#it’s kind of pathetic how people think radical feminism is just any feminist who believes in sex based oppression

[scumsleeperagent]

The categorization here isn’t the best (there are many liberal feminist works on this list and important stuff missing) but reblogging bc there’s interesting stuff here too that I haven’t read

A radical feminist’s reading list-

Classic

The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir

The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan

Sexual Politics by Kate Millett

On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose, 1966-1978 by Adrienne Rich

The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf

Fiction

The Power by Naomi Alderman

Salt Slow by Julia Armfield

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Native Tongue by Suzette Haden Elgin

The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

The Gate to Woman’s Country by Sheri S. Tepper

History

Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years by Elizabeth Wayland Barber

Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation by Silvia Federici

The Living Goddesses by Marija Gimbutas

The Creation of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner

Who Cooked the Last Supper? The Women’s History of the World by Rosalind Miles

Women of Ideas: And What Men Have Done to Them by Dale Spender

Headstrong: 52 Women Who Changed Science-and the World by Rachel Swaby

Intersectional

Women, Race & Class by Angela Y. Davis

Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism by bell hooks

It’s Not About the Burqa by Mariam Khan (editor)

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde

This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color by Cherríe Moraga (editor) and Gloria Anzaldúa (editor)

Lesbian

Unpacking Queer Politics: A Lesbian Feminist Perspective by Sheila Jeffreys

The Disappearing L: Erasure of Lesbian Spaces and Culture by Bonnie J. Morris

Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism by Suzanne Pharr

Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence by Adrienne Rich

Liberal vs. radical

Female Erasure: What You Need to Know about Gender Politics’ War on Women, the Female Sex and Human Rights by Ruth Barrett (editor)

End of Equality by Beatrix Campbell

Feminisms: A Global History by Lucy Delap

Daring to be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-1975 by Alice Echols

Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism by Sheila Jeffreys

Freedom Fallacy: The Limits of Liberal Feminism by Miranda Kiraly (editor) and Meagan Tyler (editor)

The Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism by Dorchen Leidholdt (editor) and Janice G. Raymond (editor)

The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male by Janice G. Raymond

We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement by Andi Zeisler

Pornography, prostitution, surrogacy & rape

Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape by Susan Brownmiller

Slavery Inc.: The Untold Story of International Sex Trafficking by Lydia Cacho

Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality by Gail Dines

Being and Being Bought: Prostitution, Surrogacy and the Split Self by Kajsa Ekis Ekman

The Industrial Vagina: The Political Economy of the Global Sex Trade by Sheila Jeffreys

Only Words by Catharine A. Mackinnon

Know My Name by Chanel Miller

Not a Choice, Not a Job: Exposing the Myths about Prostitution and the Global Sex Trade by Janice G. Raymond

Women as Wombs: Reproductive Technologies and the Battle Over Women’s Freedom by Janice G. Raymond

Psychology & trauma

Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men by Lundy Bancroft

Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society and Neurosexism Create Difference by Cordelia Fine

Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence – From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror by Judith Lewis Herman

Toward a New Psychology of Women by Jean Baker Miller

Theory

Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism by Mary Daly

Last Days at Hot Slit: The Radical Feminism of Andrea Dworkin by Andrea Dworkin, Johanna Fateman (editor) and Amy Scholder (editor

The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for a Feminist Revolution by Shulamith Firestone

Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics by bell hooks

Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center by bell hooks

Against Sadomasochism: A Radical Feminist Analysis by Robin Ruth Linden (editor), Darlene R. Pagano (editor), Diana E. H. Russell (editor) and Susan Leigh Star (editor)

Toward a Feminist Theory of the State by Catharine A. Mackinnon

The Sexual Contract by Carole Pateman

Other

Without Apology: The Abortion Struggle Now by Jenny Brown

Close to Home: A Materialist Analysis of Women’s Oppression by Christine Delphy

Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick by Maya Dusenbery

Beauty and Misogyny: Harmful Cultural Practices in the West by Sheila Jeffreys

Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues by Catharine A. Mackinnon

Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez

A Passion for Friends: Toward a Philosophy of Female Affection by Janice G. Raymond

How to Suppress Women’s Writing by Joanna Russ

Man Made Language by Dale Spender

Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women are Worth by Marilyn Waring

[brothermoth]

the left wing of the ostrich

You know what? This is the fault of young people being so fucking stupid and unable to educate themselves with the vast fucking resources they have available. I don't give a shit how good or bad your formal schooling was. The internet is free and you can learn these skills entirely on your own by simply not being a goddamn reactionary fool.

