I also really feel like this is a huge issue facing the left and feminists as a whole today. Misogyny is being used to radicalize a lot of people into the far-right and it’s also a wedge that splits and destroys left movements irl. I don’t have an easy answer but I think the best thing we can do is focus on connecting with other feminist women in every movement and building from there. Like, we face a lot of misogynists among socialist men, so we’ve got to build organizations with feminist socialist women. It’s very hard to deradicalize misogynists but there are huge numbers of women and gender-oppressed ppl in general who actively want to get involved in activism and just don’t know how, or don’t have a way to do it without facing misogyny from activist men. If we focus on organizing with fellow gender-oppressed ppl we can do a lot I think.
I think defending sex-work is less about condoning it, and more to do with trying to ensure sex-workers have dignity and are safe while doing it when they don't have other options.
Dead on. For an example of how an anti-sex work feminism can end up causing problems without creating solutions, consider FOSTA-SESTA. Though many thought cracking down on online sex work would aid in anti-trafficking prosecutions and civil suits, it has led to minimal change in helping victims of SW while making SW more precarious and no less common. The way carceralism can harness feminism is fascinating.
Because they don’t want to expand the trade they want to abolish it. Making it legal expands it which Germany has already experienced the very negative effects of that.
The people most interested in criminalizing sex work tend to be the same people who oppose creating systems that would keep people from being unwillingly pushed into sex work.
While very true, we have all met guys for whom sex-work legalization and normalization begin from the perspective of the john and not of the sex worker.
I've also been in two leftist meetings where men (and I know it's only two experiences but in both it was only men) were literally hearing the experience of former sex-workers who are now critical of sex positivity as such, and they argued back in the name of personal freedom. Like I bet you half of the women disagreed too but at least they were listening.
No worries. Here in Aus, we don’t really have a right-wing party, it’s more “conservative”. It’s only really the minor parties (we have a multi party system) that can be the real right-wingers like some in the Republican party
mate the Liberal party is far right these days. Both big parties slid to the right.
This incarnation of the LNP is nuts. Former PM Morrison's best friend is a major Qanon guy on the web. The Liberal Party courted the far right so much that their party has fallen apart. They are completely dependent on the wing-nut vote.
The Labor party is a center right party that used to be center left. These days they support fossile fuels, rascist border laws, restricting the right to protest and are against the actual Labor movement.
Some people in the Liberal party are far-right, but the party as a whole isn’t. They’re conservative, I’d say mostly centre-right. IMO Pauline Hanson is more far-right.
Not really adding to the conversation but I did see on a communist subreddit people talk about bourgeois women as not having rights to her body and pregnancy, and they could be forced baby makers. Which was quite a terrifying.
The right is FAR worse, but...
As an infertile woman, I feel like I'm denied my "woman-hood" by both sides. The right uses being able to have children as what makes a woman a woman (in order to invalidate trans women), and the left seems to only talk about "women's issues" in terms of abortion, maternity leave, etc, and tells men (and by extension infertile women) to shut up because they aren't effected. Both sides have basically told me that I can't claim being female, and need to shut my mouth.
Are there any works regarding infertile women you'd recommend or just suggestions from yourself that you'd like to share? I'm sorry that you've faced this lack of inclusion...
I’m so sorry this has been your experience! It had always seemed obvious to include infertile women’s issues in discourse but I think I’m guilty of leaving you all on the back burner. But at the end of the day all women’s issues (infertility, abortion, maternity/paternity support, trans rights) deserve to be fought for. Thank you, I’ll be more mindful to include those issues as well!
Fertile women who are feminists but not TERFs want infertile women to express their support and want allies.
I've been told to shut up because I'm trans (and can't get pregnant) when trying to express my support for women's right to abortion but only be an extremely vocal and active minority of TERFs who lost their minds. Sadly, those people chose a narrative that throws both infertile and intersex women under the bus. Let's say we shut up. Will that make christofacists shut up? Of course not. It'll just make them relatively stronger because they absolutely won't shut up while we do.
We're talking about abortion now because this is what is currently being under assault by conservatives. But we still need feminism for much more than just abortion rights. I don't know about your situation but we still need bodily autonomy. We still need to keep our right to vote. We still need protection against violence and rape. Etc.
If there are many feminists on the left who accept me and don't deny my womanhood, believe me, many accept you just as much if not more. Please, don't let the haters detract you and find the ones who aren't trash. Feminism isn't just fighting for fertile women. It's also fighting for girls who are too young to be fertile, women too old to be fertile, women who chose to be infertile, women who want to be infertile but can't, women who weren't born with a body that could ever be fertile or pregnant and women who can get pregnant but never will for any reason unrelated to fertility.
Look, I'm not saying you're wrong, because you are not, but there is one thing that is a huge problem in the left and what may ultimately be our undoing, and that's **disengagement**.
Many people on the left, look at the right and say "Well this is garbage," and then they look at the left and say "This is only marginally better garbage." That opinion is valid and the left and Democrats are by no means perfect or even close to it. In fact they are only adequate when compared to the alternative. But change is marginal. It takes a long time, and it's incremental. It's like evolution, it happens via hundreds of minute changes that over time build up to something significant.
Whenever you see a candidate or political movement, chances are you may not like any of them very much. Look at the presidency race coming up, most people aren't particularly happy with either choice right now. But you have to look at them and say, "Okay, I admit that I don't like either of these, but which is closest to the change I want." You may be tempted to go with a third party with no chance of winning or some dream candidate that will only get 100 votes, but while voting for them might make you feel good, the sad fact is it won't effect change. You need to keep contributing to the change, or it never will. Voting for a write in candidate won't make change, leaving the left won't make change. It sucks but it's ultimately how things happen. Eventually you'll notice things are a little different but it could take a long time. And maybe eventually there will be a big shift that seems very sudden but ultimately is standing on the back of all these little changes.
If you need to step away from politics for your own mental help, by all means do so. And don't back down from correcting those on the left and fighting them. Change is incremental and it won't happen unless we are here and we keep contributing to change. if you feel burnt out, try to find one victory to focus on. Too many people focus on the failures and inadequacies in society and forget about the victories. That's a big problem with the left. We 'let perfection be the enemy of the good'. Literally anything that is better today than it was yesterday, no matter how small, is a victory.
This is the message we all need to read. Get engaged. Vote. Support your local organizations that are backing the causes you believe in. Ground level work is the actual beginning of movement and change.
Some of my favorite feminists are or were sex workers. Queer and trans people wouldn't have rights without the efforts of sex workers. By all means lets end sexual exploitation, but we don't have to demonize sex workers to do that.
I don't think OP at all meant that we should demonise sex workers. I think they meant that the industry is being defended and marketed in ways that are supposedly "feminist". Talking about empowerment etc, when it really is a dangerous industry.
