radical feminism essays

Radical Feminism: Definition, Theory & Examples

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.

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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.

On This Page:

Radical feminism is a perspective within feminism that calls for a radical reordering of society in order to eliminate patriarchy, which it sees as fundamental to the oppression of women. It analyses the role of the sex and gender systems in the systemic oppression of women and argues that the eradication of patriarchy is necessary to liberate women.

Key Takeaways

• Radical feminists believe that men are the enemy and that marriage and family are the key institutions that allow patriarchy to exist.
• For radical feminists in order for equality to be achieved patriarchy needs to be overturned. They argue that the family needs to be abolished and a system of gender separatism needs to be instituted for this to happen.
• Sommerville argues that radical feminists fail to see the improvements that have been made to women’s experiences of the family. With better access to divorce and control over their fertility women are no longer trapped by family. She also argues that separatism is unobtainable due to heterosexual attraction.

What Is Radical Feminism?

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

Radical feminists believe that the cause of gender inequality is based on men’s need or desire to control women. The definition of the word ‘radical’ means ‘of or relating to the root’.

Radical feminists thus see patriarchy as the root cause of inequality between men and women and they seek to up-root this. They aim to address the root causes of oppression through systemic change and activism, rather than through legislative or economic change.

Radical feminism requires a global change of the system. Radical feminists theorize new ways to think and apprehend the relationships between men and women so that women can be liberated.

Radical feminism sees women as a collective group that has been and is still being oppressed by men. Its intent is focused on being women-centered, with women’s experiences and interests being at the forefront of the theory and practice. It is argued by some to be the only theory by and for women (Rowland & Klein, 1996).

What Are The Principles Of Radical Feminism?

Below are some of the key areas of focus which are essential to understanding radical feminism:

Patriarchal institutions

Radical feminists believe that there are existing political, social, and other institutions that are inherently tied to the patriarchy.

This can include government laws and legislature which restricts what women can do with their bodies, and the church, which has long restricted women to the maternal role, and rejects the idea of non-reproductive sexuality.

Traditional marriage is also defined as a patriarchal institution according to radical feminists since it makes women part of men’s private property.

Even today, marriage can be seen as an institution perpetuating inequalities through unpaid domestic work, most of which is still done by women.

Control over women’s bodies

According to radical feminists, patriarchal systems attempt to gain control over women’s bodies. Patriarchal institutions control the laws of reproduction where they determine whether women have the right to an abortion and contraception.

Thus, women have less autonomy over their own bodies. Kathleen Barry stated in her book Female Sexual Slavery (1979) that women in marriage are seen to be ‘owned’ by their husband.

She also suggested that women’s bodies are used in advertising and pornography alike for the male use.

Women are objectified

From a radical feminist standpoint, the patriarchy, societal sexism, sexual violence, and sex work all contribute to the objectification of women.

They accuse pornography of objectifying and degrading women, displaying unequal male-female power relations. With prostitution, radical feminists argue that it trivializes rape in return for payment and that prostitutes are sexually exploited.

The struggle against pornography has come to occupy such a central position in the radical feminist critique of male supremacist relations of power.

Campaigns against this are intended to tell women how men are willingly being trained to view and objectify them (Thompson, 2001).

Violence against women

Radical feminists believe that women experience violence by men physically and sexually, but also through prostitution and pornography.

They believe that violence is a way for men to gain control, dominate, and perpetuate women’s subordination. According to radical feminists, violence against women is not down to a few perpetrators, but it is a wider, societal problem.

They claim there is a rape culture that is enabled and encouraged by a patriarchal society.

Transgender disagreement

There is disagreement about transgender identity in the radical feminist community. While some radical feminists support the rights of transgender people, some are against the existence of transgender individuals, especially transgender women.

Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERF) are members of the radical feminist community who do not acknowledge that transgender women are real women and often want to exclude them from ‘women-only’ groups.

For this reason, TERFs often reduce gender down to biological sex differences and do not support the rights of all those who identify as being a woman.

What Are The Goals Of Radical Feminism?

Structural change.

Radical feminists aim to dismantle the entire system of patriarchy, rather than adjust the existing system through legal or social efforts, which they claim does not go far enough.

They desire this structural change since they argue that women’s oppression is systemic, meaning it is produced by how society functions and is found in all institutions.

They believe that institutions including the government and religion are centered historically in patriarchal power and thus need to be dismantled.

They also criticize motherhood, marriage, the nuclear family , and sexuality, questioning how much culture is based on patriarchal assumptions. They would like to see changes in how these other institutions function.

Bodily autonomy

Radical feminists emphasize the theme of the body, specifically on the reappropriation of the body by women, as well as on the freedom of choice. They want to reclaim their bodies and choose to be able to do what they want with their bodies.

They have argued for reproductive rights for women which would give them the freedom to make choices about whether they want to give birth.

This also includes having access to safe abortions, birth control, and getting sterilized if this is what a woman wants to do.

End violence against women

Radical feminists aim to shed light on the disproportionate amount of violence that women face at the hands of men. They argue that rape and sexual abuse are an expression of patriarchal power and must be stopped.

Through dismantling the patriarchy and having justice for victims of violence on the basis of sex, radical feminists believe there will be less instances of this violence.

Many also argue that pornography and other types of sex work are harmful and encourage violence and domination of men over women and should be stopped. They believe that sex work falls under the patriarchal oppression of women and is exploitative, although some radical feminists disagree with this position.

Women-centered strategies

A main part of radical feminism is that they want strategies to be put in place to help women. This can include the creation of shelters for abused women and better sex education to raise awareness of consent.

Many radical feminists strive for establishing women-centered social institutions and women-only organizations so that women are separated from men who may cause them harm.

For instance, they may be against having gender neutral public bathrooms as this increases women’s risk of being abused by a man.

This is also where TERFs can be critical of transgender people as they do not want them in women-only spaces since they do not see a transwoman as a woman.

The History Of Radical Feminism

Radical feminism mainly developed during the second wave of feminism from the 1960s onwards, primarily in Western countries. It is influenced by left-wing social movements such as the civil rights movement.

It is thought to have been constructed in opposition to other feminist movements at the time: Liberal and Marxist feminism. Liberal feminism only demanded equal rights within the system of society and is criticized for not going far enough to make actual change.

Marxist feminism , on the other hand, confined itself to an economic analysis of women’s oppression and believed that women’s liberation comes from abolishing capitalism.

Although becoming popularized in the 1960’s there are believed to be radical feminists decades before this time.

For example, some of the actions of the women in the women’s suffrage movement in the early 20th century can be considered radical.

Likewise, a 1911 radical feminist review in England titled The Free Woman published weekly writings about revolutionary ideas about women, marriage, politics, prostitution, sexual relations, and issues concerning women’s oppression and strategies for ending it.

It was eventually banned by booksellers and many suffragists at the time objected to it because of its critical position on the right to vote as the single issue which would ensure women’s equality (Rowland & Klein, 1996).

Radical feminism as a movement is thought to have emerged in 1968 as a response to deeper understandings of women’s oppression (Atkinson, 2014). The early years of second wave feminism were marked by the efforts of young radical feminists to establish an identity for their growing movement.

They argued that women needed to engage in a revolutionary movement which goes beyond liberal and Marxist movements.

A significant radical feminist group which emerged around this time is the New York Radical Women group, founded by Shulamith Firestone and Pam Allen.

They attempted to spread the message that ‘sisterhood is powerful’. A well-known protest of this group occurred during the Miss America Pageant in 1968.

Hundreds of women marched with signs proclaiming that the pageant was a ‘cattle auction’. During the live broadcast of this event, the women displayed a banner that read ‘Women’s Liberation’, which brought a great deal of public awareness of the radical feminist movement.

A noteworthy writing prior to this time which may have been influential to the movement is Simone de Beauvoir’s 1949 book titled The Second Sex .

In this book, she understands women’s oppression by analyzing the particular institutions which define women’s lives, such as marriage, family, and motherhood.

Another influential writing is Betty Friedan’s 1963 book titled The Feminine Mystique which addresses women’s dissatisfaction with societal standards and expectations.

Her book gave a voice to women’s frustrations with their limited gender roles and helped to spark widespread activism for gender equality.

Strengths And Criticisms Of Radical Feminism

Radical feminism is thought to expand on earlier branches of feminism since it seeks to understand and dismantle the roots of women’s oppression. It is considered stronger than liberal feminism which only seeks to make changes within the already established system, which is considered not enough to make actual change.

Radical feminism has also been responsible for many of the advances made during the second wave of feminism . This is particularly true when it comes to women’s choice over their bodies and violence against women.

Due to the activism of radical feminists, sexual violence such as rape and domestic violence are now considered crimes in most Western countries.

It has also been recognized that violence against women is not a series of isolated cases, but rather a societal phenomenon. Radical feminists have thus increased awareness of this issue.

A prominent criticism of radical feminism is the transphobia associated with TERFs. Many people who relate to a lot of the original ideas of radical feminism may have stopped identifying as a radical feminist due to its association with TERFs.

It is not only transphobic but is part of a wider movement which encompasses its feminist stance to partner with conservatives, with a goal to endanger and get rid of transgender people.

While radical feminism may have been progressive during its peak, the movement can be criticized for lacking an intersectional lens. It views gender as the most important axis of oppression and sees women as a homogenous group collectively oppressed by men.

It does not always take into consideration the different experiences of oppression suffered by women with disabilities, women of color, or migrant women for instance.

As with a lot of branches of feminism, radical feminism is often dominated by white women. Radical feminists are often criticized for their paradoxical views of bodily autonomy.

They promote freedom of choice when it comes to women and what they do with their bodies, but they do not support women who choose to engage in sex work. They argue that all sex workers are oppressed, without recognizing that a good number of them use this work to reappropriate their own bodies or even to play on male domination.

The critical view that radical feminists have about sex work has contributed to the further stigmatization of this industry and it contradicts their message of ‘my body, my choice’ and their opposition to conservative views of sexuality.

If they supported bodily autonomy, then they should be happy to see a woman choosing to engage in sex work, as long as this is what she is choosing to do.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are there different types of radical feminists.

According to Rosemarie Tong (2003), there are two types of radical feminism: libertarian and cultural.Radical libertarian feminists assert that an exclusively feminine gender identity limits a woman’s development, so they encourage women to become androgynous, who embody both masculine and feminine characteristics.

Radical cultural feminists argue that women should be strictly female and feminine and should not try to be like men. However, not all radical feminists fit into one of these categories.

What are radical feminists’ views on crime?

Radical feminists recognize that there is a disproportionate amount of violence against women, including domestic abuse. In the 1970’s radical feminists labored to reform the public’s response to crimes such as rape and domestic violence.

Before the revision of policies and laws, rape victims were often blamed for their victimization. Due to the help of radical feminists, there is more justice for victims of gender-based violence.

What are radical feminists’ views on the family?

Adrienne Rich (1980) analyzed the compulsory nature of heterosexuality and claims that men fear that women could be indifferent to them and only allow them emotional and economic access on their own terms.

She suggests that the compulsory nature of heterosexual relationships allows men access to women as natural and their right. The family is considered to be an institution, which starts off with marriage and a legal contract where the reproduction of children naturally follows.

Many radical feminists may engage in political lesbianism, refuse to marry, and remain child-free as a way to not feel tied down by patriarchal institutions.

Atkinson, T. G. (2014). The Descent from Radical Feminism to Postmodernism. In presentation at the conference “ A Revolutionary Moment: Women’s Liberation in the Late 1960s and the Early 1970s,” Boston University.

Barry, K. (1979).  Female sexual slavery . NyU Press.

Cottais, C. (2020). Radical Feminism. Gender in Geopolitics Institute. Retrieved 2022, August 19, from: https://igg-geo.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Technical-Sheet-Radical-feminism.pdf

De Beauvoir, S. (2010). The second sex . Knopf.

Friedan, B. (2010). The feminine mystique . WW Norton & Company.

Greer, G. (1971). The female eunuch .

Greer, G. (2007). The whole woman . Random House.

Nachescu, V. (2009). Radical feminism and the nation: History and space in the political imagination of second-wave feminism.  Journal for the Study of Radicalism, 3 (1), 29-59.

Rich, A. (1980). Compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian existence. Signs: Journal of women in culture and society, 5 (4), 631-660.

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

Thompson, D. (2001).  Radical feminism today . Sage.

Tong, R., & Botts, T. F. (2003). Radical Feminism. Encyclopedia of Feminist Theories . London: Routledge.

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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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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 .

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Liberal vs Radical Feminism Revisited

1994, Journal of Applied Philosophy

This essay considers the movement away from a feminism based upon liberal political principles, such as John Stuart Mill espoused, and towards a radical feminism which seeks to build upon more recent explorations of psychology, biology and sexuality. It argues that some of these moves are philosophically suspect and that liberal feminism can accommodate the more substantial elements in these radical lines of thought.

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Published, 2015: The International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2nd Edition, Elsevier. Emerging from mainstream liberal feminism of the late 1960s and early 1970s, radical feminists challenge the prevailing view that liberating women consists in reforming social institutions such as marriage, family, or the organization of work. They argued that insofar as a deeper analysis of marriage, family, and work shows the extent to which these institutions continue to privilege some men (white, middle-class, predominantly Christian, and educated) over other men and virtually all women, reform alone cannot achieve the equality liberal feminists envisioned. Radical feminists promote not reform but revolutionary change in the ways we conceive gender, sexual identity, and sexuality. The aim is to end the oppression of women by creating first awareness and then resistance not only to male-dominated or patriarchal institutions, but to the conceptual frameworks that sustain them. However, if the radical lesbian feminist critique of what has grown well-beyond capitalist heteropatriarchy, AKA, corporatist and globalist heteropatriarchy, is correct, this endeavor is more than just important; it is necessary to the emancipation of women. Why? Because in a world confronted by the possibility of ecological apocalypse, critique which represents those most affected--especially women and minorities among women--may be that which offers the most hope.

