Unlike much of the discourse that transpires in the living world, radical feminist reading, writing, and thought is not about shallow engagements, conversational pastimes, aligning with power structures, reactionary politics, and/or the development of superficial relationships. Rather, radical feminism is purposeful; the purpose of radical feminism is to end the violent tyranny (which is exacted through both physical force and psychological warfare) against women and girls by men and boys. This purpose suggests that, when women and girls reach the realization that they no longer want to center men and boys in their lives given that doing so makes them susceptible to violence, they will need to rebuild their lives in a manner marked by the acquisition of new cultural proclivities. This is why radical feminist reading, writing, and thought is important. These modalities provide women and girls with the tools necessary to begin to envision a world in which their existence is not predicated upon submitting to male domination. Moreover, radical feminist reading, writing, and thought provides women with the tools through which to understand that this system of male domination is indeed the foundational principle of life in both the historical and modern worlds. By helping women and girls see what is really going on (and what is really going on is the perpetuation of male supremacy), radical feminist reading, writing, and thought enables women to 1. decide if they agree with the subordinate positions of degradation and dehumanization that they have been given under the current regime of domination and 2. determine whether they want to begin to cultivate lives in which they can be and continually become fully human rather than regularly subjecting themselves to the devolution and diminishing that the dominant order insists that they adhere to.  

Reading, writing, and thinking in radically feminist ways does not, as many know, end patriarchy. In fact, as one of my former professors noted in discussing the impact and response to the publication of dissident thought, many individuals and institutions that seek to perpetuate systems of domination prefer that these publications happen. When publication of nonconformist thought transpires, people who purport systems of domination can actively monitor what is being said and thought by radicals who may be strategizing to annihilate or at least trouble the system. In recognizing this reality, it is important for radicals to understand that responding to the monitoring of oppressors with the cessation of publication of anarchic thought is not an effective solution. Alternatives would include the privatization of publications, meetings, and radical discourses, the process which is oftentimes referred to as going underground in activist communities. Going underground is a somewhat effective solution for the issue of how subjugated people will operate within the patriarchy’s system of dominative containment given that it enables individuals to speak freely about and strategize against the oppression that they are experiencing. However, it is important to understand that male supremacy is a ubiquitous entity which gains actualization through the brains and bodies of sentient beings; this means that we will never escape it as long as living people consent to its edicts. Yet the inescapability of patriarchy does not have to entail passively acquiescing its existence and awry agency while internalizing its discriminatory logic. Rather, we should regularly produce and circulate counternarratives so that we are not consistently inundated in the fallacious logic which, over time, might convince us that nothing is really wrong and being raped, murdered, subjected to sexual harassment, ridiculed for not dressing “sexy” enough or avoiding intimacy with men is just “the way things are.”  

              Male domination and all of its ugly affects and effects have not gone away. From racialized rape to the perpetuation of multiple forms of male violence which result in death and other life-negating outcomes, men and the women who support them¹ are continuing to inundate everyone in a world of multifarious miseries. As such, it is imperative that radical feminist reading, writing, and thinking continue to exist in antagonistic relationship to androcentric thought and praxis. Although it is clear that the majority of the populace will continue to support the maintenance of male supremacy through active participation in its institutions and cultural productions, radical feminism creates the conditions necessary for individuals to escape patriarchy’s malefic clutches and develop a life of dissident dissent which involves happily struggling towards the attainment of autonomy and full humanity as the system of domination continues its work of dependence and dehumanization.  

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Radical Feminist Must Reads (Fiction, Non-fiction, and an Essay):

Complaint! by Sara Ahmed

Intercourse by Andrea Dworkin

Where We Stand: Class Matters by bell hooks 

Only Words by Catharine MacKinnon

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

The Dialectic of Sex by Shulamith Firestone

Amazon Odyssey by Ti-Grace Atkinson

Female Erasure: What You Need To Know About Gender Politics’ War on Women, the Female Sex and Human Rights by Ruth Barrett

