radical feminism essays

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Perspective

With the death of bell hooks, a generation of feminists lost a foundational figure.

Lisa B. Thompson

Author and cultural critic bell hooks poses for a portrait on December 16, 1996 in New York City, New York. Karjean Levine/Getty Images hide caption

Author and cultural critic bell hooks poses for a portrait on December 16, 1996 in New York City, New York.

"We black women who advocate feminist ideology, are pioneers. We are clearing a path for ourselves and our sisters. We hope that as they see us reach our goal – no longer victimized, no longer unrecognized, no longer afraid – they will take courage and follow." bell hooks, Ain't I a Woman

Arts & Life

Trailblazing feminist author, critic and activist bell hooks has died at 69.

There are well-worn bell hooks books scattered throughout my library. She's in nearly every section – race, class, film, cultural studies – and, as expected, her books take up an entire shelf in the feminism section. I doubt I would have survived this long without her work, and the work of other Black feminist thinkers of her generation, to guide me. I've retrieved every bell hooks book today, and the unwieldy stack comforts me as I assess the impact of her loss.

If you ever heard hooks speak, it would come as no surprise that she first attended college to study drama, as she recounted in a 1992 essay. In the 1990s she blessed my college campus for a week, and I was mesmerized by lectures that were deliciously brilliant yet full of humor. Her banter with the audience during the Q&A floated easily between thoughtful answers, deep questioning and sly quips that kept us at rapt attention. Her words garner just as much attention on the page. She was a prolific writer, and her intellectual curiosity was boundless.

Discovering bell hooks changed the lives of countless Black women and girls. After picking up one of her many titles – Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center; Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics; Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism – the world suddenly made sense. She reordered the universe by boldly gifting us with the language and theories to understand who we were in an often hostile and alienating society.

She also made clear that, as Black women, we belonged to no one but ourselves. A bad feminist from the start, hooks was clearly uninterested in being safe, respectable or acceptable, and charted a career on her own terms. She implored us to transgress and struggle, but to do so with love and fearlessness. Her brave, bold and beautiful words not only spoke truth to power, but also risked speaking that same truth to and about our beloved icons and culture.

As we traversed hostile spaces in academia, corporate America, the arts, medicine and sometimes our own families, hooks not only taught us how to love ourselves, but also insisted that we seek justice. She helped us to better understand and, if necessary, forgive the women who birthed and raised us. She claimed feminism without apology, and encouraged Black women in particular to embrace feminism, and to do more than simply identify their oppression, but to envision new ways of being in the world. She called on us to honor early pioneers such as Anna Julia Cooper and Mary Church Terrell, who first claimed the mantle of women's rights.

The lower-case name bell hooks published under challenged a system of academic writing that historically belittled and ignored the work of Black scholars. She also used language that was as plain and as clear as her politics. While her writing was deeply personal, often carved from her own experiences, her ideas were relentlessly rigorous and full of citations—even though she eschewed footnotes, another refusal of the academy's standards that endeared her to those of us determined to remake intellectual traditions that denied our very humanity.

Rejecting footnotes seemed to symbolize the fact that the knowledge hooks most valued could not fit into those tiny spaces. Her writing style hinted at the fact that her ideas were always more expansive than even her books could hold. While there were no footnotes, her books were love notes to a people she loved fiercely.

No matter where she taught or lived, bell hooks always kept Kentucky and her family ties close. She frequently claimed her southern Black working-class background and an abiding love for her home. Although she was educated at prestigious schools, she always spoke with the wisdom and wit of our mothers, grandmothers and aunties. Her return to the Bluegrass State and Berea College towards the end of her career has a narrative elegance. A generation of feminists has lost a foundational figure and a beloved icon, but her legacy lives on in her writing, which will provide sustenance for generations to come.

Lisa B. Thompson is a playwright and the Bobby and Sherri Patton Professor of African & African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Follow her @drlisabthompson on Twitter and Instagram .

Radical Feminist essays

Radical feminist ideas

What Is Radical Feminism?

ThoughtCo / Kaley McKean

• History Of Feminism
• Important Figures
• Women's Suffrage
• Women & War
• Laws & Womens Rights
• Feminist Texts
• American History
• African American History
• African History
• Ancient History and Culture
• Asian History
• European History
• Latin American History
• Medieval & Renaissance History
• Military History
• The 20th Century
• B.A., Mundelein College
• M.Div., Meadville/Lombard Theological School

Radical feminism is a philosophy emphasizing the patriarchal roots of inequality between men and women or, more specifically, the social domination of women by men. Radical feminism views patriarchy as dividing societal rights, privileges, and power primarily along the lines of sex, and as a result, oppressing women and privileging men.

Radical feminism opposes existing political and social organization in general because it is inherently tied to patriarchy. Thus, radical feminists tend to be skeptical of political action within the current system and instead tend to focus on culture change that undermines patriarchy and associated hierarchical structures.

What Makes It 'Radical'?

Radical feminists tend to be more militant in their approach (radical as "getting to the root") than other feminists. A radical feminist aims to dismantle the patriarchy rather than making adjustments to the system through legal changes. Radical feminists also resist reducing oppression to an economic or class issue, as socialist or Marxist feminism sometimes did or does.

Radical feminism opposes the patriarchy, not men. To equate radical feminism to man-hating is to assume that the patriarchy and men are inseparable, philosophically and politically. (Although, poet, journalist, and activist Robin Morgan has defended "man-hating" as the right of the oppressed class to hate the class that is oppressing them.)

Roots of Radical Feminism

Radical feminism was rooted in the wider radical contemporary movement. Women who participated in the anti-war and New Left political movements of the 1960s found themselves excluded from equal power by the men within the movement, despite the movements' supposed underlying values of empowerment. Many of these women split off into specifically feminist groups, while still retaining much of their original political radical ideals and methods. "Radical feminism" became the term used for the more radical edge of feminism.

Radical feminism is credited with the use of consciousness-raising groups to raise awareness of women's oppression. Later radical feminists sometimes added a focus on sexuality, including some moving to radical political lesbianism.

Some key radical feminists were Ti-Grace Atkinson, Susan Brownmiller, Phyllis Chesler, Corrine Grad Coleman, Mary Daly, Andrea Dworkin, Shulamith Firestone, Germaine Greer, Carol Hanisch, Jill Johnston, Catharine MacKinnon, Kate Millett, Robin Morgan, Ellen Willis, and Monique Wittig. Groups that were part of the radical feminist wing of feminism include Redstockings , New York Radical Women (NYRW), the Chicago Women's Liberation Union (CWLU), Ann Arbor Feminist House, The Feminists, WITCH, Seattle Radical Women, and Cell 16. Radical feminists organized demonstrations against the Miss America pageant in 1968.

Key Issues and Tactics

Central issues engaged by radical feminists include:

• Reproductive rights for women, including the freedom to make choices to give birth, have an abortion , use birth control, or get sterilized
• Evaluating and then breaking down traditional gender roles in private relationships as well as in public policies
• Understanding pornography as an industry and practice leading to harm to women, although some radical feminists disagreed with this position
• Understanding rape as an expression of patriarchal power, not a seeking of sex
• Understanding prostitution under patriarchy as the oppression of women, sexually and economically
• A critique of motherhood, marriage, the nuclear family, and sexuality, questioning how much of our culture is based on patriarchal assumptions
• A critique of other institutions, including government and religion, as centered historically in patriarchal power

Tools used by radical women's groups included consciousness-raising groups; actively providing services; organizing public protests; and putting on art and culture events. Women's studies programs at universities are often supported by radical feminists as well as more liberal and socialist feminists.

Some radical feminists promoted a political form of lesbianism or celibacy as alternatives to heterosexual sex within an overall patriarchal culture. There remains disagreement within the radical feminist community about transgender identity. Some radical feminists have supported the rights of transgender people, seeing it as another gender liberation struggle; some have been against the existence of trans people, especially transgender women, as they see trans women as embodying and promoting patriarchal gender norms.

The latter group identifies their views and themselves as Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism/Feminists (TERFs), with the more informal monikers of "gender critical" and "rad fem."

Because of the association with TERFs, many feminists have stopped identifying with radical feminism. Though some of their views may be similar to the original tenets of radical feminism, many feminists no longer associate with the term because they are trans-inclusive. TERF is not just transphobic feminism; it is a violent international movement that often compromises its feminist stances to partner with conservatives, with a goal to endanger and get rid of trans people, especially transfeminine people.

In 2020, one of the more notorious TERF organizations in the United States partnered with South Dakota Republicans despite their disagreement about abortion to ban medical intervention for trans youth.

Radical feminism was progressive for its peak, but the movement lacks an intersectional lens, as it views gender as the most important axis of oppression. Like many feminist movements before and after it, it was dominated by white women and lacked a racial justice lens.

Since Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality , giving a name to the practices and writings of Black women before her, feminism has been moving towards a movement to end all oppression. More and more feminists are identifying with intersectional feminism.

Radical Feminism Writings

• Mary Daly . "The Church and the Second Sex: Towards a Philosophy of Women's Liberation." 1968. 
• Mary Daly. "Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism."   1978.
• Alice Echols and Ellen Willis. "Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967–1975." 1990.
• Shulamith Firestone . "The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution." 2003 reissue.
• F. Mackay. "Radical Feminism: Feminist Activism in Movement." 2015.
• Kate Millett. "Sexual Politics."   1970.
• Denise Thompson, "Radical Feminism Today." 2001.
• Nancy Whittier. "Feminist Generations: The Persistence of the Radical Women's Movement." 1995.

Quotes From Radical Feminists

"I didn't fight to get women out from behind vacuum cleaners to get them onto the board of Hoover." — Germaine Greer

"All men hate some women some of the time and some men hate all women all of the time." — Germaine Greer

"The fact is that we live in a profoundly anti-female society, a misogynistic 'civilization' in which men collectively victimize women, attacking us as personifications of their own paranoid fears, as The Enemy. Within this society it is men who rape, who sap women's energy, who deny women economic and political power." — Mary Daly

"I feel that 'man-hating' is an honorable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them." — Robin Morgan

"In the long run, Women's Liberation will of course free men—but in the short run it's going to COST men a lot of privilege, which no one gives up willingly or easily." — Robin Morgan

"Feminists are often asked whether pornography causes rape. The fact is that rape and prostitution caused and continue to cause pornography. Politically, culturally, socially, sexually, and economically, rape and prostitution generated pornography; and pornography depends for its continued existence on the rape and prostitution of women." — Andrea Dworkin

• The Women's Liberation Movement
• Emma Watson's 2014 Speech on Gender Equality
• Shulamith Firestone
• 24 Andrea Dworkin Quotes
• Feminist Philosophy
• Simone de Beauvoir and Second-Wave Feminism
• Feminist Consciousness-Raising Groups
• What Is Feminism Really All About?
• Biography of Valerie Solanas, Radical Feminist Author
• New York Radical Women: 1960s Feminist Group
• Socialist Feminism vs. Other Types of Feminism
• What Is 'The Second Feminist Wave?'
• Patriarchal Society According to Feminism
• Cultural Feminism
• Womanist: Definition and Examples
• Biography of Adrienne Rich, Feminist and Political Poet

Reimagining Liberation: the Role of Radical Feminism in Challenging Norms

This essay about radical feminism explores its pivotal role in challenging societal norms entrenched in patriarchy. It highlights how radical feminism goes beyond surface-level activism, aiming to uproot the systemic power dynamics that perpetuate oppression. By dismantling binary gender norms and addressing intersecting forms of oppression, radical feminism advocates for a more inclusive and equitable society. Additionally, it critiques the capitalist system for exacerbating gender-based oppression and advocates for economic justice. Despite facing backlash and marginalization, radical feminism persists with resilience, offering a vision of liberation where power is distributed equitably. Ultimately, it calls on individuals to confront their complicity in oppressive systems and join the ongoing struggle for justice and societal transformation.

How it works

In the vibrant tapestry of societal evolution, radical feminism emerges as a bold brushstroke, daring to challenge the established norms with unwavering conviction. It transcends mere activism, evolving into a powerful force of reimagining liberation – a journey that traverses the depths of entrenched patriarchy and surfaces with the promise of equitable futures.

Radical feminism, as a beacon of defiance, does not merely seek to chip away at the edges of oppression; it aims to excavate its roots, revealing the intricate web of power dynamics woven into the fabric of society.

It is a movement that refuses to acquiesce to token gestures or surface-level reforms, recognizing that true liberation demands a seismic shift in societal paradigms.

At its core, radical feminism dismantles the binary understanding of gender, challenging the notion that one’s identity must be confined within the narrow constraints of societal expectations. By embracing the fluidity and complexity of human experience, it paves the way for a world where individuals are free to express themselves authentically, unencumbered by the shackles of prescribed roles.

Moreover, radical feminism extends its critique beyond gender alone, interrogating the intersections of oppression that permeate our social structures. It recognizes that the fight for liberation cannot be divorced from struggles against racism, classism, ableism, and other forms of systemic injustice. In doing so, it fosters solidarity among marginalized communities, forging alliances that are indispensable in the battle against entrenched power structures.

In challenging norms, radical feminism also confronts the capitalist system, which thrives on exploitation and inequality. It exposes how gender-based oppression is perpetuated and exacerbated within capitalist frameworks, as women and marginalized genders are disproportionately marginalized and exploited. By advocating for economic systems rooted in justice and equity, radical feminism seeks to dismantle the entrenched power differentials that perpetuate cycles of oppression.

Yet, the path to liberation is fraught with obstacles. Radical feminists often find themselves marginalized, their voices silenced or co-opted by those invested in maintaining the status quo. The movement is caricatured as divisive or extremist, its nuanced critiques reduced to simplistic stereotypes. However, radical feminism is not deterred by such challenges; it draws strength from its resilience and unwavering commitment to justice.

In reimagining liberation, radical feminism invites us to envision a world where power is not concentrated in the hands of the few, but distributed equitably among all members of society. It challenges us to confront our own complicity in systems of oppression and to actively work towards dismantling them. In doing so, radical feminism offers not just a critique of the status quo but a roadmap for creating a more just and equitable future.

As we navigate the complexities of gender-based oppression, radical feminism serves as a guiding light, illuminating the path towards a world where liberation is not just a distant dream but a tangible reality. It beckons us to join in the struggle, to lend our voices and our actions to the ongoing quest for justice. In the end, radical feminism reminds us that the fight for liberation is not just about challenging norms – it’s about reshaping the very fabric of society itself.

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• > Journals
• > Review of International Studies
• > Volume 46 Issue 3
• > Returning to the root: Radical feminist thought and...

Article contents

Introduction, why stories (of feminist ir) matter, the representation of radical feminism in feminist ir, unearthing radical feminist thought on the international, conclusion: radical feminist ir redux, returning to the root: radical feminist thought and feminist theories of international relations.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2020

• Supplementary materials

Feminist International Relations (IR) theory is haunted by a radical feminist ghost. From Enloe's suggestion that the personal is both political and international, often seen as the foundation of feminist IR, feminist IR scholarship has been built on the intellectual contributions of a body of theory it has long left for dead. Though Enloe's sentiment directly references the Hanisch's radical feminist rallying call, there is little direct engagement with the radical feminist thinkers who popularised the sentiment in IR. Rather, since its inception, the field has been built on radical feminist thought it has left for dead. This has left feminist IR troubled by its radical feminist roots and the conceptual baggage that feminist IR has unreflectively carried from second-wave feminism into its contemporary scholarship. By returning to the roots of radical feminism we believe IR can gain valuable insights regarding the system of sex-class oppression, the central role of heterosexuality in maintaining this system, and the feminist case for revolutionary political action in order to dismantle it.

Q: How many radical feminists does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: Thirteen. One to change the bulb and twelve to argue over the definition of ‘radical feminist’.

