Okay, so off the back of this conversation, I want to say something that often comes up when I'm teaching at the school, but I don't think I've ever laid out here...

I am a radical socialist feminist. To me that means I am opposed to an entire social and political structure that

is grounded on the control, erasure and appropriation of women's bodies and women's labour, and the other structures of domination that spring from this. It also means I am opposed to patriarchal gender as the means of enforcing that structure.

It is fundamental to my

materialist analysis that this is a structural and class-based critique. And the object of my activism is to a) raise the class consciousness of women and b) critique the *structures* that oppress that.

We currently live an extremely fucked up and imperfect world. Inside that

fucked up and imperfect world, people make all kinds of fucked up and imperfect decisions, to try and survive, and deal with how hard it is living in a fucked up and imperfect world.

If we want to raise the class consciousness of women, the most important thing is that we

present the analysis to them in a way that they can *hear.*

Anything that involves personally judging and shaming people for making fucked up and imperfect choices in a fucked up and imperfect world works against people hearing us.

People who feel personally judged and shamed

do not listen and do not hear.

One of the main reasons why radical feminism fell into somewhat oblivion at the end of the sex wars is because women felt personally judged and shamed by the way it was presented.*

One of the things this horror-show has given us is a chance of a do-over. Let's not fuck it up by making the same mistake again.

*This does not mean we need to change the analysis. We can say 'yes, this choice is not consistent with feminist principles,' and we can both

recognise that at the same time as recognising that individual humans deserve empathy and understanding for making fucked up and imperfect choices in a fucked up and imperfect world.

No feminist alive is a perfect feminist. And in this world, that has to be okay.

This is precisely what I am talking about.

My belief is that it is *not* in the interests of radical feminism to behave like puritans who judge individual people for falling short of living perfect radical feminist lives. Because that is precisely what alienates people from

hearing the analysis.

We are against prostitution. That does not mean we judge individual women for engaging in prostitution. We are against the performance of patriarchal beauty standards. That does not mean we judge individual women for performing them in a world in which they

might well suffer real and damaging consequences for not performing them.

What matters is that women can HEAR the analysis. Because it is the most fucking important analysis in the world. It is perfectly possible to maintain the integrity of the analysis while also recognising

that NO ONE can perfectly live that analysis in this fucked up world.

If you are more interested in judging and shaming individuals for failure to be perfect radical feminists than you are in presenting the analysis in a way that women can hear, what you are doing is actually

not in our interests.

We fucked this up once before by being self-righteous rigid dogmatic and judgemental with the mess and reality of real people's lives.

I, for one, will absolutely not make that mistake again.