by Paul Elam

Created on: November 15, 2008   Last Updated: November 19, 2008

Radical feminism. I am sure you might get ten different interpretations of what constitutes radical feminism if you ask ten different people.

Ostensibly, feminism that exists in any culture where women are not oppressed is radical. And that is what we have in western culture today; an ideology that seeks to perpetuate itself by any means necessary, because the agenda is not about equality, but revenge. As much as equality can ever exist, it does in today's world, and then some.

Women are outpacing men from grade school to grad school. It has long been proven that any wage gap solely based on gender is imaginary, and that the disparities that do exist are ones that result from choices, not chance of birth. It is radical feminism that tells you that construction workers make more than waitresses because of patriarchal conspiracy, not because the latter choice is an arduous and dangerous job that more men than women are willing to do.

It is radical feminism that tells you that women and children are the "real" victims of war, as Hillary Clinton did at the United Nations Conference on Women. She should tour a veterans hospital some time and see if the twenty year olds with no legs and the countless sufferers of PTSD find solace that their pain and wounds are not so important as those who never faced the horrors of combat. Radical feminism dwells heartily on women's historical status as chattel, and tires quickly to hear that men were, and are, the cannon fodder of our world.

Consequently, it is radical feminism that tells us these wars would not exist in the first place were it not for men. Subscribers to that bit of philosophy grow blank and distant at the mention of Margaret Thatcher, Indira Ghandi, Golda Mier, and any number if female European monarchs. Or worse, they become vitriolic and combative. Radicalism by its very nature is reacts with virulent opposition to truth and objectivity.

It is that rancor; the bitterness that defies reason, that is the lifeblood of all radicals, and radical feminists are no exception. It sustains them when the reasons for it have long since past. One imagined slight will become another, and no matter how good the lot for women becomes, there will be the radicals screaming indignantly for more.

More of what they cannot tell you with honesty and credibility, for what they want is underneath their words. They want a father who loved them; a man who stayed and didn't drink or hit them; an image in the mirror that doesn't make them wish for something else. And for all those things and more, they want to lash out.

And they do.

At men. At women who don't hate men or mind being mothers and wives. And in that sad analysis we see that radical feminism, like all radicalism, is ideology born of personal suffering. It is beliefs formed from tragic, but personal wounds.

Learn more about this author, Paul Elam.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.