A spectre is haunting feminist International Relations (IR) – in the form of radical feminism. Its core concepts and critiques lurk throughout feminist IR, but we find direct engagement with radical feminism curiously absent in the scholarship. In this article, we explore the absence of radical feminist theory within feminist IR, the effects this has had on how feminist IR has theorised concepts that are central to its development, and attempt to sketch what might be gained by revisiting radical feminist theory for thinking through issues of the international. In forwarding this argument, we echo Maria Eriksson Baaz and Maria Stern's insight that feminist IR has rarely provided sustained critical engagement with the earlier feminist theoretical debates that inform current scholarship on ideas such as sexuality, violence, and power. Footnote 2 Echoing debates across the discipline regarding the representation of and depth of engagement with the ‘old’ theories from which the discipline developed, Footnote 3 we call attention to what is lost from the death of radical feminist thought in disciplinary IR and call on feminists in IR to revisit radical feminist theory, not as a corrective to current conceptualisations of the international, but as a means for maintaining the robustness and diversity of feminist praxis in international relations.

Feminist IR owes a great deal to radical feminist theory, beginning with its basic premise that the daily lived experiences of women around the world are of ontological and epistemological significance to the study of the international. Footnote 4 Surveys of feminist IR theory commonly begin with Cynthia Enloe's evocative claim that the personal is international. Footnote 5 This rallying cry of feminist international thought expands on the radical feminist slogan ‘the personal is political’, which originated within second-wave feminist agitation for a more serious consideration of women's embodied experiences as a basis for political analysis and engagement. Footnote 6 Thus, the fundamental notion that relations between the sexes are political provides the starting point for feminist IR to analyse both women's participation within and marginalisation from the ‘high politics’ of IR as based within structural relations of disparate power between men and women, which obfuscates not only where women are in international politics, but also what effects the doing of politics at the international level has on the lived experiences of those outside the halls of power.

Since the late 1980s, feminist IR has gained significant traction in the discipline. Nearly all IR textbooks and most IR theory courses now include at least a cursory survey of feminist contributions to the field. And while earlier surveys may have presented gender and women as an ‘issue’ of the field, Footnote 7 increasingly feminist IR is represented as a theoretical lens for the study of international politics, Footnote 8 particularly its ‘structures and processes’. Footnote 9 Categorising feminist IR theory has proven challenging, however. Although initial surveys represented feminist IR scholarship as falling into one of three ideologies: liberal, radical, or poststructural, Footnote 10 contemporary categorisations tend instead to distinguish between poststructuralist feminism and feminist standpoint, or some other configuration based on epistemological divisions. Footnote 11 While it is not our aim here to offer a mapping of the branches of feminist IR, we are interested in the process through which radical feminist thought has been written out of the discipline. By analysing the origin story of feminist IR, we find that the academic practices around its production have problematically missed the debate about feminist theory elsewhere in academia, including resolving questions around: ‘are there foundational ideas on which we all ground our work? And does feminist theory provide this foundation?’ Footnote 12 Rather, there has been a seeming homogenisation of feminist work within IR under the banner of ‘feminist theory’, but which has not sufficiently addressed what it is that makes work feminist in international relations. As such, we find the relationship between radical feminism and feminist IR deeply unresolved.

As the introductory quote indicates, defining radical feminism is a fraught task. Some definitions focus on radical feminism as a social movement (the women's liberation movement), which began during the late 1960s, rather than discrete ideology. Footnote 13 Others try to define radical feminism based on a constellation of common beliefs held by self-identified radical feminists, such as a politics centred on women's lived experiences, an emphasis on the sexual division of labour, belief in consciousness-raising, or the rejection of specific practices such as sex work. Some try to specify a central tenet, such as those who emphasise the term radical as signifying sexism as the root oppression from which all other forms originate. Footnote 14 Many definitions entail broad statements about the end goals of radical feminism, such as Cellestine Ware's claim that ‘radical feminism is working for the eradication of domination and elitism in all human relationships’. Footnote 15 Others still define radical feminism by the forms of feminism that it isn't (liberal, Marxist, socialist, cultural, postmodern, etc.). Footnote 16

While all these definitions provide some insight, they provide little clarity regarding the fuzzier boundaries of radical feminist thought (what is the precise line between radical feminism and lesbian separatism, or cultural feminism, or socialist feminism, etc.). Footnote 17 This challenge is not unique to radical feminism. However, the challenge is compounded by the tendency in radical feminism to reject the academic writing style common in political theory, on the basis that it is alienating and divorced from women's experience. Footnote 18 Due to these considerations we do not aim to define radical feminism as a coherent ideology, but instead focus on radical feminism as an intelligible corpus of work that is defined by a set of canonical texts that have come to be accepted as radical feminist. Footnote 19 In drawing on these texts, we focus on three key tenets that unify radical feminist work: the belief in the transhistorical oppression of women by men (patriarchy); the role of sexual relations in establishing this oppression; and a commitment to revolutionary emancipation from patriarchy by abolishing oppressive sex/gender roles. We recognise that this does not answer the messier questions regarding boundaries of radical feminism, but we believe this definition is sufficient for guiding our interrogation of radical feminist work in IR.

While the radical feminist inheritance within IR can be clearly charted in the foundational notions of the transhistorical nature of patriarchy, the causes and consequences of male violence, and the power and construction of sex/gender roles in international politics, direct engagement with radical feminist scholarship is conspicuously absent in feminist IR. Looking for direct references to radical feminism within IR theory, it appears almost exclusively as either a foil for making anti-essentialist arguments, as a vague reference in summaries of feminist thought, or as an issue-specific approach relevant to the study of rape or the sex trade. In each of these frames of engagement, direct citation of radical feminists is rare, generalising claims are common, and discussion is superficially dismissive instead of engaged.

Drawing on the framework offered by Clare Hemmings, from her book Why Stories Matter , Footnote 20 we begin by tracing the ‘story’ of feminist IR and the treatment of radical feminism therein. In so doing, we suggest that engagement with radical feminist thought in IR has been characterised by shallowness, mischaracterisation, and silencing, often to support a narrative of radical feminism's death, giving way to other (newer) modes of feminism. To support this claim, we explore representations of radical feminist work and present citation analysis of ‘feminism’ and ‘gender’ chapters in International Relations textbooks, key edited volumes, and monographs written by feminist IR scholars. Through this analysis, we argue that representations of radical feminism's death have limited the radical potential of feminist IR. We believe that re-engagement with radical feminism has the potential to enrich contemporary debates on key issues (such as sexuality, the state, and international political economy) and can help feminist IR to avoid the danger of what Sandra Whitworth called ‘intellectual traps’ of replicating the very power relations within the discipline that feminist IR initially set out to address. Footnote 21

We begin with the call from Hemmings to start ‘from invested attention to silences in the history of feminist theory’ in order to complicate the problematic uniformity of representations of feminist thought in contemporary feminist IR. Footnote 22 In her book, Why Stories Matter , Hemmings seeks to expose the silences, not to rewrite a more ‘correct’ version of the history of feminist thought, but rather, to analyse ‘the politics that produce and sustain one version of history as more true than another, despite the fact that we know that history is more complicated than the stories we tell about it’. Footnote 23 In her analysis, she foregrounds the role of both citation and affect as key techniques that reinforce and reproduce a hegemonic narrative of Western feminist thought, as citational practices assign scholars and ideas to particular epochs in the story of the progress of feminist thought, while the affect with which the story is told produces particular feelings in the reader about the works cited.

The story of feminist IR has very closely reflected the version that Hemmings calls ‘progress narratives’, which advance the idea that the generational shifts of feminist theory have been one of reform or correction, advancing from the problematic assumptions and viewpoints of earlier decades, to a more enlightened and uncontested version of feminism that has, in essence, learned from its mistakes. Thus, what interests us here is twofold: exposing the hegemonic story of feminist IR in lines with narratives of progress and the politics involved in its development; and, secondly, making visible the absent presences contained within this narrative, particularly in terms of the radical feminist thought that has hung over the political grammar of feminist IR. As Enloe reminds us, those occupying the margins in any particular power relationship are not there simply through neglect or omission, but through active and sustained labour of those with power to determine where the ‘centre’ is and what is included therein. Footnote 24 Hemmings similarly notes this labour in the different narratives of feminist thought, pointing out ‘the sheer affective labor required to secure these narratives as generational, the work needed to ward off “the other” in both narratives’. Footnote 25 In this, not only must we be attentive to the broad sweeps that the progress narrative prevalent in feminist IR uses to obscure the degree of contestation both through time and in the present, but also the politics of such sweeps ‘as a mechanism for obscuring these contests’. Footnote 26 As such, we extend the critique of silence that has been a particular concern for feminist IR to encompass an examination of feminist IR scholarship itself. Footnote 27

Again, the purpose of this article is not to ‘correct’ the story of feminist IR that has evolved of late or to assign blame to particular scholars. Rather, our aim is to revitalise theoretical debate in the scholarship as a form of praxis. As Sandra Whitworth argued in 1994, while we can celebrate any feminist analysis of international relations as preferable over the historical silences in the discipline, ‘we must resist … the urge to turn off our critical faculties when considering feminist work in international relations’. Footnote 28 She warns that

[f]eminist studies which replicate the ontology and epistemology of mainstream International Relations theory contribute little to either feminist or IR theory. In doing so, moreover, feminist academics not only fall into intellectual traps, but more importantly, have lost sight of the political imperatives which inform feminism … A theory which succumbs to either the fallacy of liberalism's political neutrality or postmodernism's political paralysis does nothing to further this objective. Footnote 29

Instead, the critique we advance herein is meant to highlight how the figurative death of radical feminism has implications with regards to the production of a ‘knowledge culture’ within feminist IR and the (re)production of disciplining practices internal to this scholarship. Footnote 30

We began our investigation into the representation of radical feminism in feminist IR assuming to find evidence of progress narratives, resting on a considered engagement with the core tenets of radical feminism, but ultimately a conceptual evolution away from its structural basis for understanding women's oppression. We were surprised, however, to find virtually no engagement with either radical feminist thought or its key proponents. While there exist, in political theory, important debates on how feminism may deal with the ‘agent-structure problem’, our survey found no such debate replicated within feminist IR to justify its abandonment of radical feminism. Instead, there appears to be a mirroring of the broader trend within academic feminism noted by Liz Stanley and Sue Wise towards an homogenisation of ‘feminist theory’ such that ‘feminist theory now contains considerably more of the latter (theory) and considerably less of the former (feminism), and takes the form of a “parallel project” running alongside, in many respects mimicking, but rarely influencing, mainstream/malestream social theory’. Footnote 31 Having not had this debate, the corpus of feminist IR and its origin story problematically straddles both having ‘progressed’ from simplistic, generalised, and sometimes violent structural analyses offered by radical feminism while systematically relying on the structural analyses of radical feminists in their critiques of gender-blind mainstream IR, as we will explore below.

While early feminist IR texts noted the existence of radical feminism and (often superficially) engaged with some of its key theorists, by the early 2000s radical feminism all but disappears from the landscape of feminist IR scholarship. In order to support our claim that the death of radical feminism in feminist IR has not been the result of sustained and considered debate over the value of its theoretical contributions, we survey key texts of feminist IR scholarship for their representation of radical feminism, both in name and in concept. We employ critical discourse analysis on texts selected as representative of feminist IR, including: ‘feminism’ and/or ‘gender’ chapters in International Relations textbooks and key edited volumes and monographs written by feminist IR scholars from 1989–2015. The second category of texts was identified through a survey of more than fifty syllabi on Gender and/or Feminism in International Relations available in the Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights Syllabus Bank and the European Consortium for Political Research Syllabus Bank. Critical discourse analysis was used on these texts to illuminate their representations of radical feminist theory and/or radical feminists and for analysing silences with regards to radical feminist contributions to foundational concepts in feminist IR, while citation analysis was employed to understand the depth and breadth of engagement with radical feminist works (see supplementary material: Appendix 1 and Appendix 2).

We trace here two different phenomena with relation to the representation of radical feminism in feminist IR. The first is its death – how radical feminism goes from present in representations of feminist theory in IR to being suddenly absent from the scope of feminism. The second is its enduring influence – that is, how radical feminism remains an absent presence in contemporary scholarship through veiled and unreflexive references to key tenets of radical feminist thought.

The death of radical feminism

International Relations theory textbooks in the early period of feminist IR began incorporating chapters on ‘Feminism’ or ‘Gender’ in the mid-1990s, Footnote 32 written by the first generation of feminist IR scholars like Cynthia Enloe, Ann Tickner, Jindy Pettman, V. Spike Peterson, and Sandra Whitworth. Within these chapters, feminist theory was categorised into strands, including: liberal, radical, socialist, and postmodern/poststructuralist, Footnote 33 reflecting the trend in academic texts of describing feminist ideas through a ‘litany of theoretical “isms”’ that were ‘constructed and lined up against each other in textbook after textbook, classroom after classroom, as supposed “descriptions” of feminism “on the ground” … [each] presented as “true fact”’. Footnote 34 In these early summaries, authors varied with regards to their characterisation of radical feminism. While many were measured, presenting it straightforwardly and on par with other strands of feminism (though not unproblematically, as will be shown below), Footnote 35 or engaging in sustained discussion of its (potential) application to international relations, Footnote 36 others were critical. Footnote 37 Yet, within nearly all of these works, the author ultimately rejects radical feminism on the basis of common discursive frames.

The survey of germinal feminist IR texts illustrates three frames through which radical feminism was discursively constructed in the grotesque, allowing for its figurative death in the discipline. Firstly, there is a conflation of radical feminism with cultural feminism, particularly around the idea of biological determinism of sex-differentiated human characteristics. Footnote 38 This results in the charge of radical feminism being too woman-centred and neglecting to consider how men, too, are affected by structures of patriarchy and issues like male violence, sexual exploitation, and abuse. Footnote 39

Most often in these works, radical feminism is mentioned when discussing women's anti-war activism, and, citing Mary Daly, to argue that radical feminism believes women to be naturally more inclined to peace and peacefulness. Footnote 40 The representation of radical feminism as biologically essentialist hinges on accounts of radical feminist peace activists who became prominent in the 1960s and 1970s, and who challenged militarisation as an extension of male violence. Footnote 41 Early feminist IR regularly cites Mary Daly's arguments in Gyn/Ecology , which focused on the role of mythology in patriarchy, to characterise radical feminist understanding of gender. Footnote 42 While Mary Daly is the archetypal radical feminist most in early feminist IR used to represent radical feminism as essentialist/determinist, a cursory look at her work finds numerous statements in opposition to biological determinism and the belief that male oppression stems from ‘his rationalizing supremacy on the basis of biological difference’. Footnote 43 While there were clearly debates in early radical feminist work over the potential biological origin of male supremacy, and a not insignificant number of groups who took a cultural feminist position, these approaches were not the radical feminist position ; many radical feminists challenged aspects of Daly's work in Gyn/Ecology for embracing myth-making too readily. Footnote 44 Rather, the ideas about the origins of male violence were widely debated and its biological origins ultimately rejected by most radical feminists. Even feminists like Shulamith Firestone, who traces patriarchy to the physical ability of men to overpower women, argued that the solution was not to retreat into essentialism but to move beyond gender binary. Footnote 45 When feminist IR conflates radical feminism with cultural feminism, it does not engage with these debates, rarely cites the scholarship it critiques; nor does it aim to reconcile elements of contradiction, but relies on broad, imprecise accounts of Daly that decontextualise her work from the context in which it was written and purpose for which it was written.

