If I'm a feminist but not radical or liberal, what am I?

[itsnotawatercat]

I'm gender critical, and radical feminism is much more up my street than liberal/intersectional feminism. (eg I think porn and prostitution are harmful to women).

But I don't agree with the rad fems who say all heterosexual relationships and motherhood are both, by nature harmful to women, and, ideally, best avoided.

Is there a branch of feminism that celebrates motherhood? And recognises that it is at least possible for a women to be (shock horror!) happy in - and not oppressed by - her individual heterosexual relationship, despite the societal background of misogyny?

(Did I just commit heresy?! )

LangCleg I don't understand? Have I offended you?

Your post has been the most useful to me on the whole thread so far, I'm really pleased with your recommendations, and am following them up. Thank you for them.

You wanted to discuss motherhood within feminism

No, not necessarily, that's the way the thread has gone, sure, and it is something I'm interested in. But more generally, I hoped to understand what schools of thought in feminism exist (and can be named, so I can go google them) other than radical or liberal feminism.

It’s all gone to hell in terms of feminism labels.

I do quite a bit of work in the STEM field. As I understand it, supporting women in stem careers is liberal feminism because it’s about getting ahead /thriving within a patriarchal construct rather than radically overhauling the nature of science, tech or engineering.
BUT if I say liberal feminism these days everyone thinks I support sex work and porn 🙄

So personally I have totally given up on the liberal and radical labels.

You can discuss ideas and try to understand them without having to identify with them

Of course you can. You can also criticize ideas within feminism, discard ideas that don't fit with your worldview.
I find it very silencing, the idea that we're not allowed to create definitions and labels. Would men get told this while discussing their politics? How do you even know what the politics actually stand for if it's not clearly defined?

You are a person who is putting way to much thought into finding a ‘label’ for themselves...

Lierre Keith did a pretty good YouTube series on the difference between radical and liberal feminism.
She doesn't get into the absolute nitty gritty of radical feminism and the difference factions there, but it's a good overview, and she is interesting to listen to

Well, yes, like a lot of labels recently, the tag itself and the actual views described are often at quite a disconnect. Different schools of thought is a reasonable idea. Lang alluded to her specific view point earlier. But, as has been ably demonstrated, it's currently rather difficult to establish what anyone means by the terms they use.

You are a person who is putting way to much thought into finding a ‘label’ for themselves...

I don't see it like that at all. I think the OP wants to better understand the politics of feminism

You are a person who is putting way to much thought into finding a ‘label’ for themselves...

I know the OP was phrased that way, but if I'd had any idea how people would react, I would have phrased it differently!

I'm less interested in labelling myself and more interested in ideas, and reading what other feminists have written.

It's hard to google something if you can't name it!

sakura184 thanks, I'll have a look at that.

The responses aren’t personal OP. Lately it seems there is a new thread every other day along the lines “can you really be a feminist if ?”

Could be coincidental or could be astroturfing, either way it’s not to do with your OP personally.

I love being a mum and a feminist, and see no conflict there.

I think for me the reason the theory and ideology and labels are important to me is all due to one question: how do we end patriarchy?

If your politics doesn't lean towards answering this question then how feminist are you?

Let's be clear: some women don't seem to want patriarchy to end. They're invested in the system, in men, and would rather choose the system and men over women. The thought of ending patriarchy is frightening. What would we do? How would we run things?

For some women, it seems that even thinking about the end of patriarchy is too frightening to contemplate, let alone bringing about a political ideology that would lead to this end.

Because all these different labels just pit people against each other - and makes it more about yourself than the actual cause you want to support. I’m a feminist - that’s it. I’m a feminist who doesn’t agree with everything other feminists have to say, but I’m still a feminist and respect that they are still feminists too. To me there’s just
something self-absorbed and a bit self-indulgent in spending time over-complicating it just to give yourself a special label.

Yeah but it's that thinking that gets us where we've been where liberal feminism got massively hijacked. I mean we know all this. Like the OP said we're not even allowed to get to first base on defining our politics

had you seen the recent rash of threads of “can I be a feminist if....?”. There is a definite theme on the board of wedge driving between feminists right now, and it’s likely that your thread will be read in the context of that.

While this is true I've been reading it mostly as a response to a lot of comments I'd been seeing in other discussions here. Lots of claims, often in passing, almost assumptions, that radical feminism is the only real feminism, putting down of other strands of feminism, putting down people who don't really use the label at all for one reason or another.
It kind of belies the stance (which I agree with) that the labels aren't that important.
And lots of threads recently with some making claims that radical feminism has some pretty extreme views, from a positive perspective. Not entirely accurate claims in my opinion but it makes sense that people are reading and responding to those ideas. I'm not actually positive that goadieness, if it is really happening, is coming from threads like this one, so much as the ones making the claims in the first place.

