Radical feminist tenet 2: Radical feminism derives from women and is woman-centred.
This is an element of radical feminism I most strongly embrace and one of the reasons I continue to define as a radical feminist. Radical feminism is a theory and practice that puts women first and I like that, it resonates with me, it makes sense to me.
It’s not a theory that took a male model and adapted it to fit women’s circumstance (socialist feminism) or kisses the arse and emulates the style of white male academics (pomo feminism). It came from women, formulated in consciousness-raising sessions, at conference workshops, in the pages of their independent media, as well in the academy in the form of Women’s Studies.
As a result, it’s a politics that values women’s voices and experiences, it takes us seriously. It can help us to cast off the male gaze and male values, show us that meeting that’s gaze’s expectations and emulating those values isn’t all that. Instead, we can look to other women for that validation we’re socialised into wanting from men; we can determine our own values.
I like radical feminism’s ethos of women-only organising and activism (and when I say ‘women-only’ I include trans women in this, though acknowledge that radical feminism traditionally has, and does not, hence one of my reasons for wanting to re-examine radical feminism). I like the space it offers us to be able to learn from and inspire each other, empower each other, articulate our politics, on our terms not men’s. I believe that women-only activism is key to moving feminist movement forward.
However, I need to reign this in a bit before I come across all cuddly cultural feminist like, and end up doing what I accused classic radical feminism of doing in my first post- making universal claims about ‘woman’ and what the goals of feminism should be.
I believe in women-only politics. But I know that a utopia of ‘woman-love’ with us all agreeing with each other and getting along is not the automatic outcome of a bunch of feminists getting together. (Actually this wouldn’t be a utopia at all- agreeing and smiling at each other all day is likely to get as painful as not eventually).
For starters, women – particularly white, middle-class women – are predominately socialised into putting their relationships with other women in secondary relation to the ones they may have with men. Hence the fostering of jealous and competitive attitudes towards one another, where we judge each other on how heterosexually attractive we are, staking out our competitors in the race to get his attention. In other words, we’re encouraged to like men more than women, there’s more privilege attached to heterosexual couplings than queer ones. And how many of us have said at some point, ‘oh I get on better with men/have more male friends’ in a bragging tone, suggesting that having male companionship and being liked by men makes us more superior than those of us with more women friends? Such socialisation can go real deep, and as a result can come into play within our feminist spaces. We only have to look at the way we often speak to each other in the blog wars we get ourselves into, which often echo playground bitchfests, for proof of that.
Radical feminism has worked all of this out, my own recognition of it emerging out of my engagement with such analyses, and I think the value of such theory remains in helping us to recognise those less-than-sisterly attitudes we may have towards one another which can stall productive feminist movement.
And I say this is so for white, middle-class women in particular, for they have traditionally been separated from one another via the nuclear, patriarchal family (a white and middle-class phenomenon) which encourages the formation of women’s identity in relation to men and provides less opportunity for women to get together. But for some groups of women, there is more of a tradition of solidarity. For instance, Patricia Hill Collins in her essay, The Social Construction of Black Feminist Thought, points to a “tradition of sisterhood” among communities of African-American women, fostered by the central institutions of those communities such as the church and the extended family, which bring women together.
These differences in women’s experience bring me to my next point. Also disrupting the common radical feminist notion that women are each other’s first and natural allies, is the differences amongst women along race, class, sexuality, etc lines, and the relations of privilege and inequality between women arising out of these differences.
Therefore, if we really want to put women first, want to work for women’s liberation, then we need to deal with the relations of oppression between us, which means also tackling capitalism, racism, ableism and so on, alongside sexism. Otherwise, a women’s liberation solely focused on dismantling patriarchy will only benefit a few women- namely white, middle-class, able-bodied, heterosexual, Western women whose only oppressor is man. Which won’t be much of a women’s liberation after all.
And one of the first places where we need to tackle the inequalities between women is in our very own so-called ‘woman-centred’ women-only spaces because, speaking from my experiences of feminist activism in the UK, it is clear that in these spaces the presence of privilege and inequality is very much alive and well.
For example, the feminist groups I have been a part of have largely been white and middle-class, which meant that the race and class implications of our campaigns were not discussed, such as our privilege blinded us to the necessity of doing so.
