Radical feminism

Radical feminists argued that male control of women’s sexuality was a key factor in women’s oppression (see Dworkin, 1981; Kelly, 1988; MacKinnon, 1982). Kate Millet and Shulamith Firestone are the most visible of the first radical feminist theorists and certainly attended to sexuality, though Jackson (1998b: 19—20) suggests that Firestone is rather idiosyncratic. Millet’s (1972/1970) book Sexual Politics was hugely influential and like other key feminists who published books in the same period (Firestone’s Dialectic of Sex, 1972; Germaine Greer’s Female Eunuch, 1970; Eva Figes’s Patriarchal Attitudes, 1978/1970 — see Chapter 5 for what they said about

bodies). Millet undertook the rather daunting task of explaining the causes of women’s oppression. Her explanation took women’s domination by men (patriarchy) as central to their social position. This inferior position, accord­ing to Millet, was not a product of‘natural’ differences between women and men. Instead she rigorously examined the sociocultural production of women by redefining the concept of politics. Previously it was used to talk about decision-making in the public sphere. She broadened the definition, seeing politics as referring to ‘power-structured relationships, arrangements whereby one group of persons is controlled by another’ (Millet, 1972/1970: 23). This was part of a new understanding of the personal as political, which is discussed in Chapter 6. Millet provides a broad theory of how patriarchy operates through ideology (for example, myth & religion), institutions (for example, family, education, economy) and force (for example, wife-beating and rape). Although she recognizes class and race as variables in women’s oppression, she tends to emphasize that all women are subject to oppression by men. For example, she argues that lower status males can use sex/violence over higher status women. She illustrates all of these ideas by looking at the literary reaction against women’s emancipation as expressed in the work of D. H. Lawrence, Henry Miller and Norman Mailer. These texts exemplify the ways in which women are controlled and subjugated by being sexually objectified and physically dominated. This makes Sexual Politics far more than literary criticism, but Millet perhaps makes her theory too grand. There are doubts about whether patriarchy has the transhistorical character she claims. The argument that all women are oppressed is perhaps overgeneralized and commonalities between women overstated.

There were criticisms of radical feminism for assuming that ‘women’ shared relatively universally in the disadvantages reinforced by patriarchy, but this was arguably a feature of most male theorizing of the time. Most dominant thinking worked at large-scale philosophizing and universalized in ways that excluded ‘others’, such as women. Radical feminism attempted to highlight women’s experiences by going beyond purely economic explanations of women’s oppression to include ideology, and literary and other representations of women. In order to overcome that oppression radical feminists were not content to reform the present system, they envisaged a more revolutionary overturning of present ways of thinking about and organizing the world. However this perhaps oversimplifies the wide range of ideas which are sometimes forced under the radical fem­inist banner, and draws attention to problems with the classification of different types of feminism covered so far.

The typical labelling of feminists as liberal, socialist, or radical, best describes British feminism (Holmes, 1999), although these labels do have some relevance for feminism in other Commonwealth nations (Beasley, 1999).They can also be applied to American feminism but ‘radical’ will

describe a slightly different political and theoretical approach to the one it applies to in Britain (Holmes, 1999). In America radical feminism is sometimes also called cultural feminism (Echols, 1989). Even within Britain and America these labels do not always fit all those involved in the feminist movement from the 1960s onwards and elsewhere the labels become even more difficult to apply. It is unclear, for instance, where those feminists interested in the intersections between racism and sex­ism might fit. The strong connection in America between the civil rights campaign to end racist segregation and legal discrimation in the USA can perhaps be covered by the ‘liberal’ label, but this does not fit other women’s collective action against, say, the effects of colonization. So, for example, the thought and activities of black women/women of colour can become marginalized by this way of thinking about feminism. Also, to suggest that these are simply theoretical approaches ignores how they have been used in political action. Even those most intent on ‘action’ had some sense of why they thought women were oppressed, in order to decide what needed to be ‘done’. This required rethinking whether feminists should focus on righting inequalities.