My Feminism Is Radically Inclusive

[rynling]

Two days ago I posted a Peach/Bowser commission to Tumblr (and it's really cute). It got a few dozen notes, which is nice, but in less than 48 hours it's reached the point at which the note count is now falling, and the hit count for the piece on AO3 it's meant to illustrate did not rise at all. In other words, it's a small niche thing that makes no one but me happy, and that's okay, because I am very happy.

Yesterday afternoon I got a series of messages from a prominent femslash artist in the Zelda fandom who wanted to let me know, in no uncertain terms, that I can't call myself a radical feminist if I promote "abusive m/f ships." Because I work ten hours a day and don't have time for this sort of nonsense, I didn't respond to her, but what I wanted to say is that I don't identify as a radical feminist. And this is weird, because my politics are fairly radical...

• Capital punishment needs to be abolished immediately.
• Local police forces need to be demilitarized immediately.
• The sale of marijuana needs to be decriminalized immediately.
• The prison system needs to be deprivatized immediately.
• All political prisoners need to be released immediately.
• Undergraduate student loans need to be forgiven immediately.
• American subsidies to the Israeli military need to cease immediately.

I also have radical views concerning dismantling the prison system entirely, naturalizing immigrants, setting up better infrastructures for public transportation and solar energy, regulating the lobbies surrounding the food industry, and establishing protections for queer, transgender, and nonbinary people.

When it comes to who ships what, though, holy fuck do I ever not give a shit.

Comments

[sarasa_cat]

Actually, the politics you list are mainstream progressive left. All are solid changes that could be implement within the existing economic and political system without causing large systemic change to those systems despite hopefully causing large societal intersystem change. In many cases it just means rolling back to closer to how things were within prior timea in capitalist America or adopting progressivisms that are the norm in other capitalist nations.

OTOH, the Radical left in America would be nationalize the banking and investment industry, nationalize all educational institutions, radically redistribute wealth accumulation, and radically rewrite laws (and fed & state constitutions) to vastly restructure the social and economic system. Depending on the form of radically leftism, they are either an old school communist big statist (does such a believer even exist in America) or, far more likely, the "opposite" - a political anarchist who wants syndicalism.

Radical feminism's central philosophy is all about abolishing power hierarchies, symbolic and actual.

The problem or challenge (depending on your POV) with radical left politics is in how it realizes it's idealization of a society that is completely free of power-over relationships....

[rynling]

Oh look, you're trying to educate me about radical politics, bless your heart. How adorable.

[sarasa_cat]

I really don't understand your snark here. Your post makes no sense at face value and yea, you do not appear to know what you are talking about.

The OP who was riude in your inbox -- and I agree fully that she was rude -- is "correct" (quotes fully intended) that radical feminism will take issue with certain kinds of ships. That said, a radical feminist could work through power relations via fictional ships. But all that said, neither progressive nor radical left politics necessarily include radical feminism and both have a habit of supporting systems that radical feminist wish to abolish. Thus, saying you support radical or progressive politics does not say anything about supporting goals of radical feminism.

[sarasa_cat]

Oh, and for fucksake, all of fhis is being typed on an iPhone which is full of ispell so god only knows how coherent that is.

Ps: let me repeat that i fully agree that OP was being rude, unless, idk, the art in question was posed as radfem art, which. It. was. not.

[rynling]

You have my apologies. I should not have reacted like that.

Although this isn't an excuse, please understand that unprovoked personal attacks on Tumblr tend to put me in an extremely unpleasant state of mind that is not conducive to intellectual exchange. There is a time and place for productive debate, but the comments section of a 300-word post expressing my frustration with becoming an unwilling target of online "activist" aggression is probably not it, at least not for me. I'm extremely lucky to have an interlocutor like you, but goddamn the internet makes me pigheaded and nearsighted sometimes.

I do want to write more about the difference between "progressive," "radical," and "revolutionary" stances and their relation to contemporary feminisms in the United States, though. Basically, I had thought the positions I expressed above were merely "progressive," but after talking with a number of high-profile "radical" writers and activists over the past week I've come to realize that I myself am more "radical" than I had assumed. Obviously this deserves its own post, which I unfortunately didn't have time to write before I reacted in anger to the most recent drama on Tumblr.

My ongoing attempts to negotiate my personal relationship to the evolution of the self-applied label "radical feminist" as it exists in the specific context of online Tumblr fandom are an entirely different matter, though. Symbolic representation is a topic that is near and dear to my heart, and it's bizarre and a bit upsetting to find myself at such odds with other feminists in what seems to have become an increasingly polarized conversation. Because this is an ongoing process for me, I should probably say for the record that such posts are probably not the best forum for discursive pushback.

[sarasa_cat]

Honestly: no worries. Currently at work and on iPhone. Ispell..... Omfg ispell. I cannot even begin to list the hilarity it has created.
:)

[sarasa_cat]

Oh- and when I am on a real computer I can empathize for 9 million words about the WTFingF that is tumblr posturing, be it the BS you got today or the passive ag shit that is the bread and butter of tumblr.

Also: my somewhat curt comment via phone was a note of support-concern: even tho u went into ignore mode (I would have too) won't win an argument with ppl on that topic when your argument has an easy to refute thing they can hang on thus making it even more and more about their point rather than, u know, what in hell is that accusation even trying to do bc ... It was unasked for and just sorta rude. :(

And honestly, one can be a radfem and still work with power imbalances in fiction bc that's how some ppl unpack power imbalance in a safe (fictional, theatre) space. Anyhow, I am all about talking about how radfem and power play DO go together.

[sarasa_cat]

Also: lots of *hugs* if u want them.

Tumblr is satan's anus. No one deserves that brand of bullshit.

[selenicdistance]

See: Why I (mostly) vamoosed from Tumblr. Nice to see that, years later, people are still desperate to police fandom + the communities that intersect with it.

Cute art. Need to read that fic.

("I think it's horrid."

Bowser crossed his arms and flashed a smile full of teeth. "That's what I was going for!"

"No, you know what, I don't think it was. I think what you were going for was 'Look at me, I'm a big badass, tremble before me,' and what you got was an early midlife crisis. You have no class, no taste, and no sense of shame."

Bowser scowled. "Damn, Peach, don't hold back.")

God.

...But, yeah, sorry to hear about tumblr troubles.