r/RadicalFeminism

People always say feminism “supports both genders equally,” and if you support only women, or only women’s liberation, you are not a feminist.

Feminism advocates for women's equality.

Women’s equality results in equal rights between women and men, but feminism is not a gender-neutral movement that advocates equally for both sexes.

"Equal rights for both genders"
saying this includes men (the oppressors), implying that they need empowerment too, when they need the opposite in a patriarchal society.

Feminism focuses on equal rights and opportunities FOR women because women have historically been, and still are, disadvantaged and denied rights on the basis of their sex.

However, only when it benefits men, even if they are already privileged, is when feminism has value.

Watering down feminism to "just gender equality" in order to cater to the egos of men defeats the whole purpose.

I’ve recently found myself in conflict with my ex over what I thought was a fairly ordinary safeguarding concern, and I’m interested in feminist perspectives on it.

My ex’s girlfriend’s father an adult man neither I nor my ex knows particularly well has come to stay for several months in the house where our six-year-old daughter sleeps. I haven’t met him, and my ex had already briefly left our daughter alone with him.

Because I was sexually abused as a child, the situation made me anxious. I asked some questions about the sleeping arrangements and whether this man could potentially access our daughter during the night without her father knowing. My ex is an exceptionally deep sleeper, which added to my concern.

I didn’t accuse this man of being a predator. Our daughter likes him, and I have no evidence that he has done anything wrong. I was asking for a temporary, unobtrusive precaution while an unfamiliar adult was living in the house.

This was also after my ex had previously insisted on meeting my own partner before he was allowed to stay overnight while our daughter was home, a safeguard I accepted without taking it as an accusation against my partner.

My ex’s response included:

“I’m sorry, but I’m not going to be in the position of assuming all men are predators.”

His girlfriend then messaged me very angrily, accusing me of directly calling her father a paedophile. I had done no such thing. My concern about the general risk posed by an unfamiliar adult man had suddenly been transformed into a personal allegation I had never made.
The result is that there are now no additional precautions in place, so the original anxiety remains but I’ve also been made to feel as though even raising the subject was abusive or outrageous.

This framing really bothers me. Surely taking proportionate precautions around a risk does not mean believing every member of the relevant group will cause harm? We use seatbelts without assuming every journey will end in a crash. We supervise children around water without assuming they will definitely drown.

The overwhelming majority of men will never sexually harm a child. But sexual abuse does happen, it is frequently committed by someone known to the child, and adults who cause harm generally do not identify themselves in advance. “He seems nice” cannot therefore be our entire safeguarding system.

Women are often told that we should have been more careful when something happens. Yet if we attempt to take precautions beforehand, we’re accused of paranoia, misandry or personally branding an innocent man a paedophile.

It feels like an impossible standard: anticipate danger, but never do anything that acknowledges the danger exists in case it hurts a man’s feelings.
I’m not arguing that children should be taught to fear all men, or that fathers cannot make ordinary parenting decisions.

I’m asking whether “not all men” is being used here to shut down a reasonable discussion about safeguarding.

Where is the line, in your view, between proportionate safeguarding and unfair suspicion? Why does acknowledging a gendered pattern of risk so often get reframed as “assuming all men are predators”?

As a slight aside, I’ve also noticed what seems to be both a generational and political divide in how safeguarding is understood. Younger and more left-leaning people often seem more comfortable viewing precautions as neutral, preventative measures that are not necessarily accusations against any particular person. Older or more right-leaning people seem more likely to interpret the same precautions personally as an insult to a man’s character, an accusation, or simply evidence that the concerned parent is being “weird.”

That is only my personal observation, and I’m sure there are plenty of exceptions, but I’m curious whether anyone else has noticed something similar. Has the growth of ideas such as affirmative consent, trauma-informed practice and institutional safeguarding created a genuine generational difference and cultural divide in how people understand precaution and risk?

TW: mentions of SA

Hi! This will be a long rant. I, F24, grew up without romantic love or attention and I still haven’t been in a relationship. I have swept tears off from my friend’s faces million times over years because men have breaked them and treated them the worst, then I’ve went home to cry myself to sleep because I felt so unlovable as a girl who lived without romantic experience or attention. It has been the biggest insecurity of mine but the more I learn about dating and witness the romantic relationships of these people, the more proud I’ll get that I haven’t been in a relationship since they seem like they’ll give you cardiac arrest sooner or later, propably sooner.

