2. Exploring/Challenging Radical Feminism(S)
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2. Exploring/Challenging Radical Feminism(s) What is ‘Radical’ About Radical Feminism? Radical feminists are man-eating monsters or strange esoterics, aren’t they? It is due to these parodic stereotypes that radical feminism has often been neglected by ‘serious’ theorists in recent years. Consisting of individual theorists and groups of women in a time frame generally set from 1967-75 (see Crow 2000: 2), the theory and practice of radical feminism is domi- nated by its “refusal to accept the traditional category of ‘women’ as it has been defined in the West” (ibid: 2), and an insistence on women’s oppres- sion as “the first, the oldest, and the primary form of oppression […] to which all other forms of oppression are related and connected” (ibid: 2). As Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick aptly puts it, radical feminism “takes gender itself, gender alone, to be the most radical division of human experience, and a relatively unchanging one” (Kosofsky Sedgwick 1985: 11). One of the most influential works is certainly Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex (1970), which states that patriarchy is rooted in the biolog- ical inequality of the sexes concerning reproduction. In an expansion of Marxist thinking Firestone postulates a ‘sex class’ that springs “directly from a biological reality: men and women were created different, and not equally privileged” (2000 [1970]: 93). As men are increasingly able to free them- selves from the constraints of biological conditions (with the help of improved contraceptives, artificial insemination or in-vitro fertilization), Firestone fears an additional strengthening of the patriarchal system of exploitation and thus demands a female revolt and women’s control of reproduction: “not only the full restoration to women of ownership of their own bodies, but also their (temporary) seizure of control of human fertility – the new population biology as well as all the social institutions of child- bearing and childrearing” (ibid: 95); this revolution will then, in an almost utopian vision, eliminate “the sex distinction itself: genital differences would no longer matter culturally” (ibid: 95). Firestone thus envisions an an- drogynous society in which “there are no longer distinct reproductive and productive roles for women and men” (Tong 1992: 75). In her extremely influential Sexual Politics (1970), Kate Millett focuses on the exaggeration of 10 THE PLEASURE OF THE FEMINIST TEXT biological differences in patriarchal ideology and its attempt to legitimize women’s inferiority to men. Women are oppressed by the patriarchal insti- tution of the family, through the patriarchal economic hold over women, and through education: Because of our social circumstances, male and female are really two cultures and their life experiences are utterly diffe- rent – and this is crucial. Implicit in all the gender identity development which takes place through childhood is the sum total of the parents’, the peers’, and the culture’s notions of what is appropriate to each gender by way of temperament, character, interests, status, worth, gesture, and expression. (2000 [1970]: 136) Accompanied by (especially sexual) violence and anthropological myths such as Pandora’s box or the biblical Fall, women’s sexuality is crucial to the legitimization of male domination: “The connection of woman, sex, and sin constitutes the fundamental pattern of western patriarchal thought thereafter” (ibid: 145). Like Firestone, Millett envisions androgyny as an ideal, “if the feminine and masculine qualities integrated in the androg- ynous person are separately worthy” (Tong 1992: 98). The idea of androgyny as a solution to the problem of women’s oppression is equally explored by Marilyn French. In Beyond Power: On Women, Men and Morals (1985), she postulates women’s oppression in patriarchy as the paradigm for all modes of oppression (one of the shared prerequisites of most radical feminists), and points out that “the ideas that sustain and perpetuate male control over females are institutionalized in patriarchy. Thus the fundamental nature of patriarchy is located in stratification, institutionalization, and coercion” (1985: 73). In a more equal and just society, ‘feminine’ values (which, as critics have noted, often coincide with the values and characteristics tradi- tionally ascribed to biological women in French’s work) have to be reinte- grated into a ‘masculine’ society, which in its present state predominantly focuses on brutalization and a devaluation of feeling that “precludes easy friendship, fellowship, community” (ibid: 530). In contrast to Millett, .