When I found out the headline for this interview was going to be “Fourth Wave Feminism,” I instinctively made a face. (Not unlike the faux-pensive mess of a pose that I had going on in the accompanying picture.)
You see, I’ve never been a fan of the “wave” model for feminism. In addition to contributing to generational tension, it just doesn’t seem accurate to me. As I said in the interview, I know self-identified third-wavers who are much older than me, as well as those who are much younger. And the differences that feminists have aren’t age-related as much as they are disagreements of models of thought and action (though age influences that, as well).
I do think, though, that feminists today do things differently than feminists in the 60s, or the 90s, or shit – even two or three years ago. That’s the incredible thing about feminism – it’s constantly evolving. After all, we kind of have to; the world and sexism and patriarchy aren’t stagnant things, so we can’t be either.
I also think there’s something to the idea that there’s a new model for feminism being built online. For better or worse, the internet has changed feminist organizing, writing and networking forever.
Women no longer have to seek out feminist communities in their towns – an impossible task for some. (One young woman I met at a conference told me she was literally the only feminist she knew.) Now, feminists can find support and community online. Real life activism is being organized through email, Facebook and Twitter. And the ability to have a strong presence in the feminist movement has been somewhat democratized, as well – it used to be if you wanted power in the feminism, you had to live in DC or NY and be tapped into the established feminist elite. Now all you need (at least to start) is an internet connection.
That’s not to say that online spaces are some sort of feminist utopia – far from it. Women’s voices are marginalized in larger political and social spheres online just as they are offline; U.S. feminism runs the risk of recreating the same paradigms of power and privilege that taints its history with racism, classism and homophobia; and online harassment, a problem that just seems to grow exponentially, serves as constant reminder that even though feminism is online, the backlash is there too.
So maybe the work we’re doing is the fourth wave. But it’s probably more accurate to describe what’s going on online as fourth waves. Because there’s not one cohesive movement, or one feminist platform, or one feminist leader. There are multiple online feminisms and feminist communities. To some, those who feel a social justice movement needs a monolithic center, the idea of “waves” may seem disorganized or odd. But really, it’s perfect.
For too long feminists believed women had a common cause simply by being women (and understanding ‘woman’ to mean one particular thing). Waves is a more truthful representation of women’s lives and the way they do feminism – because we don’t all have the same priorities, the same hopes and dreams, the same immediate needs and concerns, the same experiences or the same lives. (Hello, intersectionality!)
And while some worry that abandoning the idea of an all-encompassing feminism (if one ever truly existed) means giving up political power or that it muddles what feminism actually is, the truth is that intersectionality and multiple waves is inherently feminist. Because it gives room for us to organize based on our lives and experiences, and to do feminism from the ground up and the margins in.
And the terrific thing is – all of these different waves do constitute a movement. They’re all moving in the same direction, sometimes overlapping, sometimes pushing each other, but always making room for different entry points along the way.
So perhaps I was wrong; maybe the wave model is useful after all – if we use it to honor the complexity and nuance that is feminism, instead of relying on a strict framework that homogenizes what is, in its essence, wonderfully complicated.
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8 Comments
Fabulous! Excellent! Thanks.
I watched “Milk” for the first time yesterday, and I noticed a strong similarity between the rhetoric and sentiments of the gay rights movement and the women’s rights movement from a few years earlier. Then I was wondering why there has been no major movie made about the women’s rights movement of the 60s and 70s (i.e., why have only the gay rights and civil rights movements been covered)? My partner and I agreed that Hwood is generally sexist, that such a movie would not be able to get major female talent to work in it, and I added that the women’s rights movement, unlike the others of the time, was not particularly violent, and would therefore not make an exciting enough film (as far as producers are concerned).
It just saddens me that so many women are “anti-feminist” (including my mother) because they believe the myths about ‘second-wavers’ – the bra burning, the man-hating, the militancy, etc., and I wish there could be an average-Joe-enticing piece (like a ‘big’ movie) that could show some of the positive outcomes of the ‘second wave’ (most of which we now take for granted).
I just like how the pic makes you look like you’re wearing flats and, while thinking about something else, have begun to levitate.
What is wrong w. your outfit? You look super-cute on your own terms.
Since I’ve come back and reread this piece several times now, smiling each time, I should take a moment to tell you how much I liked it and that while I agree completely that there is no monolithic or all-encompassing feminism, there is nonetheless something in the best feminist writings of all times and places — fire, light, whatever — that connects them to one another, and whatever that is, it shines out in your work too.
Awesome post Jess. I think this is a really accurate way of looking at the legitimacy and uses of the metaphor. We don’t have to abandon it, but obviously should complicate it.
Nice post. I teach the history of feminist thought as overlapping and mingling streams; sometimes, as you say, pushing against one another, and that’s a healthy thing. I also believe that as feminists we live in the land of paradox a lot–a space where two or more things may be absolutely true, and absolutely contradictory. To forget this fact is to court the blindness that only ideology can bring. Should, for instance, feminism blend into a greater and more diverse struggle for the rights of humans? Well, of course. And of course not.
Maybe the only wave is the one we can catch at this moment to surf upon. As you say, everything changes.
You and I met once in the awful, sterile Chicago suburb of St. Charles a couple of years ago, btw, At a meeting of the Feminist Drinking Caucus of NWSA. We talked of inter-generational dialogue. I think that you, personally, have been listening all along to your foremothers, and enriching it with your own voice. But at 51, it’s startling to find myself so often dismissed by younger feminists as “Second Wave”. As I want to tell my 20-something WST student daughter, “We were busting gender binaries when you were still twirling in your princess skirts! Where would you be without us?” Perhaps this is uniquely a mother-daughter thing, or case of the teacher’s regret at seeing the student surpass her own travels. Still, the dialogue, and the respect and–dare I say it–love needs to flow both ways. We do not serve ourselves well as Feminists by dismissing other womens’ journies, or their heartfelt struggles for a liberatory truth of their own.
I have to say, although this is quite nitpicky of me, that your interviewer’s question about why the site was named feministing, and you “ungainly language” being a “veteran writer” and all was quite obnoxious. I think feministing is a great way to make feminist a verb, and it is very clever.