Grundsätze des (radikalen) Feminismus und warum die Meinung von Frauen wenig zählt

Eine interessante Betrachtung einer Feministin zu der der Frage, warum es nicht darauf ankommt, was einzelne Frauen wollen, sondern was damit umgesetzt wird, warum also das private politisch ist:

“I suggest that beauty practices are not about women’s individual choice or a “discursive space” for women’s creative expression but, as other radical feminist theorists have argued before me, a most important aspect of women’s oppression. The feminist philosopher Marilyn Frye has written incisively of what makes a theory feminist, and why it is not enough to rely on women’s individual assurances that a practice is OK with them and in their interests” (p2)

The ideology of individualism depicts ‘humanity’ as a set of isolated selves […] Desires, needs, interests, beliefs, actions, feelings, attitudes and behaviours, are perceived as personal properties intrinsic to each individual […] If relations of domination and subordination are interpreted as nothing but properties of individuals, they cannot be seen as relations of ruling at all. They become simply a matter of preferences and choices engaged in by discrete individuals who have no responsibilities beyond their own immediate pleasures and satisfactions. In this libertarian discourse, politics vanishes. If only individuals exist, political critique can only be seen as personal insult or annihilation of the self, and disagreement becomes assertion of the self against threatening and hostile others. ‘Freedom’ is reduced to the absence of constraint, either on the part of the self or of others.”(p43-44)

Hier ist die freie Meinung der Frauen insoweit unbeachtlich, sie ist eben auch nur Teil des Patriarchats

Dort werden auch einige Interessante Thesen zum radikalen Feminismus dargestellt:

• Heterosexual relationships and marriage are deemed to be at the root of the Patriarchy, and therefore are shunned by almost all radical feminists.

• What radical feminists call PIV (Penis in Vagina) intercourse, or basically all heterosexual sexual activities, are seen as a tool of oppression and violence towards women.

• Homosexual relationships are seen as the only route out of their idea of an all encompassing male dominated oppression. (Important: this theory has nothing to do with the rights of LGBT people, and everything to do with literally viewing the male penis as the most oppressive tool of the patriarchy)

• As discussed above, radical feminists feel that women are not able to make individual choices for themselves that will enable their liberation from men, until they fully understand the theories of radical feminism. They believe that a normal woman’s agency is an illusion. According to this doctrine, while women think they have choice, any choice they make upholds the Patriarchy.

• All forms of prostitution are seen as both violence against women and as an agent of patriarchy and oppression. Hence, why in Sweden, the laws were crafted so prostitution was only a crime a man could commit. Men are seen as the only side of the transaction with real choice, since in radical feminism, women’s individual choice is actually just the choice of her oppressors, and therefore men should be the only party criminally charged.

• Almost all spectrum’s of feminism believe that “gender” is learned and not biological in any manner. Transgendered people are seen as deviants, not because they believe it is morally wrong, but because they are either seen as attempting to be a traitor to their sex and join the patriarchy in Female-to-Male cases, or are attempting to infiltrate women only spaces in Male-to-Female cases. It is almost impossible to describe the violent hate that radical feminists have towards transgendered people.

• Pornography is seen as violence against women and another tool of oppression. Radical feminists believe pornography is not morally wrong, but rather as a show of male deviancy derived from the Patriarchy. Some Radfem’s do create their own pornography, which is obviously lesbian porn, preformed by feminists for the sole intended use of other feminists.

• Any suffering that men incur during their lives is a product of Patriarchy, and is nothing to be mourned. Indeed, many radical feminists have stated that increased suffering in men is a good thing as it may begin to show them how the Patriarchy hurts them too.

• In radical feminism, and indeed some more moderate versions of feminism, it is impossible for men to be oppressed. To them, there is no such thing as sexism or bigotry towards men, because men are the ultimate benefactors of privilege, therefore and hatred or animosity towards men simply because of their sex is seen as a positive fight against their oppressors.

• Radical feminists believe that there should be no difference as a matter of state law between private lives and public lives. They argue that the Patriarchy continues to oppress women in untold numbers behind closed doors.

• Sexual jokes or crude humor, heterosexual scenes played out in the media and even romantic advances toward women by men is seen as violence against women by radical feminists.

• As we have seen in the last couple of weeks, some radical feminists believe that the male sex is a biological accident, and that the Y chromosome should be considered a type of defect. (Of course these people ignore the rest of the animal kingdom, and the biological differences between the sexes in other species)

• Destruction of the “male” gender (not sex, though many have advocated extermination of the male sex) is seen as the ultimate way to freedom.