Philosophical trends in the Feminist movement (part 1) – Anuradha Ghandy

Internationally one of the most remarkable developments in the capitalist era has been the emergence and growth of the women’s movement. For the first time in human history women came out collectively to demand their rights, their place under the sun. The emancipation of women from centuries of oppression became an urgent and immediate question. The movement threw up theoretical analyses and solutions on the question of women’s oppression. The women’s movement has challenged the present patriarchal, exploitative society both through its activities and through its theories. It is not that earlier women did not realize their oppression. They did. They articulated this oppression in various ways – through folk songs, pithy idioms and poems, paintings and other forms of art to which they had access. They also raved against the injustice they had to suffer. They interpreted and re-interpreted myths and epics to express their viewpoint. The various versions of the Ramayana and Mahabharat for example, still in circulation among rural women through songs in various parts of India, are a vivid testimony of this. Some remarkable women emerged in the feudal period who sought out ways through the means available at the time and became symbols of resistance to the patriarchal set-up. Meerabai, the woman saint is only one example among many such who left a lasting impact on society. This is time for all societies in the world. This was a counterculture, reflecting a consciousness of the oppressed. But it was limited by circumstances and was unable to find a way out, a path to end the oppression. In most cases they sought a solution in religion, or a personal God.

The development of capitalism brought about a tremendous change in social conditions and thinking. The concept of democracy meant people became important. Liberalism as a social and political philosophy led the change in its early phase; women from the progressive social classes came forward as a collective. Thus, for the first time in history a women’s own movement emerged, that demanded from society their rights and emancipation. This movement has, like all other social movements, had its flows and ebbs. The impact of capitalism, however constricted and distorted in the colonies like India, had their impact on progressive men and women.

A women’s own movement in India emerged in the first part of the 20th century. It was part of this international ferment and yet rooted in the contradictions of Indian society. The theories that emerged in capitalist countries found their way to India and got applied to Indian conditions. The same is true in an even more sharp way in the context of the contemporary women’s movement that arose in the late 1960s in the West. The contemporary women’s movement has posed many more challenges before society because the limits of capitalism in its imperialist phase are now nakedly clear. It had taken much struggle to gain formal legitimacy for the demand for equality. And even after that, equality was still unrealized not just in the backward countries, but even in advanced capitalist countries like U S A and France.

The women’s movement now looked for the roots of oppression in the very system of society itself The women’s movement analyzed the system of patriarchy and sought the origins of patriarchy in history. They grappled with the social sciences and showed up the male bias inherent in them. They exposed how a patriarchal way of thinking colored all analysis regarding women’s role in history and in contemporary society. Women have a history, women are in history they said..(Gerda Lerner) From studies of history they retrieved the contributions women had made to the development of human society, to major movements and struggles. They also exposed the gender based division of labor under capitalism that relegated an overwhelming majority of women to the least skilled, lowest paid categories. They exposed the way ruling classes; especially the capitalist class has economically gained from patriarchy. They exposed the patriarchal bias of the State, its laws and regulations.

The feminists’ analyzed the symbols and traditions of a given society and showed how they perpetuate the patriarchal system. The feminists gave importance to the oral tradition and thus were able to bring to the surface the voice of the women suppressed throughout history. The movement forced men and women to look critically at their own attitudes and thoughts, their actions and words regarding women. The movement challenged various patriarchal, anti-women attitudes that tainted even progressive and revolutionary movements and affected women’s participation in them. Notwithstanding the theoretical confusions and weaknesses the feminist movement has contributed significantly to our understanding of the women’s question in the present day world. The worldwide movement for democracy and socialism has been enriched by the women’s movement.

One of the important characteristics of the contemporary women’s movement has been the effort made by feminists to theorize on the condition of women. They have entered into the field of philosophy in order to give a philosophical foundation to their analysis and approach. Women sought philosophies of liberation and grappled with various philosophical trends which they felt could give a vision to the struggle of women. Various philosophical trends like Existentialism, Marxism, Anarchism, Liberalism were all studied and adopted by active women movement in US and then England. Thus feminists are an eclectic group who include a diverse range of approaches, perspectives and frameworks depending on the philosophical trend they adopt. Yet they share a commitment to give voice to women’s experiences and to end women’s subordination. Given the hegemony of the West these trends have had a strong influence on the women’s movement within India too. Hence a serious study of the women’s movement must include an understanding of the various theoretical trends in the movement.

Feminist philosophers have been influenced by philosophers as diverse as Locke, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Derida, Nietzsche, Freud. Yet most of them have concluded that traditional philosophy is male-biased, its major concepts and theories, its own self-understanding reveals “a distinctively masculine way of approaching the world.” (Alison Jagger). Hence they have tried to transform traditional philosophy. Keeping this background in mind we have undertaken to present some of the main philosophical trends among feminists. One point to take note of is that these various trends are not fixed and separate. Some feminists have opposed these categories. Some have changed their approach over time, some can be seen to have a mix of two or more trends. Yet for an understanding these broad trends can be useful. But before discussing the theories we will begin with a very brief account of the development of the women’s movement in the West, esp the US. This is necessary to understand the atmosphere in which the theoretical developments among feminists grew.

