Reworking (my) radical feminism (part 1)

I define as a radical feminist which, to me, means I embrace certain broad principles and agree with particular analyses over others in the grand scheme of feminism.

And just to be clear, I’m referring to radical feminism here. The non-abbreviated version. The kind to be found in books, in a long herstory of resistance to white male dominance, the kind that was organised and committed in its activist struggles. What I’m not referring to is ‘radfem’ bullshit blogosphere feminism, because that doesn’t exist. It’s transient, there’s no real community of ‘radfems’, it doesn’t do anything beyond the computer screen, the ‘radfem’/’anti-radfem’ faction is parasitic to online feminism, sucking the energy out of what could potentially be something far more active and real.

However, I don’t think radical feminism is without its problems. As I keep reiterating, my allegiance to radical feminist theory has been challenged over the past year as a result of my introduction to pomo theory which seeks to deconstruct many of the tenets from which radical feminism is built. So inevitably, I’ve come to question radical feminist politics, its ethos and guiding principles. In addition, seeing the ever-increasing rigidity of radfem views on issues such as trans women and women-only space (they aren’t ‘FAB’ therefore can fuck off) here in the blogosphere, alongside non-radfems denouncement of them, has also forced me to step back and question my previous position on things.

But just because my radical feminism has been questioned and challenged recently, does not mean I’m willing to entirely cast off my radical feminist politics. I’m not willing to dismiss all that radical feminist writing that has inspired and validated me, just because I’ve been told that pomo’s all the theory I now need. Equally, just because I support trans women’s participation in women-only spaces, and agree with some radfem detractors, does not mean I’m about to throw away my allegiance to radical feminism along with my previous support for female-born women-only spaces.

Instead I have treated all of this as an opportunity to re-define and rework my radical feminism. My reluctance to shrug off radical feminism completely is down to the fact that I still whole-heartedly embrace some of the fundamental principles of radical feminism, and I feel that a critique and re-negotiation of those, rather than a dismissal of them altogether, is the most positive and fruitful way forward for me.

Interrogating and dissecting, adding to and updating radical feminism, in light of the above challenges, has given me the opportunity to forge a radical feminism that more closely reflects my principles, to consolidate some of that theory I’ve been engaging with, that allows room for difference and change in place of the rigid monolithic concepts commonly associated with radical feminism, and perhaps most importantly, provides a new, more substantial template for action.

So what follows is the first in a serious of posts, which set out those elements of radical feminism I still somewhat endorse alongside a consideration of how I feel those elements need to be challenged/extended/updated. This is not definitive, it’s very much a work-in-progress, but does nonetheless point to where my feminism is at right now, or at least where I would like it to go.

Radical feminist tenet 1: The sex/gender binary is a key way by which human relations are organised, and there exists a (socially-constructed) category ‘woman’ who is placed in subordinate relation to the (socially-constructed) category ‘man’. In turn, radical feminism does not hesitate to name this system of male domination – aka patriarchy – as the fundamental problem that needs to be tackled.

I believe in all of this, but with some modifications.

I certainly think that patriarchy is a key determinant of social relations. As soon as we enter the world we’re marked ‘boy’ or ‘girl’ (or made to fit one of those categories in the case of intersex people) pointing to the entrenchment of sex/gender as a social category, and broadly speaking I think women are unequal to, and dominated by, men. As a result I still find ‘patriarchy’ a useful concept to employ, particularly with Women’s Space definition of it in mind:

We understand patriarchy to be a system of structures and institutions created by men in order to sustain and recreate male power and female subordination. The structures of patriarchy include, but are not limited to, the law, medicine, religion and the traditional family

However, just because I still hold onto a concept of patriarchy, it doesn’t mean I think it’s always at the root of all women’s oppression. This is a central premise of classic radical feminism, seen for example in Robin Morgan’s assertion in the introduction to the Sisterhood is Powerful anthology, that other systems of oppression such as racism and capitalism, are “symptoms of male supremacy” (her emphasis) and therefore the focus should be on dismantling male domination because only then can everything else be sorted out.

