DISCLAIMER: This post is rooted in a feminist/pro-feminist analysis, and as a result, it may lead readers to assume certain things about me politically and personally (e.g. that I am living, have lived, and will continue to live a responsible, pro-feminist lifestyle). The fact is, I committed a crime in January 2007, sexually violating a woman who was under my care as a resident advisor in college. I ask that you keep this information in mind when evaluating my comments in this post, as well as if you engage me in dialogue. Please read this post (listed as “Because you deserve to know” on the “ARCHIVES” page) for more information.
*
On a discussion board for the ‘National Feminist Anti-Pornography Movement’ group on Facebook, I was recently asked about “Radically Speaking: Feminism Reclaimed,” a major radical feminist anthology by Diane Bell and Renate Klein. Specifically, I was asked what led me to this book and how I came to appreciate radical feminism. I include here an excerpt of my response, which will provide some background on the influence of radical feminism in my life.
Before I became involved with feminism, or really had a remotely accurate understanding of what feminism is (or feminisms, rather), I became involved with an organization providing advocacy services to survivors of sexual violence. I did not see a connection between my role as an advocate and feminism, and of course, I was not familiar with the concept of patriarchy. So I had no political context within which to make meaning of the life stories shared with me by survivors.
Frustrated with college courses that seemed so disconnected from my own lived experience, I enrolled in a women’s studies course. And in true feminist fashion, the personal became political. I began to see that the survivors I met were not merely individual human beings existing in a vacuum, just as their experiences of men’s violence, aggression, and exploitation were not devoid of political and social context. Instead, these women (and a few men) were survivors of a complex system of oppression and injustice – to borrow bell hooks’ phrase, “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.”
I would soon complete a minor in women’s studies (no major available) alongside majors in philosophy and religion and social consciousness. And without delving deeply into my research and writing in women’s studies, a major subject in my academic work has been the sexual exploitation industries. I did not immediately turn to radical feminists like Andrea Dworkin, Kathleen Barry, Catharine MacKinnon, Susan Griffin, Robin Morgan, and Sheila Jeffreys (and later, other authors mentioned in Bell and Klein’s “Radically Speaking”). But in comparison to the so-called “sex radical” or “sex-positive” (as if to say radical feminism is anti-sex) feminist literature, as well as male-dominated “critiques” from left and right, radical feminists seemed to be the only ones who took seriously the concerns of women who had been beaten, abused, prostituted, or were in various other ways survivors of sexual terrorism.
In time, I got to know radical feminist critiques of prostitution and pornography very well. And I have been actively involved academically (writing and speaking) and socially (through advocacy) promoting radical feminist critiques, as well as a general understanding of radical feminism (especially for all-male audiences), ever since.
I can identify with your concern about radical feminism being silenced in women’s studies. I recall a conflict that arose in a psychology of gender course I took. During a very brief explanation of feminisms, the professor equated radical feminism with cultural feminism, commenting that radical feminists merely wanted a society dominated by women instead of men. I don’t recall all the details of the dialogue that followed. However, I remember the first words out of my mouth – “Wait, wait, wait… What?!”
