The difference between liberal and radical feminism

I've been around a while and don't use other names on FWR - but I do dip in and out.... Funny because other people ask me this too. I must have a psychological doppelgänger!

I think FoodUnit's been around ages?

But thanks food, and yes, absolutely! There is this idea that women have to set an example, and some men feel that it's their job to snipe at feminists not being perfectly 'equal' (by which they mean not giving men 50% time/energy/credit in every single context). It is very tedious.

Foodunit, are you a name changer? I don't recognise your name but...

Great stuff on this thread.

For me there are profound problems with liberalism (not just within a feminist context). The problems were gradually revealed to me from university days onward by a fiendishly clever Asian friend of mine who was very sharp to certain things to do with racism which I (white) I'm afraid would not have noticed.

There is a long thing that I would like to write about the limits of liberalism. And how little it can ever accomplish. It annoys me that some of my best friends, and the people I can be most intellectually attracted to, then turn out to have this liberalism running through their thinking, weakening it, a sort of failure to face up to the reality of things in the end. A sort of blithe wishful thinking takes over from their other sharpness at the last minute.

That's a great example LRD.

In a lot of cases I think there's a certain degree of pragmatism to liberal thinking. There's an acceptance that 'look men have all the power and we'd better not piss them off if we want to change things, we need them to want to cooperate with us'. And this leads to what I think are quite humiliating concessions:

Yes life is just as unfair for men, no, we aren't angry we just think men should be more sporting, yes women also need to be restrained from getting too large a slice of the pie, etc.

Yes, I agree with that. Isn't the point that most people don't automatically think about structures of power/power imbalances while they're going about their daily lives? So we don't realize unless we keep reminding ourselves, what is going on.

Often when people talk about wanting 'equality', that goes hand in hand with the idea that equality right now means dedicating 50% of resources/time/energy to men as well as women - and to the men who're most used to having the lion's share of it anyway. So it's 'equal' if in my class I teach 5 male writers and 5 women. Even if there are 6 really amazing women writers to talk about - that wouldn't be 'equality'. Even if those students have studied almost nothing but male writers up to the point when they get to my class. That's a really silly example but people really do get up in arms about the 'inequality' of that, and unless I label the class 'women's writing' , teaching a majority of women is 'unfair' whereas the rest of the education system where it happens as normal, just gets the equalists' response: 'oh, what a pity ... but then, most writers are men'

I think it's probably the same with other things.

No offence intended, but generally I notice a squeamishness about naming the oppressor and yes, it is linguistics to speak about equality, but it is a language men generally prefer. It means they don't have to engage in soul-searching questions about their role as oppressor. It also means men can make feminism all about them. They can claim to be feminist, even better feminists than women even while engaging in oppressive behaviours.

That's what I mean about not woman-centred. If a man steps up, claims patriarchy hurts him more than any women, starts telling women how to conduct themselves, etc, radical feminists would probaby roast him and escort him out of the building, whereas liberal feminists would allow him space to divert the agenda.

It's all linguistics.

To say liberals seek equality but aren't woman-centred is an opinion, rather than any definitive. I don't know any feminists of any description who fail to recognize an oppressor, and indeed the oppressed. And to seek equality is to seek to rid the oppressed of oppression. You can call that liberation from male oppression. I have absolutely no idea where seeking the relonquishment of power 'when presented with good reason to do so' comes from. Is there some doctrine that I am missing out on?

Is there an actual tangible difference between equality and lack of oppression?

I don't mean the old 'trying to be equal to men on men's terms' garbage. I mean, if everyone is treated equally, there is no oppressor, no oppressed.

You are right about the class thing though. I'm not arguing against the existence of male privilege whether individual men want it or not, but to write off half of humanity by virtue of their genitalia is a step difference.

Its strange, I've not thought of liberals as pro-porn. I think of sex-possies and funfems as pro-porn, but I can see how liberals get shoved in the mix because liberal feminism isn't woman-centred. It seeks equality with men rather than liberation from male domination, and hopes men will relinquish power when presented with good reason to do so.

