Thought that some people on here might be interested. It's being organised by Education Not For Sale, a collective of socialist-feminist student women (and me, cos I'm doing the men's meeting bit).

Come along!

FIGHT BACK FOR WOMEN'S LIBERATION
Feminist Fightback is a conference for feminist activists, which will be held in London on Saturday 21 October (venue tbc).

We want to build a feminist movement that fights. A feminist movement that is about activism, not just talk; about grassroots campaigning, not just lobbying; about politics, not just lifestyle choices; and about liberation for all, not just equality for a privileged few.

The conference will include a variety of speakers, discussion and activist training workshops on themes including sexual liberation, international solidarity and women's struggles as workers. Planned sessions include:
Pornography, objectification and freedom of speech
Equal pay, low pay and workers' struggle
Prostitutes: workers or victims?
The fight for abortion rights - planning actions for the next year
Building campaigning women's groups
Against war, against theocracy - Iranian women fight back
Feminist Fightback is free and open to all; see the Get Involved box for more information on how to get involved. The agenda is a work in progress - check back soon for updates.

www.fightback.org.uk

safe integration aint no revolution but an inevitability
sorry but assimilation just dont seem like no victory to me
define and divide
divide and rule
as i said in another thread group "revolutions" ...oooh spooooky
are easily infiltrated
THAWNGARCHY NOW!!!!

So you're the ones who ruined feminism!

If you want to actually get things done instead of hoping for Utopia (fiction btw) then take it one issue at a time and stop other agendas from making the communtiy panties sloppy.

OK, here's something I've never got. In the whole thing of trying to achieve gender equality, are men supposed to be as "good" (from a feminist perspective) as women, or are women just going to try and be as "bad" as men? Because the second one's easier, but it does make all that hippy earthmother/Valerie Solanas stuff about emotional fulfillment and internal oneness seem pretty obsolete when modern feminism seems to aspire to little more than drinking vodbull til you pass out three nights a week. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there's anything inherently wrong with that, but whenever the "lad-ette" subculture ankles itself to feminism I do puke a tiny bit.

feminism is the lamest, most full-of-shit thing ive ever heard of.

"boo hoo, i have a pussy so no one thinks im tough.." ya know what? i have a cock. most women have thought it was pretty fucking big too, in a thickness sort of sense, rather than lengthy. and ya know what else? im still getting fucked left and right by everyone who has more money than me.

find a new excuse for your weakness, mmkay?

that wasnt nice generallyn and genderally since they need that there too
their hearts are in the right place

Their hearts are in their uteri.

how was it not nice? they need an enemy so bad, why dont they wake the fuck up and look at the enemy?

i believe in equality among regular people. men women, whatever. i love women, and i respect and admire them for what they are and what they go through. but as soon as they start whining about liberation, i turn into a stone. and until im liberated, and until you are liberated, and the earth is liberated... ive got no time to hear about how men suck.

obviously men suck. but so do women. and they jump and say men are in power, men are paid too much and all that.. bullshit.

rich white guys are the enemy, not MEN in general.

"feminism" would be a lot more productive if it brought people together, instead of (like you said) dividing them.

You should write for Vice. What they do is still fresh.

LOL WELCOME TO 2003

All the same, I don't think it's unreasonable that women should be paid the same as men for doing the same wake, and that is still one way in which people are discriminated against for their gender. OK, it's not the whole male sex doing it, but no-one's actually saying that it is.

sure. but a man who goes to harvard is going to be paid more than a man who goes to u.c. berkeley, for the same job.

there's a ton of discrimination out there. and the more small groups we have to complain about it SEPARATELY, the more it is perpetuated.

until 50 years ago, black people were on the same level as dogs in this country. now.. they're almost "as good as" poor white people. and what good did their Million Man March do?

we need ALL of us to get together. not a group for chicks, a group for black people, a group for gay dudes, a group for lesbians, a group for marijuana smokers, a group for etc etc etc... blah blah.

without unity, we're all fucked.. regardless of who's the top and who's the bottom.

i dont understand this post.

thanks for posting turn left
sounds good
i'll probably be back at uni (in swansea) by then which is annoying but i'll try to come back to go there...

Thing is, people feel marginalised by the inequities. I understand what you're saying fully, and it's probably really uncool to mention that movements like Women's Lib, Gay Rights etc only really took off when they gained the support/sympathy of the straight white male population. Unity does help, but the problem is that that unity is quite often not voiced.

Don't worry, I was just being a dickhead.

it's one of those accidental genderqueer things that are really unthoughtout and more to do with economics and youth culture than feminism. i don't think it was ever a goal of feminism to consume more alcohol.

hippy earthmother crap is just essentialist nonsense. o warmongering men, let me heal you! whatever. it makes me want to be violent. (wait. that's where you came in, isn't it.) i don't like the annie sprinkle meditate on my cervix version either. i like it when political movements make a greater range of possibilities.

Thats because all the fucking press goes to the "Feminist movement" and the other individual groups. people like to raise a larger voice for themselves, not for everyone. so... divert attention away from the michigan womens' festival and the rainbow gatherings and the gay pride parades. focus more on "youth against fascism" or something else that's drastically less noble...

im pretty sure we're all struggling. but we sure as fuck dont want to struggle together, because that would imply that we're all equally fucked. and that wouldn't explain why one group is more fucked than the others...

humans are, by nature, pitymongerers.

i agree with you that hierarchies of oppression just aren't that useful. but i don't agree that for progress to be made, difference has to be overlooked. i think overlooking difference leads to... well, to reductionism, to transparency of power relationships, and to a stagnancy that's hard to escape from unless you look at the things that really matter TO YOU and do something about them.

Suggesting that people are all the same is inaccurate, but it's a useful stepping stone for people. It's quite hard to take someone from "people who are different to me are inferior" to "people who are different to me are equal", without going through "people who are different from me are equal because they're not different". You need to pretend that equality means treating everyone the same before you can explain that it doesn't, otherwise people don't see any need to change their outlook. I hope that makes sense, because I can't come up with any better way of articulating it.