Rosemarie Tong

Radical Feminism: Libertarian and Cultural Perspectives

Copyright © 2009 by Westview Press

Published by Westview Press.

Reviewed by Bhakti Gaikwad, 2020.

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The book is analects which are collected and comprehended to understand the views of radical feminists both the cultural and the libertarian sects. These take an insight into most of the taboo topics which are not generally discussed when it comes to feminism and encouraged to have knowledge and discussion about the topics like The Sex and Gender System, Sexuality, Male Domination, and Female Subordination, The Pornography Debate, The Lesbianism Controversy, Reproduction, Men, and Women, Libertarian and Cultural Views on Mothering. The comprehension of this book records certain excerpts of various famous Radical feminists’ books and articles and also tried to link with Nietzsche’s philosophy. I would like to concentrate on Reproduction, Men, and Women. The author has done an amazing job at a comprehending view of different people and putting forward more information and knowledge about different perspectives towards the topic and a very neutral and nonbiased way.

Reproduction, Men, and Women.

There are two divisions in Radical feminism –

1)  Radical Libertarian Feminism –

They believe in artificial reproduction and the energy should be put in the society’s productive progress.

2)  Radical Cultural Feminism –

They believe that reproduction is the ultimate power women have over men and use this power to establish their importance and it will be a bad decision that women will give up their reproductive power in men’s hands. They also believe that it is best to gestate and procreate naturally in society’s interest.

Natural reproduction: The Site of Women’s Oppression.

Firestone’s Dialectic of Sex –

Shulamith Firestone is one of the famous radical feminists who is credited with fuelling the second wave of feminism in her book The Dialectic of Sex puts forward her views, she believes that patriarchy is rooted in the biological inequality of the sexes. She puts forward the revised version of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’s economic class into sex class. Which needs a biological revolution for the liberation of women as a class and for these women should use means of reproduction (the means of production) to eliminate the sexual class system and promoted the idea of ‘Androgynous society’ just like classless society to obliterate sexual distinctions. Firestone believes that once technology overcomes the limits of biological reproduction, sexual organs will be of no significance. She says no matter how much ever educational, political, and legal equality women achieve there will no change fundamentally unless there is a change in biological inequality. Firestone’s opinion on natural reproduction is that it is very barbaric for women, no woman enjoys the process of childbirth and it is the idea of patriarchy which is imposed on women is that childbirth is a wonderful experience. Firestone goes forward to describe the childbirth process which is nothing different than shitting a pumpkin. She also said the drawback in Engel’s idea of a classless society lacked the biological intervention, if there would be no biological children then there would be no desire to pass on the wealth to the biological children which will then move forward in a classless society.

In my opinion, the idea of Firestone is too utopian and it would be wrong to determine the childbirth process as barbaric, as to some women it would be bearable and more necessary it would be their choice whether they want to have a child or no. also the idea of androgynous is a little problematic that there would be chaos and who will decide what qualities should actually be possessed by an individual and will the individual have a choice of reproduction or there will be a certain framework which is provided by the society which is ought to be followed and what about people who do not fit into this perfect framework of the society, will they be discarded as not fit for the ideal society and not given a chance? If we follow this aren’t, we go against what we were trying to fight against a patriarchal system, we are again forming a system.

Piercy’s Woman on the edge of time –

Connie Ramos's story narrated by Piercy, tells us her idea of a utopian world which much further imagined than firestone’s utopian world, Mattapoisett – a world in which there is no bigotry of gender, both men and women rear children, everyone is a ‘per’ which stands for a person. Piercy’s utopia is much more radical than Marxist utopia because family is eliminated as a biological as well as an economic unit. Individuals do not possess any private children nor do they possess any private children, an idea of socialism where three individuals come together to raise a child and act as three co-mothers. This was put forward to justify how artificial child-rearing was superior to biological child-rearing and could lead us to a better and much improved human society.

In my opinion, the utopia which is imagined by Piercy is very hard to achieve as we yet of now are not able to reach even the socialist stage of Marxism. The idea of childbearing which is so unnatural and will take many more years of technology to develop, also this again disregards the flaws and problems which are human, which makes us human, the survival of the fittest will be practiced in such a society which will be unfair to certain individuals, who are not able to live up to the societal standards of Mattapoisett.

Similarity between Mattapoisett and Plato’s Republic –

Plato in his book The Republic, suggests something which is very similar to Mattapoisett. The children which are reproduced and reared are to be for the benefit of the state. Plato believed people had inherent talents and cannot be taught even with a lot of instructions. Similarly, some women are superior to other women in certain fields of work. But Plato considered women as naturally weak than men, even though there’s a lot of ambiguity as to why he considers women to be weaker ones. He encourages women to be Guardians of the state and dismisses somebody who is doubting women’s caliber to be a Guardian. Similar to Mattapoisett, Plato puts forward the idea that the parents should not know who their children are. He goes so far that according to him mothers should not breastfeed their children for a long time, as they might feel attached to the children. But the idea of Plato’s state was somewhere fascist because of how much ever he wanted the state to be practical to move towards a better future but dismisses children who are reproduced outside the permitted union by the state is an illegitimate child and should be disposed of.

Again, this is something too utopian or dystopian idea of the future, not really sure whether it should be called either of those. And the approach is sometimes too inhumane and we as a society of human beings cannot just leave apart empathy. That will be unfair to certain individuals. One thing that struck my attention is when Plato talks about rewarding the male Guardians with the superior o the women so as to produce a finer breed, he is limiting women again to just gestation which is certainly wrong.

