Although sharing the views of women here I don't think I can be a radical feminist

[IdaBWells]

I share virtually all the views here and this is definitely not meant to be a goady post in any shape or form. I guess I am trying to understand where I sit politically and ideologically. I would appreciate feedback to understand where I fit and some women theorists I might want to read.

For example, I do believe in the innate equality of all people. However because of our different biology I do think women and men can have different needs. Women grow and give birth to children and have the biological ability to feed them so that does affect our lives. We also can be affected by our periods and hormones. If that is ignored I believe usually women suffer.

I don't agree that the "neutral" definition's should be a male model, by that I mean an assumption that people want to have a career from the ages 22-65 and birthing and raising children don't factor into that model, or if they do it's a side factor and not as a central factor in life choices. I do think raising children with their biological mum and dad is a healthy model and if you choose your spouse with care that it usually works. I want an ideology where we recognize most parents of both sexes want to be able to be active in raising their children and also have other meaningful work.

I do think men and women parent differently for example and I don't believe that's down to purely socialization and having healthy adult male and female role models is good for boys and girls.

I am happily married to a man and am raising a son as well as daughters so I want a constructive and meaningful way to include both sexes positively. To me I want to raise my son to feel responsible for supporting his family and raising his children, I want to raise a strong man as well as strong women.

So this post is not meant to be antagonistic but purely to open a conversation and get opinions. When it comes to gay couples as I am not gay I am open to feedback. I do think as most couples raising kids are heterosexual we need to focus on supporting the majority of relationships to be successful as that benefits everyone. We should talk about all kinds of ways that women live and as the majority will raise children it is very important to talk about the needs of children. I am not talking about stereotypes and locking people into roles and stereotypes, quite the opposite. I want to acknowledge biology and how it affects women so that we don't get caught in stereotypical roles by default because the reality of how biology affects women and our working lives is not acknowledged.

Women and children's rights seem closely linked, when one group suffers so does the other.

OP, you might find this Wikipage useful;

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_feminism

I think the term 'radical' as a few others have said can be misleading. I think it's often interpreted as 'extreme' - which in turns gives rise to images militant, aggressive folks shouting down others.

Not all feminists think alike, but the foundations have to be common:

1. Women are equal to men - they are not 'the same' they are individual people with individual attributes, but those attributes have the same value regardless of sex

2. For whatever reason (mostly likely physical) men have come to dominate women and create an unjust (at best) and downright abusive (at worst) environment for women - where they place women at a disadvantage and continue to try and inhibit their progress.

3. They fail to embrace women as equals and benefit from it. It's not a competition, it's a partnership. We co-exist. We can co-exist significantly better as equals value citizens.

After that, I think there are countless debates and opinions about how best to redress the balance between the sexes, and a lot of mutual criticism of specific traits etc, but to me, if you truly believe the 3 points above you can find a way forward on the rest - given a real will to do so.

To me, you're either a feminist of you're not. There's no in-between or levels of feminism. Perhaps I've naive.
At a push maybe the only distinction between two types feminists is a) those that believe in equality, but won't stand up for it and b) those that will stand up for it. That's the only real distinction I can draw.

There are countless types of people who are feminists, and countless views on ways to achieve equality, but it's one feminism.

'Radical feminist' could be interpreted two ways. A feminist who is radical, or a believer in a radical form of feminism. I think the former is way too wide in scope to warrant such a nondescript label, and the latter doesn't make sense since you either believe or you don't - you can't 'radically believe'.

I think the term 'radical' as a few others have said can be misleading. I think it's often interpreted as 'extreme' - which in turns gives rise to images militant, aggressive folks shouting down others.

Unfortunately, there seem to be lots of feminists who are all too happy to reinforce this stereotype, which is a shame as the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater.