Overview

Radical feminism is the strand of feminism that treats male dominance, or patriarchy, as the deepest and oldest form of social oppression, and that aims to dismantle it at its roots instead of reforming it at the edges. It took shape in the American women's liberation movement of the late 1960s and produced some of the most influential and most argued-over feminist writing of the twentieth century. Its main ideas are that women are oppressed as a class because of their sex, that "gender" is a social hierarchy laid on top of sex and not an inner identity, and that the goal is to abolish gender roles altogether.

Radical feminism also matters a great deal in detransition. On /r/detrans, many detransitioned and desisted women describe radical feminist writing as the thing that let them understand their distress about being female as a reaction to misogyny, not as evidence of a male self. Other detransitioners, women and men, describe radical feminist spaces as hostile, punitive or ideological. See feminism for the wider movement and second-wave feminism for the historical setting.

Origins

Radical feminism grew out of the New Left and civil rights movements of the 1960s. From 1967 women in those movements, tired of being sidelined by male comrades, began forming separate groups: New York Radical Women (which staged the 1968 protest against the Miss America pageant), Redstockings, The Feminists, Cell 16 in Boston and many others. The historian Alice Echols traces this rise, and the movement's quick fragmentation, in Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967–1975 (Echols 1989).

These groups split from liberal feminism, which sought equal legal rights and access to institutions (the approach of the National Organization for Women), and from socialist or Marxist feminism, which treated women's oppression as an effect of capitalism. The Redstockings Manifesto of 1969 put the radical position plainly: "Women are an oppressed class" (Redstockings 1969).

The movement's main method was consciousness raising: small groups of women comparing their private experiences of sex, housework, marriage, abortion and harassment until shared patterns became visible. The slogan "the personal is political" came out of this practice.

Core ideas

Patriarchy and sex class

Radical feminists define patriarchy as a social system in which men as a class hold power over women as a class: economically, sexually, politically and through violence. In this framework a sex class is a group defined by its position in that hierarchy, much as Marxists define economic class by its relation to production. Shulamith Firestone opened The Dialectic of Sex (1970) with the claim that "Sex class is so deep as to be invisible" (Firestone 1970).

Kate Millett's Sexual Politics (1970) read D. H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, Norman Mailer and Jean Genet as evidence that male dominance is a political system kept going by culture, not only by law (Millett 1970/2016). Catharine MacKinnon later moved sexuality to the centre, opening a 1982 paper with the claim that sexuality is to feminism what work is to Marxism: the thing most one's own and most taken away (MacKinnon 1982, discussed in Phelan).

Gender as a hierarchy, not an identity

The idea most important for detransition is the radical feminist account of gender. In this tradition "gender" means the set of roles, traits and expectations a society assigns to people because of their sex: femininity for females, masculinity for males. It is not an inner feeling and not a spectrum of identities. It is a ranking. Masculinity is the dominant role and femininity the subordinate one, and the content of femininity (passivity, decoration, sexual availability, caregiving) is what keeps women in their place.

This builds on Simone de Beauvoir's argument in The Second Sex (1949) that womanhood as a social role is made, not born. For radical feminists, sex is the bodily category and gender the oppressive structure built on it. A woman who rejects femininity is not less of a woman; she is resisting a role that was imposed on her.

On this view the idea of an innate "gender identity" gets things backwards. It turns a social hierarchy back into a personal essence, so that a girl who dislikes the feminine role may conclude she is not really a girl. Many radical feminists see this as reviving the old idea of "male" and "female" brains and personalities that feminism spent decades fighting. Read gender stereotypes and gender as an explanatory framework alongside this section.

Abolishing gender

Because gender is understood as a hierarchy, the radical feminist goal is to abolish it, not to multiply or reassign it. Firestone went furthest. Her publisher quotes her argument that the end goal of feminist revolution must be "not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself" (Firestone 1970). Few later radical feminists shared her hopes for artificial reproduction, but the aim of a world where being female or male implies nothing about how a person should dress, behave, work or love remains central.

