Radical Feminism

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/03/12/seattles-radical-women/

and 

https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-radical-feminism-3528997?utm_source=emailshare&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=shareurlbuttons

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MARCH 12, 2024

Seattle’s Radical Women

BY RON JACOBSFacebook

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Like most of the liberation movements of the period we call the Sixties, the women’s liberation movement seems a shadow of its former self. In a manner similar to those other movements, the politics of what’s known as second-stage feminism have shifted rightward. This is in part due to the non-stop attacks on women’s rights by the right-wing patriarchal forces in the United States—from the Catholic Church hierarchy to the Republican Party and its adherents. Equally important, though, is the fact that the liberal wing of mainstream US politics has yet to make many women’s rights legally protected in a way that prevents the reactionaries from curtailing those rights. Instead, issues crucial to women’s liberation like reproductive rights and pay equity tend to be reduced to Democratic talking points during elections. Other factors in this rightward shift go deeper. Perhaps foremost among these causes is the predominantly bourgeois nature of the women’s movement and its consequent focus on the individual instead of the group. This latter, more fundamental, cause can be traced back to the movement’s origins in the early 1960s. Those origins reflected the concerns of the US middle class: suburban ennui, sexual harassment at work and elsewhere, women’s restrictions in public and the workplace and sexual freedom. It’s not that these weren’t important issues, but they reflected the concerns of women who did not have to worry about a place to live or how they were going to feed their family. Furthermore, they did not address the gross racial discrimination that existed in the United States at the time.

Indeed, as Barbara Winslow makes clear in her new book Revolutionary Feminists:The Women’s Liberation Movement in Seattle, it wasn’t until women from the considerably more left and more radical antiwar/anti-imperialist and anti-racist movements began forming women’s liberation groups and caucuses that the more fundamental issues regarding women’s oppression began to inform the direction of the movement. As her title makes clear, Winslow’s narrative focuses on the movement in the Seattle, Washington area. It is a story of strong-willed individuals, socialist organizations and sects and a constant battle with sexism in mainstream society and on the Left. That battle was against individuals and institutions. Some of the most sexist individuals were not in the larger society, but within the Left and its associated movements. While Winslow makes certain to make this fact clear, she does so in a manner which approaches it in terms of the historical and political moment. Of course, those individuals whose chauvinism was, for the lack of a better term, over the top, are named as they should be.

Revolutionary Feminists details the three organizations most involved in the development of the Seattle women’s liberation movement. All three had connections via individual members and organizationally to larger socialist groups. Radical Women, which was linked to the Freedom Socialist Party Bolshevik; Campus Women’s Liberation, which was linked to the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and Young Socialist Alliance (YSA); and Women’s Liberation-Seattle (WL-S), which had ties to many anti-imperialist, Maoist, and Stalinist Left. Winslow does an excellent job explaining the lineage of these organizations and the organizations from which they sprung. In doing so, she can’t help but discuss the sexist experience of women across the United States who were organizing against the war in Vietnam and for Black liberation. Those experiences revealed themselves in Seattle in often explicitly hostile terms. In fact, the sexism of the Seattle Liberation Front (SLF) leadership was so vicious, many women in the Seattle Left refused to support their defense after they were arrested during an action protesting the conviction of the Chicago 7 in February 1970.

Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling wrote in and 1886 article for The Westminster Review titled “The Woman Question” that “Women are the creatures of an organized tyranny of men, as the workers are the creatures of an organised tyranny of men, as the workers are the creatures of an organized tyranny of idlers. Both the oppressed classes, women and the immediate producers, must understand that their emancipation will come from themselves. Women will find allies in the better sort of men, as the labourers are finding allies among the philosophers, artists, and poets. But the one has nothing to hope from man as a whole, and the other has nothing to hope from the middle class as a whole.” It seems fair to say that these sentences provided a basis (if not the basis) for the women of the US left determined to organize for their liberation. Given the heterosexism and male supremacy that dominated US culture (and most every other culture) in the 1960s and 1970s, the fact that leftist women ran into so much resistance from their male comrades should not be surprising. The fact that that resistance was echoed by women on the Left perhaps might be.

