Meta-Spam Comment
On the one hand you have radical feminists ("radfem" is a slur) who argue that because we live in a culture of coercion, even if his partner welcomes his advance it's difficult or impossible for male-initiated heterosexual sex to be anything but rape.
On the other hand you get just some of the most rediculous spam titles imaginable ("She can't help noticing when it's so bit it hurts") that... strongly reinforce the radical point of view.
Both positions seem to rely too much on the dominant paradigm that men are instinct-driven, hormone-addled, unthinking, incomprehending, obligate sex machines, a.k.a. the "sex class."
Which is kind of a shame.
I don't think either the spammers or the radicals win too many converts with their rhetoric, and in the case of radicals it matters. A lot. Because nobody gives a shit if spammers go broke pushing a meat-robot view of men, but when radicals alienate more more women and men than they recruit then real people suffer because the dominant paradigm is advanced instead of subverted.
"Radfem" is a slur? Did I miss something?
[Hi ZZ. It's always possible I'm the one missing something but it's just that I've noticed that "radfem" is used far more often by critics of radical feminism than by its adherents, and used more often when the critics are angry about something than at other times. That hardly means they (or anyone else) should never be criticized, just that the word seems to come out more often then. --fl]
While I certainly use "radfem" as a "slur" of sorts to refer to a specific type I'm not particularly fond of, I do so because I saw those same ones using the term for themselves extensively. That's actually the first place I ever even heard it. Check out Debs of the Burning Times, etc.
[I get that some people use the term themselves, and the term is *10,000 times better* than all the critics who just use "feminists" the way John McCain uses "Islamist" when he really means "violently puritan Wahhabist political radicals," but because use by critics tends to set of my little Orwellian/Othering alarms I think it should be avoided. Thanks, Whatsername. --fl]
Hmm - I just use "radfem" as shorthand, following the example of those who self-identify as such. IME, those who use "radfem" as if it was innately derogatory usually use "radical feminist" in exactly the same way. (And, tangentially, I applaud the self-identified radfems - whether those I generally respect, or those I consider asshatted - for continuing to so self-describe; I depise the practice of relinquishing a word because someone used it derogatorily.)
It may be that "radfem" is commoner when folks - either radical feminists or their critics - are angry, simply because folks have even less patience for typing out terms in full at such times. (Ideally, they'd recognize that as a cue to "put the keyboard down and back away slowly", and come back to it when they're calmer, but, well, human fallibility.)
Or, Figleaf, were you thinking of spoken use? My theory would be of considerably lesser force (though still applicable to some extent) in that case.
Sunflower
[Good point about the spoken use, Sunflower. During a brief flirtation with college-level journalism courses I wound up working on the school newspaper. The editor and arts and entertainment desk reporter (both bitterly Stalinist "communists") had an astonishingly bitter feud going on with the local radical lesbian separatists... who seemed to hew closer to *Trotskyite* "communism.") Anyway late at night when I was trying to do graphics and layout they would sit around agit-propping about "radfems." So maybe that's where I got hackles over the term. (Now *those* "radfems" were scary -- they'd shoot at silhouettes of men at target ranges and then post the targets with all head shots on phone poles around town.) --fl]
Oh, heck, yeah, that'd put a massive negative weighting on how you hear the term, Figleaf. Both sides of that feud give me the chills; I'm... not fond... of extremist ideologues.
Sunflower
[To be fair there really was a "culture of rape" back then so I'm not saying they were even necessarily out of line to take "stay angry" to the extremes they did. But the result, intended or not, was similar to how you might feel around members of a motorcycle gang. Protection, yes, but also probably the source for all those stupid, thuggish "feminazi" stereotypes that, decades later, are still trotted out as if it was just yesterday. Thanks, Sunflower. --fl]