I don't really feel like I need a sexual relationship to be happy either. What I would want most of all, in this connection, is a romantic friendship. You know, just to have someone to hold hands with, cuddle with, kiss, bring flowers, that sort of thing. I don't feel like I need more than that. Well I don't "need" even that, but there's a desire for it that may be inflated artificially by the culture we live in that stresses the importance of sex and romance so much. I mean every day I go to work they have the store radio playing in the background and every single song is about either sexual appeal or an intimate relationship (successful or otherwise). All day. Every day. Almost every women's magazine cover I pass is about how to look beautiful or please one's presumed-male partner in bed. I could go on but you get the idea. The importance of these things is overstressed by our culture and I think it engineers a level of lonely feeling that one might not have otherwise.

Incels don't have an ideology. Some of them are hateful. Ostracizing them will likely make them worse or turn into an actual ideology.

MTGOWs are like the name. Not political but more like a response to feminism and wanting to defy social norms with marriage. Some of them can be MRAs.

MRAs are advocates for men's right who are trying to raise awareness and get certain laws changed so it's more equal.

Hmm. I view feminists as two halves. Women who say they are one because of the definition and the activists who comprised of many sub-groups with wide ranging beliefs. Some are like Christina Hoff Sommers which are very reasonable. Some are monetized feminists like Anita Sarkessian. Others are the radical ones who are memeable because of how out there they are. Big red is a good example of one. http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/people/big-red

Well that's three "halves".

In all seriousness though, as someone involved in the movement (admittedly mostly online), and who more specifically considers myself to be a radical feminist, that's not really how I'd define feminist radicalism. Radicalism is defined by goals, not tone.

Let's start with this: radical feminism is not mainstream feminism. Probably just about every self-described feminist you have ever heard of before is a liberal: Hillary Clinton, Anita Sarkeesian, Beyonce Knowles, Sheryl Sandberg, all of them. People are used to thinking of feminists as liberals anymore. We're not all liberals though. A feminist radical is someone who opposes the existing institutions of society because they were created by and for men. Radfems (if you will) tend to view them as inherently patriarchal institutions, accordingly. Thus, in contrast to libfems (feminist liberals), radfems tend to be skeptical of political action within the current system, and instead focus on trying to bring about cultural change that undermines patriarchy and associated structures. In other words, where liberals wish to break the glass ceiling, radicals wish to build a new building. Much of our difference of mindframe from that of libfems is concentrated in Germaine Greer's famous statement: "I didn't fight to get women out from behind vacuum cleaners to get them onto the board of Hoover."

Radical feminists tend to be more rejecting of a lot of ideas and institutions that more mainstream feminists have simply sought to reform, like marriage, surrogacy, the sex industry, capitalism in general for that matter, religion, nation-states, and gender, to name a few examples that come to mind immediately. We are basically collectivists rather than individualists. We are more concerned with the overall interests of women as a class than we are with those of any one individual, in as far as the two things may conflict. There are a wide range of ideas that encompass our movement. Most of us would seek to realize actual equal treatment with men (where the liberal would prefer to but afford nominally equitable life opportunities). We also have some female separatists though who feel that men have internalized patriarchy (their superior social position) to such a great degree that men and sexism cannot be wholly separated.

Radical feminism has sometimes been known also by other names, such as women's liberation and second wave feminism. The "radical" term derives from the first such organization: the New York Radical Women, which was created by members of the democratic socialist anti-Vietnam-War group, the Students for a Democratic Society here in the U.S. in 1967. Other such organizations created in and around that time frame (late '60s / early '70s) included Red Stockings (organizers of the women's strikes of that era), the Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell (WITCH for short), the Lavender Menace, Radical Lesbians, Take Back the Night, the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival (essentially Woodstock for feminist women), and later all of those rape crisis centers, Women Against Pornography, and the successor organization thereto, the Coalition Against Traffic in Women (which invented what has become known as "the Swedish model" or "the Nordic model" of prostitution policy), among other groups. Feminist Current is probably the most prominent radfem web site online at present. Easily contrasted with the cool, sexy ones like Vice, Jezebel, and your daughter's fashion magazine collection. We're the ones they warned you about!

If we are truthful, our current demography skews older overall, which probably has a lot to do with the fact that we're being actively censored and no-platformed by colleges and universities everywhere at present (and of late banned from Twitter as well for rejecting transgenderism), which makes it rather difficult for our thought leaders to reach a new generation. Of course, from our perspective, that is the whole point. Notable radfem thought leaders today include Sheila Jeffreys, Janice Raymond, Robin Morgan, Julie Bindel, and the aforementioned Germaine Greer, to name a few. You've probably never heard of any of them.

