Has anyone else just discovered that they are a RadFem?

[loveyouradvice]

I'd always thought of myself as a liberal feminist... yup, feminist to the core and ready to fight for women and girls where appropriate but not that knowledgeable - and happy to enjoy the fun of being a women (summer dresses, sexy flirting, beautiful bodies) while acknowledging the horrors (FGM, rape, systemic inequality)....

But who knew it.... It just takes the words Transwomen are men ... so very obvious to me on so many levels.... to turn me into a RadFem....

And I've moved from being happy to encounter the occasional Transwomen in the Ladies (in well-populated, chatty scenarios like clubs) ... treating us with respect and being treated with respect... to not wanting a Penis in any sex-segregated arena...to feel threatened by the incursion of men on "our" spaces....

to sleeping badly and wondering what kind of world we are developing for our DC where playing with the boundaries of gender stereotypes (like Boy George) is less acceptable and the blue/pink divide has become so much more entrenched and the almost automatic reaction to any gender dissatisfaction in the young is to explore whether they are trans, rather than their just questioning and exploring society and their role within it....

Terf is the new Suffragette

Absolutely.

I am a white upperclass priviledged woman, who happens to have two daughter and a career in a male dominated environment. I will fight to support other women in that environment. These are mainly younger women, often asian and lower class. Being in my position I can kick male butt and pave the way and I will. If I can do that I can also do my little bit for my daughters to do whatever they want. And let's be honest, it is minimal risk to myself but hopefully big opportunity for others.

Does that make me a radical feminist? Probably not, but replying to TRA's on twitter probably does...

I didn’t really realise I was a radfem until about three years ago, though I now see that I have been getting more radical for years. Liberal feminism is a young woman’s game -it makes sense when you feel powerful as a result of your youthful attractiveness. Once that goes (or you stop caring about it), the scales fall off your eyes and you see the structural inequality.

Also agree that libfem is a middle class, privileged thing.

I think it was after my daughter was born. I read one of the threads about trans. And then I saw it everywhere. Gender replacing sex, women being treated badly, the drip drip effect of every day sexism. And the handmaidens. They are the most difficult part.
What also makes me sad is that no man will ever fight for women, rare is the man who will speak out. It's always women having difficult conversations, saying unpopular things.

I saw what we call "liberal feminism" or "sex positive feminism" being invented by the corporate media during the early backlash years.
If you wanted to do more than write the quarterly antifeminist article about women opting out of education or the work force you had to put a sexy spin on your "can women have it all" article. So they did what was required to have a career in journalism as a professional feminist.
Basically they adopted the individualism of post modernism and punched down instead of punching up.
It was painful to watch.
When people say that Radical Feminism is old fashioned "second wave" feminism they are right up to a point. Liberal feminism is an effort to negotiate and compromise women's rights, so I would say not feminism at all.

I'm so upset about the men who are enabling this BS and so gleefully ignoring all our concerns DJLippy - I think the liberal men are more outspoken about these things and are not helping at all.

Our allies are probably the more traditional men like my DP - he’s the last person I expected to really ‘get it’. He’s a real ‘pink for girls, blue for boys’ type but seeing that this shit is the logical conclusion of that type of thinking has really made him listen.

He watched the Genderquake debate with me last night, saying he’d give it 10 minutes and then we’d find something else, but ended up watching it all. He’s been discussing it with workmates and family. He’s happy to call the “women have penises too, deal with it” brigade deluded twats and say they should all be put out of their misery, but also talks more eloquently about it having heard about it all from me! I think the more regular blokes we can get involved the more the patriarchy can actually work in our favour for once!

I’m another one who has realised recently that I’m a radfem - having watched Peach Yogurt’s description of it, that ‘radical’ is about changing things from the root, not being extreme, it makes sense.

Women’s biology isn’t going anywhere - and as the inequalities in the workplace come from the expectation that we will bear children and take time out of work to care for them - we need to address that from the ROOT. If society were set up so that women weren’t disadvantaged by having children the whole thing could be different. If workplace crèches, private rooms for pumping/fridges etc were readily available, if men were brought up to pull their weight at home and everyone respected the work that women traditionally do outside of earning money, life could look very different.

Over the last few years my feelings about the oppression of women by men have grown stronger. I think as I've got older, things which in the past I would have laughed off, are now unacceptable to me. I feel like I've been walking round with my eyes shut all these years.

And I'm grateful to Mumsnet posters
for raising awareness of he issue around transgender, as without the feminism board, I'd still be ignorant to what's going on.

