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מתוך אתר שמצרפת קישור אליו, שהופיע אצלנו בעבר: Cultural Feminism As radical feminism died out as a movement, cultural feminism got rolling. In fact, many of the same people moved from the former to the latter. They carried the name "radical feminism" with them, and some cultural feminists use that name still. (Jaggar and Rothenberg don´t even list cultural feminism as a framework separate from radical feminism, but Echols spells out the distinctions in great detail.) The difference between the two is quite striking: whereas radical feminism was a movement to transform society, cultural feminism retreated to vanguardism, working instead to build a women´s culture. Some of this effort has had some social benefit: rape crisis centers, for example; and of course many cultural feminists have been active in social issues (but as individuals, not as part of a movement). [JD] Cultural feminists can sometimes come up with notions that sound disturbingly Victorian and non-progressive: that women are inherently (biologically) "kinder and gentler" than men and so on. (Therefore if all leaders were women, we wouldn´t have wars.) I do think, though, that cultural feminism´s attempts to heighten respect for what is traditionally considered women´s work is an important parallel activity to recognizing that traditionally male activities aren´t necessarily as important as we think. [CTM] I have often associated this type of statement [inherently kinder and gentler] with Separatist Feminists, who seem to me to feel that women are *inherently* kinder and gentler, so why associate with men? (This is just my experience from Separatists I know...I haven´t read anything on the subject.) I know Cultural Feminists who would claim women are *trained* to be kinder and gentler, but I don´t know any who have said they are *naturally* kinder. [SJ] As various 1960s movements for social change fell apart or got co-opted, folks got pessimistic about the very possibility of social change. Many of then turned their attention to building alternatives, so that if they couldn´t change the dominant society, they could avoid it as much as possible. That, in a nutshell, is what the shift from radical feminism to cultural feminism was about. These alternative-building efforts were accompanied with reasons explaining (perhaps justifying) the abandonment of working for social change. Cultural feminism´s justification was biological determinism. This justification was worked out in great detail, and was based on assertions in horribly-flawed books like Elizabeth Gould Davis´s _The First Sex_ and Ashley Montagu´s _The Natural Superiority of Women_. So notions that women are "inherently kinder and gentler" are one of the foundations of cultural feminism, and remain a major part of it. A similar concept held by some cultural feminists is that while various sex differences might not be biologically determined, they are still so thoroughly ingrained as to be intractable. There is no inherent connection between alternative-building and ideologies of biological determinism (or of social intracta- bility). SJ has apparently encountered alternative-builders who don´t embrace biological determinism, and I consider this a very good sign. [JD]