There Is No Such Thing As Radical Feminism Anymore

[Bonobo]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/07/25/there-is-no-such-thing-as-radical-feminism-anymore/

There Is No Such Thing As Radical Feminism Anymore
By Amanda Marcotte
Thursday, July 25, 2013 19:12 EST



Don’t get me wrong! There was. In the 60s and 70s, there were radical feminists who were distinguishing themselves from liberal feminists. Radical feminists agreed with liberal feminists that we should change the laws to recognize women’s equality, but they also believed that we needed to change the culture. It was not enough to pass the ERA or legalize abortion, they believed, but we should also talk about cultural issues, such as misogyny, objectification, rape, and domestic violence.

In other words, what was once “radical” feminism is now mainstream feminism.

I realize there are anti-trans, anti-sex feminists out there who call themselves radical feminists, but I, simply put, don’t agree. What’s radical about them? They are to the right of the mainstream feminist movement. They often have more in common with the conservatives decrying mainstream feminism as “radical” than they do the original radical feminists who had consciousness-raising groups and abortion speak outs and who started Ms Magazine.

I don’t call anti-trans feminists “radical”. I call them reactionary. I don’t even really think of them as feminists, because feminism is about breaking down rigid gender ideology. They want to uphold rigid gender ideology, even if they differ from the patriarchy on what should go into the buckets we label “man” and “woman”.

[hrmjustin]

1. I never met an anti-transgender feminist.

[Bonobo]

2. Really? Would you like some links?

They are always associated with "radical feminism".

[hrmjustin]

3. You can give links but in real life I have many transgender and feminist friends...

... and I have never seen an issue.

[Major Nikon]

5. Many are equity feminists that have no issues with transgendered folks

[hrmjustin]

7. I have never met a feminist with a problem with transgendered folk.

[Bonobo]

8. No offense, but that doesn't mean much.

People generally modify their statements to accomodate those around them, especially when their views are anti-transgender viciousness.

Now, there have been many recent attempts to try to separate themselves from this dark legacy, but it is really nothing more than damage control.

Here are some of the many, many, many links and they are NOT from men's groups. But really, even a little bit of effort will show you that at the heart of radical feminism is the a strong paranoia against m-f transgender people.

http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2012/05/theres_nothing

http://vaguelyhumanoid.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/radical-feminist-transphobia-a-patriarchal-ideology/

http://www.feminist-reprise.org/docs/radfemtrans.html

[hrmjustin]

9. ok that is fine but I live in the real world and I have never dealt with...

a feminist that dislikes transgendered folk.

[Warren DeMontague]

22. At least one, banned repeatedly for making bigoted anti-trans statements, is having their presence

-or lack thereof- on DU mourned, right now elsewhere on this site.

And yes indeed everyone concerned knows full well the history.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

24. Maybe that's not the "real world" either nt

[Major Nikon]

4. One of them got the boot from here

The Radfem conference has been cancelled the last two years because they were afraid men were cutting off their penes in order to sneak in.
http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2013/04/terfs-radfem-hatefest-booted-from.html

They are most certainly out there.

[hrmjustin]

6. Ok but in the real world I have never encountered this.

[Bonobo]

10. You keep saying that, but I have never met a white supremacist either.

That doesn't mean they don't exist.

http://www.amazon.com/Transsexual-Empire-Making-She-Male-Athene/dp/0807762725

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jan/31/gender.weekend7

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/may/25/radical-feminism-trans-radfem2012

Simply put, TERFs hate transgender women for two reasons. First, TERFs want to eliminate gender roles and they believe that transgender women shore them up. Second, TERFs define transgender women as men based on the anatomical circumstances of their birth and believe that "actual" women must be protected from these men in order to be safe.
-cut-
TERFs despise transgender women so much, in fact, that they end up contradicting their most beloved political commitments in order to reject them. On the Radfem 2013 website, they profess: "We believe that gender is a destructive hierarchy, which harms women and needs to be abolished." But on the same page, they write:
We welcome radical feminists and those women who want to learn more about radical feminism. It is women-only because we believe that we need to organise autonomously in order to fight for our freedom from patriarchy.
-cut-
And, indeed, the penis is at the center of TERF politics. One of the most famous images of Catherine Brennan shows her holding a sign, addressed to transgender women, reading: "Sorry about your dick." Over six decades after Simone de Beauvoir refuted the Freudian notion that "anatomy is destiny," the folks in Brennan's camp vigorously defend it in all its reductiveness. It's past time to stop listening to feminists whose politics have an expiration date of 1949 and it's high time to start fashioning radical communities into safer places for trans* folks.

[hrmjustin]

11. Give me whatever links you want. When I deal with the real world I do not see this.

[Bonobo]

12. I heard you, but you DO realize that as real as the world you deal with is...

It is still limited to your own personal experience.

Do you think the links are fake? Do you think it isn't really happening in the real world?

I guess I don't understand... do you think your experience encompasses all of reality?

[hrmjustin]

13. no I am the g not the t in Lgbt but I can tell you this, most of the problems that I or my

LGBT friends deal eith are caused by MEN.

[Bonobo]

14. Perhaps that is true, but it is pretty irrelevant to the OP. nt

[hrmjustin]

15. ok but I am allowed to share my real world experience on this am I not?

[Bonobo]

16. Of course.

And I hope that I am also allowed to share links which really occur and have had a big impact on both the feminist movement and the transgender rights movement.

[hrmjustin]

17. Sure.

[Bonobo]

18. By the way, I do agree that it is an aberration.

I definitely agree that it runs contrary to most feminists systems of belief to be transphobic.

However, to the extent that it exists, it points quite clearly to the extreme hatred of men that exists among some who identify as radical feminists.

Furthermore, as the OP points out, one should seriously wonder what why a feminist would want to stick to a label that has been so badly poisoned by the anti-transgender attitudes.

After all, it isn't as if the term "feminist" has become meaningless.

I really can't understand why, after all the poisonous bile that has been unleashed at transgender people, that any feminist would want to identify themselves with such a group.

I wonder how much of the attempts at rehabilitation they have done are sincere and how much are just politics.

It would be naive to pretend that some feminists have indeed become so radicalized that they truly do "hate men". I cannot say who or how many, but the paranoia displayed against transgender men is a real thing and points unquestionably to truly emotionally disturbed levels.

[Warren DeMontague]

20. links, you say?

http://factcheckme.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/sorry-sex-pos-transwomen/

http://bugbrennan.com/2012/08/03/the-trouble-with-transgender-presentation-at-radfem-reboot/

http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/10/17/2797141/pacific-justice-institute-invented-transgender/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheila_Jeffreys#Views_on_transsexualism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Daly#Views_on_transsexualism



Trust me, that's only the tip of the particularly nasty iceberg.

[Warren DeMontague]

19. Apparently you weren't in meta much, then, in early-mid 2012.

*snork*

[loli phabay]

21. i have, more than a few. they are out there like any other group that hates people.

[Bonobo]

23. They seem to make a big deal about not considering themselves "sperm receptacles"

Does ANYONE think of women as "sperm receptacles"?

Do any of our gay men in this group think of themselves as that or is that just another heteronormative hiccup on their part?