Editing Radical feminism (section)

=== Roots ===
Radical feminists in the [[United States]] coined the term [[women's liberation movement]] (WLM). The WLM grew largely due to the influence of the [[civil rights movement]], that had gained momentum in the 1960s, and many of the women who took up the cause of radical feminism had previous experience with radical protest in the struggle against [[racism]]. Chronologically, it can be seen within the context of [[second wave feminism]] that started in the early 1960s.<ref>Sarah Gamble, ed. The Routledge companion to feminism and postfeminism (2001) p. 25</ref> The leading figures of this second wave of feminism included [[Shulamith Firestone]], [[Kathie Sarachild]], [[Ti-Grace Atkinson]], [[Carol Hanisch]], [[Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz|Roxanne Dunbar]], [[Naomi Weisstein]] and [[Judith C. Brown|Judith Brown]]. In the late sixties various women's groups describing themselves as "radical feminist", such as the UCLA Women's Liberation Front (WLF), offered differing views of radical feminist ideology. UCLA's WLF co-founder Devra Weber recalls, "the radical feminists were opposed to patriarchy, but not necessarily capitalism. In our group at least, they opposed so-called male dominated national liberation struggles".{{sfn|Linden-Ward|Green|1993|p=418}}

Radical feminists helped to translate the radical protest for racial equality, in which many had experience, over to the struggle for women's rights. They took up the cause and advocated for a variety of women's issues, including [[abortion rights]], the [[Equal Rights Amendment]], access to credit, and equal pay.{{sfn|Evans|2002}} Many women of color were among the founders of the Women's Liberation Movement ([[Frances M. Beal|Fran Beal]], [[Cellestine Ware]], [[Toni Cade Bambara]]); however, many women of color did not participate in the movement due to their conclusion that radical feminists were not addressing "issues of meaning for minority women", [[Black women]] in particular.{{sfn|Linden-Ward|Green|1993|p=434}} After [[consciousness raising]] groups were formed to rally support, second-wave radical feminism began to see an increasing number of women of color participating.

In the 1960s, radical feminism emerged within liberal feminist and working-class feminist discussions, first in the United States, then in the United Kingdom and [[Australia]]. Those involved had gradually come to believe that it was not only the [[middle-class]] [[nuclear family]] that oppressed women, but that it was also social movements and organizations that claimed to stand for human liberation, notably the [[Counterculture of the 1960s|counterculture]], the [[New Left]], and [[Marxism|Marxist]] political parties, all of which were male-dominated and male-oriented. In the United States, radical feminism developed as a response to some of the perceived failings of both [[New Left]] organizations such as the [[Students for a Democratic Society (1960 organization)|Students for a Democratic Society]] (SDS) and feminist organizations such as NOW.{{Citation needed|date=July 2008}} Initially concentrated in big cities like [[New York City|New York]], [[Chicago]], [[Boston]], Washington, DC, and on the West Coast,{{sfn|Willis|1984|p=118}}{{efn|While Willis (1984) does not mention Chicago, as early as 1967 it was a major site for consciousness-raising and home of the ''Voice of Women's Liberation Movement''; see Kate Bedford and Ara Wilson [http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/wilson935/chrono1.htm Lesbian Feminist Chronology: 1963–1970] ({{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070717042308/http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/wilson935/chrono1.htm |date=17 July 2007}}).}} radical feminist groups spread across the country rapidly from 1968 to 1972.

At the same time parallel trends of thinking developed outside the USA: The Women's Yearbook<ref>The essay on "Feminist Tendencies" in the Women's Yearbook (Frauenjahrbuch '76), published by the new Frauenoffensive press in Munich and edited by a work group of the Munich Women's Center in Myra Marx Ferree: Varieties of Feminism German Gender Politics in Global Perspective (2012) p.60 {{ISBN|978-0-8047-5759-1}}</ref> from Munich gives a good sense of early 1970s feminism in West Germany:

{{Blockquote
|text=Their Yearbook essay on behalf of the autonomous feminist movement argued that patriarchy was the oldest and most fundamental relationship of exploitation. Hence the necessity of feminists' separating from men's organizations on the Left, since they would just use women's efforts to support their own goals, in which women's liberation did not count. The editors of Frauenjahrbuch 76 also explicitly distanced themselves from the language of liberalism, arguing that "equal rights define women's oppression as women's disadvantage." They explicitly labeled the equal rights version of feminism as wanting to be like men, vehemently rejecting claims that "women should enter all the male-dominated areas of society. More women in politics! More women in the sciences, etc. . . . Women should be able to do everything that men do." Their position—and that of the autonomous feminists represented in this 1976 yearbook—instead was that: "This principle that 'we want that too' or 'we can do it too' measures emancipation against men and again defines what we want in relationship to men. Its content is conformity to men. . . . Because in this society male characteristics fundamentally have more prestige, recognition and above all more power, we easily fall into the trap of rejecting and devaluing all that is female and admiring and emulating all that is considered male. . . . The battle against the female role must not become the battle for the male role. . . . The feminist demand, which transcends the claim for equal rights, is the claim for self-determination.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Ferree|first1=Myra Marx|title=Varieties of Feminism: German Gender Politics in Global Perspective|date=2012|page=60|publisher=[[Stanford University Press]]|location=Redwood City, California|chapter=Women Themselves Will Decide: Autonomous Feminist Mobilization, 1968–1978|isbn=978-0804757591}}</ref><ref>Frauenjahrbuch '76 p 76-78</ref>
}}

Radical feminists introduced the use of [[consciousness raising]] (CR) groups. These groups brought together intellectuals, workers, and middle-class women in developed Western countries to discuss their experiences. During these discussions, women noted a shared and repressive system regardless of their political affiliation or [[social class]]. Based on these discussions, the women drew the conclusion that ending of patriarchy was the most necessary step towards a truly free society. These consciousness-raising sessions allowed early radical feminists to develop a political [[ideology]] based on common experiences women faced with male supremacy. Consciousness raising was extensively used in chapter sub-units of the [[National Organization for Women]] (NOW) during the 1970s. The feminism that emerged from these discussions stood first and foremost for the liberation of women, as women, from the oppression of men in their own lives, as well as men in power. Radical feminism claimed that a totalizing ideology and social formation—''patriarchy'' (government or rule by fathers)—dominated women in the interests of men.