Meg Gibbs
Chapter 2, pp. 71-93
The divide between radical-libertarian feminists and radical-cultural feminists is widened when it comes to issues of
female reproduction and motherhood. Radical-libertarian feminists believe that the root of all female oppression lies
in women’s ability to bare children. Shulamith Firestone reworks Marxist philosophy to explain the root of all
oppression as the struggle between the sexes. Where Marx states that the only way to remove oppression is to “seize
the means of production, women must seize the means of reproduction” (Tong, 72). In Piercy’s work of fiction
Woman on the Edge of Time, this theory is demonstrated in a Utopian society where all reproduction takes place via
advanced machines called “brooders” that fertilize eggs and raise embryos. Children are then raised by three parents
and no one knows who their biological children are. Thus, radical-libertarian feminist are for reproductive
technological advances. Furthermore, radical-libertarians argue that women do not need to be biological mothers,
that the idea of women as nurturers is a social construct. Women who would not, if left to their own devices, choose
to be mothers are pressured socially to be mothers. They are for gestational mothers, women who bare embryos for
other couples, because they see this as people sharing and spreading out the difficulty of raising children, rather than
leaving it all on the genetic mother of the child.
Radical-cultural feminists critique these ideas, stating that reproduction is the only trump card women have to gain
power. If men create technology which voids the need for women to bare children, then women’s oppression will
not be reduced, but become more explicit and worse for them. Atwood counters Piercy’s utopia with the anti-utopia
seen in A Handmaid’s Tale. Already, radical-cultural feminists point to men’s usurping of women’s reproductive
powers via male doctor’s replacing female midwifes in birth and the creation of technology which allows surrogate
mothers and ex virtrio fertilization. Radical-cultural feminists are against the advancement of such reproductive
technologies. They are for biological motherhood, critiquing radical libertarians for disregarding the experience
motherhood could be, if it were not shaped and molded by patriarchy. They are against gestational motherhood,
stating it comodofies the process of giving birth.
Radical-cultural feminists are critiqued for polarizing traits, making 'feminine' qualities somehow inherently good
and 'masculine' qualities inherently bad. Patriarchy exists as a sweeping term for them, which stands for all the evil
in the world. They fail to take into account that women are human too and can make mistakes and have undesirable
qualities that are not linked to being 'masculine.' Radical-libertarian feminist critique is directed to chapter one.
Both forms of radical feminism are critiqued for having such a deep divide between themselves and thus creating
infighting when they could get along. They are also critiqued for being ahistoric and not taking into account the
culture and time period around them, as well as for crafting in their heads futures that cannot in the present.
Feminist approaches should, Tong argues, focus on a system she calls "both-and" accepting both the oppressive and
dangerous elements of childbirth and sex as well as the pleasurable and liberating.