Winslow suggests that the peak of Seattle radical feminism ran from 1969 to about 1972. She divides her book into chapters highlighting the issues of the day—the war, healthcare, reproductive rights and the equal rights amendment, to name a few—and the role the radical feminists played in them. I would argue that the chapter that is the most important and would not have even have existed if it weren’t for the women’s liberation movement is reproductive rights. Not only is this chapter important for the history it provides regarding the fight to legalize abortion and other forms of contraception, it is important for the present, now that reproductive rights are once again under assault from a coalition of churches, reactionary politicians and certain sectors of capital. Revolutionary Feminists revisits the debates and describes the organizing, detailing the actions and the reaction to the movement and its arguments.

Winslow has produced a valiant testament to radical women, left-wing feminism and the city of Seattle. It is a history that needed to be told. It is also one that reminds the reader how sexist US society truly was fifty years ago. In doing this, it also reminds us of how sexist it still is. Her role as an organizer and participant in the movement most certainly informed the history she provides. Together with the experience and wisdom accrued over time, the resulting text stands as a crucial addition to the already expansive library focused on that period we still call the Sixties.

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What Is Radical Feminism?

ThoughtCo / Kaley McKean

Updated on November 25, 2020

Radical feminism is a philosophy emphasizing the patriarchal roots of inequality between men and women, or, more specifically, the social domination of women by men. Radical feminism views patriarchy as dividing societal rights, privileges, and power primarily along the lines of sex, and as a result, oppressing women and privileging men.

Radical feminism opposes existing political and social organization in general because it is inherently tied to patriarchy. Thus, radical feminists tend to be skeptical of political action within the current system and instead tend to focus on culture change that undermines patriarchy and associated hierarchical structures.

What Makes It 'Radical'?

Radical feminists tend to be more militant in their approach (radical as "getting to the root") than other feminists. A radical feminist aims to dismantle patriarchy rather than making adjustments to the system through legal changes. Radical feminists also resist reducing oppression to an economic or class issue, as socialist or Marxist feminism sometimes did or does.

Radical feminism opposes patriarchy, not men. To equate radical feminism to man-hating is to assume that patriarchy and men are inseparable, philosophically and politically. (Although, Robin Morgan has defended "man-hating" as the right of the oppressed class to hate the class that is oppressing them.)

Roots of Radical Feminism

Radical feminism was rooted in the wider radical contemporary movement. Women who participated in the anti-war and New Left political movements of the 1960s found themselves excluded from equal power by the men within the movement, despite the movements' supposed underlying values of empowerment. Many of these women split off into specifically feminist groups, while still retaining much of their original political radical ideals and methods. "Radical feminism" became the term used for the more radical edge of feminism.

Radical feminism is credited with the use of consciousness-raising groups to raise awareness of women's oppression. Later radical feminists sometimes added a focus on sexuality, including some moving to radical political lesbianism.

Barbara Alper / Getty Images

Some key radical feminists were Ti-Grace Atkinson, Susan Brownmiller, Phyllis Chester, Corrine Grad Coleman, Mary Daly, Andrea Dworkin, Shulamith Firestone, Germaine Greer, Carol Hanisch, Jill Johnston, Catherine MacKinnon, Kate Millett, Robin Morgan, Ellen Willis, and Monique Wittig. Groups that were part of the radical feminist wing of feminism include Redstockings, New York Radical Women (NYRW), the Chicago Women's Liberation Union (CWLU), Ann Arbor Feminist House, The Feminists, WITCH, Seattle Radical Women, and Cell 16. Radical feminists organized demonstrations against the Miss America pageant in 1968.

