(A text I wrote late at night that i gave up on, i thought it might interesting to someone or something)
Radical Feminism - A Non-Radical Feminism
“The advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes”
The quote above is usually used by liberal-feminist when arguing against anti-feminists, that is mostly conservatives or other types of reactionaries. However, the mistake the liberal feminist makes is a common one, that is thinking that the feminist movement (sometimes also called the women’s movement) is a monolithic movement, a single movement with a single goal, philosophical thinking and political theory. This isn’t even close to the truth, the feminist movement is in fact an eclectic one, that being a movement of many different philosophical trends.
Radical feminism is one of these philosophical trends within the feminist movement. What demarcates radical feminism from other feminist philosophical trends is that radical feminism posits that the principal contradiction in society is that of the antagonistic contradiction between men and women. Contradictions needs to be solved, especially antagonistic ones, and even within radical feminism there exists different answers to solving this peculiar contradiction – that being between men and women. The one that we are going to investigate in this text is separative radical feminism.
Separative radical feminism states that the only solution of the essential contradiction between men and women can only be resolved by the separation of the sexes. Women, according to these radical feminists, should only interact and relate to other women, that being sexually, economically, culturally and otherwise socially. This can be done with buying plots of land or houses and living communally with other women.
While all of this may seem radical at first glance, but so-called radical feminism is nothing radical. It is in fact utopian and unscientific. The radical feminist worldview is completely void of any class-analysis and perspective, but to the radical feminist this is no problem, because as stated earlier the radical feminist position is that the principal contradiction is that of the contradiction of men and women, not that of proletarian and bourgeoise.
Does there exist a contradiction of men and women? Of course! But the rotten root of this contradiction is that of the contradiction of proletarian and bourgeoise and class in of itself. The root of women’s oppression is that of her reproductive role in the family and it’s relation to production, the continued existence of the propertied class and that family’s continued ownership of the family’s respective private property.
The radical feminist analysis of their supposed principal contradiction is that of super structural elements such of that of culture and not that of the base, that being political-economical aspects. Therefor radical feminism can but put forward non-revolutionary solutions to the patriarchy, that being of cultural, language and ethical change.