Overview of Women’s Movement in the West

The women’s movement in the West is divided into two phases. The first phase arose in the mid 19^^’ century and ended by the 1920s, while the second phase began in the 1960s. The first phase is known for the suffragette movement or the movement of women for their political rights, that is the right to vote. The women’s movement arose in the context of the growth of capitalism and the spread of a democratic ideology. It arose in the context of other social movements that emerged at the time. In the US the movement to free the black slaves and the movement to organise the ever increasing ranks of the proletariat were an important part of the socio-political ferment of the 19^th century. In the 1830s and 40s the abolitionists (those campaigning for the abolition of slavery) included some educated women who braved social opposition to campaign to free the Negroes from slavery. Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan Anthony, Angeline Grimke were among the women active in the anti-slavery movement who later became active in the struggle for women’s political rights. But opposition within the anti-slavery organizations to women representing them and to women in leadership forced the women to think about their own status in society and their own rights. In the US, women in various States started getting together to demand their right to common education with men, for manned women’s rights to property and divorce.

The Seneca Fall Convention organized by Stanton, Anthony and others in 1848 proved to be a landmark in the history of the first phase of the women’s movement in the US. They adopted a Declaration o f Sentiments modeled on the Declaration o f Independence, in which they demanded equal rights in marriage, property, wages and the vote. For 20 years after this Convention state level conventions were held, propaganda campaigns through lecture tours, pamphlets, signature petitions conducted. In 1868 an amendment was brought to the Constitution (14^th amendment) granting the right to vote to blacks but not to women. Stanton, Anthony campaigned against this amendment but were unsuccessful in preventing it. A split between the women and abolitionists took place. Meanwhile the working class movement also grew, though the established trade union leadership was not interested in organising women workers. Only the IWW supported efforts to organise women workers who worked long hours for extremely low wages. Thousands of women were garment workers. Anarchists, Socialists, Marxists, some of whom were women, worked among the workers and organised them. Among them were Emma Goldman, Ella Reevs Bloor, Mother Jones, Sojourner Truth. In the 1880s militant struggles and repression became the order of the day. Most of the suffrage leaders showed no interest in the exploitation of workers and did not support their movement. Towards the end of the century and beginning of the 20^th century a working class women’s movement developed rapidly. The high point of this was the strike of almost 40,000 women garment workers in 1909. The socialist women were very active in Europe and leading communist women like Eleanor Marx, Clara Zetkin, Alexandra Kollantai, Vera Zasulich were in the forefront of the struggle to organise working women. Thousands of working women were organised and women’s papers and magazines were published.

It was at the Second International Conference o f Working Women in Copenhagen that Clara Zetkin, the German communist and famous leader of the international women’s movement, inspired by the struggle of American women workers, moved the resolution to commemorate March 8 as Women’s Day at the international level. By the end of the century, the women’s situation had undergone much change in the US. Though they did not have the right to vote, in the field of education, property rights, employment they had made many gains. Hence the demand for the vote gained respectability. The movement took a more conservative turn , separating the question of gaining the right to vote from all other social and political issues. Their main tactics was petitioning and lobbying with senators etc. It became active in 1914 with the entry of Alice Paul who introduced the militant tactics of the British suffragettes, like picketing, hunger strikes, sit-ins etc. Due to their active campaign and militant tactics women won the right to vote in America in 1920.

The women’s struggle in Britain started later than the American movement but it took a more militant turn’ in the beginning of the 20^th century with Emmeline Pankhurst, her daughters and their supporter^ adopting militant tactics to draw attention to their demands, facing arrest several times to press their demand. They had formed the Women’s Social and Political Union (WPSU) in 1903 when they got disillusioned with the style of work of the older organisations. This WSPU spearheaded the agitation for suffrage. But they compromised with the British Government when the First World War broke out in 1914. Both in US and in England the leaders of the movement were white and middle class and restricted their demand to the middle class women. It was the socialists and communist women who rejected the demand for the vote being limited to those with property and broadened the demand to include the vote for all women, including working class women. They organised separate mass mobilisations in support of the demand for the women’s right to vote.

The women’s movement did not continue during the period of the Depression, rise of fascism and the world war. In the post Second World War period America saw a boom in its economy and the growth of the middle class. In the war years women had taken up all sorts of jobs to run the economy but after that they were encouraged to give up their jobs and become good housewives and mothers. This balloon o f prosperity and contentment lasted till the 1960s. Social unrest with the black civil rights movement gained ground and later the anti-war movement (against the Vietnam War) emerged.

