Trying to figure out difference between liberal and radical feminism

...... and whilst I find it interesting to learn about radical feminism and to realise its power as a concept, references to this wrong “liberal” feminism sails over my head

Truthfully I thought “liberal” was, other than in relation to the Liberal Democrats more of an American term for left-wing??

(I am not completely uneducated but we Eng Lit girls were practically encouraged to make random references to political theories in our essays without understanding them. I educated myself after escaping from Durham by swimming the moat...)

speakingwoman - that's a good point. Judge people by the consequences of their utterances.

Whatever complicated academic, pseudo-intellectual mumbo-jumbo someone uses to try to defend their position, if the upshot of it is that they want to cover up the realities of prostitution and trafficking of women by painting a portrait of all prostitutes as Belle du Jour, then, to paraphrase that young man in Leystone, "you ain't no feminist, sister."

Also bear in mind that this board is, essentially, feminism HQ in the U.K. for people of mothering age and upwards outside specialist institutions like Universities. Very few of us who wander over from other boards and get hooked have ever been to any offline feminist or women’s meeting. So the general consensus on this board is essentially what I take feminism to be.

Many of us haven’t any theoretical knowledge at all. So the harsher swipes at “liberal feminism” are, for me, just like wandering in to someone else’s hard-fought academic debate about some schism that arose in the last century. It doesn’t mean anything to me -I wande4 right out again, no harm done. But - I’m not so inexperienced that I can’t tell when one side is insisting on defining the other side.

There are-thank goodness-a few brave women who disagree with the majority on this board and stick around to say so. It makes the board more interesting. But I have never read a post talking of prostitution being empowering.

One is just liberal ideology applied to the topic of women, the other is actually an analysis of the role of females in human society.

In only one of these two will you find people saying "feminism is for everyone" or "if it isn't intersectional it isn't feminism".

Yes it doesn't cover the whole of liberalism which is why I said 'essence'. Also, the liberalism is constantly shifting. However, one of the problems radical feminism has with liberal feminism is that a liberal will defend a woman's right to choose be it abortion, pornography or prostitution.

It can be a very uncomfortable position - I don't like it or agree with it but I will defend you right to make that decision.

Decision making does, however, end somewhere and that can be the crux of the matter.

That's rather a one-dimensional portrait of liberalism, Mousse. Most formulations of liberalism are big on both an account of rights, and of liberties. Because you have to be able to decide what to do when two rights, or two freely made choices, conflict. Hence the old adage about "your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose."

I don't know of many liberal theorists who would defend making selling a kidney legal, for instance.

The essence of classical liberalism is that people can make their own choices be they good or bad. So if a woman chooses to sell sex, that may not be a feminist choice but it is a choice she is entitled to make.

So liberalism may mean feminists fighting so that woman can make 'non feminist' choices.

It is an unhelpful assertion as it plays to the pro prostitution lobbyists who argue that it is only radical feminists and evangelical Christians who take the anti- stance.

Totally agree, Lass and speakingwoman.

What I would like to know is how the term "liberal feminism" got so successfully hijacked by people who are neither liberals nor feminists.

The idea that unless you identify as a radical feminist you support prostitution always strikes me as unrealistic and, again, a caricature

Well thats what an awful lot of libfems say. Again though not sure if they actually are liberal feminists or just saying they are. It always seems to be a case of 'if a woman choses it for herself its empowering, and saying you support the Nordic model is being negative towards women who chose!' kind of thing.

Many many men 'identify' as feminists but it always seems to be sex positive stuff. Like, the feminist label is just being used to support stuff that benefits men. Much like this ridiculous 'you are not a feminist if you do not accept transwomen as women (and centre them in feminism as the most oppressed of the oppressed)

The idea that unless you identify as a radical feminist you support prostitution always strikes me as unrealistic and, again, a caricature

Agreed. Many people, men and women, do not support prostitution as a valid , work choice, without being radical feminists. I am not a radical feminist.

It is an unhelpful assertion as it plays to the pro prostitution lobbyists who argue that it is only radical feminists and evangelical Christians who take the anti- stance.

The idea that unless you identify as a radical feminist you support prostitution always strikes me as unrealistic and, again, a caricature.

But I don’t have to dwell on those posts on the board so it’s fine.

Seems to me we need an alliance of all women who are against prostitution....

The problem with radical feminism as far as I can see is it is terribly good at identifying what its proponents think needs to be fixed and little help at all in suggesting a solution beyond a root and branch dismantling of the system. How this is to be achieved is not clear.

The language is, for me off putting- all that talk of the use of Marxist analysis of class- I just glaze over.

Whereas on the other hand no one can really object to the principles of equality of education and opportunity.

So far as Butler , it is entirely possible I have failed to understand a word she is saying but this is the interview I referred to. I assume few of the radical feminists would agree with these statements?

One problem with that view of social construction is that it suggests that what trans people feel about what their gender is, and should be, is itself “constructed” and, therefore, not real. And then the feminist police comes along to expose the construction and dispute a trans person’s sense of their lived reality. I oppose this use of social construction absolutely, and consider it to be a false, misleading, and oppressive use of the theory

I do know that some people believe that I see gender as a “choice” rather than as an essential and firmly fixed sense of self

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/broadly.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/z4jd7y/why-do-men-kill-trans-women-gender-theorist-judith-butler-explains

I think I'm fairly close to your position Blistory.

I think we need radical feminism because it shines a light on power structures, offers an absolutely blistering critique of them (dammit, why is my "q" key not working), and helps to shift the Overton window. But, pragmatically, I think liberal feminism (properly understood as an offshoot of liberal theory in the philosophy of politics, not bastardised into "anything goes, let it all hang out" nonsense) stands more of a chance of bringing about change in the real world.

