Feminism - where are the threads?

[Totoro303]

If you did have kids, and you did look after them, you'd learn how to do this, the same as you'd learn how to change nappies, heat milk to the right temperature, cut tiny finger nails and everything you have to do to look after little ones. None of this comes naturally to anyone and is all learnt on the job. If men have a reputation for being useless at this stuff, it's because they haven't done it enough to get the practice to be good at it. I couldn't keep a cactus alive before I had kids, but actually having a small person who's totally reliant on you forces you to do it and the more you do it the better you get.

Wholly agree. Any activity I am even semi competent at, is due to either lots of practice , or being cajoled , and/or compelled to do same..

 

[David Clapson]

The Guardian had a great piece about radical feminism the other day Don’t write off radical feminism – it’s always been ahead of its time | Finn Mackay

Feminism is often portrayed as a dinosaur rudely dying right in the way of progressive change. Younger people today are much more fluent in their understandings of sex, gender and sexuality. There are more terms available than ever before to describe identity categories (Facebook has more than 50 different choices for gender alone). Indeed, research has found pupils in UK secondary schools using more than 23 different labels for gender identity. In this climate, feminism, a movement led by the experiences of one identity, has become seen as backward, trapped in the past. Added to this are misconceptions that radical feminism in particular is uniquely transphobic, with the label of “terf”, or trans-exclusionary radical feminist, applied to anyone expressing trans exclusionary views, regardless of their politics or whether they are even a feminist at all.

In fact, far from being behind the curve or opposed to such changes, radical feminism was ahead of its time. The radical feminists of the 1970s were some of the first to take seriously the gender and sexuality debates currently raging through our society. Many of them looked forward to a gender-fluid world of polyamorous and pansexual relationships, where social roles were no longer defined by people’s sexed characteristics at birth. Their work helped to secure structural equality for women, more expansive definitions of the family and greater freedom of expression for gender and sexual identities that cut against the grain of heterosexuality.

A key tenet of radical feminism has always been the rejection of biological essentialism – the belief in innate, biological sex roles. The end goal of feminist revolution, said Shulamith Firestone, author of The Dialectic of Sex, must be “not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself: genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally”. As the radical feminist, poet and artist Kate Millett wrote in her classic 1970 text Sexual Politics, “whatever the ‘real’ differences between the sexes may be, we are not likely to know them until the sexes are treated differently, that is alike. And this is very far from being the case at present.”

The work of radical feminists put gender under the microscope, including masculinity. This was highly controversial at the time, and still is. They were among the first to study why masculinity is defined through violence, and how it might be changed. Far from promoting a war of the sexes, radical feminists had an even more radical message: women and men, all of us, however we define, are all human beings, and together are capable of growth and humanity. In 1970s Britain, feminists went beyond theorising what family life might look like without the nuclear model, and started building it themselves. They established lesbian communes, ran self-insemination classes and organised networks of gay men to become sperm donors and co-parents. Some raised children collectively. In doing so, they created egalitarian communities freed from the pressure of gender roles.

These second wave feminists started the first refuges and rape crisis centres; occupied the courts of sexist judges; burned down sex shops; launched campaigns against the institution of marriage and wore badges urging the destruction of the nuclear family. This was happening long before people started using terms such as chosen family or queer kinship.

Their movement was united with other social justice movements: for Black power, for the environment, for peace and anti-militarism. Perhaps it is because of their radicalism, and the potential of the cultural change they were involved in starting, that such a backlash ensued to stop them. Unfortunately homophobia, and perhaps lesbophobia specifically, is still a powerful deterrent to women’s engagement with feminism, and, from early on, radical feminism was picked as the cautionary tale, of the certain spinsterhood and rejection that would follow from taking feminism too far.

We should remember that these rebels are not residing in archives. Most are still with us. Radical feminism is not our past. If anything, it’s become increasingly relevant to our future. No social movement has healed the structural fractures of racism, class oppression or homophobia, and feminism is no exception. It is also affected by these same fractures – racism, the dominance of Whiteness, classism and transphobia. Just as activists look outwards towards fighting inequality and oppression in society, they also need to look inwards at the forms of oppression within their own movements.

While it was not perfect, there were many successes of that time. The women who started Reclaim the Night in 1977 founded a method of organising we still turn to today after tragic cases such as the murder of Sarah Everard. Then, as now, women said they would not accept a curfew, nor the lie that these tragedies are isolated incidents, or one-offs, or perpetrated by crazed monsters. Women set up Women’s Aid and Rape Crisis, alongside their own publishing houses, music labels and journalism. We do not always need to reinvent wheels; we can find answers in radical feminism that can help us move forward now.

