tw: misgendering, transphobia.
When radfems use the word “radical” they are not using it in the general political sense of having an extremely different point of view, they are using it from the sense of believing that the root of all the world’s troubles is sexism/misogyny. (”radical” as derived from “radix”, meaning root) and that therefore if you eradicate all vestiges of sexism and misogyny (including from your own heart and mind) the world will therefore be Perfect and so will you. In this ideology (evolved among academic upper-class white women in the 70s and 80s, and largely unchanged since then) there is no room for intersectionalism, for the oppressions of racism, classism, ableism, or queerphobia (other than lesbophobia). (lesbianism, being by, for, and about women, is ideologically congruent with their beliefs, and hatred of lesbians can be boiled down to “people hating women and hating that they don’t depend on men,” but other forms of hatred of LGBTQ+ people can’t really be acknowledged because first you would have to acknowledge that isms other than sexism exist, and that it is possible for men to be oppressed.)
Radfems did some wonderful theoretical work in the 70s and 80s. They really did provide the theoretical foundation for a lot of our understandings of sex, gender, and oppression. However, they proved more interested in putting themselves at the top of the hierarchy than in dismantling it, because they chose not to acknowledge other oppressions than the one they themselves faced, and so did not listen to their sisters of color and of lower class, or who were in any way different than themselves, and so they didn’t and do not accept responsibility for the ways in which they contribute to the oppression of others. And they are willing to join with ultra-conservative Evangelical groups to enact and enforce laws that fit their ideology. Radfems believe that they are the ultimate arbiters of feminism, and that therefore any woman who does not agree with them is either deluded about the patriarchy or consciously participating in her own oppression. Therefore, they have the right and the duty to tell other women what they can and should think and do.
For example: they did some really EXCELLENT theoretical work on the exploitation of women inherent in the sex industry, both pornography and prostitution. About the ways in which our culture devalues women’s bodies and uses them as articles of consumption for men. Well and good. But when women who work in the sex industry, both porn stars and prostitutes, point out their limited economic choices and why they and women like them don’t always have better options, radfems do not listen. To a radfem, a woman in the sex industry is either a blameless victim, or an oppressor who betrays your own people. Because of this, not only have radfems endorsed laws created by the Religious Right (blech), they have doxxed sex workers and former sex workers who publicly disagree with them. Including at least one case where a radfem sent a woman’s current location to her former pimp. This is why radfems are sometimes called SWERFs, Sex-Worker Exclusionary Radical Feminists.
Also, radfems got the ball rolling in the 70s and 80s talking about gender and how we should abolish gender roles. But they also believe that men/males are the root of all evil. Therefore, any transman is betraying their sisters by joining the oppressive patriarchy, and any transwoman is a “man” who is trying to infiltrate women’s spaces. Thus radfems have doxxed transpeople, signed on to bathroom bills, consistently deadname and misgender them, and done a variety of other transphobic things. This is why radfems are sometimes called TERFs, Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists.
But yes, a whole heaping helping of respectability politics, just with THEM as the ultimate arbiters of what “respectable” (or rather, “a good feminist”) looks like.
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