Why is it called RADICAL feminism??

[aaarrrggghhhh]

ie in the whole TERF thing?

My understanding is the basic position is:

sex = biological fact = reason for all sorts of bad stuff done to women (e.g. sexual assault, inadequate medical care) = need for interventions/policies to address bad stuff because of biology = need for women to be identified as women in a number of circumstances so biological related bad stuff can be addressed

gender = social construct and cultural stereotypes (e.g. relevantly makeup and dress wearing) = reason for all sorts of bad stuff being done to women (e.g. women are easily distracted by pink unicorns so can't possibly run business, men aren't able to clean so women must do all the cleaning) = need for gender stereotypes to be uncoupled from identification of "women" as women. Indeed, often this means the use of sex specific terms is to be avoided to avoid gender stereotypes (e.g. chairperson).

dominant transgender position/self- id = women = gender construct not biological fact = women to be identified as 'cis' women on the basis that they are one subset of a broader category of women based entirely on gender = the complete opposite of basic feminist principles.

Am I missing something? How is this radical??? My understanding is that this is really uncontroversial feminist logic that is accepted in the mainstream??? For the life of me I can't see how this logic is radical.

My own view is that i am entirely happy for men to wander round in dresses and lipstick and more power to that for challenging gender stereotypes. Very happy to support clear rights for people who don't feel they fit within established gender constructs to not be discriminated against in the workplace etc.

VERY unhappy to get changed at the swimming pool with ANY person with a penis in the room whatever they identify as. Very happy to support the provision of other areas for such people to get changed were they feel safe.

How is any of this radical? How did that become the accepted term??

Are their active transactivist campaigns in the non-western world? I'd be interested to learn more about any campaigns to have men be recognised as women in societies where women have little autonomy or independence and struggle with basic security or access to healthcare.
Nooka, Iran is possibly the most notable Middle Eastern country that advocates transitioning. Homosexuality is illegal so you can either transition or die or escape the country.

Nooka, Iran is possibly the most notable Middle Eastern country that advocates transitioning. Homosexuality is illegal so you can either transition or die or escape the country.

It's 'conversion therapy' of the most extreme form, isn't it? Medically and surgically make someone conform to sexuality or gender 'norms' (and thereby sterilise them too, so if there is any genetic basis for homosexuality or gender dysphoria it'll be eugenics too).

@ Materialist

Which spaces are you talking about? I can't think of a single space you describe still being available or open?

Materialist is clearly talking about women's toilets (which had to be fought for by women in the 19th century in order for women to participate in public life, and which still don't exist in many parts of rural India), women's changing rooms (which allow women to participate in sport), women's domestic violence shelters (which typically exclude even a woman's male children above the age of 12, because the women there are so traumatised by violence), women-only peer-to-peer rape survivor support groups, women's prisons, groups like Girl Guides.

Which women's spaces do you think have ceased to be available? Obviously most of the above are under sustained assault from TIMs, but they are still nominally women-only, and for good reason. Which you know, Still but are insisting on being deliberately disingenuous.

Stillscreaming is disingenuous.

And her double standards reek of hypocrisy.
She claims she is exclusively attracted to the female sex, but for others to declare that the female sex is utterly unique and different from the male sex is hateful.

She insists that all doctors are infallible, and that there is a consensus, even though she knows this is patently untrue.

She is aware of the excommunication and no platforming of doctors who are speaking against trans, because its been referenced many times on this board.

Using male pronouns for males is hateful, but her insisting that females DO have a matching 'same side' GENDER (which she won't define) and calling them cis is OK.

How do you maintain such a contradictory position?

One rule for you, another for everyone else?

Wonder if Stillscreaming would be equally attracted to a pre-op transwoman. After all there's no real difference between 'cis' and 'trans'women right?

Heterosexuality is the core component of female gender role.

As poster above says, by definition no lesbian is a "cis woman".

Does that mean all lesbians are "trans" then, if not transmen, then agender or similar?

No, the idea that lesbians are not "proper" women, or "really want to be men" or are "rather mannish" is incorrect, men (and a fair number of women) have always said things like this about lesbians as in a patriarchy, what is a woman who does not centre men, when heterosexuality and "looking after" and looking out for men is the core of gender?

Lesbians are women who don't centre men, have no need to dress up for them, to smooth their feelings and their lives. This is why some men actively hate them, and some of the men who hate them are TRA's. I would include any man who feels it is his right to ask, demand, pressure lesbians for sex into the group that hates them. There are plenty of women who are into dick. Leave lesbians alone.

