History of Feminism

and from a few men, as well.

I have many gay male friends -and most of them are very aware of the potential for mysogyny, and try to avoid it - and when called on it usually respond very thoughtfully.

But I choose to hang out with gay men who are involved in intentionally inclusive communities. Some of those communities have taken a lot of work to move toward being inclusive - in one instance, the women in the group locking ourselves away from the men until they were willing to work on their sexism (this was nearly 3 decades ago). We putting in place community rules to make the community a welcoming place for all of us. Ironically, or perhaps not so, when we were challenged to be more inclusive of bi and trans* individuals later, some of those rules we put in place had to yield to make the group more inclusive for the next less privileged group we wanted to include.

Being inclusive takes work - Homogeneous groups tend toward the dominant norms of the members of the group, and heterogeneous groups tend toward the dominant norms of the dominant subgroup. That's why mixed LGBT spaces (or strictly male GBT spaces) are often really uncomfortable for women, unless those groups work intentionally to be inclusive. I understand the dynamic. What pissed me off on DU was the insistence that I was imagining it, and the real anger that was at the foundation of a lot of the posts directed at me for suggesting that the LGBT space on DU didn't feel very welcoming to me - specifically as a woman.