While I find this a very seductive theory, in that I associate male domination with hierarchies and competition and the inevitable injustices this brings, and therefore can see some logic to the argument that patriarchy breeds other oppressions (not to mention making your thinking a lot clearer!), I don’t think it’s very useful in practice. What also concerns me about the positing of patriarchy as the root oppression is that it’s exclusionary and a marker of the privilege held by those who espouse it.

Let me pose a question to illustrate the point I’m trying to make:

How can the radical feminist position that patriarchy is the primary oppressor of women be reconciled with the fact that for some groups of women, other oppressions are present in their lives and inextricably bound up with sex/gender oppression?

For instance, a working-class woman’s ability to get the kind of job that would elevate her (monetarily at least) to a higher class position may be prevented by the economic (and accompanying educational and cultural) resources at her disposal as well as by the gender glass ceiling. It will do no good to just campaign for women’s entry into the top jobs, or even to dismantle the male-centric values that give rise to such discrimination, without an accompanying economic/class-based analysis, because it won’t get to the crux of many women’s realities. Even if the glass ceiling was shattered and there was flexi-time for all, that doesn’t mean all women will benefit, if there still remains a class system that prevents some women from being able to afford to go to university if they so wish, or sends the message that such an option is not desirable or possible in the first place.

Therefore, I feel that by saying that male oppression is the primary oppression makes radical feminism exclusionary to everyone but white, middle-class, heterosexual, able-bodied Western women. It dismisses women’s oppression at the hands of classism, racism, homophobia, ableism and so on. And that’s not very radical after all.

While the sex/gender category we belong to (happily or not) is a key way by which we are defined and treated by the society in which we live, it is not the only social category which determines our experiences of the world. Our race, class, sexuality, age, dis/ability, religion and cultural habitat – and the many ways in which these can combine – will also affect how we are treated by society.

Women aren’t just women. We’re white and black, Asian and European, heterosexual and lesbian, 16 and 60, living in Africa and America. The other social categories to which we belong all intersect with our sex/gender identity, and will bring with them the possibility of being oppressed along different lines than that just arising from us being women. It means we’ll have different priorities, different experiences, different problems to tackle which I think get ignored in the invocation of ‘patriarchy as ultimate oppressor of all women’. That’s not to say patriarchy is not at work, it may very well be, it’s likely to be, but in a lot of instances it may not be the only thing going on, it may be working in tandem with other things.

Therefore, a radical feminist politics – it if really wants to be radical – needs to integrate these differences and other systems of oppression into its analysis and practice. So, this means extending, updating and contesting the canonised radical feminist theory. Dealing with difference and other oppressions should be a radical feminist imperative.

Otherwise I find that radical feminism remains applicable to only the white, middle-class, heterosexual, able-bodied Westerners amongst us, those of us who can afford to just rail against male domination because we have no other inequality to fight.

I acknowledge that radical feminism has also tackled other systems of oppression, in its theory and practice. For example, the brilliant radical feminist anthology, Radically Speaking edited by Renate Klein and Diane Bell, features many articles and analyses written by women from diverse racial and cultural backgrounds, that recognise and deal with difference. But there’s still this overriding theme that while women may be affected by other inequalities, it still all comes back to patriarchy.

Yet I think to revert back to patriarchy all the time can cause feminist movement to stagnate, as it’s such an abstract monolithic concept and therefore the theory is hard to translate into any tangible practice. I instead think it’s more conducive to step away from such universalising concepts and shift towards more nuanced analyses of women’s oppression, which point out how inequality operates within particular contexts, so that more concrete action and change can come about.

I’ll leave you with this quote by Alison M. Jaggar who suggests that dealing with differences between women should be a goal in itself for feminism. A goal I think is imperative to contemporary radical feminism:

the goal that women should begin to theorize together is itself a political goal and to succeed in collective theorizing would be itself a political achievement. Women who can theorize together can work together politically; indeed in theorizing together they are already doing one kind of political work