Trying to figure out difference between liberal and radical feminism

[Millie2008]

Although I’ve always considered myself a feminist, since becoming a mother I’ve become more actively interested. Perhaps I’m reading the wrong material, but I’m struggling to work out the fundamental difference between liberal and radical feminism. Can anyone give a succinct summary of each and they’re essential differences please? I understand that it’s probably difficult to do this in a few sentences!, so even if you could point me in the direction of some good reading material that would be great. Thank you

Magdalen Berns nails it in this video IMO.

Sorry but I find both Berns and the other woman equally irritating. Neither engage me.

I like Magdalen lass but hell different boats for us all

Hopefully same destination

Used to be a libfem. I thought it was ludicrous that rapists would put on a dress just to get closer to vulnerable women in order to rape.

I used to say that feminism must also include men and it was our duty as libfems to help vulnerable men.

I thought sex work could be liberating for women if only women had better workers rights.

Then one day while on everyday feminism, I saw a transwoman called Riley J Dennis talking in a video, saying that genitals are a social construct. In the comments, to clarify my sex "I'm a woman with a uterus" and several people were disgusted and called me a terf and disgusting transphobe. I was deeply upset I had done something to offend. After all, I was a libfem and my feminism included transwomen and men. I was also deeply confused as to why on earth mentioning my uterus was transphobic.

Later, on Facebook I was discussing a news article in which a transwoman had been transferred to a womens prison. This person was a convicted rapist. Again, this was in conflict with my libfem ideals. I should be supporting the minority here. Except this minority happened to have raped a woman while male and was now among very vulnerable women in close quarters.

I actually lost sleep and cried about this. Because in my heart, I knew I couldn't be a feminist if I didn't support transwomen.
But something didn't sit right with me. My uterus is not a social construct. I knew I couldn't simply identify my way out of all the sexual assaults and rapes I had gone through, just by saying I was a man. And yet men were identifying their way out of being a convicted rapist and a danger to women, just by saying so.

Then I thought about what I had heard lesbians saying about being called transphobes for not being willing to sleep with transwomen, on account they still had their penises. It all sounded very rapey and scary to me. But again, I couldn't be a libfem and have these dangerous and bigoted thoughts.

I was called a terf again on a thread for asking questions like "should rapists be permitted into female prisons?"
"What is a woman?"
Someone told me I was a dirty radical feminist and a Nazi and I should be punched like a Nazi.
I suffered a PTSD relapse. I was banned from Twitter and Facebook. I had no idea what radical feminism was. So I looked into it.

Radical feminism seeks to liberate female humans from oppression by the removal of the harmful gender stereotypes that hurt us. It's for women and girls. It is not for men (though men would benefit). Radical feminism is for liberal feminists that have started asking questions. Its for women who have started to recognise and do something about their own internalised misogyny.

Radical feminism isn't the "fun" kind of feminism. It's fucking hard. It's a struggle. People will hate you for asking questions. Indeed, people do hate me.

I am a radical feminist. My feminism is for women and girls.

Radical feminism because the root - radix - the very root of our oppression lies in the fact that we have a female body. Cunt, uterus, vagina, etc. Men don't.

FermatsTheorem Sun 16-Sep-18 11:02:09
One way of glossing the distinction I've seen is that liberal feminism seeks to improve women's status within the existing system while radical feminism (from the Greek for root - i.e. going to the root of the problem) seeks to critique how the system came into being in the first place, whether it is possible to "fix" the system or whether this is in fact simply putting sticking plasters over an infected wound, and whether in fact we need a different system.

So, for instance, a liberal feminist might campaign for workplace nurseries, while a radical feminist might campaign for a citizen's wage as a way of recognising the unpaid labour women do. (Might rather than would because this is a scrappy off-the-top-of-my-head, oversimplified example - Lisa Muggeridge has an excellent video on what's wrong with a universal citizen's wage ).

