Which wave of feminism is the best?

[HarryHarry]

A friend of mine is constantly complaining about 2nd wave feminists. (If it helps to understand her better, she is a sex-positive, man-pleasing type of feminist from California).

I have to say that although I consider myself a feminist I haven’t studied feminism academically and I don’t know which wave happened when or what they were all about. Can someone explain what her problem might be with 2nd wave feminists?

The idea that feminism is purely a ‘Western‘ movement is not entirely correct. Women in other parts of the world faced their own, specific struggles and Western women often belittled them, especially in the age of colonialism and empire, but there were many links and cooperation, and international women’s organisations were more global than is often acknowledged. Anyhow, what is the West? Latin America included? Some of the potter history of feminism bandied about is poor and serves the purpose of making claims in the present rather than understanding the past.

It dismisses 2nd wave as conservative, out of date and filled with bitter old ladies. So it is misogynist too.

I think my mother belonged to this group -- I'm not very versed in feminist theory, as I was raised by a very feminist mother and thought the battle was over and didn't affect me at all. Personally, I was far more disadvantaged and hurt by racism.

She was a feminist before I was born, in 1951, and was instrumental in having some ground-breaking laws changed in my home country, a small British colony. She was quite a figure; she divorced my dad when I was three to become a single working mother when this was quite revolutionary. She never had a boyfriend or even dated after her divorce; she seemed not interested in men at all, and this was a freedom in her I greatly admired.

So I took her feminism much for granted; as a very liberal young woman who came of age in the 60's I was very much "live and let live", very socialist. Yet more and more issues certainly disturbed me, such as prostitution and porn which I thought degraded women.

I also grew to the opinion that when women have sex as freely as men they usually end up hurting themselves -- but that was something you couldn't say out loud, and I didn't. I was afraid of the word "prude".

Mum was definitely a prude -- she was so dignified, so independent of male opinion or need to be attractive to men, or please them in any way. She was happily man-less for several decades. And yet she had lots of male friends and most seemed to have a high opinion and respect for her. So it's a word I now accept proudly.

Gender ideology has seen me now aligning completely with my mother. She is turning in the grace at the present state of affairs. I so wish I could talk to her again and tell her she was right all along... I'm so proud of her, and glad that she was my mother.

It's mothers like her who pass the baton and help us to stand up straight.

I’ve never read up on the waves or studied them so interesting to read more on this. I think the burgeoning feminism that’s happening now, where lots of women of all ages are happy to say they are feminists and are thinking about what that means, is fucking brilliant.

A little more time for some of those women to experience life and think about stuff and soon we’ll be having another massive wave of actual social change, benefiting women.
This will take on some of the harms from social media and the internet including porn and rape culture, dangerously widening social and financial inequality and the creep of capitalism/monetisation into every single area of life, particularly affecting children. I hope it will be a lot more focused on structural system-level critique and changing institutions, and much less focused on right think, policing of language and fucking ignorant dangerous ideas like getting rid of prisons.

@lettera

I don’t agree, I wasn’t there but have studied it, it’s just a discourse I’ve noticed and it was a fragmentation in the second wave itself that as the more radical arm developed older players such as Friedan became fairly maligned. Feminine Mystique was published in 1963 on the same year Martin Luther King made his dream speech. I always remember that at the 50 year retrospective mark, there was nothing on Betty at all and yet it started to sow the seeds of the second wave.

I think it is very important to remember that the second wave was inspired by the Civil Rights Movement a

Also before we romanticise things and imply feminists should recognise some Unacknowledged debt to the civil rights movement, we need to remember that how these movements ‘inspired’ feminism is that they were often hugely exclusionary of women. Read a few accounts of activists at the time being expected to make the tea and take the notes. The anger at being treated in this way led to many women setting up feminists meetings and groups.

This wave. Right now.

The GC wave where women are women and our can't change your sex.

I think it would be shitter if we used the western term ‘Feminism’ to refer to women’s liberation globally, but as it stands the ‘waves’ are specifically talking about 3 points in Western history.

But these waves weren't, and aren't limited to focusing on Western women's struggles. Ever since the suffragettes White Western feminists have spoken loudly about women's global liberation, but often in terms that presume women outside of the West cannot speak for themselves or that their needs mirror those of Western women. Western feminism has never been limited to focusing on Western women's struggles.

In terms of second-wave feminists' privilege, Mary Daly's and Audre Lorde's exchange illustrates this pretty well.

This wave will have as many different discourses in it as all the others. There was probably a very diffuse third wave in the late 80s into the 90s (the later waves in waves in the west have always been a bit more diffuse after suffrage then enshrining of equal rights legislation in the second wave). Agree there is a 4th though with a few opposing strands in it.

In terms of gender critical though, it is definitely reaching back to the Marxist/socialist Feminist ideas of women as a materially embodied sex class who are oppressed. Sheila Rowbotham is a second wave, British socialist feminist who has raised concerns around transgender revisioning of women for decades. Bindel as well.

@DidoLamenting I know what I think, I was just curious about which wave would fit me the best. And also because I didn’t understand the 2nd wave vs 3rd wave thing.

Women were organizing long before the suffrage.
There has been just one long trudge by women toward justice for over a thousand years all over the world.
The waves just signify the times when men in power were forced to acknowledge our demands.