radical feminism

Do i have to change my fucking tag to "100% self aware" or what?

You think a cool cat like me ain't up in that shit?

Actually alot of radical feminism is extremely phallocentric in that it locates the disturbance that unbalances some mythical natural healthy sexuality in the phallus, and since all subjectivity is based on this central cut, a rupture with "nature", a perversion, then subjectivity is essentially male.

a self-aware lure is no good to the fish like

I wish I didn't know exactly what you meant. Did you only pick up Valerie Solanos because of a quote in a Manics album sleeve? Fucking trend-whore!

the Manic Street Preachers did introduce me to radical feminism, it was me own wit that got me out of it.

I ran out of eyeliner and couldn't be arsed buying any more.

also my balls dropped. ;)

Fuck me you are a childish muppet, it's not like i'm proclaiming what temperature water boils at, i'm making an assertion about radical feminism based on a few of it's texts and their essentialist foundations. At this stage you are more than welcome to explain why you think i'm wrong and then the discussion develops, you don't say idiotic comments like "prove it", which is really on a power with "it's a free world".

well as i said when radical feminists imply a kind of natural harmoney, an untainted, real sexuality that is obscured and perverted by patriarchy they are infact making patriarchy and the phallus the bearer of subjectivity as it is it that disrupts the "natural order", they make the phallus the apple of eden.

also arf it's not about proving i'm wrong, it's about thinking through interpretations, seeing how useful they are or if they can be read in a deeper manner. As I said it's not something that can be proved right or wrong in a sense.

cheers you can be exhibit 1a, my point is that you make patriarchy the locus of subjectivity, women are nothing but passive victims, holes to be filled in with the phallus, not only in sex but in all aspects of life.

it's the implications from Dworkin and Mackinnon and their followers, in their analysis of culture and sex. Just think about the infamous radical feminist slogan; Man fucks women, Subject-verb-object.

But one could guess that thats where you start from. I mean, is fighting back a step away from oppression?

Your not concerned with voiceless oppressed women? Aren't they paradigmatic category of oppressed women?

which is turnt into a reified means of understanding the world, since patriarchy is soo total, then all sex is patriarchial and therefore the only sex possible in present circumstances is subject verb object. Furthermore the feelings of individual concrete women who disagree with such sweeping generalisations are meaningless as we all know that under patriarchy women are incapable of "meaningful consent" and are enslaved in layers of false consciousness. This is why Dworkin suggests that in order for subject verb object to be overcome men should stop using their penis.

I mean don't you wonder about the theorectical justifications are for lesbian seperatism or the various strains of feminism opposed to all penetrative sex, not to mention the tutts directed towards s&m and other forms of power dynamic role play?

I think all y'all are just attacking a straw man. Not every radical feminist is a carbon copy of Dworkin, just like not every communist is a carbon copy of Stalin.

I'm a radical feminist. I have nothing against my own penis. It's not about the goddamned penis. It's about a deeply entrenched dynamic of objectifying everything that doesn't have one, a dynamic that cuts through social strata, classes and even cultures. It's not something that will be solved by equality under capitalist law, but from what I see of anti-capitalist ideology, from anarchy to Bolshevism, it's not something that will be automagically solved by the abolition of personal property, either. No, I am not satisfied with women being freed by the revolution in the way that hammers and sickles will be freed from reification. Women, and non-men in general, should be recognized as subjects, both before and after the revolution.

Amazingly this post starts off complaining about strawmen arguments.

Who are you addressing this too and why? The discussion is slightly more concrete and nuanced than that vague stuff you just posted. We are examining "radical feminisms" (that's a specific form of feminism btw) historical opposition to S&M, transgender, and penetrative sex. We are not talking about radical feminism in the sense of every feminist who is radical.

... yes, and directed towards a straw-man (straw-woman?), that is not representative of radical feminism.

Are you denying that there is a branch of feminism stemming from the third wave that is known loosely as "radical feminism" and that it has historically been the theorectical grounding for seperatism, anti transgender, anti penetrative sex, anti porn and anti S&M and other forms of sexuality? That it is premised on understanding the relationship between men and women as that between two classes?

No.

I do deny that this loose renown is used by most people who refer to themselves as radical feminists. Hence, attacking it is attacking a straw-person.

Moreover, I also deny that most of what is not-so-loosely known as "porn" has anything to do with something resembling sexuality.

a) Your wrong about radical feminism, it's generally used in relation to a particular branch of feminist thought.

b) You might not think it's a "good" expression of sexuality but I find it very strange that you don't think it has anything to do with sexuality.

Not only that but the term porn is an extremely one, covering allsorts of crazy and not so crazy shit, from lesbian fisting, s&m, scatplay, pissing, spanking, uniform fetishes, bondage right through to hentai.