As to conservative "feminists" like Sommers...eeeehhh...do you remember that episode of The Handmaid's Tale where the Commander's wife Serena is lauded by a foreign dignitary for authoring a book on "domestic feminism" that women are now forbidden to read because she got her way? Yeah, that sums up my impression of so-called conservative feminism. It's really just men's activism for women and, as such, impossible for me to take seriously. Women like Sommers, Sarah Palin, Carly Fiorina, call themselves feminists but they obviously don't mean it. One doesn't oppose the Violence Against Women Act, for example, and expect me to take them for authentic women's advocates. The label is just a substance-free PR thing for them.

The left in general are collectivists. Much like the far right is.

I think that the majority of feminists are the first ones I mentioned and the rest are actual feminists in the activist sense comprised of those sub-groups. The only type of feminism that's alright in my opinion in the west are sex positive feminists. 😸

I don't like mainstream feminism because the goals of feminism in the west have largely been accomplished (equal rights/equal opportunity), they intentionally avoid cases where feminism is needed because of "intersectionality" or it goes against what libs want which makes them hypocritical, they're not interested in actual equality between men and women because they want the perks of being a woman and being a man with none of the hangups from either. They're at the point where they have to make up shit just to show that it's still needed. They're not needed in the west as is though.

I can see your point about rad fems not being liberal. As much as I disagree with rad feminism on everything, ironically they have more legitimacy to exist than mainstream feminism because of their goals (which don't have a chance of being accomplished) not being attained and actually trying to accomplish them. 😽 I do agree with them a bit on transgenderism. I believe it's not fair to women to allow trans women to compete against them in athletic competition because their physiological advantages still exist even on hormone treatment. I'm not aware of those feminists nor have I dug that deeply in that type.

I think feminism in the west has become detrimental to women in general and to the relationship between women and men.

Men have been lied to for decades about what women (on average) really want in a man. I was lied to as well and was angry when I discovered the truth.

I was intelligent enough to look at the world objectively and discover what I had to do to become more appealing to women. I think these 'incels' are unintelligent, unattractive, weak men who have been lied to about 'being themselves' being told shit like 'you're fine the way you are'. They are not fine the way they are and there is serious work to be done. That's what they need to be told.

Well, it's not just a matter of culture; biologically, sex is second only to survival as the most powerful instinct. We are programmed through billions of years of evolution to engage in sex. Naturally it depends on the person too; some people have a more potent sex drive than others. Personally, if I were to learn I would never have sex again in my life, I would be very tempted to off myself. I can't imagine a life without sex being worth living. It really is the most amazing, wonderful thing I have ever experienced, and I crave it intensely every second of every day.

I'm shocked, shocked, that that (the last line) would be your conclusion as a man. Just as I am shocked that the 'non-frigid', 'sexy' types are your favorites because they won't challenge your sexual interests. Who would have thought? But don't you ever think that maybe you might possibly be projecting what are actually your own interests onto women for self-interested reasons?

Aaaanyway, I'm not a big fan of "intersectionality" or its ideological forerunner, identity politics, either, but I believe we see that matter differently. When I pointed out that radical feminists embrace a collectivist outlook and approach, that was to further logically contrast our view and approach from that of liberals and conventional leftists, whose outlook on these things is shaped by individualistic and sectionalistic thinking.

For the liberal feminist, the choices of each individual women are supreme because supposedly they take place in a vacuum, not within the framework of a male-dominated culture, economy, and system of governance. To illustrate the different way that radical feminists think about these things: while a few women can make a lot of money by being prostituted and calculate that to be worth the personal cost to them, the consequences of that choice are detrimental to women overall in a thousand ways. There is more than just the interests of those few women to be considered.

For the Marxist feminist, similarly, it is of first importance to break down the interests of women sectionally (what about black women? What about young women? What about poor women? What about women with disabilities? Etc.) before even considering the shared interests of women as an entire group. The result of this type of thinking having become dominant in the women's movement over the last few decades has been heavy infighting -- women becoming focused on fighting each other rather than mobilizing around shared interests -- and that has turned the younger generation of women off to the movement, I believe, and understandably so! Radical feminists prioritize the general interests of women as a group over those of individuals or sections.

