As there has been a lull in the thread, I would just really like to c&p Buffy's potted history of radfem from Saturday - as I feel it was lost in the mayhem that was Saturday night on this thread, and because it's just so informative:
In full:
"According to the Oxford Dictionary, radical (when used as a noun) means: a person who advocates thorough or complete political or social reform; a member of a political party or part of a party pursuing such aims.
It came from the women's liberation groups of the 60s and 70s, arising partly out of some young women's experiences with male led movements for liberation like socialism and civil rights. Women were part of those groups, but when some tried to get the men to listen to the issues they thought were important, they were told (and this is a quote from Jo Freeman, recounting something said to Shulamith Firestone) "Cool down, little girl. We have more important things to talk about than women's problems."
They didn't cool down, they fucked off and started their own groups, using primarily a method called consciousness raising, which is very much like we do here really. You know when a woman posts a thread that says stuff like, my DH checks my messages, gets stroppy when I see my friends, controls most of the money, is this normal? And loads of women appear to say no, it's not normal, red flag, this was my experience too and this is what happened in the end, call Women's Aid, we'll support you, get out, life can be free and good? That's like consciousness raising. Through it, women become aware that they're not the only one struggling, they're not exhausted and depressed because they're weak but because they are being treated unfairly, that it's a problem with society not with them, that with other women they can collectively find the strength to change things. Mumsnet's Let Toys Be Toys and We Believe You campaigns are examples.
Out of these groups in the 60s and 70s came the notion that society is sexist to its very core, to its root and the only way to gain equality was to liberate women from this system designed by men to benefit men. In other words, a process of complete reform. These women pointed out how women's reproductive and domestic labour was expected to be provided to men, yet wasn't valued. They pointed out how little rights women had over our own bodies. They pointed out how rape in marriage was legal, how a man's violence towards his wife and children was regarded as a private matter. They pointed out how few rights women had at work, and how much sexual harassment they were expected to put up with. They fought for those things to be brought into the light and challenged.
They achieved a great deal of change, giving us a legal bedrock upon which we can stand now to try and fight the social attitudes that still exist around rape, DV, women's work in the home etc. They wrote some crazy sounding shit (Firestone's proposal that we free women by growing babies in jars etc). I don't know for sure how that was meant, but I think most radfems today regard such writings as theory, thought experiments designed to shift the Overton window so changes like maternity rights would seem much, much less outlandish.
They were also of their time, so most of them were white, western women thinking mostly about white western culture. Black women at the time and today feel and felt (rightly so IMO) sidelined, because white women didn't really appreciate the dual impact of racism and sexism, nor realise the advantages they had over their sisters because they were white in 60s America. This problem isn't unique to radical feminism: liberal feminism is criticised for being very middle-class oriented as well as having a problem with race, socialist feminism has issues etc. Ideas like womanism arose in reaction to this. There is no one feminism that can or should claim to speak for all women, in all places, in all ways. Women are 51% of the world's population, not a minority, we are a hugely varied and complex group.
The reason radfems are painted in the popular imagination as ugly, hairy, aggressive man-haters? I think it's because radical feminism challenges the base of male power and privilege over women: dynamics in relationships and the home. If you think about it, throughout history a lot of men's exploitation of women has been conducted in the private sphere: women forced to marry and bear children, raped, abused, made to work hard in the home for little thanks or reward and the wealth she helped created belonged to the man only; if she left, she left with nothing. However much we love our partners, I can't see how anyone can argue that family structure today is not a legacy of a time when women were possessions or resources to be traded between men, when rape was a crime of property against a woman's owner. It's the last, mostly untouched bastion of male power, this ability be a king in a little castle. Radical feminism traces most other oppressions back to this dynamic. The personal is political.
And think also about what these insults say about the sort of women society approves of? Attractive, soft, passive and accommodating; hairless, young and naive, defined by our difference to men and weakness in relation to them. Men are allowed to be hairy and aggressive, aren't they? It's not an insult to call them that, these are defining characteristics of masculinity. So I want to ask again, who benefits from watering down radical feminist ideas so they become palatable to the mainstream?
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