The Fury

Australian Radical Feminism

About This Site

Australian Radical
Feminists

Organisations

Online Resources

Books

Blogs

Artists

What is Radical Feminism

Australian radical feminist Denise Thompson defines feminism in her 2001 book, Radical Feminism Today, in order to challenge the use of feminism to support harm against women. Other radical feminist theory supports her definition. Here I have included numerous quotes from her chapter on ‘Defining Feminism’.

Gertrude Green
gertrudegreen@hotmail.com
last updated 19 Mar 2008

Denise argues, “Feminism aims to expose the reality of male domination, while struggling for a world where women are recognized as human beings in their own right.” (8)

She states “…it is through exposing male domination as domination that feminism poses its major challenge, since social domination operates most efficiently to the extent that it ensures compliance by being disguised as something else, and not domination at all. It has been the task of feminism to tear away the masks behind which male domination hides its true nature, and expose it for the dehumanizing system it really is.” (8)

Denise describes male domination as the state where “…the male represents the ‘human’ norm at the expense of a human status for women. Men’s interests and values are set up as universal 'human' interests, and genuinely human values like reason, virtue or courage are appropriated as exclusive to men. At the same time, male domination means that the female is regarded as subsidiary, subservient, ancillary to, or absent from, the ‘human’ norm, while the interests, values and rights of women are denied, trivialized or derided, and women’s time, energy and attention are expropriated for men’s use and pleasure.” (12)

She argues that sexuality is central to feminist critique. “The feminist point is that sex is central to women’s oppression. It is through heterosexual desire that women are fitted, and fit themselves, into their subordinate roles in relation to men… It is women’s lot to serve men, to see no alternative to their subordinate roles in relation to men, to gain access to ‘human’ status only through men, and to embrace that as their own identity.” (14)

Hence, at least in the seventies, “Lesbianism within the feminist context was meant as a challenge to the exclusiveness and ‘naturalness’ of heterosexual desire as the only form of intimacy women are allowed. It was a refusal to serve or service men, a withdrawal of recognition from men as the only ‘human’ individuals, and as commitment by women to women’s full humanity.” (14)

In addition, Denise describes separatism as a type of feminist activism. She describes separatism as “…a continuum of feminist politics, involving a withdrawal of consent to male supremacist relations of ruling”. (15)

back to top
wake the witch with your mouse attention, and watch her leave the patriarchal dimension!