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Feminist Political Philosophy

This entry turns to how feminist philosophers have intervened in and, to a great extent, transformed the intellectual field known as political philosophy, which for millennia had largely ignored matters of sex and gender. Traditional political philosophy largely sidelined and excluded the private sphere and civil society from political theorizing, the very realms in which women were largely sequestered. It focused instead on matters of state and governance. The rise of liberalism since the seventeenth century abetted this tendency by drawing a sharp line between the public and the private realms. What happened in the household, it held, were not matters of political concern. Today, thanks largely to feminist interventions, political philosophy is a far richer field of philosophical inquiry. It understands power and governance much more broadly.

In its own right, feminist political philosophy is a branch of both feminist philosophy and political philosophy. As a branch of feminist philosophy, it serves as a form of critique or a hermeneutics of suspicion (Ricœur 1970). That is, it serves as a way of opening up or looking at the political world as it is usually understood and uncovering ways in which women and their current and historical concerns are poorly depicted, represented, and addressed. As a branch of political philosophy, feminist political philosophy serves as a field for developing new ideals, practices, and justifications for how political institutions and practices should be organized and reconstructed. Indeed, the feminist refrain that “the personal is political” speaks to the fact that feminist political philosophy is not only concerned with concepts that have always been mainstays in political philosophy (e.g., justice, equality, freedom), but with redefining and expanding what is considered “political” in the first place (e.g., the family, the workplace, reproduction; Hirschmann 2007). In this sense, feminist political philosophy may be the paradigmatic branch of feminist philosophy.

While feminist philosophy has been instrumental in critiquing and reconstructing many branches of philosophy, from aesthetics to philosophy of science, feminist political philosophy is also paradigmatic because it best exemplifies the point of feminist theory, which is, to borrow a phrase from Marx, not only to understand the world but to change it (Marx 1845). And, though other fields have effects that may change the world, feminist political philosophy focuses most directly on understanding ways in which collective life can be improved. This project involves understanding the ways in which power emerges and is used or misused in public life (see the entry on feminist perspectives on power ). As with other kinds of feminist theory, common themes have emerged for discussion and critique, but there has been little in the way of consensus among feminist theorists on what is the best way to understand them. This introductory article lays out the areas of concern that have occupied this vibrant field of philosophy for the past forty years. It understands feminist philosophy broadly to include work conducted by feminist theorists doing this philosophical work from other disciplines, especially political science but also anthropology, comparative literature, law, and other programs in the humanities and social sciences.

1. Historical Context and Developments

2.1 feminist engagements with liberalism and neoliberalism, 2.2 radical feminism, 2.3 socialist, marxist, and materialist feminisms, 2.4 poststructuralist feminisms, 2.5 care, vulnerability, affect, 2.6 intersectional feminisms, 2.7 transnational, decolonial, and indigenous feminisms, 2.8 feminist democratic theory, 3. new directions in feminist political philosophy, other internet resources, related entries.

Historically, political philosophy focused on the state and various forms of governance. It largely ignored other realms as outside the scope of the political. In general, political thought presumed that political actors were necessarily male and that politics was a masculine enterprise (Okin 1979). It sharply distinguished the public realm of the state from the purportedly non-political realms of civil society and the household, hence forgoing any serious scrutiny of relations of domination in the private sphere. It presumed that women were naturally inferior to men and lacked the capacity to rule themselves. Hence traditional political thought deemed that it was appropriate for them to be ruled by their fathers or husbands, all in the sanctity of the home, immune from public scrutiny. These presuppositions went largely unremarked upon until some women began to demand the same “universal” human dignity that men were proclaiming in newly republican and democratic states of the eighteenth century (Gouges 1791). The first feminist theorists— avant la lettre of feminism—began questioning the tenets of political thought not as an abstract exercise but out of their very real, lived experience. As feminist activists and theorists entered the fray, they quickly pointed out how many of political theory’s presuppositions were thoroughly gendered. Over millennia, feminists noted, political thought coded the public realm as masculine and the private one as feminine; there was the public world of men’s work and the private domain of women’s labor. Political claims of universality were usually quite particular: for men alone.

As they did this work, drawing on their own experience, feminist political thinkers began creating new philosophical concepts. Early feminist thinkers pointed out how social conditions (such as the lack of education) diminished women’s capacities. Later, other theorists pointed to the ways that women and their concerns were excluded or sidelined. Already in the nineteenth century they were noticing how people are socially constituted. By the mid-twentieth century, again drawing from their experience and collective “consciousness-raising” groups, they began challenging norms that countenanced women being harassed on the street by catcalls and whistles. They created new concepts like “sexual harassment” and “objectification”. Over time feminist political philosophers began to notice deeper metaphysical presuppositions underlying gender divisions and to comment on how philosophy had long construed such fundamental concepts as reason, universality, and nature in thoroughly gendered and hence suspect ways. In doing this work, feminist philosophers began to transform the field of political philosophy itself, moving it from its narrow focus on governance to a broader focus on philosophical questions of identity, essence, equity, difference, justice, and the good life.

In the European and U.S. context, earlier generations of feminist scholarship and activism, including the first wave of feminism in the English-speaking world from the 1840s to the 1920s, focused on improving the political, educational, and economic system primarily for middle-class white women. Its greatest achievements were to develop a language of equal rights for women and to garner women the right to vote. Beginning in the 1960s, second wave feminists made further interventions in political theory by drawing on the language of the civil rights movements (e.g., the language of liberation) and on a new feminist consciousness that emerged through women’s solidarity movements and new forms of reflection that uncovered sexist attitudes and impediments throughout the whole of society.

These advances opened up new questions, namely: is there anything that unites women across cultures, time, and contexts? Just as Marxist theory sought out a universal subject in the person of the worker, feminists theorists sought out a commonality that united women across cultures, someone for whom feminist theory could speak. No sooner had that question been posed than it got taken down, as in the title of a paper co-written by the Latina feminist philosopher María Lugones and the white philosopher Elizabeth Spelman: “Have We Got A Theory For You: Feminist Theory, Cultural Imperialism, and the Demand for ‘The Woman’s Voice” (1986). This notion of a universal womanhood was also interrupted by other thinkers, such as bell hooks, saying that it excluded non-white and non-middle-class women’s experience and concerns. Hooks’ 1981 book titled Ain’t I a Woman? exposed mainstream feminism as a movement of a small group of middle- and upper-class white women whose experience was very particular, hardly universal. The work of Lugones, Spelman, hooks and also Cherríe Moraga, Gloria Anzaldúa, Audre Lorde, and others foregrounded the need to account for women’s multiple and complex identities and experiences. By the 1990s the debates about whether there was a coherent concept of woman that could underlie feminist politics was further challenged by non-Western women challenging the Western women’s movement as caught up in Eurocentric ideals that led to the colonization and domination of “Third World” people. What is now known as postcolonial and decolonial theories further heighten the debate between feminists who wanted to identify a universal feminist subject of woman (e.g., Okin, Nussbaum, and Ackerly) and those who call for recognizing multiplicity, diversity, and intersectionality (e.g., Spivak, Narayan, Mahmood, and Jaggar).

As a branch of political philosophy, feminist political philosophy has often mirrored the various divisions at work in political philosophy more broadly. Prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, political philosophy was usually divided into categories such as liberal, conservative, socialist, and Marxist. Except for conservatism, for each category there were often feminists working and critiquing alongside it. Hence, as Alison Jaggar’s classic text, Feminist Politics and Human Nature , spelled out, each ideological approach drew feminist scholars who would both take their cue from and borrow the language of a particular ideology (Jaggar 1983). Jaggar’s text grouped feminist political philosophy into four camps: liberal feminism, socialist feminism, Marxist feminism, and radical feminism. The first three groups followed the lines of Cold War global political divisions: American liberalism, European socialism, and a revolutionary communism (though few in the west would embrace Soviet-style communism). Radical feminism was the most rooted in specifically feminist approaches and activism, developing its own political vocabulary with its roots in the deep criticisms of patriarchy that feminist consciousness had produced in its first and second waves. Otherwise, feminist political philosophy largely followed the lines of traditional political philosophy. But this has never been an uncritical following. As a field bent on changing the world, even liberal feminist theorists tended to criticize liberalism as much or more than they embraced it, and to embrace socialism and other more radical points of view more than to reject them. Still, on the whole, these theorists generally operated within the language and framework of their chosen approach to political philosophy.

Political philosophy began to change enormously in the late 1980s, just before the end of the Cold War, with a new invocation of an old Hegelian category: civil society, an arena of political life intermediate between the state and the household. This was the arena of associations, churches, labor unions, book clubs, choral societies and manifold other nongovernmental yet still public organizations. In the 1980s political theorists began to turn their focus from the state to this intermediate realm, which suddenly took center stage in Eastern Europe in organizations that challenged the power of the state and ultimately led to the downfall of communist regimes. It also opened up more avenues, beyond the state, for feminist political theorizing.

After the end of the Cold War, political philosophy along with political life radically realigned. New attention focused on civil society and the public sphere, especially with the timely translation of Jürgen Habermas’s early work, the Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Habermas 1962 [1989]). Volumes soon appeared on civil society and the public sphere, focusing on the ways that people organized themselves and developed public power rather than on the ways that the state garnered and exerted its power. In fact, there arose a sense that the public sphere ultimately might exert more power than the state, at least in the fundamental way in which public will is formed and serves to legitimate—or not—state power. In the latter respect, John Rawls’s work was influential by developing a theory of justice that tied the legitimacy of institutions to the normative judgments that a reflective and deliberative people might make (Rawls 1971). By the early 1990s, Marxists seemed to have disappeared or at least become very circumspect (though the downfall of communist regimes needn’t have had any effect on Marxist analysis proper, which never subscribed to Leninist or Maoist thought). Socialists also retreated or transformed themselves into “radical democrats” (Mouffe [ed.] 1992a, 1993, 2000).

Now the old schema of liberal, radical, socialist, and Marxist feminisms were much less relevant. There were fewer debates about what kind of state organization and economic structure would be better for women and more debates about the value of the private sphere of the household and the nongovernmental space of associations. Along with political philosophy more broadly, more feminist political philosophers began to turn to the meaning and interpretation of civil society, the public sphere, and democracy itself. At this point in the early 1990s new work in political theory turning to civil society converged with feminist political theory that was rendering “political” realms that heretofore had been excluded from mainstream political theory. A synergy arose between those studying communitarianisms and feminists working in an ethics-of-care tradition: both pointed to how particular care relations and communal ties were as or more important than abstract principles of justice. They also began to question the binary and hierarchical divisions of justice over care, universality over particularity, and the right over the good, all metaphysical suppositions that were hardly neutral.

2. Contemporary Approaches and Debates

Political philosophy today is significantly more interesting, complex, and capacious thanks to feminist interventions in the field. While the previous section traces these interventions in broad terms, showing how political philosophy has been transformed as a result, this section will provide more detailed descriptions of some of the major sites of concern, debate, and critique animating feminist political philosophy. Because feminist political philosophy is often distinguished by its attention to the concrete realities shaping the lives of women, differences among women (cultural, social, economic, experiential) drive the rich diversity of work being done in this field, and difference itself is a major topic for theorizing with respect to foundational concepts like justice, freedom, and equality. Thus, it is important to emphasize that there is no one feminist perspective shaping work in feminist political philosophy, but a rich variety of perspectives emerging from particular contexts, histories, and traditions. They are sometimes in tension with each other.

Now in the second decade of the twenty-first century, feminist theorists are doing an extraordinary variety of work on matters political and democratic that confront new and/or pressing challenges. Similar developments in the areas of global ethics, public policy, human rights, disabilities studies, bioethics, climate change, and international development blur the distinction between theory and practice in philosophically generative ways.

For example, in global ethics there is a debate over whether there are universal values of justice and freedom that should be intentionally cultivated for women in the developing world or whether cultural diversity should be prioritized. Feminist theorists have sought to answer this question in a number of different and compelling ways. (For some examples see Ackerly 2000; Ackerly & Okin 1999; Benhabib 2002 and 2006; Butler 2000; Gould 2004; Khader 2019; Abu-Lughod 2013; Nussbaum 1999a; and Zerilli 2009; see also the entry on feminist perspectives on globalization .)

Modern abolitionist feminism is driven by the contributions of Black feminist philosophers like Angela Davis (2003, 2005, 2016, and in Davis, Dent, Meiners, & Richie 2022), whose work on the racialized prison industrial complex has helped spur the social-political movement to abolish prisons and develop new theories of restorative justice. Contemporary feminist theories of abolitionism have also built on Michel Foucault ’s critique of the prison, generating new work on political resistance to social structures of incarceration, as well as new ways of exploring foundational political concepts like privacy, freedom, and justice (Pitts 2021b; Zurn & Dilts [ed.] 2016; Zurn 2021). (See also Ruth Wilson Gilmore 2007 and 2022; Davis, Dent, Meiners, & Richie 2022; Guenther 2013; Montford & Taylor [eds] 2022.)

The work of feminist legal theorists (see the entry on feminist philosophy of law ) has been transformative on both the theory and policy fronts. In her 1989 article “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex” Kimberlé Crenshaw critiqued “single-axis” legal frameworks for failing to address race- and gender-based discrimination occurring at the intersection of multiple identities (Crenshaw 1989). Instead, she promoted an intersectional framework and, along with many others, developed a theory of intersectionality as an analytic framework for understanding how compounded and intermeshed systems of privilege and oppression structure experience (see also section 2.6 below). Along with Crenshaw, Anita Allen (2011), Martha Fineman (2008 [2011]), Catherine MacKinnon (1987, 1989), Mari J. Matsuda (1986, 1996), and Patricia J. Williams (1991) are prominent legal scholars whose work has made significant contributions to debates in feminist political philosophy.