It was a period of great turmoil. The Cultural Revolution that began in China too had its impact. Political activity among university students increased and it is in this atmosphere of social and political turmoil that the women’s movement once again emerged, this time initially from among university students and faculty.

Women realized that they faced discrimination in employment, in wages, and overall in the way they were treated in society. The consumerist ideology also came under attack. Simone de Beauvoir had written The Second Sex in 1949 itself but its impact was felt now. Betty Friedan had written the Feminine Mystique in 1963. The book became extremely popular. She initiated the National Organisation of Women in 1966 to fight against the discrimination women faced and to struggle for equal rights amendment. But the autonomous women’s movement (radical feminist movement) emerged from within the student movement that had leftist leanings. Black students in the Student Non-violent Coordination Council (SNCC) (which campaigned for civil rights for blacks) threw out the white men and women students at the Chicago Convention in 1968, on the grounds that only blacks would struggle for black liberation. Similarly the idea that women’s liberation is a women’s struggle gained ground. In this context, women members of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) demanded that women’s liberation be a part of the national council in their June 1968 convention. But they were hissed and voted down. Many of these women walked out and formed the WRAP (Women’s Radical Action Project) in Chicago. Women within the New University Conference (NUC – a national level body of university students, staff and faculty who wanted a socialist America) formed a Women’s Caucus. Marlene Dixon and Naomi Wisstein from Chicago were leading in this. Shulamith Firestone and Pamela Allen began similar activity in New York and formed the New York Radical Women (N YRW). All of them rejected the liberal view that changes in the law and equal rights amendment would solve women’s oppression and believed that the entire structure of society has to be transformed. Hence they called themselves radical. They came to hold the opinion that mixed groups and parties (men and women) like the socialist party, SDS, New Left will not be able to take the struggle for women’s liberation forward and a women’s movement, autonomous from parties is needed. The NYRW’s first public action was the protest against the Miss America beauty contest which brought the fledgling women’s movement into national prominence. A year later N Y W R divided into Redstockings and WITCH (Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell). The Red Stockings issued their manifesto in 1969 and in this the position of radical feminism was clearly presented for the first time. ” . . we identify the agents o f our oppression as men, Male supremacy is the oldest, most basic form of domination. All other forms of exploitation and oppression (racism, capitalism, imperialism etc) are extensions of male supremacy: men dominate women, a few men dominate the rest,,,.” Sisterhood is powerful, and the personal is political became their slogans which gained wide popularity. Meanwhile the SDS issued its position paper on Women’s Liberation in December 1968. This was debated by women from various points of view. Kathy McAfee and Myrna Wood wrote Bread and Roses to signify that the struggle cannot be only against economic exploitation of capitalism (bread) but also against the psychological and social oppression that women faced (Roses).

These debates carried out in the various journals produced by the women’s groups that emerged in this period were taken seriously and influenced the course and trends within the women’s movement not only in the US but in other countries as well. The groups mainly took the form of small circles for consciousness raising. It must be noted that all of these were following either the Trotskite or Cuban socialism within the left movement. They opposed all types of hierarchical structures. In this way the socialist feminist and the radical feminist trend within the women’s movement emerged. Though it had many limitations i f seen from a Marxist perspective, it raised questions and brought many aspects of women oppression out into the open. In the later 1960s and early 70s in the US and Western Europe ‘‘different groups had different visions of revolution . There were feminist, black, anarchist , Marxist – Leninist and other versions of revolutionary politics , but the belief that revolution of one sort or another was round the corner cut across these divisions . ”(Barbara Epstein)

The socialist (Marxist) and radical feminists shared a vision about revolution. During this first period the feminists were grappling with Marxist theory and key concepts like production, reproduction, class consciousness and labor. Both the socialist feminists and radical feminists were trying to change Marxist theory to incorporate feminist understanding of women’s position. But after 1975 there was a shift. Systemic analysis (of capitalism, of the entire social structure) was replaced or recast as cultural feminism. Cultural feminism begins with the assumption that men and women are basically different. It focused on the cultural features of patriarchal oppression and primarily aimed for reforms in this area. Unlike radical and socialist feminism, it adamantly rejects any critique of capitalism and emphasises patriarchy as the roots of women’s oppression and veers towards separatism. In the late 1970s and 1980s, lesbian feminism emerged as one current within the feminist movement. At the same time women of color (Black women, third world women in the advanced capitalist countries) raised criticisms about the ongoing feminist movement and began to articulate their versions of feminism. Organizations among working class women for equal treatment at the workplace, childcare etc also started growing. That the feminist movement had been restricted to white, middle class, educated women in advanced capitalist countries and was focusing on issues primarily of their concern had become obvious. This gave rise to global or multicultural feminism.

