Alita

you can't defend having a male partner without making the not all men argument, but, dear, it is all men.

"good" men are only "good" in so much as they act better than "bad men". but when bad men rape, abuse, and kill women, the standard for good men are kept intentionally low.

becuase of this, men know they can basically get away with anything. he never does the dishes? well, at least he doesn't beat you. he made a 'joke' that hurt your feelings? well, at least he didn't rape you. this is what is meant when feminists say all men benefit from patriarchy + all men benefit from male violence.

this is radical feminism 101. pick up a book before you call yourself a radfem.

*sigh* this kind of purity policing is exactly what is alienating so many women from radical feminist spaces, even though they would need the resources most.

I wanted to talk about this anyways so here we go:

being a radfem has never required being a separatist.

full stop.

you’re acting like it’s some core tenet when it’s just one strand within the movement. kate millett was married to a man. andrea dworkin was married to a man. firestone dated men. if your version of radical feminism would’ve kicked out the founders, maybe rethink it, because you might be engaging in historical gatekeeping and no true scotsman fallacies. movements are defined by their originators and core texts. now, who gets to define radical feminism? you, or the women who have coined the term?

trying to redefine “radfem” as a label only for women who reject all contact with men is historical revisionism. it strips radical feminism of its political roots and turns it into a lifestyle identity. the original movement wasn’t about personal virtue, it was about collective resistance. rewriting the label erases its history and silences/excludes the women who built it.

you can be a separatist and praise it all you want, more power to you, but don't try to change history or conflate radfem with female seperatist. and before you try to say "those women had to have male partners, it wasn't a choice back then because of different times!" - this argument rewrites history to force separatism into the definition of radical feminism, instead of acknowledging it as one of many strategies. the claim that early radical feminists "couldn't" be separatists ignores the fact that some were, even in the 1960s and 70s (like the radicalesbians or the furies collective).

my point is: even when separatism was possible, not all radical feminists chose it. firestone, the redstockings, dworkin, they had access to separatism and still didn’t adopt it as a core of their politics. that proves it's optional, not essential. separatism is an individual and personal choice a woman makes in order to minimize all male harm to the best extent possible, it is a path some take, but it’s not the definition of the road.

a lot of blackpillers argue that the patriarchy is so all-encompassing that true resistance must involve separation but this stance is a philosophical standpoint, not a historical or definitional truth and also easily disproven by the actual diversity of thought and practice in radical feminist theory.

now put on your thinking caps and listen for a minute

radical feminism was coined in the late 1960s by women like the new york radical women and redstockings. they focused on dismantling male supremacy as a political system, not on moral purity or punishing individual women for how they survive under it.

many of these feminists dated men or were married, their feminism wasn't defined by their private relationships but by their commitment to systemic critique and resistance. separatism was one strand of thought, primarily pushed by lesbian feminists who were exhausted by male violence, but it was never a baseline requirement. In fact, groups like redstockings rejected bioessentialism ("We do not need to change ourselves, but to change men." - Redstockings Manifesto), they didn’t believe men were born oppressive, but socialized through patriarchy.

Dworkin was even critical of female separatism, here is a passage of an interview On The Issues Magazine in the 1980s where she shows skepticism about separatism as a universal or mandatory strategy and prefers to focus on broader social change:

Interviewer: A lot of radical lesbian/feminist political argument against heterosexuality is that it is impossible to have any equity in heterosexual relationships because of the power differentials between men and women. There is an attempt through lesbian sexual politics to find equality in sexuality. Do you personally think that’s possible?

AD: It’s not my way of approaching it. I have never felt that lesbians per se were exempt from any of the power hierarchies that men and women also experience. I think that being powerless is not good for people, it hurts and damages them. So when you put two people who are powerless together, you don’t necessarily get more equality except that they’ve both been hurt. Sometimes you get strength, and sometimes you get political conviction and commitment. Sometimes for the women themselves there is a tremendous sense of freedom and integrity but this is no panacea. You solve the problem out in the world or you don’t solve it at all. People may find many personal islands in their own lives where they can experience some kind of reciprocity, and mutuality. I think some women find it with some men but it’s very hard because in the real world inequality exists.

Interviewer: So the separatist argument is not for you.

AD: It’s never been a convincing argument. I really do see it as the ultimate personal solution and in that sense I reject it. I think that there has to be a complete change in gender. I don’t think gender is real, I think gender is constructed. I am about ultimately redistributing power, and the redistribution of power means taking masculinity away from men. So when men say “feminists want to castrate us”, in a sense they’re right. We see the artifice of gender and radical equality demands the kind of institutional change that will ultimately destroy gender. That’s what I hope, that’s what I work for.

so no, again, dating a man doesn’t disqualify you from being a radical feminist. radical feminism is about aligning with its values: naming male power, fighting for women’s liberation, and analyzing the roots of oppression. It’s not about living in perfect political conditions or purging yourself of anything tainted by patriarchy, because we all live under it. and I absolutely refuse to shoulder the burden of perfection. after all I'm still an individual that is seperate from the ideology. not all of my choices are automatically feminist just by the nature of me identifying as a radfem.

radical feminism critiques patriarchy, it doesn't label men as some innate evil species. that’s not feminism, that’s bioessentialism - which radical feminism opposes. patriarchy is a social structure, not something in male DNA. if it were "all men" by nature, then we’d be saying patriarchy is unchangeable, which defeats the entire point of liberation. here exactly is the point where we leap into blackpill territory again and that's exactly the point: you’re not quoting radical feminism. you’re quoting blackpill tumblr rhetoric.

there’s a major difference between strategic separatism like korea’s 4B movement and the kind of separatism often promoted on Tumblr. The 4B movement, which stands for "no dating, no sex, no marriage, no childbearing" is practiced by Korean women as a direct political response to deeply entrenched patriarchy, misogyny, and gender-based violence. It’s not about personal moral purity or hating men as a class - it’s about collective refusal to participate in systems that exploit and endanger women. the women in 4B aren’t just abstaining for abstinence's sake - they’re rejecting institutions (like marriage) that in Korea come with real economic and legal penalties for women. and crucially, many 4B women also organize, educate, and advocate, they have material goals beyond abstention, which they hope to achieve, so they can have better lives.

meanwhile, Tumblr separatism often lacks this structural focus or even goals. It becomes a kind of personal purity ritual, "don’t date men, don’t talk to men, don't interact with men, or you’re not a real feminist." there’s rarely a broader political project behind it. it’s mostly about individual abstaining, framed as resistance, but without any strategy to dismantle or change the structures that harm women. it ends up being fatalistic, assuming men can’t change, patriarchy is eternal, and women can only survive by hiding. that’s not feminism, that’s surrendering. separatism without goals becomes a cage, not a movement.

saying "good men are only good because they’re better than bad men" isn’t insightful, it’s just shifting the goalposts until no man can ever be considered decent. and that’s not analysis, that’s again... fatalism.

if your feminism requires shaming women for having relationships or demanding we all go full hermit mode to be "valid" you’ve missed the point. we live in patriarchy. being a radfem doesn’t mean running away and trying to escape, it means understanding it, resisting it, and trying to change it.