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They are actual literal radical feminists. They hate trans women because they hate men(which trans women are), not because of anything against gender transition.
That's not quite right. They hate men but they also hate the idea of a transition itself, since the radical feminist thinking is predicated on there being fundamental, inalterable biological differences between sexes, at least on the level of bodies (not necessarily brains, or if there are, they are conceived as being different from what is traditionally understood). Transition, then is sort of like cheating these differences; either an attempt to present oneself as a woman for nefarious purposes, or an attempt by a woman to try to rid themselves of the (social) burdens of a female body by trying to become a man, which is viewed with pity-often-turning-to-hatred.
No, like jericho says, what defines radfems is belief in the patriarchy. There are Trans-inclusionary radfems, including famous ones:
All feminists believe in patriarchy. Radical feminists, however, have derived their belief precisely from the idea of fundamental, inalterable biological differences, as far as I've understood.
I'm not really sure how MacKinnon constructs his ideology, I haven't read enough of her, but here's how I understand it to go for the (trans-exclusionary) radical feminists:
There are fundamental, inalterable biological differences between men and women, as classes. The most fundamental one of these is the difference in reproduction, ie. women do the most of the reproductive labor (carry children in their bodies, give birth, mostly feed them etc.) and men's role is a lesser one. This also gives women vastly more possibilities to decide if children are born or not, ie. through contraception, abortion etc, as well as decide whose children they wish to carry. However, men, as a rule, are larger, stronger and thus have more capabilities for violence, and can thus use violence to effectively seize the control of reproductive labor from women to ensure the continuation of their own line.
The easiest way for men to seize control and reduce women, essentially, to property, is direct violence. However, this leads to conflict between men and - since the men know they are also implicitly and explicitly supposed to love and protect women and this is contrary to violence required to uphold the male rule - this leads to mixed feelings and emotional anguish. Thus, institutions are created to regulate male-to-male violence and reduce the need for direct male-to-female violence, thus allowing the maintenance of male rule with a minimal amount of direct personal violence.
All other things in society are derived from this fundamental fact. Religion - the invention of male god(s) to say that it's a God-given thing for men to rule and women to obey. Science - the invention of the idea of nature saying the same. Philosophy - further justification for the same through sophistry. Culture - reproduction of countless scenes of male dominance and female obedience to drive home the message. Law and courts - codification of male dominance of women (through marriage law, family law etc) and regulation of male-to-male violence to maintain stability. Tribalism and nationalism - justification of violence as a general concept to claim that violence is needed to protect our tribe's women from the men of the other tribe, who are the real threat. And so on.
None of these even requires conscious decisions to establish new institutions of male dominance, just that new things are built on top of old unquestioned assumptions. The accumulation of these institutions, often so taken as a given as to not be even considered as something related to male dominance, is what is called "patriarchy".
Once modernity comes, many of these justifications lose force and women begin to claim their rights, but this just means that the processes of patriarchy become subtler. There are new male-led liberation movements that give lip service to the women's cause to attract new supporters but still just implicitly focus on male-male conflict to distribute the women in a new way - like sexual liberationist males chafing against the previous norms of marriage closing off some women to them.
The construction of norms becomes less about the justification of male rule and more about its obfuscation. Some feminists - the libfems - recognize the dominance of men over women but still fall for the obfuscatory processes, unlike the radical feminists, who strike at the root (ie. the etymology of the word radical). In the TERF view, trans rights are yet another obfuscation, and quite a serious one, since they aim to diminish precisely the root, ie the biological view of the sexes. Thus, whatever pro-trans feminists claim, they still would, according to the TERFs, work for the maintenance of patriarchy.
Of course, even if you accept all these assumptions, there exists the serious problem that there's no clear route to enact actual social change. If women are, by definition, less capable of violence than men, then that route is effectively closed - but violence has, in the end, been one of the most effective tools of social change ever, and some would argue that it lies, in some form, behind all social change. Separatism to feminist communities is a most commonly proposed answer, but it would seem this requires these communities to be powerless enough to not pose a real challenge to patriarchy, since if it did, it would quash them anyhow.
