Brave: Young Women’s Global Revolution

Cruz

Chapter 1

F E M I N I S T   W A V E S   I N   T H E   W E S T

Women’s March on Chico, January 21, 2017—one of 915 marches in over 75 countries

Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.

British suffragist Rebecca West

A lot of my friends are disgusted with feminism; they think it means burning your bras as in the 60s.

Zoe, 17, f, California

I think this next generation of women is going to be crazy powerful.

Parth, 18, f, England

I believe that organizations such as NOW are out of touch with the third generation and are buying into bureaucratic BS of business.

Lauren, 19, f, Illinois

If there is one message my life is dedicated to, it is that girls impact the world.

Bernadette Lim, Harvard student, founder of Women SPEAK

Our oppressors use simple boxes of identity to contain and destroy our potential—so how is recreating this containment supposed to be liberating?

Suzahn Ebrahimian, 23, f, New York

Third (and fourth) wave feminism got caught up in the neoliberal fixation on personal choice and the individual experience.

Imani Perry, Princeton University professor

You’re the generation that knows no boundaries, fears no fears, and changes the world.

Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO

Our Revolution is Now.

Canadian ReBELLE conference slogan

Contents: Feminist Wave History, Second Wave Feminists, Second Wave Created Women’s Studies, Inequality Persists, Generation Gap, Third Wave Response, Rejection of Feminism? Fourth Wave, Women of Color, US Recent Feminist Actions

I’m 17—Fear Me! This was a sign at the huge Women’s March the day after President Trump’s inauguration. His sexist policies galvanized feminism in North America and around the world, including China where well-known feminist Zheng Churan said, He has brought solidarity to Chinese feminists. We have never stood so close to each other to fight against one person. This chapter traces the growth of feminism in North America with some references to Europe. We will see some generational conflicts over style and tactics, working through large organizations like the National Organization for Women versus SlutMarches. The fear is that neoliberal economic emphasis on individual consumption weakens the large-scale organizing required to make significal change, not just permission to wear a bitch T-shirt.

Feminism has a long history. The First Wave fought for the vote and died out when it was achieved in the US (1920) and UK (1928).¹ Girls Inc. (the Girls Club of America) was founded in 1864 to help young women who migrated after the Civil War from rural areas to get city jobs. An essay written in Harper’s Magazine in 1927 reported that feminism was a term of opprobrium to the modern young woman who associated it with flat shoes and very little feminine charm.² Essential feminist books beginning with Virginia Woolf ’s A Room of One’s Own (1929) are ranked by the New York Public Library.³ The History Chicks podcast stories about women leaders⁴ and Girls: A History of Growing Up Female in America by Penny Colman (2000) tells women’s history since pre-colonial times, based on their diaries, letters, advice books and other original sources. This approach honoring ordinary women’s expressions, as opposed to famous men’s, is a characteristic of feminist scholarship. Hence, Brave includes many voices of girls and young women. Since 1917, the US had a National Woman’s Party organized by Dr. Alice Paul, author of the Equal Rights Amendment, proposed in 1923. It passed the US Senate in 1972, but in 2017 there still weren’t enough states to ratify the amendment: Nevada became only the 36th state to ratify—a gap of 40 years since the previous state.⁵ Feminists are working now for the two more states needed to make the ERA law.⁶

The Second Wave’s foundational book is Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex published in France in 1949. Three years prior, the United Nations established a Commission on the Status of Women, influenced by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.⁷ The UN went on to organize global conferences in the 1970s Decade for Women that continued to the Beijing Platform for Action in 1995. Beijing made the radical declaration that women’s rights are human rights, as advocated by First Lady Hillary Clinton.

The Second Wave began in the US with Silent Generation Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique in 1963 and the National Organization for Women that she co-founded three years later. Ms. Magazine was co-founded by Gloria Steinem in 1972. The documentary She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry (2015) features Second Wave feminists, as does Feminist: Stories from Women’s Liberation (2013).⁸ Second Wave feminists of the 1960s and 70s are shown in the documentary Makers: Women Who Make America (2013).⁹

The backlash called postfeminism emerged in the 1980s, implying that liberation was achieved and feminists were unattractive and unfulfilled. Susan Faludi explained this reaction in The Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (1995). Angry resistance increases as women are the majority of university graduates, a woman won the popular vote for US President in 2016, along with other empowering advances. Feminism became a bad word globally, influenced by Reagan conservatives in the 1980s with their attacks on supposedly unattractive man-haters. In a blog called: Gender Across Borders, a young US feminist explains, "Feminism is not embraced by many young people because progressive movements aren’t as ‘cool’ as they were back in the 70s.

Young people in the U.S. may still have the impression that feminism is about hairy armpits, burning bras, and hating men."¹⁰

The Third Wave realized the need for continuation of feminism, as expressed in Manifesta (2000) written by Gen Xers Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards. It emphasized intersectionality, portrayed in the 2007 film Itty Bitty Titty Committee about an apolitical Latinx lesbian who joins a Los Angeles radical feminist art group called Clits in Action (modeled on the actual group Guerrilla Girls). The film includes Riot Grrrl punk music. Nasty Women Get Shit Done PDX, a group formed in response to Trump’s racism and sexism—like his remark calling Hillary Clinton a nasty woman, led to the group’s formation and posting of an extensive list of intersectional resources and organizations.¹¹

The term Fourth Wave began to be used around 2008. These feminists are even more Internet focused and reject bifurcated simple categories like female and male, which are replaced by gender nonconformity and fluidity. The Fourth Wave is accompanied by more widespread and renewed acceptance of feminism by both sexes, especially in Generations Y and Z. Pew Research Center surveys consistently characterize Millennials as more liberal than their elders about social issues and more skeptical about religious and political institutions.¹²

Second and Third Wave feminists in the US may disagree about tactics. Third Wave feminists criticized their predecessors for being humorless, man-hating, lacking in style and monopolizing power in feminist organizations. The Second Wave focused on group organizing to bring about reformist institutional change such as equal pay legislation and making abortion legal in the 1960s and 70s. They developed women’s consciousness-raising groups and magazines to change attitudes as well as to change laws. They created Women’s Studies in academia and the concept of global sisterhood, citing patriarchy as the main problem for women. They were later faulted by Third Wave feminists for not acknowledging intersecting and multiple oppressions around ethnicity, sexual orientation, class and colonialism.

