Radical Feminism: Discuss

Ed, your position that women really don't have it much worse than men is completely mental. Men suffer from the normative nature of sexual roles, but women's suffering and oppression is still there. Look at any serious study of violence within relationships, look at any study on rape, on murder in the home, and it is unmistakeable that feminism has many battles still to fight and win. The fact that poverty is a bad thing does not mean that women don't have plenty of extra ground to gain.

saying you're more interested in issue a than issue b is one thing, but denying that issue b even exists and that issue a is the only one anyone should care is so arrogant and naive.

-- Orbit (cstarrcstar...), September 2nd, 2003.

So what should I do in this particular case?

Liek to add my support for the idea that feminism is not about gaining equality for women by standing on the heads of other groups that are discriminated against. It's just saying this is one issue I can identify and wish to address.

and bell hooks is TOP, I have always loved her writing, I will look up Dorothy Smith when I find the time..!

bell hooks is ace, i'm also big on judith butler, elizabeth grosz, coco fusco (who is an incredible performance artist), susan hekman, judith halberstam, and more specialised ones such as marcia citron (for music) and griselda pollock (for art history.)

[& engels' work was based on marx & they both paid tribute to fourier for saying that you could judge the level of a society by the condition of women]

krupskaya did too and she was great if particularly bonkers. but, y'know, provocatively so. i mean she was like valerie solanis without the *actual* man-hating and without the actually being literally bonkers bit. (which perhaps went together)

Mei regarding debates on separatism, you can literally Google for Riot Grrrl or Riot Grrrl yahoo groups and find the archives of these discussions. A brief sketch of them follows.

Please don't ask me to "defend" this, as I am just laying out the territory here, not stating a position. The separatist arguments boil down to this:

1. Separatism (along either gender or racial lines) is necessary because men (white people as a group for the racial version) will NEVER listen to women's voices, will NEVER genuinely allow them a part in shaping society, NEVER allow women into the old boys' network, NEVER take women nor their concerns seriously. You could call it utopian, and things like the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival are experiments in "what *would* a society that was centered on women's concerns and values look like?"

2. Separatism as a necessary step, not necessarily a permanent one: this view says that women have been so injured and silenced that they need a place to heal and deal with their own internal sexism/racism before moving forward in coalition with others. For example, it does no good for woman to talk about her rape experience if some guy in the back is going to say "what were you wearing?", which makes it a defensive and not a healing experience. Women can't work on the issues that are specific to them--for example feeling entitled to voice an opinion, feeling entitled to transgress the "whore (i'll show you my tits, i'm liberated!) / madonna (i'm sweet and emotional and supportive)" stereotypes that people use all kinds of rewards and sanctions to keep them into. This separatism is seen as necessary and temporary consciousness-raising and healing.

3. Selective separatism: when events and organizations are structured so that women get to experience the roles that they are largely left out of: decisionmaking and learning technical skills (like say running a sound board) and guys can participate in certain events but cannot run things and can't be in sensitive workshops or meetings that involve issues that women want to discuss without men telling them "what's the big deal", "prove it", "get over it", or having guys take over, interrupt and do all the other things that they have been socialized to do.

4. Feminist Inclusionist organizations and events where men and women work together in varying states of contention and chaos.

I should also throw in here that "false conscioussness" is also a big issue for stirring usenet-type debates. Saying you are a feminist doesn't make you one; being a woman doesn't make you one. Being a feminist is a political decision and it means more than "i like myself". This one is such a usenet-flame issue that I don't even want to bring it up, but it has to be mentioned in the same breath with separatism because it needs to be pointed out that being a woman doesn't mean you have a feminist political consciousness, just like being a lesbian doesn't mean you have a lesbian-feminist political conscioussness (see Arlene Stein for more on that).

A caveat: I am a sociologist who did a dissertation that crossed fields: social movements, gender, culture, and music. My take on all of this is based on very different concerns and literature than people who are coming from a largely film/literature/women's studies per se perspective. In academic feminism, women's studies is a bit different from feminist sociology so you might see me gloss over some stuff that you would expect to see here--it's not that I don't know about it, but in what I did I was speaking to a different literature.

Ok, well I think I caught up on everything I was supposed to catch up on!

I didn't go to the drumming workshop, or even try.

