| Aeolus451 said: 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.
Last edited by Jaicee - on 01 June 2018
