Radfem Refreshment
I am so out of it this spring (for various undisclosed reclusive reasons) that all kinds of stuff happens without my hearing about it. Are we at war with anybody new? Have any more European countries gone fascist? What’s the score on the celebrity death/African adoption/drug rehab front? For all I know a giant asteroid has hit the Earth and there’s nuclear winter going on outside.
Which is why I’ve just now discovered that Heart has put up the First-ever Carnival of Radical Feminists. I actually remember this being bruited about a few months ago, maybe over at Laurelin’s, and thinking at the time, “Cool!” But then I had to get back to my punishing schedule of sitting on the sofa and staring into space, and I forgot.
Fortunately Heart is not the kind of feminist who spends hours sitting on the sofa and staring into space. No, Heart’s the kind of feminist who spends hours writing serious posts and pulling together outstanding material from other serious, non-into-space-gazing feminists, with the result being a Carnival that is chock full of radfem goodness. And god knows this old world needs as much radical feminism as it can get.
As Heart says, after listing some of the major feminist accomplishments of the past 40 years:
By and large, it is radical feminism and radical feminists which are and were responsible for all of these many gains for women. When someone asks –- usually adversarially and usually as part of some ongoing campaign to discredit radical feminists –- what radical feminists actually do besides theorize, I can only marvel at the success male heterosupremacy has had in some quarters in managing to conceal or make invisible this revolution which radical feminists really have made in our time, a revolution which has benefited all women in ways which are too numerous to even begin to list and which is ongoing, despite massive, concerted, ongoing attempts to turn the clock back to the days when women were the property of men. I know, too, that it must be difficult for young people to imagine days I remember so well, when as women we lived without the benefit of anything on the list above.
Radical feminism is and has always been the engine that drives feminist advancement. Because to be a radical feminist is to radically question the status quo, to go to the root of things, to see what kind of nasty patriarchal worms are squirming under those rocks. I just wish a giant Radical Feminist asteroid would come along and smush those worms. Smush! Smush!
In the meantime, though, we have radical feminism itself, which, while not as spectacular as a giant asteroid, is, in its own strange way, almost as powerful. And if you have no idea what I’m talking about, then by all means go over to Heart’s and start reading. Actually, go over to Heart’s even if you do know what I’m talking about. She’s got the good stuff.
9 Responses to “Radfem Refreshment”
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Pony says:
Amazing isn’t it? So wonderful to read all those posts. But you know, there’s another installment coming up with the host asking for submissions. Something of yours, something from some other blog… . Hmmm I’m thinking; that book length tome between Sam and Cicely which lumbers here, somewhere.
May 22nd, 2007 at 2:27 pm EST -
Heart says:
Hey, thanks, Dr. Violet Socks! So when are you hosting? :P
Heart
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cicely says:
Maybe this goes without saying but I’m going to say it anyway.
Many, many feminists who would not now and may never have shared a good portion of the views expressed in the posts of the first Carnival of Radical Feminists have also contributed greatly to the gains for women listed by Heart, which she attributes ‘by and large’ to radical feminists - and I may be wrong, but I think she means radical - like herself.
I know your definition of radical feminism is broadish, Violet - and would actually include me, as I understand it - but I would more likely qualify as ‘the fun kind’, I feel sure, in Hearts view. Anyway, just in case there’s anyone at all out there who’s reading the carnival posts, referenced from here, and is under the impression that women owe all that’s been gained ‘by and large’ to the anti-pornography, anti-prostitution, anti-BDSM etc ideology mostly represented in the carnival - I’m here to assure you that this is most definitely not the case.
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cicely says:
Sorry about the layout above - I had to copy and paste because of a problem I had before - and sorry if I seem to be having an unnecessary stir. Not trying to start an arguement really, but this did stick in my craw a bit - whatever a craw is.
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Violet says:
I think that when Heart attributes those gains to radical feminists, she’s being historically accurate. And radical feminists is a definition that goes way back before the 80s split into anti-porn and other factions, as you know.
It’s a fact that it’s always been the radicals who have pushed through the big social changes, from contraception to abortion to rape awareness to on and on and on.
Cicely, I am confused as to why you see the carnival as being just the anti-porn segment of the radical spectrum. Heart included some posts on that subject, but that was a minority. The posts covered global violence against women, honor killings, mutilations, trafficking, reproductive rights, poverty, medicine, spirituality, lesbian separatism, etc., etc….
