feminism: tentative definition(s)

i am obsessed with the central paradox of feminism - the fact that it's a collective fight to be treated as individuals in a society free of sex hierarchies. the word "individuals" is key here. there is no single group "women" that agrees on everything. black women focus on certain aspects of their gender and status, working women on other realities, etc. that's the point. the diversity of feminism is what makes it an effective tool.

the recent publication of jennifer scanlon's biography of helen gurley brown, founder of cosmo, has forced me to swing around and confront what i mean by second and third-wave feminism again. this is a life-project, so i figured that i would post some older thoughts and slowly update them in the future. given brown's approach to feminism (she defined herself as a feminist), i think it best to begin with the third wave and work my way backwards, in the hope that my musings will make a semblance of sense. into the deep, dark depths!

the third wave is often called a movement when, in fact, it is actually a body of feminist thought - a rather expansive and often contradictory body of thought, designed to counteract the "oppressive" definitions of feminism propegated by the second-wave women's movement during the 1960s and '70s. the traditional second-wave narrative is one of two national feminist strands: (1) radical cultural feminists who sought to undermine a pervasive patriarchy linked to capitalism, commodification, and a narrowly-defined "proper" family structure and (2) political feminists who worked for legislative and legal sex equality through primarily institutional means.

third-wave feminists argued that both of these strands were populated by upper and middle-class white women whose tactics and successes were of little benefit to minority and working-class women. while this is true to some extent, recent scholarly efforts on grassroots feminist activity before, during, and after the women's movement has unearthed a far more racially diverse movement. additionally, the black feminist tradition is much longer and more important that most acknowledge. black feminists of the first wave defined themselves as "womanists," who dealt collectively with racial and sex inequality. womanism is a thriving intellectual and political tradition that provided a model for second-wave feminism. it is also a model that third-wave feminism completely ignores. if you actually read bell hooks, she references this stuff, as do historians of black women.

sometimes equipped with this scholarship, feminist theoreticians in the early 1990s took the idea of interracialism to a whole new level, and sought to create a women's movement that spanned countries and continents. thus, you get campaigns against genital mutilation, etc. now, i'm totally on board with these sorts of campaigns, but i certainly do not think they constitute a u.s. women's movement. and i'm extremely annoyed by the literature that calls itself "third-wave" feminism.

additionally, the third-wave focus on the need to accomodate differences between women leads to an emphasis on gender, rather than sex. judith butler is the obvious citation here. while i certainly agree that gender is a socially-constructed category, until men start having half the babies in this country (there are other problems too, but this is always the best example), there will continue to be a fundamental structural problem with achieving sex equality. i'd like third wavers to take that seriously. federally mandating flexible minimums for maternity/paternity leave and treating housework and childcare as work is absolutely essential to achieving sex equality, as is seriously rethinking this country's legal and medical approach to rape and domestic violence. women are not equal yet, but the third wave tends to spend a great deal of time belittling women for focusing too much on these issues instead of taking hold of new freedoms (and admittedly, there are many, courtesy of the second wave) and asserting themselves as individuals. in other words, there's a libertarian streak in the third wave that i greatly resent.

needless to say, a focus on gender rather than sex leads down an unfortunate path (in my mind). third-wave feminism tends to emphasize individuals, rather than dealing with women as a collectively discriminated-against group. although motivated by good intentions of open-mindedness and concerns about letting minority women define what feminism "means" for them and how they might best "act out" their own brands of feminism, the third wave ultimately leads to sloppy logic and and an overemphasis on individual women battling sexism in their own worlds and in their own ways - this is not a women's movement and often isn't even feminism. the nancy cott quote i always remember here is her insistence that feminism is women's "ability to say 'we,'" to think and act collectively to overturn sexist law and practice.

third-wave logic ignores the institutional, legislative, and economic barriers to women's equality, and often results in women thinking that feminism is either a scary (second-wave) diatribe against some nebulous patriarchy or the (third wave) emphasis on playing with gender through individual, everyday performance. in its worst incarnation, third-wave feminism results in women thinking that sex and the city is feminist. seriously - there are quite a few books out there on this. by scholars. well, by "scholars." these books make me very unhappy. letting a man buy you a drink will never be a feminist act, in my book. i don't care if you still feel free to walk off without letting him have sex with you. and this is exactly the kind of thinking that helen gurley brown promoted from the sixties onwards.