The Third Wave was criticized by older feminists for being self-absorbed fashionistas who don’t attack substantial political and social issues, for transforming liberation into the freedom to wear a T-shirt saying Bitch, be almost nude like Lena Dunham as Hannah in Girls and Miley Cyrus, who says the word like a lot and proclaims herself genderqueer. The Fourth Wave builds on cyberactivism, generating petitions and blogs in the lady blogger movement.

Despite decades of feminism, traditional roles persist in the West. A best-selling book, Get Married and Be Submissive by Italian Constanza Miriano, encourages women to submit to their husbands. It was on the top of Spain’s bestseller lists in 2013, published by a Catholic archbishop. Inspired by the Gospel of Saint Paul, Miriano suggested women are not equal to men and that, women like humiliation because it is for a greater good. Some demonstrators called for banning the book. The Internet anarchist hacker group Anonymous posted a video of a woman in a Guy Fawkes mask criticizing the book; at about the same time the Spanish government attempted to reverse women’s access to abortion.

Donald Trump campaigned to nominate pro-life Supreme Court Justices, ban late-term abortions, defund Planned Parenthood, and ban government funding of abortion worldwide. As president, he quickly prevented foreign NGOs from receiving federal funding if they even mention abortion as an option and appointed anti-choice Tom Price as Secretary of Health and Human Services. His administration appointed Teresa Manning, a woman who doesn’t believe that contraception works, as the head of Family Planning for Health and Human Services. She also erroneously believes there’s a link between abortion and breast cancer, similar to the new anti-choice Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs for the Department of Health and Human Services Charmaine Yoest. She believes half of the rape reports are false and posted on her webpage that eating Big Macs leads to homosexuality, which she opposes as a fundamentalist Christian. She has since removed those kinds of comments from her website.

Despite all the openness about sexuality, the double standard still exists in this area, as Zoe (17, f, California) explains about her Chico high school:

A lot of women in high school are afraid to speak out about contraception because people will assume they’re sexually active and therefore a whore, because of the way sex education is handled in our schools. It’s almost strictly abstinence only in the textbook. It doesn’t show you where the clitoris is or about female orgasm or birth control or condoms. People are feeling shamed for being sexually active. That’s my main frustration at the moment because the condom is widely regarded as the greatest invention of all times so women don’t have to be baby machines. I don’t understand why something as basic as birth control is being torn from under our feet. I’m worried that Republicans will pass legislation to make it impossible for underage girls to get birth control or an abortion. I take birth control, it’s necessary, trust me. It directly threatens me; I’d like to punch someone in the nose when limiting contraception comes up.

The discussion of intersectionality became a key concept in women’s studies, starting with black feminists in the 1980s. Audre Lorde wrote in Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference (1984), There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives. The term intersectionality was coined by law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989 and became a buzzword in social movements, as discussed in various articles.¹³ Positionality and social construction of gender also describe the belief we are socially taught by many factors, including where we live, class and gender privilege, and our level of education. A recent example of the application of intersectional theory is a book chapter on the topic about the Spanish Indignados uprising in 2011.¹⁴

The feminist focus on intersectionality applies to understanding social movements, according to activist Suzahn Ebrahimian. She describes herself by her age, ethnicity and work rather than by her gender, as a 23-year-old Iranian-American writer and agitator. She criticizes progressives who regard the lack of a unified national or global struggle as a failure.¹⁵ She wrote in The Militant Research Handbook,

Containment, categorization, assigning subjectivity and identity, ignoring complexities and intersections; these are the products of linear histories, binary constructions, simple dichotomies, and unified pluralities. In other words, our oppressors use simple boxes of identity to contain and destroy our potential—so how is recreating this containment supposed to be liberating?

She does advocate solidarity, which might mean blockading a shipment of tear gas from the US to Turkey, but not sameness: I want to complicate myself together with you.

Some feminist scholars reject the concept of waves as ignoring the interplay between feminist ideas over the decades, preferring the metaphor of a woven tapestry.¹⁶ Women’s Studies instructor and author Anahi Russo Garrido critiqued this chapter and commented, I would problematize the notion of waves, suggesting that they are useful markers to characterize the movement at a certain point of time, but also fail to capture the passing of time and all feminist activities and endeavors. It’s true that it’s difficult to distinguish Third and Fourth Waves from each other, except by chronology, and Second Wave issues and tactics still resonate. Annelise Orleck’s book Rethinking American Women’s Activism (2014) discusses the pros and cons of the wave concept.

Second Wave Feminists of the 60s and 70s

Feminist writers like Betty Friedan pointed out that the feminine mystique of the post World War II era was literally driving some middle-class women insane or to pill popping in order to cope in an era when apron-clad June Cleaver was the ideal woman. Friedan was part of the 50,000 Women’s Strike for Equality in 1970 and helped found the National Organization for Women, the National Women’s Political Caucus and wrote five more books. By 2000, The Feminine Mystique had sold more than three million copies. Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique was about middle-class homemakers like June Cleaver, rather than employed women. Women couldn’t serve on a jury, or legally refuse to have sex with their husbands (men had the legal right to consortium). They could be fired for becoming pregnant and no laws protected employees from sexual harassment or discrimination. Even in the 1960s married women had to have their husband’s permission to open a bank account or get a loan, help-wanted ads were gender-segregated, medical and law schools had small quotas for female applicants, airline stewardesses had to retire if they got married or turned 30, women wore girdles and white gloves, people used man to describe both sexes such as a female committee chair, and most college courses discussed famous men to the exclusion of women. (Has this changed?)