I mean, I’m hardly a lesbian separatist (in fact I’m probably the opposite of that, if such a thing is possible!) and most of us aren’t, but they deserve a place at the radical table.
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cicely says:
Cicely, I am confused as to why you see the carnival as being just the anti-porn segment of the radical spectrum. Heart included some posts on that subject, but that was a minority. The posts covered global violence against women, honor killings, mutilations, trafficking, reproductive rights, poverty, medicine, spirituality, lesbian separatism, etc., etc….
I mean, I’m hardly a lesbian separatist (in fact I’m probably the opposite of that, if such a thing is possible!) and most of us aren’t, but they deserve a place at the radical table.
Your objectivity is admirable, Violet, and I certainly don’t disagree that different ideas about sources of and solutions to identified problems for women (from a radical - i.e.to the roots - search) deserve a place at the radical table. I guess that’s even the point I felt I was making from a different perspective.That is, that most often it is those of us who aren’t anti-porn, anti-prostitution, anti-believing transexuals when they describe their own lived experience - transexuals who are also feminists, etc, who are denied that place. So, when Heart writes ‘By and large it was radical feminists etc’, does she mean to be inclusive of and honour these feminists’ contributions to the efforts to expose and combat the things you list in your first paragraph above about which she has presented posts? My gut reaction was ‘probably not’, and that’s where I was writing from.
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Violet says:
Okay, I see.
But if Heart actually meant “anti-porn feminists did all this,” then that would be an amazing thing for Heart to say. Like saying “anti-porn feminists got us the vote!” Very anachronistic. You know, I read that list and registered it as a greatest hits countdown of the things radical (or “militant” - we were called that too in America, don’t know about Oz) were fighting for from the late 60s on.
I believe that what you’re thinking is that Heart defines modern radical feminism as being absolutely synonymous with anti-porn feminism (though does she? I’m not sure), and is retrojecting that definition into the past. But I doubt that she is really doing that retrojecting, since it is historically inaccurate.
As for the modern synonymity between ‘radical feminism’ and ‘anti-porn feminism,’ at least in the blogosphere, I continue to be uncomfortable with that, even though I’m anti-porn myself. I’ve been a radical feminist since the 70s — long before the split over pornography into factions — and I often take a long view of our movement, even going back into the 19th century. I know that ‘radical feminism’ is broader than anti-porn, and that rads themselves have deeply disagreed about what measures are appropriate. It’s easier for us to agree on the problem (patriarchy) than on how to fix it. Sexuality has always been thorny. For a long time the majority radfem view was that prostitution needed to be completely legalized!
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Violet says:
That is, that most often it is those of us who aren’t anti-porn, anti-prostitution, anti-believing transexuals when they describe their own lived experience - transexuals who are also feminists, etc, who are denied that place.
One other thing I wanted to mention: it is certainly true that the majority of radical feminists (including myself) see the majority of modern porn as problematic — I’m putting aside lesbian porn because I know absolutely nothing about it, and just talking about the hetero porn that is so dominant and increasingly horrific. We can disagree about how to deal with it, and whether erotic material in a non-sexist world could be better, but most radfems agree that the existing porn landscape is grotesque.
But “anti-BDSM”? “Anti-transexual”? I realize there are individual feminists who have been or are against those things, but I don’t for a minute accept that those are radical feminist positions (as opposed to the positions of some individual feminists, radical or otherwise).
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cicely says:
I think it would be true to say that anyone hosting a Carnival of Radical Feminists couldn’t know what the position on sexuality issues are of every poster about other subjects. The acid test I suppose would be whether any Carnival of Radical *Feminists* host would include a post on a different issue from a feminist who’s known to support the struggle of sex workers for human, legal and workers rights. If not, they would be insisting that a feminist holding those views cannot be a radical feminist. And if they don’t make a distinction between past and present radical feminism (somehow address that -at least in the blogosphere - synonymity you’re uncomfortable with) they’re kind of invisibilising the work (past and present) of feminists who once did and perhaps still do regard *themselves* as radical. Maybe not for you, Violet, with the long view you take, but perhaps for others. I could be wrong about that, but it’s worth considering I think. For the record, I guess I might call myself a liberal radical feminist if I had to call myself anything.
And, yes, we were also referred to as ‘militant’ feminists through the 70’s and 80’s in NZ (I came to Oz in 1989) if we delved (as I did and do) any deeper into the issues than say a reformist or libertarian feminist would.