Gender abolition in this sense does not mean denying that sex exists. It means freeing both sexes from the expectations attached to sex. One desisted woman summarised the idea:

The feminist and progressive response to that is "stop forcing people into boxes based on sex" (which is actually what radical feminists mean by "abolish gender.") —novaskyd, desisted female

Key thinkers and works

Radical feminism has never had one founder or one doctrine, and its writers disagree sharply with one another. The table lists major public works often cited in discussions of gender and detransition.

Show details: publishers and editions

• Firestone: current edition from Verso.
• Millett: reissued by Columbia University Press (2016) with a foreword by Catharine MacKinnon.
• Dworkin: Intercourse was first published by Free Press (1987).
• Daly: Beacon Press (1978). Daly supervised the doctoral dissertation that became Raymond's book.
• Rich: Signs 5(4), 631–660, doi:10.1086/493756.
• MacKinnon: Harvard University Press (1989).
• Raymond: Beacon Press (1979); reissued by Teachers College Press (1994) with a new introduction on transgender.
• Jeffreys: Routledge (2014).
• Bindel: Palgrave Macmillan (2017); Constable (2021).

Major themes

Pornography and prostitution

Radical feminists see pornography and prostitution as central institutions of male dominance, not as private choices. Andrea Dworkin argued that pornography is implicated in violence against women both in how it is made and in how it shapes men's view of women. In 1983 she and MacKinnon drafted an anti-pornography civil rights ordinance for Minneapolis. It would have let women harmed by pornography sue its makers and distributors. A version passed in Indianapolis was struck down on free speech grounds in 1985 (MNopedia).

The issue split the movement in the feminist sex wars of the 1980s. "Sex-positive" feminists such as Gayle Rubin argued that anti-pornography feminism allied itself with conservative moralism and stigmatised sexual minorities (Rubin 1984). On prostitution, radical feminists such as Julie Bindel campaign for the Nordic model: criminalising the purchase of sex while decriminalising those who sell it. Sweden adopted it in 1999 as part of a law package on violence against women (Women's Studies International Forum 2011). Supporters credit it with reducing prostitution. Critics, including many sex worker organisations and some researchers, argue it makes those selling sex less safe (LSE).

One detransitioned woman described how a pornified picture of womanhood shaped her sense of being a woman before she understood she was lesbian:

I don't know what kind of healthy identity I could've developed, when I didn't want to appeal to men, when I didn't see my worth in being desirable for men, but that was the only way I was taught to be a woman. Not by my parents, not anyone directly, but by society. —anonymous1111199992, detrans

Male violence

Radical feminists treat rape, domestic abuse and harassment as a system that keeps women afraid and compliant, not as the acts of a few deviant men. Rape crisis centres and women's refuges grew largely out of this organising. The analysis also underlies radical feminist defence of single-sex spaces, now a direct point of conflict with trans activists (see gender-critical feminism). It predicts that the threat of male violence shapes how girls experience their bodies from puberty on, a pattern that recurs in detransitioned women's accounts (see trauma and internalised misogyny).

Compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian feminism

In 1980 the poet Adrienne Rich argued that heterosexuality is not simply women's natural preference. It is enforced through economic dependence, the idealisation of romance and marriage, the erasure of lesbian history and the threat of violence (Rich 1980). Some radical feminists went further and advocated political lesbianism, a position controversial among lesbians too (see lesbian feminism).

Some detransitioned women describe a related pattern: a girl attracted to girls, with no visible model of a lesbian woman, concludes that she must be a boy. Littman's 2021 survey of 100 detransitioners found that 23% gave homophobia or difficulty accepting themselves as lesbian, gay or bisexual as a reason for transition and later detransition (Littman 2021). See internalised homophobia.

The radical feminist critique of transgenderism

Raymond and the 1970s

In 1973 the writer Robin Morgan used her keynote at the West Coast Lesbian Conference to attack the inclusion of a trans woman performer and organiser (Lux Magazine). Women-only spaces argued over the issue for decades, including the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, which adopted a "womyn-born-womyn" policy in 1991 (Phys.org 2025).

