Title: An introduction to feminisms in a postfeminist age
Abstract: The past fifteen years has witnessed a proliferation of new feminisms: postfeminism, third wave feminism, cyberfeminism, power feminism, even DIY feminism. Depending on what you read, we are either in a postfeminist era or in the third wave of feminism. But what is third wave feminism, what is its relation to the first and second waves, and is it feminist? This article offers a preliminary introduction to ‘third wave’ feminisms, interrogating their assumptions and agendas, comparing and contrasting them with the feminisms that emerged from ‘second wave’ feminism, and considering their political potential as a strategy for social change. My interest in the political potential of what is being touted as third wave feminism was sparked by several incidents in 2007 when asked to comment on some recent media depictions of the current state, or demise, of feminism . The first was in relation to the possible reasons for a male being elected Women’s Officer for the Student Union at Massey University’s Wellington campus. I proffered what would be considered a ‘stock’ feminist response: many young women these days are not aware of the fragile nature of the hard-fought gains of their feminist predecessors and, not having experienced any in-your-face sexist discrimination, seem to consider feminism to be old-fashioned and irrelevant to their lives. The second incident was being asked to comment on a competition in an on-line men’s magazine where men were asked to submit a photograph of their female partner’s breasts; the most deserving would win a $10,000 boob job. I was surprised and somewhat uncomfortable about the need to consistently push beyond the line of questioning to make my point that we needed to look at the bigger picture and ask why men thought it okay to objectify their female partners in that way and what forms of masculinity and femininity supported these kinds of stereotypes. During this radio interview the interviewer made the point that “isn’t the new feminism about individual choice and if women choose to have cosmetic surgery, breast implants and the like, then that was their choice and that was okay”. Of course I questioned what constituted ‘choice’ in that scenario and insisted that feminism had never only ever been about individual women’s gains and empowerment, that feminism was about the bigger picture, about social relations and systemic injustices. The third incident was being invited as a panel speaker to the New Zealand University Students’ Association annual conference to address the issue “Is Feminism Redux?” (which, as I was later to find out, is contemporary youth speak for ‘redundant’). Somewhat relieved to not encounter as hostile an audience as I had expected, I focused my address on several recent events that had captured media attention: the release of the report commissioned by the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, “Living at the Cutting Edge – Women’s Experiences of Protection Orders” (Robertson et al., 2007); the student riots in Dunedin with the Undie 500 car race;2 and the rape charges against former police officers Brad Shipton and Bob Schollum, the Assistant 1 An earlier version of this article was presented at the Women’s Studies Association Conference, February 2007, held at Southern Institute of Technology, Invercargill, New Zealand. 2 The Undie 500 is an annual student car rally from Christchurch to Dunedin. 3
Publication Year: 2009
Publication Date: 2009-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 26
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