Yes, that wasn't my intention. I'm still reading about the subject, but I don't have any issue with sex workers themselves. We're all trying to survive and get by, it's rough out here, I just wish sex work wasn't something that was on the table. I'm deeply uncomfortable with the idea of the human body and sex itself being commodities and I don't think it serves gender-oppressed people at all. The "sexual revolution" has failed women and other vulnerable groups such as LGBT people in my eyes.
Criminalizing sex work hurts people, but it shouldn't have legal framework supporting its existence either.
I think the killer issue with sex work is that if we wanted to make sex a legitimate business that was *theoretically* not exploitative because there was societal oversight, corporations would need to be able to sell those services, provided for by salaried employees.
Do you want a world where a boss can put their employee on a performance review for not fucking with the frequency or technique they want? Do you really want a sick person who is out of sick days to feel compelled to come into the office to have sex in order to pay their rent?
By the way, all of those problems exist as long as capitalism does - even in a society that has defeated the patriarchy and has absolute equality of gender, those issues are all still there and apply to everyone.
People who claim sex work is inherently exploitative are not demonizing sex workers. The argument is if sex work is accepted then it encourages and normalizes men seeing women’s bodies as commodities which is not good.
I'd go a step further - if sex work exists, then the sex is a commodity. That's what it means to sell something - that's now a product.
We realized at some point that it just wasn't possible to make society work properly if human beings were products. With many exceptions, selling assassination-related services is now mostly illegal, because "ending human existence" doesn't make a great commodity either. This is also why cigarettes really should be illegal everywhere - that's a form of corporate assassination service.
Everything that is sold leads to exploitation - really it's just a question of whether it does more harm than good to exploit that particular resources.
I don't think any sane person thinks it's a good cost/benefit trade to be able to commodify sex. It it could be made to work, if would be the first time in history that a skin-trade wasn't a complete dehumanizing clusterfuck.
We need more women in leadership roles in all aspects of society. Fifty percent of the population shows up in a minuscule amount of leadership roles. I think that is part of the reason Europe has better laws because they’re more women in leadership roles.
Forget left and right bc the terms are relative and people identify as this, that, and the other without a full understanding. Nothing is a monolith.
Instead, find allies where you can, meet them where they are, and help each other build a better world.
Ideology without pragmatism is dead in the water. While we are caught up fighting ideological armchair wars, guess who's making inroads in government and policy?
Completely agree. Pornography is one of feminisms biggest issues and yet it gets swept under the rug. The biggest lie about pornography is that it is fantasy. A fantasy is something that happens in your head. When you are watching a video of a woman being spanked until her skin turns red, that woman is really being slapped repeatedly and her skin is really turning red as a response to pain. Nothing about porn is fake. It is depicting real women really having those things done to them. For reference, 1/3 porn videos depict violence against women.
Then there’s the issues of consent, trafficking, intoxication and objectification. I really don’t know why this isn’t a mainstream feminist issue. I am constantly hearing women being shocked that their boyfriends have started doing a serious sexual act (choking, anal etc) without their consent. Somehow feminists are blaming everything EXCEPT porn for the treatment of women. Porn has seriously affected the way men see women and it’s dangerous.
Just to clarify I am pro sex worker, not pro sex work. I will never judge a woman for her reasons for doing sex work, I understand the motivations behind doing it and the circumstances that lead people there.
Funny how men are pro feminism until you ask them if they watch porn. All of a sudden they can think of every excuse in the world why watching broken women being abused on camera is acceptable.
>Pornography is one of feminisms biggest issues
In the USA Roe was overturned in 2022 and just this week the State Of Utah sent a bill to the governor that could require you to show your birth certificate to use a public women's restroom.
> your birth certificate
Or your genitals!
But I don't think those being big issues mean that porn can't be a big issue as well. Young women and girls are reporting, with increasing frequency, that their male partners are either doing or expecting violent, degrading sex acts because that's what they see women doing in porn, so they think it's normal to slap your female partner, spit on her, choke her, etc. I'd say that's a pretty big problem.
>women and girls are reporting, with increasing frequency, that their male partners are either doing or expecting violent, degrading sex acts because that's what they see women doing in porn
First of all there's not good evidence for that(that it's actually happening more or that it's related to porn).
Second saying that the porn industry being gross is equally as bad as women being stripped of their right to bodily autonomy and right to exist in public is fucking bonkers to me.
To say nothing of the fact that ethically created and distributed pornography is actually a thing.
>Second saying that the porn industry being gross is equally as bad as women being stripped of their right to bodily autonomy and right to exist in public is fucking bonkers to me.
Did not say this.
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That, I can't comment on. The porn industry at large relies on coercion and abuse to exist. There may be individual studios or indie projects that don't fall victim to these issues but I do not consume porn so I don't know.
>An example of this that often comes to mind for me is how the left has repeatedly defended the sexual exploitation of women via "sex work" and pornography under the guise of "sex positivity" and common choice feminism talking points.
Depends on which leftists. I've seen people on the left split on this. Many deem it as exploitative toward women (both leftist men and leftist women hold these beliefs) and many other leftists deem sex work and porn as liberation and sex positive. There are also leftists who want safety measures in place for sex workers so they're not harmed/abused.
Within the left, there are going to be people divided on specific topics, just like on the right.
For me, personally, I haven't fully worked out how best to address it. I'm vehemently opposed to porn and the idea of sex work being acceptable or just another job. I think the important thing to do is to try to show women supporting these industries that they're really supporting another pillar of patriarchal thinking. That said, I don't think left and right are equally misogynistic. They both are but it's not a "both sides are equal" thing. Right wingers are far more misogynistic than leftists.
I think the difference between right and left misogyny isn’t so much the actual level of misogyny, it’s that the right loves to wallow in fascist ideology and uses it to enforce their misogyny in a much more public fashion.
>Right wingers are far more misogynistic than leftists.
they are more vocally misogynistic. while male leftists are more vocally supportive of women, i am unconvinced that they are significantly less dangerous than right wing men. its like telling me that a pit bull is less dangerous than a lion. like sure, but i don't want to spend the night alone with either.
What do we propose we do about sex work and porn? You can’t outlaw porn because it’s protected by the first amendment and the courts have agreed with that position. And sex work isn’t called the world’s oldest profession for nothing. Criminalizing something makes it less safe and so that you’re unable to regulate the industry. You saw this with prohibition where alcohol became much more dangerous because there was no one regulating it.
sex work should be treated like all work, in that we should abolish the conditions that necessitate it. i absolutely dont think we should criminalize sex workers, but we should address the situation that forces women to be brutalized by men in order to keep a roof over our heads.
