Opengender

Many would regard (lesbian) radical feminism as absolutely distinct from Marxist- or Socialist-feminist perspectives. Of course, the aims and strategies of diverse feminisms are not merely distinctive but often conflict. An 'orthodox' Marxist-feminist discourse was articulated "without challenging the primacy of production implied by the orthodox model ..." (Benhabib and Cornell, 1987: 2). The influential French radical feminists, on the other hand, articulated their critiques not through an orthodox (linear-determinist and empiricist) Marxist framework but in terms of a post-structuralist discourse already engaged in a project of deconstructing ideology, language and subjectivity (see Weedon's overview, 1987: 19-73; Wittig, 1980: 21-24). This is, of course, the same discursive field which produced French and British film theory (Easthope, 1991: 16-43; Stam et al, 1992: 18-27). 

With its more diffuse origins in a culture with strongly empiricist traditions, US radical feminist discourse refers itself to a far more generalised framework of women's 'experience:'

For feminist thinkers of the present era the first and most fundamental act of our own emancipation was granting ourselves authority as perceivers, and we accomplished this act by discovering agreement in the experiences and perceptions of women. (Frye, 1990: 176)

Nevertheless, US radical feminism directly inspired the avowedly lesbian forms of French Feminism (Marks and de Courtivron, 1981: 33-36). 

British feminists tend to distinguish between a (largely lesbian) radical/revolutionary feminism which attempts a radical break with patriarchal models and a (largely heterosexual) socialist feminism with its belief that the discursive tools of post-structuralist Marxism can be used to provide feminist analyses (Mitchell, 1971). A similar divide can be observed in French feminism. Anglo-American radical feminism is, of course, the form of feminism most commonly associated with lesbianism:

Historically, radical feminists have been those who are members of or who identify with a lesbian-feminist community that rejects male-dominated heterosexual sex. (Ferguson et al, 1984: 106)

Within French Feminism, it was the revolutionary strand which was associated specifically with lesbianism:

The lesbians among the members of the "Féministes révolutionnaires" were convinced that only a lesbian position could withstand appropriation by a patriarchal, capitalist society. (Marks and de Courtivron, 1981: 33)

Feminist critiques of patriarchal culture, seen as articulating a communality of female experience and a specifically female cultural perspective, are often bundled together as 'cultural feminism' (for example, Showalter, 1986: 263), particularly in the USA. On the other hand, an 'essentialist' cultural feminism may also be regarded as distinct from 'constructionist' radical feminism (Kimball, 1981: 3; Dyer, 1990: 179; Code, 1991: 80-81). 

Despite their differences, French feminism and the forms of British feminism which it influenced share with Anglo-American radical feminism a primary focus in gender-difference, as opposed to an 'orthodox' Marxist focus on productivity/reproductivity. I am not concerned here with the minutiae of feminist disputes but with the common constructs to which conflicting second-wave feminisms refer their differences. I shall therefore follow some influential feminist literary theorists (for example, Moi, 1985; Sedgwick, 1985; Showalter, 1986) in acknowledging their differences and conflicts and yet treating Anglo-American radical feminisms, French feminisms and socialist-feminisms as mutually productive rhetorical strategies within the discursive formation of second-wave feminism:

At the core of this feminist project lies the claim of solidarity or common cause among women as a group across lines of religion, class, race, and other historically significant divisions ... It bears emphasis that this was from the beginning a call for solidarity, not a description of reality. (Offen, 1990: 13)

[I]f the notion of class distinction is correctly, i.e., dialectically posited - that is based on the reality of oppressive dynamics instead of on a static content analysis - it can be said that all women belong to the same social class - [this] along with the breaking away from naturalist ideology - is the primary condition for any feminist struggle ... (Questions Féministes Editorial Collective, 1977; reprinted in Marks and de Courtivron, 1981: 216)

Although ... consciousness-raising groups on the American model are virtually non-existent in France ... the concern with blatant acts of oppression against women and with the institutionalization of sexism is the same among feminists of both countries. (Marks and de Courtivron, 1981: 10)

'French' and 'radical' feminism differ on very many very important issues ... they are alike in seeing all human culture, language, and life as structured in the first place ... by a drama of gender difference. (Sedgwick, 1985: 11)

In many ways, the direct experience that led to the formation of the first French women's groups in the summer of 1968 was strikingly similar to that of the American women's movement ... Predictably enough, they took their cue from American women and started to form their own women-only groups ... Once the Anglo-American reader has overcome the effects of ... culture-shock, however, it doesn't take long to discover that French theory has contributed powerfully to the feminist debate about the nature of women's oppression, the construction of sexual difference and the specificity of women's relations to language and writing. (Moi, 1985: 95-6)

To date, most commentary on French feminist critical discourse has stressed its fundamental dissimilarity from the empirical American orientation, its unfamiliar intellectual grounding in linguistics, Marxism, neo-Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, and Derridean deconstruction. Despite these differences, however, the new French feminisms have much in common with radical American feminist theories in terms of intellectual affiliations and rhetorical energies. (Showalter, 1986: 248)

I am, of course, aware that radical feminist discourse represents a very specific strand of 1970s/1980s lesbianism which was, in social-historical terms, far more diverse. Although it clearly did not by any means represent all lesbians, lesbian-feminist discourse and its separatist communities dominated lesbian life (whether lived as conformity or dissent) during the 1970s and into the 1980s.

While their community encompassed only a fraction of American women who loved women, it was their image of lesbianism that dominated the 1970s, since they felt freer than the other women to present themselves through the media. (Faderman, 1991: 218)

Gyn/Ecology is probably the most important and influential single work to come out of the American women's movement since Kate Millet's Sexual Politics ... It is influential because has been read by an enormous number of women, because it elicits positive responses from feminists who might not otherwise agree on anything else, and because it has helped to shape at least some of the broad debates in the women's movement for quite some time. (Morris, 1988: 28)

In any event, second-wave feminist theory as a whole has, by now, been repositioned by postmodernist theorists as effectively falling back into an essentialising discourse of gender, whatever its original intention (Morris, 1988: 28-50; Fuss, 1990; Butler, 1990; Jeffreys, 1994, 97-120). 

The fragmentation of identities [which postmodernism] proposes, specifically the dissolution of the category women, threatens the historical feminist project ... The category women is essential in relation to the equally essential category men. This dualism persists in our sexed bodies and in our cultural constructions of their meaning. (Offen, 1990: 15)

The [postmodernist] version of gender the lesbianandgay theorists are presenting is a far cry from the understanding of gender which other feminist theorists might have. (Jeffreys, 1993: 98)

As such, these postmodern forms of feminism represent a fundamental break with the underlying continuities of second-wave feminist discourse.