200 Chapter 9
TENSIONS WITHIN . . . FEMINISM (2) Liberal feminism v. Radical feminism female emancipation women’s liberation
gender equality
patriarchy
individualism
sisterhood
conventional politics
the personal is political
public/private divide
transform private realm
access to public realm
gender equality
equal rights/opportunities
sexual politics
reform/gradualism
revolutionary change
political activism
consciousness-raising
of physical and sexual abuse. Men have created an ‘ideology of rape’, which amounts to a ‘conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear’. Feminists who have pursued this line of argument also believe that it has profound implications for women’s personal and sexual conduct. Sexual equality and harmony is impossible because all relationships between women and men must involve oppression. Heterosexual women are therefore thought to be ‘male identified’, incapable of fully realizing their true nature and becoming ‘female identified’.This has led to the development of political lesbianism, which holds that sexual preferences are an issue of crucial political importance for women. Only women who remain celibate or choose lesbianism can regard themselves as ‘woman-identified women’. In the slogan attributed to Ti-Grace Atkinson: ‘feminism is the theory; lesbianism is the practice’ (Charvet, 1982). However, the issues of separatism and lesbianism have deeply divided the women’s movement, the majority of radical feminists remaining faithful to the goal of constructing a non-sexist society, in which women and men live in harmony with one another. Modern approaches to gender and sexuality Since the 1990s, feminist discourse has moved beyond the campaigns and demands of the 1960s and 1970s women’s movement. This has made it increasingly difficult to analyse feminism simply in terms of the threefold division into liberal, socialist and radical traditions. Not only have new forms of feminism emerged, but feminism has also been challenged as well as enriched by its encounter with new thinking about gender and sexuality. Among the themes that this has brought to the fore are the following: z z ‘third-wave’ thinking and intersectionality z z trans theory and feminism z z queer theory.
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