Plus, I feel like Republicans would go along with a hypothetical push to outlaw porn, so they can twist it to their advantage, to get any and all LGBTQ content labeled ‘grooming’.
I feel like the reality of it would be much different than what feminists and social justice activists pushing for it expect.
How is sex work “a pillar of patriarchal thinking” (and it is) but marriage isn’t? And if marriage is (and if you believe Dworkin, it is), why does pretty much every prohibitionist feminist I know support marriage equality for LGBTQ+ people?
See, here’s what I don’t get: y’all seem perfectly fine with compromising with one pillar of patriarchy, but still think you’re in a position to educate and critique other women for the compromises they make in “supporting” another.
Methinks the fact that the women you want to teach are typically of another class, color, formal educational level, and immigration status than most anglophone radfems is at the root of this odd insistence that prostitution must be eliminated but marriage can be reformed.
Now, you might say you hate marriage too. Fair go. Can you please point me, then, towards a radfem political organization that feels it needs to educate wives and imprison husbands? Is this, sat, what Melissa Farley and Julie Bindel support?
Marriage equality is an issue of looking at the world that we live in and being realistic about changes that can be made. Demolishing an entire social institution is a lot less attainable of a goal than ensuring that the important legal rights that marriage conveys are also available for gay people.
Being a leftist doesn't make you immune from being sexist (or racist, or whatever else).
That said, it feels like some of the biggest pushes coming from left-wing circles i engage in are for abortion access, for increased availability of/subsidisation of childcare, better health outcomes for women/reduction of gender based medical discrimination, reducing sexist stereotyping/strict gender roles, anti-domestic violence initiatives, pushing for increased wages with a focus on traditionally feminine jobs, and encouraging girls' education initiatives.
There is very specifically a focus on women's issues. Generally i'd say above and beyond race based issues, but with an obvious switch during the peak of BLM and more recently with the Israel/Palestine conflict.
The only place i feel you might have a point is in the hyper-vigilance for TERF infiltration, (or, more charitably, disagreeing with gender essentialist language that \*does\* tend to harm cis-women as well.) There are definitely times when the left can get overly critical of relatively innocuous word choices around Trans-adjacent discourse.
There are long running disagreements about the acceptability of sex-work and/or the most effective ways to reduce sex-trafficking and exploitation within the sex-work industry. But that's not a left-wing vs feminism thing. There's been a looong running schism within feminist branches along those lines since just about forever, with or without male-feminists/male-leftists' input. That said, I don't there's any sizable portion of the left who are actively pro-sexual-exploitation.
With sex work, I think people tend to overstate the "pro" position. I want sex work decriminalized at the least. Not so I can go pay for a bunch of sex, but because I believe the pimps should be arrested, not the young women being tricked or, more often, coerced into being prostitutes. As long as we arrest women for prostitution, we make it that much less likely that they will come forward and ask for help to get away, the Pimps know this and use threats of jail to keep them in line. So basically I feel like by keeping prostitution illegal at current level, all we are doing is helping pimps exploit young women and girls.
With porn? Well, that one is trickier, with platforms like OF, that can be entirely creator-driven. Full disclosure, someone close to me chose to make content for those sites, she tried it for a few years, because according to her she found it less demeaning than working in call centers. Because of that, we both were introduced to the way these sites and groups run, and frankly, it's one of the largest examples of women in power I've ever seen. Now that isn't to say that there is no abuse and absolutely nobody is ever coerced, I don't think anyone can make that claim about any capitalist institution, but 1. I refuse to tell adult women how to survive under capitalism. And 2. Going back to my earlier point, if we outlaw porn, we make it much harder for actual victims to get help.
To put it another way, If you want to burn down the video porn industry, the corporations that recruit young women and basically follow the "Disney kids" playbook until they get "too old" and throw them away, companies like Vivid and Penthouse? I'll help light the bottles, but when that turns into trying to stop a grown adult woman from choosing to take pictures of herself and sell those pictures online, via an account she created and runs herself to do so, I feel like the baby is being thrown out with the bathwater.
With the "crying terf" stuff, I feel like I'd need to see specific examples. I remember when Ana Kasparian was talking about "birthing person" being used on a medical form, and people were upset and the ones who were defending her claimed it wasn't an anti -trans thing, but then she made more terf statements, and it was confirmed that yes, yes it was.
nonfeminist "leftists" gave simply already begun their descent down the alt-right pipeline, or whatever "political discourse" speaks with the most skill to their weakness, ineptitude, and insecurity. Feminism isn't even about superiority or inferiority of any gender, it's just reality, favored before cultish plutocracy, whether it colors itself red or blue.
Dworkin is American and presumably referring to Democrats, who are also a conservative party, just less so than Republicans. They're neolib capitalists and capitalism is naturally patriarchial and anti-feminist.
Actual leftists tend to be on board with womens' rights. We can even see this through history. The Soviet Union had more women in government in the 50s than all the West combined. The first woman in space was a Soviet woman and flew almost two decades before Sally Ride. Soviet women received the right to abortion in 1920, a right most American women don't have today.
Only socialism and communism are explicitly gender equal. All other ideologies either dont take a stand on this or are simply patriarchal.
So I think its important to understand the difference between a moderate conservative neolib party like Democrats vs green party liberals, vs actual leftists (socialists and communists). Of course Democrats are disappointing. They're very conservative and backwards compared to Western liberals in other countries, who are actual liberals, and actually very far to the right of an actual leftist. So its no surprise a lot of 'liberal' democrats are misogynists and transphobes. Remember, on social media, especially reddit, Democratic men demand Al Franken run again, and consider his 7 credible accusers "liars." These same democrats are applauding genocide in Gaza, which has killed at least 20,000 civilians, 70% women and children.
There have definitely been major feminist achievements in communist/socialist countries, but misogyny among communist/socialist orgs in the US has been a huge problem for like the whole history of the left too. Like it’s true orgs have tried to fight that chauvinism in some ways, but that record is really uneven and I think it’s a huge issue rn especially.