“The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” by Audre Lorde

Once one becomes a radical feminist or even a feminist, one often recognizes the danger of continually immersing oneself in systems, structures, and societal groups that are predicated on the intentional or unwitting collusion with the patriarchy. Yet the problem is that because the world is organized around patriarchy as the foundational, primary, and only acceptable culture, finding a radical feminist counterculture can be challenging. However, it doesn’t have to be thanks to radical feminist readings, writings, and thought. For example, numerous radical feminist organizations, including Women’s Declaration International, have developed a culture in which women can gather and discuss our dissident and dangerously ungovernable ideas. WDI hosts a show called Feminist Question Time on Saturday mornings for the purpose of discussing key issues that are impacting women such as the perpetuity of pedophilia and the perpetuity of sexual assault. WDI also produces videos that are organized around meaningful topics. In many cases the content produced by WDI includes discussion and mentioning of important radical feminist texts, and this reality helps us understand that the anarchic, non-assimilationist ideas produced by radicals are positively impacting the world by contributing to the development of countercultures in which women can engage with one another in non-patriarchal ways which do not involve them subjecting themselves to the multifarious forms of degradation and dehumanization that they would experience in virtually any other setting that unfolds in material reality. 

 Similarly, WOLF (Women’s Liberation Front) is a radical feminist organization that places primacy on the liberation of women and girls from patriarchal domination. In addition to hosting a plethora of women-centered events that involve actively fighting against male supremacy, WOLF hosts weekly virtual coffee meet-ups in which women can gather and discuss key feminist issues. These events are organized from a radical feminist perspective, and organizational leaders such as Lierre Keith avidly read texts from within this ideological milieu and can be seen collaborating with other radical feminist thinkers in contexts where the works of women writers are subjected to intense and meaningful analysis. That the thought processes of WOLF’s organizational leaders is deeply informed by radical feminist ideologies is important because it shows us that, as opposed to prototypically patterned patriarchal organizations whose male leaders value traditional, non-progressive ways of doing things (such as non-inclusion and unilateral decision-making), there are feminist organizations whose representatives remain grounded in practices that are adamantly opposed to the patriarchal norms which perpetuate sexism and the protection of narcissistic interests. 

Once you realize that patriarchy is effective in part because it is built on lies, or false narratives regarding what reality is and how it should be, it is important to develop a counternarrative. This is a second reason for reading radical feminist work.  Although defined diversely, counternarratives are basically responses to the dominant narrative and its inaccurate, inappropriate representations of reality. Counternarratives exist to challenge the logics of domination which come to constitute the normal way that people interpret reality. Dominant narratives, which are also narratives of dominance insomuch as they reinforce the power that men have over women as well as the view that this is how things should work, exist in every sector of society and function as patriarchal propaganda designed to produce compliant, docile female citizens who accept male supremacy. Furthermore, dominant narratives are the prevailing interpretation of reality, meaning that they tend to shape society’s understanding of how we should think about our identities and events that take place in the material world. Dominant narratives are reinforced through the process of repetition, meaning that they are told over and over again so that they are normalized in the psyches of those who are exposed to them. These narratives are amplified by all types of media sources, including the film and music industries. Additionally, dominant narratives typically marginalize the experiences and ideas of historically oppressed people while also suppressing, ignoring, or ridiculing alternative viewpoints. 

An example of a normal dominant patriarchal narrative would be “A wedding is the happiest day of a woman’s life. She is given away to her husband by a loving father, and this process symbolizes her newfound immersion in the realm of adult love and blissful sexuality which she will experience in the arms of a loving man.” A feminist counternarrative would be “Weddings function as an arm of the patriarchy which convey that female people are transferred as property from one man to another; the wedding will be the onset of the saddest, most miserable days of the woman’s life as she becomes inundated in a realm of non-orgasmic sex, verbal abuse, and emotional immaturity.” 

There is a plethora of other counternarratives that women have devised in order to refute the erroneous logic of patriarchy so that they can start thinking in divergent ways which gravitate away from male supremacy and towards the conceptualization of female people as fully human. These counternarratives help dispel the lies of dominant narratives, many of which are told in simple, mantra-like formats (because the slogan-style form of language use can make concepts easier to remember). One dominant narrative-slogan designed to promote the aspect of male domination which involves the legitimization of rape is “No means yes. Yes means anal.” This verbage advances the patriarchal view that women do not have the right to say no to male sexual advances (which actually become rape rather than anything “sexual” because consent is absent when an individual cannot say no to unwanted sexual activity) while also conveying that when a female person consents to one form of sexual activity, the male is entitled to pursue other forms of bodily engagement without attaining permission. Feminists (as well as individuals who do not explicitly align themselves with feminist values) have developed many counternarratives which combat the presence and perpetuation of male supremacist logic as made evident in statements like this. One such counternarrative is “No means no.” Rather than adopting the logics of domination and its insistence in the normalization of removing a woman’s ability to say no to unwanted “sexual” activity, groups such as the Canadian Federation of Students are advancing the view that consent is mandatory and must be taken seriously. The seriousness of the “No means no” counternarrative has been historically advanced by the organization of annual events such as Take Back The Night. Originating in the 1970s, this annual event emphasizes the importance of recognizing sexual violence as an egregious harm which must be actively and arrantly resisted.  

