One’s never afraid to argue and fight in a feminist utopia.
My initial answers to the question on utopias were somewhat like universal basic income, decolonial pluriversality and the abolition of gender binaries. But then I’ve come to think that being ready for conflicting each other is the most important point on the feminist utopia checklist. I mean, it’s a necessary one.
For now, I’m often afraid of going public with any allegations against a woman, even of publicly criticising a woman. All the more so, if the target is a queer woman or a nonbinary person. I’m always concerned with the damage the allegations may do to women in general, or to queer persons in general, or to any other community this person is a part of. Therefore, I mostly resume to keep quiet even if I do feel angry and I do consider the actions of a woman or a queer person strongly inappropriate. Moreover, I’m often scared by the possible severity of a sentence the person herself may face.
But there will be no need to keep quiet in a feminist future, and I see two reasons for that:
- the attitude towards minorities (or, rather, these won’t be minorities anymore) is strongly positive in such a way that the actions of one person can’t be effectively deployed by anyone willing to promote hate and intolerance towards the community in general;
- there exist protocols for strict and restrictive, yet proper treatment of the perpetrators of violence as well as the care infrastructure for those who used to depend on the perpetrators of violence, say the accused woman’s kids; I’ve just recently started to get to know the ideas of prison abolition, but what I’m saying does probably point towards this kind of horizon.
Last but not least, the life forces and vitality generated during conflicts are super important to me. My microutopias of friendship are based on never being afraid of quarrelling, extensively and often loudly. Me and my friends are even ready to part our ways, even though we value our friendship more than we value most things, almost all other things, and we never do want to part. I suppose, these energy and integrity are no less important at the macropolitical level.