It was limited to ten people for logistical reasons so it was totally fair to limit it to girls/ladies/whatever because that's who the whole event was primarily for.

Hope there's another ladyfest sometime soon around here.

On the first day when we turned up there was nothing much going on so me and my 3 friends went to a talk "Women, conflict and resistance". None of us are particularly political but I enjoyed the talk/discussion and the enthusiasm of the speakers. It's the first talk of that kind I'd ever been to (kind of a rally almost) and I was fascinated by how it proceeded, with the talkers and audience cooperating so well and being generally supportive of each other.

Then after about twenty minutes I was looking around at the audiences' faces (I like to see the reactions wherever it is, rock concert, classroom, wherever) and I realised that I was the only man there out of 40 or 50 people. It wasn't just the fact that I happened to be the only male that made me stick out a bit, if this had been somewhere else it would have just been an odd coincidence, but here the event was set up for women and the speakers were obviously used to mainly addressing women and all the things they were saying played off male roles against female ones - eg they were talking about being all female groups of protesters in Israel, about the women of Greenham common and about women being paid for the housework they do and about a women's strike day.

After I realised this I started to think a little differently about why the whole event was run as it was. For example, as usual in public spaces people from the audience were not greatly forthcoming during the question and answer section. I've got over that in the last year because I've had to, being a teacher. I had lots of questions but I only asked a couple because I didn't want to dominate things in any way - I would never feel like that normally, I'm not a very 'manly' man and don't usually dominate _anything_, but I'm naturally very inquisitive. I made sure I wasn't going to interrupt anyone else before asking my questions.

One thing I asked was about one speaker's use of the word 'censored', she said that every time they tried to get their cause covered in the media they were 'censored'. It wasn't a particularly controversial cause so I asked who had censored them and it turns out that she meant editors weren't interested largely because they thought their readers wouldn't be.
To me that's a very different problem to censorship and her answer did leave me curious as to why no one had pointed this out to her before. I think maybe that without males around to intimidate/dominate/out-shout the women (I'm not convinced that is what happens, but it seems to be an axiom of ladyfest) it just ends up that the most bossy women assume that role.

Afterwards my 3 friends, all women, said that every time one speaker in particular mentioned men she looked at me, as if she was addressing me directly, as if I somehow represented all men. I hadn't noticed it really. At one point she said something about women and the caring professions and tacked something on the end like '...of course men do some valuable work in this area too...' then something about gay men. I got the impression that this was added for my benefit. Maybe she assumed I was gay (I'm not) because I was there at all.

It was very nice being among such a high proportion of women, and I always felt welcomed.
I'll try to write more later.

anybody ever read any Luce Irigaray or Monique Wittig? where is a good place to start, i will admit i am completely clueless on this except for parts of where they have influenced Butler/Pollock etc.

irigaray - may as well start with 'this sex which is not one'. dunno wittig

http://tshirthell.vo.llnwd.net/e1/shirts/products/a1199/a1199_bm.gif

Sorry, I've nothing else to add to this conversation.

Je, Tu, Nous is the one on Routledge classics. Kinda sounds like it might be REALLY about French.

read Irrigary in school like 20 years ago and have vague memories of digging it but that's all I got

not sure where to put this but my office had a nice cathartic moment with this today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqHYzYn3WZw

Radical feminism has come to be identified or usually aligned with the gender critical movement. The UK in particular seems to be very much thus.

Probably because "radical feminism" is part of the phrase "gender critical" is a euphemism for...

haven't heard the phrase gender critical before, but I like it

no, you're not supposed to

i mean unless you wanna be history's greatest monster who is only defending a principled position for the sake of women and female-only spaces, then you're supposed to

ok :)

Yeah, no, it's bad.

I do tend to avoid using TERF, though, mostly because I feel like these people aren't actually feminists, no matter what they say. They're transphobes and I call them that.

a euphemism for a euphemism

I think there's an honest argument to be made that gender itself is a patriarchal tool. However, that relies on the identification of gender with gender role, and that's not uncontroversial. Some folks believe gender to be a private mental object rather than a public social one, or some combination of the two.

I've mentioned this elsewhere but I do know a trans person who self-describes as gender critical

The trans folks I speak with pretty much all don't care for gender roles and all they imply. So at least that approach to the issue seems amenable in principle to trans people. On the other hand, just about anyone defending the idea that gender roles are a biological imperative is going to run into a lot of static.

