To be completely honest, I’ve grown very discouraged about the state of radical feminism. Radblr is saturated with women calling themselves radical feminists who have the barest grasp on what that phrase means. Being gender critical is great, but that is only one small facet of radical feminism.
I think this is probably because many “radfems” now are just former libfems who have peak-transed. But many of them treat radical feminism like a queer identity, like it’s something you can call yourself that others have to believe despite having little basis in reality.
Women are calling themselves radfems who have never read Dworkin, hooks, Butler, MacKinnon, Steinem, Daly, Wollstonecraft, etc. They don’t know anything about second wave feminism and radical feminist theory.
Just ten years ago you would never encounter a woman who called herself a radfem who was not PIV critical. Now many radfems don’t even know the meaning of the phrase.
You wouldn’t find a radfem who wasn’t anti-capitalist.
You wouldn’t find a radfem who was a proponent of organized religion, because nearly all organized religions are patriarchal.
You wouldn’t find a radfem who didn’t understand how powerfully female socialization affects women’s political views.
It seems to me that many of the so called radical feminists on Tumblr only agree with radical feminism in so much as they acknowledge that transwomen are men and can never be women.
I’m tired of radfems who have no feminist consciousness and who aren’t even particularly radical. We are not liberals, moderates, conservatives, or reactionaries. We are leftist radicals. Stop calling yourself radical if you have no grasp of the meaning of the word or the history it infers.
I’m just tired. Radfem is another word that has lost much of its meaning and coherence because of misuse and ignorance. I don’t mean to sound like a rambling purist, but there you have it.
Good post.
