Leadup to “What is Radical Feminism?” Wednesday, November 28th, 2007
All right… so about a year ago I found that strangely enough, I was bored on the internet. Riffling through my mind as to where I might go that would be new and interesting, I recalled and settled on the site Alternet, an alternative news service. There on the front page was a row of columnists, one of whom was Mad Melancholic Feminista, providing a blog post on the Greek System and its detrimental effects on women. Not only did I really enjoy her post, but her blog served as a gateway to the feminist world of blogging. I’ve been reading and “traveling” through it, mostly as an incredibly shy lurker ever since. To this day I muse how that line of thought and those few clicks has set me on an incredible path.
As I’ve said before, I’ve always considered myself a feminist. My interests are constantly waxing and waning and I am sad to say that consistency is not my strong point. Before stumbling into the feminist blogosphere, I had gravitated towards being one of those people who says “I’m not a feminist, I’m a humanist.” Though I never articulated it in this manner, I had come to believe that focusing on feminism was such a narrow thing to do when there are so many other ills in the world. As you can see, I am in the waxing stage and I’ve realized that I was being rather foolish in that line of thought.
And though I did a ton of reading in high school on feminism, it really only scratched the surface. Hell, at the time I never even knew there were different schools of feminist thought. And despite reading Twisty’s and many other feminist blogs for the past year and loving every word of it, (growling in rage not mutally exclusive) I only actually became more than dimly aware of the schools of thought a few months ago. Someone ought to give me an award for fine tuned perception.
The breakdown was in my sociology textbook and I seemed to fall into the category of radical feminist. Except the sociology text’s definition seemed rather simplistic, which led me to ask “Is this really what radical feminism is about?” and “Am I a radical feminist?” I also found myself identifying heavily with Marxist feminism, but didn’t see why the two couldn’t be integrated. The explanation on Multicultural/Black feminism and its argument that radical feminism doesn’t have answers to the problems of women of color really piqued my curiosity. I’d like to think that radical feminism does answer them, and my instinct is to say that it does. Of course, that’s probably incredibly presumptuous and ignorant on my part and I’m probably another one of those white feminists that women of color rightfully take issue with. (I hope to rectify that and deepen my understanding further.)
So really…. in the end, I’m very much a novice on the deeper issues of feminism, as well as racism and homophobia. And I suppose that’s in part what this blog is about. Trying to weather the awkward phase (or am I fooling myself to think we ever get past this..?) by creating an out loud dialog with myself while yeah, BIG MOTIVE IN ALL MY BLOGS – polishing my writing skillz, as they make me horribly insecure. (Which means that consequently I rarely make an effort to connect with the communities that discuss these issues.)
And I use a lot of parentheses.
It annoys me.
