Is there a place in radical feminism for women who are married to men?

[Namechangeforagamechange]

Just that really. I consider radfem views as most closely aligning with my own, but I am married with 2 children. After being subjected to the most hideous pile on in a radfem Facebook group about relationships with men, I'm left feeling a bit disillusioned.

I'm not libfem in any way, shape or form. So where do I go?

I'll admit I'm feeling a little sensitive atm, I chose to share traumatic experiences I haven't talked about for a long time and it's left me exhausted. I was accused of manipulating behaviour because I said dredging up those feelings had made me cry. I honestly cannot see how explaining that speaking about my own experiences has upset me is manipulating, but then a lot of what I said was taken out of context and twisted.

I will never feel comfortable in a 'Feminist' space where it's OK to tear down a woman when she is talking about past trauma. So where is MY place in feminism? Please, be kind.

I am exacerbated that you managed to say that a non patriarchal society would be just as war mongering when the only people who want and are agitating for a non patriarchal society are all, without exception, anti nuke.

What? This is a word salad.

I think you'll find there's other general agreements along radical feminists, or radical leaning women. Like , no more fucking with seeds and food, which is regarded by radical women as patriarchal practices

No, I am pretty sure there are radical leaning women who don't think this, as well as ones who do.

I notice you didn't actually address what I said though you managed again to suggest I was saying something I wasn't.

no more fucking with seeds and food

You do realise before we started 'fucking with seeds and food' (that well known patriarchal practice) bananas used to look like this.

The 'patriarchy' can continue the Fuckery, IMO

I just manually pollinated my courgettes because all the rain is ruining their flowers and preventing fruit from developing.

Have I ‘fucked with my food’???

Namechangeforagamechange
Wow that's interesting.

DH had to manually pollinate our pumpkins I'll ignore the fact he calls it doing pumpkin sex

Is he perpetuating the oppressive patriarchal food Fuckery regime?

Bloody strikethrough fail

People have selectively bred livestock as well. We wouldn't have eggs on demand now if we hadn't turned jungle fowl into domestic chickens.

Check out what broccoli used to look like too. Completely different. It’s actually really fascinating.

Its the same for all domestic animal and vegetable crops, they don't look like that in the wild.
Sweetcorn looks so different from its wild ancestors that scientists couldn't figure out how earlier cultures had created it. It was just selective breeding over many generations.
www.vox.com/2014/10/15/6982053/selective-breeding-farming-evolution-corn-watermelon-peaches

I am presuming sakura meant GM approaches. Even so I am pretty sure that there is a wide variety of opinions even among radical feminists.

I find the idea that women should form separatist societies and the idea that military spending isn't a feminist priority a really weird combination coming from the same person.

I'd love to know how this separatist society would defend itself.

Especially if its populated by a group of women who think men are all rapists and a threat to their safety.

Its almost as if its a bunch of thoughts and concepts that really haven't been thought through very much or just ignores the very obvious cognitive dissonance that being wedded to some idea of uptopia brings with it.

And women are at the forefront of genetics etc.with development of CRISPR.
One of these women said they hoped they wouldn't be linked to Oppenheimer by history. That's the risk, things don't necessarily pan out as you hope.

'Meanwhile, nature’s simplest organisms quietly guarded a superior way to edit genomes, which they first evolved as a defense hundreds of millions of years ago. The recent discovery of that secret, and its development into a dazzlingly superior method of genome engineering generally known as CRISPR, has electrified the life sciences in less than a decade—and challenged the scientific community to use it wisely. And although CRISPR is not without controversies, none can dispute the singular importance of biologists Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna in bringing it to light. For that exceptional work, they were named as the winners of the Dr. Paul Janssen Award for Biomedical Research in 2014.'

I swear on my life I wasn't banned, I just couldn't log in for some reason. Weird. Hence the new username.

Anyway , I wanted to reply to @RedToothBrush

*I find the idea that women should form separatist societies and the idea that military spending isn't a feminist priority a really weird combination coming from the same person.

I'd love to know how this separatist society would defend itself.*

These are interesting points

. And indeed I raised one of them myself with the separatists. How would you defend yourself if the amount of women who were separatists reached critical mass and men decided that, no, they wouldn't humor separatism anymore as they wanted more prostitutes and wives and there weren't enough to serve the need.

It was one of my arguments that if all women aren't free then no woman is free.

