Something that is interesting abt the way that RF as a school of thought and as an intellectual community has sorta changed over the years is that it has in many ways become v. narrowly defined by agreeing to a specific set of superficial (I mean that in the sense of, like not foundational, but specific) political + social points. So like, trans exclusion, sex work criminalization, and to a lesser extent reaction against BDSM have become *defining* characteristics in a way that they weren’t quite when it was beginning as a movement.
And like, because there has been just like, extensive fighting around those v. issues (and here, I’m thinking trans exclusion in particular), that has like made that a more and more important part of the philosophy because it’s how it increasingly defines itself against it’s enemies (‘liberal feminism’, 'funfem’, whatever they wanna call it). Works of historical feminism then like, stand or fall on the basis of whether they serve the purpose of that specific issue; there really isn’t a sort of vision for liberation that has to be agreed on, or a specific praxis of changing the world; in a certain sense, RF has been to a certain extent depoliticized in most areas *other* than trans and sex work issues.
It reminds me in a certain way of early Christian groups. Frequently the only thing that was keeping orthodox Christians together was their rejection of whatever heresy was being fought against at that moment; theologians w pretty dissimilar theologies were allies because they were simultaneously opposing whoever was the controversial person of the moment.
Which is why you can have the current context where like, radical feminist authors and their ideas from Wittig to Irigaray to Dworkin’s early work, are considered 'genderist’. (you have to wonder whether there is anyone in the RF canon who isn’t Daly, Raymond, or Jeffreys). And that’s why groups that have trended towards trans inclusion are seen as an enemy to feminism (here i’m thinking antifa, which has ime had disproportionate trans woman participation), whereas even anti-feminist reactionaries are seen as potential allies if they follow certain ideas on those topics. This can range from praising Milo for Drop the T, Zizek, working w organizations that want gay people executed, and includes the historical working w Religious Conservatives. You also see this inform their approach to other political issues. When people were arguing to no platform Milo, a healthy amount of people on GenderTrender were arguing that it is wrong to no platform fascists, because that’s what trans women had done to multiple RFs over the years.
Its a philosophy premised on 'enemy of my enemy’ to an almost absurd extreme. And because historical RF works really don’t have a coherent approach to the State and politics more broadly have led to a similarly inconsistent political stance that’s only become more noticeable as time goes on. There’s a certain irony of like, depicting all of the people who disagree w them as liberal feminists, right? Because their approaches: arguing against no platforming or protests as 'censorship’ and against the 1st amendment, arguing against forceful opposition to f4scism, appealing to the current State and the police as sources of good repression, other basic reformist sentiments (Hillary apologism, for example) are much more highlights of a liberal approach than many of the people they are arguing against.
Which isn’t to say that there aren’t RFs who have other politics (reactionary or leftist), just that those politics and those approaches to the state and capitalism are *relatively* insignificant compared to commitment to the specific topics of trans inclusion and sex work. For the most part there are not many Firestone-esque flights of fancy in terms of reimagining the world or Daly-esque spirit-essentialist matriarchies (w the exception perhaps of certain primitivists like Lierre Keith, tho DGR has many crypto-reactionary tendencies also). It mostly seems to be an edgy form of liberal feminism, defined completely by the marginalized peoples it criticizes.
