Victorian period. The Englishman's home was his castle - his wife, in her peaceful sanctuary, formed the basis for capitalism's version of a woman's place.
Thus women's oppression today is based on the role of woman as the centre and lynchpin of the family. The apparently personal nature of the family, separate from society, has meant that women tend to see their problems in a personal, particularist way. During its early stages, the Women's Liberation movement concentrated on breaking down this false consciousness and through consciousness-raising groups helped women to perceive the social nature of their oppression. Thus the concept: В«the personal is political В».
The catchword now amounts to: В«the political is personalВ». Everything must be looked at in a personal subjective way.
The problem here is that the Radical Feminists fail to see that the personal, subjective approach is a historically conditioned part of the female role; instead they regard it as inherently female. This a-historical approach traps them into acceptance of the essentially bourgeois ideology that the family, and consequently women, are В«Outside societyВ». p> No doubt such enthusiastic protagonists of women's liberation as John Ruskin would unhesitatingly agree with a theory that women remain untarnished by not being exposed to the world!
Seeing the family as outside society leads to the frequent attempts to change family and sexual relations by sheer willpower. Thus the Radical Feminist communes such as Amazon Acres. p> Twist and turn as they might, Radical Feminists like everyone else are still unable to avoid the pressing question: В«What to do now?В» The answer usually given is simply do what you want.
Like all change-your-head theories, Radical Feminism is voluntarist and utopian. It upholds a vision of a new society, of fundamental change, В«a female world based on love trust, freedom and humanity. В»But this world remains a distant dream.
Radical Feminism either declares this world will spontaneously arise, or that if we try hard enough we'll get it. Voluntarism, the idea you can do anything you want right now, is in the long run demoralising when disillusionment sets in. In the short run, the lack of a strategy condemns a movement to activity only around short-term objectives. A strategy, an understanding of how to build the movement and to bridge the gap between immediate actions and the eventually massive social change - this is an essential concept. Radical Feminism is lacking such a concept. p> The movement, under the influence of Radical Feminism, has largely reverted to those immediately actionable activities traditionally open to women - good works. The present movement around self-help is little more than charity. Setting up child-care centres, halfway houses, health centres and rape crisis groups - while these may be necessary and useful, they do not help to build a movement capable of changing the nature of society. In fact, as charity organisations usually do, they excuse the government and the whole society from taking the responsibility. And such an isolated institution can even be co-opted into the governmental structure. This is evident from the dependence of the Women's Health Clinic in Sydney and the Women's Centre in Berkeley, California on government grants.
This is not to say we should not act around short-term objectives. However while doing so we need to develop an understanding of how to build, a strategy that takes us towards our ultimate goals.
We need to really understand consciousness, which the Radical Feminists, for all their obsession with it, clearly do not. Consciousness is changed in the process of people struggling to change society ... and themselves.
