Radically Speaking: Feminism Reclaimed
Edited by Diane Bell and Renate Klein
Spinifex Press, 1966. 624 pp., $34.95 (pb)
Review by Pat Brewer
This book is a defensive project, criticism driven, by a strand of feminism which feels itself under siege. "Radical feminist bashing" is how the editors phrase it.
As they spell out in their introduction, this means they reject claims that their theory is essentialist, ahistoric and universalising, and that their practice is problematic and victim centred, alienating young women into rejecting feminism instead of empowering them into activity.
The book seeks to reaffirm the radical feminist perspective and address these accusations. It wants to defend the relevance of the "brave, prophetic voices of the late '60s and early '70s" from the onslaught of post-modernist individualism in feminist theory, particularly in academia, but also of all other forms of feminist theory and activity.
The editors have gathered articles and poems from 68 international contributors, many of which are reprints, excerpts or reworkings of previously published material. These include such well-known radical feminists as Catharine MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin, Renata Klein, Charlene Sprenack, Sheila Jeffreys, Robin Morgan, Robyn Rowland, Jocelynne Scutt and Janice Raymond.
The anthology is divided into five sections. The first defines the history, activities and breadth of this strand of feminism. The second identifies the critical attacks and sets out to rebut them. The third is devoted to critiquing post-modernism, the fourth to demonstrating the global relevance of radical feminism. The last section lays claim to the 21st century for radical feminist theory and activities globally.
The arrangement of the material is partly an attempt to address a major criticism raised against radical feminism — that its analysis of women's oppression as the primary social division has universalised the experiences of a limited section of white middle-class First World women, imposing their analyses and priorities on all women, ignoring the impact of class and race on others' lives.
Thus the theory of patriarchy — that women as a social group are oppressed by men as a social group — becomes elitist and proscriptive in defining how other women should perceive their oppression and how they should act to change it.
Many of the writings in the final two sections in particular describe the experiences of women from different national, cultural, racial, religious and class backgrounds to show that radical feminism is attending to these diverse experiences — is "making the connections". But whether this means listening to the experiences of women globally and acting to support their struggles, or listening to just those who repeat what you want to hear and endorsing only those struggles which you validate, is not at all clear.
Several articles do acknowledge that race, class and gender intersections should be explored further, whilst still affirming the primacy of patriarchal analysis.
But if there is some concession to the criticisms of narrowness of perspective and lack of consideration of race and class, that is the only criticism considered on its merits. All others are rejected as inappropriate, misunderstandings or malicious misinterpretations of the radical feminist perspective.
Many of the contributions take up the charge of essentialism. This has two aspects.
Post-modernism rejects the possibility of developing theories to explain the natural and social world. It labels them essentialist and universalising — imposing upon reality an order which has no validity. Such a viewpoint invalidates the collectivity and solidarity which are the basis of any political movement, particularly feminism.
But while the rejection of post-modernism is valid, there is another meaning of essentialism which is obscured. This is the essentialism which explains social differences between the sexes as biologically intrinsic. Criticism of this radical feminist theorising is far more telling.
Several contributors claim that this is an old debate, decided in the '70s, when radical feminism made it clear that it held to a social constructionist explanation of gender difference. They don't spell out the basis of these explanations, but just assert that they aren't biologically grounded.
Yet if you go back to the early theorists, this isn't the case. Brownmiller has a biological structuralist explanation, Firestone, a biological function theory, and even Millett puts forward a male power thesis without a clear social explanation of its basis.
The very diversity of those who hold to patriarchal analysis is such that when you raise these examples, they are rejected as not typical: "real" radical feminists, it's argued, don't do this. So the concrete examples are obscured by general assertions.
While many radical feminists may assert their theory isn't biologically essentialist, the way they practise their theory says otherwise, as they prioritise sexuality, reproductive technology, rape and sexual violence, pornography, etc. Theories of sexuality which assert without explanation that violent and coercive sexuality is the basis of male power automatically drift into assumptions about basic human nature.
Radical feminists also reject the label "cultural feminists". They claim that their theory is the only theory by and for women, untouched by the pollution of male minds, male theory, male culture which affects all other strands of feminist theory. Their strategy is totally women centred and radical.
But in reality their strategy is to create and develop women's culture based on women's experience and to impose this onto male culture, overturning the patriarchal relations of capitalism by reforming the bourgeois state.
One of the gurus of this position, Catherine MacKinnon, argues against the struggle for equal rights on the basis that equality and culture are defined in male terms. Her strategy is to construct a feminist jurisprudence. Just how women are supposed to develop "women's epistemology" in the patriarchy isn't explained.
Radical feminist analysis defines itself as true women's knowledge, which delegitimises all other feminist viewpoints and forms the basis for the charges of both elitism and for creating "victim feminism". If a woman doesn't accept these propositions, which form the one true feminism, then women are rejecting feminism.
Many young women respond by distancing themselves from identifying as feminists for just such reasons of narrowness, exclusion and elitism. This is a great pity at a time when the gains made by women in the second wave of feminism are under attack by neo-liberal agendas globally. That situation won't be changed by books, like this — written, not for dialogue, but to reassure the true believer.