Feminism taken too FAR

There is no denying that women have come a long way since the years when they were restricted from doing a whole lot of things.

There was a time when women could not vote, have their own bank accounts, or own property... but all this has changed. For that, women have the women’s liberation groups that sprung up in the 1960s to thank.

New groups with varying ideologies continue to emerge to integrate women into the mainstream structure of society.

Feminists challenge patriarchy, a way of thinking that confines women to a cocoon, by opposing standard gender roles and pushing for equal treatment.

And while feminism is a good cause, there is a radical brand that tends to be militant, coming off as man-hating and even irrational.

From feminists who refuse to use sanitary towels to those who think men should be killed, we take a look at some of the extreme brands of feminism seen in recent years.

 Free bleeding

The free bleeding community is the newest radical feminist movement. Free bleeders would be surprised by the sanitary towel campaigns in Kenya meant to help thousands of girls who miss school for up to five days a month due to lack of pads.

You see, this movement, started in February 2013, regards feminine hygiene products as man-made inventions intended to inadvertently “rape” a woman during her monthly period, so during that time of the month, free bleeders encourage women to let their blood flow as it pleases without interference.

The movement’s founder, Florence, a 31-year-old feminist from California, US, says that she started the movement because there was a burning need to let go of what society expected of her as a woman and to abandon her female shame.

Speaking to Saturday Magazine via email, Florence explained that the movement is driven by two things: One, the fact that women are secluded during menstruation, thus instilling feelings of disgrace, embarrassment, and shame about their period, and secondly, the feeling of unfair expectations on women because there are many things that women are told they should do, such as wearing pads, in order to remain desirable.

Those that are against the movement argue that nature has given us enlightenment on how to deal with menstrual discharge. Although Agnes Owande, a radio presenter with Q FM is a feminist, she sees this form of protest as archaic and argues that feminine hygiene products are actually a symbol of how women’s lives have improved over the years.

“There is no space for this extreme form of feminism in the 21st century,” she says.

But free bleeders insist that they do not have to deal with menstruation and they should not have to hide evidence of their fertility.

“Are men ashamed of their semen?” One community member asks on their Facebook page which has 1,000 followers.

 Topless Jihadis

Founded in Ukraine by theatre student Anna Hustol in 2008, Femen is known as another quite radical anti-sexism protest movement.

The group, now based in Paris, is best known for its topless demonstrations and campaigns for militant feminism for which activist members have been detained by police several times.

The group’s aim is to fight patriarchy in its three areas, namely: religion, sexual exploitation of women, and dictatorship.

Initially, group members sought public attention by demonstrating in erotic clothing before embracing the topless trademark, which they call sextremism.

Besides the topless protests, the group has also participated in mud wrestling matches to protest against dirty politics in the Ukrainian government.

Their most daring performance, however, was in 2012 when they attempted to steal the Euro 2012 trophy and later claimed that they were seeking to draw attention to prostitution.

In April 2013, a group of topless members ambushed Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. There have been several court cases against the organisation during which it was charged with hooliganism and desecration of state symbols.

Their slogan is “Our mission is to protest, our weapons are breasts”. Sure, flashing some skin seems like an excellent way to capture media attention, seeing as it has made them the most visible advocacy group, but one wonders whether their chosen tactic is not counterproductive.

They claim that baring their breasts is about taking power over their own bodies, but seeing as this is the only way they get attention, is it not further objectifying and sexualising the female body and reinforcing the belief that the female body is only to be looked at?

 Angry Wimmin

For Angry Wimmin, a radical feminist movement during the late 1970s and 1980s in Britain, rage was fundamental in putting across their point.

This group of revolutionary feminists believed that only by stopping having sex with men could women be free.

They called upon women to be “political lesbians”. The feminist extremists advocated direct action such as marching for the cause while waving flags and shouting their rights and firebombing sex shops.

Withholding sex to get things done is an antic that women have continued to employ. In 2009, G10, a Kenyan national women’s movement, urged women to go on a one-week sex strike in a bid to oblige the then head of state, Mwai Kibaki, and then prime minister, Raila Odinga, to settle their differences and begin effectively running the nation.

Angry Wimmin members, however, took it a notch higher and dropped their fathers’ and husbands’ names in an attempt to fight female subjugation.

They even went as far as disowning their own sons lest the testosterone rubbed off on them. They spelt the word “wimmin” this way in a bid to remove the word “man” from the core of their identity. Also, in conversation, they intentionally interchanged some words with others. “History”, for instance, became “herstory”, all in an effort to free women.