now, i don't think that there's really a definition of the third wave that's any good right now, largely because it's not a cohesive concept - it's more like a cyclic dialogue about how malleable gender is. i find it to be intellectually and methodologically lacking, but certainly can see its appeal and subscribe to a number of judith butler-isms. i just think it primarily distracts from more important issues - issues of domestic violence, of unequal political representation, of declining reproductove freedom and stigmatization of welfare mothers.

a lot of this boils down to my absolute devotion to the idea that politics is important and strategies for women's advancement need to define women as a collective group and fight for institutional change. judith butler tells me that you can't define women as a group. i think you can, and must act collectively based on this premise in order to achieve sex equality.

a large part of my problem with third-wave feminism is that none of these "feminists" realize that individual choices are not actually individual choices. patriarchy is fundamentally a system and women must confront that system as a group. otherwise, you have a conversation. and while conversations are nice, they don't get you much of anywhere. i'd prefer a nice big movement, myself. those tend to accomplish things. otherwise, all this theorizing is intellectual masturbation, and i have absolutely no patience for it.

goals and categories are not necessarily limiting, and i really wish that third-wave feminists would actually read some second-wave stuff, rather than taking what is, quite frankly, the anti-feminist definition of feminism and applying it to all second-wave feminisms. there were multiple definitions of feminism in the second wave - and this "more expansive" conversation that third-wavers think is all their own was borrowed from consciousness-raising tactics of the second wave. those were pretty damned expansive, and gave a lot of women a route to self- expression, in a collective environment.

sneaky, huh? suddenly the dichotomy between collective and individual breaks down, and you're left with a pretty large group of empowered women who tend to be connected to other empowered groups of women, who feel like they might just get up tomorrow morning and set up an organization that lobbies their local government for anti-rape legislation, etc. ywcas used to do this stuff! pidgeon-holing feminism as collective groupthink (thank you, phyllis schlafly) made women afraid to view their sex as a disenfranchised group because such thinking might lead to dictation.

newsflash: this is completely untrue. take a look at jo freeman's article on "the tyranny of structurelessness," her description of the feminist movement as the complete opposite of what third wavers often describes feminism as. women afraid of other women telling them what to do led to an extremely diverse, spider-like movement that was a prime example of bottom-up social change. indeed, sometimes it tended towards the in-fighting and ineffectiveness that i fear so much. but for most of the second-wave, this structure worked really well.

i find that the third wave has very little to say that's new and tends to use the differentiation between gender and sex to justify apolitical individualism, which i think is harmful to both feminism and, ultimately, to third-wave feminists themselves. feminism is necessarily defined as a belief in a collectivity of women. third-wavers negate this with individualism, so i generally don't define whatever they're doing (or, most often, simply saying - action is not a forte of the third wave) as feminism. it's really important to put what these women were saying into the proper context. and it's important to understand exactly what they were reacting against. women have achieved a lot in the past few decades, and it's extremely important to keep in mind the fact that these women were responding to a world that didn't look as friendly to women as your world looks to you today.

additionally, i think that women today don't really understand that our situation might not be as rosy as we think it is, sitting up in our middle-class, well-educated chairs and looking down at the opportunities beneath us. how about a nation-wide constriction in a woman's ability to have an abortion. rising birth control prices, anyone? rising domestic violence stats? women are still around 15 percent of congress. promotion statistics are dismal, and are declining in many professions. welfare rights! don't get me started on welfare rights or tanf. it's become acceptable, indeed it's become non-news when the democratic party (liberals! liberals?) launches an assault on the country's poor women. none of this seems to matter a whit to third-wave women and, quite frankly, it bugs me.

i do want to state, for the record, that i don't believe that women viewing themselves as a collectively disadvantaged group obliterates the ability to have meaningful relationships with men. viewing women as a group makes you just as self-reflective about your personal relationships as contemplating gender performance. indeed, these are not mutually exclusive ways of looking at personal relationships. feel free to mix and match approaches to gender and sex relations, while still believing that women, as a group, are not treated equally in this country and something ought to be done about it.

