Hey! I saw a post you reblogged about RadFems and white essentialism and I was wondering if you could define radical feminism a bit?
I understand the TE part of TERF and that's enough to make me grossed out and angry but I don't understand how RADICAL feminism is inherently bad bc I don't know what it is!
I'm not sure where to look and I don't want to get lured into a TERF pit online so I thought I'd ask you but ofc if you don't wanna educate that's that's valid!
Something that's important to understand from the start is that radical feminism has existed in different forms since the late 1960s, and in some two and a half or so decades has been through a good deal of change. In its modern incarnation some of the beneficial elements remain, but it has largely become a harmful philosophy, and those elements which are beneficial can be found in other, less harmful social theories.
It's generally very centered on Western culture, which we'll get to, but for now take it as read that I'm explicitly referring to circumstances specific to Western culture.
At it's most general, radical feminism argues that all forms of oppression globally stem from patriarchy (which is exchangeable for authoritarianism in this philosophy), and women represent the largest disenfranchised group across history. At a distance, it offers some useful insight into gendered hierarchy, and a broad understanding how women are disenfranchised by patriarchy. A useful tool.
However, the process of accumulation of power and creation of disenfranchised groups is extremely complicated, takes place literally over centuries, and involves an incalculable mix of history, technology, culture, and so on. Systemic oppression can be located, and addressed in the present day, but declaring an all-encompassing root cause is currently impossible, and always misleading. Where present-day radical feminists' approach becomes harmful is the foundational determination of patriarchal oppression as the root cause of inequality and oppression in society.
Present day radical feminism attributes innate authoritarianism to maleness, divorced from all other factors or context, and changed from a useful tool into a harmful social theory and authoritarian political practice. We're familiar with these today as trans exclusionary practices, anti-sex values, "gender critical" feminists on down the line into broader racial bigotry, antisemitism, and general authoritarianism. But how does it get there?
Defining maleness as innately oppressive includes attributing a variety of harmful traits as inherently and unchangably belonging to males exclusively. No "male" can change this about themselves, or escape these traits. It requires "male" to be a rigidly defined category, which is why radical feminism is gender essentialist. If a gender can change, if gender cannot be rigidly proscribed into exclusive categories, the oppressive nature of males cannot be innate, and patriarchal oppression also cannot be a singular and primary form of systemic oppression.
Gender being fluid, or complex, knocks the bottom block out from under radical feminism, because it forces a total revision to the foundational assumption of patriarchy as a universal form of authoritarianism. Okay, so radical feminism is harmful to intersex people, to trans people, to anyone whose gender cannot be an isolated, immutable, and binary category. That's just a few percentages of the population (tens of millions of people, by the way, even at just a couple percent), what about the rest?
For starters, well, what about men? All men, in general? Just off the top, consider how a social theory that attributes inherent harmfulness to the nature of being male is also not great for half the population. By accepting the initial premise of patriarchy as the singular form of social oppression, radical feminists do not have to accept that men can be harmed by the structure of society, which is obviously false, but let me just throw out men having higher suicide rates, abused men have a harder time getting help, men of color vastly more targeted by police for violence, depression in men more often going untreated, and so on. And if that's not enough, radical feminists also have a kind of tacit agreement that half the population should be oppressed - just the other half. Yes, patriarchy exists, and yes there is oppression of women by men, but this does not take place exclusively through something innate to maleness. There are more factors at work.
If it's not enough that radical feminism is harmful to millions of people, how about to billions of people who happen to be men.
We're running a bit long here, but the anti-sex features of radical feminism bear review. The key to this is understanding that radical feminism is bioessentialist as well as gender essentialist - it attributes innate violence to the penis as a penetrative sex organ, and I'm going to leave it there because we don't need to have an extended conversation about phallic violence. What it means is that radical feminists have human sexuality tied to violence - especially if that sexuality involves a penis in any capacity, but it can also be applied more broadly such as to seduction (of women by men) or kink (because no pain is acceptable as consensual under any circumstances) or pornography (because sexual desire means wanting to be a victim of violence or commit violence [ie innate violence of sex]) or sex work (because no one may exchange or make decisions about sex free from gender based sexual oppression).
It's a bit of a rabbit hole (no pun intended), but the practical outcome is political lesbianism (if any male sex act is violent, the only non-violent relationships are between women) and a highly puritan approach to sexuality (the desire for sex is tantamount to the desire for violence). In the same way that maleness means being inherently oppressive and violent, femaleness means being inherently kind and inherently liberated. Which is nice to feel, but tends to oversimplify the way that not all women are so kind or inclined to liberation. There are women who are abusive, there are horrific political leaders who are women.
Anyway, back on track, sexuality is meant to be a sort of pure act of only love and commitment under radical feminism, because if it stems from any base desire it must be derived from the patriarchal control of society and the male-dominated pervasive idea of sexuality (which also is inherently violence). From the point of view of radical feminists, women who have a high sex drive, who experience lust or desire for men, who enjoy kink, who are sex workers - in short who in any way have sexual feelings which are "impure" - are believed to have the desires against their "real" will. From outside the radical feminist box, they severely deprive women of agency and sexual freedom. Which is pretty frustrating because generally radical feminists are very pro abortion rights and advocate for bodily autonomy. But in the particulars and details their theory and praxis remains opposed to women having agency.
We've been talking really generally for awhile about women and men, but there's a larger picture to the harm inherent in radical feminism, and that's a colonialist or global perspective. In brief, radical feminism's idea of social structure, definitions of gender, and perspective on oppression is centered on white, Western culture. It discounts the more complex experiences of BIPOC in systemic oppression, it discounts different cultures ideas about gender, it discounts the differences in social structure globally.
Just within its own wheelhouse of white, Western culture, radical feminism is harmful to most people regardless of gender. But when we move into the larger context of global culture and colonialism, it's harmfulness expands substantially. Because of its need to restrict and isolate the categories of male and female, it commonly excludes the experiences of BIPOC in these roles. With this exclusion it has also created a safe haven for various white supremacist groups, furthering the move of radical feminism towards highly exclusionary ideas of gender and puritan sexuality. Included in this shift is a tendency to exploit the positive radical feminist promotion of bodily autonomy for abortion rights into eugenics, and slipping the foundational antisemitic principles of all white supremacists into the practice and principles of modern day radical feminism.
This particularly harmful component of modern radical feminism isn't typically encountered in the main public facing proponents of the movement, and when radical feminists are in the process of recruitment, they'll rarely enter into any details more complicated than masculine oppression, patriarchy, and sometimes sexual violence (if it helps their cause). However, there are consistent links between more active radical feminists and white supremacist groups, which you'll tend to encounter if you dive through one of their link-storm posts, or just spend long enough in the radical feminist tag of any social medial platform. But more commonly you'll find these sorts of ideas promoted through the idea of abortion being used to control what sort of child a woman has, or sexual violence equated to BIPOC, or treating common traits of white culture as being "oppressed."
We went a bit long here. The take-home to understand is that as a tool, as a part of feminism, it's sensible to address the function of male privilege in Western society. It's not something imaginary, it's a structure composed of a variety of methods used to maintain concentrations of power and maintain modern state power. But the radical feminist approach doesn't do this. Instead it props up a white, Western idea of bioessentialism which is harmful to any approach to reducing systemic inequality and moving towards a more egalitarian society.
