Radical Feminism: Discuss

I'd like to know too. I think women play just as big a part in Patriarchy as men, whatever it is.

"if you are male and you tell a sexist joke you don't have to wonder how it might make women around you feel, because the social pressure on them is so great you know they won't say anything about it"

not where I come from.
-- gabbneb (gabbne...), August 31st, 2003.

Certianly not round here either.

--being a woman doesn't mean you have a feminist political awareness (meaning are you really up in it, do you know what people are discussing or just your stereotype of it)

I think the second paragraph here is gently 'silencing' women who are not active feminists.
Perhaps the men who tell these jokes aren't doing it on purpose?

And about RJG's trolling. I think that's the disguise Arnold Swarzenegger's character wears in Total Recall when he's trying to get past customs, he says he's staying for "two weeks".
When he's found out the woman's face splits open and reveal a man inside.

Still don't really see what that has to do with anything.

oh yeah and i am in the USA, where the majority of women who are murdered are murdered by their spouses, domestic partners, or boyfriends.

just raising questions - i wonder about the sex breakdown of US murder victims. i wonder whether the majority of men who are murdered are murdered by someone they know. i imagine that the majority of murderers are men. i wonder if the last is the best way to view this subject.

when it comes to serious issues being trivializes, and as domestic abuse and childhood abuse survivor NO I DON'T because it is not funny

this may be inappropriate and if so i apologize in advance and anyone is welcome to get rid of this part of my post, but you raised the point so i'll go with it in one direction - do you think feminism is more important than childhood abuse? is the latter part of the former and is it discussed enough?

Do I have a sense of humor when people are not trying to trivialize serious things? YES I DO

i find it disturbing when people trivialize serious things as well. i once almost got into a physical fight (which would be like unheard of from me and which i would undoubtedly have lost resoundingly) with a friend - the grandson of a former supreme court justice, no less - who didn't vote in a national election because the line was too long. but joking about a serious subject does not necessarily trivialize it, and intentions can be misread on here if you're unfamiliar with someone or can't discern their tone. some of the most outspoken political people i know are quite willing to be funny or ironic about things that are quite important to them.

also, because thrice is nicer than twice - "this is complete bullshit"

RJG is being TRULY offensive and disrespectful, and further he is creeping me out.

Why on earth should we have to think about which of those two things is more important? They both are!

(gabbneb, if I understand what you're getting at, you're suggesting that someone might become a feminist _because_ they were abused. If that is what you're hinting at then please start another thread, this one is complicated enough already)

for instance sometimes you start thinking of women in a context separate from every other reality. like saying on this list, women should be able to do anything they want: be a housewife or a brain surgeon or a sex worker or a pro athlete. well, can anyone regardless of sex do those things? or are the class, economic, legal, and skill-set obstructions? then you get into all the other messy factors of life that prevent people everyone from achieving what they want to do. and can we judge whether what they want is valid or not and worth fighting for (ie. what does a housewife do)?

Lolita, youre second paragraph particularly sums up very nicely a lot of what I think. Thanks.

RJG, was I right about it being from Total Recall?

I have a whole spiel about theorising killing identity politics (and socialism which is the catchall for all equality issues) by taking control of the fight away from people most affected by inequality and reducing it to factional bickering by people who weren't really that oppressed in the first place, but we'll come to all of that tomorrow.

Radical Feminism: sees male supremacism (patriarchy) as the root of societal ills; strong focus on the politics of biology. One version of radical feminism is political, rationalist, and theoretical; feels women's biology (birthing, menstruation, etc.) under patriarchy limits women's access to and power in the public sphere; rejects viewing women as closer to nature.

This is from an "eco-feminist" web site (ugh), but it's close enough.

Most people use the term disparagingly, because they don't know what it is at all.