Secondly, and relatedly, there is the common charge that radical feminism is essentialist and universalising, unwilling to account for differences between women based on race, class, sexuality, or otherwise. Issue is taken with ‘Radical feminism's attribution of all women's oppression to an undifferentiated concept of patriarchy.’ Footnote 46 Even the most sustained engagement with radical feminism, a chapter written by Anne Sisson Runyan, echoes this critique. In this text, Runyan reduces the analysis of radical feminists to assumptions about innate differences in men's and women's sexuality, despite earlier in her analysis noting the belief of radical feminists that more egalitarian sexualities could be socially produced. Ultimately, she concludes that because ‘not all men’ benefit from male supremacy, Footnote 47 because there is no (possibility for) sisterhood, and because radical feminism seeks to invert power relations in a way that will/might be oppressive to men, that ‘the future is not female. Women as well as men are complicit in creating the current world politics-as-usual. None of us are innocent.’ Footnote 48

By not engaging directly with much radical feminist work, early feminist IR scholars overlooked both the attempts of the second-wave women's liberation movement to address ‘interlocking’ oppressions of sex, race, and class, but also the recognition of women's complicity in the status quo. Footnote 49 The first editorial issue of an early women's liberation magazine off our backs , explicitly notes the ‘dual nature of the women's movement’: that women not only need to be liberated from men's domination, but must also ‘become aware that there would be no oppressor without the oppressed, that we carry the responsibility for withdrawing the consent to be oppressed. We must strive to get off our backs, and with the help of our sisters to oppose and destroy that system which fortifies the supremacy of men while exploiting the mass for profit of the few.’ Footnote 50 In nearly every statement and manifesto, as well as in most key texts, radical feminists explicitly recognised and theorised the different experiences of women under patriarchy along racial and class lines, noting the especially disadvantaged positions of racial minority and working-class women. Footnote 51

Similarly, the charge made that radical feminists employed the concept of patriarchy in a monolithic and undifferentiated way is inaccurate. In her groundbreaking Sexual Politics , Kate Millett explains the means by which both race and sex operate as castes under, specifically, Western patriarchy. She recognises these conditions as contextually contingent and the trends she outlines as specific to Western societies. Footnote 52 This is not to suggest that radical feminist writing always adequately addressed these intersecting issues. Significant criticism was directed towards particular radical feminists for their failure to understand intersecting oppression, such as Mary Daly over the Eurocentrism of Gyn/Ecology by other radical feminists of colour such as Audre Lorde. Footnote 53 However, the depiction of radical feminism as being entirely, uniquely, and irredeemably insensitive to these factors is not evident from radical feminist texts. Additionally, this grotesque representation overlooks the involvement of and publications of radical feminist women of colour. Footnote 54

Finally, there is the trope of radical feminism as ‘old’ or passé, relying on outdated modes of analysis that are unable to account for the ‘complexities’ of modern human existence. Footnote 55 Christine Sylvester's Feminist Theory and International Relations (1994) is perhaps the one feminist IR text to most seriously attempt to engage with radical feminism; yet, the narrative arc of her survey of feminist theory is to build towards the argument that ‘postmodernism exposes the smokescreens, and the histories of the screens and the smoke, in brilliant, eye-opening ways’ that make it preferable to older modes of feminist analysis. Footnote 56 In the same breath that she is arguing against the neat categorisations of feminisms into waves, Sylvester nostalgically laments ‘[w]hen second-wave politics became (prematurely) passé’ as ‘[o]ut of fashion went the empowering old ways of reading the radical oldies – Mary Daly, Sonia Johnson, bell hooks. Too bad.’ Footnote 57 Here, it is clear how progress narratives become central in the story of feminist theory in IR. Given these fatal flaws of determinism and essentialism, the final nail in radical feminism's coffin is its relegation to a history from whence we have evolved.

Yet, despite these criticisms levelled against radical feminist thought, actual engagement with radical feminism, through citations to and discussion of particular radical feminist authors, begins in the literature as sparse before disappearing altogether. While many earlier texts discussed radical feminism as a theory, most do not contain citation to radical feminist thinkers within these discussions, but rather depend on through-citations from anthologies of feminist theory or other works. Footnote 58 Where citation to radical feminist scholarship exists, these authors are not generally identified as radical feminists, and their ideas are discussed separately from the overview of radical feminist thought (where it exists). While the average number of citations of radical feminist work across all texts analysed was 3.11, only Mary Daly among radical feminists was consistently identified as a radical feminist theorist.

We found that the limited and shallow engagement with radical feminism perceived in the content and discourse analysis above is also replicated in journal articles of contemporary feminist IR. A citation analysis of more than 720 articles published between 2008 and 2016 yielded a mere 116 citations to radical feminists out of 31,472 total citations, or a citation rate of 0.005 per cent. Prominent radical feminist scholars averaged only 16 total citations within this body of work identified as feminist IR, compared with, for example, Judith Butler who received 189 citations and Michel Foucault, who was cited 117 times (see Appendix 2). Even these figures are misleading, as a disproportionate number of the citations to radical feminists come from the same author across multiple publications.

We also perceive that, with time, reference to radical feminism and citations of radical feminists decline. In updated editions and later versions of key texts, engagement with and/or citation to radical feminists all but disappear. Peterson and Runyan's third and fourth editions of Global Gender Issues drop the original discussion of Robin Morgan's work, and the reference list includes only one radical feminist. Footnote 59 Sylvester, who in 1994 took quite seriously the (‘dated’) contributions of radical feminism, is far less sympathetic in her later Feminist International Relations: An Unfinished Journey , speaking of radical feminism only through her synopses of other feminist IR authors. Footnote 60 Instead, she shifts her approach in this work to positioning postmodern/poststructural feminism in opposition to its ‘others’, coalesced under ‘standpoint-based research’ (more on this below). In this characterisation, most radical feminists drop from her portrayal, save the archetype essentialist/maternalist radical feminist, Mary Daly, and a footnote to Robin Morgan. Footnote 61 She characterises feminist theory in IR as having progressed beyond radical feminism, since ‘[i]n the thrust forward, many feminists have come to recognize that the portraits they painted in the 1970s of women's oppression and emancipation – under the titles of liberal, Marxist, radical, and socialist feminisms – naively relied on epistemologies with checkered records of gender awareness.’ Footnote 62

Today, it is far more common to see critiques of radical feminism conflated with standpoint epistemology. As the field evolved, feminist theory in IR became more systematically categorised based on epistemological differences, using the categories: feminist empiricism (or liberal feminism), feminist standpoint, and feminist poststructuralism. Footnote 63 The latest editions of IR textbooks contain updated ‘Feminism’ and (more often) ‘Gender’ chapters that note ‘a large number of approaches’ encompassed by the term feminism , but which characterise their differences as being mainly on the epistemological level. In recategorising feminist theory in this way, feminist IR has written radical feminism out of the story of its development.

What are the political implications of such limited engagement, dismissive narratives, and absenting of radical feminist thought in feminist IR? As Sylvester herself notes, reflecting on citational practices of the mainstream with feminism, ‘in absenting some people and works and including others, a footnote signals to the reader who and what the writer finds uninspiring and unimportant, or perhaps threateningly important. That is, a footnote can give credit where credit is thought to be due and it can snub ideas, withhold credit and recognition, or only partially acknowledge these (as when names are provided but no reference to specific works is offered)’. Footnote 64 Yet, in the works surveyed, feminist IR has frequently marginalised, mischaracterised, and footnoted radical feminist thought. The dismissal of radical feminism as ‘outdated’ and ‘wrong’ on a number of issues without direct engagement with radical feminist theorists serves to reproduce a coherent ‘progress’ narrative of feminist theory in IR that relegates radical feminism to history, leaving it for dead. Footnote 65

The ghost of radical feminism

Despite this disavowal, we find that the germinal texts of feminist IR and their contemporaries owe a great debt to radical feminism, but are curiously silent regarding the source of their radical ideas. In this section, we trace, too, the enduring influence of radical feminism that remain in feminist IR scholarship. We note with curiosity the (sometimes explicit) disavowal of radical feminist ideology, but enduring legacy of this theorising through some of the core concepts and epistemological practices that still define feminist IR. Among these are: the lasting (though increasingly contested) value of naming patriarchy as a structure in international relations, with attendant reference to sex-based class oppression; focus on gender-based violence as a symptom and means of unequal gender relations; and standpoint epistemology as a useful means by which to advance feminist knowledge.

Early texts in feminist IR borrowed liberally from radical feminist thought, particularly in naming the problem of unequal gender relations under the sex-based system of oppression called ‘patriarchy’. In her groundbreaking edited volume, Gendered States , Footnote 66 Peterson's chapter on the formation of the state being fundamentally based on the subordination of women as a class directly builds on radical feminist thought, particularly Firestone's 1970 The Dialectic of Sex , which describes patriarchy as ‘the oldest, most rigid class/caste system in existence, the class system based on sex’. Footnote 67 Since the late 1960s, a core tenet of radical feminist theory has been that women represent a subordinated social class, or a ‘caste’, given the lack of opportunity for social mobility. Early feminist IR extended nascent analysis of radical feminists that took their critique of the domestic sources of women's subordinated class position to understand the complicity of the state in the maintenance of patriarchy and its investment in this status quo. Footnote 68 It was radical feminists who, in arguing that patriarchy is the governing structure of both the state and society, provided the basis for feminist IR critiques of the state and governance institutions as ‘not only contingently patriarchal, but essentially so’. Footnote 69 In organising for women's liberationist groups, radical feminists recognised the complicity of the state in maintaining patriarchal domestic relations as a necessary condition for its own survival and function Footnote 70 and worked to expose the patriarchal and sexist foundations of all institutions, from the family through the international. Footnote 71 However, as feminist IR evolved its own critique of the state, the ideas are represented as though they have come out of nowhere. Although Peterson explicitly refers to the exploitation of women as a ‘sex/gender class’, she nowhere in this work engages with radical feminists like Firestone, Millett, or Jeffreys, who have been central to constructing the sex-as-class analysis. Nor does she mention ‘radical feminism’ by name. Even the concept ‘the personal is political’ she attributes to Enloe's Bananas, Beaches and Bases , rather than the radical feminist rallying cry of the second-wave movement and Carole Hanisch's essay published in Notes from the Second Year . As a result, contemporary feminist IR critiques of the state begin from Peterson, noting the state ‘as a site of masculinist power that legitimizes these patriarchal structures’, Footnote 72 but lack conceptual clarity over what is meant by ‘patriarchy’ or ‘masculinist power’, its origins, or its prescriptions in terms of women's liberation.

Kate Millett's explicit recognition in Sexual Politics that the political relationship of herrschaft (dominance and subordination) is not only expressed in all aspects of human society, including ‘the military, industry, technology, universities, science, political office, and finance’, Footnote 73 but is so because patriarchy ultimately is reified in not just social, but also political, economic, and cultural relations, which requires institutionalisation through the state, the market, and other structures. As Valerie Bryson has most succinctly summarised, radical feminist analysis of the state has tended to be more implicit than explicit namely due to the fact that they see state power as ‘neither autonomous nor as reducible to the needs of the economy, but as inextricably connected to areas of life such as the family and sexuality that have usually been seen as private and non-political, but which are now seen as basic to all power relationships in society’. Footnote 74

Yet, at the same time that feminist IR scholarship speaks of gender-as-power, the field is increasingly reticent to use the concept of patriarchy to discuss power relations based on sex/gender. Footnote 75 In her 2002 text, Feminist International Relations: An Unfinished Journey , Christine Sylvester refers to the problem of patriarchy, but admits that the term makes her ‘squirm’. Footnote 76 Sylvester echoes Elshtain's reluctance to employ the concept, and Charlotte Hooper's rejection if it, because of its roots in radical feminism. Footnote 77 In fact, she criticises Enloe for ‘put[ting] most problems at the feet of patriarchy’ and for borrowing from radical feminism without adequately engaging the prescription offered by the theory: that patriarchy can be dismantled through material action, and importantly through revolutionary, strategic moves. Footnote 78 Today, most feminist IR texts favour the term ‘gender hierarchy’, which emphasises the experiences of men and values that are associated with masculinity. Footnote 79 In her footnote on patriarchy in Gendering Global Conflict , Laura Sjoberg notes that

At the founding moments of feminist IR in the late 1980s and early 1990s, most feminist IR scholars chose terms such as gender inequality and gender hierarchy over patriarchy both to avoid these problems and to demonstrate the complexity of gender relations … With that move, though, feminist IR theorists lost the structural element of the study of patriarchy, in my view. Footnote 80

Despite this unease, patriarchy still features as a key term in many feminist IR introductory texts, and in a significant number of journal article keywords and abstracts. While some authors have consciously chosen to employ the concept of ‘hierarchical gender relations’ as a replacement, we note the often slippage between these terms, which connotes the enduring utility of theorising gender relations as structural and oppressive, based on sex-class categorisations. More significantly, though, the inconsistency in the use of the term and slippages between belie the rarity with which this core concept receives sustained theoretical engagement within feminist IR. The risk that feminist scholarship in IR runs in not deeply engaging with both the roots and theoretical heritage of this core concept is that it loses its analytical utility, becoming an empty signifier that inadvertently silences or reproduces erasures within a body of work meant to be critical of such discursive manoeuvres.

A second site we find radical feminism's enduring influence evident are in feminist IR's focus on gendered and gender-based violence. Men's violence against women (and the environment, and society, and life on earth itself) was a core focus of radical feminism from the early days of consciousness-raising groups. As women began to share their personal experiences of male violence, they began to recognise the systemic and systematic nature of this violence and from this recognition sprang radical feminist theory of the relationship between men's violence and patriarchy. Footnote 81 From their early recognition of interpersonal violence as a coercive expression of patriarchal power when the socialisation of women's subordination failed, feminists soon began to connect broader forms of violence and of militarism to the same patriarchal roots. Footnote 82 Betty Reardon's influential Sexism and the War System , Footnote 83 for example, resonates with the radical feminist critique of militarism and the picture painted by radical feminists of international politics ‘closely resembl[ing] gang fights in the playground. The leader is the one acknowledged to have superior force: his power is then augmented by his position – in effect, the power of his underlings is added to his own. They give this power to him and get certain benefits – protection, enhanced prestige from the relationship to the leader.’ Footnote 84 Reardon directly engages radical feminist perspectives of the care/kill dualism that perpetuates militarism as well as sexist repression, as well as the idea that male (sexualised) violence is fundamental to the structural condition of the war system. During the 1960s, radical feminists argued that ‘the Pentagon begins at home’, a strategic response to the subordination of women's anti-war activism to the war ‘reality’ of men and the draft. Footnote 85 This approach draws directly to feminist anti-militarism that arose from feminist critiques of patriarchal state violence. As early as 1971, radical feminists groups were involved in political activism against state militarism, and produced wide-ranging critiques of the links between patriarchy and state violence. Footnote 86 Reardon's analysis of violence as linked to male domination and state use of force strongly echoes radical feminist views, evident in statements like ‘The permission society accords men to maintain dominion over women by the threat and use of violence can be viewed as a significant cause of most forms of violence, both overt and structural.’ Footnote 87 It was precisely radical feminists’ interest in the phallocentrism of militarism and weapons adoration that gave meaning to Carol Cohn's influential ‘Sex and Death’ article, which made evident the intricate and intimate ways that masculinity, sexuality, and war become entwined in the practice of global security. Footnote 88

So, too, are the concerns of feminist IR scholars with practices of sexual exploitation and sexual violence indebted to radical feminism. Not only in terms of the international advocacy that got the traffic in women proscribed in international law, Footnote 89 which stemmed from decades of radical feminist prostitution abolition campaigning, but much more so in making explicit the links between masculine sex roles, militarism, and sexual exploitation and abuse. Footnote 90 Further, attention to sex-selective acts of violence and killings, made explicit by Daly's term ‘gynocide’ and popularised by Diane Russell's term ‘femicide’, is precisely the feminist curiosity that has shed light on the forms of violence that had previously been obscured from notions of state security or even ‘human security’. Footnote 91 The radical feminist analysis of Daly and Russell on sex-specific forms of violence, as well as Catherine MacKinnon and Susan Brownmiller's work on the role of rape in armed conflicts, laid the groundwork for contemporary international legal frameworks for addressing forms of gendered violence as a war crime, crime against humanity, and as an element of genocide and torture. Without their contributions, we would not have the now vast body of feminist IR scholarship that is focused specifically on this issue. Footnote 92 It was radical feminists who argued that sexual violence exists on a continuum and that it must be conceived of as a form of violence, and a political act, not as a moral transgression. Footnote 93 From this basis, feminists in IR have been equipped with the analytical tools to talk about not just explicitly sexual acts of interpersonal violence as an expression of power and to critique the sexualisation of power/domination, as offered by earlier radical feminists, but to also extend this analysis to understand how the construction of masculinity springs out of the sexualisation of domination and valorisation of aggression and war making. Footnote 94

These contributions were formative to feminist IR both in setting the agenda of its work and in core theoretical concepts that inform later work. Radical feminism influences feminist IR due to the enduring utility of these core concepts, even if the intellectual tradition is no longer rigorously dealt with. These contributions are not, however, purely relics of a bygone age of radical feminist theorising that has since died off. Instead, when we look at the more contemporary contributions of radical feminist scholarship, we find that they have continuing relevance to key questions in the field.