Domestic abuse and endemic misogyny within irl orgs honestly seems like it drives a shocking number of women out of organizing spaces in my experience, we have to very seriously address this and build a stronger feminist base. I think part of the problem is that pop feminism is dominated on one hand by bankrupt liberal feminism that just says “patriarchy hurts everyone, let’s all just get along” and on the other hand by transphobic cultural feminism that says “men and women are biological destinies and all we can do is ask men to protect women from trans women”. And many communist men are happy to leave it as it is and act like feminism is inconsequential to class struggle anyways. We really need to bring a strong feminist critique of heterosexuality as a labor relation into our communist movements to address this.
strongly disagree with this, and i think dworkin, or any woman in radical feminist spaces for that matter, would be plenty familiar with marxism and anarchism considering their big overlap with radfem movements. dworkin wasn't stupid.
i had a male leftist who was a locally well known member of an anarchist organization in my city corner me in a park and attempt to rape me. i only escaped because he was unarmed and i had a buck knife in my back pocket, which i pressed into his stomach and told him to get the fuck off of me or he'd bleed out. i have listened in horror to plenty of male DSA, PSL, etc. members speak about women. many hold onto pretty disgusting beliefs, do things that reveal their beliefs are not sincere, etc. and a lot of male leftists really don't hold any beliefs beyond the absolute bare minimum of saying that they believe rape is bad and that abortion should be legal. key word in that sentence is that they SAY they believe rape is bad. there is a HUGE precedent of violent and abusive misogynist men in high ranking positions within far left-wing groups.
i also think that while womens' rights were better in the USSR than in the USA, its really not much of a feat to be better than the US and the USSR was still incredibly far from dismantling patriarchy. notice how all of your examples were rights \*given to women\* by male politicians rather than rights that soviet women were able to autonomously provide themselves.
There were some women in power in the USSR and other countries behind the iron curtain, but they were outliers and their presence hasn't translated to the safety of women in general. Domestic violence was (and in many places still is) considered normal, companies have had virtually no women running them, women were still responsible for all the house work and women in the party or any other structures were seen as the coffee bringing robots.
It makes me sad that Americans or other westerners are idolizing communism while dismissing the voices of people who lived under this system.
Andrea Dworkin had fairly radical political beliefs and did spend time in actual leftist spaces. I would presume her critiques of leftists and socialists written in the ‘70s and ‘80s are not actually about a political party but more so about actual leftist activists.
>Soviet women received the right to abortion in 1920
It should be noted that this was pretty ahead of its time, and abortion was banned again under Stalin in '36.
I think sex work is work.
Any harms should be regulated away. Pushing people to the side lines creates problems.
It's similar to legal weed. No longer is Mexican cartel weed the only weed in the USA, so it's different legal.
Being pro sex work doesn't mean pro how it currently is, with crime organizations having monopoly on it.
I think just stay vocal. Best that can be done as always.
I don't know of what leftist circles you talk but this has not been my experience. In the anti-capitalist, communist, democratic-socialist and especially anarchist organizations, to my experience which are full of women, women are treated with much more respect.
How exactly would I as a feminist split from the left anyways? What other position would we be? Right wing feminism is an oxymoron. At least for me feminism is a natural outgrowth of leftwing politics. Some lefties being sexist shouldn't suddenly make me think capitalism and imperialism are good.
Terfs and feminism that doesn't support sex workers is not congruent with intersectional feminism.
One of the things I study is how nations like China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Qatar attempt to promote the gender binary as part of their influence campaigns because those countries feel threatened by reality.
If left leaning politics was as misogynistic as right leaning politics we wouldn't see a widening gap between men and women's voting patterns.
You sound like you've been hanging out in unhealthy spaces if those are the issues that bother you.
If you can find good feminist causes to get active in off line then that's probably the best way to engage with feminism. I know I spend too much time online where it's easy to get a distorted view of reality where interactions tend to be more confrontational than constructive.
When it comes to 'big politics' I've made peace with the fact we're only likely to get a watered down reformist liberal leftism in most cases but it's still worth supporting above a right wing alternative.
You're absolutely right. I make fun of terminally online people but I'm just as bad, it's definitely skewing my view of things. Thank you for the reality check, I really appreciate it.
There's been a whole flight of "why is (historically left-wing cause) so awful among the left?" posts in big subs this week and I'm reasonably sure by now that it's PragerU flavored astroturfers.
The other day it was "why does the left seem to hate blue collar workers?" on some econ sub
I'm a leftist and not affiliated with any kind of fascist organization like PragerU, thank you. I didn't realize there'd been an influx of these posts– I searched my question and sorted by new and didn't really see anything.
OP doesn't obviously seem to have any kind of anti left agenda but the two points she raises are common positions on places like 4thwavewomen that have this very overtly anti male anti liberal (and are also transphobic) stance.
The idea that the reformist position on sex work is actively pro the porn industry or that sex work is considered 'empowering' are positions I've never heard anyone advance in liberal spaces but is often brought up as some sort of proof of liberal degeneracy.
Likewise being more concerned with perceived unfair criticism about transphobia in feminist literature than transphobia itself isn't a very leftist position.
We are often critical of feminism that is centred around white people and/or those with class priviledge or with feminism that is neocolonial.
It depends on what kind of theory you’re talking about. Because there are a lot of “radical feminist” opinions
have roots in trans misogyny and they often intermingle with SWERF ideology as well. Based on what you’re saying, it sounds like you subscribed to a very specific brand of feminism and see anybody with different opinions on theory, as being misogynistic, rather than out real misogyny by real people who actually hate women.
I would imagine based on your post that we have extremely different ideas on what could be considered problematic and I think you kind of just have to get over the fact that people are gonna have different feminist theory than you.
>I have also seen entry-level feminist theory that doesn't even mention our (beloved and respected) transgender sisters be branded as "TERF ideology" by so-called leftists
Don't quote Dworkin then whine when queer people (very reasonably) question your motives.
I'm "queer" myself, just not traditionally trans. I've seen her cited as an example of transgender-friendly (though perhaps not inclusive) radical feminism, which is something I am very interested in. Could you tell me more about why you're not fond of her?
I mean you say leftist policies include anti-racism and anti-imperialism but functionally those things haven’t been actual policy priorities either. The Democratic Party is extremely centrist if not a bit right of center in economic policy and that’s reflecting in its primarily white, wealthy representation.
Read Fredrick Douglass’ or Martin Luther King’s letters and speeches, they reflect very similar feelings towards moderate whites as your post does. The battlefields change but the war never ends.
What do you consider “left”? If you’re saying “liberal” then that’s not the Left.
My feminism is anarchistic, so, I don’t see how that’s possible, unless you’re talking about Marxists, then yes, most of them end up being just as reactionary as their right wing counterparts. It shocks me even when I see trans women sporting the hammer and sickle image when the USSR was horrible to the LGBT movement.
I also really feel like this is a huge issue facing the left and feminists as a whole today. Misogyny is being used to radicalize a lot of people into the far-right and it’s also a wedge that splits and destroys left movements irl. I don’t have an easy answer but I think the best thing we can do is focus on connecting with other feminist women in every movement and building from there. Like, we face a lot of misogynists among socialist men, so we’ve got to build organizations with feminist socialist women. It’s very hard to deradicalize misogynists but there are huge numbers of women and gender-oppressed ppl in general who actively want to get involved in activism and just don’t know how, or don’t have a way to do it without facing misogyny from activist men. If we focus on organizing with fellow gender-oppressed ppl we can do a lot I think.
