feminists) that it is meaningful to talk about ‘women’ and ‘men’ at all” (Bryson 2003, p. 173–174). Postmodernism's critique of the usefulness of biology and gender has become a key component of much modern theory and contemporary critiques of radical feminism. Debates around transgenderism illustrate this particularly well.
The Transgender Challenge
In 2014, Time magazine ran a cover story titled “The Transgender Tipping Point,” accompanied by a photo of transgender actress Laverne Cox (Steinmetz 2014). This article signified a watershed moment in not only transgender activism but visibility. That same year, transgender activist Janet Mock's memoir Redefining Realness became a bestseller. It was also in 2014 that Jeffreys's book Gender Hurts was published. Jeffreys's position is that transgenderism – in practice and ideology – is harmful:
[T]ransgenderism is but one way in which “gender” hurts people and societies. Transgenderism depends for its very existence on the idea that there is an “essence” of gender, a psychology and pattern of behaviour, which is suited to persons with particular bodies and identities. This is the opposite of the feminist view, which is that the idea of gender is the foundation of the political system of male domination.
(Jeffreys 2014, p. 1)
Among transgender activists, Jeffreys's book remains heavily criticized. Goldberg discusses this clash between radical feminism and the rise of transgenderism in the New Yorker:
Ordinarily, Jeffreys told me, she would launch the publication of a new book with an event at the university, but this time campus security warned against it. She has also taken her name off her office door. She gave a talk in London this month, but it was invitation‐only.
(Goldberg 2014, n.p.)
Criticism of transgenderism of course, did not start with Gender Hurts. Jeffreys credits the publication of Janice Raymond's The Transsexual Empire (1980) as being an early inspiration. Even earlier than Raymond, Morgan positioned herself as an early TERF (Trans‐Exclusionary Radical Feminist) in 1973 in a speech given at a lesbian conference following a performance by a transgender musician:
I will not call a male “she”; thirty‐two years of suffering in this androcentric society, and of surviving, have earned me the title “woman”; one walk down the street by a male transvestite, five minutes of his being hassled (which he may enjoy), and then he dares, he dares to think he understands our pain? No, in our mothers' names and in our own, we must not call him sister
(in Goldberg 2014, n.p.).
With radical feminism already seeming “passé in feminist circles” (Whisnant 2016, p. 68), compounded with the rise of identity politics6 and transgender activism and visibility, the radical feminist position is being framed in many circles as exclusionary, extreme and, notably, as anachronistic.
Radical Feminism: Legacy
On one hand, the central project of radical feminism – the dismantling of patriarchy – has to date, failed. Equally, the activism of the 1960s and 1970s has dramatically reduced. While some of the radical feminists from this period became cultural feminists as discussed, others transitioned into liberal feminism. Willis for example, explored deradicalized feminisms:
Ms. [magazine] and the new liberals embraced [radical feminist] issues but basically ignored the existence of power relationships. Though they supported feminist reforms, their main strategy for improving women's lives was individual and collective self‐improvement.
(Willis 1984, p. 108)
In terms of contributing to theory, radical feminist legacies lie in helping to revolutionize political analysis. Saulnier, for example, notes that “radical feminists developed a more comprehensive view of sexism which includes sex, gender, and reproduction as central topics in political analysis” (Saulnier 1996, p. 44). Jane Gerhard similarly spotlights that one radical feminist legacy lay in the politicizing of the category of “woman,” based on “the patriarchal uses and misuses of female sexuality” (Gerhard 2001, p. 152). Quoted earlier was Jaggar's comment that radical feminism “seeks to remove the spectacles” (Jaggar 1983, p. 85). This idea introduces the influence of radical feminism on academia leading to the rise of sex‐class examinations in fields that had historically gone without any kind of gender lens analysis. Feminist geography, for example, was formed to understand the male domination of space and design (McDowell and Sharp 1999). Feminist international relations, similarly, was created to investigate women's overlooked place in the study of global politics and security (Enloe 1989).
Consciousness‐raising also became instrumental in enlightening and educating women: Anita Shreve, for example, describes conscious‐raising groups – estimated as having had over 100 000 participants – as “one of the largest ever education and support movements of its kind for women in the history of this country” (Shreve 1989, p. 6). Bonnie Dow also discusses the impact of these groups, identifying that “the therapeutic and self‐help dimensions of consciousness‐raising translated easily into the self‐improvement ideology of women's magazines…” (Dow 1996, p. 66).
While liberal feminism has, arguably, had far stronger influence on public policy than radical feminism (Maddox 1998), nonetheless, there are also some examples of radical feminism making an impact. Through consciousness‐raising and radical feminist activism, the way we think about – and have made public policy about – sexual violence today has been substantially affected (Primorac 1998); equally so for domestic violence policy; as Stefania Abrar, Joni Lovenduski, and Helen Margretts argue, “The story of domestic violence policy shows how a network of radical feminists can influence policy in organizations as traditional, conservative and hierarchical as the police” (Abrar et al. 2000, p. 257). Policies supporting single mothers – especially those who have left situations of abuse – are also credited to radical feminism (Duncan and Edwards 1997). The legacy of domestic violence services is another legacy; as Saulnier notes, radical feminists “were instrumental in developing services that center on women's needs and do not focus on helping women adapt to sexist structures” (Saulnier 1996, pp. 44–45). Equally, the activism around these issues – for example, the Reclaim the Night marches – continue today in various forms, including through campus activism about rape and the advent of Slutwalks (Rosewarne 2011b), the latter which, while clashing with some of the radical feminist ideas, also exploit the legacy of women reclaiming public space (Johnson 2015). Equally, some of the revolutionary solutions to reproduction that Firestone (1970) advocated for that were impossible in the 1970s have, as Susan Faludi notes “proved prescient” (Faludi 2013, n.p.). In Sweden and Norway, the radical feminist impact on public policy is witnessed in what has become known as the “Nordic Model”: anti‐prostitution legislation which criminalizes the buying rather than the selling of sexual services.
In terms of enduring activism, the sex industry in fact, remains in the crosshairs of radical feminism, deemed a central component of women's continued oppression and an enduring motivation for activism.
Radical Feminism: Continued Relevance
While patriarchy may no longer be a word with much traction in modern writing or in the contemporary mediascape (Holter 2005), there are several debates still waging well into the twenty‐first century that highlight that radical feminist positions still have currency. In this section I discuss prostitution and pornography, two distinctly gendered arenas which persist as rallying cries for radical feminists.
Prostitution
In
