Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!uunet!ora!daemon
From: mtxinu!sybase!violet!mysti@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Bookhouse Girl)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: womyn-only space vs. men-only space?
Message-ID: <12000@sybase.sybase.com>
Date: 2 Jan 91 02:32:10 GMT
References: <1990Oct31.185009.701@athena.mit.edu>
	<46160@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU>
	<1990Nov26.050132.24561@iti.org>
	<1990Nov30.021256.4293@cbnewsd.att.com>
Sender: ambar@ora.com (Jean Marie Diaz)
Reply-To: mtxinu!sybase!violet!mysti@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Bookhouse Girl)
Organization: Sybase, Inc.
Lines: 34
Approved: ambar@ora.com

In article <1990Nov30.021256.4293@cbnewsd.att.com> smann@ihlpa.att.com (Sherry Mann) writes:
>In article <1990Nov26.050132.24561@iti.org>, dhw@iti.org (David H. West) writes:
>>     Detroit officials hope to avoid a legal challenge by opening 
>>   enrollment to all students - while still designing the program primarily
>>   for black males.

>> Do those soc.feminism readers who support womanspace see the above as
>> a supportable instance of boyspace?

>I for one, and based on the information provided and what I have heard of
>such plans, do. 

Students with special needs in california are often given periods
within the day to meet together and learn in a safe environment, but
at least when I attended school it was forbidden to segregate all day
long, as it were.  How can women, or men, or black men, etc., discover
what they are all about aside from the external qualities associated
with their stereotyped label if they are kept grouped along those
lines?

If I think no man can bar me from any gathering in particular, as
difficult as it may be, I must not bar that man from any gathering in
particular.  At UCSanta Cruz all groups (used to be?) required to have
open admission policies.  How can anything else be morally defensible?

I keep seeing the argument that women "need" to have a space of their
own to get power.  It doesn't work that way.  We (women) need to learn
to change *OUR* behavior in the context of the whole world, not just a
safe and unchallenging subset of it.  Men's behavior will follow.
I've seen it happen that way.  Otherwise we are unavoidably
reinforcing the barriers.  And it is the barriers we should fight, not
the people behind them, IMHO.

Mysti