I don't understand why so many feminists on here are insistent on equating liberal feminism with the notion that it's inherently selfish and all about the individual. Or that's it's about choice and only choice. Or that's it's lightweight in theory when it provides the foundation of all western feminism.

They completely ignore that the concept of individual freedom is tied to a belief that this benefits society as a whole. It's not about an individual woman achieving freedom from oppression but more about all individual women being able to live freely and equally as this benefits society.

And liberal feminism does identify the roots of female oppression but believes that it comes from the physical strength of men being used against women and that as physical strength has, to a large extent been rendered irrelevant by modern technology, it should no longer be a factor in why men believe they are superior to women. It doesn't necessarily recognise that reproductive biology is the root of oppression which is more in line with radical theory.

I suspect my view of radical feminism is affected by having a more pessimistic view of dismantling the system. Men will always remain physically stronger than women so we have to ensure that we eliminate the ways in which they utilise that strength against women and I believe that this can best be achieved by using social, economic and political pressure to bring about change.

And it's a liberal feminist view that improving the life of women improves the life of men, a view that many radical feminists on here seem to support. It's a byproduct but not the aim.

And both radical and liberal feminists can be gender critical but to me, it sits more firmly and naturally within liberal feminist theory than with radical.

Libfems want equality within the existing system.

Radfems want liberation from the existing system.

Yes, this was my understanding of the differences.

However in practice, it seems that 'liberal feminism' is about centering men and what men would want. Not sure if people who wish to centre men are just using the libfem label, or if this is actually liberal feminism.

I wish we could reclaim the word liberal in the old-fashioned sense of liberal political theory, not the modern sense of "letting it all hang out", or even worse, used as a synonym for libertarian by people who are too ill-informed to know the difference.

Properly understood, it's not clear to me that a liberal feminist would or should be "pro sex-work." If you were to take Rawl's "initial position" type thought experiment as the starting point for your liberalism, for instance, you could argue along these lines: "Well, we know this society we're going to create from first principles and dropped into will have inequalities, and I might end up at the bottom of the heap. Forget the mythical 'happy hooker' for a moment - how would I feel about finding myself as the person who had to have sex for money with people I found repulsive simply in order to feed and house my children?" A liberal, at this point, might well decide that this was the point at which "maximising utility" for society as a whole might require a blanket ban on prostitution, just as it would favour a blanket ban on selling your organs.

Similarly, liberalism has often involved very robust defences of free speech and of freedom of belief, and being allowed to get on with what you want to in the private sphere but having to balance your "freedoms" against other people's "freedoms" in the public sphere. Which would seem to me to handle the trans debate perfectly - a liberal would defend to the hilt the right of anyone born male to wear a dress, lipstick, call themselves by a woman's name - but when it came to, say, open plan, communal, single sex changing rooms or prisons or shared overnight accommodation, the transwoman's desire to be "treated as a woman" would have to be balanced against the women's desire not to be in an enclosed space where they were vulnerable with a person with a penis.

Of course Judith Butler is a feminist. It’s possible to disagree with her and others without denying their feminism!
I don’t really identify with either exclusively. Like many feminists, I work for change in eg workplaces, nursery provision etc, but I am also convinced of the deep structural issues that radical feminism identifies. In real life I don’t see the divisions that social media amplifies.

Where does the line get drawn though? Are radfems being "sneering " about libfems? Surely libfems are products of the patriarchy?

I didn't realise I was a radfem in the making when I was younger - I just thought my "logic" was different - eg I found the very notion of pole-dancing liberating to be nonsensical. But I went with the flow thinking I was fighting the good fight (with handmaidens frequently telling me I was wrong).

But what REALLY made me realise I was radfem was losing all my money, all my security, my job, my health, my family etc. Etc.

Only when you're in the gutter when you're used to the high life do you truly get it.

Now I see the patriarchy everywhere.

I think the liberal relates to 'with the truth'

You hear liberal feminists talking about 'your truth' and 'their truth' not THE truth. Some truths are too inconvenient, so they are not to be spoken of at all. Some questions are considered 'wrong' so they are made taboo.

And there very much seems to be a hierarchy of who is allowed to speak and who must shut up.

Radical feminists seem to me to be more fact/data/science driven, more analytical. More prepared to state ugly and unpopular facts so that they can be addressed.

I think it's worth recognising that these days, particularly post-90s, most females in modern Western societies start off as lib fems. This is largely because the huge meta feminist issues were won by the second wave: working rights, financial rights etc. So for young women, feminism does appear to be about individual choice.

This, however, tends to change with experience and age, particularly having a child: that's when the recognition of classwide issues emerges.

For very elite women, however, this recognition is not so drastic as wealth plays a part in eleviating the issues, so they tend to remain lib fem throughout their lives. Unfortunately, these women tend to be the ones with the most media exposure and influence, so their perspectives skew the debates.

Great posts Blistory very informative.

I’ve never studied feminism but nonetheless my smart-person alarm bells are in good working order and they ring loudly at some of the critiques-misrepresented-as-definition that I read on here. Having said that, it’s a forum not a court of law and people are entitled to say it as they see it.

For me, as a middle class person, I ticked along nicely thinking I was a feminist until some experiences gave me a bit more insight. After that I realised I was “female enough” not to be excepted from the problem (like Colin Powell realising that he was, after all, “Black Enough” after experiencing racism from which he had been largely sheltered).