A Manifesto for Third Wave Feminism

By Tamara Straus, AlterNet. Posted October 24, 2000.

It is easy to be cynical about feminist activism today. The quest for equality -- in the workplace, at home, on the street and particularly in the corridors of power -- is far from what advocates of the 1970s women's movement, the so-called Second Wave, fought for. There are few women in government; a glass ceiling in the workplace, although wearing thin, still looms overhead; and perhaps most important of all, American women -- though mostly free of the centuries' long economic dependence on men -- are now hamstrung between the pressures of making money or pursuing a profession and raising children.

Go to the magazine shelves, pick up any glossy rag -- Redbook, Mademoiselle, Cosmo -- and there you will read one benumbing article after another in reaction to (though rarely insightful about) the hackneyed belief that "You can't have it all"; that Second Wave feminism, with its derogation of marriage and emphasis on social and economic justice, has sold out a whole generation of women, who can't get hitched in the booming marketplace of sexual liberation.

It's no wonder that people aren't even familiar with the term Third Wave feminism. The more general assumption is that feminism is dead, that the Second Wavers did their work -- and not particularly well -- and now we're stuck with a bucket-load of unsolvable problems.

But hark! Feminism is not dead, nor has it ever found itself in the throes of final expiration. It just, like all movements, has mutated and transformed.

Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards know this implicitly, which is one of the reasons they wrote Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000), a book that argues for the continued importance of feminism in politics, education and culture.

The other reason they spent five years dissecting the state of the women's movement is to define the controversial ascendance of "girlie culture," a phenomenon of female self-empowerment that emerged in the 1990s with movies like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, activist groups like Riot Grrrl and books like Elizabeth Wurtzel's Bitch.

Baumgardner and Richards advocate girlie culture. They have done so as journalists (both 30-year-olds got their start at Ms. magazine) and as activists (both are leaders of the Third Wave, an activist group for young women). But their main problem is that Second Wave feminists, and especially Second Wave politicians and journalists, are largely against their advocation.

Women like former New York Times columnist Anna Quindlen have argued that equating lipstick with empowerment, however playful or ironic, and reclaiming such words a bitch and slut makes a mockery of feminism' longtime and still unachieved goals of social and economic equality. Second Wavers bemoan girlie culture's focus on the personal and the cultural over the political.

So an intergenerational struggle has sprung forth between mothers and daughters. On the one side are Second Wavers who lashed out against their sexually limiting roles as wives and mothers in exchange for equal pay and egalitarian partnerships. And on the other are Third Wavers who, perhaps dismissive of the battles fought and often won by their mothers, aspire to be Madonna, the woman who rose to fame as the ultimate virgin whore. Third Wavers, say Baumgardner and Richards, want to continue the fight for equal rights, but not to the detriment of their sexuality. They want to be both subject and object, when it comes to their sexual roles, their political power and their place in American culture.

As you will discover in the following interview and accompanying excerpt, Baumgardner and Richards believe the generational struggle over feminism marks a new era: the tapering off of the Second Wave and the growing pains of Third.

The question to ask as you read along is: Can a Third Wave that tries to push forward urgent feminist issues -- such as national heath care and child care as well as the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment -- also champion girlie power with its penchant for adolescent role playing? Can Baumgardner and Richards' Third Wave manifesto be taken seriously not only by the Second Wave but also by young American women in general?

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