What is Radical Feminism?

• We believe that women are oppressed worldwide by patriarchy, the “rule of the fathers;”
• We seek to abolish patriarchy;
• We understand patriarchy to be a system of structures and institutions created by men in order to sustain and recreate male power and female subordination. The structures of patriarchy include, but are not limited to, the law, medicine, religion and the traditional family;
• Women’s oppression is rooted in both the structures of our society and in capitalism and white supremacy. Patriarchy includes not only male rule but also heterosexual imperialism and sexism (Charlotte Bunch);
• In order to abolish patriarchy, we must challenge its root components and causes which we locate in oppression of females by males;
• We believe that the uprooting of sexism simultaneously inaugurates the uprooting of racism, class hatred, homophobia, lesbophobia, transphobia, ageism, ableism, competition, hierarchy, ecological disaster, and economic exploitation of all kinds;
• The revolutions, so-called, which the world has known to date, have been coups-d’etat between men which have pruned certain branches but have left the root embedded for the sake of preserving male privilege over all women (Robin Morgan);
• We are a journey of women becoming. We do not seek reconciliation with the fathers; rather, we affirm our original birth, our original source, movement, surge of living. We Re-member our Selves (Mary Daly);
• We are woman-identified and woman-centered. We put women first, not only in our politics but in our personal lives;
• The expression of our politics is concrete: we oppose pornography, prostitution, the institution of marriage and the traditional family, sadomasochism, compulsory heterosexuality, gender coercion, and dominance hierarchies of all kinds; we endorse, support and work to envision and create peaceful, respectful, noncoercive, relationships, structures and institutions which affirm the importance of all human beings, all creatures, and the earth;
• We affirm lesbianism and lesbian separatism as revolutionary paths for all women who choose them.
• We understand gender as a structure and system of subordination, and as such, we seek its eradication.
• We pursue and celebrate sisterhood.