Collective Action
by rubyfruit2
When we act, we do not act alone. When we speak, we do not speak alone. When we think, we do not think alone. The radical feminist movement is a collective political movement not a collection of individuals. The political steps we take should be for every woman who is, or could be, a radical feminist rather than driven by our own needs. Let’s use those political steps wisely. Rubyfruit2
sisterhoodispowerful 
What is good for a radfem is good for radfems. What one of us needs is what we all need: liberation.
It’s not Me v Every Other Feminist
I think you’ve missed the point here; liberation is not achieved by individualism. That was the point. And, no, sadly, what is good for one radfem is not necessarily good for all if what is good for that one radfem is to dump her baggage into the laps of other women.
Consciousness-raising is the missing link of today’s political times.
It’s hard to see Radical Feminism as a movement, though, when it doesn’t feel safe to identify as radical. There is so little safe space available in which to meet and organize as a movement. You have to be careful in who you approach. The anonymity of Internet organizing provides a sense of security, but costs you the value of real sisterhood, and, frankly, bleeds off a lot of energy which could be spent effecting change.
These are just my concerns, I’m kind of thinking out loud here. I apologize if I am junking up your blog.
I do my own thing because I don’t have others, or haven’t found them yet, with which to physically organize. It doesn’t help, I’m sure, that I am mostly operating on intuition, having only recently awoken. I read as much as I can as fast as I can, but I am not educated yet. In the meantime, I just keep putting one foot in front of the other, trusting that I will arrive “at” the movement eventually.
It’s good to hear from you panty and I totally agree with you when you say:
“The anonymity of Internet organizing provides a sense of security, but costs you the value of real sisterhood, and, frankly, bleeds off a lot of energy which could be spent effecting change.”
I don’t know if you’ve seen the blog post I wrote with some suggestions about addressing the challenges of the internet but net communication really is a challenge and very energy-draining, as you say
I very much hope you are able to find some local connections in real life – it does make all the difference
The linked post on making the Internet work for radical feminism was excellent. Thank you for the guidance.
This post makes me think I lack the back story AND the subtext.
Does it? If you’re online a lot, I doubt that very much. I think online communication encourages individualism; makes it much harder to work collectively, and much easier to work as separate entities being driven by what drives all human individuals, as opposed to being driven by a feminist consciousness.
Ultimately, it’s a plea to bring back CR, I think; however we do that despite the communication challenges of it.
Why would you doubt what I tell you I think? I did not get the subject of consciousness raising from your post. For some of us, online communication is usually all there is, but I certainly don’t disagree about consciousness raising. It is fundamental, and generally it got subsumed by (individual) therapy, which did not and cannot replace it. For a looooooooong time I have said “More consciousness raising, less diversity training.” Actually I said,
“More magic, less marketing.
More healing, less therapy.
More social work, less social construction.
More consciousness raising, less diversity training.”
I still say that.
Gah! And this is why we desperately need another form of communication other than text. I am not, of course, doubting what you *think*. I am doubting that you *do* “lack the back story” if you use net communication to reach out to other radical feminists/ radical lesbian feminists
The point about CR is that it enabled women to move from thinking about their lives, words they had to describe their lives and their feelings about their lives, on an individualistic level to realising that what we experience as individual women is political and that a collectively political way of thinking and acting is a (radical) feminist response. Hence relevant to the blog.
I absolutely agree with you that CR was slowly replaced by counselling/therapy among feminists and that led to individual, rather than political, solutions, being sought and was, I believe, the start of this rapid descent into all things political being about the individual and their “choices”. “All The Rage” a selection of writings by lesbian feminists articulated the problem at the time.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/search?index=books&linkCode=qs&keywords=0704344386
The internet, and the limitations of text communication (as we have just experienced ourselves!), have compounded the problem, and brought it into the heart of the movement, alongside a political rhetoric; the combination of both is confusing and misleading to many new women coming across radical feminism for the first time who think that if they can do intellectual gymnastics online or “troll” political opponents with radical feminist arguments then they understand what radical feminism is. Radical feminism is, and always has been, a starting point of self moving towards political action and not the other way round.
The Internet is an absolutely terrible place to do radical feminism. It’s a useful place for learning about how people feel about radical feminists, though.
And I do think we are at siege from without so badly, that Internet presence matters, what with all of this erasing going on, and what with so many people being heavily involved with the Internet. Otherwise they are left with nothing but images of monsters purveyed by misogynists and misled women.
The message I am trying to convey here is that there is a difference between our needs as individuals and our needs as political activists. They do both exist but they don’t necessarily always comfortably co-exist. The latter being about collective needs. It’s very easy to merge them all together and, in my opinion, all the more likely when the CR stage is missed out and there is a leap towards intellectual theorising on the internet. Ethics, practice, activism; what they mean in female hands – I really don’t see much talk about that. The focus on the net is almost exclusively theoretical but there is more to radical feminist activism than theory.
Two posters seemed to have struggled with the point of this blog post. One in particular seems to think there’s some kind of agenda about particular women/woman. I fully accept that I may not have been clear enough originally. It was just a snippet of thought based on my observations of net political activism
People often have strange notions about censorship on the Internet. We currently live in a country where anyone with access can start their own blog for free and publish damn near anything they want, within legal limits. Folks should be worrying more about net neutrality being threatened than howling about their comments not being published on other people’s blogs.
I do think you’re right. There are skills (patience/letting go of ego/ignoring personal insults) involved in completely focusing on challenging the external world when it is attacking radical feminism from all sides and ignoring any internal crap and in recognizing when particular situations are not “internal crap” but a serious threat to the movement’s progress. Biggest external threat is the growing presence of MPAs (Male Privileged Agitators) everywhere with their fake veneer of “reasonableness” but their rhetoric of “equality” is resonating with the liberals and the queer choicey-choice supporters
That’s a good concise summation of what I’ve been seeing myself.