(Jaggar 1983, p. 84)
While feminism does have factions and occasionally clashing ideologies, few movements are ever completely linear and thus, even if contested, definitions remain an essential starting point for this discussion. In 1975, Kathie Sarachild explained her use of the label:
The dictionary says radical means root, coming from the Latin word for root. And that is what we meant by calling ourselves radical. We were interested in getting to the roots of problems in society.
(Sarachild 1975, p. 145)
Robin Morgan used the same analogy:
I believe that sexism is the root oppression, the one which until and unless we uproot it, will continue to put forth branches of racism, class hatred, ageism, competition, ecological disaster, and economic exploitation.
(Morgan 1978, p. 9)
That women are subordinated – are an oppressed class; a sex‐class – and that their subordination is caused by patriarchy are two of the key tenets of the movement. While feminists like Sarachild and Morgan were using radical because of its links to root, the word also references revolution: as Valerie Bryson notes in Feminist Political Theory, the ideas being advocated for “produced a challenge to accepted values and life‐styles that often seemed both extreme and shocking” (Bryson 2003, p. 163). Radical feminism aimed to dismantle not only patriarchy but each of the social, cultural, political, and economic structures that benefited from – and supported – male authority.
In the sections that follow, I examine the principles of radical feminism and explore its criticisms and shortcomings. I end with a discussion of legacy and radical feminism's continued relevance into the twenty‐first century.
Radical Feminism: Key Tenets
Early into the movement, several efforts were made to articulate a radical feminist doctrine: Valerie Solanas's SCUM Manifesto (1967), The Redstockings Manifesto (1969), and the Radicalesbians' The Woman‐Identified Woman (1970) are three of several manifestoes that became instrumental in shaping the movement (Rhodes 2012). In recent years, scholars have attempted to synthesize these ideas. Saulnier for example, details five key tenets:
(1) the personal is political; (2) women are an oppressed class and patriarchy is at the root of their oppression; (3) patriarchy is based in psychological and biological factors and enforced through violence against women; (4) women and men are fundamentally different; (5) society must be completely altered to eliminate male supremacy – incremental change is insufficient; and (6) all hierarchies must be eliminated.
(Saulnier 1996, p. 32)
Finn Mackay similarly presents four key criteria:
First, the acceptance of the existence of patriarchy alongside a commitment to end it; second, the use and promotion of women‐only space as an organizing method; third, a focus on all forms of male violence against women and their role as a keystone of women's oppression broadly; fourth and finally, an extension of the analysis of male violence against women to include the institutions of pornography and prostitution.
(Mackay 2015b, p. 334)
Using these lists as my starting point, in the sections that follow I examine these key principles.
The Personal is Political
In the late 1960s, the women who would become radical feminists formed small groups to “rap” about their gendered experiences. These consciousness‐raising sessions were driven by four objectives: opening‐up, sharing, analyzing, and abstracting (Cobble et al. 2014). Problems that had historically been dismissed as private realm, domestic, and separate from the public policy agenda – violence in marriage, for example, and workplace sexual harassment and job discrimination – surfaced as endemic to the female experience and two principles emerged: that the personal is political and that sisterhood is powerful.
In practice, the concept of the personal as political moves issues like rape and domestic violence not merely out of women's diaries but, ultimately into the public sphere; to being spoken about as social problems of which institutions – educative, legislative, and judicial – need to address. The personal is political catch‐cry is underpinned by the belief that power is everywhere and that male dominance impacts on – and taints – all aspects of women's lives including their health and safety. Sex became a crucial component of this discussion, leading to the publication of Kate Millett's Sexual Politics (1970): an exploration of sex – the biological categories of it, as well as its intimate practice – as being a key arena where power relations are enacted. Millett used literature by authors like Norman Mailer to make her point; scholars since have presented a range of sexual political analyses; my own work has explored the sexual politics of advertising (Rosewarne 2007), infidelity (Rosewarne 2009), and sexual perversion (Rosewarne 2011a).
Sisterhood is Powerful was the title of a 1970 anthology edited by Morgan, but the phrase is also central to understanding the link between consciousness‐raising and politics: by sharing stories, not only did women realize they were linked by their subordination, but that their collective action was necessary for change.
The Patriarchy Problem
The root that Sarachild and Morgan identified was patriarchy; something defined by Sylvia Walby as “a system of interrelated social structures which allow men to exploit women” (Walby 1986, p. 51). bell hooks later elaborated on these ideas:
Patriarchy is a political‐social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence.
(hooks 2004, p. 18)
More than just the vague notion of male privilege, patriarchy describes the everyday practice of sexism and, as Bryson (2003) notes, the word became shorthand for male domination and female subordination. The aforementioned Redstockings – a radical feminist group founded in 1969 by Sarachild, Shulamith Firestone, and Ellen Willis – made it clear that their movement was distinct from what had gone before. Radical feminists were breaking away from Marxist understandings of class and from the socialist promise of liberation once capitalism is overthrown4; something they articulated in their manifesto:
Women are an oppressed class. Our oppression is total, affecting every facet of our lives. We are considered inferior beings, whose only purpose is to enhance men's lives… Because we have lived so intimately with our oppressors, in isolation from each other, we have been kept from seeing our personal suffering as a political condition … We identify the agents of our oppression as men. Male supremacy is the oldest, most basic form of domination
(in Morgan 1970, p. 598.)
Patriarchy is identifiable throughout social structures and institutions. In the workforce, it is apparent in the gender pay gap, in men's dominance in science, technology, engineering, and math professions, and in women's disproportionate occupation of caring careers like nursing, aged care, and teaching. In political life, patriarchy is evident in male dominance of elected office, in legislation restricting women's reproductive rights, in law and order, in rape myths, and in the infrequent prosecution of sex offenders. In personal relationships, patriarchy is witnessed in women's disproportionate burden of housework and child‐raising, and in women's career interruptions. In intimate relationships, patriarchy manifests in boys' and men's sexual expectations and the orgasm disparity. Patriarchy is also effortlessly identifiable in mass media through the premium placed on beauty, on femininity, on youth, and increasingly on sexiness (Rosewarne 2007, 2017). Globally, son preference, the authority of patriarchal