Radical feminism: what it is and why we're afraid of it | Jonathan Dean | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

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Alongside the obvious questions of freedom of information and criminal justice, the Julian Assange affair has also made visible a multitude of contemporary anxieties concerning sex and gender. This was brought into sharp relief by claims that Assange's prospects of a fair trial might be compromised by the possibility that Sweden's chief prosecutor Marianne Ny is a "malicious radical feminist" with a "bias against men". But what exactly is radical feminism? If popular attitudes to feminism are anything to go by, it's clearly something pretty terrifying. Research suggests that, in the popular imagination, the feminist – and the radical feminist in particular – is seen as full of irrational vitriol towards all men, probably a lesbian and certainly not likely to be found browsing in Claire's Accessories. As an academic working on issues concerning gender and politics, I've had the good fortune of meeting lots of inspiring feminist women – and men – but despite searching I've yet to locate a feminist matching that particular description. Perhaps I haven't looked hard enough. A more likely possibility is that the popular insistence that radical feminists – and often by implication feminists in general – are all man-haters reflects wider misunderstandings about the history of feminism and its impact on contemporary gender relations. So what is radical feminism? Historically, radical feminism was a specific strand of the feminist movement that emerged in Europe and North America in the late 1960s. Distinctive to this strand was its emphasis on the role of male violence against women in the creation and maintenance of gender inequality (as argued by the likes of Susan Brownmiller, Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon). And while a minority of radical feminists – most infamously Valerie Solanas – were hostile to men, radical feminism was much more instrumental in generating widespread support for campaigns around issues such as rape, domestic violence and sexual harassment. However, in Britain at least, radical feminism has never been particularly dominant, partly because – in the eyes of many socialist and postcolonial feminists – it has been insufficiently attentive to the intersections between gender inequality and other categories, such as race and class. So Rod Liddle's peddling of the tiresome rightwing idea that radical feminism has destroyed the family, along with Dominic Raab's assault on "feminist bigotry" and the Vatican's efforts to address "distortions" caused by radical feminism, rest on at least two implausible assumptions. First, they reduce feminism to a horrifying caricature that never really existed and second, they make the frankly bizarre suggestion that radical feminism is the dominant ideology of our times. It would seem that not only do these radical feminists commit the outrage of not wearing makeup, but they use the time this frees up to consolidate their world domination. Or an alternative explanation might be that these are the paranoid anxieties of fearful anti-feminists. Their fear is not totally misplaced, for radical feminism has undoubtedly had some success. Fortunately for Dominic Raab, world domination is not one of them. Three decades ago, the notion that rape and domestic violence are pressing political issues rather than trivialities, or that men should play an active role in childcare, would have been seen my many as radical and dangerous. Today, thanks to the influence of the insights of diverse strands of feminism (including, but not limited to, radical feminism), these ideas have seeped into the mainstream. Despite this, genuine gender equality can seem distant, but many groups and individuals continue to push in the right direction. Although the rights and wrongs of the Assange affair are at this stage far from clear, whenever accusations of "man-hating feminism" enter into a debate, our suspicions should be immediately aroused. For more often than not, the temptation to close down debate by tossing around accusations of man-hating radical feminism is caused not by a fear of debate, but by the deeper fear that feminism might actually have something important to say.

This is so depressing. In the same way that it must be depressing to be black and hear all the time that "Obama only did X because he hates white people". Mainly because there's no way of fighting against it, except by shooting anyone who says it in the head, and even then there's a million more that are going to turn up saying that you only did it because you've got a minority complex.

*opens whisky bottle*

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Well, so you could start wondering about what actually Marianne Ny have said or done. That's facts. And you go from there.

Of course, the exact course of event has not been confirmed but I remember your posts on the subject, and to call what Asange did as "rape" is a bit of a bad joke...

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Well, so you could start wondering about what actually Marianne Ny have said or done. That's facts. And you go from there.

1. Was born female.
2. Did her job.

Lots of people who get accused turn out not to have commited a crime - it still has to be looked into, no matter how popular he may be.

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Hmmm.... So you may well be right. OTOH, do you know this person track-record so well that you're sure she does not consistently display the biases she is accused of displaying?

