Can we talk about liberal feminism?

[JigglyTuff]

It's late and I've had wine and so this is probably a bit disjointed. BUT liberal feminism seems like a complete clusterfuck to me. It's all about 'reflecting on things' and apologising. God, so much apologising. I don't think white heterosexual lefty men spend their lives saying 'mea culpa' do they? But white het women seem to be on a mission to self-abase. It's really fucking odd and quite disturbing.

Is anyone else seeing this or do I need to start wearing a tinfoil hat or something?

Well, I do have serious issues with liberal feminism. Do you think I should shut up about those issues? There are lots of liberal feminists doing lots of good work in the world as individuals but I genuinely believe that the liberal feminist position is bad for women collectively.

Yes, looking at the list as someone who was part of many of thise campaigns and others, it felt like a RadFem was rushing around with a magenta paintbrush, 'This is mine and this is mine and this is also mine.' Along with 'radical feminism is too hard for you softy liberal types.'
Those changes, leguslations and actions took a lot of different women with differing opinions uniting to effect change and to be the change that needed to happen. Not just the Judean People's Front.

Some leading feminists, whom I would place at the radical end of the feminism spectrum, including Andrea Dworkin and Germaine Greer were married to men

Oddly, back in the day, I don't think that Greer would have called herself a radical feminist. I don't know what she calls herself now, but back then she was considered, and I think considered herself somewhat removed from labels and quite eclectic, if not eccentric.

Greer describes herself as an anarchist.

This was on wikipedia, and I would consider a radical feminist approach:

Greer is a liberation rather than equality feminist.[n 1] Her goal is not equality with men, which she sees as assimilation and "agreeing to live the lives of unfree men." "Women's liberation," she wrote in The Whole Woman, "did not see the female's potential in terms of the male's actual." She argues instead that liberation is about asserting difference and "insisting on it as a condition of self-definition and self-determination." It is a struggle for the freedom of women to "define their own values, order their own priorities and decide their own fate."

That sounds pretty radically to me!

I can remember Greer describing herself as an anarchist.

Wikipedia might see her as a radical feminist, but I'm not sure it is a self-definition at all. Also, I don't think that merely agreeing that women are different to or more than or that we want to define ourselves quite sums up radical feminism.

BertrandRussell

I have serious issues with some lib fems and some rad fems but the issues I have with misogynistic men and the capitalist structure make those issues pale into insignifice.

How many parties of the Right in the UK the Conservatives, UKiP, a couple of bonkers fascists, DUP who else?

The centre left and left? Labour, Lib dems, Plaid, SNP, Greens, NI left wing parties, socialist and Marxist parties to numerous to mention.

The majority of British people vote for the centre left and we consistently end up with right wing governments.
The majority of women are feminists in some form, we loose our power base by setting rad fem limitations on the label.

Quite Moussemoose.

SylviaPoe wrote - "Paid work is just something to keep the wolves from the door ... the most important thing in the world to me is being with the people I love ... If feminism is about promoting the workplace as some kind of security or liberation, it is in total opposition to my core beliefs."

Isn't "something to keep the wolves from the door" just another way of saying "security" or "liberation"?

I'm not aware of feminists deliberately setting out to urge women to have a work life instead of a family life. The feminist thinking that I'm aware of is about having a more woman-friendly balance between both aspects of life, because money from work is currently the biggest possible source of money that can fund the currently unpaid family relationships aspects of life.

I have read about long-term proposals (not necessarily linked to feminism) such as universal income, which would give everyone an equal share of a country's wealth generated by the robots that will do all the work currently done by humans. This would allegedly enable everyone to devote themselves completely to leisure and relationships instead of paid work.

Socialist feminism rose in the 1960s and 1970s as an offshoot of the feminist movement and New Left that focuses upon the interconnectivity of the patriarchy and capitalism.[1] Socialist feminists argue that liberation can only be achieved by working to end both the economic and cultural sources of women's oppression.[2] Socialist feminism is a two-pronged theory that broadens Marxist feminism's argument for the role of capitalism in the oppression of women and radical feminism's theory of the role of gender and the patriarchy

This is from Wikipedia, but it is a fairly good depiction of socialist feminism as I understand it.

*Radical feminism is a perspective within feminism that calls for a radical reordering of society in which male supremacy is eliminated in all social and economic contexts.[1]

Radical feminists seek to abolish patriarchy by challenging existing social norms and institutions, rather than through a purely political process. This includes challenging the notion of traditional gender roles, opposing the sexual objectification of women, and raising public awareness about such issues as rape and violence against women.

Early radical feminism, arising within second-wave feminism in the 1960s,[2] typically viewed patriarchy as a "transhistorical phenomenon"[3] prior to or deeper than other sources of oppression, "not only the oldest and most universal form of domination but the primary form"[4] and the model for all others.[4] Later politics derived from radical feminism ranged from cultural feminism[1] to more syncretic politics that placed issues of class, economics, etc. on a par with patriarchy as sources of oppression*

Again from Wikipedia, but again a description of radical feminism that I remember from 'back in the day'.

I would consider liberation to be something far greater than a wage.

I am a great believer in the idea of a universal wage. But it ain't going to happen. So in its absence, women ned to think about their financial security and that of their children. And you can't do tht while being a sahm.

I would consider liberation to be something far greater than a wage

No one reduces it to a wage. That's a straw argument.

But I do recall socialist feminists arguing that domestic labour should be shared to give women a chance to be economically independent and men a chance to connect with their children, as well as do their fair chare of domestic labour.

"I would consider liberation to be something far greater than a wage."

Me too. But it's a good start.

'No one reduces it to a wage. That's a straw argument.'

Then let me make my answer clearer.

No, when I say 'keeping the wolves from the door' I mean bringing in a wage. I do not think 'keeping the wolves from the door' means the same thing as 'liberation.'

'But I do recall socialist feminists arguing that domestic labour should be shared to give women a chance to be economically independent and men a chance to connect with their children, as well as do their fair chare of domestic labour.'

I am absolutely sick of hearing arguments on here that tie fathers to mothers in domestic of family arrangements.

^I'd answer Sylvia, but your post makes no sense. Sorry.

I can't see anything about my post that doesn't make sense. Sorry.

Then I won't answer :)

I didn't ask you to.

I did find that having a child was briefly when my feminism bit me in the arse. Logically, as I earned more than OH, and he could work from home, he became the SAHP. He was very good at it, but I envied him.

Er no, but when you quote one of my posts directly it is kind of implied. But no matter ... :)

I don't understand your post either, Sylvia, I!m afraid.

Wage and liberation are obviously not synonyms, but it's hard to be liberated without money.

And I really don't understand "I am absolutely sick of hearing arguments on here that tie fathers to mothers in domestic of family arrangements"

'domestic of family arrangements'

Perhaps this bit, Spartacus.

'domestic or family arrangements'

I did find that having a child was briefly when my feminism bit me in the arse. Logically, as I earned more than OH, and he could work from home, he became the SAHP. He was very good at it, but I envied him

I think the ideal is that these responsibilities are shared...