The founding text of the critique is Janice Raymond's The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male (1979). Raymond, a medical ethicist, argued that transsexualism is a problem created and kept going by a male-dominated medical system. In her account, clinics required patients to prove they conformed to sex stereotypes, converting discontent with sex roles into a private medical condition (Raymond 1979/1994).

Raymond also wrote about trans women in language many readers, including some feminists, found dehumanising. Her book described male-to-female transsexualism as a violation of women's bodies and space, and named Sandy Stone, a trans woman then working at the women's music collective Olivia Records. In 1980 Raymond wrote a paper on the ethics of transsexual surgery for the US National Center for Health Care Technology. Critics hold that it influenced the withdrawal of public insurance cover. Raymond disputes this, saying federal aid had not funded such treatment and that her paper was one of many consulted (Raymond, "Fictions and Facts").

Jeffreys and Gender Hurts

Sheila Jeffreys, a political scientist formerly at the University of Melbourne, brought the critique up to date in Gender Hurts (2014). Her publisher describes the book as arguing that transgenderism "is based upon sex stereotyping, referred to as 'gender'", and that its effects on lesbians and gay men, on partners, on children identified as transgender and on people who transition are harmful (Routledge). Student press coverage at the time quoted her calling transgenderism a "hugely harmful phenomenon", and students campaigned against the book (RMIT Catalyst 2014).

The radical feminist critique of medical transition makes three main claims:

• It medicalises a social problem. Distress about sex roles is treated as a disorder of the individual instead of a reasonable response to an oppressive system.
• It reinforces stereotypes. By defining "being a woman" or "being a man" through feeling, presentation or role, gender identity theory makes stereotypes the essence of sex.
• It harms women and lesbians in particular. Girls who reject femininity, and young lesbians, are moved out of womanhood instead of being helped to redefine it.

Made decades before the recent rise in teenage girls referred to gender clinics, the second and third claims are close to what many detransitioned women now report. Vandenbussche's 2022 survey of 237 detransitioners found that 70% had realised their gender dysphoria was related to other issues, and identified internalised homophobic and sexist prejudice as a significant psychological need (Vandenbussche 2022).

Trans and other feminist critiques

Trans writers argue that the critique denies trans people's own accounts of themselves. Sandy Stone's 1987 essay "The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto", written in response to Raymond, is often treated as the founding text of transgender studies. Stone argued that the medical system Raymond attacked had in fact forced trans people to hide their histories and perform stereotypes in order to get treatment, and that trans people should speak for themselves (Stone 1987). Julia Serano's Whipping Girl (2007) argued that hostility to trans women is bound up with a wider contempt for femininity, which she claimed some feminists share (Serano 2007).

Trans commenters put it sharply:

Radical feminism is antithetical to real feminism because it roots itself in bioessentialism. You cannot embrace transness and bioessentialism at the same time, it's a contradiction. —Emotional_Tomato_, ftm

Some trans men say radical feminism has no place for them, since it treats them as women who have been misled:

Trying to square the existence of trans men in radfem thought is like trying to divide by zero, hence why we are ignored, silenced, and otherwise dismissed. —8bitquarterback, ftm

Other trans people reject the claim that radical feminism must exclude them. One trans woman compared it to Marxism, a theory built on "a single fundamental conflict", and argued that trans-inclusive strains exist but get less attention (myaltduh, mtf). The trans writer Talia Bhatt's essay collection Trans/Rad/Fem (2025) argues for a trans reclamation of radical feminist theory (Bhatt 2025).

Black and intersectional feminists criticised early radical feminism for treating sex as the primary oppression and assuming a white, middle-class standpoint. The Combahee River Collective's 1977 statement argued that race, class, sex and sexuality operate together and cannot be ranked (Combahee River Collective 1977). Queer theorists, especially Judith Butler, argued that sex itself is as socially shaped as gender, and so challenged the radical feminist distinction between a material sex and a social gender (see queer theory).