Furthermore, did she not have some leeway in terms of proceeding or not proceeding? i.e. could she not say "I've heard those women and it's all a bit of a bad joke. Mr. Asange might be a prick and eager to cash in on his popularity by sleeping with lots of women but that does not make him a rapist. No case to answer."?

I mean, a lot of cases never reach court as well, don't they?

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Well either she's been recklessly prosecuting innocent men for years and Swedish judicial accountability is so hopelessly corrupt that she still has a job, or she's repressed her seething rage against the whole of masculinity throughout her career, until it finally broke out - to her eternal misfortune - in the one case where she was under international scrutiny and sure to be accused of bias whatever she did.

I presume the case was a reasonable one to bring under Swedish law, however much I might think that Swedish law is far too touchy-feely for its own good on this subject.

Can you prove that Obama doesn't actually hate white people?

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Originally Posted by Zichao

Well either she's been recklessly prosecuting innocent men for years and Swedish judicial accountability is so hopelessly corrupt that she still has a job, or she's repressed her seething rage against the whole of masculinity throughout her career, until it finally broke out - to her eternal misfortune - in the one case where she was under international scrutiny and sure to be accused of bias whatever she did.

I am sure there is a happy grey middle ground. If companies and public services were throwing all the marginally incompetent people they have, there'd be very few people left in employment... Especially within large organisations...

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I presume the case was a reasonable one to bring under Swedish law, however much I might think that Swedish law is far too touchy-feely for its own good on this subject.

Well, if that's true, that ends the debate and people are confusing the Swedish law being a dick with her being a dick...

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Can you prove that Obama doesn't actually hate white people?

His mother is white... Does he hate his mother?

As I said before, it's interesting to see that, in the US, a half-breed has to choose & usually choose 'black'. I said before that, when I was in Chicago, I met a woman who self-identified as 'black' but was so pale she could actually get visibly sun-tanned - She was so 'chocolat' she was nearly as white as me (I am fairly pale and don't really tan - I tend to burn). She was fairly vocal about being black and it certainly affected her political outlook but, on top, coming from a decent middle class family background, made the whole thing somewhat funny for an outsider such as myself...

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I am sure there is a happy grey middle ground. If companies and public services were throwing all the marginally incompetent people they have, there'd be very few people left in employment... Especially within large organisations...

Sure, but a prosecutor that's obviously biased against half the population and who keeps bringing frivolous rape charges against them is a pretty big problem.

On the other hand, you read the summing-ups/conviction stats of most judges and you realise that they're a bunch of racist, sexist neanderthals, so I guess maybe this lady's just being singled out.

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His mother is white... Does he hate his mother?

Must do, if she's white.

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Originally Posted by Zichao

Sure, but a prosecutor that's obviously biased against half the population and who keeps bringing frivolous rape charges against them is a pretty big problem.

I am not sure that, absent such behaviour, you can automatically conclude she is not biased...

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On the other hand, you read the summing-ups/conviction stats of most judges and you realise that they're a bunch of racist, sexist neanderthals, so I guess maybe this lady's just being singled out.

Here you go. And why are those judges not being taken out of their jobs by the judicial accountability you placed so much trust upon?

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Must do, if she's white.

Tsk, tsk, tsk...

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I am not sure that, absent such behaviour, you can automatically conclude she is not biased...

Innocent until proven guilty.

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Here you go. And why are those judges not being taken out of their jobs by the judicial accountability you placed so much trust upon?

Because they're sexist/racist in the right direction. If some Muslim judge showed up and started letting all the Muslims off his feet wouldn't touch.

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Originally Posted by Zichao

Innocent until proven guilty.

Fair enough. And I do agree that it's a low blow which is not that easy to repeal. But, basically, she can just say "Show me in my record of cases and in my public comments where I said something that could be construed as anti-men".

I was just surprised to see you so upset/depressed. The OP doesn't even bother to say who is launching such accusations. Are they people who actually matter or just some Daily Mail bloke he overheard in the pub?

If it is a serious challenge, I am sure we will see someone requesting some facts at some point, one way or the other.

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Because they're sexist/racist in the right direction.

So you're admitting that the judicial review process is utterly corrupt and inefficient? In the "right" way, that is...

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