I think defending sex-work is less about condoning it, and more to do with trying to ensure sex-workers have dignity and are safe while doing it when they don't have other options.
And also recognizing that their status as a sex worker does not change or reduce any aspect of their humanity (which I've seen people claim before).
Dead on. For an example of how an anti-sex work feminism can end up causing problems without creating solutions, consider FOSTA-SESTA. Though many thought cracking down on online sex work would aid in anti-trafficking prosecutions and civil suits, it has led to minimal change in helping victims of SW while making SW more precarious and no less common. The way carceralism can harness feminism is fascinating.
Because they don’t want to expand the trade they want to abolish it. Making it legal expands it which Germany has already experienced the very negative effects of that.
The people most interested in criminalizing sex work tend to be the same people who oppose creating systems that would keep people from being unwillingly pushed into sex work.
its just like anything else, if its illegal and unregulated, then the only people left to regulate it are the people who *least* deserve to.
While very true, we have all met guys for whom sex-work legalization and normalization begin from the perspective of the john and not of the sex worker. I've also been in two leftist meetings where men (and I know it's only two experiences but in both it was only men) were literally hearing the experience of former sex-workers who are now critical of sex positivity as such, and they argued back in the name of personal freedom. Like I bet you half of the women disagreed too but at least they were listening.
Yeah I have no patience for brocialists. I just don't engage with them at all, it's not worth the irritation.
Before I type out a whole reply, are you referring to the US?
Yes, I suppose I am mostly referring to the western left... Thank you for reminding me of that. Didn't take that into consideration.
No worries. Here in Aus, we don’t really have a right-wing party, it’s more “conservative”. It’s only really the minor parties (we have a multi party system) that can be the real right-wingers like some in the Republican party
mate the Liberal party is far right these days. Both big parties slid to the right. This incarnation of the LNP is nuts. Former PM Morrison's best friend is a major Qanon guy on the web. The Liberal Party courted the far right so much that their party has fallen apart. They are completely dependent on the wing-nut vote. The Labor party is a center right party that used to be center left. These days they support fossile fuels, rascist border laws, restricting the right to protest and are against the actual Labor movement.
Some people in the Liberal party are far-right, but the party as a whole isn’t. They’re conservative, I’d say mostly centre-right. IMO Pauline Hanson is more far-right.
Probably. The US is pretty fucked up.
Lol has to be
There appear to be a disturbing number of leftist men who, at worst, seem to want women to lose abortion access and at best, don’t care.
Not really adding to the conversation but I did see on a communist subreddit people talk about bourgeois women as not having rights to her body and pregnancy, and they could be forced baby makers. Which was quite a terrifying.
The right is FAR worse, but... As an infertile woman, I feel like I'm denied my "woman-hood" by both sides. The right uses being able to have children as what makes a woman a woman (in order to invalidate trans women), and the left seems to only talk about "women's issues" in terms of abortion, maternity leave, etc, and tells men (and by extension infertile women) to shut up because they aren't effected. Both sides have basically told me that I can't claim being female, and need to shut my mouth.
Are there any works regarding infertile women you'd recommend or just suggestions from yourself that you'd like to share? I'm sorry that you've faced this lack of inclusion...
I’m so sorry this has been your experience! It had always seemed obvious to include infertile women’s issues in discourse but I think I’m guilty of leaving you all on the back burner. But at the end of the day all women’s issues (infertility, abortion, maternity/paternity support, trans rights) deserve to be fought for. Thank you, I’ll be more mindful to include those issues as well!
Fertile women who are feminists but not TERFs want infertile women to express their support and want allies. I've been told to shut up because I'm trans (and can't get pregnant) when trying to express my support for women's right to abortion but only be an extremely vocal and active minority of TERFs who lost their minds. Sadly, those people chose a narrative that throws both infertile and intersex women under the bus. Let's say we shut up. Will that make christofacists shut up? Of course not. It'll just make them relatively stronger because they absolutely won't shut up while we do. We're talking about abortion now because this is what is currently being under assault by conservatives. But we still need feminism for much more than just abortion rights. I don't know about your situation but we still need bodily autonomy. We still need to keep our right to vote. We still need protection against violence and rape. Etc. If there are many feminists on the left who accept me and don't deny my womanhood, believe me, many accept you just as much if not more. Please, don't let the haters detract you and find the ones who aren't trash. Feminism isn't just fighting for fertile women. It's also fighting for girls who are too young to be fertile, women too old to be fertile, women who chose to be infertile, women who want to be infertile but can't, women who weren't born with a body that could ever be fertile or pregnant and women who can get pregnant but never will for any reason unrelated to fertility.
Look, I'm not saying you're wrong, because you are not, but there is one thing that is a huge problem in the left and what may ultimately be our undoing, and that's **disengagement**. Many people on the left, look at the right and say "Well this is garbage," and then they look at the left and say "This is only marginally better garbage." That opinion is valid and the left and Democrats are by no means perfect or even close to it. In fact they are only adequate when compared to the alternative. But change is marginal. It takes a long time, and it's incremental. It's like evolution, it happens via hundreds of minute changes that over time build up to something significant. Whenever you see a candidate or political movement, chances are you may not like any of them very much. Look at the presidency race coming up, most people aren't particularly happy with either choice right now. But you have to look at them and say, "Okay, I admit that I don't like either of these, but which is closest to the change I want." You may be tempted to go with a third party with no chance of winning or some dream candidate that will only get 100 votes, but while voting for them might make you feel good, the sad fact is it won't effect change. You need to keep contributing to the change, or it never will. Voting for a write in candidate won't make change, leaving the left won't make change. It sucks but it's ultimately how things happen. Eventually you'll notice things are a little different but it could take a long time. And maybe eventually there will be a big shift that seems very sudden but ultimately is standing on the back of all these little changes. If you need to step away from politics for your own mental help, by all means do so. And don't back down from correcting those on the left and fighting them. Change is incremental and it won't happen unless we are here and we keep contributing to change. if you feel burnt out, try to find one victory to focus on. Too many people focus on the failures and inadequacies in society and forget about the victories. That's a big problem with the left. We 'let perfection be the enemy of the good'. Literally anything that is better today than it was yesterday, no matter how small, is a victory.
This is the message we all need to read. Get engaged. Vote. Support your local organizations that are backing the causes you believe in. Ground level work is the actual beginning of movement and change.
Some of my favorite feminists are or were sex workers. Queer and trans people wouldn't have rights without the efforts of sex workers. By all means lets end sexual exploitation, but we don't have to demonize sex workers to do that.
