[New-imc] Re: proposal: gender imbalance

[Arc]

On Wed, Jan 15, 2003 at 12:13:18PM +0100, blue.pi wrote:
> 
> >Thus spake Arc:
> 
> >>>why am i not surprised that it's 2 men who "started" the imc in
> >>>binghamton and are invited to come to ithaca and talk with the imc
> >>>here about problems encountered over the last 11 months? are the
> >>>remaining imc men prepared to relate the difficulties the imc has had
> >>>with the way it alienates womyn? great.

That's actually not my words.  Someone else in our IMC sent that to our
IMC's list, I pasted it to Bill as an example of how many women would
feel alienated/ignored by an all-male IMC.

> Of course, I think gender balance is a very important issue, but I don't 
> think we should jump on some new IMC for that, while many old IMC's are far 
> from having any gender balance what so ever (just as I thought it was kind 
> of funny to ask ambazonia on their policy on gay issues). 

I strongly disagree.  Just because many existing IMCs have this problem
doesn't mean we should ignore it with new IMCs.  Not having women
involved, in cases where any organizing has happened at all, for new
IMCs in US/CA, Europe, etc indicates to me that they've either been
excluded from outreach or felt unwelcome from an unhealthy social
atmosphere within the IMC.

I think telling IMCs that they need "non-white" members would result in
unhealthy "minority hunting", whereas it becomes this "rule" that they
need to get people of other races involved.  I think it's important to
be open and welcome, as well as outreach to, but in some cities this may
not be a possibility because of vast cultural differences between races.

However more than 50% of our population is women. They are the majority.
Not having a single women involved in an IMC is a sign of a poor social
structure, and thus, exclusion of people who want to be involved but are
not willing to struggle against unchecked male ego and pissing contests.

> Of course we could also ask people to come up with a policy on this, but I 
> believe than we should first start with the excisting IMC's. 

It's easier to start with something right than it is to fix it later.
We, I feel, actually started off right.  Then new people joined, there
wasn't social conduct guidelines in place and people were not saying
"hold on, you're talking too loud and too long, let's hear what other
people have to say".  Even I am guilty of picking up some of these
behaviors in the beginning, despite my history with groups where this
would not be socially acceptable, and contributing to their
continuation.  Alot of the women got intolerate of this pattern
male behavior and simply stopped comming to meetings, others simply
chose other things to have a higher priority (work, other groups, etc).
A few of the men stopped comming as well.  

In some of the food not bombs groups Ive been involved in this would be
a serious issue, people would sit down and discuss how certain behavior
patterns made them feel and we would come to an understanding, a
solution, without making anyone feel alienated and without kicking
anyone out.  I've seen the same thing, but have less experience with,
the radical faeries.

So I think it's pretty clear, we have a broken social structure.  People
are feeling defensive, there isn't alot of trust, people are feeling
like they need to form alliances with others (which form cliques) and
play out these elaborate, manipulate power struggles.  In some cases the
women who are feeling like they are being excluded form alliances with
eachother and begin targetting males they feel are "the problem".  This
trend can only result in a complete breakdown of the entire organization
when the few people who are left just get so drained from the whole
experience they simply give up and walk away.

I think an alternative to your proposal would be a statement about
needing a strong committment to non-violence.  That seems to be the
missing part, both in the principals of unity and the mission statement.
People don't think "violence" has anything to do with making media, but
yet, the violence within our groups is destroying us from the inside.
It's not any single person's fault, really, and that's why kicking
people out to solve the problem doesn't help.

In a non-violent social atmosphere even the most violent people become
timid, I feel it's a foundation for consensus to work because it is the
mechanism for making the strong voices feel that they can lower
themselves and still be heard, that they dont have to defend themselves
or respond to trivial things because they are not being attacked, where
there's no power plays and no competition, where it doesn't matter who's
idea it was or who said it first.. where people aren't feeling like they
need to be the first to raise their hand to state their clever point
before someone else does or raise their voice to get others to listen to
them.  Where discussions and decidions are cooperative, not competitive.

New people that join a group quickly learn how to function within that
group.  That's why I feel it's important that these things be looked at
and seriously talked about from the very beginning, before the group is
even totally formed, because it's much harder to have an established
group try to fix these problems down the road after behavior patterns
have already been set.

Just my $0.03 - I tossed in a little more to cover the extra time I
spent talking.  :-)

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