What happened to radical feminism?

YesYourNigel

252

Sep 30 2025, 8:32 AM

Every time I go into radfem spaces I'm taken aback by how extremely basic the level of discussion is. I did very little feminist reading and I was surprised how common some of the sentiments that I'm interested in actually were in the past. Where's the anti-penetrative sex sentiments? The bra burning? Complete rejection of femininity? Even political lesbianism! I never see these ideas even entertained except as some relics of a far gone time when feminists had a teenage tantrum, and then straightened up and became "respectable".

It's mind boggling that we live in an age where there's a significant overlap in the Venn diagram of radfems and conservatives. I just keep wondering how the hell we got to this point. And the only way it makes sense is by recognising just how toothless and flanderised radical feminism has become purely as a response to a select couple of libfem ideas. Radical feminism just seems to be the most basic feminism (wifebeating and gangraping women = bad) combined with anti-porn, anti-prostitution and anti-trans sentiments, because liberal feminism gaslights people about these things but also it's ideas that conservatives can conveniently get behind.

I find 90% of what libfems say, even the crazy stuff that's completely out of touch with reality, to at least be controversial and interested in dismantling the dominant systems. Don't get me wrong, I can't stand the "femininity is empowering, actually" and "woman is whoever says they're a woman" rubbish, but at least there's a desire there to question the norms, thought really only as part of general postmodernist trends instead of any actual concern for women's rights, which is also why I think liberal feminism appeals to young women (youth disobediency + not being self-actualised enough to advocate for women's rights). Meanwhile most radfems I see just seem to be old women who made do with typical straight female norms, except they want less rape and wifebeating to go with it. It's even worse when these women criticise younger women for being spoiled and privileged by focusing on "insignificant issues", or engaging in "online activism".

Any criticism of femininity is kind of just...either criticising hyperfemininity (which even normies don't like because it takes things too far into making women unsexy) or criticising makeup and overt beauty standards (which again overlaps with conservative "too much makeup makes you a wh*re" sentiments). Gender Critical seems to nominally recognise the far subtler ways in which gender socialisation works, but has no interest in making actual women recognise and overcome it in themselves - it just ends as a way of explaining why men who claim to be women still act like men, even if they emulate the most superficial traits stereotypically associated with femininity. In most other radfem contexts, the only thing that gets addressed is the excesses of femininity, rather than female socialisation itself.

I refuse to debate two obvious facts: 1. the patriarchy exists 2. and that's a bad thing

Clover
Kozlik's regular account 🍀🐐

1,111

Sep 30 2025, 5:58 PM

Radical feminism? The political movement for the liberation of the female sex from male oppression? Well, I think it's still around, and as unpopular as ever in a world that upholds and enforces patriarchy in every major human society.

Quote:I did very little feminist reading and I was surprised how common some of the sentiments that I'm interested in actually were in the past. Where's the anti-penetrative sex sentiments? The bra burning? Complete rejection of femininity? Even political lesbianism! I never see these ideas even entertained except as some relics of a far gone time when feminists had a teenage tantrum, and then straightened up and became "respectable".

Anti-penetrative sex sentiments: I think this would now fall under 4B/female separatism
Bra burning: Referring to the 1968 feminist protest where feminists discarded garments that upheld female beauty standards, I don't know. I think beauty culture has just gotten way worse in modern days. Modern neoliberal feminism fracturing feminist women further into those who are willing to deride beauty culture and oppose it, to those too afraid to even critique it because it might mean feeling bad about their makeup bag.
Complete rejection of femininity: the most dangerous aspect of radical feminism, and the one patriarchal institutions tried their hardest to thoroughly squash (and pretty decently succeeded). They did this by offering three different ways to entrench the "legitimacy" of femininity: 1. transgenderism (femininity is what it means to be "a woman", and if women don't want to participate then they're not actually women) 2. neoliberal feminism (femininity is now "empowering" and/or a "harmless choice") and 3. tradwifery (standard "par for the course" continuance of what radfems were fighting against in the 2nd wave, but continuing to be willfully ignorant about the harms of femininity and view them as inherent, similar to transgenderism, but conservative flavor: femininity is what it means to be "a woman", and if women don't want to participate then they're defective and deserve to be ridiculed and/or ostracized).
Political lesbianism: imo, more appropriately replaced with female separatism. There was discussion about the term political lesbianism in this clovenhooves thread: What South Korea’s ‘Queen of 4B’ Wants Americans to Know

Some of these things, like bra burning and political lesbianism, are concrete actions/methods of attempting to make a change to promote radical feminist ideals. But they happened at a different time in history, five decades ago. What happened to the women who threw girders, bras, and hair curlers into a garbage can outside of a beauty pageant? What happened to the women who wrote Right-Wing Women and The Feminine Mystique and Sister Outsider and so on? They got old, some have since passed away. In the time since the second wave when radical feminism fruited, we've experienced third wave feminism, and are now possibly entering a fourth wave. Think about all the ways humans have adapted to the rapidly changing world in the past fifty years. The techniques of furthering radical feminist causes need to change to apply to modern times.