"Liberal feminism is an effort to negotiate and compromise women's rights, so I would say not feminism at all."

This

It's not just traditional men that get it. My OH is very right on & left wing. And he totally gets it. Like me, he might have labelled himself liberal before, but hadn't fully thought self ID through.

He'd now be the first to admit it was his male privilege that allowed him not to see the full implications for self ID initially. He's totally without ego though, which perhaps helps with the "getting it" part?

if men were brought up to pull their weight at home and everyone respected the work that women traditionally do outside of earning money, life could look very different.

Yes THIS

I've been thinking for so long that child-rearing status and traditional, caring 'womens roles' should be raised up so that men want to stay home with children.

TBH I don't know if I'm a radfem because I'd still consider myself a socialist first. I love the radfem anaylysis that applies marxism to the female body (i.e. women are the proletariat and their bodies are the factory and patriarchy skims off the excess profits-kids) But I don't believe that men are always the oppressor, put simply - "do tramps have male privilege?" Does this mean I;m not a radical feminist> I hope not!

I think we should stop talking about 2nd wave, 3rd wave feminism and just talk about feminism. These categories are the break between generations that keep women divided. i.e. Ash Shankar last night being sneering about GG because she's an 'old crone.'

Also a rad fem.... Analysing my more liberal past stance, I can see it was a mixture of A) not really thinking about the issues in depth despite having a ton of shit happen to me and B) ingrained man-pleasing. In fact I kind of view A and B as a vicious cycle.

Same here! I'm surprised that it's been going on for so long and that I didn't encounter it sooner. I'm still happy to have the door held open for me though. I realise that I have been complacent all these years about what women who went before me have achieved. This could well be a rebirth of feminism coming...we're not going back inside the box.

"do tramps have male privilege?"

What do male tramps do to avoid being raped by other male tramps while they asleep?

I have a question for you rad fems who previously considered yourself liberal. Does it feel odd that your views are aligned with the most right wing in society? I can't think of any publication - even the Daily Mail - that doesn't acknowledge and accept trans women as women and trans men as men.

I imagine it would feel strange to hold a view on trans people that is rarely published in mainstream media. Not being goady genuine question?

Where I live, holding doors for one another is common courtesy.
We no longer depend on men to hold the door for us here because our dresses are no longer so wide that we have to wait by the door for a man to let us in or out.

As others have said, it was hearing that some women had penises that turned me into a frothing radfem That and hearing the word cis for the first time

DJLippy
But I don't believe that men are always the oppressor, put simply - "do tramps have male privilege?

The understanding of patriarchy is not that all males opress all females but that we exist in a power structure that excludes females from influence and power. This power structure also excludes many many males too due to class opression.

Those who benefit from patriarchy are wealthy males. Who then opress working class males and all females apart from token females.

Marxism and feminism are not strangers but the most hardened marxists can be blind to sexism. Under communism women are still raped and expected to do all the child rearing and never actually enter the communist party or the police/political force.

Feminism has yet to penetrate the left and it is still very much behind.

Most women are used to being told things about ourselves, and other women, that are not true by the men and the media, daimbars.

That is the same argument liberal men used when we opposed porn and prostitution.
Men on the left and the right argue constantly over how best to apply the boot to women's necks. We are not stupid. We see you.

Never been a libfem. Always had a class analysis.

daimbars - any hyper individualist ideology is more associated with the right wing than the left wing. There is nothing left wing or progressive about genderist ideology. It's ultra capitalist, regressive, sexist and homophobic, and it appropriates the language of social justice to gaslight people.

I imagine it would feel strange to hold a view on trans people that is rarely published in mainstream media

Because the mainstream media is absolutely not a vehicle for propaganda and patriarchy and misogyny. Nope. Never in my lifetime.

@daimbars

I can't think of any publication - even the Daily Mail - that doesn't acknowledge and accept trans women as women and trans men as men.

Acknowledge? Or claim?

It's all virtue signalling.

Does it feel odd that your views are aligned with the most right wing in society?. No not at all. I have strong views on various subjects and they don’t fit neatly into any particular labelled box. When I do the “who should I vote for” quiz at election time I end up coming out about 20% on each party because my views are not the same as any particular party, left, right or centre.

Liberal fem here. Guardian reading, pro equality, Hadley Freeman makes me a bit uncomfortable kind of feminist. Would like us all to be one big Happy LGBT family not demonising one another.