Credo, ergo Sum: What I Call Radical Feminism

[alixtii]

Liberal feminism provides for us a measure of just how far we have come.

Radical feminism provides for us a measure of just how far we have left to go.

Both measures are equally important, and losing track of either can be dangerous.

I do believe:

• That racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, etc. are systemic, subtly and ubiquitously embedded in our society in places both obvious and invisible, and about as deeply as one can get, in our language(s) (and in our unconsciouses which are structured like a language), in a superstructure which I alternately may call "patriarchy" or "systemic injustice." Remember the word radical comes from a word meaning "root": systemic injustice infects society at its very foundations.
• Thus, that most if not all economies, governments, cultural forms, languages, etc. do in some way flow from this patriarchal root.
• That racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, and many but possibly not all other forms of systemic injustice are, if not quite equiprimordial, at least so deeply interconnected that it's never quite clear where one starts and the others end. This is a change in position from my teens when I saw all other forms of injustice as symptoms of sexism in a very second-wave sort of way.
• As a corollary, that it is extremely unlikely that racism could exist in a truly non-sexist society (since there is a sense in which racism is always-already inherently misogynistic), and vice versa. It's even harder to imagine sexism existing in a non-heterosexist society or vice versa. This doesn't mean that once we stop sexism, racism will magically fix itself so much as that we won't be able to stop sexism until we've cleaned up our act on race issues as well. On the same pattern, stopping sexism won't heal the ozone layer, but I have no doubt that the anti-environmentalist urge which impels us to harm the Earth in first place is linked in some way to and motivated by misogyny.
• That the various brands of privilege--white privilege, male privilege, heterosexual privilege, cisgendered privilege, etc.--exist even as they are so often invisible and taken for granted.
• That while men are the beneficiaries of male privilege and have certain responsibilities as a result of that, they cannot be "blamed" for patriarchy in any unproblematic way. Indeed, that the urge to blame is itself a patriarchal logic.
• That talk of reverse sexism or other "reverse discriminations" ignores the systemic character of real sexism, racism, etc.
• That male and female are not essential categories but instead the complex interaction of self-identification, behavior, and social interpellation; that the division into male and female is ultimately the result of patriarchal logics.
• That traditionally female values, behaviors, and spheres have been artificially devalued by systemic injustice and need to be reclaimed.
• That being anti-sex (and this includes the passive-agressive "sacralization" of sexuality sometimes found in some religious traditions) is always-already being anti-female and misogynistic.
• That pornography and sex work, while prone to abuse, are not inherently evil, and to view them as such can be misogynistic.
• That there are radically liberatory possibilities in female writing and female pleasure. (Cf. pretty much any French feminist.)
• That there is value in female safe spaces.
• That in a fallen world "pretty good" sometimes has to be good enough; heterosexual sex (or, for that matter, homosexual sex) as practiced by most couples may not be immune to patriarchy or be radically egalitarian and consensual but that's hardly a reason to abstain so long as one is giving it the college try. That even problematic instances of autonomy must be encouraged and celebrated from within the patriarchy, and that to erase this trace of autonomy is to be cooperative with the patriarchal logic.
• That one must use the master's tools to take down the master's house; i.e. patriarchy can only be dismantled from within, and it is possible to use its structures (e.g., "Christianity" or "the romantic comedy genre") against it. This will always necessarily require temporary compromises and cooptations, but can result in demonstrable improvements in both the short- and long-term (at least using the liberal feminist measuring stick). But there is no other choice: il n'y a pas de hors-texte.
• That government legislation is a sometimes necessary but rarely if ever sufficient remedy to systemic injustice.
• That the works of mercy needed to improve the lives of women under patriarchy are important as well as the social action needed to end it. (Cf."the two feet of justice" in Catholic social teaching.)
• Silencing the voices of women and other members of other oppressed groups is never a good thing.

I have, in the past, referred to this complex of positions as "radical feminism," and may well do so again in the future.