Second Wave feminists changed the media and thereby raised feminist awareness. Marlo Thomas played the first independent woman in the TV series That Girl (1966 to 1971), playing an actor who focused on her work and didn’t want to get married. The show was followed by similar single working women such as a TV producer in The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970 to 1977), TV news anchor and journalist Murphy Brown (1988 to 1998), and All McBeal (1997 to 2002) who broke the chain of characters working in media in her role as a lawyer. Tina Fey’s character Liz Lemon on the TV series 3rd Rock (2006 to 2013, shown internationally) described herself as a Third Wave feminist but her character’s portrayal of feminism is ambiguous. Like other female characters before her, she works in television as a writer.¹⁷ She’s single for most of the seasons, a liberal self-styled geek who posts on Tumblr complaining about raunch culture and negative body image imposed on women, but, in relation to men, she feels unattractive and ugly. Various YouTube videos document leaders of the Waves.¹⁸

Reformists

The Second Wave approach was mainly reformist, led by the NOW to work within the system to change laws and sexist attitudes. Second Wave organizations thought of women as a class and aimed for mass action on reproductive choice (advocates for the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision of 1973), equal rights legislation like the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the Title IX educational equity law passed by Congress in 1972 (students can get help with on-campus rape cases under Title IX from knowyourix.org). EAAA is a program designed to end campus sexual assault, especially during the first year when it’s most common.¹⁹ It includes bystander education. Title IX prohibits sex discrimination in educational institutions that receive federal funding, as most universities do. Violators risk losing federal funding, although no colleges have lost funding.²⁰ Supreme Court decisions included sexual harassment and sexual violence as violations of Title IX. Although colleges increased their spending on Title IX enforcement, more than 200 colleges were under federal investigation for mishandling complaints of sexual misconduct in 2016, up from 55 cases two years previously. (At the same time, the first national study of violence against British college women was conducted.) Thanks to the work of Second Wave reformers in the US, sexual discrimination in the workplace was outlawed, marital rape became illegal, domestic violence shelters were created, contraceptives were easy to obtain, women could sit on juries in all the states, and they could get credit without the backing of a man.

NOW pressured the Little League baseball program to admit girls, which they finally did in 1974. The outcome is pitcher and honor student Mo’ne Davis, at 13 the youngest person to be awarded Female Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press. Her advice to her fans is, Always follow your dreams. If there’s something people tell you that you can’t do it, go for it.²¹ NOW’s National Action Program of 2017 featured campaigns for reproductive justice and women’s health, to ratify the ERA, to advance rights for voters and immigrants, and to stop putting the victims of sexual abuse in prison.

Feminism became a more international issue due to the UN Decade of Women conferences from 1975 to 1985, as seen in postings on the Feminist Majority website.²² The slogan Sisterhood is Powerful expanded to Sisterhood is Global, the title of Robin Morgan’s anthology (2003), later critiqued for imposing western white women as the norm and leaving out other oppressive forces besides patriarchy. Another international research network called the Research Network on Gender Politics and the State formed in 1995 to study government responses to women’s movements.²³ It started with scholars from Western Europe and North America.

Under President Bill Clinton, the State Department created the Office of Global Women’s Issues. President Barack Obama said he was what a feminist looked like and created the White House Council on Women and Girls, because, From sports leagues to pop culture to politics, our society does not sufficiently value women. We still don’t condemn sexual assault as loudly as we should.²⁴ Obama asked parents of young men to teach them respect for women as part of the 2014 campaign It’s on Us to prevent campus sexual assaults.²⁵

Radicals

Radical feminists of the 1970s and 80s believed that liberal reformist efforts to change some laws would never undo the root of patriarchy and men’s control of women’s bodies and sexuality. In her book The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (1970), radical Shulamith Firestone blamed patriarchy’s control of women’s bodies and reproduction in the nuclear family as the root of all other oppressions. Her book title builds on the Marxist dialectic of class struggle, substituting gender for class as the primary source of inequality. The radical focus was on relationships including views about romantic love and sexuality as the vehicle for women’s oppression to keep them focused on pleasing men.

Radical theory was developed by scholars such as former nun Mary Daly’s critique of theology. She described herself as a radical lesbian feminist and changed the language we use to talk about religious belief in books like Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (1978). She invited women to reclaim pejorative words such as witch and hag and to assume power to heal the necrophilic world run by destructive men. When she spoke at a conference I organized on women’s culture in 1979, she mentioned that men are deficient because the Y chromosome has fewer genes than the X chromosome. See her and other major women’s culture thinkers in my free online video Feminist Visions of the Future (1980).²⁶ Womanist theology is updated in books like Katie Geneva Cannon’s Womanist Theological Ethics: A Reader (2011).

Although Daly did advocate that women assume power, most radicals advocated power-with rather than power-over in relationships, criticized male groups for ego clashes and speaking to be heard rather than to take action. Radicals contributed the main women’s movement philosophy in collectives like Redstockings, organized in 1969.²⁷ Carol Hanisch of the New York Radical Women formulated the major theme that the personal is political, further discussed in articles like the politics of the vaginal orgasm and the politics of housework that developed the idea that sexism begins in the patriarchal family.

New Social Movements such as the anti-globalization movement draw from feminist group processes, such as every person taking her turn to share her views until consensus is reached, rotating facilitators and other tasks, and doing self-criticism at the end of meetings to evaluate group dynamics in order to improve future meetings. Eco-feminist and Wiccan activist Starhawk teaches feminist group process, such as making decisions by consensus, in her 1990 book Truth or Dare.²⁸ (New Zealand activists developed an app to facilitate group consensus, what they refer to as collaboration.²⁹) Hybrid forms of consciousness-raising (CR) expanded to personal group discussions on the Internet.

The Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice outside of the Seneca Army Depot (SEAD) in upstate New York and its sister camp, Greenham Commons in England, were some of the first to make such feminist process into a way of life. They occupied permanent women-only camps outside of SEAD and the Commons in the 1980s and 1990s to protest the shipment of nuclear arms.³⁰ At its height, over 12,000 women protested through non-violent direct action at the camps.

Feminist men’s groups like the National Organization for Changing Men adopted these approaches, which I found created effective meetings when I served on their national board. They set time limits for agenda items, an important tactic to prevent burnout. (They later changed the name of the organization to National Organization of Men Against Sexism, called NOMAS.) I did notice some traditional male competition as to who was the most antisexist and I was criticized for advocating that men’s liberationist Warren Farrell be allowed to speak at a conference because he wasn’t seen as a feminist. I was asked if I would let anti-ERA champion Phyllis Schlafly speak at a feminist conference and I replied I’d like to debate her. Rob Okun, editor of Voice Male Magazine, published a new edition of his book Voice Male: The Untold Story of the Profeminist Men’s Movement in 2017.

An example of a current radical leader, anarchist Marisa Holmes, age 25, was a core organizer of Occupy Wall Street.³¹ She started her activism at age 14 when she worked in her father’s campaign for city council in Columbus, Ohio. Intrigued by the Arab Spring, she went to Egypt by herself to shoot a documentary in Tahrir Square in 2011. She slept in Zuccotti Park from the first night of Occupy Wall Street in September of 2011 and became a spokesperson and guardian of horizontal principles. When hip-hop artist Russell Simmons went to bypass the speaker’s list, she told him, Are you crazy? You’re number 12. Get used to it. Sarah Jaffe also camped out in Zuccotti Park and described it in Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt (2016), including a description of other recent social movements.