In the third world countries women’s groups also became active, but all the issues were not necessarily ‘purely’ women’s issues. Violence against women has been a major issue, esp rape, but alongside there have been issues that emerged from exploitation due to colonialism and neo-colonialism, poverty and exploitation by landlords, peasant issues, displacement, apartheid and many other such problems that were important in their own countries. In the early 1990s post-modernism became influential among feminists. But the right-wing conservative backlash against feminism grew in the 1980s, focusing opposition to the feminist struggle for abortion rights. They also attacked feminism for destroying the family, emphasizing the importance of women’s role in the family. Yet the feminist perspective spread wide and countless activist groups, social and cultural projects at the grasroots grew and continued to be active. Women’s studies too spread widely. Health care and environment issues have been the focus of attention of many of these groups. Many leading feminists were absorbed in academic jobs. At the same time many of the major organisations and caucuses have become large institutions, absorbed by the establishment, run with staff and like any established bureaucratic institution. Activism declined. In the 1990s the feminist movement is known more from the activities of these organisations and the writings of feminists in the academic realm. ”Feminism has become more an idea than a movement, and one that lack the visionary quality it once had” wrote Barbara Epstein in Monthly Review (May 2001). In the 1990s the increasing gap between the economic condition of working class and oppressed minorities and the middle classes, the continuing gender inequality, increasing violence on women, the onslaught of globalization and its impact on people, esp women in the third world has led to a renewed interest in Marxism. At the same time the participation of Women, esp. young women, in a range of political movements, as evident in the anti-globalisation and anti-war movements, has further helped the process of awakening. With this brief overview of the development of the women’s movement in the West we will analyse the propositions of the main theoretical trends within the feminist movement.

In the next phase of the women’s movement in the late 1960s among the leading proponents of liberal ideas was Betty Friedan, Bella Abzzug, Pat Schroeder. Friedan founded the organisation National Organisation of Women (NOW) in 1966. The liberal feminists emerged from among those who were working in women’s rights groups, government agencies, commissions etc. Their initial concern was to get laws amended which denied equality to women in the sphere of education, employment etc. They also campaigned against social conventions that limited women’s opportunities on the basis of gender. But as these legal and educational barriers began to fall it became clear that the liberal strategy of changing the laws within the existing system was not enough to get women justice and freedom. They shifted their emphasis to struggling for equality of conditions rather than merely equality of opportunity. This meant the demand that the state play a more active role in creating the conditions in 22 which women can actually realize opportunities. The demand for childcare, welfare, healthcare, unemployment wage, special schemes for the single mother etc have been taken up by liberal feminists. The struggle for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) has also been led by this section among feminists. The work of the liberal section among feminists has been through national level organisations and thus they have been noticed by the media as well. A section among the liberal feminists like Zillah Eisenstein argue that liberalism has a potential as a liberating ideology because working women can through their life experiences see the contradiction between liberal democracy as an ideology and capitalist patriarchy which denies them the equality promised by the ideology. But liberalism was not the influential trend within the movement in this phase.

Critique

Liberalism as a philosophy emerged within the womb of feudal western society as the bourgeoisie was struggling to come to power. Hence it included an attack on the feudal values of divinely ordained truth and hierarchy (social inequality). It stood for reason and equal rights for all individuals. But this philosophy was based on extreme individualism rather than collective effort. Hence it promoted the approach that if formal, legal equality was given to all, and then it was for the individuals to take advantage of the opportunities available and become successful in life. The question of class differences and the effect of class differences on opportunities available to people was not taken into consideration. Initially liberalism played a progressive role in breaking the feudal social and political institutions. But in the 19^th century after the growth of the working class and its movements, the limitations of liberal thinking came to the fore. For the bourgeoisie that had come to power did not extend the rights it professed to the poor and other oppressed sections (like women, or blacks in the US). They had to struggle for their rights. The women’s movement and the Black movement in that phase were able to demand their rights utilising the arguments of the liberals. Women from the bourgeois classes were in the forefront of this movement and they did not extend the question of rights to the working classes, including working class women.

But as working class ideologies emerged, various trends of socialism found support among the active sections of the working class. They began to question the very bourgeois socio-economic and political system and the limitations of liberal ideology with its emphasis on formal equality and individual freedom. In this phase liberalism lost its progressive role and we see that the main women’s organisations both in the US and England fighting for suffrage had a very narrow aim and became pro-imperialist and anti-working class. In the present phase liberal feminists have had to go beyond the narrow confines of formal equality to campaign for positive collective rights like welfare measures for single mothers, prisoners etc and demand a welfare state.

Liberalism has the following weaknesses:

1. It focuses on the individual rights rather than collective rights

2. It is ahistorical. It does not have a comprehensive understanding of women’s role in history nor has it any analysis for the subordination (subjugation) of women.

3. It tends to be mechanical in its support for formal equality without a concrete understanding of the condition of different sections/classes of women and their specific problems. Hence it was able to express the demands of the middle classes (white women from middle classes in the US and upper class, upper caste women in India) but not those of women from various oppressed ethnic groups, castes and the working, labouring classes.