Another dominant narrative of male domination is that patriarchy does not exist; rather, women “protest too much,” imagine that they are being discriminated against when they are not, don’t understand that men ruling the earth and women submitting to their rulership is God’s plan and deviation from it is demonic rebellion, will simply not accept their nature-based inferiority and accept their lot in life, etc. Additionally, the dominant narrative “patriarchy does not exist” is not always rooted in the aforementioned understandings; it can be rooted in the misperception that patriarchy may have existed in previous eras, but the passing of time has resulted in the revolutionary and/or progressive evolution necessary to ensure that women and men are treated equally in our contemporary period. Therefore, the “patriarchy does not exist” concept is a two-fold master narrative that is rooted in either ignorance regarding the ongoing war against women or a desire to shut women up so that they will keep going along with patriarchal edicts. Radical feminists have been producing effective counternarratives to these lies for quite some time. One such counternarrative is “I’ll be a post-feminist in post-patriarchy.” This counternarrative works to undermine the lie that patriarchy does not exist while simultaneously asserting that feminist antagonism towards male domination will continue until male supremacy is no longer an active, operative component of the material world. Thus, by asserting that patriarchy does exist and subsequently asserting that there therefore is a need for feminism, the slogan “I’ll be a post-feminist in post-patriarchy” functions as an effective counternarrative to the dominant mantra of pretending that patriarchy is either 1. not real or 2. existing but not a problem but rather the appropriate, acceptable way that reality should work. 

Roar is a disappointment–to see what passes for feminism these days, you’d think it was the 1950s (a feminist moment is realizing that being an object of beauty on a pedestal is not a fulfilling life?  seriously?).

But Dickinson is a hoot and I’m loving it–it might not be historically accurate, but I think Dickinson would approve because the creators are telling the truth, they’re just telling it slant.

(both on AppleTV)

It’s safe to say that at some point, everyone—all men and women—are exposed to the reality that patriarchy exists. Although some do not understand the depth and scope of the dark heart of the patriarchy, they have a general understanding that this world operates under the control of men. If, unlike most men and women, individuals decide that they are going to summarily reject patriarchy in all of its forms due to recognition of how awfully horrible it truly is, reading radical feminist work is important. This is the case for several reasons.

One of the reasons is that being attentive to radical feminist thought enables individuals to identify and summarily reject the lies of the patriarchy. This process transpires through the work of conscious, critical thought. In many if not most cases, women and girls subconsciously absorb male supremacist values and subsequently replicate patriarchal patterns in their personal and professional lives. Although patriarchal values are often spelled out with unapologetic, ugly lucidity (such as when a parent or authority figure tells a woman to stop studying politics because she will never be a president or politician), many sexist values which prevent female people from understanding the destructive agenda of men are actively present in the material world without being openly articulated. Therefore, these relatively subtle patriarchal processes and practices must be thought through so that they become glaringly conspicuous sources of evidence that men are actively working against women and, if many if not most cases, hate us. This is what radical feminism does. It thinks through patriarchy so that the hateful, discriminatory, dehumanizing value system which it upholds can be summarily rejected.

An example of how the radical feminist process of thinking through and rejecting patriarchy might happen would be recognition of the way Joanna Russ interrupts the mainstream/malestream view of gender relations by questioning the idea that men and women are engaged in a process we could consider in terms of a “battle of the sexes.” Within this fallacious framework, men and women are thought to equally contribute to psychic and physical abuse of one another. Although this view is empirically false, the fallacious language of there being a “battle of the sexes” is frequently utilized, thereby contributing to women misinterpreting reality such that they don’t recognize that male violence, not female violence, is the primary problem within the system of gender relations. When the myth that women and men are caught up in a war which involves each sex being equally culpable with respect to harms done to one another, female people are logically discouraged from becoming 1. feminist and 2. radical feminist because there is no rational framework through which to understand that women are being subjected to a war at the hands of men. Again, radical feminist reading and writing contributes to the creation of clarity regarding who the oppressor is and why we can construe him this way (such as empirical data indicating that roughly 86% of violent crimes are committed by men). 