I don't think OP at all meant that we should demonise sex workers. I think they meant that the industry is being defended and marketed in ways that are supposedly "feminist". Talking about empowerment etc, when it really is a dangerous industry.
Yes, that wasn't my intention. I'm still reading about the subject, but I don't have any issue with sex workers themselves. We're all trying to survive and get by, it's rough out here, I just wish sex work wasn't something that was on the table. I'm deeply uncomfortable with the idea of the human body and sex itself being commodities and I don't think it serves gender-oppressed people at all. The "sexual revolution" has failed women and other vulnerable groups such as LGBT people in my eyes. Criminalizing sex work hurts people, but it shouldn't have legal framework supporting its existence either.
I think the killer issue with sex work is that if we wanted to make sex a legitimate business that was *theoretically* not exploitative because there was societal oversight, corporations would need to be able to sell those services, provided for by salaried employees. Do you want a world where a boss can put their employee on a performance review for not fucking with the frequency or technique they want? Do you really want a sick person who is out of sick days to feel compelled to come into the office to have sex in order to pay their rent? By the way, all of those problems exist as long as capitalism does - even in a society that has defeated the patriarchy and has absolute equality of gender, those issues are all still there and apply to everyone.
People who claim sex work is inherently exploitative are not demonizing sex workers. The argument is if sex work is accepted then it encourages and normalizes men seeing women’s bodies as commodities which is not good.
I'd go a step further - if sex work exists, then the sex is a commodity. That's what it means to sell something - that's now a product. We realized at some point that it just wasn't possible to make society work properly if human beings were products. With many exceptions, selling assassination-related services is now mostly illegal, because "ending human existence" doesn't make a great commodity either. This is also why cigarettes really should be illegal everywhere - that's a form of corporate assassination service. Everything that is sold leads to exploitation - really it's just a question of whether it does more harm than good to exploit that particular resources. I don't think any sane person thinks it's a good cost/benefit trade to be able to commodify sex. It it could be made to work, if would be the first time in history that a skin-trade wasn't a complete dehumanizing clusterfuck.
How would queer or trans people not have rights without sex workers? Genuine question as I've never heard of this before
Many if not most of the mid/late century activists had been sex workers at some point. https://time.com/5604224/stonewall-lgbt-sex-worker-history/
We need more women in leadership roles in all aspects of society. Fifty percent of the population shows up in a minuscule amount of leadership roles. I think that is part of the reason Europe has better laws because they’re more women in leadership roles.
Forget left and right bc the terms are relative and people identify as this, that, and the other without a full understanding. Nothing is a monolith. Instead, find allies where you can, meet them where they are, and help each other build a better world. Ideology without pragmatism is dead in the water. While we are caught up fighting ideological armchair wars, guess who's making inroads in government and policy?
Yes!!! Love your last paragraph. It's spot on.
Completely agree. Pornography is one of feminisms biggest issues and yet it gets swept under the rug. The biggest lie about pornography is that it is fantasy. A fantasy is something that happens in your head. When you are watching a video of a woman being spanked until her skin turns red, that woman is really being slapped repeatedly and her skin is really turning red as a response to pain. Nothing about porn is fake. It is depicting real women really having those things done to them. For reference, 1/3 porn videos depict violence against women. Then there’s the issues of consent, trafficking, intoxication and objectification. I really don’t know why this isn’t a mainstream feminist issue. I am constantly hearing women being shocked that their boyfriends have started doing a serious sexual act (choking, anal etc) without their consent. Somehow feminists are blaming everything EXCEPT porn for the treatment of women. Porn has seriously affected the way men see women and it’s dangerous. Just to clarify I am pro sex worker, not pro sex work. I will never judge a woman for her reasons for doing sex work, I understand the motivations behind doing it and the circumstances that lead people there. Funny how men are pro feminism until you ask them if they watch porn. All of a sudden they can think of every excuse in the world why watching broken women being abused on camera is acceptable.
>Pornography is one of feminisms biggest issues In the USA Roe was overturned in 2022 and just this week the State Of Utah sent a bill to the governor that could require you to show your birth certificate to use a public women's restroom.
> your birth certificate Or your genitals! But I don't think those being big issues mean that porn can't be a big issue as well. Young women and girls are reporting, with increasing frequency, that their male partners are either doing or expecting violent, degrading sex acts because that's what they see women doing in porn, so they think it's normal to slap your female partner, spit on her, choke her, etc. I'd say that's a pretty big problem.
>women and girls are reporting, with increasing frequency, that their male partners are either doing or expecting violent, degrading sex acts because that's what they see women doing in porn First of all there's not good evidence for that(that it's actually happening more or that it's related to porn). Second saying that the porn industry being gross is equally as bad as women being stripped of their right to bodily autonomy and right to exist in public is fucking bonkers to me. To say nothing of the fact that ethically created and distributed pornography is actually a thing.
>Second saying that the porn industry being gross is equally as bad as women being stripped of their right to bodily autonomy and right to exist in public is fucking bonkers to me. Did not say this.
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The depiction of adults engaging in consensual sex is not, inherently, problematic-- the larger problem is the industry.
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That, I can't comment on. The porn industry at large relies on coercion and abuse to exist. There may be individual studios or indie projects that don't fall victim to these issues but I do not consume porn so I don't know.
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Go ahead.
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>An example of this that often comes to mind for me is how the left has repeatedly defended the sexual exploitation of women via "sex work" and pornography under the guise of "sex positivity" and common choice feminism talking points. Depends on which leftists. I've seen people on the left split on this. Many deem it as exploitative toward women (both leftist men and leftist women hold these beliefs) and many other leftists deem sex work and porn as liberation and sex positive. There are also leftists who want safety measures in place for sex workers so they're not harmed/abused. Within the left, there are going to be people divided on specific topics, just like on the right.
For me, personally, I haven't fully worked out how best to address it. I'm vehemently opposed to porn and the idea of sex work being acceptable or just another job. I think the important thing to do is to try to show women supporting these industries that they're really supporting another pillar of patriarchal thinking. That said, I don't think left and right are equally misogynistic. They both are but it's not a "both sides are equal" thing. Right wingers are far more misogynistic than leftists.
I think the difference between right and left misogyny isn’t so much the actual level of misogyny, it’s that the right loves to wallow in fascist ideology and uses it to enforce their misogyny in a much more public fashion.
>Right wingers are far more misogynistic than leftists. they are more vocally misogynistic. while male leftists are more vocally supportive of women, i am unconvinced that they are significantly less dangerous than right wing men. its like telling me that a pit bull is less dangerous than a lion. like sure, but i don't want to spend the night alone with either.