You're not a fucking anarcho-communist or a Marxist leninist feminist or whatever the fuck y'all are spouting now. You're an uneducated shitheel who thinks calling yourself the most left sounding thing is going to make you better. You've never read Marx or Engles and I doubt half of you even understand the theory you claim to follow.

I'm not blaming this on anyone with a learning disability who has difficulty accessing educational materials by the way. This is about people who make a willful choice to be radicalized online. This is about people who do not have the common sense to pull their head out of their ass.

Gen z (I fucking hate generation labels but it is largely people 18-30 that this problem comes from) is one of the least educated groups of people with some of the lowest reading levels since public education became widely available.

These are people without an ounce of fucking kindness or goodwill in their heart who feel so much apathy toward any one group of people that they are not even willing to do anything but stare like a fucking fool and let shit happen.

Radfems get off your high fucking horses—you had a hand in this. If your feminism isn't based on basic human fucking empathy then you're nothing but a shill doing absolutely fuck all for women or anyone else for that matter. You're a bastardization of feminism and you should be fucking ashamed.

Anti voting cunts? Genuinely I want you to sit and spin. Your fake empathy is pathetic. You don't get to put myself and everyone I care about in front of the bus so you can get on your moral pedestal about being against genocide. Your hands are stained with fucking blood. You're an idiot and your stupidity and your silence is murderous. You had a chance to get off your ass and DO something that fucking mattered for the people in your own community and you basically told us we are not worth it. The man who wanted to shoot protestors will absolutely be beneficial for Gaza. Right.

You're such lukewarm activists that you believed misinformation about Kamala Harris that was so easy to just fucking verify. (No she did not imprison people for weed. She was in fact supportive of lessened sentences and education for prisoners so they can find jobs when they're free. She has done a LOT for people and she was put in a very difficult position where she could not risk losing the large pool of moderate voters.)

Hey "activists"! Do you know how your own fucking government works?

THE VICE PRESIDENT CANT DO SHIT. KAMALA HARRIS HAS LITTLE TO NO SAY ON WHETHER OR NOT WEAPONS GO TO ISRAEL.

Hell, BIDEN doesn't have much sway over that decision. Congress is red and they make the majority of foreign policy decisions you fucking stupid cunts.

Trans Americans will never forgive you. Black Americans will never forgive you. Poor Americans, disabled Americans, Latino Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans and all the others.

I hope you regret the choices you made. Christ, I hope it fucking haunts you. Trump voters were always going to vote trump without hesitation but you? You had to play leftist and call every marginalized person who pleaded with you a liberal. You're pathetic. If I could spit on you via internet, I would.

Put your fucking head back in the sand. You can stop pretending to care now.

[weather-witch]

Maybe we could find common ground if you knew what we stood for.

It has been a while since I was sufficiently frustrated to sit down and write a bit by bit response to a piece of writing, but here I am baffled at how utterly misunderstood our position as gender critical feminists is. However, it is not my frustration nor my bewilderment that has me writing this tonight after sitting in Auckland traffic for over an hour. Nope. It is a pathetic skerrick of hope I have that if people who have expressed so much hate for us can be so fundamentally wrong about what we stand for then perhaps if they learnt the truth we could find just a little bit of middle ground.

Gotta love a trier, right?

The piece is What is ‘Gender Critical’ anyway? On essentialism and transphobia by Danielle Moreau — hopefully I can help her find out.

Transphobes are having a moment in Aotearoa. Attempts to pass a bill allowing transgender people to change the sex on their birth certificates without having to go through the courts have been met by vigorous opposition from a small but well-organised group of Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs) or — as they would rather be called — ‘gender critical feminists’. These activists, who probably number in the dozens rather than thousands, have been joined on social media and petition websites by a large contingent of overseas allies, most notably from the UK. In the process, we have learned of the existence in that country of a trans-exclusionary subculture that has been radicalised by, of all places, the parenting forum Mumsnet.

