the rush limbaugh way. you know, the way anti-feminists use it to reflect "bitches".
how do you interpret it?
for me, it is always a word appropriated by the conservative right to paint an slanted view of what women's empowerment looks like in a sort of immoral, unnatural, and overly excessive way.
Re: I'm sorry!altdrsmoothopSeptember 30 2005, 17:00:17 UTC
word. word.
the impetus for my post is that, by definition, i'm a radical feminist. and yes, i do think cultural change underlies equality, or even difference feminism, but I hardly think that qualifies as radical feminism. I don't even think the word "radical feminism" belongs to us anymore, it's used by anti-feminists to represent a reactionary pseudo-feminism they use to actually ignore central tenets of feminist arguments in order to reassert a status quo that is based on a premise that all experience is interchangeable somehow. seems ludicrous.
I was reading an article by Harry Brod entitled "masculinity studies" that really addressed some of my primary concerns with anti-femnism, and i'm wondering how other people feel, you know?
I take radical feminism to be more of an anti-feminist construction more closely akin to feminazi, or militant feminism.
The anti-feminists did not make up the term "radical feminist," nor did they create the theory. The radical feminists created and adopted the term. I'd point to Mary Daly's book on Gyn/ecology, but there are earlier uses of the phrase, I'm sure. I've found books with the phrase included the title, about the self-proclaimed radical feminists, as early as 1969.
Did you really mean that you think the theory and phrase were created by anti-feminists, or was that a misstatement? I think it's a fairly clear historical fact that the theory was developed by people who adopted the term to describe themselves.
I remember reading in the first Womens studies course I took that the word "radical" means to go to the root of some thing. So radical feminism is just feminism that is attempting to go to or seeking out the root of systemic and institutional "isms". For me that is what radical feminism means.
yeah, that's what I read too, but even though I've been involved with feminism for a good three and half years, i've never thought of radical as meaning route. additionally, the advent of the third wave makes a "root" or determinant cause of all oppression a little bit of a second wave generalization. I'm not the biggest fan of intersectionality, but it's a good tool for this sort of understanding. bell hooks' "feminism margin to center" is good for that sort of thing too.
I'm really focusing on what people's perceptions are, in other words, how has it come down to us through representation, rather then by active analysis.
Re: eek...this is long :(delphyne_September 30 2005, 18:53:46 UTC
"but that anti-feminist strategy has created a sort of "alter-feminism" which I like to call reactionary pseudofeminism. It's a feminism emptied of all its central arguments (difference in women's experience, the personal is the political, engaging with structures of oppression, recognizing inequalities that exist) but leaves the outer surface of feminism, the surface being its representation, which is not entirely determined by feminists"
I'm not clear if whether when you say that the reactionary right has "createded a sort of "alter-feminism" you're arguing this type of feminism actually exists or whether you are acknowledging that it is propgaganda disseminated by people who have a vested in interest in telling lies about what feminism is and what it isn't.
Re: eek...this is long :(altdrsmoothopSeptember 30 2005, 19:08:02 UTC
not exactly propaganda. I don't think it's that well-thought out. I actually think it's the product of the normal reaction men have when part of their privilege is exposed because of the efficacy of women's lib, and the real effect women's lib has had
( ... )
I don't want to give the word up either, but i'd like to find a way to reinfuse it with a meaning of our own. "radical" in the anti-feminist sense most definitely means "extreme", but more implicitly, means "irrational", which is bothersome to me, because it is invoking very old school, spate, ideas of demoralizing women and silencing them under the rubric of non-sensical. I think maybe I want to spend more time on hysterical logic. haha, that's an oxymoron.
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how do you interpret it?
for me, it is always a word appropriated by the conservative right to paint an slanted view of what women's empowerment looks like in a sort of immoral, unnatural, and overly excessive way.
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I apologize for that. I'm going to screen the mod note right now so there are no misunderstandings for other members.
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the impetus for my post is that, by definition, i'm a radical feminist. and yes, i do think cultural change underlies equality, or even difference feminism, but I hardly think that qualifies as radical feminism. I don't even think the word "radical feminism" belongs to us anymore, it's used by anti-feminists to represent a reactionary pseudo-feminism they use to actually ignore central tenets of feminist arguments in order to reassert a status quo that is based on a premise that all experience is interchangeable somehow. seems ludicrous.
I was reading an article by Harry Brod entitled "masculinity studies" that really addressed some of my primary concerns with anti-femnism, and i'm wondering how other people feel, you know?
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The anti-feminists did not make up the term "radical feminist," nor did they create the theory. The radical feminists created and adopted the term. I'd point to Mary Daly's book on Gyn/ecology, but there are earlier uses of the phrase, I'm sure. I've found books with the phrase included the title, about the self-proclaimed radical feminists, as early as 1969.
Did you really mean that you think the theory and phrase were created by anti-feminists, or was that a misstatement? I think it's a fairly clear historical fact that the theory was developed by people who adopted the term to describe themselves.
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Roland Barthes' idea of the second order signified is applicable here i believe.
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I'm really focusing on what people's perceptions are, in other words, how has it come down to us through representation, rather then by active analysis.
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I'm not clear if whether when you say that the reactionary right has "createded a sort of "alter-feminism" you're arguing this type of feminism actually exists or whether you are acknowledging that it is propgaganda disseminated by people who have a vested in interest in telling lies about what feminism is and what it isn't.
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yes, that's totally what I was thinking about.
I don't want to give the word up either, but i'd like to find a way to reinfuse it with a meaning of our own. "radical" in the anti-feminist sense most definitely means "extreme", but more implicitly, means "irrational", which is bothersome to me, because it is invoking very old school, spate, ideas of demoralizing women and silencing them under the rubric of non-sensical. I think maybe I want to spend more time on hysterical logic. haha, that's an oxymoron.
I'm glad you didn't misread me!
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