The Radical Grimoires

THE SECOND SEX. SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR. 1949  

Let the radical education commence! The Second Sex came out in 1949, well before the other texts I’ll be looking at, which are mostly from the 70s and 80s. Still, it seems to belong to the second wave, since the first wave had already achieved their goal of women's suffrage at the time de Beauvoir wrote. De Beauvoir wanted more than the vote. She wrote to explain the mechanisms of women’s subordination—for she thought women’s inferior status was not inevitable or innate, but caused by their situation—and her analysis might be seen as the first paving stone in the long and winding path of feminist theory. Let’s take off our hats, then, and respectfully explore The Second Sex.

THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE. BETTY FRIEDAN. 1963 

“No… I don’t want four different kinds of soap.” (p277)

Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique¹ in 1963. Her aim was to reveal a deep, pervasive cultural trend that was harming women—in particular, middle class American women. You may be familiar with cultural images of the 1950s housewife. It’s an ideal that many girls and women aspired to at the time. Yet when they achieved it, they were infamously unhappy about it. Today, it’s seen as the epitome of sexist, limiting stereotypes. But at the time, when people were living inside the myth, they couldn’t see those harms as clearly as we do. It seemed natural, true, unquestionable. In The Feminine Mystique, Friedan did the difficult work of questioning this myth, from the inside.

Betty Friedan’s book was about (presumably white?) middle class women who were discouraged from working, not poor women who worked due to financial necessity. Gail Dines² has described Friedan as a liberal feminist, and distinguishes her from radical feminism by explaining that Friedan focuses on individual empowerment for privileged women, rather than the collective, class interests of all women. The distinction between individual empowerment and material class interests will be crucial for understanding radical feminism. Knowing that The Feminine Mystique refers to a specific culture, era, and class, we might wonder how salient the book is today. Despite the current trend of “tradwives,” who extol the benefits of traditional gender roles, it doesn’t look as though the feminine mystique is making a big comeback. So is Friedan’s work still relevant?

Yes, it is.

THE DIALECTIC OF SEX. SHULAMITH FIRESTONE. 1970   My aim with this series is to read the books on my list as charitably as possible, since I want to come away with something valuable. I don’t want to quibble about outdated details or awkward mistakes. But my disagreements with Firestone are not incidental, they are fundamental.

In The Dialectic of Sex¹, Firestone sets out with the goal of explaining women’s oppression. She intends to create a material analysis of women as a class. But her analysis is frequently metaphorical rather than material. She leans heavily on Freudian psychoanalysis, which is incapable of providing material explanations of social classes, since it focuses on individual and family psychology. Firestone extrapolates from the individual to the societal level using metaphors about the family, examining topics she believes are central to women’s oppression: biology, race, children, love, and culture. She has valuable insights at times, but she also makes some serious mistakes.

SEXUAL POLITICS. KATE MILLET. 1969

'Sex is a political category with status implications' (p24)

Sex is political. That is to say, sex is not merely a biological category but a political one, and relationships between men and women are structured by systematically unequal power. In Sexual Politics¹, Millet reveals this political system and explores the mechanisms by which it is enforced. She illustrates its long reach through history, and its deep roots in our culture and psychology. Although Sexual Politics was published in 1969, it remains relevant because it exposes the underlying mechanisms of patriarchy, not only its historically and culturally contingent details.

ADDENDUM: RU PAUL’S DRAG RACE

The topic of drag came up while I was reading Germain Greer’s The Female Eunuch. I have a lot of thoughts about the popular television show, Ru Paul’s Drag Race, and wanted to write them down. It isn’t a book, and this isn’t a book review. But the topic seems relevant to my broader feminist project. So here’s what I think of Ru Paul and his “girls”.

THE FEMALE EUNUCH. GERMAINE GREER. 1970.

'To be emancipated from helplessness and need and walk freely upon the earth that is your birthright. To refuse hobbles and deformity and take possession of your body and glory in its power… to be freed from guilt and shame and the tireless self discipline of women. To stop pretending and dissembling, cajoling and manipulating, and begin to control and sympathise. To claim the masculine virtues of magnanimity and generosity and courage' (p370).

The core premise of The Female Eunuch¹ is that femininity is an artificial construct that “castrates” women, sapping their energy and ambition. In each chapter Greer considers one harmful aspect of femininity, and makes suggestions about what we should do and be instead. The focus of the book is gender stereotypes, not the other, concrete mechanisms of women's oppression such as laws, economics, or physical force. When Greer wrote, women had already achieved the legal right to more freedoms than they cared to utilise. 'The cage door had been opened but the canary had refused to fly out' (p14). Greer believes women's emancipation failed because of feminine socialisation and the resulting choices women made. So her focus is on the cultural and social factors that shape women. She says in the foreword that she didn't focus on poor women because she didn't know them at the time she wrote. So the book will not describe the experiences of all women, only those of Greer's social class. But I believe it can still usefully illustrate how artificial, man-made notions of femininity can limit us, and reveal what alternatives we might choose instead.

The book proceeds in five sections, and so shall we: body, soul, love, hate, and revolution.

GYN/ECOLOGY. MARY DALY. 1978

'This book is primarily concerned with the mind/spirit/body pollution inflicted through patriarchal myth and language on all levels.' (p9)

 The book Gyn/ecology¹ is a rite of exorcism. The demon possessing us is patriarchy itself, and Daly is the priestess ready to break his spell through the magical act of naming him. In other words, Gyn/ecology is about patriarchal myth, and Daly hopes to undo its power by revealing its disguises and describing it clearly.

Daly believes we need changes in thought and feeling, not merely in institutions. This is partly because of women who identify with men and do the work of patriarchy. They do so because they are trained by patriarchal myth. Daly says 'as long as that myth (system of myths) prevails, it is conceivable that there be a society comprised even of 50 percent female tokens: women with anatomically female bodies but totally male-identified, male possessed brains/spirits. The myth/spell itself of phallocratism must be broken.' (p57)