OccupyResearch reported that women were in a majority of higher positions.³² Micah White, co-author of the call to Occupy Wall Street (OWS) on Adbusters magazine, observed that women played a fundamental role in every aspect of OWS, especially the facilitating committee that organized the consensus-based assemblies in Zuccotti, and women will make the next great social movement in a global matriarchy.³³ He doesn’t elaborate on the idea in his book The End of Protest: A New Playbook for Revolution (2016), but in an article advocated a women-led hybrid movement party in every state to take over city councils.³⁴

After six months of Occupy winter hibernation, an assistant for Ben and Jerry’s ice cream company called Marissa Holmes to offer money to fund grants and a permanent headquarters in New York through a Movement Resource Group. She reported, They didn’t get that it was a problem to create a hierarchical nonprofit institution and pick out leaders. She was also worried about previous disagreements in Zuccotti Park over how to spend money. She moved on to activism in Strike Debt to alleviate student loan debts and went to graduate school at Hunter College. Elise Whitaker, age 25, another young woman active in Democracy Spring protests in 2016, traced her activism to Occupy Wall Street in 2011: I was really politicized by the Occupy movement. And I’m co-founder of 99 Rise, which is one of the founding members of this coalition movement.³⁵ The endnote includes more accounts of Democracy Spring young activists.

Radical focus on relationship dynamics as politics carried over into the global justice movement and global uprisings as participants critiqued monopolies of speech by educated white men during meetings. Feminists continue to critique the ongoing dominance of masculinity in social movements occupying public squares. A participant in Occupy Pittsburg in 2011 reported that women dropped out of the general assemblies after a few weeks due to their long hours, frequency, and the problem that, belligerent, stubborn and militant individuals tended to control conversation and decision-making.³⁶

Some feminists in Madrid’s Indignados uprising in 2011 organized separately as outraged feminists who were critical of sexism in assemblies. They pointed out that the glorification of the male hero in liberation struggles with the strong man who throws rocks at police in the front line of protests and other heroic or spiky methods in direct action ignores women’s participation and issues. Women in Slovenia, New Zealand, and Australia protested the lack of safety for women in Occupy sites. Other European feminists also formed groups in conjunction with Occupy movements such as Feminist Occupy London. For the same reasons, women in the US Occupy Movement formed groups like the First Feminist General Assembly held in New York City in May 2012, shown on video.³⁷ WomenOccupy is an international group whose website is maintained by CODEPINK and includes a forum to share occupy experiences, similar to Occupy Patriarchy website, but neither have current entries.³⁸

Queer Theory

Second Wave lesbian feminists like Adrienne Rich critiqued compulsory heterosexuality and the insistence on the nuclear family. Some lesbians like Charlotte Bunch, a member of the Furies, advocated a separatist women’s culture as the way to find freedom from patriarchy (see my two edited books on women’s culture³⁹). Lesbians felt excluded by organizations like NOW in the early 1970s, motivating them to organize the Lavender Menace in highly charged protests where they read their essay The Woman-Identified Woman. Another classic statement was Adrienne Rich’s Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence (1980). LGBT activism succeeded in changing attitudes, as evidenced in the legalization of same-sex marriage in 19 states by 2014 and the Supreme Court decision to legalize same-sex marriage in 2015.⁴⁰ Groups like the Audre Lorde Project address the social issues faced by queer youth of color; scholars like Jose Munoz, Roderick Ferguson, and Urvashi Vaid; and books like Queer Girls and Popular Culture by Susan Driver (2007). GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies began publishing in 1993 and LGBT book lists are available online.⁴¹

Queer theory rejected binary categories of male and female, discussed by scholars such as Judith Butler, Eve Sedgwick and Judith (Jack) Halberstam. It rejected the notion of fixed identities and sexual norms so that during Occupy Wall Street meetings Marisa Holmes had people introduce their name and preferred gender pronouns: ABC news identified 58 possibilities including cis and pangender.⁴² Cisgender refers to people who identify with their birth gender. In organizing for the Women’s March in 2017 participants in my group identified themselves by name and preferred pronoun, but everyone said she. Cissexist refers to someone who focuses too much on something like the gender of a new baby. Marina (25, f, Russian living in Finland) explained, Do you know that many Russian women actually think European ones are lazy and don’t usually look after themselves, since it’s so common to just wear whatever is comfortable? Obviously I disagree with them, and I love not feeling judged for what I wear in Finland, but your reality is not the same as many other cis women’s.⁴³ Henriette emailed me from Denmark in 2016 to report that many young people in her country are open to gender fluidity as portrayed in fashion, comfortable with changing from bisexuality to heterosexuality, although homophobia still exists.

Philosopher Judith Butler is a poststructuralist who influenced US Feminist and Queer Theory where people identify themselves by multiple characteristics such as sexual orientation, ethnicity, and class.⁴⁴ (A video shows her speaking at Occupy Wall Street about demanding the impossible.) For example, a transgendered woman and a Filipina domestic servant working for a wellto-do woman all have different issues even though they’re all female. Poststructuralists reject binary approaches and reject the belief that a text has a single meaning because it depends on the reader’s interpretation. They’re also called postmodernists.

Academics’ deconstruction of words in poststructuralism favored subjectivity without fixed meanings of categories like homosexual and heterosexual. Postmodern thinkers reject belief in essential natures of masculinity and femininity, as did radical Second Wave feminists who emphasized sex-role socialization as the key factor in shaping gendered behaviors rather than our genetics. Postmodern feminists focused more on fluid identities including one’s individual combination of class, sexual orientation, and ethnicity.

Queer Theory is associated with Queer Activism that emerged in the late 1980s to support causes such as AIDS research and anti-discrimination work such as actions carried out by ACT-UP. (The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power). ACT-UP carried out direct action nationwide to raise awareness, fight discrimination, promote safe sex, and get medical and disability benefits for all people living with AIDS.) Building on Gay and Lesbian Studies, examples of texts used in Queer Theory university courses are Riki Wilchins’ Queer Theory, Gender Theory; Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble (called the foundational text for queer theory); and transgendered Nick Krieger’s Nina Here Nor There: My Journey Beyond Gender.⁴⁵ A list of queer studies courses in the US and Canada is available online, along with women’s studies courses.⁴⁶ Focus on transgendered people’s rights surfaced, as with lawsuits about access to bathrooms in the US, and TV shows that include trans actors like Hollyoaks, which is popular with British teens. US shows include Boy Meets Girl, Orange is the New Black, and Transparent. Rebecca Tuvel’s article in Hypatia (a feminist philosophy journal), titled In Defense of Transracialism, generated controversy—including some calling for the journal to retract the article.⁴⁷ Tuvel argued that if it’s acceptable to change gender identity, this should apply to changing racial identity. One critic charged her with discursive transmisogynistic violence, in delightful academic jargon. California State University Long Beach hired an Assistant Professor in Trans Studies in 2018.

