Breaking the Binary, Gender Justice, and UUWF:  Are Women’s Organizations Still Relevant?

We’ve heard these questions at UUWF over the last two years, and we’ve had deep conversations about this as a board and as staff.  We see part of our role as provocative, seeking out complicated and sometimes difficult conversations about issues of the day.  Certainly, we’ve seen provocative changes in how gender is understood and expressed, and those changes have challenged us to listen, learn, and stretch towards deeper understanding.  That’s been a consistent thread in our growth as an organization over the last two years, and we’d like to share some of what we’ve learned:  

• There is one thing that has not changed:  Misogyny is still a thing.  Gender-based oppression is alive and well.  As we’ve moved through these conversations, we’ve kept this basic fact in mind.  Working for gender justice is at least as relevant as it has ever been, of that we are sure.

• We do not consider ourselves to be a non-gendered organization—rather, we have expanded our understanding of gender to recognize that there are more than two options. When talking about women, we consider all women to be women—meaning, we include trans women and femme-identifying people in that gender description.  When it comes to gender-expansive or nonbinary folks who identify as neither or as both or as something else, we recognize that many of those people also suffer due to misogynistic oppression—either because they were socialized or identified as female for some or all of their lives, or because their gender expression includes traits that we are socialized to consider “female”.    This is different from, though sometimes intersects with, homophobic oppression that generalizes to all queer people, because of the differences between gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation, and the prevailing element of misogyny at the root.  Basically, if you suffer as a result of misogynistic oppression due to your gender identity, we include you in all of our programming.  
• We also have had to think about our work as it relates to male allies; does an expansive view of gender necessitate inclusion of men in all of our work? This, too, has felt like shifting ground.  We recognize that collective liberation includes men–and that we need male co-conspirators and allies.   At the same time, misogynistic oppression is a shared experience that calls for spiritual and emotional care, healing, and safety.  We know that women and gender-expansive people need and deserve to have protected spaces.  We also know that men do not share the experience of misogyny.  These truths have led us to differentiate our programming for different audiences; the programming that we explicitly name as being for women and gender-expansive folks does not include men.  We do not believe that inclusion means including everyone at all times in everything.  We also have programming that is open to all genders, and that programming is specified as such in our promotional materials and registrations.
• Further, membership in UUWF is limited to women and gender-expansive people.  Men are encouraged and welcome to support our work by participating in our all-gender programming, and donating financially if they have the means.  

• Do we need to police these gender boundaries?  So far, we have operated on faith that people will self-select with the well-being and safety of the community in mind.  There have been times when that assumption has not proven to be true, but we are all learning, and we make adjustments as we understand more fully what our whole community needs.

• Our understanding of gender identity and expression is dynamic; there may be a time in the future when these views shift, or may not line up neatly as staff. These are complex ideas and we are committed to continuing to learn and grow, knowing that the social constructs we are exploring are themselves shifting and changing as well. We consider the language we use to articulate gender identity to be more a snapshot in time than a permanent condition.  

Expanding our view of gender does not mean we eliminate the existence of Woman as an identity. It does not mean that gender-based oppression has ceased…in fact it is growing in strength all over the world.  In this moment, we are called to simultaneously hold both inclusion and protection gently in our hands, with tenderness, reverence, and care.  We are called to step back in spaces where our presence may hinder the well-being of another, and step up in ways that feel uncomfortable and new.  We are called to loosen our grip on the way we’ve always seen the world.  We are called to believe and honor, even if we don’t understand.   We are called to center love without condition, but not without boundaries.  And we are called to continue to work against misogyny and oppression of women in all its forms.  

These are our faith’s core values–interdependence, equity, transformation, pluralism, generosity, and justice.  The Unitarian Universalist Women’s Federation strives to embody those values in our work.  We welcome you to join us.