Then there are issues around access to feminist events for women with disabilities. An issue of the UK feminist magazine Spare Rib from 1983 included a practical guide as to how to make the Women’s Liberation Movement fully accessible to women with visible and non-visible disabilities. Over 20 years later, and we’re failing to learn and/or pass down those lessons. For instance, I was involved in some regional planning meetings for the Million Woman Rise protest and that we needed to provide adequate transport for the women with wheelchairs who wanted to attend was something we didn’t address until a couple of weeks before the event, i.e. until we had to, by which time we’d already booked the coach but hadn’t checked its accessibility (all able-bodied as those of us at the meetings were). And to questions to the tune of ‘are you all lesbians?’ posed by passers-by at women-only protests, I still hear an indignant ‘no!’ in response, pointing to some heterosexism amongst us.
With all this going on, the notion of ‘woman-centeredness’ does seem laughable, such as most UK feminist activism centres some women at the expense of others. Therefore, if radical feminists want to claim to be woman-centred, we need to do more than just tackle the patriarchy ‘out there’. It’s imperative we also look inside ourselves and become attentive to, and deal with, our own privileges and role (however unconscious) in other women’s oppression.
Another problem I see with radical feminism’s ‘women first’ line, particularly in its most extreme form, lesbian separatism, is the idea that women need only align with other women to fight the women’s cause and do not need to ally politically with men.
But, in common with what I said in my previous post, such statements point to the privilege of those who make them. Exclusively allying with women is only possible for white, middle-class women. This was pointed out by the Combahee River Collective in 1977, who argued that “lesbian separatism” is not a “viable political… strategy” for black women like themselves:
Although we are feminists and lesbians, we feel solidarity with progressive black men and do not advocate the fractionalization that white women who are separatists demand. Our situation as black people necessitates that we have solidarity around the fact of race, which white women of course do not need to have with white men, unless it is in their negative solidarity as racial oppressors. We struggle together with black men against racism, while we also struggle with black men about sexism (my emphasis)
Just as patriarchy is not the sole oppressor of women, with racism and classism also intersecting with it, these other systems of inequality also affect groups of men who are not white and middle-class, which calls for some mixed-sex alliances in tackling them. Sure, the unique intersection of race, class and sex oppression experienced by a poor black woman still gives cause for her to unite politically with women, and points to the necessity of radical feminism to deal with all forms of inequality, yet her race and class identity also give cause for her to unite politically with men of that race and class.
To conclude, I do think it’s worth holding onto the radical feminist notion of woman-centeredness, in order to ensure women’s voices are heard and valued in relation to themselves, and not simply in relation to men.
But we do need to mind that this doesn’t mean centring some women over others, and ignoring our differences, for the sake of holding onto some utopian vision of universal sisterhood. My radical feminism is one that aims to be fully inclusive of all women, which listens to and centres all women’s voices and experiences, and in the process recognises how some women can keep other women down and works to tackle this.
And while I think women-only activism is a necessary part of feminism, and should be quite a substantial part at that, I dispute any argument that says women should not align politically with men. Radical feminism needs to be present in challenging other things aside from the patriarchy if it is to liberate all women from all forms of oppression.
It’s not a theory that took a male model and adapted it to fit women’s circumstance (socialist feminism) or kisses the arse and emulates the style of white male academics (pomo feminism).
I think you’re being a little unfair there, particularly with pomo feminism – and socialism is certainly not meant to be just for men!
I don’t think what you say is entirely untrue, you’re just a little overly dismissive – as a socialist feminist it made me bristle a bit! Also, from your previous posts you tend to lump, like, all 20th century academic theory under the label ‘pomo’, which is highly inaccurate – deconstructionism, structuralism, post-structuralism… I’m sure Helene Cixous and Judith Butler would just love to find out that they’re actually kissing men’s arses, considering their huge contributions to feminist theory.
Also, the idea of women-only spaces is very interesting, and to a certain extent they’re probably pretty essential, but on the other hand, there’s the whole conspicuous absence thing, which means that women-only spaces, and particularly I’d say political lesbian spaces, are a hundred times more male-centred than anything you could imagine, they could only be more so if they actually had a dick-shaped obelisk in the middle of the room. They’re constructed entirely on the idea of this big, threatening, omnipresent masculinity that they have to provide shelter from.
