Why can’t we all get along?
We signed up for this seminar with this question in mind and have now spent the entire semester trying to navigate it. Though I’m definitely more aware of the historical background of it as well as various approaches of intervention, I’m honestly not sure if I could say I have found a concrete answer as to why specifically we are unable to get along.
I think Trashing: The Dark Side of Sisterhood was an important and necessary piece in attempting to understand it all. In the text, Jo Freeman had been subjected to conflict within the feminist movement in the way that she called “trashing.” As a result, she was ostracized and shunned out of involvement in the movement. Though this isn’t something I had experienced personally, while I was reading I felt that I could relate to the cautious feeling that she was describing due to the atmosphere in some of the classes that I’ve taken. As it turns out, many of us felt this and discussing it in class was an incredible experience, just like the “feminist refugees” from the text. Almost every week for the rest of the semester, we had read about or discussed similar situations and it came back to my mind every time.
Another text that I felt was important to navigating conflict, was Feminist Accountability. During one of the first weeks of classes, Amanda made a comment about The Tyranny of Structurelessness and how it had discussed actual solutions to the issue it theorized about. I felt that from what I read of Feminist Accountability and what we discussed as a class, that it was able to do this. This was incredibly constructive to providing insight as to how we can all get along.
After completing this class, I have realized that solving conflict and answering “why” isn’t entirely necessary. Though this is difficult to conceptualize, as we are socialized to see conflict as bad and that we should all be able to find a way to get along, it isn’t always feasible in such a big group of people with varying agendas. Perhaps instead we could utilize it as a method of reflection or critique. I can now understand that having the ability to see conflict as constructive and as an opportunity to learn allows us to think from and understand other perspectives before putting our own interests first, and that is what navigating conflict is all about.