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An unfortunate narrative on radical feminism has developed leading to the widespread misunderstanding, misrepresentation, and silencing of numerous earlier contributions. Academics, including authors of texts and teachers of feminist courses, share in misrepresenting radical feminism whenever we gloss over the complexity, diversity, and plurality of radical feminist approaches. Teachers in particular are often presented with a series of challenges whenever they broach the topic of radical feminism in the classroom. Today's Women's Studies courses strive to meet legitimate demands from Queer Theory, Postcolonial and Anti-Racist Feminisms, Postmodern Feminisms, Poststructural Feminisms and Cultural Studies for a nuanced account of the diversity of perspectives, method, and action in contemporary feminist theory, practice and research. Crow's anthology, which focusses on the original documents that defined and contested radical feminism in the United States during a time of intense activity from 1967-1975, presents us with a further challenge: reconnecting today's subject matter with the origins of radical feminism through exposure to original documents and sources.
There are two reasons for reconnecting with radical feminist works of a quarter of a century ago and Crow is aware of both of them. First, in order to correct our misunderstandings, and undermine stereotypes (all radicals are separatist and essentialist), we need to be aware that earlier radicals wrote about a variety of topics covering questions of international politics, paid work, heterosexuality, colonialism, class and poverty, bisexuality, racism, reproduction, family and domesticity, abortion, pornography, lesbianism, war and...