I don't have time to write about this too much, but the key book is Shulamith Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex. I don't think there are too many radical feminists around these days, in spite of what conservatives say (the ones they call "radical" are in fact "liberal"). Radical feminists used to question economics and the nuclear family - all sorts of things. Radical doesn't mean "extreme", it just means getting to the root of something.

Liberal feminism - see "PC". Liberal feminists don't question institutions too much - many of them are far too in love with our criminal justice system IMO, to give one example.

Very good point Di, but I have to argree with Ed also in the sense that this goes back to me saying I don't feel confident in discussions like this (in fact I have a thread topic on this subject I will start later today) due to my not-so-hifalutin education.

It isnt so much a matter of social positioning, as I know a lot of people from less well-off backgrounds can get uni education but I feel personally that having had a university education gives people an advantage when it comes to defining the feminist canon (or whatever else). You'd hardly see a Bolivian factory worker coming in here espousing like someone like Momus (and thats a damn shame), and Ed's OTM - aren't the dispossesed the ones who need the voice most?

If that came across in any way patronising I didn't mean it too. Dammit I feel like what I want to say doesn't come out how I want it to grr.

heh.

Er, best not derail this very good thread, do carry on :)

However I am super-sympathetic towards many aspects of radical- and eco-feminism, especially insofar as they helped me to politically contextualise my own homosexuality. I think the root'n'branch critique of patriarchy and gender relations is urgent and key, and it ties into the more general processes by which we are all interpellated as subjects. The mistake of dumbed-down radical feminism is to ignore the fact that patriarchy is only a second-level simulacrum of the insubordination of society (by which I mean that gender oppression is a sub-set of oppression of the subject), and thus to assume that it really is just a case of womanhood vs the patriarchy.

I assume this happens for three reasons: a) the comforting thought that liberation from patriarchy is the loose end trailing from the ball of string making up liberation of the subject (radical socialists also do this vis a vis class liberation); b) a sense of intellectual security gained by devising a heirarchy of oppressions which confers upon its deviser an unambiguous response to any ambiguous (read: complex) problem (radical socialists also do this etc.); and c) a desire to effect liberation now prior to skillzing up on all these issues.

Of course this is all dumbed-down radical feminism, and I've read a lot of not so dumbed-down radical feminism which doesn't fall into these traps: its focus on the patriarchy and gender relations is not necessarily arguing for the heirarchical pre-eminence of this particular conflict, any more than a political commentator who writes an article on the economy one week and foreign policy the next is saying that the former or the latter is the most important issue in political debate.

gender oppression is a sub-set of oppression of the subject

you're right, it doesn't deserve to be given more prominence than other forms of oppression, but gender oppression isn't a subset of anything.

As for radical feminism -- love the second part, not so crazy about the first. Radical anything is guaranteed to annoy me, because all it really means is that some people managed to get together and convince each other that their theory is above the need for empirical support. Nothing is above the need for empirical support. Except possibly Ganesh. And Andrew WK.

What do you think of The Onion?

Could you explain what this phrase means please?

I found myself with a fleeting thought of "does this mean I'm being dismissive merely because I'm using humour?". And I'm not, that's never the purpose of me cracking a joke, *especially* in a serious conversation. It's usually, if anything, to try and loosen up the mood to avoid tension and thus unneccesary aggro that would derail the argument. Method of diffusion. I assume that may be why some people on ILX use humour, and they're *perhaps* being unfairly branded as "silencing" or "being dismissive".

Serious, well considered discussions are fantastic, but if they get too tense and ponderous, you lose part of your audience.

Humour CAN be dismissive and trivialize an issue as Orbit said, I do agree - like when someone mocks you with "gee youre so funny when you're mad!" stupidly.

I just don't want to think I'd be thought worse of because I might crack a funny now and then - its the kind of person I am.

But its those who never DO get there - those who for whatever reason are denied a chance at a better education - that are left out when it all goes theoretical.

Feminism would have to be the most boring topic to ever arrive on ILX. Lets get back to talking about sex - at least it's a bit exciting and imaginative.