Opinion of radical feminism

[Redalgo]

I support liberal feminism. Radical feminism is disagreeable to me since I do not think the state is an inherently male construct designed to exploit, subordinate, and control women, and disagree with the socialist feminists because I do not believe sex-related issues are part of a larger conflict waged along the lines of economic class. Major changes can and do need to be made but one of my central views on the feminist issue is that public institutions like the state are inherently neutral. They are subject to being captured or at least influenced by competing interest groups. In my opinion, reforms are the best way to go - both in terms of changing the laws of the land and in exerting influence over the norms and customs of our society. I do, to be very clear about it, think the patriarchal status quo should be ended.

[Kushahontas]

It's always hilarious when someone talks about how women are incredibly disadvantaged in terms of healthcare, and then you bring up that actually they live 7 years longer than men. They don't like facts like that. Of course if men lived 7 years longer, I'm sure we'd be hearing about how unfair that was non stop.

I find it a bit unfortunate that America is a country where even the left is critical of feminism.

[freefair]

HI .Awful. Modern Westernized civilization is not institutionally sexist. They should focus on nations where there is significant genuine sexism, ie not Europe, Anglosphere, South Korea and Japan. Liberal feminism has done enough for women.

[Gustaf]

Awful. Modern Westernized civilization is not institutionally sexist. They should focus on nations where there is significant genuine sexism, ie not Europe, Anglosphere, South Korea and Japan. Liberal feminism is enough.

lololol

[Californian Tony]

Awful. Modern Westernized civilization is not institutionally sexist. They should focus on nations where there is significant genuine sexism, ie not Europe, Anglosphere, South Korea and Japan. Liberal feminism is enough.

lololol

[Sibboleth]

Who else actually laughed when reading that? I did!

[Gustaf]

Who else actually laughed when reading that? I did!

I did! I think the killer for me was seeing Japan and South Korea tacked on at the end as examples of countries where there is no sexism.

[Californian Tony]

I was actually closer to facepalm than to laugh, FTR.

[The Mikado]

[freefair]

What is the problem? The only way to achieve a level of gender equality in first world nations any further beyond equal legal rights is to take measures that damage liberty and justice itself.

[Beet]

I still disagree with the idea that has emerged in this thread that liberal feminists concern themselves only with strict legal issues. They aren't that stupid.

[nclib]

Since I am a (male) liberal feminist, I’ll give my stances on the areas where there are differences between radical feminism and liberal feminism. BTW, I don’t think liberal feminists care only about the legal system, and I certainly believe that legal equality is the only part of the picture.

I'm not sure that's entirely accurate. Liberal feminists also locate the root cause of women's oppression in patriarchal gender relations. The actual differences I can see between radical and liberal feminism is (1) the radical feminists still see patriarchy as prior to all other forms of oppression, whereas liberal feminists see it as part of an intersecting complex of oppressions encompassing class, race, sexual identity, disability, and any number of other things (2) the radical feminists have a much more essentialist view of gender that does not accept transgender women as women (3) the radical feminists are willing to critique women for their choices that are perceived by the radical feminists to uphold the patriarchy, such as wearing makeup or doing sex work (4) there's a definite correlation between feminist misandry and radical feminist identification.

1)   I believe gender oppression is more ingrained in our culture and more widespread than other forms of oppression, though it certainly is “part of an intersecting complex of oppressions encompassing class, race, sexual identity, disability, and any number of other things”
2)   Disagree
3)   Agree to an extent. Plenty of choices women make can be influenced by (and reinforce) patriarchy. (such as women leaving their career to be with family, women assuming their husbands name upon marriage, etc.) However, I don’t think the sex industry is inherently sexist (it often can be, but not inherently so)—I would bet that gay men are just as likely to look at porn as straight men, for example)
4)   Certainly not anti-male, and consider some but not all radical feminists to be anti-male

[Proud Lieberal from Northeast]

Who else actually laughed when reading that? I did!

I did not. In fact, I did not read this thread, because reading threads on this board made me lose all faith in humanity and evolution many times.

