#radblr meta

[judeesill]

i get the fear of some women becoming reactionaries but honestly when it comes to radblr it's mostly girls/women who are sick of liberal feminism and are looking for an alternative that actually prioritises women and criticises issues like gender, porn, prostitution etc imo. im not sure if radical feminism is the right term but i don't think most there's many conservative reactionaries on radblr (in contrast on twitter you'll find a whole lot of people who are exactly that: anti trans reactionaries calling themselves GC). also take into account that the term “radical feminist” was sort of assigned on any woman who questioned liberal feminism since it's in the terf acromym so it sort of...stuck. and radfem ended up being embraced by any feminist who was done with libfem rhetoric without necessarily having a concept of radical feminism history and literature

i actually agree 100%, thanks for bringing in some of the nuance i left out! i think you're pretty much spot-on about the difference between twitter and tumblr radfems but i stand by the idea that there's still a reactionary element to radblr. Not so much in the right-wing, capital-C-conservative, republican tradwife way you find more on Twitter, but in the sense of, like, a belief system based on defensiveness/resistance to change/opposing the percieved excesses of liberalism (Make Feminism Great Again), rather than a positive political vision for a world where women are free -- if that makes sense? I see this in the pettiness and the pessimism and the us-vs-them doomerism that is very present on tumblr, even if we are a little more clear-eyed about the organized right.

but yes, soooo much of this dynamic stems from, as you pointed out, the fact that people just started calling women they isagreed with Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists, which had less to do with even the lesbian/cultural radical feminist leanings of the early gender critical feminists and more to do with the fact that misogynists look at any ol Mean Scary Dykes Doing Man Hating Extremism and call it radical feminism. and yeah, it's hard to blame us for that! but i think this community has grown and dare i say matured to the point that it's time to exercise our right to ideological self determination. lol

[judeesill]

tbf i still find non radfem books like who cooked the last supper, invisible women, the feminine mystique, the second sex etc good recs for girls/women interested in radical feminism. sort of like an intro class to feminism in general before you focus on actual radfem literature. you can't go from 0 feminist readings to gyn/ecology overnight... it's not a given that gyns who find themselves on radblr will have read basic feminist texts

yeah that’s a really good point! I think a lot of the problems on radblr come from the fact that most women come to it without any knowledge about feminism, much less any organizing experience. that’s fine, and to some extent should be expected given the current states of the broader left (weak, disorganized, overrun with liberalism/ anarchism) and the feminist movement (functionally non-existent). That’s just the way it is across the left — I can’t tell you how many so-called socialists I know who couldn’t even tell you what class struggle means. In our case, though, I think it’s especially problematic, because a lot of women are “radicalized” by disillusionment with trans politics (or discomfort with trans people 🙃) — and without a proper grounding in feminist basics, it’s really, really easy to at best lose focus on women’s liberation, and at worst just become a reactionary. lol.

So, I totally agree that some feminism 101 is in order, so we’re all at least speaking the same language when it comes to the messier ideological debates about and within radical feminism.

I think a big part of the problem, though, is that … it’s not a given that women who find themselves on radblr will EVER read basic feminist texts, or even radical feminist ones. it’s pretty obvious from the way people talk about lesbian separatism and political lesbianism that, like, no one knows what they’re fucking talking about. and how could they, if they’re just reblogging quote posts and the same handful of master lists with a whole bunch of random pdfs with no context or commentary? hate to break it to ya, ladies, but all your faves were political lesbians. like, literally all of them. And this is actually pretty clear from the things they write!

I’ll save my takes on radblr’s fundamentally incoherent lesbian politics and the fact that separatism has NEVER been a settled question in radical feminism and the fact that political movements need GOALS and STRATEGIES and DUES BASED MEMBERSHIP ORGANIZATIONS for later. Suffice it to say, we need to stop being so content to let tumblr thought leaders pulling evocative quotes from PDFs decide what we think, and start getting serious about political education.

I don’t think every woman on radblr needs to do a PhD to be able to weigh in on things, but I do think those of us with the time/desire to make intellectual interventions, create syllabi, and/or start cohering some democratic organizational infrastructure (or at least some more discussion groups) can and should step up. Obv people are and have been doing this, but if we want to ever do anything more than snipe at each other online, we gotta get movin.

Thanks for letting me grandstand on ur ask, i just have a decade’s worth of frustration built up about this 🙃 always more to say. (like, I also don’t think we should be so into gyn/ecology at all, actually … but more on that later (-:< )

TL;DR: READ MORE! GET WISE, WOMEN! LET A THOUSAND READING GROUPS BLOOM!

[judeesill]

feel kinda guilty about it but i really love andrianne rich’s work...like i know political lesbianism is anathema on radblr but personally i find it extremely valuable from a bisexual perspective? of course i disagree with the appropriation of the term lesbianism but i still think there's useful insight into female relationships to get out of it

fwiw, i don't think you have ANYTHING to feel guilty about! for several reasons!

i haven't read adrienne rich in years, but from what i remember, i do think she had a lot of useful insight, even from a lesbian perspective. and, fwiw, so did most of radblr until, afaik, pretty recently?? idk when exactly everyone turned on compulsory heterosexuality but i feel like that essay was very much in rotation back in like, 2015.

political lesbianism may be anathema on radblr these days, but rdblr isn't everything! you're allowed to have your own opinions! we can't, as a community, preach about critical thinking then turn around and expect ideological purity, especially because as far as transgressions go, being a political lesbian is, i think, not that bad? i assure you, anyone who would try to guilt trip you about liking her work has far more problematic faves, because we all do. i like morrissey :-) i say, take what you can use, and leave the rest.

the definition of the term "lesbian" has been, and some could argue still is, up for debate, and back in the 70s/80s, using "lesbian" to describe a political positionality instead of, say, an innate biological one, would just not have been seen as appropriation by a lot of feminists. and, sorry to be a postmodernist, but "lesbian" as an identity at all is a product of modern social relations. women have been doing gay shit together since before we were even human, much less political subjects. i bet we'll still be doing gay shit under the coming technofascist fratriarchy, even if our understanding of ourselves and the language we use is different 🙃 i just think we should keep our eyes on the prize, which is a world where women are liberated from the yoke of male supremacy and able to live freely, and fuck each other if they so desire. and if adrienne rich had some useful ideas about how to get there, why throw the baby out with the outdated-terminology bathwater?

