In response to an article WHY we must keep feminist spaces and actions WOMEN ONLY and not mixed.

We have lost so many of our women only(much less Lesbian only) spaces, bookstores, events, businesses, ect. it's really saddening everytime we try to gather together AS WOMEN that other women are always crying 'what about the menz?" It doesn't matter if it's the Dyke March, Take Back the Night, Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, women's music concerts(which USED TO BE women only at times), or even our own bathrooms....

I have seen women include men in what used to be women only institutions(including female only martial arts schools, tradeswomen schools, tradeswomen conferences) that once even ONE MAN comes in, or one male born, it all becomes about him. He takes over.

The most recent occurrence was a tradeswomen conference I went to last year, and we had our own workshop for Lesbians in the Trades. There had to be at least 40 Lesbians in this workshop, and ONE MAN. He kept interrrupting, kept raising his hand, kept lecturing us, kept saying homophobic and sexist things, kept dominating the entire room. Only I and one or two others told him to sit down and shut up basically. The others were a bunch of sheep, but stronger than if it had been a room of straight women. He wasn't used to NOT being kowtowed to, and having women shut up and listen to his 'expertise'.

Men are so convinced they are right, they are superior, they are smarter, they are more informed, they are more educated than us...even if the women are all those things. Still because we're women, we can't POSSIBLY know as much as him, or even have something to teach HIM and know more. In their mind, it's an impossibility.

The same thing happened in the women's martial arts schools once they allowed men in, the same thing in a sexual harassment workshop I went to where the one leading it was a MALE lawyer and all women otherwise in the room. One man taints the environment.

They don't come in quietly, they don't absorb what we have to say, they don't listen to us.  They don't shut up and HEAR. And they cannot BE Feminists. They can be pro-feminist or work as hard as they can to be anti-sexist in their lives, but any man who claims he's 'feminist', is a man I'm not gonna trust, cuz he's never lived a day, a week, a month or a year in OUR shoes.....less opportunity for work, or to have the good jobs, the better salaries, to be taken serious, less opportunity to be sexually harassed and discriminated against, much less targeted for male sexual violence, less esteem, more obsession on how our bodies look, than on what our minds contain, and on and on and on...

Society is all about the male, and woman as his helpmate. EVen the most powerful women. Just look at the ads on tv...either the women are slathering over cars, or sex objects to sell a product, or they're bimbo housewife idiots selling a product to get women to clean, clean clean....the commercials are very, very demeaning to women.

If a woman does have some power(say Hillary Clinton or others) they are derided for not being feminine enough, soft enough, too aggressive, 'ball busting', too much like us Dykes...and then of course that's the worst thing a woman can be is a Dyke. Slut is ok, because they can use sluts. But Dyke is not, because we are INACCESSIBLE to men, and want all the privileges FOR OURSELVES as EQUALS.....and that men cannot have: uppity women who don't conform to the roles they EXPECT and demand from us to service THEM.

So for all these reasons, I AGREE with you. Mixed Feminist actions don't work, cuz ultimately they coddle the men, are defanged, and don't hold them accountable for male violence and oppression against us, economic, social, political, religious, sexual, intellectual, ect.

We need our fangs, our claws, our fierce eyes, and sharp minds!
                                  -In Sisterhood,
                                  -FeistyAmazon