Political Not Generational: Getting Real About Contemporary UK Radical Feminism

Abstract

In this article, I present data from qualitative research with 30 self-identified radical feminists who are currently active in the British feminist movement. I explore how participants defined their feminism, and threats to it – particularly challenges to organising women-only political space. I also focus on how participants related to the term third wave feminism, their definitions and critiques of this type of feminism as they perceived it. Many of the radical feminists in my research were keen to disassociate from the term ‘third wave’ and expressed an allegiance and connection to second-wave radical feminism, including those radical feminists too young to have any direct connection to that ‘wave’, being born too late to be politically active during the 1970s and 1980s.

Keywords::

• Feminism
• third wave
• radical feminism
• lesbian
• young women

Notes

^1. Published works by Black feminists, including many radical feminists, can be viewed in a variety of sources, much of which are online in the current WLM, coming from bloggers and commentators, but I would also refer the reader to collected works in the explicitly radical feminist publications: Trouble & Strife magazine (2009) and Bell and Klein's (1996) reader ‘Radically Speaking’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Finn Mackay

Dr Finn Mackay is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of the West of England. She has been involved in feminist activism for 20 years and in 2004 founded the London Feminist Network and the revived London Reclaim the Night. With a professional background in Youth Work, before returning to academia, Finn set up and managed domestic violence prevention and anti-bullying programmes for a Local Education Authority in London. She is an Executive Member of the Feminist & Women's Studies Association, a Trustee of The Feminist Archive and an Ambassador for the Worker's Educational Association, and speaks and writes regularly on women's liberation and particularly on male violence against women. Her book on British feminist activism will be published by Palgrave in March 2015.