From Revolutionary Futurity to Spatial Refuge: Radical, Lesbian, and Cultural Feminist Manifestos from the 1960s and 1970s

In this article, I revisit radical, cultural, and lesbian feminist manifestos from the 1960s and 1970s, such as Shulamith Firestone's The dialectic of sex, the Radicalesbians' "The woman-identified woman," and "The fourth world manifesto" by Barbara Burris et al. I highlight a historical and political shift from the nonlinear temporality of the feminist revolution to the spatiality of women's culture. This shift, overlapping with what feminist historian Alice Echols describes as "an eclipse of radical feminism" by cultural feminism, is symptomatic and indicative of an agential crisis emerging from the utopian drive of radical feminism. The failure or indefinite postponement of the feminist revolution pushed radical feminism toward the spatial politics of separatism, in which cultural and lesbian feminists found temporary yet sustainable refuge from a patriarchal society. The cultural feminist politics of the women's space offered a utopian refuge for radical feminists whose desire for feminist revolution did not materialize. However, it initiated feminist hostility against transwomen, establishing a historical presage of the contemporary anti-trans feminist movement. In revisiting textual remnants of feminist history, this article critically intervenes with contemporary anti-trans feminist discourse that politically appropriates the cultural legacies of radical feminism in its essentialist tropes of "real women."