Not really expecting anything here (though this board often surprises me!) but I woke up with a fierce urge to write this post, so may as well go with it.
Self-declared radical feminists used to scare me - and piss me off. They were the ones who sneered at my friends & me for wearing fashionable clothes and makeup. Most of them seemed a hell of a lot quicker to anger than to rational debate. I wasn't that bothered - I was doing plenty for feminist causes, makeup notwithstanding. I just didn't call myself "radical".
A few decades along, I noticed everyone was saying "I'm not a feminist but ..." all over again. There was stuff going on in the media that I considered retrograde for women, and some spokeswomen seemed to be touting pornification and surrender as feminist values. By contemporary standards, it seemed, I was radical!
So I did a bit of reading, and asked on here, and it turns out I'm a rad fem. But it rankles. This is why: Either you're a feminist or you aren't. Either you strive for real gender equality or you don't. There's no need for the 'radical', it's a tautology.
The radical thing is also beginning to strike me as a sorority (not a sisterhood). It feels like the kind of society that's good for teenagers: an us-against-the-world, nobody-truly-understands, same-thinking, catchphrase-sharing, sycophantic sect. Unless we are teenagers, we should have grown up by now and reached out to the world we live in (and wish to change.)
So I'm a feminist, no adjectives required.
This isn't meant as a challenge or anything, but I wanted to post it since so many visitors come away from this board scratching their heads about radical feminism. I'm not saying I know a whole lot about it - I've not studied Feminst Theory or sociology - but I am a long-time feminist activist. Here's my take on it.
Feminism: Sex & gender discussions
I'm disassociating from 'radical'
garlicbutter · 27/04/2011 01:20
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