4. It is restricted to changes in the law, educational and employment opportunities, welfare measures etc and does not question the economic and political structures of the society which give rise to patriarchal discrimination. Hence it is reformist in its orientation, both in theory and in practice.

5. It believes that the state is neutral and can be made to intervene in favour of women when in fact the bourgeois state in the capitalist countries and the semi-colonial and semi-feudal Indian state are patriarchal and will not support women’s struggle for emancipation. The State is defending the interests of the ruling classes who benefit from the subordination and devalued status of women.

6. Since it focuses on changes in the law, and state schemes for women, it has emphasised lobbying and petitioning as means to get their demands. The liberal trend most often has restricted its activity to meetings and conventions and mobilising petitions calling for changes. It has rarely mobilised the strength of the mass of women and is in fact afraid of the militant mobilisation of poor women in large numbers.

2 ) RADICAL FEMINISM

Within bourgeois feminism, in the first phase of the women’s movement in the 19^’^ and early 20^’^ centuries liberalism was the dominant ideology; in the contemporary phase of the women’s movement radical feminism has had a strong impact and in many ways, though diffused, many ideas and positions can be traced to the radical feminist argument. In contrast to the pragmatic approach taken by liberal feminism, radical feminism aimed to reshape society and restructure its institutions, which they saw as inherently patriarchal. Providing the core theory for modern feminism, radicals argued that women’s subservient role in society was too closely woven into the social fabric to be unraveled without a revolutionary revamping of society itself.  They strove to supplant hierarchical and traditional power relationships, which they saw as reflecting a male bias, with non-hierarchical and anti-authoritarian approaches to politics and organization.

In the second phase of feminism, in the US, the radical feminists emerged from the social movements of the 1960s – the civil rights movement, the new left movement and the anti-Vietnam war/peace movement. They were women who were dissatisfied with the role given to women in these movements and the way the new left tackled the women’s question in its writings, theoretical and popular. At the same time none of them wanted to preserve the existing system. Hence in its initial phase the writings were a debate with Marxism, an attempt to modify or rewrite Marxism. Later on as the radical feminist movement became strong Marxism was cast aside and the entire emphasis shifted to an analysis of the sex/gender system and patriarchy delinked from the exploitative capitalist system. In this contemporary phase of feminism attention was focused on the origins of women’s oppression and many theoretical books were written trying to analyze the forms of women’s oppression and tracing the roots of this oppression. Yet one thing that needs to be kept in mind is that in all their writing they kept only their own society in mind.

Hence all their criticism, description and analysis deal with advanced capitalist societies, esp. the US. In 1970 Kate Millett published the book Sexual Politics in which she challenged the formal notion of politics and presented a broader view of power relationships including the relationship between men and women in society. Kate Millett saw the relations between men and women as relationship of power; men’s dominating over women was a form of power in society. Hence she titled her book sexual politics. Here she made the claim that the personal was political, which became a popular slogan of the feminist movement. By the personal is political what she meant was that the discontent individual women feel in their lives is not due to individual failings but due to the social system, which has kept women in subordination and oppresses her in so many ways. Her personal feelings are therefore political. In fact she reversed the historical materialist understanding by asserting that the male female relationship is a framework for all power relationships in society. According to her, this ” social caste”(dominant men and subordinated women) supersedes all other forms of inequality, whether racial, political or economic. This is the primary human situation. These other systems of oppression will continue because they get both logical and emotional legitimacy from oppression in this primary situation. Patriarchy according to her was male control over the private and public world. According to her to eliminate patriarchy men and women must eliminate gender, i.e. sexual status, role and temperament, as they have been constructed under patriarchy. Patriarchal ideology exaggerates the biological differences between men and women and subordinates women. Millett advocated a new society, which would not be based on the sex/gender system and in which men and women are equal. At the same time, she argued that we must proceed slowly, eliminating undesirable traits like obedience (among women) and arrogance (among men). Kate Millett’s book was very influential for a long time. It still is considered a classic for modem radical feminist thinking. Another influential early writer was Shulamith Firestone who argued in her book Dialectics of Sex (1970) that the origins of women’s subordination and man’s domination lay in the reproductive roles of men and women. In this book she rewrites Marx and Engels. While Engels had written about historical materialism as follows: “that view o f the course o f history which seeks the ultimate cause and great moving power of all historical events in the economic development of society, in the changes of the modes of production and exchange, in the consequent division of society into distinct classes, and i n the struggles of these classes against one another.”