In this last section, we explore what might be gained by returning to the roots of radical feminist thought directly for contemporary debates in feminist IR. While we note that radical feminism has never truly died, with current scholars conducting radical feminist analysis on internationally relevant subjects (such as Caroline Norma's work on military sexual exploitation or Kaye Quek's work on forced marriage and sex trafficking), this section explores what can be gained by returning to those ‘radical oldies’. Footnote 95 In particular, radical feminist theorising continues to provide unique contributions regarding the system of sex-class oppression, the central role of heterosexuality in maintaining this system, and the feminist case for revolutionary political action in order to dismantle it.

We are not alone in seeing value in returning to the roots of radical feminism, as can be seen in Maria Eriksson Baaz and Maria Stern's recent article ‘Curious Erasures: The Sexual in Wartime Sexual Violence’. Footnote 96 In their exploration of the sexual in sexual violence, the authors note that feminist IR scholarship have been curiously inattentive to theorising on the sexual (sexuality, desire, eroticism, pertaining to biological sex, etc.) in their accounts of sexual violence. Footnote 97 Charting the development of scholarship on sexual violence, the authors suggest that this has largely resulted from a misuse of Susan Brownmiller's work, and a lack of attention to the broader radical feminist conversations that informed current theorisation on sexual violence as violence. Footnote 98 Emphasising the importance of a contextual reading of this foundational theorisation, they suggest that ‘Brownmiller's (and others) work should be read as a product of their time (the women's movement of the 1970s) which opened up inquiry into sex and sexuality to probe its relations to power, violence and dominance, and crucially, to politics (e.g., Dworkin 1976; Jeffreys 1990).’ Footnote 99

Eriksson Baaz and Stern have noted that despite the prominence of sexual violence scholarship in contemporary feminist IR and the increased interest in sexuality, key insights are missed if scholars leave radical feminism for dead. Footnote 100 By returning to the root sources of theorising on conflict-related sexual violence, Eriksson Baaz and Stern have not only been able to contextualise current thinking, but to augment current theoretical frameworks that have moved in very different directions since the cannon of radical feminist classics was penned. Focusing on the relationship between violence and sexuality within patriarchal heterosexuality, Eriksson Baaz and Stern put forward a powerful case that much of contemporary work within feminist IR on gendered violence unintentionally reifies war/peace, sex/violence distinctions. Footnote 101 What their article highlights is just one of the ways in which radical feminist scholarship on sexuality, and in particular the critical scholarship on heterosexuality, domination, and the production of desire can speak powerfully to current focus issues in feminist IR in unexplored ways.

Classic radical feminist texts, such as Kate Millet's Sexual Politics , Andrea Dworkin's Woman Hating , and Kathleen Barry's Female Sexual Slavery all placed sexuality, and the erotics of heterosexuality in particular, at the centre of their analysis. Footnote 102 These texts take sex and sexuality not only as subjects worthy of study, but as key fixtures of their analysis of politics and gendered power. While much of the recent work on sexuality in IR has emphasised poststructural readings of discourse, performativity, and fluidity, radical feminist work sought to construct structural and material accounts of sexual power under patriarchy. In ways that resonate with recent interest in sexuality from feminist IR scholars, this scholarship offers a rich set of resources for understanding power by presenting a contrasting analysis to much of recent queer theory work on sex. By suggesting a return to the roots of radical feminist scholarship, we do not mean to suggest that it will supplant current work, but that like Eriksson Baaz and Stern's exploration of the sexual, it will open new avenues, provide other theoretical tools and expose current thought to a different sensibility of feminist research. As with work on sexuality we believe that a similar return to radical feminist thought may provide added richness to contemporary feminist IR theorising on the gendered state and growth in international political economy (IPE).

The nature of the state has possibly been the most fundamental question within the discipline of IR. Footnote 103 Despite this, in the forward to the recent edited volume Revisiting Gendered States , V. Spike Peterson has noted the state remains undertheorised in International Relations. Footnote 104 As feminists are increasingly interested in subjects such as feminist foreign policy and feminist diplomacy, this under-theorisation has become increasingly untenable and precipitated a return to the state. Footnote 105 Radical feminist scholarship began with trying to theorise the relationship between patriarchy and the state. For pioneering radical feminist Kate Millet, this meant that her analysis of sexual politics was centred on the state defined as ‘the institution whereby that half of the populace which is female is controlled by that half which is male’. Footnote 106 Millet's understanding has underpinned the subsequent radical feminist theorisations on the state, which has looked to explain the state, not as the sole site of political activity, but as the institutionalisation of men's power. Footnote 107 Later theorists, such as Catherine MacKinnon, chart the institutional development of the state out of prior forms of private patriarchal domination in the household. Footnote 108 This distinction has been drawn between what socialist feminist Sylvia Walby's calls the private patriarchy of paternal domination in the household and the public patriarchy exhibited in the formal political and economic structures of society. Footnote 109 MacKinnon argues that the state has an intimately intertwined relationship with gender oppression, solidifying and reinforcing oppressive power structures on the one hand and providing meagre protections for marginalised peoples on the other.

Radical feminist theories of the state take the sexual politics of patriarchy as their theoretical foundation, developing understandings of the state that rule out of private patriarchal configurations. While the liberal legal tradition sees the state as the impartial arbiter for disagreements and contention, MacKinnon suggests that this stance smuggles notions of the natural citizen from male patterns of behaviour while ignoring the patriarchal foundation of existing political orders. Footnote 110 Radical feminists started from the premise that, as an institution created by men, the state is an embodiment of male interests. This recognition led to radical feminists analysing the state ‘as an arena of conflict which is systematically biased against women but within which important victories can nevertheless be won; it is essential to understand the power relations that are involved and the tremendous obstacles that women face, but this need not lead to the pessimistic abandonment of conventional politics’. Footnote 111 It is this patriarchal foundation, MacKinnon argues, that underpins the core structure of international law and contemporary foreign relations. Footnote 112 For this reason, MacKinnon characterises the international state system as ‘an apex form in which the power of men is organised both among men and over women while purporting to institutionalise peace and justice’. Footnote 113 Men's dominance, MacKinnon argues, has been codified into international law such that so as to intentionally exclude the aggression against and exploitation of women, resulting in the systematic dehumanisation of women within the international realm. Footnote 114 Unlike later feminist IR theorists, who began with malestream IR theorising and then began to read gender into it, radical feminism's starting point of women's experiences led them to profoundly different conclusions. Returning to radical feminist theorising on the state has much to offer, in terms of theoretical difference to current models present in IR. This is indicative of the tradition of radical feminist scholarship on the topic and indicates the vibrant corpus of work that may can enrich the discipline.

The second areas we would like to highlight that would benefit from revisiting radical feminism is the growth in feminist international political economy. While interest in international political economy has always been present in feminist IR, recent years have seen a rapid growth in scholarship, which blends work from feminist International Relations theory and feminist political economy. These scholars have highlighted the importance of a feminist analysis of households, care work, and sexual violence in understanding world affairs. Footnote 115 Radical feminist political economics has, since the 1970s, sought to understand how women's private economic exploitation forms the basis for the public economic system and the political arrangements around it. Footnote 116 One of the central concerns of early radical feminist scholarship was how the marriage contract and the extraction of women's care work was essential to the organisation of the economy. Footnote 117 Radical feminist historian Gerda Lerner traced the origins of trade in human societies to the trade in women that began after the agricultural revolution in Mesopotamia shifted these societies from matrilocal, matrilineal kinships to patrilocal, patrilineal, and eventually patriarchal. Footnote 118 The subordination of women in peace, and the enslavement and exploitation of women's sexual and reproductive capacities by invading tribes during war, became the basis for the formation of class distinctions and the concept of property, itself. These accounts emphasise the central role of heteronormativity in producing women as a class available for economic exploitation and argued against the devaluation of women's care work. The direct analysis of how sexuality is linked to the political and economic exploitation of women aligns closely with the work of more recent feminist scholars like Claire Duncanson Footnote 119 and Juanita Elias, Footnote 120 while providing a distinct account of how to redress inequity though revolutionary action starting with the personal.

Radical feminism approaches the central subjects of feminist IR in profoundly different ways to contemporary scholars in this field, using different methods and sensibilities to contemporary scholarship. Radical feminists’ commitment to unmaking the structures of patriarchy through revolutionary action, rather than tinkering at the edges of male domination provides a distinct approach from liberal feminism's reform approach or poststructural efforts to trouble gender. We do not envision that a return to radical feminist work will result in wholesale adoption, but see productive space for conversation with the roots of many key concepts used in contemporary feminist IR. While these three areas (sexuality, the state, and political economy) are hardly an exhaustive list of areas that might warrant being revisited by feminist IR, these examples highlight the added value of going back to the root of radical feminist work. Much as mainstream IR has gained much from revisiting the foundational works of the discipline, we feel that radical feminist work has the capacity to contextualise and enrich contemporary debates.

Ultimately, we have sought in this article to better understand the curious absence of radical feminist thought in contemporary feminist IR scholarship and the potential of returning to this work. Our dual concerns have been with the representation of radical feminism as outdated and the enduring influence of concepts that originate in the radical feminist tradition in contemporary feminist IR scholarship. In doing this, we have not aimed to construct a coherent camp of radical feminist IR. Such a project of ideological reconstruction would be likely to do little beyond reinforcing the pernicious camp rivalries and ‘on brand’ thinking that tends to dominate the field. Footnote 121 Moreso, we are interested in highlighting how, despite its erasure from feminist IR, radical feminism's contributions have the capacity to inform how contemporary feminist IR understands the international. We have found that not only does the treatment of radical feminism within the discipline impoverish feminist IR's intellectual inheritance, which remains salient to core questions in the field, but that it also does a disservice to the range of theorising that has been done within a radical frame.

Radical feminism continues to provide vibrant and provocative analysis of women's oppression on a global scale. Stemming from its original contribution of the theorisation on patriarchy, radical feminism has provided incisive insights on sex, nature of the state, and the international political economy. Yet, the prevailing ‘progress’ narrative of the story of feminist IR both fails to recognise the enduring significance of core radical feminist concepts to shape the discipline and the enduring interventions of radical feminists into the study of International Relations.

Feminists in IR have levelled serious criticism of the IR mainstream for its efforts to obscure, misrepresent, and write out feminist contributions from the discipline. Footnote 122 As accounts of feminist IR and its role within the discipline have largely been generated by other feminists, the writing out of radical feminist voices is particularly troubling. Footnote 123 As with the feminist critique of mainstream IR's representation of their work, our goal has not been to suggest that no critical commentary should be directed towards radical feminist work, but, rather, that the representations so far have entailed very little substantive engagement in favour of silence and misrepresentation. Our aim is not to discourage robust criticisms of radical feminist work; such an effort would be meaningless, considering the breadth of options within the cannon. Footnote 124 Rather, we call on feminist scholars within the discipline of IR to re-evaluate how radical feminist work has been represented, and to engage in good faith with radical feminist scholarship, both in legacy and contemporary forms, which endures outside the disciplinary confines of international relations. We believe that rejecting the discursive narratives that have facilitated radical feminism's death from the discipline will allow feminist work to better address theoretical contestations in feminist work, and to avoid reproducing the problematic citational practices that have been directed from mainstream IR towards feminist work overall.

Acknowledgements

We thank Dr Meagan Tyler, the History and International Theory Reading Group at the University of Queensland, and the panel and audience at Australian Political Studies Association Annual Convention in 2017 for feedback provided on earlier versions of this article. We also thank the anonymous reviewers who provided insightful comments and suggestions for revisions. The generosity and expertise provided have improved this article in innumerable ways and through its many iterations across six years of development.

Supplementary material

To view the online supplementary material for this article, please visit: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210520000133

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• Volume 46, Issue 3
• David Duriesmith (a1) and Sara Meger (a2)
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210520000133

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J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues

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This isn’t an easy piece to write, for reasons that will shortly become clear, but I know it’s time to explain myself on an issue surrounded by toxicity. I write this without any desire to add to that toxicity.

For people who don’t know: last December I tweeted my support for Maya Forstater, a tax specialist who’d lost her job for what were deemed ‘transphobic’ tweets. She took her case to an employment tribunal, asking the judge to rule on whether a philosophical belief that sex is determined by biology is protected in law. Judge Tayler ruled that it wasn’t.

My interest in trans issues pre-dated Maya’s case by almost two years, during which I followed the debate around the concept of gender identity closely. I’ve met trans people, and read sundry books, blogs and articles by trans people, gender specialists, intersex people, psychologists, safeguarding experts, social workers and doctors, and followed the discourse online and in traditional media. On one level, my interest in this issue has been professional, because I’m writing a crime series, set in the present day, and my fictional female detective is of an age to be interested in, and affected by, these issues herself, but on another, it’s intensely personal, as I’m about to explain.

All the time I’ve been researching and learning, accusations and threats from trans activists have been bubbling in my Twitter timeline. This was initially triggered by a ‘like’. When I started taking an interest in gender identity and transgender matters, I began screenshotting comments that interested me, as a way of reminding myself what I might want to research later. On one occasion, I absent-mindedly ‘liked’ instead of screenshotting. That single ‘like’ was deemed evidence of wrongthink, and a persistent low level of harassment began.

Months later, I compounded my accidental ‘like’ crime by following Magdalen Berns on Twitter. Magdalen was an immensely brave young feminist and lesbian who was dying of an aggressive brain tumour. I followed her because I wanted to contact her directly, which I succeeded in doing. However, as Magdalen was a great believer in the importance of biological sex, and didn’t believe lesbians should be called bigots for not dating trans women with penises, dots were joined in the heads of twitter trans activists, and the level of social media abuse increased.

I mention all this only to explain that I knew perfectly well what was going to happen when I supported Maya. I must have been on my fourth or fifth cancellation by then. I expected the threats of violence, to be told I was literally killing trans people with my hate , to be called cunt and bitch and, of course, for my books to be burned, although one particularly abusive man told me he’d composted them.

What I didn’t expect in the aftermath of my cancellation was the avalanche of emails and letters that came showering down upon me, the overwhelming majority of which were positive, grateful and supportive. They came from a cross-section of kind, empathetic and intelligent people, some of them working in fields dealing with gender dysphoria and trans people, who’re all deeply concerned about the way a socio-political concept is influencing politics, medical practice and safeguarding. They’re worried about the dangers to young people, gay people and about the erosion of women’s and girl’s rights. Above all, they’re worried about a climate of fear that serves nobody – least of all trans youth – well.

I’d stepped back from Twitter for many months both before and after tweeting support for Maya, because I knew it was doing nothing good for my mental health. I only returned because I wanted to share a free children’s book during the pandemic. Immediately, activists who clearly believe themselves to be good, kind and progressive people swarmed back into my timeline, assuming a right to police my speech, accuse me of hatred, call me misogynistic slurs and, above all – as every woman involved in this debate will know – TERF.

