On the First Credo
of a Manifesto for A Radical-Materialist Feminism #MRMF
We’re looking forward to sharing women’s speaking and writing about/around Root & Spark’s manifesto. The approaches could be very personal, or historical, or poetic, or artistic, or philosophical, or shaped by other axes of oppression you may face in addition to sex-based oppression — or wild and ungovernable combinations of all these!
I offer this bit on the first credo as only one attempt, imperfect and partial. Frankly, less creative than I might like. But, we are here to #PracticeInPublic, so here’s a go!
First Credo
This feminism stands in a long looping lineage, threaded together from the indigenous and black feminisms of the 19th century to the suffragists and suffragettes, to the radical, socialist, black and womanist, ecological, lesbian, chicana, and post-colonial feminisms that bring us to the current moment. We believe that each strand of feminism evolves in relation to the others and directly addresses the various elements of patriarchal dominance. We value knowledge and application these traditions for their power and insight, with an eye for their oversights and errors. We acknowledge that no one feminism is sufficient for all women as our various oppressions shape our experience of patriarchy differently. We aim to work across these feminist traditions and among these communities more wisely and with hindsight as our guide.
The history of women’s liberation thought and action is vast. A woman founded the first university in Iran in the 1400s, and it educated women and men. Women all over the global south have adopted various strands of radical feminism in their long resistance to male supremacy, pre-, colonial, and post-. A current radical feminist movement in South Korea is one of the most hardcore going, and against a male chauvinism the cringiest of western incels would only aspire to.
Knowing everything about this history is impossible for any one woman. The writing, research, social study, legal and legislative work, science and medicine, the imaginative glory of women’s efforts to describe ourselves in history on our own terms needs more than university department or a woman or two in a male dominated field. It needs a whole woman's university – a City of Ladies, maybe, a bit like Christine de Pisan imagined in the 1400s. But, having this vast knowledge base to hand and knowing some of it is absolutely necessary.
Speaking from the US, my view looks back on a history were the New Left of the 1960s failed utterly to resist the twin backlashes of christian fundamentalism and economic neoliberalism. And here we are with the various forces of those conservative cultures on the rise and taking power across the democratic world. Austerities increase, rights decrease, resource abuse increases, and our planetary ecology weakens and frays by the week. We need our roots, we need our best nourishment for them.
Because everything is on the line now. Because what the slivers of this history that I know tell me is that building the world feminists have advocated for is to build the world that will let humans keep on humaning for more than a few centuries.
This history is not perfect soil for all kinds of women and our feminisms. Women of the global north have sometimes failed to respect the knowledge and creativity of women in the global south. In the US, various failures of political courage and feminist vision led white feminists to ask black feminists to wait until the Equal Rights Amendment was secure before the women’s movement would work directly on the racism that complicates black women’s experiences of sexism. Good thing black women did not wait!!! Heterosexual women asked lesbians to take a back seat, not bring their “lavender menace” into the mix. ERA first, then compulsory heterosexuality. Good thing lesbians did not wait!!! Our soil needs amending with rich new compost, watering with fresh wisdoms.
It is our aim and hope that we will practise this radical-materialist feminism with a much deeper commitment to material intersectionality than our second wave foremothers did. Radical feminists like Andrea Dworkin never left class or race out of her analysis of male supremacies many nuanced harms for women according to our differences. But mainstream, liberal feminism, did. And it grew into a third wave feminism that bowed almost with relief to the demands of the male backlash: the Cosmo/boss girl, sex positivity, sex work is work, inclusivity, idenitity…
We want to move with a wider awareness, trusting that women in each of our contexts knows how best to resist and create in our locales and cultures. Trusting that where we can share analysis or resources, even just awareness, we will. An essential element of a radical-materialist feminism is not only a tolerance of difference, but its celebration and recognition as our strongest source of energy and creativity.
We know – we at the early stages of Root & Spark Collective – that forcing this work is a mistake. Rather, working in this spirit, staying alert to emergent nodes of connection, welcoming critiques that open stronger possibilities, this is the way … or this is the ways. (*)