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
