What counts as radical in the context of politics, not just feminism?

[DeviTheGaelet]

This morning I heard Jeremy Corbyn's plan to introduce legislation to ensure bosses pay was capped at x20 the lowest paid in the company described as "radical".
A few days ago on a thread about what do radical feminists want to achieve I said i thought that use it or lose it paternity leave legislation would be a radical change to improve equality of the semester. But got told this isn't radical because it's using legislation to enforce a change.
Now I'm confused about what radical change actually is? Did the reporter use radical as a word for "a big change" rather than as a change targeting the root of pay inequality?
Can radical change be enacted through existing legal frameworks? Or by definition does this mean it isn't radical?
I'm confused
I would really appreciate it if we didn't derail into "rad fems are mean" please!

My understanding was that 'radical' denoted a level of system change in some way, shape or form that went beyond legal change. Liberals, stemming from an Enlightenment tradition that valued the social contract, rule of law and human rationality were more apt to favour incremental system change via legal processes and democratic agreement whereas radicals (in the old days, socialists) were more likely to want to 'smash the state'.

I agree, except it's worth noting that enlightenment liberalism itself was incipiently radical. Voltaire, Rousseau, Paine and Wollstonecraft were all radicals in that they challenged the monarchical absolutism and patrician traditions of their time. But like everything else, the enlightenment tradition they inaugurated calcified into new social hierarchies and legal systems - those of modern capitalism, namely.

SomeDyke - I meant to say ... what do you think that Wittig meant and do you agree with it?

Thanks for the Wittig quote, that's interesting

If women = "the sex class that men act on" then her opinion that lesbians have removed themselves from that class makes some sense. Of course, it doesn't stop men (as a class) perceiving a lesbian woman as part of the sex class they act on.

If women = "the sex class that men act on" then her opinion that lesbians have removed themselves from that class makes some sense. Of course, it doesn't stop men (as a class) perceiving a lesbian woman as part of the sex class they act on

Yes - it ends up as another debate about agency and power doesn't it?

What I think I agree with is that women as currently understood is defined in relation to men, hence part of the whole heteronormative wotsit. Man, in contrast, is so often seen as default human that we don't really need to add this!
Think biblical Eve for starters, where Adam gets created first, and then Eve later as an afterthought.
So bound up with all this is what distinguishes woman (her sex), and how so much of how woman is defined is in relation to man.

So, what about lesbians, who are, potentially at least, not part of this structure. Hence not women!

No surprise if then the reaction is to reel lesbians back in, and try and make them part of the existing structure:
"I think that lesbians / lesbian identity can do this, but it can also mimic heterosexual relations and there are ways of being 'not woman' that don't involve being a lesbian. "
So, trying to make (or claim) that rather than being egalitarian, say, lesbians couples are just a poor copy of the heterosexual original, yin and yang, the same basic dichotomy.

Which actually does accord with much of my thinking, that with two females, you do have a different, hopefully more egalitarian structure of that relationship possible, for starters.

So I'm thinking that I agree with the statement in theory. I think the thinking outside the patriarchal, heteronormative structure is necessary, that to do that you must first posit that there is an outside. That our everyday conceptions of what is possible are so constrained by the expected male/female, yin/yang dichotomy, that woman itself is so linked up with all that that lesbian is potentially really outside of that structure, and hence not even woman.

Well, I seem to have convinced myself all over again that I do believe it, even if I won't say it much in everyday life because today it will be misunderstood (as saying you are a man, or a transman, or non-binary or whatever other umpteen gender identities are in vogue today!), or take a very long essay to explain exactly what you do mean.......................

Whether or not this has anything to do with what Monique meant when she said it is another matter. Perhaps I need to go read 'The Lesbian Body' again..............

Do you think she was framing "woman" as a gender role rather than biologically? In a similar way to some TRAs today. I have seen it argued that lesbians are closeted trans men. Maybe that's too simplistic though.

I agree with your post too dyke. Although it seems ridiculous to say lesbians aren't women

I would guess that she is referencing Beauvoir's idea behind "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman."

The idea being that "female" is a neutral state of biological sex and "woman" is a socio-political category and status. Lesbians buck the trend through their noncompliance with key aspects of the sex role imposed on women that defines them as women.

Lots of lesbians refer to themselves as womyn.

It sucks though that "woman" has an external definition. It annoys me. I know what a woman is and lesbians are definitely women

Yes, it does. In my head "woman" has 2 different meanings. One of them is the meaning I give it myself which is "adult human female" and awesome and the other is patriarchy' s horrible one of other/inferior etc. I think of myself and other women as the former definition. The latter definition is to be resisted because it isn't true, and as you say, is external.

I hope that makes sense, it's kinda hard to express.

Yes, that's exactly what I meant!

Feminist fist bump!

I don't think she meant woman as 'gender role' in the simplistic way it is used nowadays. Man and woman as two ends of the 'gender spectrum', or even umpteen divisions in between still keep us stuck on that 1-d line with it being anchored at the man as default human end and woman only being defined as other. Gender being the system that keeps women nailed to that line. And then the same dichotomy repeated even amongst gay men, with active/passive sexual preferences etc.
And unfortunately, lesbians who don't do feminine, what do we have? Get 'understood' as closet trans, trying to nail us back down onto the same sick gender spectrum.

Beachcomber why would being an adult human female necessarily be 'awesome'? Are you not reinforcing a gender divide my making such generalised value judgements?

Surely in a post-patriarchal society gender as a value-laden dichotomy would mean nothing. It would not even exist. People would just be people who happen to be of a different biological sexes.

Now I really think you're not posting in good faith. It's perfectly clear to me what Beachcomber meant. Are you really that spectacularly obtuse? She was talking about herself being a woman and she's allowed to use any word she feels like to describe her own condition.

Here:
www.micheleleigh.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Wittig.pdf
is an essay by Monique Wittig that explains what she meant.

Querty

You have assumed women being awesome means men cannot be awesome. Why can't both be awesome?

Women awesome because we contain the miracle ability to give birth and breastfeed. And not lose our hair after turning 35 or whatever.

These factors are negated by a patriarchy that devalues the innate reality of womanhood.
Surely it's fine to retrieve the reality of womanhood from the clutches of patriarchy and describe it as awesome.

Women are awesome. Men are awesome. It is men who decided women are "other" and less than awesome.

Sorry beachcomber. I'm not deliberately speaking for you.

0phelia thank you for an amazing post. . You are much more patient than I am.
qwerty this may come as a shock but not everything is about men.

qwerty this may come as a shock but not everything is about men.

That's exactly my point.

Women awesome because we contain the miracle ability to give birth and breastfeed. And not lose our hair after turning 35 or whatever.

And a reason why men are awesome?

My point is really is that women are not awesome in comparison to men, and men are not awesome in comparison to women.

Of all the male and female individuals I have met, their gender has had no bearing on their awesomeness or non-awesomeness. Just men who are despicable, just ok and really very awesome; and women who are despicable, just ok and really very awesome.

Lol. So a reason why are men awesome...

So you're in need of an ego rub right now. It's ok just believe me men can be and often are awesome. (Apart from always expecting their ego etc to be stroked by women).

So you're in need of an ego rub right now.

No. I am in no need of that.

Indeed, my point is that there is no reason why men are awesome. And there is no reason why women are awesome.

It's just the case that some people are awesome.

What are you getting out of this, qwerty?