If you didn’t already know – and why should you? – ‘TERF’ is an acronym coined by trans activists, which stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist. In practice, a huge and diverse cross-section of women are currently being called TERFs and the vast majority have never been radical feminists. Examples of so-called TERFs range from the mother of a gay child who was afraid their child wanted to transition to escape homophobic bullying, to a hitherto totally unfeminist older lady who’s vowed never to visit Marks & Spencer again because they’re allowing any man who says they identify as a woman into the women’s changing rooms. Ironically, radical feminists aren’t even trans-exclusionary – they include trans men in their feminism, because they were born women.

But accusations of TERFery have been sufficient to intimidate many people, institutions and organisations I once admired, who’re cowering before the tactics of the playground. ‘They’ll call us transphobic!’ ‘They’ll say I hate trans people!’ What next, they’ll say you’ve got fleas? Speaking as a biological woman, a lot of people in positions of power really need to grow a pair (which is doubtless literally possible, according to the kind of people who argue that clownfish prove humans aren’t a dimorphic species).

So why am I doing this? Why speak up? Why not quietly do my research and keep my head down?

Well, I’ve got five reasons for being worried about the new trans activism, and deciding I need to speak up.

Firstly, I have a charitable trust that focuses on alleviating social deprivation in Scotland, with a particular emphasis on women and children. Among other things, my trust supports projects for female prisoners and for survivors of domestic and sexual abuse. I also fund medical research into MS, a disease that behaves very differently in men and women. It’s been clear to me for a while that the new trans activism is having (or is likely to have, if all its demands are met) a significant impact on many of the causes I support, because it’s pushing to erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender.

The second reason is that I’m an ex-teacher and the founder of a children’s charity, which gives me an interest in both education and safeguarding. Like many others, I have deep concerns about the effect the trans rights movement is having on both.

The third is that, as a much-banned author, I’m interested in freedom of speech and have publicly defended it, even unto Donald Trump.

The fourth is where things start to get truly personal. I’m concerned about the huge explosion in young women wishing to transition and also about the increasing numbers who seem to be detransitioning (returning to their original sex), because they regret taking steps that have, in some cases, altered their bodies irrevocably, and taken away their fertility. Some say they decided to transition after realising they were same-sex attracted, and that transitioning was partly driven by homophobia, either in society or in their families.

Most people probably aren’t aware – I certainly wasn’t, until I started researching this issue properly – that ten years ago, the majority of people wanting to transition to the opposite sex were male. That ratio has now reversed. The UK has experienced a 4400% increase in girls being referred for transitioning treatment. Autistic girls are hugely overrepresented in their numbers.

The same phenomenon has been seen in the US. In 2018,  American physician and researcher Lisa Littman set out to explore it. In an interview, she said:

‘Parents online were describing a very unusual pattern of transgender-identification where multiple friends and even entire friend groups became transgender-identified at the same time. I would have been remiss had I not considered social contagion and peer influences as potential factors.’

Littman mentioned Tumblr, Reddit, Instagram and YouTube as contributing factors to Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, where she believes that in the realm of transgender identification ‘youth have created particularly insular echo chambers.’

Her paper caused a furore. She was accused of bias and of spreading misinformation about transgender people, subjected to a tsunami of abuse and a concerted campaign to discredit both her and her work. The journal took the paper offline and re-reviewed it before republishing it. However, her career took a similar hit to that suffered by Maya Forstater. Lisa Littman had dared challenge one of the central tenets of trans activism, which is that a person’s gender identity is innate, like sexual orientation. Nobody, the activists insisted, could ever be persuaded into being trans.

The argument of many current trans activists is that if you don’t let a gender dysphoric teenager transition, they will kill themselves. In an article explaining why he resigned from the Tavistock (an NHS gender clinic in England) psychiatrist Marcus Evans stated that claims that children will kill themselves if not permitted to transition do not ‘align substantially with any robust data or studies in this area. Nor do they align with the cases I have encountered over decades as a psychotherapist.’

The writings of young trans men reveal a group of notably sensitive and clever people.  The more of their accounts of gender dysphoria I’ve read, with their insightful descriptions of anxiety, dissociation, eating disorders, self-harm and self-hatred, the more I’ve wondered whether, if I’d been born 30 years later, I too might have tried to transition. The allure of escaping womanhood would have been huge. I struggled with severe OCD as a teenager. If I’d found community and sympathy online that I couldn’t find in my immediate environment, I believe I could have been persuaded to turn myself into the son my father had openly said he’d have preferred.

When I read about the theory of gender identity, I remember how mentally sexless I felt in youth. I remember Colette’s description of herself as a ‘mental hermaphrodite’ and Simone de Beauvoir’s words: ‘It is perfectly natural for the future woman to feel indignant at the limitations posed upon her by her sex. The real question is not why she should reject them: the problem is rather to understand why she accepts them.’

As I didn’t have a realistic possibility of becoming a man back in the 1980s, it had to be books and music that got me through both my mental health issues and the sexualised scrutiny and judgement that sets so many girls to war against their bodies in their teens. Fortunately for me, I found my own sense of otherness, and my ambivalence about being a woman, reflected in the work of female writers and musicians who reassured me that, in spite of everything a sexist world tries to throw at the female-bodied, it’s fine not to feel pink, frilly and compliant inside your own head; it’s OK to feel confused, dark, both sexual and non-sexual, unsure of what or who you are.

I want to be very clear here: I know transition will be a solution for some gender dysphoric people, although I’m also aware through extensive research that studies have consistently shown that between 60-90% of gender dysphoric teens will grow out of their dysphoria. Again and again I’ve been told to ‘just meet some trans people.’ I have: in addition to a few younger people, who were all adorable, I happen to know a self-described transsexual woman who’s older than I am and wonderful. Although she’s open about her past as a gay man, I’ve always found it hard to think of her as anything other than a woman, and I believe (and certainly hope) she’s completely happy to have transitioned. Being older, though, she went through a long and rigorous process of evaluation, psychotherapy and staged transformation. The current explosion of trans activism is urging a removal of almost all the robust systems through which candidates for sex reassignment were once required to pass. A man who intends to have no surgery and take no hormones may now secure himself a Gender Recognition Certificate and be a woman in the sight of the law. Many people aren’t aware of this.

We’re living through the most misogynistic period I’ve experienced. Back in the 80s, I imagined that my future daughters, should I have any, would have it far better than I ever did, but between the backlash against feminism and a porn-saturated online culture, I believe things have got significantly worse for girls. Never have I seen women denigrated and dehumanised to the extent they are now. From the leader of the free world’s long history of sexual assault accusations and his proud boast of ‘grabbing them by the pussy’, to the incel (‘involuntarily celibate’) movement that rages against women who won’t give them sex, to the trans activists who declare that TERFs need punching and re-educating, men across the political spectrum seem to agree: women are asking for trouble. Everywhere, women are being told to shut up and sit down, or else.

I’ve read all the arguments about femaleness not residing in the sexed body, and the assertions that biological women don’t have common experiences, and I find them, too, deeply misogynistic and regressive. It’s also clear that one of the objectives of denying the importance of sex is to erode what some seem to see as the cruelly segregationist idea of women having their own biological realities or – just as threatening – unifying realities that make them a cohesive political class. The hundreds of emails I’ve received in the last few days prove this erosion concerns many others just as much.  It isn’t enough for women to be trans allies. Women must accept and admit that there is no material difference between trans women and themselves.

But, as many women have said before me, ‘woman’ is not a costume. ‘Woman’ is not an idea in a man’s head. ‘Woman’ is not a pink brain, a liking for Jimmy Choos or any of the other sexist ideas now somehow touted as progressive. Moreover, the ‘inclusive’ language that calls female people ‘menstruators’ and ‘people with vulvas’ strikes many women as dehumanising and demeaning. I understand why trans activists consider this language to be appropriate and kind, but for those of us who’ve had degrading slurs spat at us by violent men, it’s not neutral, it’s hostile and alienating.

Which brings me to the fifth reason I’m deeply concerned about the consequences of the current trans activism.

I’ve been in the public eye now for over twenty years and have never talked publicly about being a domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor. This isn’t because I’m ashamed those things happened to me, but because they’re traumatic to revisit and remember. I also feel protective of my daughter from my first marriage. I didn’t want to claim sole ownership of a story that belongs to her, too. However, a short while ago, I asked her how she’d feel if I were publicly honest about that part of my life, and she encouraged me to go ahead.

I’m mentioning these things now not in an attempt to garner sympathy, but out of solidarity with the huge numbers of women who have histories like mine, who’ve been slurred as bigots for having concerns around single-sex spaces.

I managed to escape my first violent marriage with some difficulty, but I’m now married to a truly good and principled man, safe and secure in ways I never in a million years expected to be. However, the scars left by violence and sexual assault don’t disappear, no matter how loved you are, and no matter how much money you’ve made. My perennial jumpiness is a family joke – and even I know it’s funny – but I pray my daughters never have the same reasons I do for hating sudden loud noises, or finding people behind me when I haven’t heard them approaching.

If you could come inside my head and understand what I feel when I read about a trans woman dying at the hands of a violent man, you’d find solidarity and kinship. I have a visceral sense of the terror in which those trans women will have spent their last seconds on earth, because I too have known moments of blind fear when I realised that the only thing keeping me alive was the shaky self-restraint of my attacker.

I believe the majority of trans-identified people not only pose zero threat to others, but are vulnerable for all the reasons I’ve outlined. Trans people need and deserve protection. Like women, they’re most likely to be killed by sexual partners. Trans women who work in the sex industry, particularly trans women of colour, are at particular risk. Like every other domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor I know, I feel nothing but empathy and solidarity with trans women who’ve been abused by men.

So I want trans women to be safe. At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe. When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman – and, as I’ve said, gender confirmation certificates may now be granted without any need for surgery or hormones – then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside. That is the simple truth.

On Saturday morning, I read that the Scottish government is proceeding with its controversial gender recognition plans, which will in effect mean that all a man needs to ‘become a woman’ is to say he’s one. To use a very contemporary word, I was ‘triggered’. Ground down by the relentless attacks from trans activists on social media, when I was only there to give children feedback about pictures they’d drawn for my book under lockdown, I spent much of Saturday in a very dark place inside my head, as memories of a serious sexual assault I suffered in my twenties recurred on a loop. That assault happened at a time and in a space where I was vulnerable, and a man capitalised on an opportunity.  I couldn’t shut out those memories and I was finding it hard to contain my anger and disappointment about the way I believe my government is playing fast and loose with womens and girls’ safety.

Late on Saturday evening, scrolling through children’s pictures before I went to bed, I forgot the first rule of Twitter – never, ever expect a nuanced conversation – and reacted to what I felt was degrading language about women. I spoke up about the importance of sex and have been paying the price ever since. I was transphobic, I was a cunt, a bitch, a TERF, I deserved cancelling, punching and death. You are Voldemort said one person, clearly feeling this was the only language I’d understand.

It would be so much easier to tweet the approved hashtags – because of course trans rights are human rights and of course trans lives matter – scoop up the woke cookies and bask in a virtue-signalling afterglow. There’s joy, relief and safety in conformity. As Simone de Beauvoir also wrote, “… without a doubt it is more comfortable to endure blind bondage than to work for one’s liberation; the dead, too, are better suited to the earth than the living.”

Huge numbers of women are justifiably terrified by the trans activists; I know this because so many have got in touch with me to tell their stories. They’re afraid of doxxing, of losing their jobs or their livelihoods, and of violence.

But endlessly unpleasant as its constant targeting of me has been, I refuse to bow down to a movement that I believe is doing demonstrable harm in seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators like few before it. I stand alongside the brave women and men, gay, straight and trans, who’re standing up for freedom of speech and thought, and for the rights and safety of some of the most vulnerable in our society: young gay kids, fragile teenagers, and women who’re reliant on and wish to retain their single sex spaces. Polls show those women are in the vast majority, and exclude only those privileged or lucky enough never to have come up against male violence or sexual assault, and who’ve never troubled to educate themselves on how prevalent it is.

The one thing that gives me hope is that the women who can protest and organise, are doing so, and they have some truly decent men and trans people alongside them. Political parties seeking to appease the loudest voices in this debate are ignoring women’s concerns at their peril. In the UK, women are reaching out to each other across party lines, concerned about the erosion of their hard-won rights and widespread intimidation. None of the gender critical women I’ve talked to hates trans people; on the contrary. Many of them became interested in this issue in the first place out of concern for trans youth, and they’re hugely sympathetic towards trans adults who simply want to live their lives, but who’re facing a backlash for a brand of activism they don’t endorse. The supreme irony is that the attempt to silence women with the word ‘TERF’ may have pushed more young women towards radical feminism than the movement’s seen in decades.

The last thing I want to say is this. I haven’t written this essay in the hope that anybody will get out a violin for me, not even a teeny-weeny one. I’m extraordinarily fortunate; I’m a survivor, certainly not a victim. I’ve only mentioned my past because, like every other human being on this planet, I have a complex backstory, which shapes my fears, my interests and my opinions. I never forget that inner complexity when I’m creating a fictional character and I certainly never forget it when it comes to trans people.

All I’m asking – all I want – is for similar empathy, similar understanding, to be extended to the many millions of women whose sole crime is wanting their concerns to be heard without receiving threats and abuse.

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The Radical Style of Andrea Dworkin

Apologies to Andrea Dworkin, who did not like book critics and who, fourteen years after her death, from myocarditis, at fifty-eight, is being subjected to a round of us again. “I have never written for a cowardly or passive or stupid reader, the precise characteristics of most reviewers,” she wrote in the preface to the second edition of “Intercourse,” the work that presented her alienating theory of heterosexual sex as a violation, “a use and an abuse simultaneously,” and “the key to women’s lower human status,” among other descriptions. “Overeducated but functionally illiterate, members of a gang, a pack, who do their drive-by shootings in print,” reviewers seemed to deny her the authority of her personal experience of rape, prostitution, and domestic violence, which they did not understand, and to wave aside the literary criticism in the book, which they also did not understand. “I will check back in a decade to see what you all think,” she wrote in a scathing letter to the Times , in 1987, responding to its pan of the first edition of “Intercourse.” “In the meantime, I suggest you examine your ethics to see how you managed to avoid discussing anything real or even vaguely intelligent about my work and the political questions it raises.”

Out of the fray emerged the idea that she believed all sex was rape, which, along with her frizzy hair, dumpy overalls, and uncompromising positions on sex work and sadomasochism, came to epitomize radical feminist hostility throughout the nineteen-eighties and nineties. Dworkin was widely regarded as sexless and “anti-sex,” feminism’s image problem incarnate, hated by various denominations of liberals and—except when she was campaigning against pornography—conservatives alike. Though she tempered her contempt for establishment stupidity with a naughtily blunt sense of humor and a deep-down belief that people could examine their ethics and change, her reputation always preceded her work, and she knew it. Foregrounding her shrewdness as a reader—or her pathos as a human being—didn’t much help. While she was working on “Intercourse,” one colleague told her to include a “prechewed” introduction “to explain what the book said,” which she did, sardonically. Others advised her to use a pseudonym.

