Radical feminism

Radical feminism is a type of feminism. Radical feminists are sometimes called 'radfems'. Famous radical feminists include Andrea Dworkin, Catharine MacKinnon, Valerie Solanas, and Alice Walker. Radical feminists say that society is a patriarchy. In patriarchy, men have more social power than women. They harm women by oppressing them. Liberal feminists want to be equal to men. Radical feminists do not want equality within the patriarchy, but they want to get rid of patriarchy entirely. This is so that women will not be oppressed.

History

In 1967 a group called New York Radical Women was started by Carol Hanisch, Shulamith Firestone and Robin Morgan. They were a group of who were unhappy with being ignored by civil rights and antiwar groups that were led by men.

In September 1968 they did a protest at the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City, New Jersey. They put symbols of female oppression including bras, copies of Playboy magazine, and girdles in a trash can.

In 1969 New York Radical Women broke up. A new radical feminist group called Redstockings was started in 1969 by Ellen Willis and Shulamith Firestone.

Criticism

In 1979 The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male, a book by a radical feminist called Janice Raymond, was published. In the book Raymond said that trans women all "rape women's bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves." The RadFem2012 conference would not let in transgender women. Radical feminists may call themselves 'transcritical' or 'gender-critical'.

Another reason people do not like radical feminism is because they may think radical feminists are "man-haters". This is because of an author named Valerie Solanas. In 1967 Valerie Solanas wrote the SCUM Manifesto. SCUM was Society for Cutting Up Men. She wrote in it that women should get rid of the male sex. Solanas tried to kill Andy Warhol. She also shot Mario Amaya.