The following positions are not ones that I particularly associate with radical feminism, not even my own unique brand of such, but which I think are compatible with it and good to hold in general:

• That dissent, discussion, and dialectic are healthy. Many objections are not stupid and showing that one can respond to them can be a powerful persuasive tool.
• Not getting things completely wrong is almost always a useful and valuable endeavor.

Also, I like slash.

Comments

[zillah975]

To the extent that I understand this (*g*), I agree with it for the most part. Couple of points have me scratching my head.

As a corollary, that it is extremely unlikely that racism could exist in a truly non-sexist society (since there is a sense in which racism is always-already inherently misogynistic),

Huh?

I mean, I can see that some elements of racism are misogynist, but I don't see racism and sexism as inextricably linked, and I can't figure out how a non-sexist society would necessarily be free of racism.

It's even harder to imagine sexism existing in a non-heterosexist society or vice versa.

How come? This makes slightly more sense to me, since being okay with lesbians would seem to imply being okay with women, but I'm not convinced that it necessarily would. I can easily imagine a society that doesn't care who you sleep with but still cares deeply about whether your bits are dangly or not.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I still have the second-wave arguments that racism is always "really" about sexism in my head. While I don't accept their directionality any more--I think the claim can equally be made that sexism is "really" about race (and I think some anti-racist theorists have made this claim?) I do find they still have a certain power. It would take me a lot of work to be able to do justice to those arguments, though; maybe soon, but not right now.

A society which doesn't care whether your bits are dangly or not wouldn't have any way to differentiate who you sleep with. (In a society without gender difference, sexual orientation would be meaningless.) Contrariwise, if we weren't so caught up with policing who we slept with, there wouldn't be so much need to differentiate people based on their dangly bits.

[zillah975]

I guess I missed those 2nd wave arguments; I'm still kind of bewildered by the idea.

A society which doesn't care whether your bits are dangly or not wouldn't have any way to differentiate who you sleep with.

Sure they would. Unless by "truly non-sexist" and/or "without gender difference" you mean "incapable of telling the genders apart at all." Which would make getting pregnant kind of dicey.

Contrariwise, if we weren't so caught up with policing who we slept with, there wouldn't be so much need to differentiate people based on their dangly bits.

Maybe not as much, but there's still be lots of reasons. Maybe if the society had started out that way, it'd be different, but there are all kinds of reasons for men to prefer women in a subservient role that have nothing to do with sleeping with them and everything to do with money and political power and generalized fear of the feminine. There are lots of gay men who are madly sexist, and it certainly isn't because they're worried about sleeping with women.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Sure they would. Unless by "truly non-sexist" and/or "without gender difference" you mean "incapable of telling the genders apart at all." Which would make getting pregnant kind of dicey.

You can still have "able to get pregant" and "unable to get pregnant" without gender.

"Separate but equal" is intrinsically injust. But we have separate bathrooms. Why? Because we assume that people we lust after and who might lust after us won't show up there. The assumption in intrinsically heterosexist.

Maybe if the society had started out that way, it'd be different, but there are all kinds of reasons for men to prefer women in a subservient role that have nothing to do with sleeping with them and everything to do with money and political power and generalized fear of the feminine. There are lots of gay men who are madly sexist, and it certainly isn't because they're worried about sleeping with women.

But in a radical feminism, we're not looking at the surface phenomenon but the root causes. Thus the term.

[zillah975]

"Able to get pregant" and "unable to get pregnant" is still a pretty profound difference. It doesn't have to be called "gender" in order to potentially be problematic.

But we have separate bathrooms. Why? Because we assume that people we lust after and who might lust after us won't show up there.

Is that why? I think there might be more to it than that, which may also be sexist and/or heterosexist, but still.

But in a radical feminism, we're not looking at the surface phenomenon but the root causes.

But in order to effect change, you have to understand the world as it is. It's fine to say that in another reality where society had developed differently, a lack of heterosexism would automatically imply a lack of sexism, but the fact is that we live in this reality and this is how society developed, and men have more reasons than sex to want women to remain unequal.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

But in order to effect change, you have to understand the world as it is. It's fine to say that in another reality where society had developed differently, a lack of heterosexism would automatically imply a lack of sexism, but the fact is that we live in this reality and this is how society developed, and men have more reasons than sex to want women to remain unequal.