First of all, thank you. Our campaign to halt the BDMRR Bill and sex self-identification was hard work and I appreciate that you could see how well organised it was. However, the persistent myth that we are two ‘TERFs’ in a trenchcoat is as ever totally inaccurate. Likewise, the conspiracy theory of an army of Mumsnet poms wielding cups of tea and scary opinions is laughable. We are in contact with gender critical feminists in the UK though…and Canada…the United States, Australia, France, South Korea, Portugal, Argentina, Nigeria, and more. There is an international community of gender critical feminists because we are all fighting a lot of the same battles. We support each other; commiserate, celebrate, and share resources. We are just like any other community.

It may be a good time, then, to examine what being ‘gender critical’ actually means.

At first blush, the phrase ‘gender critical feminist’ is essentially meaningless: all feminism is ‘gender critical’ by definition. The TERF label is at least partially descriptive, since exponents of this ideology are certainly trans-exclusionary, but it may be too generous to suggest that they are either radical or feminists. Feminism is a big tent, but it is hard to welcome into it a group so dedicated to returning us to the values of the Victorians.

Feminism is at its roots (that’s where the name Radical Feminism comes from by the way) gender critical. Past iterations of feminism were entirely gender critical, but there is little that can be said to be gender critical about third wave feminism. This is why gender critical feminists reject it. We prefer the radical analysis of our foremothers. Radical does not mean wild or extreme it simply refers to “relating to or affecting the fundamental nature of something”. It is about stripping everything back and analysing the nature of female oppression. For gender critical or radical feminists our “central tenet is that women as a biological class are globally oppressed by men as a biological class.”

What makes TERF ideology reactionary rather than radical is its dedication to binary gender essentialism. The concept of gender essentialism is practically timeless, and reaction to it is key to understanding why feminist theory exists in the first place. Gender essentialism is the idea that there is an innate, immutable ‘womanness’ or ‘manness’ which expresses itself in what we consider ‘femininity’ or ‘masculinity’. It posits, for example, that women as a group are naturally more caring and empathetic and men as a group are more aggressive and clever, and — crucially — that these gendered qualities exist inherently, without societal influence. Another key aspect of essentialism is that it is often, but not always, tied to bodies and ‘biology’. So, because a lot of women give birth, gender essentialism associates childcare with women because they are biologically ‘destined’ for it.

I’ll ignore the incorrect use of the word radical for the rest of this piece and move on to the extraordinary claim that we are dedicated to “gender essentialism.” Not only are gender critical feminists not gender essentialists, we are actually the complete opposite. In our CRITIQUE of gender we are more accurately described as gender ABOLITIONISTS. There is nothing immutable about gender. It is not innate. Rather, based on thousands of years of socialisation, survival, hierarchy, and oppression, gender is the set of stereotypes and roles that we as societies have imposed on the sexes. A more accurate moniker for gender critical feminists would be “sex essentialist”. That is because we believe that it is our biological sex and our biological sex alone that makes us women. It is not the gender stereotypes that we are socialised to associate with womanhood. It is not the “empathy” or outward expressions of femininity like how we dress or style our hair. Our POTENTIAL to become pregnant is a core part of our femaleness and it is central to a lot of the experiences women have in common. I say ‘potential’ because not all women want to or are able to get pregnant. However, it is society’s perception of us as potential ‘breeders’ that brings with it some of our most acute oppressions around bodily autonomy and biological functions.

I am going to take my refutation of the assertion that gender critical feminists are “gender essentialists” a step further. I contend that it is in fact proponents of gender identity ideology who are gender essentialist. After all, it is they who think gender is so innate that someone can be born in the wrong body. They conceptualise gender as a kind of soul that exists as separate from the biology of the person. Is it not terribly gender essentialist to suggest that a man who feels an innate sense of ‘womanness’ because he is (perhaps) empathetic, nurturing, gentle, sensitive, and presents femininely, must actually be a woman? Because no man could possibly possess those characteristics and present in that way? Rather than embrace the feminine man or the masculine women, gender identity ideology would have them switch place to ‘match’ their gender identity to the ‘appropriate’ sex.