To poster earlier asking why GG was no platformed is because she's doesn't believe men can become women. She said something about cutting a cock off doesn't make a woman.

Indeed it doesn't, the only people who believe men without cocks are women, are people who have bought into extremely rigid ideas about masculinity, and about men as people and women as defective men (men with something missing, a very I idea. Men without a cock, without rationality of thought, without intellect. Never as actual people "with". See girls described as "non prostate havers" in recent teen Vogue article on sex).

A very old idea, that should say.

I wasn't allowed to do that anymore because of their discomfort. I hear about those trans women and I think of myself at 15. I wasn't a sex offender. I wasn't a rapist. I just wanted to get changed. I wasn't allowed.

I'm sincerely sorry you had that experience and I understand it must be very difficult for anyone to feel that they are not being treated in a manner which takes into account their good character. However, in most cases I think this isn't automatically unfair.
First, I don't think the comparison you make is viable. Unless you are in fact male, they were quite aware that you couldn't actually rape them. That was ramped up overt prejudice. Worries about male-bodied people in female spaces derive from the reality that penis is used to commit rape and that, in being attached to the male body, the risk of rape is thus always present where surgically-unaltered male bodies are present. I very much resent calm recognition of this fact being equated to the same kind of lesbophobic hysteria you describe. It is not an imagined threat, it's a real risk, which becomes weaker or more acute depending on a host of factors (e.g. when you are familiar with someone's character, you can make the decision yourself to adjust your own proximity to them in function of that). When dealing with strangers, it makes sense to take your cue from what you imagine to be a realistic worst case scenario. There is significantly lower risk associated with being naked next to a woman you don't know. You can feel uncomfortable and yet safe in the knowledge that she physically cannot, under UK law, rape you - unless 'she' is male-bodied with a GIC.

I don't know what's going on in anyone's head, this is the thing. It would be very unwise for anyone to make a risk assessment re: their personal safety on the basis of trans- or homophobia. But you are suggesting we allow ourselves to be led by instinct & emotion in the same way that your bullies were. For one thing, instinct in female-bodied people is often way off the mark, due to our socialisation (insistence that there is no rape culture, etc). And it's really unwise to rely on the integrity of strangers - much more rational to note which statistical demographic you reasonably believe the person in question falls into, and which sex-specific crimes they are able or unable to commit. That is not transphobia and to tell women that their exercising caution around male-bodied people is unwarranted overexaggeration is rank gaslighting. I see it all the time and frankly it is sinister.

May I ask if you think the reaction you describe would have been out of place if the girls had been asked to change next to their male classmates? There are many non-trans-identifying boys who would never rape a female classmate standing next to them, but I suspect you're no advocate for mixed-sex changing rooms as default. So what is the difference, in the end? That trans people are inherently more trustworthy?
Identifying as trans does not cancel out one's ability or potential inclination to commit rape. Only in the unequivocal knowledge that male-bodied trans people were universally unable to commit male-sex-specific offences (the same offences in part due to which changing rooms are M/F segregated in the first place) should we make it a general rule that a male-bodied trans person automatically may share intimate space with a female-bodied person.

It's not about tarring all trans people with the same brush, it's about realising that one half of the population is more likely to be (deservedly) tarred with that brush, on the basis of their sex-specific behaviour, than is the other half, and that male-bodied people who happen to identify as trans also fall into that first half, because trans-identification contains no counter-force to male socialisation or biological reality. My reason for demanding we uphold sex-segregation of adults in intimate spaces is inspired by concern for personal safety, not phobia. So, therefore, although I believe on principle that those born with unambiguously sexed male bodies should not call themselves women/female, I do compromise & wouldn't actively object to a rule permitting trans people who've had their dicks removed to use the female loos, just like I have no problem with younger boys using the female loos. That's because I don't have to hope that this person, a stranger, will refrain from committing rape - I know categorically that they are physically incapable of committing rape. In the first case this knowledge would be based on the idea that people generally observe the law, and in the latter it would be based on visual cues.
The UK is not a tiny hamlet where we can assess individuals on a case-by-case basis, so we have to work with real recorded statistics. If you take that personally then you are missing the point.

The reason "TERF" is used is that radical feminists have been questioning transgenderism (for want of a better word) for 30 or more years, long before it widened its meaning to take in transvestites or who just "felt" like women. So even in the days when it was about men who suffered gender dysphoria and had surgery to change their bodies, a lot of radical feminists felt that it was reinforcing gender stereotypes rather than challenging them. You may remember that back in the mid 90s, Germaine Greer opposed the appointment of a mtf trans-sexual at the all-female Newnham College, Cambridge, and resigned in protest.

