Radical Feminism on Violence against Women

Abstract

Feminism springs from women’s desire to have a fair and equal treatment with men. Aristotle declared that ‘the female is female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities’.  Sigmund Freud ridiculed women using metaphors like ‘the incomplete man’ and ‘the dark continent’. Jean Jacques Rousseau stated that women were mere coquettish slaves and objects of desire born to please and serve men. Feminist writers have been long battling against the cultural and social postulations of patriarchal culture.

Radical feminists challenge the notions of gender roles and sexual objectification of women in patriarchal societies raising public awareness on the issue of violence against women which threaten the existence of femininity. Radical feminists are revolutionary feminists who focus on the destruction of heterosexuality and the recuperation of the female body from patriarchal clutches in order to assert female identity and the ‘self’.