[Gustaf]

What is the problem? The only way to achieve a level of gender equality in first world nations any further beyond equal legal rights is to take measures that damage liberty and justice itself.

That may or may not be true, but it's not really related to what you said in your previous post. If you think Western society in general is really gender equal you can't know many women very well.

[TNF]

Horrible ideology.

[BritishDixie]

Freakish vision bound up in a bundle with radical atheism and anarchism.

[asexual trans victimologist]

Freakish vision bound up in a bundle with radical atheism and anarchism.

You haven't been hanging around the right kind of radical feminists. Radical Christian socialist feminism is very much a thing, but I suspect you'd like that only marginally better (assuming you're Christian; if you're not versions invoking most other major religions are available).

[Chareth Cutestory]

Radical anything is the opponent of progress. It shuts out the exchange of thought and understanding. How can you attempt to change the way people think if you're not even interested in how they think already?

[asexual trans victimologist]

Radical anything is the opponent of progress. It shuts out the exchange of thought and understanding. How can you attempt to change the way people think if you're not even interested in how they think already?

That isn't what 'radical' means in this context.

[Chareth Cutestory]

Radical anything is the opponent of progress. It shuts out the exchange of thought and understanding. How can you attempt to change the way people think if you're not even interested in how they think already?

That isn't what 'radical' means in this context.

But it really is. Their main point is how right women are at the expense of men based solely on the horrors that men have put women through. There is no part of radical feminism that lends any credence to the perspective of men. No, it's not literally the same thing as most things described as "radical" but that's mostly because the roots of feminism are really quite reasonable. But the movement you could describe that way has become so ridiculous in its repulsion towards men that it's just ignorant. It is so deeply rooted in the wrongs of men that there is nowhere to go once men have been beat down in the ideal result of the movement. That's because of the absolute dismissal of the male point of view. That gives in namesake an appropriate level of accuracy based on what "radical" is usually meant to describe.

[asexual trans victimologist]

Except that isn't prescriptively what 'radical feminism' is supposed to describe, and it's highly tendentious to restrict the term to what you're talking about even descriptively. The 'radical' in 'radical feminism' refers to an effort to find the root (radix) of the disorderedness of gender relations, either in a given society or throughout human history (I think the latter is a fool's errand, to be perfectly frank). Everything that comes after that depends entirely upon how that root ends up being perceived.

[Chareth Cutestory]

Very true, but the problem (in a similar vein to other political-based movements) is that the perception has seeped into the mentality of the followers. It may not be what it's supposed to mean or where it comes from but it's not the movement that most followers agree means men are the root of women's problems. There is so much that should mean something meaningful and thoughtful, but the "radical" has taken over because of shallow interpretations. So yes, it absolutely depends on interpretation, but when the interpretation overpowers the cause and its meaning there's not much room to wiggle the cause out of that pigeon-hole. It is now radical in the same sense as other radical movements.

[asexual trans victimologist]

As far as it's analyzable as one movement, I'd say that's a reasonable analysis. The attitude towards trans people for example can get particularly awful.

[The Mikado]

As far as it's analyzable as one movement, I'd say that's a reasonable analysis. The attitude towards trans people for example can get particularly awful.

There's no doubt, but it does come from a reasonable place, namely the contention that trans women have the ability to "pass" for men and therefore don't have the same consistent experience as women do.  Many do turn that into some pretty fierce anti-trans bigotry.

[asexual trans victimologist]

As far as it's analyzable as one movement, I'd say that's a reasonable analysis. The attitude towards trans people for example can get particularly awful.

There's no doubt, but it does come from a reasonable place, namely the contention that trans women have the ability to "pass" for men and therefore don't have the same consistent experience as women do.  Many do turn that into some pretty fierce anti-trans bigotry.

Oh, I know. I've taken a class in a women's studies department that employed Janice Raymond as recently as a decade ago and is still trying to exorcise her, so I've been through all these arguments and they're certainly internally reasonable and come from understandable places. They just fail to account for huge elements of the experience of others, in a way that, for me, hits pretty close to home.