And in practice, I find the little Andrea Dworkin I’ve read, for instance, far more centred around men and her experiences with them than, say, Barbara Ehrenreich, who is basically going out there to find out about the experiences of women and writing about them. (Even if I’m wrong about Dworkin, as I may be, a lot of the radical feminist writing of that type I’ve read, on blogs or elsewhere, has fitted my description).
Of course, you might say that when dealing with male oppression against women, you kind of need it to be male-centred in the way I just described. But what happens if you take away the threatening masculinity? The entire premise for the relationships between the women in the women-only space disappears, as well as a huge part of their identity. I almost get the impression, sometimes, reading radical feminist texts, that there’s actually a certain amount of dependence on that threatening masculinity, not that they especially like it, but if it vanishes so does their identity – which, you know, you might as well just get married to some guy and decorate your house, because it’s the same kind of situation.
Of course, this happens in socialist circles too, you get women who are there because they’re emotionally invested in it via a man – but that’s by no means the full extent of it, and the radical feminist women-only approach is really just a negative image of that anyway, so there’s no call to be dismissive of Sylvia Pankhurst and Rosa Luxembourg for being ‘male-centred’.
On the other hand, there has to be room for women to develop on their own without male influence – and since male-only spaces exist, you know – but then again, they occurred as a result of the way society is structured. A real radical feminist approach wouldn’t be so much to create women-only spaces artificially, it would be to change society so that women have a more equal chance of developing free of male influence, which presumably would entail the formation of women-only spaces the way there are men-only spaces now.
Of course, in practical terms, it’s necessary to have the spaces so that women can discuss their relationships or various other things without being inhibited by men being present. But it should be a practical measure towards an end, not an ideal in itself.
I agree with a lot of this post, but also with a lot of Zenobia’s comment.
“Therefore, if we really want to put women first, want to work for women’s liberation, then we need to deal with the relations of oppression between us, which means also tackling capitalism, racism, ableism and so on, alongside sexism.”
It’s hard to see how you can do that while characterising socialist feminism as a male model adapted to women’s circumstances; in fact, socialist feminists are interested in how capitalism and patriarchy work together in women’s lives. Furthermore, in defense of socialists, while there was a lot of sexism historically in the socialist movement, there was also recognition that women suffered specific forms of oppression as women – look, for example, at Engels’ “On the Origin of The Family, Private Property & The State”. Also, while I’m sure you did not intend this, it’s quite dismissive to socialist feminists. It’s cool if you feel radical feminism is the theory for you, but it’s another thing to imply that socialist feminists are somehow “less feminist” than radical feminists.
With regards to post-modernism and socialism generally, as well as radical feminism, I’m a big believer in the “pick and mix” approach to radical theory. It’s possible to believe that Foucault had A Point, and that post-structuralism is a useful way of looking at some situations, without buying in 100% to Foucault’s sexism or Eurocentrism. Similarly, you can agree with stuff that Marx or Dworkin have written without having to wholeheartedly adopt every belief of either of those thinkers.
I agree with the need for “woman-centred” activism – I basically think the role of feminist in coalition work with other activists is, among other things, to make sure gender issues stay on the agenda. Inclusion of all women is not enough however; what’s required is a politics that is generally revolutionary and anti-oppressive. Which is why I don’t understand your dismissal of socialist feminism – how can we fight poverty and the economic exploitation of women without making use of the insights of socialism?
The best essay EVER on inclusion vs. intersectionality is by brownfemipower here: http://the-silence-of-our-friends.blogspot.com/2007/05/thank-you-so-much-to-donna-who-has-so.html
[...] forward. Part 1 asks questions about how patriarchy connects with other forms of oppression, and Part 2 looks at hierarchies among radical [...]
I didn’t mean to dismiss socialist feminism entirely- and I certainly didn’t want to make out that some feminists are ‘more feminist’ than others, nothing good comes out of that. Of course I recognise the importance and relevance of socialist feminist theory, particularly for the reason you state, we need that kind of analysis to deal with economic inequalities, and agree that you can align yourself with different strands of feminism without wholly subscribing to one in particular.