Key Issues and Tactics

Central issues engaged by radical feminists include:

• Reproductive rights for women, including the freedom to make choices to give birth, have an abortion, use birth control, or get sterilized
• Evaluating and then breaking down traditional gender roles in private relationships as well as in public policies
• Understanding pornography as an industry and practice leading to harm to women, although some radical feminists disagreed with this position
• Understanding rape as an expression of patriarchal power, not a seeking of sex
• Understanding prostitution under patriarchy as the oppression of women, sexually and economically
• A critique of motherhood, marriage, the nuclear family, and sexuality, questioning how much of our culture is based on patriarchal assumptions
• A critique of other institutions, including government and religion, as centered historically in patriarchal power

Tools used by radical women's groups included consciousness-raising groups, actively providing services, organizing public protests, and putting on art and culture events. Women's studies programs at universities are often supported by radical feminists as well as more liberal and socialist feminists.

Some radical feminists promoted a political form of lesbianism or celibacy as alternatives to heterosexual sex within an overall patriarchal culture. There remains disagreement within the radical feminist community about transgender identity. Some radical feminists have supported the rights of transgender people, seeing it as another gender liberation struggle; some have been against the existence of trans people, especially transgender women, as they see trans women as embodying and promoting patriarchal gender norms.

The latter group identifies their views and themselves as Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism/Feminists (TERFs), with the more informal monikers of "gender critical" and "rad fem."

Because of the association with TERFs, many feminists have stopped identifying with radical feminism. Though some of their views may be similar to the original tenets of radical feminism, many feminists no longer associate with the term because they are trans-inclusive. TERF is not just transphobic feminism; it is a violent international movement that often compromises its feminist stances to partner with conservatives, with a goal to endanger and get rid of trans people, especially transfeminine people.

Earlier in the year, one of the more notorious TERF organizations in the United States partnered with South Dakota Republicans despite their disagreement about abortion to ban medical intervention for trans youth.

Radical feminism was progressive for its peak, but the movement lacks an intersectional lens, as it views gender as the most important axis of oppression. Like many feminist movements before and after it, it was dominated by white women and lacked a racial justice lens.

Since Kimberle Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality, giving a name to the practices and writings of Black women before her, feminism has been moving towards a movement to end all oppression. More and more feminists are identifying with intersectional feminism.

Radical Feminism Writings

• Mary Daly. "The Church and the Second Sex: Towards a Philosophy of Women's Liberation." 1968. 
• Mary Daly. "Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism." 1978.
• Alice Echols and Ellen Willis. "Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967–1975." 1990.
• Shulamith Firestone. "The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution." 2003 reissue.
• F. Mackay. "Radical Feminism: Feminist Activism in Movement." 2015.
• Kate Millett. "Sexual Politics." 1970.
• Denise Thompson, "Radical Feminism Today." 2001.
• Nancy Whittier. "Feminist Generations: The Persistence of the Radical Women's Movement." 1995.

Quotes From Radical Feminists

"I didn't fight to get women out from behind vacuum cleaners to get them onto the board of Hoover." — Germaine Greer

"All men hate some women some of the time and some men hate all women all of the time." — Germaine Greer

"The fact is that we live in a profoundly anti-female society, a misogynistic 'civilization' in which men collectively victimize women, attacking us as personifications of their own paranoid fears, as The Enemy. Within this society it is men who rape, who sap women's energy, who deny women economic and political power." — Mary Daly

"I feel that 'man-hating' is an honorable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them." — Robin Morgan

"In the long run, Women's Liberation will of course free men—but in the short run it's going to COST men a lot of privilege, which no one gives up willingly or easily." — Robin Morgan

"Feminists are often asked whether pornography causes rape. The fact is that rape and prostitution caused and continue to cause pornography. Politically, culturally, socially, sexually, and economically, rape and prostitution generated pornography; and pornography depends for its continued existence on the rape and prostitution of women." — Andrea Dworkin