Destined for it?

Feminism’s first wave, popularly associated with the suffragists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, bought into gender essentialism in a big way. This wasn’t entirely their fault, for several reasons. They were heavily influenced by the dichotomous Victorian concept of ‘separate spheres’ for men and women — men in the world, women in the home — even if they tried to reject it in some limited ways. ‘HOUSEKEEPERS need the ballot to regulate the sanitary conditions under which they and their families must live… MOTHERS need the ballot to regulate the moral conditions under which their children must be brought up’, said the New York Woman Suffrage Association in 1915. The suffrage movement was more broadly linked to things like the temperance movement, and the temperance movement used essentialist ideas about women and their caring, empathetic natures in order to influence politics and get alcohol banned. (Alcohol was a huge issue for women mainly because they had so few other legal rights, and so drunk husbands could beat and rape them with no real recourse. We know now, unfortunately, that alcohol is not the thing doing the raping and beating.)

I have nothing to dispute here, but I will just point out that the history of the construction of public toilet facilities specifically for women is a fascinating part of the opening up of the public sphere to the female sex class.

Another reason for the first wave’s reliance on essentialism is that reliable contraception had yet to be invented. If you are not familiar with feminist theory, the cause and effect may seem quite tenuous here, but it is difficult for anyone to conceive of non-gendered, unfettered humanity if you are forced into a brood mare situation from young adulthood. As a result of these factors, among others, the first wave had painted itself into a theoretical corner with its essentialism. Buying into dichotomist ideas about gender used by patriarchy since time immemorial meant accepting hard limits. It meant accepting inferiority and never being able to achieve true equity.

I don’t agree that first wave feminists “relied” on gender essentialism. The realities of their sex (as you point out with reference to the lack of contraception) and the gender roles they enacted were simply all they knew. They weren’t using gender essentialism. It was the framework in which they existed and in fighting for a place in political life they were only beginning to peel the layers off their oppression.

With few exceptions, the second wave of feminist theory questioned and rejected gender essentialism. One of the important aspects of why the second wave was different from the first wave of feminist theory is that by this stage reliable contraception had being invented, accepted, and come into wide use. People were, for the first time, able to divorce their existence from sexual reproduction. Linda Cisler, in 1969: ‘different reproductive roles are the basic dichotomy in humankind, and have been used to rationalize all the other, ascribed differences between men and women and to justify all the oppression women have suffered.’ Feminists argued that social influence was the primary reason we assumed women were such-a-way and men were such-a-way; that men had written nearly all the history and psychology to that date; that patriarchy created hegemonic propaganda based on binary essentialist ideas. Second-wave writers were exhilarated by the newfound theoretical power to refute their inferiority, and you can feel it emanating from their engaged, emphatic, often uproarious writings.

In this paragraph, you see the beginnings of the gender critical movement. We as a movement identify far more with second wave feminism than with the convoluted nonsense that has followed. Cisler’s quote neatly encapsulates our true position on sex and gender. This is gender critical theory.

The second wave did, of course, get many things wrong. It tried to use its new powers of analysis to make ‘womanness’ many different things, theorising that women were a ‘class’, or ignoring voices that dealt with racism. Many of its ideas weren’t nuanced. Being associated with their bodies for their whole lives, and exploited within those bodies, gave some feminists from this era problematic ideas about sex and sexuality. There was also a subculture of hippy mysticism that associated the female reproductive organs with purity or power.

It is bizarre and, I cynically think, intentional that this idea of gender critical feminists as only white keeps getting rolled out. Believe it or not, when founder of race critical theory, Kimberlé Crenshaw, coined the term ‘intersectionality’, she used it to analyse the intersections of sex, race, and class, and this analysis is a core part of gender critical theory. This piece by Dr Holly Lawford-Smith explains really well what intersectionality really is and what it isn’t. We understand the ways race and class make us different while analysing how as a female class our lived experiences are unique from our male counterparts.

