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Third-wave feminism

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Third-wave feminism is a term identified with several diverse strains of feminist activity and study beginning in the early 1990s. The movement arose as a response to perceived failures of second-wave feminism. It was also a response to the backlash against initiatives and movements created by the second-wave.


Contents

Overview

Third-wave feminism seeks to challenge or avoid what it deems the second wave's "essentialist" definitions of femininity, which (according to the third wave) often assumed a universal female identity and over-emphasized the experiences of upper middle class white women. A post-structuralist interpretation of gender and sexuality is also central to much of the third wave and helps to account for its heightened emphasis on the discursive power and fundamental ambiguity inherent in all gender terms and categories. Third wave theory usually encompasses queer theory, women-of-color consciousness, post-colonial theory, critical theory, transnationalism, ecofeminism, and new feminist theory.

Third wave feminists often focus on "micropolitics," writing about forms of gender expression and representation that are less explicitly political than their predecessors. They also challenged the second wave's paradigm as to what is, or is not, good for females.

Ideals and debates associated with third-wave feminism were reflected in popular culture of the 1990s and 2000s. Some feminists see it as a cultural movement and trace its origin to the early 90's riot grrl movement.

See main articles: Girl Power and Buffy studies

History

In the fall of 1991, President George H. W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. During the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, Anita Hill, an African-American law professor from Oklahoma, came forward and said that she had been sexually harassed by Thomas almost a decade earlier, while she had been employed under him. In response to the Thomas hearings, Rebecca Walker published an article titled “Becoming the Third Wave” in a 1992 issue of Ms. in which she declared, “I am not a postfeminism feminist. I am the Third Wave.” This event is often marked as the beginning of the usage of the term third wave applied to feminism (the "wave" concept of social progress was floated by futurist Alvin Toffler in his 1980 book titled The Third Wave). As Amber Kisner has argued, Walker's was "a notable expansion of feminist space for women of color."

The roots of the Third Wave began, however, in the mid 1980's. Feminist leaders rooted in the second wave like Gloria Anzaldua, bell hooks, Chela Sandoval, Cherrie Moraga, Audre Lorde, Maxine Hong Kingston, and many other feminists of color, called for a new subjectivity in feminist voice. They sought to negotiate prominent space within feminist thought for consideration of race related subjectivities. This focus on the intersection between race and gender remained prominent through the Hill-Thomas hearings, but began to shift with the Freedom Ride 1992. This drive to register voters in poor communities of color was surrounded with rhetoric that focused on rallying young feminists. For many, the rallying of the young is the emphasis that has stuck within third wave feminism.

Dietary concerns

Some third-wave feminists such as Carol Adams [1] reject the consumption of meat and analogize the use and objectification of animals to the use and objectification of women in society. This criticism focuses on societal construction of ties between women and the environment and references the fact that a large majority of livestock animals are female.

References

Magazines

See also

Categories


Wikipedia articles needing clarification | Feminism | Feminists

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