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Sep 30, 2005 12:38

What do you consider to be radical feminism ( Read more... )

privilege, types of feminism, feminist mvmt general

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Re: eek...this is long :( altdrsmoothop September 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.

My thinking would be best explained by barthe's second order signified. take a culturally reactive word, empty it of its original meaning, and then fill it with a new one. it was a process he explicited in "mythologies" by which words and ideas were subsumed or subjugated by a post-colonial system, like France, or the United States.

I'm trying to delve into the process by which this occurs, because the more i look at it, the more patterns seem to emerge. I sort of take a scientific stance on revealing the functioning of masculinity, I want to stop the process, and watch what happens when that process organically takes natural routes around that stoppage, perhaps maybe being able to uncover some more central formulation of the ideological basis that drives the production of language and mainstream cultural knowledge--for instance, how can one assert they are anti-feminist, without knowing what feminism actually means, or intends. By most reasoning, in order to hate something you must at least have a notion of what it represents. what i would like to get at, by trying to delineate what radical feminism is to feminists, is how that construction of alter-feminism situates itself in terms of feminism proper for feminists, and pseudofeminism for anti-feminists.

I think the key here is what feminism has done in representation, or how it has been spun in representation. I don't think many of the anti-feminists actually disagree with feminist tenets, but disagree with a culture they attribute to feminism at large. Anti-feminists are oft to assert, for instance, that women's empowerment has led to women who dress sluttier.

is that a good explanation?

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Re: eek...this is long :( altdrsmoothop September 30 2005, 19:09:41 UTC
*not hate, maybe disagree, although hate has it's own science...

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Re: eek...this is long :( chreebomb September 30 2005, 20:28:18 UTC
I think the key here is what feminism has done in representation, or how it has been spun in representation. I don't think many of the anti-feminists actually disagree with feminist tenets, but disagree with a culture they attribute to feminism at large.

I"m nodding my head right now. Because the same thing happens across all the -isms, it seems. The anti-"ism" group will say that they believe in the idea that, say, women are equal, but the execution of such ideals are so strikingly at odds.

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Re: eek...this is long :( altdrsmoothop September 30 2005, 20:39:39 UTC
yeah. I find that antifeminists don't think that women are equal, they just boil down their experience to one which is applicable to them. They want rape to be a trauma to men like it's a trauma to women, etc. And that's just washed out old fashioned sexism right, thinking men to be the default, and women to be inferior. It's only implicit, and when you point it out they'll tell you you're making a strawman argument, but the only reason that logic is in place is to implicitly ally male heteronormativity as the pinnacle of identity.

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Re: eek...this is long :( chreebomb September 30 2005, 20:43:06 UTC
but the only reason that logic is in place is to implicitly ally male heteronormativity as the pinnacle of identity.

beautiful. your wording, i mean.

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Re: eek...this is long :( altdrsmoothop September 30 2005, 22:31:30 UTC
haha, here I thought I only spoke in strawmen!

watch out! there's strawman in your house! least they don't say "strawwoman"

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