The term often gets used as a catch all term (like dave chappelle certainly isnt a feminist). Now someone correct me if im wrong but the point is that some feminists of older generations turned out to be Trans Exclusionary which is where the term stems from.
It comes from their framework of gender, "radical" as radix in central/root. They regard the differences of biological sexes to be the primary vector of oppression. It's why they hate Judith Butler so much, because after radical feminists had their time to shine academia started focusing more on gender identity, performance, and presentation as more meaningful than strict anatomical difference. The radical feminists had an outdated framework so they can only see this as some kind of further intrusion into the affairs of women.
If only they had a dialectical materialist framework instead of half-informed biotruths, they would understand that the oppression of women, while inseperable from the fact that most women can bear children, always had room for an oppressed class of women that was disqualified from being legitimate mothers, but was still defined by physical desirability. Then they could understand how patriarchal capitalism uses both the cishetnormative nuclear family as a reproductive unit and the stigmatized clandestine lover as a reward for male performance, how easily patriarchs fit trans women into this alongside equally objectified cis women.
Not to mention that such distinctions always became largely meaningless as soon as entire groups of people where dehumanized through racialization, or that it was always part of patriarchal societies to de-gender women when their labor was needed more than their offspring. It's such a crushingly white perspective they have, and it shows so little understanding of how capitalism works, how men tick etc.
But there is another blind spot at play here, one that is inherent to Butler's perspective and that only gets remedied once we account for trans theories of gender like Leslie Feinberg's. When theory lacks a concept of gender identity, when it only knows gender role and biological sex, it becomes difficult for women who strongly reject their gender role to still define as woman without resorting to biologisms. I think a lot of radfems saw Butler as an attack on their own womanhood because they and Butler both did not understand that womanhood is an interior, psychological category that usually aligns with, but is ultimately independent from both the social construct femininity and the biological markers of femaleness.
I used to study liberal arts in another life, but it's been a while. I get most of this stuff from having a very gender in my life and from being swept to the frontline of the most recent culture war by coming out as trans at just the right time to have my hypervisible baby trans years exactly at the height of the "do we really have to treat the transes as people now, too?" debate, which is real fun if you like having too much adrenaline in your bloodstream. Whenever i move out of my wonderful hugbox bubble and walk into the battleground that is the internet outside of progressive LGBT spaces, i see a lot of former 2nd wave feminists that have evolved to terfs in the trenches that are opposite to mine, where they post alongside honest to god nazis, and Judith Butler somehow lives rent-free in all of their heads. Maybe that's a specific German thing because this country's arch terf is so obsessed with her, but i often get the impression that Butler kind of marked a watershed for younger boomer and older gen x feminists, and that everybody who didn't take the constructivist side ended up in a really weird, insular place that became increasingly more right wing over time, and even the fash are now latching on to critiques of Butler because she's also pro-Palestine, anti-islamophobia etc., and really really hating muslims is another thing terfs and nazis here can always bond over.
Are there any differences in how 2nd wave feminism emerged in former GDR vs the FRG, in your in your observation? Everything I've read is that the GDR was just so much better on women's rights. However, as an outsider who's obviously sympathetic to the GDR, it kinda feels like any progress they made got subsumed and rolled back by the West after reunification.
Not all of it was rolled back, the gender pay gap is still lower in East Germany even today - in spite of a disproportionate number of highly educated women moving westwards after the wall fell and their old lifes collapsed. It's a common cliché in Germany today that many rural parts of the East are kind of "incelized", as all the girls move to college towns as soon as they're out of school and all the dudes stay behind. The differences in mobility are really notable statistically.
But yes, the reunification was definitely a setback for women in many, many ways - abortion rights were infringed and many mothers lost the excellent daycare provided in the GDR because the publicly owned businesses they were part of got sold off and closed down.
As far as feminism as public discourse goes, the GDR didn't have the same feminist grassroots movements as the FRG. Women organized within the SED party, and i'm not particularly familiar with that subject. But i don't think a category like 2nd wave feminism can properly be applied to women's struggles in the GDR, as discussion of such societal issues was always grounded in Marxist theory, just as the agitprop image of women followed socialist ideals, portraying them with the same proletarian heroism as men (which, if you ask me, is a much healthier portrayal than what we see in capitalist advertising and entertainment of the same decades).
portraying them with the same proletarian heroism as men (which, if you ask me, is a much healthier portrayal than what we see in capitalist advertising and entertainment of the same decades).
:10000-com:
Not to mention, even when modern capitalist society attempt to portray women as "heroic", something about it just seems to ring hollow. Not sure how to articulate it, but it runs deeper than just the "more female drone pilots meme", idk.
even when modern capitalist society attempt to portray women as “heroic”, something about it just seems to ring hollow. Not sure how to articulate it, but it runs deeper than just the “more female drone pilots meme”, idk.
Might be because experience has shown us that capitalism will absolutely throw women to the wolves the second it becomes profitable to do so.
the alternative theory, and this is going to make me sound like a total conspiracy nut, is that terfs are not actually radical feminists.
but that cant be, they have "radical feminist" in their very name!
