Talk:Feminist separatism

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Origin of radical lesbianism

I've tagged the Radical lesbianism section of this article as {{Contradictory}}:

• this article (Feminist separatism) claims an origin for radical lesbianism in France and Quebec in the 1980s.
• Radical lesbianism claims an origin in the US in the 1950s and 60s, spreading to Quebec, then France.

This conflict needs to be resolved. Mathglot (talk) 07:12, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Well, it would appear that the Quebec claim is not the earliest, but that the 1950s, 60s claims are more accurate. I trace that back to this line in History_of_lesbianism_in_the_United_States#1950s:_The_Kinsey_Report: "The Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) was founded in San Francisco in 1955 by four same-sex female couples (including the lesbians Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon) and was the first national lesbian political and social organization in the United States." Cleopatran Apocalypse (talk) 17:49, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

@Mathglot:, I think you're bound to find contradictions as these are social movements developed around the globe, and they may not all be connected; some of these movements espousing similar ideas may emerge independently of each other in response to local conditions. Breve reseña de ALGUNAS TEORÍAS LÉSBICAS by Jules Falquet makes this explicit, saying, "More generally, "political lesbianism" arises in different parts and times, from ruptures and at the same time attempts to reconcile with feminism. Therefore, it appears under quite varied forms and denominations, sometimes intermingled and difficult to separate completely. The difficulty is even greater if one takes into account the way in which theories travel from one country to another, with sometimes approximate translations - given that the same term as "radical" or "separatist" has very different connotations depending on the language and above all the history of the struggles in each country." (Spanish: De manera más general, el "lesbianismo político" nace en diferentes partes y épocas, de las rupturas y a la vez de los intentos de conciliación con el feminismo. Por tanto, se presenta bajo formas y denominaciones bastante variadas, a veces entremezcladas y difíciles de separar cabalmente. La difi cultad es aún mayor si se toma en cuenta la forma en que las teorías viajan de un país a otro, con traducciones a veces aproximadas —dado que un mismo término como "radical" o "separatista" tiene connotaciones muy diferentes según los idiomas y sobre todo la historia de las luchas en cada país—.). This point could and should probably be made more clearly in both articles, to make a more broader scope. It actually addresses the issue of different types and dates most effectively. --LauraHale (talk) 08:12, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

I see you've changed the article in this edit, which resolves the contradiction as it no longer makes that claim, but correctly assigns an earlier origin in the United States. So the acute problem is now solved, and removing the template was reasonable.

Maybe a larger discussion by Falquet might be interesting, but I don't see the relevance of the quotation to the discussion. That quotation has nothing specific to say about the rise of radical lesbianism in the United States, France, or Quebec. To note, as Falquet does, that certain types of theories arise in multiple places and times seems like acknowledging a commonplace throughout history. I don't see that he's saying "they may not be connected" and I think that's an untenable thesis. I probably shouldn't have tagged this as a contradiction, but simply tagged the assertion in this article as disputed, because claiming that Radical lesbian feminism arose in the 1980s is unsupportable. (Btw, where did you run across this? Copies of it are rare, and Worldcat is only aware of one copy in a North American library, and none in Europe.)

Where the article now says, "In Francophone countries, the... radical lesbian movement... originated in France in the early 1980s.", it depends how you read some of Wittig's earlier writings and when they got taken up. Wittig's early works like Les Guérillères are from the sixties (one can argue whether that novel expressed radical feminism, but some think so), and there was also the Gouines rouges, for example, active well before that. If the "1980s" date is supposed to be aligned to responses to The Straight Mind, that's from a lecture in 1978, published in 1980. If that's the milestone, one has to watch the wording "In Francophone countries..." and maybe change it to, "From Francophone authors..." or some such, as it was written while Wittig was a professor in Arizona. Mathglot (talk) 01:23, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

I honestly think that Francophone and Anglo-Saxon feminism may have some crossover, but sources are pretty clear that they are divergent in many ways from feminism elsewhere as neither of those particular models had to deal with dictatorships or brutally repressive regimes. That historical context changes how information is shared and what information gets filtered. They might have some influence from some readings but lots of these movements do develop organically. Trying to assign credit in any one place seems inherently problematic, and it denies agency of women involved in indigenous feminist movements in their own country by suggesting these would not have happened without the influence of foreigners. The situations in many countries dictate that such change or rather resistance to repressive regimes is inevitable, with unique locally situated responses. Or is there something I am missing from countries like Mexico and Argentina? In any case, the issues of influences in a national feminist context are probably best left to articles like Feminist separatism in the United States, Feminist separatism in Canada and Feminist separatism in France where such subtly make more sense without forcing all feminist separatist movements to use an Anglo-Saxon model, no matter how inappropriate and no matter how skewed globally they make the text. --LauraHale (talk) 07:46, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure why we use anglo-saxon instead of anglophone. Anyway. I still see this line - "After gaining momentum in the U.S., radical lesbianism made its way to Canada in the 1970s." in the Radical feminism article. I suppose you can read it as causal. Skimming through the source given -- it's about LOOT in Toronto. In the separatist article, it cites Wittig. I've always heard that de Beauvoir influenced feminism in quebec, but I wouldn't call de Beauvoir a separatist. If i may, i'd like to alert you @Mathglot: to a discussion on the talk page of Talk:Material_feminism about changing the article title.Fred (talk) 17:14, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

Anglo-Saxon is better than Anglophone because there are huge tensions between white western feminism and non-white western feminism. (Which is discussed in huge bodies of feminist discussion inside the academy, particularly by black and Hispanic feminists.) The racial component needs acknowledgement. --LauraHale (talk) 10:23, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

Misandry

This movement seems highly misandrist, considering the belief that "men cannot make positive contributions to the feminist movement and that even well-intentioned men replicate the dynamics of patriarchy". Maybe making it clearer if this is the case, or discussing misandry in the movement, would be worthwhile. 118.208.172.85 (talk) 12:25, 22 May 2021 (UTC)