A new anthology of Dworkin’s writing, “ Last Days at Hot Slit ” (Semiotext(e)), edited by Johanna Fateman and Amy Scholder, suggests that the drastic, fringe ideas she promoted, despite the personal and professional consequences, might seem less threatening today. It’s also an opportunity to reassess her style. The collection brings together writing from Dworkin’s major books, including extracts from her two novels, “ Ice & Fire ” (1986) and “ Mercy ” (1990), as well as one from “My Suicide,” a twenty-four-thousand-word unpublished autobiographical essay from 1999, which Dworkin’s longtime partner, John Stoltenberg, a gay man and an activist, found on her computer after she died. Dworkin was a lucid, scarily persuasive writer, and much of this material reflects her argument, in “ Pornography: Men Possessing Women ,” that “Everything in life is a part of it. Nothing is off in its own corner, isolated from the rest.” The anthology is as much an account of Dworkin’s life as it is a presentation of her work; her project was to show how misogyny and violence against women were, like women themselves, “real,” a favorite word, and from an early age she offered up her own experiences as evidence. When she was a freshman at Bennington College, she was arrested at a protest against the Vietnam War and taken to jail, where she was subjected to a brutal pelvic exam that left her bleeding and traumatized; at the urging of Grace Paley, a fellow-protester whom Dworkin looked up in the phone book afterward, she reported her story to the newspapers, prompting a grand-jury hearing. The jail was eventually shut down.

Between this galvanizing incident—which shamed her parents back in New Jersey—and the publication of “Woman Hating,” nearly ten years later, Dworkin worked as a prostitute, moved to Amsterdam to write about the anarchist movement Provo, and married an activist, who violently abused her. She left the marriage, crediting her escape to a feminist, and vowed to “become a real writer and . . . use everything I knew to help women.” The process of writing “Woman Hating” showed her just how much she knew; experiences like hers, with “male dominance in sex or rape in marriage,” weren’t yet “part of feminism” in the early nineteen-seventies. Perhaps anticipating the mocking, vitriolic dismissal she would encounter throughout her life, Dworkin sets out her intentions in the very first sentence, with her trademark clarity and purpose: “This book is an action, a political action where revolution is the goal.” What’s more, it certainly was not “academic horseshit.”

The latter claim is correct; the former, for those appraising Dworkin, may have been a little too convincing. What’s so exciting to watch, reading “Last Days,” is not her political trajectory but the way her style crystallized around her beliefs. Dworkin saw being a writer as “a sacred trust,” which many of her peers had violated for money, and inextricable from that dedication was her love of texts and her faith in their power. Even as she acknowledged that she worked “with a broken tool, a language which is sexist and discriminatory to its core,” she aimed to “write a prose more terrifying than rape, more abject than torture, more insistent and destabilizing than battery, more desolate than prostitution, more invasive than incest, more filled with threat and aggression than pornography.” Her sentences barrel forward, strong-arming the reader with unlikely pauses or abrupt images; they force “you to breathe where I do, instead of letting you discover your own natural breath.”

You could call this a masculine way of writing, if you believe in that kind of distinction. It’s almost like revenge, a contradiction of her rejection of mere “equality”: “there is no freedom or justice in exchanging the female role for the male role.” In her preface to the second edition of “Intercourse,” Dworkin describes the book’s style in terms of domination, using the same phrases that she applies to intercourse itself. Of the male authors she analyzes, she writes, “I use them; I cut and slice into them in order to exhibit them.” The exhibition is affecting. Though the book is organized by broad themes—“Repulsion,” “Stigma,” “Possession”—Dworkin is most at home in the specific, when she’s conducting extensive close readings in the mode of an old-school literary critic. For those who associate her with a pungent misandry, it can be a surprise to find that her scorn, insofar as it exists, is grounded in considered surveys of Bram Stoker, Kōbō Abe, James Baldwin, Tennessee Williams, and Isaac Bashevis Singer, among others. In a chapter on virginity, she turns to D. H. Lawrence, for whom “virginity was ‘her perfect tenderness in the body.’ ” Then, in a little more than a page—which includes three block quotes—she compares his attitude, unfavorably, with that of Sophie Tolstoy, before bringing in a dash of Calvino to prove that, “in the male frame, virginity is a state of passive waiting or vulnerability . . . she counts when the man, through sex, brings her to life.” It is Lawrence’s ideal “phallic reality” that leads her to one of the book’s central questions: “To what extent does intercourse depend on the inferiority of women?”

Reading Dworkin, I often find myself trying to contort into agreement, although ignoring what she said in favor of what you’d like her to have said is exactly what she asked people not to do. At the time she was writing, her injunctions to read her and take her seriously, and her exasperated efforts to clarify her intentions, were directed more at her detractors; now her defenders might be reminded to pay closer attention to the text. Ariel Levy, a writer for this magazine, in her introduction to the twentieth-anniversary edition of “ Intercourse ,” points out that the discomfort in reading Dworkin is that, “if you accept what she’s saying, suddenly you have to question everything: the way you dress, the way you write, your favorite movies, your sense of humor, and yes, the way you fuck.”

If male domination determines everything, even our language, believing Dworkin requires being as hopeful as she was: she wanted nothing less than a total reimagining of the world, a pursuit that even she engaged in only sometimes, with varying degrees of specificity. Her numbered lists for addressing rape, which she believed was a prerequisite for insuring the freedom of women, comprise a rigorous program of simple definitions and actionable recommendations; her suggestions for overhauling intercourse—which to her was not necessarily rape, though she said that rape is the prevailing model for intercourse, and the relentlessness of her thinking leaves few options not to interpret her that way—are mostly vague or absurd. When she says that men will have to “give up their precious erections,” it makes sense metaphorically—men should “renounce their phallocentric personalities, and the privileges and powers given to them at birth.” But she also seems to mean it literally, which without mandated surgical intervention is just not going to happen. She writes admiringly and at length about Victoria Woodhull’s materialist “female-first model of intercourse,” but although she insists that this is “not some silly role reversal,” it’s hard to see how requiring the woman to be “the controlling and dominating partner, the one whose desire determined the event,” is particularly different from what she calls the hollow swap of “equality.”

The baroque logic of Dworkin’s arguments is usually balanced by the straightforward conviction that she gave them on the page. For Dworkin, “the favorite conceit of male culture” was to replicate “in its values and methodology the sexual reductionism of the male. . . . Everything is split apart: intellect from feeling and/or imagination; act from consequence; symbol from reality; mind from body.” Dworkin’s style worked against this; her best writing employs a precisely layered mode of argumentation in which no part can be separated from the rest. Her prose has a swift, natural fluidity that reveals a holistic view of humanity; on a single page she brings together close readings of novels, historiography, etymology, political crusading, and philosophical meditations that themselves would be at home in a (great) novel. In “Last Days at Hot Slit,” the selection from “Intercourse” includes a beautiful delineation of free will that builds to an optimistic demand that men more considerately exercise theirs:

There has always been a peculiar irrationality to all the biological arguments that supposedly predetermine the inferior social status of women. Bulls mount cows and baboons do whatever; but human females do not have estrus or go into heat. . . . Only humans face the often complicated reality of having potential and having to make choices based on having potential. . . . We have possibilities, and we make up meanings as we go along. The meanings we create or learn do not exist only in our heads, in ineffable ideas. Our meanings also exist in our bodies—what we are, what we do, what we physically feel, what we physically know; and there is no personal psychology that is separate from what the body has learned about life. Yet when we look at the human condition, including the condition of women, we act as if we are driven by biology or some metaphysically absolute dogma. We refuse to recognize our possibilities because we refuse to honor the potential humans have, including human women, to make choices. Men too make choices. When will they choose not to despise us?

Baboons do whatever! But, elsewhere, only splitting hairs can justify the generalizations to which she sacrifices possibility. The next paragraph begins with the assertion that, because of our position, women cannot make the same choices as men: “Being female in this world is having been robbed of the potential for human choice by men who love to hate us.” If that’s true, one wonders how she managed to live the way she did: married to a gay man, writing genre-bending feminist polemics. In Dworkin’s conception, objectification is more or less inevitable but can never be reclaimed as empowerment or chosen, unlike what many third-wave and contemporary feminists might believe.

It’s not squeamish to say that some of her arguments are not simply uncomfortable but offensive, almost strategically so. She compares violence against women to the Holocaust, with women who value heterosexuality being “collaborators” and pornography akin to Goebbels’s anti-Jewish propaganda; the difference, she notes, is that “the Jews didn’t do it to themselves and they didn’t orgasm. . . . Of course, neither do women; not in life.” In an essay on Nicole Brown Simpson, she juxtaposes violence against women and spousal abuse with racist police brutality and then performs a similar sort of childish qualification to imply that, actually, one of these is worse: “On the same day the police who beat Rodney G. King were acquitted in Simi Valley, a white husband who had raped, beaten, and tortured his wife, also white, was acquitted of marital rape in South Carolina. . . . There were no riots afterward.” These hyperbolic comparisons sap the power from her painstaking explanations elsewhere of the uniqueness of women’s position and the way it “intersects” with class and race. Departing from reality to emphasize women’s place in it—splitting, against her own instruction, a symbol from its context—only makes her thinking seem lost.

After Dworkin’s death, Gloria Steinem, a longtime friend, likened her to “an Old Testament prophet.” The comparison still rings true, and not only because, as Steinem had it, Dworkin “was always warning about what was about to happen.” Dworkin’s positions have also formed a set of principles that feminists approach as a general guide but rarely find appropriate to adopt as hard-core devotees. In the reconsiderations of Dworkin that have proliferated in the past couple of years, since Donald Trump was elected and #MeToo made it fashionable to express skepticism or hatred of men, a positive, if qualified, consensus has coalesced around her work. Fateman, describing the excitement she felt when she discovered Dworkin at eighteen and saw “patriarchy with the skin peeled back,” followed by her dutiful disagreement with Dworkin in the years afterward, now calls herself a “different kind of loyalist.” In “ Good and Mad ,” Rebecca Traister’s 2018 assessment of women’s anger , Traister laments that Dworkin wasn’t around to see #MeToo—but she also notes that Dworkin was “wrong” about a lot. Contemporary essays praising second-wave strategies like militant celibacy and political lesbianism invoke Dworkin implicitly, even as their authors shy away from occupying her staunch positions. “I won’t be swearing off sex anytime soon,” Nona Willis Aronowitz writes, in a Times editorial titled “Don’t Let Sex Distract You from the Revolution,” “but as I battle this latest iteration of private and public misogyny, I’ll be channeling the focused rage of the celibates.”

These sentiments, which sever intellect from feeling or mind from body, are decidedly not Dworkinesque, and the ease with which we’ve pulled out what is useful or prophetic about her work suggests that we’re still not reading her writing the way she would read it: closely, actively. Her weaknesses are congruent with her vision of the world’s totalizing interconnectedness; they flow from her awareness of the trade-offs—beyond precious erections—that revolution might require. Dworkin sacrificed her comfort, her reputation, and to some extent herself for her writing. What she never gave up was style. She called on culture to serve politics, but understood that political writing need not sound like it was written by a politician.

Since the second wave, “questioning everything” has become a prominent mode of feminist critique, as has a willingness to consider culture in political texts and politics in, say, book reviews. But, without the sort of rigor that Dworkin brought to both, neither strategy is particularly effective. When she writes, in “My Life as a Writer,” of having “to give up Baudelaire for Clausewitz,” she’s referring to a choice she made in “Intercourse,” but there she doesn’t abandon the canon; she merely sacrifices an uncritical reverence for it. This is not much of a loss at all. “The very fact that I usurp their place—make them my characters—lessens the unexamined authority that goes not with their art but with their gender,” she wrote, of the male authors she studied. “I love the literature these men created; but I will not live my life as if they are real and I am not.” ♦

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ROBERT JENSEN

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Getting Radical: Feminism, Patriarchy, and the Sexual-Exploitation Industries

By Robert Jensen

Published in Dignity: A Journal of Sexual Exploitation and Violence · March, 2021

Begin with the body.

In an analysis of pornography and prostitution in a patriarchal society, it’s crucial not to lose sight of basic biology. A coherent feminist analysis of the ideology and practice of patriarchy starts with human bodies.

We are all Homo sapiens. Genus Homo, species sapiens. We are primates. We are mammals. We are part of the animal kingdom.

We are organic entities, carbon-based creatures of flesh and blood. Whatever one thinks about the concepts of soul and mind—and I assume that in any diverse group there will be widely varying ideas—we are animals, which means we are bodies. The kind of animal that we are reproduces sexually, the interaction of bodies that are either male or female (with a very small percentage of people born intersex, who have anomalies that may complicate reproductive status).

Every one of us—and every human who has ever lived—is the product of the union of an egg produced by a female human and a sperm produced by a male human. Although it also can be accomplished with technology, in the vast majority of cases the fertilization of an egg by a sperm happens through the act of sexual intercourse, which in addition to its role in reproduction is potentially pleasurable.

I emphasize these elementary facts not to reduce the rich complexity of human interaction to a story about nothing but bodies, but if we are to understand sex/gender politics, we can’t ignore our bodies. That may seem self-evident, but some postmodern-inflected theories that float through some academic spaces, intellectual salons, and political movements these days seem to have detached from that reality.

If we take evolutionary biology seriously, we should recognize the centrality of reproduction to all living things and the importance of sexuality to a species that reproduces sexually, such as Homo sapiens. Reproduction and sexuality involve our bodies.

Female and male are stable biological categories. If they weren’t, we wouldn’t be here. But femininity and masculinity are not stable social categories. Ideas about what male and female mean—what meaning we attach to those differences in our bodies—vary from culture to culture and change over time.

That brings us to patriarchy, radical feminism, a radical feminist critique of the sexual-exploitation industries in patriarchy, and why all of this is important, not only for women but for men. I’m here as a man to make a pitch to men: Radical feminism is especially important for us.

Patriarchy Patriarchy—an idea about sex differences that institutionalizes male dominance throughout a society—has a history. Though many assume that humans have always lived with male dominance, such systems became widespread only a few thousand years ago, coming after the invention of agriculture and a dramatic shift in humans’ relationship with the larger living world. Historian Gerda Lerner argues that patriarchy began when “men discovered how to turn ‘difference’ into dominance” and “laid the ideological foundation for all systems of hierarchy, inequality, and exploitation” (Lerner, 1997, p. 133). Patriarchy takes different forms depending on time and place, but it reserves for men most of the power in the institutions of society and limits women’s access to such power. However, Lerner reminds us, “It does not imply that women are either totally powerless or totally deprived of rights, influence and resources” (Lerner, 1986, p. 239). The world is complicated, but we identify patterns to help us understand that complexity.

Patriarchy is not the only hierarchal system that enhances the power of some and limits the life chances of others—it exists alongside white supremacy, legally enforced or informal; various unjust and inhumane economic systems, including capitalism; and imperialism and colonialism, including the past 500 years of exploitation primarily by Europe and its offshoots such as the United States.

Because of those systems, all women do not have the same experience in patriarchy, but the pattern of women’s relative disadvantage vis-à-vis men is clear. As historian Judith Bennett writes, “Almost every girl born today will face more constraints and restrictions than will be encountered by a boy who is born today into the same social circumstances as that girl.” (Bennett, 2006, p. 10).

Over thousands of years, patriarchal societies have developed justifications, both theological and secular, to maintain this inequality and make it seem to be common sense, “just the way the world is.” Patriarchy has proved tenacious, at times conceding to challenges but blocking women from reaching full equality to men. Women’s status can change over time, and there are differences in status accorded to women depending on other variables. But Bennett argues that these ups and downs have not transformed women as a group in relationship to men—societies operate within a “patriarchal equilibrium,” in which only privileged men can lay claim to that full humanity, defined as the ability to develop fully their human potential (Bennett, 2009). Men with less privilege must settle for less, and some will even be accorded less status than some women (especially men who lack race and/or class privilege). But in this kind of dynamically stable system of power, women are never safe and can always be made “less than,” especially by men willing to wield threats, coercion, and violence.

Although all the systems based on domination cause immense suffering and are difficult to dislodge, patriarchy has been part of human experience longer and is deeply woven into the fabric of everyday life. We should remember: White supremacy has never existed without patriarchy. Capitalism has never existed without patriarchy. Imperialism has never existed without patriarchy. From patriarchy’s claim that male domination and female subordination are natural and inevitable have emerged other illegitimate hierarchies that also rest on attempts to naturalize, and hence render invisible, other domination/subordination dynamics.