I’m bisexual, I’ve dated women and men, and yes, overall women are better to date, like in consent, equality, dynamics, etc. But when I started to date, I lost my hope to find a partner of any gender. It’s very common to ghost and dump your date without saying any word due to this capitalistic material reality where everyone is thinking ”oh maybe I’ll find a better one” even about relationships. It’s not normal to see so much ”options” in such multimodal ways.

I’ve heard that especially hetero relationships struggle a lot with men having porn addictions and following and lusting IG models. It’s creepy to have access to any type of (sexual) content, literally, _any type_. You can get anything nowadays with AI. You can get any type of porn performed by any type of perfect person – of course it’s addicting! In addition, it’s ruining women’s mental health when they see in social media all these beautiful IG models with tons of expensive plastic surgery done. It shapes the reality you experience. This world of hyper-commercial stimuli have ruined my perception of love. I feel like every man I’ve dated have thought in some way that they’ll find someone prettier and better and every woman have just dumped me without saying anything or they went back to their ex. It has killed my self-esteem. I believe that no one would ever love me, I’m never enough. When some talking stage fails, I can’t think ”oh they’d never find anyone better than me!” because I know they will.

I still have little bit belief that there might be a woman who’d love me sincerely but I struggle to believe that I’d trust man’s ”love”. I’ve noticed that they’ll enjoy the benefits a woman gives to them – food, emotional and domestical labour, well-behaved kids (because his gf/wife is the one who is raising them) and sex. All female-male-relationships I’ve witnessed has been like this: the woman is giving everything and performing beauty and labour 24/7, and the man is just… simply existing? I’m so sad that I don’t believe in reciprocal heterosexual love. When I see a happy straight couple, I’m like ”oh she’s not telling everything what is happening inside of that relationship like what she has to do to ”keep” him.” However, it feels so dumb to generalize an entire large group of people as being all alike, but literally capitalism is so deeply rooted inside everyone’s brain, so therefore, the patterns will exist everywhere, in everyone. More or less.

I’ve never felt loved in my life (I don’t have a healthy loving family, I didn’t have a good childhood), and I’ve always struggled to trust anyone or show my vulnerabilities because I’ve believed that people will take advange of it and I end up to be very ashamed that I gave myself to someone in a raw and stripped state. So when I was younger, I thought maybe I should just be in poly relationships because one thing I noticed in my circles, where everyone was bi, anarchist, vegan, leftist, poly…etc, they’ll have many lovers and partners and they didn’t have that deep connection with any of their partners – when things got real, they’d find a new one or they took a space for a bit or just dump them.

Poly relationships of some of my friends in my local communities seemed so much more secure since I was afraid that women would switch me to a new one or get back to their ex and men would sooner or later manipulate me, rape me, assault me or even kill me. I know I’ve only witnessed poly people with attaching issues, but this was the way I was thinking. Disclaimer, I have nothing against poly people, polyamory is real and valid, but sometimes some poly people I know are examples of this modern time where you’d just want to find new dopamine and a whole new lover is giving you that, so is a new Tiktok-video you’re doom scrolling and a new Tinder match, a new useless junk you buy from online shop when you saw an influencer promoting it… You get the point? I feel like people need to get EVERYTHING they want RIGHT AWAY, they can’t wait. That’s one reason why I think I’ve been sexually assaulted by multiple guys and one time by a girl who couldn’t take a no as a no, she coerced me to have sex with her.

Yeah, so I don’t believe in love after seeing how many people just settle down with a loser and takes all the bullshit and how people get treating in a dating world. The dating pool is awful, no wonder why women don’t want to start new families and are focusing on their careers and friends. I’m so disappointed that life turned this way because I have to be honest, I’m a big lover girl and I’d like to have a gf/bf, but I don’t think there’s healthy fulfilling love under patriarchy and capitalism. But at least I have great friends (even though some of their relationships give me gray hair lol) and a loving cat.

im 16, 17 in early october and i have never worn makeup in my life. im not "ugly" perse but i feel that my mouth is weird and i have a big nose. im not very pleasing to look at. i am very against makeup as i believe the achieved look is often rooted in pedophilia and colonialism even if you think its for the self or whatever but i just want to feel normal and its really starting to get to me. a majority of my thoughts are about my insecurities and its taking over every inch of my life.