Critique of Piercy and Firestone by Radical Cultural Feminists –

As mentioned, the stand of radical cultural feminists earlier was that women have this power of childbearing which should not be given away to men, giving away this power is simply surrendering to men, letting them have control over them. According to Azizah al-Hibri, this will liberate men giving them liberation from the ‘humiliating dependency’ on women in order to ‘propagate’. Piercy’s Mattapoisett was far implausible and unintelligible to today’s women. There is no way for women to decide that they should deprive themselves of a very meaningful and personal experience, for the future which they equally will or will not find meaningful.

Radical cultural feminists after dismissing the utopia of Piercy moved on to Firestone’s masterplan to achieve women’s liberation was women’s further enslavement, they explained that women’s oppression was not caused by biology but the control of men on women’s biology through the means of science and technology.

In Of Woman Born, Adrienne Rich noted men realize that patriarchy cannot survive unless men are able to control women’s power to bring or not bring life into the world. Rich mentioned that there was men’s intrusion in pregnancy and childbirth was so much dictated by the men that women were confused about how they should actually feel with their bodies, not sure the women’s ‘intuition’. The men-controlled women’s pregnancies so much so it was merely an event where women including Rich’s experience herself, she were alienated during this process of childbirth. Rich concluded that women if they reclaimed their pregnancies would experience the pleasures as well as the pain of childbirth. Rich’s estimation, childbirth does not have to feel like “shitting a pumpkin.” Rich was just concerned about the control of men over women's bodies and reproductive rights by the means of science, technology, and medicine. Andrea Dworkin believes that artificial pregnancy is yet another attempt by patriarchy in order to alienate them from the baby like that of men. Speculating that patriarchy might view a reproductively useless as someone only good for sex work or domestic work, this urged Dworkin to believe that women should resist the further development of reproductive technology.

In my opinion, resisting the further development of reproductive technology will be fatal to women as well, rather women should partake in this development of technology understand the pros and cons, be aware of the patriarchal system which is trying to control this technology as a means to have control over women’s life. Even though I agree with Rich that only if the experience of the childbirth was not so many men driven then women would be more freely be able to experience both pleasures and pain of childbirth as well they would know their ‘intuitions’ the experience which is that of women should be more women-driven and not under the umbrella of the patriarchal system. The childbirth process can be one of the unique experiences which women have naturally and not necessarily be a tragic experience that is narrated by Firestone.

 The radical libertarian feminists were inclined towards artificial reproduction, radical cultural feminists urged that women should give up their power of bringing life into a new world, radical cultural feminists believed that the reproductive powers of women are anything but oppressive. The life-giving capacities are the paradigm for the ability for people to connect with one another in a caring, supportive relationship. I agree that natural gestation and reproduction will always be better than artificial reproduction which is the thing that makes us more human and more caring and reciprocating as a society. But there should be a balance and individuals should have a choice of how they want to reproduce whether it is artificial or natural. If we impose a certain way then we will invert the process of denying patriarchy, we need a balanced system where all genders should have a chance.

 

 

Conclusion –

The author has done an amazing work of bringing in insights from both types of radical feminists, there should have been the mention of liberals’ feminist perspective as well as the Marxist and socialist feminist perspective as well. Even though this book was written in the year 2009, there is nowhere mention of another gender apart from men and women. Even though the feminists like Piercy who thought of the utopian world where the reproductive technology was way ahead of the limits of natural reproduction there was no consideration of how different gender apart from men and women are not given a chance and not seeing reproduction through their perspective. The radical feminists sometimes get so much into portraying women as the ‘victims’ and men ‘greedy’ and ‘selfish’ that they forget we as feminists are fighting against the ‘patriarchal system’ and not against men. Feminism encouraged the perspective of women or any other perspective apart from patriarchy should be encouraged otherwise the process, the revolution would have an inverted effect on the society which is only focused on a certain gender or ‘sex’ class. The radical feminists should be given the credit where it is due because if there would not have been any radical feminists, the problem of patriarchy would not have been acknowledged. Patriarchy is a system that has made its way through the political and social sphere to something as private as the bedroom. This was acknowledged by the radical feminist and the revolution led by them made it possible for women to identify patriarchy, how it works and how much it is ingrained in our day to day life, so much in the personal and intimate life.

Certainly, radical feminists go as far as to just creating a society about just one gender that is women. Which somewhere goes forward to lesbianism, but while this thought of being gay came into their minds. One drawback I feel in this book is feminism as an idea is to promote gender nonbinary and it is something to be talked about. There is nowhere mention of how other genders should deal with reproduction. There is an ambiguous line where smashing patriarchy is one thing and having hate for men i.e. misandry is other. Gender nonbinary is something that should be promoted in the feminist movements more, the inclusion of all genders.

One more topic I need to address here is we are human beings and should accept things holistically with their bad as well as good qualities. The hedonist approach to certain things and experiences in life changes our perspective towards it. Weighing happiness more than sadness or pain or grief will be problematic to us for coping up with all these problems. Childbirth or pregnancy is an important experience of one’s life be it artificial or natural. It should be accepted as it is, holistically with all its pleasures and pains. The experiences will be certainly different for different individuals.

In all author tried to do justice to both the sects of radical feminism, i.e. radical cultural feminists and radical libertarian feminists. There were a balance and comprehension of the views and the critique of these views. And put forward us to learn and understand a topic as important as Reproduction through a radical feminist perspective.

 

Bibliography –

SHULAMITH FIRESTONE, The Dialectic of Sex.

ANURADHA GANDHY, Philosophical Trends in The Feminist Movement.

PLATO, The Republic.

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Bhakti S. Gaikwad is a second-year master’s student of Philosophy at Savitribai Phule Pune University, Ganeshkind, Pune. Her interests include Social and Political Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy, Analytic Philosophy, and Indian Philosophy.