FEMINISM

Liberal Feminism
In 1983, Alison Jaggar published Feminist Politics and Human Nature where she
defined four theories related to feminism: liberal feminism, Marxism, radical feminism,
and socialist feminism. Her analysis was not completely new; the varieties of feminism
had begun to differentiate as early as the 1960s. Jaggar's contribution was clarifying,
extending and solidifying the various definitions, which are still often used today.

Liberal feminism's primary goal is gender equality in the public sphere -- equal access
to education, equal pay, ending job sex segregation, better working conditions -- won
primarily through legal changes. Private sphere issues are of concern mainly as they
influence or impede equality in the public sphere. Gaining access to and being paid and
promoted equally in traditionally male-dominated occupations is an important goal.
What do women want? Liberal feminism answers: mostly, what men want: to get an
education, to make a decent living, to provide for one's family.

What she described as liberal feminism is theory and work that focuses more on issues
like equality in the workplace, in education, in political rights. Where liberal feminism
looks at issues in the private sphere, it tends to be in terms of equality: how does that
private life impede or enhance public equality. Thus, liberal feminists also tend to
support marriage as an equal partnership, and more male involvement in child care.

Abortion and other reproductive rights have to do with control of one's life choices and
autonomy. Ending domestic violence and sexual harassment have to do with removing
obstacles to women achieving on an equal level with men.

Liberal feminism tends to rely on the state and political rights to gain equality -- to see
the state as the protector of individual rights.

Liberal feminism, for example, supports affirmative action legislation requiring

employers and educational institutions to make special attempts to include women in the
pool of applicants, on the assumption that past and current discrimination may simply
overlook many qualified women applicants.

The Equal Rights Amendment was a key goal for many years of liberal feminists, from
the original women's suffrage proponents who moved to advocating a federal equality
amendment, to many of the feminists of the 1960s and 1970s in organizations including
the National Organization for Women. The text of the Equal Rights Amendment, as
passed by Congress and sent to the states in the 1970s, is classical liberal feminism:

"Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States
or by any state on account of sex."
While not denying that there may be biologically-based differences between men and
women, liberal feminism cannot see that these are adequate justification for inequality,
such as the wage gap between men and women.

Critics of liberal feminism point to a lack of critique of basic gender relationships, a focus
on state action which links women's interests to those of the powerful, a lack of class or
race analysis, and a lack of analysis of ways in which women are different from men.

Critics often accuse liberal feminism of judging women and their success by male
standards.

In more recent years, liberal feminism has sometimes been conflated with a kind of
libertarian feminism, sometimes called equity feminism or individual feminism.
Individual feminism often opposes legislative or state action, preferring to emphasize
developing the skills and abilities of women to compete better in the world as it is. This
feminism opposes laws that give either men or women advantages and privileges.

This is the variety of feminism that works within the structure of mainstream
society to integrate women into that structure. Its roots stretch back to the
social contract theory of government instituted by the American Revolution.
Abigail Adams and Mary Wollstonecraft were there from the start, proposing
equality for women. As is often the case with liberals, they slog along inside the
system, getting little done amongst the compromises until some radical
movement shows up and pulls those compromises left of center. This is how it
operated in the days of the suffragist movement and again with the emergence
of the radical feminists. [JD]

[See Daring to be Bad, by Alice Echols (1989) for more detail on this contrast.]

Radical Feminism
DEFINITION

Radical feminism is a philosophy emphasizing the patriarchal roots of inequality

between men and women, or, more specifically, social dominance of women by men.
Radical feminism views patriarchy as dividing rights, privileges and power primarily by
gender, and as a result oppressing women and privileging men.

Radical feminism opposes existing political and social organization in general because it
is inherently tied to patriarchy.

Thus, radical feminists tend to be skeptical of political action within the current system,
and instead tend to focus on culture change that undermines patriarchy and associated
hierarchical structures.
Radical feminists tend to be more militant in their approach (radical as "getting to the
root") than other feminists are. A radical feminist aims to dismantle patriarchy, rather
than making adjustments to the system through legal changes. Radical feminists also
resisted reducing oppression to an economic or class issue, as socialist or Marxist
feminism sometimes did or does.

Radical feminism opposes patriarchy, not men. To equate radical feminism to man-
hating is to assume that patriarchy and men are inseparable, philosophically and
politically. (Robin Morgan defended "man-hating" as the right of the oppressed class to
hate the class which is oppressing them.)