Quote:It's mind boggling that we live in an age where there's a significant overlap in the Venn diagram of radfems and conservatives. I just keep wondering how the hell we got to this point.

I'm certain this was deliberate, again on the part of patriarchal institutions trying to dismantle any ideology that purports that women are human (and that we should treat all humans fairly and humanely). Conservatives obviously benefit from usurping radical feminist analysis to promote their own causes. Neoliberal men also are happy to see radical feminist ideals dragged down into darkness by force-teaming it with the right-wing.

Quote:Radical feminism just seems to be the most basic feminism (wifebeating and gangraping women = bad) combined with anti-porn, anti-prostitution and anti-trans sentiments, because liberal feminism gaslights people about these things but also it's ideas that conservatives can conveniently get behind.

From what I have seen, it seems like online radical feminist communities are probably the most "accommodating" to right-wing women. And that is because they precisely happen to align (surface level, at least) with anti-porn, anti-prostitution, and anti-trans sentiments, and because many radical feminist places try really hard to adhere to the notion of listening to "all women." Conservatives also generally know to bite their tongue on their unpopular stances, so their pro-Christianity, pro-forced-birth, pro-colonization takes are generally kept on the down-low while they aren't in the majority.

Since radical feminist communities are usually one of the few places online where conservative women can talk amongst other women, they can steer the conversation towards the few radical feminist points that they actually support, even though the ulterior motives behind them supporting those reasons can be vastly different than the reasons radical feminists have those stances. They then happen to pepper in various little right-wing things, or even completely anti-radfem/anti-gc things, like promoting biological essentialism, in posts that mostly happen to follow along. This causes a strange blend between conservatives and radical feminist groups.

I think one of the biggest issues of "what happened to radical feminism" is the force-teaming of right-wingers and radical feminists. I think radical feminist communities are too likely to falter on the female socialized aspect of being "kind" and welcoming to women who legitimately are ultimately not interested in promoting radical feminist/humanist ideals. Soon they find themselves having to stop from promoting radical feminist causes because people are attempting to usurp the radical feminist movement to promote authoritarianism, fascism, racism, homophobia, and whatever the fuck else the right-wingers bring in with them, and now they have to defend even what radical feminism is supposed to be. This is tiring.

Also, the thing that always gets me -- if feminists believe in the crrraaaazzzzzyyyy notion that women are human, well... despicable humans exist. If I didn't want to associate with conservative men because I think their political beliefs are inhumane and antisocial and disgusting, why are conservative women, if I consider women to be human, supposed to be any different?

Conservative women and radical feminists can align on select specific topics, like anti-prostitution, but the solutions or reasons why would be very different, due to the deeper beliefs. For instance, radical feminism being a leftist movement, supports robust social safety nets and programs. Conservatives hate social safety nets, they do not want wealth to be redistributed to help those in need. Radical feminists want to encourage women to leave prostitution by providing safe exits and laws that prevent kicking them while they are down (eg. Nordic Model). What do conservatives want to do? Punish them via fines and jail and maaaaaybe some promotion of Christianity because those whores just need to "find Jesus" and repent. So then, why does it matter if both radical feminists and right-wing women are "against prostitution" on the surface? How does this help advance radical feminism's ultimate goal of female liberation? Right-wing women are not interested in promoting radical feminism, and I think that's why feminist places that allow right-wing women to participate, where they can be selective about what they support, end up just becoming either a right-wing women's place or extremely watered down to the point of being useless.

Quote:I find 90% of what libfems say, even the crazy stuff that's completely out of touch with reality, to at least be controversial and interested in dismantling the dominant systems. [...] Meanwhile most radfems I see just seem to be old women who made do with typical straight female norms, except they want less rape and wifebeating to go with it. It's even worse when these women criticise younger women for being spoiled and privileged by focusing on "insignificant issues", or engaging in "online activism".

