Radical Feminist Analysis

In her article, Brooke Meredith Beloso contends that the discourse of radical feminism and queer feminism, which heavily relies upon Marxist theory, has hindered rather than fostered the feminist critique of capitalism. The article provides a brief overview of the radical feminist movement, which was initially intended to fight against oppression and patriarchy. She contrasts it with queer feminism, which concentrated on the non-normal sex, gender and sexuality issues. Prostitution came to the forefront of both the radical and queer feminism debates because prostitutes were viewed as victims of men-driven oppression and at the apex of women’s subordination in the society.

Catharine MacKinnon and Gayle Rubin, the major voices of radical and

While Marx suggests that certain relations of capitalism transform human beings into commodities, in the theory of Rubin, unspecified certain relations transform women into the partners of men. The author thus argues that Rubin only utilizes Marxist theory to the point of the analogy. The concept of class in the feminist theory is a static ontological category, not dynamic and epistemological, as it is for Marx. MacKinnon goes further to equate sexuality with work, heterosexuality with class, gender with capital, and reproduction with production. Moreover, she reduces dialectical materialism to raising consciousness. Thus, as argued by Beloso, both authors have developed a complex theory of sexual inequality that is rooted in social relations. However, instead of tracing the categories of sex, gender and class, they render the class struggle in terms of rejection and unhappiness, which is a counterproductive

All these factors are called and recognized by the author almost as second skins of cultural oppression. Beloso emphasizes that prostitutes should not always be deemed as victims, but rather as rational creatures, who make their decision to work in this particular industry rather than in any other, driven by a complex of social and cultural factors. The author argues that feminists should not view sexual inequality as deriving from economic inequality. Instead, feminism has to be energized with the complete struggle for social justice and against the