Radical Feminism Feminism, at its most basic, challenges patriarchy. However as with any human endeavor, including movements for social justice, there are different intellectual and political strands. What in the United States is typically called “second wave” feminism, that emerged out of the social ferment of the 1960s and ‘70s, produced competing frameworks: radical, Marxist, socialist, liberal, psychoanalytical, existential, postmodern, eco-feminist. When non-white women challenged the white character of early second-wave feminism, movements struggled to correct the distortions; some women of color choose to identify as womanist rather than feminist. Radical lesbian feminists challenged the overwhelmingly heterosexual character of liberal feminism, and different feminisms went in varying directions as other challenges arose concerning every-thing from global politics to disability.

Since my first serious engagement with feminism in the late 1980s, I have found radical feminist analyses to be a source of inspiration. Radical feminism highlights men’s violence and coercion—rape, child sexual assault, domestic violence, sexual harassment—and the routine nature of this abuse for women, children, and vulnerable men in patriarchy. In patriarchal societies, men claim a right to own or control women’s reproductive power and women’s sexuality, with that threat of violence and coercion always in the background. In the harshest forms of patriarchy, men own wives and their children, and men can claim women’s bodies for sex constrained only by agreements with other men. In contemporary liberal societies, men’s dominance takes more subtle forms.

Radical feminism forces us to think about male and female bodies, about how men use, abuse, and exploit women in the realms of reproduction and sexuality. But in the contemporary United States, the radical approach has been eclipsed by the more common liberal (in mainstream politics) and postmodern (in academic and activist circles) strands of feminism. A liberal approach focuses on gaining equality for women within existing political, legal, and economic institutions. While notoriously difficult to define, postmodernism challenges the stability and coherence not only of existing institutions but of the very concepts that we use within them and tends to focus on language and performance as key to identity and experience. Liberalism and postmodernism come out of very different sets of assumptions but are similar in their practical commitment to individualism in politics, tending to evaluate a proposal based on whether it maximizes choices for individual women rather than whether it resists patriarchy’s hierarchy and challenges the power of men as a class. On issues such as pornography and prostitution, both liberal and postmodern feminism avoid or downplay a critique of the patriarchal system and reduce the issue to support for women’s choices, sometimes even claiming that women can be empowered through the sexual-exploitation industries.

Radical feminism’s ultimate goal is the end of patriarchy’s gender system, not merely expanding women’s choices within patriarchy. But radical feminism also recognizes the larger problem of hierarchy and the domination/subordination dynamics in other arenas of human life. While not sufficient by itself, the end of patriarchy is a necessary condition for liberation more generally.

Today there’s a broad consensus that any form of feminism must be “intersectional,” Kimberlé Crenshaw’s (1989) term to describe about how black women could be marginalized by movements for both racial and gender justice when their concerns did not conform to either group’s ideology or strategy. While the term is fairly new, the idea goes back further. For example, the statement of the Combahee River Collective, a group of black lesbian feminists in the late 1970s, named not only sexism and racism but also capitalism and imperialism as forces constraining their lives: [W]e are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression, and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives (Combahee River Collective, 2000, p. 264).

Intersectional approaches like these help us better understand the complex results of what radical feminists argue is a central feature of patriarchy: Men’s efforts to control women’s reproductive power and sexuality. As philosopher Marilyn Frye puts it: For females to be subordinated and subjugated to males on a global scale, and for males to organize themselves and each other as they do, billions of female individuals, virtually all who see life on this planet, must be reduced to a more-or-less willing toleration of subordination and servitude to men. The primary sites of this reduction are the sites of heterosexual relation and encounter—courtship and marriage-arrangement, romance, sexual liaisons, fucking, marriage, prostitution, the normative family, incest and child sexual assault. It is on this terrain of heterosexual connection that girls and women are habituated to abuse, insult, degradation, that girls are reduced to women—to wives, to whores, to mistresses, to sex slaves, to clerical workers and textile workers, to the mothers of men’s children (Frye, 1992, p. 130).

This analysis doesn’t suggest that every man treats every woman as a sex slave, of course. Each individual man in patriarchy is not at every moment actively engaged in the oppression of women, but men routinely act in ways that perpetuate patriarchy and harm women. It’s also true that patriarchy’s obsession with hierarchy, including a harsh system of ranking men, means that most men lose out in the game to acquire significant wealth and power. Complex systems produce complex results, and still there are identifiable patterns. Patriarchy is a system that delivers material benefits to men—unequally depending on men’s other attributes (such as race, class, sexual orientation, nationality, immigration status) and on men’s willingness to embrace, or at least adapt to, patriarchal values. But patriarchy constrains all women. The physical, psychological, and spiritual suffering endured by women varies widely, again depending on other attributes and sometimes just on the luck of the draw, but no woman escapes some level of that suffering. And at the core of that system is men’s assertion of a right to control women’s reproductive power and sexuality.

The Radical Feminist Critique of the Sexual-Exploitation Industries I use the term “sexual-exploitation industries” to include prostitution, pornography, stripping, massage parlors, escort services—all the ways that men routinely buy and sell objectified female bodies for sexual pleasure. Boys and vulnerable men are also exploited in these industries, but the majority of these businesses are about men buying women and girls.

Not all feminists or progressive people critique this exploitation, and in some feminist circles—especially those rooted in liberalism or postmodernism—so-called “sex work” is celebrated as empowering for women. Let’s start with simple questions for those who claim to want to end sexism and foster sex/gender justice: –Is it possible to imagine any society achieving a meaningful level of any kind of justice if people from one sex/gender class could be routinely bought and sold for sexual services by people from another sex/gender class? –Is justice possible when the most intimate spaces of the bodies of people in one group can be purchased by people in another group? –If our goal is to maintain stable, decent human societies defined by mutuality rather than dominance, do the sexual-exploitation industries foster or impede our efforts? –If we were creating a just society from the ground up, is it likely that anyone would say, “Let’s make sure that men have ready access to the bodies of women in commercial transactions”?

These questions are both moral and political. Radical feminists reject dominance, and the violence and coercion that comes with a domination/subordination dynamic, out of moral commitments to human dignity, solidarity, and equality. But nothing I’ve said is moralistic, in the sense of imposing a narrow, subjective conception of sexuality on others. Rejecting the sexual-exploitation industries isn’t about constraining people’s sexual expression, but rather is part of the struggle to create the conditions for meaningful sexual freedom.

So why is this radical feminist critique, which has proved so accurate in its assessment of the consequences of mainstreaming the commercial sex industry, so often denounced not only by men who embrace patriarchy but also by liberal and left men, and in recent years even by feminists in the liberal and postmodern camps?

Take the issue I know best, pornography. Starting in the 1970s, women such as Andrea Dworkin (2002) argued that the appeal of pornography was not just explicit sex but sex presented in the context of that domination/subordination dynamic. Since Dworkin’s articulation of that critique (1979), the abuse and exploitation of women in the industry has been more thoroughly documented. The content of pornography has become more overtly cruel and degrading to women and more overtly racist. Pornography’s role in promoting corrosive sexual practices, especially among young people, is more evident. As the power of the radical feminist critique has become clearer, why is the critique more marginalized today than when it was first articulated?

Part of the answer is that the radical feminist critique of pornography goes to the heart of the claim of men in patriarchy to own or control women’s sexuality. Feminism won some gains for women in public, such as more expansive access to education and a place in politics. But like any system of social control, patriarchy does not quietly accept change, pushing back against women’s struggle for sexual autonomy. Sociologist Kathleen Barry describes this process: [W]hen women achieve the potential for economic independence, men are threatened with loss of control over women as their legal and economic property in marriage. To regain control, patriarchal domination reconfigures around sex by producing a social and public condition of sexual sub-ordination that follows women into the public world (Barry, 1995, p. 53).

Why Should Men Care? Barry is not suggesting that men got together to plot such a strategy. Rather, it’s in the nature of patriarchy to respond to challenges to male power with new strategies. That’s how systems of illegitimate authority, including white supremacy and capitalism, have always operated.

Men can no longer claim outright ownership of women, as they once did. Men cannot always assert control over women using old tactics. But they can mark women as always available for men’s sexual pleasure. They can reduce women’s sexuality—and therefore can reduce women—to a commodity that can be bought and sold. They can try to regain an experience of power lost in the public realm in a more private arena.

This analysis challenges the liberal/postmodern individualist story that says women’s rights are enhanced when a society allows them to choose sex work. Almost every word in that sentence should be in scare-quotes, to mark the libertarian illusions on which the argument depends. I’m not suggesting that no woman in the sexual-exploitation industries ever makes a real choice but am merely pointing out the complexity of those choices, which typically are made under conditions of considerable constraint and reduced opportunities. And whatever the motivation of any one woman, the validation and normalization of the sexual-exploitation industries continues to reduce women and girls to objectified female bodies available to men for sexual pleasure.

If we men really believe in the values most of us claim to hold—dignity, solidarity, and equality—that is reason enough to embrace radical feminism. That’s the argument from justice. Radical feminists have shown how the sexual-exploitation industries harm women, children, and vulnerable men used in the industry. But if men need additional motivation, do it not only for women and girls. Do it for yourself. Recognize an argument from self-interest.

Radical feminism is essential for any man who wants to move beyond “being a man” in patriarchy and seeks to live the values of dignity, solidarity, and equality as fully as possible (Jensen, 2019). Radical feminism’s critique of masculinity in patriarchy is often assumed to be a challenge to men’s self-esteem but just the opposite is true—it’s essential for men’s self-esteem.

Consider a claim that men sometimes make when asked if they have ever used a woman being prostituted. “I’ve never had to pay for it,” a man will say, implying that he is skilled enough in procuring sex from women that money is unnecessary. In other situations, a man might brag about having sex with a woman being prostituted, especially if that woman is seen as a high-class “call girl” or is somehow “exotic,” or if the exploitation of women takes place in a male-bonding activity such as a bachelor party.

All these responses are patriarchal, and all reveal men’s fear of vulnerability and hence of intimacy. That’s why pornography is so popular. It offers men quick-and-easy sexual pleasure with no risk, no need to be a real person in the presence of another real person who might see through the sad chest-puffing pretense of masculinity in patriarchy.

One of the most common questions I get after public presentations from women is “why do men like pornography?” We can put aside the inane explanations designed to avoid the feminist challenge, such as “Men are just more sexual than women” or “Men are more stimulated visually than women.” I think the real answer is more disturbing: In patriarchy, men are often so intensely socialized to run from the vulnerability that comes with intimacy that they find comfort in the illusory control over women that pornography offers. Pornography may give men a sense of power over women temporarily, but it does not provide what men—what all people—need, which is human connection. The pornographers play on men’s fears—not a fear of women so much as a fear of facing the fragility of our lives in patriarchy.

When we assert masculinity in patriarchy—when we desperately try to “be a man”—we are valuing dominance over mutuality, choosing empty pleasure over intimacy, seeking control to avoid vulnerability. When we assert masculinity in patriarchy, we make the world more dangerous for women and children, and in the process deny ourselves the chance to be fully human.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This article draws on The End of Patriarchy: Radical Feminism for Men (Jensen, 2017). Special thanks to Renate Klein and Susan Hawthorne of Spinifex Press. An edited version of this article was recorded for presentation at the online Canadian Sexual Exploitation Summit hosted by Defend Dignity, May 6-7, 2021. Dignity thanks the following people for their time and expertise to review this article: Lisa Thompson, Vice President of Research and Education, National Center on Sexual Exploitation, USA; and Andrea Heinz, exited woman and activist, Canada.

RECOMMENDED CITATION Jensen, Robert. (2021). Getting radical: Feminism, patriarchy, and the sexual-exploitation industries. Dignity: A Journal of Sexual Exploitation and Violence. Vol. 6, Issue 2, Article 6. https://doi.org/10.23860/dignity.2021.06.02.06 Available at http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/dignity/vol6/iss2/6

REFERENCES Barry, Kathleen. (1995). The prostitution of sexuality. New York University Press. Bennett, Judith M. (2009, March 29). “History matters: The grand finale.” The Adventures of Notorious Ph.D., Girl Scholar. http://girlscholar.blogspot.com/2009/03/history-matters-grand-finale-guest-post.html Bennett, Judith M. (2006). History matters: Patriarchy and the challenge of feminism. University of Pennsylvania Press. Combahee River Collective. (2000). The Combahee River Collective statement. In Barbara Smith (Ed.), Home girls: A black feminist anthology (pp. 264-274). Rutgers University Press. Crenshaw, Kimberlé. (1989). “Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics.” University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1, 139-167. Dworkin, Andrea. (2002). Heartbreak: The political memoir of a feminist militant. Basic Books. Dworkin, Andrea. (1979). Pornography: Men possessing women. Perigee. Frye, Marilyn. (1992). Willful virgin: Essays in feminism 1976-1992. Crossing Press. Jensen, Robert. (2019, fall). Radical feminism: A gift to men. Voice Male. https://voicemalemagazine.org/radical-feminism-a-gift-to-men/ Jensen, Robert. (2017). The end of patriarchy: Radical feminism for men. Spinifex. Lerner, Gerda (1997). Why history matters: Life and thought. Oxford University Press. Lerner, Gerda (1986). The creation of patriarchy. Oxford University Press.

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5 Essays About Feminism

On the surface, the definition of feminism is simple. It’s the belief that women should be politically, socially, and economically equal to men. Over the years, the movement expanded from a focus on voting rights to worker rights, reproductive rights, gender roles, and beyond. Modern feminism is moving to a more inclusive and intersectional place. Here are five essays about feminism that tackle topics like trans activism, progress, and privilege:

“Trickle-Down Feminism” – Sarah Jaffe

Feminists celebrate successful women who have seemingly smashed through the glass ceiling, but the reality is that most women are still under it. Even in fast-growing fields where women dominate (retail sales, food service, etc), women make less money than men. In this essay from Dissent Magazine, author Sarah Jaffe argues that when the fastest-growing fields are low-wage, it isn’t a victory for women. At the same time, it does present an opportunity to change the way we value service work. It isn’t enough to focus only on “equal pay for equal work” as that argument mostly focuses on jobs where someone can negotiate their salary. This essay explores how feminism can’t succeed if only the concerns of the wealthiest, most privileged women are prioritized.

Sarah Jaffe writes about organizing, social movements, and the economy with publications like Dissent, the Nation, Jacobin, and others. She is the former labor editor at Alternet.

“What No One Else Will Tell You About Feminism” – Lindy West

Written in Lindy West’s distinct voice, this essay provides a clear, condensed history of feminism’s different “waves.” The first wave focused on the right to vote, which established women as equal citizens. In the second wave, after WWII, women began taking on issues that couldn’t be legally-challenged, like gender roles. As the third wave began, the scope of feminism began to encompass others besides middle-class white women. Women should be allowed to define their womanhood for themselves. West also points out that “waves” may not even exist since history is a continuum. She concludes the essay by declaring if you believe all people are equal, you are a feminist.

Jezebel reprinted this essay with permission from How To Be A Person, The Stranger’s Guide to College by Lindy West, Dan Savage, Christopher Frizelle, and Bethany Jean Clement. Lindy West is an activist, comedian, and writer who focuses on topics like feminism, pop culture, and fat acceptance.

“Toward a Trans* Feminism” – Jack Halberstam

The history of transactivsm and feminism is messy. This essay begins with the author’s personal experience with gender and terms like trans*, which Halberstam prefers. The asterisk serves to “open the meaning,” allowing people to choose their categorization as they see fit. The main body of the essay focuses on the less-known history of feminists and trans* folks. He references essays from the 1970s and other literature that help paint a more complete picture. In current times, the tension between radical feminism and trans* feminism remains, but changes that are good for trans* women are good for everyone.

