Radical feminist strategies often addressed sexism as the source of, therefore the key to, ending all other oppressions. In contrast, black power strategies recognized a dynamic between two oppressions, race and economic class, "Black Americans have two problems; they are poor and they are black" (Carmichael 1968:62). Although the radical feminist movement grew out of the liberal feminist movement, it also grew away from it. Radical feminist strategies to gain liberation for women as a class, by abolishing institutional/psychological controls, contrasted with liberal feminist strategies to gain rights within the existing public structure. Radical feminist strategy dealt with `the annihilation of female and male roles'. The strategies employed were frequently ad hoc and symbolic actions. For example, radical feminists conducted the `Burial of Traditional Womanhood' during an anti-war demonstration at Arlington Cemetery. Small groups, such as consciousness raising groups, engaged in picketing marriage bureaus, guerilla theater and demonstrations, such as WITCH groups, which hexed Wall Street, and the insurance industry. Radical feminist were also concerned with throwing off the marks of their female oppression. The Freedom Trash can is a vivid symbol of radical feminist strategies. Women threw into the can objects of female oppression such as bras, girdles, and, make-up. Women would publicly engage in hair-cutting ceremonies during larger scale events, symbolically removing an emblem of their oppression. Women learned about these ideas in consciousness raising groups. Consciousness raising groups were intentionally small, and leaderless, so women could examine who they were as individuals and as women. They could look at the things they did and said which reflected their oppression and internalized patriarchal values.
The vision of liberal feminism generalized the experience of heterosexual white middle class women (and men) to all women (and men). It did not take race, class or sexual identity into account except to assume that all perspectives were the same. Critiquing the liberal feminist analysis found in the liberal feminist classic, "The Feminist Mystique", Zillah Elsenstein says, "[Betty Friedan] misses the point in that idealogy about feminity applies differently to women of different economic classes and races, and that the way one relates to it is not a matter of individual choice" (Eisenstein 1981:184). For example, while Friedan wrote about the problems of bored housewives, 60% of black women worked, 40% of those as domestics (Langston 1989). At first, lesbians were not part of the vision -- their presence in NOW was deemed a "lavender menace".
These strategies reflect the different philosophy which radical feminist/black power groups operated under. Their vision of `what ails society' was different from the vision held by liberal feminist black civil fights groups. For radical feminists the biggest philosophical difference was the shift from the public sphere to the private sphere. The slogan `the personal is political' reflects this ideological change. Radical feminists recognized that there were biological gender differences between women and men. Their focus was on the ways in which these gender differences were exploited by men, particularly in the private sphere. In fact, radical feminists saw male supremacy as the root of all oppression. Female oppression continued because men benefitted, not merely economically but also psychologically from women' oppression. Radical feminist visions of the future was one in which male institutions such as the family and romantic love, were destroyed. The vision held that such change could only occur when women as a group were self-defined, without traces of this male oppression"(http://0-proquest.umi.com.maurice.bgsu.edu/pqdweb?RQT=575&?TS=1182666198&clientId=3340&14398&LASTSRCHMODE=1).
I chose the above article from the source in which we are required to find an article. I liked this article in particular because it talks of oppression within the feminist ranks.
This pertains to what we have studied thus far because it's all about oppression, but particularly radical feminist oppression. We haven't really touched base on feminism yet but most definitely oppression. We already know that there have been many oppressed races and even oppressed women.
As I read this and about radical feminism, which I have studied in the past, it is discernible that there can be oppressive groups who are supposed to be the oppressed, and those groups who are oppressed who are the oppressors. Johnson has told us all about this. It just depends on the person. Thus, based on the article, we see that radical feminists are pretty much man haters. They see males as the supremacy and the root of all oppression.
I think they are being a bit harsh. Women should fight for equal rights and not try to fight against men. That defeats the purpose. Radical Feminism just does not make sense to me. If anything, if one believes it's all the man's fault where the woman is today, kill them with kindness. If we go about things the wrong way, it's only going to cause negative retaliation. I'm a self proclaimed feminist but I don't hate men!
Sources:
http://0-proquest.umi.com.maurice.bgsu.edu/pqdweb?index=3&did=494619211&SrchMode=1&sid=1&Fmt=3&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1216012961&clientId=3340
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