Feminists contributions in ethics and moral psychology that emphasize relations of care have also had a major impact on political philosophy. This intervention has challenged masculinist characterizations of political subjects as highly independent and rational, as well as core concepts within political philosophy (e.g., justice, freedom, rights, sovereignty, and autonomy) derived from that characterization (see also section 2.5 below).

Likewise, new philosophical work on disabilities, as the entry on feminist perspectives on disability explains, is informed by a great deal of feminist theory, from standpoint philosophy to feminist phenomenology and feminist care ethics, as well as political philosophical questions of identity, difference, and diversity (see also Kittay & Carlson [ed.] 2010). Feminist political philosophers like Martha Nussbaum (2006) have drawn on the insights of philosophers of disability to offer new conceptions of justice (i.e., the capabilities approach).

Ultimately, the number of approaches that can be taken on any of these issues are as many as the number of philosophers there are working on them. The remainder of this entry will outline a variety of approaches to central concerns in feminist political philosophy, noting general family resemblances among these approaches (i.e., liberal feminist, radical feminist, Marxist feminist, socialist feminist) and highlighting new constellations that have emerged (e.g., intersectional feminisms).

Liberal feminism remains a strong current in feminist political thought. Following liberalism’s focus on freedom and equality, liberal feminism’s primary concern is to protect and enhance women’s personal and political autonomy, the first being the freedom to live one’s life as one chooses and the second being the freedom to help decide the direction of the political community. This follows from Enlightenment liberalism’s core norm of equal respect for personhood, where personhood is tied to moral equality, or the equal worth of persons as moral choosers (Nussbaum 1999a). This approach was invigorated with the publication of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice (1971) and subsequently his Political Liberalism (1993). Susan Moller Okin (1989, 1979, 1999), Eva Kittay (1999), Martha Nussbaum (2006), and Amy Baehr (2017) have used Rawls’s work productively to extend his theory to attend to women’s concerns.

Perhaps more than any other approach, liberal feminist theory parallels developments in liberal feminist activism. While feminist activists have waged legal and political battles to criminalize, as just one example, violence against women (which previously, in marital relations, hadn’t been considered a crime), feminist political philosophers who have engaged the liberal lexicon have shown how the distinction between private and public realms has served to uphold male domination of women by rendering power relations within the household as “natural” and immune from political regulation. Such political philosophy uncovers how seemingly innocuous and “commonsensical” categories have covert power agendas. For instance, Clare Chambers has critiqued the institution of marriage, arguing that it violates liberal political principles of equality and liberty (Chambers 2017a). Feminist critiques of the public/private split supported legal advances that finally led in the 1980s to the criminalization in the United States of spousal rape (Sigler & Haygood 1988). Efforts to politicize the private sphere have also challenged the capitalist economic system that relies on women’s unpaid labor. As the entry on feminist perspectives on class and work explains, scholars like Silvia Federici have argued that women’s unpaid housework and reproductive labor is essential to the social reproduction of capitalism that exploits women. The “wages for housework” movement led by scholar-activists like Federici is an attempt to demand remuneration for women’s unpaid work (Federici 2012, 2021; more on this Marxist feminist lineage in section 2.3 ). Reproductive justice, pornography, and sex work are yet more issues of convergence for feminist proponents and critics of liberalism alike (see the section on Reproductive Rights in the entry on feminist philosophy of law ; Altman & Watson 2019; Watson & Flanigan 2020). While the U.S. legal tradition has typically grounded abortion rights in the right to privacy, feminist political philosophers such as Shatema Threadcraft (2016) have understood reproductive justice as more fundamentally having to do with the freedom to choose one’s destiny. As such, it is connected to the history of other struggles for race and gender equality in earlier eras.

Carole Pateman and Charles Mills have worked within the liberal tradition to show the limits and faults of social contract theory, and Enlightenment liberalism more broadly, for women and people of color. Their jointly authored book, Contract & Domination , levels a devastating critique against systems of sexual and racial domination. This work engages and critiques some of the most dominant strains of political philosophy. Martha Nussbaum has defended liberalism from some of its critics, arguing that the most appealing versions of liberalism successfully avoid feminist criticisms that liberalism is overly individualistic, abstract, and rationalist (Nussbaum 1999a). She does however take seriously two deep and unresolved problems within liberalism “exposed by feminist thinkers”: (1) the fact of dependency and the need for care and (2) gender inequality and the family (Nussbaum 2004). With respect to dependency—the reality of human dependency and thus the need for care throughout the course of life—Asha Bhandary (2020) has developed a Rawlsian social contract framework to expose and address systemic inequalities in who receives and provides care (see also Bhandary & Baehr [eds] 2021 and section 2.5 below). With respect to the second issue, which deals with the social institution of the family as a site of gender hierarchy and oppression, Marxist, socialist, and materialist feminists have analyzed the material conditions under which these social arrangements (the family and gender hierarchy) have developed. These feminists typically critique liberalism for entrenching social arrangements (such as the public/private split and the system of wage labor) that arise with capitalism and marginalize and disempower women as a social group (see section 2.3 below).

As other feminist critics have argued, many of the central categories of liberalism occlude women’s lived concerns. For example, the right to privacy coveted by classical liberals is a major source of contention for feminists: the private realm, understood as a domain free from state intervention, has historically been the domain where women and children have experienced the bulk of everyday forms of oppression. The liberal private/public distinction sequesters the private sphere, and any harm that may occur there to women, away from political scrutiny (Pateman 1988). Other feminist critics note that liberalism continues to treat as unproblematic concepts that theorists in the 1990s and since have problematized, such as “woman” as a stable and identifiable category and the univocity of the self underlying self-rule or autonomy. Decolonial feminists like María Lugones have exposed the Eurocentric foundations of this view of the self (Lugones 2003; see also section 2.7 ). While Mari Matsuda develops a feminist critique of the methodological abstraction in liberal theories such as Rawls’ A Theory of Justice (Matsuda 1986), others (such as Zerilli 2009) have argued that the universal values that liberal feminists such as Okin invoked were really expanded particulars, with liberal theorists mistaking their ethnocentrically derived values as universal ones. In this vein, Falguni Sheth, focusing on the treatment of Muslim women in the contemporary United States, argues that despite liberal claims to secular neutrality, liberal states actively exclude and discriminate against racialized and marginalized populations (Sheth 2022).

Beyond liberal feminism, contemporary feminist philosophers have led the way in theorizing and critiquing what is known as neoliberalism, especially the ways that neoliberal social and economic forces impact the lives of women. On Wendy Brown’s account (2015), neoliberalism refers to a set of relations between state, society, and subjects that mimics and reinforces radical free-market ideals in the economy. These forces, Brown argues, undermine liberal democratic citizenship, public institutions, and popular sovereignty. Nancy Fraser (2013), Jodi Dean (2009), Bonnie Honig (2017) and Judith Butler (2015) join Brown in asking whether democracy—or “the demos”—can be sustained under neoliberal conditions of rapidly increasing economic precariousness and diminishing social and political resources for resistance. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Anderson asks how putatively positive values like “work ethic” have become central to the moral and physical exploitation of workers under neoliberalism.

While feminist liberalism continues to flourish, the historical developments and emerging debates described in the previous sections have eclipsed or deeply transformed Jaggar’s other three categories of radical, Marxist, and socialist feminism (Jaggar 1983). The “grand narratives” that underlay the latter two have become less credible (Snyder 2008). Among theorists, radical feminism has always been somewhat of a niche approach, likely because its stance is rather exacting. As the name “radical” suggests, radical feminists share the belief that existing structures and institutions need to be overhauled—rather than reformed , as liberalism would have it—in order to get at the “root” of women’s oppression.

Those who work in radical feminism continue to take issue with many of the central tenets of liberal feminism, especially its focus on the individual and the supposedly free choices that individuals can make. Where the liberal sees the potential for freedom, the radical feminist sees structures of domination that are bigger than any individual. The idea that domination and oppression affect social groups in ways that are structural and systemic , though they may be experienced differently by members of different social groups, is a major contribution of feminist political philosophy (Frye 1983; Young 1990). Radical feminists remain committed to getting at the root of male domination by understanding the source of power differentials, which some radical feminists, including Catharine MacKinnon, trace back to sexuality and the notion that heterosexual intercourse enacts male domination over women.

Women and men are divided by gender, made into the sexes as we know them, by the requirements of its dominant form, heterosexuality, which institutionalizes male sexual dominance and female sexual submission. If this is true, sexuality is the linchpin of gender inequality. (MacKinnon 1989: 113)

Patriarchy itself, according to this view, dominates women by positioning them as objects of men’s desire (Welch 2015). Radical feminists of the 1980s tended to see power as running one-way, from those with power over those who are being oppressed. As Amy Allen puts it,

Unlike liberal feminists, who view power as a positive social resource that ought to be fairly distributed, and feminist phenomenologists, who understand domination in terms of a tension between transcendence and immanence, radical feminists tend to understand power in terms of dyadic relations of dominance/subordination, often understood on analogy with the relationship between master and slave. (2005: §3.2)

Radical feminists of the 1970s and 1980s sought to reject the prevailing order in various ways, sometimes advocating separatism (Daly 1973 [1985], 1978 [1990]), the technologization of procreation (and thus freeing women from their oppressive role in biological reproduction; Firestone 1970), or, as MacKinnon would have it, rejecting normative sexuality as rooted in male domination (MacKinnon 1989). As Nancy Hirschmann notes, many radical feminists take biology as a “fundamental starting point” for theorizing (Hirschmann 2007: 146). This approach is generally recognized to be retrograde.

A new generation of radical feminist theorists are renewing the tradition, showing how it has respected concerns such as intersectionality (Whisnant 2016) and shares some of the commitments of the postmodern feminists discussed below, e.g., skepticism about any fixed gender identity or gender binaries and a more fluid and performative approach to sexuality and politics (Snyder 2008), as well as the ways that power and privilege continue to hold women back (Chambers 2017b: 656).

Throughout the twentieth century, many political theorists in Europe, the United States, and Latin America drew on socialist and Marxist texts to develop theories of social change attentive to issues of class relations and exploitation in modern capitalist economies. By and large, Marxist feminists focus on how modes of production, along with changing relations of production and reproduction shape the social arrangements (e.g., the gender division of labor, gender hierarchy) and institutions (e.g., marriage, motherhood, the family) that contribute to women’s oppression. After learning of the horrors of Stalinism, most Western Marxists and socialists, feminists included, were extremely critical of the communist systems in the Soviet Union and later in China. Western, mostly anti-communist, Marxist thought flourished in Italy (with Antonio Gramsci’s work), England (with Stuart Hall and Raymond Williams’ work), France (with the Socialisme ou Barbarie group), and the United States (less so there after McCarthyism, yet renewed somewhat in the 1960s with the New Left). Jaggar’s 1983 book summed up well the way feminists were using socialist and Marxist ideas to understand the way women were exploited and their laboring and reproductive work devalued and unpaid though necessary for capitalism to function. Drawing on Frederick Engels’ emphasis on the “reproduction of immediate life”, Marxist and socialist feminists were able to move beyond more orthodox readings of Marx that restrict focus to modes of “production” that privilege the experience of men as wage-laborers (Engels 1884: Preface). Social reproduction theorists instead analyze forms of labor, most often women’s unpaid labor, that contribute to the maintenance of life at the individual, family, and species level (see Bhattacharya [ed.] 2017; Federici 2004 and 2021; S. Ferguson 2019). In the entry on feminist perspectives on class and work , the authors point to much of the work that was going on in this field up through the mid-1990s. Since then, the authors note, various postmodern, postcolonial, poststructuralist, and deconstructive theories have criticized the bases for socialist and Marxist thought, including the “grand narrative” of economic determinism and the reduction of everything to economic and material relations. Despite this, Marxist analyses remain important to a variety of work being done in contemporary feminist political philosophy (see Dean 2009; Delphy 1984; Federici 2004; Fraser 2009, 2022; Gago 2019 [2020]; Spivak 1987; Vogel 1983).

While the lineage and trajectory of materialist feminism (as distinct from Marxist or socialist feminism) is unclear (see Gimenez 2000), Marxist, Socialist, and materialist feminisms all share an attention to the concrete material conditions underlying existing social arrangements (e.g., of gender hierarchy), the historically specific nature of these conditions, and a commitment to feminism as an emancipatory movement, not merely a scholarly endeavor. Meanwhile, feminists associated with these schools of thought tend to diverge when it comes to which topics of analysis are taken up, which aspects of Marx’s theory are considered pertinent for explaining women’s oppression, and the relationship between feminism and (anti)capitalism (Gimenez 2000). While the categories of socialist and Marxist feminisms are less relevant today, materialist feminism is experiencing something of a renaissance. While “materialist” can mean many things, as in the broader focus on matter and the body animating the work of “New Materialism” (e.g., see Coole & Frost [ed.] 2010), for the purposes of this entry, “materialist feminism” has a deeper and more explicit connection to the Marxist usage of the term “materialism” as described by Engels (and referenced above):

According to the materialist conception, the decisive element of history is pre-eminently the production and reproduction of life and its material requirements. This implies, on the one hand, the production of the means of existence (food, clothing, shelter and the necessary tools); on the other hand, the generation of children, the propogation of the species. (Engels 1884 [trans. Untermann 1902], Preface).

In Martha Gimenez’s view, the fact that materialist feminism has somewhat displaced Marxist and socialist feminisms may have more to do with the “ideological balance of power” in politics, academia, and publishing than the strength of feminist critiques of Marxism for its alleged economism and class reductionism (Gimenez 2000: 25).