Firestone rewrote this as follows: ” Historical materialism is that view of the course of history which seeks the ultimate cause and the great moving power of all historical events in the dialectic of sex: the division of society into two distinctly biological classes for procreative

reproduction , and the struggles of these classes with one another ; in the changes in the mode of marriage , reproduction and child – care created by these struggles ; in the connected development of other physically differentiated classes ( castes ) ; and in the first division of labour based on sex which developed into the ( economic – cultural ) class system.” Firestone focused on reproduction instead of production as the moving force of history. Further, instead of identifying social causes for women’s condition she stressed biological reasons for her condition and made it the moving force in history. She felt that the biological fact that women bear children is the material basis for women’s submission in society and it needs a biological and social revolution to effect human liberation. She too was of the opinion that the sex/gender difference needs to be eliminated and human beings must be androgynous. But she went further than Kate Millett in the solution she advocated to end women’s oppression. She was of the opinion that unless women give up their reproductive role and no longer bear children and the basis of the existing family is changed it is not possible to completely liberate women. Hence, according to her unless natural reproduction was replaced by artificial reproduction, and the traditional biological family replaced by intentional family, biological divisions between the sexes could not be eliminated. Biological family is the family in which members are genetically connected (parents and children) while the intentional family according to her means a family chosen by friendship or convenience. She believed that if this change occurs the various personality complexes that develop in present society will no longer exist. Others wrote about how historically the first social conflict was between men and women. Man the hunter was prone to violence and he subjugated women through rape.(Susan Brownmiller).

These writings set the tone for the women’s movement, the more radical section of it, which was not satisfied with the efforts of liberal feminists to change laws and campaign on such issues. They gave the push to delve into women’s traditional hitherto taken for granted reproductive role, into gender /sex differences and to question the very structure of society as being patriarchal, hierarchical and oppressive. They called for a total transformation of society. Hence radical feminists perceive themselves as revolutionary rather than reformist. Their fundamental point is that the sex/gender system is the cause of women’s oppression. They considered the man woman relationship in isolation from the rest of the social system, as a fundamental contradiction. A s a result their entire orientation and direction of analysis and action deals primarily with this contradiction and this has taken them towards separatism. Since they focused on the reproductive role of women they make sexual relations, family relations as the central targets of their attack to transform society.

Sex-Gender System and Patriarchy

The central point in the radical feminist understanding is the sex/ gender system. According to a popular definition given by Gayle Rubin, the sex/gender system is a “set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity” This means that patriarchal society uses certain facts about male and female physiology (sex) as the basis for constructing a set of masculine and feminine identities and behaviour (gender) that serve to empower men and disempower women, that is, how a man should be and how a woman should be. This, according to them, is the ideological basis of women’s subordination. Society is somehow convinced that these culturally determined behaviour traits are ‘natural’. Therefore they said that ‘normal’ behaviour depends on one’s ability to display the gender identities and behaviour that society links with one’s biological sex.

Initially the radical feminists, e.g. the Boston group or the Radical New York group, upheld Kate Millet’s and Firestone’s views and focused on the ways in which the concept of femininity and the reproductive and sexual roles and responsibilities ( c h i ld rearing etc) serve to limit women’s development as full persons. So they advocated androgyny. Androgyny means being both male and female, having the traits of both male and female, so that rigid sex defined roles don’t remain. This means women should adopt some male traits (and men adopt some female traits.). But later, in the late 70s, one section of radical feminists rejected the goal of androgyny and believed that it meant that women should learn some of the worst features of masculinity. Instead they proposed that women should affirm their “femininity”. Women should try to be more like women, i.e. emphasise women’s virtues such as interdependence, community, connection, sharing, emotion, body, tmst, absence of hierarchy, nature, immanence, process, joy, peace and life. From here onwards their entire focus became separatist, women should relate only to women, they should build a women’s culture and institutions. With this even their understanding about sexuality changed and they believed that women should become lesbians and they supported monogamous lesbian relations as the best for women. Politically they became pacifist. Violence and aggression are masculine traits according to them, that should be rejected. They say women are naturally peace loving and life-giving. By building alternative institutions they believed they were bringing revolutionary change. They began building women’s clubs, making women’s films and other forms of separate women’s culture. In their understanding revolutionary transformation of society will take place gradually. This stream is called the cultural feminist trend because they are completely concentrating on the culture of society. They are not relating culture to the political-economic structure of society. But this became the main trend of radical feminism and is intertwined with eco-feminism, post-modernism also. Among the well known cultural feminists are Marilyn French and Mary Daly.