Tabitha Njoroge, a liberal feminist who advocated for the sex boycott in 2009, believes in the respect and recognition of women.

Her problem with this kind of extreme feminism, however,  is that their measures infringe on other people’s rights.

Also, these women are intent on taking power away from the man to form a matriarchal society instead of fighting for equal rights and treatment.

“I am a feminist and I am also a married woman and I appreciate the role that my husband plays. I can’t begin to say that it isn’t important,” she says.

 SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men)

That this group still has followers is proof that radical feminism still exists. SCUM was founded by a young lesbian feminist named Valerie Solanas in late 1967.

This group of radical feminists is perhaps the most controversial in feminism history as it felt that men at that point in time were unnecessary instruments in society and called upon thrill-seeking females to overthrow and eliminate the male gender.

In 1968, Valerie came up with a manifesto which represented the male as an incomplete female due to the Y chromosome and termed him as egocentric and emotionally limited due to this genetic deficiency.

The world-famous manifesto went ahead to list grievances against the male sex including war, niceness, money, marriage, prostitution, distrust, disease, and death.

Their plan was to overthrow the government, scrap the money system, and embrace total automation so that men would have no place in society.

To achieve this, they felt that civil disobedience would only bring about small changes, so to bring down the system, violent action was necessary.

SCUM later disintegrated after Valerie’s views began to be considered as too radical and polarising following her attempts to kill three men. Some of her beliefs can appear unrealistic and insane to the average person, but some experts rationalised them and saw her as a feminist who was light years ahead of her time.

To support this theory, they point out the existence of ATM machines and artificial insemination.

Tabitha is of the view that to curb this form of extremism, we need to first look at the issues that make people think like this. This level of hatred and violence, she observes, is most likely a result of anger and frustration.

“We need to understand what feminism is about first. A lot of people are angry and bitter and they run to hide under the feminism umbrella to vent,” she says.

 The Feminists

Founded by feminist author Ti-Grace Atkinson, The Feminists was one of the earliest radical feminist movements active in New York in the late 1960s.

Like most feminist movements, they sought to eliminate patriarchy by doing away with the marriage institution.

For these women, men were the enemy, thus marriage was akin to clinging to the enemy.

Atkinson referred to married women as hostages and would not appear with any man in public lest it be interpreted that they were friends.

They felt that marriage was a slave-like practice around which all discriminatory practices against women were patterned.

They also believed that all the inequalities between men and women could not be done away with until marriage was destroyed because marriage and parenting made women slaves to men’s agenda.

The group promoted not having leaders in society, the concept around which marriage is built. They also viewed love as the response of a victim towards the rapist and declared that uterine pregnancy would no longer prevail.

Initially, they advocated celibacy and then urged women to take up political lesbianism. Their aim was total revolution against men so that women would finally end up at the top of the hierarchy.

Their most notable protest was attending the Miss America pageant in 1968 and providing trash cans so that underwear, high heels, cosmetics, and other signs of what they considered to be patriarchal oppression could be thrown away into the “freedom trash can”. This was the genesis of the famous myth of bra-burning feminists.

This strategy of attacking the men evidently failed. In analysing this brand of feminism, Brian Weke, a feminist and children’s rights activist, says that being this radical is a waste of time.

He notes that the society has moved on from discussing women’s issues to discussing gender and socio-cultural issues. His view is that empowerment of women should not mean disempowerment of men.

“We have moved from fighting each other because we are not running the same race. In a race, a man shouldn’t be pitted against a woman running with a baby on her back and a pot on her head,” he says.

More on extreme feminism

 All these radical feminist groups seem to share the belief that the man is the problem in society.

Their view is that the man has ruined the world and that it is up to the woman to fix it. Sure, over the years, feminism has led to changes in the position of women in society, with changes in marriage laws and women being able to vote and own property.

Still, the extreme feminist is focused on fighting to take power away from the man to form a matriarchal society instead of fighting for equal rights and treatment. Ultimately, she leads an unhappy life.

As author Susan Pinker writes in her book, The Sexual Paradox, the extreme feminist seems intent on fighting the biology that makes women different from men.

They forget that not all male-female relationships are characterised by oppression and that men and women are fundamentally different and achieve fulfilment in different ways.

What if women learnt to celebrate gender differences? Different does not always mean bad.

While the man may have the financial advantage, the woman gets to live longer and have more reproductive success. Instead of fighting to be freed from childbirth, how about fighting for economic and political change?