Since the 1990s, the feminist concern with culture, identity, and difference—issues that were previously marginalized within mainstream white Anglo-American and French feminist theory and activism—increased, somewhat displacing Marxist and socialist feminism’s focus on systemic social forces and concrete material conditions. Certainly, new generations of materialist feminists and critical theorists tend to be more friendly to postmodern theories of meaning, identity, and subjectivity important in the field (see, for example, Fraser 2009; Fraser & Jaeggi 2018; Amy Allen 2008; McAfee 2008; and Young 2000) and classic works by philosophers like Angela Davis ( Women, Race, and Class , 1981) demonstrate that concerns about identity, culture, and difference are not incompatible with Marxist feminist analysis.

Like Marxist/materialist feminists who take seriously the role that sexual difference plays in systems of production and reproduction, poststructuralist feminists also take sexual difference seriously, attending to the ways in which language and meaning-systems structure experience. Notable among them are the so-called French Feminists, namely Cixous, Kristeva, and Irigaray. Of them all, Irigaray may have the most developed political philosophy, including several books on the rights that should be afforded to girls and women. Irigaray’s early work (1974 [1985a] and 1977 [1985b]) made the case that in the history of philosophy women have been denied their own essence or identity. Rather, they have been positioned as men’s mirror negation. So that to be a man is to not be a woman, and hence that woman equals only not-man. Her strategy in response to this is to speak back from the margins to which women have been relegated and to claim some kind of “essence” for women, and, along with that, a set of rights that are specifically for girls and women (Irigaray 1989 [1994] and 1992 [1996]). Criticisms of her views have been heated, including among feminists themselves, especially those who are wary of any kind of essentialist and biological conflation of women’s identity. To the extent that Irigaray is an essentialist, her view would be relegated to what is sometimes called symbolic difference feminism (Dietz 2003). However, there are also compelling arguments that Irigaray is wielding essentialism strategically or metaphorically, that she isn’t claiming that women really do have some kind of irreducible essence that the history of metaphysics has denied them (Fuss 1989). This other reading would put Irigaray more in the performative group described below ( section 2.8 ). The same kind of argument could be made for the work of Julia Kristeva—that her metaphors of the female chora, for example, are describing the Western imaginary, not any kind of womanly reality. So whether French feminist thought should be grouped as difference feminism or performative feminism is still very much open to debate.

To the extent that the above two types of feminist theory are pinpointing some kind of specific difference between the sexes, they raise concerns about essentialism or identifying distinct values that women have as women. Such concerns are part of a larger set of criticisms that have run through feminist theorizing since the 1970s, with non-white, non-middle-class, and non-western women questioning the very category of “woman” and the notion that this title could be a boundary-spanning category that could unite women of various walks of life. (See the entries on identity politics and feminist perspectives on sex and gender .) Criticisms of a unitary identity of “woman” have been motivated by worries that much feminist theory has originated from the standpoint of a particular class of women who mistake their own particular standpoint for a universal one. In her 1981 book, Ain’t I a Woman?: Black women and feminism , bell hooks notes that the feminist movement pretends to speak for all women but was made up of primarily white, middle class women who, because of their narrow perspective, did not represent the needs of poor women and women of color and ended up reinforcing class stereotypes (hooks 1981). What is so damning about this kind of critique is that it mirrors the one that feminists have leveled against mainstream political theorists who have taken the particular category of men to be a universal category of mankind, a schema that does not in fact include women under the category of mankind but marks them as other (Lloyd 1984 [1993]).

The question of subjectivity has been a particularly fertile one for feminist political philosophy. Feminist politics and activism, informed by poststructuralist and postcolonial critiques of the subject, have spurred new work that seeks to understand what remains of the “feminist subject” after critiques of essentialism and Eurocentrism (Butler 1995; Kramer 2017; Weeks 1998; Zerilli 2005).

Many of the recent developments in feminist political philosophy have followed on the heels of feminist critiques or reinterpretations of the Western philosophical canon. Earlier works by Wendy Brown (1988), Alison Jaggar (1989), Genevieve Lloyd (1984 [1993]), Susan Moller Okin (1979, 1989), Carole Pateman (1988, 1989), and others, revealed the masculinist foundations of mainstream political theory. As Okin put it,

[It] has proved to be no simple matter to integrate women into a tradition of theorizing created by, for, and about men. (Okin 1998: 118)

As she goes on to say,

Great value has been placed on things traditionally associated with men—on the allegedly transcendent nonphysical realm, on excessive individualism, on reason as all-important, and on the so-called manly virtues—including competitiveness and aggression. At the same time, the realm of things traditionally associated with women—concern with physical needs and nurturance, emotionality, cooperation (with other people and with nature)—have been much more inclined to be denigrated. (Okin 1998: 119)

Rather than attempting to align their theories with those values of individualism, rationality, and abstraction associated with masculinity (and classical liberalism), many feminist thinkers have instead sought to revalue traditionally denigrated values associated with femininity.

A prime example is care ethics (see the discussion in the entry on feminist ethics ). Drawing on Carol Gilligan’s pathbreaking research in moral psychology (Gilligan 1982), which showed that the dominant conception of moral development and subjectivity was really a reflection of a particular, masculine style of moral reasoning, feminist political theorists challenged dominant conceptions of political subjectivity, judgment, and action. Just as Gilligan and other feminist ethicists emphasized that styles of moral reasoning associated with women were not inferior because of their distinctiveness from masculinist models—and that distinctiveness includes an emphasis on emotions like empathy and care, responsiveness to need, and an awareness of one’s connection with others and the natural world—feminist political philosophers argued that ways of looking at and organizing the world informed by care are not inferior or pathological. This spurred new approaches to theorizing foundational political concepts that are at odds with liberal political theory in particular. First and foremost, political theorists influenced by the care ethics tradition insist that political subjects are not independent, but fundamentally (inter)dependent , enmeshed in complex networks of relation necessary for survival. This means that as political agents, we do not act on our own, but rely on others who are themselves dependent. This transformed view of the self has both theoretical and practical implications. From a care perspective, agency is relational, and individuals are nonsovereign and heteronomous. Taking up insights about our varied proximity to states of dependency throughout the course of life arising in the field of disability studies, thinkers like Judith Butler have argued that vulnerability is both an enabling and constraining feature of our ontological condition and one that is often politically induced in particular populations, marking them as “precarious” (Butler 2004, 2015). In her 2017 book The Right to Maim , Jasbir Puar draws on similar theoretical approaches in disability studies and biopolitics to analyze and critique the ways that the liberal nation-state “debilitates” populations in order to discipline and control them (Puar 2017). This recent work marks an interest among feminist political theorists in exposing the myriad ways that contemporary liberal and neoliberal frameworks care-lessly intensify and/or manipulate vulnerability. Along with disability, these thinkers seek to expose the ways that gender, race, ethnicity, immigration status, and age are complexly enmeshed in these scenes of abandonment (see also Fineman 2008 [2011]; Fraser 2022; Povinelli 2011; Collins 1990 [2000]). From a policy standpoint, care has also been front and center for feminist political thinkers, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 global pandemic, which exposed the radical insufficiency of our infrastructures of care. The authors of The Care Manifesto (known as “The Care Collective”, 2020) explore how we might reorganize our institutions and relationships to meet the moment, including reclaiming public spaces, making healthcare for all a reality, and taking action to protect the natural world.

Some of the foundations and consequences of the care ethics approach have also produced serious skepticism from feminist political philosophers. First, there is the question of whether and, if so, how women-as-care-givers have distinct virtues. Feminists as a whole have long distanced themselves from the idea that women have any particular essence, choosing instead to see femininity and its accompanying virtues as social constructs, dispositions that result from culture and conditioning, not biological givens. So for care ethicists to champion the virtues that have inculcated femininity seems also to champion a patriarchal system that relegates one gender to the role of caretaker. The care ethicists’ answer to this problem has often been to flip the hierarchy. That is, to claim that the work of the household is more meaningful and sustaining than the work of the polis. But critics, such as Drucilla Cornell, Mary Dietz, and Chantal Mouffe, argue that such a revaluation keeps intact the dichotomy between the private and the public and the old association of women’s work with childcare (Butler & Scott [eds.] 1992; Phillips [ed.] 1998: 386–389).

Feminist political theorists associated with the care tradition have explored how the distinct values that arise from practices of care might transform our political concepts, aims, and organizations. How might those activities and values typically relegated to the private realm provide an alternative to the traditional emphases in moral and political philosophy on impartiality, rationality, and universal principles of justice in the public realm? The care approach challenged the default to abstract principles in political philosophy, leading to intense debates between liberals who advocated universal ideals of justice and care ethicists who advocated attention to the particular, to relationships, to care. In Gilligan’s early work, for instance, the care approach is presented as opposed to what she terms “the justice approach”, giving the impression that the two approaches are separate and mutually exclusive styles of moral reasoning (Gilligan 1982). By the 1990s, however, many care ethicists had revised their views. Rather than seeing care and justice as mutually exclusive alternatives, they began to recognize that attention to care should be accompanied by attention to fairness (justice) in order to attend to the plight of those with whom we have no immediate relation (Koggel 1998). Moreover, they recognized that the need to evaluate existing practices or systems of care requires applying principles of justice like equality and fairness (Held [ed.] 1995; Kittay 2002; Schutte 2002).

Like care, the history of Western philosophy has largely disregarded the role of emotion in political life, in particular because emotionality is frequently associated with women and racialized others. However, feminist political philosophers have insisted on the importance of this intersection (for example Hall 2005, Krause 2008, and Nussbaum 2013). Building on the contributions of feminist care ethicists and difference feminists who worked to show the significance of positive affects typically associated with femininity in ethical encounters—such as love, interest, and care—(see Held [ed.] 1995; Tronto 1993), other thinkers worried that this appraisal merely reified a false (gendered) dichotomy between reason and emotion, mind and body. Instead, early work by Alison Jaggar (1989), Elizabeth Spelman (1989 and 1991), Genevieve Lloyd (1984 [1993]), Elizabeth Grosz (1994), and others argued that reason is both embodied and emotion-laden, and that emotion has epistemic and moral value. Building on this work, feminist political theorists have argued that understanding the role of emotion and affect is crucial for understanding a number of important political phenomena: motivation for action (Krause 2008), collective action and community formation (Beltrán 2009 & 2010; Butler 2004 & 2015), solidarity and patriotism (Nussbaum 2006 and 2013), as well as vulnerability (Fineman 2008 [2011]), racism and xenophobia (Ahmed 2004 [2014]; Anker 2014; Ioanide 2015). Meanwhile, others examine the political significance of specific emotions, for instance: shame (Ahmed 2004 [2014]), grief (Butler 2004), anger (Cherry 2021; Spelman 1989; Lorde 1984), fear (Anker 2014), empathy (Hirji 2022), and love (Nussbaum 2013).

More recently, many feminist critics have turned their attention to the ways that neoliberalism demands resiliency and self-reliance in the face of increasing precarity. Some borrow from Michel Foucault’s late work on biopolitics, examining how neoliberal demands for autonomy, self-sufficiency, self-discipline, and self-investment impact individuals on the level of subjectivity, making both life and the possibility of political action to transform the conditions of life increasingly untenable. Individuals, they argue, are met with increasing vulnerability to economic forces and fewer resources to overcome vulnerability due to social isolation and limited access to social services (Butler 2015; Povinelli 2011). Some feminists study how subjectivity, affect, and morality accommodate these neoliberal trends. For instance, this shows up in how the demand to “overcome vulnerability” via the contemporary emphasis on individual “resilience” attempts to transform vulnerable persons, especially women, into productive neoliberal subjects (James 2015), how productive emotions like “happiness” are encouraged and unruly ones like “willfulness” are discouraged (Berlant 2011; Ahmed 2014), or how the targeted discourse around “self-care” can contribute to individualist consumer culture that diminishes women’s capacities for collective action (Ahmed 2017). Instead, many feminist critiques challenge neoliberal individualism by reasserting that agency need not be synonymous with autonomy, and propose nonsovereign or relational accounts of the agentic subject instead (Butler 2015). Along with care, some theorists have turned to contemplative practices like meditation (in the Zen Buddhist tradition, for instance) to recover important resources for democratic life (Mariotti 2020).

One of the issues that has been most vexing and generative for feminist theory in general and feminist political philosophy in particular is the matter of identity (see the entry on identity politics ). Identity politics, itself a politically vexed term, refers to political practices of mobilizing for change on the basis of a political identity (women, Black, Chicana, etc.; see Alcoff 2006; Matsuda 1996). The philosophical debate is whether such identities are based on some real difference or history of oppression, and also whether people should embrace identities that have historically been used to oppress them. Identity politics in feminist practice is fraught because for some feminists, concerns about identity are thought to weaken feminist political unity and solidarity (Hooker 2009; Zerilli 2005). As Emi Koyama writes in the introduction to “The Transfeminist Manifesto”:

The latter half of the twentieth century witnessed an unprecedented broadening of American feminist movement as the result of the participation of diverse groups of women. When a group of women who had previously been marginalized within the mainstream of the feminist movement broke their silence, demanding their rightful place within it, they were first accused of fragmenting feminism with trivial matters, and then were eventually accepted and welcomed as a valuable part of the feminist thought. We have become increasingly aware that the diversity is our strength, not weakness. (Koyama 2001: 11)

Moreover, feminist theorists of color have shown (Davis 1981; hooks 1981; Lorde 1984; Mohanty 1991) that the feminist movement has always elevated the interests of some groups and ignored or disfigured the interests of others. What looks like unity or neutrality is often exclusion. Indeed, those for whom “woman” is only one of several sources for group identification (e.g, Black women) have raised questions about which identity is foremost or whether either identity is apt. Such questions play out with the question of political representation —what aspects of identity are politically salient and truly representative, whether race, class, or gender (Phillips 1995; Young 1997, 2000). The ontological question of women’s identity gets played out on the political stage when it comes to matters of political representation, group rights, and affirmative action. The 2008 U.S. Democratic Party primary battle between Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton turned this philosophical question into a very real and heated one from Black women throughout the United States. Was a Black woman who supported Clinton a traitor to her race, or a Black woman who supported Obama a traitor to her sex? Or did it make any sense to talk about identity in a way that would lead to charges of treason?

