Talk:Third-wave feminism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article is part of WikiProject Gender Studies. This WikiProject aims to improve the quality of articles dealing with gender studies and to remove systematic gender bias from Wikipedia. If you would like to participate in the project, you can choose to edit this article, or visit the project page for more information. |
| Start | This article has been rated as start-Class. |
Contents |
[edit] Y: The Last Man
Is "Y: The Last Man" an example of something informed by Third-wave feminism?
The reason why I think it is, is because: It doesn't say that women can't do all these things that men do today; Instead, it seems to argue that we are split on these lines because people self-type themselves int gender roles. It doesn't argue that men are making women not able to do things. (2nd wave.) And it doesn't argue that men are worthless. That said, it seems very inessentialist; It argues (very convincingly) that women would do all the things men do, if there were no men. I don't understand what "transnationalism" means, in the context of feminism.
I don't know; I don't understand the words in the article very deeply, but it sure seems that what it's describing, Y fits it perfectly, in a way I have a hard time articulating. I'm talking like this because I understand Y, I don't understand this description of third-wave feminism, and I'm trying to contextualize my experience here.
If uh... somebody could help me out here, ...
- Y: The Last Man - article on Salon
Could someone check if Molly Yard should really be listed here? Given her age (born 1912-07-06), and that she stopped being NOW's president in 1991, I suspect that she would be more appropriately placed in an earlier wave. I suspect this is a misplacement. Corrections? Justifications? If she IS justifiably 3rd wave, then I think that justification needs to go into an article. -- Dwheeler
[edit] Beyond Definition?
The page reads: "In fact, it is the definitions of such things as gender, sexuality, and feminism that are a major part of the problem. Defining anything, including third-wave feminism, limits it."
Hm.
If third wave feminism is something, it should be possible to deliniate it from other somethings.
Can someone who knows 3rd wave feminism, and is a little more eager to articulate, have a swing at this one?
Imagine that you are talking with a 2nd wave feminist- if you say, "Well, it's kind of hard to define," then you have don't have a convert. You can't even have an arguing buddy. We need to draw forth some substance here..!
Main difference is that third-wave regards second-wave as having falsely taken the experience of white, middle-class, Western women and expanding it to a universal women's experience. In a word, intersectionality: Third-Wave is a response to the criticism of Second-Wave that it didn't begin to take intersectionality into account. The Literate Engineer 06:04, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
I respectfully disagree; That sounds like the bias of someone who particularly cares for intersectionality. I don't doubt that 3rd wave feminism takes intersectionality into account; I just think there's more to 3rd wave feminism than that, and I think it's not the main difference. I'm a male, and I have felt that 3rd wave feminism is "more real," to me, than 2nd wave. 3rd wave has had things to tell me about masculinity, not just female life. That is: I sense that there is a more mature general theory of mind & gender underlying 3rd wave feminism. It feels much less metaphysical to me. My suspicion is that 3rd wave came out of not only criticism of 2nd-wave focus on middle class white females, but that it also came out of the Internet, Marshall McLuhan type media thinking, neuroscience, critical theory, general systems theory. It seems to me also that it is much more interested in networking beyond women's issues: prison, ecology, mental health, race, etc., etc., many areas that are not about womens issues specificly. I feel also that there's a better sense of "the map." The map being: the types of ideas that are out there. It's not so new, the diversity of ideas and approaches, and I think that means that people are now studying the map more objectively- capable of considering the separate ideas from afar, without getting totally emotional about it. Instead of "oh my god, I can't believe that person thinks that way, and calls herself a feminist," it's "ah, there's an xyz feminist."
This said: These are just my impressions, googling and reading a bunch of pages on 3rd wave feminism.
Does anyone have a definative word on who coined the phrase "third wave feminism" and when? All of my research points to Rebecca Walker in the early 1990s, but I have heard (or maybe read) that she merely made it widely-known. tiggergrrl
LionKimbro,
Third wave feminism is informed by poststructuralism, a major part of which is the idea that there cannot be set definitions of anything and that signs (words) and their signifiers (meanings) exist in a sort of fluid, shifting matrix of language. In other words, its the belief that words can only be defined through opposition to other words (a cat is not a dog, or a tree, or a parking ticket, or Kenya) or through deference to other words (if you look up dog in the dictionary, you might run across the words "hairy," "mammal," and "animal," all of which defer to other words for their own definitions).
