Radical feminism is a perspective within feminism that calls for a radical re-ordering of society in which male supremacy is eliminated in all social and economic contexts, while recognizing that women's experiences are also affected by other social divisions such as in race, class, and sexual orientation. The ideology and movement emerged in the 1960s.
Russell Wendell Simmons is an American entrepreneur, writer and record executive. He co-founded the hip-hop label Def Jam Recordings, and created the clothing fashion lines Phat Farm, Argyleculture, and Tantris. He has promoted veganism and a yoga lifestyle, and published books on lifestyle, health, and entrepreneurship. Simmons' net worth was estimated at $340 million in 2011.
Lesbian feminism is a cultural movement and critical perspective that encourages women to focus their efforts, attentions, relationships, and activities towards their fellow women rather than men, and often advocates lesbianism as the logical result of feminism. Lesbian feminism was most influential in the 1970s and early 1980s, primarily in North America and Western Europe, but began in the late 1960s and arose out of dissatisfaction with the New Left, the Campaign for Homosexual Equality, sexism within the gay liberation movement, and homophobia within popular women's movements at the time. Many of the supporters of Lesbianism were actually women involved in gay liberation who were tired of the sexism and centering of gay men within the community and lesbian women in the mainstream women's movement who were tired of the homophobia involved in it.
Womanism is a feminist movement, primarily championed by Black feminists, originating in the work of African American author Alice Walker in her 1983 book In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens. Walker coined the term "womanist" in the short story "Coming Apart" in 1979. Her initial use of the term evolved to envelop a spectrum of issues and perspectives facing black women and others. Walker defined "womanism" as embracing the courage, audacity, and self-assured demeanor of Black women, alongside their love for other women, themselves, and all of humanity. Since its inception by Walker, womanism has expanded to encompass various domains, giving rise to concepts such as Africana womanism and womanist theology or spirituality.
Rape culture is a setting, as described by some sociological theories, in which rape is pervasive and normalized due to that setting's attitudes about gender and sexuality. Behaviors commonly associated with rape culture include victim blaming, slut-shaming, sexual objectification, trivializing rape, denial of widespread rape, refusing to acknowledge the harm caused by sexual violence, or some combination of these. It has been used to describe and explain behavior within social groups, including prison rape and in conflict areas where war rape is used as psychological warfare. Entire societies have been alleged to be rape cultures.
Feminist sexology is an offshoot of traditional studies of sexology that focuses on the intersectionality of sex and gender in relation to the sexual lives of women. Sexology has a basis in psychoanalysis, specifically Freudian theory, which played a big role in early sexology. This reactionary field of feminist sexology seeks to be inclusive of experiences of sexuality and break down the problematic ideas that have been expressed by sexology in the past. Feminist sexology shares many principles with the overarching field of sexology; in particular, it does not try to prescribe a certain path or "normality" for women's sexuality, but only observe and note the different and varied ways in which women express their sexuality. It is a young field, but one that is growing rapidly.
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw is an American civil rights advocate and a scholar of critical race theory. She is a professor at the UCLA School of Law and Columbia Law School, where she specializes in race and gender issues.
Pratibha Parmar is a British writer and filmmaker. She has made feminist documentaries such as Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth (2014) and My Name is Andrea (2022) about Andrea Dworkin.
Celine Parreñas Shimizu is a filmmaker and film scholar. She is well known for her work on race, sexuality and representations. She is currently Dean of the Arts Division at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
Zanele Muholi is a South African artist and visual activist working in photography, video, and installation. Muholi's work focuses on race, gender and sexuality with a body of work that dates back to the early 2000s, documenting and celebrating the lives of South Africa's Black Lesbian, Gay, transgender, and intersex communities. Muholi is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, explaining that "I'm just human".
The African American Policy Forum (AAPF) is a social justice think tank focused on issues of gender and diversity. AAPF seeks to build bridges between arts, activism, and the academy in order to address structural inequality and systemic oppression. AAPF develops and promotes frameworks and strategies that address a vision of racial justice that embraces the intersections of race, gender, class, and the array of barriers that disempower those who are marginalized in society.