Melody, a California college student, personalized being queer and bisexual by relating her coming-out experience on her Facebook page:

My dad informed me today that he had no idea I was queer. (I never made a formal I’m coming out announcement to my parents because I thought it was pretty obvious already.) What about the girlfriends I had in high school? Or what about the crushes I had on girls when I was a kid? I thought you were just experimenting. I think it’s interesting (and rather frustrating) that you’re confused, it’s a phase, and you’re just experimenting are all common responses I have received throughout my life when I have come out to people. Straight people—please don’t question others when they tell/show you their sexual orientation. You’re basically telling them that they are wrong, and that you know their sexual identity better than they do. It’s invalidating and insensitive. How would you like it if someone told you that they thought your heterosexuality was a phase?

Anti-Capitalism and Neoliberalism

Marxist theorists and more pragmatic socialist feminists focus on defeating capitalism and class society. Socialism aims for public ownership of resources and the provision of social services to end poverty. Marx viewed socialism as a stage following capitalism, which would be replaced by the proletariat and eventually evolve into no classes or national government. Socialists are more prominent in Europe and Latin America than in the US. Prominent British socialist books of the early 1970s include Sheila Rowbotham’s Women’s Liberation and the New Politics, Juliet Mitchell’s The Woman’s Estate, and Australian Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch. Feminist Review began publication in 1979 in the UK with a socialist point of view. It focuses on the intersection of gender, race, ethnicity, class, and sexual orientation with a postcolonial critique and it explores the relationship between academic gender studies and activism.⁴⁸ Politico leftist feminists, as radicals referred to them, published Shrew magazine through the London Women’s Liberation Center.

Italian-American Marxist feminist Silvia Federici advocates that social reproduction such as child rearing is as important as economic production with labor and machines. Socialists emphasize economics, class struggle, and capitalism as the root problem with the additional understanding of the importance of patriarchy in women’s oppression. Similar to Russia after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution until Stalin’s traditionalist rule and to China under Chairman Mao, socialists looked to communal childcare and housework to ease women’s double job doing family work and paid work. The Canadian feminist movement was more open to socialist politics and being challenged about racism than the US, according to Ten Thousand Roses: The Making of a Feminist Revolution by Judy Rebick (2005).

President Richard Nixon vetoed child care legislation in 1972 on the grounds it was communistic, so that today US working families spend almost 30% of their after-tax income on child care, more than any other Western nation. Donald Trump was critical of working mothers stating, She’s not giving me 100%. She’s giving me 84%, and 16% is going towards taking care of children.⁴⁹ Although Trump identified with the Nixon presidency, to reach out to women voters his daughter Ivanka said at the Republican convention in July 2016 that her father would institute quality affordable child care and equal pay because gender is no longer the factor creating the greatest wage discrepancy—motherhood is. (She also mentioned the injustice of student debt to appeal to her Millennial generation peers who were 31% of the electorate.) She worked with members of Congress to assist working families with childcare. However, the plan would benefit only higher-income families.⁵⁰ Her clothing line manufactured in Asia does not provide workers the kinds of benefits she advocates and the garment workers suffer in slave-like conditions in the apparel industry, according to the International Labour Organization. The First Daughter asked the World Bank to start a fund to assist women entrepreneurs, which she helped promote and initiate in 2017.

To oppose Trump’s switch to anti-abortion positions, enforced by his choice of infamous anti-choice Governor Mike Pence of Indiana, women formed Periods for Pence and Tampons for Trump. Members call the men’s offices with personal questions about reproductive health to make the point that government should not try to control women’s reproduction. Trump decided not to fund the UN’s Population Fund in 2018 because he felt it supported abortions and his global gag rule pulled funding from any global health group that even provides information about abortion. His budget proposal didn’t fund Planned Parenthood in the US. These groups provide family planning and health care that helps prevent unwanted pregnancies.

The main goal of the Occupy movement of 2011 and some transnational feminists is to overthrow neoliberal capitalism. Neoliberalism was developed by Professor Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago, explained in his book and TV series, written with Rose Friedman, titled Free to Choose (1980). The term neoliberal refers to liberalism developed by Adam’s Smith The Wealth of Nations in 1776 that advocated free trade without government regulations. However, recent opponents of modern capitalism don’t look to socialism as the answer, viewing it as a failure in Russia and China. Anarchist emphasis on local DIY cooperatives that prefigure a more utopian society is more often discussed than trying to replace corrupt national governments.

Influenced by neoliberal individualism, Third Wave feminists didn’t take to the streets to organize many mass marches, defining feminism as a personal choice, leading to criticism that being so vague diluted their politics. A young blogger feels the word choice no longer has feminist meaning as in the choice to objectivize oneself and that we need to start thinking of it in collective, rather than individualistic terms.⁵¹ Second Wave feminist professor Nancy Fraser faults recent identity feminism for not combating capitalist neoliberalism in her book Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis (2013). She criticizes capitalism for labeling work outside the home as men’s production worthy of pay while women’s family work is labeled reproduction that doesn’t require pay, thereby ensuring male domination.

