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....

I mean, if men prefer to speak softly and look pretty that's fine with me, but it doesn't make them any more female than the loud macho ugly ones, though it may make them more pleasant to be around. If a man has his penis and testicles removed it makes him a eunuch, not a woman.

thebewilderness maybe support was
the wrong word. im just trying to understand the opinion of radfems on men who are the way i described but dont claim to be women. as i understand it, radfems would rather that make up, dresses, soft speaking etc is not associated with a gender, as those things dont make you a woman. are these men still judged the same as trans men? or are they “accepted”? are non-binaries accepted? or looked at the same as trans men

i understand supporting womens rights but i also would still want to support the rights of all humans and that inevitably includes men. maybe that means im not a radfem then.

I've always been a feminist but i didnt know there were different types until recently

What do you mean by "accepted"? That might help clarify. I was a teenage goth so I've known men who wear floaty pretty clothes and makeup most of my life, and am fine with them. If they think that makes them women than we have a problem, if they know that they're men with an unconventional sense of aesthetics that's 100% OK with me.

well, as opposed to rejected by radfems. in general terms, do radfems have negative opinions or connotations with men like that? or are they viewed as harmless

i personally am not 100% supportive of men taking on feminine appearances or traits. i feel like its an exaggerated presentation of being a “woman” and using women as a costume for attention or to stand out.

i dont hate people like that. id treat them like i treat anyone else, but in my head im not 100% accepting of it.

If feminine men don't think they're women then I think you'd struggle to find a radfem who had any issues with them. We generally support gender non-conformity on the basis that gender is socialized, not innate, and should be dismantled. Drag is a different thing, and you'll find a variety of opinions on that.

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

Just yesterday I was in a massive (many hundreds) homeless shelter in North America. Vast male area including mats on the floor for hundreds of sleepers and bunk style sleeping for some without doors. The women had a much smaller area with doors. Now that looks like the men are worse off, they have no doors and therefore less privacy. The staff have even had to cut the bottom of the door off the showers and toilets in the male area. But why did this happen? What happens when there's no female area with privacy? The fact is that about 100% of the women there have dealt with sexual violence from men. And would continue to if the men were allowed access. The women have far less 'access' to the common space. Far less. You see very little of them in the cafeteria or outside. They have to guard their safety.

What I found really interesting is that the female area has a table, chair, decorations, pretty things. I asked what had happened and the staff member told me they had done it all themselves with donated things. The men are free to do the same but don't.

So even 'tramps' (although I would never use that word) who are male have power and privilege and women are trying to make the environment a little nicer and better for themselves and others.

No, but I've been here since forever.

i understand supporting womens rights but i also would still want to support the rights of all humans and that inevitably includes men. maybe that means im not a radfem then.

What rights do you think men are entitled to that they do not have?

Now gender critical AF.
YY as others have experienced- sex based reality and discrimination set in hard when I was trying to get pregnant, pregnant and with small babies and kids.
The penalty i’ve paid at work for that has made me see gender for the weaponised mass harm that it is.
At work sharing women’s toilets of standard design with male-bodied trans-identifying people and not being able to discuss it for fear of repercussions had made me see the writing on the wall and the very scary chilling effect on free speech that the TRAs have had.
I’m very very grateful for MN as a place to be able to think about all this and help me to articulate it.

I think the fear and restrictions being placed on discussing things linked to this issue has shocked me. And then made me cross.

well maybe radical feminists should have 'employed' violent TRAs a long time ago to get feminism kick-started? Seems that they have converted many to our ranks!

Just joking obviously. Not only do they want to shut us up, they are prepared to back that up with some good ol' male violence to make good on the 'promise'.

This is just the latest wave in the backlash against Second Wave Feminism - the movement that has given you most of the rights you probably take for granted - having a bank account or loan in your name; better pay (instead of 10-50% of the male wage, it is now 70-80%, still some resistance, even though illegal); abortion and contraception access; DV shelters and rape crisis support; opening up wider career paths; better outcomes for rape trials (even though reversing more recently); rape within marriage (took until the early 90s to actually become illegal).

The best piece of advice I can give you, is that women's rights are never solid. We have to constantly fight for them, or they get reversed (look at abortion in the US). Or even just look at the funding gutting in the UK for Women's Aid and Rape Crisis.

Warriors like thebewilderness and Dittany have been keeping the fight going all these years, waiting for the 'reinforcements', the mass awakening of women to see the reality of the world they really live in.

TL;DR Men don't want us to have nice things.

So when commenters like esk1mo lament how we are not 'supporting effeminate men' more, seriously, we get bruised foreheads from all the headdesking.

as i understand it, radfems would rather that make up, dresses, soft speaking etc is not associated with a gender, as those things dont make you a woman. are these men still judged the same as trans men? or are they “accepted”? are non-binaries accepted? or looked at the same as trans men

You keep asking what is accepted, who is supported, who is judged, etc.
You need to understand (most) radical feminists do not believe in gender at all, they invest in women.

