Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!orion.oac.uci.edu!ucivax!gateway From: rshapiro@arris.COM (Richard Shapiro) Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: Radical (and other) feminisms (was: _FEAR_ and feminism) Message-ID: <1991Jan2.150637.1240@arris.com> Date: 2 Jan 91 20:40:19 GMT References: <8eLmu1w163w@halcyon.uucp> <1990Dec29.204059.10264@uunet!unhd> Organization: ARRIS Pharmaceutical, Cambridge, MA Lines: 40 Approved: tittle@ics.uci.edu Nntp-Posting-Host: alexandre-dumas.ics.uci.edu In article smd@lsuc.on.ca (Sean Doran) writes: >... >"Radical" feminists are just feminists who point out the problems in >society more agressively than others, hoping that someone will listen >to them, in line with the aphorism: "the squeaking wheel gets the >oil". Um, no. Radical feminism is not simply feminism that's radical. The name has been appropriated for a specific subgroup of feminism which is often contrasted with "socialist" or "post-structuralist" feminism. There *is* a strong lesbian-separatist component to Radical feminism, as well as a belief in essential, unchangeable social/moral/political differences between men and women. Radical feminism is, in fact, not very radical at all in its essentialism. Even so, that is what the term "Radical feminism" means, more or less. By way of contrast, other variants of feminism have been heavily influenced by marxism, or psychoanalysis, or "discourse theory" (ie Foucault et al). They would regard gender, and subjectivity, in an entirely non-essentialist way. Gender would be regarded as a social construction; any belief in, for instance, the innate moral superiority of women, would be seen as complicit with a gender system that subjugates women. This variant of feminism is interested in investigating the construction of gender, in exposing the social construction of what appears to be natural, undeniable, God-given (ie, the differences between men and women). They are interested in answering these kinds of questions: how does the subjugation of women happen? and especially, how does it happen in a social setting that regards itself as egalitarian? what are the specific mechanisms involved? In short, how is gender constructed? How do individuals become, in the full social sense, men and women? As can be seen, my sympathy is wholly with the (nominally) non-Radical feminist position. Only when we have some tentative answers to the questions they ask can we begin to do something. We won't even fully understand the nature, or the scope, of the problem until that happens. rs