Since I've been (to varying extents, off and on) present/observant of online radfem spaces across since approximately 2021 (five years ago already..?), I have not seen a lot of progress in the way of growth of this community.
Granted, a lot of people come and go. It's kind of like when I worked at a McDonald's with high turnover as a teenager and the employee ecosystem completely replaced itself like every two weeks. We have no way of knowing how many people are interested in this movement, and online spaces are not really a great way to gauge that, especially when there is only so much to see in such insular spaces like this. I only dabble in the community for that reason, and I probably won't forever, but I will always live by these values.
Anyways, I believe that one of the most important things an oppressed group can have is power in numbers. If radical feminism is ever going to be something more than a bunch of theory and a small conversation, there needs to be eyes on it. A huge number of eyes. I want to see a real, measurable shift happen in the world.
I am someone who is very prone to big-picture thinking, and so as a disclaimer I likely do overlook the importance of smaller details and individual events. The way I see it, feminism is a battle of culture. We can have specific wins, like getting a law changed, but unless the culture that created those laws has also changed, all of it can be easily undone. And to change the culture, the people who create it need to change their minds. Not just a few. The majority.
Of course, the current allocation of material power also needs to change. Whenever we as leftists can accomplish that, widespread cultural change needs to be present at the same time in order to ensure that the next world order is a better one.
Over the years, I have seen a lot of conflict within this community about who to accept, who is a real feminist, what this person's choices mean about their right to engage on the same level as other feminists, and so on. This in and of itself is not really unique to radical feminist spaces; every ideological community goes through these kinds of discourses (except for the ones focused on the acceptance and validation of everything, which is consequentially where most regular people end up flocking).
I understand the importance of gatekeeping. I am probably the world's number one lover and defender of gatekeeping. However, in this insular community, it is often being done detrimentally.
This has been said before, but radical feminism needs to be understood as a movement rather than an identity. As a movement, people can take interest in it, interact with it, and subscribe to it in different ways and to different extents. You do not need to "be" a radical feminist to interact with radical feminists, speak on the same level as them, and share community with them. This also means that I want anyone who does not feel committed to live by radical feminist values in the long run to not label themselves as such, and I invite you to continue partaking in our conversations regardless.
This is not meant to be a post against criticizing other feminists. I am only specifically condemning genuine aggression towards people, not criticism.
I think some people, and this especially goes for the "blackpilled" coalition we saw a while back, have been unhappy because they wanted radical feminist spaces to be a niche community of fully like-minded women. This is completely fine. There is no reason not to have that; block liberally, have a dni, curate. I think that private spaces are the best way to obtain this, though; you can make a discord server and enforce as many rules as you want. Closed communities for people who want them have a right to exist and are very important. Public spaces, however, such as out here in the wild on tumblr, should be for anyone. It's for having a conversation ABOUT radical feminism, and that conversation is not solely FOR radical feminists.
If radical feminism is EVER going to grow, or gain any sort of public acknowledgement AT ALL, this NEEDS to be accepted. We NEED to let people dabble, we need people who only partially agree. I know it's painful to see individuals who do not actually live by feminist values in our spaces, and many are fearful that it will cause the definition of radical feminism itself to become watered down (and maybe it already has by the growth we have seen so far), but I am confident the best of both worlds can be had by simply changing our understanding of what these public spaces are for, and how they differ from closed spaces. And, of course, by promoting our literature. Which, by the way, is only read by people who seek it out, which is why we need to foster interest in radical feminism AS A TOPIC.
There are a lot of factors that contribute to this community's insular nature, and many of them are things we cannot control. The fact that the gendercrits with the largest platforms are all conservative, and the majority of people do not even know that radical feminism is a separate entity from that. The fact that most people only interact with us in bad faith. The fact that we are so socially unacceptable that you need to hide your views in order to have any semblance of a social life. This leads to people coming onto their dedicated radical feminist platform to discuss radical feminism and then going elsewhere to talk about literally anything else. There is little crossover between radical feminism and other communities, movements, or fandoms, while liberals get to mix their beliefs with anything they like. Our spaces become very one-note in comparison.
We need to understand our circumstances and be realistic. When we begin to gain any cultural influence, our possibilities will open up so much.