Because of this reliance on other words, defining something like "woman" will necessarily attach it to other words and concepts. An example: femininity as defined by having "female" genitalia. Many transgendered people who consider themselves women have "male" genitalia. You see the problem here? The concepts of woman, male, female genitalia, and male genetalia don't really make sense in this context, because their definitions contain connotations that are undesirable to 3rd wave feminists. The very terms "male genetalia" and "female genetalia" don't make sense in this discussion.
There is also the issue of who makes the definitions in the first place. 3rd wave femenists, poststructuralists, and many others would argue that the ability to control language is a powerful ability that only groups in power have. For example, there are very pejorative terms for non-whites (niggers), women (cunts) and gay people (faggot), whereas their counterparts towards whites (cracker), males (pricks), and straight people (I can't even think of one. Breeders, maybe?) are very powerless, not very hurtful, and not very serious. I would argue, and I think a lot of third wave femenists and poststructuralists would argue that this is because the words said by the dominant group (white straight males) are given a sense of power because they are wielded and defined by people in power. Thier counterparts are not nearly as offensive because marginalized groups do not have the power to make thier own defenitions of words.
So, a third wave femenist would be opposed to the definition of a concept like womanhood because the power to define the concept would be a power only had by the dominant group, which is males.
I hope that helped clear it up. I'm not going to edit the article itself, because I am only vaguely familiar with the ideas of third wave feminists, and I don't feel qualified. Although I definately agree that the article needs a lot of work.
-James
[edit] Expansion tag
I think this article needs major expansion. I'm sorry that I can't be more specific (and I don't want to be flippant or cruel), but I don't know enough about the topic to even really say how it needs to be expanded (that's my main criticism of the article).--Anchoress 08:16, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
- Um... OK. Rebecca just removed the expansion tag from the article (without explanation). Not a biggy, I'm certainly not interested in fighting over it, but honestly: I didn't know anything about Third Wave Feminism before I came to the article, and frankly I still don't know anything about it. Doesn't that mean the article should maybe be expanded a bit?--Anchoress 04:37, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Suggestion
I am somewhat skeptical of the whole concept of a "third-wave", partly because it seems to be a conusumable variety of postmodernism without the theory (i.e. what exactly?). Certainly, the discursive boundaries of the phenomenon are vague and I would be interested to know how anyone is studying it. What might be a good idea for this article is to mention the inherent problem in conceptualizing the Third Wave. Don't take my word for it: Baumgardner writes:
- "This insistence on definitions [of Third Wave feminism] is really frustrating because feminism gets backed into a corner. People keep insisting on defining and defining and defining and making a smaller and smaller definition--and it's just lazy thinking on their part. Feminism is something individual to each feminist."
"Feminism is something individual to each feminist" - Huh? So there is no such thing as feminism, just a concept of self-as-feminine-of-a-sort? I thought the word for that was "individual". You see how this could be confusing. How exactly can one identify themselves as part of a Third Wave if feminism cannot transcend the individual? The Wiki article reads "Defining anything, including third-wave feminism, limits it." This a bit over-the-edge, even for postmodernism. By its very name-sake and self-proclamation, the Third Wave is a cultural-historical phenomenon that is limited. Regardless, perhaps the article could explain these (to my mind) essential difficulties. --Vector4F 22:33, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
- While I think the influence of postmodernism/resistance constricting definitions is an intergral characteristic of the third-wave, I do see your point. I will see what I can do as far as becoming a little more concrete/a little clearer.--Clm17 18:24, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Highly confusing
This reads like an essay from an undergraduate sociology student. For those unfamiliar with the subject matter, the jargon contained in the second paragraph makes the article impossible to understand for a non-specialist. Triangle e 12:52, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Riot Grrrrl?
This article seems to completely ignore the main defining movement of the Third Wave, Riot Grrrl. Maybe someone can merge the articles together? Pollyvomit 06:09, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