Similarly, today we see that lesbian activism is no longer approached as part of the feminist movement like it largely was during the second wave, but rather now is seen as part of the "queer" movement that is shared with gay and trans-identifying men, much to its detriment. Lesbian culture has all but vanished entirely since that general transition and today half the lesbian population (the "butch" kind) is being taught that the reason they're interested in other women is because they are actually men who need to consider adopting a new identity and injecting themselves with testosterone. Those who refuse to do so, meanwhile, are being taught that, to put it in the words of one, "genital preferences are transphobic", i.e. being an actual lesbian is no longer politically correct.

You can feel it even in the types of arguments we use to defend lesbianism anymore. The "queer" movement depends on arguing that people are "born gay" and can't change, that sexual orientation is outside our control, as a defensive argument in the context of a society that stigmatizes same-sex relationships, especially between women, but lesbian feminists have traditionally regarded sexual orientation as a product of conditioning and that one can re-condition themselves and surveys of women who identify themselves as lesbians continue to bear out that most of us still believe that deep down. The "born gay" argument is a defensive one that psychologically closes off the community and keeps it small. We need to go back to recognizing that lesbianism is an option available to all women!

And it's getting worse. Having embraced gender-based identification already, now we are beginning to see the adoption of "non-binary" gender identities, as apparently there is one corresponding to each possible nuance of human behavior and attitude. The logical conclusion of this type of postmodernist thinking has been well-articulated to me by one purveyor thereof: "Women do not exist." You can quite easily see how that mentality will render it utterly impossible to discern what our shared interests are and to mobilize as an oppressed class for the advancement of those interests! That is the intellectual place where this is all headed! And I think all this illustrates the basic importance or refocusing the women's movement on women, women only, and women collectively. Otherwise it has no future.

The general persuasion of radical feminists is that the women's movement ceased to exist as a women's movement sometime around the mid-1980s. I imagine you're probably tired of digesting information at this point, but in this connection, I would really recommend checking out this podcast interview with Sheila Jeffreys (one of our major thought leaders at present) if you have 30 minutes to spare: https://www.feministcurrent.com/2016/10/18/podcast-sheila-jeffreys-impact-neoliberalism-identity-politics-womens-movement/ ...I recommend it because she delves into what led to this ideological transformation of the women's movement: the popularization of identity politics, "intersectionality", the replacement of Women's Studies with "Gender Studies", the popularization of the term "gender", etc. (The short version, if you don't have the time, is that it can be traced to the popularization of neoliberal ideology around the start of the 1980s and the restructuring of Western universities to function like business corporations. But it's really worth hearing her articulate the details because she does so very well.)

When you say trans-identifying men, are you referring to people born as male who transitioned to female, or vice versa?

I only heard of Incels recently because a Incel pandering candidate is running in a Virginia election on some pretty heinous platforms (...at least I assume most Incels do not suggest all parents are pedophiles....I'd like the video but it's a Young Turk video and while I appreciate the news breadth the cover they are not the people I link to, and I've long grown tired of their 'corporate' label).

...I must admit, Incels are disturbing little things. Look, I am a 23 year old virgin, and that isn't because of girls. It is because I don't go out to bars, social clubs, and most of the girls in my specific college at university had most of the girls being engaged or married already.

I'll probably try a bit when I have a more solid location in life, but until then I am not going to declare it the female's fault.

I am referring to people who were born male and, as far as I'm concerned, still are male. I am very much of the persuasion that it is not actually possible to "become a woman" or for a woman to "become a man".

Yes, I know there are surgeries that are often referred to as "sex change operations", but that popular term is factually incorrect. All those operations actually do is mutilate one's body in such a way as to artificially imitate the outward appearance of the other sex. They do not change one's internal DNA structure. Anyone who is born male will always DNA test as male, will never be able to reproduce, etc. Enjoyed or not, one's sex is a caste. It cannot be changed.

I feel that the steadily increasing social pressure on gender-nonconforming people to identify as trans is basically intended to wipe out public perceptions that men can be something other than masculine (which is really just our culture's sexist way of saying controlling, authoratative) and that women can be something other than feminine (which is our culture's sexist way of saying submissive, servile). There's a conservative premise there, I would observe, and it parallels increasing belief among younger Americans that traditional social roles -- male breadwinners and female homemakers, that sort of thing -- are superior and more natural; perhaps the product of three decades now of non-traditionally extreme gendering of the child-rearing process (example of what I mean by that) in reaction to the feminist wave of the 1970s.

The overlap between increasing belief in gender roles among younger people and their increasing reliance on gender-based identification is not a coincidence in my opinion. The latter thing is, at least in part, an outgrowth and expression of the former.

If girls cannot play with toy trucks without "becoming boys" in the process in our collective mindset, then is our collective imagination actually expanding...or contracting?