That's interesting, because for me, I felt the exact opposite in that liberal feminism always seemed to be a wishy-washy "feminism is for everyone," "makeup is empowering," "sex work is work," vapid stupid shit that made me think feminism was useless as a modern idea, until I discovered r/GenderCritical and as a result, radical feminism. At the time, it was revolutionary for me to realize there was still a feminism that existed that criticized entrenched beauty norms and went against society's infatuation with coddling men and excusing their behavior. Of course, the longer I stayed in these radical feminists online spaces, and is it went from r/GenderCritical to Ovarit, I began to see what you're talking about in terms of older women that seem more... "reserved" and... "stuffy", I suppose.

Maybe it just depends on where one goes to access such content. I find Tumblr/radblr to be a pretty good place for radfem content. It does take effort to set up a good radical feminist feed, though. Like, looking back on it, what's funny is most of the radfem memes and content I'd share on Ovarit/Vexxed ends up coming from radblr.

Quote:Any criticism of femininity is kind of just...either criticising hyperfemininity (which even normies don't like because it takes things too far into making women unsexy) or criticising makeup and overt beauty standards (which again overlaps with conservative "too much makeup makes you a wh*re" sentiments).

I think because of the fact "hyperfemininity" even became a thing, even basic shit like criticizing makeup culture still needs to be done. I do see what you mean about how it starts to veer into that weird blend of radical feminist and conservative, where conservative women utilize radical feminist criticism of makeup and beauty culture as a way to encourage a more "toned down" makeup as the "proper" makeup, or suggesting "yeah! you don't need makeup to find a godly husband 🙏😌🙏" kind of weird shit.

My opinion to the main question of "what happened to radical feminism?" could be answered by the same question of "what happened to working class solidarity ala unions?" See U.S. union membership rates plummeting since the 80's. Working-class solidarity is at an all-time low. What happened to a lot of leftist movements in the decades past? Fractured. We are kept too tired and barely able to survive. Our energy primarily goes into making sure we're able to live another year, month, week, day. Marx said religion is the opiate of the people back in the 19th century, but in the modern day with a decrease in people identifying as religious, I think social media has taken over as the opiate of the people. Work, work, work to afford to eat/sleep/shelter, scroll, scroll, scroll short-form content to desensitize oneself from the burden of modern life.

I might be dooming there in the end. There are still radical feminist organizations out there. Feminists in Struggle (FIST), Total Woman Victory, Medusa Rising, Redstockings. I think everything is more decentralized now, and I hope we can somehow bring everything together.

Edited Sep 30 2025, 5:59 PM by Clover.

Kozlik's regular member account. 🍀🐐

Tortoisemouse

Oct 1 2025, 9:08 AM

I agree. Even in the last 5-6 years I feel like there is less understanding of radical feminism, and less interest in understanding it, in online spaces. This is one of the reasons I have just left Vexxed.

I think Clover is right that the tsunami of social media, click-bait and short-form video content that people (especially young people) are consuming means critical thinking and capacity to follow an argument are being compromised more all the time.

Magpie

Oct 1 2025, 2:52 PM

(Sep 30 2025, 5:58 PM)Clover
Anti-penetrative sex sentiments: I think this would now fall under 4B/female separatism

Small addition to this part but when it comes to 4B I would specifically recommend checking out the online communities of South-Korean and Chinese 4B women. Places like WOMAD, r/DoubanFeministGroup, etc. Unless you know Korean and/or Chinese you'll have to use some type of translator but at least these women are actual radical feminists.

The western version is more of a mixed bag, especially after the US elections. It's good that even libfems see the value of the movement, but the level of the discussion has taken a bit of a hit.

Impress Polly
The kind they warned you about.

8 hours ago

This is a great topic! Much-needed!

My take on the generational milquetoasting of radical feminism here in the English-speaking world over the decades begins with the note that the second wave radical women called themselves women's liberationists because they were gearing up and organizing for a real women's revolution that they felt could be brought about in the near term ("liberation" being a common term for revolution back then, so essentially it meant "revolutionary women"). The reason that didn't happen was, frankly, because the 1970s happened. Women won an array of concessions from the powers that were and then settled down and got established. They left their communes, graduated college, gained access to the professions, married men (crucial step there) and raised families and before one knew it the term "men" had been replaced in their formulations of the problem with the more ethereal term "patriarchy" just like how the liberals would assess it. In short, reforms led to complacency; to a loss of revolutionary fervor. The sense of urgency disappeared as opportunities for women expanded. The women's liberation movement was, you might say, bought off. The bottom line here being that, as Tae Kyung Kim and Jen Izaakson pointed out it in their 2020 assessment of the feminist movement in South Korea, radicalization is consequential of both necessity and opportunity presenting themselves. The height of Pax Americana around the turn of the century presented a diminishing of both of those things here in the United States. That would be my assessment. It was an historical inevitability.

