When (and why) did what used to be known as Feminism become labelled Radical Feminism?

It makes me sad also Vezzie, this idea that you shouldn't challenge sexist behavior because you don't want to be seen as bolshy.

One of the problems for me when I was working in a male-dominated environment was that I felt pleased to "be one of the boys" and didn't want to rock the boat, so had to turn a blind eye to things like office porn, trips to strip clubs, which didn't happen that often, but often enough to make me feel uncomfortable.

Complaining about it just gives you a bad rep but it always surprised me that other women would just meekly smile and say "oh it doesn't bother me". Did they actually mean it? Had they been so socialized by the lad culture and the idea of empowerment or were they fooling themselves?

Whenever I did complain the men would play the trump card "well

:( Vezzie - yes, it's the old not wanting to be seen as a 'humourless man-hating feminist' thing, isn't it? I've witnessed this sort of behaviour in my office as well and it infuriates and saddens me in equal parts.

(and yes, I've been told before now that they 'needed a man' to fill a particular role I was already doing 95% of in addition to my own job!)

Lovecat, I work with young women too and I get a bit sad about some ways in which they seem to sell themselves short. Then I agnonise about being patronising. (Then, occasionally, I actually get on with some work.)

I was in the workplace at a time when blatant sexism, though illegal, was effectively unchallengeable, for instance: I was told not to bother applying for an internal post because they needed a man to do it; I was told I wasn't getting a pay rise, despite an excellent appraisal with no criticisms, because "the MD doesn't like bright young girls". (I was not born in 1930 either!) I opposed about the latter, and was effectively constructively dismissed.
Now when I manage "bright young women" (as I prefer to think of them) I LOVE that they have a great boss (me, preen) who will encourage them, give them credit for their ideas and not treat them as uppity because they have them. And then it can be a bit annoying that some men treat them as eye candy anyway, but hell, that's like the weather, what can you do; but then it makes me really sad that they accept it and are not offended by, for instance, one young man turning to another at an industry do, gesturing at my very pretty young colleague and saying, "have you tapped that?"

I feel old at the gulf between my response to that, and hers. And I think, of course (who doesn't) that I am right, it is harmful and offensive, and she is missing something in thinking it's just funny; but there was a glimmer of hurt in her eyes, for a second, that she won't "indulge", there is a level on which she feels she is demeaned and humiliated but thinks the right thing to do is be a trouper.
I'm sad.
I'm really sad today.

No hating here that I can see...

I don't think I'm a radfem, because I don't know enough about the reasoning behind certain areas of belief to be entirely accepting of them. I'm slowly educating myself and I suspect there are some things I won't agree with, but others I will.

However I find myself working in an office with mainly 20-something graduate women (I'm in my 40's) and being seen as 'the loony hardline feminist' - because I don't let sexist bullshit stand (from men or women), don't shave my legs (they don't get to see my hairy pits because I wear sleeves to hide my bingo wings ), hate lapdancing clubs/porn/prostitution, do my own car maintenance and once expressed the opinion that Rhianna did not deserve to get beaten up by Chris Brown no matter how 'annoying and pushy' she might have been...

All that to me is fairly obvious as a rational human being, not radical, weirdo thinking, but apparently to the younger generation [gimmer] it is?

Interestingly enough when I read Backlash a few years ago Susan Faludi went through the history of Feminism and said something along the lines of (forgive my paraphrasing) that it seemed to go on a cyclical basis - women would make inroads into male privilege and then within a generation it would be all but forgotten about and we would have to start all over again.

Naively, I thought 'well, that won't happen again' - but it looks like it has :(

As to why... ?

Not sure who has mentioned hating anyone, I was just saying that it seems a expression of feminism that is beyond choice feminism is now classed as being radical when before it probably would not have been seen in that way.

hating ?

where is the hating ?

it's a discussion, WW, there is no hate here

I find this whole hating of women who don't subscribe to the same ideology as you rather ironic.

I think you are saying that what is now being classed as radical was just basic feminism before? It certainly feels like everyone is into nice fluffy choice feminism. Feminism is fine as long as it us in a bikini dancing on a pole type thing.

Kim, if you look up Sheila Jeffreys on youtube, there is a video of a talk she gave on Kate Millett. It doesn't mention transgender issues (and perhaps you'd rather not here her talk about that) but it gives a good idea of her feminist politics in her own words. She does cover some stuff about the politics of sexuality.

The marriage thing is rather strange because at the time a lot of radical feminists were writing about marriage, there was no such thing as rape in marriage. So getting married did mean you were giving up rights to determine what happened to your own body. Rape in marriage was made illegal after I became an adult and started having sex, about 20 years ago, as a consequence of these kinds of feminist critiques of marriage.

And what I wonder is, with all the backlash, if feminists hadn't got that law changed just before the backlash started, would people be in favour of it now? Or would lots of people be on here arguing that the idea was too radical, and that rape in marriage wasn't really rape, that if you didn't want to have sex with somebody you shouldn't have married them, that you could never prove it happened, and that it made a mockery of 'real' rape?

Yes, there are many different types of feminism: liberal feminism, marxist feminism, hip hop feminism www.theroot.com/views/hip-hop-feminism , religious identified feminism, womanism (which is a response and sort of alternative)...

I think such diversity is a good thing, IMHO.

Radical feminism is only one stream of many. The idea that only radical feminism is real feminism, is maybe one which radfems like to indulge in, but that doesn't make it true.