Radical feminism
Radical feminism, as indicated from its critiques of other positions, takes the view
that feminism ought to deal with the position of women, independently of other
ideological commitments. As MacKinnon argues, ‘feminism is the first theory to
emerge from those whose interests it affirms’ (Humm, 1992: 119).
Radical feminists argue that women are oppressed because women are women,
and men are men. Male domination permeates all aspects of society – from sport
to literature, dress to philosophy, entertainment to sexual mores. As Mary Daly
argues, ‘we live in a profoundly anti-female society, a misogynistic “civilization” in
which men collectively victimize women, attacking us as personifications of their
own paranoid fears’ (Humm, 1992: 168).
This ubiquity of ‘maleness’ extends to the state itself. Weber’s view of the state
as an institution which claims a monopoly of legitimate force is too limited, in
MacKinnon’s view, since this monopoly ‘describes the power of men over women
in the home, in the bedroom, on the job, in the street, through social life’ (1989:
169). Patriarchy is a comprehensive system of male power and it arises from men.
Oppression, as the Manifesto of the New York Redstockingsin 1969 declared, is
total, ‘affecting every facet of our lives’ (Bryson, 1992: 183–4).
Moreover, the radicals argue that women’s oppression is the oldest and most
basic form of oppression, and whether it arises from socialists who expect women
to make tea while men develop political strategy, or it is expressed through black
men like Stokely Carmichael who see women as having only bodies and not minds,
the same point holds: all men oppress women, and all receive psychological, sexual
and material benefits from so doing. Germaine Greer argues that her proposition
in The Female Eunuch(1970) still holds 30 years later – men hate women at least
some of the time. Indeed, she reckons that in the year 2000 ‘more men hate more
women more bitterly than in 1970’ (1999: 14). Greer gives as good as she believes
that women get, and argues that ‘to be male is to be a kind of idiot savant, full of
queer obsessions about fetishistic activities and fantasy goals – a freak of nature,
fragile, fantastic, bizarre’ (1999: 327).
Why does the antagonism between men and women arise? Brownmiller appears
to suggest that the root is biological, and she speaks of the ‘anatomical fact that the
male sex organ has been misused as a weapon of terror’ (Humm, 1992: 73), but
radical feminists are aware of the dangers of a naturalist argument that reduces male
domination to biology. Although MacKinnon speaks highly of Robert Dahl and
endorses his view of politics as a system of power, authority and control, she almost
certainly would not endorse his once-expressed view that women’s subordination
arises from the superior physical strength of males (Hoffman, 2001: 97). The relation
of man and women is a social product, she argues, and a ‘naturalist’ view fails to
see these relationships as historical and transitory (MacKinnon, 1989: 56).
Nevertheless, radical feminists reject Marxist accounts that male domination arose
historically from class divisions, and they argue that patriarchy has always been
around. Although radicals disagree as to how and when patriarchy came about, they
all agree that it exists and it has done so in every known society (Bryson, 1992: 188).
What can be done about it? Radical feminists developed in the late 1960s the
idea of an all-women’s ‘consciousness-raising’ group. Indeed, MacKinnon describes322 Part 3 Contemporary ideologies