Broadly speaking, radical feminists are those that see patriarchy as the main source of oppression in society rather than, say, social class or race. They believe that men as a class oppress women as a class, and their aim is to overthrow that system of oppression. Liberal feminists, on the other hand, tend to think that it's all about equal rights, and that once women have been granted the right to vote, to do the same jobs and have the same pay etc, then everything is fine and dandy.

Conflating lesbians with men - saying that lesbians are attracted to women and they are allowed to change with women, so why aren't heterosexual men

is lesbophobic, again placing lesbians in the "man category".

The bullies in the story above were lesbophobic. This story is no reason to allowed heterosexual men into places where women and girls are vulnerable e.g. prisons, open changing facilities, etc

Lesbians are women. They are a very low risk of being sex offenders, same as other women.

Stop conflating lesbians with men. Sexual attraction is not the be all and end all. Who thinks it is? Men is who, they put their dicks at the centre of everything. Men, who make endless porn films featuring "barely legal" girls in everyday situations like showering and in changing rooms and present them as sexual opportunities.

I'm getting the impression that StillScreaming knows about as much about radical feminism as they do about astrophysics, but apparently we've hit the desperate, throw random shit at the wall and hope some of it sticks, we're too angry to type properly any more stage of the genderist confronted with people who don't agree with them lifecycle.

The idea that many early radfems were what would now be termed trans inclusive is a talking point being pushed by a specific set of TIMs for political purposes, for anyone reading along wondering WTF is going on in this conversation. There's one in particular who's obsessed with the idea of proving that Dworkin would be pro-TRA and anti-TERF if she was still around (this involves some serious misreading of her arguments and allowing her former partner to speak for her, because there's nothing more feminist than letting a man tell you what a dead woman really meant when she's no longer around to disagree).

On the difference between a regular old bloke in a dress and a trans woman - honesty and an acceptance of material facts that can't be altered. I'm fine with men wearing dresses. Doesn't make them women, though.

On the OP's original question, the radical in radical feminist means that you're looking for the root of women's oppression and in favor of larger scale structural change, as opposed to the working within the system that's typical of old school liberal feminism. These approaches can coexist and even work together (at least they could until liberal feminism went down a "sex positive" rabbit hole and became all about ensuring that no erection ever goes unaffirmed). The "radical" bit in TERF, though, is a misnomer, as lots of women who that term is applied to aren't radfems, and some aren't feminists at all. At this point "TERF" just means "woman who acknowledges that biological sex exists, thinks it matters, and has disagreed with a trans activist on something". My not at all feminist stepmother would be considered a TERF is she was active on social media in that she thinks the whole gender identity think is bollocks. If you called her a radical feminist she'd be very confused.

Thanks everyone for informative input.

Turns out I'm radical. Who knew. I just thought I recognised the bleeding obvious. Time to pull my head out of clouds.

Next week letter to my MP and see about visiting her MP surgery.

Simone de Beauvoir said 'one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman'. This is now used by TRAs as evidence that she agreed with their ideology... I kid you not.

Stillscreaming, I'm so very sorry you had that dreadful experience. Kids can be so bloody cruel, especially if teachers connive in it. Just dreadful.

Because radical feminists have opinions that men don’t like and ask difficult questions? Whereas ‘normal’ feminists behave nicely and don’t make the menz feel uncomfortable.

I'm a vegetarian who enjoys a good steak occasionally and it's vitally important to me that everyone recognize that this is valid and does not in any way undermine my claims to be a vegetarian.

You know, this pressure to allow individuals to redefine words with existing clear meanings seems awfully particular on who can do the redefining and what words are allowed to be redefined.

Oddly the words that people want to redefine mostly relate to women, and the people pushing hardest for redefinition (or, more truthfully, removal of any definition) are men.

Can I for example, redefine wanker as something entirely inoffensive in my opinion, and then go around calling people wankers and lecturing them on not being upset?

Discussing these topics with the "it means whatever I want it to mean" brigade is like asking a toddler to eat his broccoli.

Words have meanings. MUTUALLY UNDERSTOOD meanings, which is how we communicate using our common language.
Otherwise, as an astute twitterer pointed out, English would only need one word, and we could all just make it mean whatever we wanted. Noone would understand anyone else, but hey...

Groot?

ErrolTheDragon - what/who is Groot?

Is this related to the radish tangent??