There are a lot of misconceptions about radical feminism, and I would like to unpick some of them.
Most people who get called TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) are not radical feminists. Many activists probably aren’t feminists because feminism is more about how you think than what you do. Some radical feminists are activists, and some are just thinkers and writers. I am both an activist and a feminist, but I can respect those who are both, either or neither. Feminism is a way of thinking. It can inform what you do, and make you a better activist, too. If you are a woman, feminism is for you. If it harms women, it isn’t feminism.
In any case, most feminists are not ‘radical’. Radical, in this sense, doesn’t mean extreme; it means ‘relating to the root’. Radical feminism is the belief that female oppression is the first oppression, one universally experienced by all women - intensifying other oppressions that they might experience - and that female oppression is the model on which all other kinds of oppression, such as racial oppression, class oppression, and so on, are based. As a result, part of radical feminism is understanding that unless women are freed from oppression, any other form of oppression you manage to eradicate will return. This is quite an unusual view, but one that I hold because it makes sense of the world as a way to think.
It is also worth noting that many people seem to think radical feminism is “socialist feminism”. This is untrue. Socialism prioritises the eradication of class oppression above others. Given that it is a fundamental tenet of radical feminism that until women are freed, no one is free, it stands to reason that radical feminists prioritise women’s oppression above all others, including (male) class oppression, the preoccupation of socialism. Socialism is not a necessary part of radical feminism, even though many of us are politically left of centre and commit to eradicating inequality through that; some radical feminists are politically on the right.
Finally, radical feminism is a form of intersectional feminism. Intersectionality has become the dirty word of feminism, especially among those opposed to trans ideology, because so often it has been taken to mean feminism which intersects with men’s need to be freed from the bounds of patriarchy too, a tenet of third-wave feminism.
Radical feminism intersects with other oppressed classes but not with men - they are not an oppressed class. Radical feminism is of itself naturally intersectional because women’s oppression is intersectional. Women are the majority of the world, and yet we are oppressed - we are an oppressed majority. Whatever the form of your oppression, being female will intensify it. Women of colour, poor women, disabled women, homosexual women, elderly women - all exist, and all are more intensely oppressed than men of the same class. No women are men, though, and therefore radical feminism will not intersect with men.
Radical feminism covers all oppressed classes because women are present in every oppressed class - this is untrue of any other group. Radical feminists seek to address women’s oppression as women, including Black women, poor women, disabled women, homosexual women, and elderly women. Obviously, we think the most about the most oppressed women, but if it doesn’t benefit women, it isn’t feminist.
Some other expressions often muddy the waters. Sex and Gender, for instance. There is a prudishness about using the word “sex” to mean our biological category. It is very unfortunate that the same word indicates the abstract class of anisogamous species that reproduce in a particular way and the physical act of human baby-making. Other languages are not similarly afflicted, but it has led to the embarrassed and obfuscatory use of “gender” as an interchangeable word for sex, especially in the USA. This squeamish confusion has allowed many others to develop.
As Greer said, “Female is real, and it's sex, and femininity is unreal, and it's gender.” Gender is a set of stereotypes imposed on individuals by virtue of their sex. In the case of women, it is femininity that is generally imposed, and in the case of men, masculinity. As all of us are incompletely feminine or masculine, we are all “gender non conforming”. None of us is “cis”. On the genderbread person, it is worth noting that no one is actually Barbie or GI Joe, neither of whom, incidentally, have genitals, only plastic secondary sex characteristics, and therefore appear to be sexless. Funny, that.
(see The Radical Notion)
This term “gender” has also turned up in the phrase “gender-critical”. This term (usually abbreviated to GC) originally meant “critical of the way in which femininity and masculinity are imposed on individuals by society”. I would like to hang on to that meaning, but in a world where people describe Matt Walsh - who is committed to femininity as never being ascribed to men, for instance - as Gender Critical, it is becoming less useful. Matt Walsh is not critical of gender. He loves gender. He is a sex realist. After all, if you don’t know who a woman is, how can you know how to oppress her? I am a sex realist too. After all, if I cannot define what women are, how can I identify their oppression?
(Picture credit: @wackypidgeon)
But I was never assigned a sex: my sex was determined, and that happened when a particular sperm cell from my dad won the race to one of my mum’s ova; no one can think a sperm cell assigned anything. My sex was observed at birth. What was assigned to me at that moment was a wealth of expectations, based largely on our understanding of the social role of women, which we call “femininity”. That assignment has resulted in consequences (both negative and positive), all of which undermine my right to be the person I am, free of expectations. Feminism is the radical notion that we are human.
I reject that assignment, and that is why I am a radical feminist.