#about the most effective path for women's liberation. I think acknowledging the different conflicting ideologies on radblr could help us

[rad4learning]

I have previously shared quotes from The Power of History by Kathie Sarachild in part one of Feminist Revolution. One I didn't share is this:

The journey from learning about "radical feminism" from social media to then actually learning about the history of radical feminism has been so renewing. I feel so much more aligned with traditional radical feminism - and particularly what's known as "the pro woman faction" than with the how radical feminism is often portrayed on radblr.

Stuff like this could've been directly written about radblr:

...

(then there's discussion about the interconnection between cultural feminism and lesbian separatism)

This is from The Retreat to Cultural Feminism by Brooke in Part Two of Feminist Revolution https://www.redstockings.org/index.php/feminist-revolution-an-abridged-edition-with-additional-writings

I do not understand how radblr will acknowledge that the landscape encourages women and men to act in particular ways and then focuses their efforts on convincing women to change as opposed to - or as a means of - making changes to the landscape. Suggesting that perhaps feminism should be more focused on changing society than changing yourself is met with the idea that the mechanism for changing society is to be an example for other women to aspire to. I think it's sad, really, that so many women feel so disempowered that they think their best opportunity to make an impact is to act as a sort of role model. Another post could probably be written about tumblr specifically liking "normalisation" as a vehicle for social change and the impacts of that. But that's not to say there are no positive impacts from this! I think encouraging women to be skeptical of the true return on investment from conforming to expectations of women is fantastic! (incl. makeup, shaving, man-dating etc.) I also think that for some women doing what they can to opt out of male-dominated society can be highly beneficial for them & setting up spaces & networks which facilitate that can be a great aid to women. There's opportunity for a whole side conversation about people treating "radical feminism" as "useful feminism".

I'm also sick of us stepping on each other's toes and being told about "real radical feminism" from women who seem to be a lot less familiar with the history*. I think it's sad that cultural feminists were able to successfully take over what radical feminism means in the eyes of most people. I do think the anti-leadership and anti-spokesperson attitudes facilitated that. But now, when we're at the point we are now, I think it would be useful for radblr/adjacent women who are more aligned with "pro woman" traditional radical feminism to find a new name for ourselves. In our pocket of sympathetic blogs I think there's been much more uptake of the idea that "radfem" ideals aren't a 1:1 of radical feminism since we first started talking about this. I do think we keep that line and acknowledge that history. I also think it's still going to be easier for us to have in-community discussions with like-minded women if we adopt a new label for ourselves that isn't going to be as misunderstood and fought over. \* especially ironic when you have people using the "personal is political" line for that given Carol Hanisch's views and the intent of the essay

Edit: as this is getting reblogged it’s increasingly likely someone will run into it who doesn’t know this. I want to emphasise that “lesbian separatism” is the name of an ideology. An ideology that not all lesbians agree with and not everyone who agrees with it is a lesbian. This post is long enough but I’ve posted my thoughts on political lesbianism elsewhere.

Another day, another fruitless attempt to inform 'rad'blr that it's conflating radical feminism, one branch of feminism, with 'lesbian feminism,' a separate branch of feminism (ironically, 'lesbian feminists' split from radical feminism over radical feminisms failure to condemn opposite sex relationships).