ABSTRACT
A complex amalgam of theory, political action, spiritual rebirth, and collective self-discovery, feminism continues to challenge many of the basic presuppositions of modern society. If socialist-feminism has one major origin, it is among the activist women of the civil rights, anti-war, and student movements. Traditional Marxism had viewed the experience and interests of women in reductionist terms. Socialist-feminists offered strong criticisms of this view. Feminists of “radical” rather than socialist orientation had argued that male domination was an undifferentiated and nearly eternal rule of human history, and that this “patriarchy” was the key fact of social life. Socialist-feminist analysis begins with the attempt to understand the family, both internally and in terms of its complex relations with the rest of the social order. Within the family women are carrying the preposterous contradiction of love in a loveless world.
