Twitter: Jetzt fallen die Feministinnen übereinander her

Wir Männerrechtler können schon seit langem ein Lied von ständigen Anfeindungen auf Twitter, in der Wikipedia und in der feministischen Blogosphäre singen. Inzwischen aber beginnen Feministinnen, sich auch gegenseitig fertigzumachen und mit Rechtsradikalen zu vergleichen. Ein enorm ausführlicher Artikel über das aktuelle Gemetzel regt mich dazu an, ebenfalls sehr ausführlich daraus zu zitieren:

Martin was floored. She’s long believed that it’s incumbent on feminists to be open to critique—but the response was so vitriolic, so full of bad faith and stubborn misinformation, that it felt like some sort of Maoist hazing. Kendall, for example, compared #Femfuture to Rebecca Latimer Felton, a viciously racist Southern suffragist who supported lynching because she said it protected white women from rape. "It was really hard to engage in processing real critique because so much of it was couched in an absolute disavowal of my intentions and my person," Martin says.

(...) Though Mukhopadhyay continues to believe in the empowering potential of online feminism, she sees that much of it is becoming dysfunctional, even unhealthy. "Everyone is so scared to speak right now," she says.

(...) Even as online feminism has proved itself a real force for change, many of the most avid digital feminists will tell you that it’s become toxic. Indeed, there’s a nascent genre of essays by people who feel emotionally savaged by their involvement in it — not because of sexist trolls, but because of the slashing righteousness of other feminists. On January 3, for example, Katherine Cross, a Puerto Rican trans woman working on a PhD at the CUNY Graduate Center, wrote about how often she hesitates to publish articles or blog posts out of fear of inadvertently stepping on an ideological land mine and bringing down the wrath of the online enforcers. "I fear being cast suddenly as one of the ‘bad guys’ for being insufficiently radical, too nuanced or too forgiving, or for simply writing something whose offensive dimensions would be unknown to me at the time of publication," she wrote.

(...) Further, as Cross says, "this goes to the heart of the efficacy of radical movements." After all, this is hardly the first time that feminism — to say nothing of other left-wing movements — has been racked by furious contentions over ideological purity. Many second-wave feminist groups tore themselves apart by denouncing and ostracizing members who demonstrated too much ambition or presumed to act as leaders. As the radical second-waver Ti-Grace Atkinson famously put it: "Sisterhood is powerful. It kills. Mostly sisters."

(...) In "Trashing: The Dark Side of Sisterhood," a 1976 Ms. magazine article, Jo Freeman described how feminists of her generation destroyed one another. Trashing, she wrote, is "accomplished by making you feel that your very existence is inimical to the Movement and that nothing can change this short of ceasing to exist. These feelings are reinforced when you are isolated from your friends as they become convinced that their association with you is similarly inimical to the Movement and to themselves. Any support of you will taint them ... You are reduced to a mere parody of your previous self."

(...) Similarly, there’s a norm that intention doesn’t matter — indeed, if you offend someone and then try to explain that you were misunderstood, this is seen as compounding the original injury. Again, there’s a significant insight here: people often behave in bigoted ways without meaning to, and their benign intention doesn’t make the prejudice less painful for those subjected to it. However, "that became a rule where you say intentions never matter; there is no added value to understanding the intentions of the speaker," Cross says.

(...) In a revolution-eats-its-own irony, some online feminists have even deemed the word "vagina" problematic. In January, the actress and activist Martha Plimpton tweeted about a benefit for Texas abortion funds called "A Night of a Thousand Vaginas," sponsored by A Is For, a reproductive rights organization she’s involved with. Plimpton was surprised when some offended Internet feminists urged people to stay away, arguing that emphasizing "vaginas" hurts trans men who don’t want their reproductive organs coded as female. "Given the constant genital policing, you can’t expect trans folks to feel included by an event title focused on a policed, binary genital," tweeted @DrJaneChi, an abortion and transgender health provider. (She mentioned "internal genitals" as an alternative.) When Plimpton insisted that she would continue to say "vagina," her feed filled up with indignation. "So you’re really committed to doubling down on using a term that you’ve been told many times is exclusionary & harmful?" asked one self-described intersectional feminist blogger.

(...) Few people are doing that, but they are disengaging from online feminism. Holmes, who left Jezebel in 2010 and is now a columnist for The New York Times Book Review, says she would never start a women’s website today. "Hell, no," she says. The women’s blogosphere "feels like a much more insular, protective, brittle environment than it did before. It’s really depressing," she adds. "It makes me think I got out at the right time."

Der umfangreiche Artikel geht viel mehr in die Tiefe, als ich in einem Auszug sinnvoll darstellen kann. Behandelt werden auch die harten Kontroversen zwischen schwarzen und weißen Feministinnen. Letzere werden inzwischen mit dem Begriff "whitesplaining" ebenso angefeindet, sobald sie sich zum Thema Rassismus äußern möchten, wie wir Männer mit "mansplaining", sobald wir auf Sexismus zu sprechen kommen. Wenn Sie also das nächste Mal auf Twitter oder anderswo als "Nazi" angepflaumt werden, obwohl Sie nur für eine weniger einseitige Geschlechterdebatte plädieren, trösten Sie sich: Feministinnen springen mit ihren "Schwestern" auch nicht anders um.