The term often gets used as a catch all term (like dave chappelle certainly isnt a feminist). Now someone correct me if im wrong but the point is that some feminists of older generations turned out to be Trans Exclusionary which is where the term stems from.
It comes from their framework of gender, "radical" as radix in central/root. They regard the differences of biological sexes to be the primary vector of oppression. It's why they hate Judith Butler so much, because after radical feminists had their time to shine academia started focusing more on gender identity, performance, and presentation as more meaningful than strict anatomical difference. The radical feminists had an outdated framework so they can only see this as some kind of further intrusion into the affairs of women.
If only they had a dialectical materialist framework instead of half-informed biotruths, they would understand that the oppression of women, while inseperable from the fact that most women can bear children, always had room for an oppressed class of women that was disqualified from being legitimate mothers, but was still defined by physical desirability. Then they could understand how patriarchal capitalism uses both the cishetnormative nuclear family as a reproductive unit and the stigmatized clandestine lover as a reward for male performance, how easily patriarchs fit trans women into this alongside equally objectified cis women.
Not to mention that such distinctions always became largely meaningless as soon as entire groups of people where dehumanized through racialization, or that it was always part of patriarchal societies to de-gender women when their labor was needed more than their offspring. It's such a crushingly white perspective they have, and it shows so little understanding of how capitalism works, how men tick etc.
But there is another blind spot at play here, one that is inherent to Butler's perspective and that only gets remedied once we account for trans theories of gender like Leslie Feinberg's. When theory lacks a concept of gender identity, when it only knows gender role and biological sex, it becomes difficult for women who strongly reject their gender role to still define as woman without resorting to biologisms. I think a lot of radfems saw Butler as an attack on their own womanhood because they and Butler both did not understand that womanhood is an interior, psychological category that usually aligns with, but is ultimately independent from both the social construct femininity and the biological markers of femaleness.
You're some kind of academic in this field, right? I'm curious if you have any direct personal/professional dealings with 2nd wave terf types
I used to study liberal arts in another life, but it's been a while. I get most of this stuff from having a very gender in my life and from being swept to the frontline of the most recent culture war by coming out as trans at just the right time to have my hypervisible baby trans years exactly at the height of the "do we really have to treat the transes as people now, too?" debate, which is real fun if you like having too much adrenaline in your bloodstream. Whenever i move out of my wonderful hugbox bubble and walk into the battleground that is the internet outside of progressive LGBT spaces, i see a lot of former 2nd wave feminists that have evolved to terfs in the trenches that are opposite to mine, where they post alongside honest to god nazis, and Judith Butler somehow lives rent-free in all of their heads. Maybe that's a specific German thing because this country's arch terf is so obsessed with her, but i often get the impression that Butler kind of marked a watershed for younger boomer and older gen x feminists, and that everybody who didn't take the constructivist side ended up in a really weird, insular place that became increasingly more right wing over time, and even the fash are now latching on to critiques of Butler because she's also pro-Palestine, anti-islamophobia etc., and really really hating muslims is another thing terfs and nazis here can always bond over.
Are there any differences in how 2nd wave feminism emerged in former GDR vs the FRG, in your in your observation? Everything I've read is that the GDR was just so much better on women's rights. However, as an outsider who's obviously sympathetic to the GDR, it kinda feels like any progress they made got subsumed and rolled back by the West after reunification.
Not all of it was rolled back, the gender pay gap is still lower in East Germany even today - in spite of a disproportionate number of highly educated women moving westwards after the wall fell and their old lifes collapsed. It's a common cliché in Germany today that many rural parts of the East are kind of "incelized", as all the girls move to college towns as soon as they're out of school and all the dudes stay behind. The differences in mobility are really notable statistically.
But yes, the reunification was definitely a setback for women in many, many ways - abortion rights were infringed and many mothers lost the excellent daycare provided in the GDR because the publicly owned businesses they were part of got sold off and closed down.
As far as feminism as public discourse goes, the GDR didn't have the same feminist grassroots movements as the FRG. Women organized within the SED party, and i'm not particularly familiar with that subject. But i don't think a category like 2nd wave feminism can properly be applied to women's struggles in the GDR, as discussion of such societal issues was always grounded in Marxist theory, just as the agitprop image of women followed socialist ideals, portraying them with the same proletarian heroism as men (which, if you ask me, is a much healthier portrayal than what we see in capitalist advertising and entertainment of the same decades).
:10000-com:
Not to mention, even when modern capitalist society attempt to portray women as "heroic", something about it just seems to ring hollow. Not sure how to articulate it, but it runs deeper than just the "more female drone pilots meme", idk.
Thank you for sharing this.
Might be because experience has shown us that capitalism will absolutely throw women to the wolves the second it becomes profitable to do so.
Agreeed this drives me up a wall. Just call them transphobes! Matt Walsh is not a radical feminist lol
FARTs world way better.