Companion to Feminist Studies. Группа авторов
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as exclusionary, extreme and, notably, as anachronistic.
Radical Feminism: Legacy
On one hand, the central project of radical feminism – the dismantling of patriarchy – has to date, failed. Equally, the activism of the 1960s and 1970s has dramatically reduced. While some of the radical feminists from this period became cultural feminists as discussed, others transitioned into liberal feminism. Willis for example, explored deradicalized feminisms:
Ms. [magazine] and the new liberals embraced [radical feminist] issues but basically ignored the existence of power relationships. Though they supported feminist reforms, their main strategy for improving women's lives was individual and collective self‐improvement.
(Willis 1984, p. 108)
In terms of contributing to theory, radical feminist legacies lie in helping to revolutionize political analysis. Saulnier, for example, notes that “radical feminists developed a more comprehensive view of sexism which includes sex, gender, and reproduction as central topics in political analysis” (Saulnier 1996, p. 44). Jane Gerhard similarly spotlights that one radical feminist legacy lay in the politicizing of the category of “woman,” based on “the patriarchal uses and misuses of female sexuality” (Gerhard 2001, p. 152). Quoted earlier was Jaggar's comment that radical feminism “seeks to remove the spectacles” (Jaggar 1983, p. 85). This idea introduces the influence of radical feminism on academia leading to the rise of sex‐class examinations in fields that had historically gone without any kind of gender lens analysis. Feminist geography, for example, was formed to understand the male domination of space and design (McDowell and Sharp 1999). Feminist international relations, similarly, was created to investigate women's overlooked place in the study of global politics and security (Enloe 1989).
Consciousness‐raising also became instrumental in enlightening and educating women: Anita Shreve, for example, describes conscious‐raising groups – estimated as having had over 100 000 participants – as “one of the largest ever education and support movements of its kind for women in the history of this country” (Shreve 1989, p. 6). Bonnie Dow also discusses the impact of these groups, identifying that “the therapeutic and self‐help dimensions of consciousness‐raising translated easily into the self‐improvement ideology of women's magazines…” (Dow 1996, p. 66).
While liberal feminism has, arguably, had far stronger influence on public policy than radical feminism (Maddox 1998), nonetheless, there are also some examples of radical feminism making an impact. Through consciousness‐raising and radical feminist activism, the way we think about – and have made public policy about – sexual violence today has been substantially affected (Primorac 1998); equally so for domestic violence policy; as Stefania Abrar, Joni Lovenduski, and Helen Margretts argue, “The story of domestic violence policy shows how a network of radical feminists can influence policy in organizations as traditional, conservative and hierarchical as the police” (Abrar et al. 2000, p. 257). Policies supporting single mothers – especially those who have left situations of abuse – are also credited to radical feminism (Duncan and Edwards 1997). The legacy of domestic violence services is another legacy; as Saulnier notes, radical feminists “were instrumental in developing services that center on women's needs and do not focus on helping women adapt to sexist structures” (Saulnier 1996, pp. 44–45). Equally, the activism around these issues – for example, the Reclaim the Night marches – continue today in various forms, including through campus activism about rape and the advent of Slutwalks (Rosewarne 2011b), the latter which, while clashing with some of the radical feminist ideas, also exploit the legacy of women reclaiming public space (Johnson 2015). Equally, some of the revolutionary solutions to reproduction that Firestone (1970) advocated for that were impossible in the 1970s have, as Susan Faludi notes “proved prescient” (Faludi 2013, n.p.). In Sweden and Norway, the radical feminist impact on public policy is witnessed in what has become known as the “Nordic Model”: anti‐prostitution legislation which criminalizes the buying rather than the selling of sexual services.
In terms of enduring activism, the sex industry in fact, remains in the crosshairs of radical feminism, deemed a central component of women's continued oppression and an enduring motivation for activism.
Radical Feminism: Continued Relevance
While patriarchy may no longer be a word with much traction in modern writing or in the contemporary mediascape (Holter 2005), there are several debates still waging well into the twenty‐first century that highlight that radical feminist positions still have currency. In this section I discuss prostitution and pornography, two distinctly gendered arenas which persist as rallying cries for radical feminists.
Prostitution
In the Redstockings Manifesto introduced earlier, the notion of women's value being reduced to “enhanc[ing] men's lives” was identified. While women enhance men's lives as mothers, wives, lovers, and carers, a central concern for radical feminists is women doing this commercially through prostitution: as Thompson contends, “the only reason for the existence of prostitution is to service male sexual desire” (Thompson 2001, p. 42). Radical feminists are abolitionists and “view the industry of prostitution as a cause and consequence of inequality, not as work like any other” (Mackay 2015, p. 214).
The radical feminist opposition to prostitution is multilayered. First, the sex industry is viewed as another contribution to the maintenance of patriarchy. Ginette Castro argues that prostitution is symbolically oppressive, contending that “It is through the act of purchase that patriarchal man humiliates the prostitute whose services he acquires” (Castro 1990, p. 82). Thompson takes this further, saying that “Its sole reason for existence is so that men can pay money to have their penises stimulated to ejaculation by strangers who they hold in contempt” (Thompson 2001, p. 41). Symbolically, prostitution is viewed as a commercial encapsulation of how women are treated in broader society, as valued exclusively for the degree to which they enhance men's lives. Theorists like Jeffreys contend that rather than the sex industry being merely a way to capitalize on men's sexual desires, rather, “men's behaviour in choosing to use women in prostitution is socially constructed out of men's dominance and women's subordination” (Jeffreys 1997, p. 3).
While the misogyny that Castro, Thompson, and Jeffreys allude to is enacted symbolically through the bodies of prostitutes, radical feminists like Mackay quoted earlier, also argue that these acts should also be construed as physical acts of sexual violence. Atkinson, for example, describes prostitution as “institutionalized rape in its most public, brutal form” (Atkinson 1974, p. xlix). Evelina Giobbe articulates a similar argument:
The fact that a john gives money to a woman or a child for submitting to these acts does not alter the fact that he is committing child sexual abuse, rape, and battery; it merely redefines these crimes as prostitution.
(Giobbe 1991, p. 146)
Kathleen Barry takes this same position in her book The Prostitution of Sexuality:
Prostitution is sex bought on men's terms. Rape is sex taken on men's terms. The sex men buy in prostitution is the same they take in rape – sex that is disembodied, enacted on the bodies of women who, for the men, do not exist as human beings, and the men are always in control.
(Barry 1996, p. 37)
While the growth of the industry – fueled by globalization and the internet – keeps prostitution a concern, connected issues like trafficking have made radical feminist positions even more salient.
Pornography
In light of the radical feminist opposition to prostitution, it is no surprise that pornography is viewed similarly: the two topics are routinely coupled in academic discussions (Sullivan 1997; Whisnant and Stark 2004; Spector 2006; Weitzer 2009); both are reliant on women's sexual labor and both considered as products for male consumption. Equally, if one looks at the origins of the word pornography – porne&c.macr; meaning prostitute; graphein