by Lisa Jervis

“Are you in the third wave?”

“When did the third wave start?”

“What’s the most important issue to third wavers?”

I get asked this a lot — at campus lectures, during radio interviews, at publishing conferences. I hate these questions. There are so many ways to answer, none of them entirely satisfactory.

I always want to pepper my interlocutor with questions instead:

Do you want to know how I identify, or how others would label me? Are you asking when the term was coined? When the first feminists who are considered part of the third wave became politicized? When the first riot grrl zine was published? What makes you think it’s possible to elevate one issue over all others? Which definition of the third wave are we talking about here, the chronological or the ideological?

This reluctance isn’t just me being cranky and not wanting to answer any hard questions. Here is the reality: We’ve reached the end of the wave terminology’s usefulness. What was at first a handy-dandy way to refer to feminism’s history and its present and future potential with a single metaphor has become shorthand that invites intellectual laziness, an escape hatch from the hard work of distinguishing between core beliefs and a cultural moment.

Using the simplest and most straightforward definition, I am, indisputably, a member of the third wave: I was born in 1972, right smack in the demographic that people think about when they think about the third wave. But discussions of the waves are only nominally about demographics. The metaphor wraps up differences in age, ideology, tactics and style, and pretends that distinguishing among these factors is unimportant.

Even the more nuanced discussions of third-wavers tend to cast them (or, given my birthday, should I say “us”?) as sex-obsessed young thangs with a penchant for lip gloss and a disregard for recent history, or sophisticated identity politicians who have moved past the dated concerns of their predecessors.

It’s no mystery why the discourse that has developed around the waves is divisive and oppositional. Writers and theorists love oppositional categories — they make things so much easier to talk about. Similarities are much more difficult. So, naturally, much has been said and written about the disagreements, conflicts, differences and antagonisms between feminists of the second and third waves, while hardly anything is ever said about our similarities and continuities.

The rap goes something like this: Older women drained their movement of sexuality; younger women are uncritically sexualized. Older women won’t recognize the importance of pop culture; younger women are obsessed with media representation. Older women have too narrow a definition of what makes a feminist issue; younger women are scattered and don’t know what’s important.

Stodgy versus frivolous. Won’t share power versus spoiled and ignorant.

Nothing on this list is actually true — but, because this supposedly great generational divide has been constructed out of very flimsy but readily available materials, the ideas persist in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

It’s just so much easier to hit on the playful cultural elements of the third wave and contrast them with the brass-tacks agenda — and impressive gains — of the second wave: It’s become the master narrative of feminism’s progression (or regression, as some see it).

But when has it ever been a good idea to trust a master narrative? After all, the oft-repeated notion among self-described third-wavers that those labeled as hopelessly second-wave reject humor, fashion, sex or anything else that might be fun is just a slightly — and only slightly — more nuanced and polite version of the stone-faced, hairy-legged manhater whom we all know to be a myth that originated in the sexist culture at large and was cultivated and amplified by conservative, antifeminist and/or just plain clueless journalists and pundits....

When feminists engage in this kind of nuance-deprived conflation of age and ideology, we’re doing little more than reinscribing the thoroughly debunked notion that we need to agree with each other all the time.

As we all know, feminism has always held within it multitudes of ideologies, tactics and priorities. The movement’s two current generations have come to be painted as internally monolithic, but they are each as diverse philosophically as feminism itself — they have to be; they are feminism itself.

...There’s certainly no shortage of disagreements both large and small within feminism. There are those who see transgender folks as interlopers in feminist spaces, and those who see genderqueers as the frontline soldiers against sexist systems of power.

There are those who would like to see “feminine” values replace “masculine” values as the defining characteristics of our society, and those who reject the very notion that these values have any gender apart from what’s been assigned by a sexist culture.

...The issues motivating both sides of the ’80s sex wars are very much still with us. Even if some views are more common among one generation than another, at their roots these are ideological disagreements — but they can’t be discussed productively while in disguise as generational issues. That disguise keeps us distracted from the real work before the movement today.

Here’s what we all need to recognize so that we can move on: Those in their 20s and 30s who don’t see their concerns reflected in the feminism of their elders are ignorant of history; those in their 50s and beyond who think that young women aren’t politically active — or active enough, or active around the right issues — don’t know where to look.

We all want the same thing: To borrow bell hooks’ phrase, we want gender justice.

We may not all agree on exactly what it looks like or how to get it. We should never expect to agree. Feminism has always thrived on and grown from internal discussions and disagreements. Our many different and often opposing perspectives are what push us forward, honing our theories, refining our tactics, driving us toward a more thorough dismantling of the white-supremacist, capitalist patriarchy (to borrow another phrase from hooks).

I want to see these internal disagreements continue. I want to see as much wrangling over them as ever. But I want them articulated accurately. And that means recognizing the generational divide for what it is — an illusion.

***

Now, does that rock or what? VERY very good. And check out the responses-- all favorable.

http://www.msmagazine.com/blog/archives/2005/01/from_ms_the_end.html

Go Lisa Gervis!

Heart

Feminism is a revolution, not a public relations campaign. -- Margaret Sloan-Hunter

I'm a radical feminist, not the fun kind. -- Andrea Dworkin

In my women's studies classes I always liked to joke that I was some sort of bizarre fossil from the second wave. Because even though I'm twenty-four, and therefore generationally clearly a supposed 'third-waver' most of my interaction with feminism was with my mother, and the books from her generation. I love this article because if we get rid of this wave terminology and just talk about the issues then I can stop feeling like some sort of freak for not being up what happened in the zines of my generation.

This is an incredibly vital point: "We all want the same thing: To borrow bell hooks’ phrase, we want gender justice.

We may not all agree on exactly what it looks like or how to get it. We should never expect to agree. Feminism has always thrived on and grown from internal discussions and disagreements. Our many different and often opposing perspectives are what push us forward, honing our theories, refining our tactics, driving us toward a more thorough dismantling of the white-supremacist, capitalist patriarchy."

Especially the fact that their have always been divisions and disagreements and that we have grown from them. Often when I listen to my classmates, from my perspective of strangely preserved 2nd-waver, I feel like they are trying to reinvent the wheel. They'll be spinning thought about current trends in feminism and I'll be thinking, that idea was present in the second wave, it is not new, but somehow I don't want to rain on their heads by saying so. If we could just talk about the ideas, the issues that need to be adressed, without being bogged down by these generational separations I think that that would be wonderful. Because I imagine most feminists of my generation are still concerned about things like rape, domestic abuse, abortion rights, and pornography. And I imagine that most women of my mother's generation are just as fascinated and compelled by some of the issues that have been raised by more current theory (interlocking spheres of oppression, the anti-globalization movement, the sexualization of the media). And to pretend like we're all blinded by generational differences has always seemed SO silly to me. My mother and I sure as hell are not, it's relatively easy for us to see that the issues raised by both generations are important and I imagine we're not alone in that.

People are so diverse w/such intriguing and different stories on how they came to feminism! What year, by reading/seeing/hearing/experiencing what...blab blab blab ...the ways in which a woman comes to feminism are so endless and unique and bring so much insight, that's what interests me! Not the "Waves"theory ...and I am sorry to say I bought into the whole "wave" crap to a certain extent, until I realized it was just as the "Bitch" editor described -- a useful way for writers/people in general to not have to think, to make self-righteous and intellectually dishonest proclamations and judgements on feminists from both "waves" ...anyways. Cool posts. ;D
-Jeyoani