“And [do you think it wise] to keep sane people inside an asylum and let loose the insane?” from “Sultana’s Dream”, a short story by Islamic Indian writer Rokeya Hossain (published in 1905), referring to the practice of keeping the women inside while the men roam free

“Is there any crime that gentlemen don’t commit? … [Is] there a vice for which they don’t have a license?” from Padmarag, also by Hossain

It’s safe to suggest that most radical feminists agree that there is not one single economic factor, aspect of material reality, cognitive process, or bodily reality that makes male domination of women a present and prevalent component of our lives. Rather, there are a plethora of intersecting factors which, in working together, ensure that men consistently have the cultural and social authority necessary to continually degrade, demean, and dehumanize women. In her brilliant book The Straight Mind, Monique Wittig discusses several of the factors which have contributed to patriarchy becoming and remaining the ruling religion of the planet. As she references the multiple realities which contribute to male supremacy’s flourishing, Wittig grounds her analysis of patriarchy in an understanding of how heterosexuality bolsters its persistence and pervasiveness. 

In Chapter 1, Wittig enables the reader to transcend normative logic regarding the nature of the relationship that exists between men and women. Specifically, she accurately characterizes male/female relationships as predicated upon a master/slave dichotomy: “The perenniality of the sexes and the perenniality of slaves and masters proceed from the same belief, and, as there are no slaves without masters, there are no women without men” (2). In utilizing the term “perenniality,” Wittig conveys that the social functioning of women as slaves and men as masters is long-standing and enduring. This is a key point that the reader should not overlook for many reasons, including the fact that when oppressive systems of relations are established and subsequently gain traction, individuals and communities frequently become acclimated to their rules and, in naturalizing them, view the constructed reality as just “the way things are” rather than accurately processing what is unfolding as a product of the binary-based logic of elite men.   

As Chapter 1 continues to unfold, Wittig’s line of thought expands into the acknowledgement of the fictitious nature of sex. In so doing, Wittig asserts that “there is no sex” (2). This articulation puts Wittig at odds with radical feminists who believe that the material reality of physical bodies is compatible with assent to the biological understanding of sexual dimorphism. This will be problematic for many who use this argument to legitimate the claim that the oppression that women experience is sex-based oppression, meaning that it results from the recognition and response to the reality that women exist in decidedly female bodies and can be discriminated against in light of this “femaleness.” The problematic nature of Wittig’s assertion that there is no sex is rooted in a belief shared by many radical feminists, which is that denying the reality of material sex makes it difficult to identify and assert how women are being uniquely and severely oppressed by men within a sex-gender system which places males at the top and women at the bottom. If there is no sex, then the manifestation and expressions of oppression can be considered incidental, serendipitous, and random, rather than the intentional attack on women as women that they are.  

Although many will take issue with Wittig’s assertion that “there is no sex,” these same individuals will likely gravitate towards the assertion she ties to this claim. After maintaining that there is no sex, she states “There is but sex that is oppressed and sex that oppresses. It is oppression that creates sex and not the contrary. The contrary would be to say that sex creates oppression, or to say that the cause (origin) of oppression is to be found in sex itself, in a natural division of the sexes preexisting (or outside of) society” (2). In making these statements, Wittig is rejecting the gender-based construction of reality created by the elites and accepted by the masses. This constructed reality maintains that there are natural differences which exist between the sexes (men and women). These natural differences (or, “sex”) necessitate the division of labor such that women are suited for some tasks while men are designed to complete others. This division of labor results in the development and perpetuation of economic inequality (as women engage in unpaid labor) and various forms of material oppression (as women are expected to dress in ways that convey their designation as “women,” with the clothing displaying their bodies such that the understanding of what it means to be a woman always coincides that of a sex object.) When Wittig says that there is no “sex,” she is saying that the organization of reality into two distinct sexes based on perceived natural differences is merely a construction, a created fiction which begins to operate as infallible truth within cultures that accept its premises as logical and valid. Therefore, when Wittig states “There is but sex that is oppressed and sex that oppresses” (2), she is asserting that the only real organization of reality is the creation of men as the sex that has the right to oppress the other sex, women. Yet the concept of sex which the elites have created remains false.