Radical feminism sees men as a class as the oppressors of women as a class, whereas liberals tend to think its neither nice or practical to name the oppressor. In fact they don't tend to speak of oppression at all, its all about equality and inequality.

I don't believe liberals and radicals are actually hostile in their objectives, just that they disagree strongly on the role of men in both perpetuating women's oppression and the role of men in liberating women from it (or should I say 'helping women achieve equality?).

'But because there are so few liberal feminists now taking an antio porn and prostitution stance, this stance is often seen as purely a radical feminist stance. It is not. There used to be many liberal feminists who took the same stance and I hope there will be again in the future.'

I agree that I've always identified as a liberal feminist and have been anti porn and prostitution since the 70s. It confused me enormously when the proporn and prostitution activists also identified as feminist, as for decades, that was what we had been campaigning against. Was that wave three or four?

'Liberal feminism is making changes to the system to lead to equality.' Yes, as a main strategy and philosophy. Although there is a place for dynamite if certain aspects of the system are unable to change in this way.

I know, eats. but they are a mouthy lot on tinternet and always slagging off liberals, which they seem to confuse with sex-positivism and pole dancing.

What makes that a rad proposition then?

Afaik most liberals just believe if you want to be identified as a woman in law, you do x,y and z, and should be able to in order to gain a very small degree of protection in a vicious patriarchal society. An act of desperation to fit in.

What you believe about someone who has genital surgery or just puts on a dress is neither here nor there.

Honestly, it's so tricky to keep up with what you're supposed to be, these days.

I know loads of anti-porn fems, none of whom identify as radical feminists. Maybe it's a denial thing. A bit like 'i'm a feminist, but...'

It's not so far off the truth anyway. Tbh 'radical' isn't a very exclusive club. Most of the self identified liberals who took that flaming test came out as largely rad iirc.

It's the hierarchical nature of the thing that gets right on my tits, tbh. And I love an underdog.

Oh, I don't think so, eats. Even dworkin believed that someone who was being discriminated against and suffering due to their gender had the right to identify as to whatever gender they needed to in order to gain protection. I doubt I can find the quotes, but it makes me chortle every time we have a trans thread.

The issue with liberals and pornography is that liberals regard censorship, in any form and for any cause, as a horror. Radicals might say porn is a worse horrorand anyway, radicals down through the ages have never flinched from censorship, as long as they're the ones in charge. So it really isn't that liberal feminists are "pro porn"they probably don't like it, but they'd say (all right, we'd say) that there's no fair mechanism for getting rid of pornography without doing a lot of harm to people's freedom. And they, uh, we, would also ask who's going to be sitting at the controls of the censorship engine, us or our enemies? Whereas radicals think in terms of a total change in society, so they never need to deal with the idea that preventing porn will be yet another government function that'll be done so badly we'll probably wish we'd never heard of it. Obviously, the right people will be in charge of what gets published!

We are all individuals.

Are we the Judean People's Liberation Front or the People's Front of Judea??

(Sorry, couldn't resist )

Kind of like the sidelining of older women, iykwim. And I'm not even that old.

That sounded abrupt. It was meant to be more... Wry?

Yeah, I think we've all just got bored with people making assumptions and can't be bothered to argue any more.

It's very confusing. Apparently as a liberal I am supposed to be sex positive and pro-porn.

That wasn't explained to me when feminism dawned, nor to the other women who identified as feminists at that point. We all used to be in one gang, fighting the patriarchy. Not Good Enough now.

I am loving the strong hard line v soft stuff, by the way. are we reclaiming masculine stereotyped attributes and characteristics, or are we celebrating the nurturing difference of womanhood? Denigrating ourselves by attempting to don those male characteristics? Or saying it's all bollocks and there's no difference (except when we want a conference with no penes).

Funny that 'hard and strong' is seen as more positive, anyway.

More anyone?