Sometimes I feel like the air in the room gets tigher everytime I hear the word "feminist" or "feminism." It's as if every person in the room is taking a deep breath, and silently sucking in the last breath of fresh air before they get the smoke of another bra-burner.
Then I think, "I must be imagining this tension because today's women don't burn their bras, but wear 'sportier' ones." Then why is that tension there? Does feminism mean something different to them? What does it mean to me? I need to know.
When this question first formed in my head, in the fall of my junior year, I started looking for answers and I found them in the most unexpected places. It seemed as if every magazine I picked up was talking about feminism in my generation. All the non-academic literature -- Mademoiselle, Vogue, GQ, Esquire -- were talking about a "new" feminism. The March issue of Esquire had a feature article that called it "Do-Me-Feminism," while others referred to it as the "Third Wave."
The articles defined this Third Wave as a thought-movement currently emerging among young American women. These women are taking notice of the misconceptions of equality and difference and are trying to do something about them. They are writing articles, forming organizations and making themselves heard.
They reject claims that feminism is over and the notion that equality has been reached. They reject what the media has done to the word "feminist" and are boldly using it to describe themselves. Do these women represent a small number of outspoken young women or are more young women re-defining themselves using the word "feminist"?
I don't know how many women choose to use the word or not, but I find it perplexing and disconcerting that in an age where feminism has played a large role in helping women gain control of their reproductive processes and access to equal education, and supposedly have equal opportunities to career success, that it has become a 'bad' word and one that many women would prefer not to use.
But then again, the word has been so manipulated by the media that I'm not so sure who or what it describes anymore. Through the television and newspapers, we have seen both extremes of radical feminism and conservative anti-feminism.
We have witnessed rape trials on TV. We have seen professional women accuse powerful, professional men of sexual harassment. We have heard feminists claim that all sex is rape and pornography is harmful to women. We have been shocked by a woman dismembering her husband.
Take these headlines and images at the media's face value and the "F" word becomes something overwhelming, scary, and possibly offensive. But what of that is fact and what is fiction?
I think I fit the word, but not the media's stereotype of it.The media has often equated feminism with lesbianism and militant behavior or implied that feminists male bash and look down upon motherhood. Then it claims that we are in an era of post-feminism and equality.
Now the media is talking about a "new" kind of feminism, the Third Wave. If this new wave is a reaction to the conflicts that take place among the older feminisms -- ones that have left women of color, poor women, and women of various other oppressed groups out of the picture; if is a movement working towards the improvement of gender relations and includes all peoples; then yes, this fits me. I am a Third Wave Feminist. Are you?
