Feminists

Whatever this "second wave feminism" stuff is, it seems to be entirely US-centric. I am not a resident of the US. My feminism has always involved both the personal and the political, and acknowledged the common interests with other disadvantaged groups. My life has always included sex. I am not Betty Friedan or whatever other icon of your "second wave" you might be wanting to portray me/us as.

I'm also not willing to accept one person's, or any group of people's, definition of "third wave feminism" that happens to suit their purposes. Discussions of what it is are interesting. Using it as a blunt instrument to hit women women over the head with who, for example, perceive and oppose the objectification of women in the broader culture, and in some alleged manifestations of feminism within that culture, is not.

Allowing women to define feminism for themselves, as that well-worn wiki article phrases it, is bullshit. There, I've said it.

"The fact that feminism is no longer limited to arenas where we expect to see it — NOW, Ms., women's studies, and redsuited Congresswomen ..." -- well for me it never was. Feminism did not exist only in the USofA in the 1970s. I was working with women who were in conflict with the criminal justice system, and with low-income women and refugee women. My classmates were organizing and representing immigrant working women and mounting legal challenges to discriminatory legislation and policies in the fields of unemployment insurance and family property rights and the rights of Aboriginal women and foreign domestic workers. My friends and other local women were running shelters for victims of spousal violence and crisis centres for victims of sexual violence. My party's MPs were working to enact legislation that advanced women's interests in every realm.

And of course there were all those women themselves -- low-income and immigrant and visible minority and Aboriginal and so on. The claim was that they were excluded, but I didn't see it myself. Some of their concerns may have been invisible in the women's movement as they were in the broader society (especially true of Aboriginal women), but I'm not going to blame us feminists for that and I never agreed with the "third wave" criticism on that point. To me, it just amounted to blaming the victim: women, and feminists specifically, were supposed to be curing all the ills of the world, once again. Don't blame men in the groups in question (like the men who exploited Aboriginal prostitutes or the male trade union leaders who ignored low-income working women), or the broader society; blame women and feminists.

Here's something said in Canada about the "third wave" recently:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/third-wave-of-feminism-urged-by-prominent-canadian-women/article1701942/

I actually don't have a great deal of respect for McTeer, whom I once knew and whom you would certainly call "second-wave" in the most pejorative sense (her claim to fame, other than being a Prime Minister's wife - who kept her surname - is her work in the field of reproductive technology and the law), let alone another Conservative Party speaker named there, but I certainly agree with that last comment. And in Canada, it is critiques of that kind of "third-wave feminism" that you are most likely to see. They somehow think that the superficial is sufficient. The "personal" is not always superficial. But a hell of a lot of the time, it damned well is.

I wonder whether the way to stop feeling alienated from the feminist movement might be to actually join it ...

As I understand it, the "third wave" originated in the challenge to the "second wave" by women who felt excluded and that their interests were not being considered - women of colour. That's certainly what happened here in Canada, and it got pretty nasty. And it sure ain't what I hear hereabouts when I hear "third wave".

Anyhow.

I would appreciate it if you would refrain from dismissing the concerns of women in this group, that being all the post I am replying to does.

The "queer" take on pornography, for instance -- and I am not entirely ignorant of more learnèd discourse on that than one finds at DU -- does NOT overrule or invalidate the take that a large number of straight feminists (and lesbian feminists as well) have on it. The fact that some straight "third wave" feminists do not share, actually refuse to address, our analyses and concerns does not mean our analyses and concerns are illegitimate, let alone that their analyses are all legitimate.

The availability of same-sex marriage does not mean that marriage is not a patriarchal institution designed and used to oppress women. The existence of gay and lesbian pornography does not mean that pornography produced for straight men, the vast bulk of what is produced and used, is not a phenomenon that contributes to the oppression of all women - half the population. The existence of happy hookers in one country, of any sex / sexual orientation / gender identity, does not mean that prostitution is not an institution that oppresses vast millions of women. Just as the presence of a few women in the legislative chambers and boardrooms of a nation does not mean that women are not economically exploited and discriminated against in that country even.

No one's exceptional experience, or personal or group "perspective", invalidates our experience and the perspective it gives us, or the overarching reality we know exists.

Here is where my feminism intersects with my progressivism.

Being progressive means recognizing vulnerability to exploitation and oppression, and agreeing that in order to protect vulnerable individuals and groups from genuine and serious harm, I may have to agree to waive some exercises of my own freedoms.

This too is complex. What if the group being asked to waive is itself disadvantaged and oppressed? What if the freedom is more crucial to their situation than it is to mine? Matter for serious discussion there. I'm not interested in using pornography or prostitutes. If a group I don't belong to claims that one of those phenomena is crucial to its efforts to gain recognition of the human dignity of its members for who and what they are and without them having to conform to some other paradigm, do I capitulate on behalf of the people I know are seriously harmed by the phenomena? (I don't bother responding to the "nobody is the boss of me" argument, since a progressive doesn't make it.) Can I say that their position is still inimical to the interests of the people who deserve my concern? Can I say, even, that those people win, in my estimation? Others say no; why can I not say yes?

Because women are less worthy of our concern than the other group in question?

We can discuss whether it would benefit each group to consider the other's perspective and whether each group's efforts might be another road to the same thing (will same-sex marriage and gay/lesbian porn actually subvert the phenomena in a way that benefits women?).

But, in this group, I am not going to be told that my concerns as a woman are secondary, my analysis as a feminist is wrong, or I am a homophobe or racist or any other vile thing because I refuse to sit at the back of the bus or throw other women under it.