Sexuality: Heterosexuality and Lesbianism

Since man-woman relations are the fundamental contradiction for radical feminists they have paid a great deal of attention to sexual relations between men and women. Sexuality has become the arena where most of the discussions and debates o f radical feminism got concentrated. The stand of the Christian Churches in the West. regarding various issues including sex and abortion has been extremely conservative. This is more so in countries like the US, France and Italy. Christian morality has defended sex only after marriage and opposed abortion.. The radical feminist theorists confronted these questions head on. At the same time they also exposed how in a patriarchal society within sexual relations (even within marriage) women often feel a sense of being dominated. It is in this background that questions of sexual repression, compulsory heterosexuality and homosexuality or sexual choice became issues of discussion and debate. The radical feminists believe that in a patriarchal society even in sexual relations and practices male domination prevails. This has been termed as repression by the first trend and ideology of sexual objectification by the cultural feminists. According to them sex is viewed as bad, dangerous and negative. The only sex permitted and considered acceptable is marital heterosexual practice. (Heterosexuality means sexual relations between people of different sexes, that is between men and women). There is pressure from patriarchal society to be heterosexual and sexual minorities, i.e. lesbians, transvestites, transsexuals etc are considered as intolerable. Sexual pleasure, a powerful natural force, is controlled by patriarchal society by separating so-called good, nominal, healthy sexual practice from bad, unhealthy illegitimate sexual practice. But the two streams have very different understanding of sexuality which also affects the demands they make, and solutions they offer. According to the radical feminist trend sexual repression is one of the crudest and most irrational ways for the forces of civilization to control human behavior. Permissiveness is in the best interests of women and men. On the contrary the cultural feminists consider that heterosexual sexual relations are characterized by an ideology of objectification in which men are masters/subjects and women are slaves/objects. ” Hetero-sexualism has certain similarities to colonialism particularly in its maintenance through force when paternalism is rejected and in the portrayal of domination as natural and in the de-skilling of women ”{ Sarah Lucia Hoagland} This is a form of male sexual violence against women. Hence feminists should oppose any sexual practice that normalizes male sexual violence. According to them women should reclaim control over their sexuality by developing a concern with their own sexual priorities which differ from the priorities of men. Women, they say, desire intimacy and caring rather than the performance. Hence they advocated that women should reject heterosexual relations with men and become lesbians. On the other hand the radicals believed that women must seek their pleasure according to Gayle Rubin, not make rules. For the cultural feminists, heterosexuality is about male domination and female subordination and so it sets the stage for pornography, prostitution, sexual harassment and woman-battering. Hence they advocated that women should give up heterosexual relations and go into lesbian relations in which there is emotional involvement.

Cultural feminists emphasized the need to develop the essential “femaleness” of women. Lesbianism was pushed strongly within the women’s movement in the West in the early 80s but it receded a few years later. The solution offered by cultural feminists to end the subordination of women is breaking the sexual relationship between men and women with women forming a separate class themselves. The first trend are advocating free sexual relations, de-linked from any emotional involvement whether with men or with women. In fact the solutions which they are promoting make an intimate human relationship into a commodity type of impersonal relationship. From here it is one step to support pornography and prostitution. While cultural feminists strongly opposed pornography the radicals did not agree that pornography had any adverse impact on the way men viewed women. Instead they believed that pornography could be used to overcome sexual repression. Even on questions of reproductive technology, the two sides differed. While the radicals supported repro-tech the cultural feminists were opposed to it. The cultural feminists were of the opinion that women should not give up motherhood since this is the only power they have. They have been active in the ethical debates raised by repro-tech, like rights of the surrogate or biological mother.

Critique

From the account given above it is clear that radical feminists have turned Marxism on its head so to speak. Though we will deal with Firestone’s arguments in the section on socialist feminists some points need to be mentioned. In their understanding of material conditions they have taken the physical fact of reproduction and women’s biological role as the central point for their analysis and concluded that this is the main reason for women’s oppression. Marx had written that production and reproduction of life are the two basic conditions for human existence. Reproduction means both the reproduction of the person on a day to day basis and the reproduction of the human species. But in fact reproduction of the species is something humans share with the animal kingdom. That could not be the basis for women’s oppression. For in all the thousands of years that people lived in the first stages of human existence women were not subordinated to men. In fact her reproductive role was celebrated and given importance because the survival of the species and the group depended on reproduction. The importance given to fertility and the fertility rituals surviving in most tribal societies are testimony of this fact.

Marxism understands that some material conditions had to arise due to which the position of women changed and she was subordinated. The significant change in material conditions came with the generation of considerable surplus production. How this surplus would be distributed is the point at which classes arose, the surplus being appropriated by a small number of leading people in the community. Her role in reproduction the cause of her elevated status earlier became a means of her enslavement. Which clan/extended family the children she bore belonged to, became important and it is then that we find restrictions on her and the emergence of the patriarchal family in which the woman was subordinated and her main role in society was begetting children for the family.

Radical feminists have treated historical development and historical facts lightly and imposed their own understanding of man-woman contradiction as the original contradiction and the principal contradiction which has determined the course of actual history. From this central point the radical feminist analysis abandons history altogether, ignores the political-economic structure and concentrates only on the social and cultural aspects of advanced capitalist society and projects the situation there as the universal human condition. This is another major weakness in their analysis and approach. Since they have taken the man-woman relationship (sex/gender relationship) as the central contradiction in society all their analysis proceeds from it and men become the main enemies of women. Since they do not have any concrete strategy to overthrow this society they shift their entire analysis to a critique of the super structural aspects – the culture, language, concepts, ethics without concerning themselves with the fact of capitalism and the role of capitalism in sustaining this sex/gender relationship and hence the need to include the overthrow of capitalism in their strategy for women’s liberation.