The only remaining option is working with other movements to attain some goals through reformist efforts and hope that these other movements aren't able to subvert your enough fast enough for it all to turn to naught. Some TERFs have cooperated with the conservative right, which shares the idea of biological differences through differs in many other things, but presumably other radical feminists would still consider liberal feminism the lesser threat, which would require the ability to build some bridges.
I don’t think that’s true. There’s the radfem meaning, where patriarchy is the all-powerful, primary ordering of society (you describe its supposed mechanisms in your comment), that needs to be radically overthrown, and there’s the watered down, pop culture version, where it means almost nothing, just that there’s an overrepresentation of men in boardrooms. Similar to how a communist and a neoliberal don’t mean the same thing by ‘capitalism’.
Modern feminism is usually divided in radical feminism, marxist feminism and liberal feminism.
Marxist feminists are more reluctant to talk about the patriarchy, because for them sexist oppression, although part of the system, is not the defining characteristic of it, which would be the oppression of the poor by the rich.
Liberal feminism, also called women’s rights feminism, has no need to postulate an all-powerful patriarchy to achieve its moderate demands of legal equality.
Again, biological essentialism doesn’t have much to do with the fundamental radical feminist position. Radfems can go either way. The definitional borders of womanhood are peripheral to the central claim, the oppression of women by men(‘s system).
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That is common sense thinking that was the norm for thousands of years until yesterday.
Sure, I didn't intend to say that only radfems share that general view, though their interpretion is, as said, different from the traditional view - just that they do have actual ideological reasons to oppose transition, it's not just man-hating.
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Well yes, it is. But it's also radical feminist thinking(that's what radical feminist means- it's not a synonym for "particularly extreme feminist")- most feminists deny the obvious differences between men and women and claim that -whatever- will make the differences go away.
What makes them feminists is that they support reordering society(in admittedly vague and poorly defined ways) to put people exhibiting the things making women different from men on top just by nature. It's totally possible to be a moderate radical feminist. JK Rowling is probably an example.
For example, I think most radical feminists would endorse that men are more inclined to violence or criminality and are physically stronger than women (hence the concern about trans women in women's spaces), but they would deny that there are any differences in intellectual interest or interpersonal capability between men and women. For them, as the phrase goes, the sex differences stop at the neck.
They share the latter denial with more mainstream, intersectional feminism, but largely do not share the former endorsement with it -- so that's why there's an area of agreement between conservatives and radfems on the "trans women are physically stronger than women and thus are potentially dangerous to them" point. But the disagreement between radfems and conservatives on sex differences above the neck form a serious point of dissent, where in other times, where feminism in itself was more the issue du jour, they would be the worst of enemies.
From personal experience, I wager that people specifically identifying with the elements of radical feminism that haven't gone mainstream are women who typical-mind-fallacy their way into speaking for most women, who are unlike them. It seems to be a cacaphony of disagreeable women, high-self-confidence women, women with intense intellectual interest, women who don't like children, women who like challenging the status quo, women who are very stubborn. I don't intend those statements to be judgmental, just descriptive. But they are statistically unusual for women, and those traits are more typical of men.
I reckon that the very real but statistically unusual life experience and personalities of the radfems made them underestimate the difference in personality and interest that exist between average men and women. If you're disagreeable, don't like children, want to challenge the status quo (i.e. are a contrarian), then people telling you women are sweet and kind and love cute babies and often reinforce the moral order and so on sure sounds like them trying to lie to you in order to oppress you!
J.K. Rowling, whatever her problems with depression, sure seems like an agentic and stubborn person. I would say that probably the very traits that led her to such great wealth also led her to radical feminism.
This is the opposite of what actual radical feminists believe- they mostly agree that women are underrepresented in engineering and overrepresented in teaching due to intellectual interests. It’s just that their solution to that is some combination of cutting engineering salaries and raising teaching salaries until teachers are better rewarded than engineers.
No, not really. They used to back all the annoying "women in tech" initiatives, and say all the differences in outcomes come down to socialization. The entire trans affair is a bit of a bucket of cold water on their worldview, because they suddenly find themselves in the position of defending sex segregation not just in physical sports, but intellectual / hand-eye coordination ones like poker, chess, darts, or pool. But as far as I've seen they're still sticking to socialization.
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