Radical Feminism: Discuss

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.

I'm not so sure - the fact of two sexes is the condition of possibility for its existence, true, but in a very broad sense its operation is quite similar to the way in which oppression of race/culture, animals and the environment work in that it follows the operation of platonic dualism (ie. a binary opposition wherein each side of the binary is presupposed to *totally* opposed and different to the other, and one has to instrumentalise the other). Thus it is our mode of thinking about the *world* which encourages us to entrench gender inequality.

I guess I'm very swayed by eco-feminisists wrt this line of argument.

What people who do this then do is read other oppressions as a subset (I use the word deliberately this time) of the one they're interested in, which can be useful up to a point but then very quickly becomes distorting. I guess my beef is with the idea of there being a heirarchy of oppressions, when I would argue that what *is* common among different forms of oppression (eg. platonic dualism) never finds a pure expression of itself anywhere. It can only be seen in the various individual manifestations oppression but is not originally *derived* from any one form.

A lot of radical feminists I used to know would insist that the "root" of all oppression was gender oppression; likewise a lot of marxists would say the same vis a vis class oppression. I would contend that the "root" of oppression is always absent, invisibly shaping different oppressions because it is entrenched in language and consciousness rather than in any *particular* social or interpersonal operation of opression.

BECAUSE I can't smile when my girlfriends are dying inside. We are dying inside and we never even touch each other; we are supposed to hate each other.

BECAUSE we need to talk to each other. Communication/inclusion is the key. We will never know if we don't break the code of silence.

BECAUSE we are being divided by our labels and philosophies, and we need to accept and support each other as girls; acknowledging our different approaches to life and accepting all of them as valid.

BECAUSE I need laughter and I need girl love. We need to build lines of communication so we can be more open and accessible to each other.

BECAUSE we need to acknowledge that our blood is being spilt; that right now a girl is being raped or battered and it might be you or your mom or the girl you sat next to on the bus last Tuesday, and she might be dead by the time you finish reading this. I am not making this up.

BECAUSE we will never meet the hierarchical BOY standards of talented, cool, or smart. They are created to keep us out, and if we ever meet them they will change, or we will become tokens.

BECAUSE in every form of media I see us/myself slapped, decapitated, laughed at, objectified, raped, trivialized, pushed, ignored, stereotyped, kicked, scorned, molested, silenced, invalidated, knifed, shot, choked, and killed.

BECAUSE I am tired of these things happening to me; I'm not a fuck toy, I'm not a punching bag, I'm not a joke.

BECAUSE I am still fucked up, I am still dealing with internalized racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, etc., and I don't want to do it alone.

BECAUSE I see the connectedness of all forms of oppression and I believe we need to fight them with this awareness.

BECAUSE a safe space needs to be created for girls where we can open our eyes and reach out to each other without being threatened by this sexist society and our day to day bullshit.

by Erika Reinstein, editor of Fantastic Fanzine; as printed in Riot Grrrl NYC #2, 1992

BECAUSE every time we pick up a pen, or an instrument, or get anything done, we are creating the revolution. We ARE the revolution.

BECAUSE us girls crave records and books and fanzines that speak to US that WE feel included in and can understand in our own ways.

BECAUSE we wanna make it easier for girls to see/hear each other's work so that we can share strategies and criticize-applaud each other.

BECAUSE we must take over the means of production in order to create our own meanings.

BECAUSE viewing our work as being connected to our girlfriends-politics-real lives is essential if we are gonna figure out how we are doing impacts, reflects, perpetuates, or DISRUPTS the status quo.

BECAUSE we recognize fantasies of Instant Macho Gun Revolution as impractical lies meant to keep us simply dreaming instead of becoming our dreams AND THUS seek to create revolution in our own lives every single day by envisioning and creating alternatives to the bullshit christian capitalist way of doing things.

BECAUSE we don't wanna assimilate to someone else's (boy) standards of what is or isn't cool.

BECAUSE we are unwilling to falter under claims that we are reactionary "reverse sexists" AND NOT THE TRUEPUNKROCK-SOULCRUSADERS THAT WE KNOW we really are.

BECAUSE we know that life is much more than physical survival and are patently aware that the punk rock "you can do anything" idea is crucial to the coming angry grrrl rock revolution that seeks to save the psychic and cultural lives of girls and women everywhere, according to their terms, not ours.

BECAUSE we are interested in creating non-hierarchical ways of being AND making music, friends, and scenes based on communication + understanding, instead of competition + good/bad categorizations.

BECAUSE doing/reading/seeing/hearing cool things that validate and challenge us can help us gain strength and the sense of community that we need in order to figure out how bullshit like racism, able-bodyism, ageism, speciesism, classism, thinism, anti-Semitism, and heterosexism figures in our own lives.

BECAUSE we see fostering and supporting girl scenes and girl artists of all kinds as integral to this process.

BECAUSE we hate capitalism in all its forms and see our main goal as sharing information and staying alive, instead of making profits or being cool according to traditional standards.

BECAUSE we are angry at a society that tells us Girl=Dumb, Girl=Bad, Girl=Weak.

BECAUSE we are unwilling to let our real and valid anger be diffused and/or turned against us via the internalization of sexism as witnessed in girl/girl jealousism and self-defeating girltype behaviors.

BECAUSE I believe with my wholeheartmindbody that girls constitute a revolutionary soul force that can, and will, change the world for real.

from Bikini Kill #2, Olympia, WA circa 1992
(as reprinted in Rosenberg and Garofalo 1998)

(Spice Girls, dunno when)

Am I doing something right, or wrong, or...?

I get up to the front and kick arse in moshpits. I smoke, I wear jeans, I sit with my legs apart. I call boys up and ask them out on dates. I initiate sex. I tell off my boss if I think he's being a sexist prick. I can talk to my male and my female friends about any feeling or thought without feeling "weird". I walk the streets alone at night with CAUTION instead of FEAR - and it seems to work. I live alone and I work hard and I manage fine (mostly). I can admit it when I am vulnerable, and ask for a cuddle and cup of tea and not think it is "weak" or "wrong".

I refuse to be a fucking victim.

Race oppression is not a subset of gender oppression, because there are black people who are not women.

Gender oppression is not a subset of race oppression, because there are women who are not black.

Can someone explain this?