You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Radical Feminism’ tag.
“White working-class women appear to be more open than men are to progressive appeals (62 percent of them voted for Trump, as opposed to 72 percent of their male counterparts). That suggests that the most promising path forward would be to agitate for a robust economic agenda focused on women’s needs: a $15 minimum wage, universal child care and pre-K, paid family leave, free college, and tough laws that crack down on wage theft and guarantee fair scheduling and equal pay for women. One of the strengths of such an agenda is that its appeal is hardly limited to women. In our brave new economy, increasing numbers of men now labor under the kinds of precarious working conditions—low wages, minimal benefits, little if any security—that have traditionally characterized women’s employment. Policies like these would help the men, too. They would not be not just righteous, but politically pragmatic.
But it’s not only the Democratic Party that is badly in need of reform. The feminist movement, too, needs to reorient itself. Feminists would be well-advised to ease up on pop culture navel-gazing and corporate pseudo-feminist drivel like Lean In. They need to shift their central focus from the glass ceiling to the sticky floor, which, after all, is the place where most women dwell. A feminism that delivers for working-class women by addressing their material needs could expand feminism’s base and bring about a much-needed feminist revival. A feminism that delivers for working-class women by addressing their material needs could radically expand feminism’s base. And should feminism once again become a vibrant bottom-up mass movement instead of a top-down elite concern, there’s no telling how far it could go.”
This is an excerpt from Meghan Murphy’s manifesto posted on the Feminist Current titled : ‘We need to be braver’ — women challenge ‘gender identity’ and the silencing of feminist discourse.
““Cis” is another term that has been adopted by those who wish to see themselves or present themselves as progressive but that is rejected by radical feminists. “Cis,” we are told, means “a person whose self-identity conforms with the gender that corresponds to their biological sex.” Therefore, a “cis woman” would be a woman who identifies with femininity, which I most certainly do not, nor do many other women. I reject the notion of femininity and I therefore reject the notion that women who have femininity imposed on them are either privileged or are naturally inclined towards their subordinate status. “Cis” is a regressive term, as it pretends as though women somehow identify with their own oppression. Nonetheless, women who reject the term are labelled “transphobic” — yet another way feminist speech is shut down and the general questioning of gender politics is disallowed.”
The current state of gender politics makes raising objections against the trans-narrative dangerous for women. Any public narrative should be subject to scrutiny and critical analysis – shutting down dissenting voices is not progressive in any sense of the word.
I applaud Ms.Murphy’s stand on gender politics and strongly encourage people to read her website and support her in her struggle to defend the rights of women.
Smells like 1984…
“Identity has become the axis of so much university activism because, for all the radical posturing associated with it, identity politics does not threaten the established order of society. It promotes a moralistic and self-indulgent anti-politics, where a person’s use of language and the purity of their thinking matters more than confronting collectively the material conditions and social relations under which they are forced to live. It creates a simulation of political struggle – one that doesn’t merely fail to challenge the material inequality and unfreedom of late capitalism, but fundamentally aligns with the dynamics and interests of its atomised, spectacle-driven society. It is a perfect mirror of consumerism, playing-upon the individual’s desires for real freedom, only to perpetuate and prettify the conditions of their alienation.”
Control the language, control the people. Look how far we’ve fallen – stating woman = adult human female is suddenly a radical act with the potential of ruining lives/careers.
“[T]he goal of feminism is not to validate every feeling that every person has ever felt. the goal of feminism is to liberate women from patriarchy, and feminism will accomplish this by being critically analytical in order to reveal the truth about sex and gender, in order to build a world that accommodates female bodies to the same degree that the world accommodates male bodies”
A conversation gleaned from Stardate Whenever –
“I was chatting with one of my managers and he told me he does drag performance and identifies as genderqueer. Which, you know, obviously I disagree with that terminology.
He had just been reprimanded at work for wearing makeup. In the same day that I was reprimanded for not wearing makeup.
And I just kept thinking about how while we framed it differently politically, we both were pissed that we were not allowed to do something because of our sex.
What was interesting is that he framed it as an invalidation of his identity whereas I framed it as an enforcement of my oppression. In my opinion, that is the big difference–I framed it as an oppressive system which people of my sex face, he framed is as a system he had not been allowed to opt out of. So it was the difference between an individual mindset and one of collective action.
Which of course became even more obvious when he explained to me the reasons why I *should* wear makeup to work.”
See the problem? The idea that your ‘identity’ is infringed upon and therefore the battle must be to change the rules within the system so you can validate your choices. The individual battle serves only the individual and as a by-product of the individual struggle the overall system is reinforced.
Is the quality of the choice ever examined? Is the nature of the system ever examined? Nope Nope Nope. The battle for individual identity choice is necessarily framed as making advancement within the oppressive framework of the gender hierarchy, thus to be affirmed in your choice, is simultaneously affirming the validity of the system. The status-quo is not threatened.
In this case the role of gender in society is the overarching problem for both people. Gender is an hierarchy, constructed and designed for use in society to keep one class of people favoured and the other class oppressed.
The battle that should be fought, and is being fought by radical feminists, is not for getting a better a ‘choice’ within a shitty system, but for the destruction/rollback/replacement of the toxic system itself.
What we are exposed to in childhood helps set the tone of our expectations later in life. Consider the female role models little girls and boys are exposed to while they are making up their minds on what and how they want to be.
-Woman Hating. Andrea Dworkin
Contrast this passage with male role models who are actively adventuring, swashbuckling, and generally getting shit done. The gender roles and socialization are woven deeply into every aspect of our society. Gender roles are for the most part, destructive social constructs, whose expectations and limitations hurt women and men. We should strive to counter the normative messages that our socialization breeds into us because ultimately, gender is a hierarchy that happens to discriminate against half the human race and we need less oppression not more in our society.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…