The acronym TERF ("trans-exclusionary radical feminist") was coined in 2008 by the blogger Viv Smythe to distinguish some radical feminists from trans-inclusive ones (Smythe 2018). Many women it is used against regard it as a slur, and it is now applied to many who are not radical feminists.

Assessment

Raymond and Jeffreys anticipated problems that clinicians and detransitioners now describe: stereotyped assessments, distress about sex roles and sexuality treated as a medical condition, and little follow-up. Their argument that innate gender identity theory brings back sex stereotypes is a serious philosophical position held well beyond radical feminism.

But their writing often generalised about all trans people, attributed bad motives and used contemptuous language. That alienated many readers and cannot be squared with treating individuals with dignity. Detransitioners' own accounts, discussed below, suggest that the radical feminist analysis of gender helped many, while the tone and politics of some radical feminist spaces drove others away.

Radical feminism in detransitioned women's accounts

In discussions on /r/detrans, radical feminism comes up again and again as a turning point for detransitioned and desisted women. This is a self-selected online sample, and no study has measured how many detransitioners hold radical feminist views. Lomax and Butler's 2025 interview study of six UK women who detransitioned did note that participants' sense of social belonging shifted over time, sometimes linked to feminist values, and that several felt more at home among women and lesbians than living as men (Lomax & Butler 2025).

Reframing dysphoria as a response to misogyny

The most common theme is a change in how women understand their distress. Instead of "my body is wrong", the explanation becomes "the way women are treated is wrong, and I absorbed it." One commenter put the contrast in one sentence:

Transgender ideology tells you that your body is wrong, radical feminism tells you that society is wrong. —AbolishGender, r/detrans commenter

Some women trace their body hatred to what they saw a female body would be used for:

the philosophy, as in the scholarship "breaking gender" is based on, helped me cope with my dysphoria more than transitioning ever could have, because my dysphoria is rooted in sexism. It didn't spring from nowhere. I only started hating my body when I realized what it was destined for: elaborate cosmetic rituals, male attention, abuse. —throwaway-0838487jdm, desisted female

Another detransitioned woman described radical feminism as the one framework that explained how being sexualised as a child can turn into aversion to being female, "especially women who can't perform femininity, like autistic women" (Angy_kangaroo, detrans female; see autism).

This reframing moves the problem from inside the self to outside it, and several women describe anger replacing self-hatred. One wrote to another:

We're offered very little options, as women, other than just accepting the danger and belittling. We're supposed to put men on a pedestal and in a way transition is just one way of accepting the male supremacy. —anonymous1111199992, detrans

The same commenter added that her dysphoria went away once she "needed to re-frame what is a woman, other than the misogynistic fantasy created by patriarchy." See internalised misogyny for a fuller treatment.

Gender as social: "not a binary, a hierarchy"

For some women, one radical feminist idea set off a full rethinking:

Specifically- they were talking about the "gender binary" and stated, "It's not a binary. It's a hierarchy." And just like that, I saw with absolute clarity- how logically it would follow that FTMs internalized the messages elevating men and denigrating women. Obviously. And like pulling a yarn on a sweater, every single thing I looked at about my female upbringing and my trans identity started to unravel. —L82Desist, detrans female

She went on to describe grief "like a freight train", followed by acceptance and the end of her dysphoria. If gender is a hierarchy, wanting to leave the lower rank needs no inner explanation, and transition looks less like self-discovery than an individual escape from a collective problem.

Reconnecting with womanhood

Many radical feminists define a woman simply as an adult human female, a definition that asks nothing of a woman's appearance or personality. Several detransitioned women describe this as freeing:

I realized being a woman isn't a performance or something I needed to "learn". It was something I already am and always will be. Part of what made womanhood seem so suffocating to me was all of the requirements that people assigned to women. —AbsentFuck, desisted female

This definition also matters to women whose bodies were masculinised by testosterone. One commenter wrote that radical feminists she knew accepted detransitioned women as women "no matter if we have a beard, if we are bald, if we sound like men" (anonymous1111199992, detrans female). See gender non-conformity without labels.