Misogynoir is a term referring to the combined force of anti-Black racism and misogyny directed towards black women. The term was coined by black feminist writer Moya Bailey in 2008 to address misogyny directed toward black transgender and cisgender women in American visual and popular culture. The concept of misogynoir is grounded in the theory of intersectionality, which analyzes how various social identities such as race, gender, class, age, ability, and sexual orientation interrelate in systems of oppression.
Salamishah Margaret Tillet is an American scholar, writer, and feminist activist. She is the Henry Rutgers Professor of African American Studies and Creative Writing at Rutgers University–Newark, where she also directs the New Arts Justice Initiative. Tillet is also a contributing critic-at-large at The New York Times.
Sil Lai Abrams is a domestic violence awareness activist and National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) award-winning writer. Abrams is a sought after speaker on sexual assault, domestic violence, race, and depictions of women of color in the media and has spoken at over 300 organizations and universities around the United States. She regularly provides television commentary on gender violence and has been profiled in numerous magazines, including The Hollywood Reporter, EBONY, Redbook, Modern Woman, and ESSENCE. The Root praised Abrams for her use of “social media to protest the narrative that Black women’s realities can be defined by dysfunctional entertainment”, and she has served on the Board of Directors for two of the nation’s largest victim services nonprofit organizations, Safe Horizon and the National Domestic Violence Hotline.
Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons is an American activist and retired academic. She is senior lecturer emerita at the University of Florida since her retirement in 2019. Her research has explored Islamic feminism and the impact of Sharia law on Muslim women. She is a civil rights activist who served as a member of both the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Nation of Islam (NOI).
Loretta J. Ross is an American academic, feminist, and activist who advocates for reproductive justice, especially among women of color. As an activist, Ross has written on reproductive justice activism and the history of African American women.
Carceral feminism is a critical term for types of feminism that advocate for enhancing and increasing prison sentences that deal with feminist and gender issues. The term criticises the belief that harsher and longer prison sentences will help work towards solving these issues. The phrase "carceral feminism" was coined by Elizabeth Bernstein, a feminist sociologist, in her 2007 article, "The Sexual Politics of the 'New Abolitionism'". Examining the contemporary anti-trafficking movement in the United States, Bernstein introduced the term to describe a type of feminist activism which casts all forms of sexual labor as sex trafficking. She sees this as a retrograde step, suggesting it erodes the rights of women in the sex industry, and takes the focus off other important feminist issues, and expands the neoliberal agenda.
Joy James is an American political philosopher, academic, and author. James is the Ebenezer Fitch Professor of the Humanities at Williams College. Her books include Transcending the Talented Tenth: Black Leaders and American Intellectuals, Shadowboxing, Imprisoned Intellectuals, The New Abolitionists, Resisting State Violence, In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love: Precarity, Power, Communities and The Angela Y. Davis Reader. She was a Senior Research Fellow at the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies at The University of Texas at Austin where she developed the Harriet Tubman Digital Repository.
Gloria Ida Joseph was a Crucian-American academic, writer, educator, and activist. She was a self-identified radical Black feminist lesbian writer who synthesized art and activism in her work. Joseph's scholarship centered race, gender, sexuality, and class. She is known for her pioneering work on Black feminism and her activism on issues concerning Black women across the diaspora, including in the South Africa, Germany, and Caribbean.
Traci C. West is a scholar and activist. She is the James W. Pearsall Professor of Christian Ethics and African American Studies at Drew University Theological School and Professor Extraorinarius in the Institute for Gender Studies in the College of Human Sciences at the University of South Africa. She is the author of numerous articles on gender, racial, and sexuality justice. Her notable books include Solidarity and Defiant Spirituality: Africana Lessons on Religion, Racism, and Ending Gender Violence, Disruptive Christian Ethics: When Racism and Women's Lives Matter, Our Family Values: Same-sex Marriage and Religion, editor, and Wounds of the Spirit: Black Women, Violence, and Resistance Ethics. She is an ordained elder in the New York Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church (UMC). Her scholarship and activism centers the voices of Queer, Transgender, and People of Color in the struggle for LGBTQIA equality in churches. She testified before the New Jersey state legislature in support of marriage equality and protested on behalf of LGBTQIA equality at the General Conference of the United Methodist Church. West is outspoken against intimate partner violence against black women and coined the term "victim-survivor" in Wounds of the Spirit. She was featured in "No!" a documentary film on sexual violence against black women.