looking at second-wave feminism more closely renders a tactically, intellectually, and institutionally varied picture of women who all think of themselves as primarily defined by society as the group "women." they defined themselves that way as well, because it was the only way for them to interrogate their societal positions in a way that was both meaningful and conducive to the collective action necessary to actually do something about that inequality. if feminism is to make gains, women shouldn't agree on a specific set of "goals."

i myself am inclined to focus on a woman's declining ability to procure abortions and other forms of birth control. but it's all feminism, because feminism is the ability to look around and say "we" not despite, but because of the plethora of concerns "we" have. the more diverse and wide-ranging the concerns are, the better. diversity makes for change.

feminists need to disagree - that's part of the mobilization process. if we stopped whenever we disagreed, there'd be no point in trying. conversation is what gets people thinking, and thinking is what gets people acting, and acting is what allows groups to achieve change in a society where change is hard to come by. a number of women didn't want the vote. they thought suffrage would undermine their ability to push for better conditions for working women using their sway as inculcators of american morality and selflessness. they thought women might never be entirely won over to political participation. they were, understandibly, often more concerned overturning coverture and institutionalizing women's ability to control their own bodies. suffrage was the most controversial plank in the declaration issued at seneca falls in 1848.

of course, what could be defined as the "big, important battles" change over time. it's necessary that they change over time.

looking at the past lends us a model for success. i don't think it's elitist or naive to learn from our forebearers. certainly blaming elitists for notcoming up with a set of cohesive women's goals is both unproductive and unrealistic. but more than anything, it legitimates not doing anything. and that's the worst thing a feminist can do. women need to find their own version of feminist action and pursue its realization relentlessly. thinking gets you partway there. past successes help with tactics. doing forces you to encounter reality, adjust your expectations and goals, and solidify how you think about women and feminism.

this summer, that biography of helen gurley brown will be purchased and thoroughly read. i'll probably hate it, but it will be good for me. someday, i will come to a more balances position on the third wave (i think having students who think in these terms is helpful), but until then, i will continue to revise and rewrite entire sections of this essay. doing so is an integral part of my own feminism.

ny times review // wash post review // new yorker review

so here is goes - my incessant posting of nancy cott's the grounding of modern feminism

- selected excerpts from the 1987 introduction, in order -

[Feminism] was both broader and narrower: broader in intent, proclaiming revolution in all the relations of the sexes, and narrower in the range of its willing adherents. As an ism, (an ideology) it presupposed a set of principles not necessarily belonging to every woman - nor limited to women."
(and here's where i mess up - i oftentimes use "equality" as shorthand)

"Equality is such a difficult quality to apply to human beings (because it is colloquially taken to mean sameness) that the point is served better by expression in terms of opposition to ranking one's sex inferior or superior, or opposition to one sex's categorical control of the rights and opportunities of the other."

"The conviction that women's socially constructed position situates us on shared ground enables the consciousness and the community of action among women to impel change."

"Men and women are alike as human beings, yet categorically different from each other; their samenesses and differences derive from nature and culture, how inextricably entwined we cannot know."

"As much as feminism asserts the female individual - by challenging delineation by sex and by opposing the self-abnegation on behalf of others historically expected of women - pure individualism negates feminism because i removes the basis for women's collective self-understanding or action."

"The common goal of the ballot harnessed emphases on women's equality to men with emphases on women's difference from men; suffragists argued on both grounds ... [but after the ballot was won a] new understanding was needed, which Feminists proposed by making individuality and heterogeneity among women their principles and yet holding these in abeyance by acting in sex solidarity."

"Feminists offered no sure definition of who women was; rather, they sought to end the classification woman. They posited a paradoxical group ideal of individuality. Insofar as they opposed specialization by sex they gave free rein to individualism; but Feminism relied on a solidarity deeded down from the woman movement by suffragist's emphasis on women's common disenfranchisement."

"This is primarily a study of consciousness - women's willingness or reluctance to say we - a study of feminist intentions and the ways they do or do not materialize."

"What historians have seen as the demise of feminism in the 1920s was, more accurately, the end of the suffrage movement and the early struggle of modern feminism. That struggle was, and is, to find language, organization, and goals adequate to the paradoxical situation of modern women, diverse individuals and subgroups who 'can't avoid being women whatever they do,' who inhabit the same worlds as men, not in the same way."