It's not a claim about another society; it's a claim that all sexist actions can ultimately be reduced to heterosexist causes. Now we can't magically remove the heterosexist causes, and the process of removing them precisely is that of combatting sexism, but understanding how the issues intersect can help us see how far we still have to go. Seeing them separate can help us attack them one at a time. Both perspectives are important.

[zillah975]

We may have to agree to disagree on this. I'm not convinced that all sexism has its root in heterosexism. I think that the fact that women are the ones who get pregnant, and that the average woman is physically smaller and weaker than the average man, can both lead to sexism (though I expect that sexism could go either way, that is, against either gender) without having anything to do with wanting to control anyone's sexuality.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Well, I have to question why it is we notice those facts in the first place anyway, while there is so much sense-data we simply ignore.

The average woman is not smaller until the average man until we have already defined "man" and "woman" in such a way that the people who fall into the first category or bigger than the people who fall into the second. I think language is always-already suspect.

[zillah975]

Buh? Okay, and we're going to talk about this without language (more specifically, without a common language and a common set of definitions) how, exactly?

I think I'm too much of a pragmatist (and lack the time, patience, and probably Master's degree in...something, I don't even know what) to have this conversation.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Well, we're not, obviously. But we can use language to interrogate language, just as we can subvert patriarchal structures to interrogate patriarchy. We can, metaphorically speaking, make the blonde in the alley a vampire Slayer.

We've had four thousand years of history without a common set of definitions. Language doesn't need to be stable in order to work.

I'm not sure you mean by pragmatist what I would mean by pragmatist, To me, a pragmatist simply views language as a tool which is sometimes useful, sometimes not, and leaves questions of ultimate reality and being for someone else while working towards a political goal.

[beccaelizabeth]

Separate but equal" is intrinsically injust. But we have separate bathrooms. Why?
I always thought it was because people that pee standing up need different facilities. Or there's ones with sitting down, or sitting in a wide space with handles and different heights. or how there's kids bathrooms with very short toilets and all. Lots of different seperate bathrooms.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

But the signs outside the door say "Men" and "Women." (Except in my undergrad Women's Studies center, where they said--if I remember--"Boys Who Wear Skirts" and--erm, something else.)

[beccaelizabeth]

Yeah, but Why? Because we assume that people we lust after and who might lust after us won't show up there. The assumption in intrinsically heterosexist. doesn't follow from the labels 'men' and 'women' unless you're assuming they're heterosexist, cause 'men' isn't necessarily about lust and can be shorthand for 'stands up to pee'. Or possibly 'makes more stinky', though I don't know why. I just have brothers and a sense of smell.

Is having one toilet marked 'disabled' evidence that (a) disabled is a seperate gender (b) disabled is a seperate lust category (c) disabled need different facilities. If c, why assume a and b about the other labels? Because of their other uses, obviously, but.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

cause 'men' isn't necessarily about lust and can be shorthand for 'stands up to pee'.

It could be. But . . . it isn't. If I look up men in the dictionary, I won't have "stands up to pee" in the lexicography. Men who sit down to pee and women who stand up to do so don't use the opposite sex's bathrooms.

And when we (men) don't need to stand up, we don't use women's bathrooms. We use the ordinary sitting-down toilets in men's bathrooms.

I wouldn't have a problem with "stands up to pee" bathrooms, except insofar as they acted as a way of invisibly re-inscribing gender and ended up not being about excretory mechanics at all, as I expect they would in a patriarchal society. . . .

[dkompare.livejournal.com]

I've been lurking on this discussion (and I'm much too busy and plummeting into a head cold to really participate much), but this bit got me:

A society which doesn't care whether your bits are dangly or not wouldn't have any way to differentiate who you sleep with.

Au contraire, mon frere.

Such a society might not cast moral aspersions on which dangly bits you prefer, but it would certainly "differentiate." Browse the personal ads of any newspaper, anywhere, or go into any cruising bar (again, anywhere), and you'll see what I mean. Skin color, build, relative size of your dangly bits, how much/little hair you have, what bodymods you've done, how you smell, how your teeth look, what you're wearing... etc. etc. etc.

