Radical Feminists get lambasted for having any positions in common with Right Wing Women, perversely described by some as “being in bed with the Right.”

We’ve found some common ground on the issues of pornography, prostitution, BDSM, and, recently, the topic of male transgender access to female spaces. We disagree usually in areas of reproductive rights, homosexual rights, and the nature of tradition (feminists finding most tradition male supremacist and women on the right finding it cause for nostalgia and protection).

Whenever accused of needing to check my position because I share a point with right wing women, I am astounded that this is supposed to somehow bother me.

These arbitrary categories are men’s categories. They are ideological. They are based on the male supremacist dominant paradigm and attempts to uphold these divisions among women serve MEN. It’s Divide and Conquer 101. It encourages women to avoid collaboration and even candid discussion with women from one of men’s camps, even discussions in the interests of ourselves as women. The notion that sharing a standpoint with a right wing, left wing, anarchist, bla bla woman is somehow reprehensible only speaks to the accusers inability to recognize WOMEN as a distinct group that crosses ALL cultural, geographical, and political boundaries. Recognizing WOMEN as our common allies, for better or worse, whether we agree or not, is a fundamental basis of Radical Feminism.

Unlike political categories, which are based on ideology, Radical Feminism recognizes concrete, material categories that are based on a tangible common ground: femaleness. Radical Feminist analysis starts exactly there, specifically because this tangible distinction is the axis of patriarchy to begin with. Radical Feminism articulates what women, as a group, have in common under male supremacist rule and seeks to undo women’s oppression to a state of total liberation. All women. Not just feminists. Not even just feminists who agree that femaleness is a thing. A real thing. Not a feeling a man has.

Many women in my family are right wing women, and as women they have a stake in the ramifications of being female within patriarchy. Even if they don’t agree that we are living in patriarchy, I have found through enough conversation with them that we do agree on some aspects of our experiences as women, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. On the contrary, pornography, prostitution, sadomasochistic sexual practices, gender dynamics (including transgenderism), motherhood, spinsterhood, workplace sexism, media representations of women, reproductive rights, bodily autonomy, male violence, migration, access to resources, and more cross all political, geographical, and cultural boundaries for women. It is therefore not reprehensible, but deeply necessary that women unite far beyond any of men’s petty categories.

What Radical Feminism seeks is a united front against all misogyny and our oppression as FEMALES. As women. Every woman is a sister. She is not my enemy or opponent. She is my ally. She may vehemently disagree with my positions, but where we converge and recognize our common plight is where we find our power to collectively overcome.

I’ve been calling this the Women’s Wing for some time, so mote it be.