[pp.int.general] Women Pirates project

[Amelia Andersdotter]

On 3 May 2010 07:46, Eric Priezkalns <eric.priezkalns at pirateparty.org.uk> wrote:
> I feel this is a mistaken way to deal with a symptom, not a root cause.
> Yes, there are too few women in the pirate movement.  There are also too few
> older people, too few poor, too few ethnic minorities.
> These people are not in the pirate movement not because of a failure to
> 'mainstream' or 'empower' or any other jargon words that might be spoken by
> a New York Professor of Sociology.  They are not in the pirate movement
> because the pirate movement makes too little effort to appeal to them.  In
> short, we do not try to explain our policies in ways that appeal beyond a
> audience that is predominantly young, male, white and reasonably privileged.
> The worst thing we could take is to take women, or any other group, and
> place them in a 'special interest' faction.  Instead of modifying the policy
> message to make it more appealing to a wider audience, they will just be
> pushed into creating 'special interest' policies.  I dislike the idea of
> that intrinsically, but more importantly, that approach never seems to work
> in politics.  Voters can see through it and it does not appeal to them.  In
> short, if you cannot come up with a political philosophy with a core message
> that is appealing to women or any other subset of society, you cannot
> address that by creating specialist policies around the edges.  People can
> innately see the special interest policies do not fit with the philosophy
> and so become sceptical about them, and rightly so.

Bullshit.

Voters don't want to vote for a party that doesn't seem inclusive.

> If we want more women etc in the movement, the right place to begin is not
> by creating a ghetto for them.  The right place is to look at ourselves and
> ask what is in our behaviour that is a barrier to inclusion.  It is not hard
> for me to see examples of behaviour that leads to exclusion from the pirate
> movement.

The "ghetto" could also act as a group for women who can't be arsed
waiting for the non-sexist society to emerge to adapt to and see
through male behavioural flaws.

Women tend not to be that interested in party politics to begin with,
but one thing that has been working in the past is actually creating
women's groups inside the movement. Uh. How to say. It's a problem on
the male side of the story, with behaviour and all, but it's also a
universal problem and a female problem that segregation is assumed.

In fact, even looking at the way we raise children, you will notice
how children are separated quite early on. It makes sense for women
and men to have their own groups - or to tear down the sexist barriers
hindering the way to the future! The question is whether the Pirate
Party is the right arena for anarchofeminism or not.

/amelia

>
> From: "Bogomil \"Bogo\" Shopov" <bogo at piratskapartia.bg>
> Date: 2 May 2010 12:26:34 BST
> To: Pirate Parties International -- General Talk
> <pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net>
> Subject: [pp.int.general] Women Pirates project
> Reply-To: Pirate Parties International -- General Talk
> <pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net>
>
>
> Hey again,
> Here is some ideas and tasks for a project called WOPI. I am looking forward
> to see you participating.
> http://int.piratenpartei.de/User:Bogomil/Projects/WOPI
>
>
> ____________________________________________________
> Pirate Parties International - General Talk
> pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
> http://lists.pirateweb.net/mailman/listinfo/pp.international.general
>
>



-- 
Amelia Andersdotter
Lissabon-MEP
+46 722063698