsewhere. The consensus has been, and the original reason for the group was, that feminists here don't want to be told that women should sit in the back of the bus, or be thrown under that bus, in the Feminists group.

I do think members of other groups might understand that.

I know that the poverty analysis is important to you. It is to me as well; over the years of my law practice, for example, I did considerable work with low-income women / women in social housing / foreign domestic workers and the like. I'm a member of a social democratic political party. I have been talking about income inequality (in the general sense) at DU for years , since long, long before it became the idea du jour in the US. For example, in a "poverty analysis" of crime rates in 2003:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=118&topic_id=1900&mesg_id=1930

What I generally argue in such situations is that, e.g., one does not say "crime cannot be addressed unless and until we narrow the income gap". Crime can be addressed by various other measures while awaiting economic utopia.

Ditto for women's concerns and measures to advance women's interests. It is not illegitimate to talk about such concerns from the perspective of women and not the perspective of any other group one might mention, and to take such measures without revolutionizing the entire social and economic system. It is not illegitimate to talk about how present circumstances harm women without talking about how they also harm other groups. It is instructive to examine the intersections, but it is not legitimate to dismiss the concerns of women as women, and the discourse of feminists as feminists, because they do not coincide with the concerns or analysis of some members of another social or economic or other group.

I don't claim to speak for anyone else in this, but I think, personally, that the hosts of the group should be on board with that fundamental vision of the group.