There Is No Such Thing As Radical Feminism Anymore

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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/07/25/there-is-no-such-thing-as-radical-feminism-anymore/

There Is No Such Thing As Radical Feminism Anymore
By Amanda Marcotte
Thursday, July 25, 2013 19:12 EST



Don’t get me wrong! There was. In the 60s and 70s, there were radical feminists who were distinguishing themselves from liberal feminists. Radical feminists agreed with liberal feminists that we should change the laws to recognize women’s equality, but they also believed that we needed to change the culture. It was not enough to pass the ERA or legalize abortion, they believed, but we should also talk about cultural issues, such as misogyny, objectification, rape, and domestic violence.

In other words, what was once “radical” feminism is now mainstream feminism.

I realize there are anti-trans, anti-sex feminists out there who call themselves radical feminists, but I, simply put, don’t agree. What’s radical about them? They are to the right of the mainstream feminist movement. They often have more in common with the conservatives decrying mainstream feminism as “radical” than they do the original radical feminists who had consciousness-raising groups and abortion speak outs and who started Ms Magazine.

I don’t call anti-trans feminists “radical”. I call them reactionary. I don’t even really think of them as feminists, because feminism is about breaking down rigid gender ideology. They want to uphold rigid gender ideology, even if they differ from the patriarchy on what should go into the buckets we label “man” and “woman”.