Girl power takes feminist ideas and feminist language, and makes them popular, accessible, and sometimes, less potent, by not discussing sexist social structures.⁵² British journalist Laurie Penny (born 1986) is the author of six books including Meat Market and Penny Red (both 2011), Unspeakable Things (2014), and Bitch Doctrine: Essays for Dissenting Adults (2017). She faults decoy feminism for failing to critique the power structure. Fear of a crisis of masculinity is a decoy argument that blames feminism instead of neoliberalism for men’s decreased wages. A socialist, she blogs as Penny Red and describes herself as a feminist and a geek. The Telegraph labeled her the loudest and most controversial female voice on the radical left.⁵³ She is hopeful about the younger generation of feminists; Sexism is becoming more apparent to girls at an ever younger age. The sexual violence in schools is astonishing and the Internet is making that more apparent. But feminists have a way of coming together on the big issues.⁵⁴

Fraser faults the mainstream liberal feminism advocated by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg in her book Lean In (2013) that urges educated middle-class women to climb the corporate ladder by being assertive and leaning on low-paid women workers to do their family work. British academic Angela McRobbie calls this faux feminism. Sandberg’s book sold millions of copies; she supplies the charisma, the aura of emancipation, on which neoliberalism draws to legitimate its vast upward redistribution of wealth.⁵⁵ After her husband died in 2015 Sandberg realized how difficult it is to juggle work and two children. Her next book, Option B (2017), is about coping with adversity. Also accused of faux feminism, Ivanka Trump portrays herself as a champion of women who asked her father to support maternity leave, but her book Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success (2017) suggests that women have the choice to work or not. She states, The only person who can create a life you’ll love is you.

But what if I was expected to fail, had to support siblings, couldn’t afford to attend college, or couldn’t afford childcare? Janet Yellen, chair of the Federal Reserve pointed out that economic progress for women has stalled since the early 1990s, so that the comparative rate of women’s workforce participation fell from sixth in 1990 to 17th among 22 developed nations in 2010.⁵⁶ Also, women make about 23% less than men in similar jobs. If families had support systems like Scandinavian models, women could work and Yellen predicted this would increase the annual economic output.

Fraser also rejects over-focus on issues like abortion or the campus rape culture that obscure the real neoliberal problem. Fraser advocates making reforms now as well as working with progressive groups to make radical structural change for the future. A book about neoliberal obstacles to feminism is based on interviews with young feminists in the UK and Germany.⁵⁷ Microfinance loans to poor women in developing nations have the same effect of glorification of the market and the vilification of the state.

The obstacles female executives face in high finance careers are explored in Equity (2016), a film produced by women who realized that they have to be twice as prepared and twice as smart as men to climb the corporate ladder, while at the same time not seeming to be too tough. In an earlier film The Associate (1996) the character played by Whoopi Goldberg has to invent a white male partner in order to succeed in business. (The internationally popular TV series Game of Thrones increasingly showed women in power, an unusual display including ruthless Queens Daenerys and Cersei, Sansa who ruled in her brother’s absence and her sister Ayra, an assassin.)

Women negotiate for promotions as often as men do, but are more likely to be told they are intimidating, bossy, or aggressive. The Women in the Workplace 2016 study surveyed more than 34,000 US employees from 39 companies.⁵⁸ The study reported that companies hire and promote women at lower rates than men, women are less likely to be mentored and feel able to participate in meetings, receive less feedback and fewer challenging assignments, are left out of professional networks, and at higher levels women are more often shifted to staff jobs rather than line roles on the pipeline to highest management. Fewer women aspire to become top executives. Women of color face even more barriers. Men and women are equally worried about balancing work and family, which is the top concern for both sexes, but women do more family work. Fewer than half of the Workplace survey respondents think their company is taking action to improve gender diversity and only 22% say that progress toward this goal is regularly measured and discussed. Even liberals may not be aware of their sexist attitudes, as evidenced by the fact that during the progressive administration of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, women were 22 out of 31 high-level staffers who quit. One of those women, Lindsay Scola explained that the mayor tolerated disrespect for women by their male colleagues, creating an inhospitable workplace.⁵⁹

The neoliberal media in the US features the outstanding individual while ignoring the group that supports her and made activism is the new fashion accessory in an update of 1990s girl power, explains Lyn Mikel Brown in Powered by Girl: A Field Guide for Supporting Young Activists (2016).⁶⁰ An example of what scholar Anita Harris calls the can-do girl, Julia Bluhm, 14, campaigned for Seventeen magazine to feature one non-photoshopped model a month. News coverage ignored the SPARK organization team (the most frequently mentioned group in the book⁶¹) and the training Bluhm received on organizing. For example, when Bluhm gave a TED talk she was asked to tell her story, not the story of the movement that taught her. Bluhm told Mikel Brown that it creates an unrealistic idea that if you just start a petition on change.org you can change the world. Girls told the author their advice for other girls is to work with a school or community group rather than try to go it alone.

Mikel Brown faults leadership programs for still emphasizing individual self-esteem; some leadership programs are designed to tame girls’ anger, willfulness and rebellion instead of channeling it to activism. She advocates intergenerational feminist work, and advises adults to listen to girls, despite the energy, noisiness, and occasional near-chaos.⁶² Mikel Brown faults adults for not stepping up to help often enough: Our adult privileges blind us to the brilliance of the youth all around us.⁶³ Her book includes resources to assist girls’ activism, such as Catalyst! Successful Strategies to Empower Young Advocates.⁶⁴

Cultural Feminism

Cultural feminists led by artist Judy Chicago glorified women’s peaceful nature and female bodies in their art. Artists like Chicago formed all-female art schools, galleries and centers. The two Women’s Culture books I edited explore the unique approaches of women artists, writers, musicians, and filmmakers, portrayed in our video on women’s culture.⁶⁵ A group of international feminist writers formed Women’s WORLD in 1986.⁶⁶ The cultural feminist focus on women’s personal writing and creativity strongly influenced Third Wave feminists with their zines and blogs.

Ecofeminism (2014) is described in a book of that name by Second Wave feminists Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva. The authors represent the global North (Germany) and South (India) and co-founded Diverse Women for Diversity to save the environment. Susan Griffin’s book Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her (1978) was foundational for ecofeminism. A main ecofeminist concept is that domination of women and nature is similar and that patriarchy undergirds capitalism; in turn ecofeminism is criticized for reinforcing the gender binary with the concept of Mother Nature. Mies criticized Occupy Wall Street for not directly opposing patriarchal capitalism.⁶⁷ She advised young activists to meet face-to-face in international conferences because digital communication isn’t enough to build an active movement.

