Ah, I see the issue now—you are assuming that I’m saying that feminism has a model that we should directly emulate, whereas I am just saying that they are dealing with similar issues, and we have things to learn from them. In short, there are leaders in feminism who have been working on this issue, with some limited success and yes, a lot of failures. However, even if they were completely 100% failing, then there is still a very important thing that we can learn from them: what have they tried that didn’t work? It is just as important to figure out pitfalls and failed projects as it is to try and find successful case studies.
The key is getting that conversation started, and comparing notes. Your perception of feminism and the problems therein may change in the process, but most importantly we all may learn some important lessons that can be applied in EA (even if they do consist primarily of “hey this one solution really doesn’t work, if you do anything, do something else”).
If you are truly 100% not convinced that we can learn this from feminism, then that’s OK: you can talk to leaders of any other social movement instead, since many of them have dealt with and thought about similar problems. Your local union reps may be a good place to start!
“However, even if they were completely 100% failing, then there is still a very important thing that we can learn from them: what have they tried that didn’t work? It is just as important to figure out pitfalls and failed projects as it is to try and find successful case studies.”
This is completely fair. You’re right that I thought you were suggesting we should emulate, which on closer inspection isn’t an accurate reading of your post.
With that said, my experience of talking to the ‘nice’ people more internal to feminism (which includes my soon-to-be-wife, among others) about this is that they tend to deny or excuse the external optics problems, rather than making a bona fide attempt to deal with them. You can’t compare notes if they don’t have notes. If you know leaders who are aware of and actually trying to fix the problem, then I agree you should talk to them and I hope you do learn something of their positive or negative experiences which we might be able to apply.
Yeah, I can see how that could be an issue, and honestly I do lean towards the “the external optics problem is the patriarchy’s fault, not ours—telling us that we are ‘not nice enough’ is just a form of silencing, and you wouldn’t listen to us anyway if we were ‘nicer’” viewpoint, but I can see how that can make this discussion difficult. I’m just mostly hoping that the discussions on ‘calling-in’ within feminism move forward—even a quick google search shows that it’s popping up on a lot of the feminist sights targeted to younger audiences—it may be on oncoming change, and hopefully it’ll pick up steam.
This is an excellent comment that clarifies a lot. I completely agree with everything you’ve said in this comment, but I also agree with AGB that, at least from an outsider’s perspective, it is hard to find people within feminism who have “notes” that we could learn from. Of course, an insider like yourself would likely have a much better ability to locate such ideas.
Ah, I see the issue now—you are assuming that I’m saying that feminism has a model that we should directly emulate, whereas I am just saying that they are dealing with similar issues, and we have things to learn from them. In short, there are leaders in feminism who have been working on this issue, with some limited success and yes, a lot of failures. However, even if they were completely 100% failing, then there is still a very important thing that we can learn from them: what have they tried that didn’t work? It is just as important to figure out pitfalls and failed projects as it is to try and find successful case studies.
The key is getting that conversation started, and comparing notes. Your perception of feminism and the problems therein may change in the process, but most importantly we all may learn some important lessons that can be applied in EA (even if they do consist primarily of “hey this one solution really doesn’t work, if you do anything, do something else”).
If you are truly 100% not convinced that we can learn this from feminism, then that’s OK: you can talk to leaders of any other social movement instead, since many of them have dealt with and thought about similar problems. Your local union reps may be a good place to start!
“However, even if they were completely 100% failing, then there is still a very important thing that we can learn from them: what have they tried that didn’t work? It is just as important to figure out pitfalls and failed projects as it is to try and find successful case studies.”
This is completely fair. You’re right that I thought you were suggesting we should emulate, which on closer inspection isn’t an accurate reading of your post.
With that said, my experience of talking to the ‘nice’ people more internal to feminism (which includes my soon-to-be-wife, among others) about this is that they tend to deny or excuse the external optics problems, rather than making a bona fide attempt to deal with them. You can’t compare notes if they don’t have notes. If you know leaders who are aware of and actually trying to fix the problem, then I agree you should talk to them and I hope you do learn something of their positive or negative experiences which we might be able to apply.
Yeah, I can see how that could be an issue, and honestly I do lean towards the “the external optics problem is the patriarchy’s fault, not ours—telling us that we are ‘not nice enough’ is just a form of silencing, and you wouldn’t listen to us anyway if we were ‘nicer’” viewpoint, but I can see how that can make this discussion difficult. I’m just mostly hoping that the discussions on ‘calling-in’ within feminism move forward—even a quick google search shows that it’s popping up on a lot of the feminist sights targeted to younger audiences—it may be on oncoming change, and hopefully it’ll pick up steam.
Congratulations on your engagement by the way!
This is an excellent comment that clarifies a lot. I completely agree with everything you’ve said in this comment, but I also agree with AGB that, at least from an outsider’s perspective, it is hard to find people within feminism who have “notes” that we could learn from. Of course, an insider like yourself would likely have a much better ability to locate such ideas.