Community and sisterhood

Detransition often costs people their friends in trans and queer communities (see backlash against detransitioners). In several accounts, radical feminist women were among the first to welcome detransitioned women. One woman recalled that after the trans community "discarded me like garbage", the people who helped her were "a group of older women quite critical of gender" (HeavenlyMelody91, detrans female). A desisted woman explained the language of "sisterhood" that outsiders find odd:

What you need to realize is that a lot of women in these spaces have probably never had a space where they could freely talk about their body, themselves and being a woman outside of a context of femininity and the culture of shame around femaleness prevalent in most of the world. —DucksDontBiteDoThey, desisted female

Some urge caution about timing. One detransitioned woman who values the literature advised that it can help "in the early stages of detransitioning" but "Not like when you've freshly decided to since that's a vulnerable time" (Exciting_Ad8466, detrans female). Moving straight from one all-explaining framework to another carries its own risks. See healing and recovery.

Male detransitioners and radical feminism

Radical feminism is mostly about women, but some detransitioned men also describe finding it useful. One wrote that exploring radical feminist spaces "in part allowed me to reevaluate my transition" (verytiredcatto, detrans male). Another man, who links his transition to autogynephilia, credited the feminist critique with helping him recover:

I may be male but as an ex-autogynephile I "get" where terfs and gendercrit are coming from and coming to those realizations helped me get over that nasty fetish. —-Abraxas-, desisted male

For these men the useful part is the critique of femininity as a stereotype: the recognition that what they were pursuing was a sexualised image of womanhood, not womanhood. See autogynephilia and men and masculinity.

Other men find the spaces hostile. One detransitioned man explained why gender-critical radical feminists put off some of the men who come to /r/detrans:

Because gender critical radfems have a tendency to be very mean to men, and the ones who come here are usually in a bad mental state already. I can't imagine it helps, any more than it would help questioning FtMs to go on some misogynist men's rights advocates forum. —super-porp-cola, detrans male

Critiques from detransitioners

Some detransitioners who share the analysis reject the spaces, for several reasons.

Hostile or punitive treatment

Some detransitioned women report being met with contempt instead of compassion:

And that's on top of the fact that many radfems treat detransitoned women like shit too, referring to us as mutilated traitors to lesbianism and all of that bs. Instead of demonstrating even a speck of compassion, they'll say shit like "they deserve to experience complications from their surgeries to teach them a lesson." It's hypocritical and counterproductive. —pteridium-aquilinum, detrans female

The same woman objected to hostility toward gay and gender non-conforming men, whom she called "some of my closest allies against society's bullshit". Another commenter singled out radical feminists who tell people considering detransition that they have mutilated their bodies (detransdyke).

Others who still value the community say it misreads their experience:

I engage with the rad fem community because it was the first one to help me deprogram but I am constantly trying to tell them how to talk about Detrans women. Some have zero empathy and don't distinguish us from trans ppl. They don't quite grasp the brainwashing component —thisonesathrowawway, detrans female

Being used as a political tool

Many commenters say both sides of the gender debate treat them as evidence instead of people. One intersex detransitioned woman wrote that some radical feminists "see us as nothing more then a tool for their cause", while also saying that "rad-leaning people have been the best company" in her own experience (DetransIS, detrans female). The same woman left one women-only forum after finding it was more about disliking trans people than helping dysphoric women, and after seeing hostility toward women with differences of sex development (DetransIS; see intersex and DSDs).

Ideological conformity

For some, radical feminist spaces repeated the pattern they had just left:

And then when one doesn't agree with 100% of it they're kicked out just as hard as in the trans community. —MessiahJohnM, questioning own gender transition

One woman, who now trusts only other detransitioners, named "the mean girl radical feminists" among several camps that put her off (watching_snowman, detrans female). Disagreement about whether gender-critical views belong in detransition spaces at all is one reason two detransition subreddits exist (see r/detrans vs r/actual_detrans).