Conversely though, a worsening of conditions for women (e.g. beginning to lose legal rights, economic conditions becoming less stable and secure in general, the introduction of free, and thus ubiquitous pornography, creation of the moidnet, etc.) and the advent of modern social media here in the 21st century have all played a role in re-radicalizing many women of late. But these are baby radfems who are inheriting a compromised version of what the movement once stood for. They as such can barely tell the difference between liberal and radical feminism. To many, the difference seems to boil down to simply being against porn, against commercial surrogacy, and maybe skeptical of transgenderism, maybe. Possibly. These women are more left wing than feminist. I would generally place Cloven Hooves in that category, incidentally. Most contributors here are leading actively heterosexual lifestyles, for example. Back in the founding days of the organizations they highlight as inspirations (like Redstockings), the number of actively heterosexual radfems was I believe zero or close to it. That's because they felt that attaching themselves at the hip to men would compromise their readiness to make revolution against male rule. They were right. Many of them felt the same way about even lesbian lifestyles for that matter. But as time wears on, your life stabilizes more, and revolution seems more distant than it did in your youth, compromise calls.

All that said, while history may rhyme with itself, it doesn't actually repeat, and so today's generation has been mostly introduced to radfem-adjacent ideas through new sorts of venues like the Female Dating Strategy, femcel communities, and yes the gender critical movement, in contrast to the past. Many of these spaces -- especially the boldest ones, frankly -- tend to embrace important new methods of assessing female nature and interests, like evolutionary psychology. As the tools for understanding our world continue to develop and evolve, so too will feminist (and post-feminist) methods of resistance to patriarchal conditioning and male oppression. In my opinion, the next stage of resistance will be defined by the battle over childbirth. That's what we need to make our main organizing focus right now. The liberals will fight to restore abortion rights and declining contraception access, the protection of marriage equality, etc. Our task essentially is to be ready when their efforts fail, championing the abandonment of heterosexual lifestyles as the only serious beginning of an answer to what WILL be a growing epidemic of forced motherhood both here and worldwide. The failure of reform movements is by far the most radicalizing argument of all.

EDIT:

Personally, I consider myself a post-radfem these days. I'm involved in 4B, but my favorite site on the internet is Korea's female supremacist Womad.Life. (i've just linked you to the board's English-language section, which is naturally much smaller and less active than the Korean-language areas, but I obviously don't presume knowledge of Korean here. I don't know Korean myself, so this is the only part of the site I can read too, lol.) But I don't know if you (anyone) are truly prepared for the culture shock. I wasn't the first time I visited. First thing I noticed was that a thread called "How to man-shame in 100 ways" was helpfully stickied instead of closed for toxicity, ha ha! :meowwow:

Then I read the rules. Wow. Just...completely different from anything I'd ever seen! I recommend just scrolling around there for a while, especially getting past the science and history posts (although you may be highly interested in some of them, like who's actually responsible for "Albert Einstein's" theory of relativity, for example) and seeing if it's for you. I don't know if I can follow everything they prescribe myself (some of it's a bit much even for me), but I certainly admire the sheer audacity of these women and think we could learn a great deal from them. And I guarantee you THEIR age skew is not old.

As a point, Korea (both the north and the south) is a rude and aggressive place and over there, political incorrectness -- being offensive -- is actually part of the point and appeal of joining the women's movement, whether you choose Womad's path or not. I find the atmosphere there cathartically feral in a way that's an extremely refreshing, even inspiring, clean break with guilt-ridden Western wokeness and think you just might too. There's none of this "not all men" bullshit over on Womad, no socialization theory crap, gay men do not get a pass, there's no race-baiting subforums for different ethnic groups, no need for a lesbian section since nobody there is leading a heterosexual lifestyle, yes they are all against queer politics, slurs are all over the place, and the goal is a "womyn-only world", which users often spell that way. I like it! A lot! The time I've spent there over the years has significantly influenced my own attitude, worldview, and posting style.

Edited 6 hours ago by Impress Polly.