ROOTS OF RADICAL FEMINISM

Radical feminism was rooted in the wider radical movement, where women participated
in anti-war and New Left political movements of the 1960s, finding themselves excluded
from equal power by the men within the movement, even with underlying theories of
empowerment.

Many of these women split off into specifically feminist groups, while still retaining
much of their political radical ideals and methods. Then radical feminism became the
term used for the more radical edge of feminism.

Radical feminism is credited with the use of consciousness raising groups to raise
awareness of women's oppression.

Some key radical feminists were Ti-Grace Atkinson, Susan Brownmiller, Phyllis
Chester, Corrine Grad Coleman, Mary Daly, Andrea Dworkin, Shulamith
Firestone, Germaine Greer, Carol Hanisch, Jill Johnston, Catherine MacKinnon, Kate
Millett, Robin Morgan, Ellen Willis, Monique Wittig. Groups that were part of the
radical feminist wing of feminism include Redstockings. New York Radical Women
(NYRW), the Chicago Women's Liberation Union (CWLU), Ann Arbor Feminist House,
The Feminists, WITCH, Seattle Radical Women, Cell 16. Radical feminists organized
the demonstrations against the Miss America pageant in 1968.

Later radical feminists sometimes added a focus on sexuality, including some moving to
a radical political lesbianism.

Key issues for radical feminists include:

reproductive rights for women, including freedom to make choices to give birth,
have an abortion, use birth control or get sterilized.

evaluating and then breaking down traditional gender roles in private

relationships as well as in public policies.

understanding pornography as an industry and practice leading to harm to

women, although some radical feminists disagreed with this position.
 understanding rape as an expression of patriarchal power, not a seeking of sex.

understanding prostitution under patriarchy as oppression of women, sexually

and economically.

a critique of motherhood, marriage, the nuclear family and sexuality, questioning

how much of our culture is based on patriarchal assumptions.

a critique of other institutions including government and religion as centered

historically in patriarchal power.

Tools used by radical women's groups included consciousness-raising groups, actively

providing services, organizing public protests, and putting on art and culture events.
Women's Studies programs at universities were often supported by radical feminists as
well as more liberal and socialist feminists.

Some radical feminists promoted a political form of lesbianism or celibacy as alternatives

to heterosexual sex within an overall patriarchal culture.

There remains disagreement within the radical feminist community about transgender
identity. Some radical feminists have supported the rights of transgender people, seeing
it as another gender liberation struggle; some have opposed the transgender movement,
seeing it as embodying and promoting patriarchal gender norms.

Provides the bulwark of theoretical thought in feminism. Radical feminism

provides an important foundation for the rest of "feminist flavors". Seen by
many as the "undesirable" element of feminism, Radical feminism is actually the
breeding ground for many of the ideas arising from feminism; ideas which get
shaped and pounded out in various ways by other (but not all) branches of
feminism. [CTM]

Radical feminism was the cutting edge of feminist theory from approximately
1967-1975. It is no longer as universally accepted as it was then, nor does it
provide a foundation for, for example, cultural feminism. [EE]

This term refers to the feminist movement that sprung out of the civil rights and
peace movements in 1967-1968. The reason this group gets the "radical" label
is that they view the oppression of women as the most fundamental form of
oppression, one that cuts across boundaries of race, culture, and economic
class. This is a movement intent on social change, change of rather
revolutionary proportions, in fact. [JD]
The best history of this movement is a book called Daring to be Bad, by Alice
Echols (1989). I consider that book a must! [JD] Another excellent book is simply
titled Radical Feminism and is an anthology edited by Anne Koedt, a well-known
radical feminist [EE].

Marxist and Socialist Feminism

Definition: The phrase "socialist feminism" was increasingly used during the 1970s
to describe a mixed theoretical and practical approach to achieving women's equality.
Socialist feminist theory analyzed the connection between the oppression of
women and other oppression in society, such as racism and economic injustice.

Socialists had fought for decades to create a more equal society that did not exploit the
poor and powerless in the ways capitalism did.

Like Marxism, socialist feminism recognized the oppressive structure of capitalist

society. Like radical feminism, socialist feminism recognized the fundamental
oppression of women in patriarchal society. However, socialist feminists did not
recognize gender and only gender as the exclusive basis of all oppression.

