Anastasia
radical feminism / materialist feminism
About
I'm a Millennial who circled back around to radical feminist theory a few years ago after initially writing it off as "not nuanced enough" in law school. I was at one point highly sex positive, which eventually became coercive for me in ways that were very predictable in hindsight.I primarily identify as asexual, and due to experiences involving comphet, now align in many ways with lesbian radical feminism.I despise traditionalism, particularly the Catholic Church, and as a result am deeply interested in anti-essentialism. I appreciate other branches of feminist thought, especially Marxist feminism, but am frustrated by the lack of commitment to denaturalizing patriarchal structures amongst leftists at large.
Polemics
I am fairly separatist, as I find the rest of the left hopelessly masculinist and often actively antifeminist. I am highly critical of heterosexuality as an institution and believe that gender is an antagonistic contradiction that makes solidarity impossible, given that the majority of men will never abandon male supremacy.I am not a TERF, though I was at one point. I've written several essays in opposition to the ideology on Substack in the time since.I am no longer committed to the Nordic Model, but I am obviously still critical of the sex industry, given my focus on sexual subordination as the root of women's oppression. I find the term "SWERF" deeply stupid.
Reading Recommendations
As this is a question that comes up fairly regularly, my standard recommendations are as follows:For anyone wishing for a brief introduction to Second Wave feminism, a good and balanced anthology is Alix Kates Shulman and Honor Moore's Women's Liberation! It spans about three decades, touches upon many of the major figures, and seeks to present the diversity that was actually present during this time period.For a more extensive reading project, I would suggest Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex as a first stop, followed by Betty Friedan (The Feminine Mystique), Shulamith Firestone (The Dialectic of Sex) and Kate Millett (Sexual Politics). I would add Audre Lorde (Sister Outsider) and bell hooks (Ain't I a Woman, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center) to this list for the junction between radical feminism and intersectional feminism, as well as Marxist feminists Andrea D'Atri (Bread and Roses) and Silvia Federici (Patriarchy of the Wage). Additional recommendations can be found on the next pages.
Dworkin & MacKinnon
A decent anthology of Andrea Dworkin's writing is Last Days at Hot Slit, which includes significant selections of all of her major works. If you wish to read several of her books in full, in my view her most important contributions are Right Wing Women, Intercourse, and Pornography.Catharine MacKinnon's work usually takes the form of collections of speeches and essays. Chronologically, the first is Feminism Unmodified, while the most recent is Butterfly Politics. Either of these is a good starting place, though I think the second is somewhat more comprehensive. Her actual theory is developed in Toward a Feminist Theory of the State, though I believe it is better to have prior exposure to her essays before tackling it.Dworkin and MacKinnon are very powerful when read together, as they profoundly influence each other but are quite different in form, since Dworkin is a social critic and MacKinnon a legal theorist. A third person I would recommend is Dworkin's widower, John Stoltenberg (Refusing to be a Man).
French Materialist Feminism
My favorite form of radical feminism to date is actually what was developed in France, somewhat in opposition to the cultural feminism of Luce Irigaray and others of the school associated with her. This is all highly dedicated to social constructionism and denaturalizing women's oppression. One anthology available in English that includes selections from all the major figures is Sex in Question.The individual works most accessible to English speakers are Christine Delphy's Close to Home, Monique Wittig's The Straight Mind, and Colette Guillaumin's Racism, Sexism, Power, and Ideology. To those who read French or Italian, I would also recommend Paola Tabet.Their approach has sometimes been described as providing the material basis for a sex class analysis lacking in branches of radical feminism that instead start with bio-essentialism. (Note: for those who wish to avoid anything that could be described as TERF literature, Delphy is gender critical, though it does not appear in her works and is, if anything, inconsistent with her actual theory.)