One thing I often see online when someone objects to feminism is a comment along the following lines:"Oh, no, that's not feminism - that's radical feminism. Those women in the second wave - they had to be like that because of the times they lived in. But feminists aren't like that now. Feminism is just about equality."You've heard this. I've heard this. Everyone with an internet connection has heard this in one form or another.So I think it's worth putting side by side something written by Robin Morgan - an undeniably 'radical' feminist - written in 1970 - with statements made by feminists more recently and who often appear in the mainstream.Here is Morgan:White males are most responsible for the destruction of human life and environment on the planet today. Yet who is controlling the supposed revolution to change all that? White males (yes, yes, even with their pasty fingers back in black and brown pies again). It could just make one a bit uneasy. It seems obvious that a legitimate revolution must be led by, made by those who have been most oppressed: black, brown, yellow, red, and white women–with men relating to that the best they can. A genuine Left doesn’t consider anyone’s suffering irrelevant or titillating; nor does it function as a microcosm of capitalist economy, with men competing for power and status at the top, and women doing all the work at the bottom (and functioning as objectified prizes or coin as well). Goodbye to all that [ .... ]Let it all hang out. Let it seem bitchy, catty, dykey, Solanisesque, frustrated, crazy, nutty, frigid, ridiculous, bitter, embarrassing, man-hating, libelous, pure, unfair, envious, intuitive, low-down, stupid, petty, liberating. We are the women that men have warned us about.And let’s put one lie to rest for all time: the lie that men are oppressed, too, by sexism—the lie that there can be such a thing as men’s liberation groups. Oppression is something that one group of people commits against another group specifically because of a threatening characteristic shared by the latter group—skin color or sex or age, etc. The oppressors are indeed fucked up by being masters (racism hurts whites, sexual stereotypes are harmful to men) but those masters are not oppressed. Any master has the alternative of divesting himself of sexism or racism; the oppressed have no alternative—for they have no power—but to fight. In the long run, Women’s Liberation will of course free men—but in the short term it’s going to cost men a lot of privilege, which no one gives up willingly or easily. Sexism is not the fault of women—kill your fathers, not your mothers.Now think about that alongside all of the statements that have been made online by the Amanda Marcotte's, the Laurie Penny's, the Jessica Valenti's and so on over the last decade and especially over the last 4-5 years post-GamerGate.It's also worth recalling how often Gloria Watkins ('bell hooks'), Angela Davis, Shulamith Firestone, and Andrea Dworkin get referenced by latter-day 'new' wave feminists while they still try to maintain that they are nothing like those earlier 'radicals'.