Theories of intersectionality emerged in the U.S. context from the groundbreaking work of multiple thinkers (for an excellent history of the emergence of “intersectionality” within Black feminist and womanist thought, see J. Nash 2019), including Kimberlé Crenshaw’s “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Practice” (Crenshaw 1989), Patricia Hill Collins’s book Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment (Collins 1990), Angela Davis’s Women, Race, and Class (Davis 1981), Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider (1984), and Patricia Williams’s The Alchemy of Race and Rights (Williams 1991). While their specific language and emphasis varies, these theorists and others generally agree that intersectionality is an analytic framework that helps to understand how oppression and privilege along particular “axes” of identity (gender, race, class, disability, and the like) do not work independently, but intermesh in complex ways that shape our social relations, identities, interests, and experiences. The impact of this work was felt strongly where it originated in feminist legal theory (see feminist philosophy of law ), and has continued to be an important concept for theories of power and oppression in and out of feminist political philosophy. (See also the section on intersectionality in the entry on discrimination .)

While intersectionality emerged largely within the U.S. context, transnational, decolonial, and indigenous feminists theorize the political across, between, and against nation-state borders. Indeed, “the border” becomes an important geopolitical, cultural, and symbolic figure animating the work of feminist thinkers in this area. Here, like elsewhere in feminist political philosophy, new ideas in philosophy are often generated through the examination of practical political concerns in the lives of women. For scholars working in these areas, many of the issues and theories discussed emerge from ongoing histories of colonialism , settler colonialism, and imperialism.

The writings of postcolonial and transnational feminist theorists often raised the need for awareness of multiple global perspectives as a challenge to Euro- and Anglo-centric feminist theory by focusing on the lived realities of women in the Global South, such as issues related to working conditions and migration (Walia 2013). Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s Feminism without Borders (2003) is a pathbreaking work in this respect, examining both the theoretical and practical political consequences of global capitalism for women across the globe and for the future of feminist struggle. In the Middle Eastern context, Lila Abu-Lughod famously asked “Do Muslim Women Need Saving?” (2013), challenging the notion in many strains dominant in Western feminism that Muslim women are oppressed by their own culture (for more on culture see Narayan 1997). Discussing the impact of transnational feminist work during this period, Sharon Krause writes that, “this development involved the ‘world diversification’ of feminism to a more global, comparative, and differentiated body of work” (Krause 2011: 106). This diversification, Krause notes, is also due to new literature on intersectionality, that is, the ways in which the intersections of our multiple identities (race, gender, orientation, ethnicity, etc.) all need to be attended to in talking about political change (Krause 2011: 107). Intersectionality also resonates with discussions of “hybridity” in postcolonial literature, of religion and globalization, and of the experiences of LGBTQ people. “The result is an explosion of knowledge about the lived experience of differently placed and multiply-positioned women” (2011: 107). Given so many sources of difference and division among women across the globe, is a transnational feminist solidarity possible? Are there universal values and commitments on which to ground feminist activism and solidarity that do not reproduce Western ethnocentrism and imperialism? (For approaches to these questions, see Khader 2019.)

While transnational feminist theorists are largely concerned with the impacts of cross-border global processes, indigenous feminist contributions to political theory in the U.S. and Canada have developed important critiques of settler colonialism and its borders (for more on settler colonial states, decolonial resistance, and post-colonial theory see the entry on colonialism ). Audra Simpson’s Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States (2014) “interrupts” settler colonial conceptualizations of political terms like legitimacy and sovereignty with alternative meanings rooted in Kahnawà:ke Mohawk life and the political history of the Iroquois Confederacy. (See also Leanne Betasamosake Simpson 2017 on place-based resistance to settler colonialism.) In the Australian context, Aileen Moreton-Robinson challenges the ways that white women inside and outside of the academy benefit from colonialism and strategically wield power against indigenous women (Moreton-Robinson 2000). These concerns mark a broader and increasing focus among indigenous, decolonial, and intersectional feminists on critiques of whiteness (see also Alcoff 2006 & 2015).

Decolonial feminists overlap in many areas with other women of color feminists, but they bring several unique concerns specific to the colonial and post-colonial experience. In contemporary decolonial theory, these concerns are largely framed within the discourse of “coloniality”, first theorized in terms of “coloniality of power” by Anibal Quijano (2003). Here, “coloniality” refers to how relations between colonizer and colonized are racialized, for instance how labor, subjectivity, and authority are racialized around the colonial system of capitalist exploitation. (For more on “coloniality”, see Lugones 2010; Mignolo 2000; Maldonado Torres 2008; Wynter 2003.) For feminist thinkers like María Lugones (2007, 2010), gender is another axis around which the global capitalist system of power classifies and dehumanizes colonized people. For Lugones and others, including Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí (1997), gender is a colonial imposition in tension with non-modern cosmologies, economies, and modes of kinship. Lugones calls this the “coloniality of gender”, noting that de-colonizing gender is part of a wider project of decolonial resistance opposed to the categorial, dichotomous, and hierarchical logics of capitalist modernity that are rooted in the colonization of the Americas. According to Lugones, the autonomous, independent, and univocal conception of the self is one of the Eurocentric “logics of purity” that has become culturally dominant, shaping our modes of political thought and action in ways that pathologize decolonial resistance. Lugones’ critique is especially evident in her claim that colonized people are not agents. Here, she does not mean that the colonized and oppressed, including colonized women, lack capacities for action and resistance—indeed, she argues that resistance meets oppression “enduringly”. Rather, she points out that according to the Eurocentric logic that defines agency as fully capacitated, intentional, and autonomous, colonized people are considered non-agential (Lugones 2005: 86). Instead, she develops the concept “active subjectivity” to name the kinds of resistant practices that develop under conditions of oppression. Rather than a feminist or decolonial “unity” that collapses difference, Lugones seeks to sustain forms of coalition across difference (Lugones 2003). (See also the section “Latin American Feminist Philosophy” in the entry on Latin American Feminism .)

In feminist decolonial literature, resistance is often discussed in terms of the coloniality of gender (Lugones 2003, 2007, 2010; Oyěwùmí 1997); language (Spivak 1988); identity and subjectivity—for instance, accounts of hybridity, border-thinking, multiplicity, and mestizaje (Anzaldúa 1987; Ortega 2016; Moraga & Anzaldúa [eds] 1981 [2015]; Pitts 2021a); and “world-traveling” (Lugones 1995; Ortega 2016). Many of these same thinkers argue that feminism itself must be decolonized, critiquing feminist universalisms that claim to account for the complex intersections of sexuality, race, gender, and class (see Khader 2019; Lugones 2010; Mohanty 2003; Vergès 2019 [2021]).

Are there any reliable foundations on which to base feminist politics? By the end of the 1990s, postmodern critiques of the subject and feminist critiques of the category “woman” produced real uncertainty about the status of the subject of feminist politics, seeing a radical danger of relativism and disunity, and the field seemed to be at an impasse. But then another approach began to emerge. As Mary Dietz writes in her 2003 essay on current controversies in feminist theory,

In recent years, political theorists have been engaged in debates about what it might mean to conceptualize a feminist political praxis that is aligned with democracy but does not begin from the binary of gender. Along these lines, Mouffe (1992b: 376, 378; 1993), for example, proposes a feminist conception of democratic citizenship that would render sexual difference “effectively nonpertinent”. Perhaps the salient feature of such conceptions is the turn toward plurality, which posits democratic society as a field of interaction where multiple axes of difference, identity, and subordination politicize and intersect. (Dietz 2003: 419; citing Phelan 1994; Young 1990, 1997, 2000; Benhabib 1992; Honig 1992; K. Ferguson 1993; Phillips 1993, 1995; Mouffe 1993; Yeatman 1994, 2001; Bickford 1996; Dean 1996; Fraser 1997; K. Nash 1998; Heyes 2000; McAfee 2000)

Following up on what has happened in feminist political theory since Dietz’s article, Sharon Krause writes that this work is “contesting the old assumption that agency equals autonomy” and makes room “within agency for forms of subjectivity and action that are nonsovereign but nevertheless potent” (Krause 2011; citing Amy Allen 2008, Beltrán 2010, Butler 2004, Hirschmann 2003, and Zerilli 2005.) “For some theorists”, Krause writes,

this shift involves thinking of agency and freedom in more collective ways, which emphasize solidarity, relationality, and constitutive intersubjectivity. (Krause 2011: 108; citing Butler 2004; Cornell 2007; Mohanty 2003; and Nedelsky 2005)

(As we saw in the previous section, decolonial feminists like Lugones were already critiquing Eurocentric conceptualizations of agency that presume individual autonomy and sovereignty [Lugones 2003].)

This constellation of thinkers have a performative account of politics and subjectivity. Performative in several senses: in theorizing how agency is constituted, how political judgments can be made in the absence of known rules (Honig 2009: 309), how new universals can be created and new communities constituted. From a performative feminist perspective, feminism is a project of anticipating and creating better political futures in the absence of foundations. As Linda Zerilli writes,

politics is about making claims and judgments—and having the courage to do so—in the absence of the objective criteria or rules that could provide certain knowledge and the guarantee that speaking in women’s name will be accepted or taken up by others. (Zerilli 2005: 179)

Zerilli calls for a “freedom-centered feminism” that

would strive to bring about transformation in normative conceptions of gender without returning to the classical notion of freedom as sovereignty

that feminists have long criticized but found difficult to resist (ibid.). Rather than basing politics on already existing categories, principles, or values, a performative approach understands categories like identity and gender to be performatively constituted, thus appealing to other people, not to supposed universal truths or foundations. “How we assume these identities”, Drucilla Cornell writes,

is never something “out there” that effectively determines who we can be as men and women—gay, lesbian, straight, queer, transsexual, transgender, or otherwise. (Cornell 2003: 144)

It is something that is shaped as we live and externalize identities with others.

This view takes democracy to be an ongoing and unfinished project with any outcome open to further contestation. It recuperates many of the ideals of the Enlightenment—such as freedom, autonomy, and justice—but in a way that drops the Enlightenment’s metaphysical assumptions about reason, progress, and human nature. Instead of seeing these ideals as grounded in some metaphysical facts, this new view sees them as ideals that people hold and try to instantiate through practice and imagination. Where many ancient and modern ideals of politics were based on suppositions about the nature of reality or of human beings, contemporary political philosophies generally operate without supposing that there are any universal or eternal truths. Some might see this situation as ripe for nihilism, arbitrariness, or the exercise of brute power. The democratic alternative is to imagine and try to create a better world by anticipating, claiming, and appealing to others that it should be so. Even if there is no metaphysical truth that human beings have dignity and infinite worth, people can act as if it were true in order to create a world in which it is seen to be so.

Despite the shared post-foundational theorizing among democratic feminist theorists and the commitment to thinking of politics as plural, when it comes to thinking about democratic politics, there are sharp divergences, namely on the question of “what it means to actualize public spaces and enact democratic politics” (Dietz 2003: 419). On this question, theorists tend to diverge into two groups: associational and agonistic. Associational theorists (e.g., Benhabib 1992, [ed.] 1996b; Benhabib & Cornell [eds] 1987; Fraser 1989; Young 1990, 1997, 2000) gravitate more toward deliberative democratic theory. They have roots in the socialist and Marxist traditions, especially as they developed in the Frankfurt-School tradition of critical theory. They are more optimistic about the prospects for democracy. Agonistic theorists (e.g., Mouffe [ed.] 1992a, 1993, 1999, 2000; Honig [ed.] 1995; Ziarek 2001) worry that democratic theories that focus on consensus can silence the kind of disagreement essential for democratic progress. Thus they focus more on plurality, dissensus, and the ceaseless contestation within politics. Agonistic theorists are grounded in much of the poststructural feminist approach described earlier, wary of any claims to universality and identity.

The differences spring from, or perhaps lead to, different readings of the philosopher who has most inspired performative political theory: Hannah Arendt , namely Arendt’s ideas of speech and action in the public sphere, of the meaning of plurality, of the ways in which human beings can distinguish themselves. As Bonnie Honig, a champion of the agonistic model writes,

Political theorists and feminists, in particular, have long criticized Arendt for the agonistic dimensions of her politics, charging that agonism is a masculinist, heroic, violent, competitive, (merely) aesthetic, or necessarily individualistic practice. For these theorists, the notion of an agonistic feminism would be, at best, a contradiction in terms and, at worst, a muddled and, perhaps, dangerous idea. Their perspective is effectively endorsed by Seyla Benhabib who, in a recent series of powerful essays, tries to rescue Arendt for feminism by excising agonism from her thought. (Honig 1995b: 156)

Associational theorists tend to look for ways, amidst all the differences and questions about the lack of foundations, it is possible to come to agreement on matters of common concern. This is seen in feminist democratic theory, perhaps best known through the works of Seyla Benhabib (1992, 1996b), greatly inspired by her non-agonistic reading of Arendt and of the work of the German critical theorist, Jürgen Habermas. Benhabib’s work engages democratic theorists quite broadly, not just feminist theorists. The following passage helps to clarify what she takes to be the best aim of a political philosophy: a state of affairs to which all affected would assent. As she writes,

Only those norms (i.e., general rules of action and institutional arrangements) can be said to be valid (i.e., morally binding), which would be agreed to by all those affected by their consequences, if such agreement were reached as a consequence of a process of deliberation that had the following features: 1) participation in such deliberation is governed by norms of equality and symmetry; all have the same chances to initiate speech acts, to question, to interrogate, and to open debate; 2) all have the right to question the assigned topics of conversation; and 3) all have the right to initiate reflexive arguments about the very rules of the discourse procedure and the way in which they are applied or carried out. (Benhabib 1996b: 70)

Following Habermas, Benhabib contends that certain conditions need to be in place in order for members of a political community to arrive at democratic outcomes, namely the proceedings need to be deliberative. Some take deliberation to be a matter of reasoned argumentation; others see it as less about reason or argumentation but more about an open process of working through choices. (McAfee 2004.)