Socialist feminists wanted to integrate the recognition of sex discrimination with their
work to achieve justice and equality for women, working classes, the poor and all
humanity. Among the activist groups that at some point defined themselves as socialist
feminists:

Marxist feminists are feminists who ally themselves with the philosophical and
economic theories of Karl Marx, who discovered the economic laws underlying
capitalism and wrote about them in his masterpiece, Capital. In this and other
works, Marx and his lifelong collaborator Frederick Engels laid the foundations of
Marxist economics, the philosophical concept of dialectical materialism, and the
method of social analysis known as historical materialism.

Marx showed how the working class is exploited for profit by capitalists, who gain
wealth by paying workers a bare minimum of the value they produce. Marxist
feminists view the capitalist drive for profits as responsible for women's second-
class status and other forms of oppression such as racism and homophobia.
Prejudice and privilege also aid the ruling class by inhibiting workers from
organizing together. Women workers are exploited at a higher level than males,
with women of color suffering the highest degree of exploitation because of
gender and race discrimination. Women are also a source of unpaid domestic
laboran arrangement that allows the world's capitalists to save trillions of
dollars every year.
In Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Frederick Engels drew on
the work of early anthropologists to show how women's oppression developed in
pre-history when communal, matrilineal societies were violently replaced with
patriarchal societies in which individual wealth and private property were key.
(Patriarchal, profit-driven societies became dominant by conquest and
colonialism, though remnants of matrilineal culture survived in tribal societies
throughout the world.) From a position of early leadership and respect, women
became powerless domestic slaves. Engels describes this as "the world historic
defeat of the female sex." Marx and Engels viewed women's entry into the paid
labor force as the first step toward liberating women from stifling dependence on
men, though it does not free them from the class oppression they share with
male workers. To achieve the full liberation of women and of the multi-racial,
working class of all nations, international socialism is necessary, which is in
essence a return in modern form to the cooperative egalitarian foundations of
early human existence.

Marxist feminism is essentially the same as socialist feminism and materialist

feminism, though some academics have defined the terms in ways that construe
differences.

Marxism recognizes that women are oppressed, and attributes the oppression to
the capitalist/private property system. Thus they insist that the only way to end
the oppression of women is to overthrow the capitalist system. Socialist
feminism is the result of Marxism meeting radical feminism. Jaggar and
Rothenberg [Feminist Frameworks: Alternative Theoretical Accounts of the
Relations Between Women and Men by Alison M. Jaggar and Paula S.
Rothenberg, 1993] point to significant differences between socialist feminism
and Marxism, but for our purposes I'll present the two together. Echols offers a
description of socialist feminism as a marriage between Marxism and radical
feminism, with Marxism the dominant partner. Marxists and socialists often call
themselves "radical," but they use the term to refer to a completely different
"root" of society: the economic system.

Postmodern Feminism
Postmodern Feminists have built on the ideas of Foucault, de Beauvoir, as well as
Derrida and Lacan (who I'm not going to talk about). While there is much
variation in Postmodern feminism, there is some common ground. Postmodern
Feminists accept the male/female binary as a main categorizing force in our
society. Following Simone de Beauvoir, they see female as having being cast into
the role of the Other. They criticize the structure of society and the dominant
order, especially in its patriarchal aspects. Many Postmodern feminists, however,
reject the feminist label, because anything that ends with an "ism" reflects an
essentialist conception. Postmodern Feminism is the ultimate acceptor of
diversity. Multiple truths, multiple roles, multiple realities are part of its focus.
There is a rejectance of an essential nature of women, of one-way to be a
woman." Poststructural feminism offers a useful philosophy for diversity in
feminism because of its acceptance of multiple truths and rejection of
essentialism."

This is in contrast to some other feminist theoretical viewpoints. Feminist

empiricism, or liberal feminism, sees equal opportunity as the primary focus.
They are concerned with "leveling the playing field." It does not question the
nature of the knowledge or the structure of human interactions, but rather the
events that go on within that structure. Accepting the idea that there is a single
knowable truth has led liberal feminists to use the accepted methodologies in
research, believing that they just need to be used in different ways.

Radical feminism has focused on how deeply entrenched the male/female

division is in society. Women have been oppressed and discriminated against in
all areas and their oppression is primary. Their focus has been to detail how the
male dominated society has forced women into oppressive gender roles, and has
used women's sexuality for male profit. Radical feminist proposals for change
include creating woman-only communities to embracing androgyny. Criticism of
radical feminism include that it suggests that men and women are two separate
species with no commonality and that it romanticizes women and interactions
between women.