This is a good response. Thank you.

I have presented a specific thesis on restorative spaces as a material necessity for movement-building. This has been consistently ignored or reframed as “exclusionary antagonism.” I understand that you reject this as it widens empathy gap between in-groups and out-groups. However, you never engage with the interior possibility for it result in healing for the oppressed in-group.

This is largely because I don’t think it does result actually in healing of the in-group. I myself sometimes crave things that are comforting yet bad for me, like junk food, remaining sedentary on a couch, binge drinking, and secluding myself in self loathing. these are intoxicating and reinforcing. They can result in bad habits. I view such groups with a similar perspective.

I asked a direct question regarding how political movements form in the absence of private, strategic meeting spaces. This was met with a response addressing how they grow and not how which is a refusal to engage with the history of labor and policy work that defines these movements.

I did not answer this one either because I rejected the forming of a political group as an intrinsic good in the first place.

That said, fair call that I pivoted to growth. Formation I think certainly can be through an exclusionary start of course, I just don’t think explicit exclusion is needed. You can form a political group for a specific type, but you don’t really need to restrict access to only that type. Realistically, just like this comic suggests, you probably would not get too many participants outside that group anyway, but if you did they’d likely be an invaluable ally, not an antagonist to restrict your words around.

Rather, I was pointing out how empathy for the in-group is a analgesic to the pain of being an out-group.

Like I stated earlier, I think this is at best a psychological comfort food. Its not healing at all, at least not in the long term.

Finally, and arguably the most perplexing, despite my forthright and honest comportment, there has been a persistent reticent to grant me good faith and continue to view me with suspicion. You are treating my request for feminist framing as a “trap” rather than a legitimate effort to ground the discussion and find common language. Both of these I stated at the time of the request.

This is because it often is a trap. It is usually a means of identifying if I’ve “done the work” rather than engage with my points. Its a means to screen for a lack of virtue, worthiness, or dedication. If I stated that I was not a feminist at all, or that I did engage in any feminist writings, I suspect you would have dismissed me. I view this as intellectual cowardice (I suppose the one thing I will judge someone’s virtue on).

There is one instance were I suppose this can be reasonable: Boredom with my points. If I say stuff you’ve heard already and hint that I will continue to sound like someone who just regurgitates vapid talking points you’d simply be saving time and energy rather than avoiding an uncomfortable discussion by ceasing to engage.

Maybe I’m wrong though and you had no intent to do this. I can’t know for sure, but I’m very weary of it. I find allistics do it most often.

Exclusive spaces presented as a clean social laboratory

This idea is not what you originally tried to sell the spaces on. However, it is at least a novel argument for their utility and a very compelling and interesting one.

I still fear the risk of habitual usage of this and I’d question whether I’d consider that a truly “clean” environment. Just because you permit only certain groups doesn’t mean you wont have them bringing into their own internalization of cultural norms with them. I thought I was straight for most of my life and still pretty strongly have internalized homophobia & biphobia. If I went to a bisexual exclusive group I do wonder if I’d run into someone bitter about non-bisexuals or bisexual erasure and find that foment my own. If I went to an autistic exclusive space, my distrust of allistics would likely be multiplied or I would spread my admittedly low opinion of allistics to others, if I wanted to be completely honest with myself.

Now, I will admit, there is one group I think I’d greedily personally engage with that would very much bring out my worst impulses: An exclusively atheist group. Religious people will often use their own emotions and attachment to social power to actively discourage the criticism of religion and spirituality. And I’ll admit, being around religious people forces me to temper some of my meanest and most unproductive thoughts about them. I couldn’t argue that it’d be good for me, thought perhaps it would be cathartic to talk shit about how petulantly stupid I see religious people.

It is the site of “multiple political bodies”. It’s not a site available just for women. But also for men to do the same. It is a site for BIPOC, for asexuals, for trans and for neurodivergent people. If “a hundred sexes should bloom” , we must allow for a hundred different social affordances. Just as a neurodiverse person might need a specific sensory environment to thrive, women and the marginalized groups you mentioned require specific restorative environments to build the unselfish solidarity necessary for the long game of history.

I don’t think any particular group should exclude though. I don’t take issue with the unfairness, I take issue with the results.

Creating a group for a specific type of person but permitting outsiders is simply far and away more useful and beneficial. Its virtually all upside. Where as exclusion is more like a social heroin. Feels good, but produces bad results long term.

We do not build a universalist project by flattening our specific needs into a vague, horizontal mass, but by establishing robust protocols of transit between our specialized spaces, both externally and internally. This coordination is the necessary ‘boot-strapping’ phase—linking our local ‘social affordances’ into a cohesive, technomaterialist front capable of challenging the hegemon.

I am not arguing for a “shrine to nature”. I am arguing for the freedom to engineer the social conditions of our own healing. If we are to engineer a future beyond the binary, we must first defend the right to construct the specialized environments where that future is actually being built.

If we are truly connecting these nodes, then there isn’t exclusion to begin with arguably. Using the “only” as a descriptor for your group and then connecting to other “only” groups would be exclusionary, it’d just introduce a sort of negotiation table between different “nations”.

If this were actually done, maybe some good would come from it? I still think it’d be a fairly cold way of social and political organization and would still foster distrust and alienation.

I apologize if I came off as bad faith. I promise you I’m merely an impatient, cynical, suspicious, depressed, egotistical asshole.