Well, when labels and disagreements are framed as heresy then yes, there will be push back against that, because one of the most useful ideas in broader feminism is that of unity and solidarity between women against the patriarchy, and any old fool knows the phrase 'divide and conquer'.

If the OP is in good faith and just wants to discuss specifics within feminism, then ok. All I and others have pointed out is that it's a difficult thing to do here in the current climate, and as I said, my response was borne out of concern that the OP was worried that she didn't fit because she'd had a disagreement.

I find it very silencing, the idea that we're not allowed to create definitions and labels.

Feminism has got so weird lately. It's really changed. I completely agree with you about the labels and definitions. Except that I don't think people not liking them is silencing. It would only be silencing if they had a point.

All feminism and feminists start from a position of recognising that women (some, many or all) are not equal at a social and/or political and/or economic level when compared to men.

A lot of feminists start from that position. Another position is rights and opportunities for women without reference to men at all. That is, without the requirement of men as a comparator. Also without the assumption of disadvantage.

my response was borne out of concern that the OP was worried that she didn't fit because she'd had a disagreement

Well, kinda. I'm definitely experiencing radical feminists saying I'm not a radical feminist if I don't believe that all heterosexual relationships are bad news for women by definition, or that motherhood is damaging and best avoided in an ideal world.

It'd be nice to be able to say - well I subscribe more to X type of feminism, than radical feminism. But the only two sets of feminist ideas I feel I know about are radical and liberal/intersectional feminism.

I still don't get this aversion to labels though. If a coherent set of ideas has a label, then that's useful surely? Do other political groups resist naming their philosophies, or is it just us?

Maybe cultural feminism? I don't know much about it.

Do other political groups resist naming their philosophies, or is it just us?

No it really is just women who seemingly aren't "allowed" to name their philosophies, political leanings, ideologies and so forth. Like we're just one homogenous group.

Well, I resist getting too hung up on labels because of the culture of over-reliance on labels in wokey thinking that has people describing themselves by a myriad of PanCisQueerLibDemiEtc. that doesn't serve to tell you what they actually think, and feeds into tribalism and actually squashes free thought and exploration of ideas.

That doesn't mean I don't think labels have a place, because yes, they can be useful shorthand. But only if they retain the already understood definition and as we've already seen, they are primarily openers in conversation that nearly always have to be unpacked anyway.

Seriously, we talk about language and definitions here all the time. Point is that we are therefore well aware of the pitfalls of labels, as well as the uses. Who can confidently say what 'left' or 'right' is at the moment? What does it mean to be 'progressive' or 'conservative'?

I mean, radical feminism itself needs constant explanation that it doesn't mean 'extreme' feminism, it means feminism that is concerned with the roots of our oppression. So I remain somewhat reticent to coin another term that needs to be unpacked again. I'm getting far too used to just explaining the mechanisms without the shorthand, because I'm mostly talking to people who have very erroneous ideas about feminism in the first place. But that's my current sphere of activity, obviously there's nothing at all wrong with exploring ideas and labels for them. As I think I said in my first post on the thread.

any old fool knows the phrase 'divide and conquer

This is important, too. This is why it's even more important for us to be brutally clear about what everything stands for. For example we know transactivists shut down dissent with accusations of "white feminism", race being the first category which men have decided should divide women. It's so racist to say feminism is "white", implying that WOC haven't been, or aren't, actively feminist.

But men's divide and conquer tactics are different to women working towards a feminist ideology that resonates with, and works for them.

When in doubt, repeat the mantra;

“Feminism is a political practice of fighting male supremacy in behalf of women as a class, including all the women you don't like, including all the women you don't want to be around, including all the women who used to be your best friends whom you don't want anything to do with anymore.
It doesn't matter who the individual women are. They all have the same vulnerability to rape, to battery, as children to incest. Poorer women have more vulnerability to prostitution, which is basically a form of sexual exploitation that is intolerable in an egalitarian society, which is the society we are fighting for.”
Andrea Dworkin

Feminists as a group centre women, and work towards equality and or liberation.
Radical feminists examine the structure of society and want to make it fit for humans.
Liberal feminists are more concerned with individual choice within the structure.

If its outside of this remit, if it demands you include all people and all their problems, if it centres people who aren't women, if its actively harmful to women or children, if it demands you put the concerns of women second behind anything else, if its driven by or controlled by men,if its highly commercial with no apparent benefit to women, if its yet another version of 'wait until after the revolution and it will all fall into place',

then it very probably isn't feminism.