Not all theorists who tend toward the associational model embrace deliberative theory so readily. Iris Young’s pioneering book, Justice and the Politics of Difference and several of her subsequent works have been very influential and led to a good deal of hesitance in feminist theoretical communities about the claims of deliberative theory. Where Benhabib is confident that conditions can be such that all who are affected can have a voice in deliberations, Young points out that those who have been historically silenced have a difficult time having their views heard or heeded. Young is skeptical of the claims of mainstream democratic theory that democratic deliberative processes could lead to outcomes that would be acceptable to all (Young 1990, 1997). Young, along with Nancy Fraser (1989) and others, worried that in the process of trying to reach consensus, the untrained voices of women and others who have been marginalized would be left out of the final tally. Young’s criticisms were very persuasive, leading a generation of feminist political philosophers to be wary of deliberative democratic theory. Instead of deliberative democracy, in the mid 1990s Young proposed a theory of communicative democracy, hoping to make way for a deliberative conception that was open to means of expression beyond the rational expression of mainstream deliberative democratic theory. Young worried that deliberation as defined by Habermas is too reason-based and leaves out forms of communication that women and people of color tend to use, including, as she puts it, “greeting, rhetoric, and storytelling”. Young argued that these alternative modes of communication could provide the basis of a more democratic, communicative theory. In her last major book, Inclusion and Democracy (2000), Young had clearly moved to embrace deliberative theory itself, seeing the ways in which it could be constructed to give voice to those who had been otherwise marginalized. More recent feminist democratic theory has engaged deliberative theory more positively (see McAfee & Snyder 2007).

Where liberal feminists inspired by John Rawls and democratic feminists inspired by Jürgen Habermas and/or John Dewey hold out the hope that democratic deliberations might lead to democratic agreements, agonistic feminists are wary of consensus as inherently undemocratic. Agonistic feminist political philosophy comes out of poststructural continental feminist and philosophical traditions. It takes from Marxism the hope for a more radically egalitarian society. It takes from contemporary continental philosophy notions of subjectivity and solidarity as malleable and constructed. Along with postmodern thought, it repudiates any notion of pre-existing moral or political truths or foundations (Ziarek 2001). Its central claim is that feminist struggle, like other struggles for social justice, is engaged in politics as ceaseless contestation. Agonistic views see the nature of politics as inherently conflictual, with battles over the direction of political society being the central task of democratic struggle. Advocates of agonistic politics worry that the kind of consensus sought by democratic theorists (discussed above) will lead to some kind of oppression or injustice by silencing new struggles. As Chantal Mouffe puts it,

We have to accept that every consensus exists as a temporary result of a provisional hegemony, as a stabilization of power, and that it always entails some form of exclusion. (Mouffe 2000: 104)

Where associational theorists seek out ways that people can overcome systematically distorted communication and deliberation, Dietz notes that agonists eschew this project because they understand politics as

essentially a practice of creation, reproduction, transformation and articulation.... Simply put, associational feminists scrutinize the conditions of exclusion in order to theorize the emancipation of the subject in the public sphere of communicative interaction; agonistic feminists deconstruct emancipatory procedures to disclose how the subject is both produced through political exclusions and positioned against them. (Dietz 2003: 422)

As a recent review writes,

Feminist theory today is a sprawling, productive, diverse intellectual and political assemblage. It grows through imaginative interdisciplinary work and critical political engagements. Feminist theory is not only about women, although it is that; it is about the world, engaged through critical intersectional perspectives. (K. Ferguson 2017)

New work in feminist political philosophy continues to transform political philosophy, including ancient debates over identity versus difference, the private and the public, certainty and freedom. For example, new readings of Arendt’s philosophy offer hope of moving beyond the associational/agonistic divide in democratic feminist theory (Barker et al. [eds] 2012). Benhabib’s proceduralism is being surpassed with more affect-laden accounts of deliberation (Krause 2008; Howard 2017). Instead of the rational back-and-forth of reasoned argumentation, theorists are beginning to see deliberative talk as forms of constituting the subject, judging without pre-conceived truths, and performatively creating new political projects (Zerilli 2005 and 2016).

Some of the most generative sites for feminist political theorizing today are the global threats that face all of us, for instance environmental degradation or the rise of authoritarianism. In ecofeminist perspectives, as the entry on feminist environmental philosophy explains, the domination and destruction of “nature” has long been recognized as a feminist issue of political significance (especially due to the deep associations between femininity and nature that run through Western patriarchal philosophy and culture). More recently, ecofeminists have extended theories of democracy, agency, and rights to include elements of the natural world (Nussbaum 2022). Meanwhile, with the rise of authoritarianism in governments across the globe in the second decade of the twenty-first century, feminist political philosophers have tried to understand the roots of recent threats to democracy (Fraser 2019; McAfee 2019; Nussbaum 2018).

In sum, feminist political philosophy is a still evolving field of thought that has much to offer mainstream political philosophy. In the past two decades it has come to exert a stronger influence over mainstream political theorizing, raising objections that mainstream philosophers have had to address, though not always very convincingly. And in its newest developments it promises to go even further.

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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
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• European History
• Latin American History
• Medieval & Renaissance History
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• 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 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 patriarchy, not men. To equate radical feminism to man-hating is to assume that patriarchy and men are inseparable, philosophically and politically. (Although, 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 Chester, Corrine Grad Coleman, Mary Daly, Andrea Dworkin, Shulamith Firestone, Germaine Greer, Carol Hanisch, Jill Johnston, Catherine 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.

Earlier in the year, 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 Kimberle 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
• New York Radical Women: 1960s Feminist Group
• Socialist Feminism vs. Other Types of Feminism
• Patriarchal Society According to Feminism
• Cultural Feminism
• 24 Andrea Dworkin Quotes
• Shulamith Firestone
• Top 20 Influential Modern Feminist Theorists
• What Is Sexism? Defining a Key Feminist Term
• Socialist Feminism Definition and Comparisons
• Redstockings Radical Feminist Group
• 21 Quotes About Anti-Feminism
• Feminist Philosophy
• Simone de Beauvoir and Second-Wave Feminism
• Feminist Theory in Sociology
• The Personal Is Political

Radical feminism - Essay Examples And Topic Ideas For Free

Radical feminism is a perspective within the feminist movement that focuses on the fundamental nature of patriarchy and seeks to challenge and overthrow male-dominated social structures. Essays on radical feminism might explore its historical roots, key theories, or its contrast with other feminist perspectives. Discussions could also delve into the movement’s contributions to women’s rights, its criticisms, or its relevance in modern feminist discourse. Analyzing the impact and controversies surrounding radical feminism can offer a nuanced understanding of feminist ideologies and their societal implications. A substantial compilation of free essay instances related to Radical Feminism you can find at Papersowl. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.

Radical Feminism: when People Go too Far

"Feminism, according to The Merriam Webster Dictionary is, “The theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes” (Merriam Webster Dictionary). It is a noble cause that the majority of people agree with. Sadly, in the present, feminism has a radical group of women convinced that they are oppressed in today's society and demand to be treated above men. It is clear that this group no longer want the equality of the sexes, but rather they desire the […]

Controversial Topic : Gender Identity

Transgender Identities bring up the controversial topic of gender identity in society. Gender identity is important because it is a way to self-identify based on expression of the internal self rather than just by the assigned gender at birth. Individuals who identify as transgender women are born male who later in life transition to female. Some argue that transgender women face the same oppression and sexism as cisgender women. Others, such as radical feminists, disapprove of transgender women entirely being […]

The Second Wave of Feminism

The Second Wave of feminism, also known as the Women’s Movement, gave women greater personal freedoms, such as the right to work outside of the home, political freedoms, family, and reproductive rights. The second wave also drew attention to domestic violence and rape in relationships/marriages. Even though the years of The Second Wave Movement is often argued about, it is said that the second wave officially started in 1963 and ended in the early 1980s. The Women’s Movement was influenced […]

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Radical Feminist Perspective on Education in the UK

To conclude, the radical feminist perspective on education in the UK acknowledges that significant economic restructuring, the dismantling of traditional male preserves (in terms of curriculum areas and employment options) alongside the closing of the gender gap, the transformation of family life and the changing role and status of women in society have all contributed to a genderquake effect. Despite the momentum of change, radical feminists continued to question entrenched notions of gender stereotyping that remained constant in the education […]

Why are Men Afraid of Feminism?

Concerning the Justification that men are afraid of feminism, a lot of men continue to worry because their positions are violated in the society and hence, I am on the pro side of the argument. Feminism for men would encompass a lot of aspects and the need to consider underlying factors such as influence. For that reason, men and majority feminists tend to argue differently concerning the treatment of women in the society. Men are usually afraid of feminism and […]

Political Philosophy Individual Essay

Gender equality refers to the equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities for both male and female (European Institution for Gender Equality, 2019). This principle applies to all sectors including family, workplace and politics. In the past, it was obvious that male dominate the whole society. Gender inequality was a myth. In the contemporary world, although gender inequality is getting less serious, deep-rooted male domination still exists. Since the 18th century, feminism arose in western society to eliminate gender inequality and discrimination […]

Thinking Queerly: Race, Sex, Gender

Sex is a vector of oppression because people can be discriminated against and in some instances killed for whatever "deviant" act they are pursuing. Sex oppression would include the laws that make homosexuality illegal in some countries, and the rape of LGBTQ+ members that occurs to "straighten them out." The lesbian continuum is a term that Adrienne Rich refers to as, "a range - through each woman's life and throughout history - of women-identified experience; not simply the fact that […]

Interrogating Patriarchal Power: Radical Feminist Perspectives on Gender Inequality

In the corridors of power, amidst the whispers of influence, and within the intimate confines of households, the grip of patriarchal power asserts its dominance. It weaves its tendrils through the very fabric of society, shaping norms, perceptions, and opportunities along rigid lines of gender. Yet, within this intricate tapestry of inequality, radical feminism emerges as a beacon of defiance, unyielding in its quest to unravel the threads of patriarchy and unveil the truth of gender justice. At the core […]

Reimagining Liberation: the Role of Radical Feminism in Challenging Norms

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 […]

Breaking Chains: the Radical Feminism Revolution

Diving into the heart of radical feminism feels like stepping into a realm where the status quo doesn't stand a chance. This isn't just feminism; it's feminism with a wild streak, boldly questioning everything we've been told about gender, power, and society. It's about looking at the world, seeing the deep-seated injustices woven into our everyday lives, and saying, "Nah, we're not doing it this way anymore." At the very core, radical feminism isn't playing the reform game. It's not […]

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The Radical Style of Andrea Dworkin

By Lauren Oyler

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.” ♦

Books & Fiction

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By Louis Menand

By Jane Kramer

By Alexandra Schwartz

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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About the author, emmaline soken-huberty.

Emmaline Soken-Huberty is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon. She started to become interested in human rights while attending college, eventually getting a concentration in human rights and humanitarianism. LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, and climate change are of special concern to her. In her spare time, she can be found reading or enjoying Oregon’s natural beauty with her husband and dog.

Friday essay: a sex-positive feminist takes up the ‘unfinished revolution’ her mother began – but it’s complicated

Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities, UNSW Sydney

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Zora Simic does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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Bad Sex – like Bad Feminist (the title of the essay collection that launched Roxane Gay to literary stardom back in 2014) – is an enticing title for a book. Who hasn’t had bad sex at some time or other, including those of us who identify as feminists?

Bad sex, variously defined and experienced, continues to be depressingly common, even though sex “has never been more normalised, feminism has never been more popular” and “romantic love has never been more malleable”.

Or, so argues Nona Willis Aronowitz, in her genre-defying first book, Bad Sex: Truth, Pleasure and the Unfinished Revolution .

Bad Sex: Truth, Pleasure and an Unfinished Revolution – Nona Willis Aronowitz (Plume).

Aronowitz’s regular writing gigs include a love and sex advice column for Teen Vogue. But in taking “bad sex” as her subject, she’s less concerned with offering remedies than in the “broader question of what cultural forces interfere with our pleasure, desire and relationship satisfaction”.

What has changed, what remains

In her cleverly constructed investigation, Aronowitz makes this a personal and historical question, as well as a feminist dilemma. Across 11 chapters, she blends memoir, social history, feminist analysis and cultural commentary in a highly readable, often insightful – and occasionally self-indulgent – fashion.

Hers is a very US-centric story: the backdrop to her investigations is the election of Donald Trump and his term in office, which heightened the chaos of her personal world, and her feminist framework is almost exclusively US-based. But Bad Sex has wider resonance and appeal.

The starting point is Aronowitz’s own compulsion to understand and move beyond the “bad sex” that eroded her otherwise satisfying (though ultimately short-lived) marriage. Through her “zig zag pursuit of sexual liberation”, Aronowitz ranges across the contemporary sexual landscape – dating apps, ethical non-monogamy, sexual and gender fluidity – while also looking back to feminist and gender history to contemplate what has changed, and what perennials remain.

These include the murky edges of consent (a conversation, she reminds us, that started well before #MeToo), everyday forms of sexual coercion, and the “woke misogynist” – a contemporary type with antecedents like “men’s libbers”.

