Checking in on you via the Carnival and Sam’s site. I really like this post, because I’m a pretty practical person and I’ve always wanted to be part of a movement that is also a community — where we can do political stuff AND do fun stuff, like watch bad movies and groan at the antifeminist parts.

I’ve also been, I think, pretty lucky to have been able to arrange my life the way I have, so that I don’t have a 9-5 boss breathing down my neck and I don’t HAVE to soft-pedal my politics to coworkers, customers etc — when I do, it is from my own choice to not get into arguments or make others unduly uncomfortable. But I guess I worry that other women might not have the options that I do, so I’d like to hear more about your vision of how more women could not have to split themselves and hide their politics like so many of us do. Honestly, in my experience people at work just thought I was weird for my opinions, but I know that certain opinions, or expressing them forcefully or repeatedly enough, could cause a person to get fired, and what should she do then?

Also, there seems to be a fair amount of feminist organizing and events there, but here in the US, I at least feel extremely isolated, and part of the reason why internet interaction has become so important to me is because I really don’t have many other outlets, many other ways to connect with women of any kind of feminism, let alone women with radical feminist politics. I don’t really believe in the social service model so volunteer work is often frustrating, and all the feminist organizing I’ve tried to do has fallen apart in various ways. So I’m kind of stumped about where to go from here.

And frankly a lot of the ‘old’ stuff from the seventies seems still blindingly relevant to me and HAS helped me, motivated me to create a greater congruence between my principles and how I live. It’s always a work in progress, but I don’t see how learning about what women have done in the past and figuring out what we think might help is not focusing on practice.

I look forward to hearing more from you.

I’m thinking that the feminist movement at the moment is very theory-orientated rather than focus on the ‘practice’, and there is great importance placed on learning about theories that exist ‘out there’ or from the 70s and developing a standpoint as part of a particular feminist ‘camp’, rather than looking inwards to politicise what hurts us in our everyday lives and creating/developing new ideas to underpin our desire and move for change.

I think compartmentalising our lives can be used as a survival strategy, for example hiding feminist beliefs at work just to keep a job, but this ultimately leads to leading a double life and one must question the effectiveness of hiding our radical politics if we ever truely want change. I also think that the dominance of internet communication between many feminists is problematic to creating a safe space in which one can share personal struggles.

It’s my strong belief that most of the changes people make in their lives come less from splashy events than from the daily interactions we have with those around us. Theory has its safe, high-minded place, but living your politics means encouraging folks around you to be better people and not tolerating folks around you indulging their worst selves in your presence.

I have found that having even just the one radical feminist friend I have in ‘real life’ to be amazingly useful and helpful in keeping me functioning.