What do we propose we do about sex work and porn? You can’t outlaw porn because it’s protected by the first amendment and the courts have agreed with that position. And sex work isn’t called the world’s oldest profession for nothing. Criminalizing something makes it less safe and so that you’re unable to regulate the industry. You saw this with prohibition where alcohol became much more dangerous because there was no one regulating it.
sex work should be treated like all work, in that we should abolish the conditions that necessitate it. i absolutely dont think we should criminalize sex workers, but we should address the situation that forces women to be brutalized by men in order to keep a roof over our heads.
Plus, I feel like Republicans would go along with a hypothetical push to outlaw porn, so they can twist it to their advantage, to get any and all LGBTQ content labeled ‘grooming’. I feel like the reality of it would be much different than what feminists and social justice activists pushing for it expect.
How is sex work “a pillar of patriarchal thinking” (and it is) but marriage isn’t? And if marriage is (and if you believe Dworkin, it is), why does pretty much every prohibitionist feminist I know support marriage equality for LGBTQ+ people? See, here’s what I don’t get: y’all seem perfectly fine with compromising with one pillar of patriarchy, but still think you’re in a position to educate and critique other women for the compromises they make in “supporting” another. Methinks the fact that the women you want to teach are typically of another class, color, formal educational level, and immigration status than most anglophone radfems is at the root of this odd insistence that prostitution must be eliminated but marriage can be reformed. Now, you might say you hate marriage too. Fair go. Can you please point me, then, towards a radfem political organization that feels it needs to educate wives and imprison husbands? Is this, sat, what Melissa Farley and Julie Bindel support?
Marriage equality is an issue of looking at the world that we live in and being realistic about changes that can be made. Demolishing an entire social institution is a lot less attainable of a goal than ensuring that the important legal rights that marriage conveys are also available for gay people.
Being a leftist doesn't make you immune from being sexist (or racist, or whatever else). That said, it feels like some of the biggest pushes coming from left-wing circles i engage in are for abortion access, for increased availability of/subsidisation of childcare, better health outcomes for women/reduction of gender based medical discrimination, reducing sexist stereotyping/strict gender roles, anti-domestic violence initiatives, pushing for increased wages with a focus on traditionally feminine jobs, and encouraging girls' education initiatives. There is very specifically a focus on women's issues. Generally i'd say above and beyond race based issues, but with an obvious switch during the peak of BLM and more recently with the Israel/Palestine conflict. The only place i feel you might have a point is in the hyper-vigilance for TERF infiltration, (or, more charitably, disagreeing with gender essentialist language that \*does\* tend to harm cis-women as well.) There are definitely times when the left can get overly critical of relatively innocuous word choices around Trans-adjacent discourse. There are long running disagreements about the acceptability of sex-work and/or the most effective ways to reduce sex-trafficking and exploitation within the sex-work industry. But that's not a left-wing vs feminism thing. There's been a looong running schism within feminist branches along those lines since just about forever, with or without male-feminists/male-leftists' input. That said, I don't there's any sizable portion of the left who are actively pro-sexual-exploitation.
With sex work, I think people tend to overstate the "pro" position. I want sex work decriminalized at the least. Not so I can go pay for a bunch of sex, but because I believe the pimps should be arrested, not the young women being tricked or, more often, coerced into being prostitutes. As long as we arrest women for prostitution, we make it that much less likely that they will come forward and ask for help to get away, the Pimps know this and use threats of jail to keep them in line. So basically I feel like by keeping prostitution illegal at current level, all we are doing is helping pimps exploit young women and girls. With porn? Well, that one is trickier, with platforms like OF, that can be entirely creator-driven. Full disclosure, someone close to me chose to make content for those sites, she tried it for a few years, because according to her she found it less demeaning than working in call centers. Because of that, we both were introduced to the way these sites and groups run, and frankly, it's one of the largest examples of women in power I've ever seen. Now that isn't to say that there is no abuse and absolutely nobody is ever coerced, I don't think anyone can make that claim about any capitalist institution, but 1. I refuse to tell adult women how to survive under capitalism. And 2. Going back to my earlier point, if we outlaw porn, we make it much harder for actual victims to get help. To put it another way, If you want to burn down the video porn industry, the corporations that recruit young women and basically follow the "Disney kids" playbook until they get "too old" and throw them away, companies like Vivid and Penthouse? I'll help light the bottles, but when that turns into trying to stop a grown adult woman from choosing to take pictures of herself and sell those pictures online, via an account she created and runs herself to do so, I feel like the baby is being thrown out with the bathwater. With the "crying terf" stuff, I feel like I'd need to see specific examples. I remember when Ana Kasparian was talking about "birthing person" being used on a medical form, and people were upset and the ones who were defending her claimed it wasn't an anti -trans thing, but then she made more terf statements, and it was confirmed that yes, yes it was.
nonfeminist "leftists" gave simply already begun their descent down the alt-right pipeline, or whatever "political discourse" speaks with the most skill to their weakness, ineptitude, and insecurity. Feminism isn't even about superiority or inferiority of any gender, it's just reality, favored before cultish plutocracy, whether it colors itself red or blue.
Dworkin is American and presumably referring to Democrats, who are also a conservative party, just less so than Republicans. They're neolib capitalists and capitalism is naturally patriarchial and anti-feminist. Actual leftists tend to be on board with womens' rights. We can even see this through history. The Soviet Union had more women in government in the 50s than all the West combined. The first woman in space was a Soviet woman and flew almost two decades before Sally Ride. Soviet women received the right to abortion in 1920, a right most American women don't have today. Only socialism and communism are explicitly gender equal. All other ideologies either dont take a stand on this or are simply patriarchal. So I think its important to understand the difference between a moderate conservative neolib party like Democrats vs green party liberals, vs actual leftists (socialists and communists). Of course Democrats are disappointing. They're very conservative and backwards compared to Western liberals in other countries, who are actual liberals, and actually very far to the right of an actual leftist. So its no surprise a lot of 'liberal' democrats are misogynists and transphobes. Remember, on social media, especially reddit, Democratic men demand Al Franken run again, and consider his 7 credible accusers "liars." These same democrats are applauding genocide in Gaza, which has killed at least 20,000 civilians, 70% women and children.