Call me a hippy, but I love celebrating the wonder of the female body. The world we live in is a jumble of phallic one-up-manship. The male is everywhere; our architecture, art, cultures, everything! Phalluses everywhere! I love that second wave feminists decided to do a bit of collective self love. As females we are pitted against our own body from day dot and I fail to see what is wrong with celebrating its power. To be honest, it is a bit of fun too. Having shared iconography that represents shared realities is a wonderful part of bonding as a community of any kind.

However, although feminists with uteruses or vaginas wanted to know more about them — because that knowledge had been systematically hidden or controlled by ‘men of science’ — they rejected being defined by their bodies. Binary gender essentialism was, in sum, not the primary theoretical view of second-wave feminists. In fact, second-wave theory laid much of the groundwork for our current, welcome conception of a society-wide removal of a restrictive gender binary. Karen Sacks wrote in 1970: ‘For women to merely fight men would be to miss the point. The point is to change the social order …. Perhaps for the first time in human history we are faced with the possibility of a pan-human, non-exploitative society.’ By 1986 Judith Butler had taken the ideas of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex to their logical conclusion: ‘it is no longer possible to attribute the values or social functions of women to biological necessity … it becomes unclear whether being a given sex has any necessary consequence for becoming a given gender.’

Women still don’t know enough about our bodies. Research and funding for male bodies and medicine far outstrips that for females. Simply compare the money and care that has gone into developing erectile dysfunction medication to the relative void of information on the debilitating condition endometriosis which affects approximately 10% of women. The true form of the clitoris and all its glory were not known until shamefully recently either. We have every right to be obsessed with learning about our bodies; there is so much yet to learn.

Judith Butler has a lot to answer for. Her post-modern, deconstructive anarchism is at the heart of the worst parts of gender identity ideology. Please tell me you aren’t going to quote Foucault. However, that particular quote is one of her more benign. She is right that as women we should not be valued primarily on our biological ability to bear life. Our lives need not be dictated by breeding, however, that does not erase our bodies. It does not erase the fact that society still treats us in certain ways because of their perception of our ability to become pregnant. We are still oppressed in many ways because we belong to the sex class of female.

TERFs ultimately tie rights to body parts. Their approach seems to be that, because women were originally oppressed to some extent because of their bodies, their rights should be forever tied to qualities within those bodies, when in fact the precise opposite is true. Their reactionary ideology, with its obsession with binary gender essentialism, is actively harmful to all genders. TERFs aren’t even calling back to the second wave — they’re calling back to the first wave. Their ideas are over one hundred years old, and they aren’t good ones.

This is a bizarre conclusion to draw. But I’m glad I got to the end without having to read a Michel Foucault quote so, thank you. I have a question for you, Danielle. A genuine one.

If not because of our bodies, our sex, why were and are women oppressed?

It is our bodies which have always differentiated us from men. It is the fact, as you say, that before contraception we spent our lives pregnant and in the home. It is our bodies and our potential to become mothers that sees us valued less in the workforce (as well as gendered sex stereotypes). It is because we are female that we are overwhelmingly the victims of sexual violence, but rarely the perpetrators. It is because we are female that in some parts of the world little girls have their genitals mutilated, are married off to men, and deprived of education. I am terribly and genuinely confused as to what you think sexism, female oppression, and male violence are, if not based around our respective realities as members of our sex classes. What is feminism for if not to liberate the female sex class?

This does not mean that any of this oppression is our destiny. However, we simply must know what we are fighting for and against if we are to effect change. Sex is WHY we are oppressed. Gender is HOW we are oppressed.

I really hope you read some of this at least. I’m not telling you how to think, I’m telling you how we think. You have seriously misunderstood our position on things that seem to form the basis for why you hate us. It is your choice if you wish to still paint a picture of us as the antithesis of decency, but I wanted to make sure you’re at least hating us for positions we actually hold.

My Twitter DMs are always open for respectful, confidential conversation. I welcome questions and hope that maybe some of you who are afraid to be seen engaging in taboo subjects with blacklisted people will feel comfortable to reach out privately.

We need to talk to avoid further misunderstandings.