*sighs* There are, as they say, reasons but no excuses. One major starting point of it (the really early "aren't we so daring, lookit our mystical clubhouse, we have sex" stage) was desperately sexist. In reaction to that, the first big wave that really established itself as a social movement focused hard on women's issues and empowerment. But it was still pretty desperately het and unthinkingly cis. So then there were the Dianic branch, trying to ameliorate the "it's all about heterosexual sex". And both those reactions, because they were trying to counter something so deeply entrenched and normalized, did not just say "well, there's this other perspective", they said "no, this is the way it works instead". Which meant there wasn't a lot of opening to consider any more perspectives than those.
So I can understand why it started out that way. What I find really inexcusable is how long that "struggling to find space" rhetoric has gone unchallenged and unexamined. Twenty years ago I was looking at this and saying "wow, yeah, that really resonates, but... isn't there more to the world, too?" I'm glad that question is finally getting some traction, but it comes way too late for me to be re-involved.
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Date: 6 Mar 2011 09:39 pm (UTC)So I can understand why it started out that way. What I find really inexcusable is how long that "struggling to find space" rhetoric has gone unchallenged and unexamined. Twenty years ago I was looking at this and saying "wow, yeah, that really resonates, but... isn't there more to the world, too?" I'm glad that question is finally getting some traction, but it comes way too late for me to be re-involved.