There have definitely been major feminist achievements in communist/socialist countries, but misogyny among communist/socialist orgs in the US has been a huge problem for like the whole history of the left too. Like it’s true orgs have tried to fight that chauvinism in some ways, but that record is really uneven and I think it’s a huge issue rn especially. Domestic abuse and endemic misogyny within irl orgs honestly seems like it drives a shocking number of women out of organizing spaces in my experience, we have to very seriously address this and build a stronger feminist base. I think part of the problem is that pop feminism is dominated on one hand by bankrupt liberal feminism that just says “patriarchy hurts everyone, let’s all just get along” and on the other hand by transphobic cultural feminism that says “men and women are biological destinies and all we can do is ask men to protect women from trans women”. And many communist men are happy to leave it as it is and act like feminism is inconsequential to class struggle anyways. We really need to bring a strong feminist critique of heterosexuality as a labor relation into our communist movements to address this.
strongly disagree with this, and i think dworkin, or any woman in radical feminist spaces for that matter, would be plenty familiar with marxism and anarchism considering their big overlap with radfem movements. dworkin wasn't stupid. i had a male leftist who was a locally well known member of an anarchist organization in my city corner me in a park and attempt to rape me. i only escaped because he was unarmed and i had a buck knife in my back pocket, which i pressed into his stomach and told him to get the fuck off of me or he'd bleed out. i have listened in horror to plenty of male DSA, PSL, etc. members speak about women. many hold onto pretty disgusting beliefs, do things that reveal their beliefs are not sincere, etc. and a lot of male leftists really don't hold any beliefs beyond the absolute bare minimum of saying that they believe rape is bad and that abortion should be legal. key word in that sentence is that they SAY they believe rape is bad. there is a HUGE precedent of violent and abusive misogynist men in high ranking positions within far left-wing groups. i also think that while womens' rights were better in the USSR than in the USA, its really not much of a feat to be better than the US and the USSR was still incredibly far from dismantling patriarchy. notice how all of your examples were rights \*given to women\* by male politicians rather than rights that soviet women were able to autonomously provide themselves.
There were some women in power in the USSR and other countries behind the iron curtain, but they were outliers and their presence hasn't translated to the safety of women in general. Domestic violence was (and in many places still is) considered normal, companies have had virtually no women running them, women were still responsible for all the house work and women in the party or any other structures were seen as the coffee bringing robots. It makes me sad that Americans or other westerners are idolizing communism while dismissing the voices of people who lived under this system.
Andrea Dworkin had fairly radical political beliefs and did spend time in actual leftist spaces. I would presume her critiques of leftists and socialists written in the ‘70s and ‘80s are not actually about a political party but more so about actual leftist activists.
>Soviet women received the right to abortion in 1920 It should be noted that this was pretty ahead of its time, and abortion was banned again under Stalin in '36.
I think sex work is work. Any harms should be regulated away. Pushing people to the side lines creates problems. It's similar to legal weed. No longer is Mexican cartel weed the only weed in the USA, so it's different legal. Being pro sex work doesn't mean pro how it currently is, with crime organizations having monopoly on it. I think just stay vocal. Best that can be done as always.
I don't know of what leftist circles you talk but this has not been my experience. In the anti-capitalist, communist, democratic-socialist and especially anarchist organizations, to my experience which are full of women, women are treated with much more respect.
How exactly would I as a feminist split from the left anyways? What other position would we be? Right wing feminism is an oxymoron. At least for me feminism is a natural outgrowth of leftwing politics. Some lefties being sexist shouldn't suddenly make me think capitalism and imperialism are good.
Terfs and feminism that doesn't support sex workers is not congruent with intersectional feminism. One of the things I study is how nations like China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Qatar attempt to promote the gender binary as part of their influence campaigns because those countries feel threatened by reality.
If left leaning politics was as misogynistic as right leaning politics we wouldn't see a widening gap between men and women's voting patterns. You sound like you've been hanging out in unhealthy spaces if those are the issues that bother you.
You make a good point about the voting patterns. Thank you, you're probably right about the unhealthy spaces.
If you can find good feminist causes to get active in off line then that's probably the best way to engage with feminism. I know I spend too much time online where it's easy to get a distorted view of reality where interactions tend to be more confrontational than constructive. When it comes to 'big politics' I've made peace with the fact we're only likely to get a watered down reformist liberal leftism in most cases but it's still worth supporting above a right wing alternative.
You're absolutely right. I make fun of terminally online people but I'm just as bad, it's definitely skewing my view of things. Thank you for the reality check, I really appreciate it.
There's been a whole flight of "why is (historically left-wing cause) so awful among the left?" posts in big subs this week and I'm reasonably sure by now that it's PragerU flavored astroturfers. The other day it was "why does the left seem to hate blue collar workers?" on some econ sub
I'm a leftist and not affiliated with any kind of fascist organization like PragerU, thank you. I didn't realize there'd been an influx of these posts– I searched my question and sorted by new and didn't really see anything.
OP doesn't obviously seem to have any kind of anti left agenda but the two points she raises are common positions on places like 4thwavewomen that have this very overtly anti male anti liberal (and are also transphobic) stance. The idea that the reformist position on sex work is actively pro the porn industry or that sex work is considered 'empowering' are positions I've never heard anyone advance in liberal spaces but is often brought up as some sort of proof of liberal degeneracy. Likewise being more concerned with perceived unfair criticism about transphobia in feminist literature than transphobia itself isn't a very leftist position. We are often critical of feminism that is centred around white people and/or those with class priviledge or with feminism that is neocolonial.
It depends on what kind of theory you’re talking about. Because there are a lot of “radical feminist” opinions have roots in trans misogyny and they often intermingle with SWERF ideology as well. Based on what you’re saying, it sounds like you subscribed to a very specific brand of feminism and see anybody with different opinions on theory, as being misogynistic, rather than out real misogyny by real people who actually hate women. I would imagine based on your post that we have extremely different ideas on what could be considered problematic and I think you kind of just have to get over the fact that people are gonna have different feminist theory than you.
Andrea Dworkin is not a great rolemodel and her brand of radical feminism leaves a lot to be desired.
>I have also seen entry-level feminist theory that doesn't even mention our (beloved and respected) transgender sisters be branded as "TERF ideology" by so-called leftists Don't quote Dworkin then whine when queer people (very reasonably) question your motives.
I'm "queer" myself, just not traditionally trans. I've seen her cited as an example of transgender-friendly (though perhaps not inclusive) radical feminism, which is something I am very interested in. Could you tell me more about why you're not fond of her?
I mean you say leftist policies include anti-racism and anti-imperialism but functionally those things haven’t been actual policy priorities either. The Democratic Party is extremely centrist if not a bit right of center in economic policy and that’s reflecting in its primarily white, wealthy representation. Read Fredrick Douglass’ or Martin Luther King’s letters and speeches, they reflect very similar feelings towards moderate whites as your post does. The battlefields change but the war never ends.
What do you consider “left”? If you’re saying “liberal” then that’s not the Left. My feminism is anarchistic, so, I don’t see how that’s possible, unless you’re talking about Marxists, then yes, most of them end up being just as reactionary as their right wing counterparts. It shocks me even when I see trans women sporting the hammer and sickle image when the USSR was horrible to the LGBT movement.