Unless we live in a society like this one, these differentiations will still matter, in much the same way that ice cream flavors, paint colors, and genre preferences matter.

And that's a good thing.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Unless we live in a society like this one, these differentiations will still matter, in much the same way that ice cream flavors, paint colors, and genre preferences matter.

But why should they matter? Why should we invest those differences with meaning when we don't invest so many others with meaning? Genre preferences decide where in a bookstore a book is shelved. But books made with paper made from trees that have moss growing on the north versus those with moss growing on the south is a meaningless differentiation. Which differences we notice is a result of our cultural and socialization--after all, every sense-datum is different than every other. But we use language to structure that sense-data in certain ways.

[dkompare.livejournal.com]

But why should they matter?

They should matter because that's what makes life interesting. Otherwise...what? It's all undifferentiated sensation?

Yes, our distinctions have been based on social and cultural positioning, as Bourdieu painstakingly argued. But critiquing such politics should not necessarily negate the textures that such distinctions provide. Otherwise, there'd be no point in making any argument about anything; all would be the same.

In such a universe, we'd all be amorphous blobs rolling about blindly. Socially, it probably would be better. But I'd rather not roll about blindly.

And, while it wouldn't concern me, in such a universe there'd be no slash, then, m/m, f/f, or whatever! There'd be no point in fixating on Summer Glau as opposed to your aunt Petunia, Larry King, Shamu the whale, or the mailbox on the corner.

There'd be no squick, because there'd be no squee.

Me, I likes the squick and the squee.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

But I'd rather not roll about blindly.

I can't compare the two, since only one is conceptual. Talking about desire inherently privileges the linguistic universe, because desire is object-having. So in a way, talking about which situation I'd rather have misses the point. I don't want or not-want the nonlinguistic option, because it can't hold being desired as a predicate. (I'm not quite sure that made sense.)

But in any case, it's an event-horizon. As we navigate the space leading up to that event-horizon, being aware of its presence is surely better than not being aware.

And don't ask me to defend it right now, but there is the Nietzschean notion that once we break free of language we can return to it as its master rather than servant. (And yes, I can see how that is gendered!) Thus Joyce, Beckett, et al.

The goal is to destabilize language, not to chuck it completely?

And, while it wouldn't concern me, in such a universe there'd be no slash, then, m/m, f/f, or whatever! There'd be no point in fixating on Summer Glau as opposed to your aunt Petunia, Larry King, Shamu the whale, or the mailbox on the corner.

I agree that there wouldn't be m/m or f/f'; I'm not convinced there wouldn't be Summer Glau or Aunt Petunia, though, because those are particulars rather than universals. Surely I can fixate on Summer Glau or Aunt Petunia without notions of gender?

[dkompare.livejournal.com]

Surely I can fixate on Summer Glau or Aunt Petunia without notions of gender?

Yes, which is exactly my point. It doesn't have to be "gender" that drives our fixations/squees. As my list of body types indicated, any of those tropes could be non-"gendered" as well. As the inclusion of Shamu and the mailbox indicated, our squees don't even need to be human, sentient, or organic.

But squees they are, and squees they should be.

My pragmatic ideal (in short) would be a world in which there are differences, but none of them lead to unjust social relations. I'm well aware of the problems with such a vision (e.g, it sounds like a consumerist fantasy land), but I suppose I can live with them. And besides, I've got to eat some lunch before getting back to work, so... :)

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I'm not quite sure where disagreement entered in here. In the credo itself, I was very careful to remain agnostic on whether non-patriarchal forms of language are possible. Elsewhere, I've probably talked more loosely, but at the core is the belief that we notice gender difference for heterosexist reasons, and we notice difference in sexual orientation for sexist reasons. I think one can hold this without collapsing Shamu into Aunto Petunia. (Whether that difference is one that can or should also be problematized is a question that I think can be, for the moment, bracketed.)

So I'm not declaring war on difference (although I'm not signing a peace treaty either); it's gender difference in particular which I dislike and which I think we'd be better off without.