SwordToFlamethrower Mon 17-Sep-18 00:21:44
Radical feminism is for liberal feminists that have started asking questions. Its for women who have started to recognise and do something about their own internalised misogyny.

Radical feminism isn't the "fun" kind of feminism. It's fucking hard. It's a struggle. People will hate you for asking questions. Indeed, people do hate me.

This pretty much summarises my journey - I was always a career woman and fought the early workplace battles to get even one women's toilet on the management floor plus allow women into the mgt lunchroom and sales functions etc So I fought at the grassroots level at work and outside it and fought sex stereotyping as well. I never had time for reading feminist literature and tbh I don't like when academics hijack subjects because it gets too theoretical for my liking and not practical nor grounded enough. It's like some live in ivory towers, with the security of academic tenure and salaries, and have time and are paid to go down theoretical rabbit holes. The rest of us are fighting to stop drowning whilst they theorise. So I don't relate too much to academic land. Many of them have the luxury to articulate and put a theory around what is obvious to the rest of us because we are living it.

Then life happens, hormones start to disappear along with which the truth is revealed- it really is all f*ed and I have, along with many other women, been enslaved and decimated by male violence whilst the rest of those comfortably off look on with what often feels like distaste.

I've seen it from both sides - the well-off and the disadvantaged. I don't relate to middle-class academics with their labels - what I relate to is speaking the truth and advocating for women having their rightful place in the world as the majority sex in a different system that is designed to take their needs into account rather than expecting them to conform to rules and a game designed by men for men.

tl;dr forget the labels - find the common ground and focus on a common vision. Don't let ourselves be divided as that's what men want. We all have different starting points and I do find it hard to reconcile views like those of Sandberg who say Lean In from a life and position of wealth and privilege. I also won't hang on Greers' every word unquestionably. But I will try to keep finding common ground.

For me liberal feminism isn't a journey on the road to radical feminism.

As for liberal feminism being about minorities, that's not the case at all. Liberal feminism is about the greater good of the majority. It's about individual freedom but with a belief that those freedoms may need to be curtailed if they negatively affect others. There seems to be the idea that being a liberal feminist and being a liberal are the same things and they are not. Plenty of radfems are liberals. If anything modern liberals are left of centre and liberal feminism is right of centre.

Third wave feminism, which rejected a lot of liberal and radical feminist theory, pretty much on the basis that equality had been achieved, has played a huge role in the current view of feminism as being unnecessary or as having achieved its aim. There were also views that feminism hadn't done enough for some groups of women hence the whole if it isn't intersectional, it isn't feminism trope. That may be a liberal view but it's not a liberal feminist view.

When liberal and radical feminist focus on women together huge steps are made. Second wave feminism saw both these strands of feminism achieving greater protections and freedoms for women but neither of them were considered to have focused sufficiently on intersections with race, poverty etc and instead of feminists working together, we found ourselves turning on each other leaving room for identity politics to come to the fore with language becoming weaponised and freedom of speech being shut down.

As far as I understand it, liberal feminism believes that women need to be liberated in order to enjoy their full potential which will in turn benefit society and radical feminists believe that women simply need to be liberated full stop. Given that both theories seek the liberation of women, I think we have a duty to be supportive of each other.

Great to finally have someone like Blistory around -stops us getting intellectually lazy.

Libfems and radfems absolutely do have common goals and it is important have that common ground. What I will not compromise on though, is centering males in my feminism.

Posie Parker's incredible video talking about this issue really nailed it. Every woman needs to watch the video by her. It's on YouTube and Facebook gone viral. The titled "cognitive dissonance". And for a balanced view, watch Riley J Dennis video on genitals being a social construct, or that lesbians who don't want to have sex with a penis is a bigot.

Poise Parker should be on Louder with Crouder :)

mousse

Thanks, that's very helpful! I always think of "liberalism" as I believe the other side of the pond does, i.e. SJW type of leftie.