the right wants to privatize the sexual subordination of women via institutions like marriage and the nuclear family, and the left wants the sexual subordination of women to be shared by the masses via institutions like pornography, prostitution, and, get ready to really clutch your pearls, the surrogacy industry where women don’t contractually have ownership over their own wombs and must sell them as commodities. the right and the left disagree only on the orientation of male supremacy—should women be private or public property, should sexual violence be confined to the family or be enjoyed by the masses. some leftists and rightists will dip into each other’s preferences and cross contaminate, too. some right wing men love porn and kink culture, for example, and some left wing men are really into natalism and feel anxious about birth rates. this is why radical feminism is at odds with capitalism, fascism and communists who take issue with all class relationships except, suspiciously, this particular one.
our fight is against women’s sexual subordination, whether it is public, private, or otherwise. leftists will accuse us of “conservatism” because many of them genuinely believe their flavor of male supremacy is progressive, whereas, simultaneously, the right will accuse us of being communists for going against god, man and nature. they both have investments in heterosexual ideology that radical feminists seek to abolish. we may not be perfect, as no political project for freedom is, but our intervention is one that tears society at its seams in a way that is inconvenient to all other political projects, which is why completely divergent “sides” see us as a threat at the same time. all “sides” believe patriarchy is inevitable, natural, desirable, sexy, fun, even freeing.
i have been a radical feminist for as long as i’ve been a marxist (since i was 17 damn i am ancient)—i just couldn’t quite understand why it was acceptable to be radically opposed to capitalism, racism and imperialism but not radically opposed to patriarchy. we can be marxist-leninists, we can want to “smash the state,” we can scream death to america, we can support violent resistance, but we gotta be soft on patriarchy. interesting. i didn’t find leftists’ unwillingness to engage in any “feminism” spicer than bell hooks persuasive at all, even as a child, lol. what radicalized me was the grim reality that even those that exist on the periphery of gender have investments in gender hierarchy; not even queers and gender minorities want to abolish heterosexual ideology. i am only half joking when i say women’s subordination is the most gender inclusive ideology that exists. when only men are seen as human, you begin to see that all leftist movements are trying to liberate men and grant all of them the full scope of patriarchal control that may be undermined by racism, capitalism, queerphobia, colonialism and so forth. demanding that leftist movements free both men and women at the same time is divisive. notice how feminism must always come second—men must get free first and women must remain in chains and assist the cause while being shackled. you can’t criticize men who may be marginalized by any force. women must always wait, because their oppression is sustainable, acceptable and a necessary evil.
for that reason, it is a grave political error to think that male supremacy is inherently “conservative” in nature when leftists are telling you that it is compatible with the societies they want to build, too. i believed this too, that male supremacy is just a right wing affair, that leftists just need to read more books and they’ll see the error in their ways and understand that their marxist principles should perfectly map onto women’s liberation. revolutionary thinkers like engels and thomas sankara have written critiques of women’s subordination that would be seen as too radical today, after all, and leftists love those guys for the most part, so what’s going on here?
i’ve come to understand later in life that this belief in leftists’ lack of education being the source of their misogyny was merely a coping mechanism. no one wants to contend with the disturbing idea that even your own allies want women to be oppressed, but it is true. they are male supremacists not because they refuse to read books. they are male supremacists because they want to be male supremacists. they believe all men should be free to enjoy the spoils of patriarchy without other men (and god forbid, women) compromising that goal through the impositions of racism, wage labor, and so on. we have nothing to gain by coping about it, to put it bluntly.
to many leftists, the errors of radical feminists are proof enough for everyone to condemn the ideology to the dustbin of history, whereas concepts like marxism, for example, can’t just be wholly dismissed in the same way, because marxism benefits men. what benefits men is salvageable, but if something benefits women at the expense of male supremacy, it is not salvageable. male supremacists will tell you that you can’t investigate writers like andrea dworkin but will scoff if you said the same for marx, engels, fanon, etc. all imperfect and incisive intellectuals that should be critically engaged, but notice how you must not engage with radical feminism—it’s too dangerous, too mean, too evil for posing a threat to humanity’s investments in male supremacy and heterosexual ideology.
men are human, and their efforts to get free motivates and moves people. women are not, and it is silly to think non-human objects could ever be “free.” feminism is dangerous, because everyone is too afraid to imagine that women are both human and need liberation too. leftists are too afraid, for all of their radical posturing, to abolish the social and economic regime of heterosexuality. likewise, rightists are too afraid to go against man, god, and nature. radical feminism takes umbrage with all of this. as the cool kids would say, we have smoke for all of you. 🫵🏿
in the USA, ruling class politicians have rolled back abortion rights, they aspire to revoke no-fault divorce, and they are whispering about downplaying marital rape laws as well, not to mention the attacks on gay marriage and transition related healthcare—all an attempt to entrench the ideology and regime of heterosexuality that radical feminists want to abolish. over 30 years of liberal/choice feminism and “sex positivity” prevailing as the answer to patriarchy has shown that it is utterly impotent and toothless. and the leftist answer to this is to continue to call radical feminists prudes, “puritans,” underfucked, against sex itself, and conservative for taking umbrage with this impotent ideology that doesn’t threaten male supremacy while they tell us that widespread sexual subordination and sexual violence is hot and kinky or whatever. classic accusations we have sustained since the 70’s. we wouldn’t be hysterical nor complain about anything if a man would fuck us into compliance, they say, as they equate sex with our sexual subordination. while the right thinks being against patriarchy is unnatural, the left thinks being against patriarchy is unsexy, and god forbid you’re unsexy. they don’t think it’s very revealing that they cannot even imagine enjoying sex without imposing a culture of violence, abuse and inequity.
this is part of the reason why younger girls and women are responsible for radical feminisms’ current surge in popularity. millennials have so far failed to show why liberal feminism should enjoy any further entertainment as a serious threat to patriarchy, and these accusations of terminal “underfuckedness” and “prudishness” are not sticking as they once stuck. it is very telling that sex positive feminists think that our politics can just be fucked away, viewing sex as an act of discipline for women who are misbehaving. vindicating our assessments left and right.
leftist women are increasingly taking feminism as seriously as leftists of all stripes take marxism, and we just can’t have that. again, that’s a scary thought to a world that is committed to male supremacy, and that’s a scary thought to a world that is committed to our lack of humanity. the thought that women’s liberation cannot wait is terrifying to a world that profits off of our subordination. we can’t afford to accept liberal, choice, and sex positive feminisms’ capitulations, its impotency, its lack of teeth, its lack of a threat to power. just as we need a radical opposition to capitalism, we need a radical opposition to imperialism and racism, we too need a radical opposition to patriarchy.
