gills_et_all-third_wave_feminism_a_critical_exploration

Leslie Heywood and Jennifer Drake 21
simultaneously, part of multiple social struggles. To think about third wave
feminism globally is to understand that ‘young feminist membership is
much larger than may be initially imagined, and...is concerned with a feminism
beyond merely claiming girls’ power’ (Harris 9). Feminism has become
part of a global struggle for human rights that incorporates women’s and
gender issues. Third wave theory is a theory broad enough to account for
various axes of difference, and to recognise multiple forms of feminist work,
including environmentalism, anti-corporate activism, and struggles for
human rights. While gender play and cultural production are important
parts of a third wave approach to feminist action, they are only one part of
the third wave and they take place in only one site. Third wave perspectives
recognise these forms of activism, and place them alongside many other
kinds of work.
Notes
1. Generational designations – usually developed for marketers and workplace executives
– are always somewhat arbitrary. The ‘baby-boomer’ generation is commonly
designated as those born between 1943–1960, ‘Generation X’ as 1961–1981, and
the ‘Millennial Generation’ as those born between 1982 and 1998 (‘Guide to
Recent U.S. “Generations”’).
2. For more on this see Stephanie Coontz’s The Way We Really Are (126–128).
3. This situation parallels that of African Americans and Hispanics, who have also
seen a drastic decline in real wages during the past thirty years, who have continued
to identify primarily with their communities, and who have had an enormous
impact on post-boomer generations in terms of both demographic numbers and
cultural influence.
4. For examples of third wave perspectives on sexual imagery, see the magazines
Bitch, BUST, and Fierce.
5. For more on this view of the third wave see Phyllis Chesler’s Letters to a Young Feminist
or Anna Bondoc and Meg Daly’s collection Letters of Intent.
6. On the question of leaders in the third wave, see Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy
Richards’ ‘Who’s the Next Gloria?’
7. While Karen Warren, who is known for her work on ecofeminism, is not identified
as a third wave feminist, her insistence that ‘at a conceptual level the eradication
of sexist oppression requires the eradication of the other forms of oppression’ (327)
is a concept that has been thoroughly internalised in the third wave.
Works cited
Baumgardner, Jennifer, and Amy Richards. ‘Who’s the Next Gloria? The Quest for
the Third Wave Superleader.’ Catching a Wave: Reclaiming Feminism for the 21st
Century. Ed. Rory Dicker and Alison Piepmeier. Boston: Northeastern UP, 2003.
159–170.
Bondoc, Anna, and Meg Daly, eds. Letters of Intent: Women Cross the Generations to Talk
about Family, Work, Sex, Love and the Future of Feminism. New York: Free Press, 1999.
Casper, Lynne M. ‘My Daddy Takes Care of Me! Fathers as Care Providers.’ Current
Population Reports. U.S. Census Bureau, 1997. 1–9.