Please remove if this is not a community to have this discussion.
I am a white cis het man living in the USA.
I am considering starting a local in-person group for white men to process their integration of feminism, anti-racism, decolonization, queerism, and anti-capitalism.
My intention is to support the process of liberating along those lines by reducing reactionary resistance, developing more traitors to the power structures, developing more effective allyship, and healing individual humans through community building, education, compassion, and support.
Has anyone done anything like this or seen it done or have any guidance or critique on this?
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I think it would be a good thing to have a place at which men can focus on those things. I do think you need to be wary of such a place eventually turning into a place at which ‘men talk about feminism without the feminist’ kind of thing you see around the internet.
Yes, I would need to study up on it constantly and have more feminist connections. I have done the personal work I need to exist in unsafe spaces for me so I can learn, but a lot of men cannot handle not having their feelings coddled, so I believe I can help them work through their shit as their feminist connections but I still need to work on my shit with people further along on the journey.
(cis het white male here)
I’m all for this, if it were in my area I’d make an effort to be a part of it.
Thanks for the feedback
2 points from what i’ve read and seen about the general problems such spaces have:
- watch carefully who bounces off your space and who sticks around longer. you will often be able to at least tell you have problems even if it takes a while to figure out what is causing them.
- you need explicit alliances with local feminist, anti-racist, etc groups, and you might consider making participation in those mandatory for inclusion in your space. if relations with those groups shift negatively, that can also help you head off problems before they get bad.
I have the alliance of an all-white antiracist group that formed when the black members of a black and white anti-racist told the white people they needed to put in their own labor to work on their own people.
I think waiting until I have an alliance with a local explicitly feminist group is an important step, thank you.
I do want to try to attract people who might have bad relations which such groups because my goal is to be part of the “pipeline” that helps them heal enough to reduce their reactionary responses and get into humble listening mode. Maybe that’s impossible or maybe that’s dangerous. What do you think?
i think it is good to try to get more people involved who want to help but have difficulty fitting in culturally (such as having some unexamined bigotry that causes social friction). the number one skill you will need is distinguishing between people who honestly want to help but they are having a hard time analyzing their own biases and people who think their biases are fundamentally correct and will not change. one of the important reasons to make those alliances will be helping distinguish those difficult cases.
Thank you!
not white, functionally cis, not het, and not man here lol. It sounds like your vision is for your space to be a stepping stone rather than a resting/stopping point. Wishing you good luck and the strength/skill to keep bad faith actors out of your project.
Thanks for the feedback and well wishes. Yes, I see it as a stepping stone and not a stopping point. My perception is that there is resistance that these men need to overcome in themselves and doing difficult work like that is easier with support. However, a group of white men can never be the source of all the stimulus needed to embark on the deconstruction that is needed.
I see it as a place that white men will return to over and over once they get over their initial resistance, because as they become less resistant they will find themselves encountering more things that trigger that resistance and make them uncomfortable, so I would like to be a place where they can process that as they deconsruct.
And finally, I would like to have those men who are further along in the journey come back to provide support to the men who are just beginning that journey, both as a way of developing themselves and also as a way of keeping bad actors from having major effects. I don’t imagine myself to be the only person who would be responsible for the immune system.
Your words are making me think more about the types of bad actors, their intents, and their methods. Thank you.
