Post #2779794

I've had this discussion before. Symptom v disease As someone else said, speaking generally, women exclude men and men exclude women, both due to a large, problematic subset of men who believe women are inferior. Sex-/Gender- exclusive spaces sort of solve the problems of sexism, but in the same way a sandwich solves food insecurity, which is to say 'unsustainably, and in a very limited location.' However, creating sex-/gender- exclusive spaces is really only focusing on the secondary effects in a way that has no effect on the primary issue, and may in some cases make the issue worse. Nothing about a sex-/gender- exclusive space inherently creates a positive effect. Arguing against this truth is definitionally sex essentialism, a.k.a. sexism, because if you think something can only happen culturally because of sexual biology of the participants, you're there. It can be argued that an exclusive space may be a temporary necessary evil, but I'm leery of people saying 'let me do this bad thing now because I promise it will lead to better things someday.' A -only space innately encourages/enhances otherization. If you spend your time in a group that frames their definition of the world around some arbitrary distinction, which can be anything from sex to race to religion to job title to grooming habits, it encourages people to think of the division as meaningful. To a racist, your skin color tells them something significant about you. To a sexist, your sex does. And so on, and so on. To my knowledge, there are no current societies that view, say, toenail length as significant, so you won't see anyone making any clipper-only groups. However, you would know if you saw such a group, even if no one specifically told you, the organizers/members of that group believe the distinction is significant enough to warrant the separation. They would be, whether they knew or wanted to be or not, toenail-lengthists, or at the very least, participating willingly in toenail-lengthism.