Given the nature of the posts that have been submitted to the subreddit, as the head moderator I felt it was time to address some points as to how moderation will work going forward. Most of it is really just restarting practices that have not been enforced as stringently.

1. This subreddit will remove bioessentialist posts. Bioessentialism is anti-thetical to Radical Feminism. Bioessentialist rhetoric reinforces the patriarchal notion that "boys will be boys" and males are not responsible for their actions. The patriarchy is not a structure that was inherent to nature. Males were not "designed" to oppress women. A hierarchal social system was created surrounding male dominance not by nature, but by the actions of males.
2. "Misandrist" posts. Firstly, it is my position (which I developed from reading literature) that the term Misandry derives from the manosphere in an attempt to delegitimize feminism and frame it as an opposing force to misogyny. This is not true. Misandry does not carry the same systemic impacts that misogyny does. Misogyny is used to silence and oppress women. Claims of misandry are used to do the same when women rightfully "call out" the abhorrent practices of males across the world.

This being said, posts that are geared towards a hatred or disgust of males will also be "thinned" out as filling a subreddit with these types of posts does not decenter males, they are still centered in the conversation. The conversation is about males. This subreddit is supposed to be a space to speak about the oppression women face and center women in the conversations. This does not mean all these types of posts will be automatically removed, we will just ensure the subject matter of the post centers around women's oppression and Radical Feminism, and not males. A review of Radical Feminist literature is a good demonstration of how women are centered in talks about patriarchy.

Finally, posts containing topics that are against the Reddit TOS will also be removed. This includes talks of violence or eugenics to "select out males." Sex-selective procedures are used by patriarchal families because males are seen as superior and given favour. Reversing this procedure against males is essentially "painting the walls of the patriarchy pink" (for lack of a better term).

These changes are not meant to placate to males. The horrors they continue to perpetuate must continue to be voiced, women's voices must continue to be heard and males must begin to confront the patriarchy and reap what they have sown (such as the 4B movement which I support).

Thank you all for your understanding and continued good faith participation in our subreddit!

hello! im 20f, have been a feminist all my life, growing more and more radical as i aged. i read theory, consider myself a gender abolitionist, am pursuing university education.
my opinions are all in order and i believe in them, but going outside makes me realise that nothing will ever achieve any significant change during our lifetimes.

i was watching a random movie (the last duel 2021) and i was just so overcome with hopelessness. its been known to be a more “feminist” movie (obviously in a very liberal and surface-level way) but it just filled me with rage.

its set during charles vi’s france, so a period piece. but how is life much different when in courts women are still told that “if it was truly rape, the female body has ways of shutting down” (actual thing that i heard happen a few years ago, and im drawing a parallel to a priest in the movie telling the heroine that “since she got pregnant, which she can only do if she experiences pleasure, there was no way it was rape. rape cannot cause pregnancy”)

one less radical than me might argue that “its good that these movies exist because it raises awareness”. to what? most people would watch it and say “thank god times are better now”.

i just wish the planet got insta nuked. no significant change is going to happen during our lifetimes, not when every single thing in the world is working against us. no matter how much i mind my business and live a good life, anything can happen at any time at the hands of a man. no matter how successful i might become, it wont matter for womens liberation in the long run.

how do you manage these deep feelings of hopelessness? genuine question i need advice

Long story short, I was out alone at night in a city I don’t know because my friend and I fell out and he left me stranded. A man approached me in a park. My phone was dead, he said he’d help me find a taxi. He didn’t help me find a taxi. It didn’t escalate to rape, but he forcibly kissed and groped me several times while I tried to “befriend” him to get him to calm down and leave me alone. I tried reassuring him we just needed “time to get to know each other” and joking that “I’m not that easy” but he knew I was lying and kept persisting. I eventually managed to get the fuck out of there after being stuck with him for almost 2 hours and got myself a taxi home. Luckily, I had enough cash on me.

I’m so fucking tired. I’m so sick of dealing with this shit. It’s rarer to be sexually assaulted by a stranger so silly me hoped it wouldn’t happen. It was a wide open empty dark space and I was stranded. Just a reminder to take cash with you and a portable charger everywhere you go because it might just save your life. I had no money in my bank account and it was my only way out. I genuinely don’t know what I would’ve done without it. Fuck men and fuck the patriarchy. Tired of healing from trauma only to be traumatised again. Stay safe ladies and feel free to share your experience, I’d love to read them right now. ❤️‍🩹

it represents seeing women as more harmless. There is no real open-mindedness because it takes for granted that a woman is more harmless compared to a man.