"I'm not a radfem, but…"

Many commenters take parts of the analysis without the label. Common positions include being "rad-leaning", or supporting trans adults' rights while opposing paediatric transition; some describe political homelessness. The pattern in these accounts is that the ideas travel further than the movement. People keep the insight that gender is a social hierarchy and leave the parts that feel punitive or tribal.

Why the framework resonates

Philosophically, radical feminism gives the women quoted here something gender identity theory could not: a way to take their distress seriously without making it a fact about who they are. In identity terms, a girl's discomfort with womanhood has to mean either that she is not really a woman or that she is in denial. In radical feminist terms, the discomfort is an accurate perception of an unjust system, and the answer is to change the meaning of womanhood, not to leave it.

Psychologically, this resembles what therapists call externalisation: separating the problem from the person so that it can be examined. Making the suffering shared and political can also ease shame and isolation. The risk, which detransitioners themselves point out, is that any total explanation can become a new identity to defend, with its own in-group, its own enemies and its own penalties for doubt. Some of the most settled accounts hold the framework "loosely", in L82Desist's phrase from another comment, as a tool for understanding oneself, not a creed.

References

• Bhatt, T. (2025). Trans/Rad/Fem: Essays on Transfeminism. Self-published. source.
• Bindel, J. (2017). The Pimping of Prostitution: Abolishing the Sex Work Myth. Palgrave Macmillan. source.
• Bindel, J. (2021). Feminism for Women: The Real Route to Liberation. Constable. source.
• Combahee River Collective (1977). The Combahee River Collective Statement. source.
• Daly, M. (1978). Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism. Beacon Press. source.
• Dworkin, A. (1974, 1981, 1987). Woman Hating; Pornography: Men Possessing Women; Intercourse. Bennington College profile.
• Echols, A. (1989). Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967–1975. University of Minnesota Press. source.
• Women's Studies International Forum (2011). Sweden's prohibition of purchase of sex: The law's reasons, impact, and potential. source.
• Firestone, S. (1970). The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution. Verso; opening chapter.
• Jeffreys, S. (2014). Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism. Routledge. source; RMIT Catalyst coverage.
• Littman, L. (2021). Individuals Treated for Gender Dysphoria with Medical and/or Surgical Transition Who Subsequently Detransitioned: A Survey of 100 Detransitioners. Archives of Sexual Behavior. study page, source.
• Lomax, J. & Butler, C. (2025). Narratives of Adults Registered Female at Birth Who Started a Medical Transition and Later Detransitioned. Archives of Sexual Behavior. study page, source.
• LSE (n.d.). Criminalising the sex buyer: what must policymakers learn from the "Nordic model"? source.
• MacKinnon, C. A. (1982). Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: An Agenda for Theory. Signs 7(3), 515–544. Discussed in Phelan, K. M., Is Feminism Yet a Theory of the Kind That Marxism Is? source.
• MacKinnon, C. A. (1989). Toward a Feminist Theory of the State. Harvard University Press. source.
• Millett, K. (1970; reissued 2016). Sexual Politics. Columbia University Press. source.
• MNopedia. Minneapolis Anti-pornography Ordinance. Minnesota Historical Society. source.
• Lux Magazine. TERF Island. source (left-wing magazine).
• Phys.org (2025). The fight for trans inclusion at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. source.
• Raymond, J. G. (1979; reissued 1994). The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male. Beacon Press; Teachers College Press. catalogue record; Raymond's response to critics: Fictions and Facts about the Transsexual Empire (author's own site).
• Redstockings (1969). Redstockings Manifesto. Redstockings archive.
• Rich, A. (1980). Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence. Signs 5(4), 631–660. source.
• Rubin, G. (1984). Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality. source.
• Serano, J. (2007). Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity. Seal Press. source.
• Smythe, V. (2018). I'm credited with having coined the word 'Terf'. Here's how it happened. The Guardian. source.
• Stone, S. (1987). The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto. Later published in Camera Obscura 10(2). source; Duke University Press.
• Vandenbussche, E. (2022). Detransition-Related Needs and Support: A Cross-Sectional Online Survey. Journal of Homosexuality. study page, source.