Yet despite what the title might suggest, sexual harm is not her main concern and Bad Sex is not a #MeToo book. Aronowitz wants to bring both pleasure and nuance back to the centre of feminist sexual politics, including by way of telling the truth about how difficult it can be for women to pursue (or even identify) their desires in an enduringly patriarchal world.

Sometimes this involves poking gentle fun at herself and the whole concept of “feminist sex”. (“I wanted my hook-ups to be both fulfilling and morally sound”.) But there’s no doubting her commitment to the task – which includes knowing her history.

Feminist sexual revolutions and sex wars

The “unfinished revolution” of the subtitle is the explicitly feminist sexual revolution launched by women’s liberationists like Anne Koedt, whose essay The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm was first published in 1968.

By harking back to it, Aronowitz offers an updated telling of the heady and horny history of early radical feminism – as captured in Jane Gerhard’s Desiring Revolution: Second-Wave Feminism and the Rewriting of Twentieth-Century American Thought, 1920 to 1982 (2001), and before that, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America 1967-1975 (1989) by Alice Echols.

In this century, “radical feminism” has ossified into a catch-all for what many see as the most negative and obstinate manifestations of feminism – among them transphobia, anti-porn and anti-sex work, gender essentialism, and an agenda dominated by white, middle-class women.

But Gerhard and Echols, among many others, have recuperated a vibrant and multi-faceted lineage of radical feminism in which good sex was integral to liberatory feminist politics.

The points at which those earlier histories conclude are significant. Echols stops in 1975. She says that’s when “cultural feminism” became the dominant strain of feminism in the US, marked by separatism and a female counterculture that alienated many heterosexual and bisexual women – not to mention lesbians who were turned off by what they saw as the policing of their sexual desires.

Gerhard continues to 1982, the year of the historic Scholar and the Feminist Conference at Barnard College. Entitled “Towards a Politics of Sexuality”, the conference was convened by feminists eager to return to (and extend) feminism’s earlier focus on sexual pleasure – much to the consternation of anti-porn feminists. They protested outside, wearing T-shirts with “For a Feminist Sexuality” on one side, and “Against S/M” on the other.

The Barnard Conference did not launch the “Feminist Sex Wars” – with “pro-sex” feminists on one side and the so-called “anti-sex” feminists on the other. It certainly galvanised them, though. And it has been heavily dissected and narrated ever since, including by those who were there.

Anthropologist Gayle S. Rubin, part of the West Coast lesbian sadomasochism scene, was still a graduate student when she presented an early version of her since much-anthologised essay, “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality” , at the conference.

In her essay, Rubin lamented the “temporary hegemony” of the anti-pornography movement, defended pro-sex feminism as part of a longer tradition of sex radicalism, and provocatively challenged the “assumption that feminism is or should be the privileged site of a theory of sexuality”. This last point partly accounts for why Rubin’s essay is as canonical to queer theory as it is to feminist thought.

In a lecture delivered earlier this year, Rubin noted a resurgence of interest in the Feminist Sex Wars, post-#MeToo. It’s evident in a surge of books released in 2021. There were two dedicated revisionist histories: Lorna Bracewell’s Why We Lost the Sex Wars: Sexual Freedom in the #MeToo Era and Brenda Croswell’s The New Sex Wars: Sexual Harm in the #MeToo Era .

And those Feminist Sex Wars were part of philosopher Amia Srinivisan’s lauded essay collection The Right to Sex . Srinivisan also wrote an essay for The New Yorker on the Sex Wars, extending its preoccupations to the British context.

Each of these books is markedly different in its emphasis. Bracewell spotlights the participation of queer women of colour. Croswell contemplates the limits of the law for addressing sexual assault. And Srinivisan re-evaluates anti-porn feminism in light of contemporary concerns. All three, however – like Aronowitz – see the feminist politics of sex as unfinished business, with the Feminist Sex Wars of the 1980s offering both guidance and a cautionary tale.

For Rubin, however, the new literature on the Sex Wars – some of it tainted with errors of fact – is not so much history as a reiteration of myths and recycled narratives. These books reflect what she sees as a “growing tendency to pontificate on these earlier conflicts without actually knowing what was going on in them”, nor the context in which they unfolded (notably – the Reagan administration, the rise of the Christian right and the onset of the AIDS crisis).

Rubin recalls the Sex Wars as traumatic for many reasons, including because they eclipsed an earlier, more wide-ranging and libidinous feminist sexual agenda. Early radical feminists and women’s liberationists, says Rubin, were “incredibly concerned with sex, sexuality, women’s sexual pleasure, along with violence, rape and battery, and a whole lot of other things”.

One of the most prominent was Ellen Willis , author of “Towards a Feminist Sexual Revolution” (published in 1982), among other key essays. Two years later, her daughter (with activist and scholar Stanley Aronowitz ) was born: Nona Willis Aronowitz.

Read more: Is the #MeToo era a reckoning, a revolution, or something else?

Like mother, like daughter?

Like many millennial women, Aronowitz came of age with “pro-sex” feminism on the ascent. But though she was literally raised by one of the recognised progenitors of that feminism, she says while she was growing up, her mother “didn’t pry or even offer” counsel on puberty or sex.

Willis died in 2006, when Aronowitz was in her early 20s. It’s primarily through her mother’s writings that she’s absorbed her views on sex and relationships, including as editor of the posthumous collection The Essential Ellen Willis (2014).

In Bad Sex she digs deeper, reading through her mother’s letters and personal papers to piece together her sexual experiences and past relationships – including with Aronowitz’s father. Some of what she finds is confronting (especially about her dad’s first marriage). But there’s also solace, wisdom and solidarity to be found in her mother’s life and writing, and those of others like her, who have made (or continue to make) “good sex” central to their feminism.

Willis began her writing career as a rock critic. She was initially wary of the version of women’s liberation she found in Notes from the First Year (1968), a collection of writings from New York radical women.

“Sexuality,” writes Aronowitz, “was all over Notes” – including Koedt’s advocacy for the clitoris and call to “redefine our sexuality”, and Shulamith Firestone’s transcription of one of the group’s meetings on sex, a somewhat damning indictment of the sexual revolution.

Willis wrote at the time that “the tone strikes me as frighteningly bitter” – but within months of meeting the New York women, she was a total convert. She formed the breakaway group Redstockings with Firestone, who went on to write the feminist classic The Dialectic of Sex (1970). Willis also re-evaluated her relationship with her boyfriend in the light of what consciousness-raising had exposed, and went on to spend much of her thirties single.

By the end of the 1970s, Willis was an eloquent critic of the then-emerging anti-pornography feminism. She warned in a landmark 1979 essay that if

feminists define pornography, per se, as the enemy, the result will be to make a lot of women afraid of their sexual feelings and afraid to be honest about them.

In the same essay, Willis shared that “over the years I’ve enjoyed various pieces of pornography […] and so have most women I know”. A couple of years later, in “Lust Horizons: Is the Women’s Movement Pro-Sex?” (1981), Willis surveyed the flashpoints.

She concluded that both “self-proclaimed arbiters of feminist morals” and “sexual libertarians who often evade honest discussion by refusing to make judgements at all” were obstacles to “a feminist understanding of sex”. By her lights, that involved recognising that “our sexual desires are never just arbitrary tastes”.

Read more: Shulamith Firestone: why the radical feminist who wanted to abolish pregnancy remains relevant

A candid narrator

Aronowitz is clearly indebted to her mother’s style of feminism. Her description of Willis’s particular niche (in the introduction to The Essential Ellen Willis) could well describe her own. She was intellectual, but not academic. She was a journalist, but not primarily an “objective” reporter; she “poached from her life and detailed her thought processes”.

Like her mother, Aronowitz is alert to the grey areas between utopian feminist visions of sexual liberation and the tricky realities of heterosexuality – or in Aronowitz’s case, heteroflexibility. “Reconciling personal desire with political conviction,” she writes, “is frankly, a tall order,” but nevertheless “essential”.

Yet while Willis stopped short of memoir, Aronowitz – reared on social media as much as feminism – is a candid narrator. It’s hard not to bristle with sympathy for her now ex-husband Aaron when she describes their sex towards the end as “metastasizing in the worst way”, or her own experience of it as “some putrid combination of bored, irritable, and disassociated”.

Elsewhere, Aronowitz describes her sexual encounters when her marriage is opened up, while she’s separated and as she moves into a new relationship – in enough detail to possibly tip over into too-much-information territory for some readers.

What stops Bad Sex from descending into an extended confessional is that her truth-telling (which is different to tell-all) is not a solipsistic exercise. Aronowitz knows the limits of extrapolating from one’s own experience – especially if, like her, you’re a white, middle-class feminist with a big platform – and that the best way to do it is to be honest and to share the stage.

She reveals she enjoyed the social capital accrued from getting married and was terrified of being thirtysomething and single. And how she violated the rules of ethical non-monogamy (crossing over into a far less progressive “affair”), and largely went through the motions of queer experimentation.

Aronowitz indicts herself as much as she does her own generation of so-proclaimed sexual renegades. But hers is not a satirical gaze; her quest to understand what makes sex “good” or “bad” – and why it matters – is genuine.

Aronowitz typically launches each chapter with a personal experience: either her own, or from someone who offers a different perspective. Like her friend Lulu, a Black, queer woman, whose personal and family histories preface a larger discussion of the distinctive trajectories of black feminist sexual thought.

Readers with prior knowledge will be familiar with some of the key works and figures Aronowitz showcases (for instance, Audre Lorde’s classic 1978 essay “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power” ). She weaves these classics together with contemporary literature and activism (like adrienne moore browne’s 2019 book Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good ). And so, she provides entry points for different potential audiences: readers seeking a historical primer, and readers who are after an update.

The gap between theory and practice – or the challenge of what Sara Ahmed calls living a feminist life – is of special interest to Aronowitz. She manages to both capture the power of polemic in feminist history and to get behind the scenes.

For instance, Aronowitz reminds us, even Emma Goldman, the defiant anarchist who inspired women’s liberationists with her proclamations of free love, was hardly immune to romantic despair.

Elsewhere, she revisits essays by radical feminists Dana Densmore and Roxanne Dunbar on celibacy and asexuality as essential and invigorating aspects of second-wave feminist sexual thought.

When Densmore later tells her there wasn’t anyone in their militant group, Cell 16, who was actually celibate, Aronowitz isn’t surprised or judgemental. Instead, she heeds what Densmore saw as the most important sentence of her essay – one Aronowitz had originally overlooked:

This is not a call for celibacy but for an acceptance of celibacy as an honourable alternative, one preferable to the degradation of most male-female sexual relationships.

Sex, Densmore tells her, was “really bad in 1968”. In the early phase of the sexual revolution, when feminism had yet to happen, “it felt important to tell women they could walk away from bad relationships.”

Read more: Friday essay: 'with men I feel like a very sharp, glittering blade' – when 5 liberated women spoke the truth

Over 50 years later, Aronowitz has a lot to share with readers about sex. But her book is no polemic. In thinking about sex – her own and in general – feminism has clearly been an enormous and generative influence, but Aronowitz also acknowledges its limits and shares her frustrations. “I felt grateful”, she writes, “for the radical feminism that encouraged shame-free sexual exploration but I resented its high bar too.”

Crucially, however, Aronowitz does not disavow feminism or make grand claims about what sex should or should not be. That phase, Aronowitz suggests, was necessary once, but is now over.

This sets Bad Sex productively apart from other recent books, such as Louise Perry’s The Case Against the Sexual Revolution: A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century (2022). Perry’s somewhat unrelenting diatribe against sex-positive feminism concludes with motherly advice to her readers, including “don’t use dating apps” and “only have sex with a man if you think he would make a good father to your children”.

For Aronowitz, ultimately the “unsteady conclusions of liberationists” – including those of her mother – were more inspirational “than any righteous slogan”. Bad Sex offers a rich compendium of these teachings, but its value is more elusive and greater than this.

In sharing her doubts, reflections and vulnerabilities, Aronowitz pushes feminist sexual politics beyond the binaries it is sometimes reduced to: pleasure/danger, positive/negative, pro/anti. Instead, she pushes it towards the complex engagement that Ellen Willis, among others, had encouraged all along.

• Relationships
• Pornography
• Pornography censorship
• sexual revolution
• second-wave feminism
• Audre Lorde

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Radical Feminism and the Failures of the Left

Photo by David Len

I was politicized and radicalized fairly late in life, beginning at the age of 30 at the end of the 1980s, when I embraced left politics and radical feminism at the same time. Despite tensions between the two philosophies, I remain committed to both.

Back to the ‘80s: Until then, I had been a fairly conventional American liberal, albeit weighed down by considerable cynicism that was likely a product of the post-Watergate/Vietnam era, a newspaper journalism career, and my quirky personality. Ironically, left politics and radical feminism persuaded me that the world’s crises were more intractable than I thought, but at the same time cured me of my cynicism.

Instead of taking the lazy way out by thinking that we humans were simply nasty creatures bound to mess things up, I began to ask how ideologies and institutions shaped societies and influenced people, which showed me new openings for political action. Humans are nasty creatures and that we are bound to mess things up, of course, but I believe it’s worthwhile trying to be better and minimize the damage we do, and that’s more likely if we can critically analyze those ideologies and challenge the institutions.

As I sorted through all that, I viewed radical feminist and left politics as complimentary, not at odds. I soon learned that not everyone agreed. Why did I think that, and why did others disagree?

Both radical feminism’s critique of patriarchy and the political left’s critique of capitalism and imperialism offer analyses of systems and structures of power. By the time I stumbled into politics, both of these political movements had expanded to include a critique of white supremacy, and most everyone I met in these projects understood the threat of ecological degradation. A holistic politics that could face honestly the most serious threats to justice and sustainability seemed possible to me, and pursing that politics seemed like a path to a meaningful life.

