“you’re just erasing all the radfems of colour”
This is such a huge issue with liberal feminists and I see it over and over. The whole “radical feminism was built by white women for white women” is a revisionist lie.
I actually followed up with someone who said this and had about three back-and-forths with them until they blocked me. They argued the following:
a) “Radical feminism is fundamentally built on racism.”
When Frieden released The Feminine Mystique and propelled us into the second wave; when those second wave liberal feminists started campaigning solely for the expansion of rights for white, (largely middle class) women, it was WOC who founded the Women’s Liberation Movement — widely considered the first radical feminist political organisation.
The concept of consciousness raising groups was most notably utilised by radical feminists. Most of these groups were created to be apolitical safe spaces for WOC to discuss the intersection of race and sex.
There is not a speck of evidence to suggest that radical feminist theory or political history is fundamentally racist. However, the works of liberal feminists of the second wave are blatantly negligent to WOC struggle.
b) “WOC who supported radical feminism didn’t realise they were fighting in their own disinterest, and this is still true for WOC today.”
To preface, I’m white and don’t want to speak on behalf of anyone. However this struck me as extremely disparaging toward WOC.
c) “Audre Lorde, Angela Davis, and other WOC who ever criticised radical feminism, (even if they were radical feminists), actually weren’t radical feminists, because they were critics of radical feminism.”
This is the one that really gets me. Audre Lorde famously criticised liberal feminism and white actors within feminism. She criticised Daly, (a cultural feminist). As far as I’m aware, she never criticised radical feminism specifically. She was an advocate for radical feminism. So is Angela Davis. While it’s possible they criticised radical feminism as a means to develop its emphasis on racial justice, that doesn’t suddenly make them just critics, they were crucial actors.
Omitting these women from radical feminist canon is so weird. Liberal feminists have this skewed view about radical feminism being dominated by the white middle class because they omit all of the contributors who weren’t white in order to maintain a revised version of history.
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