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From: gcf@mydog.uucp (Gordon Fitch)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: womyn-only space vs. men-only space?
Summary: Is the issue what is good, or what should be legal?
Message-ID: <9101050306.AA26239@panix>
Date: 7 Jan 91 06:56:34 GMT
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In article <19910102.1@mydog.uucp> gcf@mydog.uucp (Gordon Fitch) writes:
> One of the important elements of segregation which no one seems to be
> talking about (or which I missed; on Usenet, you never know) is the
> issue of power.  It matters whether those who seek to gather in groups
> of their own kind have status and power in the society in which they
> live, or not. ...

turpin@cs.ut xas.EDU (Russell Turpin):
| As with many threads discussing the rightness or wrongness of
| particular acts, it has become unclear in this one whether we are
| discussing what we should applaud and condemn, how we should make
| rules in various private institutions, or what we should legislate.
| ...
| Things are not so clear when one discusses what we should legislate.
| Currently, whether it is legal to exclude a particular class of people
| from a group depends in part on the group's purpose and nature.  This
| distinction is narrow: if the group's nature and purpose make it
| essentially a part of a particular kind of business, financial, or
| educational organization for which discrimination is actionable, then
| the group's discrimination is also actionable.
|
| Those who think there is no danger in having the state concern itself
| with the purpose of a group before deciding the legality of its
| activities are either overly optimistic or naive.  It is very prudent
| to keep such distinctions in law definite and narrow.
|                                     ...  It is a very dangerous
| precedent to have one law for the powerful, and another for the less
| powerful.  Such distinctions have always worked to the benefit of
| those in power, and regardless of the motives in creating such
| distinctions, I suspect they will always be bent toward that end.
| ....

I was originally speaking to ethical argument ("If _they_ can
have one, why can't _I_ have one?") which is how most of the
argument had been cast thus far.  However, gatherings like
Bohemian Grove had been introduced.  Another good example are
certain clubs in New York where extensive business and political
dealings are conducted, and which used to exclude women, and
were brought under various forms of official pressure.

Before we can take a position on Bohemian Grove and the like,
we have to ask what our goals are.  If our goal is merely to
populate Bohemian Grove with a more representative sampling of
manipulators and dominators, possibly legal action will work,
but I have no interest in it.  The coercive methods involved
in inserting the desired tokens would simply be a reflection
of, and submission to, the authoritarianism already implicit in
the goal. [1]

If, on the other hand, our goal is to get rid of authoritarian-
ism -- which is a feminist issue if we believe those feminists
who identify authoritarianism with patriarchy -- then the
solution to the problem of such gatherings as Bohemian Grove
lies not in improving the population statistics of the
gatherings, but removing ourselves from the authority of the
participants, at which point the statistics will become
irrelevant.  A development of this point, however, will go off
into general political theory, and is likely get me in trouble
with our moderators.
--
[1]  I might point out, though, that membership in
organizations that discriminate on the basis of ethnicity,
religion, or sex, has become political poison for those who
run for office.  Only freedom of speech and press is
necessary to expose the identity of these individuals, and
equal access to the ballot to punish them.  The boycott is
available to discipline private businesses.