That awareness of the role of systems and structures of power is crucial to these claims. Rather than focus on the bad choices that individuals sometimes make or the self-serving corruption of some politicians, a radical/left framework helped me understand the forces shaping those choices and corruption. Individuals should strive to make good choices and we should demand that politicians serve the common good, of course. But to be effective, we need to reckon with power and ideology, with systems and institutions.

In short, this political awakening led me to question the culture’s conventional wisdom: that male dominance and white supremacy are largely a thing of the past (women and nonwhite people should stop complaining so much), that competition in capitalism is necessary to foster innovation (alas, the poor would always be with us), that US power keeps the world stable (after all, the world is a bad neighborhood and needs a cop), and that high-energy/high-technology societies will always find ways to clean up the environment (there’s no need to reduce population and consumption).

Challenging the dominant dogma on all these fronts seemed to fit together. But I learned that finding a consensus on the left wasn’t so easy. All political movements can be contentious, of course, but fairly quickly I ran into a deep divide between radical feminists and much of the political left.

My introduction to the left’s failure to embrace feminism came in my antipornography work. Like most men, I had used pornography as a child and young man, but it always left me feeling uneasy. The radical feminist critique of the sexual-exploitation industries (including prostitution, stripping, massage parlors, escorts, and pornography) not only was intellectually compelling but made sense to me personally. Instead of  struggling to “be a man” —to live up to patriarchal notions of masculinity—I found in radical feminism a path to  trying to become a decent human being .

But that approach wasn’t popular on much of the left. Instead of sticking with the analysis of systems and structures of power, most leftists suddenly became champions of individual choice. When men buy and sell objectified female bodies for sexual pleasure, the left said that’s not necessarily exploitation but rather individuals’ free choices. Usually the left would focus on the conditions under which people make choices—how power creates those conditions and ideology obscures the severity of constraints. Apparently, that approach isn’t relevant when men’s sexual pleasure is at stake.

Eventually the conflict between radical feminism and the male-dominated left expanded to conflicts within liberal/left feminism. First, women who advocated for what they called an anti-censorship feminism challenged the radical analysis, leading to debates that were spirited but usually productive. But when an explicitly pro-pornography feminism emerged, and eventually became dominant in academic feminism and on the left, the radical feminist analysis of how men buy and sell objectified female bodies for sexual pleasure was pushed to the margins.

That would have been fine with me—if the radical feminist analysis had turned out to be wrong. But it wasn’t. In fact, as the pornography industry expanded, it became clear that this analysis of the harms created by the production and use of graphic sexually explicit material—what we typically call hardcore pornography—was on target.

When  Andrea Dworkin  and other radical feminists began critiquing the misogyny of the pornography industry in the 1970s, the images were—by today’s standards—relatively tame. But Andrea and other critics saw the ideology of male dominance and white supremacy playing out in the images, which were produced through the routine exploitation of women. If those feminists were the first to analyze these features of the pornography industry, and those features have intensified over time, wouldn’t it make sense to take the analyses of those feminists seriously? That seems sensible to me, but not to most of the left or to a significant segment of the feminist movement.

This is what I have called the  paradox of pornography . In my adult life, two trends are uncontroversial: First, pornography has become more widely available and routinely accepted in liberal and left circles. Second, the pornography industry has produced images that are more overtly cruel and degrading to women, as well as more overtly racist, than ever before. As the amount of pornography produced has increased and become more normalized, the degradation it portrays has intensified. Why would a media genre become more accepted by the liberal/left at the same time it becomes more misogynist and racist? Why would progressives who routinely critique sexism and racism give pornography a pass?

I have an answer: This radical feminist analysis of the sexual-exploitation industries has been ignored because it is compelling but isn’t cool. It’s not hip. It’s not the kind of thing that cool, hip people believe. And who doesn’t want to be cool and hip? Because a radical feminist critique points out that patriarchal sexuality really isn’t cool or hip, it’s unacceptable.

A more serious answer: The sexual-exploitation industries are deeply patriarchal, and  fighting patriarchy is hard . It is the oldest of the oppressive social systems, going back several thousand years in human history, compared with several hundred for white supremacy and capitalism. Patriarchal ideas and modes of behavior are so woven into the fabric of everyday life that they can be hard to identify, let alone eliminate. Feminist organizing has forced some changes, such as improved laws against rape, domestic violence, and sexual harassment. But striking at the core of male dominance, especially at men’s sexual exploitation of women, produces intense backlash.

Although radical feminists have been marginalized for these critiques, the dominant liberal/left feminists typically didn’t suggest that the critique of the sexual-exploitation industries was antifeminist. But in recent years, the split between radical and liberal/left feminists has become even more heated over the question of transgenderism. Many (though not all) radical feminists challenge the ideology of the trans movement, which has led some pro-trans feminists not only to reject radical feminist arguments but declare that anyone who doesn’t embrace trans ideology is not really feminist. One liberal/left feminist journalist said that feminists who are uneasy about trans policies and insufficiently supportive of trans ideology are misguided but still feminist, but radical feminist critics shouldn’t be considered part of the movement. She argued that the term TERF (trans exclusionary radical feminists) is inaccurate because  “I don’t think that they actually are feminists.”  Radical feminist women who have been at the forefront of the struggle against patriarchy for a half-century are, from this perspective, no longer feminist because they challenge the ideology of transgenderism.

In my forthcoming book,  It’s Debatable: Talking Authentically about Tricky Topics ,  I argue that trans activists are pursuing a politics that is intellectually incoherent, anti-feminist, and at odds with an ecological worldview. I develop that argument at length in the book, but I raise the issue here to point out, again, that the left is abandoning its own mode of analysis and theoretical approach when it embraces the transgender movement’s liberal, individualist, medicalized response to the problem of patriarchy’s rigid, repressive, and reactionary gender norms.

Of course, I could be wrong. I have been wrong before, as have we all. In intellectual and political life, we expect people to make the case for their ideas. No one has the authority to dictate the truth by virtue of personal identity or political affiliation. When we challenge the analysis of others, we provide reasons for them to consider changing their position. What’s distinctive about my experience with radical feminism and the left today is that almost no one bothers offering me reasons why I should rethink the analysis of the sexual-exploitation industries and transgenderism. Instead, I’ve been told by many feminists and leftists that my positions are wrong (apparently that is self-evident), that it’s not their job to demonstrate why I’m wrong (I’m supposed to educate myself), and until I shift positions I’m not welcome in most feminist and left spaces (I’ve been shunned and shouted down more times than I can count).

Of course, no one has an obligation to engage me personally. But the radical feminist critique of the sexual-exploitation industries has for decades demonstrated that it is a compelling account of the ways men buy and sell objectified female bodies for sexual pleasure. And the radical feminist critique of the ideology of the transgender movement offers not only a critique of patriarchal gender norms but a compassionate alternative for those in distress.

Whether or not one embraces radical feminists, I believe everyone should be paying attention to the arguments they are making, especially on the left. When progressive movements abandon analyses of systems and structures of power  in favor of liberal individualism, we give up the hope of the radical change that is so needed.

[This is an edited version of a presentation to a forum on “The Left and Machismo” sponsored by Hombres por la Equidad in Mexico City on May 18, 2024.]

Robert Jensen is an emeritus professor in the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Texas at Austin and a founding board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center . He collaborates with New Perennials Publishing and the New Perennials Project at Middlebury College. Jensen can be reached at  [email protected] . To join an email list to receive articles by Jensen, go to  http://www.thirdcoastactivist.org/jensenupdates-info.html . Follow him on Twitter:  @jensenrobertw  

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Why Are Divorce Memoirs Still Stuck in the 1960s?

Recent best sellers have reached for a familiar feminist credo, one that renounces domestic life for career success.

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By Sarah Menkedick

Sarah Menkedick’s most recent book is “Ordinary Insanity: Fear and the Silent Crisis of Motherhood in America.”

“The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own,” Betty Friedan wrote in “ The Feminine Mystique ,” in 1963. Taking a new role as a productive worker is “the way out of the trap,” she added. “There is no other way.”

On the final page of “ This American Ex-Wife ,” her 2024 memoir and study of divorce, Lyz Lenz writes: “I wanted to remove myself from the martyr’s pyre and instead sacrifice the roles I had been assigned at birth: mother, wife, daughter. I wanted to see what else I could be.”

More than 60 years after Friedan’s landmark text, there remains only one way for women to gain freedom and selfhood: rejecting the traditionally female realm, and achieving career and creative success.

Friedan’s once-provocative declaration resounds again in a popular subgenre of autobiography loosely referred to as the divorce memoir, several of which have hit best-seller lists in the past year or two. These writers’ candid, raw and moving exposés of their divorces are framed as a new frontier of women’s liberation, even as they reach for a familiar white feminist ideology that has prevailed since “The Problem That Has No Name,” through “Eat, Pray, Love” and “I’m With Her” and “Lean In”: a version of second-wave feminism that remains tightly shackled to American capitalism and its values.

Lenz, for example, spends much of her book detailing her struggle to “get free,” but never feels she needs to define freedom. It is taken as a given that freedom still means the law firm partner in heels, the self-made woman with an independent business, the best-selling author on book tour — the woman who has shed any residue of the domestic and has finally come to shine with capitalist achievement.

It is not the freedom for a woman to stay home with her child for a year, or five. The freedom to stop working after a lifetime toiling in low-wage jobs. The freedom for a Filipina nanny to watch her own children instead of those of her “liberated” American boss. The freedom to start a farm or a homestead or engage in the kind of unpaid work ignored by an economy that still values above all else the white-collar professional labor long dominated by men — and in fact mostly fails to recognize other labor as valuable at all.

One of the paradoxes the divorce memoir highlights is that women’s work is made invisible by a society that disparages it, and the only way it becomes visible is through the triumphant narrative of a woman’s escape from it — which only reinforces its undesirability and invisibility.

In Maggie Smith’s 2023 memoir “ You Could Make This Place Beautiful ,” Smith details the critical inflection point when her poem “ Good Bones ” goes viral, her career takes off and her marriage begins to implode. She tells a reporter from The Columbus Dispatch: “I feel like I go into a phone booth and I turn into a poet sometimes. Most of the other time, I’m just Maggie who pushes the stroller.”

Nothing threatening, nothing meaningful. Just a mom pushing the stroller in the meager labor of women — until she slips into the phone booth and transforms into an achieving superhero.

This is not to diminish Smith’s work, a unique and highly refined series of linked essays that build into an emotional symphony about marital breakdown. Her intention is not, like Lenz’s, to condemn the institution of marriage or to rejoice in her release from hers, which is complicated, excruciating and tender. Her depictions of divorce clearly resonate with readers and offer solace and insight into a common experience of heartbreak. But it’s worth asking what exactly is being celebrated in the huge cultural reception her memoir, and other popular divorce memoirs, have received.

Leslie Jamison’s book “ Splinters ,” published the same day as “This American Ex-Wife,” is an exquisite, textured and precise articulation of the collapse of her marriage, all nuance and interiority where Lenz’s writing is blunt and political. But here, too, we get a female narrator for whom freedom and acceptance ultimately signify professional success. Jamison is much more vexed about this formula, but in the end she settles for lightly querying rather than assailing it. She jokes about how her editor is stressed about book sales while she’s stressed about her baby sleeping on airplanes, and mocks this as a “humblebrag”: “ I don’t care about ambition! I only care about baby carriers! ” She rushes to clarify in the next sentence, “Of course I cared about book sales, too.”

Herein lies the ultimate paradigm, the space no woman wants to explore: What if the modern woman didn’t actually care about book sales? About making partner? About building a successful brand? That would be unthinkable. Embarrassing. Mealy, mushy, female.

But later in “Splinters,” Jamison skewers the cult of male, capitalist achievement: “My notion of divinity was gradually turning its gaze away from the appraising, tally-keeping, pseudo-father in the sky who would give me enough gold stars if I did enough good things, and toward the mother who’d been here all along,” she writes. I felt an electric optimism reading this. If feminism wants to tackle patriarchy, it needs to start with that pseudo-father and his metrics of a person’s worth.

Jamison struggles toward this in “Splinters.” She wants so badly to be remarkable. To banter about the Russian G.D.P. while she spoon-feeds her toddler, or to impress arrogant lovers who critique her conversation as only “85 percent as good as it could be.” At the same time, she yearns “to experience the sort of love that could liberate everyone involved from their hamster wheels of self-performance,” a love that will “involve all your tedious moments.”

Yes , I found myself saying, I want to read about this love . A mother love that is radical, creative, affirming, even and especially in its difficulty and tedium. Jamison almost gets there, but returns ultimately to the affirmation that it’s OK to want more: “quiet mornings at my laptop, tap-tap-tapping at my keyboard.”

It is certainly OK, and natural, to want more. But what I find most exhilarating in this beautiful book is the possibility that it’s also OK to let go of wanting. It’s OK to not write a best seller, to not hold a prestigious title, to not start your own brand. It’s OK, even, to not try to find yourself, that most American of quests.

Divorce, sure. Ditch the toxic men, strike out on your own. But there’s nothing new or radical there. The radical is in a feminism that examines care as profound, powerful work and centers rather than marginalizes mothering, as both a lived act and a metaphor. We must let go of this half-century-old notion that the self can be “found” only after the roles of “mother, wife, daughter” have been rejected.

With friends, Jamison recounts lively anecdotes from a trip to Oslo with her daughter in order to prove that her life had not “‘gotten small,’ a phrase I put in quotes in my mind, though I did not know whom I was quoting.” Yet in this phrase lies another way of living: letting things get small, in a world that sees and celebrates mostly superlatives, and getting down to the level of the local, the intimate, the granular, the home.

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