You know its funny, i was just watching the movie "Kinsey" last night and one of things he showed with remarkable abstract bourgeois scientific clarity is that for around 85% of women, all sexual stimulation is clitoral/labial, so being against reducing sex to penetration is a practical demand for sexual pleasure, whether it is a man or woman or someone in between providing that stimulation.

Also, in Lacanian and Klenian psychology/psychoanaysis, the phallus is not the literal physical object, and since a lot of radical feminism has some awareness of Lacan and/or Klein, it is usually a complete mistake to take the notion of phallic and phallus as literally referring to the penis. c.f. Zizek and Robert Young, among others, for radical Lacanian and Kleinian analyses.

Chris

p.s. Revol, Kinsey is a great argument for the crisis created by gurrier's bullshit defense of scientific method as transhistorically accessing truth.

Alright - what definition of radical feminism are you using, because it's clearly not one that anyone else would recognise. It has a very specific definition and refers to a very specific body of work and activism. If you're going to defend it, it would seem like a good idea to know what that is.

Radical feminism is a strand of third wave feminism descended from Dworkin and MacKinnon in North America and Jeffreys and the Leeds/London separatist axis in the UK. That's a matter of history, that's just what it is. It is particularly associated with anti-porn and anti-BDSM activity. It is transphobic as fuck as the slightest glance at all the major theorists and most of the blogs and publications you're lauding will reveal. If you haven't seen this you haven't been paying attention - that simple.

It defends these positions by arguing that heterosexuality is a system of power backed up by the state sanctioned violence of rape. It sees patriarchy as operating primarily through people's desires which must be deconstructed and rebuilt. This is consciousness raising, the central radfem tactic. There is disagreement over whether it is possible for men to go through this process, but all agree that most people's desires and responses are basically wrong, constructed by a patriarchal society to the individual's detriment for the perpetuation of male power.

Our criticisms are based on this and on the logics underlying it that many radfems would deny operate, in the same way that Trots would deny being elitist.

arf your really an idiotic twat.

Firstly I'm not some dickhead who hasn't bothered to read large parts of radical feminist theory in full. I have and I probably understood them alot better than you, as you don't seem to have much of a notion to it's underlying assumptions which put it in conflict with transgender, and S&M lesbians, and which other sub culture doesn't match up to it's jesuit morality.

I never actually called seperatism "anti man", that's something you said, in your typical passive aggressive manipulative manner. I don't actually think it's anti man at all, infact I think it goes a huge way in reinforcing masculine and feminine gender constructs, dividing society as it does into two classes, men and women.

Who said anything about physical attacks? I never? Infact all I said was that redfem has great issues with transgender people, something you clearly understand and accept yourself. Your point about het males is idiotic, you are seeking to compare an ideological feminist tendency with a demagraphic that includes over 40% (if we believe those ones whose wives just don't understand them) of the worlds population. It's also completely wankerish as you seen to be making some point against me with it, which would only make sense if I somehow had a connection and shared responsibility with every hetero male.

I have never heard of trans folk being vocally anti feminist, I have heard them get pissed off at the narrow minded shite that often passes for radical feminism but as far as i'm aware they are generally in favour of equality between all sexes and genders. As for attempting to define what "woman" is, well I agree that would be idiotic, unfortunately it's an idiocy that radfems embrace with a grasp so poor that i'm left wondering if they have opposiable thumbs. What you actually mean is that trans people threaten the radfems defining of woman, afterall how dare they, infact I reckon youse should treat them in the same way 'real men' do when they threaten their definition of what a 'real man' is.

As for my opposition to identity politics in transgender circles, well i've said before that i oppose any attempts to essentialise gender around having or not having tits etc, infact you never responded to that post of mine.

thanks for the lesson there, i'm ever so silly, i thought the ladies just loved lying back and thinking of England. Thanks for the sex tips, but i'm alright.

Anyway the radfem take on penetrative sex isn't just that there's more to sex than that, it was based on the assertion that penetrative sex under patriarchy (and remember patriarchy is totalised and not reducable to this or that man) was essentially rape or a variation on it. Now since I think we both agree that we live in what could be described as a patriarchial society, does that not mean penetrative sex is reactionary and reinforces women as objects under the current relations.

my position is that anything that is pro woman is vague meaningless nonsense and would be best kept for Dove adverts or some such shite. On the other hand specific struggles around womens reproductive rights, child care, maternity and paternity leave and pay, domestic abuse, stigmatising of single mothers, well i've got alot of time for them, though clearly within an libertarian communist praxis.

What I don't have time for are a bunch of arrogant gobshites who think they speak for all womanhood, who think they own the right to define it and who put their half baked, sub freudian theories into sex and sexuality above the desires and enjoyment of billions of individuals.

Now seriously fuck off you manipulative, cretinous gimp.