Noli Irritare Leones

One of the things that bugged me about that Harvard professor’s piece was his misunderstanding of the term “radical feminism.” Now, I’m not exactly a women’s studies wonk. I can tell you more about the theological thinking of Peter Abelard, or the working of neurotransmitters, or how to build a Linux kernel, than I can about the ins and outs of feminist theory. But I do know my radical feminists from my liberal feminists.

The term “radical feminism” is sort of like the term “fundamentalism.” To non-Christians, and to liberal Christians like myself, “fundamentalist” can be almost a synonym for “narrow-minded.” But the word does have a historical meaning within the fundamentalist world; it’s a belief in the “five fundamentals.” Wikipedia describes these as:

… the inerrancy of the Bible, the virgin birth of Christ, the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and the authenticity of his miracles.

The particular way in which “inerrancy of the Bible” is held (to my mind, often rigid, unreasonably legalistic, and with a particular theology slipped in as the supposedly self-evident reading of the Bible) is what leads to the other meaning of the word “fundamentalist.”

Similarly, “radical feminism” gets used by people outside the feminist movement to mean “any feminist point of view that I consider too extreme,” but actually has a more specific meaning within the feminist movement. Among second-wave feminists (feminists of the 1960s and 1970s) there was a split between “liberal feminists” and “radical feminists.” I’ll quote from Wikipedia again:

For example, Radical feminism argues that there exists an oppressive patriarchy that is the root cause of the most serious social problems. Violence and oppression of women, because they are women, is more fundamental than oppressions related to class, ethnicity, religion, etc. Radical feminists have been very vocal and active in influencing attitudes and state-wide school curriculum standards. Thus, it is not unusual for feminism to be equated with the ideas proposed by Radical feminism. Some find that the prioritization of oppression and the universalization of the idea of “Woman,” which was part of traditional Radical feminist thinking, too generic, and that women in other countries would never experience the same experience of being “woman” than women in Western countries did.

Liberal feminism, in contrast, is a form of feminism that focuses more on legal changes and social reforms. Compare and contrast Betty Friedan and Andrea Dworkin and you get an idea of the difference.

Professor Mansfield, using the term “radical feminism” very loosely, appears to actually be criticizing the sexual revolution. Much of which isn’t necessarily feminist at all. To the extent that he’s criticizing a form of feminism, his argument would seem to apply better to the sex-positive feminism of someone like Susie Bright (no, I’m not going to guarantee this link is worksafe) than to a radical feminist like Dworkin. Because, while there’s lots of criticisms that can be made of Dworkin, seeking to “lower women to the level of men” in terms of sexual behavior doesn’t seem to be one. In fact, Dworkin came out of a background of having been a rape victim, a battered wife, and a prostitute, and she was about anything but getting women to be more yielding to men. Same thing for other radical feminists.

It’s a matter of addressing what the people you are criticizing are actually saying, rather than just using terms without regard to what they mean to the people who are actually applying them to themselves.

On a semi-related note, Leon Kass isn’t any happier with the sexual revolution than Professor Mansfield. Someone at Crooked Timber linked the article, and ruined my desire to actually read the whole thing by quoting the last paragraph:

Men, as Rousseau put it, will always do what is pleasing to women, but only if women suitably control and channel their own considerable sexual power. Is there perhaps some nascent young feminist out there who would like to make her name great and who will seize the golden opportunity for advancing the truest interest of women (and men and children) by raising (again) the radical banner, “Not until you marry me”? And, while I’m dreaming, why not also, “Not without my parents’ blessings”?

Right. Having to have your parents’ consent for marriage, while men can ask whom they please, is a position of tremendous sexual power. I did skim the article quickly, though, and, if you can stand to overlook “Not without my parents’ blessings,” it’s at least a more sophisticated analysis of the causes of the sexual revolution than what came out in Mansfield’s remarks.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 21st, 2005 at 7:15 am and is filed under Feminism, Sexuality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.