For example, when it comes to threesomes, an MMF one is perceived in a totally different way. It is focused mostly on 'the girl getting fucked by another guy' and on cuckoldry(they see the other men as a competitor,but they don t care about the competition between women in a ffm) rather than on sharing an experience among three people. Meanwhile, an FFM one takes for granted that it is just a game or open-mindedness.

I don't like that female homosexuality isn't taken seriously, that it is seen as a phase, as something that exists just for fun, or that they are just waiting for the right man.

i think that maybe this Is the reason that even if i would enjoy a threesome i will never do It, because i feel that Is kinda rooted in patriarchy,or maybe this Is my impression.

i would like to hear your opinion!

I only started to get in touch with radical feminism (or any feminism at all) in the last week, and it seems like it's a new world of stuff that I needed to hear now, specially when there are so little people around me that agree on it. Tho, I could only find so much as one book that seemed interesting, and it is: Refusing to be a man: essays on sex and justice by John Stoltenberg.

I don't know how weird that can sound, but I generally will like feminine identity authors. There's no profound logical reason, i just rarely can see myself in any men - fiction or not -, John is a huge exception. It means that titles aren't out of the table just because they're written by other gender identities, it's just a preference.

I would like some suggestion mainly on anything that involves gender and sexuality, because it's something that has been changing a lot on me lately. If the labels even change anything in your answer: I'm asexual, biromantic and agender.

I recently got rejected by a guy who wasn't physically my type. I liked him because we had good conversations, he seemed emotionally mature and we just seemed to have a lot in common. Guess what though, he still rejected me despite him claiming I'm incredible and beautiful, and before I confessed my feelings to him, he would put me on a pedestal, telling me how rare I am and how much he admires me. Yet, he wasn't interested in pursuing it.

I honestly feel sick. I know him not reciprocating the feelings I had doesn't make him a villain. That's valid and that's his right. But I'm just thinking to myself, so here he is claiming I'm all of these things, and also, not to sound arrogant at all and I hate that I even have to mention this but, I am actually beautiful, or atleast, a lot of people think so, and I've been painted and drawn by people. Yet, he still somehow did not think I was good enough to be pursued? And here I am looking stupid, falling for a guy who is not even remotely my type physically. It hurts.

I'm in the midst of a relationship issue where gender dynamics feel very much at play, but I cannot articulate exactly what is happening. I know some of you will read this and just say "dump him" - but I'm trying to learn and grow from this situation and I'd like to be able to better understand what gender dynamics are happening. Any insight much appreciated:

///

I’ve been with my boyfriend for three years. He is 39 and I am 33. I have a severe chronic illness which makes decisions around children complicated.

He is very committed to having children and has started testing his sperm. He’s making lifestyle choices to improve his sperm (for several months: abstaining from alcohol and weed, working out, eating healthy, etc). To be clear - he already had it tested and the results were very good - he just is trying to make them better... apparently. I have tried to be as supportive as I can of him even though we are both aware that I am not 100% committed to having kids the way that he is at this present moment. I’ve bought him supplements that I read were good for sperm health, I’ve listened to him talk about it and asked a lot of questions to understand better, I’ve routinely checked in about how he’s feeling, I’ve made him meals that were healthy, I’ve tried to help with stress management. He mentioned books about parenting that he wanted to read and I offered to read with him. But he has accused me of not being supportive of his process of… working on his fertility? 

I’ve told him that to get clarity on children I have other needs that need to be met (needs that are much more social/emotional): I need to see him more than one night a week (he had a very insane job and we have never in our three years together spent an entire weekend together), I want him to know my friends and family better, and most importantly I want us to talk about the social/emotional component of what it would mean to be parents together. I have suggested a popular workbook that we could work out of so our talks had some structure. He said he didn’t know if he could do that because it would require more/emotional capacity from him and he apparently doesn’t feel like I am being supportive enough for him to give that in return …??