[judeesill]

Agree with your take on political lesbianism! For me the “problematic” (for lack of a better word) nature of it has been mostly terminological. Encouraging female separatism is definitely endorsed in radblr, it's the calling yourself a lesbian part gyns take offence with. But as you said, critical thinking is a must and we can view it as a product of a different era. The terminology may be outdated but much of the feminist theory it involves is still relevant and valuable

thank you! I myself have political critiques of political lesbianism/lesbian separatism but imo it’s really disingenuous to caricature the OG poli lez feminists as “straight women who aren’t even ATTRACTED to women using lesbians as their personal sex toys!!” or “bisexuals making it seem like lesbians are sexually available to men!!” (as if men care at all lol)

it seems like their arguments were more along the lines of “most women are latently bisexual and every woman has the potential to have fulfilling sexual/romantic relationships with women if she unlearns patriarchal conditioning.” do we have to agree with that? ofc not. but it is definitely a very different beast. and frankly, I think it’s pretty self-defeating to write off the feminist contributions of women who chose to forego men and prioritize their relationships with women because we don’t like that they had a more expansive definition of one word than many of us do today

[judeesill]

there is a post that goes around a lot that allegedly outlines the basics of radfem thought but it is so … ahistorical and incorrect :/ and does not cite a single source :/ but I don’t have the clout yet to do anything about it or the time/energy/desire to spend an afternoon compiling evidence taking it down :/ but I think I have to :/

honestly though at the risk of sounding like “it’s not my job to educate you,” I think women on here need to be a lot less credulous and do a little more googling :/ don’t believe everything you read on the internet :/

[judeesill]

sure, we agree on that… but your older post is.. also reminiscent of political lesbian thought lol. positing homosexuality/sexuality as something perhaps not 100% and possible to change via “unlearning patriarchal conditioning” is cornerstone in actual poliles. From what little I have seen of DS posts she does the thing that 98% of radblr does which is (pretending that they don’t want political lesbianism since they don’t call separatism and nihilism that)

also was that link part of a book or collection? It read similar to something I read in 2020 but I can’t for the life of me remember the name.

radfeminism as a movement though has been long rendered useless, anyone who actually wants to do radical organization needs a new moniker

Yeah, point taken. I will admit I’m more sympathetic to poliles than radblr mainstream in some ways, but I’m def more opposed to it in others. Re: sexuality (you don’t seem like the same anon with all the questions about this but if you are, and either way, here you go): I don’t really wanna get into it tho since my real opinion is “the science is not settled” but it feels incontrovertibly true that sexuality is subject to change, bc “sexuality” is a pattern of behavior inasmuch as a True Innate Fact About A Person. (Sorry, but Foucault made like, three good points.) Women DO unlearn patriarchal/heterosexual conditioning and discover they’re attracted to women, and sometimes they discover that what they thought was attraction to men was maybe something else. Like, that happens. Are those women all deep down secretly truly innately bisexual? Maybe, sure. Are all women? Maybe not, but like, definitely more of them than probably even realize it. Does it matter? imo, like, not really - and this is where I diverge from political lesbianism. I don’t think who you (want to) fuck should be the basis for feminist political identity, much less action. To be clear, I’m not even really coming down in favor of some universal polymorphous perversity, but I think the reason people balk at the suggestion that sexuality can and does change over time is that homophobes ostensibly believe the same thing. But obviously, the similarities stop there. You’d think self-professed TERFs would understand that the conservative clock is right twice a day…

I just think all women should be free to not sleep with men, whether or not they find themselves chemically compelled to do so. I just don’t think that choice is itself a feminist act, but one made possible by feminist organizing (by which I mean LITERALLY starting and joining ORGANIZATIONS) (NO DONATING MONEY TO CHARITIES DOES NOT COUNT!!!)

Speaking of which, uh… you’re right. 😬 i like to draw on the OG radical feminists/feminist radicals who led the left wing of women’s liberation movement, but the second feminists calling themselves radicals rejected the left and retreated to the communes …. it was over.

you’ll notice I don’t call myself a radfem. I Hope you don’t either. Too much baggage, and too many reactionaries who don’t know what they’re talking about.

If you know what to call the next wave, lmk. But I guess we need to build it first?

luckily there’s lots of good stuff on the successes and failures of the early women’s liberation movement in the Feminist Revolution anthology on redstockings.org (where what I linked was from)! Great archive, lots of women puzzling through the same problems that are repeating themselves now. They said some stupid shit, and they were wrong about a lot of things, and they totally changed the world. I wanna do a reading group of some of this stuff soon, anyone who wants to help organize hmuuu

Redstockings

[judeesill]

here’s how YOU can Get Offline and do some Real Radical Feminist Political Action!

*lists charities to donate to and individual lifestyle changes you can make in an afternoon*

[judeesill]

are we really out here arguing that deciding who to fuck or not fuck is political praxis?????? pls u sound like the genderites