While making extremely strong criticisms of the patriarchal structure the solutions they offer are in fact reformist. Their solutions are focused on changing roles and traits and attitudes and the moral values and creating an alternative culture. Practically it means people can to some extent give up certain values, men can give up aggressive traits by recognizing them as patriarchal, women can try to be bolder and less dependent, but when the entire structure of society is patriarchal how far can these changes come without an overthrow of the entire capitalist system is a question they do not address at all. So it ends up turning into small groups trying to change their lifestyle, their interpersonal relations, a focus on the interpersonal rather than the entire system. Though they began by analyzing the entire system and wanting to change it their line of analysis has taken them in reformist channels. Women’s liberation is not possible in this manner. The fault lies with their basic analysis itself. The cultural feminists have gone one step further by emphasizing the essential differences between males and females and claiming that female traits and values (not feminine) are desirable. This argument gives the biological basis of male female differences more importance than social upbringing. This is in fact a counter-productive argument because conservative forces in society have always used such arguments (called biological determinism) to justify domination over a section of the people. The slaves were slaves because they had those traits and they needed to be ruled, they could not look after themselves. Women are women and men are men and they are basically different, so social roles for women and men are also different. This is the argument given by reactionary conservative forces which are opposed to women’s liberation. Hence the basic argument they are putting forward has dangerous implications and can and will rebound on the struggle of women for change. Masculinity and femininity are constructs of a patriarchal society and we have to struggle to change these rigid constructs. But it is linked to the overthrow of the entire exploitative society. In a society where patriarchal domination ceases to exist how men and women will be, what kind of traits they will adopt is impossible for us to say. The traits that human beings will then adopt will be in consonance with the type of society that will exist, since there can be no human personality outside some social framework. Seeking this femaleness is like chasing a mirage and amounts to self-deception.

By making heterosexualism as the core point in their criticism of the present system they encouraged lesbian separatism and thus took the women’s movement to a dead end. Apart from forming small communities of lesbians and building an alternative culture they could not and have not been able to take one step forward to liberate the mass of women from the exploitation and oppression they suffer. It is impractical and unnatural to think that women can have a completely separate existence from men. They have completely given up the goal of building a better human society. This strategy is not appealing to the large mass of women. Objectively it became a diversion from building a broad movement for women’s liberation. The radical trend by supporting pornography and giving the abstract argument of free choice has taken a reactionary turn providing justification and support to the sex tourism industry promoted by the imperialists which is subjecting lakhs of women from oppressed ethnic communities and from the third world countries to sexual exploitation and untold suffering. While criticizing hypocritical and repressive sexual mores of the reactionary bourgeoisie and the Church the radical trend has promoted an alternative which only further alienates human beings from each other and debases the most intimate of human relations. Separating sex from love and intimacy, human relations become mechanical and inhuman. Further, their arguments are in absolute isolation from the actual circumstances of women’s lives and their bitter experiences. Maria Mies has made a critique o f this whole trend which sums up the weakness of the approach: “The belief in education , cultural action , or even cultural revolution as agents of change is a typical belief of the urban middle class. With regard to the women’s question, it is based on the assumption that woman’s oppression has nothing to do with basic material production relations . This assumption is found more among Western , particularly American , feminists who usually do not talk of capitalism . For many western feminists women’s oppression is rooted in the culture of patriarchal civilization . For them , therefore , feminism is largely a cultural movement, a new ideology , or a new consciousness.” (1986)

This cultural feminism dominated Western feminism and influenced feminist thinking in third world countries as well. It unites well with the post-modernist trend and has deflected the entire orientation of the women’s movement from being a struggle to change the material conditions of life of women to an analysis of “representations” and symbols. They have opposed the idea of women becoming a militant force because they emphasise the non-violent nature of the female. They are disregarding the role women have played in wars against tyranny throughout history Women will and ought to continue to play an active part in just wars meant to end oppression and exploitation. Thus they will be active participants in the struggle for change.

Summing up we can see that the radical feminist trend has taken the women’s movement to a dead end by advocating separatism for women.

The main weaknesses in the theory and approach are:

1. Taking a philosophically idealist position by giving central importance to personality traits and cultural values rather than material conditions. Ignoring the material situation in the world completely and focusing only on cultural aspects.

2. Making the contradiction between men and women as the principal contradiction thereby justifying separatism

3. Making a natural fact of reproduction as the reason for women’s subordination and rejecting socio-economic reasons for the social condition of oppression thereby strengthening the conservative, argument that men and women are naturally different.

4. Making women’s and men’s natures immutable

5. Ignoring the class differences among women and the needs and problems of poor women.

6. By propagating women’s nature as non-violent they are discouraging women from becoming fighters in the struggle for their own liberation and that of society.

7. Inspite of claiming to be radical having completely reformist solutions which cannot take women’s liberation forward.