I feel wildly confused that this person who ostensibly wants me to be the mother to his children, has not prioritized extremely basic bare minimum requests of mine. I would like to be on the same page as him about kids. But it’s like he wants me to just be all in without doing the steps I describe (to be clear: he in theory agrees those things are necessary, but it’s been years of no action/change). I have told him that even if I *was* 100% in on kids right now, these are still needs I would have. Beyond that - I know I deserve someone who is *enthusiastic* about meeting the needs I've vocalized. The vibe is that he "agrees" all of the things I've outlined need to happen -- but  it feels like a chore, another responsibility whenever he talks about it or whenever we navigate it.

I feel like the gender dynamics of it all are glaring and yet I cannot articulate exactly what they are.

His obsession with his sperm health feels strange to me in a way I can’t explain. He is taking it so seriously and I don’t want to make him feel bad about it - especially because I am actually grateful to be with someone who understands fertility is not just a woman's responsibility. But when he says I’m not being supportive he has explained that he feels alone in it; he wants me to praise him for the work he’s putting in, he wants it to feel more collective. But I am obviously not on the same page as him *right now* and he knows that. I feel like I don’t know how else to be supportive without being inauthentic to where I am at which I have repeatedly communicated directly, with care.

What am I missing? Am I actually being unsupportive? I feel like I'm losing my mind.

Let's state the obvious because apparently, it needs to be said. Men have held power for most of recorded history. Kings, dictators, CEOs, religious leaders. They've built empires, waged wars, and shaped the world in their image.

And what do we have to show for it? Wars that have killed millions. A planet that's literally burning. Systems that exploit the majority for the benefit of a few. A culture that equates masculinity with dominance, control, and violence.

I'm not saying every man is evil. I'm saying the system of male leadership—centuries of it—has produced a world that is dangerously unbalanced, violent, and unsustainable.

People will say "not all men." I know. I'm not talking about individual men. I'm talking about the pattern, the system, the trend.

Some will argue that women can be just as corrupt. Sure, that's true. But the tendency is different. When you put a group with more empathy, cooperation, and care at the top, the outcomes are statistically better. This isn't about hating men. This is about pattern recognition.

I'm not asking for a world where men are vilified. I'm asking: can we at least admit that the system of male leadership has failed? Can we stop pretending that the people who've led us to the edge of destruction are the same ones who can lead us out of it?

It's time to try something new. I'm not saying women are perfect. But after 10,000 years of male leadership, maybe it's time to let the other half of the population have a turn.

Men, tell me: why should you keep leading? Women, tell me: what would you do differently?

Look at Hassan piker. He says white race should be destroyed but ultimately only hooks up with white women like Ashley st Claire. He ain’t touching AOC and the likes with a 10 feet pole
They think women are to be milked for content for their views

outside of artistic expression (for the purposes of appearances) makeup is harmful to women. women are told theyre ugly and not enough societally and by these companies to push them into being extremely insecure and feeling like they need these products to look normal. most people dont call this out because its so normalized but think about it: why arent men wearing makeup to feel more confident? because their arent a billion brands in their face telling them to. is it really ‘your choice’ if you’ve been peer pressured since childhood? theres nothing ‘empowering’ about makeup. it is a pretty cage.

So basically anytime I'm debating or arguing with a man online they assume that i'm a liberal feminist who wants equality but when I shut that down suddenly I'm bad for not wanting equality i've noticed how men are totally against equality unless you are too it's crazy how they still expect us to push for equality when for equality to work it needs to be two sided, but it's always been women begging men for it but anyways, have you guys also experience this too also my first post here

So I saw this video on Tik Tok that was saying that some men use "females" because it covers both women and girls. This resonated with me because sometimes I find myself thinking it would be easier to write "females" instead of "women and girls" when discussing sex and gender based oppression. So it makes sense that predatory men would have a similar line of thinking and use it to give the illusion of speaking about women when they really mean girls (or they mean both but dont want people to know they are including girls).

I know the use of the word "females" as a noun is already problematic due to the dehumanizing nature but I thought this was also an interesting take.

I'm posting here because I am wondering what others here think.

Edit for grammar

recently there was a post about a subreddit about degrading women (literally called “degrade this c*nt”) and there was women selling content playing into the fantasy. i made a comment about how they’re setting women back by acting that way. someone replied to me saying i’m a disgusting sexist for my comment and that women can do whatever they want. while i agree, but actions have implications and consequences. so am i really just sexist?