Intersectionality

Gloria Steinem pointed out, It’s important to say that the women’s movement was disproportionately pioneered by black women. These are not two different movements; they are profoundly connected. If you are going to continue racism, you have to control reproduction. And that means controlling women.⁶⁸ Black women active in the abolition of slavery, like Sojourner Truth, preceded the suffragettes.⁶⁹ In the 1980s and 90s, books written by women of color were influential, especially those by Alice Walker and bell hooks (she doesn’t capitalize her name in order to place attention on her writing rather than herself). Hooks defined feminism in her book Feminism is for Everybody (2014). Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa edited This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (1984). Other anthologies are All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us are Brave: Black Women’s Studies (1993); and Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism (2002). These writers emphasized interlocking oppressions and rejected the idea of a uniform global women’s sisterhood. Well-known Latina authors include Sandra Cisneros, Ana Castillo, Isabel Allende, Gloria Anzaldua, Michele Serros, and Diana Gabaldon, among others. (Starting around 2013 the ungendered term is Latinx.) Other books about women of color and black feminist queer women are listed on the book club site Goodreads, on The Feminist Wire, and Think Progress.⁷⁰

A Native American feminist, Andrea Lee Smith points out that white feminists were not the innovators of the women’s movement because beginning in 1492 Native women worked together to resist colonialization.⁷¹ Smith believes reporting this history de-centers white feminists as creators of the women’s movement since indigenous feminism emphasized anti-colonial practice in its organizing centuries ago. An update is provided in Cherokee chief Wilma Mankiller’s book Every Day is a Good Day: Reflections by Contemporary Indigenous Women (2011). Mankiller is one of Gloria Steinem’s role-models whom she believes should have been president of the US.

Steinem believes that women become more radical as they age and thereby lose power while men become more conservative as they replace their fathers and gain power. Young women haven’t yet experienced discrimination on the job or unequal division of family work. However, she is impressed by the current generation of feminists such as the three women who founded Black Lives Matter, and also with actor and writer Lena Dunham. Steinem observed about young women: They are so far ahead of where we were, it’s staggering. The only way I’ve managed to express this is, I just had to wait for some of my friends to be born.⁷² Emma Watson interviewed Steinem about her book My Life on the Road (2015), selected as a book for Watson’s Our Shared Shelf book club.⁷³

When asked during a radio show in 2016 about the progress of feminism, Steinem mentioned more advances in consciousness and awareness of gender equality but less progress than she would have predicted in structures, laws, wages, policing, etc. Steinem believes, What we want in the future will only happen if we do it every day. So, kindness matters enormously. And empathy. Finding some point of connection. The next year Steinem produced a documentary series called Woman shot in eight countries with a mostly female crew, shown on Vice TV.

Women of color and postcolonial, decolonial or post-occidental feminists point out that homogeneous Eurocentric sisterhood, whether from a liberal, radical, or socialist point of view, leaves out the interlocking racism, classism and imperialism that they experience. A Palestinian activist whom I interviewed refers to herself by the term postcolonial; she told me US black feminists like bell hooks inspired her. This perspective is pertinent to the US Millennial generation which is increasingly diverse: Millennials are 19% Hispanic, 14% African American and 5% Asian.⁷⁴

Second Wave Created Women’s Studies

Even though gender and women’s studies courses were added starting in the late 60s, mainstream curriculum is slow to evolve. Lauren, 17, reported in 2015 from Canada,

My English teacher said, Don’t worry, we won’t just be reading works of ‘dead white guys’ like you usually do. Initially, her statement excited me. Then I began thinking of all the books I had read as a school requirement, and the great majority of them were written by white men who had since died. I kept her statement in mind, however I was disappointed when I revisited it towards the end of school and realized it wasn’t true, in fact all of the books we read in class were written by ‘dead white guys.’ It was a nice thought but never executed.

The term advocacy research or militant research, where academia and activism meet, was used in Argentina in 2001.⁷⁵ The key to militancy is the belief that systems can actually change. Rather than just observe, scholars participate in political movements that create new values and relationships. Women’s Studies aims for this kind of activism outside the Ivory Tower. The first Women’s Studies programs began in 1970 at San Diego State University and at SUNY-Buffalo. Three years later I was the first coordinator and helped build the interdisciplinary Women’s Studies Program at California State University, Chico. This gave me the opportunity to teach courses about women and religion, art, global feminism, work and family, the women’s movement, etc. We were unique in being grouped with Ethnic Studies, a benefit to all the programs as we supported each other as a group until the administration dismantled our department against our wishes. Feminist Studies became the first scholarly journal in the field in 1972.

The National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) was formed in 1977 as women’s studies programs more than tripled between 1970 and 2010.⁷⁶ Many departments added gender instead of or in addition to women’s studies. In 2014 NWSA identified its four key concepts as, the politics of knowledge production [research], social justice [activism], intersectionality [not just gender], and transnational analysis with a global perspective in all four areas. It criticized a common problem in the field,

A deferral model wherein transnational, intersectional and decolonial lenses are taught later on, to complicate earlier frames and lenses which can tend to remain more gender universal or US-centered, presenting concepts—such as feminist waves or whiteness—that upper division courses go on to correct.⁷⁷

In a report to the Ford Foundation on Women’s Studies in 1986, Professor Catherine Stimpson pointed out that three tasks of women’s studies courses are to teach about women, end sex discrimination in education on all levels, and integrate feminist activism with feminist thought. She raised a question pertinent to all progressive social movements: How can a program be anti-hierarchical, anti-authoritarian, and collectivist, and still function? Sara Motta and the other European feminist critics are concerned that, Prominent sectors of the feminist movement have become institutionalized and professionalized, including within academia, and in this context serious questions have been raised about how well they can defend women from neoliberalism and their role in the struggle for a neoliberal, postpatriarchal world.⁷⁸ They would like to see more analysis of activism, as this book aims to provide. A book describes why taking Women’s Studies classes is useful and includes how to live a feminist life after graduation: Transforming Scholarship: Why Women’s and Gender Studies Students Are Changing Themselves and the World (2014), by Michele Tracy Berger and Cheryl Radaeloff. An anthology relates how to include women’s studies into education—Feminist Pedagogy, Practice, and Activism: Improving Lives for Girls and Women (2017).