Gender is appearance. It's your personality. It's society's expectation. It's socially constructed to keep people of each sex constrained into patterns of behaviour and appearance. It's a performance. An illusion.

Non-binaries as you call them are basically everyone on the planet who rejects syereotypes, which is what feminists have been aiming for for generations. You don't need to give it a special label in a manifestation of the gender illusion.

No one is "judged" or excluded or included or unsupported or supported on the basis of their belief in gender. Radical feminists look at females, analyses females, asks what is going on with females, and basically couldn't care less about what anyone wears, what anyone feels, what anyone says until men start saying they are women. Then there's a big problem.
Women are women. Your sex is your sex. Feminism focuses on women.

Opheliah thank you, you’ve explained it really well.

I'm ashamed to say that until recently I didn't understand what gender was. Because I have a type of dyslexia I don't read much, so whenever I saw references to 'gender studies' I thought it meant people studying 'what makes women different to men?' - absolutely the wrong end of the stick 😨

It's much easier to understand things when the explanations/opinions are introduced gradually in discussions, as happens here. I would never be able to research anything myself, my brain wanders off into the distance when I try to read academic studies, and it's difficult to admit to... not only being ignorant, but not being able to do anything about it because of lack of brain power 😜

Radical feminism has at its core the belief that the structure of society needs to be changed for women to be completely liberated (shorthand Smash the Patriarchy ) - liberal feminism believes that enough change can be made within the current system. Interestingly, in the long term a radical feminist approach would give more choice and a better life for many men, in particular disadvantaged men. However, liberal feminism is better for men in the short term, in particular privileged men, who can continue to say that, for example, they would spend more time with their children if it wasn't for work, the family court or their evil ex wife....

Yes, and I would like to thank my favourite trainee, Adrian, for that.

much love to all.

Juells, 'gender studies' was the trojan horse slipped in to replace 'women's studies'. Suddenly, instead of you know, focusing on WOMEN, it was a rainbow collection of all humans, which morphed into 'cis women' being the devil incarnate or something. Welcome back, 1650, let me add some sticks to the good old fashioned witchburning.

I only very recently realised I am a radical feminist, although it’s more that I didn’t know what the label was than that my thinking has changed much.

Lived most of my life as a liberal feminist, again without the label, until maternity discrimination and bringing a baby girl into this world brought into focus the deeply ingrained misogyny we are surrounded by. Bumping noses with a few handmaidens also helped.

I also owe a huge thanks to many posters on these boards who have written so elequently about feminism. You’ve made feminist discussion and critical thinking accessible.

i understand supporting womens rights but i also would still want to support the rights of all humans and that inevitably includes men

Feminism is about women. Including men is like saying All Lives Matter in reaction to the Black Lives Matter movement. You can't fight for the rights of a particular group if you can't exclude people from that group. Excluding men from feminism doesn't mean that you don't like men, you just don't think that they should be involved in the power structures of a female liberation movement. It would be like a white person taking a role as a BAME officer. What could I possibly know about being black as a white person - it wouldn't be appropriate. I think many feminists here support men in other ways - through the Labour Party for instance or in other causes but this movement is for women.

Groups that try to cover too much ground generally aren't very effective. Feminism is about women, and "woman" as a group is already half the world's population. That's more than enough to be getting on with.

Having recently had my eyes opened to what is going on, and, through reading, realised my views are in line with those of radical feminists, I'm now looking for more information and to find groups where I can talk to people I can learn from. Is anyone able to point me in the right direction?

thank you DJLippy that makes alot of sense.

This forum has hugely changed the way I view sex and gender, it's like the scales fell from my eyes and I can't unsee it now. Damn you all

That said I'm not sure I could be a radfem because I'm on the fence about assisted reproductive technologies. I know firsthand that the systems around ART reinforce the patriarchy and my experiences on the receiving end have actually made me more radical in my opinions. But radical feminism seems to say being involved IVF etc at all is unfeminist - I can see an argument for this but if my alternative is to be childless I struggle with that hugely. Is it unfeminist for other women to want to have children? But then I'd struggle to be a wishy washy libfem too!

I used to think I was a liberal feminist, but just a rather bad/hypocritical one. For example I thought I believed that prostitution/porn were OK provided that the woman chose this lifestyle but could not understand how/why a woman would choose this freely so assumed that I was a prude and blaming women that I could not identify with. I used to think that there are now systems in place so that women can be as successful as men in business if they choose to so women must just not be as single minded/ambitious or just were more likely than men to choose to prioritise children (including myself, so obviously I was a bad feminist by not fully modelling to my daughter what women can achieve). I used to think I was broad minded and welcoming to anyone regardless or sexuality ir gender but felt bad about the discomfort I felt about the idea of men with penises in changing rooms with teenage girls.

Since reading this board I have realised that I am actually a radfem and that maybe my initial assumption that I was what society told me was more socially acceptable, but just not very good at it, was part of the conditioning I've been subject to.