In addition to conveying Wittig’s belief in the fictive nature of sex, Chapter 1 of the text also considers reflections on the role that heterosexuality plays in female oppression. Specifically, Monique Wittig writes:    

The category of sex is the political category that founds society as heterosexual. As suchit does not concern being but relationships (for women and men are the result of  relationships), although the two aspects are always confused when they are discussed.  The category of sex is the one that rules as “natural” the relation that is at the base of  (heterosexual) society and through which half of the population, women, are  “heterosexualized” (the making of women is like the making of eunuchs, the breeding of  slaves, of animals) and submitted to a heterosexual economy. For the category of sex is  the product of a heterosexual society which imposes on women the rigid obligation of the  reproduction of the “species,” that is, the reproduction of heterosexual society. The  compulsory reproduction of the “species” by women is the system of exploitation on  which heterosexuality is economically based. Reproduction is essentially that work, that  production by women, through which the appropriation by men of all the work of women  proceeds (5, 6).  

Here, Wittig discusses the political import of heterosexuality. This is an important discussion given the ongoing practice–both conscious and unconscious–of presenting heterosexuality as a natural process which men and women gravitate towards because it is just “the way things are” or a reflection of the way people want to express romantic and/or sexual attraction. In this analysis, Wittig reveals the role that patriarchal values play in designating specific subordinating roles to women within the heterosexual system. These roles, which come into being during the process in which women are heterosexualized, involves reducing women to breeders whose primary purpose is to reproduce the species so that men can continue having workers whose labor they control for the process of reproducing the patriarchal world. This world is definitively patriarchal because it is built on the premise that men can and should control the labor of women and their offspring. That this process of men maintaining control over women’s reproductive capacities is a praxis which transpires within the ideological framework of heterosexuality is important to understand, if only because, as Wittig argues, what we come to define as a “woman” transpires within this heterosexual system. As Wittig notes, heterosexuality is the realm through which female humans are reduced to the dehumanizing domains of slaves and animals. An additional importance of Wittig’s reference to heterosexuality’s role in perpetuating the patriarchy is her clearly enunciating that it operates as an economy, with this reality enabling the reader to understand that it has an economically exploitative purpose. When Wittig facilitates this understanding by referring to how women’s bodies are appropriated for reproduction, the reader can stop falsely thinking that heterosexuality is always and only a natural system predicated on mutual enjoyment of romantic and sexual forms of attachment that are individually and mutually exciting, stimulating, intriguing and start correctly thinking about how this system of relations has been designed and/or appropriated by a political party (the male-led patriarchy) to ensure that men maintain unilateral control over women.  

In Chapter 2, Wittig continues her cognitive focus by exploring more false constructs and concepts which have been applied to women. In addition to critiquing the idea that what makes a woman a woman is her capacity to reproduce, Wittig questions the fact that some lesbians assert that women and men are different species and subsequently maintains that 1. men are the biological inferiors of women and 2. male violence is biologically inevitable. Wittig asserts that lesbian women who make these claims are adhering to the problematic practice of the naturalization of sex, which involves asserting that each sex is naturally inclined and disinclined towards specific behaviors. According to Wittig, naturalizing sex is problematic because it involves believing that the gendered categories of men and women were always and already present (as opposed to critiquing them as the product of an ongoing patriarchal process which involves constructing gender for the purpose of oppressing women).   

Wittig also uses Chapter 2 to address heterosexuality in context of lesbianism. This is an infinitely important section of the chapter because it enables the reader to understand how oppression operates in an intersectional capacity. In this case, the oppression that transpires in heterosexuality coincides the female subordination that happens in patriarchy to create a unique and yet highly normative, socially acceptable system in which women are forced to live out their lives as inferior others. In drawing attention to this issue, Wittig notes that “The refusal to become (or to remain) heterosexual always meant to refuse to become a man or a woman, consciously or not” (13). Here, the reader can grasp how resistance to heterosexuality is not merely or only a reflection of the individual’s refusal to enjoy and/or engage normative systems for experiencing and expressing love or engaging in “sex.” Rather, resistance to heterosexuality reflects the individual’s refusal to operate within the patriarchal constructs for identity which involve viewing “men” and “women” within a hierarchy in which members of the former group have a right to control and subordinate those who are in the latter group. Wittig goes on to point out that lesbianism is problematic within a world system predicated on patriarchal heterosexuality because it challenges the male supremacist notion that “women belong to men” (13). When understood this way, antagonism towards lesbianism can be understood beyond the realms of viewing it as a practice that constitutes social deviance or a religious infraction. Rather, or in addition to these perceptions, lesbianism constitutes a threat to the heterosexual regime because it problematizes the notion that men, and only men, should have access to women’s minds and bodies.  