Student-centered interdisciplinary Women’s Studies programs are offered in over 65 countries, including Uganda, Lebanon, and South Korea.⁷⁹ By 2015 over 900 programs from around the world had websites, with most in English-speaking countries.⁸⁰ Universities such as Oregon State University, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and Arizona State teach Women’s Studies majors online.⁸¹ Women’s Studies teachers also explore offering free MOOCs, Massive Open Online Courses. Some high schools offer Women’s Studies courses, described by Ileana Jiménez in her blog feministteacher.com. For example, the Young Women’s Studies Club at Hoover High School in San Diego is sponsored by the local state university to empower girls. The National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) offers a caucus for teachers of Girls Studies. Libraries such as the University of Michigan library provide a list of women’s studies resources, as does the Association of College and Research Libraries’ Women and Gender Studies Section. Many journals are available, cited in the University of Wisconsin’s Feminist Periodicals: A Current Listing of Contents, and Canadian Woman Studies.⁸² The Amelia Bloomer website lists feminist books for young readers, such as Drum Dream Girl (2015) by Millo Castro Zaldarriaga about a Chinese-African-Cuban musician who broke Cuba’s taboo against female drummers.⁸³

Women’s Studies expanded to focus on gender, including research on men’s roles, sexual orientation and international feminisms. The best-selling book for women is Our Bodies, Ourselves, translated into more than 30 languages and thereby building transnational feminist alliances.⁸⁴ The Boston Women’s Health Collective first published it in 1971. The Sisterhood Is Global Institute (SIGI) believes it is the first international feminist think-tank,⁸⁵ although DAWN, AVID and Women Living Under Muslim Laws were founded around the same time, as discussed in Chapter 5. Authors Robin Morgan, Simon de Beauvoir, and other women representing 80 countries founded SGI in 1984, inspired by Morgan’s book Sisterhood Is Global: The International Women’s Movement Anthology. The SIGI was headquartered in Montreal and then moved to New York City.⁸⁶ Co-founder Robin Morgan’s webpage posts updates as part of the Women’s Media Center, which she also co-founded.⁸⁷ The SIGI website points to its achievements such as the first Women’s Urgent Action Alerts (used by NGOs to keep current about women’s issues), the Global Campaign to Make Women’s Unpaid Labor Visible in national accounting, and the first Human Rights Manual for Women in Muslim Societies.

However, recent feminist scholars believe that the fantasy of an unearned global sisterhood is well and truly dead, because of differences including race, class and location. Feminists are searching for new ways of thinking of global collective solidarity that both acknowledge and counter the fragmentation of feminism.⁸⁸ Transnational feminism replaced the term international as a way of recognizing differences among women rather than pretending all women have a common identity. Examples of specific problems are sex trafficking, sweatshop labor, and low-paid migrant workers.

Feminist response to global issues relies on feminist methodology based on intersectionality and acknowledgment of specific local conditions, as explained by Chandra Talpade Mohanty in her criticism of Western feminists discussed in Chapter 2. Self-criticism is prized to reveal what Uma Narayan called Eurocentric approaches in understanding the Global South.⁸⁹ Postcolonial and Third World feminisms focus on the negative effect of Western colonialism. They criticize NGOs that frame funding for girls’ programs in development efforts as a good return on investment rather than a focus on the rights or wellbeing of the targeted girls. Development programs are also criticized for their focus on individual entrepreneurial girls rather than feminist organizing for social change.⁹⁰ Other academics focus on ethics of care, believing that women’s care work is ignored by scholars who are influenced by neoliberal individualism.

Universities developed transnational feminist studies programs like The Center for Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL), founded at Douglass College in 1989 for the promotion of women’s leadership, the advancement of feminist perspectives in economic and social rights and the elimination of violence against women, in local, national and international arenas.⁹¹ These courses use feminisms in the plural to indicate many heterogeneous viewpoints. Students in a CWGL class on feminist leadership discussed what they learned in their class in a 2013 video about Feminist Leadership.⁹² Universities offer Global Feminisms courses defined by Vanderbilt professor Brooke Ackerly as, the study of feminisms transnationally, and of global politics through feminist lenses…on the ways in which systems of power—race, gender, sexuality, colonialism, imperialism, genocide, slavery, and health— are interrelated.

An international network of women’s colleges called Women’s Education Worldwide facilitates exchange among the colleges and advocates for women’s education globally, including research on international issues.⁹³ An online International Museum of Women displays women’s art and experiences, such as an exhibit on Muslim women’s art and voices. To inspire action on global issues for women, the museum provides petitions to sign.⁹⁴ International feminist journals include Journal of International Women’s Studies, Women’s Studies International Forum, International Journal of Gender & Women’s Studies, International Feminist Art Journal, Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, International Feminist Journal of Politics, and MP: An Online Feminist Journal.

Women’s Studies researches history from the bottom up, valuing social history, folk art, and women’s diaries not considered worthwhile by patriarchal scholars.⁹⁵ Feminist standpoint theory maintains that research should begin from the bottom up, with marginalized people’s lived experiences. Knowledge is grounded in a social context rather than considered an abstract universal truth. It’s one of the influential and debated theories to emerge from Second Wave feminism in the 1970s and evolved from Marxist feminism. In Marxist theory, a standpoint is a collective identity or voice gained through collective political struggle. Feminist philosopher Sandra Harding explained, Standpoint theories map how a social and political disadvantage can be turned into an epistemic, scientific and political advantage.⁹⁶

Sandra Harding writes about feminist epistemologies, contributing to standpoint theory that researches the daily lives and voices of oppressed groups, explained in her anthology The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader (2004). Many anthologies feature young women’s personal stories, like the anthology by Craig Jeffrey and Jane Dyson, Telling Young Lives: Portraits of Global Youth (2008). Third Wave feminists contribute to anthologies of essays written in the first person and build on DIY zines (self-published short magazines). They started new magazines like Bust (1993) and Bitch (1996). Lena Dunham’s 2014 book of essays titled Not That Kind of Girl continues the tradition of autobiographical essays.

When I asked Women’s Studies students at California State University Chico about the themes in their classes they emphasized intersectionality as the main concept, being aware of the influence of ethnicity, class, sexual orientation and of white privilege— not a new concept, as explained in an article by Trina Grillo.⁹⁷ They mentioned learning about their internalized oppression based on gender, etc., which was a central insight of Second Wave feminists. The students didn’t identify with being part of a particular wave and are glad to include men in the struggle for equality. A newer focus is on the rights of transgendered people, with an emphasis on pronoun choice by which we want to be referred to (such as they, zie, or ey⁹⁸), and gender neutral language such as Latinix instead of Latina and Latino.

Lauren is a school student in New York, age 17, who reports on her peers’ views of feminism:

Before reading this chapter [in Women’s Culture in a New Era] I didn’t know much about the waves of feminism. The people in my school who identify as feminists know very little about the waves if anything at all. I think most teens (at least where I live) see feminism simply as men and women being equal rather than intersectionality. They see feminism as one idea with a few aspects rather than the history of the waves. They are more simple-minded and only have knowledge of current feminism.

I asked her how she became a feminist and