This essay was adapted from Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability by Jack Halberstam. Halberstam is the Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, Gender Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. He is also the author of several books.

“Rebecca Solnit: How Change Happens” – Rebecca Solnit

The world is changing. Rebecca Solnit describes this transformation as an assembly of ideas, visions, values, essays, books, protests, and more. It has many layers involving race, class, gender, power, climate, justice, etc, as well as many voices. This has led to more clarity about injustice. Solnit describes watching the transformation and how progress and “ wokeness ” are part of a historical process. Progress is hard work. Not exclusively about feminism, this essay takes a more intersectional look at how progress as a whole occurs.

“How Change Happens” was adapted from the introduction to Whose Story Is it? Rebecca Solnit is a writer, activist, and historian. She’s the author of over 20 books on art, politics, feminism, and more.

“Bad Feminist” extract – Roxane Gay

People are complicated and imperfect. In this excerpt from her book Bad Feminist: Essays , Roxane Gay explores her contradictions. The opening sentence is, “I am failing as a woman.” She goes on to describe how she wants to be independent, but also to be taken care of. She wants to be strong and in charge, but she also wants to surrender sometimes. For a long time, she denied that she was human and flawed. However, the work it took to deny her humanness is harder than accepting who she is. While Gay might be a “bad feminist,” she is also deeply committed to issues that are important to feminism. This is a must-read essay for any feminists who worry that they aren’t perfect.

Roxane Gay is a professor, speaker, editor, writer, and social commentator. She is the author of Bad Feminist , a New York Times bestseller, Hunger (a memoir), and works of fiction.

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Riot Grrrl Manifestos and Radical Vernacular Feminism

2017, Australian Feminist Studies

This essay argues that Riot Grrrl manifestos were instrumental in promulgating a form of radical feminism that demonstrates the enduring nature of feminist radicalism. In rejecting the traditional claims of the radical public sphere, Riot Grrrl manifestos insist on a vernacular feminism that strategically emphasises micropolitical action over grand narratives of resistance and revolution. While these manifestos draw on aspects of secondwave radical feminism and older forms of avant-garde culture, they push the genre of the manifesto into new territory by stressing everyday forms of resistance, defining their imagined consistency as porous and reactive rather than exclusive or over-determined.

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The Riot Grrrls were an underground, decentralized movement made up of young people who worked to channel feminist and queer politics through mediums of cultural production. To turn toward the affective and emotional dimensions of Riot Grrrl, I offer an analysis of the zine I <3 Amy Carter. Focusing specifically on expressions of intimacy, I trace the contours of queer modes of being across the Riot Grrrl movement as a political force for imagining new relationalities. Mobilizing queerness as a possibility within their interpersonal relations, the Riot Grrrls embodied queer intimacies alongside a queering of intimacy through what I broadly identify as a “grrrl crush,” or an overlap and oscillation between friendship, admiration, and desire. As a specific articulation of queer intimacy, the grrrl crush offers a mode of belonging that is decidedly political, enabling greater theorizations of queer and feminist solidarity.

Tristan Burfield

Riot Grrrl, Punk, Feminism

Veronica Lion

David Buckingham

Riot grrrl was a feminist youth movement that first emerged on the west coast of the United States in the early 1990s. Initially associated with a small number of rock bands, it was disseminated through mainstream and alternative publications to become a national and an international movement. Riot grrrl can be understood as a double reaction – both against the misogyny of post-punk musical subcultures, and against the style of feminist politics practiced by an older generation of women. In this essay, I focus on two key aspects. I consider how riot grrrl was represented in the mainstream media, and how the participants sought to represent themselves, especially via independent publications (zines), which were in many respects more distinctive and original than the music. I then move on to consider the internal politics of riot grrrl as a ‘movement’ or a ‘scene’ (or a network of scenes): I look at debates about inclusiveness and leadership, and particularly about identity politics. Each of these areas was a focus of tension and conflict among the participants; and the essay traces how the combination of them led to riot grrrl’s fairly rapid demise. This essay is part of a larger project, Growing Up Modern: Childhood, Youth and Popular Culture Since 1945. More information about the project, and illustrated versions of all the essays can be found at: https://davidbuckingham.net/growing-up-modern/.

Kaleidoscope: A Graduate Journal of Qualitative …

Jamie Huber

Mimi Thi Nguyen

Anna Feigenbaum

Caroline K . Kaltefleiter

Jon M. Phillips

The Riot Grrrl movement of the early 1990s began to manifest itself among small communities of young women who gathered together to discuss and process their experiences within their specific social locations and the issues of oppression and violence they experienced. These small gatherings often provided a creative outlet for various women using a do-it-yourself ethic (DIY) for self-expression primarily through the media of zines and bands. Within a few years, this so-called movement spread around the United States and to the United Kingdom, and the DIY punk bands that emerged were categorized as Riot Grrrl. Mainstream media began to pick up on this and labeled it as protest and rebellion, and marginalized their efforts as merely a musical sub-genre of punk, while eclipsing it’s significance with the emerging Grunge genre. Liberative work, both individual and collective, was being done within their contexts. In retrospect it has been classified as one of the beginning markers of a shift in feminism from second-wave to the third-wave, acting as an on-the-ground grassroots social movement that echoed new trends in academic feminist work from around the same time period. These women used elements of the hermeneutical circle, developed by liberation theologians and ethicists to seek their own liberation from patriarchal oppression, outside of a Christian context. This paper studies methodologies the Riot Grrrl movement in the United States used in an attempt to further their own liberation in a context of patriarchal, intersectional oppression. The purpose of this research is to examine the Riot Grrrl movement from a theological lens. Many social scientists have studied this movement, and its implications for feminism in the broader sense, but few theologians have done much work in this area. By examining this movement, I hope to conceptually help my reader understand that secular movements are taking up the quest for human liberation that the many within the Christian church understand themselves to be called to undertake, particularly in the absence of faith communities of dominant culture being in solidarity with them. The paper introduces the movement and gives timelines and basic introductions of the Riot Grrrl movement, briefly discusses Riot Grrrl’s place in its context and culture, highlight certain contemporary works of feminist theology and liberative work using the hermeneutical circle, and investigates intersections between the two, particularly in terms of the methodologies used by Riot Grrrl and their stated aims and goals. I investigate the particularities of the movement’s more political and individual growth areas among young women. I also will briefly look at current trends related to and identified with Riot Grrrl. Finally I will speak to the importance for the church of understanding the movements for justice that young sub-cultures strive for, and why we need to pay attention and act in solidarity, which can be highlighted in the recent interactions between Pussy Riot and the Russian Orthodox Church.

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Differentiate Between Liberal Feminism And Radical Feminism

Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

Learn about our Editorial Process

Saul Mcleod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul Mcleod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

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Radical feminism seeks to address the patriarchal system itself as the root cause of women’s oppression, while liberal feminism aims to promote gender equality through policy reforms within the existing social system. Radical feminism is viewed as more militant with its calls to fundamentally transform society’s power structures.

Radical Feminism

Radical feminism is a branch of feminism that seeks to dismantle the traditional patriarchal power and gender roles that keep women oppressed.

The word radical means ‘of or relating to the root’ – thus, radical feminists see patriarchy as the root cause of gender inequality, and they seek to up-root this.

Radical feminists believe that the cause of gender inequality is based on men’s need or desire to control women. They argue that global change in the patriarchal systems is required to achieve liberation for women.

They also assert that patriarchal systems are in place in an attempt to gain control over women’s bodies, such as laws about abortion and contraception.

According to radical feminists, women are objectified, and many experience violence from men as a way for them to gain control and dominate women.

They argue that violence against women is not down to a few perpetrators, but it is a wider, societal problem.

What Are The Goals Of Radical Feminism?

Radical feminists aim for structural change in the patriarchal systems that are oppressing women. They argue that real liberation for women cannot be achieved unless societal institutions are changed. 

They also aim for women to have bodily autonomy by giving women the freedom of choice for what they do with their lives and their bodies. This includes giving them the right to safe abortions and contraception. 

Radical feminists also want to shed light on the disproportionate amount of violence that women face at the hands of men. Many radical feminists believe that pornography and sex work increase the objectification of women, and this contributes to more violence and subordination of women. 

Likewise, radical feminists aim to put women-centered strategies in place to help women, such as having shelters for abused women and women-only spaces. Some radical feminists are known for being trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) since they do not view transgender women as real women.

Thus, many would seek to exclude transgender women from women-centered strategies. This stance has led to a lot of criticism from other branches of feminism. 

Liberal Feminism

Liberal feminism is a popular branch of feminism that emphasizes the value of freedom, which can be achieved through political and legal reform.

The ideas of liberal feminism are rooted in liberalism, a political philosophy that encourages the development of freedom, particularly in the political and economic spheres.

According to liberal feminism, there is gender inequality because women do not have the same rights as men. They claim that once this is achieved for women, it will eradicate the persist inequalities. They also believe that sexism is the fundamental cause of discrimination against women.

Liberal feminists have most notably fought for women’s right to vote, to work, to have an education, and to have equal pay to men. Many liberal feminists believe that their fight for these rights means that their battle is largely won.

However, many others believe there are still issues to work on, such as the gender pay gap and representation in politics and the media.

What Are The Goals Of Liberal Feminism?

Liberal feminists want women to be granted the same social and political rights as men, have equal pay for doing the same work as men, and be equal in marriage and partnership.

Many of these changes are thought to come through legal and legislative reformation.

In addition, liberal feminists aim for equality in the representation of women in the workplace, politics, and the media.

They would want to see more women in positions of power and being equally represented to men in film and television. Reforming the system is a big part of liberal feminism.

They believe that gender justice is best achieved by modifying existing social institutions and political systems that have the capacity to adjust. Liberal feminism is also individualistic rather than group-based.

This means that rights are granted to individual women who are assumed to be equally deserving of these rights, rather than granting rights to a whole group.

Differences

When they emerged.

Liberal feminism is thought to have emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries through the work of early feminist scholars such as Mary Wollstonecraft, who advocated for educational and social equality for women, and John Stuart Mill, who defended the civic and legal equality of women and their right to vote.

There was then a rise in liberal feminism during the first wave of feminism in the 19th and early 20th centuries when women fought for their right to vote.

Radical feminism primarily developed during the second wave of feminism from the 1960s onwards. It is thought to have been developed in opposition to liberal and Marxist feminism at the time.

Although becoming popularized in the 1960s, there are believed to have been radical feminist activism and ideas during the first wave of feminism. For example, some of the actions of the women in the suffrage movement can be considered radical.

The cause of gender inequality

Liberal feminism does not generally consider what the root cause of gender inequality is. Instead, they claim that the oppression of women comes from their lack of political and civil rights and that once they have these rights, they will be equal to men.

However, they do not explain why it is that women were not granted these rights in the first place. Radical feminists would claim that they go a step further than liberal feminists by wanting to tackle the root of gender inequality – the patriarchy.

The patriarchy and its structures and institutions, which follow patriarchal ideals, are thought to be the cause of all gender injustice.

Radical feminists would criticize liberal feminism since they claim that only seeking to add more women into the already established systems is not enough.

Just because there are more women in positions of power does not mean there is not still sexism and misogyny, radical feminists would reason. They would argue that the whole system needs to be uprooted and changed for women to be free from gender inequality.

In tackling gender inequality

For liberal feminists, gender inequality is thought to be eliminated once women gain the same rights as men. This is done by reforming the legal, political, social, and other systems.

However, for radical feminists, it is believed that reforming the systems that are already in place will not do enough to make real change. Instead, they suggest that eliminating gender inequality will require a radical restructuring of society and its systems.

They believe that removing male supremacy from all spheres of society is the only way that women will be truly liberated.

Thoughts on marriage and the family

There are differences between radical and liberal feminism regarding ideas about the private sphere. Liberal feminists are generally not against heterosexual marriage and having children, as long as this is what the woman wants.

If the woman is being treated as an equal by their partner and chooses how to raise their family, this is a feminist choice.

Although this is not the case for everyone, many radical feminists would choose not to marry or engage in any heterosexual relationship with men. Some may engage in political lesbianism as a way to be segregated from men.

Many hold the view that traditional marriage is a patriarchal institution since this makes women part of men’s private property. Even in modern marriage, radical feminists argue that women who are married to men are under patriarchal rule and are still made to complete much of the unpaid labor in the household compared to their husbands.

Similarities

Despite the many differences between radical and liberal feminism, these branches have some similarities.

Liberal feminists generally support radical feminists’ views that abortion and other reproductive rights should be granted to women. They would also believe that women should have control and autonomy over their own lives and bodies.

Radical and liberal feminists both work to encourage gender equality in the private and public spheres. They have both also achieved legislative change for women’s rights and aim to end domestic violence obstacles that stop women from achieving an equal level to men.

A criticism of both radical and liberal feminism is that they are mainly prominent in Western cultures, aiming to tackle gender inequality, particularly for Western women.

Intersectional feminism would suggest that radical and liberal feminism may fail to account for different groups of women and how oppression affects them uniquely.

For instance, women who are of different ethnicities, gender identities, sexualities, disabilities, and social classes would have different experiences of gender inequality.

Cottais, C. (2020). Liberal feminism. Gender in Geopolitics Institute. Retrieved 2022, September, 2 from: https://igg-geo.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/IGG_CCottais_Liberal_feminism2020.pdf

Cottais, C. (2020). Radical Feminism. Gender in Geopolitics Institute. Retrieved 2022, September 2, from: https://igg-geo.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Technical-Sheet-Radical-feminism.pdf

Graham, G. (1994). Liberal vs radical feminism revisited. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 11(2), 155-170.

Oxley, J. C. (2011). Liberal feminism. Just the Arguments, 100, 258262.

Rowland, R., & Klein, R. (1996). Radical feminism: History, politics, action. Radically speaking: Feminism reclaimed, 9-36.

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July 18, 2024

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Radical anti-feminism the most prevalent form of violent extremism in Australia, report finds

by University of Melbourne

Nearly 20% of Australian men believe that feminism should be violently resisted, if necessary, new research from the University of Melbourne and the University of Queensland has found.

For their newly published report , researchers surveyed 1,020 people from across Australia and found that misogynistic beliefs were a significant predictor of most forms of violent extremism . The researchers also found if authorities recognized anti-feminist beliefs as a separate form of violent extremism, it would represent the most prevalent form of violent extremism in Australia today.

Among men surveyed, 19.4% believed it was legitimate to violently resist feminism and over 30% of all respondents agreed or slightly agreed with statements expressing hostile sexist views.

Report author University of Melbourne Dr. Sara Meger said the results showed the urgent need for security and policing agencies to take misogynistic and racist attitudes seriously as predictors of violent extremism, regardless of ideological or religious motivations.

"In light of the apparent targeting of women during the Bondi stabbings and the ongoing national domestic violence crisis, it is imperative that misogynistic attitudes be treated as a serious predictor of violent extremism, or we risk mistaking a deeply rooted and widespread security threat as just individualized and unconnected offending," Dr. Meger said.

"We were surprised by how prevalent anti-feminist violent extremist attitudes were in the responses. While existing early intervention strategies recognize the need to address societal drivers of radicalization, the role of gender is largely unaddressed in this policy environment."

The report aimed to examine the relationship between various attitudes and support for violent extremism among the general public in Australia.

In 2021, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) reclassified the terms it used to describe all forms of violent extremism to be either ideologically motivated or religiously motivated, arguing that the use of specific political or religious distinctions were both a distraction from the true nature of the threat and no longer useful descriptors of emerging forms of violent extremism.

The report recommended that misogynist and racist attitudes needed to be recognized as significant predictors of violent extremism and that both security and policing agencies should co-operate with programs on gender-based and family violence to develop better risk assessment tools, early warning systems, and rehabilitation and reintegration programs for violent extremist offenders.

Provided by University of Melbourne

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