Radical feminism

Name(s):

Women's liberation

Gender politics

Nature

Feminism implies a radical ideology in favour of liberation of women from traditional role-playing. As a movement encompassing a wide range of views of varying degrees of militancy, it may tend to lack cohesiveness and may be extremist in certain tactics and, by denigrating the virtues traditionally held to be worthy of respect in women, may reduce rather than increase internal self-worth of those whose liberation it is attempting to assist. It may increase family breakdown and child-neglect, make conflict rather than cooperation the norm in situations involving members of both sexes, and possibly lead to discrimination against men. Women in developing countries are sceptical of ways in which the feminist agenda has been "mainstreamed" and thereby neutralized.

Incidence

Feminist groups of women strive to rid themselves of whatever it is that creates an oppressive environment for them--a task they have not the slightest opportunity of achieving as groups of women outside the men, children and institutions who maintain the oppression.

Claim

The original meaning of feminism is the belief in equal rights for women, such as the right to vote, to equal pay for equal work and equal opportunities in education. An evolutionary change in the status of women in this direction is long overdue in many parts of the world. If the status quo was such that everybody was equal and women and men were allowed to select their own roles, there would be no feminist movement.

Counter-claim

1. Like Marxism, feminism is parasitic on the development of modernity. As such it is an exploitation of the impatience of less able women who wish to make a fast leap into a future of free and easy equality. All that matters to such people is that they want it now, and all problems are theorized away as prejudice, stereotyping, and the resistance of the "malestream". As with Marxism, there is a curious backward-looking element (such as the campaign to label all men as rapists) which may prove to be as destructive of the opportunities of Western women as Marxism has been of the countries it dominated.

2. In many ways, feminism has ignored and distorted the status of black communities. When education, family planning, and other social reform issues are seen as 'women's issues', it undermines the interest that black men (as well as other men) have in them.

3. Many aspects of the feminist movement go far beyond equality and are concerned rather with power and rights, grasped so militantly that other members of society suffer a kind of persecution. Men have become, on the feminist agenda, the scapegoats fro the social and personal problems of women, while feminists have induced in men a sense of guilt and even hopelessness. In addition, by denigrating home-making and motherhood as jobs without pay or status and by denouncing voluntary work as exploitation, feminists have caused women to forsake a worthwhile and fulfilling world, based in home and community, for the workplace and the "rat-race".

4. Feminism is bad for your health. Assertive women are more prone to heart attacks than meek women.

Broader

Postmodernism

Extremist ideologies

Political partisanship

Conflicting roles of women

Narrower

Female separatism

Feminist backlash

Feminist politicization of choice

Reduces

Sexism