What I'm getting at here is that I think the relationship between the public and private concepts of gender are key to understanding radical feminist positions on the matter of trans identity in a larger cultural context.

luckily all the other problems with the relationship between public and private have been sorted out already so this one last thing shouldn't be too tough to handle

'gender critical' is just classic transphobic 'feminist' rhetoric - take what seems to be/should be a fairly innocent feminist-sounding phrase and turn it into a dogwhistle for 'transphobic biological essentialist' and in doing so attempt to falsely position their ideological enemies (anyone pro-trans rights) as in favour of gendered oppression and supporting gender roles etc. which is obviously untrue

Yeah to be "gender critical" sort of presupposes being "sex uncritical"

At first I thought 'gender critical' was a tautology: like, of course gender is a critical notion.

Anyway, what I find especially worrisome is the intersection between 'feminist' transphobic discourse and archaic, borderline ecofascist concepts such as the Great Mother.

I can't take euphemisms like "gender critical" or (another one I have seen) "trans skeptical" any more seriously than old military euphemisms like "collateral damage". It's not just that such terms are inherently weaponized - mostly I'm not entirely sure they're effective. I can't speak for other people but when I see people making arguments using, with a straight face, weasel words like those, I find it relieving. When people use those words, to me it's indicative that they're not arguing in good faith, and opposing them becomes a simple matter of pointing that out, if absolutely necessary, and just plain ignoring them as toxic, if not.

I too try to avoid the word "TERF", not because I feel it's necessarily inaccurate, but because I do think it's a loaded and contentious word that has, I think, done a lot to undermine radical feminism. I find "transphobe" (or just plain "phobe", as I've started abbreviating/generalizing it) is more broadly applicable.

But I'm also a descriptivist, and I don't expect "TERF" to go away any time soon. I certainly have little sympathy for anybody who characterizes it as a "slur".

My experiences is that as I've encountered more and more trans and genderqueer people, as I've listened to more and more people's experiences, my willingness to make broad and sweeping statements - radical statements - has decreased. My focus at this point - and this may change with time - is on celebrating and affirming diversity rather than on interrogating and criticising discourse. From where I am right now, compassion and kindness are more important than critical interrogation. The two approaches are not incompatible, but there's definitely a tension between them.

If that all sounds vague and new age-y, a specific example: When I first started coming out, I had a lot of frustration regarding my perception that gender was an arbitrary social construct. I was sympathetic with those who wished to abolish gender entirely. Since reading about what John Money did to David Reimer, I've walked back that position. To me, Money is a perfect example of someone who let their abstract ideals take precedence over, really, the basic human rights of another human being. If I have a broader criticism of radicalism (in a feminist context or otherwise), it's that I worry that it can sometimes create a context where such behavior is excused or defended.

My experiences is that as I've encountered more and more trans and genderqueer people, as I've listened to more and more people's experiences, my willingness to make broad and sweeping statements - radical statements - has decreased. My focus at this point - and this may change with time - is on celebrating and affirming diversity rather than on interrogating and criticising discourse. From where I am right now, compassion and kindness are more important than critical interrogation. The two approaches are not incompatible, but there's definitely a tension between them.

Well said.

My experiences is that as I've encountered more and more trans and genderqueer people, as I've listened to more and more people's experiences, my willingness to make broad and sweeping statements - radical statements - has decreased. My focus at this point - and this may change with time - is on celebrating and affirming diversity rather than on interrogating and criticising discourse. From where I am right now, compassion and kindness are more important than critical interrogation. The two approaches are not incompatible, but there's definitely a tension between them.

isn't this is basically a small-c conservative position though, one that leaves the status-quo in place, a status-quo that benefits men and damages women? one could still argue that it's the right position to take despite this, but my impression is that many/most of the anti-TERF/anti-'gender critical' ppl deny this tension you acknowledge between kindness/cautiousness and critical interrogation, deny that accepting trans and gender fluid identities blunts critiques of patriarchy

I have never understood the argument that accepting trans and gender fluid identities blunts the critique of the patriarchy and honestly it’s not something that stands up to scrutiny. If it was the case, you wouldn’t hear about butch (cis!) women being harassed entering women’s toilets, or see the bleed into blatant homophobia. Neither of these outcomes are opposed by the patriarchy; quite the reverse in fact.