Patriarchy Discussion

Well, we had a very interesting and quite fruitful discussion about
patriarchy! Seven women from all over: Margaret in Cairns, Brenda in Perth,
Mary in Adelaide, Jo in Daylesford, Chris in Benalla, Marina in Sydney, and
Manon in Brisbane. By phone! 

After hearing from all we agreed that structural oppression based on gender
must be addressed by members of the Network in some way.

The Network should include gender-base structural oppression as part of its
principles. Most of us were not too fussed about whether we call this
structural oppression patriarchy. As long as it is being actively and
thoughtfully addressed. 

However we felt that it was important that people with strong feelings
associated with the word should remain responsible for those feelings. It's
not appropriate for others to adapt AROUND those feelings. For example, men
seem to feel blamed or defensive and some women feel fearful and gripping.
Both women and men need to challenge this as it affects them; to work out how
it gets in the way. We should expect this stuff to come up and work out what
to do when it does happen.

It is inevitable that people will feel uncomfortable when we talk about
oppression. However, we won't be able to have very much discussion if we
don't find a way to tackle the discomfort and continue to hold out that
people should address their discomfort rather than the conversation stopping
because of it. 

We figured that it would help to frame the whole discussion differently. We
felt that discussion should not centre entirely around meanings of the word
"patriarchy". It was stated that coming from this direction is seeming to
inflict division where division is not necessary. Instead, we all need to
talk about and keep out in the open our different analyses of how the world
works. We need to keep exploring how different oppressions interrelate and
reinforce each other. Discussions on this need to be open free sharings,
nonjudgemental and loving. And, we urge discussion based on people's own
experience of living in the oppressive society instead of only getting hooked
on neat, philosophical arguments from ideological perspectives. Jo reminded
us to to keep coming back to how such discussions are useful for our activist
work.

We also talked briefly (it was not central to our firty-five min discussion)
about Structural Oppression based on other things such as class, race,
sexuality, physical difference etc. It was again raised (it was discussed at
the initial principles discussion in 1994) that these oppressions should also
be included in the principles alongside gender based oppression. 

Three clear directions for moving forward were agreed upon:
1) We urge Network groups in each region to organise discussions (for women
and men only, and mixed) about how we see things (in terms of world picture
or analysis).
2) There was much support for asking people to be clear about what they mean
when they do use the word Patriarchy simply in the interests of good
communication.
3) That people in the Network continue to write down their thoughts and send
them to NVT to share with us all. An ongoing discussion through NVT would be
highly valuable; perhaps even a special issue.
Margaret with minutes from Mary