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Caitlin McGregor♀☭

@caitlnmcgregor

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philosophy masters + educator 🇿🇦
radical feminist pieces on female victimhood, violence, womanhood, philosophy, and patriarchy
@rivercelt + @777radfem

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read more on my substack: Humanities with McGregor. #radicalfeminism #genderbasedviolence by @caitlnmcgregor

women's rights & safety symposium done and dusted ✅️💜 it was an honour to be able to listen and contribute to discussions on gender-based violence, victimhood, patriarchy, and institutional responses to violence against women with a panel of researchers, legal professionals, and activists. thank you very much to the UP women in law society for the invitation to be on this panel. by @caitlnmcgregor

yesterday, i handed in my philosophy master’s dissertation ‘victimhood on trial’, and i can’t believe the project that has consumed my entire being for the last two years is finally done. two years of deepening my understanding of violence against women, discourse, post-structuralism, radical feminism, and victimhood. two years of analysing discourse and learning about the public’s patriarchal logic when dealing with female claims to victimhood. two years of juggling my research, my jobs, and a private life that resembles this dissertation in uncanny ways, and living almost the exact material of my work.

i thought i’d feel excitement and relief after handing this in; my biggest feeling is numbness. i don’t know if it’s because my cat died as i finished this, or if it’s because i’m burnt out, or if it’s because this research isn’t just theory for me (it’s probably a combination of all three). i also feel a bit of grief, as this is a project that has been the centre of my existence for so long.

but i am also excited. and i am far from done with this topic. much more to come :) by @caitlnmcgregor

some novels i can’t wait to start / finish by @caitlnmcgregor

for those who asked, here is a list of readings based on my post on the intersections of radical feminism with marxist and socialist feminism.

radical feminists agree largely with marxist and socialist feminism (in fact socialist feminism is often considered a synthesis of marxfem and radfem theory). however, i will say that i do not necessarily agree with the unitary systems approach that many marxist feminists employ. i do think that the structures of patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy overlap and co-constitute each other immensely, and should thus not always be studied in isolation. but i feel that this approach often collapses these structures into one, leaving little room for a focus on the often autonomous functioning of class exploitation, racism, and female subjugation. these are all interconnected, but they are not identical, nor is each form of oppression surmountable by destroying the other. there are phenomena which require a unitary structural analysis, and there are times where a focus on a single system is necessary.

this list of books is not exhaustive. feel free to add on. and please don't assume that every book on the list is an endorsement of every position or moral standpoint the authors have ever expressed. likewise don't assume that an exclusion is an intentional slight. i am but human and do not claim to have read everything in existence.

for free access to these books, use this:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1GcJZPuOAboqkX-JMNYFQ07jtx2Mk6cI4?usp=sharing

(copy and paste it into your browser)

#marxistfeminism #radicalfeminism #socialistfeminism by @caitlnmcgregor

this subreddit truly scares me. #radicalfeminism #mensrightsactivist by @caitlnmcgregor

part one of a small series on the intersections of radical feminism with other branches of feminism. we often treat different feminist approaches as mutually exclusive, but this is far from the case. in this particular example, it is extremely common for radical feminists to also be marxist and socialist feminists. i consider myself to adopt elements from all three in my analyses. this diagram is by no means exhaustive, and it is very possible that i have overlooked or forgotten something, so feel free to suggest or add anything. #radicalfeminism #marxistfeminism #socialistfeminism by @caitlnmcgregor

being white in societies built and functioning on white supremacy (alongside patriarchy) means we will often have blindspots that we aren't even aware of. radical feminism is not a majority white movement, but it has historically had the same kinds of blindspots and pitfalls that we see in white feminism. there are several radical feminist thinkers that have pointed this out, and i would like to emphasise this as well: radical feminism can be, has been, and should be intersectional alongside its primary focus on patriarchy as an oppressive system. it is not dilution to acknowledge and understand the intersections of patriarchy with other systems. a sole focus on patriarchy is not inherently erasure of a focus on all other systems, nor does it necessarily signal ignorance. but it can veer into the ignorance of white feminism when we refuse to ever engage with intersectionality in general. #radicalfeminism #whitefeminism #intersectionalfeminism #blackfeminism by @caitlnmcgregor

i have been on a serious fiction kick lately, and i think feminist fiction deserves a place alongside feminist theory. theory gives us the concepts to understand patriarchy, but fiction allows us to inhabit the worlds those concepts describe. it makes the violence intimate, the contradictions tangible, and the consequences of women’s subordination impossible to keep at a comfortable intellectual distance. it gives us access to the interior lives of women navigating systems of domination, and invites us to imagine forms of existence beyond the conditions we have been taught to accept. there is something politically valuable about encountering patriarchy not only as a structure to analyse, but as a reality lived, felt, resisted, and survived by women. here are ten novels i think every radical feminist should read, or might find worth reading. #radicalfeminism #feministfiction by @caitlnmcgregor

we are born into a world that has already decided what we are allowed to become. our bodies become the grounds on which culture assigns us a role, disciplines our desires, shapes our consciousness and determines the boundaries of our lives. we learn to understand ourselves through the very structures that confine us. femininity and masculinity become prisons mistaken for identities, and the self is sacrificed to the demands of a social order that presents its own expectations as nature.

dworkin exposes the violence of a world in which the body becomes a sentence, gender becomes a destiny, and freedom becomes unimaginable within the conditions of our own existence. we dream of heaven as a place without suffering, without sex, without the body, because we have been taught to experience embodied existence as inseparable from domination. we imagine liberation as escape from life itself.

the tragedy of patriarchy is that it does not merely restrict what we can do. it colonises what we can imagine ourselves to be. liberation demands the destruction of the conditions that make our own becoming impossible. #andreadworkin #feministtheory #radicalfeminism #genderabolition by @caitlnmcgregor

my current tbr, all from my late father <3 #kafka #alanpaton #hermannhesse #jamesjoyce by @caitlnmcgregor

anyone else with first-hand experience, feel free to add on if you're comfortable. #domesticviolenceawareness #radicalfeminism #gbv by @caitlnmcgregor