Main point I wanted to get across was that radical feminism is rooted in a different tradition than other kinds of feminism, it made the personal political and made women’s lived realities as articulated by those women the basis for its theory, as opposed to say socialist and pomo feminism which tend to take more abstract ideas and then apply them to women. And I (personally) prefer the former, but would not say one is better than the other. There’s points at which all three can come together. I was being knowingly flippant for the sake of argument!
Zenobia: I see where you’re coming from re. radical feminists in women-only space having a tendency to invoke an outside masculine threat, and I agree that women-only space should be a means to an end and not the utopia waiting for us the other side of the revolution, because it does rely on that thing you’re battling against- dominant destructive masculinity- to exist.
However, on the flip side of that, in the here and now, male violence and threatening masculinities are very real to many women’s lives, and so of course this is going to figure in women-only space. Same with Dworkin, given the male violence she experienced in her life, it’s not surprising that it’s present in her theory, and has every right to be. The very act of writing about such experiences, articulating such theory, can be validating and hopeful to women who have had similar experiences. I see it as offering a way forward, and not about wallowing in victimhood. Same re. women-only space. Sure, a women-only march protesting male violence against women is not going to suppress the masculine threat, and of course relies on its existence in order to take place, but it does exist in everyday life and spaces for women to steal away from that, discuss it amongst themselves, and figure out ways to go forward, are important.
[...] fact, Michelle at Lonergrrrl has a rather good post on women-only activism, but I really have to respectfully disagree with this part: It’s not a [...]
Main point I wanted to get across was that radical feminism is rooted in a different tradition than other kinds of feminism, it made the personal political and made women’s lived realities as articulated by those women the basis for its theory, as opposed to say socialist and pomo feminism which tend to take more abstract ideas and then apply them to women. And I (personally) prefer the former, but would not say one is better than the other. There’s points at which all three can come together. I was being knowingly flippant for the sake of argument!
I just don’t think they’re as opposed as you think they are. Reading this you’d think they were two sides of a coin, in fact a deconstructionist would point out that you’ve created rather a neat binary opposition there. But you mention the personal political – it’s quite obvious, reading Carole Hanisch, that she’s quite well-versed in Marxism and Psychoanalysis, and that particular essay is pretty much marxist to the core. There’s certainly just as much abstract and theory involved in both sides of the coin you describe. In fact it’s been my perception that the two sides are mainly opposed because the radical feminist side wants to be separate, for some good reasons and some less good reasons.
However, on the flip side of that, in the here and now, male violence and threatening masculinities are very real to many women’s lives, and so of course this is going to figure in women-only space. Same with Dworkin, given the male violence she experienced in her life, it’s not surprising that it’s present in her theory, and has every right to be. The very act of writing about such experiences, articulating such theory, can be validating and hopeful to women who have had similar experiences. I see it as offering a way forward, and not about wallowing in victimhood.
Of course, and I didn’t mean to equate ‘women-centred’ with ‘valid’. Only it seems unfair to say that radical feminism isn’t male-centred whereas socialist and pomo/deconstructionist/structuralist feminism are.
I think you’re probably having trouble seeing the application to theory and philosophy to practical considerations. It’s easy to break things down into binaries, because it’s what we’re used to doing all the time. What I try to do personally when I see one is to just consider that I’m wrong and it doesn’t exist. For instance, I know that when I think ‘do I find that girl hot or do I just like her dress sense?’ I’m bullshitting myself into thinking that they’re two separate things, because I don’t want to think about what it means if they’re not. Same when there’s a distinction between real life and academia. And actually, a lot of the academia you’re a little dismissive of, I would call radical feminist, because it tries to find the root of oppression in language, power relationships, psychology, etc. And those are very practical things, there’s nothing airy fairy about language.
Then of course there’s the eternal problem, that we’re all products of the same social structures that are oppressive to us. If we take those away, our identities as we currently know them vanish. And that’s a scary thing, and a massive dilemma for feminists, and probably one reason why all our activism, on some level, is going to be male-centred, and the more furiously we try to paddle away from that, the more we’re going to find ourselves up shit creak racing into a whirlpool.