As the text progresses, Wittig retains a high level of relevance and accessibility. In Chapter 3, she discusses how dominant discourses work to keep the masses subordinated and/or confused. In providing several practical examples, Wittig helps us understand that academic work does not have to be confined to the theoretical, metaphysical realms in which extracting meaning that is germane to one’s everyday existence is difficult or impossible to do. One of the most important examples of a dominant discourse that she provides in this chapter is that of pornography. Specifically, she writes “Pornographic images, films, magazine photos, publicity posters on the walls of the cities, constitute a discourse, and this discourse covers our world with its signs, and this discourse has a meaning: it signifies that women are dominated” (25). In making this statement, Wittig moves beyond normative/heteronormative/patriarchal discourse regarding pornography which involves viewing it as a form of entertainment, free speech, art, and/or creative expression. Rather, Wittig reveals pornography to be a form of political, patriarchal propaganda which involves conveying female people being dominated by male people. As innumerable radical feminists have discussed, this domination involves a plethora of degrading, dehumanizing practices, including but not limited to physically harming, decapitating, raping, and murdering women, with each of these practices constituting a form of behavior associated with “eroticism,” “sexuality,” “sexiness,” “desire,” etc. As many feminist theorists have pointed out, the depictions of women being degraded constitute neither unique nor normative manifestations of sexuality. They simply constitute domination, and the domination comes to be associated with what it means to be sexual due to the observer’s continual exposure to pornographic material conveying that acts featuring men dominating women convey what sex can or should be.   

As Wittig’s text continues, she engages in a discourse that has remained prevalent and pressing within feminist communities for many years. This issue pertains to how we are to grapple with what it means to be human in light of our ongoing exposure to dehumanizing representations of women as we continue to exist under patriarchy. In discussing this issue, Wittig notes that  

“All of us have an abstract idea of what being ‘human’ means, even if what we mean  when we say ‘human’ is still potential and virtual, has not yet been actualized. For  indeed, for all its pretension to being universal, what has been until now considered  ‘human’ in our Western philosophy concerns only a small fringe of people: white men,  proprietors of the means of production, along with the philosophers who theorized their  point of view as the only and exclusively possible one. This is the reason why when we  consider abstractly, from a philosophical point of view, the potentiality and virtuality of  humanness, we need to do it, to see clearly, from an oblique point of view” (46). 

Here, the reader can understand the oblique point of view as referencing the way that individuals from marginalized groups examine reality, organize their self-concepts, approach daily life, construct meaning, etc. The ability to adopt and maintain an oblique point of view is problematized by the persistence and pervasiveness of the white supremacist logics which Wittig attributes to the white men who control property, production, and the fields of philosophy where ideas regarding what reality is are organized around oppressive male ways of thinking, being, and acting. Wittig’s assessments here are important because they remind us that what it means to be human is, like many or most “realities” we experience in the living world, a product of patriarchal thought and praxis. Therefore, individuals who are interested in moving beyond the parochial and oppressive modes of thinking which result in the development of a binary logic in which some people (white males) are subjects and other people (females, people of color, and homosexuals) are objects need to develop new mental frameworks in which to conceptualize what it means to be human. Wittig’s development of the discourse of an oblique point of view is a good starting point.  

As men continue to rape, murder, assault, and degrade women in a plethora of unconscionable, pernicious ways, radical feminists need to continue thinking about why this is happening and what can be done about it. By providing readers with insights into the role that heterosexuality plays in perpetuating patriarchy and, from my interpretation of the text, explaining that heterosexuality is a product of patriarchy, Wittig enables us to think about key concepts such as whether our participation in this regime constitutes complicity, indifference to male dominion, learned submission, and/or a manifestation of social conformance which exists in continuity with passively internalizing other regimes of domination (such as white supremacy, capitalism, and materialism) as normative, desirable, or inevitable. As we continue thinking about what it means to be female in a world predicated on male supremacy, we need to think ourselves out of this necrotic domain. This is what Wittig enables us to begin, or continue, doing through her production of dissident thought in The Straight Mind.