There is no one agreed definition of feminism; there are as many different understandings as there are people who would say they are feminist. This is a strength, but there is also a risk that if feminism means everything, it can become meaningless. At the very least, feminism is a movement for women’s equality with men in terms of legal rights, recognition and access in the world. But men are not a homogeneous group, and they do not enjoy rights equally. Because of this, feminist activists over the centuries have pointed out that this movement is not a struggle merely for rights with unequal men.

Radical feminism is a revolutionary social justice movement, working for the world as it could be, and for the liberation of women and society; through challenging, changing, and, one day, ending patriarchy as a form of social governance.

Finn Mackay is the author of Radical Feminism: Feminist Activism in Movement, and is a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of the West of England in Bristol

I was at university with radical feminists in the '80s and have supported them ever since. Their views seem like common sense to me. There's nothing radical about them. If the boot was on the other foot, men would be demanding all the same things as a basic human right.

 

[Orang Utan]

The Guardian had a great piece about radical feminism the other day Don’t write off radical feminism – it’s always been ahead of its time | Finn Mackay



I was at university with radical feminists in the '80s and have supported them ever since. Their views seem like common sense to me. There's nothing radical about them. If the boot was on the other foot, men would be demanding all the same things as a basic human right.

How does this skew with your loathsome comments on the Dune thread?

 

[David Clapson]

Well done, 1 internet point to you. Now fuck off to my ignore list and stop derailing this thread.

 

[Flavour]

It does seem like an attempt to make up for what you said on the Dune thread tbh

 

[xenon]

Well done, 1 internet point to you. Now fuck off to my ignore list and stop derailing this thread.

Stick me on ignore as well if you like. But having just read what you posted over there he has a point. you probably consider yourself a feminist. I bet you have even said that at some point.

 

[Orang Utan]

Judge for yourselves folks:

I love this article. And although the long edit is a bit slow in parts, I find all of it believable. I have no trouble buying into every detail. I feel sorry for people who can't do that. They must be some other species. Also, I'm still in love with Lady Jessica. I'm a bit shocked that Paul didn't jump her. If I was the writer I'd add that to the plot. Of course it would be wrong, but how can a man not lose control when she's there? Miss "tell me of your homeworld, usul" is a poor substitute. Hard to believe that she's the fragrant Rachael out of Blade Runner. Her unfortunate bun emphasises her pointy ears. She looks like an elf extra from a lost Lord of the Rings scene set in a Bangkok ladyboy bar.

 

[David Clapson]

It's all about context. Think dark humour and bizarre violent fantasy films. And now fuck off for being dense and trying to derail one of the few feminist threads we have, with a cross thread beef. That's against the forum rules, so report yourself to a mod while you're at, simpleton.

 

[Orang Utan]

It’s very relevant to this thread to mention that

 

[BillRiver]

There's feminists, and feminist posts, in a lot of threads on here that I've read. They may not announce themselves as feminist, and it may not be in the thread title, but it is there nonetheless.

For example, the reactions to David Clapson in the Dune thread...

 

[JudithB]

I had to go and look after my family. And now I am back to try and stop the erosion of women.
Go chuckle

 

[8ball]

I am back to try and stop the erosion of women.

Not wanting to ejaculator-splain, but I more commonly hear the term "exfoliation" these days.

Ooh - and hi - and Merry Christmas in few mins!

 

[Clair De Lune]

It's more of a titter tbf but cheers yeah

 

[JudithB]

I tried to post a thread called The Erosion Women And Are We OK Unless It's A Resource - and it wasnt allowed

 

[8ball]

It's more of a titter tbf but cheers yeah

Merry Christmas - five mins to go!!

 

[ska invita]

interesting article saying british feminism is a bit of a wash out these days
i wonder what people think of it
i think probably correct - its perhaps broader than ever, but also shallower

English Feminism Needs A Kick Up The Arse | Novara Media

Feminism is no longer a dirty word. But for many leftwingers it’s become an embarrassing one, argues Moya Lothian-McLean.

novaramedia.com

 

[Pickman's model]

interesting article saying british feminism is a bit of a wash out these days
i wonder what people think of it
i think probably correct - its perhaps broader than ever, but also shallower

English Feminism Needs A Kick Up The Arse | Novara Media

Feminism is no longer a dirty word. But for many leftwingers it’s become an embarrassing one, argues Moya Lothian-McLean.

novaramedia.com

surprised it's not from the guardian