So separatism is a sort of individualist act, not a class act. It's an act of desperation and it's not about revolution. But I figure the separatists have looked at the facts and decided that a revolution is most likely out of the question so they're making do with the here and now.

This doesn't really have anything to do with being anti nuke does it. Nukes are about bombing populations

Again, this is obtuse.
Prostitution does not equal marriage.
Prostitution is hell for most prostitutes.
Marriage is hell for some women.
Even if it was most women, which you may well think (I don't), it still doesn't mean prostitution = marriage.

No that's not my argument at all. My argument is that marriage is transactional. Arguably cohabiting without marriage is not transactional , or as transactional. And that there are strong social forces pushing women into marriage. And that some women are honestly so appalled at what marriage is, and what it means for women, they they "choose" prostitution. And this is why the pimp lobby was so successful riding on the coattails of libfem. If you listen to prostitutes this is what they sometimes say.

And there is also the argument that what passes for "work" for women is also a living hell so there are women who go into prostitution for other reasons. And they don't appreciate middle class academic feminist women trying to get them to lose their livelihood --judging by how angry I heard a prostitute get at one. Because in all honesty what can feminist academics offer ex prostituted women , except for having to live with a man or working in the pink ghetto. Not all prostituted women are trafficked. Like not all wives are sold into marriage.

And even though the idea that prostitution is marriage came from academia, well I first came across it in books when I was in the library at uni perusing the shelves there at 18, it's only Solanas who has really spelt out what was quite obvious to me, that even though prostitution is a very shitty deal , there are other very shitty deals for women too. And some women literally cannot cope with the idea of having an "owner" and thats why they go into what they call "Indie" or "independent prostitution".

*You do realise before we started 'fucking with seeds and food' (that well known patriarchal practice) bananas used to look like this.

The 'patriarchy' can continue the Fuckery, IMO*

Seeds and food was my masters degree. I'm not saying I know everything about it but I know enough to refute a "you do realize" comment

And even though the idea that marriage is prostitution came from academia

That line should've been

This thread is crazy. I don’t know how bananas and seeds came into radical feminism?

Longlongsummer because apparently ALL radfems believe that 'fucking with seeds and food' should be stopped, as it's a well known patriarchal practice. Apparently. If you don't believe that, according to Sakura, then perhaps you're not a true radfem. But then, bananas...

Sakura185 sorry what exactly is your degree in?

So you're saying that because you have a degree in 'seeds and food' that you can confidently refute any suggestion that before genetic modification/selective breeding, a lot of food was pretty shit/probably inedible. Bananas was just the most memorable example, but there are plenty of others. It's not important, for the purposes of this thread of course. But if you can be so adamant on that topic, it puts my mind at rest that I've disregarded literally everything else you've said.

How could anyone say they represented women if they then excluded: heterosexuals, bisexuals, mothers and women who are married to men? That's the vast majority of women! Ridiculous. Instead they are just a clique of puritans. I also personally want to hear any feminist who wants me to agree with her POV to acknowledge race and ethnicity in every analysis. If you don't acknowledge it again you're not acknowledging how most women on this planet are not white westerners. That's a very specific POV.

And that some women are honestly so appalled at what marriage is, and what it means for women, they they "choose" prostitution.

You seem to think that women have two choices in life: marriage or prostitution.
This is demonstrably untrue.
OK, later you admit they can also choose a shitty job.
Again you are being wilfully obtuse here.
The fact that some women have shitty jobs doesn't mean all women have shitty jobs.
Because of feminism (not radical), women have more opportunity than ever before.
The building I work in contains mostly tax accountants, many of them women, many of them partners or directors, some of them more junior. I bet there isn't a single woman out of hundreds in this building who would say their job is a living hell.
Stop with the hyperbole and minimisation of women's contributions to the workplace.

And if you are citing shitty mind numbing repetitive soul destroying jobs - then prostitution would be the classic example. Trafficked or not.

How could anyone say they represented women if they then excluded: heterosexuals, bisexuals, mothers and women who are married to men? That's the vast majority of women!

It is extreme. I have actually never felt very comfortable calling myself a feminist because I've always felt that I have opinions that feminists found unacceptable, and therefor I am a sort of woman who doesn't count. And I think actually quite a lot of women feel that way about feminism, and not without reason. Sure, feminism says it works for the good of all women, but when they ignore what you actually think and what you have to say that doesn't really ring true.

Sakura here has a particularly odd take on it, but I am not sure it's really all that alien to feminism as a whole.