Comments Elsewhere

Numbers added for expository purposes.

Gonzman: Thing is, too, I’m not claiming – I’m pointing out [1] that ya’ll are claiming it, that people take the most radical rhetoric and hold it as representive of all feminism, [2] that it produces the “I’m not a feminist, but…” women because they are afraid of being associated with it. That such things are an issue speak loudly of a public image and perception problem.

Look, I don’t like it when feminists do this, because I think it’s a destructive tactic that caters to anti-feminist baiting. (On the other hand, I’m biased, because my sympathies lie with radical feminism anyway.) But in any case, (1) and (2) are separate claims, and, in my experience, most feminists who do say this sort of thing make claim (1) but not claim (2). The main people who blame radical feminists for fence-sitting or anti-feminist attitudes are the fence-sitters and anti-feminists themselves. Most actual feminists who make claim (1) are simply making the point that feminist thought isn’t a monolithic hive mind, and they blame anti-feminists, not radical feminists, for treating it as if it were. Now, maybe the opinions of fence-sitters and anti-feminists are signs of “a public image and perception problem,” and maybe they aren’t, but even if they are, I don’t think it’s accurate to claim that it’s feminists rather than you who are stressing this point. But the point of feminist theory and practice is not necessarily to persuade more non-feminists to become feminists. So how seriously to take such a “problem,” so far as it exists, depends on a lot more than just the reactions of non-feminists to radical feminist rhetoric, where it is aired.

Anyway, I don’t know that you’ve understood my original point. People (women, mostly) who actually identify themselves as radical feminists don’t generally feel that their views are widely aired or discussed, and that their positions and contributions have been marginalized and continue to be marginalized. Not only by others IN the movement, but also by those OUTSIDE the movement. (They are widely “quoted” by certain factions within the anti-feminist movement, but that’s itself a minority faction.) Maybe you think they’re just wrong about the content of the discussion. But, really, which of the following do you think is better known and more widely discussed outside of feminist circles?

• Betty Friedan, or Shulamith Firestone?

• NOW, or the Redstockings?

• The Feminine Mystique, or Sexual Politics?

• Ms., or off our backs?

(N.B.: if you think that, in any of these four pairs, both are examples of the “radical” or “extremist” tendency in feminism, then you’ve made it pretty clear that what’s going on is that you have a very different picture of what constitutes radicalism than self-identified radical feminists do.)