[a sign reads FEMINIST CONFERENCE next to a closed door, a blue character shrugs and says…]
I don’t care
[next to the same door, the sign now says RESTRICTED FEMINIST CONFERENCE WOMEN ONLY, there are now four blue characters desperately banging on the door, one is reduced to tears on the floor, they are shouting]
DISCRIMINATION
SO UNFAIR!!!
LET US IINN!!
MISANDRY
There’s actually mens that are feminist. Why would they be excluded from the conference?
Also, conferences are a great way to recruit new participants so that’s also stupid
Edit: forgot about woman safe spaces…
To create a safe space for women.
Oh yeah fair enough. I was more focused on OP’s bad argument that I forgot about this. My bad
Why would a space exclusive for feminists ever not be a safe space for women?
A space can be safe for cisgender, white feminists without being a safe space for trans women, women of color, working class women, disabled women, etc. Intersectionality is a big part of what makes ‘general’ spaces for women actually only safe or accessible for women who fit a narrow ideal of Western womanhood.
Like, ideally a feminist space would account for this, but ask a black feminist if they’re safe and welcome in every feminist space and they will probably tell you no, because many spaces center the concerns of cisgender, white, otherwise privileged women.
Yes. I think this comic just does a bad job of portraying this. The second sign is unnecessarily agressive and a conference doesnt make much of an immediate connection to a safe space.
Seems a bit sexist
I am not shocked that we’re still having this “discussion” in 2026
It’s like the discussion about if you can be racist toward white people. It’s endless drama
Depends on whether you’re using the common definition, or intersectional feminist jargon. That is literally the distinction.
Common definitions:
Intersectional feminist jargon:
PS: Race isn’t real. Not even a social construct: it’s straight up an arbitrary line drawn by a bunch of ignorant assholes, for the sake of being assholes. Ethnicities are real though.
It’s not. You’re boring and stupid. Go read a book.
You’re saying it’s not endless drama while participating in the drama
You can’t shit your pants then blame other people for participating in it because they called you out for it.
A single comment wouldn’t be drama. This would be more like bringing food for everyone and saying it will cause diarrhea. It always does and people always eat it.
But I did bring the food
Hohojoho you’ve got me now
All non-women that could attend that conference safely respect their choice and don’t want to. Thus the sign is valid.
The fact this doesn’t hold when “feminism” is gender-reversed comes from patriarchy. Treating men better than our patriarchical society treats them without treating women worse is a feminist position.
And indeed, feminist men-only groups are just as respected by feminists as feminist women-only groups.
The exclusion is still solely based on sex. I’m not even saying that’s wrong in all situations
It isn’t. My sex is XY, but I would be allowed entry because I’m a (trans) woman. More importantly, it’s about the shared experience of being treated as a woman or being at risk of being treated as a woman in patriarchal society.
That said, the social status of someone who is known to have XX chromosomes or who is at risk of people learning they have XX chromosomes would also have a lot of overlap with women, so it would make sense in many cases to categorically allow everyone with XX chromosomes even if they are (cis) men.
(I don’t think cis men with XX chromosomes are medically possible, but you can have cis women with XY chromosomes because testosterone insensitivity isn’t lethal).
So these days, most of the time you would have more queer-inclusive categories like FLINTA, explicitly including everyone who has experience with patriarchy as “the woman”. Different exclusions make sense in different situations; sometimes it makes sense to exclude trans men, sometimes it makes sense to exclude people who don’t menstruate. Sometimes organisations are wrong/immoral about who they exclude, like TERFs. But a feminist meeting without men is going to be able to touch on a lot of topics they otherwise couldn’t safely and go a lot deeper than when having to explain things to men.
(There’s also the “sexism = prejudice + power” thing, which I don’t really vibe with as a rebuttal because it neglects the power of local institutions that may run askew from larger society; if you can host a conference, you have enough power for your prejudice to be sexist).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XX_male_syndrome
So is it more a gender than sex exclusion? My native language doesn’t (afaik) separate the two so it can be hard for me to remember to make the distinction.
Women choosing who they want to spend their time with is sexist?
Is that based on solely the sex of the person?
Yes. Because sex discrimination and sexism are not the same thing. And not all forms of discrimination are wrong. We just use “discrimination is wrong” as a useful first-pass mental hack. But every non-discrimination law is written with certain reasonable exceptions built into it. It is sex discrimination, but not sexism, to refuse to hire cis men as wet nurses. It is disability discrimination, but not illegal discrimination, to refuse to hire someone in a wheelchair to be a circus acrobat.
This is sex discrimination, but it is neither illegal or sexism. It’s not saying that men are inherently inferior to women. It’s saying that there is a bona fide reason to make this space woman-only, based on the lived experience of men vs women.
Wikipedia just redirects sex discrimination to sexism
I think it’s fine to have women-only or men-only spaces if the goal is to not have the social dynamics of a mixed space for specific discussions. I don’t think that’s discrimination at all, but that word has multiple meanings.
Neither of these are prejudiced. You also wouldn’t hire a cis woman as wet nurse if she couldn’t breastfeed (which is the reason for discriminating) and there certainly are circus acrobats who are wheelchair-bound, it’s just that usual acts wouldn’t work with that, especially not safely.
The other form of discrimination is based on prejudice against a group, no exceptions. It’s not “no because you can’t do X”, it’s “no because you are X”. That’s never a good thing. But it also isn’t necessarily the motivation behind creating an X-only space.
The point was that most men aren’t interested in being there unless they’re told they’re excluded.
Feminism welcomes all. But some times there need to be safe spaces for women, and women’s groups are there for that. So the comic is just a joke, not a provocation.
There are local men’s groups around where I live, they’re safe spaces for men who want to talk about relationships , fatherhood, anger issues or how to be more confident in their masculinity etc. Women are (usually) excluded. Many of these men are feminists, I would guess.
You are correct, there are men who are feminists, but this comic isn’t about them. Men who are feminists would not say “I don’t care” at an open women’s conference, they would join in and allow women to have their space at the closed conference. Both the open and closed conferences have valid reasons for existing. Not all conferences are about recruitment.
This comic points out the hypocrisy of men who say they don’t care about feminism until they are excluded from women’s spaces, then they complain about not being allowed into any space they want. Sometimes women like to have our own spaces to speak about our feelings and experiences with other women and that’s ok.
I think men should have their own spaces like that too. A place for men to talk about their feelings and positive aspects of masculinity without it devolving into the toxic masculinity we see from a lot of influencers who focus on dominating women and body dysmorphia. A place where men can build positive friendships and community, a place to support other men.